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Reuters reports that the “No Zoom” policy for this year’s Oscars ceremony is proving a headache for multiple nominees who live outside the US and who are still under pandemic restrictions, according to Hollywood publications.
Variety and Deadline Hollywood reported on Wednesday that publicists and some studio executives have complained to the film academy about logistics, costs and quarantine issues raised by the decision to bar nominees from taking part in the ceremony remotely.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which organises the ceremony, did not return a request for comment on the reports.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 25 April show to hand out the highest honors in the movie industry will be held both at Union Station in Downtown Los Angeles and the traditional home of the Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
Producers said last week that there will “not be an option to Zoom in for the show” and encouraged nominees to attend in person.
At least nine nominees, including “Promising Young Woman” director Emerald Fennell and star Carey Mulligan, live in Britain. England is next week expected to ban non-essential international travel until at least 17 May.
Representatives of the five international feature films - submitted by Denmark, Hong Kong, Romania, Tunisia and Bosnia - could also face hurdles getting to Los Angeles, Variety and Deadline noted.
Some of the other 200 or so nominees will be working on productions that require quarantine or living in restricted “bubbles” with cast and crew, the publications said.
Visitors to California are currently expected to quarantine for 10 days. Travellers to nations outside the United States are also subject to varying quarantine requirements.
Variety said a meeting this week to discuss the issues between the Academy, movie studio executives and publicists had been cancelled.
Other awards shows in recent months have replaced the usual in-person gatherings at gala dinners and on stage with pre-recorded appearances or virtual events, or a combination of those with small in-person gatherings.
But television audiences have slumped, with the Golden Globes and the Grammys attracting the smallest numbers in decades.
India will likely delay deliveries of AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine doses to the GAVI/WHO-backed Covax facility for March and April, the programme’s procurement and distributing partner Unicef told Reuters early on Thursday.
“We understand that deliveries of Covid-19 vaccines to lower-income economies participating in the Covax Facility will likely face delays following a setback in securing export licenses for further doses of Covid-19 vaccines produced by the Serum Institute of India (SII), expected to be shipped in March and April,” Unicef said in an email.
“Covax is in talks with the government of India with a view to ensuring deliveries as quickly as possible.”
Reuters reported on Wednesday that India had put a temporary hold on all major exports of the AstraZeneca shot made by SII, the world’s biggest vaccine-maker, to meet domestic demand as infections rise.
Unicef also said that Covax participant countries have also been told about lower-than-expected supplies of AstraZeneca doses made in South Korea for March.
“In line with the challenges of the current global supply environment, this is due to challenges the company faces in rapidly scaling up supply and optimising production processes for these early deliveries,” Unicef said.
Brazil surpasses 300,000 deaths from Covid-19
The number of lives lost to Covid-19 in Brazil passed 300,000 on Wednesday. Latin America’s biggest country, already home to the world’s second-highest coronavirus death toll after the United States, has become the global epicentre of Covid-19 deaths, with one in four global fatalities currently a Brazilian.
Brazil registered a further 2,009 deaths from the disease on Wednesday, taking the national death toll to 300,675, second only globally to the 558,203 lives lost in the US.
Pubs in England could be allowed to ditch social distancing rules and allow people to crowd together as long as they check customers’ Covid-19 status on entry, the Guardian understands.
Details of the proposed incentive emerged as the prime minister Boris Johnson told MPs he believed landlords should be able to set the criteria for entering their establishments.
The comments from Johnson, a far stronger endorsement of the widespread use of Covid certification than has previously been made by the prime minister, prompted an immediate backlash from some Conservative MPs, who called it “a dangerous path”.
Johnson said he believed Covid certification had the backing of the British people who understood the need for protective measures, and suggested he backed a more wide-ranging use for vaccine passports, which a taskforce is currently investigating.
The UK government’s review into social distancing measures, due to report in June, is currently considering whether allowing venues that demand Covid status on entry – which includes either a recent test or proof of vaccine – could be allowed to relax all rules on social distancing.
That move would mean many pubs would be able to operate far more profitably, and is likely to be an incentive for citizens to get vaccinated or tested.
A Whitehall source stressed the consultation was in its early stages and that no decision had been made, but said it was a measure being considered as part of the social distancing review ordered by Johnson when he set out the roadmap for easing restrictions. A separate review is also looking at how Covid certification could work in practice.
Read Jessica Elgot’s full report here:
Updated
Brazil is set to pass 300,000 Covid-19 deaths, as the president Jair Bolsonaro’s fourth health minister used his first official day in the job to pledge a vaccination goal of one million shots a day to put the brakes on the country’s spiralling crisis.
Reuters reports that the country, already home to the world’s second-highest coronavirus death toll after the US, has become the global epicentre of Covid-19 deaths, with one in four global fatalities currently a Brazilian.
The outbreak is reaching its worst ever stage in Brazil, fanned by a patchy vaccine rollout, an infectious new variant and a lack of nationwide public health restrictions.
The scale of the outbreak is placing fresh pressure on far-right Bolsonaro, who has won international notoriety for his efforts to block lockdown measures, sow doubts over vaccines and push unproven cures like hydroxychloroquine.
In his first press conference as health minister on Wednesday, a day after Brazil recorded a record death toll of 3,251 fatalities, Marcelo Queiroga said the government aims to speed up the inoculation drive and pledged to deliver a million shots a day.
He added that vaccinations, masks and social distancing are all key to slowing the virus, and that nobody wants lockdowns, especially as Brazilians are unlikely to adhere to them. Queiroga said he would focus on science and transparency.
As the pandemic has worsened in recent weeks, Bolsonaro has showed signs of taking it more seriously. The return of his political nemesis, former leftist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose corruption convictions have recently been annulled, allowing him to run in next year’s election, also appears to have stirred him into action.
On Wednesday, Bolsonaro said the government will seek more coordination with state governors, with weekly meetings to discuss coronavirus-fighting measures in a newly launched committee. But the pandemic outlook remains bleak.
“The outlook for the coming weeks will be very difficult,” the former health minister Nelson Teich, who left the ministry after clashing with the president, told Reuters. “Our vaccination program is slow.”
Teich, the former health minister, said he thought the situation in Brazil could still “get much worse” if the transmission of the disease is not controlled nationally by measures such as testing, case screening, isolation of infected people, quarantines and payment of financial aid for people to be able to stay at home.
The disease is now dictating its own evolution, because we are not able to control it. It is a difficult situation.
WestJet Airlines is restoring some suspended domestic routes beginning in June, as executives hope that a pickup in Covid-19 vaccinations can salvage summer travel, Canada’s second-largest carrier said on Wednesday.
Reuters reports that while Canada has trailed the US in the pace of its vaccine rollout, supplies are expected to ramp up over the next two weeks, and Canada’s top vaccine coordinator expects there should be enough to give every citizen a first dose by the end of June.
“That’s the type of encouraging news that’s allowed us to make today’s announcement,” Andy Gibbons, WestJet’s director for government relations, told reporters.
Onex Corp-owned Westjet would resume flights to five airports serving Atlantic Canada and Quebec, beginning on 24 June. Canada’s largest carrier, Air Canada, also plans to resume summer service to certain destinations that are seasonal or were suspended due to the pandemic.
Gibbons called for government to transition away by 1 May from crippling requirements that oblige international travellers to self-isolate for up to three days in a hotel, before completing a 14-day quarantine.
He said WestJet’s announcement was unrelated to a government demand to protect regional routes as part of talks to reach a financial aid package for the aviation sector.
Calgary-based WestJet, which currently operates at around 10% of pre-pandemic traffic, is restoring routes of “its own volition,” said its chief commercial officer, John Weatherill.
Later in the day, the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau acknowledged in a radio interview that the country needed to move faster on vaccinations, but he was optimistic about summer.
We are going to have all adults fully vaccinated by September and, looking at the horizons some of the provinces have put forward, I think it’s possible that many, many Canadians will have their first doses by the time summer rolls around.
Vienna and two other provinces in eastern Austria will go back into lockdown for several days over Easter in a bid to ease the growing strain on intensive care wards from rising coronavirus infections, Austria’s health minister said on Wednesday.
Reuters reports that the three provinces - Vienna and the province surrounding it, Lower Austria, as well as Burgenland, which borders Hungary - have been working on tighter restrictions with the Health Ministry after the conservative-led government decided on Monday the rest of the country’s curbs would remain unchanged.
Of Austria’s nine provinces, those three are among the hardest-hit and have high levels of the more contagious UK variant of the coronavirus, which has been causing severe cases faster and in greater numbers.
“We want to introduce restrictions on movement as was the case in Austria before and after Christmas, from midnight until midnight,” the health minister Rudolf Anschober told a news conference with the governors of the three provinces, referring to curbs during Austria’s second and third national lockdowns.
Anschober has spoken of a “looming collapse” in eastern Austria’s intensive-care wards and said recent projections by experts were so alarming that such strong action was necessary.
The lockdown will last from 1-6 April. Non-essential shops, which reopened when Austria’s third lockdown was eased last month, will close over the same period. In a normal year virtually all shops are closed on Easter Sunday and Monday.
Face masks of the FFP2 standard, which are already required on public transport and in shops, will also be compulsory in crowded outdoor spaces, Anschober said, adding that a negative coronavirus test result would then be required to enter non-essential shops as of 7 April.
Updated
The Finnish government on Wednesday proposed locking down residents of five cities, including the capital Helsinki, and only allowing people to leave their homes for limited reasons, to curb rising coronavirus infections and hospitalisations.
Reuters reports that the lockdown, which would be the first time Finland confines people to their homes during the Covid-19 pandemic, is subject to a parliamentary vote and assessment by the constitutional law committee.
Earlier this month, the government closed restaurants and secondary schools throughout the country.
The Nordic nation of 5.5 million people has recorded 73,516 coronavirus infections and 811 deaths. It has been praised for its handling of the pandemic and has been among the least-affected countries in Europe. It has 295 people in hospital with Covid-19.
“These are now the cities with the most difficult epidemic situations but the list can be updated if the situation changes,” Paivi Anttikoski, communications director at the prime minister’s office told Reuters.
In the draft legislation published on Wednesday evening, the government said the lockdown would mean people would only be allowed to leave their home for a predetermined purpose such as buying food or traveling to a second home. Disobeying the restrictions would result in a fine.
Caribbean nations appeal to Biden to share vaccines with US's 'third border'
Several Caribbean island nations have issued a plea to the US to share its stockpile of Covid-19 vaccines with the region as it has said it would with Mexico and Canada, calling on it not to neglect its “third border.”
Reuters reports that the independent island states of the Caribbean archipelago - except for Cuba, which is developing its own homegrown vaccines - have complained of inequitable global access to vaccines hurting countries like them without the financial or political heft to seal deals.
These nations have only received a dribble of shots as donations from India or through the Covax vaccine-sharing mechanism, while neighbouring Caribbean islands that are still territories of former colonial powers, like the Cayman islands, have already started mass vaccinations.
The tourism-dependent economies of Caribbean nations are among those that have been most ravaged by the pandemic, which has devastated the travel industry, forcing the already debt-laden region to take on new loans.
And several countries, including Jamaica and Antigua and Barbuda, are experiencing severe Covid-19 outbreaks at the moment with new cases per capita more than twice the global average.
The head of the Caricom Caribbean bloc, Trinidad and Tobago’s prime minister Keith Rowley has written to the US president Joe Biden seeking provision of World Health Organization-approved vaccines for the region, a foreign affairs ministry source told Reuters, confirming an earlier report by Trinidadian newspaper Newsday. The US State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The US plans to send roughly 4 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine that it is not using to Mexico and Canada in loan deals with the two countries, the White House said last week.
The Biden administration has come under pressure from countries around the world to share vaccines, particularly its stock of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, which is not authorise for use yet in the US. AstraZeneca has millions of doses made in a US facility, and has said it would have 30 million shots ready at the beginning of April.
The governments of Caribbean twin-island nations Saint Kitts and Nevis and Antigua and Barbuda have also written to the Biden administration.
“I have myself indicated to the United States that ... having benefited the other two borders Mexico and Canada, that it would perhaps be useful for them to think of their ‘third border’, the Caribbean,” Mark Brantley, the minister of foreign affairs for Saint Kitts and Nevis, said at a virtual forum hosted by the Organization of American States (OAS) last week.
Antigua and Barbuda’s prime minister Gaston Browne said he underscored the fact that the economies of Caribbean island states had shrunk up to 30%, with unemployment rising to more than 50% in some cases.
The vulnerability of states must become an important criterion in the provision of vaccines, and the Caribbean region is among the most vulnerable in the world.
Jamaica last week became the first Caribbean country to receive Covid-19 vaccines through Covax, but at just 14,400 doses it will not go far among the island nation’s nearly 3 million inhabitants.
Summary
- India has temporarily suspended exports of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India (SII) to meet domestic demand as cases rise, two sources have told Reuters.
- AstraZeneca has dismissed as “inaccurate” a report in the Italian press that 29m doses of its Covid-19 vaccine found in factory near Rome were destined for the UK. The manufacturer said no exports were currently planned other than to developing countries via the Covax facility.
- The European commission will extend the bloc’s powers to potentially halt vaccine exports to the UK and other areas with much higher inoculation rates.
- Ukraine has reported a record daily number of Covid-related deaths for the second consecutive day, as well as its highest daily number of hospitalisations
- Spain has restarted its AstraZeneca vaccination drive after a week-long suspension of the jab over fears about potential side-effects.
- Finland is to resume use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine from Monday, but will only give it to people aged 65 and over
- Belgium will impose fresh lockdown restrictions, shutting schools, hairdressers and non-essential stores.
- Iceland has tightened Covid-19 measures following a spike in the number of new cases recorded in the country.
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Coronavirus lockdowns are to be imposed in three more regions in France, including the city of Lyon, the country’s government has said.
- Turkey registered its highest daily number of new infections this year on Wednesday, adding 29,762 infections to its tally in the last 24 hours.
- Luxembourg has announced a partial reopening of its hospitality industry, with cafés and restaurants able to serve customers again in outdoor areas from 7 April.
I’m handing over to my colleague Lucy Campbell now, who will guide you through the remainder of the evening.
Updated
Ukraine reports record Covid deaths and hospitalisations
Ukraine has reported a record daily number of Covid-related deaths for the second consecutive day, as well as its highest daily number of hospitalisations, according to Reuters.
A further 342 deaths were recorded over the past 24 hours, up from 333 in the previous 24 hours, taking the overall death toll to 30,773, the health minister Maksym Stepanov said.
Meanwhile a peak figure of 5,438 Covid patients were admitted to hospital over the past day, Stepanov said on Facebook. The previous record figure was 4,887, recorded on 11 March.
March’s hospitalisation figures have been well beyond the pandemic’s last peak in late 2020, when daily numbers were below 2,000.
The surge has been attributed to the more transmissible variant of the virus first detected in the UK.
Seven in 10 patients hospitalised with Covid-19 have still not fully recovered after five months, and they appear to cluster into four distinct categories based on their symptoms, research suggests.
The study, one of the world’s largest into long Covid in hospitalised patients, includes a group with persistent brain fog, which bears little relation to the severity of their other symptoms.
More than 300,000 Britons are estimated to have received hospital care for Covid-19 during the pandemic, and the UK-wide Phosp-Covid study has been following the health of 1,077 of those discharged between March and November 2020 – ranging from intensive care patients to some who only visited hospital for a few hours.
More than 50 soldiers at Switzerland’s nuclear, biological and chemical threats army training centre have tested positive for the coronavirus variant first detected in the UK, the country’s defence ministry has said.
The military school’s training has been temporarily suspended.
Along with the 59 who tested positive for the highly transmissible variant at Spiez’s NBC 77 training school, 87 others have been quarantined, AFP reports the ministry as saying.
Fortunately, there are no serious cases,” it said in a statement. “Clarifications to determine how the virus may have spread through the school on such a scale are still ongoing.”
The training service is temporarily suspended, the statement said, adding that medics were treated those who had contracted the virus.
Updated
The United States has administered a total of 130,473,853 doses of Covid-19 vaccines since its vaccine drive began, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said as reported by Reuters.
The total is made up of vaccines produced by produced by Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech, and Johnson & Johnson.
A further 2,256,824 doses were given in the 24 hours up to 6am on Wednesday.
The agency said 85,472,166 people had received at least one dose while 46,365,515 people have had both shots.
Updated
AstraZeneca has dismissed as “inaccurate” a report in the Italian press that 29m doses of its Covid-19 vaccine found in factory near Rome were destined for the UK.
La Stampa reported on Wednesday that the doses – almost twice the amount the EU has so far received from AstraZeneca – were found “hidden” in the factory following a search by Italian police on Saturday at the request of the European commission, and that they were probably destined for the UK.
AstraZeneca said no exports were currently planned other than to developing countries via the Covax facility, and it was incorrect to describe the batches in the factory – run by the US-based company Catalent to provide vial filling and packaging to AstraZeneca – as a “stockpile”.
Luxembourg has announced a partial reopening of its hospitality industry, with cafés and restaurants able to serve customers again in outdoor areas from 7 April.
The European country’s venues have been closed since the end of November.
Prime Minister Xavier Bettel said bars would be open until 6pm, adding that the easing of restrictions would be like “a small breath of air”, according to AFP.
Luxembourg’s relaxation of its rules comes as neighbouring countries Belgium and France turn in the opposite direction, with the former tightening its lockdown while the latter imposes tighter restrictions on three more regions.
Italy has reported a further 460 coronavirus-related deaths, the health ministry said, while the total tally of infections rose by 21,267.
Wednesday’s figures compare with 431 deaths and 23,040 cases one week ago.
Since Italy’s outbreak began in February last year, the country has registered 106,339 deaths linked to Covid-19, according to Reuters.
Italy has suffered the second-highest death toll in Europe after the UK and the seventh-highest in the world. The country has reported 3.44 million cases to date.
Iceland tightens coronavirus restrictions
Iceland has tightened Covid-19 measures following a spike in the number of new cases recorded in the country.
The new restrictions, which include lowering the cap on public gatherings from 50 to 10 people, will remain in force for three weeks, the government said in a statement reported by Reuters.
Schools, swimming pools, gyms, and bars will be closed from tomorrow, a report on the Iceland Review news site said.
Updated
Turkey registered its highest daily number of new infections this year on Wednesday, adding 29,762 infections to its tally in the last 24 hours, according to health ministry data.
The spike in new infections comes as cases rise after restrictions were eased earlier this month.
Wednesday’s figure takes the cumulative number of cases to 3,091,282, Reuters reports.
With 146 more deaths, the daily death was the highest since the restrictions were eased, raising the country’s death toll to 30,462.
Sudan will receive its first batch of 250,000 doses of China’s Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine on Friday, state news agency SUNA has said in a statement reported by Reuters.
The country has already received 828,000 AstraZeneca doses through the Covax scheme earlier this month, when it became the first first country in the Middle East and North Africa region to get doses via the programme.
Updated
Finland is to resume use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine from Monday, but will only give it to people aged 65 and over, Reuters reports citing the country’s institute of health and welfare.
Taneli Puumalainen, chief physician at the institute, said in a press release:
We have not detected people that have turned 65 to have an increased risk of blood clotting so we can resume vaccinating them.
The institute is still looking into two cases of blood clots in Finland and said it needed more time to complete its investigation, which will not be finished until 6 April the earliest.
Updated
The proportion of US households home educating their children has doubled since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report by the US Census Bureau.
Last spring, about 5.4% of all US households with school-aged children were homes educating, a figure which rose to 11% by the start of the new school year last autumn, according to the bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.
Before the pandemic, household homes educating rates had remained steady at around 3.3% for several years. The report, seen by the Associated Press, said:
It’s clear that in an unprecedented environment, families are seeking solutions that will reliably meet their health and safety needs, their childcare needs and the learning and socio-emotional needs of their children.
Black households saw the largest jump in rates of homeschooling, going from 3.3% in the spring to 16.1% in the autumn. The rate for Hispanic households of any race went from 6.2% to 12.1%. It went from 4.9% to 8.8% for Asian households, and from 5.7% to 9.7% for non-Hispanic white households.
Some states saw bigger jumps than others. Alaska went from 9.6% of households to 27.5% of households. In Florida, the rate jumped from 5% to 18.1%, and it grew in Vermont from 4.1% to 16.9%. Even Massachusetts, which has some of the country’s best public schools, went from 1.5% of households to 12.1% of households with school-aged children homeschooling.
Updated
Lockdowns imposed on three more French regions
Coronavirus lockdowns are to be imposed in three more regions in France, including the city of Lyon, the country’s government has said.
The announcement by Gabriel Attal, a government spokesman, came after a weekly pandemic crisis meeting chaired by the president, Emmanuel Macron, according to the French state-backed news agency AFP. Most businesses in the Rhône, Auge and Nièvre departments will have to close and residents stay home except for essential outings, Attal said.
Sixteen departments including the Paris region have already been under a third lockdown and the rest of the country is under a 7pm curfew. However, schools remain open and people are not required to fill out forms to justify local trips out.
Macron has said the measures should not even be described as a lockdown, with the government calling them a “third way” to put a brake on the virus without closing down the country.
The new restrictions are set to last for at least four weeks.
Updated
Twenty-nine million doses of Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine found in a factory in Italy were destined for distribution in Europe and for donation to poorer countries via the World Health Organization’s Covax scheme, AstraZeneca has said.
There was surprise earlier on Wednesday when La Stampa first shared reports of the “hidden” AstraZeneca doses at Catalent factory in Anagni, near Rome. It reported that that the vaccines had been found during an inspection by Italian authorities following a request from the European commission. Peter Liese, a German MEP, said said the report left him speechless, and he urged AstraZeneca to clarify the situation, according to Reuters.
AstraZeneca has now said that most of the doses in the Catalent plant were for the EU, and the rest were for poorer countries supplied by the Covax scheme. The company said:
There are no exports currently planned other than to Covax countries. There are 13m doses of vaccine waiting for quality control release to be dispatched to Covax.
The remaining 16m will be shipped to Europe this month and in April, it said.
Updated
The president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been denounced by opposition politicians for gathering delegates from his Justice and Development Party (AKP) into a packed sports complex for a party congress.
Despite social distancing rules still in force, and amid a new surge of coronavirus cases in Turkey, thousands of the ruling party’s supporters filled stands and floor seating in a 10,400-capacity arena in Ankara, the capital.
According to an Associated Press wire report, Erdogan spoke for nearly two hours at the event, presenting his vision the centenary of the Turkish Republic in 2023. He insisted, however, that he cut his remarks short in order not to expose congress participants to the virus.
Murat Emir, a doctor and MP from Turkey’s main opposition party, described the scenes as “shameful,” writing on Twitter that the event showed disregard for “the health workers who work day and night in the battle against the pandemic.”
Melih Gokcek, former mayor of Ankara for AKP, said that delegates were tested for the coronavirus before attending the congress.
Erdogan has been criticised for holding similarly crowded local party congresses across the country in past weeks despite the pandemic. During one such event, he even boasted about the size of the crowd.
Turkey reported more than 26,000 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, weeks after the government eased restrictions in dozens of provinces under a so-called “controlled normalisation” program.
Summary of recent developments
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Officials have confirmed that an inspection this weekend found 29m doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine at an Italian plant and said the shots were to be sent to Belgium.
- India has temporarily suspended exports of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India (SII) to meet domestic demand as cases rise, two sources have told Reuters.
- The European commission will extend the bloc’s powers to potentially halt vaccine exports to the UK and other areas with much higher inoculation rates.
- The French government believes drug manufacturer AstraZeneca is not honouring its commitment to supply the bloc with Covid-19 vaccines, according to government spokesman Gabriel Attal.
- Angela Merkel has performed a U-turn on plans to put Germany under a hard lockdown over Easter following a critical backlash, describing the decision to close churches and shops over a five-day period as a mistake.
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Spain has restarted its AstraZeneca vaccination drive after a week-long suspension of the jab over fears about potential side-effects.
- Mexico will step up its vaccine rollout, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced on Wednesday, with the armed forces helping medical personnel to administer the vaccine.
- Belgium will impose fresh lockdown restrictions, shutting schools, hairdressers and non-essential stores.
- Syria is sending oxygen to Lebanon, where 1,000 patients are on respirators in the country’s hospitals and emergency supplies are close to running out.
- Pope Francis has ordered salary cuts at the Vatican to save ordinary employees’ jobs amid the economic fallout of the pandemic.
Updated
29m AstraZeneca doses found in Italian factory
Officials have confirmed that an inspection this weekend found 29m doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine at an Italian plant and said the shots were to be sent to Belgium, Reuters reports.
It is unclear whether the jabs would then be exported or distributed across the EU.
“An inspection took place this weekend at the Anagni plant and uncovered a stock of 29m doses. The destination for these doses still needs to be clarified,” the official at the French presidency said, noting that if doses were for export, they could be blocked.
Italian newspaper La Stampa first shared reports of the “hidden” AstraZeneca doses at Catalent factory in Anagni, near Rome, writing that the vaccines had been found during an inspection by Italian authorities following a request from the European commission.
The discovery comes amid tensions between the EU and AstraZeneca, which has cut its supply targets to the bloc, as well as with the UK, which wants access to some AstraZeneca doses produced in the EU.
Updated
India delays AstraZeneca vaccine exports – Reuters
India has temporarily suspended exports of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India (SII) to meet domestic demand as cases rise, two sources have told Reuters:
The move will also affect supplies to the GAVI/WHO-backed COVAX vaccine-sharing facility through which more than 180 countries are expected to get doses, one of the sources said.
There has been no vaccine export from India since Thursday, the foreign ministry’s website shows, as the country expands its own immunisation effort.
“Everything else has taken a backseat, for the time being at least,” said one of the sources. Both sources had direct knowledge of the matter, but declined to be named as the discussions are not public.
“No exports, nothing till the time the India situation stabilises. The government won’t take such a big chance at the moment when so many need to be vaccinated in India.”
It comes as the EU empowered officials to prohibit shipments of doses to countries where a large part of the population has been vaccinated.
Updated
Ryanair plans to increase the number of its flights to 80% of pre-pandemic levels by July, as the airline’s chief executive criticised the UK government for warning against booking overseas summer holidays this year.
Michael O’Leary said he was “very confident” that Britons would be “going to the beaches of Europe” and that Ryanair would have a “strong summer”, thanks to the UK and EU’s rapid, albeit politically fraught, vaccination programmes.
The Irish carrier said it would run about half the number of flights it flew before the coronavirus pandemic in 2019 from April to June but will step up its schedule to 80% during July or August, or 90% if there is sufficient demand.
Mexico will ramp up its vaccine rollout, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced on Wednesday in comments reported by Reuters, with more people due to receive a jab.
Lopez Obrador told a press briefing that 2.7 million AstraZeneca doses from the United States were set to arrive on Sunday or Monday.
The armed forces and medical personnel will help administer the vaccine to more people, the premier said, in order to better shield the population against a potential new wave of the virus.
Jordan’s biggest cemetery is struggling under pressure as the country suffers a surge in Covid-19 deaths over the last two months, according to Reuters.
At least 50 people were buried on Tuesday at the cemetery on the outskirts of Amman, the capital, a day after the health ministry announced a record figure of 109 deaths.
The surge, which has been attributed to the more transmissible virus variant first detected in the UK, has pushed Jordan’s infection rate and deaths above most of its neighbouring countries and reverses months of success in containing the outbreak.
With 3,334 Covid patients in hospitals across the country, many wards in and around the hard-hit capital (where 60% of the country’s 10 million population live) have reached capacity.
Sweden reported a further 7,649 Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, according to health agency statistics reported by Reuters. This compares with 6,781 new infections reported one week ago.
The country, which is home to 10 million people, also registered 42 new deaths, taking the total to 13,357. The deaths reported have taken place over several days and sometimes weeks. Last Wednesday, 56 more deaths were recorded.
The Covid-19 death rate per capita in Sweden, which has avoided lockdowns, is many times higher than that of its other Nordic countries but lower than in several European countries that have imposed lockdowns over the last year.
Updated
The French government believes drug manufacturer AstraZeneca is not honouring its commitment to supply the bloc with Covid-19 vaccines, according to comments by government spokesman Gabriel Attal reported by Reuters.
“The situation is completely unacceptable”, Attal told reporters after a cabinet meeting.
It comes after a briefing by the European Commission announcing plans for a new export authorisation mechanism which will prioritise “reciprocity and proportionality” in the bloc’s decision to export doses as the EU’s vaccination programme lags behind.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that the virus variant first discovered in the UK, and now spreading in Germany, is more dangerous to young people, Reuter reports.
“The British mutant, and this is the difference with the spring, is proven to be more dangerous in children and young people so we need to put the protection of schools more front and centre than with the original virus,” she told lawmakers.
However, a study by King’s College Hospital in London last month “found no evidence of more severe disease having occurred in children and young people during the second wave”, which researchers said suggested that the B.1.1.7 variant does not lead to “an appreciably different clinical course” in young people.
Further to an earlier post about Germany scrapping a planned Easter shutdown, my colleague Philip Oltermann has the full story. He writes:
Angela Merkel has performed a U-turn on plans to put Germany under a hard lockdown over Easter following a critical backlash, describing the decision to close churches and shops over a five-day period as a mistake.
Addressing the public at a press conference on Wednesday morning, the German chancellor said the plan for an Easter lockdown had been her personal mistake, “and mistakes should be called out as such”.
Merkel said she regretted that her proposal had caused further uncertainty and asked for forgiveness from the German public, whose growing frustration with the government’s cumbersome decision-making and glacial vaccine rollout is threatening to damage her party before national elections in September.
Read more here:
Updated
More people in France should work remotely in order to limit the spread of the coronavirus, the government’s spokesman Gabriel Attal has said in comments reported by Reuters.
Attal added that the government would increase inspections and penalties on firms not doing enough to encourage home working.
It comes as the government considers adding three more regions - the Rhone, Aube and Nievre regions - to its list of coronavirus high-risk zones, potentially coming under stricter measures, according to the spokesperson.
Updated
Spain has restarted its AstraZeneca vaccination drive after a week-long suspension of the jab over fears about potential side-effects.
The suspension does not appear to have dampened people’s enthusiasm to get the jab, according to Reuters.
We have to put prejudice and urban myths aside and move forward,” civil servant Jose Manuel Plaza said after getting the shot in the southern province of Huelva.
People lined up outside Atlético Madrid’s Wanda football stadium, which has been transformed into a mass vaccination centre.
I am happy to receive the vaccine. I think that you have to be positive and there is nothing worse than Covid,” 30-year-old old health worker Cristina Gonzalez told the news agency.
Updated
Belgium tightens lockdown
Belgium will impose fresh lockdown restrictions, shutting schools, hairdressers and non-essential stores, Le Soir newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Schools will reopen following the Easter break on 19 April, according to the newspaper.
Restrictions on non-essential retail and close-contact services such as beauty salons will be in place until 25 April.
Updated
Syria is sending oxygen to Lebanon, where 1,000 patients are on respirators in the country’s hospitals and emergency supplies are close to running out, Reuters reports ministers from both countries as saying.
Lebanon’s hospitals only have one day’s worth of oxygen left. The country’s supplies have been hit by bad weather which has prevent cargo ships from docking.
Syria will send 75 tonnes of oxygen within the next three days, the country’s health minister, Hassan al-Ghobash, told state news agency SANA.
“This response … will save Lebanese lives and is enough for three days until supplies arrive,” Lebanon’s caretaker health minister, Hamad Hasan, was quoted as saying by SANA.
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Q: Would commission be ready to block exports of Pfizer vaccines to the UK if the UK doesn’t send any doses to the EU?
Concrete decisions will be taken on case by case basis, Dombrovskis says.
Kyriakides says that “respecting the advance purchase agreement remains paramount”, adding that the EU is “introducing the criteria of reciprocity and proportionality”.
The briefing has now ended.
Updated
Q: Why don’t you use this mechanism to make sure the companies keep vaccines in the EU?
Dombrovskis says it does not prescribe the decisions of vaccines, but adds that if the EU sees “further problems emerging... all options remain on the table”.
Q: How many doses could be directed into the EU supply through this policy?
The modification provides a “framework and criteria”, does not come with “detailed algorithm” so EU cannot provide specific figures, Dombrovskis says. The mechanism also provides leverage to help EU engage with vaccine producers.
EU has supported rapid development of several vaccines, Kyriakides says. “We are concerned about lack of transparency about the way some companies have been operating and want complete information to ensure all contractual agreements are fulfilled,” she adds.
Despite initial measures put in place in January, EU is continuing to see shortfalls which is why the change is being made, Kyriakides says.
Updated
Dombrovskis reiterates that this modification of export system “does not constitute an export ban” and EU continues to be biggest exporter of vaccines.
Q: Which countries will this affect the most, and why are you seeking to punish countries that have been more successful than others?
Export authorisation mechanism “not addressed at any specific country” but it’s clear that the EU must ensure vaccination of its own population as it is behind.
EU is a global hotspot of the pandemic while also the largest exporter of vaccines. Since the introduction of the export system, some 10m doses exported to the UK the EU, while 0 doses had been exported in the other direction.
Says it’s a matter of “reciprocity, solidarity and global responsibility”.
Q: What else do we know about the provenance of the 29m doses and can you confirm they were produced in the Dutch plant Halix as it was reported, which is not certified by EMA?
Says the vaccine company can answer the question of provenance. Adds that it is always the responsibility of the company to request plants are covered by marketing authorisation.
Commission clarifies that what they are presenting today is “not an export ban”.
In the advance purchase agreements, these were following a population-based distribution key which was followed – this was a “fair solution” because it “strikes all parts of the EU equally” and this is “a very transparent process” with all the members states in agreeement.
Updated
AstraZeneca 'very far from their contractual commitments', EU says
AstraZeneca is “very far away from their contractual commitments”, Dombrovskis says.
He adds that “they have committed 120m doses in the first Q of the year they are promising to be able to deliver 30 doses but they’re not even close to this figure as of today”.
Updated
Q: Why will countries like Georgia, Albania etc. that are part of Covax no longer exempted when others such as Ukraine are still exempted?
Countries covered by Covax remain exempt, including Ukraine and Moldova. Countries that are accessing supplies through Covax they will be exempted in any case.
Q: If companies backload, what action will be taken?
The adjustment provides criteria to take into account when deciding export authorisation. The EU is not proposing specific algorithms – it’s an overall assessment to be taken into account. They are “guiding principles” and decisions will be taken on “case by case basis” based on them.
The EU will speed up the authorisation of adapted vaccines in the face of variants, the commission announces.
European commission to announce new proposals for vaccine exports
The European commission is set to announce new proposals for vaccine exports imminently.
Updated
The European Union shouldn’t be the pandemic’s “useful idiot” by exporting vaccine supplies while other countries save doses for themselves, a French official has said on Wednesday in comments reported by Reuters.
“Europe shouldn’t be a sort of useful idiot in the battle against the virus,” the French presidential adviser told reporters.
The European Commission will extend the bloc’s powers to potentially halt vaccine exports to the UK and other areas with much higher inoculation rates, and to cover instances of companies backloading contracted supplies, EU officials have said.
Pope Francis has ordered salary cuts at the Vatican to save ordinary employees’ jobs amid the economic fallout of the pandemic, Reuters reports.
Cardinals have been told to take a 10% salary cut, while other clerics will also see their pay reduced. Lower-paid lay employees will not be affected by the cuts, a Vatican spokesperson said.
Francis issued the decree on Wednesday, which will see salary reductions come into force from 1 April, the Vatican said.
Updated
France’s employment minister Elisabeth Borne has left hospital after being admitted last Friday following a positive Covid-19 test.
Sortie de l’hôpital à l'instant, je suis soulagée. Merci au personnel soignant qui m’a accompagnée pendant ces jours difficiles pour leur travail formidable et à vous tous pour vos messages de soutien. J’ai une pensée pour nos concitoyens qui luttent en ce moment contre ce virus.
— Elisabeth BORNE (@Elisabeth_Borne) March 24, 2021
Borne’s discharge comes as Roselyne Bachelot, the country’s culture minister, was admitted to hospital after testing positive for Covid.
“Her condition is stable, there is no reason for worry,” the ministry said in a statement reported by Reuters.
Hungary will begin vaccinating employees working for some key companies such as the Budapest Transport Company amid rising Covid-19 infection levels as the country battles its third wave, Reuters reports.
Surgeon general Cecilia Muller told a briefing that the country’s hospitals were under immense pressure due to the surge in Covid-19 hospitalisations.
Updated
The Paris-Roubaix cycling race will not take place on 11 April as expected due to the Covid-19 crisis, according to a report in Le Parisien newspaper.
The event was postponed last spring and then cancelled altogether due to the coronavirus measures that were in place at the time of the rescheduled October dates.
Germany scraps strict Easter shutdown
Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, has cancelled a hard Easter lockdown just days after imposing it, according to media reports.
The chancellor told state leaders on Wednesday morning that she has decided to scrap the measure after heavy criticism.
Merkel said the strict Easter shutdown, which would have designated 1-5 April as “quiet days” when no more than five adults from two households would be able to meet at home at once, was her “mistake”.
Spiegel quotes her as saying: “If possible, we need to correct this [mistake] in time. I do think that is possible.” She hoped the German people would forgive her error.
Updated
An experimental oral drug developed by Kaleido Biosciences reduces recovery time as well as hospital and emergency room admissions in people with mild to moderate Covid-19, an early trial has shown. Reuters reports:
The treatment, KB109, reduced the total number of hospitalisations, emergency room visits, and urgent care visits by 51% in a study of 350 patients, and by 62% among patients with one or more co-morbidities, the company said.
The median recovery time for Covid-19 patients with one or more co-morbidities or who were aged 45 years and above shrunk by ten days, according to the drug developer.
KB109 belongs to a class of treatments called microbiome metabolic therapy (MMT) that work by changing the composition and metabolic output of microbes in the gut.
An aggressive immune response of the body in some patients is responsible for respiratory failure and pneumonia. Kaleido said gut microbes can produce molecules that are believed to modulate such responses.
Hello, Clea Skopeliti here picking up the liveblog from my colleague Tobi Thomas. You can reach me by email if you have any suggestions for coverage – thanks in advance.
Updated
Summary
- Poland reports record number of daily coronavirus cases. The country has reported 29,978 new daily cases, and a further 575 coronavirus related deaths.
- India detects new coronavirus variant. India’s health ministry has said that a new double mutant variant has been detected in the country, in addition to many other variants of concern which originated abroad.
- Ukraine suffers record daily deaths for second consecutive day. Maksyn Stepanov, the health minister, said that there were 342 deaths in the last day, up from 333 deaths recorded the previous day.
- The UN has warned that over 30 million people are ‘one step away from starvation’. An estimated 34 million people are struggling with emergency levels of acute hunger, with families in pockets of Yemen and South Sudan already being in the grip of starvation.
- Hong Kong suspends Pfizer vaccine. The city’s government said the suspension was immediate while the matter is investigated by distributor Fosun Pharma and BioNTech.
- NHS hit by covid disruption as cancer referrals plunge. In November, NHS England said that the number of people waiting more than a year for surgery had reached its highest level since 2008.
- Fury in Brazil after Bolsonaro says people will soon lead ‘normal lives’. Bolsonaro made this televised address while Brazil suffered its heaviest day of losses since the pandemic began, reporting a record 3,251 deaths on Tuesday.
No final decisions have been made on whether children should receive the coronavirus vaccine, the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has said.
While children are unlikely to fall ill with Covid-19, they do play a role in transmitting the virus, PA Media reports.
Prof Adam Finn, who sits on the JCVI, said:
As far as I know there has been no decision made to immunise children starting in August, or indeed any decision been taken to immunise children at all at this point. But it’s certainly something that we might need to do.
If it does turn out to be necessary to immunise children, I think it is more likely that we would prioritise teenagers over younger children, simply because the evidence we have at the moment is that transmission of the virus is more likely to occur from and between teenagers who are a little bit more like adults.
Updated
Poland reports record number of new daily coronavirus cases
Poland has reported 29,978 new daily coronavirus cases, the highest number since the start of the pandemic.
The country also recorded 575 coronavirus related deaths, the highest number in 2021. This brings the total death toll to over 50,000.
Updated
A Hong Kong clinic has been punished for recommending a foreign vaccine over a Chinese vaccination, AFP reports:
Hong Kong health authorities have ejected a private clinic from the city’s coronavirus vaccination programme after it reportedly recommended the German-made Pfizer/BioNTech shot to patients over the one from China’s Sinovac.
The move illustrates the Hong Kong government’s sensitivity to any criticism of the Sinovac vaccine, which has a comparatively lower efficacy rate and was fast-tracked by regulators despite a lack of published data.
The city’s health department said Tuesday that the clinic would no longer administer Covid-19 jabs because a doctor violated an agreement with the inoculation programme.
Authorities said they had also reclaimed unused Sinovac doses from the clinic.
The announcement came after a photo of a notice at the clinic comparing the two vaccines’ efficacy rates went viral online over the weekend.
Reuters reports Roselyne Bachelot, France’s culture minister, has been taken to hospital after testing positive for coronavirus.
Elizabeth Borne, the employment minister, is in hospital too after testing positive for the virus.
Updated
Outbreaks of infectious diseases are more likely in areas of deforestation and monoculture plantations, according to a study that suggests epidemics are likely to increase as biodiversity declines.
Land use change is a significant factor in the emergence of zoonotic viruses such as Covid-19 and vector-borne ailments such as malaria, says the paper, published today in Frontiers in Veterinary Science.
Even tree-planting can increase health risks to local human populations if it focuses too narrowly on a small number of species, as is often the case in commercial forests, the research found.
Russia has reported 8,861 new coronavirus cases, and a further 401 deaths today.
The total amount of cases now stands at 4,483,471 and the death toll at 96,219.
Sweden has announced that the travel ban preventing people from Norway and Denmark travelling to the country will end on 31 March.
Mikael Damberg, a government minister, told a news conference that the measure was no longer necessary to reduce the spread of the virus, and that everyone travelling to Sweden will still need to provide a negative test before entering the country.
He added:
This means, among other things, that Norwegians and Danes can travel to their holiday homes in Sweden and that families and friends across borders can meet each other
Updated
Emma Graham-Harrison and Helen Davidson have written a feature on why Taiwan has been much more successful in their approach to the pandemic than the UK.
At the end of 2019, both were heavily exposed to travellers carrying coronavirus: Britain because of its status as an international travel hub; Taiwan because closely woven cultural and economic ties meant hundreds of planes crossed the narrow strait to mainland China – where the virus was first detected – weekly.
A little over a year later, Britain has one of the world’s worst death rates, with more than 130,000 people lost to the virus and more than 4 million people infected. Taiwan has lost 10 people, and had just 1,000 documented cases, the vast majority of them among quarantined travellers.
The root of the difference lies in the approach their governments took.
Updated
India detects new coronavirus variant
India’s health ministry has said today that a new coronavirus variant has been detected in the country in addition to many other variants of concern also found abroad, Reuters reports.
In a statement, the health ministry said:
Though variants of concern and a new double mutant variant have been found in India, these have not been detected in numbers sufficient to either establish a direct relationship or explain the rapid increase in cases in some states,” the health ministry said in a statement.
Updated
Aubrey Allegretti and Jessica Elgot report that Boris Johnson has told Conservative MPs that the success of the UK’s vaccine rollout was thanks to “greed” and “capitalism”.
Several of those present confirmed the prime minister had made the remarks during an end-of-term Zoom meeting with Tory backbenchers, known as the 1922 Committee, on Tuesday evening, two days before the Commons breaks for Easter.
Johnson hailed the fact that more than 28 million people have been given a first jab in the UK, saying: “The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed my friends.”
Immediately afterwards, he tried to backpedal and withdraw what he had said, according to MPs, one of whom added that the PM then made a joke about how details of the 1922 Committee virtual meetings often leak.
Downing Street has not denied the account but refused to issue a comment.
Updated
Ukraine suffers record daily deaths for second consecutive day
Ukraine has reported a record daily number of coronavirus deaths for the second consecutive day, Reuters reports.
Maksyn Stepanov, the health minister, said that there were 342 deaths in the last day, up from 333 deaths recorded the previous day.
The country is also reporting a record number of hospitalisations, with 5,483 Ukrainians beig taken to hospital with coronavirus over the past day. The daily record was 4,887, reported on 11 March.
On Tuesday, Ukraine tightened border controls in an attempt to slow infections, and now requires visitors to provide a negative test.
The country of 41 million has a relatively slow vaccination programme, with just 137,026 people have received their first shot by 24 March. The country has reported a total of death toll of 30,773.
Updated
Reuters reports that Poland is likely to announce over 29,000 new coronavirus cases today, with the figure being the highest daily number of new cases since 27,875 in November.
Michal Dworcyz, the prime minister’s top aide, told Polsat News: “We are waiting for the final data but all indications are that we will have over 29,000 new infections.”
Updated
Good morning, I’m Tobi Thomas and will be taking over the liveblog from my colleague Helen Sullivan.
If you spot anything I miss or have any tips for the blog, please do contact me on twitter or by email: @tobithomas_ and tobi.thomas@theguardian.com
Thank you in advance!
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today.
Here is a picture of a fox that was later rescued from the floods in Australia:
protect him at all costs pic.twitter.com/dWFb1PLmQV
— Helen Sullivan (@helenrsullivan) March 23, 2021
Over 30 million people 'one step away from starvation', UN warns
Acute hunger is likely to soar in more than 20 countries in the next few months, the UN has warned.
Families in pockets of Yemen and South Sudan are already in the grip of starvation, according to a report on hunger hotspots published by the agency’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP).
An estimated 34 million people are struggling with emergency levels of acute hunger known as IPC (Integrated food security Phase Classification) 4, meaning they are ‘one step away from starvation’.
Acute hunger is being driven by conflict, climate shocks and the Covid pandemic, and, in some places, compounded by storms of desert locusts:
Updated
Summary
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Hong Kong suspends Pfizer vaccines. Hong Kong has suspended use of the Pfizer vaccine Wednesday after its Chinese distributor informed the city that one batch had defective bottle lids.
- EU to tighten export rules to stop one-way flow of vaccines. The European Commission will tighten its export guidelines on Wednesday to prevent what it sees as an unfair one-way flow of vaccines, according to a draft seen by AFP.
- EU finalising regulation to reduce vaccine exports for six weeks – report. The EU is in the process of finalising emergency legislation that will give it the power to “curb exports for the next six weeks of vaccines manufactured within the bloc,” the New York Times reports.
- Brazil suffers record daily deaths. Brazil suffered a record 3,251 Covid-19 deaths on Tuesday, as President Jair Bolsonaro prepared to address the nation after swearing in his fourth health minister since the country’s snowballing coronavirus pandemic began last year.
- New US surgeon general to focus on Covid, opioids. The Senate confirmed a soft-spoken physician as President Joe Biden’s surgeon general Tuesday. While Dr. Vivek Murthy says ending the coronavirus pandemic is his top priority, he’s also raised concerns over a relapsing opioid overdose crisis.
- Brazil Covid crisis: fury after Bolsonaro says people will soon lead ‘normal lives’. Loud protests have erupted across Brazil as the country’s Covid-sceptic president, Jair Bolsonaro, struggled to defend his handling of the pandemic and claimed citizens would soon be able to resume their “normal lives” despite the soaring death toll.
- NHS hit by Covid disruption as cancer referrals plunge. The Covid pandemic is casting a wide shadow over the nation’s health, according to new data revealing a dramatic drop in urgent referrals for suspected cancers in England, and a plummeting quality of life among patients awaiting hip and knee surgery in the UK.
Here is what we know so far about Hong Kong pausing the use of the Pfizer vaccine:
Cuba will administer experimental Covid shots to nearly the entire population of the capital Havana by May as health authorities carry out massive interventional studies and late stage trials, officials said on Tuesday.
Cuba, which has a long history of developing and exporting vaccines, this month began late phase trials of two of its five experimental shots, Soberana 2 and Abdala, which will be Latin America’s first homegrown Covid vaccines if they prove successful.
Reuters: Ileana Morales, the health ministry’s director of science and technological innovation, said on a roundtable broadcast on state television that authorities would conduct an intervention study in 1.7 million people in Havana by May.
That comes on top of one it has already started for 150,000 frontline workers in the city, which is estimated to have 2.1 million inhabitants.
Cuba’s capital is at the centre of its worst coronavirus outbreak since the start of the pandemic, registering 292 cases per 100,000 inhabitants compared with a nationwide average of 103.5, Deputy Health Minister Carilda Peña said.
More than four in five people who said last December they were either uncertain about or intended to refuse a Covid-19 vaccine had changed their mind by February and had accepted a jab or planned to, an analysis has found.
Researchers tracked responses of 14,713 adults in England and Wales over the two months, finding that the change was consistent across all ethnic groups and all levels of social deprivation. The results are encouraging given minority ethnic people have been hit hardest by Covid but are among the least likely to take up the vaccine.
“We were really sort of taken aback by the sort of the magnitude of the shift,” said the study’s author, Dr Parth Patel of University College London.
“What we’re showing is that vaccine hesitancy has changed. Everyone is pretty keen to take a vaccine right now … that doesn’t mean disparities in vaccination rates will disappear,” he said:
NHS hit by Covid disruption as cancer referrals plunge
The Covid pandemic is casting a wide shadow over the nation’s health, according to new data revealing a dramatic drop in urgent referrals for suspected cancers in England, and a plummeting quality of life among patients awaiting hip and knee surgery in the UK.
The crisis has caused huge disruption to healthcare services: in November NHS England revealed that the number of people waiting more than a year for surgery had reached its highest level since 2008, while patients have reported that their procedures, from cancer surgery to hip replacements, have been repeatedly cancelled.
It has also been linked to a fall in MRI and CT scans, while among other consequences breast screening programmes were paused last year. Experts have warned the pandemic may also have led to people avoiding GPs and hospitals, meaning they may have missed out on crucial care.
The Guardian’s Nicola Davis and Denis Campbell report:
The suspension if the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in Hong Kong could lead to a shortage of vaccines, the New York Times reports:
The announcement could lead to a shortage of Covid-19 vaccines in Hong Kong, which ordered 7.5 million doses of the BioNTech shot. It is one of two vaccines available in the city. The other is produced by Sinovac, a Beijing-based vaccine maker.
Hong Kong suspends Pfizer vaccines
More now on Hong Kong, which has suspended use of the Pfizer vaccine Wednesday after its Chinese distributor informed the city that one batch had defective bottle lids, AP reports.
We were unsure earlier whether it was all Pfizer vaccines or just the defective bunch, but according to AP, citing the government, other batches are also being halted.
The city’s government said the suspension was immediate while the matter is investigated by distributor Fosun Pharma and BioNTech, the German company which created the vaccine with American pharmaceutical firm Pfizer.
BioNTech and Fosun Pharma have not found any reason to believe the product is unsafe, according to the statement. However, vaccinations will be halted as a preventive and safety measure.
The defective lids were found on vaccines from batch number 210102. A separate batch of vaccines, 210104, will also be not be administered.
Macao also said Wednesday that residents would not receive the Pfizer vaccinations from the affected batch.
All community centres in Hong Kong administering the Pfizer vaccine have temporarily suspended vaccinations and residents who already made appointments for Wednesday need not proceed to the centres, the government said.
The suspension of the Pfizer jab means the only vaccine currently offered to residents is China’s Sinovac vaccine. The two vaccines are the only ones that were offered to residents in Hong Kong.
Some residents who had appointments in the morning stood in line outside a community centre administering the Pfizer vaccinations in the city’s Sai Ying Pun neighbourhood. They eventually left the centre when it became apparent that no vaccines would be administered.
As of 8pm Tuesday, 403,000 people have received vaccines in the city, of which 150,200 had received the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, compared with 252,800 who had taken the Sinovac jab.
Australia’s Covid-19 vaccine rollout would be in jeopardy if local manufacture of the AstraZeneca vaccine was not occurring, with the health department secretary saying the government has “no expectation” that supplies of the vaccine will be coming from overseas “anytime soon”.
Responding to questions about Australia’s vaccine rollout before Senate estimates on Wednesday, Prof Brendan Murphy was asked how many of the 4m doses projected to be administered by the end of March had been delivered. As of Monday only 312,502 first doses had been administered.
This includes 61,766 doses in Victoria, 34,877 in Western Australia, 72,943 in New South Wales, 7,251 in the ACT, 8,790 in Tasmania, 16,949 in South Australia, 42,469 in Queensland and 5,395 in the Northern Territory:
Joe Biden marked the 11th anniversary of the signing of the Affordable Care Act with a trip to Ohio on Tuesday, touting his efforts to reverse many Trump-era measures aimed at weakening the landmark health reform law, and pledging that his $1.9tn Covid rescue package would build on the ACA’s promise.
The administration also extended a special enrollment period for registering for subsidized health insurance coverage until 15 August, from the previous deadline of 15 May. The extension will give Americans who lost health coverage during the pandemic more time to sign up, and allow more Americans to take advantage of new federal subsidies to reduce insurance premiums granted under the new relief package:
Brazil Covid crisis: fury after Bolsonaro says people will soon lead 'normal lives'
Loud protests have erupted across Brazil as the country’s Covid-sceptic president, Jair Bolsonaro, struggled to defend his handling of the pandemic and claimed citizens would soon be able to resume their “normal lives” despite the soaring death toll.
Bolsonaro, whose anti-science response to coronavirus has drawn international condemnation, made a televised address to the country on Tuesday night, as Brazil suffered by far its heaviest day of losses since the outbreak began last February.
According to a coalition of Brazilian news groups, which has been keeping a tally since Bolsonaro’s administration was accused of trying to suppress such information last year, a record 3,158 deaths were registered on Tuesday, as well as 84,996 new infections. Brazil’s official death toll – already the world’s second highest after the US – rose to 298,843 and was likely to exceed 300,000 on Wednesday. About a third of the global total of fatalities were recorded in Brazil on Tuesday:
More on the EU tightening vaccine export rules, via AFP: Under the export-checking mechanism created at the end of January, a vaccine-maker needs to ask for authorisation to send doses out of the bloc.
EU member states are divided on whether to enact a tougher ban.
Some see it as a way to prod pharmaceutical companies into honouring their European delivery schedules, noting in particular that the EU exported more than 10 million vaccine doses to Britain from early February to mid-March but received none from the UK.
Others such as the Netherlands fear it could trigger retaliation that would choke international vaccine supply chains, some of which furnish crucial ingredients, and Ireland has spoken out against a ban.
More from that report by the South China Morning Post on Hong Kong halting vaccines from a single Pfizer batch over defective packaging:
The German manufacturer on Wednesday notified Hong Kong and Macau of issues with packaging lids on batch 210102 of its doses and in the interests of safety had decided to suspend the delivery of that set of jabs to the public while the matter was being investigated, according to sources.
Macau has confirmed that its residents will not be receiving jabs from that batch. A notice from the Macau government said the vaccine doses in question did not pose any risks, but BioNTech and Fosun Pharma had requested the suspension until their investigations had been completed. Fosun is delivering the jab jointly developed by German producer BioNTech and US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
AstraZeneca has said that its contract with the UK government gives Britain priority over some production, AFP reports.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, supported by some EU leaders including Germany’s Angela Merkel, has demanded what she calls “reciprocity” in vaccine exports and warned that AstraZeneca could face an export ban.
The draft document also warns that some other countries currently exempt from export controls now have a better vaccination rate than EU members or are suffering a “less serious” coronavirus pandemic.
“Exports to those countries may thus threaten the security of supply within the Union,” the draft warns.
The draft suspends the entire list of non-EU countries previously exempt from the mechanism - mainly poorer European neighbours - apart from a handful of micro-states and territories like San Marino, Andorra and the Faroes.
On Tuesday, Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressed concern over the EU move, but also hope that a negotiated solution could be found.
“We in this country don’t believe in blockades of any kind of vaccines or vaccine material,” Johnson told a news conference.
“It’s not something this country would dream of engaging in and I’m encouraged by some of the things I’ve heard in the continent in the same sense.”
But Sandra Gallina, head of the European Commission’s health directorate, had earlier told MEPs that the EU has “a serious problem” with AstraZeneca.
The Anglo-Swedish company delivered less than a quarter of the 100-million-plus doses it had pledged to supply in the first three months of this year, she said.
Britain is now facing its own AstraZeneca shortfall, with expected shipments from a huge plant in India being delayed.
It wants to access AstraZeneca doses being made in the Netherlands in a factory expected shortly to be approved for operation, but fears that Brussels may prevent deliveries from other EU-based firms.
Aside from AstraZeneca, Britain relies on vaccines produced in Belgium for the US and German firms Pfizer and BioNTech.
Hong Kong halts batch of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines after defective packaging - SCMP
Hong Kong suspended Covid vaccinations from a single batch of Pfizer/BioNTech shots over defective packaging, the South China Morning Post reported on Wednesday, citing sources.
On Wednesday, several centres around the Asian financial hub were told to stop using the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, according to notices seen by residents, Reuters reports.
The government did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Updated
New US surgeon general to focus on Covid, opioids
The Senate confirmed a soft-spoken physician as President Joe Biden’s surgeon general Tuesday. While Dr. Vivek Murthy says ending the coronavirus pandemic is his top priority, he’s also raised concerns over a relapsing opioid overdose crisis, AP reports.
The vote on Murthy was 57-43, giving him bipartisan support. Biden’s coronavirus response can already count on plenty of star players, but Murthy has a particular niche. As a successful author he’s addressed issues of loneliness and isolation that have been exacerbated by the pandemic.
For Murthy, this will be his second tour as America’s doctor, having previously served under former President Barack Obama.
Covid has taken the lives of several members of Murthy’s extended family. He told senators during his confirmation hearing that he wants to help individuals and families protect themselves by conveying “clear, science-based guidance” to the general public. Persuading Americans to keep up such protective measures as wearing masks could well be his toughest challenge.
EU finalising regulation to reduce vaccine exports for six weeks – report
The EU is in the process of finalising emergency legislation that will give it the power to “curb exports for the next six weeks of vaccines manufactured within the bloc,” the New York Times reports.
The legislation will be made public on Wednesday and will make it harder for pharmaceutical companies to export vaccines manufactured in the bloc – which is bad news for the UK:
The European Union is finalizing emergency legislation that will give it broad powers to curb exports for the next six weeks of Covid-19 vaccines manufactured in the bloc, a sharp escalation in its response to supply shortages at home that have created a political maelstrom amid a rising third wave on the continent.
The draft legislation, which is set to be made public on Wednesday, was reviewed by The New York Times and confirmed by two E.U. officials involved in the drafting process. The new rules will make it harder for pharmaceutical companies producing Covid-19 vaccines in the European Union to export them and is likely to disrupt supply to Britain.
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The legislation is unlikely to affect the United States, which has so far received fewer than one million doses from E.U.-based facilities.
Updated
EU to tighten export rules to stop one-way flow of vaccines
The European Commission will tighten its export guidelines on Wednesday to prevent what it sees as an unfair one-way flow of vaccines, according to a draft seen by AFP.
Brussels has been infuriated that Britain has laid claim to vaccines produced at a plant in the Netherlands by AstraZeneca, while the UK-based firm falls short on deliveries promised to the EU.
While negotiations with the British government continue behind the scenes to head off the threat of a general vaccine export ban, the EU is moving to tighten its export rules.
The measure, put in place to monitor exports from EU territory and if necessary to block them, has already been used once to prevent an AstraZeneca shipment leaving Italy for Australia.
But the draft of the updated rule complains of countries preventing exports to the EU “either by law or through contractual or other arrangements concluded with vaccine manufacturers”.
On Tuesday, Bolsonaro received a fresh setback when Brazil’s Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal against several states’ measures restricting economic activity to slow contagion, according to a document seen by Reuters.
The country’s federally funded Fiocruz Institute, which is producing the AstraZeneca vaccine that serves as the cornerstone of the government’s vaccine rollout, said on Tuesday it would only deliver 18.8 million shots in April, down from an initial forecast of 30 million. It said it was working as hard as possible to speed up manufacturing and deliver reliable production estimates.
Only 2.6% of Brazilian adults have so far received two vaccines doses, according to a Fiocruz survey, while 7.6% of the population, or 12.1 million people, have received one shot.
The World Health Organization’s (WHO) regional director for the Americas, Carissa Etienne, said on Tuesday that the virus is surging “dangerously” across Brazil, and urged all Brazilians to adopt preventive measures to stop the spread.
Brazil suffers record daily deaths
Brazil suffered a record 3,251 Covid-19 deaths on Tuesday, as President Jair Bolsonaro prepared to address the nation after swearing in his fourth health minister since the country’s snowballing coronavirus pandemic began last year, Reuters reports.
The new record number of daily deaths underlines the scale of Brazil’s outbreak, which is spiraling out of control thanks to a lumpy vaccine rollout and a messy patchwork of public health restrictions that are pushing the country’s hospitals to breaking point.
Bolsonaro is under mounting pressure to control the outbreak, after repeatedly playing down the virus, sowing doubts about vaccines and fighting state and local lockdown measures.
On Tuesday, ahead of a televised national address, he swore in cardiologist Marcelo Queiroga in a closed ceremony, the Health Ministry said in a statement. Tapped by Bolsonaro on March 15, Queiroga replaces Eduardo Pazuello, an active-duty army general who has overseen most of the pandemic response.
It remains to be seen what path Queiroga will chart as health minister. Pazuello’s two predecessors both left government after clashing with Bolsonaro’s views on Covid.
Bolsonaro has gained international notoriety for his efforts to fight lockdowns, dismiss mask mandates and advocate unproven remedies such as hydroxychloroquine.
Updated
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan.
I’ll be bringing you the latest global developments for the next while. As always, you can say Hi on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
Brazil suffered a record 3,251 Covid deaths on Tuesday, as President Jair Bolsonaro prepared to address the nation after swearing in his fourth health minister since the country’s snowballing coronavirus pandemic began last year.
The new record number of daily deaths underlines the scale of Brazil’s outbreak, which is spiralling out of control thanks to a lumpy vaccine rollout and a messy patchwork of public health restrictions that are pushing the country’s hospitals to breaking point.
Meanwhile the European Commission will tighten its export guidelines on Wednesday to prevent what it sees as an unfair one-way flow of vaccines, according to a draft seen by AFP.
Brussels has been infuriated that Britain has laid claim to vaccines produced at a plant in the Netherlands by AstraZeneca, while the UK-based firm falls short on deliveries promised to the EU.
More on these two stories shortly. Here are the other key developments from the last few hours:
- Anthony Fauci, the US’s top health official, said the AstraZeneca vaccine was likely to be very good, but that an independent review board assessing the jab’s efficacy “got concerned” that the data in its public statement “were somewhat outdated and might in fact be misleading a bit”, adding that the “unforced error” would only add to public doubts about vaccines.
- Norway is introducing new national measures to contain the pandemic, including a ban on the public serving of alcohol, and would postpone the introduction of a plan to reopen society, health minister Bent Høie has said.
- Poland is to announce new restrictions for the next two weeks by Thursday at the latest, prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki said, as the country braces for what could be a second Easter spent under a strict lockdown.
- The Dutch government is to extend its lockdown measures by three weeks until 20 April due to rising numbers of Covid-19 infections and hospital admissions, prime minister Mark Rutte said.
- Texas is to become the largest US state to make Covid vaccines available for all adults, with the drastic expansion for the state’s nearly 30 million residents beginning from Monday.
- Spain will on 30 March lift restrictions on arrivals from Britain that have been in place since December in an attempt to contain the spread of new strains of coronavirus.
- Vladimir Putin reportedly had his first dose of a Russian-made coronavirus vaccine in private, after months of delaying his jab, in an apparent effort to boost Russia’s fledgling vaccination drive.
- General practitioners in Australia have been told the Covid-19 vaccine rollout experienced “significant” week-one delivery errors, including a failure to send some shipments of needles to accompany the vials.
- German hotel owners are unhappy over an extension to measures that bizarrely bar citizens from going on vacation in their own country but allow them to travel abroad.
