People cycle along the Marina Bay promenade in Singapore on May 7, 2021. (ROSLAN RAHMAN / AFP)
DHAKA / SUVA / NEW DELHI / BAGHDAD / VIENTIANE / BEIRUT / ULAN BATOR / YANGON / KATHMANDU / WELLINGTON / DOHA / SINGAPORE / COLOMBO / ANKARA / MANILA / HANOI – Singapore will test thousands of people for COVID-19 as the number of infections unlinked to current clusters continued to rise.
Three Changi Airport employees and a junior college student were among those who registered positive for the virus in recent days, the health ministry said late Saturday. The government will expand testing to all workers at two of the airport’s terminals and its Jewel shopping mall, and all students, staff and visitors at the junior college.
The Ministry of Education said about 2,200 people associated with Victoria Junior College will undergo swab tests by Monday, while just over 100 people who are close contacts will be quarantined.
The health ministry didn’t provide the number of people who will be tested at Changi Airport Terminal 1 and Terminal 3, and Jewel. There was no immediate reply to emails to the ministry outside of business hours seeking those figures.
Singapore has seen 10 cases per week of unlinked cases in the community in the past two weeks, the government said.
The threat had been easing for Singapore until a few weeks ago when new clusters started to emerge including cases with the variant of COVID-19 first detected in India. Tighter social-distancing measures kicked in for the country on Saturday with officials saying they were necessary to prevent a harsher lockdown similar to one last year.
Singapore's Ministry of Health (MOH) reported 20 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday, bringing the total confirmed cases in the country to 61,331.
Of the new cases, 13 are imported cases and seven are community cases.
Medical officers walk past a sign board of COVID-19 testing center on Bondi Beach in Sydney on May 6, 2021, as administration implementing new restrictions after new cases of community transmission. (SAEED KHAN / AFP)
Australia
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said that the country will remain closed for the foreseeable future.
Morrison said in an interview with News Corp Sunday newspapers that there is no "appetite" among Australians to re-open the country's borders to international travelers as COVID-19 continues to spread throughout the world.
The government has previously said that the borders will re-open once the adult population has been vaccinated against COVID-19.
Restrictions on gatherings are being extended for another week in Sydney and surrounding areas after health officials said they were unable to identify how a man in the community caught COVID-19.
The New South Wales state government has extended safety measures until 12:01 am on May 17, NSW Health said in a statement on Sunday. The restrictions were imposed on May 6 and were due to be eased on May 10, subject to review.
The measures include limiting the maximum number of people allowed into homes to 20, while singing and dancing in all indoor venues except those hosting weddings will be banned. Masks will be compulsory on public transport and indoor venues, such as theaters, hospitals and aged care facilities. A requirement for customers to wear masks in retail stores has been eased, but staff who serve customers must continue to do so, NSW Health said today.
ALSO READ: Indian states impose stricter lockdowns as deaths hit record high
Bangladesh
Bangladesh has detected its first case of a highly infectious coronavirus variant first identified in India, the country’s health directorate said on Saturday, weeks after it sealed its borders with its neighbour.
Six cases of the Indian variant had been detected in Bangladesh, Nasima Sultana, additional director general of the health directorate, told reporters.
“Two cases are confirmed to be of the Indian variant, and the others are quite close to it,” Sultana said, adding that they all recently returned from neighbouring India and were in isolation.
“The Indian variant is highly contagious and people must be cautious and strictly follow health guidelines such as wearing masks, maintaining physical distances and washing hands.”
The variant, named B.1.617, has reached at least 17 countries, from Britain and Iran to Switzerland, sparking global concern.
Fiji
Fiji confirmed on Sunday three new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases and the containment areas in the Suva-Nausori-Lami area will remain for at least another week.
According to Fiji's Health Ministry, the new cases are all linked to a man from Lautoka who tested positive on Friday. One of the new cases is the man's wife, another is his daughter, and the third is a primary contact of his wife.
Family members and undertakers carry the body of a victim who died of the COVID-19 coronavirus at an open air crematorium set up for the coronavirus victims inside a defunct granite quarry on the outskirts of Bangalore on May 8, 2021. (MANJUNATH KIRAN / AFP)
India
India's COVID-19 tally crossed the 22-million mark on Sunday, reaching 22,296,414, as 403,738 new cases were registered in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said.
Besides, as many as 4,092 deaths took place in the country since Saturday morning, taking the total death toll to 242,362, added the ministry. This was the fourth consecutive day when over 4,000 deaths were recorded in 24 hours.
The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) has granted the emergency use authorisation license to the country's Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) for a drug to treat COVID-19 patients, officials said Saturday.
The drug, namely drug 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG), was developed by the Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences (INMAS), a lab of DRDO in collaboration with Dr Reddy's Laboratories (DRL), Hyderabad.
"Clinical trial results have shown that this molecule helps in faster recovery of hospitalised patients and reduces supplemental oxygen dependence. Higher proportion of patients treated with 2-DG showed RT-PCR negative conversion in COVID patients. The drug will be of immense benefit to the people suffering from COVID-19," a statement issued by the federal defense ministry said.
The drug comes in powder form in a sachet and is taken orally by dissolving it in water.
Iraq
Iraq decided to impose 14-day quarantine on those evacuated from India to ensure that they are not infected with the new double mutant COVID-19 variant identified in the South Asian country, official Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported Saturday.
Ryadh Abdul-Amir, head of the Public Health Department in the Iraqi Health Ministry, told INA that the first batch of evacuees would be quarantined in a hotel in eastern Baghdad and tested and monitored by medical teams for 14 days before leaving.
He said the health ministry registered 82 COVID-19 cases among the first evacuees from India, all of whom did not show symptoms.
The quarantine comes as the Iraqi authorities are evacuating hundreds of Iraqi citizens stranded in India after Iraqi Airways announced on April 27 that it had cancelled all direct flights to India.
The Iraqi authorities confirmed that more emergency evacuation flights would be arranged by Iraqi Airways for the rest of the stranded citizens.
Meanwhile, a statement by the ministry reported 4,608 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, raising the total nationwide number to 1,108,558.
The ministry also reported 39 new deaths, raising the death toll from the infectious virus to 15,741, while the total recoveries in Iraq climbed by 6,203 to 998,626.
Laos
Lao Ministry of Health on Sunday reported the first COVID-19 death.
The victim was a 53-year-old woman, who received treatment for COVID-19 at designated hospital in Lao capital Vientiane since April 30, Deputy Director General of the Department of Communicable Disease Control under the Lao Ministry of Health Latsamy Vongkhamsao told a press conference in Vientiane on Sunday.
Latsamy added that Laos recorded 69 new COVID-19 cases over the previous 24 hours, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 1,302.
Lebanon
Lebanon registered on Saturday 435 new COVID-19 cases, raising the total number of infections to 532,269, the health ministry reported.
Meanwhile, the death toll from the virus went up by 24 to 7,460.
Mongolia
Mongolia on Sunday confirmed 804 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, bringing the national tally to 44,820, according to the country's National Center for Communicable Diseases.
Meanwhile, two more fatalities were reported, raising the death toll to 174, the center said, adding that 1,389 more recoveries were reported, bringing the nationwide count to 31,373.
Myanmar
The number of COVID-19 infections has risen to 142,947 in Myanmar after 13 new positive cases were reported in the past 24 hours, according to a release from the Health and Sports Ministry on Saturday.
The death toll stood at 3,210 while 132,013 recovered patients have been discharged from hospitals so far, the release said.
A man wearing a protective gear stands amid the burning pyres of victims who died of the COVID-19 coronavirus on the banks of Bagmati river in Kathmandu on May 7, 2021. (BIKASH KARKI / AFP)
Nepal
As many as 26 members of the House of Representatives in Nepal have tested positive for coronavirus, just as they are preparing to vote on Monday on a motion of confidence called by Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli.
The secretariat of the federal parliament conducted the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests for lawmakers ahead of the key vote, with tests returned positive for 18 of them, while eight others were already infected from the second wave of the pandemic that is raging in Nepal, said Gopal Nath Yogi, secretary at the House of Representatives.
"We have reports that 26 members of the House of Representatives have tested positive for coronavirus," Yogi told Xinhua. "Two of them are ministers."
There are four ministers in the Oli cabinet who have tested positive, but two are not members of parliament.
New Zealand
New Zealand reported two new cases of COVID-19, the Ministry of Health said in a statement on Sunday.
The new cases were returnees reported in managed isolation facilities, while there was no new case in the community, said the ministry.
According to the ministry, the seven-day rolling average of new cases of COVID-19 detected at the New Zealand border was three.
The total number of active cases was 27, and the total number of confirmed cases reached 2,286, according to the ministry.
Qatar
The Qatari health ministry on Saturday announced 533 new COVID-19 infections, raising the total number of confirmed cases in the Gulf state to 210,603, the official Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported.
Meanwhile, 1,023 more people recovered from the virus, bringing the overall recoveries to 200,467, while the fatalities increased by six to 502, according to a ministry statement quoted by QNA.
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka's Health Ministry on Saturday began administering the Sinopharm vaccine to local nationals, soon after the World Health Organization (WHO) approved it for emergency use worldwide.
The vaccines were administered at the Panadura Health Office in Kalutara District, in the outskirts of capital Colombo, an area which has reported a rising number of COVID-19 patients in recent days.
Speaking at the launch of the vaccination drive, State Minister of Production, Supply, and Regulation of Pharmaceuticals Channa Jayasumana thanked the Chinese government for sending the Sinopharm vaccines to Sri Lanka and said this would add to the efforts of the Sri Lankan government to vaccinate at least 70 percent of its population against the COVID-19 virus by the end of the year.
Thailand
Thailand’s death toll from coronavirus pandemic neared 400 on Sunday, with 17 more people succumbing to the disease in the past 24 hours.
Most of the country’s COVID-19 deaths have occurred since early April, when a third wave of infections hit. Total cases in the Southeast Asian nation have jumped to about 83,400 from fewer than 7,000 at the end of 2020, government data shows.
The Philippines
The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported on Sunday 7,174 new COVID-19 infections, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the Southeast Asian country to 1,101,990.
The death toll climbed to 18,472 after 204 more patients died from the viral disease, the DOH said.
The Philippines, which has about 110 million population, has tested over 11 million people since the outbreak in January 2020.
Turkey
Turkey on Saturday confirmed 18,052 new COVID-19 cases, including 2,178 symptomatic patients, raising the total infections in the country to 5,016,141, according to its health ministry.
The death toll from the virus in Turkey rose by 281 to 42,746, while the total recoveries climbed to 4,691,224 after 28,896 more recovered in the last 24 hours.
READ MORE: Myanmar's COVID-19 infections surpass 100,000
Vietnam
Vietnam recorded 93 new cases of COVID-19 infection on Saturday, including 80 locally transmitted and 13 imported, raising the total confirmed cases in the country to 3,230, according to the country's Ministry of Health.
The community cases included 31 in northern Bac Ninh province, 23 in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, eight in central Da Nang city, and seven in northern Vinh Phuc province, among others.