Covid-19 global updates: Moderna says vaccine works against delta variant as WHO warns of global spread

Here are some significant developments:

• The British government was heavily criticized on Tuesday for allowing some senior business leaders in England to temporarily leave quarantine for work. The exemption applies to executives who can demonstrate that their work “has a greater than 50% chance of creating or preserving at least 500 UK-based jobs.”
• Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike has been discharged from hospital, Japanese media reported. She had been off work for about a week to recuperate from fatigue and apologized for “causing worries” ahead of the Olympics, which begin in 23 days. Infections are rising in the capital and officials are considering extending strict distancing curbs through at least part of the 2020 Games.
• North Korea’s Kim Jong Un warned of a “grave incident” that caused a “huge crisis” in Pyongyang’s battle against covid, state media reported, without providing further detail.
• Thailand reported a record 53 covid-linked deaths on Wednesday as it struggles to stamp out a recent pandemic wave with a sluggish vaccine rollout. It plans to reopen its Phuket resort island, without quarantine, for fully inoculated travelers on July 1.
• Denmark said that it would purchase nearly 1.2 million excess doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines from Romania, which is combating vaccine hesitancy. Bucharest narrowly missed a goal to inoculate just over 20 percent of its population by end May.