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The European Union has threatened to impose tight controls on the export of coronavirus vaccines made in the bloc, potentially impacting the UK’s supply of Pfizer jabs.
The UK government said it was in “close contact” with suppliers after the European Commission issued the warning amid a row with AstraZeneca over a shortfall of doses for member states.
Facing criticism of a slow rollout in the EU, the European Commission threatened to impose controls on vaccines that would affect the Belgium-manufactured Pfizer vaccine.
European health commissioner Stella Kyriakides accused pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, which worked with Oxford University on the vaccine’s development, of failing to give a valid explanation for failing to deliver doses to the bloc.
Warning the EU “will take any action required to protect its citizens and rights”, she said in a broadcast address that an “export transparency mechanism” will be installed “as soon as possible”.
“In the future, all companies producing vaccines against Covid-19 in the EU will have to provide early notification whenever they want to export vaccines to third countries,” she said.
But the UK government remained confident that vaccine supply will ensure it meets its first target.
A spokeswoman said: “We remain in close contact with all of our vaccine suppliers.
Our vaccine supply and scheduled deliveries will fully support offering the first dose to all four priority groups by February 15.”
Spanish tennis player Paula Badosa has described her extended period of quarantine ahead of the Australia Open following a positive Covid-19 test as the worst moment of her career, adding she felt abandoned by organisers.
Badosa, ranked 67 in the world, was the first player to test positive for the virus upon arrival in Australia ahead of the tournament and cannot leave her hotel room until 31 January.
A new Brazilian variant of the coronavirus has made its first known appearance in the US in a person who recently returned to Minnesota after traveling to Brazil, state health officials announced.
The Brazil P.1 variant was found in a specimen from a patient who lives in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area who became ill in the first week of January, the Minnesota Department of Health said in a statement.
Epidemiologists are interviewing the person to obtain more details about their illness, travel and contacts.
There was no immediate indication that the variant was spreading in Minnesota.
State Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm said the new finding underscores the importance of testing as well as continued efforts to limit the spread of the disease.
We know that even as we work hard to defeat Covid -19, the virus continues to evolve as all viruses do,” Malcolm said in a statement.
“That’s yet another reason why we want to limit Covid -19 transmission the fewer people who get Covid -19, the fewer opportunities the virus has to evolve.
“The good news is that we can slow the spread of this variant and all Covid-19 variants by using the tried-and-true prevention methods of wearing masks, keeping social distance, staying home when sick, and getting tested when appropriate.”
AstraZeneca has denied its Covid-19 vaccine is not very effective for people over 65, after German media reports said officials fear the vaccine may not be approved in the European Union for use in the elderly, Reuters reports.
German daily papers Handelsblatt and Bild said in separate reports the vaccine - co-developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University - had an efficacy of 8% or less than 10%, respectively, in those over 65.
German officials were concerned that the vaccine may not receive approval from the EU’s medicines authority EMA for use in those over 65, Bild reported online.
The reports mark another potential issue for AstraZeneca, which told the EU on Friday it could not meet agreed supply targets up to the end of March after running into vaccine production problems.
Frustration was already growing among European countries because Pfizer and partner BioNTech announced a temporary slowdown in vaccine supplies earlier in January.
AstraZeneca described the German media reports saying its vaccine was shown to have a very low efficacy in the elderly as “completely incorrect”.
It said Britain’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation supported the vaccine’s use in the elderly.
The company added that a strong immune responses to the vaccine had been shown in blood analysis of elderly trial participants.
Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Ricardo Lewandowski has approved an investigation into health minister Eduardo Pazuello’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in the northern city of Manaus, according to a court document, Reuters reports.
Lewandowski granted a petition for the probe by Attorney General Augusto Aras, and gave a period of 60 days for the probe to conclude. Pazuello has five days to give testimony to the federal police, the document shows.
Manaus, in the northern state of Amazonas, has been hit hard by a brutal second wave that has pushed the city’s emergency services to breaking point.
The city ran out of oxygen, prompting the federal government to fly in tanks from across the country in order to save people from suffocating to death.
The region is also the birthplace of a new coronavirus variant, with similar mutations to those from Britain and South Africa, that researchers believe is more transmissible.
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, a longtime China skeptic, thanked Beijing on Monday for rapidly approving export of enough active ingredients to produce about 5.4 million doses of Sinovac Biotech’s vaccine being made in Sao Paulo, Reuters reports.
Bolsonaro tweeted that China has also fast-tracked approval for supplies of active ingredients to make AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine in Brazil.
With few vaccines to inoculate Brazil’s 210 million people and a rampant second wave, the country now finds itself almost entirely reliant on the Sinovac vaccine that Bolsonaro, a China hawk, had previously ridiculed.
Brazil’s federally-funded Fiocruz Institute, which has a deal with AstraZeneca to produce up to 100 million doses of its vaccine, said on Monday it expects China to send the active ingredient needed to make the shots locally around February 8th.
It had previously said it could deliver finished doses in March, but now says it will await the Chinese shipment before giving a more specific time frame.
It is not possible to disclose a detailed production schedule at this time,” it said.
A troop of gorillas in a US zoo are recovering from an outbreak of Covid-19 that sickened several of the group’s eight members, the zoo said.
The gorillas began to fall ill on January 6, when two of them started coughing, the statement by San Diego Zoo Global said.
Tests conducted showed that an unknown number were infected with the virus that causes Covid-19, likely contracted after exposure to a zoo employee who was infected but asymptomatic.
The strain that infected them was “a new, highly contagious strain of the coronavirus, recently identified in California,” the San Diego Zoo’s Safari Park said.
After the diagnosis, the gorillas were quarantined together at the park.
The oldest gorilla, a 48-year-old silverback named Winston, was diagnosed with pneumonia and heart disease, the zoo said.
He was treated with heart medications, antibiotics and an antibody therapy for COVID-19 that came from a supply not allowed for use in humans.
The veterinary team who treated Winston believe the antibodies may have contributed to his ability to overcome the virus,” the zoo said.
Brazil has registered 26,816 new coronavirus cases and 627 deaths, Reuters reports.
It comes as Brazilian pharmaceutical company met with health regulator Anvisa seeking approval to conduct Phase III clinical trials of Russia’s Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine, which it plans to make in Brazil for national immunisation and for export.
União Química has previously requested emergency use authorization for the vaccine, made by Moscow Gamaleya Institute and marketed by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF).
Anvisa requires late stage testing in Brazil to fully register the vaccine, which is already being used to inoculate people in Argentina.
“We have no doubt it will be approved. It is just a question of timing and satisfying all of Anvisa’s requirements,” said Fernando Marques, União Química’s chief executive officer and its main owner.
“By April, we expect to be producing 8 million vaccines a month,” he told reporters.
Russia is ready to deliver 10 million ready-made doses in the first quarter and can start shipping them as soon as Anvisa green-lights emergency use, Marques said.
Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim is recovering from Covid-19 after more than a week of mild symptoms, his son said.
Slim, 80, visited the National Institute of Nutrition for clinical analysis, monitoring and treatment in a preventative manner, his son Carlos Slim Domit said, Reuters reports.
He’s very well and has had a very favorable development after more than a week of minor symptoms,” Slim Domit said.
Telecoms magnate Slim is the richest man in Mexico and among the wealthiest in the world.
US president Joe Biden said he might be able to raise to 150 million his 100-day goal of administering 100 million vaccination shots for the coronavirus.
Biden told reporters it is likely that 1 million or more shots a day will be delivered in about three weeks.
He said: “If we wear masks between now and the end of April, the experts tell us we may be able to save 50,000 lives.”
Dozens of Lebanese protesters, enraged at a nearly month-long lockdown to combat the spread of coronavirus, took to the streets of the country’s second largest city on Monday and pelted security forces with stones, Reuters reports.
The security forces responded with tear gas to break up the protesters, who gathered in central Tripoli despite a strict lockdown in place since mid-January aimed at containing a major surge in infection in the small Mediterranean country.
Protesters in Tripoli were complaining that their region, the most impoverished in Lebanon, is unable to cope with the nearly month-long lockdown with little to no government assistance. The lockdown is in place until February 8.
Coronavirus infections surged in recent weeks, partially blamed on government measures to relax restrictions during the holiday seasons when tens of thousands of expat Lebanese were visiting. Hospitals have since registered near full occupancy of ICU beds and supplies were running out.
Russia will supply Mexico with 24 million doses of the Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine over the next two months, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said after a phone call with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
Putin’s pledge marks a sharp increase from a previous target from last week of 7.4 million doses through March, though some doubts over Russia’s production capacity persist, Reuters reports.
Russia’s vaccine diplomacy has developed goodwill in Latin America after other pharmaceutical companies including U.S.-based Pfizer Inc announced shortfalls in distribution plans.
Lopez Obrador held the call with Putin despite announcing on Sunday that he was himself infected with Covid-19 and was being treated for mild symptoms.
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A summary of today's developments
- The UK will announce on Tuesday enforced quarantine for travellers arriving in the country from abroad, the broadcaster ITV reported, after prime minister Boris Johnson said that new coronavirus variants were prompting a review of border policy.
- The Italian government on Monday sent a letter of formal notice to Pfizer calling on the drug company to respect its contractual commitments over its Covid-19 vaccine deliveries, the government special commissioner said.
- Spain has recorded a record number of weekend cases, logging 93,822 infections between Friday and Monday, and 767 deaths. The latest statistics, published by the health ministry on Monday, make the last weekend the worst of the entire pandemic in terms of new cases. The number of cases of the virus per 100,ooo people over the past 14 days rose from 829 on Friday to 885 on Monday.
- Rioting broke out for a third night in Dutch cities on Monday, initially linked to protests over a government decision to add a night time curfew to the Netherlands’ already strict lockdown.
- The number of people hospitalised in France for Covid-19 rose by more than a 1,000 over the last two days, a trend unseen since November 16, and the number of patients in intensive care units for the disease exceeded 3,000 for the first time since December 9. The country’s Covid-19 death toll was up by 445, at 73,494, the world’s seventh highest, versus a rise of 172 on Sunday.
- People in Iceland will soon receive vaccination certificates that could allow them to circumvent quarantine requirements. Iceland’s Directorate of Health said on Monday is in the process of finalising a system for Icelanders who have been fully vaccinated to obtain a Covid-19 vaccination certificate.
- The World Health Organization is providing risk management advice to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Japanese authorities regarding the holding of the Tokyo Olympics, but the top priority is vaccinating health workers worldwide against Covid-19, its top emergency expert said.
- Moderna has confirmed that its Covid-19 vaccine is expected to be protective against the two new South African and British strains of the virus, Reuters reports.
- Some 8.8% of global working hours were lost in 2020 due to the pandemic, roughly four times the number lost in the 2009 financial crisis, but there are “tentative signs” of recovery, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said.
AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine may not be very effective for people over 65, German coalition sources told tabloid Bild and Handelsblatt.
German officials fear that the AstraZeneca vaccine may not be approved by European Union authorities for use in those over 65, the German tabloid reported.
AstraZeneca, which developed its jab with Oxford University, told the EU on Friday it could not meet agreed supply targets up to the end of March.
The high rate of positive Covid-19 tests in Mexico likely means the nation has been screening too few people, the top World Health Organization (WHO) emergencies official, Mike Ryan, said, Reuters reports.
Over the weekend, Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced he had contracted Covid-19, the highest-profile case of the disease in a country where the new coronavirus has infected nearly 1.8 million people and killed about 150,000 of them.
“The positivity rates are high,” Ryan told a news conference, when asked about Mexico’s testing regime.
“Which probably does represent undertesting over many, many months.”
Rioting broke out for a third night in Dutch cities on Monday, initially linked to protests over a government decision to add a nighttime curfew to the Netherlands’ already strict lockdown.
The motivation behind incidents in Rotterdam and in the southern city of Geleen on Monday was not immediately clear, but rioters were overwhelmingly in their teens and twenties, Reuters reports.
News agency ANP reported that police on horseback in Rotterdam had charged at a group of about 50 youths. In Geleen, images showed youths running from police shortly before the night’s curfew was due to go into effect.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte earlier on Monday had condemned the riots over the weekend in which demonstrators attacked police and set fires.
The curfew, the first in the country since World War Two, was imposed after the National Institute for Health (RIVM) warned a new wave of infections is on its way due to the “British variant” of Covid-19, though numbers of new infections in the Netherlands have been declining for weeks. Some 4,129 new cases were reported on Monday, the lowest number since December 1.
Brazil is trying to buy as many Covid-19 vaccines as possible and accusations it has focused its efforts on only one manufacturer are unjust, Economy Minister Paulo Guedes said, Reuters reports.
Speaking in an online briefing, Guedes said the government’s biggest challenge this year is rolling out a nationwide vaccination program and that he has full confidence this will be accomplished.
“The big challenge is mass vaccination. I trust and have faith in on everybody who is collaborating on mass vaccinations. We have the logistics, we have the capacity,” Guedes said.
“Brazil really is trying to buy all the vaccines. The criticism that we would have focused on just one does not stack up,” Guedes said, adding that are a lot of people “climbing on corpses” to score political points.
Brazil has the second highest death count in the world from the virus, and President Jair Bolsonaro has come under heavy criticism from politicians, the press and the public for his stance on the pandemic and handling of the crisis.
Official figures show fatalities from the pandemic total 217,037 people, and the number of coronavirus cases is now nearly 8.9 million.
Hospital admissions of people with Covid-19 in England have dropped to the lowest daily figure reported since New Year’s Eve, according to official data.
NHS England said a total of 2,780 admissions of patients with the disease were reported for January 23.
This is the lowest daily figure since December 31, and is down 22% on the equivalent figure a week ago on January 16.
All regions have recorded a week-on-week decrease in daily admissions, data showed.
The figures cover all patients admitted in the previous 24 hours who were known to have Covid-19, plus any patients diagnosed in hospital with Covid-19 in the previous 24 hours.
The World Health Organization is providing risk management advice to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Japanese authorities regarding the holding of the Tokyo Olympics, but the top priority is vaccinating health workers worldwide against Covid-19, its top emergency expert said.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is sticking to his government’s commitment to host the Summer Games, with officials last week dismissing a report in Britain’s Times newspaper that said Tokyo had abandoned hope of holding the event this year, Reuters reports.
Mike Ryan, asked whether athletes should be vaccinated as a priority, told a WHO news briefing: “We have to face the realities of what we face now. There is not enough vaccine right now to even serve those who are most at risk.
“We face a crisis now on a global scale that requires frontline health workers, those older people and those most vulnerable in our societies to access vaccine first.”
The Games is scheduled to open on July 23, after being postponed for a year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Italian government on Monday sent a letter of formal notice to Pfizer calling on the drug company to respect its contractual commitments over its COVID-19 vaccine deliveries, the government special commissioner said.
The letter adds to tension between the European Union and the US drug-maker, which announced last week a temporary slowdown in deliveries to the bloc, Reuters reports.
The State Attorney General’s Office has sent Pfizer a formal notice to comply with its contractual obligations relating to its failure to deliver vaccine doses,” the special commissioner office said.
The number of people hospitalised in France for Covid-19 rose by more than a 1,000 over the last two days, a trend unseen since November 16, and the number of patients in intensive care units for the disease exceeded 3,000 for the first time since December 9.
The country’s Covid-19 death toll was up by 445, at 73,494, the world’s seventh highest, versus a rise of 172 on Sunday. The seven-day moving average of new fatalities increased to 401, the highest since December 9.
The Serum Institute of India (SII) will supply Saudi Arabia with 3 million AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine doses priced at $5.25 each in about a week on behalf of the British drugmaker, its chief executive told Reuters on Monday.
SII has no immediate plans, however, to divert supplies to Europe, even though AstraZeneca has come under pressure from the EU to deliver more shots after announcing a big cut in shipments due to production problems at a Belgian factory.
SII, the world’s biggest vaccine manufacturer, has partnered with AstraZeneca, the Gates Foundation and the Gavi vaccine alliance to make up to a billion doses for poorer countries.
The Indian company supplies doses on behalf of AstraZeneca but is also free to strike its own supply deals.
“We continue to support AstraZeneca wherever they need the support. We are happy to do so,” Chief Executive Adar Poonawalla told Reuters in an interview.
“But we have not been asked to supply any more products for Europe because then that would mean supplies to Africa and India would suffer, and we certainly don’t want that,” he said.
“Once I satisfy that I can look at other, richer nations. Six months to a year, that could change.”
He said the doses destined for Saudi Arabia would be shipped in a week or 10 days. SII is also supplying South Africa with 1.5 million doses at the same price of $5.25 each on behalf of AstraZeneca.
I’m now handing over to my colleague Nadeem Badshah.
Updated
UK to announce mandatory hotel quarantine for all arrivals
The UK will announce on Tuesday enforced quarantine for travellers arriving in the country from abroad, the broadcaster ITV reported, after prime minister Boris Johnson said that new coronavirus variants were prompting a review of border policy.
“Hotel chains tell us they expect govt to announce enforced quarantine for those arriving in UK tomorrow. They are already preparing following discussions. People would quarantine for 10 days under security with all meals in rooms - price upwards of 1,500 pounds,” ITV’s UK Editor Paul Brand said on Twitter.
“Decision still to be signed off at meeting of ministers tomorrow but several government sources say disagreement is only over the detail. General policy looks pretty nailed on.”
Coming up on @itvnews... Hotel chains tell us they expect govt to announce enforced quarantine for those arriving in UK tomorrow. They are already preparing following discussions. People would quarantine for 10 days under security with all meals in rooms - price upwards of £1500.
— Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) January 25, 2021
Zimbabwe’s government has ordered a near shutdown of public services operations to minimise the spread of Covid-19 amid a spike in infections and deaths, the AP reports.
The southern African country is on a tight lockdown since early January and last week the government ordered that only 10% of its employees should go to work to reduce transmission.
Four Zimbabwean cabinet ministers having died of Covid-19 so far, three within the past two weeks.
Usually crowded government offices were deserted on Monday, with officials only attending to emergencies such as issuing burial orders.
People reported waiting for hours to get a death certificate in order to bury a relative.
Zimbabwe has delayed reopening schools except for students sitting exams.
Thwe country, in line with other nations on the African continent, initially recorded low numbers of Covid-19 but has recently experienced a surge in cases, with some fearing expat Zimbabweans returning from South Africa for a holiday may have imported a more infectious variant of the virus.
The country of 15 million has recorded 1,005 deaths so far, up from 277 deaths at the beginning of December, according to government figures.
US coronavirus deaths and infections dropped markedly over the past couple of weeks, but are still alarmingly high, the Associated Press reports.
The government’s top infectious-disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said the improvement in numbers around the country appears to be the result of “natural peaking and then plateauing” after a holiday surge, rather than an effect of the rollout of vaccines that began in mid-December.
Deaths are running at an average of just under 3,100 a day, down from more than 3,350 less than two weeks ago. New cases are averaging about 170,000 a day after peaking at almost 250,000 on 11 January.
The number of Covid-19 patients in the hospital in the US has fallen to about 110,000 from a high of 132,000 on 7 January.
States that have been hot spots in recent weeks such as California and Arizona have shown similar improvements during the same period.
On Monday, California lifted regional stay-at-home orders in favor of county-by-county restrictions and ended a 10pm curfew.
Elsewhere, Minnesota school districts have begun bringing elementary students back for in-person learning.
Chicago’s school system, the nation’s third-largest district, had hoped to bring teachers back Monday to prepare for students to return next month, but the teachers union has refused.
“I don’t think the dynamics of what we’re seeing now with the plateauing is significantly influenced yet -- it will be soon -- but yet by the vaccine. I just think it’s the natural course of plateauing,” Fauci told NBC’s “Today.”
Nationwide, about 18 million people, or less than 6% of the US.population, have received at least one dose of vaccine, including about 3 million who have gotten the second shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A cheap steroid drug that can help save the lives of patients with Covid-19 should work on patients infected with the new more infectious variant of the coronavirus found in the UK, a senior medical official in England said on Monday.
Dexamethasone, a generic drug used since the 1960s to reduce inflammation in diseases such as arthritis, has been found to cut death rates among the most severely ill coronavirus patients admitted to hospital, Reuters reports.
“We would expect Dexamethasone to work perfectly because this is about reducing your own immune response and calming that down so that your body can get over this virus,” Susan Hopkins, senior medical adviser at Public Health England told a press conference.
“We would expect Dexamethasone will still be effective in reducing mortality with this virus.”
Ukraine is to launch its inoculation programme in February, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address on Monday.
The country’s official death toll stands at 21,924, and Ukrainian healthcare experts say the country will face a more difficult period of the epidemic in February as the number of daily deaths may rise to 250-400, the RBC Ukraine news agency reports.
Head of the Laboratory of Immunorehabilitology at the Mechnikov Institute of Microbiology and immunology Andrey Volyanskiy said daily deaths have been on the rise lately despite restrictions.
“There is risk that the number of deaths will rise to 250-400. These are today’s figures in Poland. It is very likely this will happen [in Ukraine] in the coming weeks,” he said.
Spain sees record rise in cases over the weekend
Spain has recorded a record number of weekend cases, logging 93,822 infections between Friday and Monday, and 767 deaths.
The latest statistics, published by the health ministry on Monday, make the last weekend the worst of the entire pandemic in terms of new cases.
The number of cases of the virus per 100,ooo people over the past 14 days rose from 829 on Friday to 885 on Monday.
Fernando Simón, Spain’s health emergencies chief, said the country’s intensive care units were being stretched to their limits and called on people to step up preventative measures.
He also said the surge in cases could be traced back to the festive period, which runs until 6 January in Spain.
“It’s been 20 days since Christmas and we’ve seen a very sharp rise since the end of the year,” he said. “Transmission doesn’t just suddenly cut off. We will probably also see that the descent following this peak will be far slower.”
To date, Spain has recorded 2,593,382 cases and 56,208 deaths. It has so far administered 1,237,593 doses of the vaccine to its population of almost 47 million people.
Updated
France on Monday reported 4,240 new infections, compared with 18,436 on Sunday and 3,736 last Monday.
The number of people in intensive care rose above the 3,000 for the first time since 9 December, Reuters reports.
France’s finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, said on Bloomberg Television nothing had been decided in regard to a new, third lockdown, emphasising that France will struggle to reach its 2021 target of 6% economic growth if another general lockdown is imposed.
The last lockdown was lifted on 15 December, in light of patients being treated in intensive care staying below 3,000.
The UK health minister, Matt Hancock, said on Monday that a small number of people in the country had been found to have been infected with the new virus variants from Brazil and South Africa, and that more people than ever were currently being treated with ventilators.
“There are more people on ventilators than at any time in this whole pandemic,” Hancock said, stressing that the pressure on the NHS “remains huge”.
Hancock said he has a high degree of confidence that the vaccines would protect against the UK variant, but added that the new more infectious UK variant means the government needs to be more cautious in lifting lockdown restrictions.
The government said on Friday that the new variant may be 30% more deadly than the original strain.
“There is no question the new variant made this fight a whole lot tougher,” Hancock told a press conference. “The critical message is we must be cautious. For all of us, our response must be extra careful.”
Dr Susan Hopkins, Covid-19 strategic response director at Public Health England, said during a Downing Street press conference that the UK was still “far away” from achieving herd immunity.
“One in 10 people having immunity is far away from where we need to be,” she said.
England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales are all currently under restrictive national lockdowns to try and halt the spread of Covid-19.
On Monday, the UK reported its lowest number of new daily infections since mid-December.
Updated
Several Spanish regions ramped up anti-coronavirus measures on Monday after weeks of incremental tightening have failed to tame a rampant third wave, Reuters reports.
With Spain’s 14-day incidence of the virus soaring to 829 cases per 100,000 people from 263 a month ago, regions have been scrambling to curb infections - although national law bars them from imposing the harshest restrictions like home confinement.
Potentially further complicating the authorities’ decision-making is the resignation of Health Minister Salvador Illa, who confirmed he would step aside to run for election in Catalonia after leading Spain’s response since the start of the pandemic.
However, a source close to the government pointed to Regional Policy Minister Carolina Darias, who has worked closely with Illa and overseen weekly summits of regional health chiefs, as the most likely candidate to replace him.
The regions brought in a range of restrictions.
Northwestern Galicia imposed its toughest measures yet, limiting people to socialising only with members of their own household and ordering non-essential businesses to close at 6pm for three weeks.
Regional leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo urged citizens to stay at home from 8pm but acknowledged he could not enforce that.
Southeastern Valencia and Murcia, where the 14-day incidence exceeds 1,200 cases per 100,000 people, banned gatherings of more than two people.
Even Madrid, whose regional government has staunchly opposed any measures that hurt business, will bring forward a curfew by an hour to 10 p.m. and deploy drones and extra police to ensure compliance.
Illa, who has repeatedly ruled out a nationwide lockdown, will join his final cabinet meeting on Tuesday before stepping down to try to win the Catalan regional government away from pro-independence parties in elections scheduled for 14 Febuary.
The president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, on Monday reversed an earlier decision by the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases to allow children aged 10 to 14 to go out of their homes in areas under “modified general community quarantine” (MGCQ) starting February, citing the threat of the new Covid-19 variant.
“I’m sorry, [it] is just a precaution. I’m just scared, because this new strain strikes young children,” Duterte said in his weekly national address.
Children aged five and 10 were among the Covid-19 patients found with the latest variant in Bontoc, Mountain Province, CNN Philippines reports.
The country reported a further 1,581 cases on Monday, taking the overall tally to 514,996.
The Department of Health said that active cases stand at 29,282 or 5.7% of the total infected.
Leading the areas with the highest number of new infections is Quezon City with 89, followed by Cebu City with 88, Cavite with 80, Davao City with 78, and Cebu province with 50.
The number of infections in the country’s capital Manila remains relatively flat despite the expected holiday surge, according to independent research group OCTA, which said on Monday the trend in Metro Manila has “leveled off” this month.
Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s announcement that he has tested positive for Covid-19 just a few hours after boarding a plane has raised fresh questions over his handling of the pandemic and set off a scramble by top officials to get tested for the virus, Reuters reports.
The 67-year-old Lopez Obrador, who has a history of heart problems and high blood pressure, said on Sunday evening he was being treated for mild symptoms of Covid-19 after touring parts of northern and central Mexico for three days.
News of his diagnosis capped the deadliest week of the coronavirus pandemic in Mexico and left questions unanswered about how exactly he became ill following a busy schedule of meetings and public events in the preceding days. Foreign minister Marcelo
Ebrard, Interior Minister Olga Sanchez and Security Minister Rosa Icela Rodriguez were among top officials who said they had taken tests after the news, while others said they would go into self-isolation.
Mexico, which has registered nearly 150,000 deaths from Covid-19, has the fourth-highest death toll worldwide, and Lopez Obrador’s management of the crisis has drawn heavy criticism from political adversaries and many medical experts.
Nevertheless, some polls show his popularity has risen during the pandemic, despite accusations he downplayed it at the start and has put himself in situations of unnecessary risk.
Standing in for him at a regular daily news conference on Monday, Interior Minister Sanchez said the president was feeling well and remains firmly in charge of the government.
“He will recover soon,” she said.
Hong Kong has lifted an unprecedented lockdown for mandatory Covid-19 testing in one of its most crowded areas amid questions about its effectiveness, even as the city faces an escalating new outbreak in a middle-class neighbourhood.
Authorities confirmed 73 new cases citywide, the South China Morning Post reports, amid growing speculation that the Yau Ma Tei wholesale fruit market might locked down soon, which would heavily impact on vendors ahead of their critical selling period for the Lunar New Year holiday in mid February.
Health experts on Monday were left debating the justification for locking down part of Yau Tsim Mong district to test more than 7,000 residents over a two-day period, which uncovered only 13 coronavirus infections.
But those who supported the drastic move noted the possibility that a security guard from the stricken district could have spread the disease to the Laguna City private housing estate in Lam Tin, where dozens of residents were evacuated from an affected block.
Also on Monday, Secretary for Food and Health Professor Sophia Chan Siu-chee approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for the first roll-out in Hong Kong, which was expected to start after the festive season break.
Hong Kong announced a sudden lockdown of a block of nearly 200 buildings in Yau Tsim Mong, a densely-packed neighbourhood that squeezes in more than 10,000 people in the space of a square kilometre, on Friday, with little notice given to residents and businesses.
The decision was made after the area, which is home to many ethnic minorities, saw spiralling infections.
People live in cramped, often illegally subdivided flats with shared sanitation facilities, priced out of other areas and accommodation in light of high rents.
Italy reported 420 further fatalities and 8,561 new cases on Monday, compared with Sunday’s 299 new deaths and 11,629 new infections.
The health ministry said that, while new infections were down, the number of swab tests also fell, as often happens over the weekend, totalling just 143,116 against a previous 216,211.
Italy has now registered 85,881 deaths linked to Covid-19 since last February, the second-highest toll in Europe after the UK and the sixth-highest in the world. The country has reported 2.475 million cases.
Patients in hospital with Covid-19 - not including those in intensive care - stood at 21,424 on Monday, compared with 21,309 a day earlier, according to Reuters.
The total number of intensive care patients stood at 2,421 up from 2,400 on Sunday.
When Italy’s second wave of the epidemic was accelerating quickly in the first half of November, hospital admissions were rising by about 1,000 per day, while intensive care occupancy was increasing by about 100 per day.
Companies need female employees to help them bounce back from the coronavirus pandemic and must not let gender equality slip off their agenda due to the tough business climate, a virtual meeting of global figures heard on Monday.
Reuters reports:
Women have been hit hard by the pandemic’s economic impact, with the International Labour Organization warning last year that Covid-19 threatened to wipe out “modest progress” on workplace in equality in recent decades.
Business leaders, campaigners and politicians told Monday’s online meeting organised by the World Economic Forum that women risk losing hard-won gains at work.
“I have heard many organisations are saying ‘Well, we have so many important issues that diversity really isn’t something we can focus on right now’,” said Laura Liswood, secretary-general at the Council of Women World Leaders.
“That’s just the opposite of the truth, because in a crisis time you need the most creative ideas and the most differing experiences and perspective, which is what diversity provides.”
The disparity is partly because women are more likely to have insecure jobs, while many have also struggled to balance employment with extra caring responsibilities and home-schooling.
Too often their needs are being put last in pandemic response strategies, women leaders told the meeting.
“In crisis, the gender perspective is unfortunately often the first thing to be disregarded,” said Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde.There is “lots of willingness” among businesses to tackle gender inequalities but not always enough attention to setting and tracking targets on hiring, promotions and fair pay, said Martine Ferland, chief executive at consulting fund Mercer.
Meanwhile, Liswood said she had come to back the idea of quotas for women in politics and business alike, to ensure that women have a “seat at the table” to influence decisions.
Panel members said governments, business and civil society groups must work together to promote equity in the recovery, with stimulus measures offering a chance to rebalance the scales.
UK reports lowest daily rise in cases since mid-December
The UK reported 592 new deaths on Monday, compared with Sunday’s 610 Covid-related fatalities.
The country recorded 22,195 new infections, significantly down from 30,004 the day prior, and the lowest daily rise in infections since 19 December, the last time the new daily tally was below 30,000 new cases.
Prime minister Boris Johnson said the government will look at the possibility of lifting some restrictions in England from mid-February, but added that the government was looking at tougher measures on traveller quarantine.
According to the latest figures, around 6,6 million people in the UK have received their first dose of vaccine so far.
The seven-day rolling average of first doses given daily in the UK is now 358,724.
The UK has the world’s fifth worst official death toll and is on course to hit the grim milestone of 100,000 fatalities this week.
The toll has risen by an average of over 1,000 per day since 13 January.
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Covid-19 case rates in most regions of England are at their lowest level since before the start of 2021, new figures show.
In London, the rolling seven-day rate as of 20 January stood at 557.8 cases per 100,000 people - down from 770.6 a week earlier, and the lowest since the seven days to 16 December, the PA reports.
Eastern England is currently recording a seven-day rate of 437.9, down from 561.4 and the lowest since mid December.
South-east and south-west England are also at the lowest level since before New Year’s Day.
The picture is more mixed across the Midlands and northern England, however.
New figures for the seven days to 21 January show that infection rates are currently falling in all local areas in Wales, with the biggest decrease in Wrexham, where the number of new cases per 100,000 people has dropped from 703.2 to 531.8.
The figures are based on tests carried out in NHS Wales laboratories and those conducted on Welsh residents processed in commercial laboratories.
Portugal’s firefighters, police, and people over 50 with pre-existing conditions will start getting vaccinated against Covid-19 from next week, the government said on Monday, as it scrambled to contain soaring infection rates that are overwhelming hospitals.
Lawmakers and government ministers will also get vaccinated from next week, health minister Marta Temido said, while medical staff spoke of despair at the steep increase in cases, Reuters reports.
The country of 10 million people, which fared better than others in the first wave of the pandemic, now has the world’s highest seven-day rolling average of new daily cases and deaths per million inhabitants, according to data tracker ourworldindata.org.
“Colleagues are worn out. They are completely worn out and some days they just feel like crying,” an ambulance worker told Reuters. She spoke anonymously for fear of losing her job if she gave her name, as her employer does not allow staff to talk to the media without permission.
“People have already died in ambulances and will continue to die because there is no capacity to respond,” she said, adding: “I recently took a patient to hospital and I had to wait two hours inside the ambulance ... but I have colleagues who waited five, six, nearly seven hours.”
Last week, an elderly man died in an ambulance after a three-hour wait outside a hospital in the town of Portalegre.
The week before, an 80-year-old man also died waiting for hours outside the Torres Vedras hospital.
Portuguese hospitals have said they are running out of beds for coronavirus and non-coronavirus patients.
Pandemic created £400bn windfall for world's ten richest men, Oxfam says
The coronavirus pandemic has been disastrous for millions, closing businesses, destroying livelihoods, and plunging people into poverty - as national economies stare into the abyss of the worst recession since the 1930s - or maybe even ever.
And yet, for the superrich, it has apparently been a blessing. New research by Oxfam claims that the ten richest men in the world have seen their combined wealth increase by a staggering £400bn ($540bn).
That’s enough, says the charity, to both vaccinate every person in the world and reverse the rise in poverty caused by the pandemic.
In a report timed to coincide with the World Economic Forum’s Davos Agenda, the annual tycoons’ jamboree gone online this year, Oxfam says that the crisis sparked by Covid-19 could, for the first time since records began, lead to an increase in inequality in almost every country at once.
A survey of 295 leading economists in 79 countries, commissioned for the report, found that almost nine in ten (87%) said they expected income inequality to increase as a result of the pandemic, two thirds thought racial inequality would increase, and half thought the same for gender inequality.
Danny Sriskandarajah, Oxfam GB chief executive, said:
“The virus hit an already profoundly unequal world and without urgent action to make our economies work for everyone, things are set to get much, much worse.
“Billions of people were living on the edge when the pandemic began and had no resources or support to weather this fierce storm. In countries across the world we see people struggling to feed their families and keep a roof over their heads, while paid employment becomes harder to come by. At the same time, a tiny number of individuals have pocketed more money in nine months than they could spend in a lifetime.
“These facts are shameful. Governments cannot continue to look the other way, they must act. Fair taxation on the very richest could help with the global recovery, raise more money to fight poverty and help shape more equal societies.”
A further 609 people who tested positive for coronavirus have died in hospital in England, bringing the total number of confirmed deaths reported in hospitals to 67,046, NHS England said on Monday.
Patients were aged between 30 and 101. All except 14, aged between 41 and 96, had known underlying health conditions.
The deaths were between 17 December and 24 January, with the majority being on or after 15 January.
There were 28 other deaths reported suspected to be Covid-related but with no positive Covid-19 test result.
Iceland to start issuing vaccination certificates
People in Iceland will soon receive vaccination certificates that could allow them to circumvent quarantine requirements.
Iceland’s Directorate of Health said on Monday is in the process of finalising a system for Icelanders who have been fully vaccinated to obtain a Covid-19 vaccination certificate.
Around 4,500 people in the country have received their second jab and will thus be considered fully vaccinated against coronavirus.
The certificate, which is available online, aims “to facilitate the movement of people between countries, so that individuals can present a vaccine certificate at the border and be exempt from Covid-19 border measures in accordance with the rules of the country concerned,” a government website states.
In addition, the government of Iceland announced earlier this month that vaccination certificates meeting the Chief Epidemiologist of Iceland’s guidelines and are issued in an EEA/EFTA state will be valid at the Icelandic border, meaning that those presenting such a certificate are exempt from the quarantining and testing measures in place.
Iceland has reported zero new coronavirus infections since 22 January.
A reminder that you can get in touch with me via Twitter @JedySays or via email if you have any tips or comments you want to share.
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India’s government will pay tribute on Tuesday to ordinary workers - millions of whom have lost their jobs due to Covid-19 during an annual militray parade.
The pandemic-related hardships of labourers, gig employees and other informal workers will be recognised in the labour ministry’s Republic Day float, which will emphasise the role of new reforms in boosting workers’ rights.
India’s parliament approved the controversal labour laws in September despite a boycott by opposition parties and protests from trade unions.
Reuters reports:
The three labour codes will make it easier for firms to hire and fire workers and impose operating restrictions on unions, but Santosh Gangwar, India’s labour and employment minister, has said they will safeguard workers’ interests and foster growth.
His ministry has said the new legislation will usher in a range of worker rights, such as health checks, home visits, emergency aid and written terms.
Trade unions and rights campaigners have said the new laws compromise workers’ legal rights and exclude many informal and home-based workers from getting any health or social security benefits.
Nearly 90% of India’s workforce is in the informal sector - including an estimated 100 million migrant workers who have been hard hit by the pandemic as they struggle to access government aid and find new jobs, campaigners say.
US President Joe Biden will formally reinstate Covid-19 travel restrictions on non-US travelers from Brazil, Ireland, the United Kingdom and 26 other European countries that allow travel across open borders, the Associated Press reports.
The news comes from two White House officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. They also confirmed that South Africa would be added to the restricted list due to concerns about the country’s new Covid-19 strain.
The European Union has urged AstraZeneca to speed up vaccine delivery after the company announced a large cut in supplies of its Covid-19 shot, Reuters reports.
In a sign of the EU’s frustration – after Pfizer also announced supply delays earlier in January – a senior EU official told Reuters the bloc would in the coming days require pharmaceutical companies to register Covid-19 vaccine exports.
AstraZeneca, which developed its shot with Oxford University, told the EU on Friday it could not meet agreed supply targets up to the end of March, with an EU official involved in the talks telling Reuters that meant a 60% cut to 31m doses.
News emerged on Monday that the company faces wider supply problems.
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Moderna confirms its vaccine works against UK and South African variants
Moderna has confirmed that its Covid-19 vaccine is expected to be protective against the two new South African and British strains of the virus, Reuters reports.
Moderna said on Monday its COVID-19 vaccine produced virus-neutralising antibodies in laboratory tests against new coronavirus variants found in the UK and South Africa.
A two-dose regimen of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine is expected to be protective against emerging strains detected to date, the company said.
Moderna, however, said it would test a vaccine booster against the South Africa variant in pre-clinical trials to see if that would be more effective in boosting antibodies against the variant and other future variants.
The US has also announced that scientists are preparing to upgrade existing Covid-19 vaccines to address these variants, the Guardian and agencies report.
“We’re doing it today to be ahead of the curve should we need to,” Dr Tal Zaks, Moderna’s chief medical officer, told the New York Times. “I think of it as an insurance policy.
Rachel Hall here taking over the liveblog from Jedidajah Otte. You can reach me at rachel.hall@theguardian.com or on Twitter to share any thoughts or tips.
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Czechs flocking to escape coronavirus restrictions with a day’s cross-country skiing or sledding in a national park have brought a surge of Covid infections to a tiny village, a local official said.
Modrava’s mayor, Antonin Schubert, said tests last week had identified 13 positive cases among the 90 people who live there, making the hamlet that sits in central Europe’s largest forest area, the Sumava national park, the most infected in the region.
Reuters reports:
Ski lifts were closed but, with local pubs allowed to sell take-out food, crowds built up in the village, which became much more popular after Alpine resorts shut their doors.
“At every take-out window, the line of people is much bigger than if they were waiting for the ski lift,” said the mayor of the hamlet surrounded by gently rising peaks near the German and Austrian borders. “No visitor is wearing a mask.”
On a recent weekend, skiers, sledders and others – most without masks – congregated in small groups as they strapped on their gear to explore the snow-covered trails around 170km (100 miles) from Prague.
Mountains areas across the Czech Republic have experienced similar crushes of people clogging parking lots with cars and camper vans at the weekend and creating headaches for local officials like Modrava’s mayor.
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New York City “does not have enough doses” of Covid-19 vaccine to “be able to meet the demand we know exists among New Yorkers”, the city’s health commissioner Dave Chokshi told CNN on Monday.
Chokshi said the current supply, only a few thousand doses, would be used in the next 24 to 48 hours.
During one week in January, more than 220,000 doses were administered, with a New Yorker getting the jab every three seconds.
Chokshi said the city had the capacity to easily double the number of vaccinations, if it had the supply, and more than 20,000 vaccine appointments scheduled for last week had had to be rescheduled.
He expected to get a re-supply on Tuesday and Wednesday of 100,000 doses, but those would be gone by the end of the week.
New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, tweeted on Sunday that his office “would fight to get supply to New Yorkers”.
This Sunday morning I want to be clear:
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) January 24, 2021
Our vaccination plan will be fair and equitable and we will fight to get supply to New Yorkers.
When it is your turn - take it. Trust science.
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Impact of pandemic "far greater" than that of 2009 financial crisis, report says
Some 8.8% of global working hours were lost in 2020 due to the pandemic, roughly four times the number lost in the 2009 financial crisis, but there are “tentative signs” of recovery, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said on Monday.
The losses were equivalent to 255m full-time jobs and included an “unprecedented” 114m workers joining the ranks of the unemployed and others whose working hours were reduced due to restrictions, it said.
“These massive losses resulted in an 8.3% decline in global labour income (not counting support measures), equivalent to $3.7tn or 4.4% of global gross domestic product (GDP),” the ILO, a UN agency, said.
Guy Ryder, the ILO director general, told a news briefing: “This has been the most severe crisis for the world of work since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Its impact is far greater than that of the global financial crisis of 2009.”
Ryder said it was “particularly concerning” that 71% of the job losses, or 81 million people, came in the form of inactivity, Reuters reports.
“These people have simply dropped out of the labour market. Either they are unable to work, perhaps because of pandemic restrictions, or social obligations or they have given up looking for work,” he added.
More hours will be lost this year and possibly next, he said.
“All scenarios project that working hour losses will continue, in other words the financial and social distress for millions of people will continue through 2021 and beyond that,” Ryder said.
ILO data showed that women and younger workers were most affected, while the hardest-hit sectors were accommodation, food services, retail and manufacturing.
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Public Health Wales said a total of 270,833 first doses of the Covid-19 vaccine had now been given, an increase of 6,295 from the previous day.
The agency said 543 second doses had also been given, an increase of 27.
The Welsh health minister Vaughan Gething said he would be able to confirm whether or not his target of vaccinating 70% of people over 80 and in care homes by 25 January had been met “in the next day or two”, the PA reports.
The latest figures from Public Health Wales show 47% of those aged over 80 have received their first dose of the vaccine, along with 64.8% of care home residents and 73.4% of care home staff, but Gething previously said there would be delays in reporting.
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Russia and China have approached Zimbabwe about supplying vaccines to tackle its escalating Covid-19 outbreak amid concern about Harare’s ability to afford the jabs, with plans for meetings with business leaders who have offered to pay for them.
Reuters reports:
Authorities in the impoverished southern African nation are scrambling to contain the accelerating spread of the coronavirus. Infections have doubled in just the past few weeks and three government ministers have died in the last 10 days.
Zimbabwe doctors’ groups say hospitals are quickly filling up with Covid-19 patients and cite an increase in the number of infected people dying at home, unable to afford the steep fees charged by hospitals.
Authorities are now trying to establish whether a more infectious South African variant of the virus is circulating in Zimbabwe, fearing it may have entered when thousands of citizens living in South Africa returned home for the December holiday.
Portia Manangazira, a director of epidemiology and disease control in the health ministry, told a parliamentary committee that China and Russia were among those that had approached Zimbabwe to offer supplies of their Covid-19 vaccines.
Zimbabwe has recorded a total of 31,320 coronavirus cases and 1,005 deaths – more than half reported since the beginning of this year, data released late on Sunday showed. The recovery rate has fallen to 71% from 82% on 1 January.
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Thailand said on Monday it would start its coronavirus vaccination programme next month, amid accusations that the government is too slow in its efforts to procure vaccines.
Thailand’s food and drug administration last week approved AstraZeneca’s vaccine for emergency use but has yet to grant authorisation for that of Sinovac Biotech, of which the country has ordered 2 million doses, Reuters reports.
Health workers in Samut Sakhon province, the centre of the latest outbreak, would be the first to be inoculated with the initial delivery of 50,000 doses, as well as the elderly and people with chronic diseases, officials said.
But the health minister Anutin Charnvirakul on Monday said AstraZeneca would be supplying 50,000 fewer doses of the vaccine than the 200,000 Thailand had ordered, adding that Thailand had initially requested 1 million doses.
The government has rejected criticism for taking too long to secure vaccines while neighbours in south-east Asia have started vaccinations or ordered supplies from multiple companies.
On Monday morning, Thailand reported 187 new cases, taking the overall number of recorded infections to 13,687.
The total death toll stands at 75 after two new deaths were recorded.
One of the two people who died was a British man, 61, who arrived in Bangkok on 25 December and tested positive on 29 December, the Bangkok Post reports.
Later on Monday, Samut Sakhon province reported 914 new cases there alone, the majority of which were found as a result of a new province-wide mass testing effort that authorities said would take place for a week.
Updated
Poland reported 2,419 new cases on Monday, the Polish ministry of health said, as well as 38 new deaths.
The country’s overall death toll now stands at 35,401, with 1,478,119 total recorded infections.
Since 21 January daily infections have been falling.
The health ministry also reported that 14,544 people who confirmed to have the virus have been hospitalised, while 170,854 are under quarantine.
Since the governement launched its national inoculation programme on 27 December, 707,474 Poles have been vaccinated against Covid-19, according to data posted on the official government website.
Health workers were among the first to receive the jab, and on Friday, Poland started vaccinating people over 80.
In December, the government announced that Poland would enter a “national quarantine” from 28 December to 17 January, First News reports, but the restrictions have since been extended to 31 January.
Hotels, ski slopes, shopping centres, gyms and aquaparks have been closed.
Updated
Germany to treat some Covid patients with antibody cocktail given to Trump
Specialist clinics in Germany will this week become the first hospitals in the EU to treat Covid-19 patients with the expensive and experimental antibody cocktails used to treat the former US president Donald Trump after he caught the virus last October.
“Monoclonal antibodies will be used in Germany as the first country in the EU, initially in university clinics,” the health minister, Jens Spahn, told Bild am Sonntag newspaper, confirming that his government had bought 200,000 doses for €400m (£355m).
Containing lab-made antibodies that attach to the coronavirus spike protein and prevent it from hijacking cells, the drugs would initially only be used on high-risk patients with weak immune systems and at an early stage of the illness, a health ministry spokesperson said on Monday.
Monoclonal antibody therapies, which are also used as a “passive vaccination” against diseases like tetanus or rabies, are notoriously difficult to produce and expensive.
Trump credited the Regeneron therapy for his early recovery from coronavirus in October, after receiving a single 8g dose of its monoclonal antibody cocktail at the Walter Reed National Military Medical centre, the US army’s flagship medical centre.
America’s leading infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci at the time said he suspected that Regeneron’s drug had contributed to Trump’s recovery, but “you can’t prove that until you do a number of studies to show that it actually works”, he said.
Recent studies have given scientists new hope, however, with a December 2020 article in the New England Journal of Medicine noting that the REGN-COV2 antibody cocktail “reduced viral load”, especially in patients whose immune response had not yet been initiated or who had a high viral-load at baseline.
In the US, the two drugs were granted emergency clearance by the country’s regulator, the Food and Drug Administration, in November last year but have only been used sparsely because they need to be infused into the bloodstream, which requires patients to be in a hospital setting at an early stage of the infection.
Updated
The ruler of Dubai has replaced the head of the emirate’s health authority without explanation, amid a spike in Covid-19 infections in the United Arab Emirates.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum appointed Awad Saghir al-Ketbi as the director general of the Dubai Health Authority, replacing Humaid al-Qutami, according to a statement issued on Sunday.
No reason for the change was given, Reuters reports.
The number of daily coronavirus cases in the UAE has tripled in the past month. On Monday authorities registered 3,579 new infections and nine deaths.
The UAE has largely removed coronavirus restrictions with the exception of face masks in public and social distancing.
Dubai, the region’s business and tourism hub, advertised itself as an open and quarantine-free escape for international travellers.
But after a surge in cases, Dubai has clamped down on its entertainment scene, further restricting the number of people allowed to gather at social events and restaurants, and suspended non-essential surgery in hospitals.
Last week, Denmark announced it was suspending flights from the UAE for five days after doubts emerged that the results of coronavirus tests taken before departure from the country were not reliable.
The UAE has ramped up its immunisation campaign with the aim of vaccinating more than 50% of its roughly 9 million population before the end of March.
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A Russian social media star with millions of followers has been kicked out of Bali for holding a party on the Indonesian island that broke virus rules, local authorities said on Monday.
Sergey Kosenko’s, 33, was put on a plane bound for Moscow on Sunday and would be banned from returning for at least six months, AFP reports.
“We took administrative action against Sergey in the form of deportation,” said a Bali justice official, Jamaruli Manihuruk.
Kosenko, who has nearly five million followers on Instagram, made headlines in December after he posted a video of himself and a woman driving a motorbike off a dock.
Immigration officials moved against him after he posted another video of a party he held at a local hotel this month that breached health protocols banning large gatherings, authorities said.
More than 50 people were in attendance despite the restrictions.
Kosenko also had misused his visitor visa by doing business while on the island, they added.
Kosenko is from Smolensk, according to his social media, where he condemned his deportation as “outrageous”.
“If in Russia the law doesn’t work as it should, here there is no law at all,” he wrote. “There’s no presumption of innocence - they just deport you.”
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Drugmaker Merck & Co on Monday said it would end development of its two Covid-19 vaccines and focus its pandemic research on treatments.
Reuters reports:
Merck said in a statement it will record a pretax discontinuation charge in the fourth quarter for vaccine candidate V591, which it acquired with the purchase of Austrian vaccine maker Themis Bioscience, and V590, developed with nonprofit research organisation IAVI.
In early trials, both vaccines generated immune responses that were inferior to those seen in people who had recovered from Covid-19 as well as those reported for other Covid-19 vaccines, the company said.
Merck was late to join the race to develop a vaccine to protect against the coronavirus, which has so far killed more than 2 million people and continues to surge in many parts of the world including the United States.
US regulators in December authorised Covid-19 vaccines from Moderna and partners Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE, and tens of millions of doses of both have so far been administered globally.
Rivals Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and others are also racing to develop safe and effective vaccines to protect against the virus.
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Austrians over 14 must wear FFP2 masks on public transport, in shops and medical sites
From Monday, Austrians over 14 are required to wear medical-grade FFP2 masks on public transport, in shops and businesses, and in pharmacies, hospitals and medical practices.
The mandatory measure has largely been accepted without complaint, despite controversy over other measures such as the closing of schools while ski lifts remain open, AFP reports.
Though often sold for more than €5 each just a few weeks ago, the masks, which block 94% of aerosols, can now be found at all grocery stores for 59 cents each.
Elderly residents and low-income households received packs of free FFP2 masks last week.
The measure also applies to supermarkets and to service providers such as garage owners and health professionals, while teachers, warehouse workers and people in the public service must also comply at their workplace, unless a minimum distance of two metres can be ensured.
Pregnant women and people with medical conditions that make it harder for them to breathe are exempt.
On Monday morning, passengers on one of Vienna’s busiest underground lines wore a problematic variety of masks still, ranging from self-made fabric products to pulled up scarves, the Standard newspaper reports.
Following a second lockdown that ended in early December and allowed stores to open for Christmas shopping, daily infection rates quickly increased, leading the government to imposed a third lockdown just a few weeks later, on 26 December.
The third lockdown, which was due to be lifted on 25 January, has failed to significantly contain new infections in the nation of 8.9 million, leading to an extension until 8 February and stricter regulations, including the mandatory FFP2 masks.
Currently, around 130 new infections are registered per 100,000 residents each day - well above the maximum of 50 infections the government aims for.
Schools, museums, sports halls, cinemas and non-essential shops are currently closed and the government is urging Austrians to limit social contacts and to work from home wherever possible.
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France bans certain homemade masks because they don't offer enough protection
France has issued a decree banning certain homemade masks being worn in public saying they do not offer sufficient protection from new more contagious Covid-19 variants.
The health minister Olivier Véran said a decree published on Friday came after recommendations from the country’s health experts.
“The High Council for Public Health recommends, as do I, that the French do not masks they have made at home,” Véran said. He said the advice also covered industrially made fabric masks with lesser filtering qualities, listed as Category 2.
On Monday France’s junior minister responsible for health at work confirmed that official advice was to be changed to stop people wearing homemade masks in the workplace.
“The government is scrupulously following the recommendations of the High Council for Public Health and has done so since the beginning of this crisis,” Laurent Pietraszewski told Franceinfo radio.
He said the new “health protocol” in the workplace would be adapted “as usual, after discussions with the unions”.
Only three types of masks will be recommended: surgical, FFP2 and fabric masks made to Category 1 standards.
The recommendation has been criticised by the French Academy of Medicine, which says there is a “lack of scientific proof” that homemade masks do not offer sufficient protection “if worn properly”.
The French authorities have admitted the new decree will be difficult to enforce.
“I don’t imagine the police are going to be asking people the protection level of their mask,” a spokesperson for the prime minister said.
Category 1 masks filter 95% of 3 micrometer particles, whereas Category 2 only filter 70%. Surgical masks filter 95%. FFP2 masks filter 94% of even smaller 0.6 micrometer particles.
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The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, said on Monday he was looking at the possibility of toughening the country’s border controls because of the risk of “vaccine-busting” new variants of coronavirus.
“We want to make sure that we protect our population, protect this country against reinfection from abroad,” Johnson said. “We need a solution.”
“We have to realise there is at least the theoretical risk of a new variant that is a vaccine-busting variant coming in,” he said.
Johnson said the UK was on target to reach its vaccination targets for vulnerable groups by 15 February.
According to an ITV report of Johnson’s comments this morning, his overall tone was relatively downbeat about the prospect of lockdown being lifted any time soon.
He said:
Daily we’re looking at the data and trying to work out when we’re going to be able to lift restrictions.
Schools obviously will be a priority but I don’t think anybody would want to see the restrictions lifted so quickly while the rate of infection is still very high so as to lead to another great spread of infection …
We’ve now got the R down below 1 across the whole of the country. That’s a great achievement. We don’t want to see a huge surge of infection just when we’ve got the vaccination programme going so well and people working so hard.
I’m Jedidajah Otte and will be bringing you the latest pandemic developments over the next few hours. Feel free to get in touch if you have any comments, tips or updates, you can reach me on Twitter @JedySays or via email.
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Dutch police unions warns of more anti-lockdown riots
The Netherlands police union, NPB, has warned there could be more anti-lockdown riots after hundreds were arrested over the weekend in several cities.
“We haven’t seen so much violence in 40 years,” the union board member Koen Simmers said on the television programme Nieuwsuur.
Police used water cannon, dogs and officers on horseback to disperse a protest in central Amsterdam on Sunday afternoon. Nearly 200 people, some of them throwing stones and fireworks, were detained in the city.
In the southern city of Eindhoven, looters plundered stores at the train station and set cars and bikes on fire.
When police said the demonstrators were violating the country’s current lockdown rules “they took weapons out of their pockets and immediately attacked the police”, Eindhoven’s mayor, John Jorritsma, said.
The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, on Monday condemned riots as “criminal violence”.
Riot police in Netherlands clashed with protesters angry at new #coronavirus restrictions
— Darren McCaffrey (@DarrenEuronews) January 25, 2021
Officers used water cannon and tear gas to clear demonstrators in Eindhoven, who gathered in defiance of new 21:00 curfew
More than 100 people have been arrestedpic.twitter.com/qXCC8ajg8Y
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Bulgaria is to make everyone coming into the country take Covid tests to stop the spread of the more contagious UK variant, the health minister Kostandin Angelov said on Monday.
Bulgarian health authorities say they have so far recorded eight cases of the new variant that was first identified in Britain.
“Today we will undertake actions to make PCR tests compulsory for all travellers that want to enter the country, including from the European Union,” Angelov told a government meeting.
The country has seen a significant drop in new infections in recent weeks and is planning to ease some restrictions and reopen secondary schools, shopping malls and gyms from 4 February.
Four players and the president from the Brazilian football club Palmas, who were travelling separately after testing positive for Covid, have died in a plane crash.
The private plane carrying the group plunged to the ground at the end of the runway shortly after takeoff at an airport in the northern state of Tocantins. The pilot also died in the accident, with the cause of the crash not immediately clear.
The team were on their way to the central region of Goiânia to play a Copa Verde match against Vila Nova. The victims were identified as the club president, Lucas Meira, and players Lucas Praxedes, Guilherme Noé, Ranule and Marcus Molinari, in addition the unnamed pilot. There were no survivors on board.
Read more here:
Updated
The United Arab Emirates has reported a new daily record for increased infections of 3,591. The previous record was set on Sunday when there were 3,579 new cases.
COVID-19 Updates in the UAE – Monday ,January 25,2021:
— UAEGov (@uaegov) January 25, 2021
Further 140,477 #COVID-19 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours, revealing 3,591 new cases, 3,820 recoveries and 6 death cases.
Updated
Malaysia’s death toll from coronavirus has increased to 689 after 11 new fatalities were reported. The Malaysian government also reported 3,048 new cases, bringing the country’s total number of infections to 186,849.
Malaysia reported its highest daily infections on Saturday.
Pecahan kes baharu (3,048)#JagaNegaraKita pic.twitter.com/2Ey5R2rGHv
— KKMalaysia🇲🇾 (@KKMPutrajaya) January 25, 2021
Updated
Hospitals in Texas are overwhelmed with more than 13,500 coronavirus patients after the Republican governor rejected lockdowns.
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The European Union will meet AstraZeneca executives today to seek further clarification on why they unexpectedly announced a large cut in supplies of vaccine to the bloc, Reuters reports.
AstraZeneca, which developed its shot with Oxford University, told the EU on Friday that it could not meet the agreed supply targets running up to the end of March, with an EU official telling Reuters that meant a 60% cut to 31m doses.
The Anglo-Swedish drugmaker has received an up-front payment of €336m from the EU, a second EU official told Reuters when the 27-nation bloc sealed a supply deal with AstraZeneca in August for at least 300m doses – the first signed by the EU to secure Covid shots.
Under advance purchase deals sealed during the pandemic, the EU makes downpayments to companies to secure doses, with the money expected to be mostly used to expand production capacity.
“Initial volumes will be lower than originally anticipated due to reduced yields at a manufacturing site within our European supply chain,” AstraZeneca said on Friday.
The site in question is a vaccine factory in Belgium run by the drugmaker’s partner Novasep.
The EU commission said a meeting had been called with AstraZeneca after Friday’s announcement, and was due to start in the early afternoon on Monday.
Earlier in January, Pfizer, which is currently the largest supplier of vaccines to the EU, announced delays of nearly a month to its shipments, but hours later revised this to say the delays would last only a week.
Updated
The overnight curfew in the Madrid region of Spain will be brought forward an hour from today, running from 10pm until 6am.
Private gatherings of people from different households will also be banned as the regional government once again tries to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Restaurants, cafes and bars - which had been allowed to stay open until 10pm - will also have to close an hour earlier.
Pharmacies, vets, petrol stations and other essential businesses will be open to stay open later.
On Friday, Spain reported 42,885 new cases and 400 deaths. The country’s 14-day average of cases per 100,000 people rose from 796 on Thursday to 828 on Friday.
The third wave of the virus is once again putting hospitals and intensive care units under huge pressure.
Across Spain 36% of intensive care unit beds are occupied by Covid patients, but in two regions - La Rioja and Valencia - the percentage rises to 60% and 57% respectively. In Madrid, the figure stands at 46%.
To date, Spain has recorded 2,499,560 Covid cases and 55,441 deaths. More than 1.1 million of Spain’s 47 million people have been vaccinated since the end of December.
Moderna has cancelled its coronavirus vaccines supply to Poland scheduled for Tuesday, Reuters reports citing a government official.
“Unfortunately tomorrow’s delivery of Moderna vaccines has been cancelled. We will be modifying the vaccination schedule if needed,” the Polish prime minister’s top aide Michal Dworczyk told a news conference.
Poland has been receiving coronavirus vaccinations as part of the European Union’s procurement scheme. Warsaw has also ordered vaccines outside the EU agreement, local media reported.
Poland has vaccinated over 700,000 up to date, mostly medics and some elderly. The country planned to vaccinate 3 million people in the first quarter of 2021.
Dutch PM condemns Covid riots
Mark Rutte, the prime minister of the Netherlands, has condemned anti-lockdown riots over the weekend as criminal actions not protests.
“This has nothing to do with protest, this is criminal violence and we will treat it as such,” Rutte told reporters outside his office in The Hague.
He said the riots underlined the need for a night-time curfew.
Rioters in the the Dutch city of Eindhoven started fires and pelted rocks at police on Sunday at a banned protest against lockdown measures.
Police arrested at least 30 people in Eindhoven and used teargas and water cannon to disperse crowds.
In Amsterdam, police also used a water cannon at a major protest at a city square.
It was the worst violence to hit the Netherlands since the pandemic began, coming a day after anti-curfew rioters torched a coronavirus testing facility in the Dutch fishing village of Urk.
Dutch police said on Monday hundreds had been detained after the incidents.
Updated
Australia has suspended its travel bubble with New Zealand for three days after a case of the South African variant was identified in a woman who had been out and about in the community.
The 56-year-old is likely to have contracted the virus from someone on the same floor of the Pullman hotel in Auckland, where they were both quarantining.
New Zealand health authorities are concerned because the woman had left the hotel after serving her full quarantine period and after producing two negative test results.
It was only later that she developed symptoms and returned a positive test – raising concerns she may have unknowingly spread it to others in Northland and Whangarei.
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Updated
More than 1m people in France have now been vaccinated. As of 24 January 1,026,871 have had a vaccine, the country’s health ministry said.
#Vaccination | À ce jour, 1 026 871 personnes ont été vaccinées contre la #COVID19
— Ministère des Solidarités et de la Santé (@Sante_Gouv) January 25, 2021
The French government has confirmed it is considering introducing a third lockdown if current measures – including the nationwide daily curfew from 6pm – prove insufficient.
Updated
The increase in the wealth of the 10 richest billionaires since the crisis began is more than enough to pay to vaccinate the global population, research by Oxfam has pointed out.
In a pamphlet on what it dubs the “inequality virus” Oxfam said:
Worldwide, billionaires’ wealth increased by a staggering $3.9tn between 18 March and 31 December 2020. Their total wealth now stands at $11.95tn, which is equivalent to what G20 governments have spent in response to the pandemic. The world’s 10 richest billionaires have collectively seen their wealth increase by $540bn over this period.
It said such sums could also help prevent anyone on Earth from falling into poverty because of the virus.
The 10 richest men were listed as Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault and family, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Warren Buffett, Zhong Shanshan, Larry Page and Mukesh Ambani.
Oxfam said:
Over 2 million people have died, and hundreds of millions of people are being forced into poverty while many of the richest – individuals and corporations – are thriving. Billionaire fortunes returned to their pre-pandemic highs in just nine months, while recovery for the world’s poorest people could take over a decade.
The crisis has exposed our collective frailty and the inability of our deeply unequal economy to work for all. Yet it has also shown us the vital importance of government action to protect our health and livelihoods. Transformative policies that seemed unthinkable before the crisis have suddenly been shown to be possible. There can be no return to where we were before. Instead, citizens and governments must act on the urgency to create a more equal and sustainable world.
Updated
Ukraine has reopened schools, restaurants and gyms, after completing a three-week lockdown, Reuters reports.
The number of new cases of coronavirus infection in Ukraine has significantly decreased from up to 9,000 cases a day at the beginning of January to 2,516 new cases on 25 January, the fewest since early September.
Speaking at TV briefing, the health minister, Maksym Stepanov, said:
Such statistics, which indicate the stabilisation of the situation, the improvement of the situation could be obtained only thanks to you, Ukrainians.
We believe that this [lockdown] has significantly improved the situation now and in the future.
He said Ukraine, which has registered around 1.2 million cases of coronavirus with 21,924 deaths, would retain some restrictions, mainly related to the work of the service sector, restaurants and transport.
Updated
Russia has registered fewer than 20,000 new cases for the first time since 11 November, the country’s coronavirus crisis response centre said on Monday.
Russia reported 19,290 new daily cases, including 2,382 in Moscow, taking the national tally to 3,738,690.
The authorities also reported an additional 456 deaths in the last 24 hours, raising the total count to 69,918.
В России за сутки выявили 19 290 случаев заражения коронавирусом. Это минимум с 3 ноября: https://t.co/2AZiUkvEDG pic.twitter.com/vRjFK3fxvi
— ТАСС (@tass_agency) January 25, 2021
Opposition parties in Chad have accused the government of using lockdown to interfere with election campaigning ahead of the presidential vote scheduled for April.
President Idriss Déby, who seized power in 1990, began his campaign rallies before the measures were introduced, visiting most of the main cities outside N’Djamena.
“He did his rallies and locked the city down to prevent us from doing the same thing,” says Yacine Sakin, a member of the Reformist party, part of an opposition coalition that aims to put forward a candidate in the election.
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South Korea, which is due to start its vaccination programme next months, aims to inoculate 70% of its population inoculated by September, according to the Yonap news agency.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency announced a set of core tasks for this year, which includes providing free Covid-19 vaccines to all nationals to form herd immunity by November.
The government has already secured Covi-19 vaccines to inoculate 56 million people under the World Health Organization’s global vaccine Covax project and separate contracts with four foreign drug firms.
Zimbabwe’s Covid deaths have passed 1,000 as the country scrambles to contain a spike in infections that has claimed the lives of three government ministers in the last 10 days, Reuters reports.
There are fears the more infectious South African variant of the virus came to the country when thousands of Zimbabweans living in the neighbouring countries returned home for the December holiday.
Zimbabwe has recorded a total 31,320 coronavirus cases and 1,005 deaths. More than half of these have been reported since the beginning of this year, data released late on Sunday showed.
The recovery rate has fallen to 71% from 82% on 1 January.
Even before the outbreak of the pandemic, Zimbabwe’s healthcare system was facing collapse with workers frequently going on strike to demand better salaries and hospitals facing shortages of medicines and equipment.
Doctors’ groups say that hospitals are quickly filling up with Covid patients and that there is an increase in the number of infected people dying at home, unable to afford the steep fees charged by hospitals.
Seeking to re-assure anxious citizens, President Emmerson Mnangagwa said in a national address on Saturday that health experts were assessing different vaccines and would “quite soon” recommend to the government which shots to purchase.
Frontline health workers, who complain that they lack adequate protective clothing, would be the first to receive the vaccine, Mnangagwa said.
Early this month, Zimbabwe extended a nationwide curfew, banned gatherings, closed its land borders and ordered non-essential businesses closed for a month in an effort to curb the surge in coronavirus infections.
The government said it was ready to introduce stronger measures if necessary.
Zimbabwe COVID-19 Update (24 January 2021)
— 263Chat.com 🇿🇼 (@263Chat) January 25, 2021
Confirmed cases - 31 320
New cases - 313
Active cases - 8 065
Recoveries - 22 250
Deaths - 1 005#StaySafe #MaskUpZim pic.twitter.com/KUluF0GEEA
Japan is likely to achieve herd immunity to Covid through mass inoculations only months after the planned Tokyo Olympics, according to a London-based forecaster, Reuters reports.
That would be a blow to Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga who has pledged to have enough vaccines for the populace by the middle of 2021, as it trails most major economies in starting inoculations.
Rasmus Bech Hansen, the founder of British research firm Airfinity, said:
Japan looks to be quite late in the game.They’re dependent on importing many (vaccines) from the US. And at the moment, it doesn’t seem very likely they will get very large quantities of for instance, the Pfizer vaccine.
There simply aren’t enough vaccines for all the countries that Pfizer made agreements with. America needs 100 million more Pfizer vaccines to be on the safe side to reach their goals, and a lot of those 100 million would come from the Japan pile.
Hansen said Japan will not reach a 75% inoculation rate, a benchmark for herd immunity, until around October, about two months after the close of the Summer Games.
Japan has arranged to buy 314 million doses from Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca, and that would be more than enough for its population of 126 million.
But problems seen in vaccine rollouts elsewhere stir doubt that Japan will get those supplies on time.
Taro Kono, Japan’s vaccine programme chief, said last week it would begin its first shots in February, starting with 10,000 medical workers, but he walked back on a goal to secure enough vaccine supplies by June.
Japan is particularly vulnerable because its initial inoculation plan is dependent on Pfizer doses, which are at risk of being taken back by US authorities to fight the pandemic there.
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. Thanks for following along – my colleagues in London will bring you the latest for the next few hours.
Hello, Warren Murray putting the news afoot immediately to hand with your morning briefing:
Boris Johnson is facing increasing pressure from cabinet ministers and scientists to require all new arrivals, including British citizens, to quarantine at their own expense in government-supervised hotels. “Anyone who slips through could be a new mutant strain, hence the need for blanket measures,” one Home Office source said. The PM is said to favour only placing people from high-risk countries into hotel quarantine, putting him at odds with Priti Patel, the home secretary, and others in cabinet who favour a stricter approach. Travellers to Britain are already required to self-isolate for 10 days, or five with a negative test, but enforcement has been patchy. Separately there are Tory MPs calling for England’s schools to reopen as soon as possible – but ministers who are worried about infection rates are refusing to commit to pupils being able to go back even after the Easter holidays:
Summary
- Mexico’s president tested positive for coronavirus. Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has become the latest world leader to contract Covid-19. “I’m sorry to inform you that I’ve been infected,” the 67-year-old politician announced on Twitter on Sunday evening.
-
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is stepping up efforts to track coronavirus mutations and keep vaccines and treatments effective against new variants until collective immunity is reached, the agency’s chief said on Sunday.
- Residents in Tonghua, a city of about 2 million in northeastern Jilin province which has been locked down since 18 January, complained on social media that the lockdown had left them short of food and medicines, triggering an apology from local officials.
- Turkey received 6.5 million further doses of the coronavirus vaccine made by China’s Sinovac Biotech on Monday, CNN Turk and other media reported, allowing its nationwide rollout to continue. An initial consignment of 3 million doses previously arrived in Turkey and it has so far vaccinated 1.245 million people, mostly health workers and elderly people, according to health ministry data.
- China reported a climb in new Coronavirus cases driven by a spike in infections among previously symptomless patients in northeastern Jilin province, official data showed on Monday. The total number of confirmed cases in the mainland rose to 124 on Jan. 24 from 80 a day earlier, the National Health Commission said in a statement, amid the worst wave of new infections China has seen since March 2020.
- The Hong Kong government lifted a lockdown in an area of Kowloon district in the early hours of Monday after testing about 7,000 people for coronavirus to curb an outbreak in the densely populated area.
- New Zealand authorities have said a new case of Covid-19 that emerged outside quarantine appeared to be the South African variant. Health officials said on Monday that they believed the infected woman, aged 56, contracted the virus from an infected person on the same floor of the Pullman hotel in Auckland where they were both quarantining.
- Travel bubble between Australia and New Zealand suspended for 72 hours. Amid concern the single case of community transmission in New Zealand is of the South African variant, Australia’s federal health minister, Greg Hunt, has announced the Australian government will suspend the travel bubble with New Zealand for 72 hours.
- Pfizer Covid vaccine approved for Australia rollout. In Australia, the Pfizer vaccine has met strict standards for safety, quality and efficacy, a statement from the prime minister’s office said on Monday, and the vaccine has been approved for rollout in Australia for people age 16 years and older.
- US president Joe Biden on Monday will formally reinstate Covid travel restrictions on non-US travellers from Brazil, Ireland, the United Kingdom and 26 other European countries that allow travel across open borders, according to two White House officials. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the order, also confirmed Sunday that South Africa would be added to the restricted list because of concerns about a variant of the virus that has spread beyond that nation.
- Israel ‘closes skies’ to air travel to prevent virus spread. Israel on Sunday announced a week-long ban on most incoming and outgoing flights in a bid to slow the spread of new coronavirus variants. The measure will begin at midnight from Monday into Tuesday and remain in effect until Sunday, a statement from the prime minister’s office said.
- World nears 100m cases. The number of coronavirus cases worldwide has passed 99 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, as the total moves rapidly towards a shocking 100 million people infected with Covid-19 in just over a year. The current total is 99,105,389 infections. At least 2,127,206 people have died. On average, around 650,000 coronavirus cases have been reported daily in the last week.
- Netherlands anti-curfew protests spark clashes with police, looting. Protests against a curfew to curb the spread of Covid-19 in the Netherlands degenerated into clashes with police and looting in cities across the country Sunday, authorities and reports said.
In case you missed this earlier: some residents in Tonghua, a city of about 2 million in northeastern Jilin province which has been locked down since 18 January, complained on social media that the lockdown had left them short of food and medicines, triggering an apology from local officials.
“We will do our best to improve the distribution capacity and supplement the supply of materials for citizens,” Jiang Haiyan, Tonghua deputy mayor, told a media briefing on Sunday.
Efforts to tackle the outbreak had caused a shortage of manpower, she added.
Netherlands anti-curfew protests spark clashes with police, looting
Protests against a curfew to curb the spread of Covid-19 in the Netherlands degenerated into clashes with police and looting in cities across the country Sunday, authorities and reports said.
AFP: Police used water cannon and dogs in Amsterdam, public television NOS reported, after hundreds gathered to protest the curfew which is set to last until February 10 and is the country’s first since World War II.
In the southern city of Eindhoven, police fired tear gas to disperse a crowd of several hundred, regional television Omroep Brabant reported. At least 30 people were arrested there, according to police.
A number of vehicles were burned and businesses at Eindhoven’s central train station were also looted, media reports said.
Violators of the 9 pm to 4:30 am curfew, which Prime Minister Mark Rutte says is needed to bring case numbers down, face a €;95 ($115) fine.
Exemptions are possible, in particular for people returning from funerals or those having to work, but on condition that they present a certificate.
Travel bubble between Australia and New Zealand suspended for 72 hours
Amid concern the single case of community transmission in New Zealand is of the South African variant, Australia’s federal health minister, Greg Hunt, has announced the Australian government will suspend the travel bubble with New Zealand for 72 hours.
Turkey receives 6.5m additional doses of Sinovac vaccine
Turkey received 6.5 million further doses of the coronavirus vaccine made by China’s Sinovac Biotech on Monday, CNN Turk and other media reported, allowing its nationwide rollout to continue.
Reuters: An initial consignment of 3 million doses previously arrived in Turkey and it has so far vaccinated 1.245 million people, mostly health workers and elderly people, according to health ministry data.
State broadcaster TRT Haber said the latest shipment, part of a second consignment which will total 10 million doses, arrived at Istanbul Airport early in the morning on a Turkish Airlines flight from Beijing.
About 600,000 people were vaccinated in just two days when the vaccine rollout began in mid-January, but the pace later slowed as it moved beyond healthcare workers.
The Health Ministry will test the new shipment, which medics say takes around two weeks, before the vaccines are administered. That means Turkey would be constrained to around 100,000 inoculations per day for the next two weeks.
Turkey has recorded more than 2.4 million infections and 25,073 deaths due to Covid. A rise in cases over recent months led the government to introduce weekend lockdowns since December but daily cases have dropped to below 6,000 in recent days, from a high of more than 33,000 in early December.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 6,729 to 2,141,665, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed on Monday.
The reported death toll rose by 217 to 52,087, the tally showed.
The case total is among the lowest in recent weeks, though cases are often lower after the weekend.
Thailand reported 187 new coronavirus cases and two deaths on Monday, bringing the overall number of cases to 13,687 and fatalities to 75 since it detected its first case a year ago.
The tally included 10 imported cases, the country’s Covid taskforce said.
The US dollar stabilised on Monday after a recent decline as fresh worries about the coronavirus and the global economy prompted investors to hang on to the safe-haven currency, Reuters reports.
But analysts said the dollar could resume its fall if the U.S. Federal Reserve reaffirms its commitment to a highly accommodative monetary policy at its rate meeting later this week - as widely expected.
“I don’t think the Fed has any incentives to curtail its stimulus at this point, even though some market players may try to read between the lines for any signs of tapering in stimulus,” said Kazushige Kaida, head of FX sales at State Street Bank’s Tokyo Branch.
“I think the dollar is staying in a downtrend even though it is marking time for now,” he said.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is expected to signal he has no plan to wind back the Fed’s massive stimulus any time soon when the central bank concludes its policy review on Wednesday.
The dollar index stood at 90.172, flat on the day. It bounced back on Friday after hitting 90.043 on Thursday, last week’s lowest level.
US to escalate tracking of Covid variants
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is stepping up efforts to track coronavirus mutations and keep vaccines and treatments effective against new variants until collective immunity is reached, the agency’s chief said on Sunday.
Reuters: Dr Rochelle Walensky spoke about the rapidly evolving virus during a Fox News Sunday interview as the number of Americans known to be infected surpassed 25 million, with more than 417,000 dead, just over a year after the first US case was documented.
Walensky, who took over as CDC director the day President Joe Biden was sworn in, also said the greatest immediate culprit for sluggish vaccine distribution was a supply crunch worsened by inventory confusion inherited from the Trump administration.
“The fact that we don’t know today, five days into this administration, and weeks into planning, how much vaccine we have just gives you a sense of the challenges we’ve been left with,” she told Fox News Sunday.
China reports higher daily cases
China reported a climb in new Coronavirus cases driven by a spike in infections among previously symptomless patients in northeastern Jilin province, official data showed on Monday.
Reuters: The total number of confirmed cases in the mainland rose to 124 on Jan. 24 from 80 a day earlier, the National Health Commission said in a statement, amid the worst wave of new infections China has seen since March 2020.
Of the 117 new local infectons, Jilin accounted for 67 cases - all but three of whom were previously asymptomatic patients who were reclassified as confirmed cases after developing symptoms. Heilongjiang reported 35 new cases, while Hebei reported 11 new cases.
The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, fell to 45 from 92 cases a day earlier.
The total number of confirmed Covid cases in mainland China is 89,115, while the death toll remains unchanged at 4,635.
In India, Tata Medical & Diagnostics is said to have started initial discussions with Moderna Inc for a partnership to launch its coronavirus vaccine, the Economic Times reported on Monday.
Reuters: Tata could team up with the India’s Council of Scientific & Industrial Research to carry out clinical trials of Moderna’s vaccine candidate in India, the report added, citing officials familiar with the matter.
The Indian government this month gave emergency-use approval to a coronavirus vaccine developed by Bharat Biotech International Ltd and state-run Indian Council of Medical Research, and another licensed from Oxford University and AstraZeneca PLC that is being manufactured by the Serum Institute of India.
Moderna did not respond to Reuters’ request for a comment outside business hours, while Tata Medical & Diagnostics did not immediately respond.
Residents in locked down Tonghua, China complain of food and medicine shortages
Since the Chinese city of Tonghua, with its population of nearly 400,000, was put under lockdown a week ago, citizens have begun to complain of shortages of food and medicine.
On Weibo, some said they have only two or three days of food rations. Users wrote: “I’m out of food supplies” or “ unable to have a prenatal examination after seven months of pregnancy” and “unable to be hospitalised for chemotherapy”, according to local media reports.
“We will do our best to improve the distribution capacity and supplement the supply of materials for citizens,” Jiang Haiyan, Tonghua deputy mayor, told a media briefing on Sunday.
Efforts to tackle the outbreak had caused a shortage of manpower, she added.
The local epidemic control department later issued an announcement promising residents that basic living materials will be supplied for a 5-day demand of each household every time at half price from now on.
By Sunday this month, Tonghua has reported 246 coronavirus cases, of which 50 are asymptomatic.
Hong Kong lifts lockdown in Kowloon
The Hong Kong government lifted a lockdown in an area of Kowloon district in the early hours of Monday after testing about 7,000 people for coronavirus to curb an outbreak in the densely populated area, Reuters reports.
The government set up 51 temporary testing stations on Saturday and found 13 confirmed cases in the restricted area that is home to many ageing, subdivided flats in which the disease could spread more quickly.
“Businesses in the area have been hit hard and brought to a standstill,” the government said in a statement.
“The government hopes this temporary inconvenience will completely cut the local transmission chains in the district and ease residents’ worries and fear, so that they will regain confidence in resuming social and business activities in the area, and return to a normal life.”
The lockdown in the neighbourhoods of Jordan, across the harbour from the heart of the business district, was the first such measure imposed in the global financial hub since the outbreak happened.
On Sunday, the government reported 76 cases of coronavirus, taking the total to 10,086, of which 169 people have died.
Hong Kong authorities have taken aggressive measures to curb the spread of the virus, including a ban on in-house dining after 6pm and closing facilities such as gyms, sports venues and beauty salons.
Most residents wear face masks when moving around the city.
The full story on the new case in New Zealand now:
Police in Amsterdam used water cannon to disperse protesters demonstrating against Covid-19 restrictions while in the southern city of Eindhoven cars were burnt and shops smashed in riots against the country’s lock-down measures.
Riot police on horseback attempted to clear the demonstrators in both cities where hundreds of people were arrested. A nighttime curfew went into effect on Saturday in a bid to rein in the coronavirus.
Parliament voted narrowly last week to approve the curfew, swayed by assertions that an English variant is about to cause a new surge in cases:
Pfizer Covid vaccine approved for Australia rollout
In Australia, the Pfizer vaccine has met strict standards for safety, quality and efficacy, a statement from the prime minister’s office said on Monday, and the vaccine has been approved for rollout in Australia for people age 16 years and older.
The first vaccinations are expected to be in late February and the first 1.4m doses will go to a priority group that includes quarantine and border workers, frontline health workers in high-risk settings, and aged care and disability staff and residents. This will be administered at hospitals, with the government aiming for 80,000 doses a week.
Next, 14.8m doses will go to elderly adults age 70 and above and to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders over the age of 55. Other healthcare workers; young adults with underlying medical conditions and disability; and critical and high-risk workers including defence, police, ambulance, fire and meat workers will also be vaccinated as part of the second phase:
Updated
Mexico president tests positive for coronavirus
Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has become the latest world leader to contract Covid-19.
“I’m sorry to inform you that I’ve been infected,” the 67-year-old politician announced on Twitter on Sunday evening.
Lamento informarles que estoy contagiado de COVID-19. Los síntomas son leves pero ya estoy en tratamiento médico. Como siempre, soy optimista. Saldremos adelante todos. Me representará la Dra. Olga Sánchez Cordero en las mañaneras para informar como lo hacemos todos los días.
— Andrés Manuel (@lopezobrador_) January 25, 2021
“The symptoms are mild but I’m receiving medical treatment. As always, I’m optimistic,” added López Obrador, a populist nationalist who has been heavily criticised for his handling of the pandemic and decision to shun face masks.
Mexico is going through a particularly dire moment its epidemic, with hospitals in many states stretched to their limits. The country’s daily average number of Covid deaths last week overtook that of Brazil where more than 1,000 fatalities are being registered each day.
According to Mexico’s official death toll nearly 150,000 people have so far died from Covid there, the world’s fourth highest number. But many suspect low testing rates mean Mexico’s true death toll is even higher than that of Brazil, where 217,000 deaths have been recorded.
López Obrador said that while he was being treated he would remain in the presidential palace in Mexico City which has been under a Covid red alert since last month.
Updated
More now from New Zealand.
Over three dozen guests at the Pullman hotel in central Auckland, where the infected woman was undergoing government-managed isolation, are being held longer in their rooms while the source of the newly confirmed local infection is investigated. Nearly all 200 hotel staff have been tested
Although health authorities suspect the virus was contacted directly - meaning person to person contact - they have not ruled out airborne or surface contact.
Hundreds of people have been lining up all day for tests in Whangarei, Northland and Auckland. Test results for these people will be known tomorrow. The director-general also said many people who had no symptoms or contact with the infected woman have been lining up for tests - and he asked them to go home so close contacts could be prioritised.
The Covid-19 response minister said news was circulating on social media of an impending lockdown. He said this was “fake news” and “not true at all”.
Experts have called for greater clarity about the monitoring in place to assess the 12-week dosing interval for Covid vaccines, as the UK’s vaccination programme ramps up.
According to government data released on Sunday, a total of 6,353,321 people in the UK have received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine. A further slew of vaccination centres are due to open on Monday to speed up delivery of the jabs.
These include at the Crick Institute in London, the Blackpool Winter Gardens, Lancaster town hall, Bath racecourse and the Black Country Living Museum, where scenes for the TV show Peaky Blinders were filmed.
“These 33 new major vaccine centres will bolster our existing network and enable the NHS to protect as many people as possible in the coming weeks,” said the vaccine minister, Nadhim Zahawi.
However, there is continued controversy about the government’s decision to increase the interval between the two doses of the jabs to up to 12 weeks in an effort to offer protection to as many people as possible.
The Guardian’s Nicola Davis and Jessica Elgot report:
Community case confirmed in New Zealand
A community case of Covid-19 has been confirmed in New Zealand, with genome sequencing identifying it as of the South African variant of the virus.
Investigators think the 56-year-old woman contracted the infection from a fellow guest at the Pullman hotel, where she was undergoing government-managed isolation.
World nears 100m cases
The number of coronavirus cases worldwide has passed 99 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, as the total moves rapidly towards a shocking 100 million people infected with Covid-19 in just over a year.
The current total is 99,105,389 infections. At least 2,127,206 people have died.
On average, around 650,000 coronavirus cases have been reported daily in the last week.
Israel ‘closes skies’ to air travel to prevent virus spread
Israel on Sunday announced a week-long ban on most incoming and outgoing flights in a bid to slow the spread of new coronavirus variants, AFP reports.
The measure will begin at midnight from Monday into Tuesday and remain in effect until Sunday, a statement from the prime minister’s office said.
Exceptions will be made for cargo and firefighting flights, as well as trips for medical treatments, funerals and legal procedures.
A panel of health and interior ministry officials will be able to issue exemptions on request “for humanitarian or personal needs”, the statement said.
The decision came with the country in its third national coronavirus lockdown, initiated late December and extended on Tuesday until the end of the month due to a surge in deaths.
Earlier Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had announced his government’s intention to close the airport, as variants of the coronavirus have been detected in rising numbers.
“We’re closing the skies hermetically, except for rare exceptions, to prevent the entry of virus mutations, and to ensure that we make swift progress with our vaccination campaign,” he said ahead of a cabinet meeting.
Biden to reinstate travel ban and add South Africa
US president Joe Biden on Monday will formally reinstate Covid travel restrictions on non-US travellers from Brazil, Ireland, the United Kingdom and 26 other European countries that allow travel across open borders, according to two White House officials.
AP: the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the order, also confirmed Sunday that South Africa would be added to the restricted list because of concerns about a variant of the virus that has spread beyond that nation.
Biden is reversing an order from President Donald Trump in his final days in office that called for the relaxation of the travel restrictions as of Tuesday.
The decision to reverse the order is not surprising, but the addition of South Africa to the restricted travel list highlights the new administration’s concern about mutations in the virus.
The South Africa variant has not been discovered in the United States, but another variant — originating in the United Kingdom — has been detected in several states.
Reuters was first to report Biden’s decision to add South Africa to the list.
Biden last week issued an executive order directing federal agencies to require international air travellers to quarantine upon US arrival. The order also requires that all US-bound passengers ages 2 and above get negative test results within three days before traveling.
Updated
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan.
As always, you can find me on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
The number of coronavirus cases worldwide has passed 99 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, as the total moves rapidly towards a shocking 100 million people infected with Covid-19 in just over a year.
In the US, president Joe Biden on Monday will formally reinstate travel restrictions on non-US travellers from Brazil, Ireland, the United Kingdom and 26 other European countries that allow travel across open borders, according to two White House officials.
The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the order, also confirmed Sunday that South Africa would be added to the restricted list because of concerns about a variant of the virus that has spread beyond that nation.
Here are the other key developments from the last few hours:
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Israel is set to ban passenger flights in attempt to prevent Covid variant imports, coming into effect from Monday 10pm for two weeks
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Greek health authorities have reported a jump in the number of cases of the coronavirus variant first spotted in the UK, with 32 infections detected.
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The UK has reported a further 30,004 lab-confirmed coronavirus cases, according to government data. This compares with 38,598 cases registered last Sunday.
- Jeremy Hunt, the former UK health secretary, has echoed calls from epidemiologists urging the use of medical-grade masks to be compulsory on public transport and in shops.
- Serbia has detected its first case of the UK coronavirus variant, in a woman who travelled from London but no new lockdown is planned in the country, President Aleksandar Vučić said.
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Airbus has announced that some 500 employees have entered quarantine following an outbreak at its aircraft factory in Hamburg in which 21 workers have tested positive, according to Reuters.
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Police used water cannon and dogs against protesters after hundreds gathered in a square in central Amsterdam on Sunday to protest against a new coronavirus curfew.
- France probably needs to enter into a third lockdown because of the spread of new coronavirus variants in the country, the government’s top medical adviser on Covid-19 policy has said.
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Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will telephone Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Monday to discuss Mexico’s procurement of the Sputnik V vaccine, the Mexican government said on Sunday.
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France has reported 18,436 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, down from 23,924 on Saturday. However, today’s figure is higher than last Sunday’s, when 16,642 infections were registered.
- Ecuador has approved the use of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, the country’s health ministry said on Sunday.
