DAVID DOYLE: The World Health Organization
has reported a record rise in global coronavirus cases
for a second day in a row with the total increasing
by nearly 260,000 in 24 hours.
The most new infections on Saturday
were from the United States, Brazil,
India, and South Africa.
Those four countries accounting for nearly 2/3 of new cases,
according to WHO figures, with the United
States alone reporting over 71,000 infections.
India on Friday became only the third country in the world
to report more than 1 million cases, while Brazil on Thursday
crossed the 2 million mark.
Speaking at the 18th Nelson Mandela annual lecture
on Saturday, UN chief Antonio Guiterrez
said the pandemic had been likened to an X-ray revealing
fractures in the fragile skeleton of the societies
we have built.
ANTONIO GUITERREZ: It is exposing fallacies
and falsehoods everywhere--
the lie that free markets can deliver health care for all;
the fiction that unpaid care work is not work;
the delusion that we live in a postracist world;
the myth that we are all in the same boat.
Because while we are all floating on the same sea,
it is clear that some are in super yachts
while others are clinging to drifting debris.
DAVID DOYLE: Total global coronavirus
cases surpassed 14 million on Friday, according to a Reuters
tally, another milestone in the spread
of the disease which has killed nearly
600,000 people in seven months.