A health worker administers a dose of Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine to a woman wearing rain suit in Bangkok, Thailand on Aug 25, 2021. (SAKCHAI LALIT / AP)
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN / BANGKOK / HANOI / JAKARTA / PHNOM PENH / SEOUL / SINGAPORE / SYDNEY / TEHRAN / WELLINGTON / VIENTIANE – Thailand will halve to three months the time between administering a second COVID-19 vaccine shot and a booster, a health official said on Monday, to try to strengthen immunity in anticipation of a local spread of the Omicron variant.
"Because Omicron is now widespread, the booster third shot would help lessen the severity of symptoms and reduce the death rate," said Taweesin Wisanuyothin, spokesperson for the government's COVID-19 taskforce.
Taweesin said recipients of a second shot in August or September could get boosters right away at any vaccine center nationwide.
More than 43 million people or 60 percent of people in Thailand have received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, of which 4.1 million have received boosters.
People exercise in front the city skyline in Melbourne on Aug 29, 2021, as authorites announced the extension of an ongoing coronavirus lockdown in Australia's second-biggest city. (William WEST / AFP)
Ausralia
Coronavirus-free Queensland state opened its domestic borders to all vaccinated people on Monday for the first time in nearly five months, as Australians gear up for quarantine-free travel across most of the country during the busy Christmas period.
Queensland, shut its border to New South Wales in July and then later to people coming from Victoria to protect against a Delta outbreak that rocked the country's east for several months
Queensland, Australia's third most populous state, shut its border to New South Wales in July and then later to people coming from Victoria to protect against a Delta outbreak that rocked the country's east for several months.
"We will live with COVID – but on our terms," state Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said in a tweet as the state topped its goal of having 80 percent of people over 16 fully vaccinated – a prerequisite for relaxing rules.
Qantas said it would fly nearly 10,000 passengers to and from Queensland on Monday in about 100 flights, with most fully booked.
The easing of border restrictions comes just days before school summer holidays begin and will be a boost for the state's lucrative tourism sector which has been badly hit by the internal border curbs.
Tasmania is set to reopen its borders to other states later this week, while Western Australia will announce its plans later on Monday. South Australia has been welcoming interstate arrivals since late November.
Brunei
Brunei reported five new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Sunday, the lowest daily rise since the second wave from Aug 7, bringing the total tally to 15,348.
According to Brunei's Ministry of Health, all the newly recorded cases were local infections.
While the source of one local infection was still under investigation, no new clusters have been detected and two clusters were closed following no new cases in the clusters for 28 days, bringing the total number of active clusters to 99.
Haji Hassanal Bolkiah, Brunei's sultan, announced earlier that Brunei would move to the Endemic Phase under the National COVID-19 Recovery Framework on Dec 15.
Cambodia
Cambodia on Monday received another batch of 300,000 doses of Chinese-made Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine through the COVAX Facility, a senior health official said.
Cambodian Ministry of Health Secretary of State Yok Sambath said a flight carrying the jabs touched down at Phnom Penh International Airport at around 10:30 am local time.
With the newly arrived vaccines, Cambodia has so far received a total of 40.8 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from three sources through bilateral procurement, the COVAX Facility, and donations. Of the total, over 90 percent were purchased from or donated by China, according to the MoH.
As of Dec 12, the country had administered at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccines to 14.2 million people, or 88.7 percent of its 16-million population, the MoH said.
Indonesia
Indonesia will start administering COVID-19 vaccinations for children aged between 6-11 on Tuesday, a health ministry official said, as the Southeast Asian country becomes one of the first in the region to immunize the very young.
Indonesia approved China's Sinovac Biotech vaccine for the age group last month and about 26.5 million children have been targeted for vaccination, Maxi Rein Rondonuwu, a senior health ministry official, told a briefing.
Indonesia has reported more than 4.2 million coronavirus infections with cases among those aged 0-18 in Indonesia making up 13 percent of total infections, government data shows.
The country has fully vaccinated about 38 percent of its total population of 270 million people.
Iranians wearing face masks as protection from COVID-19, shop at the Grand Bazaar of Iran's capital Tehran on Sept 5, 2021. (ATTA KENARE / AFP)
Iran
The Iranian Health Ministry reported on Sunday 2,289 new COVID-19 cases, taking the country's total infections to 6,154,813.
According to the ministry's latest daily briefing, the pandemic has claimed 130,722 lives in the country so far, after 61 new deaths were registered in the past 24 hours.
A total of 5,969,591 people have recovered from the disease or been discharged from hospitals across the country, while 3,104 remained in intensive care units, the ministry's official website wrote.
By Sunday, 58,696,394 Iranians have received their first vaccine doses, including 49,377,847 who have taken two jabs, and 2,504,552 who have received their booster doses.
Hamidreza Jamaati, secretary of Iran's national scientific committee in charge of the COVID-19 epidemic, said the research concerning the possibility of vaccinating children under the age of 12 years is ongoing.
READ MORE: Iran's COVID-19 caseload tops 6m
Laos
The number of COVID-19 cases in Laos increased to 90,458 on Monday after over 1,100 new cases were reported in the past 24 hours, according to the Ministry of Health.
Deputy Director General of the Department of Communicable Diseases Control under the Lao Ministry of Health, Sisavath Soutthaniraxay, told a press conference in Lao capital Vientiane on Monday that the country recorded 1,138 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases.
Of the new cases, Vientiane again reported the highest number with 533.
New Zealand
New Zealand's largest city Auckland and other areas, which have been seriously affected by the latest community outbreak of the COVID-19 Delta variant, will further relax restrictions at the end of the year.
All regions under "red" in the "traffic light" COVID-19 protection framework, excluding Northland, will move into "orange" from 11:59 pm local time on Dec 30, which means unrestricted life for the vaccinated people, as venues that use vaccine passes face no limits in the scale of gatherings.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told a press conference on Monday that the areas to move from "red" to "orange" include Auckland, Taupo, Rotorua lakes districts, and Gisborne among other areas in the North Island.
New Zealand reported 101 new Delta variant cases of COVID-19 in the community on Monday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the country's current community outbreak to 9,814.
Singapore
Singapore reported 370 new cases of COVID-19 on Sunday, bringing the total tally in the country to 273,362.
Of the new cases, 355 were in the community, four were in migrant worker dormitories and 11 were imported cases, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Health.
A total of 592 cases are currently warded in hospitals, with 30 cases being critically ill in the intensive care unit. The current overall ICU utilization rate is 46.9 percent.
Five more patients have passed away from complications due to COVID-19 infection, bringing the death toll to 794.
A medical worker holds a sign for visitors to prepare for the coronavirus tests at a temporary screening clinic for coronavirus in Seoul, South Korea, Dec 10, 2021. (LEE JIN-MAN / AP)
South Korea
South Korea will soon roll out a pilot project to use artificial intelligence, facial recognition and thousands of CCTV cameras to track the movement of people infected with the coronavirus, despite concerns about the invasion of privacy.
The nationally funded project in Bucheon, one of the country's most densely populated cities on the outskirts of Seoul, is due to become operational in January, a city official told Reuters.
The system uses an AI algorithms and facial recognition technology to analyze footage gathered by more than 10,820 CCTV cameras and track an infected person’s movements, anyone they had close contact with, and whether they were wearing a mask, according to a 110-page business plan from the city submitted to the Ministry of Science and ICT (Information and Communications Technology), and provided to Reuters by a parliamentary lawmaker critical of the project.
South Korea already has an aggressive, high-tech contact tracing system that harvests credit card records, cellphone location data and CCTV footage, among other personal information.
The Ministry of Science and ICT said it has no current plans to expand the project to the national level. It said the purpose of the system was to digitize some of the manual labor that contact tracers currently have to carry out.
The Bucheon system can simultaneously track up to ten people in five to ten minutes, cutting the time spent on manual work that takes around half an hour to one hour to trace one person, the plan said.
Vietnam
Vietnam reported 14,638 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, including 14,621 locally transmitted and 17 imported, according to its Ministry of Health.
Most of the community cases were reported in southern localities, including 1,216 in Ho Chi Minh City, 920 in Tay Ninh province, and 745 in Dong Thap province. The Vietnamese capital Hanoi also logged the record high number of infections in a single day with 980 cases.
The infections brought the country's total tally to 1,413,051 with 27,839 deaths, said the ministry. Nationwide, 1,054,720 COVID-19 patients have so far recovered, up 1,295 from Saturday.
Vietnam has by far gone through four coronavirus waves of increasing scale, complication and infectivity. As of Sunday, the country has registered more than 1.4 million locally transmitted COVID-19 cases since the start of the current wave in late April, the ministry said.