A health worker prepares a booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at Ichilov medical center in Tel Aviv. (KOBI WOLF/BLOOMBERG)
SEOUL / SYDNEY / BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN / NEW DELHI / JAKARTA / TOKYO / ULAN BATOR / WELLINGTON / ISLAMABAD / ANKARA – Israel, an early leader in COVID-19 inoculations, reported a record number of daily infections, giving fresh impetus to the vaccine booster drive the country began in early August.
The country recorded 10,947 new cases on Monday, surpassing the previous high of 10,118 daily infections reached in January, according to health ministry figures.
Testing for the virus has been especially high in the past week as students prepared to return to school. The portion of positive tests reached about 7.7 percent, high for the current wave but only around half the rate at the end of last September. Serious cases have risen, but remain well below January levels.
Israel began a booster drive for older people early this month and gradually expanded the campaign to include everyone aged 12 and over. Health officials have said that the effects of the initial shots weaken five months after inoculation, making boosters necessary.
Commuters wear masks at a train station in Tokyo on Aug 10, 2021, as a coronavirus state of emergency remains in place in the city. (YUKI IWAMURA / AFP)
Australia
Australia will receive 500,000 doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine from Singapore this week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Tuesday, after Canberra agreed a swap deal in a bid to curtail surging coronavirus infections.
The agreement, which will see Australia return the same amount of Pfizer vaccine doses to Singapore in December, will allow Canberra to accelerate its vaccination programme as daily cases near record levels for the country.
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Australia’s second-most populous state, Victoria, reported 76 new locally acquired coronavirus cases in the 24-hour period to Monday evening, health officials said on Tuesday.
That was up marginally from 73 cases reported the previous day. Victoria Health said 45 of the new cases were linked to known cases and outbreaks. Some 50,848 coronavirus test results were received and 32,162 vaccines given.
Bangladesh
Bangladesh reported 3,357 new COVID-19 cases and 86 more deaths on Tuesday, making the tally at 1,500,618 and the death toll at 26,195, the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) said.
Brunei
Brunei reported 76 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, bringing the national tally to 2,641.
According to Brunei's Ministry of Health, all the new cases are local infections. While the source of infection of 45 local cases is still under investigation, one new cluster has been detected, which brings the total number of active clusters to 46.
India
India’s total death toll from the virus could be about 4.5 million, according to a new study by the US-based National Bureau of Economic Research, which estimated COVID-19 mortality in India from February 2020 to May 2021.
That’s compared with the latest official total of 438,560 deaths, released by the federal health ministry today.
India's COVID-19 tally rose to 32,768,880 on Tuesday as 30,941 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours across the country, showed the ministry's latest data.
A total of 350 deaths due to the pandemic since Monday morning took the total death toll to 438,560.
The biggest numbers of single-day new cases and deaths were reported from the southern state of Kerala.
More than 640 million vaccine shots have been administered.
The NBER report is the latest estimate to question whether the government has been under-reporting deaths in the world’s second-worst-hit nation.
Indonesia
Indonesia is investigating a suspected security flaw in a COVID-19 test-and-trace app that left exposed personal information and the health status of 1.3 million people, a health ministry official said on Tuesday.
Researchers from encryption provider vpnMentor said personal information in the Indonesia Health Alert Card (eHAC) app, often required to be used by travellers, was accessible "due to the lack of protocols put in place by the app's developers."
Anas Ma'ruf, a health ministry official overseeing data, said the government was looking into the potential breach, but said the potential flaw was in an earlier version of the app, which has not been used since July.
Indonesia has extended its four-tiered restrictions on public activities (locally abbreviated as PPKM) on the country's most populated island of Java and the resort spot of Bali until next Monday.
At a live-streamed briefing on Monday evening, President Joko Widodo said the number of municipalities on Java and Bali implementing Level 4, the strictest in the PPKM, decreased to 25 compared to the previous week of 51.
The positivity rate and hospital bed occupancy rates in the archipelago have been reducing in the past week, the president added.
Indonesia has implemented the curbs on Java and Bali for the past six weeks following the increase in COVID-19 cases from late June to July fueled by the high transmissible Delta variant.
Since two weeks ago, restrictions in a number of major cities have been lowered due to a decline in daily cases.
Commuters wear masks at a train station in Tokyo on Aug 10, 2021, as a coronavirus state of emergency remains in place in the city. (Yuki IWAMURA / AFP)
Japan
A group of Japanese researchers said a new mutation of the COVID-19 Delta variant had been discovered for the first time in Japan, local media reported Tuesday.
The research team, led by Associate Professor Hiroaki Takeuchi at Tokyo Medical and Dental University Hospital, announced the finding on Monday, saying the mutation was found when a patient infected with the Delta variant visited the institute in mid-August.
Genetic analysis revealed the N501S mutation, the team said, adding that only eight cases of the mutation have been reported outside Japan.
The N501S mutation is similar to the N501Y variation of the Alpha variant, which was first detected in Britain. The team said its impact on the virus's transmissibility is unclear so far, and researchers plan to study further.
The Tokyo metropolitan government said on Monday that after thousands of young people swarmed the walk-in COVID-19 vaccination site in its first days of opening, it is considering implementing an online lottery system to reduce crowds, local media reported Monday.
The walk-in site, located close to JR Shibuya Station, was set up in the wake of the COVID-19 resurgence in Tokyo, aiming to inoculate people between the age of 16 and 39, who reside in or commute to Tokyo, as the spread rate of infections among this age group began to speed up.
Japanese health minister Norihisa Tamura told reporters on Tuesday it was highly likely that foreign matter found in COVID-19 vaccines in Okinawa were caused when needles where stuck into the vials.
Moderna Inc vaccines used in the southern prefecture of Okinawa were temporarily halted on Sunday after foreign materials were discovered in vials and syringes.
A survey conducted by a university hospital director showed Monday that between April 2020 to July this year, a total of 460 pregnant women tested positive for the COVID-19 in Tokyo, and in last month, the monthly figure marked a record high of 98, local media reported Monday.
Mongolia
Mongolia logged 2,740 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, marking the seventh day in a row with over 2,000 new cases recorded in the country, the health ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
The latest confirmed cases brought the national tally to 213,820, the ministry said.
Meanwhile, six more COVID-19 patients aged over 40 died in the past day, taking the death toll to 937.
New Zealand
New Zealand’s government on Tuesday reported that new COVID-19 cases fell for a second day, down to 49, amid the tight lockdown the country undertook during the latest outbreak this month.
Except for a small number of cases in February, New Zealand was mainly coronavirus-free for months, until an outbreak of the Delta variant imported from Australia prompted Ardern to order a snap nationwide lockdown on Aug 17.
The total number of cases in the outbreak is at 612, with 597 in New Zealand’s largest city of Auckland and 15 in the capital Wellington.
The declining number of daily cases signals that the social restrictions are reducing the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in a news conference.
Oman
Oman said on Monday only vaccinated people will be allowed to travel to the sultanate in an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Omani state news agency said the decision would be applied to all countries without exception.
Pakistan
Pakistan reported 3,838 new COVID-19 cases over the last 24 hours, the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) said on Tuesday.
The NCOC, a department leading Pakistan's campaign against the pandemic, said that the country's number of overall confirmed cases has risen to 1,160,119, including 1,039,758 people who have recovered after treatment.
The number of active cases has risen to 94,573 across the country, including 5,542 critical patients.
According to the NCOC, the pandemic killed 118 people on Monday, increasing the overall death toll to 25,788.
A deserted street in the Chinatown area of Singapore, Aug 3, 2021. (LAURYN ISHAK / BLOOMBERG)
Singapore
Singapore on Tuesday reported 156 new local coronavirus cases, its highest number in almost six weeks.
The country's count of daily coronavirus cases remained above 100 for the eighth consecutive day amid a surge in clusters at bus depots, testing its resolve to use one of the world’s best vaccination rates to continue reopening the economy.
Adding to the rise in recent days are COVID-19 clusters that have been found at eight local bus depots, totaling more than 220 cases, according to Ministry of Health data compiled by Bloomberg.
Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in a speech on Sunday said it’s no longer possible to reduce COVID-19 cases to zero, even if the country locks down for a long time, adding that the country will reopen “cautiously and progressively.”
Lee said that while cases have risen in recent days, the number of “seriously ill” cases is stable. “It is important to maintain this, so that we can continue to ease up, and especially to reconnect Singapore with the rest of the world.”
Singapore had fully vaccinated 80 percent of its population against COVID-19 as of Sunday, one of the highest rates in the world, reaching a threshold for the city-state to further ease its restrictions.
South Korea
South Korea plans to begin giving out COVID-19 booster shots from October, joining several countries that have approved such doses amid resurgent infections and concern that vaccine protection wanes over time.
The plan will kick in once an October target for full vaccination of 70 of the population is achieved, as authorities aim to boost the rate above 80 percent with coverage for pregnant women and minors aged between 12 and 17 in the fourth quarter.
Initial booster doses will go to those with weakened immune systems or deemed to be at high risk. Others will receive them six months after full vaccination, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said.
"We will start with booster shots for high-risk groups such as the elderly and virus-prevention, medical personnel and gradually expand inoculation in line with expert recommendation and decisions by health authorities," President Moon Jae-in told his top aides on Monday.
Although the World Health Organization has repeatedly urged a delay in booster doses, arguing that the world's most vulnerable people should be fully vaccinated first, several countries have approved them, citing data on waning protection.
South Korea's SK Bioscience and Britain's GSK said on Tuesday the drugmakers had begun a late-stage trial of their COVID-19 vaccine candidate against AstraZeneca's approved shot, the second study of its kind globally.
The AstraZeneca vaccine will take the place of a dummy shot in the trial, which will enrol about 4,000 candidates worldwide. It will test SK's candidate, GBP510, in combination with GSK's vaccine booster after positive early-stage data and a greenlight from South Korea earlier this month.
Commuters walk along a train station platform in Seoul on Aug 30, 2021. (ANTHONY WALLACE / AFP)
Thailand
Thailand’s 14,666 new cases on Tuesday are the lowest since July 27, and the fourth straight day of declines. From tomorrow, the country’s strictest restrictions in 29 provinces, including Bangkok, will be relaxed. Restaurants will be allowed to offer dine-in services, more businesses in shopping malls will reopen and domestic flights will resume.
The Thai government last week approved a “living with Covid” strategy, allowing the economy to reopen provided that the healthcare system doesn’t get overwhelmed. The nation still has 171,368 active cases, with just over 5,000 in critical condition.
The Philippines
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said he plans to revise the nation’s pandemic response after coronavirus cases surged by to a record on Monday. “We need to recalibrate our response,” Duterte said in a televised briefing. The government is studying “whether granular or localized lockdowns will work best.”
Cases will continue to rise in the country and will likely peak in mid-September, the Health Department said, after daily infections hit 22,366 on Monday. The rise in cases has slowed in the capital region in the past two weeks following a strict lockdown, but infections in areas outside Metro Manila are increasing due mainly to the delta variant. Only about 18 percent of the country’s adult population have been fully vaccinated.
The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the Philippines surged to 1,989,857 after the Department of Health (DOH) reported 13,827 new daily cases on Tuesday.
The DOH also reported 118 coronavirus-related deaths, raising the Southeast Asian country's death toll to 33,448.
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Turkey
Turkey on Monday confirmed 19,557 new COVID-19 cases, raising its tally of infections to 6,366,438, according to its Health Ministry.
The death toll from the virus in Turkey rose by 245 to 56,458, while 13,401 more people recovered in the last 24 hours.
A total of 283,250 tests were conducted over the past day, it said.