The UK government on Sunday vowed to offer a first coronavirus vaccine dose to every adult by the end of July, as it readied to announce a gradual easing of its third lockdown.

More than 200 million coronavirus vaccine doses have been administered in at least 107 countries and territories, according to an AFP count based on official sources Saturday.
In total 201,042,149 doses had been given worldwide by 1000 GMT -- a figure that does not include the latest data from China and Russia, who have stopped making their progress public in recent days.

Moscow announced Saturday it had registered its third vaccine against the coronavirus and promised to introduce the jab to the Russian population by March.

Britain has circulated a draft resolution to members of the UN Security Council calling on rich countries to donate doses of the Covid-19 vaccine to poorer and war-torn states, according to a text of the draft seen by AFP Friday.

The European Union will announce it is doubling its contribution to the Covax global Covid-19 vaccination programme to one billion euros ($1.2 billion) at a G7 meeting Friday, a European source said.

Thirty-one people have died in an outbreak of plague that erupted in northeastern DR Congo three months ago, health officials and experts said on Friday.

French President Emmanuel Macron has proposed that rich Western countries transfer 3-5 percent of their stock of Covid-19 vaccines to Africa, in an interview with the Financial Times published on Thursday.

Africa on Thursday recorded more than 100,000 deaths from Covid-19, a grim milestone likely to understate the real toll, as the continent of 1.2 billion people battles a second wave of infections.

In a Lebanese textile workshop, Umm Omar recalled making school uniforms and holiday garments -- before surging coronavirus cases forced her into the grim business of body bags.

The UK variant of the coronavirus is spreading rapidly in Germany, where it now accounts for more than one in five cases, German Health Minister Jens Spahn said Wednesday.
