Brazil coronavirus toll now world’s second highest: Live updates | News

• Brazil became the country with the second-highest coronavirus death toll in the world with 41,828 fatalities, surpassing Britain’s and second only to the United States.

• The British economy has dwindled 25 percent over March and April as a result of the coronavirus lockdown, dwarfing previous downturns.

• The World Health Organization (WHO) said pandemic puts women at ‘heightened risk’ of dying in childbirth.

• More than 7.6 million people have now been confirmed to have the coronavirus and at least 424,000 have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Here are the latest updates:

Saturday, June 13

01:12 GMT – Somalia’s al-Shabab sets up virus treatment center

Somalia’s al-Shabab group said they had set up a COVID-19 treatment center in the country, and said the disease posed a grave threat, citing international health authorities.

“Al-Shabab’s corona (virus) prevention and treatment committee has opened a COVID-19 center,” the group said in a broadcast on their radio Andalus, adding the center had been set up in Jilib, about 380 kilometers (236 miles) south of the capital, Mogadishu.

“International health organizations said COVID-19 is terribly spreading in countries of Africa continent.”

For more than a decade the group has been fighting to topple the Horn of Africa’s Western-backed central government and establish its own government based on its own interpretation of Islamic law.

00:18 GMT – Brazil’s COVID-19 death toll passes Britain’s

Brazil’s COVID-19 death toll has overtaken Britain’s to become the second highest in the world after the United States, according to numbers released by the Brazilian Health Ministry.

Brazil reported a total of 828,810 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with 25,982 new infections in the last 24 hours, and another 909 fatalities, raising the death toll to 41,828, the Health Ministry said.

Of the total cases of COVID-19, 365,063 have recovered, the ministry said.

00:10 GMT – Botswana reinstates strict lockdown in Gabrone

Botswana has brought back a strict coronavirus lockdown in its capital city and surrounding areas after recording 12 new cases of the virus – four imported cases at its borders and eight at a private hospital in Gabrone.

The southern African nation ended a 48-day national coronavirus lockdown late last month, allowing businesses and schools to reopen under controls, but its borders are still closed apart from for returning citizens and imports of essential goods.

Announcing the new lockdown measures, Malaki Tshipayagae, the country director of health services, said authorities were trying to determine if the Gabrone hospital cases were locally transmitted.

“From midnight today the greater Gaborone area will revert to extreme social distancing until further notice, where only essential services will be allowed to operate,” he said in a televised announcement.

The new cases bring Botswana’s cumulative cases to 60. Prior to Friday’s cases, Botswana only had one active case of the coronavirus. It has recorded only one coronavirus death.

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Hello and welcome to Al Jazeera’s continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. I’m Zaheena Rasheed in Male, Maldives.

You can find all the developments from yesterday, June 12, here.

SOURCE:
Al Jazeera and news agencies