WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Here are the latest updates of the COVID-19 outbreak as of Wednesday, March 11, 2020.
The World Health Organization has declared COVID-19 as a pandemic because of the alarming levels of spread and severity. This is the first pandemic caused by a coronavirus. The last time such a declaration was made was in 2009 during the H1N1 influenza outbreak, which killed an estimated 284,500 people worldwide.
Globally, 122,928 cases of infections and 4,596 deaths have been reported as of March 11.
China, from which the virus outbreak all began, has so far reported 80,955 confirmed cases and 3,162 deaths. In the past two weeks, the number of new cases of infection in the country has declined while cases outside China have increased thirteen-fold.
In Italy, the second-worst affected country due to the coronavirus after China, the number of infections has climbed to 12,462 and the number of fatalities has jumped to 827. The country, which is home to around 60 million people, has been under lockdown since March 9 and will continue to remain so until April 3.
Indonesia, Bulgaria, Belgium, Ireland, and Sweden reported the first fatalities from the new coronavirus on March 11.
Australia, which is also grappling with the virus, has announced a health package worth A$2.4 billion ($1.56 billion) to combat the outbreak. The country has so far recorded almost 150 confirmed cases and 3 deaths.
Meanwhile, starting Friday, the U.S. has imposed a 30-day ban on travel from Europe into the country as part of mitigating the spread of the coronavirus. However, the ban would not apply on travel from the U.K.
There are 1,135 confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections and 38 deaths in the U.S. as per the latest update.
The National Basketball Association (NBA) has suspended all games until further notice, following one player testing positive for the virus. The player in question is Rudy Gobert of the team Utah Jazz.
A new study on the new coronavirus by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health suggests that the median disease incubation period, i.e., the time from exposure to onset of symptoms, is 5.1 days. This finding supports the current recommendation of 14 days for active monitoring or quarantine for individuals with likely exposure to the coronavirus is reasonable.
There have been unconfirmed reports from China claiming that AbbVie's HIV medicine Kaletra/Aluvia is effective in COVID-19 treatment.
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