Over 1b COVID-19 vaccine doses administered: China

Seoul plans to relax virus restrictions; US sends 2.5m doses of Moderna vaccine to Taiwan; Philippines signs deal for 40m doses of Pfizer vaccine

China has announced that more than 1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine had been administered in the country.

The National Health Commission did not say Sunday how many people had been vaccinated.

As elsewhere, most of the vaccines in China are given in two doses.

The total number of doses given doubled from 500 million in less than a month, according to government tallies.

China has approved seven domestically developed vaccines and recently approved two of them for children as young as 3 years old.

South Korea says it plans to allow social gatherings of up to six people and allow restaurants and cafes to operate until midnight in the densely populated Seoul area, starting from July 1.

Health Minister Kwon Deok-cheol said on Sunday the eased distancing rules are aimed at “finding a balance between quarantine and (effort to) return to normal amid the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic.”

Ater a two-week transition period, health authorities plan to allow gatherings of eight people in the Seoul area from July 15.

Kwon says about 30 per cent of South Korea’s 52 million people have received their first dose of coronavirus vaccines. He says

Daily new infections have held stubbornly in a range of 400 to 700 for the past few weeks, but have stayed below 600 for more than a week so far.

Under the revised rules, restaurants, nightlife venues and cafes will be allowed to open for business until 12am, versus 10pm currently.

Unless daily infections spike significantly, the government plans to allow gatherings of up to eight people in the greater Seoul area from July 15, Kwon said.

For those outside of greater Seoul, no restrictions will apply on the number of private gatherings allowed.

Afghanistan’s is racing to ramp up supplies of oxygen as a deadly third surge of COVID-19 worsens, a senior health official said in an interview on Saturday.

The government is installing oxygen supply plants in 10 provinces where up to 65 per cent of those tested in some areas are positive, health ministry spokesman Ghulam Dastigir Nazari said.

The US sent 2.5 million doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to Taiwan on Sunday, tripling an earlier pledge in a donation with both public health and geopolitical meaning.

The shipment arrived on a China Airlines cargo plane that had let Memphis the previous day.

Health Minister Chen Shih-chung and Brent Christensen, the top US official in taiwan, were among those who welcomed the plane on the tarmac at the airport outside of the capital, Taipei.

Chen said that America was showing its friendship as taiwan faces its most severe outbreak.

The Philippine government has signed a supply agreement for 40 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc and Biontech SE in its biggest coronavirus vaccine deal to date.

Deliveries of the vaccine, among several brands of coronavirus shots allowed for emergency use in the Southeast Asian country, will begin in August, Carlito Galvez, head of the government’s COVID-19 vaccine procurement, said on Sunday.

Vietnam has received a shipment of 500,000 Sinopharm vaccine doses donated by China, the health ministry said on Sunday, as the country is ramping up inoculations to batle against a more widespread outbreak.

The Southeast Asian nation approved China’s Sinopharm vaccine for emergency use against COVID-19 in early June.

The vaccines will be used for three groups: Chinese citizens in Vietnam, Vietnamese who have plan to work or study in China and people who live near the borders with China, the health ministry said in a statement.

Vietnam’s domestic inoculation programme, which started in March, has so far relied heavily on around 4 million shots of Astrazeneca’s vaccine.

Nearly 2.4 million people in Vietnam have had one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while 115,315 have been fully vaccinated, according to official data.

The country of 98 million also received a batch of nearly one million Astrazenca doses of vaccine donated by the Japanese government on June 16.