The US’s top infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci warned on Tuesday that the coronavirus pandemic was far from over, calling Covid-19 his “worst nightmare”.

“In a period of four months, it has devastated the whole world,” Fauci said, speaking to executives at a conference of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization. “And it isn’t over yet.”

About 7 million people have been infected with the coronavirus and 400,000 people are known to have died. Many countries, including the US where more than 110,000 have died, are now relaxing quarantine rules despite rising rates of infection in some areas.

“That’s millions and millions of infections worldwide. And it isn’t over yet. And it’s condensed in a very, very small time frame,” said Fauci.

In a videotaped discussion Fauci said he had known that an outbreak like this could occur but he was surprised by how “rapidly it just took over the planet”. Fauci attributed the rapid spread to the contagiousness of the virus and extensive world travel by infected people.

The top White House infectious disease adviser said the coronavirus pandemic differed significantly from other recent public health crises including Ebola and HIV.

Argentina confirmed more than 1,000 new cases of coronavirus on Tuesday as the rate of new infections continued to rise just days after it extended lockdown measures in the capital Buenos Aires, the country’s largest city and epicentre for the virus, Reuters reports.

Argentina’s Health Ministry logged 1,141 new cases in the past 24 hours, as well 24 deaths, pushing its totals to 24,761 cases and 717 deaths since the outbreak began in early March.

Latin America has become the new front in the global coronavirus outbreak. Argentina’s rising rate of infections, though, still remains markedly lower than neighbours Chile, which reported 3,913 cases on Tuesday, and Brazil, with 32,091 new cases.

Argentina last week extended a mandatory lockdown in Buenos Aires, which accounts for the country’s highest concentration of confirmed infections. Other areas have moved to “mandatory and preventive social distancing.”

Much of the nation had been under a shelter-in-place order since 20 March. The country has a commercial flight ban until 1 September, one of the world’s strictest travel measures during the pandemic.

The Yonhap News Agency reports that South Korea’s coronavirus cases spiked to 50 new cases on Wednesday, after two consecutive days of fewer than 40 cases:

South Korea’s new virus cases spiked again Wednesday as sporadic cluster infections continued in the greater Seoul area, prodding health authorities to consider more stringent social distancing in the densely populated area.

The country added 50 new cases, including 43 local infections, raising the total caseload to 11,902, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).

It marked a rebound after the country’s new COVID-19 cases hovered below 40 for the second straight day.

All but three of the locally transmitted cases were reported from the Seoul metropolitan area.

Brazil on Tuesday restored detailed COVID-19 data to its official national website following controversy over the removal of cumulative totals and a ruling by a Supreme Court justice that the full set of information be reinstated, Reuters reports.

The move came after days of mounting pressure from across the political spectrum and allegations the government was trying to mask the severity of the outbreak, now the world’s second-largest.

The official website reverted to showing cumulative totals of deaths and infections – as well as breakdowns by state, as it had done until last week.

On Tuesday evening the latest daily numbers were uploaded to the site. They showed 32,091 new infections of coronavirus in the previous 24 hours for a cumulative total of 739,503 cases, and 1,272 new deaths, bringing the toll to 38,406 dead, the third highest after the United States and Britain.

Right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro has consistently sought to play down the severity of the coronavirus, dismissing it as a “little flu” and urging governors to reverse lockdown measures battering the country’s economy.

Health experts had feared that by not publishing accumulated totals and releasing only deaths that occurred in the past 24 hours, cases in which someone tested positive for the coronavirus days after their death could disappear from public view.

Here is our full story on the court decision:

The World Health Organization has told Pakistan it should implement “intermittent” lockdowns to counter a surge in coronavirus infections that has come as the country loosens restrictions, an official said Tuesday.

Since the start of Pakistan’s outbreak in March, Prime Minister Imran Khan opposed a nationwide lockdown of the sort seen elsewhere, arguing the impoverished country could not afford it, AFP reports.

Instead, Pakistan’s four provinces ordered a patchwork of closures, but last week Khan said most of these restrictions would be lifted. That decision came as Pakistan’s infection rate is worsening, as it is across all of South Asia, which until recently had lagged Western nations in virus tolls.

Health officials said Tuesday they had recorded a total of 108,317 cases and 2,172 deaths – though with testing still limited, real rates are thought to be much higher.

“As of today, Pakistan does not meet any of the pre-requisite conditions for opening the lockdown”, the WHO said in a letter to Punjab’s provincial health minister Yasmin Rashid. The health body recommended an intermittent lockdown cycle of two weeks on, two weeks off.

Some 25% of tests in Pakistan come back positive for Covid-19, the WHO said, indicating high levels of infection in the general population.

Hospitals across the country say they are at or near capacity, and some are turning Covid-19 patients away.

Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan.

As always, it would be great to hear from you. Get in touch with questions, comments, tips and news from your part of the world on Twitter @helenrsullivan or via email: [email protected].

The World Health Organization has told Pakistan it should implement “intermittent” lockdowns to counter a surge in coronavirus infections that has come as the country loosens restrictions. One in four tests conducted in the country come back positive, the WHO said, which indicates a high level of infection.

Here are the key developments from the last few hours:

• Brazil restored on Tuesday detailed Covid-19 data to the official national website, following a scandal about the removal of cumulative totals and a ruling by a Supreme Court justice that the full set of information be reinstated.
  The detailed information, with cumulative totals and breakdowns by state, was restored to the website https://covid.saude.gov.br/, Reuters confirmed on Tuesday afternoon.
• The World Health Organization’s Covid-19 technical lead backtracked on her comment that asymptomatic transmission of the virus was “very rare”. “I think that it’s a misunderstanding to state the asymptomatic transmission globally is very rare,” Dr Maria Van Kerkhove said, noting modelling suggesting 40% of infections could be transmitted by people without symptoms.
• A group of EU member states called for medical and equipment stockpiles to be increased. The leaders of Denmark, Spain and Germany, as well as France, Belgium and Poland, called for measures to boost the bloc’s long-term resilience to public health crises and backed proposals for shared research and development of vaccines and treatment.
• The epidemic in Mexico is advancing toward its peak level of infections, the World Health Organization warned. Mexico, where total confirmed cases exceed 120,000 and the death toll stands at about 14,000, began a gradual re-opening of the economy at the start of June.
• Pakistan should implement intermittent lockdowns to counter a surge in infections, the World Health Organization advised. The increase has come as the country was loosening restrictions.
• Zoos, safari parks and drive-in cinemas will be allowed to reopen in England from 15 June. Boris Johnson will make the official announcement on Wednesday.
• There have been sharp rises in reports of violence against women across Latin America, already a hotspot for gender-based violence, since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the International Rescue Committee has said. Meghan Lopez, the IRC’s regional director for Latin America, said some women and girls were stuck with perpetrators 24 hours a day.
• The world faces a food crisis worse than any seen for at least 50 years, the UN has warned. Social protections for poor people are urgently needed as the looming recession following the Covid-19 pandemic may put basic nutrition out of reach.
• A supreme court judge in Brazil has ordered Jair Bolsonaro’s administration to resume publishing complete Covid-19 statistics. His government sparked outrage on Saturday by purging the health ministry website of data on to pandemic and announcing it would stop publishing the death toll or number of infections.
• Nearly one in five people in Iran may have been infected with coronavirus since the country’s outbreak, a health official said. This meant the virus was “much less lethal than we or the world had anticipated”, said Ehsan Mostafavi, a member of the taskforce set up to combat Covid-19.
• Face masks will remain compulsory in all public spaces even after Spain’s Covid-19 state of emergency ends on 22 June. “The message is one of prudence and caution,” said the government spokeswoman, María Jesús Montero. “Until there is a vaccine or a treatment, the virus remains a threat. We can’t think that the danger has gone.”
• Fifty-two Cuban medics who flew to Italy to help doctors treat Europe’s first mass coronavirus outbreak returned home to a heroes’ welcome. The medical brigade, comprising 36 doctors, 15 nurses and a logistics specialist, arrived in Milan on 22 March and were the first ever to be deployed to a European country.
• Up to 600 deaths in Kano, northern Nigeria, most within a single week in April, were caused by an undetected outbreak of Covid-19, officials said. Government investigations, which began after reports of hundreds of deaths caused alarm in Nigeria’s second largest city, linked 50-60% of 979 “mysterious” deaths to the virus.
• Coronavirus may have been present and spreading in Wuhan as early as August last year, according to a study that analysed satellite imagery of car parks outside major hospitals and search engine data.