The WHO warned that Covid-19 was moving faster than the vaccines, and said the G7’s vow to share a billion doses with poorer nations was simply not enough.

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said unequal distribution of vaccines has allowed the coronavirus to continue spreading, thus increasing odds of a variant emerging that could render these treatments ineffective.

Key Indian cities re-opened for business yesterday, with long queues for buses in the financial hub of Mumbai while traffic returned to the roads of New Delhi after a devastating second wave of coronavirus that killed hundreds of thousands.

The United Nations said yesterday that the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on the world of work was four times worse than the 2008 economic crisis.

France faces the risk of a fourth Covid-19 wave by the end of July due to the progression of the Delta variant of the virus, the country’s health minister warned.

The government has decided to send Tk 25,000 as a subsidy to the hotel quarantine fee for Saudi Arabia-bound migrant workers to their bank accounts.

Countries and private donors pledged nearly $2.4 billion to the Covax vaccine-sharing plan, expanding efforts to make Covid-19 shots more available to people in poorer nations.

The name of Haris Ahmed, younger brother of army chief Gen Aziz Ahmed, has been removed from the list of “wanted person” in the police website following his application in March.

Peru on Monday more than doubled its official coronavirus death toll, becoming the country with the highest Covid-19 mortality per capita anywhere in the world.

The World Health Organization has warned that efforts to uncover the Covid-19 pandemic’s origins were being hampered by politics, insisting scientists needed space to work on solving the mystery.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) will review 3,000-5,000 people above 45 years of age, of which up to 80% will be those who have taken the AstraZeneca vaccine made locally by the Serum Institute of India.

Official tolls showing the number of deaths directly or indirectly attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic are likely to be a “significant undercount,” the World Health Organization said yesterday, saying 6-8 million people may have died so far.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday said her government would not take any advice that would cause damage to the country.

Biman Bangladesh Airlines will be forced to suspend all its flights to three destinations in Saudi Arabia from May 20 due to travel restrictions from the Gulf country, sources in Biman said.

Operation of regular international flights to and from Dhaka resumed on May 1 after a 17-day suspension due to coronavirus restrictions.

As many as 90 dead bodies of Bangladeshi expatriates have been sent home from Italy between July 2020 and April this year, according to the Bangladesh Embassy in Rome.

More than 500 health workers have died in Venezuela since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, a nongovernmental organization said Monday.

The developers of Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine yesterday criticised Brazil’s refusal to import the jab as politically motivated. Brazilian health regulator Anvisa on Monday denied requests from several states to receive batches of Sputnik V, saying it did not have the data needed to verify the jab’s safety and efficacy.

Negotiations were difficult and the plan got off to a slow start, but Europe’s huge post-coronavirus recovery fund may make its first payments in July.

A daily record of more than 893,000 Covid-19 cases has been recorded worldwide yesterday as US regulators said pharma giant Johnson & Johnson can restart a vaccine rollout paused due to worries over blood clots.