The latest:
- How international students heading to Canada are navigating pandemic travel.
- Rev. Jesse Jackson and wife hospitalized for COVID-19.
- Why giving COVID-19 booster shots to everyone in Canada is hard to justify.
- How will COVID-19 change voting in Canada? Your questions answered.
- U.S. talk radio host who was vaccine skeptic dies after being hospitalized with COVID.
- Iran reports its highest single-day COVID-19 death toll with 684 deaths.
- Have a coronavirus question or news tip for CBC News? Email: [email protected].
New Zealand recorded 21 new cases of COVID-19 on Sunday, as the current community outbreak of the highly transmissible delta variant continues to grow, bringing infections associated with the outbreak to 72, health officials said.
Of the 21 new cases, 20 are in Auckland, the largest city, and one is in the capital Wellington. Five people were in hospital, but no one was in intensive care.
The Pacific nation of 5.1 million is under a strict lockdown until midnight on Tuesday as the outbreak has widened beyond the two key cities.
COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said that about a million people have been fully vaccinated in New Zealand, after more than 50,000 doses of the vaccine were given on Saturday.
“We continue to deliver incredible numbers we can be proud of,” he said.
Until the current outbreak, however, New Zealand’s vaccination pace was the slowest among the wealthy nations of the OECD grouping, with only a fifth of the population fully vaccinated.
The country has recorded just 2,660 confirmed coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic and 26 related deaths, according to the Health Ministry.
In neighbouring Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Sunday the country will stick to its lockdown strategy until at least 70 per cent of its population is fully vaccinated, but after that it will have to start living with the virus.
The country set a record with 914 infections, its highest daily figure, as the southern and eastern states of New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory remain under a strict lockdown.
“You can’t live with lockdowns forever, and at some point you need to make that gear change, and that is done at 70 per cent,” Morrison said in a television interview on the Australian Broadcasting Corp’s Insiders program.
About 60 per cent of the population of 25 million is now under lockdown. Stay-at-home orders, often lasting for months, have taxed the patience of many.
Police in the most populous state of New South Wales said they handed out 940 fines in the past 24 hours for breaches of public health orders, while media said several hundred people gathered to protest Sunday curbs at the Queensland state border.
This follows hundreds of arrests made by police on Saturday during anti-lockdown demonstrations in Sydney and Melbourne.
About 30 per cent of Australians older than 16 have been fully vaccinated, Health Ministry data showed on Saturday. This is mainly because the Pfizer vaccine is in short supply and the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine provokes public unease.
Despite a third wave of infections from the delta variant, Australia’s COVID-19 numbers are relatively low, with just under 44,000 cases and 981 deaths.
What’s happening across Canada
![](https://thumbnails.cbc.ca/maven_legacy/thumbnails/765/779/BORDER-CLOSED-US-NICHOLSON-200821.jpg?crop=1.777xh:h;*,*&downsize=510px:* 510w")
Still no luck for Canadians hoping to cross the U.S. border after Washington extends the order to keep it closed until at least Sept. 21. But with fully vaccinated Americans free to cross into Canada, where COVID-19 is under better control, some on both sides are losing what little patience they have left. 1:56
What’s happening around the world
As of Sunday morning, more than 211.4 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide. According to the Johns Hopkins University tracking database, more than 4.4 million deaths had been reported worldwide.
In the Americas, a conservative talk radio host from Tennessee, who had been a vaccine skeptic until he was hospitalized from COVID-19, has died. He was 61.
Nashville radio station SuperTalk 99.7 WTN confirmed Phil Valentine’s death in a tweet on Saturday.
Valentine had been a skeptic of coronavirus vaccines. But after he tested positive for COVID-19, and prior to his hospitalization, he told his listeners to consider, “If I get this COVID thing, do I have a chance of dying from it?” If so, he advised them to get vaccinated. He said he chose not to get vaccinated because he thought he probably wouldn’t die.
After Valentine was moved into a critical care unit, his brother Mark said the talk radio host regretted that “he wasn’t a more vocal advocate of the vaccination.”
“I know if he were able to tell you this, he would tell you, ‘Go get vaccinated. Quit worrying about the politics. Quit worrying about all the conspiracy theories,'” Mark Valentine told The Tennessean on July 25.
“He regrets not being more adamant about getting the vaccine. Look at the dadgum data,” Mark Valentine said.
In Africa, Togo has recorded only 56 COVID-19 infections in health workers since the end of May, after the vast majority of the country’s health workers received their vaccine second dose, says the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Africa (WHO AFRO).
<a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/Togo?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#Togo</a>???????? has vaccinated over 90% of health workers against <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/COVID19?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#COVID19</a>. ????????????????????????<br> <br>This has seen a significant reduction in the number of health workers being infected with COVID-19, bolstering the country’s response to the pandemic. <a href=”https://t.co/SybvP1mkzg”>https://t.co/SybvP1mkzg</a>
—@WHOAFRO
Health personnel were identified among the priority groups when Togo launched its COVID-19 vaccination campaign on March 10. A total of 33,090 of them — almost 95 per cent of the country’s health workers — got their first dose between March 11 and 13, WHO AFRO says. A total of 30,867 of those caregivers, or about 93 per cent, received their second dose between May 18 and 21.
In Asia, Iran has reported its highest single-day COVID-19 death toll of the pandemic, according to state media. The official IRNA news agency said Sunday that 684 people had died of the disease since Saturday, while more than 36,400 new cases were confirmed over the same 24-hour period.
A five-day lockdown in the country ended on Saturday. Iran is struggling to vaccinate its population against the coronavirus, with some seven per cent of Iranians fully vaccinated.
In Europe, thousands marched on Saturday in cities across France to protest the COVID-19 health pass that is now required to access restaurants and cafés, cultural venues, sports arenas and long-distance travel. For a sixth straight Saturday, opponents denounced what they see as a restriction of their freedom.
Have questions about this story? We’re answering as many as we can in the comments.
