Australia reported an increase in Covid-19 cases Tuesday while authorities in several states tightened movement restrictions and pushed for immunizations to reduce flare-ups of the Delta variant.
Worries the variant - first detected in India - might touch off outbreaks have forced health officials to enforce lockdowns in three big cities - affecting more than 20 million Australians, or about 80% of the population, reports said.
In South Korea, the government plans to acquire more mRNA vaccines to use them as a booster next year for its entire population, Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said Tuesday.
South Korea has already agreed to procure 106 million doses from Pfizer and Moderna to cover full inoculation of its population of 52 million this year.
In Indonesia, officials plan to carry out tougher curbs starting Wednesday, as the country battles a second wave of infections brought about by Delta.
President Joko Widodo led an internal meeting Tuesday to discuss strategies of the proposed new measure, called Pemberlakuan Pembatasan Kegiatan Masyarakat Darurat, or emergency public activity restrictions, The Straits Times said.
"Hospital lobbies, hallways have turned into treatment wards. Emergency rooms have been used as ICUs. This means our situation is really serious," Jakarta Gov. Anies Baswedan said.
In the Philippines, the government is expecting to receive 13 million doses next month, Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr, the country's vaccine director, said.
The Philippines' Department of Health said more than 10 million doses had been administered as of June 27, according to Inquirer.net.
Over in Hong Kong, officials will put the United Kingdom back on its list of "extremely high-risk" nations and ban incoming travelers starting Thursday in a bid to keep out variants.
The ban means anyone who has stayed in the UK for more than two hours during the past 21 days won't be allowed to enter Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post said.
In China, the Spanish embassy in Shanghai is calling on the city's officials to clarify quarantine rules for incoming visitors after a number of immunized people were made to undergo several days of hospital tests upon arrival.
"Neither the people admitted to hospital nor the consulates general in Shanghai were informed of this surprising and unethical practice," the Spanish consulate said in quotes by SCMP.
In Vietnam, authorities have authorized the emergency use of the vaccine by Moderna, the Ministry of Health has announced.
It is the fifth to be given emergency use approval after Russia's Sputnik V and those made by the U.S.'s Pfizer and Germany's BioNTech, British-Swedish company AstraZeneca and China's Sinopharm, VNExpress reported.
Worldwide, there are currently 181 million cases of the virus, with 3.93 million deaths.
