Geneva, May 27: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide has increased by nearly 100,000 over the past 24 hours to surpass 5.4 million, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said.
According to the WHO, the global case tally currently stands at 5,404,512 -- a rise by 99,780 over the past day.
The death count worldwide amounts to 343,514 -- an increase by 1,486.
Most cases of infection are recorded in the Americas -- 2,454,452, with 143,739 deaths.
Canadian researchers are developing a DNA vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and has currently infected nearly 5,00,000 people worldwide and crippled the global economy.
Entos Pharmaceuticals, a health-care biotechnology company headed by a University of Alberta researchers, develop new therapeutic compounds using the company's proprietary drug-delivery platform and has begun manufacturing vaccine candidates against the novel coronavirus.
"Given the urgency of the situation, we can have a lead candidate vaccine within two months. Once we have that it's a race to get it into clinical trials," said John Lewis, CEO of Entos and a Professor at the University of Alberta in Canada.
Lewis said in comparison to a traditional vaccine, DNA-based vaccines hold several advantages.
Nucleic acids are introduced directly into the patient's own cells, causing them to make pieces of the virus--tricking the immune system into mounting a response without the full virus actually being present, the researcher said.
According to the company, the approach is recognised as being easier to move into large-scale manufacturing, offers improved vaccine stability and works without needing an infectious agent.
In the current absence of a vaccine for COVID-19, several companies around the world are mounting efforts to begin similar work.
The first clinical trial using a DNA-based vaccine developed by Moderna Inc.in the US on March 13.
Their approach allows for antibodies to be made in the human trial volunteers against a specific protein on the surface of the coronavirus that lets the virus enter human cells.
The hope is that the antibodies will stop the interaction.
Though this approach is designed to be effective against COVID-19 specifically, Lewis said Entos is taking a different tack.
The company plans to use plasmid DNA to amplify the production of key coronavirus surface and structural proteins with each injection, with an eye to the bigger picture.
"Many of the structural proteins in the virus are pretty well conserved across all the coronaviruses, including SARS and MERS," said Lewis.
"We're hoping that if we express more of the structural proteins that are common to most coronaviruses, we can inhibit the current COVID-19, and also potentially protect against all coronaviruses both past and future," Lewis added.
To move the project forward quickly, the company is seeking financial support from both provincial and federal levels of government.
"We have the opportunity to save a lot of lives, and I think it's really upon us and governments to find solutions for that," Lewis said.
Manila, Aug 2: The number of COVID-19 cases in the Philippines has exceeded the 100,000 marks with a record 5,032 new infections registered on Sunday, the Health Ministry's data showed.
With the total cases now reaching 103,185, the spread of COVID-19 in the Southeast Asian nation is steeply rising. The daily growth rate just this Thursday set a record at over 3,800 cases, the next day there were nearly 4,000 new infections detected and on Saturday, over 4,800 cases were detected.
More than 65,000 people have recovered from the ailment, while 2,059 people have died.
The Philippines' epidemiological dynamic mirrors that of many Southeast Asian nations, where COVID-19 infections have only recently begun to climb.
Most other nations in Europe and the Americas experienced an initial spread of the virus which later tailed off only to begin climbing again after easing of restrictions.
New York, Jan 30: Three Indian citizens were arrested by border patrol agents here for entering the US illegally.
US Border Patrol agents stopped a vehicle near Massena in New York state along the county's northern border on January 24. During the vehicle checking, the agents found that two of the passengers were Indian citizens who entered the US illegally and not at a designated port of entry.
Both the passengers were transported to the Border Patrol Station for processing and charged.
The vehicle driver, also an Indian citizen who originally entered illegally into the US in 2012 and was ordered removed from the country in absentia last December, was charged with alien smuggling, a felony, which carries a penalty of a fine and up to five years of imprisonment for each violation.
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