Live COVID-19 updates: Brazil registers record daily high of 3,780 COVID-19 deaths

The following are the updates on the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
 RIO DE JANEIRO -- Brazil on Tuesday registered the highest daily count of 3,780 COVID-19 deaths in the past 24 hours, the country's ministry of health said.
   
The latest figure has raised the nationwide death toll to 317,646 since Brazil's first case was detected on Feb. 26, 2020.

SEOUL -- South Korea reported 506 more cases of COVID-19 as of midnight Tuesday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 103,088.
The daily caseload was up from 447 in the previous day, rising above 500 in four days.
 
BERLIN  -- The AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine should generally only be used for people aged 60 and over from Wednesday, German federal and state governments decided Tuesday evening.
   
People aged under 60 could be vaccinated with AstraZeneca "at the doctor's discretion and in the case of an individual risk analysis after careful explanation," according to the decision.
 
PARIS -- France registered 30,702 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, pushing the total count above 4.5 million. The country's hospitals are nearing the breaking point and a third nationwide confinement is very much on the cards, figures released by the health authorities showed on Tuesday.
   
In a single day, 188 people have been hospitalized, bringing the total to 28,510. COVID-19 patients currently occupy 5,072 resuscitation beds, the largest number since mid-November 2020, when the country entered its second confinement.
  
TUNIS  -- Tunisian Health Ministry on Tuesday reported 1,002 new COVID-19 cases, raising the total number of infections in the country to 252,171.
   The death toll from the virus rose by 28 to 8,788, the ministry said in a statement.
 
QUITO -- Ecuador recorded 2,201 new COVID-19 infections and 34 more deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing the number of cases to 327,325 and deaths to 11,912, the Public Health Ministry reported on Tuesday.
   
The province of Pichincha, where the nation's capital Quito is located, is the hardest hit by the pandemic, reporting 834 infections, including 799 in Quito, in the last day.
   
HAVANA  -- Cuban health authorities reported on Tuesday 1,008 new COVID-19 infections in the last day, the highest figure in two weeks, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 74,212, as well as four more deaths to total 421.
   
"Today's indicators show the complexity of the epidemiological situation, since there is significant transmission in a large part of the country," the Public Health Ministry's national director of hygiene and epidemiology Francisco Duran said during his daily broadcast.

BEIJING  -- China believes that the joint research carried out by the World Health Organization (WHO) and China will play a positive role in promoting global cooperation in COVID-19 origin tracing, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tuesday.
   
The spokesperson made the remarks after WHO released a report earlier on Tuesday on the joint research with China on the global tracing of COVID-19 origins.