World news

* China’s population continued to grow in 2020, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Thursday. Specific data will be released in the 7th national population census bulletin, the NBS said in a brief statement on its website.

* India’s total COVID-19 cases passed 18 million after another world record number of daily infections, as gravediggers worked around the clock to bury victims and hundreds more were cremated in makeshift pyres in parks and parking lots.

* Brazil is set to become the second country to pass 400,000 COVID-19 deaths after the United States, and experts warned the daily toll could remain high for several months due to slow vaccinations and loosening restrictions.

* The US economy grew at an annual rate of 6.4 percent in the first quarter of 2021, the US Commerce Department reported Thursday. The increase in first quarter GDP (gross domestic product) reflected the continued economic recovery, reopening of establishments, and continued government response related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

* Global shares extended gains, after the Federal Reserve said it was too early to consider rolling back emergency support for the economy and US President Joe Biden proposed a US$1.8 trillion spending plan.

* EU contracts for COVID-19 vaccines to be delivered in 2022-23 contain clear rules about what would happen if the vaccine makers do not deliver, Germany’s health minister said.

* Ireland will press ahead with plans to reopen all retail stores, personal services and non-residential construction in May, with hotels, restaurants and bars to follow sooner than expected in early June.

* Germany has managed to break the rapid rise in new infections, but it is still too early to sound the all-clear, the head of the Robert Koch Institute said.

* The land border between Portugal and Spain will reopen for all travel on Saturday after more than three months of restrictions and border checks.

* Pakistan purchased 13 million vaccine doses from three Chinese companies, its health minister said, which are expected to arrive in May and June.

* Argentina has frozen the price of medicinal oxygen for 90 days and directed liquid oxygen producers in the country to give priority to the health system as cases spike.

* The US’s New York City aims to “fully reopen” on July 1, Mayor Bill de Blasio said, citing satisfactory progress in its vaccination campaign.

* Developers of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine said they were suing Brazilian regulator Anvisa for defamation, accusing it of having knowingly spread false information without testing their product.

* Total global spending on COVID-19 vaccines is projected to reach US$157 billion by 2025, driven by mass vaccination programs underway and “booster shots” expected every two years, according to a US report.

* Europe’s major energy companies profited from a rise in oil prices to report big increases in first-quarter earnings, putting the worst of the pandemic-driven slump in fuel demand behind them.

* Bangladesh’s drug regulator has authorized the emergency use of China’s Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine.

* The Democratic Republic of Congo started re-deploying hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 vaccines to other African nations, which it says it won’t be able to administer before they expire at the end of June.

* Indonesia’s government has declared the armed criminal group locally known as KKB linked to the Papuan separatists in the Southeast Asian country’s eastern province of Papua as terrorists, a senior minister said on Thursday.

* The International Organization for Migration (IOM) on Wednesday said that 108 illegal migrants have been rescued off the Libyan coast. According to IOM, a total of 6,174 illegal migrants have been rescued off the Libyan coast so far this year, including 426 women and 277 minors.

* Iraqi Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul-Jabbar and his Syrian counterpart Bassam Touma discussed in Baghdad on Thursday the possibility of transporting Egyptian natural gas to Iraq through the Syrian territories.

* India’s COVID-19 tally reached 18,762,976 on Friday, as 386,452 new cases were recorded during the past 24 hours, said the federal health ministry. Besides, as many as 3,498 deaths across the country since Thursday morning took the total death toll to 208,330.

* China’s aviation regulator said it would suspend an Air France flight from Paris to Shanghai for two weeks from May 10 due to COVID-19 cases.

* Japan is prepared to provide 300 respirators and 300 oxygen concentrators to India once talks are finalised, the chief cabinet secretary said.

* Brazil on Thursday became the second country to pass 400,000 COVID-19 deaths, after the United States.

* Russia has produced the world’s first batch of vaccines for animals, its agricultural regulator said.

* Indonesia’s drug regulator approved the vaccine of China’s Sinopharm, which it will use in a private immunisation scheme where companies buy government-procured vaccines to inoculate their staff.

* The Portuguese presidency of the European Union (EU) called on member states on Thursday to present “concrete actions” for “strong commitment to well-being in Social Europe” in a bid to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19.

* Italy on Thursday approved a recovery and resilience plan worth EUR222.1 billion (US$269 billion) which aimed at restarting the economy affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

* European lawmakers said on Thursday that the European Union’s (EU) planned “COVID-19 certificates” – and not “Digital Green Certificates” as proposed by the European Commission — aimed at facilitating travel across the bloc should be enough to enable free movement this summer.

* Britain said it would host a summit in 2022 to raise money for vaccine research and development to support an international coalition seeking to speed up the production of shots for future diseases.

* France detected its first cases of contamination with the B.1.617 variant, currently very present in India, the country’s Health Ministry said on Thursday.

* Contract drugmaker Emergent BioSolutions said on Thursday it hopes to respond to US regulators within days on how to resolve problems at its Baltimore plant.

* World stocks held near a record high and the euro was on course for its best month in nine as strong US data and corporate earnings plus the Federal Reserve’s commitment to support the economy fuelled investors’ appetite for risk.

* The economies of Germany, Portugal, Spain and Italy contracted in the first quarter, data showed, as restrictions to curb a third wave of coronavirus stifled output.

* Turkey’s tourism revenues fell 40% and foreign visitor arrivals dropped 54% in the first quarter, data showed.

* The Republic of Korea decided Friday to extend its tightened quarantine measures for three more weeks amid lingering worry about small cluster infections of COVID-19 in the Seoul metropolitan area.

* From May 2, Ukraine will impose an entry ban on non-nationals arriving from India, its deputy health minister said.

* Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said parts of the service economy will reopen as scheduled on Saturday as the country’s vaccination rate surpasses 40%.

* Costa Rica will for the next week close non-essential businesses across the centre of the country, the government said on Thursday.

* Uganda has detected the Indian variant, stirring fears the East African nation could suffer a resurgence of cases just when its outbreak has waned, a senior health official said.

* China has administered 270.41 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Saturday, the National Health Commission said on Sunday. That compares with 265.06 million doses given as of Friday, up 5.34 million doses.

* The death toll from COVID-19 has surged to 103 in Cambodia on Sunday after seven new fatalities were reported in the last 24 hours, the Ministry of Health (MoH) said in a statement.

* Cuba on Saturday registered the lowest number of daily COVID-19 cases in the last two weeks, after reporting 915 new infections and 10 deaths in the last 24 hours.

* Russia confirmed 8,697 new COVID-19 infections over the past 24 hours, taking the nationwide tally to 4,823,255, the official monitoring and response center said Sunday. The national COVID-19 death toll rose by 342 to 110,862 in the past day, while the number of the country’s recoveries grew by 7,339 to 4,443,922.

* The number of COVID-19 patients with severe symptoms hit a record 1,050 across Japan on Sunday, according to the latest figures from the health ministry and local authorities. The previous record was 1,043 on Jan. 27 when several prefectures were under the second state of emergency over the coronavirus.

* The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) warned on Sunday that the United States “will face worse and worse crisis” after US President Joe Biden called the DPRK’s nuclear program a “serious threat,” reported the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held telephone conversations with his Kyrgyz and Tajik counterparts on Saturday to discuss the armed clashes on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border.

* More than 100 million adult Americans have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as of Saturday, according to data of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The fully vaccinated account for 30.5 percent of the US population.

* India’s new coronavirus cases dipped marginally on Sunday but deaths from COVID-19 jumped by a record 3,689, with one more state going into lockdown as the nation’s creaky healthcare system is unable to cope with the massive caseload.

* Brazil began the month of May reporting 2,656 deaths from COVID-19 as well as 66,964 new cases, rasing the national death toll to 406,437 and the total caseload to 14,725,975, the Ministry of Health said on Saturday. The daily average number of deaths in the last seven days was 2,421, while the figure for April was higher than 3,000, according to the ministry.

* Chilean President Sebastian Pinera announced on Saturday that the country will accelerate its mass vaccination program against COVID-19 after already having 6.6 million people fully vaccinated.

* Another 1,907 people in Britain have tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 4,418,530, according to official figures released Saturday.

* Stable new COVID-19 infection numbers in Germany are fuelling hopes that intensive care units won’t be overburdened, the head of the German hospital federation (DKG) told the mass tabloid newspaper Bild.

* Britons need to be “patient for a short period” ahead of the next planned relaxation of coronavirus restrictions in England on May 17, a government advisory scientist said Saturday.

* Australia’s second-largest state of Victoria on Sunday committed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by up to 50% by 2030, based on 2005 levels, and to power all government operations like schools and hospitals with renewable energy within the next four years.

* The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 16,290 to 3,416,822, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Sunday. The reported death toll rose by 110 to 83,192, the tally showed.

* Demand for oxygen has been rising in Nepal as more and more hospitalized COVID-19 patients are in need of oxygen.

* An earthquake of magnitude 6.0 struck offshore Coquimbo in Chile, the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC)said on Sunday. The quake was at a depth of 10 km (6.21 miles), EMSC added.

* More than 275.34 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been administered across China as of Sunday, the National Health Commission said Monday.

* Moderna will supply 34 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine this year and Sweden has donated 1 million AstraZeneca shots to the global COVAX programme, a small boost as it struggles to get stocks to inoculate the world’s poorest people.

* Malaysia will begin a parallel COVID-19 innoculation programme this week for people who chose to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine, after it was removed from an ongoing rollout due to public fears over its safety, a minister said on Monday.

* The United States has administered 245,591,469 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Sunday morning, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Sunday. A total of 243,463,471 vaccine doses had been administered by May 1, the CDC said.

* Argentina coronavirus cases hit 3 million on Sunday since the pandemic began, as medical workers said hospitals were full to capacity despite toughened government measures to bring down the spread of infections.

* A single dose of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine may not generate a sufficient immune response to protect against dominant new variants, except in people who have already been infected with COVID-19, according to a UK study.

* The European Union summoned Russia’s ambassador to the bloc on Monday to condemn Moscow’s decision to bar eight officials from entering the country, which the Kremlin said was in retaliation for sanctions imposed on Russian citizens by the EU.

* The United States and the Republic of Korea on Monday reaffirmed their alliance and its role in Indo-Pacific security, a US spokesman said after a meeting in London between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the ROK’s Chung Eui-Yong.

* Japan’s western prefecture of Osaka confirmed a record daily total of 1,262 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, along with 41 deaths, national broadcaster NHK reported.

* Thailand on Monday reported a new daily record of 31 coronavirus deaths, the health ministry said, as the Southeast Asian country grapples with a third wave of infections.

* US President Joe Biden is expected to impose new travel restrictions on India starting Tuesday, barring most non-US citizens from entering the United States, a White House official told Reuters.

* The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 9,160 to 3,425,982, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Monday.

* All people in France aged 18 and over will be able to get COVID-19 vaccines from June 15 onwards.

* Republic of Korea launched an electronic travel authorization (ETA) program Monday for some countries, with which Seoul has reached agreements on visa waiver, the justice ministry said.

* Canada reported 7,145 new cases of COVID-19 Sunday, bringing the cumulative total to 1,234,181 cases, including 24,300 deaths, according to CTV. Coronavirus variants now make up the majority of Canada’s new COVID-19 cases, Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, said on Sunday.

* Spain is extending the gap between the first and second doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine to 16 weeks for people aged under 60, going beyond the 12-week maximum interval approved by European authorities.

* Ukraine has signed a contract with Pfizer for an additional 10 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine, brining the total number of doses to 20 million, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office said on Saturday.

* The Sri Lankan government has informed all operating airlines to bring in a maximum of 75 passengers from one flight into the island country following a sharp rise in the number of new COVID-19 patients, local media reported Monday.

* German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday that the EU-China investment treaty was an “important undertaking” despite “all the difficulties that will certainly arise in the ratification process.”

* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday that Moscow is ready to facilitate direct dialogue between Israel and Palestine.

* India’s COVID-19 tally surpassed 21 million on Thursday as 412,262 new cases were registered across the country in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said. This is the second time this month that over 400,000 cases have been registered in a single day.

* The Chinese mainland on Wednesday reported five new COVID-19 cases, all of which were imported, the National Health Commission said in its daily report on Thursday.

* Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said on Thursday an extended state of emergency was needed to contain COVID-19 infections that are straining the capital’s medical system.

* The US State Department said it had approved the departure of non-emergency US government employees from India because of a surge in COVID-19 cases.

* Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro said that US President Joe Biden will soon send doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to the South American country, which has recorded the world’s second-deadliest coronavirus outbreak.

* Moderna Inc said on Wednesday early human trial data shows that a third dose of either its current COVID-19 shot or an experimental new vaccine candidate increases immunity against variants of COVID-19 first found in Brazil and South Africa.

* Australian officials reinstated social distancing measures across greater Sydney, as they scrambled to find missing transmission links in a COVID-19 case connected to an Indian variant of the virus.

* With COVID-19 vaccine demand declining in the United States, some Canadians facing third-wave lockdowns are flying south to get inoculated, perhaps months earlier than they would be able to at home.

* Private companies in the United States added 742,000 jobs in April, indicating continued labor market recovery, payroll data company Automatic Data Processing (ADP) reported Wednesday.

* Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan is expected to embark on a three-day visit to Saudi Arabia on Friday to discuss bilateral cooperation, the Foreign Ministry of Pakistan said on Thursday.

* Canada became the first nation in the world to authorize the use of Pfizer Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 12 to 15.

* Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday announced a funding injection to transform the country into a leading digital economy by 2030.

* US President Joe Biden on Tuesday set a goal of getting 70 percent of the country’s adult population to receive at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by July 4.

* Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, reported 2,941 new cases of COVID-19 Wednesday morning, bringing the country’s cumulative total to 1,252,891 cases, according to CTV.

* The number of foreign tourist arrivals to Israel jumped about 4.5 times in April from March, according to data released by the Central Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday. The number of tourists who visited Israel last month thus increased to 30,200, from 6,700 in March and only 600 in April 2020.

* A variant of COVID-19 first diagnosed in India has been detected in Kenya, days after the same variant was detected in neighbouring Uganda.

* Tanzania has suspended flights to and from India, the country’s health ministry said.

* Global stocks headed for their first weekly gain in three amid a surge in commodity prices, while traders braced for a key US jobs report later on Friday that could provide clues on when the Federal Reserve will ease back on monetary stimulus.

* India’s COVID-19 tally reached 21,491,598 on Friday as a fresh high of 414,188 new cases were registered in the past 24 hours, said the federal health ministry. It was the third time this month when over 400,000 cases have been registered in a single day.

* The Chinese mainland on Thursday reported 13 new COVID-19 cases, all of which were imported, the National Health Commission said in its daily report on Friday. The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases on the mainland reached 90,739 by Thursday and 4,636 had died as a result of the virus.

* US COVID-19 case count rose to 32,603,556 with a total of 580,054 deaths, as of 8:20 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) on May 6, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

* Japan’s government is set to extend a state of emergency in Tokyo and three other areas by about three weeks until the end of May to curb a surge in novel coronavirus cases just months before the start of the Tokyo Olympics.

* Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison confirmed on Friday that the ban on travel from India would end on May 15, paving the way for thousands of Australians stranded in the country to return home.

* The European Commission wants to speed up EU approval of experimental COVID-19 drugs, according to a document released by the EU executive, with the aim of having at least three new medicines authorised by October.

* All countries should commit to zero carbon emissions by 2050 if the world is to avoid a disastrous temperature rise of 2.4 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday.

* The delays in supply of COVID-19 vaccine doses to Africa linked to the crisis in India could reignite new waves of infections in the continent, the World Health Organization (WHO) official said Thursday.

* Brazil aims to expand and diversify its economic and trade relations with China, its largest trading partner, Foreign Minister Carlos Franca said Thursday.

* Visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Thursday said here that Russia is committed to ensuring the security of its allied Armenia.

* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday discussed the security situation and reforms with visiting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Kiev, the president’s press service said.

* Israel’s foreign exchange reserves reached a new record of US$194 billion at the end of April, according to data issued by Israel’s central bank on Thursday. This is an increase of over US$8.3 billion month on month from the end of March.

* People under the age of 40 in Britain will be offered an alternative to the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine following concerns of rare blood clots, The Daily Telegraph and The Independent newspapers reported.

* Germany will allow AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine to be administered to adults of all ages and aims to offer 12-18 year olds a vaccine by the end of August.

* Australia’s international borders might not fully reopen until the middle or second half of 2022, Trade Minister Dan Tehan said on Friday, in a blow to airlines and the tourism sector.

* Over 10 million Turkish citizens have received both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine as part of the ongoing nationwide vaccination program, the Health Ministry’s data showed on Thursday.