Coronavirus outbreak update: Dec. 31, 2020

As of 10 p.m., Thursday, Dec. 31

• President Xi Jinping said Thursday that China has overcome the impact of the pandemic, underscoring his confidence that the world's second-biggest economy has brought the novel coronavirus outbreak under control.
  
  
• Wakatakakage, a wrestler in sumo's elite makuuchi division, has become infected with the novel coronavirus, the Japan Sumo Association announced Thursday.
  
  
• China has approved its first home-developed coronavirus vaccine, the country's health authorities said Thursday, although fears linger about its safety and efficacy.
  
  
• The novel coronavirus pandemic has been selected by senior editors of Kyodo News and its member or subscriber newspapers and broadcasters as the top international news story of 2020.
  
  
• The daily number of coronavirus infections topped 1,300 in Tokyo on Thursday, metropolitan government officials said, exceeding the 1,000 mark for the first time since the pandemic began earlier this year and deepening concerns about hospital capacity.
  
  
• A Tokyo-based money transfer company has spent much of the year supporting Vietnamese stranded in Japan without jobs due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
  
  
• While uncertainty still surrounds next summer's Tokyo Olympics, athletes village mayor Saburo Kawabuchi is aiming for a safe and successful games following the one-year postponement stemming from the novel coronavirus pandemic.

As of 12:50 p.m., Wednesday, Dec. 30

• Local health officials in the western state of Colorado on Tuesday announced the United States' first known case of a potentially more transmissible coronavirus variant spreading in Britain.
  
  
• The Japanese government has decided to suspend special entry conditions for athletes and team staff from countries and regions where new, potentially more infectious variants of the coronavirus have been found, sources with knowledge of the matter said Tuesday.