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

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have now passed 36.5 million globally, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. The number of confirmed deaths stands at over 1.06 million.

More French cities are set to be moved to the highest alert level. Lyon, Lille, Grenoble and Saint-Etienne will all go on maximum coronavirus alert level from Saturday.

The World Health Organization has recorded a record daily rise in COVID-19 cases - 338,779 in 24 hours.

Italy has registered more than 4,000 new cases in 24 hours for the first time since mid-April.

Confirmed cases in India have risen to 6.91 million, with 70,496 new cases reported.

Australia has gone a second straight day without any COVID-19 deaths - the longest stretch in three months.

The national government in Spain has warned Madrid that it must enforce travel restrictions or will face a state of emergency.

A UK study has shown that 86% of the people who tested positive for COVID-19 over a two-month period were asymptomatic.

This suggests that a testing approach - where only people with symptomd are encouraged to get tested - could miss a large number of cases.

“The fact that so many people who tested positive were asymptomatic on the day of a positive test result calls for a change to future testing strategies,” said Irene Petersen of UCL Epidemiology & Health Care.

“More widespread testing will help to capture ‘silent’ transmission and potentially prevent future outbreaks.”

However, the authors noted that other studies have found very different results. For example, one in China found just 5% of cases were asymptomatic, while a study in Iceland returned a figure of 43%.

China has joined COVAX, the global vaccine initiative co-led by the World Health Organization. It is the biggest economy to pledge its support for the programme, which aims to buy and distribute any potential vaccines fairly and equitably.

“We are taking this concrete step to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines, especially to developing countries, and hope more capable countries will also join and support COVAX,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a statement.

China joins 168 countries that have already announced their participation.

The programme aims to deliver 2 billion doses of vaccines by the end of next year, with a focus on vaccinating the most high-risk people in every country first.