(Reuters) – Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:
“A long way to go”
The World Health Organization is starting to raise the alarm bell about the rising number of new coronavirus cases in poor countries, even as many rich nations emerge from lockdowns.
The global health body said on Wednesday 106,000 new cases had been recorded in the previous 24 hours, the most in a single day since the outbreak began.
“We still have a long way to go in this pandemic,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
Global coronavirus cases have surpassed 5 million, with Latin America overtaking the United States and Europe in the past week to report the largest portion of new daily cases.
Vaccine: high hopes and a reality-check
The United States said it will pump up to $1.2 billion into developing AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine and confirmed that it would order 300 million doses.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he hoped the first doses of the vaccine, which is being developed with the University of Oxford, would be available by October.
AstraZeneca meanwhile stressed it was still awaiting results from an early stage trial to know if the vaccine worked at all.
China fur and traditional medicine trade to continue?
China’s parliament is preparing new laws to ban the trade and consumption of wildlife, following on from a temporary move in January after exotic animals traded in a Wuhan market were identified as the most likely source of COVID-19.
However, local action plans published this week suggest the country’s fur trade and lucrative traditional medicine sectors will continue as usual.
That means practices that lead to cross-species virus transmission could continue, said Peter Li, China policy specialist with Humane Society International, an animal rights group. China’s annual national session of parliament, delayed from March, starts on Friday.
Sports and sleep wear over suits and ties
The new best sellers at Marks & Spencer are sports wear, sleep wear and bras, while sales of suits and ties are down to “a dribble”, as the lockdown transforms shoppers’ priorities, Britain’s biggest clothing retailer said on Wednesday.
What customers are buying is “completely different from what it would have been a year ago,” M&S chairman Archie Norman told reporters, after the 136-year-old group published annual results and its response to the pandemic.
Along with surging sales of jogging pants, hoodies and leggings, an emphasis on home comforts and family needs has boosted bedding sales by 150%.
(Compiled by Karishma Singh and Mark John; editing by Nick Macfie)
