All businesses in Sindh will remain open on Friday and Saturday, May 7 and 8, from 6am to 6pm while adhering to the coronavirus SOPs, provincial Information Minister Syed Nasir Hussain Shah has said.

He said in a statement that the businesses will be closed from Sunday, for which a notification will be issued.

"It is hoped that the public and the business community will follow the SOPs," Shah added.

Health officials in Russia have approved a single-dose version of the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, the developers of the shot said.

The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which helped finance the vaccine, said in a statement that Sputnik Light “demonstrated 79.4 per cent efficacy” compared to 91.6pc for the two-shot Sputnik V.

The results, it said, were drawn from “data taken from 28 days after the injection was administered as part of Russia's mass vaccination programme between 5 December 2020 and 15 April 2021”.

The Russian vaccine has been approved for use in over 60 countries, according to AFP.

German firm BioNTech has said that patent protection for Covid-19 vaccines is not holding back production or supply of the jabs that it developed with Pfizer.

“Patents are not the limiting factor for the production or supply of our vaccine. They would not increase the global production and supply of vaccine doses in the short and middle term,” it told AFP in a statement, in a tacit rejection of a call from the United States to waive patent protections for Covid vaccines.

Rather it was issues ranging from the set up of manufacturing sites to the sourcing of raw materials to the availability of qualified personnel that were holding up the process.

“If any of these requirements is not met, the quality, safety and efficacy of the vaccine cannot be ensured by the manufacturer nor the innovator. This could put the health of the vaccinees at risk,” warned the company.

Sindh has reported 966 new coronavirus cases and seven additional fatalities in the last 24 hours, Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah's office said in a statement.

The province's caseload has risen to 289,646, while the death toll has reached 4,698.

Moreover, 805 people recovered from Covid-19 in the last 24 hours in Sindh, where 13,821 tests were conducted.

Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah has said that all businesses, including grocery shops, will remain closed in the province after 6pm as a precautionary measure to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Restaurants would also not be allowed to offer takeaway after iftar, Shah said in a statement, adding however, that they would be allowed to offer home delivery services.

“We will further tighten enforcement of SOPs after Sunday and close Hawksbay, Sea View and such other recreational facilities for visitors,” he said.

“People do not understand the situation,” the chief minister lamented.

Poland has detected its first three cases of the Brazilian variant of the coronavirus, the health minister said, as the European nation starts to emerge from a third wave of the pandemic.

Poland tightened quarantine rules in May for people travelling from Brazil, India and South Africa after cases of an Indian variant of the virus were detected in the Warsaw and Katowice areas.

The three cases of the Brazilian variant were detected in Poland's southern Silesia region, Health Minister Adam Niedzielski said, according to Reuters.

Poland has so far reported 2,818,378 coronavirus cases and 68,993 deaths.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he supported the idea of a waiver on patent protections for coronavirus vaccines and urged his government to consider lifting them for Russia's jabs.

“We are hearing from Europe an idea that, in my opinion, deserves attention — namely, to remove patent protections from vaccines against Covid-19 altogether,” Putin said during a televised meeting, adding that “Russia would, of course, support such an approach.”