Bedugul Coffee: Tuesday Morning Briefing: Global coronavirus cases push past 20 million

What you need to know about the coronavirus today

Over 20 million cases
Global coronavirus cases pushed past 20 million, according to a Reuters tally, with the United States, Brazil and India accounting for more than half of all known infections. The Reuters tally, which is based on government reports, shows the disease is accelerating.

Experts believe the official data likely undercounts both infections and deaths, particularly in countries with limited testing capacity.

Signs Australian outbreak subsiding
Victoria, Australia’s second-most populous state, reported a small rise in new COVID-19 infections on Tuesday, boosting hopes that case numbers are stabilizing after a second wave forced authorities to send the city of Melbourne back into lockdown.

Victoria state detected 331 new COVID-19 infections and 19 deaths in the past 24 hours, compared with 322 infections and the same number of fatalities a day earlier, health officials said.

Authorities said the restrictions that will run until September are bearing fruit. Outside the two largest states of Victoria and New South Wales, the virus has effectively been eliminated.

U.S. weekly death toll falls
Deaths from COVID-19 fell last week after four weeks of increases, according to a Reuters tally of state and county reports. About 7,200 people died last week, 26% below the previous week.

And new cases have now fallen for three straight weeks, though the United States still accounts for a quarter of the global total of 20 million cases.

Last week’s decline in new cases came largely from recent hot spots. For instance, new cases in Arizona fell by more than 48% in the last week, and on Aug. 9 the state reported fewer than 1,000 cases for the first time since June 29.

Track the spread with our U.S.-focused and global interactive graphics.

Breakingviews - Corona Capital: Hotels, Unemployment, Soup.
Read concise views on the pandemic’s financial fallout from Breakingviews columnists across the globe.

Reuters reporters and editors around the world are investigating the response to the coronavirus pandemic.

We need your help to tell these stories. Our news organization wants to capture the full scope of what’s happening and how we got here by drawing on a wide variety of sources. Here’s a look at our coverage.

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Top News

Angry Lebanese said the government’s resignation did not come near to addressing the tragedy of last week’s Beirut explosion and demanded the removal of what they see as a corrupt ruling class to blame for the country’s woes. A protest with the slogan “Bury the authorities first” was planned near the port, where highly explosive material stored for years detonated on Aug. 4, killing at least 163 people, injuring 6,000 and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.

U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar, one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress and no stranger to criticism from across the aisle, faces a challenge from fellow Democrats hoping to unseat her in a primary election. “Her progressive politics is a platform of platitudes,” said Antone Melton-Meaux, a Black lawyer who is one of four candidates challenging Omar in her Minneapolis-based district.

A storm packing hurricane-force winds tore across the U.S. Midwest, causing widespread property damage in cities and rural towns and leaving more than half a million homes and businesses without power. The storm compounded troubles for a U.S. farm economy already battered by extreme weather, the U.S.-China trade war and most recently, the disruption caused to labor and consumption by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday will consider whether a federal judge is obligated to honor the Trump administration’s request to drop the criminal case against President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn. The hearing is the latest skirmish between the Justice Department, which has sought to abandon a politically charged case against the Trump ally, and U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who says he cannot act as a “rubber stamp” for the highly unusual move.

COVID Science

New saliva test for COVID-19 avoids supply chain shortages
A new saliva test for COVID-19 will cost less and, because it can use several readily available reagents, it will not be as affected by supply chain shortages as other PCR tests, researchers said in a paper posted ahead of peer review. According to Dr. Nathan Grubaugh of Yale University, the new test uses enzymes and heat to break open the virus and expose its nucleic acids for molecular detection, rather than extracting the nucleic acids from the sample.

COVID-19 strokes hitting younger, low-risk patients
A large study of strokes associated with COVID-19 found that many strokes occur in relatively young people without risk factors, the Multinational COVID-19 Stroke Study Group reported on Friday ahead of peer review. Researchers in 32 countries identified 432 COVID-19 patients with strokes caused either by blocked blood flow to the brain - called ischemic strokes - or by blood hemorrhage in the brain. Among those with ischemic strokes, more than one-third had no coronavirus symptoms.