Quarantined fishermen drive New Zealand virus spike

New Zealand has recorded more than 1,500 cases and 25 deaths in a population of almost five million and has been widely praised for its handling of the pandemic.

Brazil's health minister said the country would add the Chinese-made CoronaVac vaccine against Covid-19 to its national immunisation programme, despite a political and diplomatic row over whether to use it.

Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello said the federal government had reached a deal with Sao Paulo state, which is helping test and produce the vaccine, to buy 46 million doses to be administered starting in January.

Brazil, a country of 212 million people, has registered 5.3 million cases and 155,000 deaths from the novel coronavirus.

The number of daily coronavirus deaths in Ukraine has jumped to 141 from the previous record of 113 deaths registered yesterday, the national security council said.

The council also reported a record 6,719 new coronavirus cases registered in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number to 315,826 cases with 5,927 deaths.

Ukrainian health minister Maksym Stepanov said the number of coronavirus cases may rise to 8,000-10,000 a day in the coming weeks

Meanwhile, the Czech Republic reported 11,984 new cases of coronavirus yesterday, the highest daily tally on record, as the country is struggling with a surge in recent weeks

The number of people who died due to Covid-19 rose to 1,619 from 1,513 over the past 24 hours in the country of 10.7 million, Health Ministry data showed