The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on Tuesday launched its fifth annual Goalkeepers Report, featuring an updated global dataset illustrating the pandemic’s adverse impact on progress toward the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (Global Goals). This year’s report, co-authored by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, co-chairs of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, shows that disparities caused by COVID-19 remain stark, and those who have been hardest hit by the pandemic will be the slowest to recover. Because of COVID-19, an additional 31 million people were pushed into extreme poverty in 2020 compared to 2019. And while 90% of advanced economies will regain pre-pandemic per capita income levels by next year, only a third of low- and middle-income economies are expected to do so. Amidst this devastation, the world stepped up to avert some of the worst-case scenarios. In last year’s Goalkeepers Report, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) predicted a drop of 14 percentage points in global vaccine coverage—effectively erasing 25 years of progress in 25 weeks. New analysis from IHME demonstrates that the decline, while still unacceptable, was only half of what was anticipated.

The admission tests to all dental colleges across the country for the academic year 2020-21 have been rescheduled for June 11. The previous date of intake tests was on April 30. Also read: Buet admission test: Application deadline extended to May 3 The admission test for all dental colleges and dental units has been rescheduled due to the surge of Covid-19 cases in the second wave of pandemic, said a notification signed by Dr AKM Ahsan Habib, director of Directorate General of Health Services (Medical Education). Read No assignments for secondary school students

Speakers at the DCCI webinar on Wednesday urged the authorities concerned to simplify the documentation process for the speedy disbursement of stimulus fund to the cottage, micro, small and medium enterprises (CMSMEs) to offset the COVID-19 impacts.

The death toll from coronavirus or Covid-19 has reached 5,436 globally as of Saturday.

Mount Everest has shut down for the rest of the expedition season because of the coronavirus outbreak, reports BBC.

Spain's has ordered its first mandatory lockdown, confining over 60,000 people to four towns as infections for the new coronavirus increase sharply.