COVID digest: Delhi drops COVID restrictions

Delhi's Disaster Management Authority has announced that all coronavirus-related restrictions will be withdrawn in the Indian capital. The city's Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said in a tweet that the situation has "improved" and people were "facing hardships due to loss of jobs."

People would still have to follow what Kejriwal called "COVID appropriate behavior" like wearing masks, though fines for non-compliance were also reduced on Friday.

Lifting of curbs means shops and markets can operate through to the end of business hours. Night curfew has been lifted, and restaurants, cafes and cinemas can operate at full capacity. Schools reopen fully for classes from April 1 after almost two years, Kejriwal said.

Delhi imposed new restrictions towards the end of December in the wake of the spread of the omicron variant. It recorded 460 COVID cases on Friday, while nationally, India recorded 11,499 new cases and 255 COVID-related deaths on Saturday.

Here are the major coronavirus developments from around the world:

Asia

South Korea reported 112 COVID-related deaths on Saturday, making it the highest number of deaths since the pandemic began. It also reported 166, 209 new cases, almost a 37-fold increase from daily levels in mid-January. Officials expect the COVID surge, driven by the omicron variant, to peak in mid-March, with around 250,000 cases.

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam invoked emergency powers on Thursday in a bid to try to bring the COVID outbreak under control.

The government said in a statement that the city-state was facing a "dire epidemic situation" and that emergency power would exempt persons or projects from "statutory requirements... for containing the fifth wave in a short period of time." The move exempts mainland Chinese nurses and staff from meeting certain legal requirements before working at hospitals in Hong Kong.

Europe

Germany has "no scope for accelerated opening," Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said on Friday. He said the pandemic is not over because daily cases are still high, and called it unacceptable that the country recorded 200-300 deaths every day.

Germany recorded 175,833 new cases and 250 deaths on Saturday, according to data from the Robert Koch Institute public health agency. The total number of cases stands at 14,574,845 and deaths at 122,621.

A number of German states have begun administering the first doses of Novavax vaccine. Around 33,000 shots will be available at first.

Health officials agreed that unvaccinated health care workers should initially be prioritized. Federal authorities are hoping the arrival of the shots will help boost vaccinations in the country.

It's the fifth COVID-19 vaccine to receive approval for persons aged 18 and over and is based on different technology to the mRNA vaccine.

On Saturday, Poland's government said that more than 100,000 Ukrainians had crossed the border over the past 48 hours. A queue of vehicles could be seen stretching for kilometers as people tried to flee the violence since the Russian invasion on Thursday.

Polish authorities said that its border would be open and that a requirement to produce a negative COVID-19 test had been dropped.

"We will help everyone," the Polish Border Agency said in a tweet. "We will not leave anyone without help." 

Americas

The United States eased mask-wearing guidelines on Friday, depending on whether people were deemed to be at low, medium, or at high risk of contracting the disease, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said. Authorities have shifted focus to the rate of hospitalization rather than transmission of the disease. 

"We're in a stronger place today as a nation with more tools to protect ourselves and our community from COVID-19," CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told a media briefing on Friday.

People on planes, trains or buses still have to wear their masks until the CDC reviews those requirements in the coming weeks.

rm/kb (Reuters, AP)