coronavirus
Russia hits another virus death record as infections soar
Russia on Friday recorded another daily record of coronavirus deaths as authorities hoped to stem the contagion by keeping most people off work.
The government’s coronavirus task force reported 1,163 deaths in 24 hours, the largest daily number since the pandemic began. That brought Russia's official total to 236,220 deaths, by far the highest in Europe.
The task force counts only deaths directly caused by the virus. The state statistics service Rosstat, which counts COVID-19 deaths by wider criteria, released figures Friday indicating a much higher toll.
Rosstat counted 44.265 deaths in September caused directly by the virus, or in which it was a contributing cause or of patients believed to have been infected. That would bring Russia's pandemic-long death toll to about 461,000 as of the end of September, nearly twice the task force's count.
Also Read:Dual disaster management during COVID-19 pandemic underscored
Either death figure places Russia among the worst-hit nations in the world during the pandemic.
To contain the spread of infection, Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered a nonworking period from Oct. 30 to Nov. 7, when most state agencies and private businesses are to suspend operations. He encouraged Russia’s worst-hit regions to start sooner, and some ordered most residents off work earlier this week.
Moscow introduced the measure beginning Thursday, shutting down kindergartens, schools, gyms, entertainment venues and most stores, and restricting restaurants to takeout or delivery. Food stores, pharmacies and companies operating key infrastructure remained open.
Access to museums, theaters, concert halls and other venues in Russia is limited to people holding digital codes on their phones to prove they have been vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19, a practice that will remain after Nov. 7. Unvaccinated people older than 60 have been ordered to stay home.
The number of new daily cases in Russia rose by 39,849 on Friday, just below the all-time record reported the previous day. The government hopes that by keeping most people out of offices and public transportation, the nonworking period will help curb the spread of the virus, but many Russians rushed to use the time off for a seaside Black Sea vacation or to take a trip to Egypt or Turkey.
Also Read:How virtual galleries kept Indian art alive amid Covid
Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova, the head of the government coronavirus task force, voiced concern about a spike in beach vacations.
“We are particularly worried about our citizens booking tourist trips to other regions,” she said.
Authorities have blamed soaring infections and deaths on Russia’s lagging pace of vaccinations. About 51 million Russians — just over a third of the country’s nearly 146 million people — were fully vaccinated as of Friday.
Russia was the first country in the world to authorize a coronavirus vaccine in August 2020 and proudly named the shot Sputnik V to showcase the country’s scientific edge. But the vaccination campaign has stalled amid widespread public skepticism blamed on conflicting signals from authorities.
Be careful during winter about Coronavirus: PM
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Thursday urged all to maintain health protocols like wearing masks to check the recharge of Coronavirus in the upcoming winter as the virus hits many countries of the world at this time.
“I urge all to remain careful so that Coronavirus cannot resurge in any way. You’ll have to wear facemasks always,” she said, adding that the virus has again hit many other countries including the USA, England and Europe in the world with the advent of winter.
The Prime Minister said this while receiving 2645,000 blankets for the destitute from the Bangladesh Association of Bank (BAB) for her relief godown ahead of winter.
She joined the blanket handover ceremony, held at the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), virtually from her official residence Ganobhaban.
Read: Bangladesh reports 6 more Covid deaths, 294 fresh cases
Noting that the season changes in October-November here, which is a very critical time for the outbreak of influenza and cough, she urged people to take precaution to prevent influenza and cough in this transitional period between the cold and hot seasons.
Hasina also asked people to keep vitamin C-enriched fruits in their food menu to enhance their immunity against the coronavirus alongside maintaining the health protocols.
She said the government has successfully been able to keep the coronavirus under control.
The PM reassured that all those who are eligible for vaccination according to WHO would be brought under vaccination by the middle of the next year.
Read: Conduct digital surveys to protect forests: PM
She thanked the representatives of the private banks for donating the blankets and cash for the poor. "You people are always coming forward to help the poor."
On behalf of the Prime Minister, her Principal Secretary Dr Ahmad Kaikaus received the blankets and a cheque of Tk 10 lakh for the PM's Relief and Welfare Fund from 37 private banks.
BAB Chairman Nazrul Islam Majumder spoke at the function while top representatives from the banks were present.
Facebook froze as anti-vaccine comments swarmed users
In March, as claims about the dangers and ineffectiveness of coronavirus vaccines spun across social media and undermined attempts to stop the spread of the virus, some Facebook employees thought they had found a way to help.
By altering how posts about vaccines are ranked in people’s newsfeeds, researchers at the company realized they could curtail the misleading information individuals saw about COVID-19 vaccines and offer users posts from legitimate sources like the World Health Organization.
“Given these results, I’m assuming we’re hoping to launch ASAP,” one Facebook employee wrote, responding to the internal memo about the study.
Instead, Facebook shelved some suggestions from the study. Other changes weren't made until April.
READ: Australia wants Facebook to seek parental consent for kids
When another Facebook researcher suggested disabling some comments on vaccine posts in March until the platform could do a better job of tackling anti-vaccine messages lurking in them, that proposal was ignored at the time.
Critics say the reason Facebook was slow to take action on the ideas is simple: The tech giant worried it might impact the company’s profits.
“Why would you not remove comments? Because engagement is the only thing that matters,” said Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, an internet watchdog group. “It drives attention and attention equals eyeballs and eyeballs equal ad revenue.”
In an emailed statement, Facebook said it has made “considerable progress” this year with downgrading vaccine misinformation in users' feeds.
Facebook’s internal discussions were revealed in disclosures made to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by former Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen’s legal counsel. The redacted versions received by Congress were obtained by a consortium of news organizations, including The Associated Press.
The trove of documents shows that in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Facebook carefully investigated how its platforms spread misinformation about life-saving vaccines. They also reveal rank-and-file employees regularly suggested solutions for countering anti-vaccine content on the site, to no avail. The Wall Street Journal reported on some of Facebook's efforts to deal with anti-vaccine comments last month.
Facebook's response raises questions about whether the company prioritized controversy and division over the health of its users.
“These people are selling fear and outrage,” said Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and early investor in Facebook who is now a vocal critic. “It is not a fluke. It is a business model.”
Typically, Facebook ranks posts by engagement — the total number of likes, dislikes, comments, and reshares. That ranking scheme may work well for innocuous subjects like recipes, dog photos, or the latest viral singalong. But Facebook’s own documents show that when it comes to divisive public health issues like vaccines, engagement-based ranking only emphasizes polarization, disagreement, and doubt.
READ: Communal violence: Facebook cannot deny responsibility, says Hasan Mahmud
To study ways to reduce vaccine misinformation, Facebook researchers changed how posts are ranked for more than 6,000 users in the U.S., Mexico, Brazil, and the Philippines. Instead of seeing posts about vaccines that were chosen based on their popularity, these users saw posts selected for their trustworthiness.
The results were striking: a nearly 12% decrease in content that made claims debunked by fact-checkers and an 8% increase in content from authoritative public health organizations such as the WHO or U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Those users also had a 7% decrease in negative interactions on the site.
Employees at the company reacted to the study with exuberance, according to internal exchanges included in the whistleblower’s documents.
“Is there any reason we wouldn’t do this?” one Facebook employee wrote in response to an internal memo outlining how the platform could rein in anti-vaccine content.
Facebook said it did implement many of the study’s findings — but not for another month, a delay that came at a pivotal stage of the global vaccine rollout.
In a statement, company spokeswoman Dani Lever said the internal documents “don’t represent the considerable progress we have made since that time in promoting reliable information about COVID-19 and expanding our policies to remove more harmful COVID and vaccine misinformation.”
The company also said it took time to consider and implement the changes.
Yet the need to act urgently couldn't have been clearer: At that time, states across the U.S. were rolling out vaccines to their most vulnerable — the elderly and sick. And public health officials were worried. Only 10% of the population had received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. And a third of Americans were thinking about skipping the shot entirely, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Despite this, Facebook employees acknowledged they had “no idea” just how bad anti-vaccine sentiment was in the comments sections on Facebook posts. But company research in February found that as much as 60% of the comments on vaccine posts were anti-vaccine or vaccine reluctant.
“That’s a huge problem and we need to fix it,” the presentation on March 9 read.
Even worse, company employees admitted they didn’t have a handle on catching those comments. And if they did, Facebook didn’t have a policy in place to take the comments down. The free-for-all was allowing users to swarm vaccine posts from news outlets or humanitarian organizations with negative comments about vaccines.
“Our ability to detect (vaccine hesitancy) in comments is bad in English — and basically non-existent elsewhere,” another internal memo posted on March 2 said.
Los Angeles resident Derek Beres, an author and fitness instructor, sees anti-vaccine content thrive in the comments every time he promotes immunizations on his accounts on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. Last year, Beres began hosting a podcast with friends after they noticed conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and vaccines were swirling on the social media feeds of popular health and wellness influencers.
Earlier this year, when Beres posted a picture of himself receiving the COVID-19 shot, some on social media told him he would likely drop dead in six months’ time.
"The comments section is a dumpster fire for so many people,” Beres said.
Anti-vaccine comments on Facebook grew so bad that even as prominent public health agencies like UNICEF and the World Health Organization were urging people to take the vaccine, the organizations refused to use free advertising that Facebook had given them to promote inoculation, according to the documents.
Some Facebook employees had an idea. While the company worked to hammer out a plan to curb all the anti-vaccine sentiment in the comments, why not disable commenting on posts altogether?
“Very interested in your proposal to remove ALL in-line comments for vaccine posts as a stopgap solution until we can sufficiently detect vaccine hesitancy in comments to refine our removal,” one Facebook employee wrote on March 2.
The suggestion went nowhere until mid-April, when Lever said the company stopped showing previews of popular comments on vaccine posts.
Instead, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on March 15 that the company would start labeling posts about vaccines that described them as safe.
The move allowed Facebook to continue to get high engagement — and ultimately profit — off anti-vaccine comments, said Ahmed of the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
“They were trying to find ways to not reduce engagement but at the same time make it look like they were trying to make some moves toward cleaning up the problems that they caused,” he said.
It’s unrealistic to expect a multi-billion-dollar company like Facebook to voluntarily change a system that has proven to be so lucrative, said Dan Brahmy, CEO of Cyabra, an Israeli tech firm that analyzes social media networks and disinformation. Brahmy said government regulations may be the only thing that could force Facebook to act.
“The reason they didn’t do it is because they didn’t have to,” Brahmy said. “If it hurts the bottom line, it’s undoable.”
Bipartisan legislation in the U.S. Senate would require social media platforms to give users the option of turning off algorithms tech companies use to organize individuals' newsfeeds.
Sen. John Thune, R-South Dakota, a sponsor of the bill, asked Facebook whistleblower Haugen to describe the dangers of engagement-based ranking during her testimony before Congress earlier this month.
She said there are other ways of ranking content — for instance, by the quality of the source, or chronologically — that would serve users better. The reason Facebook won’t consider them, she said, is that they would reduce engagement.
“Facebook knows that when they pick out the content ... we spend more time on their platform, they make more money,” Haugen said.
Haugen’s leaked documents also reveal that a relatively small number of Facebook’s anti-vaccine users are rewarded with big pageviews under the tech platform’s current ranking system.
Internal Facebook research presented on March 24 warned that most of the “problematic vaccine content” was coming from a handful of areas on the platform. In Facebook communities where vaccine distrust was highest, the report pegged 50% of anti-vaccine pageviews on just 111 — or .016% — of Facebook accounts.
“Top producers are mostly users serially posting (vaccine hesitancy) content to feed,” the research found.
On that same day, the Center for Countering Digital Hate published an analysis of social media posts that estimated just a dozen Facebook users were responsible for 73% of anti-vaccine posts on the site between February and March. It was a study that Facebook’s leaders in August told the public was “faulty,” despite the internal research published months before that confirmed a small number of accounts drive anti-vaccine sentiment.
Earlier this month, an AP-NORC poll found that most Americans blame social media companies, like Facebook, and their users for misinformation.
But Ahmed said Facebook shouldn't just shoulder blame for that problem.
“Facebook has taken decisions which have led to people receiving misinformation which caused them to die,” Ahmed said. “At this point, there should be a murder investigation.”
Covid-19 claims 9 more lives in Bangladesh, infects 275 others
Covid-19 claimed nine more lives and infected another 275 people in Bangladesh in 24 hours till Sunday morning.
The daily-case positivity rate declined slightly to 1.49 per cent from Saturday’s 1.85 per cent.
With the fresh numbers, the Covid fatalities reached 27,823 while the caseload climbed to 1,567,692 in Bangladesh, according to the Directorate General of the Health services (DGHS).
Also read: Covid in Bangladesh: fatalities, positivity rate increase slightly
Of the latest deaths, three were men and six were women.The new cases were detected after testing 18,499 samples during the 24-hour period.
However, the mortality rate remained static at 1.77 per cent compared to the same period.
Also, the recovery rate increased slightly to 97.68 per cent, with 364 more patients getting cured.
Also read: Pfizer says COVID-19 vaccine more than 90% effective in kids
Covid in Bangladesh: fatalities, positivity rate increase slightly
Covid-19 claimed nine more lives and infected another 278 people in Bangladesh in 24 hours till Saturday morning.
The daily-case positivity increased slightly to 1.85 per cent from Friday’s 1.36 per cent after a streak of declining trend.
Read: Covid: 4 die, 232 infected in 24 hours -
With the fresh numbers, the Covid fatalities reached 27,814 while the caseload climbed to 1,567,417 in Bangladesh, according to the Directorate General of the Health services (DGHS).
Of the latest deaths, six were men and 3 were women.
Read: Covid-19: Bangladesh sees 41 deaths in 24 hours, lowest in 39 days
The new cases were detected after testing 15,042 samples during the 24-hour period.
However, the mortality rate remained static at 1.77 per cent compared to the same period.
Also, the recovery rate remained unchanged at 97.67 per cent, with 294 more patients getting cured.
Can new variants of the coronavirus keep emerging?
Can new variants of the coronavirus keep emerging?
Yes, as long as the virus that caused the pandemic keeps infecting people. But that doesn’t mean new variants will keep emerging as regularly, or that they’ll be more dangerous.
With more than half the world still not vaccinated, the virus will likely keep finding people to infect and replicating inside them for several months or years to come. And each time a virus makes a copy of itself, a small mutation could occur. Those changes could help the virus survive, becoming new variants.
But that doesn’t mean the virus will keep evolving in the same way since it emerged in late 2019.
When a virus infects a new species, it needs to adapt to the new host to spread more widely, says Andrew Read, a virus expert at Pennsylvania State University.
Read: AstraZeneca, Pfizer vaccines effective against Delta Covid-19 variants: Study
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the delta variant is twice as contagious as earlier versions of the virus. And while it could still mutate to become more infectious, it probably won’t double its transmission rate again, says Dr. Adam Lauring, a virus and infectious disease expert at the University of Michigan.
“We’ve seen a stage of rapid evolution for the virus. It’s been harvesting the low-hanging fruit, but there’s not an infinite number of things it can do,” Lauring says.
It’s possible that the virus could become more deadly, but there isn’t an evolutionary reason for that to happen. Extremely sick people are also less likely to socialize and spread the virus to others.
Read: WHO: High vaccination rates can help reduce risk of variants
Experts are watching to see whether emerging variants could be better at evading the protection people develop from vaccination and infections. As more people get the shots, the virus would have to be able to spread through people who have some immunity for it to survive, says Dr. Joshua Schiffer, a virus expert at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
“The virus could take on a mutation that makes the immune response less effective,” he says.
If that happens, scientists may recommend that vaccine formulas be updated periodically, just as annual flu shots are.
Covid: 10 more die, 243 test positive
Covid-19 in Bangladesh claimed ten more lives and infected another 243 people in 24 hours till Thursday morning.
The daily-case positivity rate decreased further to 1.51 per cent from Wednesday’s 1.81 per cent.
Read:Covid kills 78 more in Bangladesh
With the fresh numbers, the Covid fatalities reached 27,801 while the caseload climbed to 1,566,907 in Bangladesh, according to the Directorate General of the Health services (DGHS).
Of the latest deaths, four were men and six were women.
The new cases were detected after testing 16,088 samples during the 24-hour period.
However, the mortality rate remained static at 1.77 per cent compared to the same period.
Besides, the recovery rate rose slightly to 97.65 per cent, with 534 more patients getting cured.
China's economic growth weakens amid construction slowdown
China’s economic growth is sinking under pressure from a construction slowdown and power shortages, prompting warnings about a possible shock to its trading partners and global financial markets.
The world’s second-largest economy grew by a weaker-than-expected 4.9% over a year ago in the three months ending in September, down from the previous quarter’s 7.9%, government data showed Monday. Factory output, retail sales and investment in construction and other fixed assets all weakened.
Manufacturing has been hampered by official curbs on energy use and shortages of processor chips and other components due to the coronavirus pandemic. Construction, an industry that supports millions of jobs, is slowing as regulators force developers to cut reliance on debt that Chinese leaders worry is dangerously high.
“Ripple effects to the rest of the world could be significant" due to weaker Chinese demand for raw materials, said Mo Ji of Fidelity International in a report. “Even developed markets, including the U.S., would not be immune to a significant tightening in global financial conditions as a result of a negative China growth shock accompanied by financial stress.”
Read: China to commit 1.5 bln yuan to initiate Kunming Biodiversity Fund: Xi
Compared with the previous quarter, the way other major economies are measured, output barely grew in the July-September period, expanding by just 0.2%. That was down from 1.2% in the April-June period and one of the past decade’s weakest quarters.
The slowdown adds to pressure on Beijing to prop up activity by easing borrowing controls and spending more on building public works. But forecasters said even if that happens, activity will weaken before policy changes take effect.
“Growth will slow further,” Louis Kuijs of Oxford Economics said in a report.
Chinese leaders are trying to steer the economy to more sustainable growth based on domestic consumption instead of exports and investment and to reduce financial risk.
Construction and housing sales, an important source of demand for steel, copper and other industrial imports, have slowed since regulators ordered developers to reduce their debt levels.
One of the biggest, Evergrande Group, is struggling to avoid defaulting on $310 billion owed to banks and bondholders. That has fueled fears about other developers, though economists say the threat to global financial markets is small.
Read:China's Shanxi downgrades flood-control emergency response
Factories in some provinces were ordered to shut down in mid-September to avoid exceeding official goals for energy use and energy intensity, or the amount used per unit of output. Some warned deliveries of goods might be delayed, raising the possibility of shortages of smartphones and other consumer products ahead of the Christmas shopping season.
Factory output barely grew in September, expanding by only 0.05% compared with August. That was down from the 7.3% growth for the first nine months of the year.
Private sector forecasters have cut their growth outlook this year for China, though they still expect about 8%, which would be among the world’s strongest. The ruling Communist Party’s official target is “more than 6%,” which leaves Beijing room to keep its controls in place.
The near-term outlook “remains difficult," said Rajiv Biswas of IHS Market in a report. Real estate also is suffering from “fears of contagion to some other property developers.”
This year’s economic figures have been exaggerated due to comparison with 2020, when factories and stores were closed to fight the coronavirus.
Read: French senators arrive in Taiwan amid tensions with China
Output grew by a record 18.3% in the first quarter of 2021, but forecasters said the rebound already was leveling off.
In September, growth in retail spending weakened to 4.4% over a year earlier, down from 16.4% in the first nine months.
Investment in real estate, factories, housing and other fixed assets rose 0.17% in September, down from 7.3% for the first nine months.
The latest figures indicate “the property sector fallout will be a significant drag on growth in the coming quarters,” said Fidelity’s Mo. “Even significant policy easing now, which is still unlikely in our view, will take time to propagate into the real economy.”
Auto sales in the global industry’s biggest market fell 16.5% in September from a year earlier, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. The group said production was disrupted by shortages of processor chips.
Imports, an indicator of Chinese domestic demand, rose 17.6% in September over a year earlier, but that was about half the previous month’s 33% growth.
Covid-linked deaths in Bangladesh fall to 7
Covid-19 claimed 7 more lives in Bangladesh and infected 466 others in 24 hours till Thursday morning.
With the fresh numbers, the Covid-19 fatalities reached 27,737 in the country while the caseload rose to 15,64,485, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
Read: Covid-19: 17 more die, 518 infected in Bangladesh
Of the latest deceased, four were women and three men.
Three of them died in Dhaka division, two in Chattogram and one each in Khulna and Barishal divisions.
Bangladesh last logged seven Covid-19 deaths on October 8, the lowest since March 17 this year when the country recorded 11 such deaths.
The fresh cases were detected after testing 21,568 samples.
Read: Global Covid cases near 237 million
With this, the daily-case positivity rate declined slightly to 2.16% percent. However, the mortality rate remained static at 1.77%.
Besides, the recovery rate increased slightly to 97.56 %, with 695 more patients getting cured during the period.
So far, 15,26,368 people have recovered from the deadly virus infections, the DGHS added.
Global Coronavirus cases top 239 million as it keeps escalating
The overall number of global Covid cases has now surged past 239 million, despite the ongoing mass inoculations in many countries.
According to Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the total Covid case count and fatalities stand at 239, 121, 766 and 4,873,471 respectively as of Thursday morning.
The US has recorded 44,681,561 cases and 719,515 fatalities to date, according to the university data.
Brazil currently has the world's second-highest pandemic death toll after the United States and the third-largest caseload after the United States and India.
Brazil has registered 21,597, 949 cases so far. The country's Covid death toll has also risen to 601,574 as it has been experiencing a new wave of cases since January.
Read:Dubai's Expo 2020 reveals 3 worker deaths from COVID-19
India's Covid-19 tally rose to 34,001,743 on Wednesday, as 15,823 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours across the country, showed the federal health ministry's latest data.
Besides, as many as 226 deaths due to the pandemic since Tuesday morning took the total death toll to 451,189.
Situation in Bangladesh
Covid-19 claimed 17 more lives in Bangladesh and infected 518 others in 24 hours till Wednesday morning.
With the fresh numbers, the Covid-19 fatalities reached 27,730 in the country while the caseload mounted to 15,64,019, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
Of the latest deceased, nine were women and eight men.
Read: US hits 700,000 COVID deaths just as cases begin to fall
Thirteen of them died in Dhaka division, one in Chattogram, two in Khulna and one in Barishal divisions.
Bangladesh logged seven Covid-19 deaths on October 8, the lowest since March 17 this year when the country recorded 11 such deaths.
The fresh cases were detected after testing 22,153 samples
With this, the daily-case positivity rate declined slightly to 2.34% percent.
However, the mortality rate remained static at 1.77%.
However, the recovery rate decreased slightly to 97.54% from Tuesday’s 97.55, with 505 more patients getting cured during the period from Monday’s 97.53%.
So far, 15,25,673 people have recovered from the deadly virus infections, the DGHS added.