The world faces around 4,000 variants of the virus that causes Covid-19, prompting a race to improve vaccines, Britain said yesterday, as researchers began to explore mixing doses of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca shots in a world first.

Covid-19 vaccine nationalism is harmful for all, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Tuesday, and said weak cooperation between nations is a major barrier to achieving worldwide vaccination at the scale needed to end the coronavirus pandemic.

Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen yesterday said the conviction of lawmaker Mohammad Shahid Islam alias Kazi Papul is a matter of sadness and shame for the country.

A one-off tax on Argentina’s richest people to help pay for medical supplies and relief for small businesses battered by the global coronavirus pandemic entered into force on Friday.

The closing of Panama’s border due to Covid has stranded a thousand migrants -- most from Haiti and Cuba -- in Colombia, as they had planned to sneak across on their way to the United States, officials said Thursday.

Border restrictions were being tightened around the world yesterday in the face of an unrelenting coronavirus threat, after a weekend in which anger at social distancing rules bubbled over into fiery clashes in the Netherlands.

Most pledges made by the mayoral aspirants of the two major parties -- Awami League and BNP -- in their manifestos for the January 27 Chattagram City Corporation election are beyond the legal and financial mandates of a mayor, experts said.

Amnesty International yesterday expressed deep concern over the recent arbitrary detention and other forms of harassment of artists who are facing increasing attacks on their right to freedom of expression in Bangladesh.

Five people died as a fire tore through a building in the world’s biggest vaccine manufacturing hub in India yesterday, but the company insisted the production of drugs to counter the coronavirus pandemic would continue.

The UK coronavirus strain has spread to at least 60 countries, the World Health Organization reported yesterday, as 1.6 million residents were banned from leaving Beijing after two cases linked to the new strain were found in the Chinese capital.

More than 600 people have been arrested and troops have been deployed after a third consecutive night of riots in several Tunisian cities, officials said yesterday.

Slovakia yesterday began a new round of nationwide Covid-19 screening -- a process aimed at easing curfew restrictions for people who test negative.

The global Covid-19 vaccination drive gained pace yesterday as Brazil gave its first injections and France and Britain joined a growing list of nations starting mass vaccinations for all elderly citizens.

The European Union started the approval process for its third vaccine yesterday after WHO scientists warned that herd immunity from coronavirus was unlikely this year even with mass inoculation schemes.

Worldwide coronavirus cases surpassed 90 million yesterday, as nations around the globe raced to dose millions of people and extend or reinstate lockdowns to fight new coronavirus variants.

Cuba will test its most advanced Covid vaccine candidate, in Iran, the research center that developed it announced on Saturday.

The daily number of new coronavirus cases has doubled in China, prompting tougher movement restrictions and, in the capital, passengers must scan a health code before boarding a cab or ride-hailing car, officials said yesterday.

Awami League General Secretary Obaidul Quader’s younger brother Abdul Quader Mirza yesterday said Awami League men were calling him insane because he spoke against corruption and misdeeds by many leaders of the party.

The world’s poorest countries can expect to start receiving their first Covid-19 vaccine doses between the end of January and mid-February, the World Health Organization said Thursday.

World Health Organization experts warned Wednesday there could be six months of “hard, hard road ahead” in 2021 before vaccines turn the tide against the coronavirus pandemic.