Denmark’s plan to kill its farmed mink is on hold because of a question about the government’s legal authority to order the cull, the Danish environment and food minister, Mogens Jensen, said in an interview on Denmark’s TV2 on Tuesday.

Last week, Denmark announced that it would kill all its farmed mink because of coronavirus infections and virus mutations.

In Tuesday’s interview, Mr. Jensen said he was not aware that the government did not have legal authority to require all healthy mink to be culled.

Mink farmers are still encouraged to cull their mink and the government is seeking legal approval, Mr. Jensen said.

Farms with coronavirus infections and other farms within a radius of about five miles are required to cull their animals under a pre-existing order.

Denmark’s concern is that a mutated variant of the coronavirus that came from mink and that has infected some people could diminish the effectiveness of potential vaccines.

The World Health Organization has said there is no evidence yet that vaccines would be affected. And there is no evidence that the mutated virus, one among many existing mutations in both people and mink, is more transmissible or causes more serious illness than any other variant.

In other developments around the world:

Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian leader and negotiator who passionately advocated the establishment of an independent Palestinian state as a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has died of complications from the virus. He was 65. For three decades, as a close confidant of the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and his successor, President Mahmoud Abbas, Mr. Erekat was one of the most prominent voices of the Palestinian cause.

Peter Szijjarto, the Hungarian foreign minister, went to Southeast Asia on Nov. 3 to promote trade and investment. He left possibly having infected at least five people in two countries — Thailand and Cambodia — with the coronavirus. Mr. Szijjarto tested positive for the virus upon arrival in Thailand. Schools in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, have shut again, after having opened last week after a long coronavirus closure, as a precaution following the Hungarian foreign minister’s visit.

Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, said on Tuesday that the country was considering opening its borders to several Asian countries, including Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. Australia already has a one-way travel bubble with New Zealand, which allows visitors from that country to enter Australia, but not the other way around. “I think we proceed cautiously,” Mr. Morrison told reporters in Canberra.

Returning citizens of the Solomon Islands will be prosecuted if they lie on predeparture forms about their exposure to the coronavirus, Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare said Monday. “My government will hold these people responsible for endangering our people and our country,” he said in his weekly address to the nation, the local news media reported. The Solomon Islands, which recorded its first coronavirus case last month, now has a total of 16, all of them detected among people in quarantine after arriving from overseas.

Restaurants and nightclubs in Moscow will be forbidden to serve customers between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. for two months to reduce the spread of the virus, Reuters reported. Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, wrote on Tuesday on his website that these measures would be in place from Nov. 13 until Jan. 15. During that period, schoolchildren will also have to stick to online remote learning.

Nepal has resumed free tests and treatment after a court order and as new infections and deaths have increased across the Himalayan country. The government in Kathmandu had been providing free tests and treatment to all virus patients until a month ago. Because of the deepening economic crisis, the government instructed state-run hospitals and labs to begin collecting fees. A group of lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled last week that the government must bear all expenses related to coronavirus tests and treatment.

— James Gorman The New York Times