Two Muslim women wearing face masks walk in front a Chinese temple decorated with Chinese lantern at Chinatown in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Feb 7, 2021. (VINCENT THIAN / AP)

DUBAI / SEOUL / CANBERRA  / PHNOM PENH / NEW DELHI I / JERUSALEM / TOKYO / BAGHDAD / AMMAN / BEIRUT / ULAN BATOR / WELLINGTON / ISLAMABAD / GAZA / SINGAPORE / MANILA  / ANKARA / YANGON / DHAKA / KABUL / JAKARTA / HANOI / MALE - Malaysia eased some COVID-19 restrictions on Tuesday as the country reported 2,764 new infections.

The fresh cases took the nation's caseload to 248,316, the health ministry said. Deaths rose by 13 to 909.

Health Ministry Director-General Noor Hisham Abdullah said the country had seen cases drop after a record daily spike of 5,298 on Jan 31, with the number of new cases expected to plateau before dropping off further.

Malaysia's lockdown has cost the economy an estimated 700 million ringgit (US$173 million) daily

"We have passed the highest case on Jan 31 and new cases are expected to continue to flatline," he said.

Meanwhile, Defense Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob, who coordinates the implementation of COVID-19 restrictions, announced the easing of some restrictions that were implemented on Jan 13 to curb the spread of the virus.

Starting from Wednesday, dine-in at eateries will be allowed but will be limited to two persons per table. 

In addition, businesses in the retail sector, including clothes stores, cosmetic stores and antique shops, and the creative industry may resume operations, the minister said.

The lockdown has cost the economy an estimated 700 million ringgit (US$173 million) daily, prompting the government to estimate that this year’s gross domestic product will likely be at the lower end of its 6.5 percent-7.5 percent forecast range.

Afghanistan

Sixteen new COVID-19 cases were registered in Afghanistan in the past 24 hours, bringing the infection tally to 55,402, according to a statement issued by the Public Health Ministry Tuesday.

The death toll rose by four to 2,418, according to the statement.

Meanwhile, the number of recoveries increased by 67 to 48,109, according to the statement.

Australia

Australia has fewer than 50 active cases of COVID-19, official data released on Tuesday showed, the lowest number in nearly two months, although authorities warned against complacency.

A patient with COVID-19 in the state of Victoria has been transferred to an intensive care unit, the first such case in over two weeks, while authorities are still investigating a case in a worker at a quarantine hotel for returned travellers.

Victoria state Premier Dan Andrews said the unnamed person transferred to intensive care caught the virus overseas and had recently returned to Australia.

Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales, which has now gone 23 days without detecting any local cases of COVID-19, also warned of a drop-off in testing rates among the community.

Australia has escaped a high number of casualties from the new coronavirus, with just over 28,800 infections and 909 deaths, aided by strict lockdown measures and social distancing rules.

Bangladesh

Bangladesh reported 387 new COVID-19 cases and eight deaths on Tuesday, bringing the tally to 538,765 and the death toll to 8,229, the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) said.

The total number of recoveries increased by 642 to 484,573, said the DGHS.

Cambodia

Cambodia on Tuesday confirmed two new imported COVID-19 cases, bringing the total number of infections in the kingdom to 476, said a Ministry of Health (MoH) statement.

The new cases were detected on a 19-year-old Cambodian woman returning from the United States and a 26-year-old Chinese woman, the statement said, adding that both arrived in Phnom Penh on Feb. 7 via a connecting flight in South Korea.

India

India has ordered 10 million more doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine from the Serum Institute of India (SII) and 4.5 million more of a homegrown one from Bharat Biotech, company representatives told Reuters.

Just the two shots have been used in what India calls the world’s biggest immunization program to cover 300 million people by August, starting with healthcare and other workers to reach the elderly and those with existing conditions by March.

India's COVID-19 tally rose to 10,847,304 on Tuesday as 9,110 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours, said the latest data from the federal health ministry.

According to the official data, the death toll mounted to 155,158 as 78 COVID-19 patients died since Monday morning.

This was the first day in the past several months when less than 10,000 cases per day were registered in the country, and the fourth consecutive day when the number of deaths recorded in a single day was below 100.

Johnson & Johnson is interested in manufacturing its COVID-19 vaccine in India, a government official told a news conference on Tuesday.

India also currently has no concern over the efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine that is being used in the country’s massive inoculation campaign, Vinod Kumar Paul said.

In another development, Bharat Biotech is likely to export its COVID-19 vaccine to Brazil and the United Arab Emirates by the end of this week, a company spokeswoman told Reuters on Tuesday.

Indonesia

COVID-19 cases in Indonesia rose by 8,700 within one day to 1,174,779, while the death toll climbed by 213 to 31,976, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday.

According to the ministry, another 10,424 patients were discharged from hospitals after recovery, bringing the total number of recoveries to 973,452.

An Iranian health worker receives a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine as the country launches its inoculation campaign, at the Imam Khomeini hospital in the capital Tehran, on Feb 9, 2021. (ATTA KENARE / AFP)

Iran

Iran launched a vaccination drive against COVID-19 on Tuesday, focussing initially on hospital intensive care personnel as the hardest-hit country in the Middle East awaits enough vaccines for its general population.

State television showed Parsa Namaki, son of Health Minister Saeed Namaki, receiving the first jab, in an apparent effort by officials to boost public confidence in Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.

Iran has received 10,000 of the 2 million doses of Sputnik V it has ordered and plans to vaccinate some 1.3 million people by March 20, the television said. The country also expects to receive more than 4 million doses of AstraZeneca’s shot.

Iran’s top authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has banned the health ministry from importing US- and British-made vaccines, which he said were unreliable and may be used to spread the infection to other nations. Officials have refrained from referring to the Anglo-Swedish Astrazeneca’s British ties.

Iran reported 7,640 new infections over the last 24 hours, its highest daily jump since Dec 17. 

Fatalities from the virus rose by 89 to 58,625, the Health Ministry reported.

ALSO READ: Thailand's daily COVID-19 cases continue to drop

Iraq

The Iraqi Health Ministry reported on Monday 1,713 new COVID-19 cases, the highest daily infections since the beginning of 2021, bringing the tally to 630,263.

It also reported six new deaths, raising the death toll from the infectious virus to 13,126, while the total recoveries in Iraq climbed by 848 to 601,041.

Israel

More than 97 percent of COVID-19 deaths in Israel over the past month were people who had not been vaccinated, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday, as his government tries to increase turnout for the Pfizer Inc shots.

Around 38 percent of Israel’s 9 million population have received at least one vaccine dose, the Health Ministry says. But government goals of achieving 50 percent coverage and reopening the economy next month have been challenged as the daily vaccination pace ebbs.

“We are in a national emergency,” Netanyahu told reporters.

“I want to give you a jarring fact: Over the last month - the last 30 days - 1,536 people have died (of COVID-19) in the State of Israel. More than 97 percent of them had not been vaccinated. Fewer than 3 percent had been vaccinated.”

Israel's COVID-19 tally rose to 700,479 on Tuesday after 3,951 new cases were added since Monday evening, the Ministry of Health said.

The death toll stood at 5,192, while the number of patients in serious condition decreased to 1,088, out of 1,710 patients who are hospitalized.

According to the ministry, the number of people vaccinated against the COVID-19 in Israel has surpassed 3.54 million, or 38.1 percent of its total population.

Japan

The EU has approved the first shipment of Pfizer Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine to Japan, the minister overseeing Japan’s vaccination programme said on Tuesday, as the country aims to start vaccination by mid-February.

It appears each shipment requires EU approval, said the minister, Taro Kono. He did not say how many doses the first shipment would contain, or when it would be delivered.

“This will enable us to start vaccination of the initial group of medical workers. We will need to fix the schedule for the rest of the medical workers and the elderly as we go forward,” Kono told a regular news conference.

The Japanese government plans to vaccinate medical workers first, then the elderly, followed by people with health conditions and those working at elderly care facilities.

Japan, with a population of 126 million, has signed contracts to procure 314 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from AstraZeneca PLC, Moderna Inc and Pfizer, enough for 157 million people.

Jordan

Nine teachers and eight students in Jordan have tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday as the kingdom decided to reopen schools this week, the Ministry of Education said.

Starting from this week, students in kindergartens and first, second, third, and 12th grade are allowed to return to their classes after months of online curriculum. The rest of the students will return to school in March.

The education ministry mandated that schools should be able to provide a minimum of two-square-meter space for each student.

Schools that cannot provide the space should have their students take a rotation to attend in-class education and online classes, said the ministry.

On Monday, Jordan reported six coronavirus-related deaths, increasing the death toll to 4385 since the start of the pandemic. The country also added 1,685 infections, bringing the overall number to 336,839. 

Members of Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah movement's Islamic health unit, transport the coffin of a Lebanese Christian woman who died of COVID-19, out of a church to be buried in a nearby cemetery, near the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil, on Feb 5, 2021. (MAHMOUD ZAYYAT / AFP)

Lebanon

Lebanese authorities on Monday started to gradually ease the strict lockdown measures against COVID-19 under huge economic pressure.

Lebanese authorities decided to start a four-phase plan to reopen several sections in the country as total lockdown dealt a heavy blow to the economy.

Representatives of businesses in the country have been calling upon authorities to scale down the lockdown measures and allow them to operate and be able to survive amid the deteriorating economic situation.

Lebanon recorded on Monday 2,063 new COVID-19 infections, raising the total number of cases to 321,980, the Health Ministry reported.

Meanwhile, the death toll from the virus increased by 61 to 3,677.

The American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) announced on Monday that it has opened a Post COVID Care Clinic to follow up on patients who have been previously infected with COVID-19.

Maldives

The Maldives has vaccinated more than 12,000 people against COVID-19 while the daily average of detected cases remained over 100 for the past week, local media reported Tuesday, citing the Health Protection Agency (HPA).

The Maldives vaccinated 3,190 people on Monday, raising the total number of vaccinations to 12,934. 

Also on Monday, the HPA confirmed 126 new cases, raising the country's total case count to 16,909. 

Official figures showed that the country has detected an average of 122 new cases every day for the seven days between Feb 2 and Feb 8.

The Maldives currently has 2,075 active cases, of which 204 are hospitalised. The death toll stood at 55.

Mongolia

The number of COVID-19 cases has risen to 2,120 in Mongolia on Tuesday after 47 new infections were reported in the last 24 hours, according to a release from the country's National Center for Communicable Diseases.

Myanmar

Testing for coronavirus has collapsed in Myanmar amid ongoing political unrest, official testing figures showed.

The number of daily tests reported late on Monday stood at 1,987, the lowest number since Dec 29, compared with more than 9,000 a week earlier and an average of more than 17,000 a day in the week before Feb 1, when a state of emergency was declared. Since then, tests per day have averaged 9,350.

The number of cases found on Monday was just four - compared with an average of 420 a day in the last week of January.

New Zealand

New Zealand reported two new cases of COVID-19 in managed isolation on Tuesday.

Both new border cases came from the United Arab Emirates, according to the Ministry of Health.

One previously reported case has now recovered. The total number of active cases of COVID-19 in New Zealand is now 67, and the total number of confirmed cases has risen to 1,966, said a ministry statement.

Pakistan

Russia’s Sputnik-V has become the third COVID-19 vaccine to be approved by Pakistan for emergency use after China’s Sinopharm and the one developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, the country’s health minister said on Tuesday.

“Sputnik has received EUA (emergency use authorisation),” the minister, Faisal Sultan, told Reuters in a WhatsApp text message.

Another candidate, developed by CanSino Biologics Inc(CanSinoBIO), has also completed clinical trials in the South Asian nation of 220 million people.

Palestine

The Russian coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V will arrive in the besieged Gaza Strip on Feb 14, according to a local health official on Monday.

Majdi Dheir, head of the preventive medicine department under the Hamas-run health ministry, told reporters that the ministry in Gaza is waiting to receive the Russian vaccines from the West Bank.

"According to the schedule, vaccination procedures will be carried out in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip at the same rates," Dheir said.

"The vaccine will be for free. We will not force anyone to be vaccinated, and we are working to limit the spread of the coronavirus through vaccination," he added.

On Monday, Palestine reported 612 new cases infected with the COVID-19 pandemic, bringing the total number to 183,977 in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip since last March. In addition, seven fatalities from the new virus were recorded in the Palestinian territories, raising the total number of deaths to 2,079.

In the Gaza Strip alone so far, 52,599 cases have been recorded and 529 people have died from the pandemic. 

Visitors wearing face masks as a precaution against the coronavirus, walk along a stream in Seoul, South Korea, Feb 9, 2021. (LEE JIN-MAN / AP)

South Korea

South Korean Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun on Tuesday called on restaurant and other business owners in the greater Seoul area to cooperate with social distancing rules to head off a spread of COVID-19 during the Lunar New Year holiday.

The country has been trying to clamp down the number of infections by imposing strident social distancing measures, including a ban on indoor restaurant dining after 9 pm.

The authorities on Saturday eased curfews on more than half a million restaurants and other businesses outside the capital Seoul, letting them stay open an hour later, amid a public backlash over tight curbs to contain the coronavirus.

Business owners and self-employed people in Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and port city of Incheon, home to over 25 million, have strongly criticised the government for unfair treatment, prompting some businesses to open their stores in protest.

The Lunar New Year holiday starts on Feb 11, and tens of millions of Koreans usually travel across the country to family gatherings during the celebration.

South Korea reported 26 more cases of COVID-19 variants, bringing the total number of such cases to 80, the health authorities said Tuesday.

Among the newly confirmed cases, 22 were imported while the remaining four were locally transmitted, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.

Out of the combined variant cases, 64 came from Britain, 10 from South Africa and six from Brazil each. The three variants are believed to be more transmissible than the original one.

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) reported 303 daily new coronavirus cases as of Monday. That brings total infections reported in South Korea to 81,487, with a death toll of 1,482.

Singapore

Singapore's Ministry of Health (MOH) reported 22 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, bringing the total confirmed cases in the country to 59,721.

Of the new cases, 20 are imported cases and two are community cases.

Currently the two community cases are unlinked.

One is a 49-year-old male Singaporean whose job includes transporting individuals placed on Stay Home Notice (SHN) from Changi Airport to dedicated SHN facilities. The other is a 30-year-old male Indian national who is a Work Pass holder. As part of his job, he boards ships to install communications and IT equipment.

Sri Lanka

A 102-year-old woman in Sri Lanka’s southern city of Galle has died of COVID-19 in her house, local media quoting health officials said Tuesday.

She was Sri Lanka's oldest COVID-19 victim.

Sri Lanka has reported more than 70,000 COVID-19 cases, of which more than 64,000 have recovered. 

A student undergoes a temperature check as schools reopen due to the easing of restrictions after a temporary closure to combat the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus in Bangkok on Feb 1, 2021. (LILLIAN SUWANRUMPHA / AFP)

Thailand

Thailand on Tuesday confirmed 189 new COVID-19 cases, mostly domestic infections, according to the Center for the COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA).

Of Tuesday's new cases, 179 were domestic infections while 10 others were imported cases, said CCSA spokesman Taweesin Visanuyothin.

Thailand will rely on vaccines from China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd to kick off an inoculation drive that aims to cover about two-thirds of the eligible population by the end of this year, potentially paving the way for a full reopening of its tourism industry.

While the bulk of vaccine needs will be met from AstraZeneca Plc shots to be locally produced by a Thai drugmaker, the country’s drug regulator is expected to approve Sinovac’s product for emergency use parallel to the arrival of the first shipment of 200,000 doses later this month, Deputy Prime Minister and Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said Monday.

The Philippines

The Department of Health (DOH) of the Philippines reported on Tuesday 1,235 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the Southeast Asian country to 540,227.

The death toll climbed to 11,296 after 65 more patients died from the viral disease, the DOH said.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has expressed optimism that arrival of the COVID-19 vaccines starting this month will bring "good results" in the country's battle against COVID-19.

The Philippines expects the initial 117,000 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines this month through the World Health Organization-led COVAX facility.

READ MORE: Dubai aims to vaccinate all eligible adults by yearend

A woman walks past resting dogs along the deserted quai of the ferry port during a two-day weekend lockdown, in Istanbul on Feb 6, 2021. (BULENT KILIC / AFP)

Turkey

Turkey on Monday reported 8,103 new COVID-19 cases, including 632 symptomatic patients, as the total number of positive cases in the country reached 2,539,559, according to its health ministry.

The death toll from the virus in Turkey rose by 103 to 26,900, while the total recoveries climbed to 2,449,273 after 8,567 more cases recovered in the last 24 hours.

Vietnam

Vietnam recorded 19 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, including 16 locally transmitted cases and three imported ones, according to the Ministry of Health.

The new infections took the tally to 2,069 with 35 deaths as of 6 pm local time Tuesday.