TOP HEADLINES 

• Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced a "non-working" week in the Russian capital, with non-essential workers told to stay home, as COVID-19 cases hit a six-month high.

• Saudi Arabia says it will allow 60,000 vaccinated residents of the kingdom, free of chronic diseases and between ages of 18 and 65, to perform the annual hajj, state media reported.

• Italy says it will only give the AstraZeneca vaccine to people over the age of 60, with younger people who have already received a dose compleying the cycle with an mRNA jab.

• Health authorities in eastern France are conducting 'targeted vaccinations' over the weekend after four cases of the highly transmissible COVID-19 Delta variant, first detected in India, were confirmed in the Rhine School of Arts (Haute Ecole des Arts du Rhin) in Strasbourg.

• Rising COVID-19 case numbers and hospitalizations are a matter of "serious, serious concern," British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Saturday, adding he was less optimistic about reopening the country than he was last month.

• Britain reported 12 new deaths within 28 days of a positive COVID-19 test on Saturday and a further 7,738 cases of the virus, official government data showed. That compared with 17 deaths and 8,125 cases reported a day earlier. On vaccines, a total of 41.29 million people have now received a first dose and 29.5 million have received two shots.

• The European Medicines Agency's safety committee said that capillary leak syndrome (CLS) must be added as a new side effect to labeling on AstraZeneca's vaccine, and says that anyone who had previously had the condition should not have the jab. 

• Reuters report that the UK's regulator said it was considering precautionary advice for people with a history of CLS but did not see a causal link with the vaccine. It said two of the eight reports of CLS after the AstraZeneca vaccination in the UK were in people with a history of the condition, and 40 million doses of the vaccine had been given.

• Russia reported 13,510 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, the fifth day of a sharp rise that has taken the daily infection tally to a three-month high.

• 60 million doses of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine manufactured in the U.S. are unusable and will be discarded, according to the New York Times.

• Scientists on the front lines in the fight against the pandemic, including the designers of the British vaccine developed by AstraZeneca with the University of Oxford, are among the latest list to be awarded honors in the UK.

• The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 1,911 to 3,713,480, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Saturday. The reported death toll rose by 129 to 89,816, the tally showed.

• Novavax stated its experimental COVID-19 vaccine showed immune response and protection against the Beta variant, initially identified in South Africa in a clinical trial.

ACROSS EUROPE

France 

An exemption to the COVID-19 curfew was granted at the French Open tennis semi-final between Rafa Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Spectators were allowed to watch the two tennis heavyweights battle beyond the 11 p.m. curfew, with Serbian Djokovic eventually beating Spain's Nadal in four sets. 

On the other side of the capital, far from the bright lights of Roland Garros, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) were endeavoring to vaccinate the city's homeless and undocumented migrants and refugees. 

The group plans to expand their operation beyond Paris. 

France has an estimated 300,000 homeless people, with around 20,000 of them believed to sleep on the streets. At the peak of the pandemic, COVID-19 rates among these people were often three to four times higher than among the rest of the population. 

"In two homes of migrant workers in Seine-Saint-Denis, the contamination rate was 89 percent and 54 percent in emergency accommodation," the head of MSF France mission, Corinne Torre, told AFP.

Patrick Atack from the G7 summit

The first day of the G7 was dominated by smiling photos and promises of global vaccine delivery. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced plans for a "pandemic radar" to improve the world's reaction time for future viruses. 

The G7 should aim to create a "more equal and... a more gender-neutral and perhaps a more feminine" world after the pandemic eases, Johnson added.

On Saturday the conference pivots to foreign affairs, and the G7 has said its joint-approach to Russia and China - neither of which are G7 members - would be discussed at length. 

Johnson met with French President Macron and Germany Chancellor Merkel in one-on-one meetings in the morning, with meetings also taking place with the European Union leaders Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel later today. 

Brexit and Northern Ireland will certainly be on the agenda, or as Johnson's spokesperson said "it's fair to say it may well come up."

President Macron was a bit more straightforward, it is reported he told Johnson to "keep your word."

Guy Henderson in London 

According to the Financial Times, Johnson is set to postpone the final stage of England's lockdown easing by a month.

The weekend newspapers are awash with similar reports of delays to what many dub 'freedom day,' which had been penciled for June 21 under the terms of a 'roadmap' laid out during the depths of lockdown in February.

Fifty-five percent of the UK's adult population have now been vaccinated, but cases and hospitalizations have begun to rise sharply - mainly amongst the unvaccinated. Studies suggest the Delta variant is 64 percent more transmissible than the previous Alpha strain first identified in the UK late last year. Alpha had itself been significantly more contagious than the previous dominant strains.

So now the race is on to roll out vaccines as rapidly as possible. The Financial Times cites two senior officials saying a shorter delay would be insufficient to allow enough progress on vaccinations to suppress case numbers.

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