TOP STORIES

- France's vaccine program has now given more than 20 million jabs, with at least 9 million people fully vaccinated against COVID-19. The news comes three days ahead of France's partial 'reopening' when bars and cafes will be allowed to open their outdoor spaces, and non-essential businesses can reopen. 

- UK Health Minister Matt Hancock said the planned relaxation of restrictions in England - including allowing restaurants and bars to serve customers inside - will go ahead tomorrow, despite the rise in cases linked to the variant first identified in India. 

- Meanwhile, new analysis has shown the effect of the pandemic on the restaurant sector in the UK. According to research from CGA and AlixPartners, nearly 10 percent of restaurants have closed over the past year, and that number is closer to 20 percent in the casual dining sector. 

- And it is not just the food and drink sector that is hurting after a year of on-off lockdowns and travel restrictions. The London Symphony Orchestra has warned the dual-effects of the pandemic and Brexit are putting it under threat. Despite welcoming crowds back this week, Conductor Simon Rattle warned the LSO could lose 40 percent of its income from lost touring. 

- Although Turkey is on full lockdown and under an overnight curfew, Istanbul's streets were full of football fans on Saturday night, as Besiktas were crowned national champions. There were no reports of arrests as thousands celebrated with flares and fireworks in the city, but video showed security personnel shooting guns into the air to try to disperse the crowds. 

- As European countries open to tourists - Greece, Portugal and the Netherlands this week - and restrictions on social gatherings are relaxed, many people might be looking to book holidays. But anyone hoping to visit Australia will likely have to wait until at least the middle of 2022, as the Australian government said it is in no rush to open up. Australia has seen relatively few infections, and light-touch restrictions. "We have to be careful not to exchange that [freedom] for what everyone else had," said Prime Minister Morrison. 

- The CEO of Dubai Airports, Paul Griffiths, said vaccine passports are "inevitable" as international travel resumes. His comments come after months of political wrangling in the EU over what powers a vaccine certificate could have. "I think the problem is not the vaccine passport and its discrimination. It's the need to roll things out and have a proper globally equitable vaccine program," he said. 

- Despite worldwide travel restrictions stopping the holiday industry in its tracks, there is one sector that's remained buoyant. The mega-yacht industry, which caters to the billionaires and oligarchs of the world, has seen huge success since June 2020. Sales are nearly 50 percent higher than Q1 2020, according to Boat International, and ports in the Gulf such as Dubai are reportedly magnets for the billionaire's boating breaks. 

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AROUND EUROPE 

Natalie Carney in Munich

Germany's Standing Vaccination Commission has said that people might have to refresh their COVID-19 vaccination protection in the next year for currently unknown mutations. 

Currently 36.5 percent of the population in Germany have been vaccinated with at least one dose.

According to a YouGov survey, the willingness of Germans to be vaccinated has increased since the start of the vaccination campaign almost five months ago. Almost three quarters of Germans over 18 years of age now want to be immunized, compared with 65 percent shortly before the jab was first offered on December 27. The proportion of people who are undecided has fallen from 16 to 11 percent.

Meanwhile, the number of daily infections continues to drop across Germany, with 8,500 new positive tests reported in the past 24 hours, 4,000 fewer than on Sunday a week ago, bringing the national seven-day incidence level to 83.1 per 100,000 people.

Iolo ap Dafydd in London

On the eve of when a whole swathe of coronavirus regulations are to be relaxed across the four nations of the UK, the British Medical Association has raised serious concerns. 

The BMA's Dr Richard Jarvis says he's worried about removing many restrictions on May 17, especially as younger people under 30 years of age are generally not vaccinated yet, but are likely to mix socially.

The COVID-19 variant which originated in India is thought to be as much as 50 percent more transmissible and the UK government is facing criticism for not adding India to a 'red list' of countries until April 23, despite Indian authorities reporting more than 100,000 cases a day two and a half weeks earlier.

The government is now advocating surge testing in several areas of England where the numbers of infections with the variant has been increasing.

Some of the government's scientific advisers are also worried, especially as mixing and socializing will increase from tomorrow with cafes, bars and restaurants allowed to serve customers inside their premises.

Istanbul, Turkey 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the country's lockdown restrictions will start to lift on Monday, after nearly three weeks of the strongest anti-pandemic measures seen in the country so far. 

But, perhaps motivated by the crowds of football fans who ignored curfew measures in Istanbul last night, the authorities confirmed the night-time and weekend curfew across Turkey will continue for the foreseeable future. 

That means people in Turkey will have to stay at home between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. until at least June 1, but shopping malls will reopen on weekdays and travel between cities will be allowed again. 

Although the cases are falling - now 11,000 per day, down from from 60,000 in April - the high numbers have cost Turkey the Champions League Final and the Turkish F1 Grand Prix, which have both been moved. 

Nearly 11 million people have been fully vaccinated, or 13 percent of the population.

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CGTN Europe has been providing in-depth coverage of the novel coronavirus story as it has unfolded.