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

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 498.8 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths has now passed 6.17 million. More than 11.37 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.

Authorities in Shanghai say they'll start lifting COVID-19 lockdown restrictions in some areas from today.

India has begun to roll out COVID-19 vaccine booster doses to all adults. However, the free third doses will only be available to frontline workers and those aged over 60 who get them at government centres.

Around one in 13 people in England, Scotland and Wales had COVID-19 in the week beginning 28 March, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Canada will provide CAD220 million ($174.8 million) in additional funding to support COVID-19 vaccination needs in lower-income countries.

A large study of vaccinated Britons has found that disease caused by the Omicron variant lasts on average around two days less than that caused by the Delta variant.

Cyprus will lift COVID-19 travel restrictions from 18 April, ending two years of rules imposed because of the pandemic.

Germany will not end mandatory isolation for most people who catch COVID-19, the health minister said on 6 April, reversing course amid concerns that lifting quarantine restrictions would suggest the pandemic is over. "Coronavirus is not a cold. That is why there must continue to be isolation after an infection," Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said on Twitter.

COVID-19 infections and deaths have fallen in the Americas in recent weeks, the Pan American Health Organization said last week, but adds that the risk of further surges remains.

Spain is set to lift a requirement to wear face masks indoors – except on public transport and in hospitals and retirement homes – from 20 April.

Global vaccine alliance Gavi has secured $4.8 billion in funding pledges for the COVAX vaccine-sharing scheme. This leaves it just short of its $5.2 billion target.

"It is really putting us in a very comfortable position," Marie-Ange Saraka-Yao, Managing Director for Resource Mobilization at Gavi, told a virtual media briefing.

Saraka-Yao said $2.1 billion of the total has come from innovative finance instruments, $1.7 billion from sovereign pledges from individual countries and $1 billion from multilateral development banks.

COVAX has so far delivered 1.42 billion doses to 145 countries. Scaling up deliveries through COVAX is seen as critical to meeting a World Health Organization target to vaccinate 70% of the population in poorer nations by mid-2022.

More than two-thirds of Africans have been infected with COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) study published on 7 April. The figure is 97 times higher than reported confirmed cases.

The study found that by September 2021, 800 million Africans had been exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, compared with 8.2 million cases reported at that time.

The WHO said that under-counting is happening everywhere in the world, but to a lesser degree than in Africa. On average globally, true infections are 16 times higher than confirmed cases, it said.