Argentina Now Has 1 Million Confirmed COVID-19 Cases | WPN World People News

Argentina is now the world’s fifth country with more than one million confirmed COVID-19 cases.

Data collected by Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center shows the South American country has 1,002,662 total cases. Argentina is in fifth place behind the United States (8.2 million), India (7.5 million), Brazil (5.2 million) and Russia (1.4 million).

The one million coronavirus cases in Argentina include 26,716 deaths.

The new figures from Argentina push the total number of worldwide coronavirus infections to more than 40.4 million cases, including 1.1 million deaths.

Reuters news agency says U.S.-based pharmaceutical firm Pfizer and German-based BioNTech have begun a combined Phase One and Phase Two trial of an experimental coronavirus vaccine in Japan. The study will recruit 160 people between the ages of 20 and 85 to take part in the study.

The United Nations Children’s Fund says it will stockpile 500 million syringes by the end of the year, and one billion by 2021, as part of its preparations for an eventual COVID-19 vaccine.

According to U.N. News, the stockpile of one billion syringes to support the agency’s coronavirus vaccination drive is in addition to the 620 million syringes UNICEF plans to purchase for its normal vaccination programs.

UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore says the push to vaccinate billions of the world’s children against COVID-19 “will be one of the largest mass undertakings in human history, and we will need to move as quickly as the vaccines can be produced.”

UNICEF is the world’s largest purchaser of vaccines, buying more than two billion doses annually for routine vaccination efforts against such diseases as measles and typhoid, as well as outbreak responses on behalf of nearly 100 countries.

A report in The Guardian newspaper says Chinese health authorities have found traces of live coronavirus on frozen food packaging. The live virus was detected during an investigation of an outbreak in the eastern coastal city of Qingdao, marking the first time the virus in an active state has been detected on the outside of refrigerated goods.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has previously said there has been no evidence of COVID-19 infection through handling or consuming food.

Source: Voice of America