COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 1 February

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 378.5 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths has now passed 5.67 million. More than 10.08 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.

More than half of Tokyo's hospital beds set aside for COVID-19 patients were occupied on Tuesday, a level that officials have previously flagged as a criterion for requesting a state of emergency. The capital and most of Japan are now under curbs to contain record coronavirus cases driven by the contagious Omicron variant.

The COVID-19 situation at the Beijing Winter Olympics is within the "expected controllable range", despite increasing positive cases being detected, a senior official at China's Olympics Pandemic Prevention and Control Office said on Tuesday. The Organizing Committee has reported 200 COVID cases since 23 January.

The British government said on Monday it planned to revoke mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for health workers in England after warnings that an already-stretched service could face crippling staff shortages. Health minister Sajid Javid said the government would launch a consulation into whether the policy announced in November was still needed.

Russia reported a record daily number of COVID-19 cases on Tuesday as the Omicron variant of coronavirus spread across the country, authorities said. New daily cases jumped to 125,836, up from 124,070 a day earlier. The government coronavirus task force also reported 663 deaths in the past 24 hours.

The US Food and Drug Administration on Monday gave full approval to Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine for people age 18 and older, making it the second fully approved vaccine for the virus. The Moderna vaccine has been authorized for emergency use in the United States since December 2020.

South Africa no longer requires those who test positive for COVID-19 without symptoms to isolate and has also reduced the isolation period for those with symptoms by three days, as the country exits its fourth wave of the coronavirus, a government statement said on Monday.

Indonesia's holiday island of Bali will start welcoming back travellers from all countries later this week, officials said on Monday, more than three months after announcing it was open to selected nationalities.

The BA.2 subvariant of the Omicron coronavirus variant is more transmissible than the more common BA.1 and more able to infect vaccinated people, a Danish study has found.

The study, which analyzed coronavirus infections in more than 8,500 Danish households between December and January, found that people infected with the BA.2 subvariant were roughly 33% more likely to infect others, compared to those infected with BA.1.

Worldwide, the "original" BA.1 subvariant accounts for more than 98% of Omicron cases, but its close cousin BA.2 has quickly become the dominant strain in Denmark, dethroning BA.1 in the second week of January.

The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, was conducted by researchers at Statens Serum Institut (SSI), Copenhagen University, Statistics Denmark and Technical University of Denmark.

BA.2 cases have also been registered in the United States, Britain, Sweden and Norway, but to a much lesser extent than in Denmark, where it accounts for roughly 82% of cases.

Discarded syringes, used test kits and old vaccine bottles from the COVID-19 pandemic have piled up to create tens of thousands of tonnes of medical waste, threatening human health and the environment, a World Health Organization report said on Tuesday.

The material, a portion of which could be infectious since coronavirus can survive on surfaces, potentially exposes health workers to burns, needle-stick injuries and disease-causing germs, the report said.

Communities close to poorly managed landfills can also be affected through contaminated air from burning waste, poor water quality or disease-carrying pests, it added.

The report calls for reform and investment including through the reduction in the use of packaging that has caused a rush for plastic and the use of protective gear made from reusable and recyclable materials.

It estimates that some 87,000 tonnes of personal protective equipment (PPE), or the equivalent of the weight of several hundred blue whales, has been ordered via a UN portal up until November 2021 - most of which is thought to have ended up as waste.