Authorities in Ho Chi Minh City imposed a two-week period of social distancing on Monday following a steep rise in community transmission of the coronavirus, while strict measures have been enforced in northern provinces that have seen hundreds of cases in industrial parks.

Park said suppressing transmission as quickly as possible and offering vaccinations remains critical to reducing the risk of worsening outbreaks.

“Even though Vietnam did an excellent job in controlling the outbreak last year, Covid-19 remains a threat to the country,” Park said. “The pandemic will not be over anywhere until it is over everywhere.”

Vietnam has officially recorded 7,972 coronavirus cases and 49 deaths since the pandemic began.

Indonesia cancels haj

Indonesia has cancelled the haj pilgrimage for people in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation for a second year in a row due to concerns over the Covid-19 pandemic, the religious affairs minister said on Thursday.

For many Indonesians, the religious pilgrimage is a once-in-a-lifetime event, with the average wait time 20 years due to a quota system, according to the country’s cabinet secretariat.

“Due to the pandemic and for the safety of the pilgrims, the government has decided that this year it won’t allow Indonesian pilgrims to go again,” Minister Yaqut Cholil Qoumas said in a statement.

Yaqut said Saudi Arabia had not opened access to the haj.

“It’s not just Indonesia … no countries have received quotas, because the memorandum of understanding has not been signed,” he said, adding that pilgrims who had paid haj fees will be pilgrims next year.

Saudi Arabia has lifted a ban on travellers arriving from 11 countries that it imposed to curb the spread of coronavirus, the Saudi state news agency said on Saturday, but will still require quarantine procedures.

Before the pandemic enforced social distancing globally, some 2.5 million pilgrims used to visit the holiest sites of Islam in Mecca and Medina for the week-long haj, and the lesser, year-round umrah pilgrimage, which altogether earned the kingdom about $12 billion a year, according to official data.

India to buy 300 million shots from Biological-E

The vaccine, which is currently undergoing phase three clinical trials, is likely to be available in the next few months, the health ministry said in a statement.

Biological-E will run a clinical trial of Providence’s vaccine in India and seek emergency use approval.

India has suffered a disastrous second wave of infections that is only now abating. Health experts India needs to carry out mass vaccination of its 1.3 billion people to reduce the impact of subsequent waves.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has drawn criticism for a slow vaccine roll-out even though India is one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of doses.

India on Thursday added 134,154 new cases, close to the lowest number since April 8, government data showed. The country’s death toll from the pandemic climbed by 2,887 to 337,989.

Pakistani province won’t pay unvaccinated staff

The head of a Pakistani province has ordered that government employees who refuse to be vaccinated against Covid-19 would not be paid from next month.

Sindh chief minister Murad Ali Shah announced the move after meeting with health officials to discuss the first cases of the delta variant detected in the province, which includes the megacity of Karachi.

“Any government employee who is not vaccinated should have their salary stopped from July,” he tweeted, adding that orders had been given to the finance ministry.

A third wave of infections has begun to stabilise in the country after weeks of restrictions on public gatherings, but Sindh province has reported the highest number of cases since the pandemic began.

Pakistan’s initially sluggish vaccination roll-out has been ramped up in recent weeks with more than 200,000 doses administered most days.

But the impoverished country has fully vaccinated only around 2.2 million people – a fraction of its 220 million population.

Misinformation and conspiracy theories about the side effects of the jab have sparked hesitancy in Pakistan, while the requirement to have a mobile phone to register for a shot has proved a barrier for some poor and illiterate citizens. Those in rural areas have also struggled to get access to vaccine centres, most of which are in major cities.

The Sindh salary order mystified employee representatives.

“This is a strange order, as people are very much volunteering and willing to get vaccinated,” said Liaqat Sahi, the secretary general of a labour union at the central State Bank of Pakistan. “Instead the government should … create more vaccination centres, especially in rural areas.”

Melbourne lockdown reduces cases

Australia’s second most populous state has endured four lockdowns since the pandemic begun, the longest running for more than 100 days late last year.

Under mounting pressure and with an election likely within a year, Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday announced a plan to pay up to A$500 (US$387) a week to people in lockdown.

Morrison said the payments would be given to people over the age of 17 who cannot work from home and who have less than A$10,000 in liquid assets.

Australia introduced a wage subsidy scheme at the beginning of the pandemic but it ended in March and the government resisted calls for a temporary reintroduction of the measure.

Snap lockdowns, international and regional border curbs and tough social distancing rules have largely helped Australia keep its Covid-19 figures relatively low, at 30,130 cases and 910 deaths.

But Morrison is being criticised for a slow vaccine roll-out and his refusal to help state governments build quarantine centres, instead of relying on hotel quarantine where some lax security has let the virus spread.

Reporting by dpa, Reuters, Bloomberg, Agence France-Presse