$20.6b fund to aid mothers, the young

UNITED NATIONS－A global alliance of more than 1,000 organizations has announced $20.6 billion in pledges to help women, newborns, young children and adolescents deal with the COVID-19 pandemic as well as long-standing issues.

The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, hosted by the World Health Organization, says $16.1 billion represents new commitments to deal with COVID-19, $2.2 billion is new money not linked to the coronavirus, and $2.3 billion is new funding for existing programs.

The announcement of the pledges last week coincided with other bright news on COVID-19: in Britain a vaccine is now being administered, and in the United States official approval was given for the same.

For the global alliance, low-and middle-income countries including Afghanistan, India, Kenya, Liberia and Nigeria pledged a total of $6.6 billion, and $14 billion came from international aid and grants from Canada, Germany Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Bill& Melinda Gates Foundation, the partnership said. The pledges were announced on Thursday and Friday.

On Sunday the world had more than 71.8 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, and more than 1.6 million people had died after contracting the disease, Johns Hopkins University said.

Faced with surging case numbers, some countries have adopted more stringent control measures.

Germany will close most stores from Wednesday until at least Jan 10, cutting short the busy Christmas shopping season, as it tightens coronavirus restrictions and tries to rein in the spread of the disease, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday.

"I would have wished for lighter measures. But due to Christmas shopping the number of social contacts has risen considerably," Merkel told journalists following a meeting with leaders of the country's 16 federal states.

In Spain, more than 1,000 Barcelona residents eager for a live music show after months of social distancing gathered on Saturday to participate in a medical study to evaluate the effectiveness of same-day coronavirus screening to safely hold cultural events.

Stricter measures delayed

Japan's daily coronavirus cases exceeded 3,000 for the first time, but the government is delaying stricter measures for fear of hurting the economy before the holiday season. The 3,030 new cases took Japan's national tally to 177,287 with 2,562 deaths, the Health Ministry said on Sunday.

Experts say serious cases are on the rise around the country, putting a burden on hospitals and affecting the daily medical treatment for other patients.

South Korea's President Moon Jae-in warned on Sunday that COVID-19 restrictions may be raised to the highest level after a second day of record increases in cases as the country battles a harsh third wave of infections.

"Unless the outbreak can be contained now, it has come to the critical point of considering escalating social-distancing measures to the third level," Moon said, referring to the tightest curbs under the country's five-tier system.

South Korea reported 1,030 new coronavirus infections on Sunday after 950 the previous day,

Bahrain said on Sunday that it approved the use of a Chinese coronavirus vaccine, following its earlier approval of a vaccine made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.

Pakistan has increased its funds allocation for buying COVID-19 vaccines amid a surge in the coronavirus. On Saturday, it had 3,369 new cases and 72 new deaths.

Agencies - Xinhua