New Zealand has purchased 500,000 doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine from Denmark, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Sunday, as the country struggles with a cluster of infections in its largest city.
New Zealand, which reported 20 locally acquired COVID-19 cases in Auckland on Sunday, said the vaccines will arrive within days. The latest outbreak now totals 599 infections since the first case was detected in late August.
"There is now more than enough vaccine in the country to vaccinate at the world-leading rates we were hitting earlier in the month, and I strongly encourage every New Zealander not yet vaccinated to do so as soon as possible," Ardern said in an e-mailed statement.
New Zealand, which until last month had largely reined in COVID-19, has struggled to stamp out the last cluster despite a weeks-long lockdown of Auckland.
About 1.7 million people in Auckland remain in a strict level four lockdown but curbs have been eased in the rest of the country.
About a third of New Zealand's 5.1 million people have been fully vaccinated, one of the slowest paces among the wealthy nations of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development grouping.
The Pentagon said on Wednesday that US strikes 10 days ago had degraded Iran's nuclear programme by up to two years, suggesting the US military operation likely achieved its goals despite a far more cautious initial assessment that leaked to the public.
Hundreds of firefighters battled a blaze Thursday on Crete island, which burnt swathes of forest and olive groves and forced the evacuation of over 1,000 people, officials said, underscoring the region's vulnerability to destructive wildfires.
Five people were injured, including a seven-year-old boy and a nine-year-old girl, in a Russian attack on the southern Ukraine port of Odesa overnight, Ukrainian authorities said on Thursday.
Indonesian rescuers raced to find victims in rough seas on Thursday after five people died and dozens were left missing when a ferry carrying 65 people sank near the island of Bali, according to search and rescue agencies.