This May 8, 2021 photo shows a sign of the World Health Organization (WHO) at the entrance of their headquarters in Geneva. (FABRICE COFFRINI / AFP)

NEW YORK / JOHANNESBURG / WARSAW / QUITO / KAMPALA / BERLIN / MOSCOW / BRUSSELS / KYIV / GENEVA / ADDIS ABABA / PARIS / LISBON / MALABO - The World Health Organization (WHO) said Wednesday that a new variant of COVID-19, named Lambda, was identified in 29 countries and notably in South America, where it was believed to have originated.

First identified in Peru, the Lambda lineage was classified as a global Variant of Interest on Monday due to an "elevated prevalence" in South America, the WHO said in its weekly update.

Lambda has been rampant in Peru, where 81 percent of COVID-19 cases since April 2021 were associated with this variant, authorities reported.

In Chile, it was detected in 32 percent of all submitted sequences in the last 60 days, and only outclassed by the Gamma variant which was first identified in Brazil. Other countries such as Argentina and Ecuador have also reported elevated prevalence of the new variant.

The WHO reported that the Lambda lineage carries mutations that might increase transmissibility or strengthen the virus's resistance to antibodies.

Variants of Interest, unlike Variants of Concern that have made headlines in newspapers worldwide, are monitored by health organizations but are not yet proved to be significant threats to public health.

France

French Prime Minister Jean Castex on Wednesday announced that people could stop wearing face masks outdoors starting from Thursday and the night-time curfew will also be lifted starting Sunday as the country's COVID-19 indicators continued to drop.

"The health situation in our country is improving faster than we expected," Castex said at a press conference after a cabinet meeting. "We are going to lift the general obligation to wear a mask outdoors."

Masks will still be required in busy public spaces such as public transport, stadiums and other crowded places, the prime minister said.

However, "if we are to face in the coming weeks an epidemic situation, we will not hesitate to take new measures to act quickly," he added.

France is now "below the threshold of 5,000 (new) cases per day" and "no department reports worrying (epidemic) dynamics," according to Castex.

The number of hospitalized and critically-ill patients - key indicators to evaluate the health system's ability to cope with the health crisis - has been falling for the sixth straight week.

Portugal

Portuguese health authorities began issuing the EU (European Union) Digital COVID Certificate on Wednesday, which will allow free transit in the bloc's 27 member countries as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland.

According to the authorities, the so-called "COVID-19 passport" will be granted to those who have already been vaccinated, recovered from the disease, and those who present a negative result in polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests.

The Certificate can be requested and received over the internet free of charge for Portuguese residents. It's also available through a smartphone application integrated with other EU countries.

Equatorial Guinea

The central African country Equatorial Guinea said on Wednesday that it has purchased more doses of Chinese Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine, which are ready to be shipped to the country.

On Feb 10, a batch of China-donated Sinopharm vaccines arrived in Malabo, capital of Equatorial Guinea, making it the first African country to receive COVID-19 vaccine aid from China.

To date, Equatorial Guinea has confirmed 8,662 COVID-19 cases with 120 deaths, according to the WHO.  

EU

European Union governments agreed on Wednesday to add the United States to their list of countries from which they will allow non-essential travel, EU diplomats said.

Ambassadors from the EU's 27 countries approved the addition of the United States and five other countries at a meeting on Wednesday, with the change to take effect in the coming days.

The European Union plans to boost its early warning system and have a permanent capacity to produce about 300 million vaccines in the first six months of any new health emergency, as it prepares for "the age of pandemics".

The EU executive published on Tuesday a set of new proposals to strengthen the bloc's ability to react to new crises, acknowledging that its preparedness and the initial reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic fell short.

"Scientists tell us that this is the age of pandemics and that another health crisis can come. We must ensure we are ready to respond effectively," EU health commissioner Stella Kyriakides told a news conference.

In the document listing ten lessons learned from the pandemic, the European Commission said it will launch this year a new pandemic information gathering system meant to detect new health risks as soon as possible.

In another development, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) is expected to miss its COVID-19 vaccine supply target to the EU for the second quarter after millions of doses were banned for use in Europe over safety concerns, an EU Commission spokesman said.

The setback could cause new delays in the EU vaccination drive, although the EU now relies mostly on the Pfizer-BioNTech shot to inoculate its population. More than half of adults in the EU have so far received at least one shot.

Global tally

Coronavirus virus cases worldwide exceeded 176.71 million while the globa death toll topped 3.82 million, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Africa

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa reached 5,084,637 as of Wednesday afternoon, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said.

The death toll stood at 135,650 while a total of 4,548,655 patients across the continent have recovered from the disease, the Africa CDC said.

US

New York is lifting all state-mandated coronavirus restrictions after reporting that 70 percent of the state's adults have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Tuesday.

"It is an important milestone, and we're going to keep pushing to do more," Cuomo told a news conference, adding that the state would continue to encourage more New Yorkers to get vaccinated.

At least seven people in five US states were infected with the novel coronavirus weeks before the states reported their first cases, a large new government study showed, pointing to the presence of the virus in the country as early as December 2019.

Participants who reported antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 were likely exposed to the virus at least several weeks before their sample was taken as the antibodies do not appear until about two weeks of infection, the researchers said.

The samples came from Illinois, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and were part of a study of more than 24,000 samples taken for a National Institutes of Health research program between Jan 2 and March 18, 2020.

Of the seven samples, three were from Illinois, where the first confirmed coronavirus case was reported on Jan 24, while the remaining four states had one case each. Samples from participants in Illinois were collected on Jan 7 and Massachusetts on Jan 8.

The data suggests the virus was in the US states far from the initial hotspots and areas that were considered its points of entry into the country, according to the study.

"Data suggest that more rapid and widespread implementation of testing could have allowed us to better realize the spread might have been worse than initially thought, perhaps influencing our level of response," said Micheal Breen, director of infectious diseases and ophthalmology at GlobalData.

The data backs a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study that suggested the virus may have been circulating in the United States well before the first COVID-19 case was diagnosed on Jan 19, 2020.

"This study allows us to uncover more information about the beginning of the US epidemic," said Josh Denny, a co-author of the study that was published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

The United States reached the grim milestone of 600,000 coronavirus deaths on Tuesday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. The country has reported 33.48 million cases, according to JHU's tally.

California topped the national death toll list, standing at 63,191. New York reported the country's second largest deaths of 53,558, followed by Texas with 51,940 deaths and Florida with 37,265 deaths, the CSSE tally showed.

Moderna said the US government’s deal to purchase of an additional 200 million vaccine doses came with an option to purchase other candidates from the drugmaker’s pipeline.

The new doses bring the total amount of Moderna vaccine ordered by the US to 500 million doses, of which 217 million doses had already been delivered as of June 14, the company said.Pedestrians wearing face masks pass along a street in Manhattan, New York on June 3, 2021. (PHOTO / AFP)

Royal Caribbean

Royal Caribbean Group said on Wednesday it would delay the inaugural sailing of its Odyssey of the Seas cruise liner by nearly a month after eight crew members tested positive for COVID-19.

The news comes a week after two people tested positive for the virus on one of its Celebrity cruises, where the infected travelers were quarantined.

Odyssey of the Seas, which was scheduled to sail through Southern and Western Caribbean from Fort Lauderdale, will now sail on July 31 instead of July 3. A simulation cruise, originally scheduled for late June, will also be rescheduled.

Six of the eight people who tested positive were asymptomatic and two had mild symptoms, Michael Bayley, chief executive of Royal Caribbean International, said in a Facebook post.

The positive cases were identified after the crew were inoculated but before the vaccine became fully effective, the company said. 

Regeneron

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s antibody cocktail reduced the risk of death by 20 percent among hospitalized COVID-19 patients who don’t have a natural antibody response of their own, according to a large study by University of Oxford researchers.

The results suggest there would be six fewer deaths over 28 days for every 100 patients given the company’s casirivimab and imdevimab combination of monoclonal antibodies. Patients who got the cocktail also spent four days fewer in the hospital on average, and had less of a need for a ventilator.

The combined therapy is already authorized in the US for treating COVID-19 outpatients at risk of developing severe symptoms. The data reported Wednesday will be used to seek expanded emergency use for the drug cocktail for this large subset of hospitalized patients, Regeneron said in an email.

There was no benefit, though, for roughly two thirds of the more than 9,700 patients studied who were either already producing COVID-19 antibodies or whose antibody status was unknown.

“The trial was conducted at a time when most patients had not been fully vaccinated,” David Weinreich, Regeneron’s executive vice president for global clinical development, said in a statement. “These results provide hope to patients who have a poor immune response to either the vaccine or natural infection, as well as those who are exposed to variants for whom their existing antibodies might be sub-optimal.”

Ukraine

Ukraine's government on Wednesday extended COVID-19 lockdown measures until Aug 31, but eased some of the restrictions, Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said.

Shmygal said all Ukrainian regions are now in the "green zone" but the country "must be ready for any development".

Shmygal did not specify which measures will be eased.

The announcement came on a day the health ministry reported 1,045 new cases with 78 deaths.

To date, Ukraine, which has a population of 41 million, has reported 2.23 million cases and 51,847 deaths.

Russia

Authorities in Moscow will make vaccination against COVID-19 compulsory for 60 percent percent of employees in the services sector, a decree published on Wednesday showed, as coronavirus cases continued to tick up in the Russian capital.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the coronavirus situation in the city was developing dramatically and urged people to get vaccinated in an effort to drive down hospitaliztions and deaths.

Nationwide, the country reported 13,397 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, including 5,782 in Moscow, taking the official national tally to 5,249,990.

The toll went up by 396 to 127,576.

Russia’s most widely available vaccine provides some protection against the delta variant, but it isn’t as potent relative to its effectiveness against the original strain, according to lab results reported by the vaccine’s developer. 

Sputnik is up to 60 percent less effective against the delta variant, the head of the Gamaleya Institute Alexander Gintsburg told Interfax Wednesday.

Russia's RDIF sovereign wealth fund expects to receive approval for the Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 from the European Medicines Agency within two months, Interfax reported.

Reuters reported earlier on Wednesday that European Union approval of Sputnik V will be delayed because a June 10 deadline to submit data was missed, citing two people familiar with the matter.

Ecuador

Ecuador said on Tuesday it has approved the use of the COVID-19 vaccine made by China’s CanSino Biologics Inc, part of President Guillermo Lasso’s effort to accelerate the Andean nation’s vaccination plan.

Lasso announced last week the purchase of six million doses of the CanSino shot. 

The government is also negotiating the purchase of 18 million doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, and is asking pharmaceutical companies to speed up the delivery of doses they had previously agreed to provide.

Ecuador has registered some 21,000 confirmed and probable deaths from the disease and almost 440,000 infections. Since Lasso took office, Ecuador has vaccinated more than a million people, according to the health ministry.

Uganda

The World Health Organization (WHO) and Uganda plan to import medical oxygen from neighboring Kenya as a virulent second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to devastate the country, a WHO official said on Wednesday.

Yonas Tegegn Woldemariam, WHO representative to Uganda, told Xinhua by telephone that health authorities are working to increase oxygen supply to address the nationwide shortages, caused by a high demand in the wake of surging COVID-19 cases.

On Monday, Uganda's health ministry said that the country was running short of medical oxygen.

Uganda reported on Tuesday 1,422 new cases of COVID-19, bringing the tally to 64,251. 

The country saw 25 more deaths, the highest daily increase, taking the toll to 459, according to official data.

Germany

Germany will not extend beyond the end of June a rule which forces companies to allow working from home because of the coronavirus pandemic, Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief of staff was quoted as saying on Wednesday.

As coronavirus infection numbers are sinking, the home office rule does not need to be extended on June 30, when the emergency law regulating the lockdown expires, Helge Braun, Merkel's chief of staff, told the WirtschaftsWoche weekly.

It might have to be reimposed in the autumn, depending on the progress of vaccinations and the spread of new variants, he said.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 1,455 to 3,717,625, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday. The reported death toll rose by 137 to 90,074, the tally showed.

UK

Ministers will be advised against the mass rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations to children below the age of 18 in the UK until scientists obtain more data on the risks, The Telegraph reported on Tuesday.

Experts on the country's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) are understood to be preparing an interim statement for release as soon as the end of the week following a meeting on Tuesday, the report added.

"Scientists want to see more data from the US and elsewhere before taking a firm stand either way. Nobody is going to make a final decision at this point. The JCVI will want to weigh up the benefits against the risks before vaccinating children, and it wants more data," a government source told the paper.

Coronavirus variants will continue to emerge and “we will not be through this pandemic until the whole world has the ability to get vaccinated,” Susan Hopkins, deputy director of Public Health England’s National Infection Service, said at a House of Commons science committee meeting. “And that realistically is two years away.”

South Africa

The South African government will place the country under level three of lockdown due to rapidly increasing COVID-19 cases, announced President Cyril Ramaphosa in a televised address on Monday night.

"A third wave of infections is upon us. We have to contain this new wave of infections," he said.

South Africa recorded 8,436 new COVID-19 cases over the last 24 hours. Ramaphosa said tighter regulations were required as the "The average number of people who die from COVID-19 each day has increased by 48 percent from 535 two weeks ago to 791 in the past seven days."

"The massive surge in new infections means that we must once again tighten restrictions on the movement of persons and gatherings," he noted.

Under the adjusted level three set to come into effect on Tuesday night, restaurants, fitness centers and other establishments would close at 9:00 p.m., with curfew being imposed from 10:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. Indoor gatherings would be limited to 50 people and outside to 100 people.

As alcohol played a big role in driving the second wave, Ramaphosa said retail outlets would sell alcohol for off-site consumption between 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. from Monday to Thursday. Citizens wouldn't be permitted to consume alcohol in public spaces such as beaches and parks.

Poland

Polish government officials warned on Tuesday that a fourth COVID-19 wave is still possible despite a growing vaccination rate.

Giving separate interviews to Polish media, both health minister Adam Niedzielski and government spokesperson Piotr Muller said that new mutations might cause a new wave of the pandemic, despite that Polish society has come close to herd immunity.

Niedzielski told the Polish Radio that the ministry is preparing for the eventuality of a new outbreak in the fall, although the likelihood of that is not very high. "However, we need to prepare logistically," he said.

The preparation measures would include reserving hospital capacity in case of a new COVID-19 surge, and preparing labs to test as many different genomes of the coronavirus as fast as possible to identify new mutations.

Muller said in an interview with Polsat TV on the same day that the country's vaccination numbers are not high enough to prevent the spread of new mutation that would be more resistant to current vaccines, "but the numbers for June are still higher than we estimated earlier," he added.

Chile

Chile this week began vaccinating young people between the ages of 20 and 21 against COVID-19, as part of a plan to inoculate some 80 percent of its population, Deputy Health Minister Paula Daza said on Tuesday.

"This week we are vaccinating youth between 20 and 21 years of age, followed by youth aged 18 and 19 years old next week," Daza told reporters.

Next week will also mark "a milestone" with the start of vaccination of children aged 12 to 17 with specific underlying medical conditions, said Daza.

Sixty-four percent of people aged 22 to 25 have been inoculated, and 70 percent of those aged 26 to 29, according to Health Ministry data.

Ethiopia

Ethiopia registered 134 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, taking the national tally to 274,480 as of Tuesday evening, according to the country's Ministry of Health.

The ministry said seven new deaths and 773 more recoveries were reported, bringing the national death toll to 4,257 and total recoveries to 251,880.

According to the ministry, Ethiopia currently has 18,341 active COVID-19 cases, of whom 242 are under severe health conditions.

Ethiopia, Africa's second-most populous nation, has so far reported the largest number of COVID-19 cases in the East Africa region.

Tunisia

Tunisian Health Ministry on Tuesday reported 1,997 new COVID-19 cases, raising the total number of infections in the country to 372,221.

The death toll from the virus rose by 89 to 13,656 in Tunisia, while the total number of recoveries reached 324,846, the ministry said in a statement.

A total of 1,575,876 lab tests have been carried out in Tunisia so far, according to the ministry.

Mexico

Mexico is registering a rebound in COVID-19 infections in six of its 32 states after 20 weeks of a national downward trend, Undersecretary of Prevention and Health Promotion Hugo Lopez-Gatell said on Tuesday.

Yucatan and Quintana Roo have a "very substantial" increase in COVID-19 cases, followed by Baja California, Campeche, Sinaloa and Veracruz, according to the official.

"We will be working with these six states, where collaboration with state governments is very good," Lopez-Gatell, who has acted as the spokesperson for the pandemic, said during a press conference.

He called on the population to seek medical attention as soon as suspected COVID-19 symptoms arise, as there is no overcrowding in pandemic-oriented hospitals at the moment.

Cuba

Cuba registered a daily record of 1,537 COVID-19 infections in the past 24 hours on Tuesday, for a cumulative total of 160,594 cases, the Ministry of Public Health said.

In addition, there were another eight deaths recorded in the day, to total 1,106, according to the ministry's daily report.

In Havana, the daily caseload decreased to 375, although it continues to be the epicenter of the pandemic, with the highest incidence rate in the country of 298 per 100,000 inhabitants.

Meanwhile, the ministry expanded its vaccination campaign in the capital, hoping to inoculate the entire population of 2.2 million people by the end of July.

Scotland

Scotland is unlikely to push ahead with a planned easing of coronavirus restrictions later this month amid a rise in new cases of the delta variant first discovered in India, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said.

While a firm decision will be made next week, Sturgeon said that rising case numbers mean it’s now doubtful that Scotland will move to the lowest level of restrictions on June 28 as planned. Instead, the semi-autonomous Scottish government expects current restrictions will continue for another three weeks from that date to allow more people to get vaccinated.

Romania

Romania asked vaccine makers to delay the delivery of over 4 million doses that were scheduled for June because it has a surplus of shots after a decline in daily inoculations, according to deputy health minister Andrei Baciu. The country was supposed to get about 7 million doses in June and will only get 2.6 million.