Highlights: Italy reports 662 Covid-19 deaths in the last 24 hours

A sitting judge of the Gujarat High Court died following a cardiac arrest on Saturday while undergoing treatment for coronavirus at a private hospital here, a doctor said. Justice G R Udhwani (59), who had tested Covid-19 positive on November 19, died at SAL Hospital due to complications arising out of the infection, the doctor said.

Odisha's Covid-19 caseload mounted to 3,20,803 on Saturday after 409 people tested positive for the virus, while five more fatalities pushed the death toll to 1,765, a health department official said. The fresh cases were detected in 27 of the state's 30 districts, of which 234 came from quarantine centres and the remaining were local-contact infections.

Italy reported 24,099 new cases, confirming the downward trend from last week. Daily fatalities dropped to 814 from a record 993 the previous day. The government eased restrictions on some regions. While the epidemic is still putting pressure on hospitals, there’s a general improvement in its transmission speed, which proves the three-tier restriction system introduced in early November has worked, according to the Health Ministry weekly report.

Swedish health authorities say they need to convert vaccine doubters if they’re to reach enough people to achieve herd immunity. Only 46% of Swedes say they want to be vaccinated, while 26% say they don’t, according to a recent Novus poll. Sweden expects to get enough vaccines to immunize a fifth of the population in the first quarter, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said.

France added 627 deaths, bringing the total to 54,767. That brought the seven-day average for fatalities to 408, the lowest in a month. New confirmed cases rose by 11,221 to 2.27 million, with the weekly pace dropping to the lowest since September 21. Hospitalizations and patients in intensive care continued their decline from a mid-November peak.

Some US hospitals already have the vaccine and are waiting for an Emergency Use Authorization to deploy it, Fauci told CNN.

Pakistan reported 3,119 new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 413,191 . There were 44 new deaths, according to Radio Pakistan.

Tokyo reported a daily record of 584 new Covid-19 infections, bringing an accumulative total of reported cases to 43,377 in the capital, with 55 serious cases.

Puducherry clocked 44 fresh cases of Covid-19 pushing the aggregate to 37,209, the territorial government said. The toll remained 614 as no fresh fatality was reported from any of the four regions of Puducherry, Karaikal, Mahe and Yanam in the last 24 hours.

Germany has registered 23,318 new coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours, with total count reaching 1,153,556, the Robert Koch Institute said on Saturday. The death toll has grown by 483 to 18,517 people within the same period of time.

Arunachal Pradesh's Covid-19 caseload rose to 16,367 as 18 more people tested positive for the virus, a health department official said here on Saturday.

One more person succumbed to the infection on Thursday, pushing the number of fatalities in the northeastern state to 55, State Surveillance Officer (SSO) Dr Lobsang Jampa said.

Haryana minister Anil Vij announces he has tested positive for Covid-19. On November 20, he was administered a dose of Covaxin at a hospital in Ambala, as part of its third phase trial.

President-elect Joe Biden urgently called on Americans to wear masks after deaths from the coronavirus set a single-day record, with two people dying every minute. More than 213,830 new cases and 2,861 deaths were reported on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally, with several experts projecting the death toll will soon surpass 3,000 per day.

US President-elect Joe Biden said that Americans will not be forced to take the coronavirus vaccine and he is willing to get vaccinated publicly to assuage any concerns about its efficacy and safety.

At least 25 people, including six Border Security Force (BSF) jawans, have tested positive for Covid-19 in Mizoram, taking the state's tally to 3,913. Seven cases were confirmed at RT-PCR lab in Zoram Medical College (ZMC), 12 cases at TrueNat labs in district hospitals and six cases were detected through Rapid Antigen Test from various districts.