Rasheeda Jaleel lives in fear that she may not be able to feed her seven children as millions of Indian families are forced into poverty by a devastating new coronavirus wave.

Lebanon vaccinated more than 10,000 people on Saturday as part of a day-long vaccine "marathon" organized by the health ministry to ramp up inoculation rates in the crisis-hit country.

A neighborhood in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou has been locked down as officials rush to quell an uptick in cases in the area.

The World Health Organization warned Friday 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.

China hit out at the "dark history" of the U.S. intelligence community Thursday, after President Joe Biden ordered a probe into the Covid-19 origins as the lab-leak theory rebounds and strains relations between the two countries. 

French actors, stage technicians and other members of the performing arts ended a more-than-two-month occupation of the famous Odeon theatre in Paris on Sunday, allowing the show to go on after this week's easing of Covid-19 curbs.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Friday that Berlin would donate 30 million coronavirus vaccine doses to poorer countries this year as part of EU efforts to alleviate the pandemic worldwide.

Cyprus confirmed its first cases Wednesday of the Covid-19 variant behind the acceleration of India's explosive outbreak, detected among four people quarantined upon arrival, the health ministry said.

India on Wednesday reported a record 4,529 coronavirus deaths in a single day even as the number of new cases in its devastating new wave fell.

Singapore will close schools from Wednesday as authorities warned new coronavirus strains such as the one first detected in India were affecting more children in the city-state.