SITUATION IN NUMBERS total (new) cases in last 24 hours 

(last updated 10:00 AM CET 8/5/2020)

 

Globally 18,354,342 cases (206,709)

696,147 deaths (5,116)

Africa 834,147 cases (8,875)

14,750 deaths (611)

Americas 9,841,842 cases (100,115)

367,934 deaths (2,600)

Eastern Mediterranean 1,585,458 cases (10,907)

41,601 deaths (399)

Europe 3,451,556 cases (21,623)

214,731 deaths (476)

South-East Asia 2,299,433 cases (56,777)

48,569 deaths (995)

Western Pacific 341,165 cases (8,412)

8,549 deaths (35)

 

Highlights
    • WHO Regional Director for the Americas, Dr Carissa Etienne, has warned of disruptions to
      regular health services due to COVID-19. Health workers have been redirected to care for
      COVID-19 patients, people are hesitating to seek routine care due to fears of infection, and
      global supply chains of medicines and equipment are strained.
    • This week, the world celebrates Breastfeeding Awareness Week to highlight the importance of
      breastfeeding. WHO recommendations on the initiation and continued breastfeeding of
      infants and young children also apply to mothers with suspected or confirmed COVID-19. As
    • WHO Director-General Dr Tedros mentioned in yesterday’s press briefing, ‘the many, many
      benefits of breastfeeding for newborn babies and children substantially outweigh the potential
      risks for COVID-19 infection.’ The WHO Regional Office for Europe has released an article on
      Marko Obradovic, a paediatric nurse in Serbia, who describes the challenges and importance of
      encouraging breastfeeding.
    • WHO has been supporting Suriname to address the COVID-19 pandemic and has assisted in
      strengthening Suriname’s health system and through the Universal Health Coverage
      Partnership, with the goal of helping the country achieve universal health coverage.
    • Today we include two reports in the ‘Subject in Focus’ below. The first discusses a recently
      released WHO brief on estimating mortality from COVID-19, an extremely useful indicator of
      the burden of disease that helps guide policy decisions. The second provides a summary of the
      age and sex distribution of confirmed COVID-19 cases from the WHO COVID-19 global
      surveillance database from January to July 2020.