New York, Mar 19: Security officials got alerted after the driver of a car claimed to have a bomb in his vehicle as he drove up to the White House.
There was no confirmation of any device in the vehicle, but security at the White House was immediately upgraded, CNN reported.
One person was taken into custody after the incident and the vehicle was checked.
Several streets around the White House were closed in what remained an ongoing operation.
Washington, Apr 17: A record number of 4,591 Americans have died in the last 24 hours due to the deadly novel coronavirus in the US, which has the highest number of COVID-19 casualties in the world.
According to the Johns Hopkins University data, by 8 pm on Thursday, as many as 4,591 Americans have died in the last 24 hours, The Wall Street Journal said.
The previous highest was 2,569 on Wednesday.
By Thursday, more than 662,000 Americans tested positive with the coronavirus.
The dreaded disease, which originated in Wuhan city in China in December last year, has so far claimed more than 144,000 lives and infected over 2.1 million people.
The virus has infected over 671,000 people and claimed more than 33,000 lives, the highest for any country in the world.
New York City and its adjoining areas, including New Jersey and Connecticut have emerged as the epicenter of the virus in the US.
New York alone accounts for 226,000 cases of infections and 16,106 deaths.
In New Jersey, as many as 3,518 people have died of the disease and 75,317 have tested positive.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, till April 14, four per cent of the Americans infected with COVID-19 were of Asian origin and nearly one-third (30 per cent) were African Americans.
US President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that experts and scientists report that his strategy to slow the spread of the virus has saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
Models predicted between 1.5 million and 2.2 million US deaths. If there was no mitigation, it could have even been higher than that and between 100,000 and 240,000 deaths with mitigation. It is looking like we will come far under even these lowest numbers, he said.
Noting that experts say the curve of the virus has flattened, and the peak in the new cases has passed, Trump said that nationwide, more than 850 counties or nearly 30 per cent of the country have reported no new cases in the last seven days.
Because of our early and aggressive action, we have avoided the tragedy of health care rationing and deadly shortfalls that have befallen in many other nations, nations which wherever possible we are helping, he said.
According to Trump, at least 35 clinical trials are already underway, including antiviral therapies, immune therapies, and blood therapies in the form of convalescent plasma. So far, more than 3.5 million tests have been carried out.
Wuhan, Feb 16: The death toll from China's coronavirus epidemic has climbed to 1,665 after 142 more people died, mostly in the worst-hit Hubei Province, and the confirmed cases jumped to 68,500, officials said on Sunday, as top WHO experts scramble to assist Beijing contain the virus spread.
China's National Health Commission confirmed 2,009 new cases across the country.
Hubei and its provincial capital Wuhan, where the virus first emerged in December, reported 1,843 of the new cases. The latest report brought the total confirmed cases in Hubei to 56,249 cases.
Of the new deaths, 139 were in Hubei, two in Sichuan, and one in Hunan, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The number of new cases, however, appears to have started dropping and a top Chinese health official has said efforts to control the outbreak have reached the “most crucial stage".
The report said 9,419 infected patients had been discharged from hospital after recovery so far.
The coronavirus has posed a severe threat to the medical staff as more than 1,700 Chinese health officials have been infected by the virus while treating the patients and six of them have died.
Experts from the World Health Organisation are expected in Beijing on Sunday to join Chinese health authorities in containing the virus, which has spread to several other countries forcing them to temporarily stop tourist arrivals from China.
The health commission said a joint mission with WHO experts will pay field visits to China's three provincial-level regions to learn the effectiveness of the epidemic control measures.
One task of the mission will be to come up with standard medicine to cure the disease, according to the health commission.
Several antiviral drugs are under clinical trials and Chinese researchers have narrowed down their focus to a few existing drugs, including Chloroquine Phosphate, Favipiravir and Remdesivir, said Zhang Xinmin, director of the China National Centre for Biotechnology Development.
Experts have asked people to frequently wash hands and face, and wear masks.
Authorities have begun quarantining large quantity of bank notes and coins in the affected areas and sanitising them with UV light before releasing them back into circulation to stop the virus from spreading.
Kolkata, Feb 4: A Thailand national on Tuesday gave birth during a flight from Doha to Bangkok.
The unnamed woman passenger went into labour and delivered the baby with the help of a cabin crew of Qatar airways at around 3 am.
The aircraft made the emergency landing in Kolkata and the woman was admitted to a private hospital here. Both the mother and the baby are doing fine.
"An unscheduled flight from Doha to Bangkok QR-830 landed around 03:09 am at Kolkata airport in medical priority landing. The pilot of Qatar flight had asked SOS to ATC for medical priority landing. The flight landed safely, the airport team with the doctor was attending the concerned." Kolkata Airport official said while speaking to news agency.
More details in this regard are awaited.
Comments
Add new comment