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

1. How COVID-19 is affecting the globe

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have now passed 124.8 million globally, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. The number of confirmed deaths stands at more than 2.74 million. More than 475.61 million vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.

The Finnish government has proposed locking down residents of five cities, including the capital Helsinki, for the first time in the pandemic, and only allowing people to leave their homes for limited reasons, to curb rising coronavirus infections and hospitalizations.

Israel has administered two doses of COVID-19 vaccine to more than half its 9.3 million population, its health minister said on Thursday, a rapid roll-out that has helped the country begin emerging from pandemic closures.

India added 53,476 COVID-19 infections overnight, the highest daily rise since Oct. 23, the health ministry data showed on Thursday. This brings India's total to 11.8 million COVID-19 cases, the third-highest amount behind the United States and Brazil.

This comes with the discovery of a new variant in India, found in 15%-20% of the samples found in the Maharashtra region, according to a statement from the Health Ministry.

The number of new confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany jumped on Thursday by 22,657 to 2.713 million, the biggest increase since Jan. 9 as the country struggles to agree measures to contain the third wave of the pandemic.

AstraZeneca said its COVID-19 vaccine was 76% effective in a new analysis of its U.S. trial. The latest data was based on 190 infections among more than 32,400 participants in the United States, Chile and Peru.

France reported 65,373 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, more than four times the number of cases officially registered the previous day, health ministry data showed.

Brazil passed the grim milestone of 300,000 COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday, as its new health minister Marcelo Queiroga said the government aims to speed up the inoculation drive and pledged to deliver 1 million shots a day.

2. Third wave hits Central and Eastern Europe hard

Hospitals in Hungary are struggling to cope as a third wave of COVID-19 cases is hitting Central and Eastern Europe particularly hard.

This week, Hungary has overtaken the Czech Republic as the country with the world’s highest daily COVID-19 deaths per capita, according to figures from Our World in Data.

Out of a population of nearly 10 million, a total of 18,952 people have died of coronavirus.

Experts have put this down to the spread of the much more contagious virus variant first found in Britain, which accounts for most reported cases now and infects entire families.

“I am asking you to do everything possible to avoid getting infected and avoid having to go to the hospital as hospitals are struggling under an extraordinary burden,” Surgeon General Cecilia Muller told a briefing.

While new infections in the Czech Republic and Slovakia have started to decline, Poland reported a record number of new cases just shy of 30,000 and the government mulled sending patients to different regions to help hospitals cope.

It ordered theatres, shopping malls, hotels and cinemas to close last week as infections rose, but more restrictions loom ahead of the Easter holidays, typically marked by packed church services in the deeply Catholic country.