What you need to know about the coronavirus right now

What you need to know about the coronavirus right now
Representative Image Image Credit: ANI
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Here's what you need to know about the coronavirus right now: Burgers, coffee and the beach

New Zealanders queued on Tuesday for takeaway burgers, fries and coffee, after being freed from a month-long lockdown, while surfers lined up to hit Sydney's Bondi Beach at dawn, as the iconic Australian venue was officially reopened. "It's hard to explain how good this tastes," Christopher Bishop, a New Zealand lawmaker, said on Twitter after posting a picture with a takeaway coffee cup.

Hard to hold Olympics without vaccine Tokyo faces a tough task in hosting the Olympics next year without an effective vaccine, the head of the Japan Medical Association said.

"I am not saying that Japan should or shouldn't host the Olympics, but that it would be difficult to do so," the association's president, Yoshitake Yokokura, said. Laboratories in several countries are working on vaccines and drugs to fight the virus. The need for exhaustive clinical trials of their effectiveness and safety, however, means they could take months to become widely available.

Election mostly by mail Ohio holds its primary election on Tuesday, a virtually all-mail contest, and a glimpse of what the U.S. presidential contest might look like in November if the virus threat persists.

Some voters, election officials, and voting rights watchdogs are already alarmed, as Ohio's system has been overwhelmed by the crush of requests for absentee ballots, which stands to deny voting rights for tens of thousands. "There is a strong likelihood that the timing for mailing out ballots may not allow adequate time for voters to receive the ballot and return it by mail in time to meet the state's postmark deadline," the U.S. Postal Service warned in an April 20 email.

Real death toll masked More than 2,200 Indonesians have died with acute virus symptoms but were not recorded as victims, a Reuters review of data from 16 of the country's 34 provinces showed. Three medical experts said the figures indicated the death toll nationwide was likely to exceed the official figure of 765.

Wiku Adisasmito, a senior member of Indonesia's virus task force, did not dispute the Reuters findings but said few of the 19,897 suspected sufferers had been tested as many specimens stacked up for processing at under-staffed labs. "If they have thousands or hundreds of samples they need to test, which one will they give the priority?" he asked Reuters. They will give priority to the people that are still alive."

The disparity in virus deaths will have a huge effect on Indonesia's tracking of the spread of the disease.

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