COVID-19 infections in Sweden exceed 600,000

The number of Sweden's confirmed coronavirus cases exceeded 600,000 on Wednesday, the country's Public Health Agency said, reported Xinhua.

Meanwhile, the country continues to battle the new, more contagious COVID-19 strain.

The agency reported 4,070 new confirmed infections in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of cases to 600,244. Since Tuesday, 138 new deaths have been reported, pushing the national death toll to 12,326.

The agency has been stepping up efforts to map the mutated strains of the coronavirus in the country, focusing on the highly contagious variant first detected in the United Kingdom. Last Tuesday, the government instructed the country's 21 counties to strengthen their genome sequencing capability, the Swedish TT News Agency reported.

The coronavirus variant was identified in approximately 11 percent of 2,200 positive COVID-19 tests screened for the new strain, the agency said in a press release on Tuesday.

As of Feb. 6, foreign travelers are required to show a recent negative COVID-19 test result in order to enter Sweden. Exempt from this requirement are travelers under the age of 19, cross-border commuters, foreign citizens living in Sweden, those who want to enter the country for humanitarian reasons.

Also on Wednesday, the agency said that its goal of vaccinating all adults in the country against COVID-19 by the end of June might prove to be difficult to achieve.

To date, slightly less than 317,000 adults -- or 3.86 percent of Sweden's population -- have received at least the first coronavirus vaccine dose, the agency said.

As the world is struggling to contain the pandemic, vaccination is underway in some countries with the already-authorized coronavirus vaccines.

Meanwhile, 242 candidate vaccines are still being developed worldwide -- 63 of them in clinical trials -- in countries including Germany, China, Russia, Britain and the United States, according to information released by the World Health Organization on Feb. 9.