• The French health ministry reported more than 2,500 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours, setting a new post-lockdown daily high for the third day in a row, and taking the country’s cumulative total of cases to 249,611. 

• An Australian inquiry into the virus-infected Ruby Princess cruise ship said health officials made a “serious and material error” in allowing passengers to disembark from the vessel. 

• Worldwide coronavirus cases surpassed 21 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, while more than 13 million people have recovered. More than 763,000 people have died.

Here are the latest updates:

Saturday, August 15

08:50 GMT – Russia starts production of COVID-19 vaccine

Russia has started manufacturing its new vaccine for COVID-19, the Interfax news agency reported, citing the health ministry.

Russia has said the vaccine, developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute and the first for the coronavirus to go into production, will be rolled out by the end of this month. Some scientists said they fear Moscow may be putting national prestige before safety.

08:31 GMT – India set to mass produce COVID-19 vaccine

India is ready to mass produce COVID-19 vaccines when scientists give the go-ahead, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his Independence Day speech on August 15, also launching a national project to roll out health identities for each citizen.

In annual celebrations held at the 17th-century Red Fort and scaled down due to the pandemic, Modi identified health and economic self-reliance as the key priorities for his government.

At the event, soldiers who ceremonially welcomed Modi had been under quarantine days before the event.

Only around 4,000 guests were allowed and made to sit six feet apart, while medical booths with ambulances were set up for any attendee showing COVID-19 symptoms during entry.

08:12 GMT – Russia reports more than 5,000 new coronavirus cases

Russia reported 5,061 new cases of the novel coronavirus, bringing its nationwide tally to 917,884, the fourth highest caseload in the world.

Russia’s coronavirus crisis response centre said 119 people had also died over the last 24 hours, pushing its official death toll to 15,617. It added that 729,411 people have recovered.

07:14 GMT – Ukraine sees new record daily high

Ukraine registered 1,847 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, officials said, a new daily record for infections in the country – which is seeing cases increase sharply following the easing of some COVID-19 restrictions.

The figure given by the national council of security and defence surpassed the previous single-day record of 1,732 reported on Friday.

Total cases reached 89,719, including 2,044 deaths.

Infections have risen since June as authorities have eased some restrictions, allowing cafes, churches and public transport to reopen.

06:12 GMT – India cases cross 2.5 million with another jump

India’s confirmed coronavirus cases have crossed 2.5 million with another biggest single-day spike of 65,002 in the past 24 hours.

India is behind the United States and Brazil in the number of cases.

The Health Ministry on Saturday also reported another 996 deaths for a total of 49,036.

The average daily reported cases jumped from around 15,000 in the first week of July to more than 50,000 at the beginning of August.

The Health Ministry said the rise shows the extent of testing with 800,000 carried out in a single day. But experts say India needs to pursue testing more vigorously.

04:55 GMT – New Zealand’s outbreak grows

New Zealand reported seven new cases of COVID-19 as a lockdown in the country’s biggest city, Auckland, was extended in response to the Pacific nation’s first coronavirus outbreak in months.

Six of the seven new cases have been linked to the cluster responsible for all the previous community cases, while one case was being investigated, Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield told a media briefing in Wellington.

The new cases bring New Zealand’s total infections since the start of the year to 1258, while the number of currently active cases stands at 56. Twenty-two people have died so far.

04:21 GMT – Latin America’s caseload exceeds 6 million

Coronavirus cases in Latin America has exceeded 6 million and is continuing to accelerate, according to a Reuters tally, as most of its nations begin to relax lockdown measures.

The region reached 6,000,005 confirmed cases by Friday evening and 237,360 deaths. That accounts for just under one-third of the world’s total case load and a similar share of reported deaths from the pandemic.

The climb from 5 million to 6 million cases took 11 days, one day less than it took to reach the previous million.

Latin America is the region of the world worst-affected by the pandemic, reporting an average of more than 86,000 daily infections and more than 2,600 deaths in the last seven days.

03:47 GMT – China reports 22 new cases

Health authorities in China reported 22 new coronavirus cases in the mainland for August 14, compared to 30 cases a day earlier.

Of the new infections, 14 were imported and the locally transmitted cases included seven in the far western region of Xinjiang and one in Guangdong province.

On Friday, a shopping centre in Shenzhen, a city in Guangdong, was sealed after a COVID-19 case was confirmed there. The Shenzhen health authority later that day said two positive cases had been found, both of whom had worked inside the mall at the Alibaba-owned supermarket Freshippo.

Freshippo said in a separate statement that it had suspended operations at 21 of its stores in Shenzhen to carry out disinfection work and nucleic acid tests for its employees.

03:13 GMT – Australia’s Victoria reports 303 new cases

The Australian state of Victoria continued to flatten the curve in its wave of COVID-19 infections and deaths, reporting four more fatalities and 303 new cases in the past 24 hours.

It was the second-lowest daily figure in Victoria this month after 278 cases on Thursday.

Victoria’s daily numbers are gradually decreasing, with the seven-day average down to 344 from 521 a week ago. But authorities warn more progress is needed before lockdown restrictions in the city of Melbourne can be eased.

“We could not conceive of opening up with 200 cases a day. We couldn’t do it with 100 cases a day. We have to head for the lowest possible number,” said Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton.

02:45 GMT – South Korea’s cases jump again

South Korea reported 166 newly confirmed case of the coronavirus, it’s highest daily jump in five months, amid fears transmissions were getting out of control in the greater capital area.

The figures announced by South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) brought the national caseload to 15,039, including 305 deaths.

The KCDC said 155 of the new infections were locally transmitted, mostly from the densely populated Seoul metropolitan area where authorities scurried to shut down thousands of churches, which have emerged as a major source of COVID-19 cases. Many of them had failed to properly enforce preventive measures, allowing worshippers to take off their masks, sing in choirs or eat together in diners.

Other clusters have been tied to nursing homes, schools, restaurants, outdoor markets and door-to-door salespeople.

02:29 GMT – Top official says coronavirus has peaked in Mexico

Hugo Lopez-Gatell, Mexico’s point man for the coronavirus pandemic, said he thinks the country reached its peak of infections over the last three weeks.

“We have now had a maximum point in the curve,” the assistant health secretary said, while also predicting that second waves of infections would continue occurring around the world for some time.

“This is a phenomenon that is going to be with us in the whole world for several years,” he said.

Lopez-Gatell had had previously wrongly predicted that infections would peak in May and June.

Meanwhile, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Mexico rose by 5,618 on Friday to reach 511,369. The health department reported 615 newly confirmed deaths from COVID-19, bringing the country’s total deaths to 55,908.

01:37 GMT – Paris expands mask requirements for pedestrians

France’s capital, Paris, is expanding the areas of the city where pedestrians will be obliged to wear masks starting on Saturday morning.

The Champs-Elysees Avenue and the area around the Louvre Museum are among zones where masks will be mandatory, and police checks ensuring respect for mask-wearing in designated areas are to be reinforced.

Bars and restaurants could be ordered closed if distancing and other barriers to virus transmission are not respected, health officials said. 

00:20 GMT – California surpasses 600,000 cases, most in US

California became the first state in the United States to surpass 600,000 cases of COVID-19 on Friday, although Governor Gavin Newsom said he was encouraged to see that hospitalisations have declined 20 percent over the past two weeks and admissions to ICU wards were down 14 percent in the same period.

“The number that really matters to us is that positivity rate,” he said when asked about the state’s caseload. The positivity rate – the number of confirmed infections as a percentage of tests done – has declined from 7 percent to 6 percent statewide over the past 14 days, Newsom said.

“I’m not going to back off on more tests because I fear [more cases],” he said.

Hello and welcome to Al Jazeera’s continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. I’m Zaheena Rasheed in Male, Maldives. 

For all the key developments from yesterday, August 14, go here. 

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NEW DELHI: India’s Covid diplomacy has moved beyond HCQ and paracetamol to ensure that the country can leverage its position as the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer to be part of the search and distribution of the Covid vaccine.

After sustained conversations with their counterparts in key countries, the government has zeroed in on the Indo-Pacific group to cooperate on looking for a vaccine. The key players have been foreign minister S Jaishankar and foreign secretary Harsh Shringla as well as the Prime Minister’s principal scientific adviser Dr K Vijayaraghavan and the government’s department of biotechnology.

Coronavirus outbreak: Live updates

Talking to TOI in an exclusive chat, Vijayaraghavan said, “India will have a voice – even if there is no “Indian” vaccine — in terms of distribution because India’s role in providing vaccines to others will be very important.”

Shringla has continued a sustained and regular conversation with his US counterpart Steve Biegun, as well as officials from Japan, Australia and South Korea, while Jaishankar has added political heft to conversations with US, Israel, the Quad countries, Brazil and South Korea. India, officials said, would work with “like-minded countries” on not only vaccine development, but production and distribution.

Vijayaraghavan says, “Globally there are more than 125 vaccine development programmes today. … of these, 10 are in the first stage, eight in phase two (animal and limited human trials) and two in phase 3 (larger-scale human trials). We will know the results of the phase 3 trials in a few months time.”

More on Covid-19

Apart from the Oxford University programme where India has a large presence and which is currently the most advanced, getting into phase 3, “There is a programme in the US called Warp Speed which combines phase 1 and 2. Vaccines in these programmes include those by Johnson & Johnson and Merck and others. A Chinese one also going into phase 3. There is an Australian one, also going into phase 3, by Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Australia. That’s not really a vaccine for Covid 19, but it is new kind of BCG vaccine,” Vijayaraghavan said.

Interestingly, while India has a presence in most of the international vaccine development programmes, it has no presence in the two Chinese vaccine programmes.

Vijayaraghavan observes, “The size and extraordinary capability of the Indian vaccine manufacturing effort in bulk are enormous and well appreciated. Apart from the big multinationals, Brazil, Indonesia, China and India have enormous capabilities. India has the largest. So India will not be ignored no matter who makes the vaccine.”

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The Indian and Chinese foreign ministers have exchanged protests over clashes in a disputed Himalayan border area which led to the deaths of at least 20 Indian troops.

India’s Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said China tried to erect a structure inside Indian territory, while China’s Wang Yi said Indian troops attacked first.

But in a phone call both men promised not to escalate the situation.

It was the first deadly clash at the disputed border for at least 45 years.

Soldiers reportedly brawled with sticks and bats but no shots were fired.

China has not released casualty figures. Unconfirmed reports in Indian media say at least 40 Chinese soldiers died. Some Indian soldiers are still believed to be missing.

Earlier Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the Indian deaths “will not be in vain” and that India would be “proud that our soldiers died fighting the Chinese” in the clash in the Ladakh region on Monday.

Addressing the confrontation for the first time in a televised address on Wednesday, he said: “India wants peace but when provoked, India is capable of giving a fitting reply, be it any kind of situation.”

What did the two diplomats say?

An Indian government statement following the phone conversation said that Chinese troops had tried to put up a structure on the Indian side of the de facto border, the Line of Actual Control (LAC), in the strategically important Galwan Valley.

It described this as “premeditated and planned action that was directly responsible for the resulting violence and casualties” and urged China to “take corrective steps”.

The statement concluded that neither side would take action to escalate matters.

Meanwhile a Chinese statement quoted Mr Wang as saying: “China again expresses strong protest to India and demands the Indian side launches a thorough investigation… and stop all provocative actions to ensure the same things do not happen again.”

“Both sides should resolve the dispute through dialogue, and keep the border safe and tranquil,” he added.

What happened?

The fighting occurred in the precipitous, rocky terrain of the Galwan Valley.

Indian media say soldiers engaged in direct hand-to-hand combat, with some “beaten to death”. During the fight, one newspaper reported, others fell or were pushed into a river.

The Indian army initially said a colonel and two soldiers had died. It later said that “17 Indian troops who were critically injured in the line of duty” had died from their injuries, taking the “total that were killed in action to 20”.

“I understand that some [further] Indian soldiers went missing. The Indian side is still working to release them from Chinese custody,” defence analyst Ajai Shukla told the BBC.

Indian forces appear to have been massively outnumbered by Chinese troops.

A senior Indian military official told the BBC there were 55 Indians versus 300 Chinese, who he described as “the Death Squad”.

“They hit our boys on the head with metal batons wrapped in barbed wire. Our boys fought with bare hands,” the officer, who did not want to be named, said.

His account, which could not be verified, tallies with other reports in the Indian media detailing the savagery of the combat.

The clash has provoked protests in India, with people burning Chinese flags.

China has not confirmed how many of its personnel died or were injured. The BBC’s Robin Brant in Beijing says that China has never given contemporaneous confirmation on military deaths outside of peacekeeping duties.

Our correspondent adds that on this occasion China’s propagandists may not want to fan nationalist flames at home by making much of any loss, or admit to a significant and demoralising loss.

This is not the first time the two nuclear-armed neighbours have fought without conventional firearms on the border. India and China have a history of face-offs and overlapping territorial claims along the more than 3,440km (2,100 mile), poorly drawn LAC separating the two sides.

India shows restraint

Analysis by Geeta Pandey, BBC News, Delhi

The first comments from the Indian government on the violent standoff on the Chinese border came nearly 24 hours after the news broke on Tuesday.

And Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his cabinet colleagues – the defence minister and the home minister – have chosen their words carefully.

Usually boastful and given to grandstanding, Mr Modi and his ministers have displayed utmost restraint in their public messages this time, mostly sticking to mourning the loss of soldiers.

The prime minister did say: “India wants peace but, if instigated, it is capable of giving a befitting reply.” But this is seen as aimed more at his political rivals and supporters domestically, rather than as a warning to Beijing.

China is not Pakistan and memories of the humiliating defeat in the 1962 war are all too real for any misadventure.

How tense is the area?

The LAC is poorly demarcated. The presence of rivers, lakes and snowcaps means the line can shift. The soldiers either side – representing two of the world’s largest armies – come face-to-face at many points.

Border patrols have often bumped into each other, resulting in occasional scuffles.

The last firing on the border happened in 1975 when four Indian soldiers were killed in a remote pass in the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh. The clash was variously described by former diplomats as an ambush and an accident.

But no bullets have been fired since.

At the root of this is a 1996 bilateral agreement that says “neither side shall open fire… conduct blast operations or hunt with guns or explosives within two kilometres of the Line of Actual Control”.

But there have been tense confrontations along the border in recent weeks. In May Indian and Chinese soldiers exchanged physical blows on the border at Pangong Lake, also in Ladakh, and in the north-eastern Indian state of Sikkim hundreds of miles to the east.

India has accused China of sending thousands of troops into Ladakh’s Galwan Valley and says China occupies 38,000 sq km (14,700 sq miles) of its territory. Several rounds of talks in the last three decades have failed to resolve the boundary disputes.

The two countries have fought only one war, in 1962, when India suffered a humiliating defeat.

There are several reasons why tensions are rising again now – but competing strategic goals lie at the root.

The two countries have devoted extensive money and manpower to building roads, bridges, rail links and air fields along the disputed border.

Both India and China see each other’s construction efforts as calculated moves to gain a tactical advantage, and tensions often flare up when either announces a major project.

India also disputes part of Kashmir – an ethnically diverse Himalayan region covering about 140,000 sq km – with Pakistan.

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When novel coronavirus cases first emerged in India, authorities acted swiftly. They halted public transit, scrambled to stockpile medical gear and ordered more than 1.3 billion residents to stay indoors. Everyone braced for the worst.

The fear was that if COVID-19 were to spread through India’s densely crowded cities, especially its slums, millions could die. The toll could be much worse than in Europe or the United States, where there are many more doctors and hospitals per capita.

But about five weeks later, parts of the country are seeing a dramatic drop in mortality. Funeral directors and ambulance drivers are bewildered. Instead of seeing a deluge of COVID-19 patients, many say their facilities are less crowded.

India has counted more than 20,000 active cases of COVID-19 and about 900 deaths, though testing has not been widespread.

There are other, unproven theories as to why India’s coronavirus death toll is not higher: Some believe a certain type of tuberculosis vaccination common in India may offer some immunity. Others believe India’s heat and humidity may kill the virus.

But those who work in funeral services say the drop in mortality, under lockdown, is a bitter illustration of how deadly India can be in normal times. They credit a near-total lockdown that has averted road and railway accidents and thwarted some types of crime.

“We typically get 20 bodies a day, but these days it’s one or two, maximum,” says Lakshmi Kumar, 46, proprietor of Kumar International, which offers private ambulance and funeral services in the southern city of Bengaluru but does not handle COVID-19 cases. “We still get the occasional heart attack victim, but otherwise it’s quiet. There haven’t been road accidents, because everyone is staying at home.”

The government recorded more than 150,000 deaths from road accidents in 2018, the most recent year for which data are available. (Many deaths go unregistered though, so the real toll is probably higher.) By contrast, the U.S., which has higher car ownership per capita, saw more than 36,000 road deaths the same year.

In the commercial capital Mumbai, an average of about eight people are killed per day on commuter trains. Since passenger trains were halted on March 22, eight people have died so far in all of April. (Some cargo services are still running.) Mumbai reported a 20% drop in all non-COVID-related deaths last month, compared to March 2019.

It’s unclear how many deaths have occurred at home and may have gone unreported.

In Bengaluru, police cite a dramatic decrease in murder and theft under lockdown.

With so few deaths, Kumar, the funeral director, is struggling to make payroll for her 45 employees.

“It’s the worst since our business opened in 1994,” she says. “I’ve never seen such a quiet period.”

NPR producer Sushmita Pathak contributed to this report from Mumbai.

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US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last fortnight that India and the US were working together to develop vaccines against the coronavirus.

Mr Pompeo’s remark didn’t entirely come as a surprise.

The two countries have run an internationally recognised joint vaccine development programme for more than three decades.

They have worked on stopping dengue, enteric diseases, influenza and TB in their tracks. Trials of a dengue vaccine are planned in the near future.

India is among the largest manufacturer of generic drugs and vaccines in the world. It is home to half a dozen major vaccine makers and a host of smaller ones, making doses against polio, meningitis, pneumonia, rotavirus, BCG, measles, mumps and rubella, among other diseases.

Now half a dozen Indian firms are developing vaccines against the virus that causes Covid-19.

One of them is Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine maker by number of doses produced and sold globally. The 53-year-old company makes 1.5 billion doses every year, mainly from its two facilities in the western city of Pune. (It has two other small plants in the Netherlands and the Czech Republic.) Around 7,000 people work for the firm.

The company supplies some 20 vaccines to 165 countries. Some 80% of its vaccines are exported and, at an average of 50 cents a dose, they are some of the cheapest in the world.

Now the firm has stitched up collaboration with Codagenix, an American biotech company, to develop a “live attenuated” vaccine, among the more than 80 reportedly in development all over the world.

This vaccine is created by reducing the virulence – or removing the harmful properties – of a pathogen but keeping it alive. (They cause no or very mild disease because the pathogen is weakened under laboratory conditions.)

“We are planning a set of animal trials [on mice and primates] of this vaccine in April. By September, we should be able to begin human trials,” Adar Poonawalla, chief executive officer of Serum Institute of India, told me over the phone.

Mr Poonawalla’s firm has also partnered to mass produce a vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford and backed by the UK government. A genetically engineered chimpanzee virus would form the basis for the new vaccine. Human clinical trials began in Oxford on Thursday. If all goes well, scientists hope to make at least a million doses by September.

“It’s pretty clear the world is going to need hundreds of millions of doses, ideally by the end of this year, to end this pandemic, to lead us out of lockdown,” Prof Adrian Hill, who runs the Jenner Institute at Oxford, told the BBC’s Health and Science correspondent James Gallagher.

This is where Indian vaccine makers have a head start over others. Mr Poonawalla’s firm alone has an extra capacity of 400 to 500 million doses. “We have lots of capacity as we have invested in it,” he says.

There’s more. Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech had announced a partnership with the University of Wisconsin Madison and US-based firm FluGen to make almost 300 million doses of a vaccine for global distribution. Zydus Cadilla is working on two vaccines, while Biological E, Indian Immunologicals, and Mynvax are developing a vaccine each. Another four or five home-grown vaccines are in early stages of development.

“The credit must go to entrepreneurs and pharmaceutical companies who invested in quality manufacturing and in processes that made it possible to produce in bulk. The owners of these companies have also had the goal of doing good for the world, while also running a successful business and this model is a win-win for all,” Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist of the World Health Organization (WHO), told me.

Experts warn that people should not be expecting a vaccine in the market any time soon.

David Nabarro, professor of global health at Imperial College, London, says humans will have to live with the threat of coronavirus “for the foreseeable future” because there’s no guarantee that a vaccine will be successfully developed.

And Tim Lahey, a vaccine researcher at the University of Vermont Medical Centre, warns that there’s a “good reason to worry a coronavirus vaccine would elicit harmful immune responses too”.

Global Covid-19 infections have already passed 2.5m with more than 177,000 deaths. Developing a safe vaccine which can be mass produced is going to be a time consuming exercise – every lot has to be chemically and biologically tested before being released. “But we are hopeful, very hopeful, of having a safe and efficacious vaccine in two years or less,” says Mr Poonawalla.

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The post Coronavirus: How India will play a major role in a Covid-19 vaccine appeared first on Virus Reports.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last fortnight that India and the US were working together to develop vaccines against the coronavirus.

Mr Pompeo’s remark didn’t entirely come as a surprise.

The two countries have run an internationally recognised joint vaccine development programme for more than three decades.

They have worked on stopping dengue, enteric diseases, influenza and TB in their tracks. Trials of a dengue vaccine are planned in the near future.

India is among the largest manufacturer of generic drugs and vaccines in the world. It is home to half a dozen major vaccine makers and a host of smaller ones, making doses against polio, meningitis, pneumonia, rotavirus, BCG, measles, mumps and rubella, among other diseases.

Now half a dozen Indian firms are developing vaccines against the virus that causes Covid-19.

One of them is Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine maker by number of doses produced and sold globally. The 53-year-old company makes 1.5 billion doses every year, mainly from its two facilities in the western city of Pune. (It has two other small plants in the Netherlands and the Czech Republic.) Around 7,000 people work for the firm.

The company supplies some 20 vaccines to 165 countries. Some 80% of its vaccines are exported and, at an average of 50 cents a dose, they are some of the cheapest in the world.

Now the firm has stitched up collaboration with Codagenix, an American biotech company, to develop a “live attenuated” vaccine, among the more than 80 reportedly in development all over the world.

This vaccine is created by reducing the virulence – or removing the harmful properties – of a pathogen but keeping it alive. (They cause no or very mild disease because the pathogen is weakened under laboratory conditions.)

“We are planning a set of animal trials [on mice and primates] of this vaccine in April. By September, we should be able to begin human trials,” Adar Poonawalla, chief executive officer of Serum Institute of India, told me over the phone.

Mr Poonawalla’s firm has also partnered to mass produce a vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford and backed by the UK government. A genetically engineered chimpanzee virus would form the basis for the new vaccine. Human clinical trials began in Oxford on Thursday. If all goes well, scientists hope to make at least a million doses by September.

“It’s pretty clear the world is going to need hundreds of millions of doses, ideally by the end of this year, to end this pandemic, to lead us out of lockdown,” Prof Adrian Hill, who runs the Jenner Institute at Oxford, told the BBC’s Health and Science correspondent James Gallagher.

This is where Indian vaccine makers have a head start over others. Mr Poonawalla’s firm alone has an extra capacity of 400 to 500 million doses. “We have lots of capacity as we have invested in it,” he says.

There’s more. Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech had announced a partnership with the University of Wisconsin Madison and US-based firm FluGen to make almost 300 million doses of a vaccine for global distribution. Zydus Cadilla is working on two vaccines, while Biological E, Indian Immunologicals, and Mynvax are developing a vaccine each. Another four or five home-grown vaccines are in early stages of development.

“The credit must go to entrepreneurs and pharmaceutical companies who invested in quality manufacturing and in processes that made it possible to produce in bulk. The owners of these companies have also had the goal of doing good for the world, while also running a successful business and this model is a win-win for all,” Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist of the World Health Organization (WHO), told me.

Experts warn that people should not be expecting a vaccine in the market any time soon.

David Nabarro, professor of global health at Imperial College, London, says humans will have to live with the threat of coronavirus “for the foreseeable future” because there’s no guarantee that a vaccine will be successfully developed.

And Tim Lahey, a vaccine researcher at the University of Vermont Medical Centre, warns that there’s a “good reason to worry a coronavirus vaccine would elicit harmful immune responses too”.

Global Covid-19 infections have already passed 2.5m with more than 177,000 deaths. Developing a safe vaccine which can be mass produced is going to be a time consuming exercise – every lot has to be chemically and biologically tested before being released. “But we are hopeful, very hopeful, of having a safe and efficacious vaccine in two years or less,” says Mr Poonawalla.

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NEW DELHI (AP) — A tentative easing around the world of coronavirus lockdowns gathered pace Saturday with the reopening in India of neighborhood stores that many of the country’s 1.3 billion people rely on for everything from cold drinks to mobile phone data cards.

The U.S. states of Georgia, Oklahoma and Alaska also began loosening lockdown orders on their pandemic-wounded businesses, even as the confirmed U.S. death toll from the coronavirus soared past 50,000 and health experts warned that such steps may be coming too soon.

The relaxation of the super-strict Indian lockdown came with major caveats. It did not apply to hundreds of quarantined towns and other hot spots that have been hit hardest by the outbreak that has killed at least 775 people in the country and terrified its multitudes of poor who live hand-to-mouth in slum conditions too crowded for social distancing.

Shopping malls also remained closed nationwide. Still, for families that run small stores, being able to earn again brought relief.

“This is a good decision,” said Amit Sharma, an architect. “We have to open a few things and let the economy start moving. The poor people should have some source of income. This virus is going to be a long-term problem.”

Last week, India also allowed manufacturing and farming to resume in rural areas to ease the economic plight of millions of daily wage-earners left jobless by the lockdown imposed March 24. India’s stay-home restrictions have allowed people out of their homes only to buy food, medicine or other essentials.

Elsewhere in Asia, authorities reported no new deaths Saturday for the 10th straight day in China, where the virus originated.

And South Korea reported just 10 fresh cases, the eighth day in a row its daily jump came below 20. There were no new deaths for the second straight day.

In Sri Lanka, however, the lockdown was tightened, not eased, confirming a pattern of one-step-forward, one-step-back also seen elsewhere in the pandemic, trying to juggle public health against the health of shut-down economies.

Sri Lanka had partially lifted a monthlong curfew during daytime hours in more than two thirds of the country. But it reimposed a 24-hour lockdown countrywide after a surge Friday of 46 new infections, the highest increase in a day on the Indian Ocean island. The new curfew remains in effect until Monday.

The global death toll climbed Saturday toward 200,000, according to a tally compiled by John Hopkins University from government figures. The actual death toll is believed to be far higher.

Pope Francis appealed to people to pray for funeral home workers, saying: “What they do is so heavy and sad. They really feel the pain of this pandemic.”

But in an announcement that underscored the scientific unknowns that still surround the virus and the difficulty of fighting it, the World Health Organization said “there is currently no evidence” that people who have recovered from COVID-19 cannot fall sick again.

In Europe, Belgium sketched out plans for a progressive lockdown relaxation starting May 4 with the resumption of nonessential treatment in hospitals and the reopening of textile and sewing shops so people can make face masks. Bars and restaurants would be allowed to start reopening June 8, although Belgian Prime Minister Sophie Wilmes also cautioned that a surge in infections could alter the timeline and that “nothing is set in stone.”

Kids in Spain will get their first fresh air in weeks on Sunday when a total ban on letting them outside is relaxed. After 44 days indoors, they’ll be allowed to take one toy or scooter with them but not play together for the adult-supervised one-hour excursions no further than one kilometer (0.6 miles) from home.

Italy announced that free protective masks will be distributed to nursing homes, police, public officials and transport workers, preparing for the return to work of millions of Italians when lockdown restrictions are eased from May 4. Rome’s public transit agency started taking measures to keep commuters apart when they return in large numbers, painting blue circles on subway platforms to remind people to keep their distance.

Britain was still holding off on changes to its lockdown as the coronavirus-related death toll in hospitals was on target to surge past 20,000. It’s the fourth highest in Europe, behind Italy — with nearly 26,000 deaths — and Spain and France, both with more than 22,000.

In France, the government is preparing to gingerly ease one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns from May 11. The health minister detailed plans Saturday to scale up testing to help contain any new flare-ups.

Testing shortages are a critical problem elsewhere, too, including in Brazil, Latin America’s largest nation, which is veering closer to becoming a pandemic hot spot.

Medical officials in Rio de Janeiro and four other major cities warned that their hospital systems are on the verge of collapse or already overwhelmed. In Manaus, the biggest city in the Amazon, officials said a cemetery has been forced to dig mass graves because there have been so many deaths. Workers have been burying 100 corpses a day — triple the pre-virus average.

In the U.S., Republican governors in Georgia and Oklahoma allowed salons, spas and barbershops to reopen, while Alaska opened the way for restaurants to resume dine-in service and retail shops and other businesses to open their doors, all with limitations. Some Alaska municipalities chose to maintain stricter rules.

Though limited in scope, and subject to social-distancing restrictions, the reopenings marked a symbolic milestone in the debate raging in the United States and beyond as to how quickly political leaders should lift economically devastating lockdown orders.

In Michigan, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer lengthened her stay-at-home order through May 15, while lifting restrictions so some businesses can reopen and the public can participate in outdoor activities such as golf and motorized boating. Michigan has nearly 3,000 deaths related to COVID-19, behind only New York and New Jersey.

During a White House press briefing Friday, President Donald Trump spoke optimistically of the economy but also asked people to continue social distancing and using face coverings. The same day, Trump signed a $484 billion bill to aid employers and hospitals under stress from the pandemic. Over the past five weeks, roughly 26 million people have filed for jobless aid, or about 1 in 6 U.S. workers.

Trump also said his widely criticized comments suggesting people can ingest or inject disinfectant to fight COVID-19 were an attempt at sarcasm.

Amy Pembrook and her husband, Mike, reopened their hair salon in the northwest Oklahoma town of Fairview after it had been closed for about a month.

“We’re super excited about going back, but we have caught a little flak from people who say it’s too early,” Amy Pembrook said. “We just said we can live in fear for a long time or we can trust that everything is going to be OK.”

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Leicester reported from Le Pecq, France. Associated Press journalists around the world contributed.

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Follow AP pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

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