Developments in worldwide fight against the coronavirus

United States

'Virus is not going to rest,' Osterholm says

The coronavirus won't be loosening its grip on the United States anytime soon, infectious disease experts said Sunday. They are also uncertain how the viral spread will be affected by the patchwork of states reopening businesses and by large events like protests and President Donald Trump's upcoming campaign rallies. "This virus is not going to rest" until it infects about 60 to 70% of the population, Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said on Fox. Joseph Fair, a virologist and epidemiologist who recently recovered from a serious bout of COVID-19, echoed that view on NBC. "Once it gets so ingrained in the population, there's not a point where we can come back from that other than having a vaccine in place," said Fair, who is a medical contributor to NBC News.

Iran

Tehran: Highest daily death toll in 2 months

Iran suffered its biggest daily death toll from the coronavirus since April 13, when the country first started to relax lockdown measures and reopen its economy, state TV reported. So far, a total of 187,427 people have been infected with the disease and 8,837 have died, a Health Ministry spokeswoman said in a televised statement, adding that 107 deaths had been recorded in the past 24 hours, the highest number in nine weeks.

China

Fears of a second wave of coronavirus infections struck China's capital city as a new cluster was discovered over the weekend, centered around a massive seafood, meat and produce market in the southern Fengtai district of Beijing. Beijing's health authorities reported six confirmed cases Saturday and 36 new cases Sunday, with an additional eight cases reported late Sunday. All were locally transmitted infections, breaking a monthslong trend of China reporting mostly imported COVID-19 cases while the domestic transmission seemed to be largely under control.

Washington, D.C.

How accurate are the virus tests being used?

Months into the outbreak, no one really knows how well many of the screening tests work, and experts at top medical centers say it is time to do the studies to find out. When the new virus began spreading, the Food and Drug Administration used its emergency powers to OK scores of quickly devised tests, based mainly on a small number of lab studies showing they could successfully detect the virus. That's very different from the large patient studies that can take weeks or months, which experts say are needed to provide a true sense of testing accuracy.

Russia

President Vladimir Putin said Russia is emerging "confidently" from the coronavirus crisis, drawing a contrast with the United States, where he suggested Donald Trump's efforts to tackle the pandemic have been hamstrung by political bickering. In an interview with state TV, Putin said Russia has suffered "minimal losses" from the virus and praised the government for working in a coordinated fashion "as a single team." Protests sweeping the U.S. are a sign of "deep internal crises," he said. Putin said it would be hard to imagine a situation in Russia where regional governors ignored his instructions. In the U.S., some states have defied guidance from the White House in dealing with the deadly virus.