World Coronavirus Dispatch: Belarus jails packed with critics and virus

Hong Kong's public sceptical of Chinese vaccines, Sri Lanka's anti-burial rules fan minority ire, AstraZeneca chief feels vaccine will work on variant and other pandemic-related news across the globe

More countries find cases of the new virus variant

More and more countries are starting to detect infections of new coronavirus variant, that was first found UK. Canada, Sweden, Japan, France and Spain are the latest countries to report cases of the new strain. The new variant can spread more efficiently, causing more infections than the original one and has the potential to overwhelm hospital systems. There is no evidence as yet to know if it is more dangerous. Countries are stepping up their genomic sequencing surveillance to detect new mutations that might have developed even within their borders.