India continues to battle COVID-19 spread

Authorities found 71 dead bodies floating in the Ganges River in eastern India. Health officials worked through Monday night to retrieve them, but post mortems could not confirm the cause of death. On Tuesday, more corpses washed up in the Ghazipur district: One resident told the Associated Press that villagers were burying their dead in the water after running out of wood for cremations amidst a surge of COVID-19 cases. India announced nearly 390,000 new infections on Tuesday and 3,876 more deaths.

What is the latest with COVID-19 internationally? Nearly a dozen countries, most in Africa, are still waiting for their first shipments of vaccines, according to the World Health Organization. The European Union is discussing how to implement a certificate program to facilitate summer travel for citizens who can prove they have been vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19. Faced with its highest daily case count so far, Nepal is extending its lockdown until May 27. North Korea again reported to the World Health Organization that it has zero cases of COVID-19, but experts are skeptical of that claim.

Dig deeper: Read Mindy Belz’s report in WORLD Magazine on the COVAX campaign to get the vaccine to poor countries.