India becomes world's third country to top 1 million cases

A health worker places a swab sample into a test tube at a Covid-19 testing centre in Srinagar, India on July 16. Tauseef Mustafa/AFP/Getty Images

India has recorded more than one million coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, as the world's second most populous country struggles to contain a growing healthcare crisis.

India is only the third country globally, after the United States and Brazil, to hit a million Covid-19 infections, according to Johns Hopkins University tally. 

The country reported 34,956 new cases in the past 24 hours, said the country's health ministry on Friday -- the highest daily jump yet.

That raises the country's total to 1,003,832 coronavirus cases and more than 25,600 deaths. 

More than 630,000 patients have so far recovered from the virus, the ministry said. 

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega attends a meeting in Panama City on April 10, 2015. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has not been seen in public for more than a month, as the virus continues to sweep across Latin America.

Ortega’s last public appearance was on June 10 at a virtual conference regarding the post-pandemic economy with member countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our America (ALBA).

There was a similar lengthy period of absence at the start of the pandemic, when Ortega spent more than 40 days out of the public eye. The government offered no explanation for that absence.

The government has reported nearly 100 deaths related to the novel coronavirus and 3,147 confirmed cases as of Thursday, though skepticism regarding the transparency of the data provided by the Ortega administration lingers, especially since the government controls all test information. The country's population is estimated to be around 6.5 million, according to 2018 figures provided by the World Bank.

According to research from Nicaragua’s Covid-19 Citizen Observatory, an interdisciplinary monitoring group working to “fill the void of information about Covid-19 in Nicaragua,” at least 2,225 people have died from the virus. Confirmed cases in the country have reached at least 7,893, according to the group.

China recorded 10 new symptomatic coronavirus cases on Thursday, the country's National Health Commission announced Friday. 

Of these 10, nine were considered as imported cases registered across Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong, Guangxi, Shaanxi and Shanghai. 

The commission also reported five new asymptomatic cases, which are counted separately in China.

Ian Haydon CNN/FILE

Ian Haydon, a participant in Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine trial, told CNN he suffered some serious side effects after receiving a high dose of the vaccine.

The effects included a high fever and nausea after receiving a 250 microgram dose, Haydon said on Thursday night.

Some background: CNN reported this week that a Covid-19 vaccine developed by the biotechnology company Moderna in partnership with the National Institutes of Health has been found to induce immune responses in all of the volunteers who received it in a Phase 1 study.

These early results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Tuesday, showed that the vaccine worked to trigger an immune response with mild side effects — fatigue, chills, headache, muscle pain, pain at the injection site — becoming the first US vaccine candidate to publish results in a peer-reviewed medical journal

The vaccine is expected to begin later this month a large Phase 3 trial — the final trial stage before regulators consider whether to make the vaccine available.

A healthcare worker carries Covid-19 tests in Bogota, Colombia on July 15. Juan Barreto/AFP/Getty Images

Authorities in Colombia reported 8,037 new coronavirus cases on Thursday and 251 deaths. 

The new numbers bring the total number of cases for the country to 173,206 and the number of deaths to 6,029. 

More than 76,000 people have so far recovered from the virus, according to government data.