Coronavirus live news: US nears 10m cases as global infections pass 50m
US currently has 9.96m confirmed Covid cases; pandemic expert says half positive cases not being identified; economic fallout makes prospect of third world war ‘a risk’. Follow the latest updates
- Joe Biden’s coronavirus task force to meet as first public schedule released
- US confirms more than 126,000 Covid cases in new record
- Global coronavirus cases pass 50m with US worst affected country
- UK test and trace needs radical reform, experts say
- Follow all our coronavirus coverage
10.14am GMT
German health minister Jens Spahn has warned once again of the danger that the country’s health system will no longer be able to cope if the coronavirus infection rate continues to rise. If there are, as we saw last week, around 20,000 new registered infections a day with on ave 2 % of those cases needing to go to into intensive care, that amounts to 400 people a day. And with the average stay in ICU being 15 days, it’ll quickly be the case that 6000 ICU beds are filled. The health system can just about cope with such figures, but beyond that, it will be struggling, he said in an interview with the video channel of the tabloid Bild.
Germany tightened coronavirus measures a week ago, and it’s still too early to say if they have yet had the effect of slowing down the virus’s spread.
9.48am GMT
Here is the latest Covid world map, showing how the virus has spread.
Related: Covid world map: which countries have the most coronavirus cases and deaths?