Sindh has reported 668 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours — up from 616 a day earlier, taking the provincial tally to 329,947, according to an update from Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah's office.

Moreover, 19 more people succumbed to the virus, taking the death toll to 5,292.

A total of 13,755 Covid-19 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha has said Thailand will fully reopen to visitors within 120 days after more than a year of coronavirus travel restrictions, a calculated risk required to support the economy, Reuters reported.

Thailand was ahead of target in securing 105.5 million doses of coronavirus vaccine for this year, and would seek more supplies next year, Prayuth said, according to a transcript of a recorded televised speech provided by his office.

The Ministry of Health and Sports in Myanmar has announced detection of three new variants of the Covid-19 in five cities across the nation, according to Bloomberg.

Laboratory tests conducted by the Defence Service Medical Research Center under the Ministry of Defence reported 11 cases of new Covid variants including one in commercial capital Yangon, four in its second biggest city Mandalay, three in southern Myeik, two in northwestern Tamu and one in Kalay near the Myanmar-India border.

“In terms of mutated strain, we have found out from the tests that two people were infected with Alpha variant, five with Delta variant, and four with Kappa,” the ministry said in a statement. It also added that one of the newly infected is a Yangon resident who returned from abroad.

Germany will not extend beyond the end of June a rule which forces companies to allow working from home because of the coronavirus pandemic, Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief of staff was quoted as saying.

After first introducing a working from home obligation in January, the measure was anchored in “emergency brake” legislation that allows the government to impose lockdown measures if infections rise beyond certain thresholds.

As coronavirus infection numbers are sinking, the home office rule does not need to be extended on June 30, when the emergency law regulating the lockdown expires, Helge Braun, Merkel's chief of staff, told the WirtschaftsWoche weekly.

“The emergency brake will not be extended at this time because we have a favourable situation at the moment,” Braun said.

Striking a blow for China's so-called vaccine diplomacy, state media have mocked the United States for calling attention to its donation of 80 vials of Covid-19 vaccines to Trinidad and Tobago.

“Would this be selected for the Worst Public Relations Award of the Year?” the official Xinhua news agency said in an article on WeChat, which compiled more than 10 mocking tweets by other social media users under a US embassy Twitter statement announcing the donation.

Chinese state media outlets including the Global Times and China Daily took delight at the sarcastic comments generated by the embassy tweet.

“Little was given, but much was spoken on it,” Xinhua said.

Authorities in Moscow will make vaccination against Covid-19 compulsory for 60 per cent of employees in the services sector, a decree stated, as coronavirus cases continued to tick up in the Russian capital.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the coronavirus situation in the city was developing dramatically and urged people to get vaccinated in an effort to drive down hospitalisations and deaths.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany have increased by 1,455 to 3,717,625, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases shows, according to Reuters.

The reported death toll has risen by 137 to 90,074, the tally shows.

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc's Covid-19 antibody cocktail reduces deaths in hospitalised patients who have not mounted their own antibody response, a large British study has found.

The therapy, REGEN-COV, has been granted emergency use authorisation for people with mild-to-moderate Covid-19 in the US, but results from the recovery trial provide the clearest evidence of its effectiveness among hospitalised patients.

It has found that the antibody therapy reduces by a fifth the 28-day mortality of people admitted to hospital with Covid-19 whose immune system has not mounted an antibody response, known as seronegative.

The result translates into six fewer deaths for every 100 seronegative patients treated with the therapy, researchers say, Reuters reports.

Like many other twenty-somethings in India, Beverly Coutinho kept postponing buying a life insurance policy, until a surge in Covid-19 cases and deaths made her confront her own mortality.

"I saw people my own age dying, which prompted me to get life insurance immediately," says Coutinho, a 24-year-old senior executive at a public relations agency in Mumbai.

When a devastating second wave of the pandemic peaked in India during April and May, the numbers of people aged between 25 and 35 buying term insurance was 30 per cent higher than in the previous three months combined, said PolicyBazaar, India's largest online insurance aggregator.

"The current pandemic has led to higher awareness around the need for financial protection and the inadequacy of the current insurance coverage," Niraj Shah, chief financial officer of HDFC Life Insurance, said.

Read the full story at Reuters here.

China has tripled its daily Covid-19 vaccine rollout in June, inoculating 44 per cent of its population with at least one dose, but its health experts warn against a quick border reopening, citing an uneven rollout and the low rate of full vaccinations.

China rolled out 17.3 million doses per day in June on average, up sharply from 4.8 million in April, as it expanded the list of approved vaccines to seven by adding three more locally-developed shots, and continued to boost production. But the rollout has been uneven.

By the first week of June, major cities of Beijing and Shanghai fully inoculated nearly 70 per cent and 50 per cent of their residents respectively, but the rate in Guangdong and Shandong provinces remained below 20 per cent.

Read the full Reuters story here.