Caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan on Sunday signed a “final agreement” with the Pfizer company for securing more than 2.1 million Covid-19 vaccines that will begin gradually arriving in Lebanon as of early February, his press office said.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has asked caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan to move a donated Qatari field hospital from the Tyre region to the Rafik Hariri University Hospital or the Camille Chamoun Sports City Stadium, Hassan’s press office said.

Officials sought to ease concerns in Europe on Sunday about deliveries of coronavirus vaccines as nations across the world doubled down on restrictions to fight the rampaging pandemic.

US President-elect Joe Biden announced Friday he would surge federal resources into making "thousands" of vaccine sites, while also deploying mobile clinics and expanding the public health workforce to accelerate the rollout of Covid-19 shots.

Mexico reeled Thursday from its worst week of the pandemic yet, with deaths averaging nearly 1,000 a day and a health system that was close to reaching a breaking point.

Amazonas state in northern Brazil on Thursday announced a 10-day curfew to try to slow the spread of the coronavirus, as cases soar and hospitals run out of beds and oxygen.

Germany's total coronavirus cases topped two million on Friday, as Chancellor Angela Merkel pushed for a "significant" tightening of restrictions to slow the infection rate.

The number of people inoculated in Israel for coronavirus passed the two million threshold Thursday, with the prime minister saying there was "light at the end of the tunnel."

The French government will impose a daily nationwide curfew at 6 pm starting Saturday to combat a worrying increase in Covid-19 cases, Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Thursday.

A full lockdown started in Lebanon Thursday, with residents barred even from grocery shopping and dependent on food deliveries, in a bid to slow a surge in novel coronavirus cases.

The new restrictions were only loosely respected in some areas of the country, however, after mass protests in recent years against a political elite held responsible for a deepening economic crisis.