South Africa on Sunday extended a night curfew and introduced a ban on gatherings, alcohol sales, indoor dining and some domestic travel for 14 days to halt a worrying surge in cases driven by the delta variant, President Cyril Ramaphosa said. In Bangladesh, the government pointed to a “dangerous and alarming” rise in delta-related infections and said it was closing businesses and public transportation for a week starting Monday.
Here are some other developments:
- China welcomed Ukraine’s withdrawal of support for a statement calling for an investigation into alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The Associated Press previously reported that Beijing had threatened to withhold Chinese-developed coronavirus vaccines from Kyiv if it went ahead. China said its shots come without strings attached.
- Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike, who had taken time off to recuperate from fatigue, will be off duty for a few more days than planned. The Tokyo 2020 Games begin in 25 days and infections have started rising again in the Japanese capital.
- Bogus vaccination certificates are booming in Russia as Moscow orders 60 percent of workers who interact with the public to get inoculated or get different jobs. The capital on Sunday logged a record 144 covid-19 deaths in 24 hours.
- The United States is providing Honduras with 1.5 million doses of the coronavirus Moderna vaccine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted Sunday. The nation of about 10 million has one of the lowest inoculation rates in Latin America, with fewer than 1 percent of the population fully inoculated.