COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 11 November

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 251.4 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths has now passed 5.07 million. More than 7.36 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.

Germany reported a record 50,196 new cases of coronavirus on Thursday, the fourth day in a row it has posted a fresh daily high, as a fourth wave of COVID-19 infections sweeps the country.

Russia on Thursday reported 1,237 coronavirus-related deaths in the last 24 hours, close to a record one-day toll recorded the previous day, amid a nationwide surge in cases.

France is at the beginning of a fifth wave of the coronavirus epidemic, Health Minister Olivier Veran has said. The health ministry registered 11,883 new cases on Wednesday, the second day in a row with a new case tally over 10,000. New cases have seen double-digit percentage increases week-on-week since around mid-October.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and senior aides holed up in a war bunker on Thursday during an exercise simulating an outbreak of a lethal new COVID-19 variant. He described the day-long "Omega Drill", named after a fictitious virus strain, as a precaution to ensure Israel was prepared for "any scenario".

Denmark will impose self-isolation requirements on travellers from Singapore, its embassy in the city-state said on Thursday, following a surge in COVID-19 infections. Singapore was removed this week from a European Union list of non-EU countries for which travel restrictions should be lifted.

Malaysia will reopen its borders to international visitors by Jan. 1 at the latest, a government advisory council said on Thursday, as the country seeks to revive its ailing tourism sector.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday the United States has brokered a deal between Johnson & Johnson and the COVAX vaccine-sharing programme for the delivery of the company's COVID-19 vaccine to people living in conflict zones.

Britain's economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic lagged behind that of other rich nations in the July-September period, according to official data on Thursday which underscored the interest rate dilemma facing the Bank of England.

Gross domestic product grew by 1.3%, the weakest three-month growth since Britain was under lockdown in early 2021.

The Bank of England and a Reuters poll of economists had forecast an expansion of 1.5%.

The Office for National Statistics said Britain's economy remained 2.1% smaller than it was at the end of 2019, a bigger shortfall than in fellow Group of Seven countries Germany, Italy and France.

The United States has already surpassed its pre-crisis size. Canada and Japan, the other G7 members, have yet to report third-quarter growth data but had already regained more ground by the second quarter than Britain had achieved by the third quarter.

The risk of severe illness from COVID-19 is higher in people with obstructive sleep apnea and other breathing problems that cause oxygen levels to drop during sleep, researchers say.

They tracked 5,402 adults with these problems and found that roughly a third of them eventually tested posted for the coronavirus.

While the chance of being infected did not increase with the severity of their problems, people with higher scores on the "apnea-hypopnia index" - a measure of the severity of their sleep-related breathing problems - had higher odds of needing to be hospitalized or dying from COVID-19, Drs. Cinthya Pena Orbea, Reena Mehra and their colleagues at the Cleveland Clinic reported on Wednesday in JAMA Network Open.

It is not clear if treatments that improve sleep apnea, such as CPAP machines that push air into patients' airways during sleep, would also reduce the risk of severe COVID-19, said Pene Orbea and Mehra.