WHO records record rise in coronavirus cases
The World Health Organization has reported a record rise in global coronavirus cases for a second day in a row - with the total increasing by nearly 260,000 in 24 hours.
The most new infections on Saturday (July 18) were from the United States, Brazil, India and South Africa.
Those four countries accounted for nearly two-thirds of new cases, according to WHO figures, with the United States alone reporting over 71,000 infections.
India on Friday (July 17) became only the third country in the world to report more than one million cases while Brazil on Thursday (July 16) crossed the two million mark.
Speaking at the 18th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture on Saturday, UN chief Antonio Guterres said the pandemic had been "likened to an x-ray, revealing fractures in the fragile skeleton of the societies we have built."
"It is exposing fallacies and falsehoods everywhere: the lie that free markets can deliver healthcare for all; the fiction that unpaid care work is not work; the delusion that we live in a post-racist world; the myth that we are all in the same boat. Because while we are all floating on the same sea, it’s clear that some are in super-yachts while others are clinging to the floating debris.”
Total global coronavirus cases surpassed 14 million on Friday, according to a Reuters tally - another milestone in the spread of the disease which has killed nearly 600,000 people in seven months.
