Dubai, Feb 27: Twenty two people have died so far from the new coronavirus in Iran, the official Iranian news agency IRNA reported in a chart it published on Thursday.
The number of people diagnosed with the disease is 141, the chart showed. It did not specify whether those who have died were included in the tally of those infected.
Iranian officials on Wednesday reported a total of 139 cases of coronavirus and 19 deaths.
Washington, Feb 22: US President Donald Trump will raise the issue of religious freedom with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit to India next week, the White House said on Friday, noting that the US has great respect for India's democratic traditions and institutions.
"President Trump will talk about our shared tradition of democracy and religious freedom both in his public remarks and then certainly in private. He will raise these issues, particularly the religious freedom issue, which is extremely important to this administration," a senior official told reporters in a conference call.
The official was responding to a question on whether the president was planning to speak to Modi on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act or the National Register of Citizens.
"We do have this shared commitment to upholding our universal values, the rule of law. We have great respect for India's democratic traditions and institutions, and we will continue to encourage India to uphold those traditions," the official said, requesting anonymity.
"And we are concerned with some of the issues that you have raised," the senior administration official said, in response to the question on CAA and NRC.
"I think the President will talk about these issues in his meetings with Prime Minister Modi and note that the world is looking to India to continue to uphold its democratic traditions, respect for religious minorities," the official said.
"Of course, it's in the Indian constitution -- religious freedom, respect for religious minorities, and equal treatment of all religions. So this is something that is important to the president and I'm sure it will come up," said the official.
Pointing out that India has a strong democratic foundation, the official said India is a country rich in religious, linguistic, and cultural diversity.
"In fact, it's the birthplace of four major world religions," the official noted.
London/Milan, Jun 2: World Health Organization experts and a range of other scientists said on Monday there was no evidence to support an assertion by a high profile Italian doctor that the coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic has been losing potency.
Professor Alberto Zangrillo, head of intensive care at Italy's San Raffaele Hospital in Lombardy, which bore the brunt of Italy's COVID-19 epidemic, on Sunday told state television that the new coronavirus "clinically no longer exists".
But WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove, as well as several other experts on viruses and infectious diseases, said Zangrillo's comments were not supported by scientific evidence.
There is no data to show the new coronavirus is changing significantly, either in its form of transmission or in the severity of the disease it causes, they said.
"In terms of transmissibility, that has not changed, in terms of severity, that has not changed," Van Kerkhove told reporters.
It is not unusual for viruses to mutate and adapt as they spread, and the debate on Monday highlights how scientists are monitoring and tracking the new virus. The COVID-19 pandemic has so far killed more than 370,000 people and infected more than 6 million.
Martin Hibberd, a professor of emerging infectious disease at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said major studies looking at genetic changes in the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 did not support the idea that it was becoming less potent, or weakening in any way.
"With data from more than 35,000 whole virus genomes, there is currently no evidence that there is any significant difference relating to severity," he said in an emailed comment.
Zangrillo, well known in Italy as the personal doctor of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, said his comments were backed up by a study conducted by a fellow scientist, Massimo Clementi, which Zangrillo said would be published next week.
Zangrillo told Reuters: "We have never said that the virus has changed, we said that the interaction between the virus and the host has definitely changed."
He said this could be due either to different characteristics of the virus, which he said they had not yet identified, or different characteristics in those infected.
The study by Clementi, who is director of the microbiology and virology laboratory of San Raffaele, compared virus samples from COVID-19 patients at the Milan-based hospital in March with samples from patients with the disease in May.
"The result was unambiguous: an extremely significant difference between the viral load of patients admitted in March compared to" those admitted last month, Zangrillo said.
Oscar MacLean, an expert at the University of Glasgow's Centre for Virus Research, said suggestions that the virus was weakening were "not supported by anything in the scientific literature and also seem fairly implausible on genetic grounds."
Islamabad, Jun 25: The coronavirus cases in Pakistan crossed the 192,000-mark after 4,044 new Covid-19 infections were detected in the last 24 hours, the health ministry said on Thursday.
According to the Ministry of National Health Services, 148 more people died due to the deadly virus in the country, taking the death toll to 3,903.
With the detection of 4,044 new cases in the last 24 hours, the coronavirus tally in the country now stands at 192,970, it said.
Sindh reported a maximum number of 74,070 infections, followed by 71,191 in Punjab, 23,887 in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, 11,710 in Islamabad, 9,817 in Balochistan, 1,365 in Gilgit-Baltistan and 930 in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
A total of 81,307 patients have recovered so far from the disease.
Health authorities have so far conducted 1,171,976 coronavirus tests, including 21,835 in the last 24 hours.
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