More than 11,400 people died from Covid-19 within 24 hours; Malaysia recorded a record number of infections

According to an update from the global statistics site Worldometers, as of 6 a.m. on May 26, the pandemic of the century had infected a total of 168.5 million people and claimed the lives of nearly 3.5 million patients in 220 countries and territories.

Indiacontinues to be a hot spot, with the number of positive cases on the decline but the death toll remains very high. In the past day, the country recorded nearly 209,000 new cases, adding to the total of 27.1 million people infected with the new coronavirus, and 4,170 victims to the list of more than 311,400 deaths.

With more than 73,000 new infections and over 2,000 deaths, Brazil now has about 16.2 million patients and 452,000 unfortunate victims of the pandemic.

In the US, the number of infections is 33.9 million, an increase of 20,700 cases, while the number of deaths is more than 605,000, an increase of more than 600 cases in the past 24 hours.

Record infections in Malaysia

Malaysia on May 25 recorded nearly 7,300 new Covid-19 cases, the highest number since the beginning of the pandemic. This is also the first time the number of new infections per day in the Southeast Asian country has exceeded 7,000.

Previously, Malaysia had experienced 6 consecutive days with the number of Covid-19 infections per day at over 6,000. The Ministry of Health of this country warned that if people do not strictly comply with the restrictions, Malaysia could face the number of infections per day up to 8,000 people next June.

The new wave of Covid-19 has forced the Malaysian government to impose a nationwide travel restriction until the end of June.

Indonesia receives 8 million more doses of Chinese vaccine

The vaccines, delivered in raw form by Sinovac, are the 13th batch of Covid-19 vaccines that Indonesia has received from foreign suppliers.

Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs and Chairman of the National Covid-19 Response and Economic Recovery Committee (KPC-PEN) Airlangga Hartarto said that so far, Indonesia has received a total of more than 80 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines, including 76 million doses of Sinovac, 1 million doses of Sinopharm and 6.41 million doses of AstraZeneca.

On May 20, Indonesian pharmaceutical company PT Bio Farma announced that it is negotiating with Sinovac to buy an additional 120 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine. Indonesia aims to vaccinate about 181.5 million people, equivalent to two-thirds of the population, by March 2022.

Discovery of a "distant relative" of SARS-CoV-2

Researchers at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology have discovered a new branch of the coronavirus family in bats. The South China Morning Post (SCMP) cited a research report saying that these viruses are related to the virus that causes the Covid-19 pandemic because they have a high degree of similarity in some parts of their genome.

This is the first time the Wuhan Institute of Virology has released details of the new branch of viruses they studied several years ago.

"These results suggest that the coronaviruses we have discovered in bats are just the tip of the iceberg," the team stressed in a report posted on the bioRvix portal.

To date, experts have not yet determined the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic and there has been much controversy about this since the first case was detected in Wuhan more than a year ago.