The World Trade Organization (WTO) now predicts a 9.2% drop in global merchandise trade this year.

The Geneva-based trade body released the estimate Tuesday, revising its forecast in April of a 12.9% decline this year, following "strong trade performance in June and July."

The WTO also now expects a 7.2% rise in merchandise trade next year, compared to the previous estimate of 21.3% growth.

"Whether the recovery can be sustained over the medium term will depend on the strength of investment and employment," the WTO cautioned. "Both could be undermined if confidence is dented by new outbreaks of COVID-19, which might force governments to impose additional lockdowns."

There are 15 clinical trials of potential COVID-19 vaccines underway across the African continent, according to a comment by the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that was published Tuesday in the journal Nature.

Five trials are being carried out in South Africa, four in Egypt and one each in Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

"We’ve seen a scramble for access to therapies before," the Nature comment said. "It happened with HIV and H5N1 influenza, for example. And Africa has ended up at the end of the queue every time. Yet the global economy depends on the continent for its exports of raw materials, food, energy and labour."

"This experience -- and the fact that other infectious diseases will surely emerge -- is why Africa needs a coordinated strategy to develop, finance, manufacture and deliver vaccines across the continent," the comment added.

For the past few months, the Africa CDC has been working with African leaders and global health officials on a "whole of Africa" coordinated approach to do just that.

"Infectious agents span the globe in weeks: vaccinating people on one continent is essential to the health, wealth and well-being of those on the others," the Nature comment said. "No region can be immune until a meaningful and equitable share of the world’s population is protected -- by the tenets of good basic public health as well as a vaccine."

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, more than 1.5 million people across the African continent have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and nearly 37,000 of them have died. South Africa accounts for nearly half of all confirmed cases on the continent, according to the latest data from the Africa CDC.

Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza said Tuesday the government is working on a proposal to make the use of face masks outdoors mandatory nationwide, as COVID-19 infections have steadily increased in recent months.

Italy, once the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, gradually loosened restrictions during the spring and summer, following a nearly three-month lockdown that helped get its COVID-19 outbreak under control. But now the country -- like several others across Europe -- is seeing an uptick in infections.

On Saturday, Italy reported 2,844 new cases of COVID-19, its highest single-day jump since April, but still far less than the daily figures being recorded in France, Spain and the United Kingdom as Europe grapples with a second wave of infections.

"We must raise our guard with the awareness that our county is better off than others," Speranza told the lower house of parliament on Tuesday.

The government is expected to announce the new measures by Wednesday. Several regions in Italy have already made mask-wearing compulsory, but there is currently no nationwide mandate.

"Italy, together with Germany, is the one that in the EU is holding up the second wave better," Speranza said. "But we must not have any illusions."

Since the start of the pandemic, Italy's civil protection agency has recorded at least 327,586 confirmed cases with 36,002 deaths.

The European Union's drug regulator has started reviewing a second potential vaccine for COVID-19, which is being developed by Germany's BioNTech in collaboration with American pharmaceutical company Pfizer.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced Tuesday that it has begun a "rolling review" of the latest vaccine candidate in an accelerated regulatory approval process, examining the data as it becomes available rather than waiting for the trial to end.

"The start of the rolling review means that the committee has started evaluating the first batch of data on the vaccine, which come from laboratory studies (non-clinical data)," the EMA said in a statement. "This does not mean that a conclusion can be reached yet on the vaccine's safety and effectiveness, as much of the evidence is still to be submitted to the committee."

The agency added that its decision to start the expedited approval process for the vaccine candidate was based on preliminary results from non-clinical and early clinical studies in adults which suggest that the drug triggers the body's immune system to fight COVID-19.

Last week, the EMA began its first review process of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate -- a rolling review of one being developed by U.K.-based pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca in collaboration with England's University of Oxford.