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Global coronavirus cases surpassed 5 million on Wednesday, with Latin America overtaking the United States and Europe in the past week to report the largest portion of new daily cases globally. (Shumaker and Cadell, 5/20)

The global health body said 106,000 new cases of infections of the novel coronavirus had been recorded in the past 24 hours, the most in a single day since the outbreak began. “We still have a long way to go in this pandemic,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference. “We are very concerned about rising cases in low and middle income countries.” (5/20)

The World Health Organization on Wednesday reported the highest single-day increase of coronavirus cases worldwide, warning the gradual end of lockdowns in wealthier countries may be obscuring an increasing crisis in the developing world. Over the last 24 hours, 106,000 new cases of the virus were recorded, the body said, according to Reuters. Mike Ryan, head of the WHO’s emergencies program, said the world will “soon reach the tragic milestone of 5 million cases.” (Budryk, 5/20)

Mexico’s health ministry on Wednesday registered 2,248 new coronavirus infections and an additional 424 fatalities, a record one-day death toll since the start of the pandemic. The new infections brought confirmed coronavirus cases to 56,594 and 6,090 deaths in total, according to the official tally. Mexico registered its biggest daily increase yet in infections on Tuesday, when it reported 2,713 new cases. (5/20)

Like many people around the world, Mexican funeral home owner Salvador Ascencio did not believe at first the coronavirus outbreak was going to be a big deal. Then calls from grieving relatives began to pour in. During the first 11 days of May, his small funeral parlor in a run-down part of Mexico City dealt with 30 bodies, a more than four-fold spike in daily funeral services compared to the same period last May. (Jorgic, 5/20)

Rich countries should help the world’s poorest survive the coronavirus pandemic by keeping up development aid and mulling relief measures that go beyond a moratorium on debt payments, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday. Major international creditors agreed last month to relieve the poorest countries of debt payments this year to help them deal with the coronavirus crisis that has sparked the steepest downturn in the global economy since the 1930s. (5/20)

It is not a bird, a plane or Superman: the aircraft humming in the skies above Colombia’s capital Bogota are instead police drones that are meant to detect people with high temperatures or those violating the country’s coronavirus quarantine. (Acosta, 5/20)

Brazil’s coronavirus outbreak worsened on Wednesday and the South American nation could soon have the second-highest number of cases in the world as the Health Ministry reported 888 new deaths and nearly 20,000 new infections in a single day. (Fonseca and Simoes, 5/20)

Hospitals nearing capacity. Deaths soaring. A president urging people back to work. São Paulo, the largest city in the Western Hemisphere, is emerging as the coronavirus pandemic’s latest global hot spot. Confirmed cases in the city have soared 34 percent and at least 510 people have died in the past week as the public health infrastructure buckles and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro continues to shrug off the crisis. (Lopes, 5/20)

There are no daily public displays of gratitude for Russian doctors and nurses during the coronavirus crisis like there are in the West. Instead of applause, they face mistrust, low pay and even open hostility. Residents near the National Medical Research Center for Endocrinology, a Moscow hospital now treating virus patients, complained when they saw medical workers walking out of the building in full protective gear, fearing the workers would spread contagion. (Litvinova, 5/21)

Before an adulatory crowd of university professors and students, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, offered a strikingly bold message about the global coronavirus pandemic. Summoning images of sacrifice from Communist Party lore, he told them that the calamity was ripe with possibility for China. “Great historical progress always happens after major disasters,” Mr. Xi said during a recent visit to Xi’an Jiaotong University. “Our nation was steeled and grew up through hardship and suffering.” (Myers and Buckley, 5/20)

Rising tensions between the United States and China brought fresh mudslinging Wednesday as a sharp dispute over responsibility for the coronavirus pandemic spills into new forums such as Taiwan. In the span of several hours, the feud swung from Taipei to Beijing to the Internet, where an animated "credibility test" on Chinese state TV's Twitter feed mocked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. (Shih, Dou and Gearan, 5/20)

In Shulan, a city in China’s northeast, the streets are eerily quiet, devoid of taxis and buses. Apartment complexes have been sealed off, confining residents inside. Teams of government workers go door to door rounding up sick people as part of what they call a “wartime” campaign. As the Chinese authorities confront scattered outbreaks of the coronavirus in the country’s northeast, they are turning to many of the same strict lockdown measures that were a hallmark of the effort four months ago to stamp out the epidemic in the central city of Wuhan. (Hernandez, 5/21)