COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 16 March

1. How COVID-19 is affecting the globe

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have now passed 120.2 million globally, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. The number of confirmed deaths stands at more than 2.66 million. More than 381 million vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.

In a press conference on Monday, World Health Organization (WHO) epidemiologist Maria van Kerkhove, the technical lead on COVID-19, said the world has seen an 11% increase in COVID-19 cases worldwide in the past week. “It is not the time to let up [on measures],” she added.

A new coronavirus variant has been found in a cluster of cases in the Brittany region of France. The French health ministry said that initial analysis did not show this new variant to be more serious or transmissible than others.

India reported 24,492 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, the sixth straight day of more than 20,000 infections. Total cases have now risen to 11.41 million, the highest in the world after the United States and Brazil.

The United States has administered 109,081,860 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Monday morning, and distributed 135,847,835 doses, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

German coronavirus infections are spreading exponentially, up 20% in the last week, an expert at the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases said on Tuesday. On Monday, the number of cases per 100,000 rose to 83, up from 79 on Sunday and 68 a week ago, and the RKI has warned that metric could reach 200 by the middle of next month.

2. WHO Director-General urges vaccine solidarity across the world

WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has urged countries to work together to address access to vaccines.

"The greatest threat that most countries face now is lack of access to vaccines. Almost every day, I receive calls from senior political leaders around the world, asking when their country will receive their vaccines through COVAX," he said during a WHO media briefing Monday.

"We continue to call for all countries to work in solidarity to ensure that vaccination begins in all countries within the first 100 days of this year. We have 26 days left. No country can simply vaccinate its way out of this pandemic alone. We are all in this together."

3. More countries suspend use of AstraZeneca vaccine, WHO gives reassurance

On Tuesday, Sweden and Latvia announced they are pausing the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine as a precautionary measure. They join a number of other European countries, including Germany, France and Italy.

Denmark and Norway stopped giving the shot last week after reporting isolated cases of bleeding, blood clots, and a low platelet count. Iceland and Bulgaria followed, and Ireland and the Netherlands announced suspensions on Sunday.

In the WHO media briefing on Monday, Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan reiterated that there had been no documented deaths linked to COVID-19 vaccines.

“We do not want people to panic,” she said, adding that no association had so far been found between the “thromboembolic events” reported in some countries and COVID-19 shots.

In a statement on Sunday, AstraZeneca reassured people that after a review of over 17 million people vaccinated in the EU and UK, "...there have been 15 events of DVT and 22 events of pulmonary embolism" as of 8 March.

It added that "this is much lower than would be expected to occur naturally in a general population of this size and is similar across other licensed COVID-19 vaccines".