COVID-19 updates: Anti-vaccine protesters halt vaccinations at Dodger Stadium

Colombian President Ivan Duque announced Tuesday that Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujilo died in the early morning hours from COVID-19 complications. He was 69.

"I can't express the pain that I have," Duque said in a statement while conveying his condolences to Trujilo's family.

Colombia has the third-highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the Americas, behind the United States and Brazil, according to the World Health Organization.

ABC News’ Christine Theodorou contributed to this report.

Europe's longest land border, spanning more than 1,000 miles, has closed for the first time since World War II.

Sweden's temporary ban on entry from neighboring Norway went into effect Monday and will last until at least Feb. 14. The Swedish government has also extended an entry ban from the United Kingdom and Denmark until the same date.

The move comes amid concerns over a new, more contagious variant of the novel coronavirus that was first identified in the U.K. and has since spread to Norway's capital and the surrounding area.

On Saturday, shortly before Sweden announced the new travel ban, the Norwegian government imposed strict new lockdown measures for Oslo and nine neighboring municipalities due to an outbreak of the variant.

ABC News' Clark Bentson contributed to this report.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has accused wealthy countries of "hoarding" excess doses of COVID-19 vaccines that they had ordered but did not immediately need.

Without identifying specific countries, Ramaphosa asserted that rich nations had "acquired large doses of vaccines" -- some "up to four times what their population needs" -- with the aim of "hoarding" them and "to the exclusion of other countries in the world that most need this." He said ending the global pandemic "will require greater collaboration on the rollout of vaccines, ensuring that no country is left behind in this effort."

"We need those who have hoarded the vaccines to release the vaccines so that other countries can have them," Ramaphosa told a virtual meeting of the World Economic Forum on Tuesday. "We are all not safe if some countries are vaccinating their people and other countries are not."

Ramaphosa's comments come as African nations grapple with a rising number of COVID-19 infections. South Africa accounts for nearly half of the continent's confirmed cases and deaths from the disease, according to the latest data from the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Ramaphosa chairs the African Union, which secured a provisional 270 million COVID-19 vaccine doses from manufacturers last week for its 55 member states across the continent. Ramaphosa said those doses will supplement the 600 million to be acquired from the COVAX Facility, a global initiative co-led by the World Health Organization to ensure rapid and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for all countries regardless of income.

Having Joe Biden in the Oval Office versus Donald Trump is a "complete game-changer" for the country's COVID-19 response, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said.

"Two ways: obsession with this, knowing that public health creates economic health, and a consistent national strategy as opposed to a patchwork quilt. It's a complete game-changer over the past six days," Murphy, a Democrat, told ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos in an interview Tuesday on "Good Morning America."

Murphy said his state, like many others, desperately needs more doses of COVID-19 vaccines

"We need more doses," he said. "The Biden administration knows that, they've entered into what I think is an empty cupboard and they're frantically, I know, obsessed with building that supply back."

New Jersey has confirmed more than 666,000 cases of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, including at least 20,972 deaths. The Garden State has administered 551,209 doses of COVID-19 vaccines as of Tuesday morning, according to real-time data collected by Johns Hopkins University.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has delivered almost double the amount of vaccine doses to New Jersey than have been administered there. Murphy said part of the issue is that a federally-run long-term care channel is putting aside doses in advance of visits to nursing homes and other care facilities.

"So it looks like they're not getting used. Those are actually earmarked for distribution over the next week or two," he said. "And then on the state side, ... we're not throwing any doses away, I promise you that. ... We are putting as many shots in the arms as possible."

In order for New Jersey to meet the goal of vaccinating 70% of its population within six months, Murphy said the state needs two or three times the weekly dosage of COVID-19 vaccines that they're currently getting.

"I'm confident we'll get there," he said. "It's not going to be as early as we had hoped, but I'm confident we're going to get there and I think by the time we turn to the summer, we're in a whole different place."

Biden aims to reopen all elementary schools and bring students for in-person learning within the first 100 days of his presidency, but Murphy said New Jersey will likely have to do a mix of remote and in-person learning.

"I'm not sure we can do it all in, fully in-person," he said. "I think the game-changer will be whether or not we can get the vaccinations for our educators."