COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 17 August

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 207.8 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths stands at more than 4.37 million. More than 4.72 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.

COVID-19 cases are set to "rise substantially" in Sydney in the coming weeks despite a prolonged lockdown, authorities said on Tuesday. New South Wales state reported 452 cases in the past 24 hours, the third-biggest one-day jump, and one new death.

India administered more than 8.8 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the past 24 hours – close to its all-time record – government data showed on Tuesday. There's also been a sharp decline in daily new infections, which fell to 25,166, the lowest since 16 March, the health ministry said.

The United States had administered 357,292,057 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Monday morning and distributed 415,958,305 doses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Mexico registered 7,172 new COVID-19 infections and 272 more deaths, health ministry data showed on Monday, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 3,108,438 and the death toll to 248,652.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 3,912 to 3,827,051, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Tuesday.

Two feature films dealing with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on peoples' lives and the economy will on Friday open the Sarajevo Film Festival, the largest film showcase in a region spreading from Vienna to Istanbul.

New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern put the nation under strict lockdown on Tuesday after one new case of coronavirus was reported in its largest city of Auckland, the country's first in six months.

All of New Zealand will be in lockdown for three days from Wednesday, Reuters reports, while Auckland and Coromandel, a coastal town that the infected person had also spent time in, will be in lockdown for seven days.

Imposing its toughest lockdown rules, schools, offices and all businesses will be shut down and only essential services will be operational.

"The best thing we can do to get out of this as quickly as we can is to go hard," Ardern told a news conference.

"We have made the decision on the basis that it is better to start high and go down levels rather than to go low, not contain the virus and see it move quickly," she said.

Ardern said authorities were assuming the new case was a Delta variant infection although this has not been confirmed. There may be other cases, she said.

The last reported community case of COVID-19 in New Zealand was in February.

The Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, co-led by the World Health Organization, has appealed for $7.7 billion within the next four months to stem the surge of dangerous COVID-19 variants.

With the highly transmissable Delta variant set to become the dominant strain worldwide, there is greater urgency for vaccinating large numbers of vulnerable people, the WHO said.

The $7.7 billion in funding for the Rapid ACT-Accelerator Delta Response (RADAR) would:

1. Significantly increase testing and better surveillance to detect and protect against new variants

2. Provide more oxygen to treat the seriously ill and save lives

3. Provide more vital PPE to protect health workers

4. Enable the roll-out of emergency response and delivery support for the effective delivery and deployment of COVID-19 tools, including in humanitarian contexts

5. Support continued research and development so that tools remain effective.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, said: "This investment is a tiny portion of the amount governments are spending to deal with COVID-19 and makes ethical, economic and epidemiological sense.

"If these funds aren’t made available now to stop the transmission of Delta in the most vulnerable countries, we will undoubtedly all pay the consequences later in the year.”

The $7.7 billion is not an additional funding need but is part of the ACT-Accelerator’s overall 2021 budget, which is needed urgently within the next four months.