That’s it from the UK blog team, thanks for following our coverage.
One of the UK’s leading scientists has called on the prime minister to donate 20% of the UK’s Covid vaccines to other countries in an effort to try to save lives and stem the spread of coronavirus variants.
Sir Jeremy Farrar and the executive director of Unicef UK, Steven Waugh, have published an open letter to Boris Johnson appealing for the UK to set an example ahead of the G7 summit in Cornwall, which begins in a week’s time. Covax, the UN scheme to distribute vaccines equitably, is 190m doses short of what it needs for this year. The UK has ordered more than 400m vaccine doses.
Authorities in Australia have released a list of public exposure sites in New South Wales visited by a confirmed case of Covid-19.
Here are the current coronavirus hotspots, Covid exposure sites, venues and case location alerts and what to do if you’ve visited them.
People who have had the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine have lower antibody levels targeting the coronavirus variant first discovered in India than those against previously circulating variants in the UK, new data suggests.
The research also suggests the levels of these antibodies are lower with increasing age and that levels decline over time, PA reports.
Researchers say this provides additional evidence in support of plans to deliver a vaccination boost to vulnerable people in the autumn.
The new laboratory data from the Francis Crick Institute and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) UCLH Biomedical Research Centre also supports current plans to reduce the dose gap between vaccines.
The study found that after just one dose of the Pfizer jab, people are less likely to develop antibody levels against the Indian (B.1.617.2) variant, also known as Delta, as high as those seen against the previously dominant Kent variant (B.1.1.7) also known as Alpha.
However, levels of antibodies alone do not predict vaccine effectiveness and prospective population studies are also needed.
Lower neutralising antibody levels may still be associated with protection against Covid-19, the experts say.
Malala Yousafzai says she fears the coronavirus crisis will cause millions of girls worldwide to lose their education.
The activist and Nobel Prize laureate, 23, said the pandemic had “drastically” impacted progress made over 20 years, and many young women were being forced to abandon their education, PA reports.
Speaking to Vogue, she said: “We have seen progress over the past 20 years, it has been a steady and slow progress, however, things have changed drastically because of Covid.
“It’s because these girls are now in their homes and they now have more family work to do, they’re asked to do family chores, they’re asked to become financial supporters for their family.
“All these girls are pushed into early child marriages and many of these girls may never be able to return to school.
“This is something that we saw in the Ebola crisis as well and this is the fear that I have for girls - that they will lose their education because of this pandemic.”
Updated
Following the news that the US is to share 25m surplus Covid-19 vaccines, Alex Feldman, head of the US-Asean business council lobbying group, said for Southeast Asian countries it is a “symbolically important” first step, but the dose shipments are a “drop in the bucket” compared to what is needed in the region, said.
He added Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand are facing serious difficulties with Covid-19, Reuters reports.
Updated
Brazil registered 1,682 Covid-19 deaths on Thursday and 83,391 new cases, according to data released by the country’s health ministry.
The South American country has now registered 469,388 total coronavirus deaths and 16,803,472 total confirmed cases, Reuters reports.
Puerto Rico will reopen bars and clubs for the first time since the pandemic began following a significant drop in Covid-19 cases and deaths, the U.S. territory’s governor announced.
Associated Press reports:
Those and other places including party buses will only be allowed to operate at 50% capacity, said governor Pedro Pierluisi.
He also said those who are vaccinated will no longer have to wear a mask outside, although masks are still required for everyone entering any kind of business.
“We’re getting close to normal,” he said, but added, “We can’t claim victory yet.”
The new measures go into effect June 7 through July 4.
Two suspected “fleeting” transmission cases of coronavirus that were part of the reason for Melbourne’s lockdown extension have been declared false positives.
Most people in the UK are still showing “residual cautiousness” when it comes to meeting friends and family or increasing social contact, even as Covid-19 restrictions continue to ease, a leading scientist said.
John Edmunds, professor in the Centre for the Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said the latest data suggests that since the easing of coronavirus restrictions on May 17, contacts have increased and are now at similar levels to those observed during August 2020 - the highest level observed during the pandemic.
The rise is thought to be driven by an increase in contacts in schools (measured before half term) as well as in other settings such as social, leisure and retail - after restrictions were lifted to allow people to meet indoors.
But Prof Edmunds said the data also suggests the UK is still a long way away from normality because people are now making roughly half as many contacts when compared to life before the Covid-19 pandemic.
He also said that although current guidelines allow people to hug each other, people remain cautious about skin-to-skin contact.
He told a media briefing on Thursday: “We are (now) making more contact than we have done at any point in the period of the epidemic.
“To some extent, that is intended - that is what the easing of restrictions is all about, allowing us to start to go back to something more approaching normality.
“So, although there is only one step left in terms of the easing of restrictions (on 21 June ), there is a long way to go to get back to complete normality.”
Updated
Wales to ease lockdown restrictions on Monday
Up to 30 people will be able to meet outdoors and large outdoor activities with up to 10,000 people can resume in Wales from Monday, first minister Mark Drakeford has announced.
Other measures include the size of extended households can be increased to up to three households and a further household with a single adult or single adult with caring responsibilities will also be able to join.
Drakeford said the move to alert level one will be phased with outdoor events opening first.
Updated
France has donated 184,000 doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine to Senegal through the Covax vaccine-sharing facility, the programme’s sponsors said.
This is the second batch of Covid-19 vaccines Senegal has received through the global scheme, after an initial 324,000 AstraZeneca doses arrived in March, Reuters reports.
Updated
The US has laid out a plan to share 25m surplus Covid-19 vaccine doses with the world and said it would lift some restrictions to allow other countries to more easily buy US-made supplies for vaccine production, Reuters reports.
President Joe Biden said the US would share the vaccines without expectation of political favors in return. He has pledged to share some 80m vaccines internationally this month.
The US will donate nearly 19 million doses through the Covax international vaccine-sharing program, Biden said.
Through Covax, some 6 million doses would go to Latin America and the Caribbean, about 7mdoses to South and Southeast Asia and roughly 5m to Africa.
The remaining doses, amounting to just over 6m, would go to countries including Canada, Mexico, India and South Korea, he said.
Updated
Portugal has questioned the UK’s decision to move the country to the amber travel list.
The holiday hotspot, including the islands of Madeira and the Azores, will be removed from the green list exempting the need to quarantine on return from 4am on Tuesday.
However, a Portuguese ministerial social media account has said that they “cannot understand” the “logic” of the decision, amid dismayed reaction from the travel industry.
Sri Lanka, Egypt and five other countries will also be added to the red list requiring isolation in a Government-approved hotel, it was announced.
The account of the cabinet of Portugal’s minister of state for foreign affairs tweeted in English: “We take note of the British decision to remove Portugal from the travel ‘green list’, the logic of which we cannot understand.
“Portugal continues to carry out its prudent and gradual deconfinement plan, with clear rules for the safety of those who live here and those who visit us.”
Updated
Mexico records nearly 3,000 new coronavirus cases
Mexico reported 2,894 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 216 more deaths, Reuters reports.
It brings the total to 2,426,822 infections and 228,362 deaths, according to health ministry data released on Thursday.
Separate government data recently published suggests the actual death toll is at least 60% above the confirmed figure.
A summary of today's developments
- The UK has recorded 5,274 new cases - the highest daily figure since March. There were 18 deaths reported within 28 days of a positive test.
- France’s seven-day moving average of daily Covid-19 deaths fell below 100 for the first time since October 27th, official figures show. The Covid-19 death toll increased by 70 to 109,828, the eighth-highest total globally, Reuters reports. The seven-day moving average stood at 95 versus 105 on Wednesday.
- John Hopkins university confirmed that more than two billion vaccine doses have been distributed worldwide, with Israel remaining the country with the most vaccinated – as nearly six-in-10 people are fully inoculated against Covid.
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Italy opened vaccinations for everybody over the age of 12, after the European Medicines Agency approved the Pfizer/BioNTech jab for 12 to 15-year-olds last week.
- The US is to donate 75% of its unused Covid-19 vaccines to the UN-backed Covax global vaccine sharing program, president Joe Biden announced as more Americans have been vaccinated and global inequities have become more glaring.
- The heads of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank also urged the G7 advanced economies to release any excess Covid-19 vaccines to developing countries as soon as possible, and called on manufacturers to ramp up production.
- India placed an order for 300m doses of an as-yet unapproved coronavirus vaccine, a day after its Supreme Court criticised the government for bungling the country’s vaccination programme.
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The potential Covid treatment based on a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies developed by US drugmaker Regeneron and Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche was purchased by the EU to the tune of about 55,000 doses.
- The US embassy ‘strongly suggested that US citizens make plans to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible’ amid spiking reported Covid cases and US citizens reportedly being denied admittance because of a lack of beds, with other concerns unrelated to the virus in the country also growing.
- Portugal was removed from the UK government’s “green list” of destinations from which people can return to England without having to quarantine, and no extra countries have been added, sparking industry fury.
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The head of a Pakistani province decreed that government employees who refuse to be vaccinated against Covid would not be paid from next month.
- A cruise ship arrived in Venice, Italy, for the first time in 17 months, signalling the return of tourists after the pandemic but enraging those who decry the impact of the giant floating hotels on the world heritage site.
Airline Jet2 has delayed the restart of flights and holidays from June 24 to July 1, following the UK government changes to travel lists.
Jet2 said that flights to Turkey, which remains on the “red” list, would not restart until July 22, PA reports. Portugal including the islands of Madeira and the Azores, will be removed from the green list exempting the need for travellers from the UK to quarantine on return from 4am on Tuesday. Sri Lanka, Egypt, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Costa Rica, Sudan, and Trinidad and Tobago will also be placed on the red list, meaning people arriving in the UK from those nations will be required to stay in a quarantine hotel for 11 nights.
The heads of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have welcomed US plans to distribute the first 25 million of 80 million vaccine doses that Washington has pledged to share globally by the end of this month.
“It’s a good start, and I am hoping that more doses will be made available, especially for countries with deployment programs,” World Bank president David Malpass told Reuters. Malpass and IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva will meet in person on Friday and Saturday with finance officials from the G7 countries - Britain, the US, Canada, Germany, Italy, France and Japan.
Democratic Republic of Congo is facing a third wave of coronavirus infections with its epicentre in the capital Kinshasa, health minister Jean-Jacques Mbungani said.
Authorities are concerned about a recent spike in infections that saw 243 new cases recorded on Wednesday, the highest daily figure since March, Reuters reports. “I officially announce the onset of the third wave of the Covid-10 pandemic in our country, with Kinshasa as its epicentre,” Mbungani told reporters. A low vaccination rate and haphazard observance of recommended hygiene practices were among the reasons for the rising infection rate, he said. On Wednesday, the World Health Organization said it was concerned about the spread in Kinshasa of the Delta variant first identified in India.
The US has told India about its plans to make Covid-19 vaccines available to other countries, including the South Asian nation, prime minister Narendra Modi’s office said.
The move comes after the White House laid out a plan to share 25 million surplus vaccine doses with the world and said it would lift some restrictions to allow other countries to buy American-made supplies for vaccine production more easily, Reuters reports.
In a phone call on Thursday, Modi and US vice president Kamala Harris discussed efforts to improve the bilateral health supply chain, including in vaccine production, the Indian premier’s office said in a statement.
“They highlighted the potential of the India-US partnership as well as the Quad vaccine initiative in addressing the long-term health impact of the pandemic.”
Updated
Chile’s health ministry said it would raise the minimum age of men approved to receive the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine to 45, from 18, until authorities complete an investigation into a young man who had a blood clot after his first shot.
The country received its first doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford University vaccine in April. Regulators initially approved the vaccine for men over 18 and women over 45, Reuters reports.
Authorities said a case of thrombosis in a 31-year man prompted them to increase the minimum age, calling it a “preventive and proactive measure”.
Updated
Dr Jeff Barrett, director of the Covid-19 Genomics Initiative at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in the UK, said the Nepal mutation first detected in India has also been observed in other variants including the one first identified in South Africa.
He said it “is believed to be part of why that variant (South African) is less well neutralised by vaccines”.
Dr Barrett added that because of this possibility and because the Indian variant appears more transmissible than the variant first detected in South Africa, scientists are monitoring it carefully, PA reports.
He explained this Indian variant plus the mutation has been seen in numerous countries, including the UK, Portugal, the USA, India, Nepal and Japan.
Updated
France's average daily Covid deaths fall below one hundred
France’s seven-day moving average of daily Covid-19 deaths fell below 100 for the first time since October 27th, official figures show.
The Covid-19 death toll increased by 70 to 109,828, the eighth-highest total globally, Reuters reports. The seven-day moving average stood at 95 versus 105 on Wednesday. French health authorities reported 8,161 new confirmed cases over 24 hours, taking the total to 5.69 million, the world’s fourth-highest total. The daily total has now stayed below 10,000 for a fifth straight day, a sequence unseen since early September, and the seven-day moving average of daily new cases fell below 9,000 for the first time since September at 8,350.
The UK death toll is now at 127,812 after a further 18 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Thursday.
Separate figures published by the Office for National Statistics show there have now been 153,000 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate. A total of 39,758,428 people have received a first dose of Covid-19 vaccine, with half the adult population having received two doses.
Guatemala’s President Alejandro Giammattei said the US will supply half a million Covid-19 doses to the Central American country, Reuters reports.
Under pressure from the international community to share a surplus of vaccines, US president Joe Biden had laid out earlier how his country would share some 25 million of a planned 80 million doses with the rest of the world. “We were just told that the government of the United States will work with us and send half a million vaccines,” Giammattei said.
Summary
- John Hopkins university confirmed that more than two billion vaccine doses have been distributed worldwide, with Israel remaining the country with the most vaccinated – as nearly six-in-10 people are fully inoculated against Covid.
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Italy opened vaccinations for everybody over the age of 12, after the European Medicines Agency approved the Pfizer/BioNTech jab for 12 to 15-year-olds last week.
- The US is to donate 75% of its unused Covid-19 vaccines to the UN-backed Covax global vaccine sharing program, president Joe Biden announced as more Americans have been vaccinated and global inequities have become more glaring.
- The heads of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank also urged the G7 advanced economies to release any excess Covid-19 vaccines to developing countries as soon as possible, and called on manufacturers to ramp up production.
- India placed an order for 300m doses of an as-yet unapproved coronavirus vaccine, a day after its Supreme Court criticised the government for bungling the country’s vaccination programme.
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The potential Covid treatment based on a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies developed by US drugmaker Regeneron and Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche was purchased by the EU to the tune of about 55,000 doses.
- The US embassy ‘strongly suggested that US citizens make plans to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible’ amid spiking reported Covid cases and US citizens reportedly being denied admittance because of a lack of beds, with other concerns unrelated to the virus in the country also growing.
- Portugal was removed from the UK government’s “green list” of destinations from which people can return to England without having to quarantine, and no extra countries have been added, sparking industry fury.
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The head of a Pakistani province decreed that government employees who refuse to be vaccinated against Covid would not be paid from next month.
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A cruise ship arrived in Venice, Italy, for the first time in 17 months, signalling the return of tourists after the pandemic but enraging those who decry the impact of the giant floating hotels on the world heritage site.
UK reports most new cases in day since March
The UK has recorded 5,274 new cases - the highest daily figure since March. There were 18 deaths reported within 28 days of a positive test.
Airlines and travel firms have reacted with dismay to the latest UK government guidance on foreign holidays, saying it has “failed on a promise” to the industry to provide greater notice on its directives.
PA has the story:
Many were angry at the lack of consultation and said it risked the summer being ruined for the struggling sector.
John Holland-Kaye, boss of Heathrow, the UK’s largest airport, said: “Ministers spent last month hailing the restart of international travel, only to close it down three weeks later all but guaranteeing another lost summer for the travel sector.
“Everyone wants to protect public health, but the entire point of the ‘global travel taskforce’ was to establish a system to unlock low-risk travel safely. Britain is the worst performing economy in the G7, and in the week that the prime minister hosts G7 leaders to launch his government’s vision of ‘global Britain’, he’s sending a message that the UK will remain isolated from the rest of the world and closed to most of its G7 partners.”
Package holiday firm TUI UK was equally scathing, claiming the government broke promises to the industry.
Andrew Flintham, managing director for TUI UK, said: “This latest announcement is another step back for our industry. After promises that the ‘global travel taskforce’ would result in a clear framework, removing the damaging flip flopping we all endured last summer, the Government decision to move Portugal straight from green to amber will do untold damage to customer confidence.
“We were reassured that a green watch list would be created and a weeks’ notice would be given so travellers wouldn’t have to rush back home. They have failed on this promise.”
The coronavirus variant of concern first discovered in India, known as Delta, is more likely to lead to hospitalisations that the Alpha variant first detected in Kent, data suggests, raising further concerns about its spread across the UK.
US 'strongly suggests' its citizens leave Afghanistan amid spiking Covid cases
The New York Times reports that Afghan and US officials have warned of spiking reported Covid cases in Afghanistan after the health ministry declared the country was in the midst of a third wave of the pandemic.
It cites a health ministry report that hospitals are swiftly reaching occupancy with Covid patients and that some health centres are running out of oxygen. The US embassy said some of its citizens reported being denied admittance because of a lack of beds.
“The US embassy strongly suggests that US citizens make plans to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible,” the American mission said in a statement today.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a Level 4 Travel Health Notice and the Department of State has issued a Level 4 Travel Advisory advising against all travel to Kabul due [to] Covid-19, crime, terrorism, civil unrest, kidnapping, and armed conflict.
Commercial flight options from Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) remain available and the US Embassy strongly suggests that U.S. citizens make plans to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible. Given the security conditions and reduced staffing, the embassy’s ability to assist US citizens in Afghanistan is extremely limited.
In its daily coronavirus report, the Afghan health ministry said the rate of positive tests rose sharply yesterday to 34%, the NYT reported.
Acting minister of public health Wahid Majrooh said this week that rising rates of infection had forced authorities to open another hospital for Covid patients in Kabul, but that many more facilities were needed.
“Lack of oxygen is becoming a serious problem,” he said today, according to the paper. “We are quickly approaching a critical phase of the coronavirus.”
UK prime minister Boris Johnson has received his second dose of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine. He got his jab at the Francis Crick Institute in central London this evening.
Johnson received his first dose of the Astra Zeneca/Oxford vaccine at St Thomas’ Hospital in March. He spent several days in intensive care at the same hospital after contracting Covid-19 in Spring 2020.
Here’s the full story, courtesy of AP, on the US’ vaccine offering to the world. Diplomacy or philanthropy, one would ask.
The US will donate 75% of its unused Covid-19 vaccines to the UN-backed Covax global vaccine sharing program, President Joe Biden announced Thursday as more Americans have been vaccinated and global inequities have become more glaring.
The White House unveiled the allocation for sharing a first 25 million doses with the world, part of its plans to share 80 million globally by the end of June. The administration says 25% will be kept in reserve for emergencies and for the US to share directly with allies and partners.
“As long as this pandemic is raging anywhere in the world, the American people will still be vulnerable,” Biden said in a statement. “And the United States is committed to bringing the same urgency to international vaccination efforts that we have demonstrated at home.”
Of the first tranche of 25 million doses, the White House says about 19 million will go to Covax, with approximately 6 million for South and Central America, 7 million for Asia, and 5 million for Africa. The doses mark a substantial — and immediate — boost to the lagging Covax effort, which to date has shared just 76 million doses with needy countries.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the US “will retain the say in terms of where” the doses distributed through Covax ultimately go. “We’re not seeking to extract concessions, we’re not extorting, we’re not imposing conditions the way that other countries who are providing doses are doing; we’re doing none of those things,” said Sullivan. “These are doses that are being given, donated free and clear to these countries, for the sole purpose of improving the public health situation and helping end the pandemic.”
The remaining 6 million will be directed by the White House to US allies and partners, including Mexico, Canada, and the Republic of Korea, West Bank and Gaza, India, Ukraine, Kosovo, Haiti, Georgia, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Yemen, as well as for United Nations frontline workers.
The long-awaited vaccine sharing plan comes as demand for shots in the U.S. has dropped significantly — more than 63% of adults have received at least one dose — and as global inequities in supply have become more glaring.
Scores of countries have requested doses from the United States, but to date only Mexico and Canada have received a combined 4.5 million doses. The U.S. also has announced plans to share enough shots with South Korea to vaccinate its 550,000 troops who serve alongside American service members on the peninsula.
The growing US stockpile of Covid-19 vaccines is seen by many overseas and at home not only as a testament to America’s achievement but also its global privilege.
The White House also announced that it is lifting restrictions on sharing vaccines produced by AstraZeneca, as well as Sanofi and Novavax, which are also not authorised in the US, allowing the companies to determine themselves where to share their doses.
Updated
The heads of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have urged the G7 advanced economies to release any excess Covid-19 vaccines to developing countries as soon as possible, and called on manufacturers to ramp up production.
In a joint statement to the G7, IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva and World Bank president David Malpass, also called on governments, pharmaceutical companies and groups involved in vaccines procurement to boost transparency about contracting, financing and deliveries.
“Distributing vaccines more widely is both an urgent economic necessity, and a moral imperative,” they said. “The coronavirus pandemic will not end until everyone has access to vaccines, including people in developing countries.”
A cruise ship arrived today in Venice, Italy, for the first time in 17 months, signalling the return of tourists after the coronavirus pandemic but enraging those who decry the impact of the giant floating hotels on the world heritage site.
Its presence in Venice is proving no less controversial than it was before the pandemic. Environmental protesters warn the large waves caused by the cruise ships are eroding the foundations of the buildings in Venice, which with its lagoon are designated a UNESCO heritage site.
Celebrities and cultural figures including Mick Jagger, Francis Ford Coppola and Richard Armstrong, director of the New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, this week called for an end to the passage of large ships through the lagoon.
In an open letter to the Italian government calling for a range of measures to better protect the city, they warned the historic site risked being “swept away” by the ships.
France has reported 2,677 people in intensive care units with Covid-19 today, down by 77 from yesterday. The health ministry also reported that the total number of coronavirus deaths in French hospitals had increased by 70 to 83,409 over the past 24 hours.
Portugal has been removed from the UK government’s “green list” of destinations from which people can return to England without having to quarantine, and no extra countries have been added, it is understood.
The decision, set to be confirmed later today with an updated list of countries on green, amber and red lists, will dismay holidaymakers and the travel industry, with hundreds of millions of pounds immediately wiped off the value of tour operators and airlines.
US president Joe Biden has announced how the country is to share some 25 million of a planned 80 million Covid-19 vaccines with the rest of the world.
The US will donate nearly 19 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine through the Covax facility, he said in a statement. Through Covax, some 6 million doses would go to Latin America and the Caribbean, some 7 million for South and Southeast Asia and roughly 5 million for Africa.
The remaining doses, amounting to just over 6 million, would go directly from the US to countries including Canada, Mexico, India and Korea, he said.
Yesterday, UK prime minster Boris Johnson said he saw nothing in the current data to stop the planned lifting of Covid restrictions in England on 21 June. But he said questions remained over how much protection the current vaccines offered against the Delta variant, B.1.617.2.
Countries in Africa are poorly prepared for a third wave of coronavirus pandemic, with many severely lacking the clinics and medical workers needed to treat critically ill patients, the UN has warned.
“The threat of a third wave in Africa is real and rising,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization’s regional director for the continent, on Thursday, according to AFP.
Many African hospitals and clinics are still far from ready to cope with a huge rise in critically ill patients.
Across the continent, about 4.8m cases of coronavirus and 130,000 related deaths have so far been officially recorded, representing 2.9% of global cases and 3.7% of deaths. There has been a rise in infections in recent weeks, with the WHO warning in a statement that the pandemic is trending upwards in 14 countries.
A survey conducted last month of 23 African countries found most had less than one intensive care unit (ICU) bed per 100,000 population and only one-third had mechanical ventilators. By comparison, rich countries such as Germany and the United States have more than 25 ICU beds per 100,000 people.
Moeti said in an online briefing:
Many African hospitals and clinics are still far from ready to cope with a huge rise in critically-ill patients. We must better equip our hospitals and medical staff to avert the worst effects of a runaway surge.
India orders 300m doses of unapproved Covid vaccine
India has placed an order for 300m doses of an as-yet unapproved coronavirus vaccine, a day after its Supreme Court criticised the government for bungling the country’s vaccination programme.
An advance of $205.6m will be paid to local firm Biological-E for the vaccines, the health ministry said, according to the Reuters news agency. The company’s vaccine candidate is still undergoing Phase III clinical trials.
The ministry said in a statement:
The arrangement with Biological-E is part of the wider endeavour of the government of India to encourage indigenous vaccine manufacturers by providing them support in research & development and also financial support.
India, the world’s second most populous country, is currently dealing with a widespread second wave of coronavirus infections, with about 170,000 Covid deaths recorded in the past two months.
Just less than 5% of India’s 950m adult population have received two doses of coronavirus vaccine so far. The country’s vaccine programme has been using AstraZeneca shots produced at the Serum Institute of India, as well as Covaxin made by local firm Bharat Biotech, and is set to commercially launch Russia’s Sputnik V in mid-June.
But supplies are running short after the government opened vaccinations to all adults last month. Some vaccination centres have had to close down, prompting criticism from the Supreme Court about a lack of planning.
While the federal government gave free vaccines to the elderly and frontline workers, it left state governments and private hospitals to administer doses to people in the 18-45 age group at a price.
“The policy of the central government of conducting free vaccination themselves for groups under the first two phases, and replacing it with paid vaccination...is, prima facie, arbitrary and irrational,” the Supreme Court said.
In Greece, the government is to target tens of thousands of undocumented migrants living in government-run camps in the next phase of its vaccination campaign.
Health Ministry officials said the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine was being used for the programme, which is to begin on the islands of Lesbos, Chios and Samos before later expanding to other Greek islands and the mainland later this week, according to an Associated Press wire report.
About 60,000 migrants and asylum-seekers currently live in camps, shelters, and government-subsidised flats in Greece.
About one-quarter are children and not currently eligible to receive vaccines.
The expansion of Greece’s vaccination programme comes after the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control urged EU states to “ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines and ensure equitable uptake” for migrants and the wider population.
Nearly one in five Greek residents have been fully vaccinated, according to government figures published Thursday.
People in Bahrain who have already received two doses of China’s Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine are being offered a booster shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech version.
The Middle East island is currently in the midst of its worst wave of pandemic so far, despite being one of the countries with the most vaccinations per capita, according to the Associated Press.
The government has now recommended people over 50, the obese and people with weakened immune systems receive the Pfizer shot regardless of whether they first received Sinopharm.
The vaccines use different technologies. Pfizer’s, a so-called “mRNA vaccine,” contains a piece of genetic code that trains the immune system to recognise the spike protein on the surface of the virus. Sinopharm’s is an “inactivated” vaccine, made by growing the whole virus in a lab and then killing it.
The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, both of which heavily relied on Sinopharm in their initial vaccination drives, announced in May that they’d offer a third shot of Sinopharm vaccine amid concerns about an insufficient antibody response.
China’s top disease control official acknowledged in April that the country’s locally produced vaccines offer low protection against the virus, adding to growing questions over the shot’s efficacy.
The UAE and Bahrain rank among the world’s top vaccinators on a per-capita basis. Yet Bahrain, home to some 1.6m people, is in the throes of its worst wave yet of the virus, forcing the kingdom into a two-week lockdown.
In response to questions from The Associated Press, Bahrain’s government said “the people of Bahrain have a choice of vaccine when choosing their booster appointment six months after their original vaccinations.”
“All the data from the Ministry of Health has shown all the vaccines in use in Bahrain are providing similar high levels of protection against COVID-19,” the government said, adding that 90% of new cases in Bahrain were “people who had chosen to receive no vaccinations.”
Updated
Venice has received its first visit from a cruise ship in 17 months, as tourists finally returned to the lagoon city after the coronavirus pandemic.
The MSC Orchestra arrived empty from Piraeus, Greece, and will pick up about 650 passengers on Saturday, before heading south to Bari, Corfu, Mykonos and Dubrovnik, according to French news agency AFP.
Covid restrictions limit the numbers on board to a fraction of the Orchestra’s usual capacity of 3,000 passengers. All were required to show negative Covid tests before embarking
However, their presence in Venice is proving no less controversial than it was before the pandemic. Two demonstrations were planned for Saturday - one in support of the cruise ship, one against.
Environmental protesters say the large waves caused by the cruise ships are eroding the foundations of the buildings in Venice, designated a heritage site by UNESCO.
Italy’s government announced in March that cruise ships would no longer sail past Venice’s iconic St Mark’s Square and dock in the historic centre, but instead be diverted to the city’s industrial port.
However, the infrastructure is not yet in place for this to happen.
This is Damien Gayle taking the reins of the live blog from Mattha, while he has a well-earned rest. You can get in touch with me through my Twitter account, @damiengayle, or via email to damien.gayle@theguardian.com.
Two billion vaccine shots given worldwide
John Hopkins university has confirmed that more than two billion vaccine doses have been distributed worldwide.
It puts the figure at 2,002,917,476 after we reported an AFP tally earlier with similar figures.
Israel remains the country with the most vaccinated, with nearly six-in-10 people in the country fully inoculated against Covid.
It is followed by Canada (59% of the population have had at least one jab), the UK (58.3%), Chile (56.6%) and the US (51%), according to AFP.
Six out of 10 of the injections have been administered in the world’s three most populous countries – China (704.8 million doses), the US (296.9 million) and India (221 million).
Only six countries in the world have not yet started vaccinating - North Korea, Haiti, Tanzania, Chad, Burundi and Eritrea.
Updated
Asylum-seekers in Greece have been receiving coronavirus shots as authorities began rolling out vaccinations in migrant camps.
Reuters reports that the government, which began vaccinating the general public in January, had been criticised by rights groups for being slow to include asylum-seekers, at risk in overcrowded camps where sanitary conditions are poor and social-distancing impossible.
There are about 12,100 asylum-seekers on five Greek islands close to Turkey, and about 9,400 of those live in official camps, according to the United Nations’ refugee agency UNHCR.
Today, vaccinations began on the islands of Lesbos, Chios and Samos with Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose shot, said Anastasios Chatzis, an official with the National Organization of Public Health.
“We have the vaccines, we have the staff, the mood is positive,” Chatzis said from Lesbos. “We have a long but good road ahead, and we hope everything goes well.”
The head of a Pakistani province has decreed that government employees who refuse to be vaccinated against Covid would not be paid from next month.
Sindh chief minister Murad Ali Shah announced the move after meeting with health officials to discuss the first cases of the delta variant detected in the province, which includes Karachi, AFP reports.
“Any government employee who is not vaccinated should have their salary stopped from July,” he tweeted, adding that orders had been given to the finance ministry.
The country has fully vaccinated only around 2.2 million people – a fraction of its 220 million population. The requirement to have a mobile phone to register for a shot has proved a barrier for some poor and illiterate citizens.
Every cloud has a silver lining, or indeed perhaps one made of latex.
Sexually-transmitted infections (STIs) declined sharply in Norway last year thanks to physical distancing rules, official statistics show.
AFP reports that the country saw a 39% reduction in gonorrhoea cases, an 11% drop in chlamydia cases, and a 20-percent decline in HIV cases in 2020.
“The drop in the number of STIs in 2020 is most probably linked to anti-Covid measures, such as travel restrictions, social distancing and the closure of bars and restaurants,” Oyvind Nilsen of Norway’s Institute of Public Health (FHI) said in a statement.
Nilsen said a drop in testing due to the pandemic played only a marginal role in the decline. Meanwhile, the only STI to register a rise in cases was syphilis, up by 39% and qualified as “surprising” by FHI.
“One possible explanation for the rise in syphilis among men having sexual relations with other men – while gonorrhoea has seen a sharp decline – could be that syphilis has fewer symptoms, has a longer transmission phase than gonorrhoea and the infection is highly contagious,” said Nilsen.
She added: “We always have problems convincing young people to use condoms. Before they settle down with a stable partner, their sex life is largely made up of multiple short-term relationships and no condoms.”
Norway, a country of 5.4 million, is among the countries least affected by Covid-19, with 125,881 cases and 785 deaths. The country had no excess mortality last year. On the contrary, the number of deaths declined by 73 in 2020 from the previous year, even though it was a leap year.
Updated
The UN’s health agency has said it had detected a surge late last month in coronavirus cases in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“An exponential rise in the spread of SARS-Cov-2 virus has been recorded in Kinshasa,” the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a weekly report. The rise mirrored a “clear deterioration” in the wider province of Kinshasa, it said.
AFP reports that a DRC health ministry official said “the third wave of Covid-19 is already there - it’s the Indian [Delta] and South African [Beta] variants.”
“This wave could be deadlier than the previous ones,” the official said, blaming lax adherence to social distancing and face masks.
The WHO said that the mortality rate across the country was currently unchanged at 2.5%, but noted concern about the presence of the Delta variant in Kinshasa.
So far, the city - and the DRC itself - have been relatively spared from the impact of coronavirus compared to South Africa, the worst-hit country in Africa, and states in other continents.
As of yesterday, the DRC had recorded 32,176 confirmed cases of the disease, of which 789 were fatal.
A German police force has established a dedicated team to counteract an ascendant illegal trade in fake vaccine certificates, the BBC reports.
Some people are conned into paying about €100 for both dud certificates and workable ones over the encrypted Telegram messenger service which unlike other platforms authorities cannot access conversations on.
The certificates are reported to have become increasingly desirable to those hesitant to receive the Covid jab, as proving vaccination can provide greater freedoms in Germany.
Six suspected criminals are being investigated by the new unit, Cologne police spokeswoman Nicole Gentner said, according to the BBC.
One Telegram offer quoted by German broadcaster MDR read: “The order with stamp - already available - takes 1-3 days. We will give you a certificate, stamp, BioNTech or Astra sticker and signature on the stamp. Two certificates cost €150.”
The war of words continues between Taiwan and China – with the island state having accused the superpower of meddling with its efforts to source vaccines.
Taiwan’s foreign minister has said China is seeking political gains abroad in return for providing vaccines and other pandemic assistance, partly to increase pressure on Taiwan, which it claims as its own territory.
AP reports that Beijing’s leaders “further exploited the pandemic to impose their political agenda on many others,” according to Joseph Wu in a video conference with the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan.
In particular, China’s “vaccine diplomacy” is creating divisions among countries in Central and South America, giving Beijing an opportunity to exert its influence in the Western Hemisphere, Wu said. The World Health Organization’s Covax scheme also gives vaccines freely to countries in need.
Beijing is providing access to its domestically produced vaccines, other anti-coronavirus resources and development funding to “those who are willing to accept political partnership with Beijing,” he said.
“China then uses this partnership to lure or pressure those allies of Taiwan and the US to lean toward Beijing. Through these manoeuvrings, China is trying to gain political influence in the region at the cost of Taiwan and the US.”
China has sold hundreds of millions of coronavirus vaccine doses abroad and donated millions more, mainly to developing nations in Africa. The WHO has given emergency authorisation for two Chinese-developed vaccines, but the companies, particularly Sinopharm, have faced criticism over a lack of transparency in sharing data.
China has shut Taiwan out of an increasing number of international organisations, including the WHO, and has blocked Taiwan’s cooperation with Covax.
India has signed its first order for a Covid-19 vaccine still undergoing trials as it seeks to inoculate more of its population, with no more than 5% of its 950 million adult population so far having received both doses.
The government will buy 300 million vaccine doses from local firm Biological-E and has put down an advance of $205.6 million, the health ministry said, even though the vaccine is still going through Phase III clinical trials, Reuters reports.
“The arrangement with Biological-E is part of the wider endeavour of government of India to encourage indigenous vaccine manufacturers by providing them support in research & development and also financial support,” the ministry said in a statement.
India has been inoculating its people with AstraZeneca shots produced at the Serum Institute of India, Covaxin made by local firm Bharat Biotech and is set to commercially launch Russia’s Sputnik V in mid-June.
But supplies are running short after the government opened vaccinations to all adults last month. Some vaccination centres have had to close down, prompting criticism from the Supreme Court about a lack of planning.
Reuters has this dispatch from San Marino, the micro-state surrounded by northern Italy which is banking on a new way to attract visitors - vaccine tourism.
Europe’s smallest independent state after Vatican City and Monaco last month began offering the Russian Sputnik V Covid-19 shot to tourists. About 250 have so far received their first dose.
Hotels handle the paperwork after a tourist sends an email. The visitors typically stay three days for both first and second jabs. “The guest arrives, stays here for three days, the day after his arrival we accompany him to receive the first dose, and then he comes back after 21 days for the second dose,” said Francesco Brigante, director of the IDesign Hotel.
The programme, which is helping San Marino’s tourism sector emerge from a Covid slump, is restricted to people who are not resident in Italy.
Igor Pershin, a Russian who lives in the Czech Republic, travelled to San Marino with his wife and stayed at the IDesign after hearing about the programme on Russian TV. “In the Czech Republic, it is difficult to get vaccinated, especially for foreigners,” Pershin said. “I only wanted to get the Sputnik vaccine and I only wanted to get it in San Marino so I booked a hotel.”
Apart from hotel costs, the price for two doses of the vaccine is about €50 euros. “We came here from Germany because we want to get vaccinated with Sputnik V and because in Germany they haven’t given us an appointment yet”, said Gioele Cozzolino.
Sweden’s government failed in several aspects of its handling of the pandemic, the country’s parliament’s constitutional committee has said.
The government was slow to put in place a testing and tracing system, failed to protect of the elderly and there was a lack of clear lines of responsibility between national and local authorities, Reuters reports the committee – which did not criticise Sweden’s absence of sweeping lockdown measure – as saying.
“It is ... clear that Sweden was not sufficiently prepared before [the pandemic] and we can learn from many of the underlying failures that have been identified,” Hans Ekstrom, deputy chairman of the committee and a lawmaker from the governing Social Democrat party, told a hearing.
Sweden has been an outlier in the fight against the pandemic and has opted against lockdowns, instead relying on mostly voluntary measures as well as bans on mass gatherings amid a shift to mostly home working. The death toll has been higher than that among its Nordic neighbours, but lower than in most European countries that opted for lockdowns.
The committee said that the government should have been quicker to set up a framework for testing and tracing, quicker to draw up a law giving it wider powers to deal with the crisis and quicker to isolate care homes for the elderly, Reuters reports.
“The government’s response was not sufficient,” committee chairperson Karin Enstrom, of the opposition Moderate Party, said. “The elderly were particularly vulnerable ... and ... the government should have acted more forcefully.”
The Social Democrat-led government has already accepted that it did not do enough to protect elderly residents of care homes.
The pandemic has severely affected children’s rights worldwide, with young people risking a “generational catastrophe” if governments do not act, a rights group has said in an annual survey.
Millions of children have missed out on education because of Covid-19 restrictions while there will be a long term impact in terms of their physical and mental health, Dutch NGO KidsRights said as it launched its annual ranking, AFP reports.
The survey ranks Iceland, Switzerland and Finland as best for children’s rights and Chad, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone as the worst, out of a total of 182 countries.
Marc Dulleart, founder and chairman of KidsRights, said that the effects of the pandemic on children had “unfortunately exceeded our predictions at the outset last year”.
Apart from patients of the coronavirus, children have been hardest hit, not directly by the virus itself, but fundamentally failed through the deferred actions of governments around the world. Educational recovery is the key to avoiding generational catastrophe.
The group said schools for more than 168 million children have been closed for almost a full year, with one-in-three children worldwide unable to access remote learning while their schools were shut.
An additional 142 million kids fell into material poverty as the global economy was hit by the pandemic and the responses to it, while 370 million kids missed out on school meals.
Italy opens vaccinations for all over-12s
Italy has today opened vaccinations for everybody over the age of 12, after the European Medicines Agency approved the Pfizer/BioNTech jab for 12 to 15-year-olds last week.
“It’s a beautiful day,” said Naples mayor Luigi de Magistris, saying it was an “excellent signal for both containing the pandemic and for resuming as soon as possible all forms of... activity.”
After a slow start due to organisational issues and lack of supply, Italy’s vaccination programme has been accelerating. More than 35 million doses have been administered, with 12.4 million people - almost 23% of the population - now fully vaccinated, according to health ministry figures.
Hailing the widening of the vaccination programme, health minister Robert Speranza said: “We can still accelerate our campaign to get through this difficult season.”
However, health experts have warned that immunising children against Covid should only be considered in special circumstances due to the potential of it raising important practical and ethical problems.
“Children transmit Covid to some extent, although they rarely suffer badly from the disease themselves. If you offer them vaccines, then you put them at risk of possible side-effects – so there really needs to be some significant, tangible benefit to them, not just the indirect protection of adults from Covid-19,” said Prof Adam Finn of Bristol University last week.
Updated
Over two billion Covid vaccine doses distributed worldwide in six months - AFP
More than two billion Covid-19 vaccines have been given across the world, according to an AFP tally drawn from official sources.
The milestone comes six months after the first vaccination campaigns against Covid-19 began. At least 2,109,696,022 shots have been given in 215 countries and territories, according to the count from an AFP database.
Israel remains the country with the most vaccinated, with nearly six-in-10 people in the country fully inoculated against Covid.
It is followed by Canada (59% of the population have had at least one jab), the UK (58.3%), Chile (56.6%) and the US (51%).
Six out of 10 of the injections have been administered in the world’s three most populous countries – China (704.8 million doses), the US (296.9 million) and India (221 million).
Nearly four-in-10 people in the EU have had at least one shot, with Germany leading with 43.6%, followed by Italy (40%) and France and Spain on 39.4%.
Only six countries in the world have not yet started vaccinating - North Korea, Haiti, Tanzania, Chad, Burundi and Eritrea.
But with vaccination programmes now accelerating, China leads the league of countries giving doses the fastest over the last week, injecting 1.37% of its population per day. Bahrain and Uruguay are also covering about 1% a day.
Greece is to supply its northern neighbours Albania and North Macedonia with 40,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines, the country’s spokeswoman has said.
“Greece, in coordination with the European Commission, as most European countries do for their neighbours, will offer vaccines ... 20,000 doses to North Macedonia and 20,000 to Albania,” Aristotelia Peloni told a news conference.
Covid is many times more prevalent in Indonesia than shown by official figures in the world’s fourth most populous country, authors of two new studies told Reuters.
The news agency reports the country of 270 million has recorded 1.83 million positive cases, but epidemiologists have long believed the true scale of the spread has been obscured by a lack of testing and contact tracing.
One nationwide study between December and January suggested 15% of Indonesians had already contracted the virus - when official figures at the end of January had recorded infections among only around 0.4% of people. Even now, Indonesia’s total positive infections are only around 0.7% of the population.
The results of the survey were not unexpected given under reporting, said Pandu Riono, a University of Indonesia epidemiologist who worked on the study carried out with help from the World Health Organisation.
Siti Nadia Tarmizi, a senior health ministry official, said it was possible the study was preliminary, but there might be more cases than officially reported because many cases were asymptomatic. She said Indonesia had a lack of contact tracing and not enough laboratories to process tests.
Once touted by former US president Donald Trump, and subsequently derided by some as lacking efficacy evidence, the potential Covid treatment based on a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies developed by US drugmaker Regeneron and Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche has been purchased by the EU to the tune of about 55,000 doses.
Reuters reports that the deal is the bloc’s first contract for this kind of drug, as it aims to identify 10 promising treatments by the end of the month amid a failure by pharmaceutical companies to swiftly deliver sufficient supplies of vaccines after initial promise.
The deal with Roche was reached in April, the company told Reuters, but contract details were not made public. A European Commission spokesman said the EU had secured about 55,000 doses of the single-dose treatment.
The only other anti-Covid drug the EU has bought is Gilead’s remdesivir, an antiviral medicine. Last year, the EU reserved half a million courses after the drug obtained a conditional EU approval.
European countries would buy the Roche-Regeneron drug, which is composed of the monoclonal antibodies casirivimab and imdevimab, only after it was approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) or by national drug regulators.
“The EU authorisation is expected between August and October 2021,” an EU document says, citing Roche estimates.
Its Mattha Busby here taking over from my colleague Martin Belam. Hello to everyone reading - do drop me a line on Twitter with any tips or thoughts.
Today so far…
- Hong Kong will open its vaccine scheme to children over the age of 12, as it pursues a broader campaign across the city to incentivise its 7.5 million residents to get vaccinated. The region started its vaccination programme in February but only around 14% of the population have been fully vaccinated so far.
- Another 17 people have died in Taiwan, where authorities reported 364 new local cases and 219 backlogged cases added to previous days’ totals. It brings Taiwan’s total death toll to 166, of which 154 have been since 15 May.
- Bulgaria plans to provide about 150,000 Covid vaccines to its Balkan neighbours, health minister Stoicho Katsarov has said. It has the lowest inoculation rates in the European Union, but Katsarov said the country has agreed to receive about 13m doses under the EU supply scheme by the end of the year and can afford to help other countries.
- “The idea is to distribute up to 150,000 doses among our neighbouring western Balkan countries,” Katsarov said, adding that Sofia has received requests from North Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia.
- A coronavirus variant which Vietnam authorities thought was a combination of the Indian and UK strains is not a new hybrid, but part of the existing Indian strain, the World Health Organization’s representative in Vietnam has said.
- The WHO in Nepal has also denied reports that there is a “Nepal variant” causing concern.
- Syria has received its first shipment of Russian Sputnik V vaccine. Syrian President Bashar Assad was inoculated with the vaccine, the Syrian ambassador to Moscow said.
- The Serum Institute of India has sought regulatory approval to make Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, on top of the AstraZeneca and Novavax shots it is already producing.
- Indonesia has cancelled the haj pilgrimage for people in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation for a second year in a row due to concerns over the pandemic.
- Infection rates in Germany continue to drop as the country slowly emerges from eight months of lockdown, but politicians are urging caution over a possible variant-driven resurgence at the end of the summer.
- Seiko Hashimoto, the president of the Tokyo 2020 organising committee has ruled out a cancellation or further postponement of the Olympics, amid concerns about hosting the event during a global pandemic. “We cannot postpone again,” she said in an interview
- And you might be interested in the latest episode of the Guardian’s Today In Focus podcast, exploring the Wuhan lab leak theory…
Reuters have very handily – for me, if not for you – wrapped up exactly which countries in Europe are now allowing children and adolescents to be vaccinated.
- France will start vaccinating teenagers from age 12 on 15 June
- Germany plans to offer a first shot to children aged 12-16 from 7 June, while Poland would offer shots to those aged 12-15 the same day.
- Lithuania’s prime minister said the country could start vaccinating children from age 12 in June.
- Italy on 31 May approved extending the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to 12-15 year olds.
- Austria aims to have over 340,000 children aged 12-15 vaccinated by the end of August.
- Hungary started vaccinating 16-18-year-olds in mid-May.
-
Switzerland’s health watchdog said in early May Pfizer had sought approval for its shot in children aged 12-15.
- San Marino on 1 June opened vaccinations for children aged 12-15.
Infection rates in Germany continue to drop as the country slowly emerges from eight months of lockdown, but politicians are urging caution over a possible variant-driven resurgence at the end of the summer.
The seven-day incidence of infections per 100,000 people over seven days dropped to 34.1 on Thursday, with 4,640 new infections reported by Germany’s disease control agency, the Robert Koch Institute.
Social Democrat delegate Karl Lauterbach, a trained doctor and prominent health expert, said he expected the incidence rate to remain around 35 in the coming weeks, as people spent more time outdoors during the summer and more and more people were fully immunised.
Some 53 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered in Germany so far, and 44.6% of the population has had at least one shot.
Lauterbach said he expected the “Delta variant” of the virus that was first detected in India to become more dominant in Germany after the holidays, saying it “will probably spread around numerous European countries in the coming months”.
For now, the Delta variant B1.617.2 only plays a minor role in Germany, making up 2.1 percent of cases reported over the last week.
Nonetheless Germany is one of the European countries who have imposed restrictions on travel from the United Kingdom over the variant, with anyone entering Germany from the UK will be required quarantine for two weeks on arrival, even if they test negative for the coronavirus.
Updated
Regular readers of this blog will know that I usually slightly raise one eyebrow when reporting the official numbers out of Russia as they are remarkably consistent. They’ve pretty much been in the range of 7,000 to 9,500 daily every day since early March, which feels unusual as it suggest the virus is neither gathering pace or diminishing, which tends not to be how epidemics behave.
Today is no different, as Russia reported 8,933 new cases taking the official national tally since the pandemic began to 5,099,182.
The government coronavirus task force said 393 people had died of coronavirus linked causes in the past 24 hours, pushing the national death toll to 122,660.
Reuters always note that the federal statistics agency has kept a separate count and has said Russia recorded significantly more fatalities than that. They put the figure at around 250,000 deaths related to Covid from April 2020 to March 2021.
My colleague Nicola Slawson has just opened up the UK live blog for the day – so if you are looking for UK Covid news, that’s where you need to head. I’ll be continuing here with global updates.
Bulgaria reveals plan to share vaccines with Balkan neighbours
Bulgaria plans to provide about 150,000 Covid vaccines to its Balkan neighbours, health minister Stoicho Katsarov has said.
Bulgaria has the lowest inoculation rates in the European Union, but Katsarov said the country has agreed to receive about 13m doses under the EU supply scheme by the end of the year and can afford to help other countries.
“The idea is to distribute up to 150,000 doses among our neighbouring western Balkan countries,” Katsarov told reporters, adding that Sofia has received requests from North Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia.
“Our needs are fully covered so there is no danger whatsoever that Bulgaria can be left without vaccines,” he said.
Reuters report Katsarov said he expects to receive an answer on Friday from the European Commission how exactly the country should proceed and whether it could donate or sell the doses.
He said Bulgaria was looking to donate mostly AstraZeneca vaccines, not least because of the low interest in them at home.
Last week president Rumen Radev said Sofia plans to donate a significant amount of vaccines to North Macedonia in a move that could help improve strained relations over Bulgaria’s veto on the start of EU accession talks with Skopje.
A quick one from Sky here, that the reopening of indoor hospitality last month failed to boost footfall in town centres in England. The figures are compiled by a company called Springboard, and they said:
May was the wettest on record which inevitably lowered the initial exhilaration of consumers in being able to eat out as even visiting indoor environments necessitated braving the weather.
Secondly, the limitations on dining capacity in indoor venues inevitably means that the uplift in footfall generated has been limited; and thirdly most of the increase in footfall has occurred post 5pm when volumes of activity are far lower those than during retail trading hours.
Footfall in May 2021 was around 25% down on the same pre-pandemic period in 2019
Hong Kong authorises vaccine use for over 12-year-olds
Hong Kong will open its vaccine scheme to children over the age of 12 for the first time, Reuters report, as it pursues a broader campaign across the city to incentivise its 7.5 million residents to get vaccinated.
The region started its vaccination programme in February but only around 14% of the population have been fully vaccinated so far.
Another 17 people have died in Taiwan, where authorities reported 364 new local cases and 219 backlogged cases added to previous days’ totals. It brings Taiwan’s total death toll to 166, of which 154 have been since 15 May.
Taiwan’s worst outbreak since the pandemic began continues to report high daily numbers, but analyses of the general trend are tentatively suggesting a decline. Finding trends in the data has been made difficult during this outbreak, as a backlog of cases routinely adds dozens of cases to previous days.
In its daily briefing today, the central epidemic command centre reported details of a growing outbreak in aged care, and a cluster among migrant workers in Miaoli county.
Ahead of an upcoming long weekend, health and welfare minister Chen Chih-Shung urged people not to travel. Taiwan is on level 3 of a four tier alert system which does not stop people from traveling. Restrictions limit gatherings to 10 outside and five inside, restaurants are take-away only, and employers have been urged to facilitate working from home, although this has not been widely taken up.
Syria receives first batch of Russian vaccines
Another quick Reuters snap here, that Syria has received the first shipment of Russian Sputnik V vaccine. Syrian President Bashar Assad was inoculated with the vaccine, Syrian ambassador to Russia Riad Haddad said.
Also on variants, Reuters report that a coronavirus variant which Vietnam authorities thought was a combination of the Indian and UK strains is not a new hybrid but part of the existing Indian strain, the World Health Organization’s representative in Vietnam told Nikkei.
“There is no new hybrid variant in Vietnam at this moment based on WHO definition,” Kidong Park said in an online interview with the newspaper, adding that it was within the “Delta variation” that was first detected in India.
In the UK today the Daily Mail is carrying a front page story warning of the threat from what they call a “Nepal variant”.
Thursday's Mail: "‘Nepal variant’ threat to our holidays" #BBCPapers #TomorrowsPapersToday https://t.co/7FuHsAa3Vz pic.twitter.com/hqXGjUfQ79
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) June 2, 2021
The World Health Organization in Nepal have put out a tweet this morning saying that they aren’t aware of any such variant.
WHO is not aware of any new variant of SARS-CoV-2 being detected in Nepal. The 3⃣confirmed variants in circulation are: Alpha (B.1.1.7), Delta (B.1.617.2) and Kappa (B.1.617.1). The predominant variant currently in circulation in Nepal is Delta (B.1.617.2).@mohpnep @PandavRajesh
— WHO Nepal (@WHONepal) June 3, 2021
One of things we are expecting today is for the UK government to announce if they are making any changes to the green, amber and red lists for international travel. A lot of people with hopes of a holiday or visiting loved ones abroad will have their eye closely on the situation – we might get that news around 11am this morning.
Getting there may prove more of a headache than usual, as AFP report. A year after the coronavirus pandemic emptied airports, air travel associations fear chaos during Europe’s summer holiday season as travellers could wait hours before boarding planes due to health checks.
Strict controls are still in place at most European airports even though vaccination campaigns are making progress and infection rates are falling.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) reported last week that on average, people travelling at peak times now stay twice as long at airports - three hours - compared with 2019.
That time is generally spent checking in, passing security and immigration controls, picking up checked bags and making it through customs. And there’s the new reality: Airlines having to check passengers’ Covid tests, temperature and other health documents.
The wait time has increased even though the volume of traffic is “only about 30 percent of pre-Covid-19 levels”, an IATA statement said.
The sector lobby group warned that time spent in airports could swell to five hours and 30 minutes if traffic rebounds to 75 percent of its pre-pandemic level, and even longer “without process improvements”.
The EU Digital Covid Certificate - showing whether a traveller was vaccinated, has immunity from a previous infection or passed a coronavirus test - will be rolled out on 1 July in an effort to make travel smoother within the 27-nation bloc.
“The level of both uncertainty and complexity in planning for the restart is just mind blowing for now,” said the director general of the European branch of Airports Control International, Olivier Jankovec. His association represents 500 airports on the continent.
“With each passing day, the prospect of travellers enduring widespread chaos at airports this summer is becoming more real.”
Updated
Indonesia has cancelled the haj pilgrimage for people in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation for a second year in a row due to concerns over the pandemic, the religious affairs minister said this morning.
Reuters report that minister Yaqut Cholil Qoumas told a briefing that Saudi Arabia, where the pilgrimage takes place, had not opened access to the haj.
UK government 'shortchanging children' in England on catch-up plans – Labour spokesperson
In the UK, Labour’s opposition spokesperson James Murray has also been trailing round the TV and radio studios. On the proposals for catch-up funding for pupils in England, he told Sky News:
I think everyone listening to the show will realise that what the government is doing by shortchanging children feels wrong, and it’s also the ultimate false economy. If we don’t invest in protecting our children now, and making sure that their education catches up, that they are prepared in terms of their mental wellbeing and so on, it’s going to cost the country and the economy dearly in the long run.
'If we don't invest in protecting our children now, it will cost the country and the economy in the long run'.
— Sky News (@SkyNews) June 3, 2021
Shadow treasury minister James Murray says the government's school recovery plan "feels wrong" and is the "ultimate false economy".#COVID19: https://t.co/dXYTpNZNKV pic.twitter.com/DIODiojycz
Seth Borenstein, science writer at AP, reports that in the US, new White House science adviser Eric Lander wants to have a vaccine ready to fight the next pandemic in just about 100 days after recognizing a potential viral outbreak.
In his first interview after being sworn in, he painted a rosy near future where a renewed American emphasis on science not only better prepares the world for the next pandemic with plug-and-play vaccines, but also changes how medicine fights disease and treats patients, curbs climate change and further explores space.
“This is a moment in so many ways, not just health, that we can rethink fundamental assumptions about what’s possible and that’s true of climate and energy and many areas,” Lander told The Associated Press.
“It was amazing at one level that we were able to produce highly effective vaccines in less than a year, but from another point of view you’d say, ‘Boy, a year’s a long time,”’ even though in the past it would take three years or four years, Lander said. “To really make a difference we want to get this done in 100 days. And so a lot of us have been talking about a 100-day target from the recognition from a virus with pandemic potential.”
“It would mean that we would have had a vaccine in early April if that had happened this time, early April of 2020,” Lander said. “It makes you gulp for a second, but it’s totally feasible to do that.”
He is the first director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy to be promoted to Cabinet level in a US administration. Lander said President Joe Biden’s elevation of the science post is a symbolic show “that science should have a seat at the table” but also allows him to have higher-level talks with different agency chiefs about making policy.
Serum Institute of India seeks approval to manufacture Russia's Sputnik V vaccine
A very quick Reuters snap here that the Serum Institute of India has sought regulatory approval to make Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, on top of the AstraZeneca and Novavax shots it is already producing.
In England, much of the news this morning has been dominated by the continued fall-out over the government’s plans for education “catch-up” spending. Yesterday Sir Kevan Collins quit, said to be dismayed that his long-awaited £15bn proposals were watered down to a £1.4bn package.
Home Office minister Victoria Atkins has been out and about fronting up the government response, saying that the Government’s education recovery fund was “very much focused on what we can deliver and deliver quickly”
Collins said in his resignation statement that the package of support is “too narrow, too small and will be delivered too slowly”. When asked on Sky News, Atkins said she had not read the resignation statement – which does seem somewhat extraordinary given that she’s been sent out this morning specifically to rebut it
She told Sky News the Government was “continuing to look at things like lengthening the school day”.
Meanwhile, PA report that senior Conservative MP Robert Halfon said the Government must “decide their priorities in terms of education” and that the Treasury can “find the money from the back of the sofa”, where there is the political will.
The chairman of the Education Select Committee told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Of course there are funding constraints but the Treasury announced over £16bn extra for defence only last year, we’ve got £800m being spent on a new research agency, £200m being spent on a yacht.
“So where there is the political will, the Treasury can find the money from the back of the sofa, and there has to be that political will because we need a long-term plan for education, a proper funding settlement.”
He said the damage caused by Covid-19 to younger children “has been nothing short of disastrous”.
Oliver Laughland brings us a special report on vaccine hesitancy this morning from Tuskegee and Florala in the US:
In 1997, President Bill Clinton apologized for the Tuskegee study, which he described as “clearly racist”. Two decades on, the legacy of what happened here has been routinely cited as a reason many Black Americans remain distrustful of the country’s medical systems and also the Covid-19 vaccine itself.
It is then, perhaps, against expectation that vaccination rates in Macon county, where this city of 8,000 residents is situated, are substantially higher than the state average in Alabama. In Macon county, 36% of residents have now received their first shot compared with only 32% statewide. In this historic region of Black Belt counties, home to large populations of Black residents, some jurisdictions have completed vaccinations at rates of over 40%.
But Alabama and the neighbouring state of Mississippi have for months had the lowest vaccination rates in the country, with vaccine hesitancy underwritten by different forces in various locations across the state. In some areas local political leaders have retreated from public engagement on the issue, while in others, including Tuskegee, local leadership has played a vital role in pushing rates above the state average.
Omar Neal, a local radio host and community leader, took his shot almost as soon as it was available. He weighed the heavy history but set aside what he described as instinctive distrust of public health systems after generations of failures.
“Trust is a calculated risk,” he said, pausing for a moment. “Five hundred and eighty-eight thousand people have died because they didn’t get this vaccine. Nobody died that did take it. That’s pretty good odds for me.”
Read more of Oliver Laughland’s report here: Alabama faces vaccine hesitancy but only some counties try to tackle it
A five-pronged approach focused on the five C’s - confidence, complacency, convenience, communication and context - is needed to combat vaccine hesitancy, according to scientists from the UK, US and South Africa.
PA report that writing in the Royal Society of Medicine journal, they say complacency due to lower perceptions of personal risk and disease severity, particularly among younger people and those of lower socioeconomic status, is strongly associated with lower vaccine uptake.
One of the authors, Dr Mohammad Razai, of the Population Health Research Institute at St George’s, University of London, said: “As the lower age groups are being offered the vaccine, addressing complacency through repeated risk communication is crucial to facilitate informed decision-making.
“It is important to emphasise the greater societal benefits of population level immunity and the protection it offers to those vulnerable, their families and friends.”
The proposed strategy also focuses on convenience of vaccination delivery, communication to combat misinformation, and recognition of context including ethnicity, religion, occupation and socioeconomic status.
Confidence in vaccine safety, efficacy and importance is crucial, and the public needs to be aware that for most people the benefits of vaccine “vastly outweigh the risk” of rare side effects, they write.
Getting Alan Sugar to endorse the vaccine for young people was probably not on their list of priorities, but he’s done that on social media this morning in his own imitable style.
Can I just add my two penny worth and heartily encourage all 18-35 year old to havex the vaccination . It makes sense . @NHS@NHSEngland @NHSDigital
— Lord Sugar (@Lord_Sugar) June 3, 2021
Workers in Melbourne in Australia who haven’t had shifts due to the extended Covid lockdown will be eligible for up to $500 in support after the prime minister announced a new temporary Covid disaster payment.
Scott Morrison said on Thursday the disaster payment would be available in areas declared a commonwealth hotspot when any lockdown lasted longer than seven days.
A $500 weekly payment will be available for people who work more than 20 hours a week while $325 will be available for those who work less than that.
The support will only go to people older than 17, who were working before the lockdown and who can no longer work. They will need to have less than $10,000 in savings.
There are further restrictions including whether other leave – beyond annual and sick leave – is available to cover the lockdown period.
People 'naive' in trusting China over origins of coronavirus – former M16 chief
Good morning, it is Martin Belam here in London taking over for the next few hours. I must say that I was one of those very sceptical about the Wuhan lab leak theory initially, as much of the evidence posted online that I saw seemed to amount to not much more than “They have a lab there, you know”.
Former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove possibly knows his onions a bit better than me, and he’s had some pretty stringent words about the origins of the virus on a podcast from the Telegraph, and PA have picked up the quotes this morning. He says:
The People’s Republic of China is a pretty terrifying regime and does some things we consider unacceptable and extreme in silencing opposition to the official line of the government. We don’t know that’s what’s happened, but a lot of data have probably been destroyed or made to disappear so it’s going to be difficult to prove definitely the case for a ‘gain of function chimera’ being the cause of the pandemic.
Trevor Marshallsea writes that Sir Richard said he felt some vindication as more people were beginning to take seriously his repeated questioning of the origins of the coronavirus. He spoke of “extraordinary behaviour” in the scientific community which had “shut down any debate” and which he said verged on “academic bullying”.
China, he said, had originally been “let off the hook” on questions about the virus’s origins due to scepticism over the Trump administration, which had led such enquiries initially.
He also said the West had been naive in trusting China, which had infiltrated scientific institutions and journals in the UK and elsewhere.
The latest episode of the Guardian’s Today In Focus podcast is exploring the Wuhan lab leak theory.
When Covid-19 first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan, much of the focus of the initial investigation fell on a seafood market that also sold exotic animals for human consumption. But in the months since, no definitive link has been proven and the precise origin story remains unsolved.
In the intervening period numerous conspiracy theories have spread: that somehow 5G phone signals could be involved, or that the virus is a hoax. Bracketed in with these was a theory that Covid-19 may have been released (accidentally or otherwise) from a lab.
Initially scientists poured scorn on the lab leak theory but in recent months suspicion has fallen on the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which studies coronaviruses. As the Guardian’s Peter Beaumont tells Anushka Asthana, these suspicions are still being treated with scepticism by scientists. But now, in the absence of any other confirmed origin, Joe Biden has asked US intelligence agencies to consider the lab leak theory as a possibility and to investigate. So how seriously should we take it?
In Australia, Melbourne GPs say they are being forced to turn away huge numbers of vaccine-seeking locals, including busloads of vulnerable residents from care facilities, because the commonwealth’s supply of doses has not increased to match the explosion in demand.
The latest outbreak has caused a huge increase in demand for the Covid-19 vaccine in Victoria, and the state is now recording daily vaccination numbers of above 20,000 in primary care, up from the roughly 2,300 doses administered on 24 May.
The demand has inundated local GPs, who say their supplies of vaccine doses are evaporating almost immediately.
'We cannot postpone again' – Tokyo Olympic chief
Seiko Hashimoto, the president of the Tokyo 2020 organising committee has ruled out a cancellation or further postponement of the Olympics, amid concerns about hosting the event during a global pandemic.
“We cannot postpone again,” she said in an interview with Nikkan Sports newspaper.
Reuters reports: Public opinion polls in Japan have consistently shown that a majority want the Games cancelled or put off yet again after being delayed by one year because of the coronavirus crisis. A majority of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly feel the same way, the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper reported on Thursday.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is likely to call a snap election after the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Asahi newspaper reported, showing his resolve to push ahead with the event.
Towns and cities lined up to host Olympic training or events have increasingly expressed resistance, amid concern visitors will spread variant strains of the virus and drain medical resources.
The government of Ota City has been inundated with complaints by residents over a decision to give preferential Covid-19 vaccinations to city and hotel staff tending to Australian athletes, media reported.
While Japan has avoided the large-scale infections suffered by many other nations, severe cases are rising in the latest outbreak. More than 746,000 cases have been recorded and more than 13,000 deaths.
Shigeru Omi, Japan’s top medical adviser, told a parliamentary committee on Wednesday that it was “not normal” to host the Olympics amid the current state of infections.
Updated
Reuters:
Pot-banging protests erupted across several cities in Brazil last night, as President Jair Bolsonaro addressed the nation, Reuters reports.
It occurred just days after protestors took to the streets across the country over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has so far killed almost half a million people.
A protest banner reads “we don’t want the Cup, we want vaccine! Out Bolsonaro”. Photograph: Pilar Olivares/Reuters
The last few days have been rocky for the government of the right-wing leader, whose popularity had already been flagging amid persistently high daily Covid-19 deaths and cases.
On Wednesday alone, almost 100,000 Brazilians came down with the coronavirus and 2,507 died, according to government data. Earlier in the day, the nation’s Supreme Court authorised a criminal investigation into Bolsonaro’s environment minister for allegedly interfering with a police probe into illegal logging.
In the televised speech, Bolsonaro briefly summarised some of his government’s recent accomplishments and pledged strong economic growth going forward, but presented no new information.
On Saturday, thousands participated in protests in at least 16 cities across the country, which were organised by leftist political parties, unions and student associations.
In Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, thousands of mask-wearing people blocked one the largest city’s avenues, while a large balloon depicted Bolsonaro as a vampire.
Some protests, like the one in Rio de Janeiro, included images of former leftist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has emerged as Bolsonaro’s main challenger in the nation’s 2022 election, wearing the presidential sash.
In the brief Wednesday evening speech, Bolsonaro, who has ridiculed masks and vaccines in the past, said all Brazilians who wanted a vaccine would be able to get one by the end of the year.
Also in the evening, the nation’s Health Ministry revised down the number of Covid-19 vaccines it will receive in June by about 4 million doses.
Hello and welcome to our continuing coverage of the global pandemic.
Here is a short update of developments in the last 24 hours
- In the US Joe Biden has announced a “national month of action” to get 70% of Americans vaccinated.
- Meanwhile in Australia, doctors in Melbourne say they have had to turn away patients because they don’t have enough vaccines to meet demand.
- The pandemic has pushed more than 100 million more workers into poverty, the UN has said.
- Cancellation or another postponement of the Tokyo Olympic Games has been ruled out by the head of the organising committee.
- France will start vaccinating teenagers from age 12 with the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine on June 15, the government said.
- Mexico reported 3,269 new cases of Covid-19 in the country and 306 more fatalities, Reuters reports. It brings the total to 2,423,928 infections and 228,146 deaths, according to health ministry data released on Wednesday.
- Spanish regions with a low Covid infection rate will be allowed to reopen nightlife before herd immunity is achieved, which is expected by mid-August, the health minister said.
- The Canadian province of Ontario will keep schools closed for in-person learning until the new school year starts in September, premier Doug Ford announced.
- Germany plans to pay vaccine manufacturers an annual reservation fee to build up reserve capacity of around 600-700m doses per year to help it fight future pandemics, the health minister said.
- Colombia has began what its government called a gradual opening of its border with Venezuela after a 14-month closure intended to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
- In Germany, the Robert Koch Institute has confirmed that a third wave of the virus has been broken.
- EU governments have agreed to add Japan to their small list of countries from which they will allow non-essential travel, it was reported earlier.
