White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has tested positive for coronavirus, several media outlets reported late Friday. Meadows joins several members of the Trump administration who have tested positive for the dreaded viral infection. Trump and the first lady had announced back in October that they too had tested positive for COVID-19, but had recovered after hospitalization and self-quarantining respectively. This news comes as the US sets a new record of coronavirus cases on Friday surpassing 125,000 new daily cases with at least 1,137 deaths being recorded, according to the Johns Hopkins University. Meanwhile, more than 49.04 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 1,238,751 have died, according to a Reuters tally published on Saturday. Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019. In London, an estimated 618,700 people had coronavirus in community settings in England last week, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has said as quoted by Sky News. The total equates to around one in 90 people or 1.13 percent of the population for the week between Oct. 25 and 31. The figure represents a jump from 568,100 people, or 1.04 percent of the population, who were estimated to have COVID-19 in the period Oct. 17 to 23. In its latest update on Friday, the ONS said new infections in England have stabilized at around 50,000 a day, suggesting a leveling off in a recent steep rise in cases. The ONS data refers to COVID-19 infections in the community, meaning private residential households, and does not include people with the virus in hospitals, care homes or other institutional settings. In Paris, France registered a record 60,486 new confirmed coronavirus cases today, on Friday, after posting a record 58,046 on Thursday, Reuters cited health ministry data as showing. The new cases took the total number of confirmed cases to 1.66 million, close behind Russia, which with 1.73 million cases has the world's fourth-largest number after the US, India and Brazil. The ministry also reported 828 new deaths from coronavirus, including 398 deaths in hospitals over the past 24 hours, and 430 deaths in retirement homes over three days. On Thursday, the ministry reported 363 deaths in hospitals. The seven-day moving average of the combined death toll rose by 40 to 471, compared to a high of 975 on April 9. The highest number of COVID-19 deaths reported in one day in France was 1,438 on April 15. A week after the government imposed a new nationwide lockdown, the number of people in hospital with the virus rose by 553 to 28,979, the smallest one-day increase in nearly three weeks. The number of people in intensive care with COVID-19 rose by 101 to 4,331, the smallest increase in six days. In Mumbai, India recorded 50,356 new cases of the novel coronavirus, taking its total to 8.46 million, data from the Health Ministry showed on Saturday. India has the world's second-highest caseload behind the United States, but has seen a steady dip in cases since September. Deaths rose by 577 in the last 24 hours, taking total mortalities to 125,562, the ministry said. The Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population said Friday that 224 people contracted the novel coronavirus and 14 other died from it over the past 24 hours. The figures took the overall confirmed cases to 108,752 and the death toll to 6,343, and as many as 100 patients have been discharged from the hospitals, bringing the overall recoveries to 100,106. — Agencies
