Factbox: Latest on the worldwide spread of the coronavirus

March 31 (Reuters) – Germany plans to end mandatory quarantine for most people who catch COVID-19, the health ministry proposed on Thursday, as numbers isolating with the infection top four million. read more

DEATHS AND INFECTIONS

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EUROPE

* Britain’s economy grew faster than expected in 2021, but the increase was largely due to COVID-related activity in the health sector, which masked the inflation hit to household incomes and a gloomy picture for the private sector. read more

* Italy reported 73,195 COVID-19 related cases on Thursday, against 77,621 the day before, the health ministry said, while the number of deaths fell to 159 from 170.

AMERICAS

* CIA Director William Burns has tested positive for COVID-19 and will work from home and quarantine for five days before returning to the office, the U.S intelligence agency’s public affairs office said on Thursday. read more

* More than a third of high school students surveyed in the United States experienced stress, anxiety or depression, and nearly a fifth said they seriously considered suicide during the pandemic, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday. read more

* Much of Canada is facing a fresh COVID-19 wave just as authorities ease measures meant to curb the spread of the virus, emboldened by a brief drop in cases and relatively high vaccination rates. read more

ASIA-PACIFIC

* Shanghai is set to put the vast majority of its residents under COVID-19 lockdown from Friday, as it expands curbs to include the western half of the city and extends restrictions in the east where people have already been forced to stay home since Monday. read more

* Activity in Chinese manufacturing and services simultaneously contracted in March for the first time since the country’s COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, adding to the urgency for more policy intervention to stabilise the economy. read more

* India’s Maharashtra state, home to Mumbai, will make wearing masks optional from April 2 after a steep fall in the number of active cases and deaths from COVID-19 in recent days. read more

* Pakistan has disbanded the National Command and Operations Center, which was overseeing the country’s COVID-19 response, as infection numbers were at the lowest since the start of the outbreak, the prime minister said. read more

AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST

* Ghana will start producing its own COVID-19 vaccines by January 2024, President Nana Akufo-Addo said on Wednesday. read more

MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS

* Governments want COVID-19 vaccine developers to aim higher in the hunt for better shots to ward off future virus variants amid signs of tension between companies and regulators over the best approach. read more

* Children aged 5 to 11 who received the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine were 68% less likely to be hospitalised during the Omicron wave in the United States than unvaccinated children, a study showed. read more

ECONOMIC IMPACT

* Global stocks fell on Thursday as investors sold risky assets due to concerns about possible recession and the Russian-Ukrainian war, and oil prices plunged over $5 a barrel as Washington contemplated releasing more U.S. emergency oil reserves. read more

* China stocks fell after data showed activity in China’s factory and services sectors swung into a negative territory in March, contracting simultaneously for the first time since the peak of the country’s COVID-19 outbreak in 2020.

* U.S. consumer spending barely rose in February, but a significant decline in COVID-19 infections boosted demand for services like dining out, hotel stays, recreation, air travel and healthcare, data from the Commerce Department showed. read more