This handout photo from the Thai Ministry of Tourism and Sports taken on April 28, 2021 and released on April 29, 2021 shows the newly setup pre-admission centre equipped with 300 cardboard beds for COVID-19 patients at the Nimibutr sports arena in Bangkok. (PHOTO / AFP)

GENEVA / SYDNEY / BANGKOK - Thailand added more measures on Thursday to arrest its biggest coronavirus outbreak yet, including a nationwide requirement to wear masks in public and a ban on dining at restaurants in and around its capital. 

Authorities reclassified Bangkok and five provinces as highest-controlled zones. There are 46 others with broad restrictions after a third COVID-19 wave that has seen more than half of the country's overall infections this month alone. 

Masks are widely worn in Thailand but the order to make them mandatory comes just a few days after Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha was fined US$190 for failing to wear one during a meeting.

Parks, gyms, cinemas, bars, restaurants, day-care centres and schools have been closed in Bangkok, the outbreak epicentre, and non-essential travel from the capital is being discouraged. 

Public transport is still operating and malls remain open, but for shortened trading hours.

Thailand registered 1,871 new COVID-19 cases and 10 fatalities on Thursday, according to the country's Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA).

Of the new infections, 1,864 were domestic transmissions and seven others were imported cases, CCSA spokesman Taweesin Visanuyothin said.

South Korea

South Korea's drug safety ministry said on Thursday that Russia's Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine and a shot developed by Novavax have been submitted for preliminary regulatory approval.

South Korea reported 680 more cases of COVID-19 as of midnight Wednesday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 121,351.

The daily caseload was down from 773 in the previous day, falling below 700 amid lingering worry about the fourth wave of the pandemic.

The daily number of infections hovered in triple figures since Nov. 8 last year due to cluster infections in Seoul and its surrounding Gyeonggi province as well as imported cases.

Of the new cases, 225 were Seoul residents and 176 were people residing in Gyeonggi province.

Thirty cases were imported from overseas, lifting the combined figure to 8,302.

Afghanistan

Afghanistan's Public Health Ministry has warned of a third wave of COVID-19 as coronavirus infections are on the rise over the past couple of weeks in the conflict-stricken country.

"The Public Health Ministry has registered 169 new COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, bringing the number of patients infected with the disease to 59,754 in the country," the ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

According to official data, the daily cases were recorded at 206 and 169 on Wednesday and Tuesday, respectively.

The ministry on Thursday also reported seven new deaths from the coronavirus epidemic in the country, taking the death toll to 2,625, as well as 180 new recoveries, raising the total number of recoveries to 53,154.

Acting Public Health Minister Wahid Majroh has warned of a third wave of COVID-19 infections and called on the Afghan people to follow the related health guidelines to stay safe.

Vietnam

Vietnam recorded 45 new cases of COVID-19 infection on Thursday, including six locally transmitted and 39 imported, raising the total confirmed cases in the country to 2,910, according to the country's Ministry of Health.

The domestic cases included a local man who recently returned from Japan and finished a 14-day quarantine before testing positive for the coronavirus, as well as five of his contacts. Relevant authorities are urgently conducting antiseptic measures and contact tracing upon the new development of the pandemic.

Indoensia

The COVID-19 cases in Indonesia rose by 5,833 within one day to 1,662,868, with the death toll adding by 218 to 45,334, the Health Ministry said on Thursday.

 According to the ministry, 6,015 more people were discharged from hospitals, bringing the total number of recovered patients to 1,517,432.

Bangladesh

Bangladesh's drug regulator has authorized the emergency use of China's Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine.

Major General Mahbubur Rahman, director general of Bangladesh's Directorate General of Drug Administration, made the announcement at a press conference Thursday in the capital Dhaka.

"We've issued emergency use approval for the Chinese-made jab."

Mahbubur Rahman further said hopefully within 1-1.5 weeks, Bangladesh will receive a batch of Sinopharm vaccine as a gift.

The Bangladeshi government on Wednesday gave the green light to a proposal of producing Chinese and Russian COVID-19 vaccines in the country.

Bangladesh offered to send India medicines and medical equipment, including vaccines and protective equipment, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a press release.

Bangladesh reported 2,341 new COVID-19 cases and 88 new deaths on Thursday, making the tally at 756,955 and death toll at 11,393, the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) said.

The official data showed that 24,928 samples were tested in the last 24 hours across Bangladesh.

Cambodia

A plane carrying the third batch of China-donated Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine arrived in the capital of Cambodia Wednesday night.

"The arrival of the vaccine today is another testament to the unbreakable iron-clad friendship between Cambodia and China," Cambodia's Health Ministry secretary of state Yok Sambath told reporters while receiving the vaccine at the Phnom Penh International Airport.

Malaysia 

Malaysia reported 3,332 new COVID-19 infections, bringing the national total to 404,925, the health ministry said on Thursday.

Health Ministry Director-General Noor Hisham Abdullah said in a press statement that nine of the new cases are imported and 3,323 are local transmissions.

Another 15 deaths have been reported, bringing the death toll to 1,492.

Some 1,943 patients have been released after recovery, bringing the total number of cured and discharged to 375,340, or 92.7 percent, of all cases.

A medical worker measures his own body temperature during the COVID-19 testing at a makeshift clinic in Seoul, South Korea, Aug 26, 2020. (AHN YOUNG-JOON / AP)

Turkey 

Turkey has signed a deal for 50 million doses of Russia’s Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine that will start arriving next month and should help address a short-term fall in supply, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Wednesday.

Vaccines will be scarce in the upcoming two months, Koca said, but the shortfall should in time be overcome with the new procurements and ultimately by production in Turkey.

"We are at the last stage for Sputnik V vaccine emergency use authorisation," Koca said in a televised speech. "Turkey signed a deal to receive 50 million doses within six months."

Turkey has until now been using COVID-19 vaccines developed by China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd and by Pfizer and BioNTech. It has carried out 22 million inoculations, with 13.55 million people having received a first dose.

On Monday, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) said a Turkish pharmaceutical firms would also produce Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine at its plants.

As of June, Turkey has also decided to administer the two doses of BioNTech vaccine at six- to eight-week intervals versus the previous gap of 28 days, Koca said.

Japan 

Japan will consider making vaccines and medical treatments that have yet to be domestically approved available for emergency use in order to reduce regulatory delays to vaccination as cases spike, the Nikkei reported.

As the number of COVID-19 cases worldwide has been on the increase for the ninth consecutive week, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday that India alone accounted for 38 percent of all infections -- or 2,172,063 new cases -- recorded in the seven-day period that ended on April 25.

India

India's COVID-19 tally surpassed 18 million, reaching 18,376,524 on Thursday, as a fresh high of 379,257 new cases were recorded during the past 24 hours, said the federal health ministry.

As many as 3,645 deaths reported across the country since Wednesday morning, also the highest daily spike, took the total death toll to 204,832.

The COVID-19 figures continue to peak in the country, but the federal government has ruled out imposing a complete lockdown. The capital Delhi has been put under a second successive week-long lockdown till May 3.

The number of daily active cases has been on the rise over the past few weeks, after once coming down to below 10,000 in January.

So far over 150 million vaccination doses have been administered to the people across the country, since the nationwide inoculation drive started in January.

Online registration began on Wednesday for vaccinating people aged above 18, which will start from May 1. This would be the third phase of COVID-19 vaccination.

The surge in India is understood to be fueled by the new COVID-19 variant dubbed as the "double mutant" and scientifically identified as B1617. It was "detected at increasing prevalence" among the new cases in the country, according to the WHO.

The B1617 variant is believed to contain mutations from two separate virus variants. The WHO said that B1617 "has a higher growth rate than other circulating variants in India, suggesting potential increased transmissibility."

Pakistan

Chairman of Pakistan's National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) Asad Umar said on Thursday that starting from May 3, the vaccination against COVID-19 will be open to people aged between 40 and 49 in the Asian country. 

While expressing satisfaction at the pace of registration for vaccination, Umar said on Twitter that Thursday marked the second successive day with more than 100,000 vaccinations in the country. 

Earlier on Tuesday, Pakistan opened the registration for COVID-19 vaccination for the 40-49 age group and also allowed walk-in vaccination of all registered citizens in 50-plus age group.

Pakistan recorded more than two hundred COVID-19 deaths in a day for the first time since the start of the pandemic on Tuesday, as the government said it was considering stricter lockdowns.

A total of 201 new deaths were recorded on Tuesday, bringing the country's overall death toll from the virus to 17,530, according to the National Command Operation Center (NCOC), which oversees the government's pandemic response. The previous highest daily death count was 157 recorded on April 23.

A total of 5,292 new cases were reported on Tuesday, bringing the total cases to 810,231 in the country of more than 220 million people.

The national posititivity ratio, the number of infections among those tested, was 10.8 percent. The death rate, the number of infections resulting in fatalaties, hit the highest point since the start of the pandemic, reaching around 2.2 percent.

ALSO READ: Malaysia makes AstraZeneca shots optional amid public worry

Australia

Australia’s medicines regulator will investigate two deaths for possible links to the COVID-19 vaccine, raising fresh concerns as the country seeks to accelerate an immunisation programme that has widely missed its initial vaccination targets.

“All reports ... of death following vaccination are reviewed to assess the likelihood that the vaccine contributed to the event or medical condition that led to a fatal outcome,” the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) said on Thursday.

Two men died in the country’s most populous state of New South Wales (NSW) days after getting their coronavirus vaccine shots, Australian media reported.

The Philippines

The Philippines received an additional batch of the Sinovac CoronaVac vaccine from China on Thursday morning, allowing the Southeast Asian country to continue its vaccination drive.

Carlito Galvez, chief implementer of the country's fight against COVID-19, said the government expects the rest of the vaccines it purchased from Sinovac could be delivered within this year.

Metro Manila and its four adjacent areas will remain under strict lockdown for another two weeks starting May 1 while the government continues to curb the COVID-19 infections and decongest hospitals, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Wednesday.

"I'm sorry that I have to impose longer (quarantine restrictions) because it is needed due to a spike of infections, and hospitals are full," Duterte said in a public address, urging the people to cooperate and strictly follow the health protocol to avoid virus transmission.

Duterte said he was not surprised when the Philippines' confirmed COVID-19 cases breached the 1 million mark on Monday, adding that people keep on violating the lockdown laws.

"There will always be a rise, and maybe exponential of COVID-19 in the Philippines if you continue to violate the laws. There are a lot of you out there violating and violating and repeatedly violating the laws," he warned.

Duterte directed local government officials to enforce the laws.

The government placed Metro Manila and four adjacent provinces, home to over 28 million people, under strict lockdown since March 29 as COVID-19 cases soar.

The Philippines has been in varying lockdown levels over the past year when the government imposed a lockdown in mid-March last year. 

The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported 8,276 new confirmed cases, bringing the country's total tally to 1,028,738.

Singapore

Singapore’s daily number of cases climbed to the highest in more than nine months, with a cluster formed in one of the biggest hospitals in the country and another from a worker at Changi Airport. There were 16 new cases of coronavirus in the local community.

While the numbers are low compared to the rest of Asia, Singapore has been discovering new clusters as well as virus cases in a foreign worker dormitory that has raised concerns of a resurgence.

Singapore could consider letting vaccinated residents travel to countries where caseloads are low without having to be quarantined when they return, the Straits Times reported, citing Transport Minister Ong Ye Kung. This is another avenue for travel that the city-state is exploring, Ong said, two days after Singapore and Hong Kong announced a travel bubble plan.

Singapore's Ministry of Health (MOH) reported 23 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, bringing the total confirmed cases in the country to 61,086.

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

READ MORE: WHO steps up aid to India to stem COVID-19 surge

Iran

Iran on Thursday reported 19,899 new COVID-19 cases, taking the country's total infections to 2,479,805.

The pandemic has so far claimed 71,351 lives in Iran, up by 385 in the past 24 hours, Sima Sadat Lari, spokeswoman of the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education, said during her daily briefing on the state of pandemic in the country.

A total of 1,938,064 people have recovered from the disease or been discharged from hospitals across the country, while 5,367 remain in intensive care units, said Lari.

Iran on Wednesday reported 21,713 new COVID-19 cases.

Israel

Israel's Ministry of Health reported 106 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, raising the total number of cases in the country to 838,317.

The death toll from the virus increased by two to 6,361, while the number of patients in serious condition decreased from 138 to 120, out of 190 hospitalized patients.

This is the lowest number of patients in serious condition in Israel since July 8, 2020, when it stood at 113.

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka's Army Commander and Head of the National Operations Center for Prevention of COVID-19, General Shavendra Silva said Thursday that a nationwide lockdown would not be imposed in the Asian country but warned the cases of a new COVID-19 virus variant were on the rise.

Silva said that authorities would not go for a lockdown but urged people to follow all health guidelines including wearing a face mask.

"We expect the people to be disciplined. And have their masks firmly on. While we will not go for a countrywide lockdown there will be area isolations, depending on the number of patients reported," Silva said.

Health authorities on Wednesday announced that a new variant of the COVID-19 virus which was rapidly spreading across Sri Lanka was identified to be the B.1.1.7 variant reported in Britain and presently in creating havoc in India.