Russia's Covid-19 death toll hits record high, Delta variant hits Cambodia

According to the 6:00 a.m. update on June 30 from the global statistics site Worldometers, the pandemicCovid-19continues to rage in 220 countries and territories, infecting more than 182.5 million people and killing more than 3.95 million. The number of recoveries reached more than 167.1 million cases.

Brazil leads the world in the rate of deadly SARS-CoV-2 infection, adding about 65,000 new cases to the total of over 18.5 million infected people, and adding 1,783 victims to the total of nearly 516,000 deaths.

With 45,700 new positive cases and 816 deaths recorded in the past day, India has now had more than 30.36 million infections and nearly 398,500 deaths from Covid-19.

Covid-19 deaths in Russia hit record high

The epidemic situation in Russia continues to be complicated, as the country recorded 652 more deaths from Covid-19 on June 29, the highest level since the outbreak.

The Russian government's Covid-19 response committee also reported 20,616 new infections, bringing the number of people infected and killed by Covid-19 in the country to 5,493,557 and 134,545, respectively.

According to official figures, the city of St. Petersburg recorded 119 Covid-19 deaths, a record daily high.

Japan sends more vaccines to Southeast Asia

The Japanese government announced on June 29 that it will provide about 1 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine each to Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand starting this week.

Tokyo plans to send doses of British drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc's vaccine to Malaysia and Indonesia on July 1, and to the Philippines and Thailand on July 8 and July 9, respectively.

With this decision, Japan has so far provided Covid-19 vaccines to 6 countries and territories in the region, including Vietnam. It is expected that on July 1 and 8, a total of about 1 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines provided by Japan will be delivered to Vietnam by air.

South Korea issues 3 types of Covid-19 vaccination certificates

South Korean authorities plan to issue three different types of Covid-19 vaccination certificates after the government eased anti-epidemic measures for those who have received the vaccine from this weekend.

Those who have received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine will be issued a certificate on a mobile device or in other forms to prove their vaccination history, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) announced.

The written certificate, which will state information such as the name of the vaccine and the date of vaccination, can be issued at community service centres nationwide from July 1.

Digital certificates are generated through COOV, a mobile application available on Google's Android and Apple's iOS devices.

Additionally, the authority will issue a written certificate that can be attached directly to the identification card, primarily for the elderly population who are not familiar with mobile applications.

Cambodia has dozens of cases of Delta variant infection

According to the announcement of the Cambodian Ministry of Health, as of June 29, Cambodia has detected 22 cases of infection with the Delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This is an important warning because Delta is a variant that spreads quickly, even among young people, and reduces the effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccine.

Cambodia's Ministry of Health also requested to strengthen measures to prevent the Delta variant from spreading further, especially as more Cambodian citizens who have lost their jobs in Thailand are looking to return home.

In Phnom Penh, the outbreak at Boeung Keng Kang market in the capital city has flared up again, with more than 100 traders testing positive for Covid-19. Authorities have decided to close the market for two weeks, and predict that the number of infections could increase if testing is expanded.

To date, there have been 49,255 infections and 575 deaths from Covid-19 in Cambodia.