Residents queue up outside a pharmacy for a COVID-19 vaccination in western Sydney, Australia, on July 30, 2021. (SAEED KHAN / AFP)

TOKYO / SYDNEY / NEW DELHI / JERUSALEM / BEIRUT / ISLAMABAD / CAIRO / SINGAPORE / DAMASCUS / SEOUL / WELLINGTON / MANILA / ANKARA / NEW DELHI / BANGKOK / PHNOM PENH / ULAN BATOR / TASHKENT / KUALA LUMPUR / HANOI / COLOMBO / SUVA / KUWAIT CITY / BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN - Australian soldiers will help to enforce coronavirus isolation orders in the hard-hit city of Sydney, police said on Friday, as resentment seethed in some communities over new curbs to stem the highly contagious Delta variant.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison held out hope of better times with a four-stage plan back to freedom but said 80 percent of adults would have to be vaccinated before the border can begin to open.

From Monday, some 300 army personnel will help police go door to door to ensure people who have tested positive are isolating, New South Wales police commissioner Mick Fuller said at a news conference.

On Friday, Sydney entered its sixth week of a nine-week lockdown with 170 new cases, down from a record 239 a day earlier. Of the new cases, at least 42 spent time in the community while infectious. New South Wales reported 170 new local cases, most of them in the state capital Sydney,

Australia is now in phase A, or the suppression phase of the plan, with large parts of the country plunging in and out of lockdowns to stamp out the virus, Morrison said at a news conference.

Phase B would be reached when 70 percent of adults are vaccinated, which Morrison said would mean greater freedoms and special rights for the inoculated. He did not specify a timeframe but said phase B could be reached by Christmas.

Morrison said the border would be gradually reopened in phase C of the plan, when 80 percent of adults have been vaccinated.

Australia is in talks with Singapore on a similar travel bubble plan as the one with New Zealand, he said.

ALSO READ: Pakistan to ban air travel, malls, education for unvaccinated

Brunei

Brunei reported three new imported COVID-19 cases on Friday, bringing the tally to 336.

According to the Ministry of Health, two of the new cases are among the 18 crew of a ship that left Singapore on July 4 and arrived in Brunei on July 9, which means that 15 out of 18 ship crews have tested positive. Three more crews are still undergoing quarantine.

The other one case arrived in Brunei from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on July 16. Contact tracing has found no close contacts for this case.

There are currently 55 active cases being treated and monitored at the National Isolation Center, with one in intensive care.

Cambodia

Cambodia on Friday logged 668 COVID-19 infections, of which 240 were imported, pushing the caseload to 76,585, the Ministry of Health (MoH) said in a statement.

Twenty-five more fatalities were confirmed, bringing the death toll to 1,375, the ministry said, adding that 812 more patients have recovered, taking the total number of recoveries to 69,198.

MoH's secretary of state and spokeswoman Or Vandine said 11.8 million vaccine doses have been administered so far, with 7.13 million people having received their first dose and 4.67 million having completed the two-dose inoculation.

Fiji

Fijian health authorities on Friday confirmed 1,163 new COVID-19 infections over the past 24 hours and six more deaths.

Ministry of Health Permanent Secretary James Fong said all opening businesses have to put forward COVID-safe operational plans approved by the Ministry of Health.

Fong said 80 percent of all eligible adults in Fiji have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

India

India reported 44,230 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, the most in three weeks, the latest evidence of a worrying trend of rising cases that has forced one state to lock down amid fears of another wave of infections.

The nationwide tally of infections has reached 31.57 million, according to health ministry data. Deaths rose by 555 overnight, taking the overall toll to 423,217.

The R value hit 1 on July 24 - meaning on average, every 10 people infected will infect 10 other people - for the first time since May when daily infections were near a peak of 400,000.

The government estimates that 67.6 percent of the 1.35 billion population already have antibodies against the coronavirus, with nearly 38 percent of the adult population of about 944 million people having received at least one vaccine dose.

Commercial international flights to and from India shall remain suspended until Aug 31, according to a circular issued by the country's civil aviation watchdog Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Friday.

The southern state of Kerala announced a new lockdown on Thursday while movement restrictions are in place in some northeastern states reporting a rise in infection rates.

A man receives the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine at a makeshift mass vaccination centre on a football field in Surabaya on July 29, 2021. (JUNI KRISWANTO / AFP)

Indonesia

Indonesian President Joko Widodo said the country won’t resort to a full lockdown even as the country tops the world tally of daily deaths. The current restrictions, in place until Aug 2, have started to ease in some parts of Java and Bali as the rate of cases and deaths falls in those areas. Elsewhere, the delta variant continues to spread.

“As I visited the villages and the cities, so many people are screaming for a reopening,” Jokowi said in an address to entrepreneurs. “A lockdown won’t necessarily end the problem.”

With more than 70 million informal workers, who are especially vulnerable to movement limits, the pandemic has already dragged nearly 3 million Indonesians below the poverty line. Only about 7 percent of people have been fully vaccinated, according to Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker.

Israel

Israeli President Isaac Herzog received a third shot of coronavirus vaccine on Friday, kicking off a campaign to give booster doses to people aged over 60 as part of efforts to slow the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant.

Herzog, 60, received a booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv. He said he was proud to launch the booster vaccination initiative "which is so vital to enable normal circumstances of life as much as possible in this very challenging pandemic".

The president was accompanied by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who urged the importance of booster shots in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic and pledged that Israel would share all the information it gleaned from the initiative.

On the eve of the booster rollout. Bennett said Israel had already given 2,000 immunosuppressed people a third dose with no severe adverse events.

Israel's Ministry of Health reported 2,197 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, bringing the tally of infections in the country to 869,063.

The death toll from the virus in Israel rose by four to 6,466, while the number of patients in serious condition rose from 149 to 151, the ministry said.

People wearing face masks to help curb the spread of the coronavirus walk past shops in a shopping alley near Ueno Station in Tokyo, Japan, on July 30, 2021. (KANTARO KOMIYA / AP)

Japan

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga on Friday announced a coronavirus state of emergency in four more prefectures and extended one already imposed in Tokyo by more than a week to the end of next month as infections have surged in recent days.

The state of emergency will be expanded to Chiba, Kanagawa and Saitama, as well as the western prefecture of Osaka.

A quasi-state of emergency with loose restrictive measures will also be put in place for Hokkaido, Ishikawa, Hyogo, Kyoto, and Fukuoka.

Both will be effective from Aug 2 to Aug 31.

Newly reported daily COVID-19 cases in Japan came in at record-high 10,743 on Friday, public broadcaster NHK said, after the Tokyo metropolitan government reported 3,300 new infection cases in the capital.

Also on Friday, a Japanese health ministry panel approved the domestic use of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine for people aged 40 and older in principle due to a supply shortage of vaccines, local media reported.

The central government will supply the vaccine to local governments depending on their demand, with a schedule for safety research, possibly conducted by Self-Defense Forces personnel, due to haunting worries over rare side effects.

Kuwait

Kuwait is preparing to receive vaccinated expatriates from Aug 1, the Ministry of Health said Friday.

Abdullah Al-Sanad, spokesman for the ministry, said in a press statement that Kuwait Airport will allow the return of fully vaccinated expats starting Aug 1 according to the decision of the government.

The ministry's team will check the vaccination certificates of travelers vaccinated outside the country, he added.

According to the decision of the Kuwaiti government, arrivals must present the result of a negative PCR test taken within 72 hours before departure.

When they land in Kuwait, they must be quarantined at home for seven days. If they want to end the quarantine early, they must have a negative PCR test result on the third day. 

Lebanon

Lebanon registered on Thursday 1,104 new COVID-19 cases, raising the total number of infections to 559,473, the Health Ministry reported.

Meanwhile, the death toll from the virus went up by three cases to 7,900.

Malaysia

Malaysia reported 16,840 new COVID-19 infections, bringing the tally to 1,095,486, the health ministry said Friday.

Health Ministry Director-General Noor Hisham Abdullah said in a press statement that 17 of the new cases were imported and 16,823 were spread through local transmission.

Another 134 deaths were also reported, bringing the death toll to 8,859.

Micronesia

The small South Pacific island nation of The Federated States of Micronesia has mandated that its adult population be inoculated against COVID-19 in an effort to continue to prevent the pandemic reaching its shores.

The Federated States of Micronesia, with a population just over 113,000 and covering more than 600 islands, has not recorded any locally acquired COVID-19 cases after it shut its international borders to prevent the spread of the virus.

In a statement issued late on Thursday, the Pacific island nation said everyone over 18 years will have to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.

Mongolia

Mongolia's COVID-19 tally reached 162,869 on Friday after recording 1,294 new cases in the last 24 hours, said the health ministry.

Seven more fatalities and 2,126 new recoveries were reported during the same period, bringing the death toll to 836 and the number of recoveries to 161,957, the ministry said.

So far 60.7 percent of the country's population have been fully vaccinated.

New Zealand

New Zealand reported two new cases of COVID-19 in recent returnees in managed isolation, and no cases in the community on Friday.

The two newly imported cases came from Zimbabwe and Britain, and have remained in managed isolation and quarantine facilities in Auckland, according to the Ministry of Health.

Pakistan

Pakistan is to ban staff from entering public offices, schools, restaurants, transport and shopping malls without vaccination certificates, officials said on Thursday, despite only 2.7 percent of the population having had the full two COVID-19 vaccine shots.

The certificate will also be required for all air passengers and crew, said Asad Umar, who heads National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC), a military-run body that oversees the pandemic response.

Out of a population of 220 million, more than 27.8 million have received one vaccine shot, but only 5.9 million have been fully vaccinated, according to the NCOC.

Pakistan recorded 4,537 new COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) said on Friday.

The NCOC said that the country's number of overall confirmed cases has risen to 1,024,861, including 938,843 recoveries.

A total of 23,295 people died of the disease, including 86 patients who died over the last 24 hours, the NCOC said, adding that 3,117 are in critical condition.

A Saudi pilgrim waits for his luggage at King Abdulaziz airport in Jeddah, on July 15, 2021. (FAYEZ NURELDINE / AFP)

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia’s Tourism Ministry will re-allow entry for tourist visa holders starting Aug 1, it said in a statement.

“Vaccinated tourists will be allowed to enter without having to be institutionally quarantined upon providing a negative Covid-19 PCR test and a vaccination certificate,” the ministry said. Accepted vaccines will be Pfizer, Astrazeneca, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, the statement added.

Singapore

Singapore schools remain safe places for learning and have measures in place to minimize the transmission risks of COVID-19, according to Education Minister Chan Chun Sing.

The government would continue to adopt a targeted approach to deal with COVID-19 infections within schools and continue to monitor the situation closely and make adjustments as needed, Chan said Friday in a Facebook post.

The Ministry of Health (MOH) reported 133 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, bringing the tally in the country to 64,722.

The new infections included 129 locally transmitted cases, of which 30 were linked to the Jurong Fishery Port cluster and two belonged to the KTV cluster.

South Korea

South Korea announced on Friday plans to expand its coronavirus vaccine rollout to people aged 18 to 49, as the country grapples with record high daily cases driven mostly by infections in the unvaccinated younger population.

About 36.5 percent of its 52 million people having received at least one dose, while just 14 percent are fully vaccinated.

The country aims to immunize over 70 percent by September as it vaccinates the 18-49 year olds with Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech's products in August, Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency Director Jeong Eun-kyeong said at a briefing.

South Korea reported 1,710 more cases of COVID-19 as of midnight Thursday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 196,806.

Forty-eight cases were imported from overseas, lifting the combined figure to 11,823.

Four more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 2,089. The total fatality rate stood at 1.06 percent.

Sri Lanka

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday congratulated the Sri Lankan government for administering a record number of over 500,000 COVID-19 vaccines in a single day on Thursday.

In a statement on its official Twitter account, the WHO said that by administering such a large number of vaccines in a single day, the government had achieved an impressive milestone.

According to official statistics from the health ministry, 515,830 vaccines doses were administered on Thursday across the country, while over 11.2 million doses have been administered in total to date.

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa said in a statement Sri Lanka had marked a new record by vaccinating over 500,000 people within a day, thanks to the dedication of the ministry and the tri forces.

Syria

The Syrian Health Ministry on Thursday received a batch of Chinese COVID-19 vaccines.

A total of 150,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine provided by the Red Cross Society of China (RCSC) to Syria.

Health Minister Hasan al-Ghabash attended the reception ceremony at the Damascus International Airport alongside Chinese Ambassador to Syria Feng Biao, as the Chinese embassy has supervised the delivery of the vaccines to the Syrian government.

Thailand

Thailand received its first batch of 1.5 million doses of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines donated by the US government on Friday, as the Southeast Asian country battles its biggest COVID-19 outbreak to date.

The first batch of vaccines donated by the US will be used to inoculate high risk groups or as a "booster" third shot for frontline medical workers, deputy Thai government spokeswoman Traisulee Traisaranakul said in a statement.

The US will send another one million doses of COVID-19 vaccine in addition to the batch that was received on Friday, US Charge d'Affaires in Thailand Michael Heath said.

Thailand will take delivery of 20 million doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine later this year, but also has plans to order an additional 10 million shots from the company, health ministry official Kiatiphum Wongrajit told reporters.

Separately on Friday, Thailand began a renewed drive to vaccinate Buddhist monks and other temple workers in Bangkok. Officials said they planned to provide AstraZeneca vaccines to 221 temples in the Thai capital, before beginning distribution in other parts of the country.

The country’s COVID-19 task force on Friday reported 17,345 new cases and another 117 deaths.

Phuket will ban travel from the rest of the country from Aug 3-16 to try to stop a surge in infections from spreading to the resort island, but overseas visitors will be largely unaffected, the Thai foreign ministry said on Thursday.

Tanee Sangrat, spokesman for the ministry, said the new travel rules will restrict movement to Phuket from elsewhere in Thailand, meaning foreign visitors who stay on the island will not be affected.

Tourists who have stayed on Phuket for more than 14 days will be allowed to leave for other parts of Thailand and can re-enter Phuket only if they have international flights booked from the island's airport, Tanee said.

The Philippines

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday approved the imposition of lockdown measures in the capital region, in a bid to contain the spread of the Delta coronavirus variant and to shield the country's medical system.

The Manila capital region, a sprawl of 16 cities home to more than 13 million people, will be placed under the tightest quarantine curbs from Aug 6 to 20, Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said in a televised address. 

The lockdown, which is expected to cost the economy US$4 billion, will mean people cannot leave their homes, except for essential shopping, while indoor and al fresco dining is banned.

"Delta is all over Metro Manila already. This is proper intervention," Benjamin Abalos, chairperson of the capital's council of mayors, told Reuters.

The mayors planned to step up vaccinations to 250,000 doses a day, up from 150,000 now, he said.

The Philippines also extended a ban on travelers coming from 10 countries including India, Indonesia, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates to Aug 15.

The country on Friday posted 8,562 new cases and 145 deaths, bringing the total to 1,580,824 infections with 27,722 fatalities.

READ MORE: NZ PM: Accelerating access to COVID-19 vaccines a priority

Turkey

Turkey on Thursday registered 22,161 new COVID-19 cases, raising its tally of infections to 5,682,630, according to its Health Ministry.

The death toll from the virus in Turkey rose by 60 to 51,184, while 5,463 more people recovered in the last 24 hours.

Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan's COVID-19 tally rose by 897 in the past 24 hours to 128,403, the highest daily count since the beginning of this year, the health ministry said on Friday.

The Central Asian nation also reported seven more coronavirus-related deaths, bringing the death toll to 866.

So far, more than 7 million vaccine doses have been administered, and more than 1.1 million people have been fully vaccinated, according to the ministry. 

Vietnam

Vietnam's health ministry issued an urgent appeal on Friday for private hospitals to treat COVID-19 patients as the Southeast Asian country battles a surge in infections driven by the highly contagious Delta variant.

Private medical facilities should make their beds, equipment and manpower available to treat COVID-19 cases when assigned to do so by authorities, the ministry said in the statement. Vietnam has an additional 20,000 beds across 228 private hospitals in the country, according to health ministry data.

Vietnam's daily COVID-19 infections hit a record 8,649 cases on Friday, taking its tally to over 137,000, the health ministry said.

With cases rapidly rising and the capacity of state hospitals stretched, however, asymptomatic cases in outbreak epicenter Ho Chi Minh City have been permitted to isolate at home on a trial basis.

During a visit to the city on Friday, president Nguyen Xuan Phuc urged authorities to speed up their vaccination campaign.

Vietnam has a population of 98 million and has so far administered over 5.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine, but only around 550,000 people have been fully inoculated.