KINGSTON, Jamaica — The novel coronavirus has infected more than 243.2 million people, leaving more than 4.9 million dead across 196 countries and territories.

The majority of those infected have recovered and many countries have rolled out vaccine campaigns as economies start to recover from the pandemic.

— Jamaica recorded 100 new COVID-19 cases and four deaths on Saturday, bringing the infection total to 88,259 and the virus death toll to 2,179.

— In a pair of Cape Town warehouses converted into a maze of airlocked sterile rooms, young scientists are assembling and calibrating the equipment needed to reverse engineer a coronavirus vaccine that has yet to reach South Africa and most of the world’s poorest people.

— The Government of Barbados is set to receive another shipment of Pfizer vaccines from the United States.

— The US is the worst-affected country with 735,801 deaths from 45,427,539 cases followed by Brazil with 605,457 deaths from 21,723,559 cases, India with 454,269 deaths from 34,175,468 cases, Mexico with 286,259 deaths from 3,781,661 cases, and Russia with 230,600 deaths from 8,241,643 cases.

Read full stories:

100 new COVID cases in Jamaica, four more deaths

Africa tries to end vaccine inequity by replicating its own

Barbados to receive more Pfizer vaccines to fight pandemic