Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Tuesday that starting next week any nonessential traveler arriving in Canada by land will need to show a negative PCR-based COVID-19 test or face a fine if they don’t have one. Trudeau said customs officers can’t send Canadians back to the U.S. if they don’t have a test because they are technically on Canadian soil but said the fine will be up to $3,000 Canadian (US$2,370) and the traveler will be subject to extensive follow up by health officials if they don’t show a negative test. So-called snowbirds who reside in warm U.S. states part-time are included in the COVID-19 test requirement. The land border already remains closed to nonessential travelers who are not Canadian.

A high-level Greek delegation led by the Greek prime minister, foreign minister and tourism minister arrived in Israel on Monday and signed a deal creating a travel corridor for vaccinated tourists between the two countries. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the two leaders subsequently announced they had signed a “green passport” travel agreement at a joint press conference. Netanyahu said that the agreement allows tourism “without any limitations, no self-isolation, nothing.” Israel is also in discussions with the UK and Estonia on establishing a travel corridor between their countries for vaccinated tourists, Army Radio reported on Monday.

Another Israeli mother was attached to an ECMO machine overnight Monday at Beilinson Hospital in Petach Tikvah. The 40-year-old woman was hospitalized about ten days ago after she contracted the coronavirus in her 28th week of pregnancy. On Monday, she suffered a deterioration in her condition and was sedated and ventilated. Unfortunately, a few hours later her condition deteriorated further and the doctors made a decision to deliver her baby by emergency C-section and attached her to an ECMO machine. “Due to her early stage of pregnancy, we tried to wait as long as possible before delivering the baby,” said Dr. Ilya Kagan, the director of the coronavirus intensive care unit.

South Africa is considering giving a COVID-19 vaccine that is still in the testing phase to health workers, after suspending the rollout of another shot that preliminary data indicated may be only minimally effective against the mutated form of the virus dominating the country. The country was scrambling Monday to come up with a new vaccination strategy after it halted use of the AstraZeneca vaccine — which is cheaper and easier to handle than some others and which many had hoped would be crucial to combatting the pandemic in developing countries.

An Israeli hospital director told Army Radio on Monday that a quarter of his current coronavirus patients are under the age of 50. Dr. Masad Barhoum, head of the Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya, warned of a fourth wave of the virus, saying that an extension of a hermetic nationwide lockdown for another two weeks is essential. “Most of the patients have the British variant. The fear in reopening schools is the infection rate and illness in children and young people,” Barhoum said, adding that younger people are dismissing the true risk of the virus and are not getting vaccinated. “This population doesn’t want to get vaccinated,” Barhoum lamented. “Furthermore, the public is burned out after five weeks of a partial-lockdown.

The coronavirus is unlikely to have leaked from a Chinese lab and is more likely to have jumped to humans from an animal, a World Health Organization team has concluded, an expert said Tuesday as the group wrapped up a visit to explore the origins of the virus. The Wuhan Institute of Virology in central China has collected extensive virus samples, leading to allegations that it may have caused the original outbreak by leaking the virus into the surrounding community. China has strongly rejected that possibility and has promoted other theories for the virus’s origins.

Dozens of asylum seekers and foreign workers in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv lined up to receive their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday as part of an initiative to inoculate the city’s foreign nationals. Tel Aviv city hall and the Sourasky Medical Center started administering vaccines free of charge to the city’s foreign nationals, many of whom are undocumented asylum seekers. On its first day of operation, the vaccination center in southern Tel Aviv, which is home to a large migrant community, dispensed doses to dozens of foreign nationals who lined up outside the building. Posters provided information in English, Tigrinya, Russian and Arabic. Recipients included foreign workers from the Philippines, Moldova, and Nigeria, as well as Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers.

Israel’s Health Ministry warned on Monday that due to the spike in seriously ill coronavirus patients in recent weeks, Israel’s supply of ECMO machines is almost depleted, Ynet reported. Health Ministry sources warned that if the spike continues, health professionals will be forced to choose who will be attached to the life-saving machines. “We’re not there yet,” a ministry source said,” but it can happen in the future. We never thought we would have to treat over 40 ECMO patients at the same time but here we are. We’re now reaching our limit.” A total of 41 coronavirus patients in critical condition were attached to ECMO machines last week alone.

Brazilian marketing executive Eduardo Menga is extra cautious when it comes to his health. During the pandemic, he consulted a slew of doctors to ensure he was in good shape and uprooted his family from Rio de Janeiro to a quiet city in the countryside where he works remotely. His wife Bianca Rinaldi, an actress, hasn’t worked since March. Menga and Rinaldi are among a minority of Brazilians who will pay for a COVID-19 vaccine if an association of private clinics can close a deal to bring 5 million shots to Latin America’s most unequal country. President Jair Bolsonaro, under fire for his government’s handling of the pandemic, has promised not to interfere.

The tiny glass vaccine vials are delivered to Miami’s largest hospital and immediately whisked to a secret location, where they are placed inside a padlocked freezer with a digital thermometer that reads minus 76 degrees Celsius (minus 105 F). An armed guard watches outside the door. The pharmacy staff at Jackson Health System often gets short notice on how many doses are coming — sometimes as little as 24 hours. As soon as the doses arrive, the pressure builds to administer them quickly, but the timing is complicated. The staff can thaw out only as much COVID-19 vaccine as the hospital can administer that same day.