Coronavirus updates: State reports over 49,000 new cases, 468 new deaths

Seychelles has recorded its first death from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

The patient was a 57-year-old Seychellois man who was hospitalized on New Year's Eve at a COVID-19 isolation and treatment center on Perseverance Island, just north of the capital Victoria. He died from complications of his illness on Sunday evening, according to a press release from Seychelles' Ministry of Health.

"This is the first such death occurring in Seychelles and comes amid an uptick of new COVID-19 cases," the health ministry said in a statement. "This first loss is deeply felt by all the health workers and community in general. It further strengthens the resolve to intensify efforts to prevent further transmission."

In the wake of the country's first coronavirus-related fatality, Seychellois health authorities announced a string of new restrictions at a press conference Monday, including the closure of all public swimming pools, retail stores and many restaurants. Grocery stores and hardware shops can remain open.

Seychelles President Wavel Ramkalawan warned that the "situation is deteriorating," with more than a dozen new cases confirmed over the previous 24 hours.

"It is easy to put COVID-19 under control if we all take precautions," Ramkalawan told reporters Monday. "We should all be wearing our mask, it is an easy thing to do."

Seychelles, an Indian Ocean archipelago located off the coast of East Africa with a population of just under 100,000, has reported 322 confirmed cases of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to the latest data from the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There were 180,477 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in the United States on Monday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

Monday's tally is less than the all-time high of 297,491 new cases, which the country logged on Jan. 2, Johns Hopkins data shows.

An additional 1,903 deaths from COVID-19 were also registered nationwide on Monday, down from a peak of 3,750 on Dec. 30, according to Johns Hopkins data.

COVID-19 data may be skewed due to possible lags in reporting over the holidays followed by a potentially very large backlog.

A total of 20,823,345 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 353,621 of them have died, according to Johns Hopkins data. The cases include people from all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., and other U.S. territories as well as repatriated citizens.

Much of the country was under lockdown by the end of March as the first wave of pandemic hit. 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 over the summer.

The numbers lingered around 40,000 to 50,000 from mid-August through early October before surging again to record levels, crossing 100,000 for the first time on Nov. 4 and reaching 200,000 for the first time on Nov. 27.

A COVID-19 vaccine developed by England's University of Oxford and British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has been authorized for emergency use in Mexico.

Mexico's Federal Commission for the Protection against Sanitary Risks (COFEPRIS), a decentralized regulatory body of the country's health ministry, announced its decision to approve the shot in a statement Monday evening.

Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations Marcelo Ebrard took to Twitter to praise the approval, calling it "very good news."

It's the second COVID-19 vaccine to be approved in the Latin American nation. Mexico authorized a vaccine developed by U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech for emergency use on Dec. 11, just before the United States did so as well.

Mexico has reported more than 1.4 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, including at least 127,757 deaths, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

Despite a backlog in data on COVID-19 cases and deaths over the holiday weekend, the United States still marked a record level of coronavirus-related hospitalizations, according to data collected by The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the U.S. outbreak.

The data shows there were 128,120 people hospitalized across the country on Monday.

The COVID Tracking Project warned that data on testing, cases and deaths has been affected by the holidays.

"Hospitalization data remains the most stable metric despite the reporting disruptions. The 7-day average is now over 125k," the group wrote on Twitter Monday.

The COVID Tracking Project also noted that the seven-day average for COVID-19 deaths is increasing in 30 U.S. states.

"We expect the daily death numbers to increase significantly once the reporting trends stabilize post-holidays, in part due to backlogs," the group tweeted.