Yesterday, Covid-19 infections sprinted past the 3-million mark – the pandemic has now affected 210 countries and territories around the world.
Despite the grim milestone, many countries are cheering as new cases and fatalities are slowing down.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (right), for one, has claimed her country scored a significant victory against the spread of the coronavirus as it begins a phased exit from lockdown.
"There is no widespread, undetected community transmission in New Zealand", Ardern declared. "We have won that battle".
Notwithstanding this bit of encouraging news, Russia has confirmed 6,198 new coronavirus infections on Monday, bringing the country’s official number of cases to 87,147 – and therefore, surpassing China to become the world's ninth most-affected country amid the pandemic.
Russia's cases, unsurprisingly, are mainly concentrated in Moscow – although infections have been confirmed in every one of the country’s 85 regions.
Also on Monday, the US of A posted one million confirmed cases.
Donald Trump (right) again let loose his tongue – he again faulted China for the Covid-19 spread and saying his administration is conducting "serious investigations" into what happened.
“We are not happy with China”, the blockhead asserted.
Interestingly, CNN reported that researchers from the Yale School of Public Health had detected ‘notable increases’ – about 15,000 excess deaths in the US from March 01 to April 04 – yet these had not been attributed to Covid-19.
Over in Southeast Asia, Singapore is just one or two days away from reaching 15,000 confirmed cases – given the spikes in numbers, it is the worst hit country in ASEAN.
And the Philippines recorded 501 deaths Sunday.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (left) is not budging from his position.
He is still insisting the coronavirus pandemic is “far from over” – and that “we have a long road ahead of us and a lot of work to do”.
Not many governments are listening though.