COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 25 August

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 213.2 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths stands at more than 4.45 million. More than 5 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.

Sydney's daily COVID-19 infections have hit a record high, putting parts of the healthcare system under pressure.

Japan is set to expand a state of emergency to eight more prefectures, bringing the total to 21, the minister in charge of coronavirus countermeasures said today.

New US data shows an increase in 'breakthrough' infections among fully vaccinated individuals. However, the vaccine did protect against severe illness in almost all cases.

Indonesia has granted emergency use approval to Russia's Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine.

The US will donate 1 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to Viet Nam, Vice President Kamala Harris told Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh during a meeting in Hanoi.

The US also shipped just over 3 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to Pakistan yesterday via COVAX, a White House official said.

The European Medicines Agency has approved additional manufacturing sites for mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna in an effort to boost production.

COVID-19 deaths in Iran hit a record daily high of 709 on Tuesday. 40,623 new infections were also reported, bringing total confirmed cases to 4.75 million.

Britain recorded 174 new COVID-19 deaths on Tuesday - the highest tally since 12 March.

The French health watchdog has backed COVID-19 booster shots for those aged over 65 and those with existing medical conditions.

Greece has said it will end free testing for unvaccinated people, in a bid to encourage people to get inoculated.

The United States could get COVID-19 under control by spring next year if vaccinations ramp up, Dr Anthony Fauci, the country's top infectious disease expert, said yesterday.

The Food and Drug Administration's full approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine paves the way for more people to get vaccinated, he said, adding there's potential for approval of the Moderna shot in the coming weeks.

"I would like to appeal to the people in the country who are not vaccinated to realize that we have the capability, among ourselves, to essentially cut down the time frame to getting to the end of this pandemic," Fauci, head of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a press conference.

"I think there's a reasonable chance" that Pfizer or Moderna could get FDA clearance for children under 12 before the upcoming holiday season, he told NBC News. "Hopefully by the mid-late fall and early winter."

People infected with the Delta variant have a viral load 300 times higher than those with the original COVID-19 virus, when symptoms are first observed, a South Korean study has reported.

But this amount decreases over time - to 30 times in four days, over 10 times in nine days and it matched levels seen in other variants after 10 days, Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said.

This higher load means the virus spreads more easily from person to person - increasing infections and hospitalizations.

"But it doesn't mean Delta is 300 times more infectious... we think its transmission rate is 1.6 times the Alpha variant, and about two times the original version of the virus," health ministry official Lee Sang-won said.