Beijing, Jun 15: China is locking now ten more neighbourhoods in Beijing to try and contain the spread of a new coronavirus outbreak linked to a food market, authorities announced Monday.
City official Li Junjie said at a press conference that fresh cases had been found in a second wholesale market in northwestern Haidian district, and as a result, the market and nearby schools would be closed, and people living in ten communities around it placed under lockdown.
Toronto, Apr 25: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday (local time) announced a new CAD 1.1 billion package supporting vaccine research and clinical trials as well as expanded testing capacity.
"We are putting in place an additional CAD 1.1 billion dollars for a national medical and research strategy to address COVID-19," Trudeau said during his daily novel coronavirus pandemic briefing on Thursday.
"This plan has three pillars -- research on vaccines and other treatments, support for clinical trials and expanding national testing and modelling," he added.
Trudeau pointed out that CAD 82 million of the total sum will be directed to the development of a vaccine and treatments against the virus, while CAD 471 million will go towards supporting clinical trials.
A further CAD 249 million is being allocated for expanding testing capacity and modelling, the Prime Minister added.
According to Trudeau, this funding will be allotted to a new "immunity task force" commissioned with conducting serology testing -- blood tests looking for the presence of antibodies indicative of exposure to the virus and subsequent immune response.
He said the taskforce, comprising the country's top medical experts, including Chief Public Health Officer Dr Theresa Tam, will test at least a million Canadians over the next two years.
The funding announced today comes in addition to the CAD 200 million committed for COVID-19-related research on March 11.
Trudeau has repeatedly stressed the daily constraints that much of the population is adhering to will be the new normal until a vaccine is developed.
As of Thursday, Canada has confirmed a total of 40,824 COVID-19 cases since the onset of the outbreak, out of which more than 2,000 have proven to be fatal, according to the latest figures from the country's public health agency.
Washington, Jun 30: Indian-American Medha Raj has been named by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as his digital chief of staff, a key role in his election campaigns which are entirely going virtual due to the Covid-19 pandemic in the US.
In this capacity, Raj will work across all facets of the digital department to streamline and coordinate how to maximise the impact of its digital outputs, the Biden campaign said.
“Excited to share that I've joined Joe Biden's campaign as the Digital Chief of Staff. 130 days to the election and we're not going to waste a minute!” she said on LinkedIn.
Raj comes from Pete Buttigieg's campaign, who has now endorsed Biden.
The news was first reported by CNN, which the news channel said is part of the efforts of the Biden campaign to adapt to an almost entirely virtual campaign trail brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.
The US is the hardest-hit country by the coronavirus pandemic, with more than 2.64 million official cases and over 128,000 deaths.
According to CNN, Clarke Humphrey, who previously worked on Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, will act as the Biden campaign's new deputy digital director for the grassroots fundraising.
Jose Nunez is the campaign's new digital organising director.
He is from the Kamala Harris' campaign. Christian Tom is the new director of digital partnerships. Over the past few months, Biden has been relying more and more on digital campaigning and raising funds virtually.
A graduate in international politics from Georgetown University, Raj has earned her MBA from Stanford University.
Biden, 77, is challenging the 74-year-old Republican incumbent President Donald Trump in the November 3 presidential elections.
Former US vice president Biden would formally accept his Democratic presidential nomination at the party’s scaled back convention in Wisconsin’s Milwaukee city on August 20.
In view of the coronavirus pandemic, the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) on Wednesday announced its convention plan to broadcast from Milwaukee and across the nation to reach out to all Americans.
According to some of the latest opinion polls, Biden is leading by more than eight percentage points over Trump.
Paris, Apr 17: The number of coronavirus-related deaths in France has increased by 753 to 17,920 over the past 24 hours, with the total case count now standing at 108,847, Jerome Salomon, the head of the state health agency, said on Thursday.
On Wednesday, the country reported a total of 106,206 cases, including a record 1,438 new fatalities. Salomon specified that it was not the daily death toll, as the data had been compiled over the last three-day weekend.
"The total number of victims since March 1 is 17,920," Salomon said at a briefing on Thursday.
He noted that 11,060 of them had died in hospitals, and 6,860 others in social and medical-social facilities.
President Emmanuel Macron on Monday extended nationwide movement restrictions, which had been introduced due to the epidemic, until May 11. Afterwards, the country is set to gradually reopen kindergartens, schools and universities.
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