COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 9 November

Nov 9, 2020

The COVID-19 response specialist Alexandra Vizcarra prepares to administer a nasal swab test at Public Health Madison & Dane County as the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak continues in Madison, Wisconsin, U.S., October 19, 2020. REUTERS/Bing Guan - RC2VLJ96BMU8

Confirmed cases continue to rise across the United States. Image: REUTERS/Bing Guan

Joe Myers

Writer, Forum Agenda

Our Impact

What's the World Economic Forum doing to accelerate action on Health and Healthcare Systems?

The Big Picture

Explore and monitor how COVID-19 is affecting economies, industries and global issues

A hand holding a looking glass by a lake

Crowdsource Innovation

Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:

COVID-19

Listen to the article

This daily round-up brings you a selection of the latest news and updates on the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, as well as tips and tools to help you stay informed and protected.
Top stories: global confirmed cases pass 50 million; Biden to launch coronavirus task force; Sydney's famous fireworks to be restricted.

Have you read?

1. How COVID-19 is affecting the globe

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have now passed 50 million globally, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. The number of confirmed deaths stands at more than 1.25 million.

Sydney's famous New Year's Eve fireworks will be limited this year to help control the coronavirus.

The northern Chinese port city of Tianjin will carry out tests on some cold storage facilities, after a confirmed case involving a worker who'd handled imported frozen pork.

Portugal will impose localized night-time curfews from today, as confirmed cases reach a record high.

Reported COVID-19 deaths in France have passed 40,000 - one of the world's highest.

Discover

What is the Global Alliance for Social Entrepreneurship?

The Global Alliance for Social Entrepreneurship is one of the largest multi-stakeholder collaborations in the social innovation sector.

The Alliance has 100 members – corporations, investors, philanthropists, governments, researchers, media, and industry actors – who work together to build an engaged ecosystem of key public and private sector leaders in support of a social innovation movement that transforms society to be more just, sustainable and equitable.

Launched in response to the COVID-19 crisis by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship together with Ashoka, Catalyst2030, Echoing Green, GHR Foundation, Skoll Foundation, and Yunus Social Business in April 2020.

In that pursuit, the Global Alliance will continue to mobilise a trusted community of leaders together with core partners - SAP, Bayer Foundation, Motsepe Foundation, GHR Foundation, Porticus, Deloitte, Microsoft and Catalyst 2030, that acts and learns together so that social entrepreneurs can flourish.

2. 50 million confirmed cases

Global confirmed COVID-19 cases have passed 50 million. The second wave has accounted for a quarter of this total in the last 30 days, according to a Reuters tally.

It took 32 days for the number of cases to rise from 30 million to 40 million, but just 21 days to add another 10 million.

Confirmed COVID-19 coronavirus cases globally

Cases have risen quickly in recent weeks. Image: Our World in Data

Europe has become the world's worst-affected region, with around 12 million cases and a quarter of the 1.25 million global deaths.

3. Biden launches COVID-19 task force

US President-elect Joe Biden will convene a coronavirus task force today. He's set to meet with an advisory board led by former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler.

It comes as the United States reported a record increase in coronavirus cases for a fourth consecutive day on Saturday, with at least 131,420 new cases.

Ten states have reported record daily deaths so far in November, as well.

4. COVID-19 vaccine more than 90% effective

Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech have said their experimental COVID-19 vaccine is more than 90% effective, in preliminary results from a large-scale clinical trial.

The companies say they've found no serious safety concerns and are set to seek US authorization for emergency use this month.

“Today is a great day for science and humanity,” Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s chairman and chief executive, said.

“We are reaching this critical milestone in our vaccine development program at a time when the world needs it most with infection rates setting new records, hospitals nearing over-capacity and economies struggling to reopen.”

The results are yet to be peer-reviewed or published in a medical journal, with this expected once results are in from the entire trial.

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.