Summary
Here’s a roundup of the latest developments:
- In the UK, Boris Johnson has ditched plans for tougher quarantine restrictions for some holidaymakers after days of chaos, as it emerged the chief of the Joint Biosecurity Centre that advises on travel rules has departed the job leaving it “rudderless”.
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New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern has taken a Covid-19 test after picking up a “seasonal sniffle” from her three-year-old daughter, the government spokesman said on Tuesday.
- Brazil had 15,143 new cases of the novel coronavirus reported in the past 24 hours and 389 deaths from Covid-19, the lowest death toll for a Monday since early December, according to Health Ministry data.
- At least 70% of adults in the US have now received at least one Covid-19 vaccination shot, the White House announced on Monday, reaching a target Joe Biden originally said he had hoped to achieve by 4 July.
- Mexico’s health ministry reported 6,506 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the country and 245 more fatalities, bringing its total to 2,861,498 infections and 241,279 deaths.
- The Philippines will extend a night curfew in the capital, Manila, amid a tightening of curbs in the south-east Asian country to combat a potential surge in cases of the Delta variant of Covid-19, a government official said today.
- The coronavirus has killed at least 4,227,765 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019.
- Health authorities in Iran have reported more than 37,000 cases of coronavirus in 24 hours for the first time, as the country also recorded its highest daily number of deaths from Covid for three months.
- Germany plans to offer booster shots to vulnerable people from September, as well as offer vaccinations to children over 12. Health ministers from the country’s states
- Poland is stepping up security at vaccination points following two arson incidents overnight in a single town and an attempt by anti-vaccine activists to break into another.
- The UK has registered 21,952 new Covid cases in the past 24 hours. There were 912 further hospital admissions and 24 more people have died within 28 days of a positive test.
- Italy reported five coronavirus-related deaths on Sunday, down from 16 the day before, the health ministry said. The daily tally of new infections fell to 5,321 on Sunday compared with 6,513 the previous day.
- A day after it recorded the most new daily cases since the start of the pandemic, Florida on Sunday broke a previous record in the US for current hospitalisations, as the number of patients in hospitals because of Covid-19 once again broke through the 10,000-person threshold.
- Tunisia, which has one of the world’s highest coronavirus death rates, received 1.5m Covid-19 vaccine doses from Italy on Sunday, the president’s office announced.
We’ll be closing this liveblog shortly. Thanks so much for joining us today.
Mexico’s health ministry reported 6,506 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the country and 245 more fatalities, bringing its total to 2,861,498 infections and 241,279 deaths.
The government has said the real number of cases is likely significantly higher, and separate data published recently suggested the actual death toll is at least 60% above the confirmed figure, Reuters reports.
New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern has taken a Covid-19 test after picking up a “seasonal sniffle” from her three-year-old daughter, the government spokesman said on Tuesday.
Ardern will step back from her duties for the day due to the sickness and the deputy prime minister Grant Robertson will take on the responsibilities, the spokesman said.
New Zealand is largely free of coronavirus and has had no cases in the community since February.
At least 70% of adults in the US have now received at least one Covid-19 vaccination shot, the White House announced on Monday, reaching a target Joe Biden originally said he had hoped to achieve by 4 July.
The administration reported the news in a tweet hailing “Milestone Monday” by Cyrus Shahpar, the government’s Covid-19 data director, who said the seven-day average of people receiving their first dose – 320,000 – was the highest since the Independence Day holiday.
Health and government officials have in recent days painted the resurgence of coronavirus as a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”, highlighting that areas of the country with the most spread were those with lower than average vaccination rates, and almost all hospitalizations and deaths are now among those declining to be vaccinated.
“Communities that are fully vaccinated are generally faring well,” Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said, noting that “breakthrough” infections in vaccinated people were rare.
On Monday, a state-by-state study published by the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that less than 1% of fully vaccinated people experienced a breakthrough infection, ranging from 0.01% in Connecticut to 0.9% in Oklahoma.
Additionally, more than 90% of all cases, and more than 95% that resulted in hospitalizations or deaths, were among unvaccinated people, the study found.
Figures published by the CDC on Monday added that 49.7% of the US population who were eligible were now fully vaccinated, and that demand for the shots had increased by 28% from a week ago to reach a new daily average of 673,185 vaccinations administered.
A senior Biden administration official said on Friday that the White House was frustrated by what it saw as “alarmist” reporting by some media outlets over the Delta variant, and was worried that coverage of rare breakthrough cases could lead to more vaccine hesitancy.
Read the full story here:
Brazil had 15,143 new cases of the novel coronavirus reported in the past 24 hours and 389 deaths from Covid-19, the lowest death toll for a Monday since early December, according to Health Ministry data.
The South American country has now registered 19,953,501 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 557,223, according to ministry data, in the world’s third worst outbreak outside the US and India and its second-deadliest.
As vaccination advances, the rolling 7-day average of Covid deaths has fallen to one third of the toll of almost 3,000 per day at the peak of the pandemic in April, according to a Reuters tally.
The sight of a needle piercing skin is enough to chill a quarter of adult Britons and trigger up to 4% into fainting. But hope is on the horizon for needle-phobics as researchers are working on a range of non-injectable Covid vaccine formulations, including nasal sprays and tablets.
Almost every vaccine in use today comes with a needle, and the approved Covid-19 vaccines are no exception. Once jabbed, the body’s immune system usually mounts a response, but scientists in the UK and beyond are hoping to harness the immune arsenal of the mucous membranes that line the nose, mouth, lungs and digestive tract, regions typically colonised by respiratory viruses including Covid-19, in part to allay the fears of needle-phobics.
To understand the role this anxiety may be playing in vaccine hesitancy in the UK, Daniel Freeman, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Oxford, and colleagues recruited more than 15,000 adults – representative of age, gender, ethnicity, income and region of the UK population – in a study and found that a quarter of the group screened positive for a potential injection phobia.
Notably, this subset of people were twice as likely to report that they would put off getting vaccinated or indeed never get the jab. Out of the total number of those fearful of needles, 10% were found to be strongly Covid vaccine-hesitant.
Probably about 3% to 4% of the UK’s total adult population were needle-phobic (have an intense fear of medical procedures involving injections), he said. And the fear of needles was more prevalent in younger adults, he added.
So, potentially, needle phobia explains more of the hesitancy in younger people.
The fear of needles is the one type of anxiety where actually you can faint and that sort of fear and sometimes the embarrassment about fainting is a powerful driver that people want to avoid.
This avoidance, among other reasons, has spawned efforts to develop Covid-19 vaccines in the form of inhaled vapours, tablets, oral drops or intranasal sprays.
Dr Stephen Griffin, a virologist at Leeds University, said he was constantly asked by UK healthcare staff when there would be non-injectable formulations of Covid vaccines – not just for patients, “but because there are so many needle-phobic staff”.
Read more here:
A majority of Australian voters would be comfortable with vaccination passports as a precondition of future domestic travel, and with entertainment venues requiring proof of inoculation before entry, according to the latest Guardian Essential poll.
With Labor intending to use the resumption of parliament on Tuesday to urge the Morrison government to offer a one-off $300 payment to every fully-vaccinated Australian to increase incentives to get the jab – the latest poll of 1,098 respondents captures the nation in a cautious mood.
The survey shows a majority of people (62%) think 80% or more of the Australian population should be fully vaccinated before Australia reopens its international borders and removes all restrictions resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic.
The data indicates that 72% of respondents would support rules requiring people to prove they are vaccinated before travelling interstate, while 63% would back a requirement that people prove they are fully vaccinated before entering public venues, like restaurants.
With the dangerous Delta strain triggering restrictions that have forced millions of Australians into lockdown, a majority of respondents (67%) oppose the recent anti-lockdown protests, with 57% saying they “strongly” oppose them.
The protests are supported by 18% of respondents. While some Liberal and Nationals MPs fear there is a growing backlash in their base about the lockdowns, 72% of self-identified Coalition voters in the sample say they oppose the protests. Support is highest (31%) among respondents who identify as intending to vote for someone other than the major parties or the Greens.
While a majority of politicians and public health officials are now pleading with the public to get vaccinated as quickly as possible given the current risks, the latest Guardian Essential survey demonstrates there is significant residual hesitancy in the community about taking the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Just under half of respondents (47%) say they would be willing to get the Pfizer vaccine but not AstraZeneca, while 24% say they would be willing to get either jab. Only 3% of the sample say they would be willing to get the AstraZeneca vaccine but not Pfizer, and 14% continue to say they won’t get either.
Read the full story here:
Summary
Here’s a round-up of what has happened so far today.
- The coronavirus has killed at least 4,227,765 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019.
- Health authorities in Iran have reported more than 37,000 cases of coronavirus in 24 hours for the first time, as the country also recorded its highest daily number of deaths from Covid for three months.
- Germany plans to offer booster shots to vulnerable people from September, as well as offer vaccinations to children over 12. Health ministers from the country’s states
- Poland is stepping up security at vaccination points following two arson incidents overnight in a single town and an attempt by anti-vaccine activists to break into another.
- The Philippines will extend a night curfew in the capital, Manila, amid a tightening of curbs in the south-east Asian country to combat a potential surge in cases of the Delta variant of Covid-19, a government official said today.
- Vaccine shortages in developing countries are pushing refugees to the back of the queue.
- US president Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, Dr Anthony Fauci, has told ABC News he does not expect the US will be returning to lockdowns, despite the growing risks of Covid-19 infections posed by the Delta variant.
- The UK has registered 21,952 new Covid cases in the past 24 hours. There were 912 further hospital admissions and 24 more people have died within 28 days of a positive test.
- Italy reported five coronavirus-related deaths on Sunday, down from 16 the day before, the health ministry said. The daily tally of new infections fell to 5,321 on Sunday compared with 6,513 the previous day.
- A day after it recorded the most new daily cases since the start of the pandemic, Florida on Sunday broke a previous record in the US for current hospitalisations, as the number of patients in hospitals because of Covid-19 once again broke through the 10,000-person threshold.
- Tunisia, which has one of the world’s highest coronavirus death rates, received 1.5m Covid-19 vaccine doses from Italy on Sunday, the president’s office announced.
Updated
Morocco has announced a curfew starting on Tuesday to combat a rise in cases.
The curfew will last from 9pm to 5am and movement between several cities will be restricted to people who can prove vaccination or have medical emergencies.
Infection rose throughout July and the country recorded 6,189 new cases on Monday, according to the WHO.
Updated
Senegal has told employers that turning away workers who have not been vaccinated would be discriminatory after some announced plans to do so, Reuters reports.
Despite only 1 million people being vaccinated out of a population of about 16 million, Senegal’s public electricity company last week said it would place unvaccinated workers on annual leave from 16 August. Some private companies have also told employees to stay at home.
“These measures, which are discriminatory and violate the rights of workers, have no legal basis,” said the labour minister, Samba Sy.
Senegal’s total number of cases jumped 44% in July to more than 62,000, pushing hospitals in the capital, Dakar, to capacity.
Updated
Italy has reported five new deaths related to coronavirus, taking the total toll to 128,068.
It recorded a drop in infections, to 3,190 from 5,321. The health ministry said data was incomplete for the Lazio region, including Rome, because of a hacker attack on the vaccination booking system.
Italy has registered 128,088 deaths linked to Covid-19 since the outbreak emerged in February last year.
Updated
Germany to start boosters and offer vaccines for children in September
Germany will start giving booster shots to vulnerable people in September and will offer vaccines to children above 12, the country’s state-level health ministers said in a joint statement.
Reuters reports the booster jabs will be mRNA vaccines from Pfizer or Moderna, not necessarily matching whichever vaccine was initially given.
Just over half the population has been fully vaccinated and about 62% have received at least one shot.
Updated
The planned curfew extension capital Manila will help protect hospital in the Phillipines, according to a top regional official.
Benjamin Abalos said on Monday that the curfew would begin from 8pm, two hours earlier than before.
“This will stop the virus for the meantime. What’s important is our hospitals don’t get full,” Abalos told a briefing.
Police are also being deployed to checkpoints used to limit travel in and out of the region, which will be locked down from Friday until 20 August.
Sunday’s recorded tally of 8,735 infections was the highest since 28 May.
Updated
Dressed in a T-shirt and holding his phone up himself, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, turned to TikTok for his latest appeal for citizens to get vaccinated.
After another week of protests over plans for a Covid pass, Macron used the platform to counter misinformation about the vaccines.
“Some of you have been hearing false rumours, some of it rubbish, it has to be said, so I have decided to answer your questions directly,” said Macron, requesting users to send him their questions.
Macron has uploaded videos to TikTok before but they have tended to picture him dressed more typically in a suit and usually taken from official statements.
The original French video is here and he has begun uploading his responses.
Updated
In England, ministers are to alter the NHS Covid-19 app to slash the number of people being told to isolate after contact with a Covid case.
From Monday, the app will instruct close contacts to isolate only if they met a person within two days of a positive test, rather than five days, which the government said was in line with the latest public health advice.
It comes amid reports that people are ditching use of the app in droves. The Department of Health said it was urging people to continue to use the app now the changes have been made.
Updated
The British prime minister, Boris Johnson, told reporters that he wanted a “user-friendly system” to help the travel industry but there still needed to be caution.
“We need to get people, get the travel industry moving again,” said Johnson. “We want an approach that is as simple as we can possibly make it.”
Travellers returning from red list countries have to pay £1,750 to isolate in designated hotels, while anyone fully vaccinated is now exempt from having to isolate 10 days after returning from an amber list country, apart from France.
The government is, however, considering another category – an amber watchlist – for countries that could quickly be moved onto the red list.
“We have also got to remember this is still a dangerous virus and we must try and stop variants coming in, must stop importing variants from abroad, so we have to have a balanced approach,” said Johnson.
Updated
UK cases fall to 21,952 as 24 people die
Cases in the UK have fallen further to 21,952 on Monday, while 24 people died after having been infected.
Cases were down from 24,470 yesterday and are down 27% compared to the previous week.
Cases have dropped each day since last Thursday and are now at their lowest since 29 June, according to government data.
Criminals have obviously seen the pandemic as an opportunity to meddle in Italy’s health system. Following the hacking of vaccination booking websites reported today, police have announced the arrests of nine people accused of rigging contracts to benefit the ‘Ndrangheta mafia.
“Suspects, in the midst of the pandemic crisis, embezzled anti-Covid-19 personal protective equipment, even taking them away from health staff enlisted in the emergency,” police wrote in a statement, reported by AFP.
The suspects are accused of infiltrating the provincial health authority on behalf of the ‘Ndrangheta mafia, securing contracts for hospital cleaning and sanitation but also using false invoices to take more money from the authority.
They also jumped vaccination queues and forced some employees to hand over about €250 (£214) of their salary each month, according to the statement.
Updated
New York will demand public transport workers are vaccinated or tested weekly by September and is considering similar for other frontline workers.
The New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, said on Monday that teachers, healthcare workers and nursing home workers should face similar rules if the situation did not improve.
“If you want to teach my kids, I think you should be vaccinated,” Cuomo said.
He also said it was the interest of businesses to run “a vaccine-only establishment ... it’s going to help your business, not hurt it.”
“If you say to people: well, if you don’t have a vaccine, you can’t get into these establishments, then you’ll see a real incentive to get vaccinated.”
Beginning Labor Day, all @MTA employees & NY employees of the Port Authority will be required to either be vaccinated or get tested weekly.
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) August 2, 2021
Amid the growing threat of the #DeltaVariant, this precaution will help ensure the health & safety of these dedicated workforces.
Hi, this is Kaamil Ahmed and I’m taking over the blog until the evening. Feel free to get in touch if you think there’s anything we need to cover.
Updated
Summary
That’s all from me, Robyn Vinter, today. Today’s top stories so far, as I hand over to my colleague:
- The coronavirus has killed at least 4,227,765 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019.
- Health authorities in Iran have reported more than 37,000 cases of coronavirus in 24 hours for the first time, as the country also recorded its highest daily number of deaths from Covid for three months.
- Poland is stepping up security at vaccination points following two arson incidents overnight in a single town and an attempt by anti-vaccine activists to break into another.
- The Philippines will extend a night curfew in the capital, Manila, amid a tightening of curbs in the south-east Asian country to combat a potential surge in cases of the Delta variant of Covid-19, a government official said today.
- Vaccine shortages in developing countries are pushing refugees to the back of the queue.
- US president Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci has told ABC News he does not expect the US will be returning to lockdowns, despite the growing risks of Covid-19 infections posed by the Delta variant.
- In Australia, the state of Queensland has extended its lockdown until Sunday, defence minister Peter Dutton has been forced to isolate after a health alert at his son’s school and soldiers have been deployed on the streets of Sydney to enforce stay-at-home rules as New South Wales struggles to contain its own Delta outbreak.
- Brazil had 20,503 new cases of coronavirus reported in the past 24 hours and 464 deaths, the country’s health ministry said on Sunday. The South American country has now registered 19,938,358 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 556,834, Reuters reports.
- Mexico’s health ministry has reported 6,740 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 128 more fatalities, Reuters reports. It brings its total to 2,854,992 infections and 241,034 deaths.
- Thousands turned out in Berlin on Sunday to protest the German government’s anti-coronavirus measures despite a ban on the gatherings, leading to clashes with police and about 600 arrests.
- The UK has registered 24,470 new Covid cases in the past 24 hours. There were 911 further hospitalisations and 65 more people have died within 28 days of a positive test.
- Italy reported five coronavirus-related deaths on Sunday, down from 16 the day before, the health ministry said. The daily tally of new infections fell to 5,321 on Sunday compared with 6,513 the previous day.
- A day after it recorded the most new daily cases since the start of the pandemic, Florida on Sunday broke a previous record in the US for current hospitalisations, as the number of patients in hospitals because of Covid-19 once again broke through the 10,000-person threshold.
- Tunisia, which has one of the world’s highest coronavirus death rates, received 1.5m Covid-19 vaccine doses from Italy on Sunday, the president’s office announced.
More than 600 people have been arrested after participating in protests against the German government’s coronavirus measures, officials have said.
About 13 separate demonstrations took place around Berlin on Sunday, despite being banned by a court order and participants saying they would not follow safety rules.
Libya has called on people to come forward to be vaccinated after it received 2m doses of the Chinese vaccine Sinopharm, with more on the way.
“We call on all our fellow citizens to be vaccinated,” the prime minister, Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, told reporters at Mitiga airport near Tripoli after the shipment arrived, according to Agence France-Presse.
Adding to its security and political problems, the North African country of about 7 million people has been hard hit by the pandemic.
Dbeibah, who heads a transitional government ahead of elections set for December, added that another 1.5m doses of vaccine were expected “in the coming weeks”.
Since the pandemic began, Libya has recorded 256,328 cases and 3,579 deaths from Covid-19.
Recently, it has recorded an increase in daily cases of several thousand, partly because of increased testing.
Last Tuesday, a two-week overnight curfew aimed at halting the rise in new infections came into force in central and west Libya.
It does not apply in eastern and southern Libya, which are de facto controlled by the military strongman Khalifa Haftar, despite the political and military situation improving.
Updated
An uplifting story from Serbia here, which is benefiting from COVID-19 “quarantine tourism” as thousands of Indians make a two-week stopover on the way to other countries, Reuters reports.
India has registered more coronavirus cases than any other country except the United States. Its citizens are barred from entering many countries during the pandemic unless they spend two weeks in another country en route.
Serbia has become a popular stopover destination for Indians because it offers them visa-free entry if they have been vaccinated and test negative for the virus.
They are also required to spend at least the first seven days of their stay in Serbia in isolation, depending from conditions set by their destination countries. They must also take another coronavirus test at the end of their quarantine.
Hotel owners said thousands of Indians came to Belgrade in July.
In June, Serbia recorded a 48.4% annual increase in tourist arrivals and the number of overnight stays increased by 39.3%, the Statistics Office said.
Updated
Here’s the global picture over the past two weeks:
Updated
Coronavirus has killed 4.23 million people globally, figures show
The coronavirus has killed at least 4,227,765 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to a tally from official sources compiled by news agency AFP today.
At least 198,247,050 cases of coronavirus have been registered. The vast majority have recovered, though some have continued to experience symptoms weeks or even months later.
The figures are based on daily reports provided by health authorities in each country. They exclude revisions made by other statistical organisations, which show that the number of deaths is much higher.
The World Health Organization estimates that the pandemic’s overall toll could be two to three times higher than official records, due to the excess mortality that is directly and indirectly linked to Covid-19.
A large number of the less severe or asymptomatic cases also remain undetected, despite intensified testing in many countries.
On Sunday, 7,236 new deaths and 455,312 new cases were recorded worldwide.
- Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were Indonesia with 1,568, followed by Russia with 785 and Brazil with 464. The US is the worst-affected country with 613,228 deaths from 35,003,546 cases.
- After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 556,834 deaths from 19,938,358 cases, India with 424,773 deaths from 31,695,958 cases, Mexico with 241,034 deaths from 2,854,992 cases and Peru with 196,438 deaths from 2,113,201 cases.
- The country with the highest number of deaths compared with its population is Peru with 596 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Hungary with 311, Bosnia-Herzegovina with 295, the Czech Republic with 284, and North Macedonia with 264.
- Latin America and the Caribbean overall has 1,375,285 deaths from 40,901,761 cases, Europe 1,203,546 deaths from 58,536,165 infections, and Asia 675,820 deaths from 44,999,056 cases.
- The US and Canada have reported 639,828 deaths from 36,434,778 cases, Africa 170,998 deaths from 6,746,432 cases, the Middle East 160,907 deaths from 10,543,800 cases, and Oceania 1,381 deaths from 85,064 cases.
Updated
Millions of people were confined to their homes in China today as the country tried to contain its largest coronavirus outbreak in months including seven positive tests found in Wuhan, where the virus first emerged in late 2019, reports Agence France-Presse.
China reported 55 new locally transmitted cases on Monday as an outbreak of the fast-spreading Delta variant reached over 20 cities in more than a dozen provinces.
The Wuhan cluster came after the official daily tally was released, but it was confirmed by state media which said the infections had been traced to a train station.
“The seven were identified as migrant workers,” Xinhua reported, citing Covid-19 prevention and control officials.
Major cities including Beijing have now tested millions of residents while cordoning off residential compounds and placing close contacts under quarantine.
Authorities in the capital met and agreed on the need to “raise vigilance, take strict precautions and defend (the city) to the death, sparing no expense,” in comments put out by the Beijing government.
Elsewhere, over 1.2 million residents were placed under strict lockdown for the next three days in the central city of Zhuzhou in Hunan province Monday, as authorities roll out a citywide testing and vaccination campaign, according to an official statement.
“The situation is still grim and complicated,” the Zhuzhou government said.
China had previously boasted of its success in bringing domestic cases down to virtually zero after the coronavirus first emerged in Wuhan, allowing the economy to rebound.
But the latest outbreak, linked to a cluster in the city of Nanjing where nine cleaners at an international airport tested positive on July 20, is threatening that success with more than 360 domestic cases reported in the past two weeks.
In the tourist destination of Zhangjiajie, famed for its national forest park, an outbreak spread last month among theatre patrons who then brought the virus back to their homes around the country.
Zhangjiajie locked down all 1.5 million residents on Friday.
Officials are urgently seeking people who have recently travelled from Nanjing or Zhangjiajie, and have urged tourists not to travel to areas where cases have been found.
Meanwhile, Beijing has blocked tourists from entering the capital during the peak summer holiday travel season.
Only “essential travellers” with negative nucleic acid tests will be allowed to enter after the discovery of a handful of cases among residents who had returned from Zhangjiajie.
Top city officials on Sunday called for residents “not to leave Beijing unless necessary”.
The capital’s Changping district locked down 41,000 people in nine housing communities last week.
Fresh cases were also reported on Monday in the popular tourist destination of Hainan as well as in flood-ravaged Henan province, national health authorities said.
From Lorenzo Tondo in Caltanissetta, Sicily:
A cyber-gang has launched a massive ransomware attack in Italy and shut down an official website for booking Covid-19 vaccinations, putting national security at risk, authorities have said.
The powerful hacker attack, described as the biggest in the country’s history, was announced on Sunday and targeted the IT systems of the company that manages Covid-19 vaccination appointments for the Lazio region, the regional government said.
Hackers are stealing millions of medical records in the region, and according to media reports, those records allegedly include healthcare data from the highest representatives of the government and the state, with most of them living in Rome, in the Lazio region.
“A powerful hacker attack on the region’s CED (database) is under way,” the region said in a Facebook post. “All defence and verification operations are underway to avoid the possibility of the cut in services.”
Hackers have allegedly asked for ransom payments of thousands or millions in bitcoin, with the exact sum not yet revealed.
Prosecutors in Rome have launched an investigation and according to la Repubblica, authorities cannot exclude no-vax groups being behind the attack.
According to media reports, the cyber-attack was launched from Germany.
“It is a very powerful hacker attack, very serious ... everything is out. The whole regional CED is under attack,” Lazio region’s health manager, Alessio D’Amato, told Reuters.
Italy announced that proof of vaccination or immunity from Covid-19 would become mandatory to access gyms, restaurants and bars, triggering a series of protests across the country.
Updated
Iran posts new record daily coronavirus case numbers
Health authorities in Iran have reported more than 37,000 cases of coronavirus in 24 hours for the first time, as the country also recorded its highest daily number of deaths from Covid for three months.
According to the latest update from the country’s health ministry, Iran registered a record 37,189 positive cases, of which 4,317 were admitted to hospital. There were currently 5,607 Covid-19 patients in a critical condition in intensive care units, the ministry said.
There were also 411 coronavirus-related deaths, taking Iran’s total toll from the pandemic to 91,407.
The record caseload is Iran’s fourth in two weeks as positive cases surge in what the authorities say is the country’s “fifth wave” of the virus, according to the French state-backed news agency AFP. It brings the total number of infections since the start of the pandemic to 3,940,708. The health ministry said 3,404,533 had so far recovered or been discharged from hospitals.
Iran has pinned its hopes on vaccinations to help combat the health crisis, but its vaccination programme, which began in early February, has progressed more slowly than planned. Choked by US sanctions that have made it difficult to transfer money to foreign firms, Iran says it is struggling to import vaccines.
Over 10.2 million people have received so far a first dose, and 2.7 million have received the necessary two jabs, the health ministry said.
Opposition MPs in Malaysia have accused the country’s prime minister of using Covid as a pretext for locking down parliament for two weeks to avoid a no-confidence vote in his government.
On Monday, police deployed a water-cannon truck and riot police armed with shields and batons to shut off the road heading to parliament to block a protest march by MPs over the shutdown.
Parliament’s closure means the prime minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, can postpone a crucial parliamentary session. On Monday, parliament had been expected to debate a motion of no confidence against Muhyiddin, tabled by the opposition after the king rebuked Muhyiddin’s government for misleading parliament on the status of ordinances issued during the seven-month coronavirus state of emergency.
Muhyiddin’s health minister said the parliament was a risk venue because four of 11 Covid-19 cases detected among staff and others were suspected to be the fast-spreading Delta variant.
“This government has failed to carry out its duties but is continuing to cling to power,” the opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. Apart from mismanaging the pandemic, he said Muhyiddin had also abused his power to bypass parliament and the king in withdrawing the emergency ordinances.
Public anger has built up against the government as Malaysia’s Covid-19 cases jumped eightfold this year to more than 1.1 million. New daily infections breached 10,000 on July 13 for the first time and have stayed there since. Total deaths have risen to above 9,000.
Updated
A 49-year-old man in Germany has died after he was detained by police during protests in the capital, Berlin, against anti-coronavirus measures on Sunday.
Early on Monday, police said the man had complained of tingling in his arm and chest while officers checked his ID, according to the Associated Press.
The incident took place in the capital’s Mitte district, where thousands had rallied despite a court banning the weekend’s demonstrations. About 600 people were detained during the demonstrations, in which protesters defied orders to disperse and tried to break through police lines.
Protesters were railing against the imposition of Covid passports in Germany, which restrict access to many activities, such as dining indoors or staying in a hotel, to those who can prove they have been vaccinated, recovered from Covid, or recently tested negative for the virus.
An investigation has been opened into the man’s death. Police said officers gave first aid until an ambulance arrived and took him to hospital, where he later died, police said.
Authorities were still trying to determine how many people were injured during Sunday’s events, which were spread out across a large area.
Among those injured was Jörg Reichel, the head of the German journalists’ union dju. Reichel was pulled from his bike, beaten and kicked by protesters, Berlin daily Tagesspiegel reported.
The group Reporters without Borders cited attacks on reporters in Germany during anti-lockdown protesters in its annual World Press Freedom Index that ranked the country two places lower than in 2020.
Updated
Poland to step up security at vaccination centres after arson attacks
Poland is stepping up security at vaccination points following two arson incidents overnight in a single town and an attempt by anti-vaccine activists to break into another.
“These incidents are recurring unfortunately,” the prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, told reporters from Agence France-Presse.
“They will all be severely punished in accordance with current regulations and we will also carry out activities aimed at increasing the security of all these centres,” he said.
The police chief, Jarosław Szymczyk, said arsonists had set fire to a mobile vaccination centre and an office used by the local epidemiological agency in the town of Zamość in eastern Poland.
There were no casualties from the fires.
He called the incidents “extremely shocking” and said there would be “around the clock” security at vaccination points.
“Unfortunately we are observing an escalation of extremely brutal and even thuggish behaviour in anti-vaccine circles,” he said.
Last month, police were called to two incidents involving anti-vaxxers – one at a vaccination point in Grodzisk Mazowiecki where activists scuffled with security guards and medics.
The government has been encouraging Poles to get vaccinated, but the rate of vaccinations has slowed down sharply and remains relatively low in southern and eastern regions of the country.
Many vaccination points are being closed down owing to low demand.
Nearly 50% of the population have been fully vaccinated and opinion polls indicate that up to a quarter of Poles are either against vaccination or hesitating about getting one.
Updated
Hong Kong civil servants, teachers and healthcare workers must get vaccinated against coronavirus or pay for regular testing, the city’s leader has announced, as her administration adopted a push into mandatory inoculations.
The finance hub is one of the few places in the world to have secured ample supplies of the coronavirus vaccine, but public take-up has been lacklustre, Agence France-Presse reports.
After six months, only 36% of the city’s 7.5 million residents are fully vaccinated with two jabs while 48% have received one dose.
But infections have remained low as Hong Kong has been all but closed to non-residents for most of the last 18 months and all arrivals must undergo lengthy quarantine in designated hotels.
The chief executive, Carrie Lam, on Monday announced a new push to raise the city’s vaccination rate by making jabs compulsory for four sectors: civil servants, healthcare workers, care home staff and school teachers.
Vaccination rates vary between those sectors, from 70% among civil servants to just 47% among teachers.
Those who refuse vaccinations will have to be tested twice a week and pay for the cost out of their own pockets unless they have a valid medical reason not to be inoculated.
Lam said:
If people are refusing to get vaccinated for reasons that are not health related, I don’t think a responsible government should tolerate that.
The city’s virus measures have kept infections down with around 12,000 cases and 200 deaths. No local infections have been recorded for more than 50 days.
But the zero-Covid strategy has imposed tough economic costs on the city, once a major international transport hub, and added to a sense of complacency among the public.
Distrust of the government as authorities carry out a sweeping crackdown on dissent has also compounded poor vaccine take-up.
Updated
The Philippines is gearing up for its strictest lockdown starting on Friday as Manila hospitals reach ‘critical levels’
The Philippines will extend a night curfew in the capital, Manila, amid a tightening of curbs in the south-east Asian country to combat a potential surge in cases of the Delta variant of Covid-19, a government official said today, as reported by Reuters.
Metropolitan Manila, already subject to a six-hour curfew from 10pm (1400 GMT), will bring forward that curfew by two hours to 8pm, said Benjamin Abalos, the chair of the region’s governing body:
We are only asking for two weeks. This will stop the virus for the meantime. What’s important is our hospitals don’t get full.
Authorities have deployed police to quarantine checkpoints in Metropolitan Manila, where inbound and outbound travel will be restricted.
The region, home to more than 13 million people, will be placed under strict lockdown from 6 to 20 August, the presidential spokesman Harry Roque said on Friday.
Covid-19 cases in the Philippines exceeded 8,000 a day from Friday to Monday. Sunday’s recorded tally of 8,735 infections was the highest since 28 May.
In the central province of Cebu, the number of cases has overwhelmed healthcare facilities. Two of Cebu City’s 15 hospitals were at “critical levels”, the city councillor David Tumulak told local media.
A surge in Covid-19 cases driven by the Delta variant has been rattling parts of Asia, including countries which had been relatively successful at containing the virus.
Updated
Minister defends government in UK amber list travel row
Arguably the biggest story in the UK at the moment is the potential for confusion over which countries are safe to visit during the summer holidays.
A government minister has defended proposals for an amber watchlist for travel destinations, as Labour warned it would merely add to the confusion around which countries are safe to visit during the summer holidays.
Matt Warman, the minister for digital infrastructure, said the travel watchlist for England would provide people with more information so they could make “informed decisions”.
Damien Gayle has more on the row:
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The United Arab Emirates will start providing China’s Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine to children aged 3-17, the UAE government said on Twitter on Monday.
It cited the health ministry as saying the decision followed clinical trials and extensive evaluations, without providing any details, Reuters reports. Authorities said in June the trial would monitor the immune response of 900 children.
The Gulf Arab state, which has among the world’s highest immunisation rates, was already providing the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children aged 12-15.
The health ministry said on Sunday that 78.95% of the UAE’s population of roughly 9 million had received one vaccine dose while 70.57% had been fully vaccinated.
The UAE, the region’s tourism and trade hub, registered 1,519 new coronavirus infections on Sunday to take its total to 682,377 cases and 1,951 deaths. It does not provide a breakdown for each of its seven emirates.
It ledphase III clinical trials of the vaccine produced by China’s state-owned drugmaker Sinopharm and has started manufacturing it under a joint venture between Sinopharm and the Abu Dhabi-based technology company Group 42.
Updated
More on HSBC’s profits here, from the Guardian’s banking correspondent Kalyeena Makortoff:
Newly reported Covid-19 cases in Tokyo totalled 2,195 yesterday, the metropolitan government announced, as infections spread in the Olympics host city. It was the highest Monday figure yet, according to public broadcaster NHK.
On Friday, Japan extended its state of emergency to areas around Tokyo, including the city of Osaka.
Tokyo reported record increases in cases for three days in a row last week, including 3,865 on Thursday before logging a further 3,300 on Friday. The number of cases doubled last week, but officials say the rise is unrelated to the Olympics.
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A psychology professor has called for clear and consistent messaging from governments, warning that young people may not be taking up the vaccine because there is an implication that “infections don’t matter”.
Stephen Reicher, a professor of psychology at the University of St Andrews and a member of the UK’s independent Covid-19 behavioural insights group Spi-B, told Times Radio:
In many ways the implication has been there that infections don’t matter.
So, if the health secretary can say ‘We’re going to have 100,000 cases a day, that doesn’t matter, we’re still going ahead with our policy’, and when you see reopening everywhere, it does begin to send the message that infections don’t matter.
And in fact there’s some evidence that the young people are beginning to say ‘Well, why should I get vaccinated if it doesn’t really matter, if infection doesn’t matter, why should I do things to avoid infection?’.
I think the messaging is really critical from governments as well – it needs to be consistent, it needs to be clear.
And it needs to be about not only the fact that the pandemic is still there and it’s necessary to do something, but this is a matter not only of personal responsibility, but a social responsibility – of doing things for others, doing things for the community so the community as a whole can reopen safely.
I think the messaging, as well as the practical support, are key things that the government needs to be involved in.
Updated
- Heineken is one of a number of companies today reporting strong profits after taking a hit during the pandemic. Net profit at the Dutch brewer rose to €1bn ($1.2bn) in the first six months of 2021 after the company suffered €297m in losses during the same period last year. But Heineken said it expected full-year financial results to remain below pre-pandemic levels.
- French insurance giant Axa, which faces hundreds of lawsuits over Covid-19 claims, on Monday reported a huge surge in net profits in the first half of 2021, well above pre-pandemic levels. The company posted €4bn ($4.75bn) in net profit in the first six months of the year, up 71% from the same period in 2019 and nearly triple from last year. Axa’s earnings for 2020 took a €1.5bn hit from Covid-related claims and higher payouts for natural catastrophes.
- HSBC has said it will pay an interim dividend to shareholders after revealing that profits more than doubled for the latest half-year. The banking giant told investors on Monday that pre-tax profits soared to $10.8bn for the six months to June, compared with $4.3bn for the same period in 2020. The profit figure came in significantly ahead of analysts’ expectations, with experts predicting around $9.4bn in profit.
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The US state of Florida has surpassed its record for Covid-19 hospitalisations, AP reports, which was set more than a year ago before vaccines were available.
The Sunshine State had 10,207 people hospitalised with confirmed Covid-19 cases, according to data reported to the US Department of Health & Human Services.
The previous record was from 23 July 2020, more than a half-year before vaccinations started becoming widespread, when Florida had 10,170 hospitalisations, according to the Florida Hospital Association.
Florida is now leading the nation in per capita hospitalisations for Covid-19, as hospitals around the state report having to put emergency room visitors in beds in hallways and others document a noticeable drop in the age of patients.
In the past week, Florida has averaged 1,525 adult hospitalisations a day, and 35 daily paediatric hospitalisations.
Both are the highest per capita rate in the US, according to Jason Salemi, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of South Florida.
Updated
China administered about 16.7m doses of Covid-19 vaccines yesterday, Reuters reports, bringing the total to 1.67bn doses, according to data from China’s national health commission.
Updated
Wellbeing in England has decreased in the last year while loneliness and mistrust in government has increased, analysis of ONS data shows.
The new report from Carnegie UK comes in advance of the publication on Tuesday of the latest ONS GDP figures, which are expected to show that the UK economy grew in the second quarter of 2021.
Caroline Lucas, the Green party MP, said the analysis highlighted a “worrying decline in collective wellbeing” that suggested the government’s priorities were not working for people.
The decline in wellbeing started before the pandemic and continued to drop as the country entered its first national lockdown in March 2020, the data indicates.
Refugees across the world are missing out on vaccines due to short supplies
Vaccine shortages in developing countries are pushing refugees to the back of the queue, news agency AP reports.
About 85% of the world’s 26 million refugees live in developing countries struggling to vaccinate even the most vulnerable, according to the UN refugee agency.
For months the World Health Organization urged countries to prioritise immunising refugees, placing them in the second priority group for at-risk people, alongside those with serious health conditions.
That’s because refugees inevitably live in crowded conditions where the virus can spread more easily, with little access to the most basic health care or even clean water, said Sajjad Malik, the director of the UN refugee agency’s division of resilience and solutions. “They are really living in difficult situations,” he said.
Some countries, like Bangladesh, pinned their hopes on Covax, the global initiative aimed at vaccine equity. In February, it altered its original vaccination plan to include nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees in crowded camps on the country’s border with Myanmar. But so far, it’s received only 100,620 doses – less than 1% of its allocated shots – from Covax, leaving Rohingya refugees without.
Globally the initiative has delivered fewer than 8% of the 2bn vaccine doses it had promised by the end this year.
Even in countries where refugee vaccination has started, supplies remain an issue. In Uganda’s Bidi Bidi camp fewer than 2% of the 200,000 refugees have received a single shot of the AstraZeneca vaccine, with second doses in short supply after India stopped exporting them after its own cases exploded.
Other obstacles ranging from language barriers to misinformation about vaccines are exacerbating the problem.
Updated
Lewis Hamilton believes he may still have not fully recovered from contracting Covid-19 after he experienced fatigue and dizziness at the Hungarian Grand Prix. The British driver finished third in a monumental effort to come back from last place in Hungary – a position later raised to second when Sebastian Vettel was disqualified on a technicality – but admitted he fears he may be suffering from long Covid.
Great reporting from Amrit Dhillon in New Delhi: middle-class India has pulled up the drawbridge on domestic workers, as the part-time cleaners, cooks and childminders who used to work in their homes every day are no longer welcome due to Covid-19 fears.
Domestic workers are desperate to get their jobs back, despite the low pay and poor working conditions, but are being blamed as carriers of the virus.
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It’s Robyn Vinter here, taking over the live blog and bringing you Covid-19 updates throughout the day.
Kate Nicholls, chief executive of the trade association UKHospitality, has warned that businesses are in a “fragile state” due to the so-called “pingdemic” hitting at the same time as the reopening of the hospitality sector, having a major impact on staffing.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
In the last month one in 10 of our businesses have had to close their sites and more importantly one in five have had to significantly adjust their offer or services in order to cope with the pandemic.
The pingdemic has hit at the same time as the reopening, they haven’t had time to rebuild cash reserves and so they are in quite a fragile state and the hit to revenues as a result of the pingdemic is running at about 15 to 20% of revenues for those businesses that are affected, so it is a significant suppression just at the point in time when these businesses needed to start recovering from about 16 months’ worth of closure and restrictions.
We are recommending that workers have daily and regular tests and that’s an important part of it for those who are a younger workforce who are through no fault of their own unable to be fully vaccinated by August 16... we are urging the government to develop a more workable, pragmatic self-isolation policy for those workers that continue to be affected.
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Summary
That’s it from me, Helen Livingstone, today, I’m handing over to my colleague in London.
A quick roundup of what’s been happening so far:
- Health authorities in China are battling to contain the country’s most widespread coronavirus outbreak in months and several cities have rolled out mass testing of millions of people and imposed fresh travel restrictions. China reported 75 new coronavirus cases with 53 local transmissions, with a cluster linked to an eastern airport now reported to have spread to over 20 cities and more than a dozen provinces.
- US president Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci has told ABC News he does not expect the US will be returning to lockdowns, despite the growing risks of Covid-19 infections posed by the Delta variant.
- In Australia, the state of Queensland has extended its lockdown until Sunday, defence minister Peter Dutton has been forced to isolate after a health alert at his son’s school and soldiers have been deployed on the streets of Sydney to enforce stay-at-home rules as New South Wales struggles to contain its own Delta outbreak.
- Brazil had 20,503 new cases of coronavirus reported in the past 24 hours and 464 deaths, the country’s health ministry said on Sunday. The South American country has now registered 19,938,358 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 556,834, Reuters reports.
- Mexico’s health ministry has reported 6,740 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 128 more fatalities, Reuters reports. It brings its total to 2,854,992 infections and 241,034 deaths.
- Thousands turned out in Berlin on Sunday to protest the German government’s anti-coronavirus measures despite a ban on the gatherings, leading to clashes with police and about 600 arrests.
- The UK has registered 24,470 new Covid cases in the past 24 hours. There were 911 further hospitalisations and 65 more people have died within 28 days of a positive test.
- Italy reported five coronavirus-related deaths on Sunday, down from 16 the day before, the health ministry said. The daily tally of new infections fell to 5,321 on Sunday compared with 6,513 the previous day.
- A day after it recorded the most new daily cases since the start of the pandemic, Florida on Sunday broke a previous record in the US for current hospitalisations, as the number of patients in hospitals because of Covid-19 once again broke through the 10,000-person threshold.
- Tunisia, which has one of the world’s highest coronavirus death rates, received 1.5m Covid-19 vaccine doses from Italy on Sunday, the president’s office announced.
Updated
Guardian columnist Paul Daley has written about how the decision to allow uniformed troops to help enforce isolation restrictions could intimidate some of Australia’s most economically and socially marginalised people.
Meanwhile in Sydney, 300 soldiers, unarmed and under police command, have begun door-to-door visits to ensure people who have tested positive are isolating at their homes, as Australia’s biggest city enters its sixth week of lockdown, Reuters reports.
Army personnel also accompanied police officers around the streets of the areas of Sydney were most Covid-19 cases have been recorded. Footage published online showed police asking the few people encountered on the street as to why they were out of their homes in the largely deserted streets in Sydney’s south west.
New South Wales state, home to Sydney, said it had detected 207 Covid-19 infections in the past 24 hours as daily new cases continue to linger near a 16-month high recorded late last week.
The state has recorded more than 3,500 infections since the outbreak begun in June, when a limousine driver contracted the virus while transporting an overseas airline crew.
For some more upbeat news, Sheldon Chanel has written this lovely op-ed about how Fiji’s gold medal in the rugby sevens in Tokyo couldn’t have come at a better time:
Australia’s defence minister, Peter Dutton, who caught the virus early on in the pandemic, has been forced to quarantine due to the latest outbreak in Queensland. He released this statement:
My sons attend a school subject to the current Queensland Health directive and as a household member I am subject to the 14 day direction. I will quarantine at home with my family.
I will therefore be unable to attend parliament, although will take part in leadership, NSC, ERC and cabinet meetings remotely.
I will still perform my duties as minister for defence, however the Hon Christian Porter MP will perform leader of the house duties whilst I am unable to attend.
Having had Covid and being fully vaccinated, I have also tested negative this morning.
Updated
Another update from Tess McClure: New Zealand is opening a “travel corridor” from Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu, to allow seasonal workers into the country without quarantine.
New Zealand’s horticultural sector is highly dependent on seasonal workers from the Pacific, and this would allow them to enter New Zealand without having to spend two weeks in government’s managed isolation and quarantine facilities. All three countries have avoided community transmission of Covid-19.
The decision been made by cabinet in principle, and is light on details at this stage – it is likely to come into effect by September. Prime minister Jacinda Ardern is due to announce more details on New Zealand’s plan for reopening its borders next week.
New Zealand had its first mass-vaccination event over the weekend, with more than 15,500 people getting a shot over three days, our correspondent Tess McClure writes.
Organisers told RNZ the event was a “huge success,” but that they would examine whether there were ways the process could be improved before it was replicated. Covid-19 response minister Christ Hipkins previously called the event a “prototype” for the country to test the mass-vaccination process and get it right.
New Zealand’s next mass-vaccination event is due to take place in 6 weeks’ time.
Summary
Welcome to the Guardian’s rolling updates on the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Livingstone.
Health authorities in China are battling to contain the country’s most widespread coronavirus outbreak in months and several cities have rolled out mass testing of millions of people and imposed fresh travel restrictions. China reported 75 new coronavirus cases with 53 local transmissions, with a cluster linked to an eastern airport now reported to have spread to over 20 cities and more than a dozen provinces.
US president Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci has told ABC News he does not expect the US will be returning to lockdowns, despite the growing risks of Covid-19 infections posed by the Delta variant.
In Australia, the state of Queensland has extended its lockdown until Sunday, while soldiers have been deployed on the streets of Sydney to enforce stay-at-home rules as New South Wales struggles to contain its own Delta outbreak.
Here’s a roundup of what’s been happening over the past 24 hours:
- Brazil had 20,503 new cases of coronavirus reported in the past 24 hours and 464 deaths, the country’s health ministry said on Sunday. The South American country has now registered 19,938,358 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 556,834, Reuters reports.
- Mexico’s health ministry has reported 6,740 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 128 more fatalities, Reuters reports. It brings its total to 2,854,992 infections and 241,034 deaths.
- Thousands turned out in Berlin on Sunday to protest the German government’s anti-coronavirus measures despite a ban on the gatherings, leading to clashes with police and about 600 arrests.
- The UK has registered 24,470 new Covid cases in the past 24 hours. There were 911 further hospitalisations and 65 more people have died within 28 days of a positive test.
- Italy reported five coronavirus-related deaths on Sunday, down from 16 the day before, the health ministry said. The daily tally of new infections fell to 5,321 on Sunday compared with 6,513 the previous day.
- A day after it recorded the most new daily cases since the start of the pandemic, Florida on Sunday broke a previous record in the US for current hospitalisations, as the number of patients in hospitals because of Covid-19 once again broke through the 10,000-person threshold.
- US president Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci has told ABC News he does not expect the US will be returning to lockdowns, despite the growing risks of Covid-19 infections posed by the Delta variant.
- Tunisia, which has one of the world’s highest coronavirus death rates, received 1.5m Covid-19 vaccine doses from Italy on Sunday, the president’s office announced.
