May 24 coronavirus news

India reported 6,767 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours -- the country's biggest one-day surge in cases so far, said the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Sunday.

There were 147 Covid-19 related deaths during the same period.

This raises the nationwide total to 131,868 confirmed cases and 3,867 deaths.

It's the second consecutive day that India reported its highest daily number of cases. On Friday, the health ministry recorded 6,654 new cases.

This comes as domestic flights resume in India. The government announced that domestic airlines would be able to resume services starting next week, though some states have said incoming passengers would still be subject to a mandatory 14-day quarantine.

Japan reported 28 new coronavirus cases and 12 new deaths on Saturday, according to the country's health ministry.

In the capital Tokyo, two new infections were reported, the smallest number since a state of emergency was declared on April 7.

The Japanese government expects to lift the emergency declaration for Hokkaido, Tokyo and three neighboring prefectures on Monday.

Japan has recorded 17,263 infections, with 713 from the Diamond Princess cruise ship. The official death toll stands at 833, of which 13 are from the cruise.

South Korea reported 25 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, according to the South Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Of those, 17 were locally transmitted cases and eight were imported.

South Korea now has confirmed 11,190 cases, including 266 deaths. The KCDC said 10,213 people have recovered.

Far from hospitals and often lacking basic infrastructure, Brazil's indigenous people are dying at an alarming rate from Covid-19 with little help in sight. 

The mortality rate is double that of the rest of Brazil's population, according to advocacy group Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) which tracks the number of cases and deaths among the country's 900,000 indigenous people.

APIB has recorded more than 980 confirmed cases of coronavirus and at least 125 deaths, which suggests a mortality rate of 12.6% -- compared to the national rate of 6.4%.

Indigenous people who have moved to larger towns or urban areas to study or in search of work can end up in precarious living conditions with few public services, increasing their vulnerability to health issues. Meanwhile, those living in remote areas may not have basic sanitation and health facilities -- a 15-year-old Yanomami boy from a remote village in the Amazon, was one of the first indigenous Brazilians to die of Covid-19 in April.

On Saturday, Brazil overtook Russia to have the second-highest total number of confirmed cases in the world, after the US. The country has 347,398 cases.

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Report: Brazil's indigenous people are dying at an alarming rate from Covid-19

Several people who attended a high school swim party in the US state of Arkansas have contracted Covid-19, Gov. Asa Hutchinson told reporters on Saturday. 

"A high school swim party that I'm sure everybody thought was harmless. They're young, they're swimming, they're just having activity and positive cases resulted from that," Hutchinson said. 

The governor declined to provide further details on the party but noted the incident was "an encouragement for us to be disciplined in our activities."

"During this Memorial (Day) weekend, we want to be out and we want to enjoy ourselves, we want to remember this holiday and those that have served our country and given their lives in service of our country. But let's be safe and let's be disciplined at the same time," Hutchinson said.

The case highlights the threat of community spread in the US as cities and states continue relaxing social distancing measures and businesses reopen.

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A cluster of coronavirus cases was reported in Arkansas after a swim party

China reported three new coronavirus cases and no new deaths on Saturday, according to the National Health Commission.

Two of the new cases -- in Shanghai and Guangdong -- were imported, and the other was a local transmission in northeastern Jilin province. 

China has now recorded 82,974 cases, 79 of which are active.

China reported 36 new asymptomatic cases on Saturday. Health authorities started including asymptomatic cases in their count from the end of March.

The official death toll stands at 4,634. 

Rising levels of coronavirus in sewage can forewarn an outbreak before other metrics such as hospital admissions and case counts, according to a study published Friday.

That means sewage could be an effective way of tracking the virus, especially when coronavirus tests are in short supply, researchers said.

Coronavirus has been found in the stool of Covid-19 patients. In the study, which hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed, researchers compared levels of the virus in “primary sludge samples” to hospital and test data.

Testing sewage to track outbreaks has been done for other diseases. Places in the US are also considering testing wastewater.

Earlier this week, Honolulu said it plans to check 1,000 samples from its main sewage plant.

Mayor Kirk Caldwell said the testing would give officials an early indication of whether infections are on the rise. “It shows trend lines, and it alerts people — in our case, the city and county of Honolulu — whether we have a problem,” Caldwell said Tuesday.

There are more than 5.2 million cases of Covid-19 reported worldwide, as well as at least 340,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. Here's the latest developments on the pandemic.

Mexico now has 65,856 cases of the coronavirus, after its Ministry of Health reported 3,329 cases Saturday evening.

The spike was the second time in three days that Mexico reported its highest daily increase.

Another 190 deaths were also reported on Saturday evening, bringing the country’s death toll to 7,179. 

This week has been Mexico’s worst since the beginning of the outbreak. The deaths recorded over the past seven days represent nearly one-third of its entire official death toll.

Mexico recorded its first coronavirus death more than two months ago, on March 18.