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Summary
- Brazil reported more than 1,200 deaths for the third day in a row. A further 1,232 deaths were registered on Thursday, according to data released by the nation’s health ministry, taking its death toll to 228,795, the second highest in the world after the US.
- Paraguay signed a contract with the Russian Direct Investment Fund to purchase the Sputnik V vaccine. The Paraguayan health minister, Julio Mazzoleni, said the number of doses and schedule for distribution would be reported later. The country will also receive some 300,000 doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in the second half of February through the Covax program promoted by the World Health Organization.
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The World Health Organization said its Covax initiative aims to start shipping nearly 90 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to Africa in February. About 320,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine have been allocated to four African countries – Cabo Verde, Rwanda, South Africa and Tunisia – the WHO said in a statement.
- China will donate 100,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine to Congo Republic and forgive $13m in public debt, its ambassador to the country said. The ambassador Ma Fulin announced the measures after a meeting with Congo’s president, Denis Sassou Nguesso. He did not say which Chinese-developed vaccine would be provided, but the doses are enough to vaccinate 50,000 of Congo’s 5.1 million people. Ma said the Chinese government would also forgive all public Congolese debt that came due before the end of 2020, an estimated $13m.
- Peru’s interim president, Francisco Sagasti, said his administration had locked in a deal with Pfizer to purchase 20m doses of its vaccine. Sagasti said that by April, Peru would receive at least 500,000 doses. The first 250,000 are slated for arrival in March, he said.
- Iran received its first batch of foreign-made coronavirus vaccines – Russia’s Sputnik V – as the country struggles to stem the worst outbreak of the pandemic in the Middle East.
- Ghana’s parliament will restrict its sessions to twice a week after 15 lawmakers and dozens of legislative staff tested positive for coronavirus, the house speaker, Alban Bagbin, announced. He said 56 staffers had also tested positive, forcing him to decree that parliament would only sit on Tuesdays and Thursdays in a measure to control the spread.
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Portugal, hit by the world’s highest per capita Covid-19 death rates and infections in recent weeks, is now seeing a decline in cases, the health minister said. Marta Temido warned that there were “nevertheless … difficult weeks ahead of us”.
- The French prime minister said the coronavirus situation in France remained fragile, but that for the moment ruled out a new national lockdown. Jean Castex said the rate of infection had not significantly grown over the past two weeks, even if the pressure on French hospitals remained strong, and the country must stick with the current restrictions.
- The Netherlands became the latest European country to limit AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine to people aged under 65, despite the EU approving it for all ages. It comes after Switzerland’s medical regulator said it could not authorise use of the vaccine based on the available trial data.
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Some two million Mozambicans at the centre of the country’s coronavirus outbreak will from Friday adhere to a curfew for the first time since the civil war ended in 1992, the president Filipe Nyusi announced on Thursday.
The nation’s decision to impose a 9pm to 4am curfew in the Great Maputo area – which includes the cities of Maputo, Matola, Marracuene and Boane – comes as the national health system buckles under rising infections.
Mozambique has registered 42,488 positive cases nationwide, about half of which were recorded in January. More than half of the 427 deaths were also recorded last month.
The strict curfew will run from 5 February until 7 March, Nyusi said in a televised address, blaming a poor adherence to measures previously imposed.
“Mozambique was once an example of managing Covid-19 in Africa and we were praised for our ability to stop the first wave of infections from Covid-19,” said Nyusi, calling for compliance with the measures. “But now we are one of the countries with one of the fastest increases in cases in Africa.”
As of Thursday, the capital Maputo and neighbouring Matola city were the hub of infections, with more than 11,000 active cases of around 16,000 across the country of over 30 million people, putting pressure on the country’s health system.
Public hospitals have reached 100% in-patient capacity, while private hospitals report more than 80% in-patient capacity, the president said.
In addition to the curfew, the new restrictions include a ban on all religious services, the suspension of all face-to-face classes, the prohibition of private events except for weddings, and the suspension of sports activities including professional football championships.
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Brazil has reported more than 1,200 deaths for the third day in a row. A further 56,873 new cases of Covid-19 were registered on Thursday and another 1,232 deaths, according to data released by the nation’s health ministry. Brazil has now registered 9,396,293 total confirmed cases and 228,795 deaths from the virus, the second highest death toll in the world after the US.
Paraguay signed a contract with the Russian Direct Investment Fund to purchase the Sputnik V vaccine, the country’s health minister said on Thursday.
It was the first announcement of a bilateral agreement under Paraguay’s coronavirus immunisation plan. Neighbouring Argentina is also using the Russian vaccine.
Scientists gave Sputnik V the green light this week saying it was almost 92% effective in fighting Covid-19 based on peer-reviewed late-stage trial results published in The Lancet international medical journal.
The Paraguayan health minister, Julio Mazzoleni, said the number of doses and schedule for distribution would be reported later, without giving further details of the operation. “We are awaiting the return of the contracts that have already been signed in order to make that announcement,” he said at a press conference.
The country will also receive some 300,000 doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in the second half of February through the Covax programme promoted by the World Health Organization, as announced by the president, Mario Abdo, over the weekend.
The health ministry has confirmed 2,765 deaths associated with Covid-19 as of Wednesday. The government said it planned to start vaccination in the second half of February, giving priority to health professionals and adults over 60 years old.
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UK government ministers have been criticised for failing to act more urgently on coronavirus vaccine disparities after data showed that white people are almost twice as likely to have been vaccinated as black people among over-80s in England, Nazia Parveen and Caelainn Barr report.
Black, Asian and mixed ethnicity people are all less likely to have been vaccinated than white people among those aged 80 and above in England, according to new research. A lower proportion of ethnic minorities have been shown to have received at least one vaccine dose up to 27 January.
Equality campaigners have said calls to ministers 10 months ago to take urgent action to protect overexposed black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities were ignored, leading to the current vaccine uptake crisis.
Halima Begum, chief executive of the Runnymede Trust, said she first raised concerns about the dangerous exposure of these communities in March last year.
This isn’t about vaccine refusal, because that very rhetoric implies that these communities are doing something wrong, it’s their fault somehow. We need to balance the conversation away from hesitancy and uptake to the response to BAME groups and their institutional mistrust now, and how they might be supported to show trust back in our public services like the NHS and the police.”
The trust says the government should prioritise the rollout of vaccines to BAME communities in dense urban areas “where the need is greatest” and work with community leaders to address misinformation and boost vaccine confidence.
Here is the full report.
The German health minister Jens Spahn has suggested coronavirus restrictions could be lifted before spring, as case numbers in the country continued to edge downwards.
“We can’t stay in this hard lockdown all winter. We would not tolerate that well as a society,” Spahn said in an interview with the Funke media group.
Germany went into a partial lockdown in November, closing bars, restaurants and cultural and sporting facilities. Schools and non-essential shops were added to the list in mid-December, with rules on mask-wearing and working from home tightened in January amid concerns over new variants.
The numbers of new infections and of patients in intensive care have been falling steadily since the start of the year, a trend Spahn called “encouraging”.
The chancellor Angela Merkel, giving a rare interview on German TV for the second time this week, struck a slightly more cautious tone. “A quick reopening only to quickly shut down again, as some of our neighbours have unfortunately done, doesn’t help us,” she told broadcaster RTL.
I see a light at the end of the tunnel, but this is an incredibly difficult time. It’s now a matter of weeks that we still have to endure, provided we don’t see more aggressive mutations.
Merkel and the leaders of Germany’s 16 states will meet next Wednesday to decide whether to extend restrictions after they expire on 14 February.
Germany’s Robert Koch Institute health body reported 14,211 new cases and 786 deaths on Thursday and an incidence rate of 81 - still well above the target of 50 that German politicians have set as a yardstick for reopening.
Some experts believe it is too soon to relax the measures.
Ute Teichert, the head of the Federal Association of German Public Health Officers, called last week for a so-called zero-Covid strategy to stamp out infections:
We cannot start relaxing [restrictions] again at an incidence rate of 100, 70 or 50.
But Spahn said the goal for Germany remained “to prevent the health system from being overburdened - and not to avoid every infection”.
To get it down to zero infections and keep it that way comes at a disproportionate cost in other areas of life.
Almost three million older people and medical workers have so far received their first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, with calls growing for new freedoms for those who have had the jabs.
But the German Ethics Council, which advises the government on scientific and moral issues, on Thursday came out in opposition to lifting restrictions for those who have been inoculated.
Council head Alena Buyx advised against “individual relaxation of the rules”, pointing to a lack of evidence on whether those who have received jabs are still able to spread the virus.
The World Health Organization said on Thursday its COVAX initiative aims to start shipping nearly 90 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to Africa in February.
About 320,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine have been allocated to four African countries - Cabo Verde, Rwanda, South Africa and Tunisia, the WHO said in a statement.
The roll-out of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is subject to the vaccine being listed for emergency use by WHO. The organisation is currently reviewing the vaccine and the outcome of the review is expected soon.
China to donate vaccine doses to Congo and forgive public debt
China will donate 100,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine to Congo Republic and forgive $13 million in public debt, its ambassador to the country said on Thursday.
The ambassador Ma Fulin announced the measures after a meeting with Congo’s president Denis Sassou Nguesso. He did not say which Chinese-developed vaccine would be provided.
The doses are enough to vaccinate 50,000 of Congo’s 5.1 million people. Congo, which has recorded 8,060 infections and 122 coronavirus-related deaths, has been allocated 420,000 doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine for the first half of this year under the global COVAX vaccine-sharing facility.
As lower income countries struggle to obtain doses, China is aiming to cultivate goodwill through so-called vaccine diplomacy. It said on Monday that it was providing vaccine aid to 13 countries globally and planned to help a further 38.
Ma said the Chinese government would also forgive all public Congolese debt that came due before the end of 2020, an estimated $13 million. China offered similar relief to neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo last month.
France registered a further 357 deaths in the last 24 hours, but hospitalisations continued to decline, initial data from the health ministry’s Geodes site showed.
The number of patients hospitalised with Covid-19 stood at 27,766, down 187 over 24 hours, while there were 3,240 patients in intensive care units, down 27 over the same period.
Earlier, the French prime minister Jean Castex said the situation in France remained fragile but for the moment there was no need for a new national lockdown (see 6.08pm.).
Peru’s interim president, Francisco Sagasti, said on Thursday his administration had locked in a deal with Pfizer to purchase 20 million doses of its vaccine, a major milestone as the nation scrambles to jumpstart a mass vaccination program.
Earlier this week, Peru approved the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for one year amid a recent surge in coronavirus cases that has brought local hospitals to the brink of collapse.
Sagasti said that by April, Peru would receive at least 500,000 doses of the vaccine. The first 250,000 doses are slated for arrival in March, he said.
Peru was initially slow to lock down supplies for its vaccination program, lagging behind wealthier neighbours in Latin America. But it has since raced to catch up, securing deals with Sinopharm and AstraZeneca earlier this year.
The first lot of vaccines from Sinopharm are expected to arrive in the country on 13 February, Sagasti said.
Sagasti said Pfizer had committed to delivering at least 5 million doses its vaccine to Peru by June.
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A curfew will go into effect for the Cuban capital of Havana on Friday evening, as the island struggles with its worst coronavirus surge since the beginning of the pandemic.
State-run media reported that from 9 pm to 5am only authorised vehicles and personnel would be allowed outdoors in the city of 2.2 million residents.
Cuba managed to contain the virus last year, boasting case rates that were well below average, but it has experienced a surge since the country’s airports began reopening in November. More than 15,000 cases were reported in January, nearly 50% of them in Havana and around five times the monthly figures last year.
The government said a majority of the cases were linked to travellers breaking quarantine, mainly Cubans living abroad. Authorities shuttered schools and dining in Havana and other parts of the country last month and imposed restrictions on flights and travellers to try to stop the spread of the virus.
Cuba has seen an average of about 900 daily Covid-19 cases in February, similar to the international average. A total of 225 people have died in the country since the start of the pandemic.
Iran receives first batch of foreign vaccines with arrival of Sputnik V
Iran on Thursday received its first batch of foreign-made coronavirus vaccines as the country struggles to stem the worst outbreak of the pandemic in the Middle East.
The shipment consists of 500,000 doses of Russian-made Sputnik V vaccines which arrived at Tehran’s Imam Khomeieni international airport from Moscow, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
Iranian state TV quoted Tehran’s ambassador to Russia, Kazem Jalali, as saying that Iran has ordered 5 million doses from Russia. The next batches are to arrive on 18 and 28 February, said Jalali.
However, a report on the semi-official ISNA news agency appeared to contradict Jalali’s statement and the Fars report. ISNA quoted Mohammadreza Shanehsaz, head of Iran’s food and drug organisation, as saying Thursday’s shipment included only 10,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine.
The conflicting reports could not be immediately reconciled. Shanehsaz also said that Iran had purchased 2 million doses, not 5 million.
Last month, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei banned Iran from importing the American Pfizer/BioNTech and the UK’s Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccines, a reflection of mistrust toward the west.
The coronavirus has so far infected over 1.4 million people in Iran and killed more than 58,000.
In December, the country began testing an Iranian-made vaccine in humans and said it expects to distribute it in spring, an extremely aggressive timeline.
The country has also began working on a joint vaccine with Cuba. It is also planning to import some 17 million doses of vaccine from COVAX and millions from other countries.
But Iran is struggling to transfer some $220 million held in South Korean banks to pay for the vaccines through COVAX, an international program designed to distribute coronavirus vaccines to participating countries.
The government in Tehran has touted Iran’s domestic vaccine research, repeatedly alleging that tough American sanctions undermine its efforts to purchase foreign-made vaccines and launch mass inoculation campaigns like those underway in the US and Europe.
While US sanctions do have specific carve-outs for medicine and humanitarian aid to Iran, international banks and financial institutions hesitate in dealing with Iranian transactions for fear of being fined or locked out of the American market.
Catalonia will remove some lockdown restrictions from next week, the government said on Thursday, allowing gyms to reopen and people to move outside their municipalities after infections edged lower in the region and across Spain.
“We believe we are leaving behind the maximum peak of the third wave,” the Catalan health secretary general Marc Ramentol told a news conference.
At a national level the 14-day incidence of the virus retreated to 783 cases per 100,000 people, dropping below 800 cases for the first time in two weeks.
Madrid has already announced some easing of lockdown restrictions, starting from Friday.
But Spain still has the world’s third-highest number of daily infections, according to a Reuters tally, and stress on the health system remains high. A total of 29,960 new cases were recorded by the country on Thursday bringing the total above 2.9 million, while the death toll climbed by 432 to 60,802.
“This is a still a very high-pressure situation for our society,” Spain’s health emergency chief Fernando Simon told a news conference. “We have at least six regions with ICU occupancy above 50 percent.”
He warned the situation would persist into at least the beginning of next week.
In Catalonia, where the incidence is below 500 cases per 100,000 people, bars and restaurants from Monday will be able to serve customers for an extra hour at breakfast and lunch but will be limited to offering take-away services for the rest of the day.
A lockdown that stopped people from leaving their municipalities except for work or health reasons, will be eased slightly, but many other restrictions in place since early January will remain.
Large shops and malls will remain closed while most non-essential small shops will only be allowed to open from Monday to Friday. A 10pm-6am curfew will remain in place.
Ghana’s parliament will restrict its sessions to twice a week after 15 lawmakers and dozens of legislative staff tested positive for coronavirus, the house speaker Alban Bagbin has announced.
Out of those who submitted themselves for the test in parliament, 15 MPs tested positive to the virus. All the 15 have been contacted and advised to self-isolate.
He said 56 staffers had also tested positive, forcing him to decide the parliament would only sit on Tuesdays and Thursdays in a measure to control the spread, AFP reports.
Ghana’s president Nana Akufo-Addo on Sunday reimposed a ban on social gatherings as the number of Covid-19 cases spiralled in the West African nation.
Schools reopened in Ghana in January after a 10-month closure, but Akufo-Addo said a return to stricter measures was required because of surging cases.
The new measures came as the average daily rates of infection rose to 700, compared to 200 two weeks ago. Land and sea borders have been closed since March, while beaches, night clubs, cinemas, and pubs continue to be shut.
Germany’s finance minister has attacked the European commission’s Covid vaccine strategy as “really shit”, Bild has reported, as Angela Merkel’s centre-left coalition partners seek to exploit anger over the issue before federal elections.
Olaf Scholz, who is also the vice-chancellor, reportedly criticised the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, by name during a cabinet meeting on Monday, saying Berlin could not “let this shit repeat itself” and that the vaccine debacle was “a disgrace”.
Scholz is the most senior cabinet member from Germany’s Social Democratic party (SPD), the junior partners in Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU)-led “grand coalition” for 12 of the past 16 years.
Portugal, hit by the world’s highest per capita Covid-19 death rates and infections in recent weeks, is now seeing a decline in cases, the health minister Marta Temido has told a committee of the European Parliament in Brussels
Currently, the incidence of new Covid-19 cases is starting to decrease in Portugal ... We nevertheless have difficult weeks ahead of us.
Under health ministry figures given to AFP, intensive care units set aside for Covid patients hit 90.3 percent occupancy nationwide on Wednesday.
The health ministry said today that in the last 24 hours, Portugal – a country of 10 million people – recorded 225 new deaths, or the lowest toll for two weeks. With nearly 8,000 new cases in 24 hours, the rate of new infections was trending lower after a record of nearly 16,500 infections reached 28 January.
The number of people hospitalised also declined between Wednesday and Thursday to 6,496 patients, including 863 in intensive care.
Though Portugal has seen the highest per capita Covid death and infection rates in recent weeks, it ranks seventh in the world for infections per capita since the pandemic began about a year ago.
Liverpool football team blocked from entering Germany for Champions League tie due to Covid restrictions
Germany will not allow Liverpool into the country to play a Champions League game at Leipzig on 16 February because of border restrictions imposed over new Covid variants, AFP reports.
The German interior ministry has confirmed that an application by Leipzig for special permission for Liverpool to enter the country was refused by federal police, the dpa news agency reported.
That means the game, the first leg of the round of 16, can’t be played as scheduled on 16 February in Leipzig. The German club could ask UEFA to move the game to a neutral venue. Switching the order of the legs so that Liverpool plays at home first could also be an option, but would likely require Leipzig’s players and staff to go into quarantine on their return to Germany from Britain.
UEFA is open to delaying games affected by travel bans. On Tuesday it set 2 April as the latest possible date to finish last-16 games in time for the quarter-finals.
Germany is blocking most arrivals of non-residents from Britain to restrict the spread of new variants of the virus. If the travel restrictions — which don’t contain any exemptions for sports — are extended beyond the current expiry date of 17 February, Manchester City’s first-leg trip to play Borussia Mönchengladbach on 24 February could be affected.
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French PM rules out new national lockdown and defends slow vaccine rollout
French prime minister Jean Castex said that the coronavirus situation in France remained fragile but that for the moment there was no need for a new national lockdown, Reuters reports.
Castex said that the rate of infection had not significantly strengthened over the past two weeks, even if the pressure on French hospitals remained strong.
We must stick with the current restrictions we already have in place ... but the situation today does not justify a new national lockdown.
Castex said it was true that other countries had started their vaccination campaign more quickly than France but that this was the result of the French government’s choice to start with the most vulnerable people in retirement homes.
He said that while they only made up one percent of the population, they represent one third of those who have died from Covid-19. France has registered more than 77,000 deaths from Covid-19 since the start of the epidemic.
Castex also said that the number of new cases affected by new variants of the virus has increased from 3.3% on 8 January to 14% today. “We must fight the virus by applying the measures in place ... it is not the time to ease up now,” he said, adding that he would not hesitate to tighten curbs on movement if there was a spike in infections.
He also said France would take delivery of its first doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine at the end of the week, a step that will help accelerate its faltering rollout after supply shortages from other manufacturers.
France would make 1.7 million additional appointments available between late February and the end of March and was on track to hit a target of 4 million people vaccinated by the end of February, he told a news conference.
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A member of the WHO team investigating the origin of the pandemic has warned that the “short mission” would not be able to provide all the answers.
Dr Hung Nguyen-Viet, co-leader of animal and human health program of the International Livestock Research Institute tweeted:
I keep saying that we need to be realistic, a short mission like this one will not have all the answers but it helps advance the understanding of the virus’ origin.
The team today spent two hours meeting with managers and residents at the Jiangxinyuan community administrative center in Wuhan’s Hanyang District. Official statistics shows there were at least 16 confirmed coronavirus cases in the community last year among nearly 10,000 people living there when the virus broke out.
The head of the probe said World Health Organization inspectors had “very frank” discussions with Chinese scientists about the source of the pandemic, including theories it leaked from a laboratory (see 1.00pm).
The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was visited yesterday by the experts, who have been keen not to play up the possible link which was seized upon by Donald Trump and his allies.
In a statement to NBC News following the visit, the WIV said it would continue to “work together to help safeguard global public health security”.
During the exchange, Shi Zhengli, a researcher from the WIV, introduced the progress in the field of coronavirus research over the years, and said that novel coronavirus’ origin tracing requires the cooperation of scientists from all over the world, making judgements based on scientific data and facts.
She said that scientists from all countries should conduct extensive wildlife monitoring globally to jointly safeguard human health in the future. Yuan Zhiming, director of the Wuhan National Bio-Safety Laboratory, stated that the laboratory strictly complies with the requirements of international and national bio-safety laboratory management to carry out scientific research activities.
It has carried out safe and stable operations for many years, and there has been no accident of pathogen leakage and personnel infection. Wang Yanyi, director of the WIV, said that the institute will further strengthen cooperation and exchanges with the WHO in the future, continue to improve capacity, and join the WHO reference laboratory network as soon as possible, and work together to help safeguard global public health security.
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Europe’s drugs regulator has said it will begin reviewing data on US drugmakers Eli Lilly and Regeneron’s combination therapies of antibody-based treatments for use in Covid-19 patients.
Two separate reviews will be carried out to see if patients with Covid-19, who do not need oxygen support and are at high risk of their condition worsening, can be treated with these drugs, the European Medicines Agency said.
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The Palestinian Authority (PA) has received 10,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine in the West Bank, while Hamas, which controls Gaza, has relaxed Covid restrictions, AFP reports.
The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority had already begun vaccinating health workers on Tuesday in the occupied West Bank after receiving 5,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine from Israel. But the PA has said the bulk of its vaccinations will be carried out with stocks it has procured from at least four international providers.
The first shipment of the Russian-made product landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport earlier Thursday, before being transferred to the West Bank, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials. The Palestinian health ministry “thanked” Russia for the vaccines, saying in a statement it would enable the inoculation of “5,000 Palestinian citizens”.
The Palestinian Authority is expecting some two million doses ordered from various manufacturers, in addition to vaccines from the UN-backed COVAX programme, set up to help less wealthy nations respond to the pandemic.
Some 109,000 Palestinians in the West Bank have been infected with Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, 1,337 of them fatally, out of a population of 2.8 million, according to official data. In the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, controlled by Hamas since 2007, some 52,000 cases have been recorded, including 527 deaths.
Netherlands latest country to limit AstraZeneca vaccine to under-65s
The Netherlands has become the latest European country to limit AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine to people aged under 65, despite the EU approving it for all ages, AFP reports.
France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and other countries have so far put age limits on the vaccine, which was developed by the British-Swedish firm with Oxford University.
“Because the immune system starts to function less well with increasing age, the council considers the vaccine suitable for people up to the age of 65,” the Dutch health council said in a statement.
The council added that it “recommends that the first available doses of the vaccine from AstraZeneca be used in elderly people aged 60 to 65 years”. The vaccine’s efficacy in people aged over 55 was unclear because only a small number of that age took part in clinical trials, it added.
The European Medicines Agency, the EU’s drug regulator, backed the AstraZeneca vaccine last Friday for all ages despite the lack of data for older people, saying that the bloc’s countries needed to “have these options available to them”. Britain has meanwhile used the vaccine on all ages.
It comes after Switzerland’s medical regulator yesterday said it cannot authorise use of the vaccine based on the available trial data.
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Afternoon summary
- World Health Organization inspectors had “very frank” discussions with Chinese scientists about the source of the pandemic, including theories it leaked from a laboratory, the head of the investigation in Wuhan said (see 1.00pm).
- Early restrictions on international travel might have made a difference in the spread of pandemic in western Europe, including the UK, a new study has found (see 10.16am).
- Nearly four in 10 people in France, more than 25% of those in the US and 23% in Germany say they definitely or probably will not get vaccinated against Covid-19, according to a survey that underlines the challenge facing governments.
- The Spanish region of Catalonia removed some pandemic restrictions, allowing gyms to reopen and people to move outside their municipalities after infections and hospital admissions started to edge down (see 12.41pm).
- Covid restrictions in Germany could be lifted before spring, as case numbers continue to edge downwards, the health minister, Jens Spahn, suggested (see 11.36am).
- Qatar reimposed a raft of restrictions on education, leisure and business activities, including closing indoor swimming pools and theme parks and restricting restaurant capacities (see 1.47pm)
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Sweden has joined Denmark in planning to launch a digital coronavirus “vaccine passport” by summer, assuming there is an international standard in place for the document by then (see 1.35pm).
- Three ventilated Covid patients and another patient died in a fire at a Ukrainian hospital which tore through the intensive care unit of an infectious diseases hospital, local police said (see 11.12am).
- Politicians around the world must be held accountable for the “social murder” inflicted on populations by their mishandling of the pandemic, the executive editor of the BMJ medical journal has said (see 4.06pm).
- North Korea requested Covid-19 vaccines and is expected to receive nearly 2m doses, according to the Gavi vaccine alliance, part of the WHO-backed Covax programme (see 11.22am).
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If you live in Belle Glade, Florida, US, a rural, predominantly African American town, and you want to get to a Covid-19 vaccine appointment, you’re going to either need a car or $2 and a lot of time.
That’s because the closest up-and-running Covid-19 vaccination site accepting new appointments is at a Publix supermarket nearly 30 miles away in Loxahatchee Groves, an overwhelmingly white, affluent town. And, without a car, you will need to catch a bus that runs once an hour, transfer, and ride 34 stops total to get there.
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Politicians should be held accountable for 'social murder', says BMJ editor
Politicians around the world must be held accountable for the “social murder” inflicted on populations by their mishandling of the pandemic, the executive editor of the BMJ medical journal has said.
With more than two million deaths from Covid-19 so far – the majority in richer, developed nations in Europe and the Americas – Kamran Abbasi argued that world leaders had ensured needless death and suffering through a string of policy missteps, AFP reports.
Politicians must be held to account by legal and electoral means, indeed by any national and international constitutional means necessary. State failures that led us to 2 million deaths are ‘actions’ and ‘inactions’ that should shame us all ... At the very least, Covid-19 might be classified as ‘social murder’.
The term social murder was coined by the 19th-century Marxist philosopher Friedrich Engels to describe the systemic killing of workers through neglect by the ruling class.
Abbasi, who lives in the UK, said that governments had repeatedly ignored warnings by their own scientific advisers to implement more stringent and accelerated social distancing measures, resulting in lockdowns coming too late to prevent avoidable deaths.
Two million deaths but where is the political accountability for mishandling a pandemic response? Is it social murder, manslaughter, misconduct in public office? In a new editorial, I explore these issues and how accountability is possible @bmj_latest https://t.co/P1jVZkaMMx
— Kamran Abbasi (@KamranAbbasi) February 4, 2021
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Employees who work from home are spending longer at their desks and facing a bigger workload than before the Covid pandemic hit, two sets of research have suggested.
The average length of time an employee working from home in the UK, Austria, Canada and the US is logged on at their computer has increased by more than two hours a day since the coronavirus crisis, according to data from the business support company NordVPN Teams.
UK workers have increased their working week by almost 25% and, along with employees in the Netherlands, are logging off at 8pm, it said.
Nearly four in ten people in France, more than 25% of those in the US and 23% in Germany say they definitely or probably will not get vaccinated against Covid-19, according to a survey that underlines the challenge facing governments.
Hesitancy was markedly lower in Italy (12%), the UK (14%) and the Netherlands (17%), according to the seven-country survey, which revealed a close correlation between people’s reluctance to be vaccinated and their trust in central government.
Only 11% of US citizens and 13% of French citizens trust their governments to be a reliable source of information on vaccines, the survey, carried out last month by Kantar Public, found, compared with 30% in the Netherlands and Britain.
The study also suggested satisfaction with national vaccine rollouts was linked to vaccine acceptance and trust in government. More than 60% of UK respondents were very or somewhat satisfied with Britain’s speedy vaccination campaign, compared with only 31% in France, where the rollout is among the EU’s slowest.
China is to send 150,000 doses of coronavirus vaccine to Syria as aid, the Chinese embassy in Damascus has said, Reuters reports.
Syrian health officials have said the country is engaged with Russia and China over vaccines but authorities have not yet announced any bilateral deals.
Medicines are generally exempt from the international financial sanctions Syria is under, but UN sources have said sanctions have left Damascus without much financial clout to negotiate deliveries.
The WHO said yesterday it is deploying teams across Syria for a vaccination programme that will be rolled out both in government-held areas and territory outside state control, perhaps as soon as April.
Dr Akjemal Magtymova, the WHO’s representative in Damascus, said the Covax programme plans to immunize 5 million Syrians - 20% of the population.
Updated
Sixteen African countries have shown interest in securing Covid-19 vaccines under an African Union (AU) plan, the head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said, according to Reuters.
While many rich nations have already begun mass vaccination drives, only a few African countries have started vaccination, and the 55-member African Union hopes to see 60% of the continent’s 1.3 billion people immunised in the next three years.
The AU has so far secured around 670m doses for its member states.
Africa’s CDC director, John Nkengasong, said the 16 countries had asked for a total of 114m doses under the AU’s Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT), which began work in mid-January.
“Our hope is that in the next two to three weeks, they should be having their vaccines,” he told a virtual news conference.
Africa is also due to receive about 600m vaccine doses this year via the Covax facility, co-led by the World Health Organization.
At a later briefing, the WHO’s Africa director, Matshidiso Moeti, said nearly 90m doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine could start arriving on the continent later this month.
Updated
Steven Poole’s word of the week this week asks, why do we call vaccinations “jabs”?
As usual, the answer may surprise you.
Updated
India has said it will continue to provide coronavirus-related humanitarian assistance to Myanmar despite a military coup which overthrew elected civilian leaders on Monday.
According to Reuters, Anurag Srivastava, the spokesman for India’s foreign ministry, said his government was monitoring the situation in Myanmar closely, but would not cut aid. India last month sent 1.5m doses of Covid-19 vaccine to Myanmar, and a second shipment is planned.
Srivastava said:
We remain committed to continuing our humanitarian support for the people in Myanmar in mitigating the health and economic impact of the pandemic.
According to Reuters:
India, the world’s biggest manufacturer of vaccines, has given away shots of AstraZeneca made at the Serum Institute of India for free to neighbours such as Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bhutan to get their immunisation programmes started.
Diplomats say the “Vaccine Friendship”, as the campaign is called, is also intended to push back against China’s political and economic dominance of the region and win goodwill.
Srivastava noted that India had helped Myanmar by providing test kits and medicines early on when the pandemic struck and then with vaccines.
Updated
The new US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, on Thursday warned of “tough months ahead” before the US economy gets to the other side of the coronavirus-related crisis, writes Joanna Walters for the Guardian US.
She also said that she and financial market regulators needed to “understand deeply” what happened in the trading frenzy involving GameStop and other retail stocks in recent days before taking any action.
Yellen, who is convening a meeting of top market regulators on Thursday, told ABC’s Good Morning America: “We really need to make sure that our financial markets are functioning properly, efficiently and that investors are protected.”
She added: “We’re going to discuss … whether or not the recent events warrant further action.”
Updated
Portugal’s health chief has sought to reassure people in the country that they will get vaccinated, amid a rise in transmissions that has led to among the highest per capita rates of deaths and new infections in the world.
Graça Freitas was quoted by Reuters as saying:
People must trust the system. The system will invite everyone to be vaccinated. Everyone will be vaccinated – we cannot all get [a shot] on the same day. There are priorities.
There has also been anger in the country at perceived delays in the distribution of vaccines, as well as widely publicised incidents of alleged queue jumping. Several mayors, a doctor’s husband and even a priest’s mother have been vaccinated ahead of time, even as vaccines were still being prioritised for frontline health workers, care home residents and those aged over 80.
Reuters reports:
The head of the country’s vaccination task force, Francisco Ramos, stepped down on Wednesday, over what he acknowledged were “irregularities” in the process of selecting which workers should be vaccinated at the Red Cross hospital where he is the chief executive.
In a country of 10.3 million people, only about 350,000 have so far received any vaccine, of whom 75,000 have had a second dose.
“It is a hope, it is a positive thing and it is going well so we shouldn’t get caught up with the things that are not going as well,” Freitas said.
Discontent with vaccination has reached the country’s famed pastéis de nata custard tarts. Over the weekend, a regional ambulance service unit INEM said it had used leftover Covid-19 shots to vaccinate workers of a pastry shop next door to its building in the city of Porto – prompting questions over why the shots had not gone to priority workers.
Updated
A first batch of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine has arrived in Iran, the Middle East’s worst-hit country by coronavirus, as the country reported its highest number of new infections in a day since mid-December.
“The first shipment of vaccines from Moscow... has landed at Imam Khomeini airport in Tehran,” the state news agency IRNA was quoted as saying by AFP, the French news agency.
Kazem Jalali, Iran’s ambassador to Moscow, told IRNA that second and third deliveries of the vaccine were due to be sent to Tehran on 18 and 29 February.
The shipment came as Iran reported 7,040 cases of coronavirus on Thursday, the country’s highest daily number of infections since 18 December. The health ministry reported 67 deaths from Covid-19, the lowest number since June 2020. The Islamic republic is fighting the Middle East’s deadliest outbreak of the coronavirus, with more than 58,000 lives lost out of more than 1.4m cases.
Last month, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, banned vaccines made by the US and UK, calling them “completely untrustworthy”.
Despite that, Iran’s health minister, Saeed Namaki, said on Wednesday that the Anglo-Swedish firm AstraZeneca would provide the country with 4.2m doses of its vaccine.
“AstraZeneca is produced in Russia, India and South Korea, and Iran uses these anti-coronavirus products,” the health ministry spokesman, Kianoush Jahanpour, told AFP.
Updated
The Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has urged health staff to overcome their reported scepticism and accept coronavirus vaccinations, AFP reports.
He said during a visit to a state hospital Covid ward:
Now that we have more [scientific] data, I ask those who had not been vaccinated to seriously reconsider. We now know, beyond any doubt, that approved vaccines are above all safe, but also effective.
Talk to your colleagues and explain why this is the right choice to protect themselves and the people they care for daily.
Skai TV reported on Thursday that only 90,000 of Greece’s 190,000 public and private health sector staff have been vaccinated.
The head of Greece’s union of hospital workers, Michalis Giannakos, said earlier this week that around half of health staff “had reservations” about receiving jabs when the initiative began in December.
Updated
Qatar has reimposed a raft of restrictions on education, leisure and business activities, including closing indoor swimming pools and theme parks and restricting restaurant capacities, Reuters reports.
Other Gulf states have tightened restrictions in recent days to curb the spread of the coronavirus as infections have risen. Qatar on Thursday reported 407 new cases of infection with the virus. Daily case numbers have been steadily rising since a one-day December low of 117.
“These increases appear to be early signs of a potential second wave in Qatar,” the ministry said in a statement, referring to both rising infection numbers and increased numbers of hospital admissions.
Qatari markets should now operate at 50% capacity, weddings not held at home are banned – with guests for weddings at home limited to relatives only – and nurseries should operate at 30% capacity, the health ministry said on Twitter.
Outdoor gatherings in venues such as parks should be limited to 15 people, while indoor gatherings should be no more than five people. Boat rentals have been banned and the capacity of personal boats has been limited to 15 people.
Updated
Sweden plans to launch a digital coronavirus “vaccine passport” by summer, assuming there is an international standard in place for the document by then.
Swedish digitalisation minister Anders Ygeman told a news conference:
When Sweden and countries around us start to open up our societies again, vaccination certificates are likely to be required for travel and possibly for taking part in other activities.
Denmark said yesterday that it would launch a first version of a coronavirus vaccination passport by the end of February, Reuters reports.
Meanwhile, Sweden, which has garnered global attention for its soft-touch pandemic response, registered 89 new Covid-19 related deaths today, taking the total to above 12,000, Health Agency statistics showed.
Chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell said:
There is a high risk of a third wave if we are not resilient. It shows a need for the restrictions we have in place to reduce the spread of infection.
The government today extended its ban on alcohol sales after 8pm and told public sector employees to work from home until 31 May.
The country of 10 million inhabitants has a death rate per capita many times higher than that of its Nordic neighbours, but lower than most western European countries that opted for lockdowns.
Updated
Human trials of a Covid-19 vaccine combining a British shot from AstraZeneca and Oxford University with Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine will begin next week in Azerbaijan and some Middle Eastern countries, a Russian official quoted by Reuters said.
AstraZeneca said in December it would start clinical trials to test combining the two vaccines to see if this could boost the efficacy of the British shot. Both vaccines involve two doses, an initial shot and a booster, and use harmless adenoviruses as vehicles, or vectors, to carry genetic instructions into the body to prompt cells to produce antibodies. Sputnik, however, uses different viral vectors for its two shots.
A two-dose regimen of Sputnik V was 91.6% effective against symptomatic Covid-19, according to peer-reviewed late-stage trial results published in the Lancet international medical journal.
Russia is ready to offer a collaboration with Sputnik V to any producer that has a vaccine with efficacy less than 90%, Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s RDIF sovereign wealth fund, said. Pooled late-stage trial data showed AstraZeneca’s shot was about 70% effective.
“Sputnik was the first in the world to suggest that the two shots should be different to give a stronger and longer immune response, more mutation-proof,” Dmitriev said. “So what others are starting to do with this kind of trial is to follow our steps.”
Updated
WHO inspectors in Wuhan hold 'frank' talks over source of virus
World Health Organization inspectors had “very frank” discussions with Chinese scientists about the source of the pandemic, including theories it leaked from a laboratory, the head of the probe in Wuhan has told AFP.
The talks covered famous claims widely reported in global media, Peter Ben Embarek said in an interview a day after he and his WHO team visited the lab. While he did not identify specific theories, Ben Embarek described some of them as irrational and insisted the investigators would not waste time chasing the wildest claims.
The discussions were very frank ... We discussed ... a lot of the famous theories and so on, and what has been done to explain them.
Since emerging from a 14-day hotel quarantine last week, the WHO experts have visited a number of high-profile sites linked to the pandemic origins, including a seafood market where people were first found falling ill.
The trip yesterday to the Wuhan Institute of Virology was one of the highest-profile events on the agenda because of the controversial theory it was the source of the pandemic, AFP reports. Scientists at the laboratory conduct research on some of the world’s most dangerous diseases, including strains of bat coronaviruses similar to Covid-19.
Speculation emerged early in the pandemic that the virus could have accidentally leaked from the lab in Wuhan, although there was no evidence to back up that theory.
Ben Embarek said discussions at the lab were useful to understand the staff’s position “in regards to many of these statements and claims that everyone has seen and read about in the news”. He appeared to dismiss some of the theories, calling much of the speculation “excellent scenarios for good movies and series for the years to come”.
It comes as China’s foreign ministry said today it had lodged “stern representations” to the BBC over what it said was “fake news” coverage of Covid-19, and urged the broadcaster to publicly apologise, Reuters reports.
In a statement, a ministry spokesperson said that the BBC had recently “linked the pandemic to politics” and “rehashed theories about covering up by China”. However, the BBC said it stood by its “accurate and fair” reporting of events in China.
The statement was issued shortly after UK media regulator Ofcom announced it had revoked China Global Television Network’s (CGTN) licence to broadcast in the UK.
Updated
Catalonia loosens some restrictions as hospital admissions edge down
The Spanish region of Catalonia has removed some pandemic restrictions, allowing gyms to reopen and people to move outside their municipalities after infections and hospital admissions started to edge down, Reuters reports.
The average number of cases per 100,000 people in the region fell to 494 on Wednesday, down from 589 a week ago and a peak of over 620 in mid-January.
“We believe we are leaving behind the maximum peak of the third wave,” the Catalan health secretary general, Marc Ramentol, told a news conference. But he warned there were still serious threats from new virus variants, intense pressure on hospitals and a slow vaccination roll-out.
Starting on Monday for an initial 14-day period, bars and restaurants will be able to serve customers for one more hour during breakfast and lunch, while for the rest of the day they will still have to offer takeaway only.
A lockdown that stopped people from leaving their municipalities, except for work or health reasons, will be eased slightly. Gyms, which had been shut for a month, will be allowed to open at 30% capacity, and some first-year university courses will be done in-person.
Large shops and malls will remain closed while most non-essential small shops will only be allowed to open from Monday to Friday. A 10pm-6am curfew remains in place.
Updated
The Irish health minister, Stephen Donnelly, has responded to criticism that public health authorities in the country are being over cautious in not advocating the use of vitamin D.
In a radio interview with Newstalk he agreed that it was established that vitamin D boosts immune systems and would not do people harm, but said the country’s National Public Health Emergency Team was right to not act unless there was irrefutable evidence.
I do take a fair dose of multivitamins in the morning myself. NPHET’s view was quite sensible. It said, yeah, be healthy, take the supplements that work. They’re not saying that vitamin D doesn’t boost the immune system at all. They’re saying there isn’t evidence that suggests it is effective against the coronavirus. They want to be giving people the best possible advice based on evidence ... They’re not poo-pooing or dismissing vitamin D at all.
It comes after the respected biochemist Prof Luke O’Neill said last week:
The criticism always was there hasn’t been a double-blind, placebo controlled trial – but we’re in the middle of a pandemic for God sake. It’s a very safe product ... and it’s cheap as chips. The correlation studies are there, which isn’t ideal cause it’s not double-blind, but still they’re very compelling that vitamin D is a protector. We know exactly vitamin D really works for the immune system.
On Tuesday, it emerged that NPHET ruled there was insufficient high-quality evidence to support any change to existing recommendations, but that efforts should be made to increase awareness of existing guidance recommending 600iu per day for over 65’s.
It said that while 'circumstantial evidence' exists to suggest an association, to date there is insufficient high-quality evidence to support any change to existing recommendations.
— Fergal Bowers (@FergalBowers) February 2, 2021
This isn’t new but is perhaps more relevant now given dark days we are experiencing. All over 65’s advised to take 15 micrograms of Vitamin D each day. https://t.co/wTJky5BMW7
— Leo Varadkar (@LeoVaradkar) January 28, 2021
Updated
Taiwan will get a share of 1.3m Covid-19 vaccine shots produced by AstraZeneca from the Covax global vaccine programme, the government has said, Reuters reports.
Taiwan has kept the pandemic well under control thanks to early and effective prevention, with only 71 active cases, but it has not yet received any vaccines.
In December, Taiwan said it had agreed to buy almost 20m vaccine doses, including 10m from AstraZeneca and 4.76m doses from Covax, and that it was in talks with another company it did not identify.
Deliveries were initially expected from March, but the government has subsequently declined to commit to a date. In a statement, the Central Epidemic Command Centre said that of the 1.3m doses Covax has set aside for non-United Nations members, a proportion would go to Taiwan.
Taiwan is not a UN member due to China’s objections, which considers the democratic island Chinese territory with no right to the trappings of a state.
Updated
Production on the third Fantastic Beasts movie has been halted after a team member tested positive for Covid-19, Warner Bros has announced.
Filming had begun in September at Warner Bros Studios in Leavesden, outside London, after the pandemic delayed a March 2020 start, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
A Warner Bros spokesperson said in a statement:
A team member from Fantastic Beasts 3 has tested positive for Covid-19. The diagnosis was confirmed as a result of required and ongoing testing that all production employees receive, and the team member is currently in isolation. Out of an abundance of caution, Fantastic Beasts 3 paused production and will be back up in accordance with safety guidelines.
Updated
After-effects from the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine, such as chills, headache and fatigue, are more common among those who have previously had Covid itself, according to data released by the team behind “the Covid Symptom Study”.
The data was collected from those who had their first dose before 4 January 2021 and only relates to those who received the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine. In total the dataset covers 40,000 vaccine doses, with some participants having received two doses of the jab.
The results, collected by the team from users of the Zoe Covid Symptom Study app, found that 33% of people who have previously had Covid reported at least one such side effect within a week of receiving the jab (the figure covers effects that occurred at least once after the first or the second dose). For those who had not previously had Covid the figure was 19%.
Tim Spector, lead scientist on the Zoe Covid Symptom Study app and professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, said the findings were welcome.
This could be good news, as a larger response like this suggests that those getting a first dose after having had Covid are generating a stronger immune reaction and may get greater protection from just a single shot of the vaccine.
The findings chime with previous discovery that after-effects from various Covid vaccines appear to be stronger after the second dose than the first, as flagged by the US Food and Drug Administration.
The Covid Symptom Study data also suggests this, with 14% of people reporting at least one after-effect within a week of their first dose compared with 22% after their second dose. Again this is likely to be because the body’s immune system responds more forcefully when exposed to the same antigens for a second time.
Updated
Covid restrictions in Germany could be lifted before spring, as case numbers continue to edge downwards, the health minister, Jens Spahn, has suggested.
Spahn said the goal for Germany remained “to prevent the health system from being overburdened - and not to avoid every infection”.
We can’t stay in this hard lockdown all winter. We would not tolerate that well as a society ... To get it down to zero infections and keep it that way comes at a disproportionate cost in other areas of life.
Germany went into a partial lockdown in November, closing bars, restaurants and cultural and sporting facilities. Schools and non-essential shops were added to the list in mid-December, with rules on mask-wearing and working from home tightened in January amid concerns over new virus variants, AFP reports.
The number of new infections and patients in intensive care has been falling steadily since the start of the year, a trend Spahn called “encouraging”.
But the Robert Koch Institute health body reported 14,211 new cases and 786 deaths today and an incidence rate of 81 - still well above the target of 50 that German politicians have set as a yardstick for reopening.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and the leaders of Germany’s 16 states will meet on Wednesday to decide whether to extend restrictions after they expire on 14 February.
Updated
North Korea has requested Covid-19 vaccines and is expected to receive nearly 2m doses, according to the Gavi vaccine alliance, part of the WHO-backed Covax programme, although the isolated country has insisted it is virus-free, AFP reports.
It is the first official confirmation that the North has asked for international help, with the country’s medical infrastructure seen as woefully inadequate for dealing with any large-scale outbreak.
The Covax scheme, co-led by the Gavi alliance, will distribute 1.99m doses to the North, according to Covax’s interim distribution report released this week. All countries receiving interim allocations of vaccines “have submitted requests for vaccines”, a Gavi spokesman said.
The allocations cited in the report “reflect latest estimates of supply and take into account country readiness and regulatory approvals,” he added. According to the report, the North is to receive the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab produced by the Serum Institute of India.
Pyongyang closed its borders in late January last year – the first country in the world to do so – in a move to protect itself against the coronavirus.
Updated
We have more information on the fire at a Ukrainian hospital which tore through the intensive care unit of an infectious diseases hospital that was treating coronavirus patients, with four people now confirmed to have died in the blaze, police have said.
Three of the victims had been diagnosed with coronavirus and were on ventilators, according to the regional governor quoted by the Interfax-Ukraine news agency. “The fire killed four people, including a medical worker,” regional police said in a statement.
AFP reports that the fire broke out just before midnight on Wednesday on the ground floor of the five-storey building in the south-western city of Zaporizhzhya.
It was the latest in a spate of deadly fires in Ukraine, which are not uncommon in the ex-Soviet republic due to poor compliance with safety regulations and ageing infrastructure.
Two more patients suffered burns and poisoning from inhaling fumes, while six were rescued unharmed.
President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed his “sincere condolences” to the families of the victims and sent the health minister, Maksym Stepanov, to the scene, the presidency said in a statement.
Saddened to hear of the tragic fire at the infectious diseases hospital in Zaporozhye, caring for #COVID19 patients. My deepest condolences to those who have lost loved ones. We stand in solidarity with 🇺🇦 & @MoH_Ukraine, and wish a speedy recovery to the injured.
— Hans Kluge (@hans_kluge) February 4, 2021
This is Mattha Busby taking over from my colleague Alexandra Topping. Do get in touch on Twitter or via email on mattha.busby.freelance@guardian.co.uk with any tips or thoughts.
Updated
More than 50% of cases that occurred on the Diamond Princess cruise ship early in the pandemic last year were transmitted by aerosol - either breathed out or spoken, research by the US National Academy of Sciences has found.
More than 600 passengers fell ill with coronavirus on the cruise ship in Japan last February.
Experts are urging health organisations to put a greater emphasis on measures that can reduce the spread of airborne transmission.
Study: international travel biggest factor in death rate
Early restrictions on international travel might have made a difference in the spread of pandemic in western Europe, including the UK, a new study has found.
Restrictions on international travel had the greatest impact on death rates, according to a study from the University of Aberdeen.
It compared the 37 countries most severely affected by the first wave of the pandemic and looked into a range of factors that could have affected transmission including international arrivals, population density, the percentage of people living in urban areas, age, average body mass index and smoking prevalence.
They found a million international arrivals was associated with a 3.4% increase in Covid-19 deaths during the first wave of the pandemic.
One of the study’s authors Tiberiu Pana, said:
Our assessment of available data indicates that very early restrictions on international travel might have made a difference in the spread of pandemic in western Europe, including the UK.
These findings are particularly important as the world looks to control future waves and strains of the Covid-19 pandemic and prevent related deaths.
It comes as the UK government faces criticism for delays in implementing plans to quarantine international arrivals.
The head of one of the UK’s biggest airport hotel chains, Best Western, said his company had been “kept in the dark” over the government’s plan to quarantine international arrivals.
The chief executive, Rob Paterson, said the chain had made multiple offers to help with the isolation plans, first announced by ministers in mid-January, but “simply haven’t heard anything”.
He said:
Other than very broad information about what timings they’re thinking about and who is handling it we haven’t had any discussions at all.
We have connections in Singapore and Australia and New Zealand who are doing this, that we could learn from and easily get on the phone and offer their support. We’re just surprised that we haven’t heard anything.”
Updated
Royal Dutch Shell’s profit last year dropped to its lowest in at least two decades as the coronavirus pandemic hit energy demand worldwide though the company’s retail network and trading business helped cushion the blow, Reuters reports.
The Anglo-Dutch oil major’s annual profit slumped 71% to $4.8bn as its oil and gas production and profits from refining crude into fuels dropped sharply.
In a sign of confidence, however, Shell said it planned to raise its dividend in the first quarter of 2021, which would be the second slight increase since its slashed its payout by two-thirds at the start of last year due to the pandemic.
Analysts said that while Shell missed forecasts for both its fourth-quarter profit and cash flow, the results overall were not as bad as feared, especially after its rival British BP posted a loss of $5.7bn earlier this week.
Updated
Three intensive care patients and a ward doctor died in a fire in a south-eastern Ukrainian hospital treating coronavirus cases, a regional governor said on Thursday.
Reuters reports: “Oleksander Starukh said the fire broke out overnight on the first floor of the hospital in Zaporizhzhya where patients were on ventilators. He said eight other patients in the unit were evacuated.”
The prime minister, Denys Shmygal, said an oxygen leak could have caused the fire.
Ukraine has registered more than 1.2 million coronavirus cases with 23,229 deaths.
Updated
A British man in his 70s has died of Covid-19 in Taiwan – the ninth recorded fatality there since the pandemic began, and the first of a foreign national, reports my colleague Helen Davidson in Taipei.
Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said on Thursday the man had traveled to Taiwan from the UK on 18 December to visit family. He began showing symptoms while in quarantine, the minister for health and welfare, Chen Shih-chung, said.
On 29 December he was admitted to hospital and tested positive on 31 December. As his condition deteriorated he was intubated and moved to the intensive care unit, but died yesterday.
The CECC’s adviser, Chang Shan-chwen, said the man’s illness was compounded by pre-existing cardiovascular disease.
Taiwan has recorded 919 cases of Covid-19, 805 of which were overseas arrivals. Nine people have died, and 71 are currently in hospital. Authorities are responding to a cluster of cases around a hospital in Taoyuan, currently totalling 19.
Updated
New vaccination centres are to open this month in the US in two urban California communities especially hard hit by the coronavirus, as state and federal officials try to tackle racial and economic disparities hindering US immunisation efforts.
Reuters reports:
Joint plans to launch the two sites on 16 February at the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum in Oakland and the California State University campus in east Los Angeles, were detailed separately on Wednesday by Governor Gavin Newsom and the Biden administration’s Covid-19 response coordinator, Jeff Zients.
The two sites, which the state’s Department of Health said will be capable of administering several thousand shots per day each, mark the first of more than 100 such vaccination centers expected to be established in communities of color across the United States, according to Newsom.
Newsom told reporters outside the Oakland coliseum:
Equity is the call of this moment. The reason this site was chosen was the framework of making sure that communities that are often left behind are not left behind.
Black and Hispanic populations, overly represented among the working poor and accounting for a large share of high-risk jobs in food service, factories, warehouses and healthcare, have been ravaged by the pandemic.
They also suffer disproportionately from chronic underlying health conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease, that put them at higher risk of severe illness if infected by the coronavirus.
Their risk of exposure, and the risk of transmitting the virus to others, is further amplified by rampant overcrowded housing in the greater Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay areas, where multi-generational households frequently live in cramped conditions.
Public health experts have pointed to extreme overcrowding in Los Angeles housing as a primary factor driving the year-end wave of infections that turned Southern California into a US epicentre of the pandemic.
Updated
German military doctors fly to Portugal to help ease Covid pressure
German military doctors have flown into Portugal in a bid to to ease pressure on the European country.
German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported that on Wednesday, a team of 26 doctors and nurses boarded a Luftwaffe Airbus A400M plane, flying from Wunstorf, in northern Germany, headed for a civilian hospital in Lisbon.
The medical staff will spend three weeks helping treat critically ill Covid-19 patients, after which they will be relieved by another team, DW reported.
Portugal currently has one of Europe’s highest infection rates – recording more than 5,000 deaths in January, almost half the country’s number of deaths during the entire pandemic.
Joao Colaco, an ICU doctor at Hospital da Luz in Lisbon, told Sky News that hospitals and ICUs across the country were full. He said:
A lot of the patients are very sick – some of them are young. The ones that survive will need help for weeks, months, even years.
Updated
Zahawi told Sky News that the UK government is looking to “gradually re-open the economy” in the first week of March.
He said a “roadmap” for opening schools would be discussed by parliament on 22 February.
The top-four groups of most vulnerable people in the UK would have received a first dose of the vaccine by mid-February, meaning that the first week of March would be the point when “vaccine protection really kicks in” - which would be the correct time to first open schools, then begin a gradual reopening of the economy.
Any reopening would be conditional on “good data”, he added.
Zahawi said more than 10,000 care homes across the UK had been offered a coronavirus vaccine to all residents who are eligible.
“We have offered it to each and every care home in the UK by last weekend.”
— Sky News (@SkyNews) February 4, 2021
Vaccines Minister @nadhimzahawi explains how the government’s jab rollout plan for care homes works.
Get live #COVID19 updates: https://t.co/OWpcFFOPfQ pic.twitter.com/F7QDAqXXSC
Speaking on Sky News, UK vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi has sought to reassure UK residents who have had just one dose of the Pfizer COVID vaccination - after some studies suggested it may be less efficient against new variants.
He said the UK’s vaccines regulator, the MHRA, and all the UK’s chief medical officers had looked “thoroughly” at all the data and that at 15 -21 days, the single first dose gave “very high protection”.
Norway has become the latest European country to restrict use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, Reuters reports. The country will not be offered to individuals over the age of 65, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI) has said.
So far, some 135,000 individuals in Norway have received their first dose against the disease and some 35,000 have received their second shot, from vaccines made by Moderna and from a partnership between Pfizer and BioNTech, the agency said.
The FHI said there had been few participants above the age of 65 in the trial conducted by AstraZeneca, meaning there was a lack of documentation as to the effect of the vaccine on older age groups.
The Nordic country has 5.4 million inhabitants.
UK minister: 4,000 Covid-19 variants around the world
There are around 4,000 variants of the virus that causes Covid-19 around the world now so all vaccine manufacturers including Pfizer Inc and AstraZeneca Plc are trying to improve their vaccines, a British minister said.
Vaccine deployment minister Nadhim Zahawi told Sky:
It’s very unlikely that the current vaccine won’t be effective on the variants whether in Kent or other variants especially when it comes to severe illness and hospitalisation.
All manufacturers, Pfizer-Biontech, Moderna, Oxford-AstraZeneca and others are looking at how they can improve their vaccine to make sure that we are ready for any variant - there are about 4,000 variants around the world of Covid now.
Updated
Covid has totally changed the way many people work, and a new UK study suggests that a showdown between employees and employers may be coming when things return to “normal”.
The Press Association reports:
Workers who have juggled home working with looking after children in the past year strongly favour carrying on with hybrid working arrangements, said a report.
A survey of 1,000 parents found that more than two out of five feared losing their jobs when the coronavirus crisis eases.
Worries include the end of furlough schemes, a belief that organisations will cut jobs, and managers demanding greater attendance in offices and other workplaces, the report found.
Nursery provider Bright Horizons said half of those it surveyed complained that employers were unsympathetic or did not offer practical help with childcare needs.
Employers are approaching a “moment of truth” in their relationships with staff as the vaccine rollout continues, and have an opportunity to reassure workers and retain their loyalty, said the report.
Almost one in five of those surveyed said they wanted to work entirely from home in the future, while most respondents favoured a mixture of home and office work.
Many workers still do not feel confident about discussing family issues with their employers despite the huge changes over the past year, with fewer than three in five saying their organisation cares about their work-life balance, said the report.
[...]
A separate survey of almost 700 adults suggested most do not want to go back to working in an office full time, with nearly three-quarters saying they want to split their time between home and office working.
The Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) said its study indicated that more people felt working from home was better for their health and wellbeing, despite some feeling less connected to colleagues, taking less exercise and developing musculoskeletal problems.
This is Alexandra Topping taking over from Helen Sullivan. If you’d like to get in touch and tell us what is happening where you are, I’m on alexandra.topping@theguardian.com and I’m @lexytopping on Twitter. My DMs are open.
Updated
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, and over to my colleagues in London for the latest.
To all the women out there – try not to talk too much in meetings today:
Summary
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
- Canada is set to receive a significant haul of vaccines over the next months through a platform designed to maximise supply to poor countries, according to a new forecast, despite reserving the most doses-per-person in the world through direct deals with pharmaceutical companies. The Globe and Mail reports that Canada will be the only G7 country worldwide to accept vaccines from the scheme.
- Oxford trial to test efficacy of mix of Covid vaccines for individuals. Volunteers are being sought for a world-first trial to establish the efficacy of giving people a first dose of one vaccine and a second dose of a different vaccine. The trial, which is being run by Oxford University and is funded by the government’s vaccine taskforce, has been described by ministers as “hugely important”.
- Care homes still breaking Covid rules despite fatal outbreaks, inspectors say. Care homes in England operated by profitable chains have been branded unsafe by inspectors, who found serious failures in efforts to control the spread of coronavirus in its latest wave.
- US deaths pass 450,000. The United States – the worst-affected country worldwide in terms of both the number of coronavirus cases and the number of people who have died in the pandemic, has passed a death toll of 450,000, according to Johns Hopkins Universityas it approaches a staggering half a million lives lost.The Biden administration has warned that the US toll could pass 600,000 before the virus is under control.
- Australia puts 500 tennis players, staff into coronavirus isolation. More than 500 tennis players and officials were ordered into isolation in the Australian city of Melbourne on Thursday as authorities reintroduced coronavirus restrictions after a worker at a quarantine hotel tested positive for the virus.
- New Zealand identifies new community case. A new community case of Covid-19 has been identified in New Zealand: a close contact of two recent cases, who has been self-isolating.The new case is the mother of the toddler (known as Person C) who tested positive for Covid-19 after quarantining at the Pullman Hotel in Auckland. Person B, her partner, also tested positive.
- Mexican president in ‘excellent health’ after Covid diagnosis. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is in “excellent” health and is virtually free of Covid-19 symptoms, Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell said on Wednesday. Lopez Obrador has been recovering from the virus since announcing on 20 January he had tested positive for Covid-19.
- Brazil aims to buy 30 mn Sputnik V, Covaxin shots. The Brazilian government announced Wednesday it was negotiating the purchase of 30 million coronavirus vaccine doses from Russia and India, after regulators made it easier for the treatments to win emergency-use authorisations.
- US CDC says schools can reopen even if teachers have not had Covid vaccine. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asserted on Wednesday that US schools can safely reopen even if teachers have not received the coronavirus vaccine, while the top US infections expert supported the idea of wearing two face masks.
- One Pfizer/BioNTech jab gives ‘90% immunity’ from Covid after 21 days. One dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine gives people about 90% protection from Covid by 21 days, according to an analysis of Israel’s mass vaccination programme.
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South Korea PM orders revamp ofsocial distancing rules. South Korean Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun on Thursday ordered a revamp of social distancing guidelines in a bid to win greater public support for efforts to stop local transmission of the new coronavirus.
- UK plans announcement on quarantine for travellers. Britain’s health minister will make an announcement on further plans to order hotel quarantine for some travellers on Thursday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.
Brazil planning to buy 30m vaccines from Russia and India
In case you missed this earlier:
The Brazilian government announced Wednesday it was negotiating the purchase of 30 million coronavirus vaccine doses from Russia and India, after regulators made it easier for the treatments to win emergency-use authorisations, AFP reports.
Until now, only the AstraZeneca/Oxford shot and China’s CoronaVac have been permitted in Brazil, the second-hardest-hit country after the US, with more than 226,000 deaths from Covid-19.
Brazil’s health surveillance agency said it would no longer require final Phase 3 trials to be carried out in Brazil, clearing the way for the emergency authorisation of the vaccinations.
The health ministry said it is meeting from representatives from Russia and India on Friday to finalise details of a deal, which would see some 18 million doses delivered this month, and 12 million more in March.
The move comes after The Lancet medical journal this week published results showing Sputnik V - named after the Soviet-era satellite - to be safe and 91.6 percent effective, allaying concerns over transparency.
Brazil began vaccinations 17 January, starting with medical workers, the indigenous population and the elderly.
With 212 million inhabitants, Brazil has suffered an average of 1,062 deaths and 50,000 cases per day in the past week.
Care homes in England still breaking Covid rules despite fatal outbreaks, inspectors say
Care homes in England operated by profitable chains have been branded unsafe by inspectors, who found serious failures in efforts to control the spread of coronavirus in its latest wave.
In the last month 40% of care homes inspected by the Care Quality Commission in England were judged to be inadequate or in need of improvement. Several handling fatal coronavirus outbreaks were revealed to have broken laws meant to keep residents safe.
Some of the worst failings uncovered in reports filed in the last month include CCTV showing PPE being used wrongly on 63 occasions in one home, infected residents mixing in communal areas with Covid-free residents, chronic staff shortages, and a care home manager continuing to work after showing Covid symptoms:
Updated
UK plans announcement on quarantine for travellers
Britain’s health minister will make an announcement on further plans to order hotel quarantine for some travellers on Thursday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.
Reuters: Last month Johnson said arrivals from high-risk nations would have to quarantine for 10 days in government-provided accommodation to stop the spread of new variants of the virus, but the measure has not yet been introduced.
Updated
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 14,211 to 2,252,001, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed on Thursday.
The reported death toll rose by 786 to 59,742, the tally showed.
Australian Open draw delayed but TA ‘absolutely confident’ grand slam will go ahead
The Australian Open will go ahead as scheduled, starting on Monday at Melbourne Park, despite the detection of a Covid-19 case in a hotel quarantine worker at a facility linked to the tennis.
“We’re absolutely confident the Australian Open will go ahead,” Tennis Australia CEO Craig Tiley said on Thursday afternoon.
“We will be starting on Monday and we have no intention of changing times.”
But players eager to know who they will face in the opening round of the first grand slam of the year will be kept waiting, with the draw put back from Thursday to Friday.
Around 500 players and support staff were forced into isolation after the infected person – a 26-year-old man working at one of the hotels containing some of the sizeable tennis cohort visiting Melbourne – returned a positive test result on Wednesday.
Testing began in earnest on Thursday morning and those affected will remain in isolation until they return a negative test. As a result, Thursday’s play in the six warm-up tournaments being contested at Melbourne Park was postponed.
Depending on test results, those events should resume on Friday, with a busy day of tennis expected as organisers play catch up:
Oxford University announced on Thursday it will launch a medical trial alternating doses of Covid-19 vaccines created by different manufacturers, the first study of its kind, AFP reports.
The trial will show whether different Covid doses - those created by the Astrazeneca and Pfizer/BioNTech pharmaceutical companies - can be used interchangeably to allow greater flexibility in pressured vaccine delivery schedules.
The British government’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Jonathan Van-Tam, said the trial would offer “greater insight” into the use of vaccines against Covid.
“Given the inevitable challenges of immunising large numbers of the population against Covid-19 and potential global supply constraints, there are definite advantages to having data that could support a more flexible immunisation programme,” Van-Tam said.
“It is also even possible that by combining vaccines, the immune response could be enhanced giving even higher antibody levels that last longer,” he added.
The 13-month study will compare different combinations of prime and booster doses of the Astrazeneca and Pfizer vaccines at intervals of four and 12 weeks
Australia will buy 10 million additional doses of the Covid-19 vaccine jointly developed by U.S. drugmaker Pfizer Inc and Germany’s BioNTech , Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Thursday.
“These additional vaccines have been secured consistent with our requirements,” Morrison told reporters in Canberra.
Australia last week approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for use for people aged 16 years and older, and expects to begin inoculation at 80,000 doses per week by the end of February.
Updated
South Korea PM orders revamp ofsocial distancing rules
South Korean Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun on Thursday ordered a revamp of social distancing guidelines in a bid to win greater public support for efforts to stop local transmission of the new coronavirus, Reuters reports.
The country’s five-tier social distancing system has faced a public backlash for imposing unfair restrictions and curfews on specific businesses, including a ban on indoor restaurant dining after 9 pm.
“Rather than introduce the guidelines unilaterally, we should make the virus prevention rules along with the public,” Chung told an intra-agency meeting on Thursday.
Separately, health authorities warned on Thursday that a large fourth wave of infections caused by the more transmissible British and South African coronavirus variants cannot be ruled out. There have been 39 confirmed cases of those variants.
While South Korea had initial success in containing the virus without drastic lockdowns, an incremental approach to social distancing and more rigid guidelines were criticised for leaving it scrambling to contain a third wave of transmissions.
At the same time, however, hundreds of restaurant and cafe owners across the country complained about the impact of the bans on their businesses. Gym owners hurt by restrictions reopened in protest against strict social distancing rules, ahead of the recent lifting of the ban.
South Korea has one of the world’s highest proportion of self-employed people, about 25% of the job market, making it particularly vulnerable to downturns.
Authorities on Sunday extended by two weeks a requirement to observe social distancing, urging vigilance ahead of the Lunar New Year break, when tens of millions of Koreans usually travel across the country. The holiday begins on 11 February.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency reported 7 new deaths and 451 new cases by Wednesday, for a total of 1,448 deaths and 79,762 cases overall.
One Pfizer/BioNTech jab gives '90% immunity' from Covid after 21 days
One dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine gives people about 90% protection from Covid by 21 days, according to an analysis of Israel’s mass vaccination programme.
The data analysis, carried out by researchers from the University of East Anglia with UK government funding, runs counter to an earlier study from Israel which suggested that one dose may not give adequate protection.
Prof Nachman Ash, in charge of the Israeli vaccination effort, said last month that a single dose appeared “less effective than we had thought”, and was also lower than Pfizer had suggested. Pfizer had said efficacy was 52% after a single dose.
But Prof Paul Hunter and Dr Julii Brainard say their reanalysis of the data, which has not been peer-reviewed, shows high protection just before the second dose was given at 21 days. However, they warn that the risk of infection doubled in the first eight days after vaccination – possibly because people became less cautious:
Mexico reported a near-record 1,707 confirmed coronavirus deaths Wednesday, as the country runs out of vaccines, AP reports.
The Health Department reported Mexico’s Covid-19 deaths now total 161,240, and confirmed infections rose by 12,153 to nearly 1.89 million. Estimates based on excess-death statistics suggest the real death toll is over 195,000.
Mexico approved Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine Tuesday, but has not yet signed a purchase contract and does not have a firm date for its first delivery. The government had hoped to get 400,000 doses by the end of February.
Mexico has received about 766,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and has administered about 686,000 shots, with much of the remainder set aside for second doses. The next Pfizer shipment is not expected until mid-February.
Meanwhile, the government website set up to register people for vaccines when they do arrive was overwhelmed and inoperable for a second straight day.
Authorities have said they are still working on getting enough server capacity to handle the number of people attempting to register.
Australian Open expected to go ahead despite Covid outbreak
In Australia, the premier of the state of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, does not expect a fresh outbreak from hotel quarantine to affect the Australian Open as authorities investigate how a worker employed at a site designated for tennis players and staff contracted Covid-19.
Victoria’s premier announced a slight tightening of restrictions at a snap press conference late on Wednesday night after revealing that the man had tested positive.
The positive case, in a 26-year-old from Noble Park in Melbourne’s south-east, means 600 Grand Hyatt hotel workers have been directed to isolate and get tested, as have 520 Australian Open players and staff who completed quarantine at the facility and are considered casual contacts.
Tennis Australia cancelled warm-up games at Melbourne Park on Thursday but the tennis tournament is still scheduled to begin on 8 February, with up to 30,000 fans allowed into the precinct each day.
Asked on Thursday morning if the event might be cancelled, the deputy chief health officer, Prof Allen Cheng, said it was “unlikely”.
“We have asked for testing of all the tennis players and other people that have been in the hotel,” Cheng said. “I think we need to wait for those results to come back.”
Andrews said: “We all understand that there’s no guarantees in any of this. But at this stage the tournament shouldn’t be impacted”:
Here is the full story on the local Covid case reported in New Zealand:
As always, you can find me on Twitter @helenrsullivan – questions, comments, news tips welcome.
US CDC says schools can reopen even if teachers have not had Covid vaccine
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) asserted on Wednesday that US schools can safely reopen even if teachers have not received the coronavirus vaccine, while the top US infections expert supported the idea of wearing two face masks.
As some teachers’ unions balk at resuming in-person instruction before teachers are inoculated, the CDC director, Rochelle Walensky, said: “Vaccination of teachers is not a prerequisite for safe reopening of schools.”
And Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious diseases official said there is “no harm” if people want to “double mask” for added protection against Covid-19:
Britain has given a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine to more than 10 million people, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced, as he praised NHS staff for what he described as the “most colossal effort in the history of our health service”:
Brazil aims to buy 30m Sputnik V, Covaxin shots
The Brazilian government announced Wednesday it was negotiating the purchase of 30 million coronavirus vaccine doses from Russia and India, after regulators made it easier for the treatments to win emergency-use authorisations, AFP reports.
Until now, only the AstraZeneca/Oxford shot and China’s CoronaVac have been permitted in Brazil, the second-hardest-hit country after the US, with more than 226,000 deaths from Covid-19.
Brazil’s health surveillance agency said it would no longer require final Phase 3 trials to be carried out in Brazil, clearing the way for the emergency authorisation of the vaccinations.
The health ministry said it is meeting from representatives from Russia and India on Friday to finalise details of a deal, which would see some 18 million doses delivered this month, and 12 million more in March.
The move comes after The Lancet medical journal this week published results showing Sputnik V - named after the Soviet-era satellite - to be safe and 91.6 percent effective, allaying concerns over transparency.
Brazil began vaccinations 17 January, starting with medical workers, the indigenous population and the elderly.
With 212 million inhabitants, Brazil has suffered an average of 1,062 deaths and 50,000 cases per day in the past week.
Updated
Mexican president in 'excellent health' after Covid diagnosis
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is in “excellent” health and is virtually free of Covid-19 symptoms, Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell said on Wednesday.
Lopez Obrador has been recovering from the virus since announcing on 20 January he had tested positive for Covid-19.
New Zealand identifies new community case
A new community case of Covid-19 has been identified in New Zealand: a close contact of two recent cases, who has been self-isolating.
The new case is the mother of the toddler (known as Person C) who tested positive for Covid-19 after quarantining at the Pullman Hotel in Auckland. Person B, her partner, also tested positive.
Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said that he had a “high degree of confidence” that the woman had been isolating as a result of confirmed cases in her family and would not have transmitted the virus. “This was a very close household contact for Person B and C. … we are not expecting any other positive results.”
Routine testing of the woman was done on two consecutive days by mobile testing unit going to her house. One carried out on 2 February returned positive.
Bloomfield said the contradictory results were “a good example of the variable nature” of testing and praised the health services for persevering.
The woman will be moved to a quarantine facility to see out the remainder of her illness.
“This is just a good example of our response – our isolation and testing follow-up system – working,” said Bloomfield.
Testing of other close contacts of those cases has come back negative.
Six more cases of coronavirus have been identified in managed isolation and quarantine since Wednesday’s briefing: three caught on day 0, two on day 3, and one on day 8.
An investigation into how transmission occurred at the Pullman Hotel investigation is yet to report back.
On Wednesday, the chief executive of Gavi, one of the organisations that is helping to administer Covax, was asked if it was helpful that many wealthy countries did not opt to take vaccines from the first batch that will be distributed. “Of course it helps,” Seth Berkley, Gavi CEO, said. “That means there are more doses available for others.”
The supply through Covax – which is not final and subject to manufacturing and logistical delays – represents a boost to the six million doses Canada was already expecting from Pfizer and Moderna before the end of March.
Despite reserving large supplies, Canada has struggled to get its vaccination program off the ground. Unlike other rich countries, it does not have fully developed domestic production capacity and is reliant on shipments from abroad.
The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has said the country will vaccinate its population by September, but has so far managed to reach just 2.5% of people, raising doubts it will reach its target before 2022.
“Compared to other OECD countries, Canada is way down to the bottom of the pack in terms of vaccinations per hundred thousand,” said Ronald Labonté, former Canada research chair in globalisation and health equity at the University of Ottawa.
“Would I criticise Canada for having engaged in vaccine nationalism at the outset? Yes, but I would also do that with all of the countries that have since followed suit … We’ve moved from vaccine nationalism to a vaccine race.”
Research released last week predicted that most low-income countries would not have sufficient vaccine supplies until at least 2024, by which time most rich and middle-income countries may have achieved close to full vaccination.
The delay will slow the global economic recovery from the crisis and increase the chance of new variants emerging that overcome immunity induced by vaccines:
The Guardian’s Michael Safi and Leyland Cecco:
More on Canada’s vaccine supply now, from the Guardian’s Michael Safi and Leyland Cecco:
Global health authorities have criticised countries for making private deals that they say push up vaccine prices and represent a form of “double-dipping” – taking supplies from Covax while at the same time signing private deals that make it harder for the facility to secure doses that would be shared equitably.
Other countries that have reserved significant supplies through side deals with pharmaceutical companies, including Australia, Israel and the UK, did not elect to receive or were not allocated any vaccine from the first batch of allocations announced on Wednesday.
Canada opted to receive 1,903,200 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine through Covax, representing about 5% of its population – above the average that other countries will receive.
Canada and UK among countries with most vaccine doses ordered per personRead more
Some of the vaccine doses that Canada has reserved in private deals come from candidates that are still in development, and may not be approved. But taking into account just those that have released phase 3 results, Canada still has enough reserved to vaccinate its population at least four times over.
Chile and New Zealand, who have also made extensive private deals, were also both scheduled to receive enough vaccine through Covax over the next months to cover more than 5% of their people, the data showed.
In contrast, many of the countries that were allocated Covid-19 vaccine doses on Wednesday’s list have made no direct supply deals and have no other source of vaccinations but Covax:
Oxford trial to test efficacy of mix of Covid vaccines for individuals
Volunteers are being sought for a world-first trial to establish the efficacy of giving people a first dose of one vaccine and a second dose of a different vaccine.
The trial, which is being run by Oxford University and is funded by the government’s vaccine taskforce, has been described by ministers as “hugely important”.
It will recruit 820 people over the age of 50 who have not yet had a vaccine, to receive a first dose of either the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine or the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Some people will then get an alternative vaccine at a second appointment within 12 weeks, and others will get the same vaccine again.
Public Health England’s Green Book on vaccinations already tells the NHS that in exceptional circumstances if people arrive for their second dose and the vaccine they originally had is not available, they can be given a different one:
US deaths pass 450,000
The United States – the worst-affected country worldwide in terms of both the number of coronavirus cases and the number of people who have died in the pandemic, has passed a death toll of 450,000, according to Johns Hopkins University as it approaches a staggering half a million lives lost.
The Biden administration has warned that the US toll could pass 600,000 before the virus is under control.
Is Canada entitled to Covax shots?
Canada is entitled to receive shots under the Covax scheme, in which advance purchases by wealthy nations are used to underwrite vaccine development and subsidise doses for poorer countries. It has contributed about $345m, half of which was to pay for its own doses.
But Global health authorities have criticised countries for making private deals – of which Canada has made enough to secure 9.6 doses per person – that they say push up vaccine prices and represent a form of “double-dipping” – taking supplies from Covax while at the same time signing private deals that make it harder for the facility to secure doses that would be shared equitably.
Other countries that have reserved significant supplies through side deals with pharmaceutical companies, including Australia, Israel and the UK, did not elect to receive or were not allocated any vaccine from the first batch of allocations announced on Wednesday.
More from this report by the Guardian’s Michael Safi and Leyland Cecco:
Canada to receive significant doses from Covax fund despite already securing 9.6 doses per person
Canada is set to receive a significant haul of vaccines over the next months through a platform designed to maximise supply to poor countries, according to a new forecast, despite reserving the most doses-per-person in the world through direct deals with pharmaceutical companies.
Chile and New Zealand, which have also made controversial side deals to secure their own vaccine supplies, will also receive above-average numbers of doses, according to the interim allocation schedule released by Covax on Wednesday.
Covax, a mechanism to distribute Covid-19 doses fairly around the world, aims to deliver about 330m doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines to 145 countries by June, volumes that it says will be enough to cover an average of 3.3% of each country’s population.
Ottawa has led the world in direct deals with pharmaceutical companies to secure its own supply, reserving enough to cover approximately 9.6 doses per person, according to Guardian analysis.
The Guardian’s Michael Safi and Leyland Cecco report:
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coronavirus coverage with me, Helen Sullivan.
As always, you can find me on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
Canada is set to receive a significant haul of vaccines over the next months through a platform designed to maximise supply to poor countries, according to a new forecast, despite reserving the most doses-per-person in the world through direct deals with pharmaceutical companies.
The Globe and Mail reports that Canada will be the only G7 country worldwide to accept vaccines from the scheme.
My colleagues Michael Safi and Leyland Cecco report that Canada is entitled to receive shots under the Covax scheme, in which advance purchases by wealthy nations are used to underwrite vaccine development and subsidise doses for poorer countries.
But Ottawa has also led the world in direct deals with pharmaceutical companies to secure its own supply, reserving enough to cover approximately 9.6 doses per person, according to Guardian analysis.
More on this shortly. For now, here are the other key recent developments:
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Regulators in Belgium are the the latest in Europe to advise against the administration of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine to older people due a lack of data about its efficacy.
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Switzerland has withheld approval for the Oxford/AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine, its drugs regulator said today.
- Leaders in Europe are recklessly endangering their own public’s health by using self-serving point-scoring to attack Britain’s coronavirus vaccine rollout, UK health experts have warned. “The views coming out from politicians in Europe are in striking contrast to the scientific view reached by the European regulator,” a former medicines regulator chief said.
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Greece’s new coronavirus infections rose by more than 1,000 for a second consecutive day, with health authorities adding 1,151 to the country’s tally after a month of the daily figure remaining in the triple digits.
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Vets in Germany have trained sniffer dogs to detect the coronavirus in human saliva samples with 94% accuracy.
- The Covax facility scheme aims to distribute at least 330m doses in the first half of 2021, its co-leaders announced on Wednesday. It has also struck a deal with the Serum Institute of India for up to 1.1bn doses of AstraZeneca and Novavax’s vaccines for $3 per dose for low- and middle-income countries.
- AstraZeneca and Oxford University are aiming to develop a next-generation vaccine to tackle new variants as early as by the autumn, a senior executive at the manufacturer has told Reuters.
