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Brazil reported 49,863 additional confirmed cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, and 698 new deaths from Covid-19, the health ministry said on Wednesday. The country has now registered 6,436,650 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 174,515, according to ministry data. Brazil has the world’s second deadliest outbreak behind only the United States.
Prince Harry has suggested that the coronavirus pandemic is a rebuke from nature as he called for more action to tackle climate change.
During a conversation about the environment with the chief executive of a streaming platform for climate documentaries, he said:
Somebody said to me at the beginning of the pandemic, it’s almost as though Mother Nature has sent us to our rooms for bad behaviour, to really take a moment and think about what we’ve done.
It’s certainly reminded me about how interconnected we all are, not just as people but through nature. We take so much from her and we rarely give a lot back.
Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have spoken out on issues such as race and the environment since stepping down from their roles as working members of the royal family at the end of March and moving to California.
The prince, who has been criticised in the past for his use of private jets, urged people to imagine being a raindrop in order to help repair the Earth.
Every single raindrop that falls from the sky relieves the parched ground. What if every one of us was a raindrop? If every single one of us cared? We do, because we have to, because at the end of the day nature is our life source.
Since the start of the pandemic, scientists have stepped up warnings that deforestation, ecosystem destruction and illegal trade in wildlife can increase the risk of disease transmission from animals to people, and have urged tighter controls.
Italians will not be able to attend midnight mass or move between regions over the Christmas period, a top health ministry official said on Wednesday, as the country battles high coronavirus infection rates and deaths.
Italy has been reporting more daily Covid-19 fatalities than any other European nation in recent weeks and, while the increase in new cases and hospital admissions is slowing, the government is worried about gatherings over Christmas.
The junior health minister Sandra Zampa said Christmas Eve mass must end by around 8:30pm so that worshippers can return home before a 10pm curfew, and people should not invite non-family members home for Christmas lunch or other celebrations.
“From December 20, people will only be able to travel outside their own region for emergencies such as to care for a single parent,” she said in an interview with private television channel La7.
The government has already said ski resorts will be closed over the Christmas and New Year period.
The cabinet is meeting late on Wednesday to decide the details of restrictions over coming weeks, which the prime minister Giuseppe Conte is expected to outline at a news conference on Thursday.
Germany extends restrictions to 10 January
Germany will extend restrictive measures designed to stem a tide of new COVID-19 infections until 10 January, the chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday after talks with German state leaders.
The measures, which had been due to expire on 20 December, include keeping restaurants and hotels shut and limiting private gatherings to five people from two households.
“The states will extend their measures from December 20 until January 10,” Merkel told a news conference, adding that another round of consultations would be held on 4 January. “In principle things will remain as they are.”
While the daily rise in infection numbers has started to fall, Germany reported its highest single-day death toll on Wednesday since the start of the pandemic, and regions that had been spared the worst are seeing case numbers surge.
More than 17,000 new cases were reported overnight, and 487 deaths - a new daily record.
Markus Soeder, leader of the southern state of Bavaria, said the high number of deaths justified keeping restrictions in place until January. He said:
Over the next few weeks we will also be considering whether all this is enough.
In the past, Germany’s many regional and central government bodies have been at odds over how strictly to impose lockdown, since cases were concentrated in the south and west of the country.
While Merkel has always been in favour of stricter lockdowns, many of the regional premiers who have the final say in Germany’s federal system were opposed. This is beginning to change.
Other than a few, mainly northern areas, the entire country is well above the rate of 50 new infections per 100,000 population per week that the government says is the fastest the virus can spread without overwhelming track-and-trace systems.
Restrictions on gatherings will be eased slightly over Christmas to allow families to meet.
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The Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador suggested on Wednesday that politicians who impose lockdowns or curfews to limit Covid-19 are acting like dictators, the Associated Press reports.
The comments came as López Obrador once again fended off questions about why he almost never wears a face mask, saying it was a question of liberty. He said pandemic measures that limit people’s movements are “fashionable among authorities ... who want to show they are heavy handed, dictatorship”.
“A lot of them are letting their authoritarian instincts show,” he said, adding “the fundamental thing is to guarantee liberty.” It was unclear if the Mexican leader was referring to authorities in other countries, or the mainly opposition-party local leaders who have tried to impose limits in Mexico.
Many governments across the world have effectively implemented lockdowns or limits on when people can leave their homes, something López Obrador has fiercely resisted doing, arguing some people live day-to-day on what they earn on the streets.
Some local governments in Mexico have tried to use police to enforce limits on masks or movement, which resulted in scandals of abusive behaviour by police. López Obrador argues such measures should be voluntary. “Everyone is free. Whoever wants to wear a face mask and feel safer is welcome to do so,” López Obrador said.
The Mexican government has gone against the grain of international anti-virus practices in two ways. It has offered changing and contradictory advice on the utility of wearing face masks, and has described mass testing as wasteful and pointless.
But one area in which Mexico has joined with the rest of the world is in the rush to acquire vaccines. López Obrador urged the country’s medical safety commission, known as Cofepris, to hurry up and approve the vaccine developed by US drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech, which has already been given the go-ahead by regulators in the UK.
“The whole process of authorization in Cofepris is being simplified, we don’t want that to get held up in bureaucracy there,” López Obrador said. “This is an urgent issue, the final paperwork is being started and Cofepris is going to be working day and night to approve it as soon as possible.”
And on Wednesday, Mexico’s health department signed a contract for 34.4 million doses of that vaccine, and said it hoped to receive 250,000 doses in December. Each person requires two doses.
Mexico has seen almost 107,000 test-confirmed deaths so far, the fourth-highest tally in the world, but Mexico does relatively little testing and officials estimate the real death toll is closer to 150,000.
Spain caps end-of-year parties to 10 and restricts domestic travel
The Spanish government agreed with regional authorities on Wednesday that a maximum of 10 people per household will be allowed to gather for the Christmas and New Year holidays to avoid spreading the coronavirus, the health minister Salvador Illa said.
The agreement, which applies to celebrations on Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Year’s Eve and on New Year’s Day, means a slight relaxation of the current general rule that allows gatherings of up to six people, except in some regions that have defined their own limits.
The start of the night-time curfews in force in most Spanish regions would be moved to 1:30am from 11pm on 24 and 31 December.
Still, movement of people between regions will be banned, with some exceptions, between 23 December and 6 January, Illa told a news conference, adding that although the latest infection data inspired some optimism, prudence was paramount.
To sum it up, this Christmas we stay at home ... It is desirable that people restrict their mobility and social contacts as much as possible.
Governments across Europe are trying to navigate between avoiding spreading the virus over the holiday season and allowing people to celebrate with family and friends.
The 10-person limit includes children, and the official recommendation is for people from the same household to celebrate together without outside guests.
Spain imposed a six-month state of emergency in October, giving regions legal backing to impose curfews and other restrictions. While the rate of infection in the country has slowed since, its overall tally of over 1.66m Covid-19 cases is among the highest in western Europe. The death toll reached 45,784 on Wednesday.
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French health authorities on Wednesday reported 14,064 new Covid-19 infections over the past 24 hours, up from Tuesday’s 8,083. The number of people in France who have died from Covid-19 in hospitals rose by 313 in 24 hours to 37,002, bringing that tally to 53,816. The cumulative number of cases now totals 2,244,635, the fifth highest in the world.
Summary
Here’s a quick recap of the latest coronavirus developments across the globe from the last few hours:
- Vaccines won’t prevent short-term coronavirus surge - WHO expert. The World Health Organization does not believe there will be enough supplies of coronavirus vaccines in the next three to six months to prevent a surge in the number of infections, its top emergency expert said.
- UK put speed before public confidence in vaccine, says EU agency. The European Medicines Agency has suggested British regulators prioritised speed over winning public confidence to enable the UK to become the first western country to license a coronavirus vaccine.
- France to carry out border checks to stop skiers spreading Covid. France will carry out random border checks over the holiday season targeting French skiers on their way to and from foreign resorts – particularly Switzerland and Spain – where slopes stay open, the prime minister, Jean Castex, said.
- Beware fake coronavirus vaccines, says Interpol. Interpol has issued a global alert to law enforcement agencies around the world warning them that organised crime networks may try to sell fake Covid-19 vaccines or steal real supplies.
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Putin orders Russia to begin mass Covid-19 vaccinations. President Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian authorities to begin mass voluntary vaccinations against Covid-19 next week, as Russia recorded 589 new daily deaths from the coronavirus.
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North America seeing record-setting daily Covid-19 cases. Covid-19 deaths in the Americas have increased nearly 30% in November compared to the end of October, while North America is seeing record-setting daily cases registered, the WHO regional director, Carissa Etienne, said.
That’s all from me Jessica Murray, I’m now handing over to my colleague Lucy Campbell.
Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has suggested politicians who impose lockdowns or curfews to limit Covid-19 are acting like dictators.
The comments came as López Obrador once again fended off questions about why he almost never wears a face mask, saying it was a question of liberty.
The Mexican leader said pandemic measures that limit people’s movements are “fashionable among authorities … who want to show they are heavy-handed, dictatorship.
“A lot of them are letting their authoritarian instincts show,” he said, adding “the fundamental thing is to guarantee liberty”.
It was unclear if the Mexican leader was referring to authorities in other countries, or the mainly opposition-party local leaders who have tried to impose limits in Mexico.
Many governments across the world have effectively implemented lockdowns or limits on when people can leave their homes, something López Obrador has fiercely resisted doing, arguing some people live day to day on what they earn on the streets.
Some local governments in Mexico have tried to use police to enforce limits on masks or movement, which resulted in scandals of abusive behaviour by police.
López Obrador argues such measures should be voluntary. “Everyone is free. Whoever wants to wear a face mask and feel safer is welcome to do so,” he said.
The Mexican government has offered changing and contradictory advice on the utility of wearing face masks.
Mexico has seen almost 107,000 test-confirmed deaths so far, the fourth-highest toll in the world, but Mexico does relatively little testing and officials estimate the real death toll is closer to 150,000.
Updated
Republicans and Democrats in Congress remain unable to reach agreement on fresh relief for a pandemic-hit US economy, with top Republicans supporting what the Senate’s top Democrats dismissed as an “inadequate, partisan proposal”.
Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin said outgoing president Donald Trump supported a proposal put forth by Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell, after McConnell on Tuesday rejected a $908bn bipartisan package.
McConnell’s outline is very close to the legislation that the Senate leader has been touting for months and was rejected by Democrats, according to one Senate Republican source. The plan includes $332.7bn in new loans or grants to small businesses, according to a document provided to Reuters.
“The president will sign the McConnell proposal that he put forward yesterday. We look forward to making progress on that,” Mnuchin said.
But the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, blasted the Republican effort for excluding Democrats, who control the US House of Representatives. In a speech on the Senate floor, he said:
The Republican leader should not waste the Senate’s time on another inadequate, partisan proposal and instead should sit down with Democrats to begin a true bipartisan effort to quickly meet the needs of the country.
He noted the McConnell proposal includes liability protection for businesses that Democrats reject.
Adding to the pressure, the two parties face a 11 December deadline to pass a $1.4tn budget or risk a shutdown of the government as the Covid-19 crisis worsens across the US.
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The global Covid-19 pandemic could derail efforts to control and eradicate malaria across the Pacific, with the potential for thousands of new cases and deaths, health experts have warned.
Malaria, one of the oldest diseases on Earth, remains one of its most significant killers: the mosquito-borne disease still kills 400,000 people a year, most of those children under five.
Prof Brendan Crabb, chair of Pacific Friends of Global Health and chief executive of the Burnet Institute, said the Pacific was at acute risk if intervention measures were disrupted within health systems overwhelmed by, or focused on, Covid-19.
There are a number of infectious diseases that could spike if we ignore them in the wake of the focus on Covid-19, but none are more acute than the short-term risk that malaria poses. It can double, even triple or worse in a single season if the wheels come off control measures.
In Papua New Guinea, where malaria remains highly endemic, case numbers surged between 2001 and 2016 – from 80,000 to 500,000 every year – when control measures weakened.
A recent Lancet study said disruptions to malaria interventions could lead to 46m additional cases worldwide.
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The Hungarian politician József Szájer has quit Viktor Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party after fleeing a lockdown party in Brussels via a gutter, the daily newspaper Magyar Nemzet has reported.
“The actions of our fellow deputy József Szájer are incompatible with the values of our political family,” the paper cited Orbán as saying.
“We will not forget nor repudiate his 30 years of work, but his deed is unacceptable and indefensible. Following this, he took the only appropriate decision when he apologised and resigned from his position as member of the European parliament and left Fidesz,” Orbán added.
Morocco hopes to launch an ambitious vaccination campaign against the coronavirus by the end of the year, but its efforts have sparked suspicion and rumours in the country, which is hard hit by the pandemic.
The North African kingdom is hoping to immunise 20 million adults against Covid-19 within three months, using vaccinations from China’s Sinopharm and a UK-sourced shot developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.
But even before the campaign began, rumours have flooded social media, including a fake “draft law” stating that vaccination would be mandatory in Morocco, forcing the health ministry to issue a denial last month.
And this week, a photo of a young man being hauled away by six police officers, with the caption “official: vaccination campaign launched in Morocco”, was denounced as “fake news” by the Twitter account of the DGSN security service.
Morocco in August signed a deal to take part in clinical tests of a vaccine developed by the Chinese company Sinopharm, which has agreed to provide the kingdom with 10m doses before the end of the year if results are successful.
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Boris Johnson might be persuaded to take a Covid-19 vaccination on television to show it is safe but he would not have one before those in greater need, his press secretary has said.
Johnson, 56, who spent time in intensive care earlier this year after contracting Covid-19, has hailed the UK approval of Pfizer’s vaccine as a global win and ray of hope.
Like other leaders, Johnson cannot be seen to be jumping the queue for the vaccine, ahead of more vulnerable people, but he wants to illustrate its safety to try to persuade others to take it when it is more widely available.
Asked if the prime minister would take the shot live on television, his press secretary, Allegra Stratton, said:
I don’t think it would be something he would rule out.
But I think we also know that he wouldn’t want to take a jab that should be for someone who is extremely vulnerable, clinically vulnerable, and who should be getting it before him.
Britain’s government has said the health service will prioritise vaccinations, putting older residents in care homes and their carers first, then all those over 80 and frontline health workers.
Johnson said his weight was an underlying condition that made his Covid infection worse and has since spoken frequently about his attempts to lose the pounds.
Stratton said she did not know whether his weight might put him in a more vulnerable group, adding that he has been exercising more.
Johnson’s spokesperson also said it was a matter for Buckingham Palace whether 94-year-old Queen Elizabeth received a vaccination. A palace spokesman declined to comment on whether the queen would get a shot, saying royal medical matters were traditionally kept private.
The queen and her 99-year-old husband, Prince Philip, who would be in the second priority tier for a vaccine, have spent national lockdowns this year with a small number of staff at Windsor Castle in Berkshire.
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North America seeing record-setting daily Covid-19 cases
Covid-19 deaths in the Americas have increased nearly 30% in November compared to the end of October, while North America is seeing record-setting daily cases registered, the World Health Organization regional director, Carissa Etienne, said.
Hospitalisations in the US are at their highest since the onset of the pandemic, and in Canada Covid-19 is spreading to indigenous communities in remote areas such as the Yukon and Nunavut, Etienne warned in a briefing.
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UK put speed before public confidence in vaccine, says EU agency
The European Medicines Agency has suggested British regulators prioritised speed over winning public confidence to enable the UK to become the first western country to license a coronavirus vaccine.
After it was announced that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine had been authorised for emergency use by the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority (MHRA), the EU agency issued a statement backing its own “robust” approach.
In a series of media appearances on Wednesday morning, the UK health secretary, Matt Hancock, erroneously claimed that speedy authorisation had been possible “because of Brexit”, contrasting the UK approach with the “pace of the Europeans, who are moving a little bit more slowly”.
The EMA said the bloc’s member states had the option of taking the emergency authorisation route but that its own process was the “appropriate regulatory mechanism for use in the current pandemic emergency, to grant all EU citizens’ access to a vaccine and to underpin mass vaccination campaigns”.
Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, said Berlin had also considered the fast-track authorisation chosen by the UK and allowed under EU law, but the task of convincing people of the safety of vaccines was crucial.
“The idea is not that we’re the first, but to have safe and effective vaccines in the pandemic and that we can create confidence, and nothing is more important than confidence with respect to vaccines,” he said.
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Residents of Britain’s care homes have shared their first precious hugs and kisses with relatives since March, after homes were able to give visitors rapid tests for Covid-19 which give results in 30 minutes.
Bob Underhill, an 84-year-old retiree, was reunited with his wife Patricia, 82, who has Alzheimer’s. Both were overcome as they met, then hugged and kissed through their face masks.
“I’ve only seen her twice since March because they had a shutdown here, and we just had to sit and wait,” said Underhill. “I did come and see her last Friday through the partitions, which is not very pleasant; it is not the same being three metres apart.”
Patricia moved into a home in London in March after breaking her hip, meaning Bob could no longer care for her.
Covid-19 spread rapidly through British care homes at the start of the pandemic, as institutions found themselves without adequate protective gear, and agency staff working in multiple homes and visitors unwittingly spread the virus.
This led to homes coming under strict lockdown and limiting visits to protect frail and elderly residents.
Some 17,319 people have died of Covid-19 in care homes in Britain up to the week ending 20 November, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), although that figure doesn’t account for residents who were moved to hospitals before dying.
Care home residents and staff will be among the first in line for a vaccination after Britain became the first country in the world to approve Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine.
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Kenya’s tourism sector lost close to $1bn in revenue between January and October, when numbers of foreign visitors fell by two-thirds due to Covid-19.
From safaris in the Maasai Mara and other wildlife reserves to holidays on pristine Indian Ocean beaches, Kenya’s tourism industry contributes 10% of economic output and employs more than 2 million people.
It brought in the equivalent of 163.5bn Kenyan shillings last year, and the government had initially expected that figure to grow 1% in 2020.
International visitors fell to fewer than 500,000 in the first 10 months from 1.7 million in the same period last year, the ministry said, knocking 110bn Kenyan shillings ($995m) off revenues that had been predicted to reach 147.5bn shillings.
Tourism minister Najib Balala said there had been a slight rise in visitor numbers following the lifting of travel restrictions in August.
The government was “optimistic the situation will gradually improve once the (Covid) vaccines being developed become readily available to the masses,” he said in a statement.
Kenya has had nearly 84,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, with 1,469 deaths, according to data from the World Health Organization.
Between 2012 and 2015, visitor numbers to Kenya fell after a spate of attacks claimed by al-Qaida-linked al-Shabaab, which wants Nairobi to pull troops out of neighbouring Somalia. A fall in the number of attacks in subsequent years helped the sector to rebound.
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Vaccines won't prevent short-term coronavirus surge - WHO expert
The World Health Organization does not believe there will be enough supplies of coronavirus vaccines in the next three to six months to prevent a surge in the number of infections, its top emergency expert said.
“We are not going to have sufficient vaccinations in place to prevent a surge in cases for three to six months,” Mike Ryan said, calling on people to maintain social distancing and respect other measures to restrict the spread of Covid-19.
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A coronavirus cluster in Thailand has grown to 10 amid fears scores of other Thai women connected to a hotel in a notorious Myanmar border town could be infected and may attempt to return home under the radar.
Health authorities in Bangkok were holding emergency talks on Wednesday night, an official said.
Thailand has managed to contain Covid-19 infections to just over 4,000 cases. Its achilles heel is an extremely porous 2,400km border it shares with Myanmar, where the virus is rampant, with more than 1,000 new cases a day in recent months.
The Thai public health ministry announced a further six Thai women who had returned from Tachilek had tested positive, up from four on Tuesday.
Two of the women remained in Chiang Mai in Thailand’s north while the other four caught planes, minibuses, taxis and motorbikes to travel to Bangkok, Phayao, Phichit and Ratchaburi provinces.
Thai officials could not confirm the number of people who had come into contact with the six new cases.
The cluster of 10 Thai women worked at the same entertainment venue – 1G1 Hotel, about 1.5km from the border, according to local media. The hotel has a casino, VIP rooms, disco, massage parlour and karaoke bar.
An estimated 70-100 Thai women are employed in the karaoke and VIP rooms, as models who entertain and flirt with male clients, according to Thai media.
A hotel staff member told AFP the general manager was in police custody for breaching Myanmar’s disaster laws relating to coronavirus regulations, by opening the venue.
The four confirmed coronavirus cases from Tuesday remained in Thailand’s north. Since the pandemic, Thai border patrols have stepped up surveillance to prevent illegal crossings.
Long plagued with a seedy reputation, Tachilek serves as a conduit for the so-called Golden Triangle’s lucrative drug trade and is home to numerous casinos and brothels.
Myanmar has more than 90,000 confirmed coronavirus infections with almost 2,000 deaths, according to the latest official figures. Parts of northern Rakhine state and commercial capital Yangon are under lockdown.
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Britain’s initial approval of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine should give Americans confidence as the drugmaker next week moves further toward seeking US approval, US health secretary Alex Azar said.
“For the American people this should be very reassuring: an independent regulatory authority in another country has found this vaccine to be safe and effective for use,” Azar told Fox Business Network.
“Here we’re going to let the FDA run through its process.”
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Pfizer’s Portuguese unit said the pharmaceutical company would be able to distribute its Covid-19 vaccine in the country three days after the EU’s medicines agency (EMA) has given it the green light.
“Once approved and once we know (…) where the vaccines should be delivered, we will get the vaccines to those places in a maximum of three days,” Susana Marques, medical director at Pfizer Portugal, told RTP Television.
The EMA said on Tuesday it could complete its reviews of candidate vaccines by 29 December if drugmakers including Pfizer have provided it with sufficient data.
Portugal’s health minister, Marta Temido, said last month she hoped the country would be ready to start distributing shots as early as January.
The government is set to announce its vaccination strategy on Thursday after a group of experts worked to decide which groups should get the vaccine first, as well as to look at distribution logistics from transport to storage.
The health ministry has said the country of about 10 million people has contracts to buy 22m doses of vaccines, without specifying from which, or how many, manufacturers.
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Celebrating Britain’s swift approval of BioNtech and Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine as a benefit of Brexit is misplaced since the vaccine was itself a product of the EU that Britain has left, the German health minister, Jens Spahn, said.
Spahn told journalists that while Britain had been the first to approve the vaccine, he was optimistic that the European Medicines Agency would soon follow. The time difference was due to Britain and the US having conducted an emergency approval process, while the EU was using a regular process. He said:
But a few remarks on Brexit to my British friends: BioNTech is a European development, from the EU.
The fact that this EU product is so good that Britain approved it so quickly shows that in this crisis European and international cooperation are best.
Some have suggested that Britain having its own medicines approval meant it could move more nimbly than the EU’s bloc-wide agency.
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Putin orders Russia to begin mass Covid-19 vaccinations
President Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian authorities to begin mass voluntary vaccinations against Covid-19 next week, as Russia recorded 589 new daily deaths from the coronavirus.
Russia will have produced 2m vaccine doses within the next few days, Putin said. Russia said last month that its Sputnik V jab was 92% effective at protecting people from Covid-19 according to interim results.
“Let’s agree on this - you will not report to me next week, but you will start mass vaccination … let’s get to work already,” Putin told deputy prime minister Tatiana Golikova.
Golikova said large-scale vaccination could begin on a voluntary basis in December.
The rise in infections has slowed since reaching a high on 27 November, with 25,345 new cases reported on Wednesday. Russia has resisted imposing lockdowns during the second wave of the virus, preferring targeted regional curbs.
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All cafes and restaurants in St Petersburg will be closed from 30 December until 3 January due to the coronavirus pandemic, Russia’s RIA news agency has reported.
The city of more than 5 million people reported 3,684 new coronavirus infections on Wednesday.
Germany has opted for a longer procedure to approve Covid-19 vaccines than the emergency process chosen by Britain for the shot developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, because it wanted to increase confidence in vaccines, the country’s health minister said.
“We have member states, including Germany, who could have issued such an emergency authorisation if we’d wanted to. But we decided against this and what we opted for was a common European approach to move forward together,” Jens Spahn said when asked about the British emergency procedure for Pfizer vaccine.
“It’s very important we do this to help promote trust and confidence in this authorisation,” he added.
The EU has urged countries to reinforce their healthcare systems and coordinate restrictions on social gatherings ahead of the Christmas holiday season, to avoid a resurgence of Covid-19 cases.
After a surge of cases in October and November, many European countries have reined in infections by imposing stricter lockdowns and social restrictions.
The European commission on Wednesday urged governments to keep up measures on physical distancing and mask wearing over the Christmas holidays, and require people to self-isolate before and after social gatherings if rules on meetings are temporarily loosened during the festive season.
This self-quarantine should be for “at least seven” days, the commission said. Countries should consider banning mass gatherings, while there should be “clear criteria” for small events.
“We know that the sacrifices for keeping each other safe are high. But we cannot allow the risk of seeing Christmas or new year’s celebrations becoming super-spreading events,” EU health commissioner Stella Kyriakides said.
Brussels encouraged countries to use “household bubbles” to limit social contacts if they loosen restrictions during the holidays, and said countries could extend school holidays or impose a period of online learning after the festive season, to act as a buffer against infections.
Hospitals should prepare “surge capacities” in staffing and tap EU programmes to secure protective equipment when needed, the Commission said.
It called on countries to expand testing capacities to track local virus outbreaks, and expand public transport capacity, where possible, to avoid overcrowding. Masks should be mandatory on public transport, the commission said.
Health policy is a national prerogative in the 27-country bloc and the EU commission can only make recommendations for common measures. But by attempting to coordinate countries’ efforts, the EU hopes to avoid a return to the patchwork of different national rules that characterised the first months on the pandemic on the continent.
With the first Covid-19 vaccines potentially available this month, the commission said it will make recommendations for countries to coordinate the lifting of restrictions once the jab rollout occurs.
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The German state of Saxony is imposing a curfew from today after several districts in the eastern region reported rising infections.
In the city of Chemnitz and most Saxon municipal districts, as of Wednesday people are only allowed to leave their homes if they have a valid reason for doing so, such as a journey to work, school or nursery, a doctor’s appointment or a shopping trip.
The sale of alcohol is banned from 10pm, and weddings and funerals may only be attended by no more than 25 people.
The curfew does not yet apply to the state capital of Dresden, where infection rates are comparatively low.
While the less densely populated states that used to make up the German Democratic Republic saw consistently lower infection rates in the first wave of the pandemic, Saxony in particular is now trying to control a number of hotspots.
The district of Bautzen, for example, has reported 414.7 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants within the last seven days.
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Poland has signed a contract for 45m Covid-19 vaccine doses, which will be free, Poland’s prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki said.
“Poland has signed the required contracts. We have ordered 45m doses with companies like Pfizer, BioNTech , AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson and we are ready to sign further contracts,” Morawiecki said during a news conference in the city of Łódź.
Morawiecki added he hopes the vaccines will be available to citizens by February 2021.
The country’s vaccination strategy should be complete by the end of the week, the prime minister’s top aide Michał Dworczyk said.
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Ukraine has lifted weekend lockdown restrictions in place to fight the spread of the coronavirus but is still considering whether to introduce a tighter lockdown at a later stage, prime minister Denys Shmyhal said.
The government last month introduced a lockdown at weekends, closing or restricting most businesses except essential services such as grocery shops, pharmacies, hospitals and transport.
Shmyhal told a televised government meeting the measure had brought down the spread of cases and stabilised the situation in hospitals.
BioNTech will send the Covid-19 vaccine it has developed with Pfizer in temperature-controlled boxes to Britain by ferry or plane as it prepares to deliver the shots in the next few days, a senior executive said.
The comments were made by chief business and chief commercial officer Sean Marett in a briefing after Britain approved the vaccine, becoming the first western country to formally endorse a jab it said should reach the most vulnerable people early next week.
Marett said the vaccine can be transported after leaving storage for up to six hours at 2C to 8C during delivery to facilities including care homes, and it can also last for five days in a normal fridge.
His comments will allay some concerns that the shots need to be stored at -70C, equivalent to the Antarctic winter, which may be difficult for nursing homes and other locations where the shots will be administered first.
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Austria allows skiing over Christmas but hotels to stay shut
Austria’s ski lifts will open on 24 December but hotels, bars and restaurants will remain closed throughout the holiday season, the government has announced.
A second lockdown has failed to dramatically lower coronavirus infection rates, which remain at around 5,000 new cases per day, but the Alpine nation will slowly begin reopening measures, starting with schools and shops on Monday.
“Our expectation is that we can push the infection rates down until Christmas so that we can celebrate a dignified Christmas and so that outdoor sports - the keyword being skiing - will be possible,” chancellor Sebastian Kurz told a press conference.
Hotels, bars and restaurants, however, will only reopen on 7 January, while Austria’s famous Christmas markets will be cancelled this year, Kurz said.
The winter ski season has been the subject of a Europe-wide debate as Germany, France and Italy pushed for a EU-wide ban on ski tourism until early January.
Kurz said that Austria, where more than 2,000 ski lifts are a major driver of the €15bn winter sports industry, had decided to allow skiing and other individual outdoor sports starting 24 December “so that the Austrian population has the chance to engage in sporting activity over the holidays”.
He said skiing was an outdoor sport whereas the majority of coronavirus infections can be traced back to private parties and meetings.
In the pandemic’s first wave, Austrian ski hotspots - above all the resort of Ischgl - were accused of failing to respond quickly enough to outbreaks and allowing thousands of infected tourists to travel home and spread the virus.
However, Kurz said the decision to allow lifts to open “has as little to do with Germany as it has to do with other neighbouring countries”.
The only other major ski destinations to open through the holidays in Europe are Switzerland’s, which has not imposed a lockdown despite high infection rates.
As part of the broader relaxation of anti-virus measures in Austria announced on Wednesday, museums and libraries will also reopen on 7 December, followed by cinemas and cultural venues on 7 January.
As of 7 December a night-time curfew will replace the current 24-hour restrictions on movement outside the home.
From 24 to 26 December and on 31 December, rules on gatherings will be eased to allow 10 people to meet, regardless of how many separate households they belong to.
Updated
The World Health Organization said it had received data from Pfizer and BioNTech on the Covid-19 vaccine and was reviewing it for “possible listing for emergency use”, a benchmark for countries to authorise national use.
Referring to Britain’s regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, it said in a statement to Reuters: “WHO is also in discussions with MHRA on the possibility of accessing some of the information from their assessment, which could expedite WHO’s emergency listing”.
Britain approved Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine on Wednesday, jumping ahead of the US and Europe to become the West’s first country to formally endorse a shot it said should reach the most vulnerable people early next week.
People living in areas with Covid-19 spread should wear masks in shops, workplaces and schools if ventilation is not adequate, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.
Health workers could wear N95 masks if available when caring for Covid-19 patients, but the only proven protection is when they are doing aerosol-generating procedures, the UN agency said, updating its previous guidance from June.
Swiss ski resorts are ploughing ahead with preparations for the year-end holiday season despite pressure from neighbouring Italy, France and Germany to shut until the latest coronavirus wave passes.
Health minister Alain Berset has proposed limits on the capacity of ski lifts at Christmas and the New Year, but lift operators and mountain regions who already expect many foreign visitors to stay away during the festive period bristle at added restrictions.
Eloi Rossier, mayor of Swiss alpine village Verbier, acknowledged feeling the heat from other countries, but said that his town’s ski economy was too important to simply call off the season, especially given measures the resort was taking to keep people safe.
He expects up to 45,000 people over Christmas and New Year, fewer than normal due to “a lot of cancellations”.
“There is an economic aspect that we cannot deny, it is extremely important,” Rossier said. “But it is not skiing that’s dangerous for transmitting the virus, but the stuff that comes after skiing, the apres-ski. And here we took extremely strict measures to limit...the risks.”
France, with no skiing before January, plans border checks to deter people, president Emmanuel Macron said, while Germany’s Bavaria state is considering similar spot checks followed by a 14-day quarantine upon return.
Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz was due to present his country’s ski plan on Wednesday. The Swiss government, which has said lifts can stay open if they have strict health measures in place, meets on Friday.
In Verbier in southern Switzerland, lift operator Téléverbier was not expecting droves of people, given that foreign visitors who make up as many as half of a typical winter’s crowd are unlikely to travel this year.
“We lost a big part of our clients...from Asia, the Middle East or the Americas, so we don’t think that if the Italians or French remain closed that they will compensate,” Téléverbier chief executive Laurent Vaucher said.
Interpol issues global alert on fake Covid-19 vaccines
Interpol has issued a global alert to law enforcement agencies around the world warning them that organised crime networks may try to sell fake Covid-19 vaccines or steal real supplies.
The global police coordination agency, based in France, said on Wednesday it had issued an orange alert to police forces in its 194 member states warning them to prepare for organised crime to target vaccines both physically and online.
It said the pandemic had already triggered “unprecedented opportunistic and predatory criminal behaviour” and warned of a new wave of criminal activity “in relation to the falsification, theft and illegal advertising of Covid-19 vaccines”.
Updated
Brexit has helped Britain accelerate the landmark rollout of a Covid-19 vaccine while the EU lags on its own approval, health secretary Matt Hancock has said.
But the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), after giving its green light to introduce the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, gave a more nuanced view.
“Whilst until earlier this year we were in the European Medicines Agency (EMA), because of Brexit we’ve been able to make a decision to do this based on the UK regulator, a world-class regulator,” Hancock told Times radio.
As a result, Britain was able to “not go at the pace of the Europeans, who are moving a little bit more slowly”, he said.
Britain formally quit the EU in January, and the EMA has relocated from London to Amsterdam. But the country remains in a post-Brexit transition period until the end of this year, and EU pharmaceutical regulations still apply for now.
“We have been able to announce the supply of this vaccine using provisions under EU law which exists until 1 January,” the MHRA chief executive, June Raine, said.
“Our speed and our provision has been totally dependent on the available data in our rolling review,” she stressed, insisting the agency had taken no shortcuts in approving the vaccine.
The EMA on Tuesday said it would hold an extraordinary meeting on 29 December “at the latest” to consider its own emergency approval for the vaccine developed by Germany’s BioNTech and the US firm Pfizer.
Another US company, Moderna, said it was filing on Monday for emergency authorisation of its vaccine in the US and Europe.
Britain and the EU are meanwhile locked in tense negotiations to craft a new trading partnership from 1 January.
Failure to strike a deal will seriously disrupt cross-Channel trade, although Hancock says planes are on standby to replace ships for ferrying supplies of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to Britain from its manufacturing base in Belgium.
Updated
Germany inching towards tougher lockdown
Germany is inching towards tougher lockdown measures, with one regional premier promising a stricter course now regions that had been spared the worst of the pandemic are seeing case numbers surge.
A partial lockdown imposed at the start of November was extended into December last weekend. State and federal leaders are expected to discuss a further extension into January at a video conference due on Wednesday.
Germany reported more than 17,000 new cases in its latest update. It also said it had suffered 487 deaths; the worst such figure since the pandemic began.
Michael Kretschmer, the premier of Saxony, the most populous of the eastern German states, said his state would impose lockdown measures strictly given the speed at which the virus was spreading throughout the region.
“There are now restrictions on leaving home in almost the entire state,” he told ZDF public television, adding that hospitals in the region were already seriously overburdened. “We need to act fast.”
In the past, Germany’s many regional and central government bodies have been at odds on how strictly to impose lockdown, since cases were concentrated in the south and west of the country.
While the chancellor Angela Merkel has always been in favour of stricter lockdowns, many of the regional premiers who have the final say in Germany’s federal system were opposed. This is beginning to change.
Other than a few – mainly northern – districts, the entire country is well above the rate of 50 new infections per 100,000 population per week the government says is the fastest the virus can spread without overwhelming track and trace systems.
The defence minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has said more soldiers could be sent to join the 10,000 already working in public health authorities, where they are helping with efforts to track infections to slow the virus’s spread.
Updated
Norway eases restrictions for holiday gatherings
Norway will relax its coronavirus restrictions slightly over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, raising the number of guests allowed to be invited to parties to 10.
Currently, a household is allowed to invite a maximum of five guests into their home as long as people stay one metre apart from each other.
That rule will remain in place until 2021 but during the holidays, people will be allowed to make exceptions on two occasions per household, inviting up to 10 guests, the government said.
It emphasised the importance of social distancing.
“You’ll have to improvise and maybe extend the table a bit this year,” prime minister Erna Solberg told reporters.
Neither domestic nor foreign travel is advised, and most of those who do go abroad must quarantine on their return to Norway.
While the country has not imposed a new lockdown like many other European countries, strict curbs are in place until 16 December.
The city of Oslo has banned alcohol sales in bars and restaurants, causing many establishments to close.
The Scandinavian country has one of the lowest coronavirus infection rates in Europe. As of Wednesday, it had reported 36,591 cases and 351 deaths.
Updated
President-elect Joe Biden will meet with American workers and business owners hit by Covid-19 today, as he prepares to confront the pandemic that has taken a heavy human and economic toll when he takes office next month.
The Democrat is urging Congress to resolve a months-long standoff over coronavirus aid and has promised to act quickly to provide more resources to fight a health crisis that has killed more than 268,000 Americans so far.
Biden has selected many of his top national security and economic advisers, though it unclear how many will win confirmation in a closely divided US Senate, control of which will be determined by a pair of January run-off elections.
One potential bright spot: Top US health officials say they plan to begin vaccinating Americans against the disease as soon as mid-December. Healthcare workers and long-term care residents are expected to be first in line.
Biden is due to hold a socially distanced discussion with workers and small-business owners who have suffered during the economic upheaval brought on by the pandemic.
He and vice president-elect Kamala Harris also will receive national security briefings from US government officials. Those briefings are a tacit sign from outgoing president Donald Trump’s administration that Biden and Harris will take power on 20 January, though Trump himself has refused to concede in a sharp break from US tradition.
Coronavirus infections in Switzerland rose by 4,786 in a day, data from health authorities shows.
The total number of confirmed cases in Switzerland and the neighbouring principality of Liechtenstein increased to 335,660 and the death toll rose by 115 to 4,667, while 230 new hospitalisations kept pressure on the healthcare system.
Hi everyone, this is Jessica Murray, I’ll be running the blog for the next few hours. Please feel free to get in touch if you have any story tips or personal experiences you would like to share.
Email: jessica.murray@theguardian.com
Twitter: @journojess_
Thailand has reported six more Thai nationals infected with the coronavirus illegally entered the country, skipped quarantine and travelled to different provinces, escalating fears of a new outbreak in a nation with relatively few cases.
Reuters reports that the new infections follow four others last week, who also entered Thailand from neighbouring Myanmar through natural border crossings, avoiding immigration checks and the mandatory two weeks of quarantine.
With its normally strict border controls and surveillance, Thailand has kept the number of infections low at 4,026, with 60 deaths, but the new cases are causing fears of rare local outbreaks.
The six Thais had then travelled separately to four provinces, including the capital Bangkok, Sophon Iamsirithaworn, the director of the Disease Control Department, said.
They had worked together at an entertainment venue in Myanmar, a country seeing an average 1,421 new cases each day, with 92,189 infections and 1,972 deaths overall.
A health official told Reuters that authorities would have to track down hundreds of people potentially exposed to the six new cases.
They have managed to trace 300 people in recent days who were exposed to the first illegal entry case, but none were infected. Thongchai Keratihuttayakorn, a senior health official, said:
These people lack responsibility to society and country. We are in the process of gathering information about who they came into contact with and a detailed timeline of where they were.
After returning, they travelled on planes, buses and taxis and visited entertainment venues and malls, some not wearing masks, Thongchai said. The prime minister Prayuth Chan-ocha has said those who enter the country illegally will be prosecuted.
The head of Portugal’s health authority has tested positive, the body has confirmed. Graça Freitas has displayed only mild symptoms of the disease that has infected more than 300,000 people in the southern European nation.
The 63-year-old, whose daily updates on the pandemic have made her a familiar face to the Portuguese public, tested positive on Tuesday and is in isolation, the general directorate for health (DGS) said.
Wednesday’s news conference on the pandemic situation in Portugal had been cancelled, the DGS said, and authorities were tracking those who had been in recent contact with her.
The news website Observador said the health minister, Marta Temido, and the health secretary, António Sales, were in isolation while they waited for test results.
Portugal, with a population of about 10m people, has reported 300,462 cases and 4,577 deaths.
The country has suffered a much worse second wave in recent weeks, having seen a relatively mild first wave, when compared with countries such as Spain or Italy.
The number of infections per 100,000 people measured over the past 14 days in Portugal is 704, more than double that in neighbouring Spain, data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control show.
Updated
Following tacit EU criticism of the UK’s decision to approve the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine, the head of the body responsible for that decision has insisted standards were maintained.
Dr June Raine, the head of the regulator MHRA, said a rolling process had been conducted as the vaccine was developed. She told the Downing Street press conference:
That doesn’t mean that any corners have been cut, none at all.
Raine said experts worked “round the clock, carefully, methodically poring over tables and analyses and graphs on every single piece of data”. More than 1,000 pages of data were examined, she said.
Organised criminal networks could be targeting vaccines and could look to sell fake shots, the Interpol global police coordination agency has warned.
The body said it had issued a global alert to law enforcement across its 194 member countries, warning them to prepare for organised crime networks targeting Covid-19 vaccines, both physically and online. Its secretary general, Jürgen Stock, said:
As governments are preparing to roll out vaccines, criminal organisations are planning to infiltrate or disrupt supply chains. Criminal networks will also be targeting unsuspecting members of the public via fake websites and false cures, which could pose a significant risk to their health; even their lives.
Updated
After Liese expressed his concern, the European Union’s drug regulator said its longer vaccine approval process was safer. Asked about the UK’s approval of the Pfizer vaccine, the European Medicines Agency said:
EMA considers that the conditional marketing authorisation is the most appropriate regulatory mechanism for use in the current pandemic emergency.
It said that procedure was based on more evidence and more checks than the emergency procedure chosen by the UK. EMA said on Tuesday it will decide by 29 December whether or not to authorise Pfizer’s vaccine.
Poland surpasses 1m cases
Poland, as expected, has now recorded more than 1m cases, according to data from its health ministry, as the country grapples with a shortage of doctors and medical supplies amid its second wave.
Poland has now confirmed 1,013,747 cases and 18,208 deaths, the data showed.
Italy will launch a huge, free coronavirus vaccination programme early next year, health minister Roberto Speranza has said, as the government readies restrictions to avoid a surge in infections during the winter holidays.
“We finally see land, we have a clear route to a safe harbour... It seems likely that from January we will have the first vaccines,” he told the upper house Senate.
Speranza said the government had options to buy 202m Covid-19 vaccine shots from various companies and was awaiting clearance for their usage from European drug authorities.
“The vaccine distribution depends on the contracts signed by the European Commission... subject to authorisation procedures that are not yet absolutely certain,” he told parliamentarians.
On Wednesday, Britain became the first country in the West to approve a Covid-19 vaccine, after its medicine regulator granted emergency use approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine which will be available from next week.
Italy, the first Western country to be hit by the virus, has registered 56,361 Covid-19 deaths, the second highest toll in Europe after Britain. It has also registered 1.62 million cases.
Speranza said the main part of the Italian vaccine campaign would be carried out between spring and summer 2021, with health workers, elderly people and those living in nursing homes getting the first shots, and the army involved in distribution.
Italy imposed new restrictions last month to rein in a second wave of infections, putting under partial lockdown much of its industrial north and limiting business activity.
After daily new cases declined in the past week, the government removed some restrictions on shops and people’s movement before Christmas.
A cabinet meeting scheduled for late Wednesday is expected to approve further curbs to prevent any new surge in infections during the coming holiday season.
“Our intention is to limit travel abroad and between regions during the winter holidays,” Speranza said, adding that movement could be further limited on Christmas, Boxing and New Year’s day. He reiterated that the government intended to keep ski resorts closed.
Updated
The Filipino president, Rodrigo Duterte, has issued an executive order granting the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the power to clear Covid-19 drugs and vaccine for emergency use.
The Philippines wants to start immunising 25 million people next year, hoping to restore some normalcy after nearly nine months of at times harsh restrictions and prevent the economy from sinking deeper into recession.
The FDA can now grant emergency use authorisation (EUA) if there is reason to believe the drug or vaccine may be effective in preventing, diagnosing or treating Covid-19 and if their potential benefits outweigh possible risks.
EUAs shall also be issued if there is “no adequate, approved and available alternative to the drug or vaccine”.
The national procurer or the public health programme implementer can apply for the EUA, said the order.
The Philippines, which has the second greatest numbers of confirmed cases and deaths in south-east Asia, is racing to lock in vaccine supplies as it targets to immunise a third of its 108 million population.
The country has been in talks with at least four vaccine makers about supply deals and has so far secured more than 2m shots from AstraZeneca. The British drugmaker’s vaccine still has to be approved by regulators.
Updated
International tourist arrivals to Spain fell 87% year-on-year in October, official data show, after authorities imposed new travel restrictions.
Over the first 10 months of the year, 17.9 million foreign tourists visited Spain, about 76% fewer than in the same period of 2019, the National Statistics Institute (INE) said. Tourists spent 90% less in October than in the same month a year ago, INE said.
Updated
The total number of Covid-19 cases in Poland country will surpass 1m on Wednesday, the country’s health minister, Adam Niedzielski, has told the private radio station TOK FM.
Updated
Japan will give free vaccines to all of its residents under a bill passed on Wednesday, as the nation battles its worst numbers of daily cases, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
The bill, which says the government will cover all vaccine costs for Japan’s 126 million residents, was approved by the upper house of parliament, having cleared the powerful lower house.
The country has secured enough doses for 60m people from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, and for a further 25 million people from the biotech firm Moderna. It has also confirmed it will receive 120m doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine.
Pfizer and Moderna are already seeking emergency-use approval in the US and Europe, after clinical tests showed their jabs were effective.
The bill’s passage comes two weeks after Japan’s prime minister said the country was on “maximum alert” over the virus, and as medics warn hospitals are on the brink of collapse.
Japan has had a comparatively small Covid-19 outbreak overall, with about 2,100 deaths and 150,000 cases, and has not imposed the strict lockdowns seen elsewhere.
But it is now facing a third wave of the disease, reporting record numbers of daily infections nationwide in recent weeks.
Tokyo’s governor has urged residents to avoid non-essential outings and asked businesses serving alcohol to shut early, although there is no enforcement mechanism for these recommendations.
The national government has also decided to allow individual regions to opt out of a controversial domestic tourism campaign.
Updated
The rollout of the vaccine across Wales will start within days, the nation’s chief medical officer, Dr Frank Atherton, has said.
There’s still a few stages we need to work through but, once all these safeguards are in place, vaccination can begin. There will only be relatively small amounts of the vaccine at first, those who have been advised as most needing the vaccine first, through approved delivery mechanisms. A full announcement around the timetable for rollout in Wales will follow in the next few days.
A Welsh government spokesperson said:
The vaccine, which needs to be administered in two doses, will initially be prioritised and available for those aged 80 and over, care home staff and residents and those working within health and social care.
The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine needs to be stored at ultra-low temperatures. These centres have already been decided by health boards and are in the process of being stood-up.
Individuals in the priority groups for a Covid-19 vaccine will receive an invitation from their employer or health board providing information about the Covid-19 vaccines, telling them where to go and what to do on the day of their appointment.
People are urged to wait to be invited, which will happen through NHS systems. Please do not ask your pharmacist or GP.
There are plans in place for people who are housebound and for care homes to be vaccinated as soon as safely possible, with the approved vaccine being safely taken to them using a mobile service, once cleared for this purpose.
The Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford, added:
Today’s news is a small glimmer of light at the end of what has been a long and dark tunnel.
We know some people within our communities are much more at risk than others from the serious complications of Covid-19, which is why the new vaccine is being prioritised to protect them first.
While these first doses are given at fixed sites and occupational settings, and to protect our NHS and social care services, we must all continue to do our bit to prevent the spread of coronavirus: regular handwashing, social distancing, and wearing a face covering where required to protect yourself and others.
Updated
Russia suffers worst day
Russia has suffered its worst daily death toll since the pandemic began, reporting 589 deaths on Wednesday. That brings its cumulative total to 41,053.
Authorities also reported 25,345 infections in the last 24 hours, including 5,191 in the capital, Moscow, and 3,684 in St Petersburg, bringing the national cumulative tally to 2,347,401.
Updated
France will make random borders checks to stop people getting infected by going to countries where ski resorts remain open, the country’s prime minister, Jean Castex, has told BFM TV.
The goal is to avoid French citizens getting contaminated. That will be done by installing random checks at the borders.
Updated
Reacting to the vaccine’s approval, Stormont’s health minister, Robin Swann, has tweeted:
This is a hugely significantly day. My Department has the plans and preparations in place. There will still be difficult days ahead, and people must not let their guard down, but there are brighter days ahead.
— Robin Swann MLA : #StopCovidNI (@RobinSwannMoH) December 2, 2020
Health officials in Northern Ireland have already indicated that the vaccine rollout plan is scheduled to start on 14 December.
Updated
The leader of the UK’s opposition Labour party, Keir Starmer, has tweeted:
Thank you to all those involved in this wonderful news - from the brilliant scientists to the trial volunteers.
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) December 2, 2020
We must now ensure vaccines are rolled out safely but swiftly across the country. https://t.co/DDueB5QpWw
There is no plan for a vaccine passport in the UK, its health secretary has said. Hancock has told Sky News:
While we know that this vaccine protects you from getting ill with Covid – we don’t yet know how much it stops you transmitting Covid until we roll it out broadly. We will, of course, be monitoring that very carefully.
Therefore, we will vaccinate according to protecting the people who need the protection most, according to those who are vulnerable from Covid.
So, that is part of the plan. The plan is to get this rolled out, according to the clinical prioritisation that the advisers will set out.
He said losing his step-grandfather to Covid-19 has made him more determined.
I have a big and complicated and loving family, and losing a member of your family is obviously a big thing for anybody. It’s just made me more determined.
This is a horrible disease and I’ve hated seeing so many people suffer from it. It just really brings it home when it’s a member of your own family.
The work that we’re all doing together – abiding by these rules – I know that the rules are frustrating and I know that you can have debates about some of the boundaries.
The thing about rules is they’re there not to push the boundaries, they’re there to tell us what are the limits of behaviour that is keeping people safe.
It just underlines how important it is for people to abide by these rules.
Scotland’s interim chief medical officer, Gregor Smith, has tweeted:
Wonderful news that MHRA has approved the authorisation to supply Pfizer BioNTech coronavirus vaccine. First of several vaccines in pipeline and begins to change everything for our future. 😁 https://t.co/Ri02imfXS9
— Gregor Smith (@DrGregorSmith) December 2, 2020
Updated
The vaccination programme will be the “largest-scale vaccination campaign in our country’s history”, the chief executive of the NHS in England has said. Sir Simon Stevens added:
This is an important next step in our response to the coronavirus pandemic and hospitals will shortly kick off the first phase of the largest-scale vaccination campaign in our country’s history.
The NHS has a proven track record of delivering large-scale vaccinations from the winter flu jab to BCG and, once the final hurdles are cleared and the vaccine arrives in England’s hospitals, health service staff will begin offering people this ground-breaking jab in a programme that will expand to cover the whole country in the coming months.
There will be “three modes of delivery” of the vaccine, Hancock has told Sky News.
The first is hospitals themselves, which of course we’ve got facilities like this – 50 hospitals across the country are already set up and waiting to receive the vaccine as soon as it’s approved, so that can now happen.
Also vaccination centres, which will be big centres where people can go to get vaccinated. They are being set up now.
There will also be a community rollout, including GPs and pharmacists. Now, of course, because of the -70C storage conditions of this vaccine, they will be able to support this rollout where they have those facilities.
But they’ll also be there should the AstraZeneca vaccine be approved because that doesn’t have these cold storage requirements and so is operationally easier to roll out.
The UK’s health secretary, Matt Hancock, has hailed the vaccine news. He told Sky News the joint committee on vaccine and immunisation (JCVI) would set out its priority list later on Wednesday.
This is fantastic news. The MHRA, the fiercely independent regulator, has clinically authorised the vaccine for rollout. The NHS stands ready to make that happen.
So, from early next week we will start the programme of vaccinating people against Covid-19 here in this country.
Hancock added:
As we know from earlier announcements, this vaccine is effective. The MHRA have approved it as clinically safe. And we have a vaccine, so it’s very good news.
Asked about the challenge posed by the need for the vaccine to be stored at an ultra-low temperature, he said:
This is a challenging rollout and the NHS in all parts of the UK stands ready to make that happen. They are used to handling vaccines and medicines like this, with these sorts of conditions.
It’s not easy but we’ve got those plans in place, so this morning I spoke to my counterparts in the devolved nations to make sure that we are all ready to roll out this vaccine … from early next week.
Help is on its way.
— Matt Hancock (@MattHancock) December 2, 2020
The MHRA has formally authorised the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for Covid-19.
The NHS stands ready to start vaccinating early next week.
The UK is the first country in the world to have a clinically approved vaccine for supply.
Nadim Zahawi, the newly appointed minister responsible for overseeing the vaccination rollout, called the news a “major step forward”.
The Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said the news a vaccine has been approved for use in the UK was the “best news in a long time”.
The best news in a long time. @scotgov ready to start vaccinations as soon as supplies arrive https://t.co/C1HDWCLccd
— Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) December 2, 2020
Updated
What are the advantages of this type of vaccine?
No actual virus is needed to create an mRNA vaccine. This means the rate at which it can be produced is dramatically accelerated. As a result, mRNA vaccines have been hailed as potentially offering a rapid solution to new outbreaks of infectious diseases.
In theory, they can also be modified reasonably quickly if, for example, a virus develops mutations and begins to change. The mRNA vaccines are also cheaper to produce than traditional vaccines, although both will play an important role in tackling Covid-19.
One downside to mRNA vaccines is that they need to be stored at ultra-cold temperatures and cannot be transported easily.
Are they safe?
All vaccines undergo rigorous testing and have oversight from experienced regulators. Some believe mRNA vaccines are safer for the patient as they do not rely on any element of the virus being injected into the body.
The mRNA vaccines have been tried and tested in the lab and on animals before moving to human studies.
The human trials of mRNA vaccines involving tens of thousands of people worldwide have been going on since early 2020 to show whether they are safe and effective. Pfizer will continue to collect safety and long-term outcomes data from participants for two years.
Do we have enough doses to vaccinate the UK population?
The UK has secured 40m doses of the vaccine, with 10m due in the UK by the end of the year.
Patients need two doses, meaning not enough shots have been secured for the entire UK population. However, it is likely other vaccines, including one from Oxford University, will be approved in the coming weeks and months.
Updated
PA Media has produced this helpful Q&A on how the vaccine works:
Is this a reason to celebrate?
Yes. Analysis shows the vaccine can prevent 95% of people from getting Covid-19, including 94% in older age groups.
The vaccine has been tested on 43,500 people in six countries and no safety concerns were raised.
What type of vaccine is this?
The jab is known as a messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine. Conventional vaccines are produced using weakened forms of the virus, but mRNAs use only the virus’s genetic code. An mRNA vaccine is injected into the body where it enters cells and tells them to create antigens. These antigens are recognised by the immune system and prepare it to fight coronavirus.
Updated
The “historic” news means the UK becomes the first western country to license a vaccine.
The first doses will arrive in the coming days, the company has said. The UK has bought 40m doses of the vaccine, which has been shown to have 95% efficacy in its final trials. Albert Bourla, the chairman and chief executive officer of Pfizer, has said:
Today’s emergency use authorisation in the UK marks a historic moment in the fight against Covid-19. This authorisation is a goal we have been working toward since we first declared that science will win, and we applaud the MHRA for their ability to conduct a careful assessment and take timely action to help protect the people of the UK.
As we anticipate further authorisations and approvals, we are focused on moving with the same level of urgency to safely supply a high-quality vaccine around the world. With thousands of people becoming infected, every day matters in the collective race to end this devastating pandemic.
Although the vaccine has to be kept at -70C, the companies say it can be stored for up to five days in a fridge at 2-8°C. The first priority groups for vaccination are care home residents, who may not be able to come to a vaccination centre, together with the staff who look after them. At fridge temperatures, it may be possible for the vaccine to be brought to them. Next in line will be the over-80s and NHS staff.
The trial data showed the vaccine had equal efficacy among younger volunteers and those over 65 who are most at risk from Covid. Gender, race and ethnicity also made no difference.
Pfizer and BioNTech say their combined manufacturing network has the potential to supply globally up to 50m vaccine doses in 2020 and up to 1.3bn doses by the end of 2021.
UK to get vaccine next week – government
The vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech will be available in the UK from next week, the country’s Department of Health and Social Care has said. A spokesperson has said:
The [UK] government has today accepted the recommendation from the independent Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to approve Pfizer/BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine for use. This follows months of rigorous clinical trials and a thorough analysis of the data by experts at the MHRA who have concluded that the vaccine has met its strict standards of safety, quality and effectiveness.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) will also publish its latest advice for the priority groups to receive the vaccine, including care home residents, health and care staff, the elderly and the clinically extremely vulnerable.
The vaccine will be made available across the UK from next week. The NHS has decades of experience in delivering large scale vaccination programmes and will begin putting their extensive preparations into action to provide care and support to all those eligible for vaccination.
To aid the success of the vaccination programme it is vital everyone continues to play their part and abide by the necessary restrictions in their area so we can further suppress the virus and allow the NHS to do its work without being overwhelmed.
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. Thanks for following along.
I’ll be back tomorrow – by which time I will hopefully have coaxed my dog from his new hiding spot:
he was just sitting there pic.twitter.com/6E4BvFyteh
— Helen Sullivan (@helenrsullivan) November 30, 2020
Summary
Here are the key global developments from the last few hours:
- The US reported more than 100,000 cases a day every day of November, Johns Hopkins data shows, as it heads into a festive season marked by surging hospitalisations.
- A US government panel on Tuesday formally recommended early doses of Covid-19 vaccines be given first to healthcare workers and long-term care facility residents in the US, generally seen as people who live in nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
- In the UK, Boris Johnson suffered his worst-ever Commons rebellion on Tuesday night, as 55 Conservative MPs opposed the government’s new coronavirus tier system. The UK’s month-long lockdown ends on Wednesday, 2 December.
- England’s new three tier system comes into effect on 2 December. Non-essential shops in all areas can reopen, as can gyms, hairdressers and other personal care businesses, with the formal instruction to stay at home coming to an end. The “rule of six” will again apply for outdoor gatherings in all areas.
- Mexico’s government was due to sign a contract on Wednesday with pharmaceutical company Pfizer for the delivery of its coronavirus vaccine, Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell said on Tuesday. Pfizer has submitted the details about its vaccine to Mexico’s health regulator, Cofepris, and the country’s foreign minister last month said the government expects the vaccine to reach Mexico in December.
- Mexico’s government was due to sign a contract on Wednesday with pharmaceutical company Pfizer for the delivery of its coronavirus vaccine, Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell said on Tuesday. Pfizer has submitted the details about its vaccine to Mexico’s health regulator, Cofepris, and the country’s foreign minister last month said the government expects the vaccine to reach Mexico in December.
- India’s daily coronavirus cases continued to stay below the 50,000 mark for the 25th straight day, with 36,604 new infections reported, data from the health ministry showed on Wednesday. The country now has 9.5 million total infections, but cases have been dipping since a peak in September, in spite of a busy festival season last month.
- US says it is ready for immediate domestic shipment vaccines. The US Transportation Department said Tuesday it has made preparations to enable the “immediate mass shipment” of Covid-19 vaccines and completed all necessary regulatory measures.
- The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will soon shorten the length of self-quarantine recommended after potential exposure to the coronavirus to 10 days, or 7 days with a negative test, a federal spokesperson said on Tuesday. CDC currently recommends a 14-day quarantine in order to curb the transmission of the virus.
And back in England: for nearly a month festive shop windows and twinkling fairy lights have been wasted on empty high streets but that changes on Wednesday when the end of shopping restrictions in the country hands retailers 23 days to save Christmas.
Retailers have drawn up the battle plans they hope will enable them to safely concertina two months’ worth of Christmas shoppers into a Covid-secure one, from round-the-clock shopping in Primark to virtual queues outside John Lewis.
The four-week shutdown has cost the non-essential retail chains, which sell Christmas gifts such as clothes, toys and gadgets, an estimated £8bn in lost sales. A successful December will be critical to preventing further store closures and job losses on the UK’s battered high streets:
Meanwhile in Australia, the economy rebounded in the September quarter, but the Reserve Bank governor is warning the recovery from the pandemic will be uneven, bumpy and protracted.
Gross domestic product through the year fell by 3.8% as a consequence of the most significant economic shock since the Great Depression according to the latest national accounts released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
But Australia’s economy grew by 3.3% in the September quarter, which is the largest quarterly increase in GDP since 1976.
A rebound in consumption was a key driver of the September result. Household consumption increased 7.9% in the September quarter, which is the largest rise in the 60-year history of the national accounts:
In case you missed it, Boris Johnson suffered his worst Commons rebellion on Tuesday night as 55 Conservative MPs opposed the government’s new coronavirus tiers despite the prime minister pleading with them as they cast their votes:
Before this, in England’s “high” alert level tier, people were prohibited from mixing socially indoors with anybody outside of their household or support bubble but the rule of six remained in place outdoors.
Hospitality businesses, such as pubs and restaurants, could open until 10pm but people were only allowed to visit with their household or support bubble.
Do you have questions or comments about the UK’s tier system? Let me know – or just say Hi – on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
England wakes up to tier 2 restrictions
England’s month-long lockdown has ended, and the country is now waking up to a new three tier system of restrictions.
Here are the rules for tier 2:
Under the new system, although hospitality venues will be allowed to stay open until 11pm – with last orders at 10pm – only those that serve substantial meals can operate. It means pubs and bars that do not will have to close.
As before, social mixing outside of households or support bubbles will not be allowed indoors. The rule of six will apply outdoors.
Spectators will be allowed to watch sport in tier 2, with a maximum crowd capacity outdoors of 50% of the capacity of the stadium or 2,000 people, whichever is smaller. Indoors, the maximum capacity is 1,000.
Indoor entertainment venues, such as cinemas, casinos and bowling alleys, can open, but must close at 11pm:
Updated
The efforts of eight people who have continued working on heritage, community and arts projects during the Covid crisis have been celebrated in a spectacular light show at Stonehenge.
Images of the group, including volunteers ranging from an arboretum guide who carried on leading tours, to the curator of an exhibition telling the story of a West Indian community in Britain, were beamed on to the great stone circle.
It is believed to be the first time a group of individuals has been at the centre of such a night-time installation at the prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain:
From avoiding family members to skipping extra study at “cram schools”, the coronavirus has forced nearly half a million South Korean test-takers and proctors to rethink their strategies ahead of a hyper-competitive university entrance exam this week.
Reuters: The gruelling, almost eight-hour test on Thursday is seen as a life-defining event for high school seniors. A degree from a prestigious university is seen as a minimum requirement for securing one of the coveted but limited corporate jobs in Asia’s fourth-largest economy.
This year teachers, proctors and students drastically changed their study and teaching practices to try to ensure those taking the test don’t ruin their chances by getting sick.
“We take caution not just in classes but also during lunch, sitting facing the walls, eating alone and not talking at all,” said one teacher who will also serve as a proctor, speaking on condition of anonymity as she was not authorised to speak to the media.
After delaying the exam by two weeks, authorities have prepared 31,291 test venues nationwide for this year’s exam, nearly double the number from last year to allow more social distancing.
Some venues are specialized to accommodate at least 37 students with confirmed infections, and another 430 in quarantine, deputy education minister Park Baeg-beom told a briefing on Wednesday.
All students must wear masks and will be separated by plastic screens, Park said.
For students who are suspected cases of Covid-19, proctors must wear protective equipment and collect exam papers in plastic bags and wipe them before handing over to the staff outside.
South Korea reported 511 new cases as of midnight Tuesday, bringing the country’s total to 35,163 with 526 deaths.
Updated
US CDC shortens self-quarantine period to 10 days
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will soon shorten the length of self-quarantine recommended after potential exposure to the coronavirus to 10 days, or 7 days with a negative test, a federal spokesperson said on Tuesday.
CDC currently recommends a 14-day quarantine in order to curb the transmission of the virus.
US says it is ready for immediate domestic shipment vaccines
The US Transportation Department said Tuesday it has made preparations to enable the “immediate mass shipment” of COVID-19 vaccines and completed all necessary regulatory measures.
The department said US agencies have been coordinating with private sector companies that will carry vaccines from manufacturing facilities to distribution centers and inoculation points.
It added it has established “appropriate safety requirements for all potential hazards involved in shipping the vaccine, including standards for dry ice and lithium batteries used in cooling.”
The department is preparing to ensure deliveries of vaccine doses for about 40 million US residents through January, or about 20 million a month, officials told Reuters.
India reports under 50,000 cases for 25th straight day
India’s daily coronavirus cases continued to stay below the 50,000 mark for the 25th straight day, with 36,604 new infections reported, data from the health ministry showed on Wednesday.
The country now has 9.5 million total infections, but cases have been dipping since a peak in September, in spite of a busy festival season last month.
Daily cases rose by less than 40,000 for the third straight day on Wednesday, according to a Reuters tally.
Deaths rose by 501, the health ministry said, with the total now at 138,122.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 17,270 to 1,084,743, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday.
The reported death toll rose by 487 to 17,123.
Mexico to sign vaccine deal with Pfizer on Wednesday
Mexico’s government was due to sign a contract on Wednesday with pharmaceutical company Pfizer for the delivery of its coronavirus vaccine, Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell said on Tuesday, Reuters reports.
Pfizer has submitted the details about its vaccine to Mexico’s health regulator, Cofepris, and the country’s foreign minister last month said the government expects the vaccine to reach Mexico in December.
Lopez-Gatell said the contract with Pfizer, which developed its vaccine with German partner BioNTech SE, is expected to be signed by Health Minister Jorge Alcocer, and the Finance Ministry was making plans to ensure Mexico sets aside enough money to pay for the Pfizer and other vaccines.
Mexico’s contract with Pfizer will include ways to minimize the challenges associated with its vaccine, which requires that it be transported and stored at -70 degrees Celsius (-94 F).
“The contract that will be signed tomorrow includes provisions for its distribution to be as close to the point of use so that the period of deep freezing is shortened, the distance to be covered is shortened,” Lopez-Gatell said.
He said Mexico’s military will help with the vaccination process.
Lopez-Gatell also said that Johnson & Johnson*s Janssen unit has begun its coronavirus clinical trial in Mexico, where it is looking to have up 20,000 subjects.
Mexico’s Health Ministry on Tuesday reported 8,819 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infection and 825 additional fatalities, bringing the total in the country to 1,122,362 cases and 106,765 deaths.
The government says the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
On that note:
One figure underscores the level of the global economic crisis, AFP reports: in April, 20.5 million jobs disappeared in the United States
In 1929, the world suffered a stock market crisis, in 2008 it was a financial crisis. In 2020, an external shock paralysed from one day to the next all “physical” economic sectors.
Lockdowns that affected half of the world’s population were an incredible shock for a global economy that employed lean manufacturing methods that reduced stocks to a minimum and extended production lines around the planet.
Aircraft that typically carry 4.3 billion passengers a year were grounded, and tourism that accounts for 10.5 percent of global output stopped dead in its tracks.
Shipping containers piled up on docks, public transportation and factories slowed and small shops, restaurants and theatres locked their doors.
Meanwhile, information technology, telecommunications, online retailing and pharmaceutical companies benefited from what some called a “Darwinian” crisis that accelerated the transition towards digital operations.
Unlike 2008, emerging economies were immediately hit head-on by the crisis as exports plunged, along with commodity prices.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts a global economic contraction of 4.4 percent this year.
Hopes for a sharp “V-shaped” recovery have been dashed by a second wave of virus-induced restrictions in the past few months, resulting in an uncertain outlook for 2021.
Rising chances of effective vaccines for Covid-19 becoming available in the coming months have nonetheless brightened the horizon.
Japan’s approach to tackling the coronavirus pandemic has become the country’s buzzword for 2020. “Sanmitsu” - known in English as the “three Cs” - was one of several words and phrases inspired by the virus to have made it onto this year’s shortlist.
Popularised by the Tokyo governor, Yuriko Koike, sanmitsu refers to three situations the government has encouraged people to avoid to prevent the transmission of Covid-19: confined spaces, crowded places and close-contact settings.
The approach was adopted early on in the pandemic and has been credited with keeping cases and deaths in Japan comparatively low.
Koike, whose enthusiasm for the three Cs inspired an online game, received the buzzword award from the contest’s organiser, the publishing house Jiyukokuminsha, in an online ceremony.
The top 10 candidates included “Abenomask” - a reference to the much-derided face coveringsdistributed to every household earlier this year, when Shinzo Abe was prime minister.
The Go To travel campaign also made the top 10 amid criticism that the heavily subsidised tourism programme has helped spread the virus since it was launched in July to prop up regional economies during the pandemic.
On Tuesday, Koike and Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, agreed that people over 64 and those with underlying health conditions should be discouraged from using the scheme.
Other popular words included Amabie, a mythical sea monster that wards off disease, and Demon Slayer, a manga and animated film that is on course to become Japan’s biggest-grossing movie of all time.
With more people forced to entertain themselves at home, it was no surprise that the popular video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons and the hit South Korean drama Crash Landing On You also made the shortlist.
The Trump administration late on Tuesday released the names of more than 10 million businesses and individuals that took pandemic aid, providing more transparency for the programs which officials say have been plagued by fraud and abuse, Reuters reports.
The Treasury Department and Small Business Administration (SBA) were forced to release the information on the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) after a federal judge last month sided with a challenge brought by news organisations seeking the data under the Freedom of Information Act.
The two programs were the primary means by which the federal government assisted small businesses hurt by the Covid-19 pandemic, but the Trump administration from the outset had resisted providing full transparency on who got the cash.
As of November, the SBA had processed and approved more than 5.2 million individual PPP loans amounting to $525bn, along with 3.65 million EIDL loans worth $194bn. Several billions of dollars have gone to ineligible businesses and fraudsters, watchdogs have warned.
The SBA in July identified borrowers who took more than $150,000 from the PPP, but provided only aggregated and anonymised data for borrowers who took less than $150,000, which accounted for roughly 85% of the total number of PPP loans. The agency provided similar partial disclosures for EIDL loans.
The Trump administration said that identifying the EIDL and PPP recipients would violate individuals’ personal privacy and reveal confidential business information that can be redacted under Freedom of Information Act exemptions.
A federal judge in Washington, DC, rejected that argument and dismissed further efforts by the agency to delay releasing the data, which it mandated must be published by 1 December.
Texas surpassed 9,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients Tuesday for the first time since a deadly summer outbreak as the pandemic’s spread threatened the Big Bend region near the desert artist hub of Marfa, where tourists continued visiting and officials urged people to stay home, AP reports.
The rising number of cases near the remote West Texas border is but another example of how the virus is now spreading into places that ducked previous surges but are now ensnared by its long-reaching tentacles and confronted with its wide-ranging challenges.
Texas reported more than 15,000 new cases Tuesday, smashing the previous single-day record. State health officials attributed at least some of the spike to a lag in reporting over the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend, but doctors and local leaders still say they’re trending in the wrong direction.
Marfa is located about 200 miles (321.87 kilometers) down the border from El Paso, where hospitalizations have fallen slightly after a grim November. The town of roughly 1,700 people is the second-largest in Presidio County, where in the past two weeks the number of cases since the pandemic began has doubled to at least 460 confirmed cases, according to state health figures.
The county borders Ojinagao, Mexico, and the only hospital in rural Alpine has just enough beds to treat only a handful of Covid-19 patients.
In more Australian economy news:
Australia’s housing market could potentially surpass pre-Covid levels by early 2021 as housing prices continue to rise across the country.
Experts now believe that if the virus remains under control in Australia, prices will no longer decline by 10% to 20%, as initially forecast.
Building on gains made in October, CoreLogic has now recorded a 0.8% rise in dwelling values in November. The recovery comes after a pandemic-influenced 2.1% drop in housing prices between April and September.
If the growth trend persists, Tim Lawless, CoreLogic’s head of research, thinks the national home value index will surpass pre-Covid levels in early 2021:
Australian economy grows 3.3% in September quarter
The Australian economy rose 3.3% in the September quarter, the latest national accounts reveal.
The national accounts, released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics just now, shows that rise in seasonally adjusted chain volume measures, after a 7% fall in the June quarter.
That 7% fall was the biggest fall ever seen since records began in 1959 in Australia.
Through the year, the ABS said, GDP fell 3.8%.
It also said terms of trade rose 0.7%, and the household saving ratio decreased slightly.
Updated
In the US, a government panel on Tuesday formally recommended early doses of Covid-19 vaccines be given first to healthcare workers and long-term care facility residents in the US, generally seen as people who live in nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
Together, that group would represent roughly 23 million Americans, disproportionately including women, people of color and low-wage workers who makeup the healthcare labor force.
The recommendation from the panel at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) hinges on a vaccine being approved for emergency use by the US Food and Drug Administration and later recommended by the advisory panel:
In England, the government has announced details of the new three tier system that will come into effect in when the four-week national lockdown across the country ends on 2 December.
Non-essential shops in all areas can reopen, as can gyms, hairdressers and other personal care businesses, with the formal instruction to stay at home coming to an end. The “rule of six” will again apply for outdoor gatherings in all areas.
Places of worship will be able to open and weddings will be allowed within local restrictions.
The system has been criticised in parliament by Labour leader Keir Starmer, saying that introducing a three-tier system without an effective test and trace system is a “major risk”.
The hospitality industry has also warned the stricter system of tiers will “ruin Christmas” for struggling restaurants, hotels and pubs:
Summary
Hello, my name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest pandemic news for the next few hours.
You can get in touch with me on Twitter @helenrsullivan or via email: helen.sullivan@theguardian.com.
The US reported more than 100,000 cases a day every day of November, Johns Hopkins data shows, as it heads into a festive season marked by surging hospitalisations. Meanwhile a US government panel on Tuesday formally recommended early doses of Covid-19 vaccines be given first to healthcare workers and long-term care facility residents in the US, generally seen as people who live in nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
In the UK, Boris Johnson suffered his worst-ever Commons rebellion on Tuesday night, as 55 Conservative MPs opposed the government’s new coronavirus tier system. The UK’s month-long lockdown ends on Wednesday, 2 December.
-
BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna file for EU approval of Covid-19 vaccine. Germany’s BioNTech and its US partner, Pfizer, have applied for EU regulatory approval for their Covid-19 vaccine, raising hopes that the first jabs could be administered in December. If approved, the vaccine could potentially be rolled out “in Europe before the end of 2020”, the companies said in a statement. US biotech company Moderna said it had also sought regulatory approval for its Covid-19 shot in both the US and Europe.
- Belgian police arrest 25 men including MEP as ‘sex party’ breaks curfew. A Hungarian MEP in Viktor Orbán’s rightwing party, spotted fleeing along a gutter to escape police raiding a “sex party” above a Brussels bar, has apologised for breaching Belgium’s lockdown rules. József Szájer was one of about 20 people, mainly men and including at least two EU diplomats, who attended a party held near the Grand Place on Friday evening.
- Lewis Hamilton tests positive for Covid-19 and will miss F1 Sakhir GP. The driver9is “devastated” to miss Sunday’s Sakhir Grand Prix after contracting coronavirus. Hamilton tested positive the day after winning the Bahrain GP and is in isolation. His participation in the final race of the season at Abu Dhabi remains in the balance.
- Lastminute.com to pay £7m in refunds for cancelled holidays. The flight and hotel booking site has agreed to pay £7m in refunds to more than 9,000 customers whose holidays were cancelled because of coronavirus. After an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority, lastminute.com has given undertakings that it will pay refunds as soon as possible, and by 31 January at the latest.
- Turkey’s coronavirus death toll hits record for ninth consecutive day. Turkey’s daily Covid-19 death toll hit a record high for a ninth consecutive day on Tuesday, with 190 fatalities in the last 24 hours, as Turks braced for new restrictive measures to curb the spread of the pandemic.
- Concerns in Ireland as shopping sprees follow Covid lockdown. Ireland emerged from maximum Covid-19 restrictions on Tuesday, prompting pre-dawn shopping sprees and appeals to the public to stay vigilant against infection.
- Austria set to bow to pressure on Covid risk with ski holiday ban. Austria’s government appears to have bowed to pressure from Germany, France and Italy and10will ban skiing holidays over the Christmas break in an attempt to control the coronavirus pandemic. The decision, expected to be officially announced on Wednesday, follows heated disagreements between Berlin and Vienna.
