Indonesia will receive at least two million doses of a coronavirus vaccine produced by China’s Sinopharm for use in a private vaccination scheme due to run alongside a national inoculation programme according to a minister, Reuters reports.

Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, Indonesia’s minister for maritime affairs and investment, said the China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) vaccine would be part of the private scheme.

“What’s fixed is two million [doses]. Three million is our hope [...] we will vaccinate employees in stages,” he told an economic forum.

France said it would bring in new Covid-19 restrictions for the area around its common border with Germany, as President Emmanuel Macron’s government tries to contain a surge of coronavirus variants in the French region of Moselle, Reuters reports.

Homeworking in the area will also be reinforced, after France and Germany said earlier this week they were trying to find ways to prevent a closure of their common border.

Joint France-German police patrols could be stepped up, ministries said, adding that France’s vaccination programme in the region was also being sped up and testing would be boosted.

South Korean politicians won’t be the first in line when the county kicks off its coronavirus vaccination drive on Friday, despite calls from the opposition party for the president to roll up his sleeve and take a shot to reassure vaccine sceptics, Reuters reports.

Leading political figures spent the week trading rhetorical shots over who should be the first to take a literal jab, but in the end, health authorities said widespread acceptance of vaccines in South Korea means they would stick to plans to vaccinate healthcare workers and other at-risk individuals first.

The first doses of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine were distributed to clinics in preparation for the initial inoculations.

Islamabad, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan have collectively reported 216 coronavirus cases and three deaths during the last 24 hours.

Breakdown of deaths and cases recorded:

• Islamabad: 148 cases
• AJK: 67 cases, 3 deaths
• GB: 1

Punjab has reported 583 coronavirus cases and 39 deaths during the last 24 hours.

The total has risen to 169,474 while the death toll is 5,308.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has recorded 208 coronavirus cases and eight deaths during the last 24 hours. The total has risen to 71,490 while the death toll is 2,058.

Meanwhile, Balochistan reported six more cases. The provincial tally has risen to 19,010 while the death toll remains 199.

Pakistan has reported 1,681 coronavirus recoveries during the last 24 hours, according to the government's portal for tracking the spread of the disease in the country.

The total has risen to 539,888 while the recovery rate is 93.7 per cent.

The Tokyo Olympic Organising Committee said they could suspend the upcoming torch relay should big gatherings raise coronavirus infection risks, asking spectators to support by clapping, Reuters reported.

The toned-down torch relay, which will begin on March 25 and travel through Japan, will be broadcast live to avoid gatherings on streets, Yukihiko Nunomura, senior executive at Tokyo 2020, told a media briefing.

He said the organisers had put off a decision whether to proceed with the relay in Tochigi prefecture, initially scheduled for late March, because the prefecture has called for unnecessary outdoor activities to be scrapped amid the pandemic.

A new coronavirus variant that shares some similarities with a more transmissible and intractable variant discovered in South Africa is on the rise in New York City, researchers said.

The new variant, known as B.1.526, was first identified in samples collected in New York in November, and by mid-February represented about 12 per cent of cases, researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, said.

The variant was also described in research published online this week by the California Institute of Technology. Neither study has been reviewed by outside experts, Reuters reported.

The Columbia researchers said an analysis of publicly available databases did not show a high prevalence of coronavirus variants recently identified in South Africa and Brazil in case samples from New York City and surrounding areas.