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 Mexican president contracts COVID
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Sunday he had
tested positive for COVID-19 during the country's deadliest week yet
in the pandemic.
The 67-year-old leader said in a tweet that his symptoms were light
and he was receiving treatment. "As always, I am optimistic," said
Lopez Obrador, who has resisted wearing a face mask in public since
the virus reached Mexico over 10 months ago.
Critics have railed incessantly against his management of the health
crisis, but despite a mounting toll of nearly 150,000 dead, his
popularity has risen, according a daily tracking poll by polling
firm Consulta Mitofsky.
Japan likely to hit herd immunity some months after Olympics
Japan is likely to achieve herd immunity to COVID-19 through mass
inoculations only months after the planned Tokyo Olympics, even
though it has locked in the biggest quantity of vaccines in Asia,
according to a London-based forecaster.
That would be a blow to Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga who has
pledged to have enough shots for the populace by the middle of 2021,
as Japan trails most major economies in starting inoculations.
"Japan looks to be quite late in the game," Rasmus Bech Hansen,
founder of British research firm Airfinity, told Reuters. "They're
dependent on importing many (vaccines) from the U.S. And at the
moment, it doesn't seem very likely they will get very large
quantities of, for instance, the Pfizer vaccine."
Dutch PM condemns lockdown riots
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Monday condemned riots across the
country this weekend in which demonstrators attacked police and set
fires to protest against a night-time curfew, calling them "criminal
violence".
The police said hundreds of people had been detained after incidents
that began on Saturday evening and lasted until the early hours of
Monday, including some in which rioters threw rocks and in one case
knives at police and burned down a COVID-19 testing station.
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 U.S. to escalate tracking of
COVID variants
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention is stepping up efforts to track
coronavirus mutations and keep vaccines and
treatments effective against new variants until
collective immunity is reached, the agency's
chief said on Sunday. Dr.
Rochelle Walensky spoke about the rapidly evolving virus during a
Fox News Sunday interview as the number of Americans known to be
infected surpassed 25 million, with more than 417,000 dead.
Walensky, who took over as CDC director the day President Joe Biden
was sworn in, also said the biggest immediate culprit for sluggish
vaccine distribution was a supply crunch worsened by inventory
confusion inherited from the Trump administration.
New Zealand confirms first case in months
New Zealand on Monday confirmed its first case of COVID-19 in the
community in months in a 56-year-old woman, but said close contacts
of the recently returned traveller had so far tested negative.
The woman, who returned to New Zealand on Dec. 30, had tested
positive for the South African strain of the virus after leaving a
two-week mandatory quarantine where she had twice tested negative.
 Authorities said the source of the infection was probably a fellow
returnee at the quarantine facility.
(Compiled by Linda Noakes; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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