Coronavirus outbreak upfate: Jan. 16, 2021

As of 11 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 16

• Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday kicked off the first phase of a mass COVID-19 vaccination campaign in the world's second-most populous country.
  
  
• The number of coronavirus patients recuperating at home in Japan reached 30,208 this week, the health ministry said Saturday.
  
  
• The Washington Wizards postponed two NBA games Friday following a coronavirus outbreak among the team that has sidelined nine players, including Japanese forward Rui Hachimura.
  
  
• Japan's new unified university entrance exams started Saturday across the country amid the coronavirus pandemic.
  
  
• The coronavirus pandemic has triggered a major shift away from restaurant dining, leaving many chefs in Japan out of work and looking to devise ways to stay in business with their normal clientele reluctant to venture out.
  
  
• The World Health Organization said Friday its panel has concluded that vaccinations against the novel coronavirus should not be mandatory for international travelers, citing uncertainty over effectiveness and supply.
  
  
• The global death toll from the coronavirus pandemic has exceeded 2 million amid an accelerating pace of fatalities, a tally by Johns Hopkins University of the United States showed Friday.

As of 11 p.m., Friday, Jan. 15

• Sea piracy and armed robbery in Asian waters jumped 17 percent last year compared with a year earlier, with a particularly high occurrence in the Singapore Strait, a Japan-led international center to combat the scourge said on Friday.
  
  
• The Philippines said Friday it has extended until the end of this month a travel ban on foreigners from Japan and other countries where a new, possibly more transmissible variant of the coronavirus has been confirmed.
  
  
• Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's administration is readying legislation to punish refusal to comply with government-mandated COVID-19 measures, amid concerns it may infringe too much on personal freedoms.
  
  
• The Hiroshima prefectural government in western Japan said Friday it is considering conducting free coronavirus testing of up to 800,000 people in the largest such testing campaign in the country, as it struggles to contain a recent rise in infections.
  
  
• Japan's Cabinet decided Friday to use 741.8 billion yen ($7.15 billion) in reserve funds for fiscal 2020 to increase subsidies for restaurants and bars cutting business hours following the latest emergency declaration over the resurgent coronavirus pandemic.
  
  
• U.S. President-elect Joe Biden said Thursday that he is proposing a $1.9 trillion emergency relief plan to change the course of the coronavirus pandemic and put the economy on track for recovery.