Here's the latest on the COVID-19 pandemic from around the world.
Europe
Slovakia
Slovakia's hospitals are in a critical situation because of a surge in coronavirus infections and the government will decide on Thursday on tighter restrictions to limit access to services for unvaccinated people, Prime Minister Eduard Heger said.
The country of 5.5 million reported record daily cases of around 6500 in recent days. The health ministry said on Tuesday there were just 20 beds with lung ventilators currently available for new patients as hospitals rushed to re-purpose beds and shipped patients around the country.
"Situation in hospitals is critical," Heger told reporters.
"We need to significantly tighten (restrictions) in the coming three weeks to calm down the situation at hospitals."
Italy
Italy reported 74 coronavirus-related deaths on Tuesday against 44 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 7,698 from 5,144.
Italy has registered 132,893 deaths linked to COVID-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the ninth-highest in the world. The country has reported 4.9 million cases to date.
Patients in hospital with COVID-19 - not including those in intensive care - stood at 3,970 on Tuesday, up from 3,808 a day earlier.
There were 41 new admissions to intensive care units, the same number as the previous day. The total number of intensive care patients increased to 481 from a previous 475.
Some 684,710 tests for COVID-19 were carried out in the past day, compared with a previous 248,825, the health ministry said.
The UK
The United Kingdom reported 37,243 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday compared with 39,705 a day earlier, official daily data showed.
The daily death toll stood at 214 on Tuesday compared with 47 a day earlier, measured by deaths within 28 days of a positive test.
The seven-day total number of cases was up by 14.6 percent compared with the previous seven days, while the seven-day death toll was down by 10.8 percent.
Ireland
Ireland will from Thursday require bars and nightclubs to close early while ramping up the use of booster vaccines in a bid to combat a resurgence in COVID-19 cases in its largely vaccinated population, the governing party said on Tuesday.
Three months ago it announced plans to drop almost all restrictions within weeks, but infection numbers have since increased again to levels close to last January's all-time peak, even though more than 90 percent of adults are now vaccinated.
From Thursday, nightclubs, bars as well as restaurants must close by midnight and workers will be advised to work from home where possible, Prime Minister Micheal Martin's Fianna Fail party said in a Twitter post.
Asia-Pacific
Japan
Japan intends to ease quarantine rules by the end of November for people inoculated with Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine, the Nikkei daily reported on Tuesday.
Japan last week took a first step in its planned phased re-opening of borders, which centres on business travellers.
But that plan's easing of quarantine rules for inbound business travellers did not cover people inoculated with J&J's COVID-19 vaccine.
Americas
United States
New York City's Times Square will once again fill with revelers ringing in the new year on Dec. 31, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Tuesday, but only if they are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
Last year, the still-raging coronavirus pandemic allowed only a handful of invited guests, including essential workers, to witness in person the dropping of the iconic New Year's Eve ball, signaling the start of the new year.
"We can finally get back together again," de Blasio told reporters, touting New York City's recovery after more than a year of pandemic hardship. "It's going to be amazing, it's going to be a joy for this city."
Visitors to the area will be asked to provide proof of vaccination and a valid photo ID, de Blasio said. Security checkpoints will be in place to check documentation of those seeking to enter Times Square for the festivities.
"We will require spectators five and older who are eligible to be fully vaccinated," said Tom Harris, president of the Times Square Alliance. "If you are unable to get vaccinated because of a disability, we will require proof of a negative PCR test within 72 hours."
Masks will be required for those unable to get vaccinated, he added.
Medical developments
No link seen between vaccines and menstrual changes
Many women have reported noticing changes in their menstrual cycle after being vaccinated against COVID-19 but a new study of 1,273 women in the UK found no correlation, according to a report posted on Monday on medRxiv ahead of peer review. The women in the study kept careful records of their cycles and their vaccination dates. "We were unable to detect strong signals to support the idea" that COVID-19 vaccines are linked to changes in timing or flow of women's periods, said Victoria Male from Imperial College London. It is possible that larger studies, or studies in other countries, might find links, she said. "It is important to note that most people who report such a change following vaccination find that their period returns to normal the following cycle." Other studies have found no evidence that the vaccines affect female fertility, Male added.
Safe to get COVID-19 vaccine, flu shot together
It is safe to administer COVID-19 vaccines and flu vaccines to patients at the same time, and doing so might increase vaccination rates, according to a report published on Thursday in The Lancet. Researchers randomly assigned 697 adult volunteers to receive their second dose of either the mRNA vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech or the viral-vector vaccine from AstraZeneca/Oxford, along with one of three influenza vaccines for the 2020-2021 season (FluAd or Flucelvax from Seqirus UK or Flublok from Sanofi) or a placebo. Most reactions to the shots were mild or moderate, and antibody responses to the vaccines were not adversely affected by getting two shots at once, the study found. Giving both vaccines at a single appointment "should reduce the burden on health-care services for vaccine delivery, allowing for timely vaccine administration and protection from COVID-19 and influenza for those in need," the research team concluded.
Lung cancer patients respond well to COVID-19 vaccines
Lung cancer patients may get good protection from mRNA COVID-19 vaccines even while undergoing treatments that suppress the immune system, a small study suggests. From January through July this year, researchers in France administered the vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech to 306 lung cancer patients, 70 percent of whom had recently received immunosuppressive therapies that impair the body's ability to respond to vaccines. Patients with COVID-19 antibodies from a previous infection received only one dose; most patients, however, received both doses, according to a paper released on Monday and scheduled for publication in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology. About 10 percent of the patients failed to develop antibodies in response to the first two doses and received a third dose, which successfully induced antibodies in all but three individuals who also had blood disorders known to impair the effect of the vaccines. The researchers noted that before vaccines, the death rate among lung cancer patients who developed COVID-19 was 30 percent. In this seven-month study, only eight patients, or 2.6 percent of the total, developed mild cases of COVID-19. Because the study was small and not randomized, the investigators called for more research to confirm their findings.
Reuters
