India reported more than 4,000 Covid-19 deaths for a second day, as the nation battled the world’s worst outbreak of the virus. The country on Sunday recorded 4,092 fatalities and found 403,736 new cases, with the capital New Delhi and other big cities continuing to report surging infections.
The country’s top court set up a panel of doctors and public heath experts to find ways to remove production bottlenecks for oxygen supplies that are running short at hospitals across the country.
In South Africa, a variant of the coronavirus that was first detected in India has been found in four people. Two cases of the B1.617.2 variant were identified in patients in the central Gauteng province and another two in the eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, and all of them were isolated to prevent its spread, the health department said in a statement on Saturday. South Africa has confirmed 1.59 million Covid-19 cases so far, more than any other African nation, and 54,724 of those diagnosed with the disease have died.
Key developments:
Thailand’s death toll nears 400
Thailand’s death toll from coronavirus pandemic neared 400 on Sunday, with 17 more people succumbing to the disease in the past 24 hours.
Most of the country’s Covid-19 deaths have occurred since early April, when a third wave of infections hit. Total cases in the Southeast Asian nation have jumped to about 83,400 from fewer than 7,000 at the end of 2020, government data shows.
Singapore to test thousands
Singapore will test thousands of people for Covid-19 as infections that couldn’t be traced back to known clusters continued to pop up.
Testing will be expanded to all workers at two Changi Airport terminals and a connected shopping mall after three employees came up positive in recent days, the health ministry said. At a junior college where a student also tested positive, about 2,200 people will undergo swab tests by Monday, while just over 100 close contacts will be quarantined.
Singapore put tighter social-distancing measures into place on Saturday after finding 10 new unlinked cases in the community in each of the past two weeks.
Sydney extends Covid measures
Restrictions on gatherings are being extended for another week in the Sydney area after Australian health officials said they were unable to identify how a man in the community caught Covid-19.
The measures, which include limits on home gatherings to 20 people and a ban on singing and dancing in indoor venues except for weddings, will run through May 17. Masks will be required on public transport and at theaters, hospitals and nursing homes, although shoppers will no longer be required to wear them at stores, the state government said.
EU tells Biden to export vaccines now
European Union leaders urged US President Joe Biden to lift restrictions on exports of Covid-19 vaccines to address the desperate needs of developing countries before embarking on complex discussions about patent waivers.
At a summit in Porto, Portugal on Friday and Saturday shortly after the US suggested suspending intellectual property rights to boost the supply of Covid shots, German’s Angela Merkel, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Italy’s Mario Draghi appealed to the US to follow the EU example and start shipping significant numbers of vaccines.
“I hope that now that large parts of the American society have been vaccinated we will come to a free exchange of components and opening of the market for vaccines,” Merkel told reporters after the meeting.
Brazil’s weekly cases rise
Weekly cases in Brazil ticked up again but remain well below a peak from mid-March, health ministry data showed. The country reported 63,430 new cases on Saturday, at the end of a week in which 419,904 new infections were recorded. That compares with a peak of almost 540,000 six weeks ago. Total infections are 15.1 million.
Deaths fell for the fourth consecutive week, to 14,879. Another 2,202 fatalities were reported on Saturday, for a total of 421,316, the most after the US.
US vaccination pace slows
The US recorded 2.57 million vaccinations administered on Saturday, as the seven-day average slipped below 2 million for the first time since early March. Daily vaccinations fell from the previous day, with the general demand for vaccinations dropping sharply since a peak in mid-April, according to data from the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker.
States around the US are requesting fewer doses than allocated to them, and the Biden administration has said it will reallocate doses to places that can use them. Meantime, the focus of vaccinations is shifting from mass sites to smaller places like pharmacies, mobile clinics and doctors’ offices. A total of 257 million doses have been administered.
US cases continue to slow
The US recorded 47,082 new cases on Friday, as daily infections fall or are roughly even in most states and territories, according to data from Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg. The week is on track to be the first since mid-September in which daily cases have not exceeded 50,000.
Another 832 deaths were reported. The decline in fatalities following the holiday surge has flattened out, the data show.
UK expert optimistic on Covid’s end
One of the UK’s top vaccine experts said Covid-19 will no longer be circulating in Britain by August.
“Sometime in August, we will have no circulating virus in the U.K.,” Clive Dix, departing head of the country’s vaccine task force, told the Daily Telegraph in an interview.
The UK remains on track to meet its target of giving all adults at least one Covid-19 shot by the end of July, which should give adequate protection against all known variants of the disease, he added.
The widespread vaccination should even allow the country to delay the booster program beyond autumn to January or February next year, Dix said.
EU secures 1.8 billion doses
The EU approved a contract with Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE for 900 million vaccine doses guaranteed with the option of 900 million more through 2023.
In a tweet, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said “other contracts and other vaccine technologies will follow.” In other comments, the Commission president said she’s open to discussing Joe Biden’s proposal to waive vaccine patents, but the US needs to dramatically ramp up the shots it’s exporting.
Hopes rise in Germany for easing
Germany recorded 15,090 new cases on Saturday, continuing a recent trend of slowly declining numbers. The country remains in a partial lockdown as officials grapple with a third wave of the virus, but accelerating vaccinations and fewer infections are increasing hopes that the authorities can ease some restrictions.
UK travel means lines, tests
The UK government’s decision to loosen border rules frees Britons to feed their pent-up appetite for leisure travel. But getting to a sun spot and back this summer will be neither easy nor particularly cheap.
The new policy that takes effect on May 17 lists just a handful of destinations—including Portugal, Israel and Singapore—as green in the so-called traffic-light system. For now, Greece and Spain are excluded, and most of the dozen deemed safe aren’t yet accepting visitors.
While passengers returning from green-lit places won’t be asked to quarantine, they’ll be subject to expensive Covid-19 tests that airlines warn could put the cost of a summer vacation out of reach for many UK families on a budget.