Tens of thousands of workers belonging to South Korea’s largest umbrella labor union rallied on the streets of downtown Seoul, defying a city government ban on their gathering. 

The White House chief of staff suggests that the Biden administration has had “a rough and tough year,” an idea projected in the the president’s decline in national polls, further asserting that the vaccine mandates will prevail despite opposition by most of the Republicans.

Russia has reported a record number of daily coronavirus cases.

The chief executive of the American pharmaceutical industry company Pfizer Inc. has warned poor countries to “place orders” soon.

Russian officials reported 40,251 new infections on Saturday, exceeding the previous record 40,096 reported on Thursday. They also added that 1,160 people died of the virus on Saturday, three fewer than the record set on Friday.

This weekend, countries accountable for 80 percent of the global economy gathered in Rome for the G20 summit.

US intelligence agencies said on Friday they may never be able to identify the origins of COVID-19.

The impact of Brexit on the UK economy will be worse in the long run compared to the Covid pandemic, according to the chairman of the UK fiscal watchdog.

Protests over the compulsoriness of a vaccine passport in workplaces have continued across Italy. The last of these were staged in Trieste where dockers joined by the general population held an anti-green pass rally.

The British government’s flagship test-and-trace system has failed to cut infection levels in spite of receiving an “eye-watering” £37bn in taxpayers’ cash, a highly-critical report from MPs has said.