In this June 25, 2021 photo, a man receives the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building in Tokyo. (Rodrigo Reyes Marin / POOL / AFP)
HANOI / SYDNEY / NEW DELHI / ULAN BATOR / WELLINGTON / ISLAMABAD / SINGAPORE / SEOUL / COLOMBO / BANGKOK / ANKARA / DUBAI / MANILA / KUALA LUMPUR / TEHRAN / TOKYO – A Japanese health ministry panel said on Friday that based on the information so far, it was unable to determine whether there is a relationship between the deaths of three men and their inoculations using batches of Moderna Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine doses.
The batches of vaccines were later withdrawn from use over contamination fears.
After stainless steel contaminants were found in some vials in one of the lots, Moderna and Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., which is in charge of sales and distribution of the US biotechnology firm's vaccine in Japan, suspended the use of three batches of around 1.63 million vaccine doses. However, 500,000 shots were believed to have been already used.
Three men aged 38, 30, and 49 died after receiving their second shots.
Meanwhile, With Japan’s fourth state of emergency extended yet again, growing numbers of the bars and restaurants that have borne the brunt of curfews say they can no longer afford to comply. Some are simply fed up.
“I feel the government is bullying us,” says one Tokyo pub owner, Yuka Fujishima, who’s chosen to defy the rules. “I just couldn’t take it anymore.”
Public health experts have pinpointed watering holes like Fujishima’s in Tokyo’s Shimbashi neighborhood as potential hotbeds of infection, leading to the emergency restrictions that ban them from serving alcohol and set 8 p.m. as closing time.
A widening rebellion among business owners against the measures reflects the exasperation of many Japanese whose anger over the government’s handling of the pandemic last week drove Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to announce his resignation.
On Thursday, the outgoing premier extended the emergency in Tokyo and large parts of the country to the end of the month, while acknowledging the need to return to something like normal life. For the first time, he opened the door to using vaccination certificates as a way to eventually ease restrictions, though the move would come too late for businesses that have already gone under.
A woman exercises in Melbourne on Sept 9, 2021, as Victoria and New South Wales announce an easing of coronavirus restrictions amid the pandemic. (WILLIAM WEST / AFP)
Australia
Australia placed new restrictions on prescribing of oral ivermectin for COVID-19 treatment, the Department of Health’s Therapeutics Goods Administration said in a statement.
The administration said that general practitioners are now only able to prescribe ivermectin for TGA-approved conditions, such as scabies and certain parasitic infections.
Australia's Victoria state reported its biggest single-day rise in COVID-19 cases this year, the majority in Melbourne, as most other regions in the state exited lockdown on Friday.
Officials have announced plans to bring Melbourne and Sydney out of extended lockdowns in coming weeks, despite infections continuing to rise in both of the country's two biggest cities.
The shift to a strategy of living with, rather than suppressing, the virus after hitting national vaccine coverage of 70-80 percent is part of a four-stage national reopening plan unveiled by the federal government in July. The national vaccination rate for adults is currently at around 40 percent.
Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews, whose state on Friday reported 334 new locally acquired cases and one death, has said lockdown restrictions in Melbourne will not be eased until 70 percent of the adult population has received at least one vaccine dose, which is expected around Sept 23.
New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Thursday said Sydney's businesses could reopen once 70% of the state's adult population is fully vaccinated, a target due to be reached around the middle of October.
ALSO READ: 50% of M'sia's population fully vaccinated against COVID-19
India
India's COVID-19 tally rose to 33,174,954 on Friday, even as 34,973 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours across the country, showed the federal health ministry's latest data.
Besides, 260 deaths from the pandemic have been reported since Thursday morning, taking the total fatalities to 442,009.
Iran
Iran's Health Ministry on Friday reported 21,114 new COVID-19 cases, taking the country's tally to 5,258,913.
The death toll rose by 445 to 113,380, according to the Ministry of Health and Medical Education.
A total of 4,509,905 people have recovered from the disease while 7,418 remained in intensive care units, according to the ministry.
By Friday, 21,753,020 people have received at least a dose of a coronavirus vaccine in the country and 1,696,569 have received two doses.
Malaysia
Malaysia reported 21,176 new COVID-19 infections Friday, the Health Ministry said, bringing the national tally to 1,940,950.
Another 341 more deaths were also reported, taking the death toll to 19,827.
Some 21,476 patients have been discharged after recovery, bringing the total number of recoveries to 1,678,962, or 86.5 percent of all cases.
Of the remaining 242,161 active cases, 935 were being in intensive care and 455 of those required assisted breathing.
So far, some 64.5 percent of the population has received at least one vaccine dose and 51.1 percent have been fully vaccinated.
Mongolia
The COVID-19 death toll in Mongolia has exceeded 1,000, the country's health ministry said Friday.
The country's death toll increased to 1,007 with 15 more COVID-19 fatalities in the past 24 hours, the highest single-day growth since July 3, the ministry said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Mongolia reported 2,009 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, including an imported case, bringing the national tally to 249,408.
New Zealand
Arrivals and departures across the New Zealand border fell in July 2021 from the previous two months, due to ongoing interruptions to two-way quarantine-free travel with Australia, New Zealand's statistics department Stats NZ said on Friday.
Total movements across the New Zealand border in July 2021 were 147,900, down from 189,500 in May 2021 and 175,500 in June 2021, Stats NZ said.
Trans-Tasman travel made up almost three-quarters of all New Zealand border crossings in July 2021, it said.
New Zealand reported 11 new community cases of the Delta variant of COVID-19 on Friday, all in the largest city Auckland, bringing the total number of cases in the country's community outbreak to 879.
Of the current community cases, 27 cases are in hospital, including four cases in intensive care units (ICUs) or high dependency units (HDUs), Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield told a press conference.
Auckland has 862 community cases and the capital Wellington has 17 cases, Bloomfield said.
There are 850 cases that have been clearly epidemiologically-linked to another case or sub-cluster, and a further 29 for which links are yet to be fully established, he said.
New Zealand also reported six new cases in recent returnees and they have remained in managed isolation and quarantine facilities in Auckland, Bloomfield said.
The total number of confirmed cases in New Zealand since the start of the pandemic is 3,510, according to the Ministry of Health.
Pakistan
Pakistan on Thursday reported 3,689 new COVID-19 cases and 83 more deaths, the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) said on Friday.
The NCOC, the country's department leading the campaign against the pandemic, said that the country's number of overall confirmed cases had risen to 1,197,887, including 1,079,867 recoveries.
The number of active cases has dropped to 91,440 who are under treatment, including 5,362 in critical conditions.
People watch fish in an aquarium at the River Safari wildlife park in Singapore on Sept 10, 2021. (ROSLAN RAHMAN / AFP)
Singapore
Singapore says it’s sticking to the course of living with COVID-19 for now, though officials are bracing for daily cases to rise to 2,000 in a few weeks from over 400 currently.
Rather than re-impose strict rules as cases surge, the island nation of about 5.7 million people will start its vaccine booster program from Sept 14 for vulnerable groups like the elderly and immunocompromised. To ease the strain on hospitals, it will also expand a pilot to let more vaccinated people recover at home, as well as cut local quarantine from 14 days to 10 days from next week.
The moves come as the government seeks to assuage a population that’s been rattled by the rapid rise in cases, and amid divided sentiment over the country’s pledge to cautiously reopen. Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said at a briefing on Friday that as far as possible, the government doesn’t want to reverse course on its pivot to treating the virus as endemic.
“This rapid and exponential rise in daily infections that we are experiencing now is what every country that seeks to live with COVID-19 has to go through at some point,” Ong said, adding Singapore wants to avoid a collapse in the hospital system and high death tolls seen when other countries reopen. “We always wanted to go through it differently from other countries.”
The city-state’s reopening is closely watched as the first among a handful of places that stamped out COVID-19 to now shift towards treating the pathogen as endemic. Singapore wants to now rely on its vaccination rate – one of the highest in the world where four out of five people are fully inoculated – to allow it to normalize like western economies.
South Korea
South Korea reported 1,892 more cases of COVID-19 as of midnight Thursday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 269,362.
Thirty-five cases were imported from overseas, lifting the combined figure to 13,866.
Five more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 2,348. The total fatality rate stood at 0.87 percent.
Three women wearing traditional hanbok dress walk on a pavement in Seoul on Sept 9, 2021. (ANTHONY WALLACE / AFP)
Sri Lanka
Sri Lankan authorities on Friday further extended a nationwide quarantine curfew till Sept 21 to prevent further spread of the COVID-19.
Health Minister Keheliya Rambukwella said the curfew will be lifted at 4:00 am on Sept 21 after a decision made by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa following a meeting with the COVID-19 Task Force.
The Hotel Association of Sri Lanka (THASL) has welcomed a request by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) to ease entry requirements for foreigners in a bid to revive the country's COVID-19 battered tourism industry, local media reported here Friday.
"Subsequent to the Easter Sunday attacks, Sri Lanka tourism has lost out on three winter seasons, which has had a devastating impact on the industry and the local economy. We fear the industry will not be able to sustain a fourth winter season if globally-recognized entry protocol is not implemented," the THASL was quoted as saying by the Daily FT.
The THASL said that Sri Lanka is in the middle of a successful vaccination drive. They said that the safety and security of citizens should be protected while reopening the country to foreign currency inflows from tourism.
The SLTDA on Wednesday wrote a letter requesting the country's Health Services Director General to ease entry requirements for foreign visitors. The letter was signed by SLTDA Chair Kimarli Fernando and addressed to Health Services Director General Dr. Asela Gunawardena.
The SLTDA requested that mandatory PCR tests for fully vaccinated individuals and children below 12 years of age be removed.
Tourism is one of Sri Lanka's largest foreign currency earners, raking in between US$3 billion to US$4 billion per year.
Thailand
Thailand will keep strict containment measures in 29 provinces considered as virus hot spots at least until the end of September to prevent a spike in COVID-19 infections.
Thailand on Friday reported 14,403 new COVID-19 cases and 189 additional fatalities, according to the Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA).
New cases went down again after reporting a spike of over 16,000 cases on Thursday. Out of the new cases reported, 3,495 were found in Bangkok and 1,037 in neighboring Samut Prakan.
The Philippines
The Philippines’ virus task force provisionally approved rules for smaller lockdowns in the capital region, where quarantine levels are set to be reduced to two from four, presidential spokesman Harry Roque said Friday.
The plan is expected to come in tandem with looser restrictions on public movement in certain areas of the capital.
The Philippines reported 17,964 new COVID-19 infections on Friday, bringing the Southeast Asian country's confirmed cases to 2,179,770.
The DOH also reported 168 coronavirus-related deaths, raising the country's death toll to 34,899. On Thursday, the DOH reported its highest ever daily tally, with 22,820 cases.
Also on Friday, China delivered an additional batch of Sinovac CoronaVac vaccines to the Philippines to support the Southeast Asian country's COVID-19 vaccination campaign.
Over 16 million people have been fully vaccinated in the Philippines so far.
READ MORE: Philippines keeps metro Manila's curbs, backtracking on easing
Turkey
Turkey on Thursday confirmed 23,846 new COVID-19 cases, raising the tally of infections in the country to 6,590,414.
The death toll from the virus in Turkey rose by 257 to 59,170, while 31,322 more people recovered in the last 24 hours, according to Turkey's Health Ministry.
UAE
The United Arab Emirates said on Friday residents who had been fully vaccinated with a shot approved by the World Health Organization could return as of Sept 12 from a list of previously suspended countries.
Dubai, one of the UAE's seven emirates, is due to open the Expo 2020 world fair on Oct 1 after a year-long delay due to the pandemic. The regional business and tourism hub is relying on the fair to give its economy a boost.
Countries from which residents can fly into the UAE from Sept 12 are: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Namibia, Zambia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, South Africa, Nigeria and Afghanistan.
Approval must be sought from the UAE government to return, and various PCR tests must be taken, the UAE's National Emergency Crisis and Disaster Management Authority said on Twitter.
This April 11, 2017 photo, shows a man preparing a boat for tourists on a beach in Phu Quoc island in southern Vietnam. (HOANG DINH NAM / AFP)
Vietnam
Vietnam plans to reopen the beach-fringed island of Phu Quoc to foreign tourists from next month, authorities said, as the country looks at ways to revive an economy suffering from extended lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The island, 10 km off the coast of Cambodia, is expected to open for a trial period of six months, the government said in a statement issued late on Thursday.
Vietnam, which is currently shut to all visitors apart from returning citizens and investors, had managed to contain the virus for much of the pandemic but in the past three months has faced a surge in infections driven by the Delta variant.
"The prolonged pandemic has seriously hurt the tourism industry," Vietnam's tourism and culture minister Nguyen Van Hung said.
Fully vaccinated tourists with a negative coronavirus test will be eligible to visit Phu Quoc, the statement said, adding they could fly to the island on chartered or commercial flights.
Foreign arrivals to Vietnam slumped from 18 million in 2019, when tourism revenue was US$31 billion, or nearly 12 percent of its gross domestic product, to 3.8 million last year.
At the same time, lockdowns in recent months have prompted companies to suspend operations. August industrial output fell 7.4 percent from a year earlier, while exports were down 5.4 percent and retail sales plunged by 33.7 percent.
Vietnam will fully vaccinate all residents on Phu Quoc before opening, the tourism ministry said, adding that the island had not reported any community infections and had sufficient COVID-19 quarantine and treatment facilities.
In another development, Vietnam has approved the Hayat-Vax coronavirus vaccine for emergency use, the seventh to be endorsed in the country.
The vaccine is manufactured in China and packaged in the United Arab Emirates, the government said in a statement.