COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 7 September

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 221.1 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths stands at more than 4.57 million. More than 5.49 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.

Confirmed daily COVID-19 infections have fallen for a third straight day in Sydney, Australia, as the outbreak spurred a rise in vaccination rates in the hard-hit western suburbs.

New Zealand is 'very close' to procuring more COVID-19 vaccines and a deal could be announced this week, according to the country's COVID-19 Response Minister.

Chile's health regulator has approved the use of Sinovac's CoronaVac COVID-19 in children over 6.

Restrictions have been extended in Viet Nam's capital, Hanoi, for a further two weeks. Authorities are launching a mass testing campaign in an effort to try to slow a rise in infections.

Peru has reached an agreement with Russia to install a plant to produce the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine.

The European Medicines Agency is evaluating data on a booster dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, to be administered six months after the second dose.

Denmark has cancelled a previous plan to establish a national COVID-19 vaccine production facility, instead betting on a vaccine already under development by a Danish firm.

The Group of 20 (G20) said yesterday that more efforts were needed to help poor countries vaccinate their populations against COVID-19. However, no new numerical or financial commitments were announced.

"The level of (vaccine) inequality is too high and is not sustainable," Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza told reporters. Italy holds the G20 presidency this year and said the 'Pact of Rome', where the meeting was held on Sunday and Monday, includes a political agreement to share more vaccines and increase support for poor nations.

"If we leave part of the world without vaccines, we risk new variants which will hurt all of us... Our message is very clear: no one must be left behind in the vaccination campaign," Speranza said.

He also said that poorer countries must be helped to produce their own vaccines. "Transferring doses is not enough. We have to make other areas of the world capable of producing, sharing methodologies and procedures," he said.

A new study has shown that booster dose Sinovac Biotech's COVID-19 vaccine reversed a decline in antibody activities against the Delta variant.

The study comes amid concerns about the vaccine's efficacy against Delta, which has become the globally dominant variant.

Neutralising antibody activities against Delta were not detected in samples taken from vaccine recipients six months after they received the second dose of Sinovac's CoronaVac vaccine, according to the study published on Sunday before a peer review.

But recipients of booster shots showed over 2.5-fold higher neutralizing potency against Delta about four weeks after the third dose, compared with the level seen about four weeks after the second shot, researchers from Chinese Academy of Sciences, Furan University, Sinovac, and other Chinese institutions said in the paper.