India locks capital to battle COVID as all US adults eligible for vaccine

India locked down its capital New Delhi for a week beginning on April 19 night seeking to control a raging coronavirus outbreak, as the hard-hit United States made all adults eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

There was good news from Australia and New Zealand as well, as the neighbors opened a travel bubble that will allow people to move between the countries without a mandatory quarantine.

And in Europe, Greece said it would welcome vaccinated travellers from some nations as it sought to restart its badly-bruised tourism sector, while Portugal and Slovenia peeled back virus restrictions as infections eased off.

But India is still facing skyrocketing infections, with hospitals running out of beds and the government forced to reimpose economically painful restrictions.

The capital New Delhi braced for a fresh lockdown as officials scrambled to get surging cases under control.

"Delhi's health system is at a tipping point. The COVID-19 situation is pretty critical," Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said.

"If we don't impose a lockdown now, we will be looking at a bigger disaster."

Tens of thousands of migrant workers tried to flee the restrictions, fuelling fears they could spread the virus to their rural hometowns

The Delhi lockdown came after the vast nation of 1.3 billion reported a record high of 273,810 infections on Monday - the fifth consecutive day topping 200,000 cases.

India has the world's second-highest caseload with more than 15 million known infections.

The government said on April 19 it would make COVID vaccines available to all adults in the country from May 1, in a bid to beat back infections.

The soaring cases forced British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to...