Coronavirus pandemic: Updates from around the world

A Miami-Dade County bus operator, who was last on the job in late June, has died after testing positive for Covid-19, according to a news release from Miami-Dade Department of Transportation and Public Works (DTPW).

The bus operator "was working in June before testing positive" for Covid-19, said communications director Ileen Delgado in a correction to the initial release.

"A total of 44 bus operators have tested positive for Covid-19 from June 21 through July 9. All of them are quarantined on paid leave," DTPW spokesperson Luis Espinoza told CNN. 

It is not clear if the bus operator was symptomatic or what route this person drove.

There are a total of 7,063 patients hospitalized in Florida with coronavirus, according to new data released by the Agency for Health Care Administration on Saturday. 

Miami-Dade County currently has 1,601 patients hospitalized; the most hospitalized patients of any county in the state.

In Orange County, where Disney World reopens on Saturday, 475 patients are hospitalized.

More than seven thousand Moroccans, most of them women, are stranded in Spain after their country closed its borders to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

They arrived in Spain to pick fruit in March, sending their earnings back home to families, and were trapped when the season ended in May. Now, 7,200 people are in limbo in Spain's southern Huelva province with almost no money, according to a statement released earlier this week by a group of Spanish and Moroccan non-governmental human rights organizations, including local Andalusian group Mujeres 24h.

On Thursday, a group of 15 women staged a protest in in Cartaya, Huelva. The women, who work on one of the farms involved marched with banners demanding to be allowed to go back home.

"We are here without a job, we have nothing, the money we had we sent it to our family. We are out of money to eat, we need to go back. We ask [King] Mohammed VI to send someone to help us so that we can return," Fátima, one of the protesters, said, in a video of the protest obtained by CNN.

"Our children are alone in Morocco, they have nobody to take care of them, we need to go back," she said. A video of the protesters discussing their situation was obtained by CNN from an activist group.

Read the full story here.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said "the Covid-19 crisis is a wake-up call,” and that “economies and societies must be reshaped to be fairer and more inclusive” in the future. 

During his speech at the closing of a virtual Covid-19 conference put on by the International AIDS Society on Saturday, Guterres focused on the parallel lessons learned from the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic and the current coronavirus pandemic:

Guterres went on to talk about the importance of accessibility to viable vaccines as they become available. "Effective treatment to the future vaccine against the coronavirus must be available to everyone everywhere as a global public good -- a people's vaccine."

The Covid-19 pandemic is starting to cause disruptions to global health care supply chains, slowing down the fight against all other diseases, including AIDS, Bill Gates has warned.

Gates, speaking at the International Aids Conference on Saturday, cited projections by the both the United Nations and the Global Fund that these disruptions could prevent hundreds of thousands of people from getting the treatments they need in Sub-Saharan Africa alone. 

The Microsoft co-founder said that because of the advances made by researchers to help identify those infected, along with improved diagnostic tools and progress with vaccinations, he remains optimistic that we will defeat Covid-19 and continue making strides with HIV/AIDS.

The philanthropist cautioned that if drugs and vaccines go out to the highest bidder instead of to the people and places who really need them, we will have a "longer, more unjust, deadlier pandemic."

"We need leaders to make these hard decisions about distributing based on equity not just on market-driven factors" Gates said. 

Japan recorded 430 new coronavirus cases Friday, its health ministry said -- the first time the country has registered more than 400 daily new infections since April 24, when it was still under a state of emergency over the pandemic. 

The nationwide total includes Tokyo’s 243 new Covid-19 cases on Friday, the highest daily jump in new cases in the capital since the outbreak began. 

The total number of people infected by the virus in the country so far stands at 21,841 with 995 deaths.

India has registered more than 800,000 Covid-19 cases so far, the country’s health ministry announced Saturday.

It reported a record 27,114 new Covid-19 cases on Friday, bringing the nationwide total to 820,916. 

This is the third consecutive day that the country has recorded its highest single-day jump in new coronavirus cases. 

As Covid-19 cases continue to soar, Indian cities and states are reimposing strict measures to curb the spread.

On Friday, India’s most populous Uttar Pradesh state issued several restrictions in the state for the weekend in a bid to contain the surge, with only essential services operating.

At least 515,000 people have recovered from the virus to date, the ministry said. 

The South Asian nation has so far tested over 11.3 million samples for coronavirus, according to the Indian Council of Medical Research. 

A garment manufacturer in downtown Los Angeles with more than 300 employees infected by the coronavirus has been ordered closed after an investigation into the deaths of four workers, county health officials said Friday. 

The Los Angeles Apparel had three deaths in June and one in July, prompting an investigation, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health announced in a statement. 

Los Angeles Apparel was founded in 2016 by Canadian businessman Dov Charney, who previously founded American Apparel. It was first shut down on June 27 after violating the county's mandatory health orders. The company failed to cooperate with the health department's investigation of a reported coronavirus outbreak, health officials said.

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New data suggests that working-class and minority neighborhoods hit hardest by coronavirus in the borough of Queens in New York are now overwhelmingly testing positive for antibodies. 

But that data doesn't mean those who have antibodies are immune.

The data, first reported by The New York Times Thursday, shows that more than 68% of people tested positive for antibodies at a clinic in Corona, Queens, while 56% tested positive at another clinic in Jackson Heights, Queens. CityMD, which operates dozens of walk-in clinics in New York, confirmed the data to the Times and CNN.

While these two working-class neighborhoods saw high numbers for their antibody tests, only 13% of people tested positive for antibodies at a clinic in Cobble Hill, a mostly white and wealthy neighborhood in Brooklyn. The data suggest that while minority and working-class communities were hit hard by the virus, they may be first to build immunity. 

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