The EU’s drug regulator said yesterday that blood clots should be listed as a “very rare” side effect of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine but that the jab’s benefits continue to outweigh the risks.

A senior BBC correspondent yesterday said he had left China, after facing legal threats and pressure from authorities over his reporting on Xinjiang rights abuses and the coronavirus pandemic.

India’s Covid-19 situation is turning from “bad to worse,” a senior government official said yesterday, as infections surge across several states. “Remember if the cases are more, they will eventually overwhelm the system”, senior NITI Aayog Member Vinod Kumar Paul told a news conference.

France, Belgium and Poland yesterday tightened curbs as coronavirus cases surged in Europe while the Philippines prepared for a giant lockdown and Chile confined over 80 percent of its population.

The United Nations has urged a divided world to unite against a virus that ignores all borders, saying the pandemic could delay by a decade its goal to end global inequalities as vaccine diplomacy threatens global inoculation goal.

Misinformation threatens to scuttle Papua New Guinea’s already faltering efforts to bring a severe Covid-19 outbreak under control, with a survey showing one-in-four health workers are reluctant to get vaccinated.

Europe could have herd immunity against Covid-19 by July, a European Union commissioner has said, as incoming jabs are expected to speed up the continent’s sluggish vaccine rollout.

France, Poland, Ukraine and parts of India introduced new lockdown measures yesterday to fight a surge in coronavirus infections, as the European Union threatened to block exports of AstraZeneca jabs in an escalating row over vaccines.

Several European countries resumed AstraZeneca vaccinations yesterday after an all-clear from EU regulators, as US President Joe Biden was set to meet his goal of having 100 million Americans inoculated weeks ahead of schedule.

India and Pakistan reported a big jump in new coronavirus infections yesterday, driven by a resurgence in cases in their richest states, as experts warned that large parts of Europe are at the start of a third coronavirus wave.

The EU’s drugs regulator said yesterday the AstraZeneca vaccine is “safe and effective” and not associated with a higher blood clot risk, after more than a dozen countries paused rollouts over health fears.

President Abdul Hamid has said politics in Bangladesh is now moving in the opposite direction and some opportunists have made politics a profession.

The coronavirus pandemic may have indirectly contributed to around 228,000 additional child deaths in 2020, 11,000 maternal fatalities and 3.5 million unwanted pregnancies in South Asia, the UN said in a report yesterday.

The World Health Organization said yesterday its experts were still reviewing safety data on the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine following concerns around blood clots but recommended that injection programmes continue.

India has conveyed to Bangladesh that any progress on the long-pending Teesta water-sharing issue will be possible only after the completion of the assembly elections in West Bengal.

New York, the US city most bereaved by the coronavirus, paid a moving tribute Sunday to its 30,258 dead, one year after the start of the pandemic.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday that its advisory panel was reviewing reports related to AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine but there was no evidence that any health incidents were caused by the shot.

Pabna-1 lawmaker Samsul Haque Tuku’s son Nafis Sams has allegedly grabbed vast government land beside the Jamuna in the district’s Bera upazila and forcibly removed landless people from the area.

Awami League yesterday nominated Nuruddin Chowdhury Nayan, the party’s Laxmipur district unit general secretary, to contest the Laxmipur-2 by-election.

The Covid-19 pandemic has not only had devastating effects on humans, it has also heavily impacted efforts to safeguard natural ecosystems and habitats around the globe, conservationists warned yesterday.