Confirmed COVID-19 cases have surpassed 41 million globally, with over 1.1 million fatalities and more than 28 million recovered, according to the latest tally from Johns Hopkins University.

The Chinese mainland reported 14 new cases from overseas on Wednesday. Four Chinese vaccine candidates have entered international phase-3 clinical trials and nearly 60,000 volunteers have received Chinese COVID-19 vaccines with no severe side effects reported so far.

The U.S. registered over 220,000 deaths and more than 8.2 million infections – both the highest in the world.

Russia on Tuesday posted record-high daily infections – 16,319 – as a second wave of COVID-19 lifts head in some European countries.

Italy's government agreed on a request from the Lombardy region, hard hit by COVID-19, to impose further restrictions to curb a new infection surge. The curfew will run from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., expected to be in place from Thursday.

The number of COVID-19 infections in France had reached 1,000,369 as of 01:24 GMT on Thursday, while the country's death toll hit 34,075, according to the latest figures from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

France has become the second European country, after Spain, whose COVID-19 cases surpassed 1 million mark on Wednesday.

Experts are warning that the U.S. is seeing a “rapid acceleration” of COVID-19 cases, as the country confirmed over 60,000 new cases on Tuesday, according to Johns Hopkins University tracking.

Cases have not reached this height since mid-summer, which saw numbers reach 67,200 on July 22. Average daily cases have surged 70 percent since mid-September.

The U.S. has so far counted more than 8.3 million cases of the virus and over 220,000 deaths since the pandemic began in March.

At least 37 states have seen a rise in hospitalizations, with hospitals in rural parts of the country facing the brunt of the surge.

China has decided to not yet resume inbound or outbound group tours organized by travel agencies or online travel businesses on account of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism made the announcement on Wednesday, acknowledging that COVID-19 is still spreading around the world and there's still potential risk of sporadic COVID-19 outbreaks as China enters the winter season.

England's South Yorkshire region will move into Britain's highest tier of coronavirus restrictions, the mayor of Sheffield Dan Jarvis said on Wednesday.

The new restrictions will apply to all four local authority areas in South Yorkshire: Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield.

The United States is "very unlikely" to have a COVID-19 vaccine authorized by its Food and Drug Administration before November, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) said during an interview on Tuesday.

"I would think it's very unlikely – given the timetables and the standards that have to be followed – that you will hear about an emergency use authorization before late November at the earliest," Collins said.

Nepal Confirms 5743 New COVID-19 Cases, The Single Highest, Tally Reaches To 144872

Professor Dr. Jageshwor Gautam, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP), confirmed 5743 New COVID-19 Cases. With this, the total cases reach 144872.

He said that in In 20,118 Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests done in the last 24 hours, as many as 57743 persons were found to have been infected with SARS-CoV-2.

He said that there are currently, there are 44476 active cases of COVID-19 of which, 14,676 patients are receiving treatment in institutional isolations and 29,800 are in home isolation. Some 4020 people are currently placed in quarantine centers across the nation.

He said that 2996 COVID-19 patients, either receiving treatment at various health facilities or staying in home isolation, recovered from the infection in the last 24 hours. Nepal has now registered 99605 cases of recoveries and the recovery rate is at 68.7 per cent.

Furthermore, 26 patients receiving treatment at various health facilities across the nation succumbed to the novel coronavirus infection in the last 24 hours. Nepal's COVID-19 death toll has now reached 791.

Of the active cases, 269 are admitted to the ICU and 87 are under treatment with ventilator facility.