Washington, May 1: The United States on Thursday recorded 29,625 new coronavirus cases, and 2,035 deaths in the last 24 hours, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The total number of coronavirus cases has reached 1,069,534 and the death toll stands at 63,001, CNN reported.
The novel coronavirus has infected more than 3.2 million people and killed at least 233,000 globally, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Washington, Jun 18: US Defence officials are concerned over China's use of COVID-19 situation to gain stakes in strategically important companies of United States as the impact of novel coronavirus has left several companies in dire need of capital.
Amid the pandemic, it getting hard for the defence department to keep an eye on national security and help protect smaller companies down the chain, CNN reported.
"We are paying close attention to any indicators that China is leveraging Covid-19 to take advantage of a situation where defence companies need capital more than ever," a defence official told CNN.
In April, Ellen Lord, undersecretary of defence for acquisition and sustainment said it is paying close attention to 'adversaries' against the 'economic warfare' with the United States.
"We have to be very, very careful about the focused efforts some of our adversaries have to really undergo sort of economic warfare with us, which has been going on for some time," Ellen Lord, undersecretary of defence for acquisition and sustainment was quoted as saying by CNN.
US Committee on Foreign Investment protects its interest against hostile countries gaining ownership in strategically important companies. But the pandemic is changing the definition of national security concerns to include drugs, protective gear and medical supplies.
"These are now national security needs and we probably should have been thinking about it a long time ago in terms of biowarfare that we should have a trusted industrial base or a set of trusted allies -- the UK, or NATO allies or Japan or Korea -- who are trusted in that regard," Bill Greenwalt, a former Pentagon official.
Give the threat posed by foreign acquisition, Pentagon has been offering tools to help small US businesses defend themselves against adversarial investment and conducting background checks with other government agencies to ensure transparency.
US President Donald Trump's trade adviser Peter Navarro recently told CNN if Trump wins reelection, Washington DC will likely take offshore supply chains as national security priorities.
"If we fail to do that in the face of this crisis, we will have failed this country and all future generations of Americans," Navarro said.
The US State Department has also warned US allies to "avoid economic overreliance on China" and "guard their critical infrastructure" from China's influence.
Chad P Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, pointed to recent China's economic coercion of Australia on the political matter saying, "this is how China operates and everybody knows it."
Geneva, Jun 22: The global count of coronavirus cases has surpassed 8.7 million, with 183,020 new cases recorded on Sunday, the World Health Organisation said in its daily situation report.
Over the last 24 hours, 4,743 people died from COVID-19 worldwide, taking the death toll to 461,715 fatalities, according to the report.
The cumulative global toll of confirmed cases has now reached 8,708,008, as stated in the report.
The WHO Regional Director for Europe, Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, shared that Europe accounts for 31 per cent of COVID-19 cases and 43 per cent of COVID-19 deaths globally.
Dr Kluge highlighted that several countries continue to face increasing disease incidence and that "preparing for the autumn is a priority now at the WHO Regional Office for Europe"
The United States continues to be worst affected by the contagion with the highest count of cases and fatalities -- 2.2 million and 118,895, respectively.
The novel coronavirus was declared a pandemic by WHO on March 11.
Paris, Jun 13: The coronavirus pandemic has killed 425,000 people since it emerged in China late last year, according to an AFP tally of official sources at 0130 GMT on Saturday.
A total of 425,282 deaths have now been recorded from 7,632,517 cases.
Europe has registered 186,843 deaths from 2,363,538 cases, but the epidemic is progressing most rapidly in Latin America, where there have been a total of 76,343 deaths recorded from 1,569,938 cases.
The United States remains the country with the most recorded deaths at 114,643, ahead of Brazil which on Friday became the second worst-hit nation with 41,828 deaths. Britain is next with 41,481 deaths, followed by Italy (34,223) and France (29,374).
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