Nations across the globe hit new COVID-19 pandemic highs and reimposed restrictions on Saturday as G20 finance ministers meeting in Venice said that the economic recovery was threatened by variants of SARS-CoV-2 and uneven vaccination campaigns.
The highly transmissible Delta variant, first detected in India, is sweeping the world as countries race to inoculate their populations to ward off fresh outbreaks and allow for economies and daily life to resume.
“The recovery is characterized by great divergences across and within countries and remains exposed to downside risks, in particular the spread of new variants of the COVID-19 virus and different paces of vaccination,” the G20 finance ministers said in a final statement.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The EU — lambasted early on for a botched vaccine acquisition program — on Saturday said it has delivered enough shots to cover 70 percent of the bloc’s population.
“By tomorrow, some 500 million doses will have been distributed to all regions of Europe,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
However, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control says that the proportion of adults aged 18 or older who are fully vaccinated in the EU and European Economic Area is still only 44.1 percent.
Supply shortages in South Korea have meant only about 11 percent of the country’s 52 million population is fully vaccinated, health authorities said.
South Korea reported 1,324 new COVID-19 cases as of midnight on Saturday, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said yesterday, down from a record 1,378 from the day before as the country battles a surge in infections.
From today, gatherings of more than two people are to be banned after 6pm, and schools, bars and clubs would be closed.
Australia reported its first COVID-19-related death of the year and a record for this year of 77 new cases of the virus in the state of New South Wales, which is battling an outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant.
State Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the numbers in and around the country’s biggest city Sydney, already under a hard lockdown, are expected to rise.
“I’ll be shocked if it’s less than 100 this time tomorrow, of additional new cases,” Berejiklian told a televised briefing.
In Pakistan, where less than 8 percent of the population has been vaccinated, the government on Saturday said only those who had received jabs would be allowed to fly.
The country of about 215 million people has largely escaped the worst of the pandemic, with under a million recorded infections and 22,582 deaths — although cases are on the rise again.
Russia announced that cases continued to surge and it had a new record number of daily deaths, the fifth since the beginning of the month.
The 752 new deaths bring Russia’s total toll to 142,253. It also recorded 25,082 new infections, meaning there have been more than 5.7 million cases.
The Russian Federal State Statistics Service, which defines COVID-19-related deaths more broadly, put the figure at 270,000 by the end of April.
Less than 20 percent of Russians have received a single dose, despite shots of locally developed vaccines being readily available.
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
‘DOWNSIZE’: The Trump administration has initiated sweeping cuts to US government-funded media outlets in a move critics said could undermine the US’ global influence US President Donald Trump’s administration on Saturday began making deep cuts to Voice of America (VOA) and other government-run, pro-democracy programming, with the organization’s director saying all VOA employees have been put on leave. On Friday night, shortly after the US Congress passed its latest funding bill, Trump directed his administration to reduce the functions of several agencies to the minimum required by law. That included the US Agency for Global Media, which houses Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Asia and Radio Marti, which beams Spanish-language news into Cuba. On Saturday morning, Kari Lake, a former Arizona gubernatorial and US
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
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