Russia has developed ‘first’ coronavirus vaccine: Live

• President Vladimir Putin said Russia has developed the first vaccine offering “sustainable immunity” against coronavirus.
• New Zealand announced its first locally transmitted coronavirus infections in 102 days.
• Worldwide coronavirus cases have surpassed 20 million, with Brazil and Mexico reporting a combined 27,000 infections in just one day. More than 12.2 million have recovered, and almost 735,000 have died from the disease, according to the Johns Hopkins University tally.
• US President Donald Trump is considering a measure to block US citizens and permanent residents from entering the country if they are suspected of being infected with the new coronavirus, according to the New York Times and Reuters news agency.

Here are the latest updates:

Tuesday, August 11

10:35 GMT – Singapore confirms 61 news cases, lowest daily count in four months

Singapore reported 61 new COVID-19 cases, its lowest daily count in more than four months.

The city-state went into a lockdown in mid-April after mass outbreaks in cramped migrant worker dormitories pushed its caseload to one of the highest in Asia.

Last week, it said it had cleared infections from all of the dormitories – housing around 300,000 workers – barring some blocks which continue to serve as isolation zones.

Of Tuesday’s cases – its lowest tally since April 2 – the majority were among those remaining workers serving quarantine.

10:05 GMT – New Zealand announces return of coronavirus after 102 days

New Zealand announced its first locally transmitted coronavirus infections in 102 days on Tuesday, prompting the country’s prime minister to issue a stay-at-home lockdown order for the country’s largest city.

“After 102 days, we have our first cases of COVID-19 outside of managed isolation or quarantine facilities… While we have all worked incredibly hard to prevent this scenario, we have also planned and prepared for it,” Jacinda Ardern said.

09:40 GMT – Former Indian president Pranab Mukherjee contracts COVID-19

Former Indian president Pranab Mukherjee was put on ventilator support after undergoing surgery having contracted COVID-19, local media reported, quoting unidentified sources at the military hospital in New Delhi where he is admitted.

The reports on Mukherjee, 84, who served as president between 2012 and 2017, came as the federal health ministry once again reported a daily increase of more than 50,000 cases in the coronavirus outbreak. At least 50,000 new cases have been reported in the world’s second-most populous country every day since July 30.

Mukherjee, who also led India’s federal defence, foreign affairs, finance ministries over a decades-long political career, said in a Twitter posting on Monday that he had tested positive for COVID-19 while visiting the hospital for a separate procedure.

“I request the people who came in contact with me in the last week, to please self isolate and get tested for COVID-19,” he said, without disclosing further details of his condition.

09:10 GMT – Russia approves world’s first coronavirus vaccine 

Russia has developed the first vaccine offering “sustainable immunity” against the coronavirus, President Vladimir Putin announced Tuesday.

“This morning, for the first time in the world, a vaccine against the new coronavirus was registered” in Russia, he said during a televised video conference call with government ministers.

The country’s health ministry has given regulatory approval for the vaccine, developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute, after less than two months of human testing, Putin said.

The move paves the way for mass inoculation even as the final stages of clinical trials to test safety and efficacy continue.

08:35 GMT – Indonesia reports 1,693 new cases

Indonesia reported 1,693 new coronavirus cases, bringing the country’s total tally of infections to 128,776, data from the country’s health ministry website showed.

The data also showed an additional 59 deaths, taking the total number of fatalities to 5,824, the highest COVID-19 death toll in Southeast Asia.

08:00 GMT – UK’s Heathrow Airport passenger numbers down 88 percent

Britain’s Heathrow Airport renewed its call for COVID-19 testing at airports as it reported an 88 percent plunge in July passenger numbers due to ongoing restrictions on travel which it said were strangling the UK economy.

Despite thousands of Britons holidaying overseas after months of lockdown, the government has already reimposed quarantine on arrivals from Spain, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Bahamas and Andorra.

“Tens of thousands of jobs are being lost because Britain remains cut off from critical markets such as the US, Canada and Singapore,” said Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye.

“The government can save jobs by introducing testing to cut quarantine from higher risk countries, while keeping the public safe from a second wave of COVID.”

07:25 GMT – Bhutan orders first coronavirus lockdown 

Bhutan ordered its first nationwide lockdown on Tuesday after a returning resident tested positive for coronavirus after being discharged from quarantine and coming into close contact with people in the capital Thimphu.

The lockdown was ordered after a 27-year-old Bhutanese woman, who returned from Kuwait and was discharged from quarantine after testing negative, tested positive at a clinic on Monday.

The case took the total in the tiny Himalayan kingdom to 113, still the lowest in South Asia, and it has yet to record a fatality.

06:55 GMT – Economic cost of coronavirus seen in UK jobs data: Minister

Coronavirus was always going to have an economic cost said junior health minister Edward Argar, when asked about UK jobs data which showed the biggest fall in employment in the country since 2009.

“We always knew that sadly this disease would not only have a health cost but would have an economic cost and I think we are seeing the consequences of part of that,” he told Sky News on Tuesday.

The number of people in employment in Britain fell by 220,000 in the three months to June, Office for National Statistics said.

The unemployment rate held at 3.9 percent but that reflected an increase in people who had given up looking for work and who were therefore not consider to be unemployed.

06:40 GMT – Manager of Japan’s football club Sagan Tosu tests positive for COVID-19

The manager of Japanese top flight side Sagan Tosu, Kim Myung-hwi, has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, the club said.

Kim felt unwell before Sagan Tosu’s game at Kashima Antlers on Saturday but as his symptoms did not include a fever the 39-year-old remained involved in the match, they said.

Kim developed a fever on Sunday evening and after having a PCR test he received the positive result on Monday.

06:20 GMT – 

Hello, this is Hamza Mohamed in Doha, Qatar taking over from my colleague Ted Regencia in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

05:45 GMT – Philippines’ Duterte has ‘huge trust’ in Russia vaccine, volunteers for trial

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has lauded Russia’s efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine and is willing to participate in trials, as he welcomed a supply offer from Moscow that he expects will be free of charge, according to Reuters news agency.

Russia expects regulatory approval for a potential COVID-19 vaccine this month and is ready to provide it to the Philippines, or team up with a local firm to mass produce it.

The Philippines has among Asia’s highest numbers of coronavirus infections, which rose to 136,638 on Monday after a record daily jump of 6,958 cases.

To allay public fears, Duterte offered to be a guinea pig when the vaccine arrives and said: “I can be the first they can experiment on.”

04:40 GMT – Incoming UN assembly president praises Pakistan’s response against pandemic

Volkan Bozkir, the incoming president of the United Nations General Assembly has praised Pakistan for quickly containing the coronavirus, saying the South Asian nation’s handling of the pandemic is a good example for the world, according to AP news agency.

The Turkish diplomat was recently elected as the president of the 75th session of the UN General Assembly.

Bozkir’s visit in Islamabad comes amid a steady decline in COVID-19 deaths and infections in Pakistan.

Pakistan on Monday reported 15 fatalities from coronavirus in the past 24 hours, raising its total COVID-19-related fatalities to 6,097. It has a total of more than 284,000 cases.

04:20 GMT – Hong Kong reports another coronavirus death; death toll at 56

An elderly man has died of the coronavirus infection at a hospital in Hong Kong, pushing the semi-autonomous city’s fatalities to 56.

According to the South China Morning Post on Tuesday, the 79-year-old patient has been hospitalised since July 27. He had some medical pre-conditions before being infected with COVID-19.

As of Monday, Hong Kong has recorded at least 4,148 coronavirus infections.

04:00 GMT – Papua New Guinea to lift lockdown despite surge in COVID-19 cases

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape is pressing ahead with plans to lift lockdown measures in the Pacific nation this week, even as a recent sharp spike in coronavirus infections worries health officials, according to Reuters news agency.

Marape said a two-week lockdown in the capital of Port Moresby would be lifted from Wednesday, despite the country’s reported cases of COVID-19 doubling over the past week.

“Whilst the spread is there, we have to adapt to living with COVID-19 this year, instead of taking on drastic measures,” Marape told a news conference on Monday.

PNG had a total of 214 cases and three deaths as of Sunday, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported, up from 104 cases and one death the previous week. More worryingly, WHO said it was likely the real infection numbers were much higher, given low rates of testing throughout the country.

03:30 GMT – New Zealand retirement home in lockdown to test for COVID-19

A New Zealand retirement village has gone into lockdown after residents displayed symptoms of the respiratory illness, Reuters news agency reported on Tuesday city the New Zealand Herald.

The Village Palms retirement village in Christchurch advised of the lockdown in a letter to family members on Tuesday, the newspaper said. No further details were immediately available.

New Zealand, which has managed to largely contain the spread of the coronavirus, has gone more than 100 days without community transmission of COVID-19.

02:55 GMT – ‘Land of COVID-19’? Philippines protests Thai newspaper headline

 

The Philippine government has sent a letter of protest to a Bangkok-based newspaper over a headline calling the country the “land of COVID-19”, after it recorded the highest numbe of coronavirus cases in the East Asia region.

In a letter to Thai Rath editor-in-chief Saravut Vacharaphol, Philippine Consul General to Thailand Val Simon Roque said the description “is inappropriate, insensitive, and unhelpful”.

In a report dated August 8, Thai Rath said that 165 Filipino teachers arrived in Bangkok from the “land of COVID-19”. Thousands of Filipino teachers work in Thailand to fill its shortage in the education field.

The Philippines has recorded 136,638 cases and almost 2,300 deaths as of the end of Monday. The number of cases tops the entire East Asia region and ranks 22 worldwide.

02:20 GMT – Greece reports 126 new cases, Athens museum ordered shut

Greece has confirmed at least 126 new coronavirus infections, pushing the country’s total to 5,749 with at least 213 deaths.

According to the government, 17 of the new cases involved migrants in Lesbos, who arrived from Turkey.

Meanwhile, the country’s culture ministry announced that for the next two weeks, the Museum of the Ancient Agora in Athens will be closed for disinfection, after one of its workers was tested positive of the disease, also known as COVID-19.

01:48 GMT – South Korea reports 34 new COVID-19 cases

South Korea’s new coronavirus cases bounced back to above 30 on Tuesday, as an uptick in church-traced infections shows no signs of letup, according to Yonhap news agency.

The country identified an additional 34 virus cases, including 23 domestic infections, raising the total caseload to 14,660, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).

There were no new reported fatalities for the second consecutive day, keeping the death toll at 305.

01:30 GMT – Drug company eyes 500-600 million doses of vaccine by 2021 

The US-listed drug company, Novavax Inc, said that its manufacturing capacity is sufficient to meet the US demand for COVID-19 vaccines in 2021, according to reports.

Executives of the company said that demand of vaccines could be as high as 500 million to 600 million doses.

Last week, Novavax said that its experimental COVID-19 vaccine produced high levels of antibodies against COVID, according to initial data from a small, early-stage clinical trial.

Novavax expects to be able to produce well over 2 billion doses of its vaccine annually overall, the executives told reporters.

01:10 GMT – UK laying off 6,000 COVID-19 contact tracers

The British government is laying off 6,000 coronavirus contact tracers and deploying the rest to work in local teams, in an acknowledgment that the centralised track-and-trace system is not working well enough, AP news agency reported.

The UK has been criticized for failing to keep track of infected people’s contacts early in the pandemic, a factor that contributed to the country’s high death toll of more than 46,500, the most in Europe.

The national test-and-trace programme said it was officially adopting that localised approach. Some 6,000 contact tracers will be laid off this month, and the remaining 12,000 will work with local public health authorities around the country.

00:47 GMT – Mexico reports more than 5,500 new cases, 705 deaths

At least 5,558 new coronavirus cases and 705 additional deaths have been reported in Mexico, bringing the total in the country to 485,836 cases and 53,003 deaths, according to Reuters news agency.

The country’s health ministy said the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.

00:20 GMT – Brazil registers 22,048 new coronavirus cases and 703 new deaths

Brazil has registered 22,048 new cases of coronavirus and 703 deaths, Reuters news agency reported quoting the health ministry.

Overall, Brazil now has 3,057,470 confirmed cases, while the death toll has risen to 101,752.

00:05 GMT – Trump weighs blocking US citizens coming home if coronavirus infection feared

The administration of US President Donald Trump is considering a measure to block US citizens and permanent residents from returning home if they are suspected of being infected with the new coronavirus, according to the New York Times and Reuters News Agency.

The draft regulation would give the government authorisation to block individuals who could “reasonably” be believed to have contracted COVID-19 or other diseases.

Trump has instituted a series of sweeping immigration restrictions since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, suspending some legal immigration and allowing US border authorities to rapidly deport migrants caught at the border without standard legal processes.

00:01 GMT – Australia reports 331 new cases, 19 deaths

Australia’s second-most populous state of Victoria on Tuesday reported 19 new deaths from the coronavirus in the last 24 hours and 331 new cases, according to Reuters News Agency.

The state reported 322 infections and 19 deaths, its biggest one-day rise in casualties, a day earlier.

Victoria last week began a six-week total lockdown, closing down shops and businesses to contain a second wave of infections requiring its five million residents to stay home.

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Hello and welcome to Al Jazeera’s continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. I’m Ted Regencia in Kuala Lumpur. 

For all the key developments from yesterday, August 10, go here.