- Doctors in South Korea have been ordered to return to work because of the continued surge in coronavirus cases, after they began a three-day strike on Wednesday over government plans to train more medical students.
- The University of Cambridge is due to start vaccine trials in the autumn after securing government funding.
- More than 23.8 million people around the world have been diagnosed with the coronavirus, and 15.4 million have recovered. More than 817,000 have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Here are the latest updates:
Wednesday, August 26
03:50 GMT - Australia boosts defence spending in latest stimulus
Australia will boost defence spending by 1 billion Australian dollars ($716.80 million) in the government's latest attempt to help the country's coronavirus-hit economy.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the money will be used to upgrade military facilities and offer additional paid employment to some 27,000 reservists.
Many of the facilities earmarked for improvement are in areas ravaged by fire earlier this year.
Australia will slip into recession for the first time in three decades because of the pandemic.
02:20 GMT - South Korea's striking doctors ordered back to work
Doctors in South Korea have been ordered back to work after they began a three-day strike on Wednesday, and the number of new coronavirus cases jumped above 300.
Trainee doctors and other medics have been staging walkouts in recent weeks, but a full-scale strike by members of the profession forced the country's five major general hospitals to limit hours and postpone scheduled surgeries.
Tens of thousands of doctors will go on a full-scale strike this week in protest of the government's medical workforce reform plan and proceed with a rally in a non-contact manner amid spiking virus cases, @YonhapNews reports https://t.co/a837IQSFdb
— CSIS Korea Chair (@CSISKoreaChair) August 25, 2020
"The government has no choice but to take necessary legal actions such as an order to open business to not put citizens' lives and safety in danger," Health Minister Park Neung-hoo told journalists. "We urge all trainee and fellow doctors to immediately return to work."
Doctors' associations are opposed to government reforms that would include training more medical students, opening more public medical schools, and broadening telemedicine options. They say the money would be spent on improving the pay and conditions of existing trainees so they would be willing to work outside Seoul.
The country reported 320 new cases on Wednesday, with nearly 20 percent of cases in the past two weeks coming from unknown sources, according to Yonhap.
01:30 GMT - Malaysian minister to be questioned over failure to follow mandatory quarantine
Malaysia's Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Mohd Khairuddin Aman Razali is expected to be questioned by police on Wednesday after he failed to comply with a mandatory two week quarantine when returning from a business trip to Turkey.
Mohd Khairuddin has been fined 1,000 ringgit ($240) for failing to go into quarantine after he returned from the trip on July 7.
Malaysians have been infuriated not only by his failure to comply with the quarantine rules, but also that he was allowed to travel overseas at a time when Malaysians are barred from leaving the country.
A man who returned from India in July and failed to comply with his quarantine was jailed for five months and fined 12,000 ringgit ($2,880), while a 72-year-old woman who had lunch out in breach of quarantine orders was jailed for a day and fined 8,000 ringgit ($1,920).
Regarding his failure to comply with mandatory home quarantine after returning from Turkey in July.#AWANInews #AWANIpagi #EnglishNEWS #COVID19 https://t.co/nupqOx9lo6
— 🇲🇾Astro AWANI🇲🇾 (@501Awani) August 26, 2020
Tan Sri @DGHisham, the issue is discriminative enforcement in favour of the political elite. Raising the quantum is meaningless if law-breaking Ministers are still given convenient exit when offenders from among the common people get the full brunt of the law. https://t.co/3t2QmfqU3r
— Daud Suratman (@DaudSuratman) August 25, 2020
One is unlike the others. pic.twitter.com/nTdxSUUJCP
— Lee Seng Foo🇲🇾李成富 (@sengfoo88) August 22, 2020
00:30 GMT - Latest data from Mexico, China
Mexico and China have just released their latest data on coronavirus.
Mexico has confirmed 4,916 new cases of the disease and 650 more deaths, bringing its totals to 568,621 cases and 61,450 deaths.
China, meanwhile, has reported 15 new cases in the mainland - all of them in people returned from overseas. The mainland has not confirmed a domestically transmitted case in 10 days. It also had 14 new asymptomatic cases, which are not included in confirmed cases. The death toll remains unchanged at 4,634.
23:30 GMT (Tuesday) - North Korea's Kim calls for enhanced prevention efforts
Kim Jong Un has told North Korea to step up prevention efforts against the coronavirus.
State news agency KCNA says a politburo meeting "assessed some defects in the state emergency anti-epidemic work for checking the inroads of the malignant virus."
North Korea has not reported any confirmed cases of the virus, but imposed a strict lockdown in the city of Kaesong after a man there showed symptoms of the disease. Later tests were inconclusive, according to the WHO.
23:05 GMT (Tuesday) - Cambridge to start vaccine trials in the autumn
The University of Cambridge said it will start clinical trials of a possible coronavirus vaccine in the UK's autumn after getting funding of 1.9 million pounds ($2.5m) from the UK government.
The scientists working on the vaccine - DIOS-CoVax2 - are using genetic sequences of all known coronaviruses to hone an immune response and reduce potential side effects.
"We're looking for chinks in its armour, crucial pieces of the virus that we can use to construct the vaccine to direct the immune response in the right direction," said Jonathan Heeney, head of the Laboratory of Viral Zoonotics at the university.
There are already 30 vaccines in human trials.
A colourised scanning electron micrograph of an apoptotic cell (green) infected with SARS-COV-2 virus particles (yellow) isolated from a patient sample, captured at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in the US [National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH/Handout via Reuters]
23:00 GMT (Tuesday) - Victoria reports 149 new cases, 24 deaths in past 24 hours
Australia's southern state of Victoria has reported 149 new cases of coronavirus and 24 deaths in the past 24 hours as it battles a resurgence of the disease.
Melbourne, the state's capital and the second-biggest city in Australia, is midway through a six-week lockdown and curfew.
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Hello and welcome to Al Jazeera's continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. I'm Kate Mayberry in Kuala Lumpur.
Read all the updates from yesterday (August 25) here.
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