Coronavirus Live Updates: Singapore Reports Lowest Daily New Cases In Months

Chart of daily new coronavirus cases in the U.S. with data through August 11, 2020.
The following data was compiled by Johns Hopkins University:

Global cases: More than 20.3 million
Global deaths: At least 742,000
U.S. cases: More than 5.1 million
U.S. deaths: At least 164,500
1 HOUR AGO
Amazon to hold new seller conference online due to coronavirus
Amazon on Wednesday announced a new conference to help U.S. third-party sellers grow their businesses. The conference, Amazon Accelerate, will run from Sept. 1 through 3.

The event, which is free to attend, will be held online only due to the coronavirus pandemic. Sellers will be able to tune into panels like “Growing to a $1 Million Business” and “Responding to Changes in Consumer Demand.”

Amazon says it will be the “largest ever U.S. event dedicated to seller success,” with Amazon’s CEO of worldwide consumer, Jeff Wilke, delivering the keynote address. Other top executives will host discussions during the event, including Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of worldwide customer trust and partner support, and Amazon fashion group leader Christine Beauchamp. —Annie Palmer

1 HOUR AGO
Florida, Texas, California still lead the U.S. in daily new cases

1 HOUR AGO
Russia’s vaccine could be rolled out in November
Russia has been working on its coronavirus vaccine effectively for the past six years, the head of the country’s sovereign wealth fund told CNBC, and could be rolled out before the end of the year.

Russia said its work in recent years on developing a vaccine for Ebola and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) had helped it to create a vaccine against the new coronavirus.

“We were just fortunate that the coronavirus was very close to MERS, so we pretty much had a ready-to-go vaccine on MERS, studied for two years on MERS (and) slightly modified to be the coronavirus vaccine, and that is the real story, no politics … Russia has always been at the forefront of vaccine research,” Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund RDIF, which is backing the vaccine, told CNBC.

Russia announced Tuesday that it had registered a coronavirus vaccine, making it the first country to do so. There are doubts over its efficacy and safety, however, and larger-scale Phase 3 clinical trials have not yet taken place. Furthermore, no data has been published yet from earlier clinical trials that were carried out in less than two months. —Holly Ellyatt

2 HOURS AGO
Dr. Gottlieb suggests virus was circulating at ‘very low level’ in New Zealand before resurgence
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Former FDA chief Scott Gottlieb on New Zealand outbreak, back-to-school concerns
New Zealand officials said they are investigating whether the country’s first reported cases of the coronavirus in months could have been imported by freight, but former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC he finds it “hard to believe.”

“It’s also possible that it was circulating at a very low level and now it’s being manifest,” he said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

The comments come as New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern reimposes strict containment measures across the entire country after four cases of the virus were identified in Auckland. The country’s health officials are urgently trying to determine the source of spread and to block the chains of transmission. —Will Feuer

2 HOURS AGO
Singapore reports lowest number of new cases in over four months
Singapore reported 42 new cases of the coronavirus on Wednesday, marking its lowest daily count in about four and a half months, according to Reuters.

The island country was one of the first nations to be hit by the coronavirus and saw a delayed outbreak after the virus was largely contained in the general population but was allowed to circulate widely in the city state’s migrant worker population’s dormatories. The outbreaks in the dorms pushed Singapore’s daily new case count to one of the highest in Asia.

Authorities have since brought the outbreak under control by aggressively investigating new cases and quarantining infected individuals. Most of the new cases reported on Wednesday were among workers currently in quarantine.

– Reuters.