By global standards South Korea’s figure remains extremely low but the rise has alarmed authorities, who have tightened social distancing measures.
The exam itself is a particular concern, with nearly 500,000 pupils gathering in test centres across the country.
Plastic see-through dividers have been set up on each desk and students are required to wear facemasks throughout the test.
Students will be checked on arrival and those showing temperatures of 37.5 C or higher – or other coronavirus symptoms – will have to take the test in a separate designated area.
All were advised to refrain from gathering and talking during breaks, with exam rooms to be ventilated after each session.
The exam itself was delayed for two weeks due to the earlier disruptions to teaching, and all high schools across the country have returned to online classes for a week to try to prevent school clusters.
South Korea falls into hush mode on Thursday as hundreds of thousands of students sit the high-stakes national university entrance exam, with the added tension of strict anti-coronavirus measures, AFP reports.
Success in the day-long test – which teenagers spend years preparing for – can mean a place in one of the elite colleges seen as key to future careers, incomes, and even marriage prospects.
Adding to the pressure is the coronavirus epidemic, which both delayed and disrupted the school year in the South, forcing all classes online for a time.
The country brought its outbreak broadly under control with its “trace, test and treat” approach, but in recent weeks has seen new infections jump from around 100 a day to more than 500.
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Stranded Australians who were promised their hotel quarantine fees in Sydney would be waived if they flew home on tickets booked before 13 July are now being told by the government to pay for their 14-day stay in Darwin – in some cases more than AU$5,000 (US$3,700) – after the commercial flight they booked was cancelled.
Some stranded Australians have been forced to decline seats on specially organised government repatriation flights after being told the free quarantine stays are “not applicable” if they accept the government’s offer to repatriate them via the Howard Springs quarantine camp.
One family of four who have been stranded in Italy for more than five months after their commercial flight to Sydney was cancelled have been told by both the Northern Territory and federal governments they will have to pay $5,000 for their two-week stay at the Howard Springs centre in the territory:
Pupils in England sitting GCSEs and A-levels next summer will be given advance notice of topics and allowed to take in exam aids including formula sheets, as part of a package of measures to mitigate for learning disruption caused by the pandemic.
After months of uncertainty for pupils and their teachers, the government’s long-awaited announcement on the 2021 exam series promises that students will be awarded more generous grades, in line with last summer’s significantly improved results:
Brazil opens route for emergency approval of Covid-19 vaccines
Brazil’s health regulator Anvisa said on Wednesday it was open to approving Covid-19 vaccines for emergency use and outlined the requirements for companies looking to do so, Reuters reports.
Anvisa said authorisations would be analysed on a case-by-case basis and that to be considered the vaccine must be in late-stage trials in Brazil. It said no requests had been received so far.
AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Sinovac currently have vaccines in Phase III trials in Brazil.
The regulator said producers should still seek the usual registrations for their vaccines. On Tuesday, Brazil’s Health Ministry unveiled a preliminary plan for national immunisation, prioritising indigenous people, health workers and those aged 75 years and older.
The ministry said it has so far guaranteed access to 142.9 million doses of vaccines against Covid-19.
Of those, 100.4 million doses are under an agreement with AstraZeneca, and another 14.5 million through the Covax Facility co-led by the World Health Organization.
Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello told lawmakers on Wednesday that Brazil would begin receiving about 15 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine between January and February, with 100 million doses arriving by the middle of the year.
The devastation caused by Covid-19 presents an opportunity for countries to rebuild their economies in a way that is environmentally responsible, researchers say.
“The only way you can meet the Paris agreement is by taking advantage of this moment … by combining the recovery from Covid-19 with the response to climate change,” said Dr Nick Watts, the chief sustainability officer for the NHS.
Watts is one of the authors of the annual Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, which tracks the impacts of global heating on health. The series has been running since 2015, when the Paris agreement was signed with the goal of holding global temperatures to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels:
Lilly to supply 650,000 more doses of bamlanivimab to US government
Eli Lilly and Co said on Wednesday the US government has purchased 650,000 additional doses of its Covid-19 antibody drug for $812.5 million.
The doses will be delivered through 31 January, with at least 350,000 delivered in December, the company said.
The drug has been authorised by the UUS Food and Drug Administration for emergency use, and the government bought 300,000 doses in October.
The new purchase is part of a US government deal to secure nearly 1 million doses of Lilly’s bamlanivimab, a treatment similar to Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc’s Covid-19 antibody therapy that US President Donald Trump received in October during his illness.
The treatments belong to a class of drugs called monoclonal antibodies that are manufactured copies of antibodies created by the body to fight against an infection.
Lilly anticipates manufacturing up to one million doses of bamlanivimab by the end of 2020 for use around the world through early next year.
