Vice President Kamala Harris will focus on defending international rules in the South China Sea, strengthening U.S. regional leadership and expanding security cooperation during her trip to Vietnam and Singapore this month, a senior White House official told Reuters.

Harris will be the first U.S. vice president to visit Vietnam as Washington seeks to bolster international support to counter China's growing global influence.

The U.S. official said Washington saw both countries as critical partners given their locations, the size of their economies, trade ties and security partnerships on issues such as the South China Sea, which China claims almost in its entirety. 
 

Former U.S. foe Vietnam has been a vocal opponent of China's South China Sea claims. Countries in the region largely welcome the U.S. military presence there in the face of China's militarization of the waterway and its vast coastguard and fishing fleet.

"We do not want to see any country dominate that region or take advantage of the power situation to compromise the sovereignty of others," the White House official said.

"The vice president is going to underscore that there should be free passage for trade, throughout the South China Sea, and no single country should disrespect the right of others."

The U.S. Navy has maintained a steady pattern of freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea and near Taiwan, but these appear to have done little to discourage Beijing. 

Harris' trip will follow one by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last week to Hanoi, where he sought to nudge forward steadily deepening security ties. 

 
It will also follow high-level talks between U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and senior Chinese diplomats last month that did little to ease deeply strained ties.

This week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken will seek to reinforce the U.S. message that it is serious about engaging with Southeast Asia to push back against China by joining a series of regional meetings held virtually.

Addressing a virtual session Tuesday of the Aspen Security Forum, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said high-level U.S. visits were "greatly valued" as they showed Washington knew it had substantial interests to protect and advance in the region.

He expressed concern about deteriorating U.S.-China relations, however, and said many countries hoped to see this checked "because many U.S. friends and allies wish to preserve their extensive ties with both powers."

"It's vital for the U.S. and China to strive to engage each other to head off a clash, which would be disastrous for both sides, and the world," he said.

The White House official said the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccinations and quality of vaccines would also be a top priority for Harris.

Last month, Washington shipped 3 million doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to Vietnam, bringing total donations to Hanoi to 5 million.

Harris is due in Singapore on Aug. 22. She arrives in Vietnam on August 24 and departs on August 26.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is aiming to give full approval to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine by early September, according to The New York Times. 

The two-dose vaccine, which Pfizer developed in collaboration with German-based BioNTech, was granted emergency use authorization by the FDA last November. 
 
It is one of just three COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S. stockpile, along with the two-shot vaccine from Moderna and the single-dose version developed by Johnson & Johnson.   

The newspaper says the FDA is accelerating its normal timetable to grant full approval to the two-dose vaccine as the United States undergoes a new surge of coronavirus infections and hospitalizations caused primarily by the highly contagious Delta variant of COVID-19. 

The recent surge of new infections is mainly among people who have not gotten vaccinated. The Times quotes recent polls by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health care research group, which found that three of every 10 unvaccinated people in the U.S. said they more likely would take a fully approved vaccine.  
 
The surge has prompted a growing number of public and private entities to issue mandatory vaccinations for all of its employees, including an order last week by U.S. President Joe Biden for all employees of the federal government.

Pfizer applied for full authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine back on May 7, while Moderna filed for full approval on June 1. Johnson & Johnson said it plans to apply for full approval later this year.   

In Australia, authorities in New South Wales state Wednesday announced 233 new cases of confirmed COVID-19 infections in the state capital Sydney, the epicenter of the nation’s current surge of new infections. They also reported two new deaths, including a woman in her 80s who died Tuesday, and a man in his 20s who died at his home in Sydney, making him one of the youngest people in Australia to die from the disease.  
 
The unvaccinated man had been in isolation at his home for 13 days when his condition suddenly deteriorated.  

New South Wales state Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the man’s death shows “again how this disease is lethal, how it affects people of all ages.” 

The current outbreak has been traced to a Sydney airport limousine driver who tested positive for the Delta variant after transporting international air crews in late June. At least 16 people have died in this latest surge. The city of 5 million residents remains under a strict lockdown until August 28. 
 
Australia has been largely successful in containing the spread of COVID-19 through aggressive lockdown efforts, posting just 35,089 total confirmed cases and 927 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. But it has proved vulnerable to fresh outbreaks due to a slow rollout of its vaccination campaign, with only 15% of its citizens fully vaccinated.  

And authorities in China have announced that all 11 million citizens in Wuhan will undergo mandatory testing as an outbreak of the Delta variant spreads across the country, with cases confirmed in more than 35 cities. The central Chinese city, where the novel coronavirus first emerged in late 2019 before spreading across the globe, reported three new cases Monday. 

The new outbreak has been traced to Jiangsu province, where officials say the Delta variant was introduced last month at the airport in Nanjing, the provincial capital.  Authorities have suspended all domestic flights from Nanjing and nearby Yangzhou.  

A separate outbreak in the city of Yangzhou has been traced to infected passengers who traveled across the border from Myanmar.   

The latest figures from Johns Hopkins show 199.5 million people around the globe have been infected since the start of the pandemic, including 4.2 million deaths. The United States leads the world with 35.2 million total cases, with India in second place with 31.7 million infections, followed by Brazil with 19.9 million.   

The U.S. leads COVID-19 deaths with 614,295, followed by Brazil with 558,432 and India with 425,757. 

Information from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.  

The rise of violence between the Taliban and the Afghan government forces has triggered a new influx of Afghan refugees to Turkey. VOA’s Arif Aslan reports from Turkey’s Van province in this story narrated by Namo Al-Jaf.

Produced by: Farhad Fallahi        Camera: Arif Aslan  

A Belarusian Olympic sprinter who said she faced punishment if she returned to her country departed Japan Wednesday on a flight bound for Austria. 

Krystsina Tsimanouskaya was scheduled to land in Vienna Wednesday afternoon. She is then expected to travel on to Poland, where the government has offered her a humanitarian visa. 

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki posted Tuesday on Facebook that he had spoken with Tsimanouskaya and that she should be able to live in Poland without obstacles. 

Polish authorities granted Tsimanouskaya a humanitarian visa to seek political asylum on Monday after she alleged her team’s officials were trying to force her to fly home to Belarus against her wishes.

 Tsimanouskaya told officials in Tokyo she feared she would not be safe in Belarus from the autocratic government of President Alexander Lukashenko.  

“They made it clear that upon return home I would definitely face some form of punishment,” she told The Associated Press in a Tuesday videocall interview. “There were also thinly disguised hints that more would await me.”  

Her departure from Tokyo comes days after she provoked backlash in state-run media in Belarus by criticizing how official were managing the Belarusian Olympians. 

On her Instagram account, Tsimanouskaya said she was put on the country’s 4x400 relay team even though she has never raced in the event.    

The Belarus National Olympic Committee has been led for more than 25 years by Lukashenko and his son, Viktor.    

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Lukashenko government was trying to force Tsimanouskaya to leave the Games “simply for exercising free speech.” 

Some information in this report came from the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.