Here are the latest developments in the coronavirus crisis.
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Sweden sets new Covid-19 case record as deaths pass 6 000 mark
Sweden, whose pandemic strategy of avoiding lockdowns has gained international attention, reported a record increase in new Covid-19 cases on Thursday as health officials said it was seeing a marked rise of patients in intensive care.
Sweden registered 4 034 new coronavirus cases, health agency data showed, the latest in a string of records set in recent days amid a pandemic resurgence that has struck the country later than many other parts of Europe, but which now appears to be rapidly gaining momentum.
The Health Agency has said the outbreak was likely more severe during the spring when Sweden periodically suffered some of Europe's highest per capita death tolls though limited testing at the time had meant many infections went undetected.
"There is continued increase in the number of cases in all regions except one," said Karin Tegmark Wisell, head of the microbiology department at the agency.
"We are now also beginning to see a fairly significant increase on the number of intensive care patients."
The intensifying outbreak has seen Sweden tighten the mostly voluntary recommendations on which it relies across much of the country and Tegmark Wisell said the percentage of positive tests had climbed to 9.7% last week from 5.6% the week before.
Earlier on Thursday, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said he was self-isolating and getting tested after he learned a person close to him had met someone who was later confirmed to have Covid-19.
On Thursday, 90 Covid-19 patients were receiving intensive care at Swedish hospitals, 19 more than on Wednesday, while a further 661 were being treated in other modes of care.
Sweden registered 5 new deaths, taking its death toll during the pandemic to 6 002. Sweden's death rate per capita has been several times higher than Nordic neighbours but lower than some larger European countries, such as Spain and Britain.
-REUTERS
WHO warns of 'explosion' of virus cases in Europe: AFP interview
The World Health Organisation in Europe on Thursday said they were seeing an "explosion" of virus cases in the European region and warned mortality rates were also rising.
"We do see an explosion.... in the sense it only takes a couple of days to have over the European region an increase of one million cases," WHO's regional director for Europe Hans Kluge told AFP, adding that "we see little by little the mortality increasing as well."
-AFP
AstraZeneca aims to bring non-US vaccine data before the FDA
AstraZeneca will start discussing emergency approval of its experimental Covid-19 vaccine with US regulators once it has good trial data from Britain, South Africa and Brazil, as it has no indication the watchdog would favour U.S. data.
If and when AstraZeneca reaches the first statistically reliable efficacy and safety results from those trials, based on more than 25 000 volunteers in total, it would present them to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) even though any read-out from an ongoing US trial will be months later.
"If you hit those thresholds we are going to have a conversation with them," executive team member Mene Pangalos told Reuters.
"What the FDA has signalled is what their expectations of data are for an approval," he said, adding the company had not spoken to the US watchdog about where the data should some from.
The future of the US trial would not be called into question by any successful non-US trial result, Pangalos stressed.
Some experts have argued that, once a successful vaccine is widely available or soon expected, the runners-up in the vaccine race may find it difficult to recruit volunteers willing to risk being randomly assigned to a control group on placebo.
Pangalos said a vaccine would not be available for everyone immediately following approval. "That is not how it happens. It will take months to vaccinate people (widely)," he said.
"By the time the [UK] study reads out, we submit regulatory documents, and assuming we get an approval and the vaccine starts to be distributed across the US, I think there will be more than enough time to get the study almost fully recruited."
"Being on a vaccine study is probably going to be a good way ... to get access to the vaccine," he said, adding that only one in three US trial participants will be on placebo.
-REUTERS
Russia's coronavirus tests show false negatives up to 40% of time, official says
Russia's coronavirus tests give false negative results up to 40% of the time, a health official said on Thursday as new infections rose and Moscow's mayor warned of a worsening situation.
The Kremlin, which has said there are no plans for a lockdown despite the surge in Covid-19 cases in recent weeks, told reporters the overall situation was alarming but under control.
"Unfortunately we see setbacks in some regions. The president [Vladimir Putin] knows about this and emergency measures are being taken," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
"In general the situation is alarming," he told reporters on a conference call.
Sergei Avdeev, the health ministry's lead external consultant on pulmonology, said coronavirus tests often showed false negatives, not because of a problem with the tests, but because the swabs were not taken properly.
"How often: roughly 30-40%," he was quoted by TASS news agency as saying.
The foreign ministry's spokeswoman recommended that Russians postpone non-essential travel because of the pandemic.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin extended a remote learning period for secondary schools, requiring pupils from Class 6 [age 12] upwards to continue online classes for two more weeks until 22 November They began remote learning three weeks ago.
"The coronavirus situation in Moscow began to get worse again at the start of this week, as we can see from the number of patients and hospitalisations," Sobyanin said on his website.
Russia reported 19 404 new infections in the previous 24 hours, including 5 255 in Moscow, and 292 virus-related deaths nationwide, pushing the official death toll to 29 509.
The Kremlin has said that targeted measures are enough because Russia is better prepared than it was at the beginning of the pandemic.
-REUTERS
Latest on worldwide spread of the coronavirus
Several European countries reintroduced lockdown measures and other restrictions as new coronavirus infections surge across the continent, while China barred non-Chinese travellers from Britain, Belgium, the Philippines and India, imposing some of the most stringent entry curbs of any country.
DEATHS AND INFECTIONS
EUROPE
* Moscow's mayor said the city's coronavirus situation was worsening, and extended a remote learning period for secondary schools as infections climbed nationwide at a near-record daily rate.
* Greece ordered a nationwide lockdown for three weeks, its second this year after a sharp increase in infections this week.
* Poland reported a record 27 143 new infections, approaching a threshold at which the government has said it could be forced to impose a nationwide lockdown.
* Paris will be placed under more restrictions, including a requirement for more shops to close in the evening.
* Parts of Denmark will face new, tougher lockdown measures after health authorities discovered a mutated coronavirus strain in minks and people in the country's northern regions.
* Norwegians were urged to avoid domestic travel and to limit social contracts as part of a new round of restrictions to curb the virus spread.
* Local Italian leaders reacted with dismay and anger on Thursday after the government singled out some regions for tougher restrictions than others in the renewed battle against the pandemic.
* Germany, Austria, Sweden, Czech Republic and Ukraine also reported daily records in new cases.
AMERICAS
* The United States set a daily record for new cases a day after the presidential election.
* U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Congress needed to approve a new coronavirus aid bill by the end of 2020 as lawmakers return to work following Tuesday's elections.
ASIA-PACIFIC
* South Korea has alerted about 1 000 people who attended the memorial of the late Samsung Group patriarch Lee Kun-hee last week to get tested for the coronavirus after one person at the event tested positive.
* Australia agreed to purchase two more Covid-19 vaccines in development, beefing up its prospective arsenal against the pandemic to 135 million doses as it aims to complete a mass inoculation programme within months.
MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA
* The pandemic is having a knock-on effect on other vital health services in Africa as countries are forced to redirect already stretched resources, a regional head of WHO said.
MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS
* A summer dip in UK infections has pushed back test results for AstraZeneca's potential vaccine, leading the drugmaker to delay deliveries of shots to the UK government.
* A WHO-led scheme to supply Covid-19 drugs to poor countries is betting on experimental monoclonal antibody treatments and steroids but is shunning Gilead's remdesivir blockbuster therapy, an internal document shows.
ECONOMIC IMPACT
* British finance minister Rishi Sunak ramped up his 200 billion-pound economic rescue programme once again in a coordinated move with the Bank of England, which increased its already-huge purchases of government debt.
* Indonesia suffered its first recession in over two decades as the pandemic hit consumption and business activity in Southeast Asia's largest economy, costing millions of jobs.
-REUTERS
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