(Reuters) – Australian officials extended lockdown and social distancing measures to more of the country on Wednesday, with four major cities already under a hard lockdown in a race to contain an outbreak of the highly contagious Delta coronavirus variant.
DEATHS AND INFECTIONS
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EUROPE
* Greece will allow people fully vaccinated against the coronavirus inside restaurants without masks, the government said, as part of measures to boost inoculation rates.
* Russia will fail to vaccinate 60% of its population by the autumn as planned due to sluggish demand for the shots, the Kremlin said, after the country recorded its highest number of daily deaths from the virus.
ASIA-PACIFIC
* Japan is considering an extension of its coronavirus prevention measures in Tokyo and other areas by two weeks to a month, Japanese media said, with less than a month to go until the Tokyo Summer Olympics are set to open.
* North Korean leader Kim Jong Un chastised top ruling party officials for failures in anti-epidemic work that led to an unspecified “great crisis” and put the safety of the country and people at risk, state media reported on Wednesday.
AMERICAS
* Health Canada said it has recommended that people with a history of capillary leak syndrome not be vaccinated with drugmaker AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine.
* The U.S. Supreme Court left in place the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s ban on residential evictions imposed last year to combat the spread of COVID-19 and prevent homelessness during the pandemic.
* Guatemalan Health Minister Amelia Flores said on Tuesday that the government had asked Russia to return money already paid for doses of the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine because of non-delivery.
MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA
* The Tunisian government on Tuesday extended the hours of night curfew in an effort to stop the rapid spread of COVID-19, as the North Africa country reached a daily record of cases since the start of the pandemic last year.
* Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Tuesday imposed a dusk to dawn curfew, banned inter-city travel and cut business hours with immediate effect in response to increasing coronavirus infections.
MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS
* Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine showed promise against the Delta variant first identified in India in a lab study, while Indian drugmaker Cipla received regulatory approval to distribute the shot in the country.
ECONOMIC IMPACT
* Asian shares rose and a gauge of global equities hovered near record highs on Wednesday after rising consumer confidence in economic recovery boosted the Nasdaq index to its highest-ever closing level. [MKTS/GLOB]
* Growth in China’s June factory activity dipped to a four-month low on higher raw material costs, a shortage of semiconductors and a COVID-19 outbreak in the major export province of Guangdong, amid wider supply chain disruptions in Asia.
* Japan’s industrial output posted the biggest monthly drop in a year in May, as a sharp fall in car production threatened to undermine the country’s economic recovery just weeks before Tokyo is set to host the Olympic Games.
* The World Bank said it approved a $300 million loan for Costa Rica to help support the Central American nation’s efforts to recover from the pandemic fallout.
(Compiled by Amy Caren Daniel; Edited by Shounak Dasgupta)
