Sinovac vaccine becomes third worldwide to enter Phase 3 clinical trial; California cases set to overtake New York’s; Mike Pompeo attacks WHO. Follow the latest updates
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California on Tuesday became the second US state after New York to report more than 400,000 Covid-19 cases, according to a Reuters tally of county data.
Reuters reports that most populous US state has a total of 400,166 Covid-19 cases, putting it on the verge of surpassing New York - the original epicentre of the nation’s outbreak – for the highest number of infections.
If California were a country, and it overtakes New York, it would rank fifth in the world for total Covid-19 cases behind only the United States, Brazil, India and Russia. New York currently has over 412,800 total cases and is adding on average 700 new cases a day in July. In California there is an average of 8,300 new cases a day.
The rapid increase of cases has made it difficult to trace the pathogen’s path through the community through contact tracing, a process of interviewing people who test positive for the virus to find out how they were exposed, and whom they in turn might have exposed, said California Secretary of Health and Human Services Mark Ghaly.
“No one anticipated building a program to contact trace the number of cases we’re seeing here,” Dr. Ghaly said at a news conference, referring to Los Angeles and other counties struggling to trace cases of the disease.
A Chinese-made vaccine against the new coronavirus entered the final stage of testing Tuesday in Brazil, where volunteers received the first doses of what officials hope will be a game-changer in the global pandemic, AFP reports.
The vaccine, developed by private Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinovac Biotech, became the third in the world to enter Phase 3 clinical trials, or large-scale testing on humans - the last step before regulatory approval.
Related: Coronavirus vaccine tracker: how close are we to a vaccine?
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