Washington, Mar 27: The United States has seen a record 18,000 new confirmed coronavirus cases and 345 deaths over the past 24 hours, according to a Johns Hopkins University tracker.
There are now 97,028 declared virus cases in the country and there have been 1,475 deaths, Johns Hopkins said.
Madrid, Apr 4: Spain recorded a second successive daily drop in coronavirus-related deaths with 809 fatalities, official figures showed Saturday.
The total number of deaths in Spain now stands at 11,744, second only to Italy. A record 950 people died on Thursday.
The number of new cases also slowed at 7,026, taking the total to 124,736.
Recoveries over the last 24 hours stood at 3,706, taking that total to 34,219.
The Madrid region was the worst affected accounting for 40 percent of the deaths, 4,723, and 29 percent of the cases at 36,249. The northeastern region of Catalonia was in second place with 2,508 deaths.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is due to decide whether to prolong the emergency measures and confinement declared on March 14 for another two weeks in order to get on top of the outbreak.
Kensington (United States), May 20: The world cut its daily carbon dioxide emissions by 17% at the peak of the pandemic shutdown last month, a new study found.
But with life and heat-trapping gas levels inching back toward normal, the brief pollution break will likely be “a drop in the ocean" when it comes to climate change, scientists said.
In their study of carbon dioxide emissions during the coronavirus pandemic, an international team of scientists calculated that pollution levels are heading back up — and for the year will end up between 4% and 7% lower than 2019 levels.
That's still the biggest annual drop in carbon emissions since World War II.
It'll be 7% if the strictest lockdown rules remain all year long across much of the globe, 4% if they are lifted soon.
For a week in April, the United States cut its carbon dioxide levels by about one-third.
China, the world's biggest emitter of heat-trapping gases, sliced its carbon pollution by nearly a quarter in February, according to a study Tuesday in the journal Nature Climate Change. India and Europe cut emissions by 26% and 27% respectively.
The biggest global drop was from April 4 through 9 when the world was spewing 18.7 million tons (17 million metric tons) of carbon pollution a day less than it was doing on New Year's Day.
Such low global emission levels haven't been recorded since 2006. But if the world returns to its slowly increasing pollution levels next year, the temporary reduction amounts to ''a drop in the ocean," said study lead author Corinne LeQuere, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia.
“It's like you have a bath filled with water and you're turning off the tap for 10 seconds," she said.
By April 30, the world carbon pollution levels had grown by 3.3 million tons (3 million metric tons) a day from its low point earlier in the month. Carbon dioxide stays in the air for about a century.
Outside experts praised the study as the most comprehensive yet, saying it shows how much effort is needed to prevent dangerous levels of further global warming.
“That underscores a simple truth: Individual behavior alone ... won't get us there,” Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann, who wasn't part of the study, said in an email.
“We need fundamental structural change.”
If the world could keep up annual emission cuts like this without a pandemic for a couple decades, there's a decent chance Earth can avoid warming another 1.8 degrees (1 degree Celsius) of warming from now, study authors said. But getting the type of yearly cuts to reach that international goal is unlikely, they said.
If next year returns to 2019 pollution levels, it means the world has only bought about a year's delay in hitting the extra 1.8 degrees (1 degree Celsius) of warming that leaders are trying to avoid, LeQuere said. That level could still occur anywhere from 2050 to 2070, the authors said.
The study was carried out by Global Carbon Project, a consortium of international scientists that produces the authoritative annual estimate of carbon dioxide emissions. They looked at 450 databases showing daily energy use and introduced a measurement scale for pandemic-related societal “confinement” in its estimates.
Nearly half the emission reductions came from less transportation pollution, mostly involving cars and trucks, the authors said. By contrast, the study found that drastic reductions in air travel only accounted for 10% of the overall pollution drop.
In the US, the biggest pollution declines were seen in California and Washington with plunges of more than 40%.
Mexico City, Jun 13: The number of people, who have died of COVID-19 in Mexico, has risen by 544 to 16,448 within the past 24 hours, Jose Luis Alomia, the director of epidemiology at the Health Ministry, said.
He also said on late Friday that the number of confirmed coronavirus cases had increased by 5,222 to 139,196 within the same period of time.
A day earlier, the Latin American nation has recorded 4,790 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus, with 587 fatalities.
The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11. To date, more than 7.6 million people have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, with over 425,000 fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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