Coronavirus updates: US state sees record rise in daily cases over last 2 weeks

A spokesperson for the University of Oxford told ABC News Tuesday that volunteers under the age of 18 are currently not being recruited into the clinical trail of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine.

"We have prioritized adults as there is strong evidence that children are much less likely than adults to become unwell with COVID-19," the spokesperson said. "Whilst we do plan to run a trial in this age group, we first hope to generate evidence of the vaccine efficacy in adults, and as such cannot set a date for when the under 18 element of the trial may begin."

The studies to assess the safety and efficacy of the so-called ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine began in the United Kingdom in April. In addition to the U.K.-based trial, phase III studies have now begun in Brazil, South Africa and the United States to assess the vaccine in other populations, along with a related trial in India.

ABC News' Zoe Magee contributed to this report.

Israel now has the world's highest daily COVID-19 death rate per million people, surpassing that of the United States, according to a report published Tuesday morning by an Israeli military task force.

The report shows that the daily COVID-19 death rate over the past week has been 3.5 per million people in Israel and 2.2 per million people in the United States.

Meanwhile, Israel continues to have the world's highest weekly COVID-19 infection rate per million people, followed by France and the United States, according to the report from the task force, which was formed by the Israel Defense Force's Military Intelligence Directorate and advises the country's health ministry.

The report also shows that the number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized in critical condition has increased by 70% over the last month and is 10 times higher than three months ago.

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Israel has reported more than 233,000 confirmed cases with over 1,500 deaths, according to data from the country's health ministry.

Israel entered its second nationwide coronavirus lockdown on Sept. 18, as the Jewish High Holidays began. The country's health minister, Yuli Edelstein, said Tuesday that there was "no way" the lockdown would be lifted after three weeks as originally planned.

ABC News' Bruno Nota contributed to this report.

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin announced Tuesday that fall break for all schools will be extended from one week to two, due to rising COVID-19 cases in Russia's capital.

"On the recommendation of sanitary doctors, taking into account the autumn increase in colds and the growth of the number of identified cases of COVID, I decided to prolong the duration of the autumn holidays to two weeks and to hold them at the same time in all schools -- from October 5 to 18," Sobyanin said in a message to parents and students, which was posted on his official website.

There will be no remote learning during the break. Moscow's kindergartens and preschool groups will continue working as usual, according to Sobyanin.

The mayor urged families to use this time as "an opportunity" to reduce the spread of COVID-19. He advised children against visiting shopping malls or riding public transportation "for fun."

"I very much ask parents to explain to their children that it is best to spend holiday time at home or in the countryside," he said. "Today, a significant part of those infected, often asymptomatic, are children. When they come home, they very easily transmit the virus to adults and elderly family members, who suffer much more severely from the illness."

The move comes as Moscow confirmed some 2,300 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, the city's highest daily tally since May 31. The daily growth of cases in the capital stands at 0.8%, according to Russia’s coronavirus response headquarters.

ABC News' Alina Lobzina contributed to this report.

There were 33,037 new cases of COVID-19 identified in the United States on Monday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

Monday's tally is far below the country’s record set on July 16, when there were 77,255 new cases in a 24-hour-reporting period.

An additional 316 coronavirus-related fatalities were also recorded Monday, down from a peak of 2,666 new fatalities reported on April 17.

A total of 7,149,072 people in the United States have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 205,085 of them have died, according to Johns Hopkins. The cases include people from all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C. and other U.S. territories as well as repatriated citizens.

By May 20, all U.S. states had begun lifting stay-at-home orders and other restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. The day-to-day increase in the country's cases then hovered around 20,000 for a couple of weeks before shooting back up and crossing 70,000 for the first time in mid-July. The daily tally of new cases has gradually come down since then but has hovered around 40,000 in recent weeks.

An internal memo from the Federal Emergency Management Agency obtained by ABC News on Monday night shows that the number of new cases recorded in the United States is continuing to increase significantly while the number of new deaths decreased slightly in week-over-week comparisons.