"Brides" protest against virus restrictions in Rome

Women wearing wedding dresses stage a flashmob protest by the Trevi fountain in Rome, Italy, on July 7. Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images

A group of women dressed as brides carried out a flash mob in Rome on Tuesday to protest against the coronavirus safety measures that prohibit large religious ceremonies like a big wedding. 

The event, organized by an Italian wedding association, was called the "flash mob of the singles or unmarried ones." 

The protesters hold signs against the postponement of their marriages due to the strict protocol around religious ceremonies. Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images

Some 15 women held signs and posed in front of Rome's famous sites like the Trevi Fountain. They were also pictured outside the Italian Parliament, where they were joined by members of the country’s hard-hit wedding industry.

Protestor Francesca Del Vechio, who is from Naples, told CNN that she was supposed to "get married in September but because of government restrictions we had to postpone the date for at least one year."

She said that while the change of date was not an issue, she would like to get married next year "without restrictions."

The Chinese mainland on Tuesday recorded seven new COVID-19 cases from overseas, but no new domestic cases or deaths.

Beijing reported no new confirmed domestically transmitted COVID-19 cases on Tuesday. The total cases of infection in the city rose to 335 since the cluster outbreak was discovered in the Xinfadi market on June 11, according to the municipal health commission.

Thirteen more patients recovered on Tuesday, taking the total number of recoveries to 28, the city's health commission said.

Meanwhile, 31 asymptomatic people are currently under medical observation in the Chinese capital.

Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro says he has tested positive for COVID-19. He confirmed the test results while wearing a mask and speaking to reporters in capital Brasilia."I'm well, normal. I even want to take a walk around here, but I can't due to medical recommendations," Bolsonaro said.

Colombia extended lockdown measures until at least August 1, as the country reported a record number of new coronavirus cases on Tuesday.

(US) Columbia University will welcome back 60% of undergraduates in Columbia College and the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, University President Lee Bollinger announced in an email.

Brazil recorded 45,305 new Covid-19 cases Tuesday after its own president also tested positive for the virus, according to Brazil's health ministry.

The Palestinian Authority has extended a lockdown in the West Bank for another five days in hopes of slowing a new outbreak of the coronavirus. The stay-at-home orders allow people to go out only for food or medicine and prohibit most intercity travel. 

At least eight state legislators in US State of Mississippi have tested positive for the coronavirus after working for weeks in a Capitol where many people stood or sat close together and did not wear masks.

Mississippi legislators, staff and Capitol employees take advantage of a drive-thru COVID-19 testing center on the Capitol grounds in Jackson, Mississippi. [Rogelio V. Solis/AP Photo]

Walt Disney Co will stick to its plans to reopen its Walt Disney World theme parks in Orlando, Florida, to a limited number of guests on Saturday, the company said in a statement.

President Donald Trump has formally withdrawn the United States from the World Health Organization, making good on threats over the UN body's response to the coronavirus. 

Zimbabwe's health minister has been fired for inappropriate conduct after he was accused of illegally awarding a multi-million-dollar contract for COVID-19 medical supplies to a shadowy company that sold the government $28 face masks and other materials at inflated prices.

Dubai reopens doors to tourists after long shutdown: With a "welcome" passport sticker and coronavirus tests on arrival, Dubai has reopened its doors to international visitors in the hope of reviving its tourism industry after a nearly four-month closure. Incoming tourists are required to present a negative test result taken within four days of the flight. If not, they can take the test on arrival, but must self-isolate until they receive the all-clear.

Serbia will return to a long weekend curfew and introduce other restrictions. 

The World Health Organization acknowledged there was "emerging evidence" on airborne transmission of the coronavirus after an international group of scientists said it could spread far beyond two metres (6 feet). More than 200 scientists called on the WHO to acknowledge the coronavirus can spread in the air - a change that could alter some measures taken to stop the pandemic. It would mean people in certain indoor conditions could be at greater risk of being infected than was previously thought.

Italy has ordered a one-week suspension of incoming flights from Bangladesh after a spate of coronavirus cases near Rome were traced to members of the Bangladeshi community who had recently returned to Italy.

Germany's eastern state of Saxony plans to allow large-scale events with more than 1,000 visitors from September 1

Iran reported 200 new deaths from the coronavirus, the most in a single day since the Middle East's deadliest outbreak began in February. The previous record was Sunday's toll of 163 deaths.

Armenia will not send athletes to the first Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Games in the Russian city of Kazan in September due to concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.

Japan's national broadcaster NHK has reported that five members of the Sumo Association have been confirmed to have coronavirus antibodies. It did not say whether they were wrestlers or had other roles in the association. A 28-year-old wrestler, Shobushi, died from the disease in May, the first death in sumo. 

Iraq on Tuesday recorded 2,426 new coronavirus cases, according to the country's health ministry. Iraq now has a total of 64,701 cases of coronavirus. The health ministry also reported 118 new Covid-19-related fatalities, bringing the total to 2,685 deaths across the country.

Australia has closed its inter-state border between Victoria and New South Wales [NSW] - the country's two most populous states - at midnight local time on Wednesday (10 a.m. ET Tuesday), as it battles a second wave of the Covid-19 outbreak. This is the first time in 100 years that the border between the two states has been closed since the 1919 Spanish flu pandemic.

Brazil's state of Rio de Janeiro has extended the restrictions to tackle the COVID-19 until July 21; cinemas and gyms will remain closed in the state.

Iran reported 2,637 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 245,688 as of Tuesday. The death toll in the country now stands at 11,931. So far, 207,000 patients have recovered from the disease in the country. 

England: Seventy-eight percent of people who test positive for COVID-19 in England don't show any symptoms, according to data released by UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Tuesday, suggesting a potentially large number of asymptomatic cases in the country.

The eurozone economy will plunge 8.7 percent in 2020 due to the coronavirus crisis, the European Commission said Tuesday in more pessimistic forecasts that do not see a complete rebound next year.

Biotechnology company Regeneron has been awarded a $450 million contract to manufacture and supply REGN-COV2, a combination antibody treatment for Covid-19 that is now in late-stage clinical trials. The funding is part of the US federal government's Covid-19 vaccine program, "Operation Warp Speed."

The German district of Guetersloh, the site of a coronavirus outbreak at a meatpacking plant in June, has had its lockdown lifted by a court order.

The University of Washington has extended its projection of how many people are likely to die from coronavirus in the US to November 1, predicting at least 208,255 deaths by then, based on the current scenario.   

But if 95% of the population wears a mask in public, that number would drop to approximately 162,808, the university’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) said Tuesday.

International students who are pursuing degrees in the United States may have to leave the country or risk deportation if their universities switch to online-only courses, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Monday.

The move could affect thousands of foreign students who come to the United States to attend universities or participate in training programs, as well as non-academic or vocational studies.

Universities nationwide are beginning to make the decision to transition to online courses as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. At Harvard, for example, all course instruction will be delivered online, including for students living on campus. For international students, that opens the door to them having to leave the US.

Silent transmission could be responsible for half of coronavirus cases in the US, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The term "silent transmission" means the virus is transmitted through asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic patients, who are harder to find and trace.

How the study worked: The study, led by Alison Galvani of Yale University and colleagues, used coronavirus transmission models and existing research, which already indicated that asymptomatic infections account for 17.9% to 30.8% of all infections.

Based on these existing figures, the team found that presymptomatic people would account for 47% to 48% of transmission, and asymptomatic people would account for 3.4% to 6.6% of transmission. 

What this means: The team found that even immediate isolation of all symptomatic cases would not be enough to get the spread under control. Authorities would need to identify and isolate more than one-third of silent transmitters, as well as all symptomatic cases, to prevent an outbreak.

Researchers emphasized the need for both testing and contact tracing to safely lift the current social distancing and stay-at-home restrictions