This blog is closing now but thanks for reading and we’ll be back in a few hours with more rolling coverage of the pandemic. In the meantime you can read all our coronavirus coverage here.
And these were the main developments in the past 24 hours:
- The US and the European Union are expected to support a renewed push into investigating the origins of Covid-19 after conflicting assessments about where the outbreak started, according to Bloomberg News.
- Washington is also forming working parties with Brussels, Canada, and Mexico to determine how best to safely restart international travel. It came as the World Travel and Tourism Council said the UK government had to scrap its traffic light system for travel because it had “wreaked havoc”.
- Portugal will allow vaccinated US tourists into the country, Reuters reports. “We are in a position to approve the opening of non-essential travel and flights to people from the US to Portugal as long as they have a vaccination certificate,” economy minister Pedro Siza Vieira, cited by Portuguese radio Renascenca, said.
- Vaccine passports will be used for the first time at UK sporting events for England’s Euro 2020 group games at Wembley stadium, with those not fully vaccinated able to show proof of a negative lateral flow test taken within the previous 48 hours.
- World Bank president David Malpass said the institution does not support waiving intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organization, claiming it is out of concern that it would hamper innovation in the pharmaceuticals sector.
- South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa placed the country’s health minister on “special leave” over alleged links to a corruption scandal involving coronavirus communications funding.
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Pfizer is to begin testing its Covid-19 vaccine on a larger cohort of thousands of children under 12 years old in the US, Finland, Poland and Spain after selecting a lower dose of the shot in an earlier stage of the trial.
- A top White House official has urged state governors to work with the US Food and Drug Administration to extend the shelf life of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid vaccine as millions of unused doses nationwide near expiration.
- Many thousands of vaccine doses have been destroyed in African countries after exceeding their expiry dates amid a reluctance to be inoculated and a lack of medical infrastructure, while some jabs were donated relatively late in their shelf life.
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Music fans flocked to the first unrestricted European festival since the pandemic began over the weekend at an event in Albania that had 10,000 attendees across four days, with everyone showing proof of a recent negative test.
- Washington state is to give adults a free cannabis spliff after they receive a Covid jab in an attempt to accelerate vaccination uptake through a promotion coined “Joints for Jabs” by the state’s liquor and cannabis board.
US president Joe Biden’s Indo-Pacific policy chief said he was “relatively confident” a target for the production of a billion vaccine doses for the region by the end of 2022 would be met, despite the Covid-19 crisis in India, where they are due to be made.
Asked at an event hosted by the Center for a New American Security think tank if he expected a delay in the four-nation plan, Kurt Campbell said Washington had been in close consultation with India and others involved in the project, Reuters reports.
“Obviously, this is an extremely difficult period for Indian friends. The United States has tried to stand with Delhi and to bring others, both in the private and public sector, to support them,” he said.
“Our discussions with both our partners in the private sector, and also in government, suggest that we are - knock on wood - still on track for 2022.”
Updated
Brazil has had 52,911 new cases of coronavirus reported in the past 24 hours and 2,378, the country’s health ministry said.
The South American country has now registered 17,037,129 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 476,792, according to ministry data, Reuters reports.
Uruguay released data on the impact of Sinovac Biotech’s Covid-19 vaccine among its population that showed it was more than 90% effective in preventing intensive care admissions and deaths.
The dose reduced deaths by 95% and intensive care admissions by 92%, and also showed 61% efficacy in cutting coronavirus infections, the government said.
A total of 795,684 people – health workers and members of the general population between the ages of 18 and 69 – at least 14 days after receiving their second dose of Sinovac’s CoronaVac were compared with unvaccinated people to determine the real-world vaccine effectiveness, the government said in a report.
The government also studied the effectiveness of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine among 162,047 health workers and people over 80. The shot was 94% effective at preventing intensive care unit admissions and deaths, and reduced infections by 78%, the report said.
Overall, intensive care hospitalisations and deaths from Covid-19 dropped by more than 90% among Uruguayans who were fully inoculated, the data showed, Reuters reports.
Updated
The “failed and damaging” traffic light system for international travel must be abandoned if the UK travel and tourism sector is to be saved from total collapse, an industry body warned.
World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) said the government must scrap the system which has “wreaked havoc” among consumers and businesses in order to save hundreds of thousands of jobs, PA reports.
The risk-based system with red, amber and green ratings for countries around the world determines the quarantine and coronavirus testing requirements people face when returning to the UK.
But Portugal being moved from the green to amber caught many holidaymakers by surprise and left thousands of UK tourists scrambling to get home before new quarantine rules came into force on Tuesday morning.
The WTTC said that moving to a more transparent and easier to understand system will restore consumer confidence and provide a “much-needed” boost to the travel and tourism sector.
It warned that a further 218,000 jobs were at “serious risk” if international travel continued to be off-limits for most of the summer, on top of the 307,000 jobs which were lost in the UK sector last year.
Updated
The British Olympic Association (BOA) has reacted to speculation that Japan could place the UK on its red list by revealing that 86% of Team GB has already had at least one Covid vaccine – and pledging to do everything possible to keep the local population in Tokyo safe.
In a letter to the head of the Tokyo organising committee, Seiko Hashimoto, the BOA chair, Hugh Robertson, said Team GB athletes and staff were “doing everything possible to minimise any risk to the people of Japan” in the lead-up to the Olympic Games. He also promised the hosts that the BOA would “do everything we can to get the entire team fully vaccinated before we depart for Japan”.
Updated
The US administered 303,923,667 doses of Covid-19 vaccines and distributed 372,100,285 doses in the country as of Tuesday morning, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Those figures are up from the 302,851,917 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by 7 June out of 371,520,735 doses delivered, Reuters reports.
The agency said 171,731,584 people had received at least one dose while 140,441,957 people are fully vaccinated as of Tuesday.
Updated
Brazil’s government will need at least 11bn reais ($2.2bn) in extra cash to extend emergency cash transfers to the poor for two or three months until the Covid-19 outbreak is under control, economy minister Paulo Guedes said.
The monthly cost of the programme is about 9bn reais, so a two-month extension would cost 18bn reais, Guedes said, adding that the government already has an unspent 7bn left from the previous package that was revived in April, Reuters reports.
President Jair Bolsonaro is deciding whether the aid will be extended for two or three months, Guedes said. This will depend on how the pandemic evolves, but even three months should not cause ripples in financial markets, Guedes said.
“I wouldn’t expect any noise from the market ... if you spend 11 or 12bn more. That’s reasonable (in view of the pandemic).”
The additional funding would come from emergency spending from a parallel budget to combat Covid-19 that is not subject to the government’s spending cap rules.
Updated
Amid the stress and unknowability of the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic – which continues to wreak daily havoc and decimate arts industries around the world – there was a moment when some Australian musicians actually felt lucky.
“A lot of my friends overseas weren’t getting any sort of stimulus or funding from [their] governments, and we were,” recalls Harriette Pilbeam, who records as Hatchie. After months of lobbying, the state and federal governments had begun drip-feeding the industry with rescue packages, and some musicians found themselves eligible for fortnightly jobkeeper supplements (although many working behind the scenes were not).
“We were so grateful to be here – for [nearly] a year, we thought ‘God, we’re so lucky’,” she says. “It felt like it would be silly [to complain] while everyone else was so much worse off.”
Fast-forward to June 2021, and that moment has passed. Where Australian musicians may once have felt protected from the worst of the global crisis, they now feel left behind by a government that has botched the vaccine rollout, scrapped jobkeeper, and allowed sporting matches to continue while the music equivalents – stadium shows and festivals – have been cancelled repeatedly, often with no insurance.
The US is forming expert working groups with Canada, Mexico, the European Union and the UK to determine how best to safely restart travel after 15 months of pandemic restrictions, a White House official said.
Another US official said an announcement expected on Tuesday indicated the administration will not move quickly to lift orders that bar people from much of the world from entering the US because of the time it will take for the groups to do their work, Reuters reports.
“While we are not reopening travel today, we hope that these expert working groups will help us use our collective expertise to chart a path forward, with a goal of reopening international travel with our key partners when it is determined that it is safe to do so,” the White House official said.
They added: “Any decisions will be fully guided by the objective analysis and recommendations by public health and medical experts.”
Updated
Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez thanked the Mexican government for agreeing to donate 100,000 Covid-19 vaccines, as he seeks to inoculate the population of the Central American country against coronavirus, Reuters reports.
Hernandez, in a tweet, also thanked El Salvador and Israel for helping his country secure vaccine doses.
Hundreds of UK passengers on a cruise ship sailing around the country have been told they will not be allowed to disembark when they arrive in Scotland on Wednesday.
The MSC Virtuosa left Liverpool on Tuesday and was due to dock at Greenock on Wednesday at about 9.30am, departing at 8pm the same day, PA reports.
The domestic seven-night cruise is then due to drop anchor at Belfast, Southampton and the Isle of Portland before returning to Greenock and with a final stop at Liverpool the following day.
However the Scottish Passenger Agents’ Association, the professional body for travel agents and the sector in Scotland, has seen a copy of an email sent to current passengers by the cruise operator.
It says: “Due to the latest Scottish Government Covid 19 restrictions and regulations ... we are sorry to inform you that the port call of Greenock has been cancelled.
“No guests are allowed to embark or disembark ... This decision has been made by the Scottish Government and is out of our control.”
Updated
A summary of today's developments
- The US and the European Union are expected to support a renewed push into investigating the origins of Covid-19 after conflicting assessments about where the outbreak started, according to a document seen by Bloomberg News.
- Portugal will allow vaccinated US tourists into the country, Reuters reports. “We are in a position to approve the opening of non-essential travel and flights to people from the US to Portugal as long as they have a vaccination certificate,” economy minister Pedro Siza Vieira, cited by Portuguese radio Renascenca, said.
- Vaccine passports will be used for the first time at UK sporting events for England’s Euro 2020 group games at Wembley stadium, with those not fully vaccinated able to show proof of a negative lateral flow test taken within the previous 48 hours.
- World Bank president David Malpass said the institution does not support waiving intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organization, claiming it is out of concern that it would hamper innovation in the pharmaceuticals sector.
- South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa placed the country’s health minister on “special leave” over alleged links to a corruption scandal involving coronavirus communications funding.
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Pfizer is to begin testing its Covid-19 vaccine on a larger cohort of thousands of children under 12 years old in the US, Finland, Poland and Spain after selecting a lower dose of the shot in an earlier stage of the trial.
- A top White House official has urged state governors to work with the US Food and Drug Administration to extend the shelf life of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid vaccine as millions of unused doses nationwide near expiration.
- Many thousands of vaccine doses have been destroyed in African countries after exceeding their expiry dates amid a reluctance to be inoculated and a lack of medical infrastructure, while some jabs were donated relatively late in their shelf life.
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Music fans flocked to the first unrestricted European festival since the pandemic began over the weekend at an event in Albania that had 10,000 attendees across four days, with everyone showing proof of a recent negative test.
- Washington state is to give adults a free cannabis spliff after they receive a Covid jab in an attempt to accelerate vaccination uptake through a promotion coined “Joints for Jabs” by the state’s liquor and cannabis board.
Updated
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has eased travel recommendations for more than 110 countries and territories including Japan just ahead of the Olympics.
Reuters reports:
The CDC’s new ratings include 61 nations that were lowered from its highest “Level 4” rating that discouraged all travel to recommending travel for fully vaccinated individuals, the agency confirmed on Tuesday.
Another 50 countries and territories have been lowered to “Level 2” or “Level 1,” a CDC spokeswoman said.
Countries ranked lowest for Covid-19 risks now include Singapore, Israel, South Korea, Iceland, Belize and Albania.
Among those now listed at “Level 3,” are France, Ecuador, Philippines, South Africa, Canada, Mexico, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Honduras, Hungary, and Italy.
A US State Department official said it was in the process of revising its travel advisory to reflect the CDC changes.
As of early Tuesday, the State Department had lowered its ratings on more than 90 countries and territories, including for Japan.
Updated
Mexico reported 3,449 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the country and 262 more fatalities on Tuesday, bringing total infections to 2,438,011 and the death toll to 229,100, according to health ministry data, Reuters reports.
Separate government data recently published suggests the real death toll may be at least 60% above the confirmed figure.
Rishi Sunak, the UK’s chancellor, is willing to accept a delay of up to four weeks to the final stage of England’s reopening roadmap, the Guardian understands, as the government considers extending restrictions beyond 21 June.
Ministers will continue to scrutinise data on cases and hospitalisations over the coming days, with a final decision set to be announced by the prime minister on Monday. From 21 June nightclubs are due to reopen, with the cap on wedding numbers, large-scale events and indoor mixing lifted and guidance on working from home and mask-wearing dropped.
A delay in all these changes would infuriate many Conservative backbenchers. On Tuesday the former Tory minister Steve Baker pressed for the date dubbed “freedom day” to go ahead, calling it the “last chance” to save industries such as hospitality, which is calling for the 2-metre distancing rule to be scrapped.
Sunak, the chancellor, has in the past been regarded as more keen to lift lockdown constraints than some cabinet colleagues.
But a Whitehall source said he was not fixated on the 21 June date and was more concerned that when restrictions are lifted, the move can be permanent. “The Treasury’s main thing is that freedoms are irreversible and businesses have clarity,” the source said.
Portugal to allow vaccinated US tourists to enter from next week
Portugal will allow vaccinated US tourists into the country, Reuters reports.
“We are in a position to approve the opening of non-essential travel and flights to people from the US to Portugal as long as they have a vaccination certificate,” economy minister Pedro Siza Vieira, cited by Portuguese radio Renascenca, said.
Tourists from the US wanting to travel to Portugal should have received final doses of one of the vaccines approved by the European Medicines Agency at least 14 days before their trip, Siza Vieira said.
“I believe that next week we will be able to have this up and running,” he said.
Vieira did not give an exact date for when US tourists would be allowed in.
Updated
The US and the European Union are expected to support a renewed push into investigating the origins of Covid-19 after conflicting assessments about where the outbreak started, according to a document seen by Bloomberg News.
In a draft statement the countries hope to adopt at a summit later this month a “call for progress on a transparent, evidence-based, and expert-led WHO-convened phase 2 study on the origins of Covid-19, that is free from interference.”
The statement is a draft and could change before the US and European leaders meet in Brussels on 15 June.
Updated
Almost 12,000 Australians received permission to travel overseas in May, a higher rate than the preceding three months, despite the federal government promising to look at tightening exemptions.
According to a Guardian Australia analysis of Australian Border Force (ABF) statistics, some 11,879 citizens and residents were granted exemptions in May, a jump of more than 10% on the average of 10,353 a month between February and April.
On 7 May, national cabinet agreed that the commonwealth would “consider tightening ABF outbound travel restrictions for Australians travelling overseas and continue the restrictions in place in respect of applications for travel to high-risk countries”.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken cast doubt on the methodology of a report on the origins of Covid-19 cited that concluded the hypothesis of a virus leak from a Chinese lab was plausible.
“I saw the report. I think it’s on a number of levels, incorrect,” Blinken told a Senate committee hearing on the State Department’s budget request when asked about the Journal article.
The article by the Wall Street Journal cited people familiar with a classified report by a US government national laboratory as saying it concluded that the hypothesis of a virus leak from a Chinese lab in Wuhan was plausible and deserved further investigation, Reuters reports.
The report said the study was prepared in May 2020 by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and referred to by State when it conducted an inquiry into the pandemic’s origins during the final months of former President Donald Trump’s administration.
Blinken said that to the best of his understanding, the report originated after the Trump administration asked a contractor to look into the origins of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, with a particular focus on whether it was a result of a lab leak.
“That work was done, it was completed, it was briefed, to relevant people in the department. When we came in, we also were made aware of the findings,” Blinken said.
“The Trump administration, it’s my understanding, had real concerns about the methodology of that study, the quality of analysis, bending evidence to fit preconceived narrative. That was their concern. It was shared with us.”
Updated
The branch responsible for the Australian federal government’s aged care Covid-19 response was left with just three staff members at times in the pandemic’s early stages, internal documents show.
The Coalition has faced persistent criticism for failing to prepare for Covid-19 in aged care, including from the aged care royal commission, which found its actions were “insufficient to ensure preparedness” in the sector.
Summary
- Vaccine passports will be used for the first time at UK sporting events for England’s Euro 2020 group games at Wembley stadium, with those not fully vaccinated able to show proof of a negative lateral flow test taken within the previous 48 hours.
- World Bank president David Malpass said the institution does not support waiving intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organization, claiming it is out of concern that it would hamper innovation in the pharmaceuticals sector.
- South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa placed the country’s health minister on “special leave” over alleged links to a corruption scandal involving coronavirus communications funding.
-
Pfizer is to begin testing its Covid-19 vaccine on a larger cohort of thousands of children under 12 years old in the US, Finland, Poland and Spain after selecting a lower dose of the shot in an earlier stage of the trial.
- A top White House official has urged state governors to work with the US Food and Drug Administration to extend the shelf life of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid vaccine as millions of unused doses nationwide near expiration.
- Many thousands of vaccine doses have been destroyed in African countries after exceeding their expiry dates amid a reluctance to be inoculated and a lack of medical infrastructure, while some jabs were donated relatively late in their shelf life.
-
Music fans flocked to the first unrestricted European festival since the pandemic began over the weekend at an event in Albania that had 10,000 attendees across four days, with everyone showing proof of a recent negative test.
-
Washington state is to give adults a free cannabis spliff after they receive a Covid jab in an attempt to accelerate vaccination uptake through a promotion coined “Joints for Jabs” by the state’s liquor and cannabis board.
Fans must show vaccine passport or negative test at Wembley Euro 2020 games
Vaccine passports will be used for the first time at UK sporting events for England’s Euro 2020 group games at Wembley stadium.
However, those not fully vaccinated can show proof of a negative lateral flow test taken within the previous 48 hours, the BBC reports.
Uefa, the European football governing body, said UK-based ticket holders aged 11 or over must present evidence of full vaccination, with both doses received at least 14 days before each match. Vaccination status can be displayed through the NHS app.
But attendees of matches at Hampden Park will not be required to show proof of vaccination or a negative Covid-19 test.
Wembley will host up to of 22,500 people, 25% of its capacity, for England’s group D fixtures against Scotland, Czech Republic, and Croatia. England play the latter on Sunday.
Updated
A former Slovenian figure skater who competed in the 1992 Winter Olympics has been criminally charged in Manhattan, US, with fraudulently raising $1.6m meant to help small American businesses cope with the pandemic.
Reuters has the story:
US prosecutors charged Luka Klasinc, 48, with bank fraud and aggravated identity theft related to his alleged use of falsified documents. The fraud count carries a maximum 30-year prison term.
Prosecutors said Klasinc owns BOB77 LLC, which has staged ice-themed amusement park events in locations such as Warsaw, Poland; Dusseldorf, Germany; and Ljubljana, Slovenia.
According to court papers, BOB77 received $1.6 million of US small Business Administration (SBA) “economic injury disaster loans” from July to September 2020, when there were also many wire transfers to international recipients from its accounts.
After Klasinc’s bank froze the accounts on suspicion of fraud, Klasinc allegedly provided a falsified letter on SBA letterhead to “verify” the funds’ legitimacy.
Klasinc flew in from Istanbul on 31 May and visited the bank three times to access the funds but was denied, and the bank alerted law enforcement, prosecutors said.
Updated
Vaccine patent waiver opposed by World Bank, citing potential threat to innovation
World Bank president David Malpass has said the institution does not support waiving intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organization out of concern that it would hamper innovation in the pharmaceuticals sector.
As WTO negotiations over the proposed waiver resumed in Geneva, Malpass was asked whether he supports a potential vaccine IP waiver, which India, South Africa and other emerging market countries argue is needed to expand vaccine access
He said: “We don’t support that, for the reason that it would run the risk of reducing the innovation and the R&D in that sector.”
The comment puts Malpass, a Trump administration nominee, at odds with the Biden administration, which is supporting text-based WTO negotiations for vaccine intellectual property rights, led by US trade representative Katherine Tai.
Major vaccine makers and the pharmaceutical industries have opposed the waiver.
However, Malpass reiterated his calls for wealthy countries to quickly donate their excess vaccine doses to the developing world as quickly as possible.
Three of the leading Covid vaccine manufacturers have paid out $26bn in dividends and stock buyouts to shareholders in the last year – enough to cover the cost of vaccinating the population of Africa, say campaigners.
Conservative backbencher Steve Baker has urged the UK government to press ahead with lifting England’s remaining Covid restrictions on 21 June despite a sharp rise in cases.
He claimed that by that date, all over-50s and vulnerable younger adults should have been given the opportunity to receive two doses of Covid vaccine.
These groups represent about 99% of Covid deaths and about 80% of hospitalisations. As of today, according to announcements made by the government, these groups should all have been offered a chance to have had a second dose. It would be helpful for the government to clarify that this has been achieved.
If this brilliant milestone isn’t enough to convince ministers that we need to lift all remaining restrictions – especially social distancing requirements – on 21 June, nothing will ever get us out of this.
The Dutch government has promised an independent investigation into a supposedly not-for-profit €100m deal to buy facemasks from China last year that ended up making three young entrepreneurs about €20m richer.
The investigative website Follow the Money revealed that Sywert van Lienden, 30, a former civil servant turned TV pundit and activist, who co-wrote the manifesto of the Christian Democrat (CDA) party (part of the ruling coalition), netted €9.2m.
His two associates, Bernd Damme, and Camille van Gestel, made €5.7m and €5.5m respectively, after launching a not-for-profit foundation amid a barrage of publicity in April 2020, after hospitals and officials warned of a desperate shortage of PPE.
A top White House official has urged state governors to work with the US Food and Drug Administration to extend the shelf life of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid vaccine as millions of unused doses nationwide near expiration.
“I would encourage every governor who has doses that they worry may be expiring to work with the FDA directly on the proper storage procedures as they continue to examine processes that will allow them to potentially last longer,” White House Covid-19 Advisor Andy Slavitt said on a press call today.
AP reports that Slavitt added that the FDA is working on plans to safely store the unused J&J vaccines. The pharmaceutical giant has said it is conducting ongoing stability assessment studies that could allow it to extend the expiration dates for its one-shot vaccine.
Safety concerns about J&J’s shot and flagging demand for vaccinations have left close to half of the 21 million doses the company has produced for the US sitting unused. Demand for all the vaccines has slowed since mid-April, but the drop has been significantly steeper for the J&J shot.
Reuters reported that at least 13 lots of J&J shots have expiration dates of 27 June or earlier. It is not clear how many doses that reflects. J&J has another 100 million doses on hand but shipment timing is uncertain.
Starbucks has said it will start accepting reusable cups from customers in the US later this month, more than a year after stopping their use due to the pandemic.
Reuters reports that coffee chains had been encouraging the use of reusable cups and thermos flasks to lower their high carbon footprint before the health crisis caused them to shift to disposables last year.
The rollout of Covid-19 vaccines in the US has, however, allowed restaurants to restart dining rooms and apparel sellers such as Kohl’s Corp and Target Corp to reopen their fitting rooms.
Starbucks said it would also adopt a contactless method that would eliminate any shared touchpoints between its baristas and customers bringing their personal cups.
Last week, the coffee chain announced it would offer reusable cups in stores across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa by 2025.
The confirmed number of Covid-19 patients in intensive care in Northern Ireland has dropped to zero.
PA has the story:
Deputy first minister Michelle O’Neill said it is the first time the number has been zero in ten months. O’Neill expressed her thanks to healthcare workers and also encouraged the public to continue playing their part.
“For the first time in 10 months in the North, there are zero Covid patients in intensive care,” O’Neill tweeted. “A massive thank you to our healthcare workers for their efforts - let’s keep playing our part and making progress.”
Today, there were 15 confirmed Covid-positive patients in the region’s hospitals. None were described in Department of Health data as being confirmed in ICU beds.
No further deaths of patients who had previously tested positive for the virus were notified on Tuesday, however another 81 cases were confirmed.
AP has this dispatch from the White House briefing room yesterday, where for the first time in 449 days reporters crammed into every seat for the daily briefing.
Coronavirus restrictions had kept one of the most recognised rooms in the US government almost empty. But mass vaccinations allowed reporters to first doff their masks on 13 May and then nearly a month later to gather in a pack of raised hands, shouting, hard-eyed stares and the occasional grimace.
“Hope everyone’s cozy,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at she stepped to the lectern. Forty-nine journalists sat elbow-to-elbow in blue seats, while others stood on the edges. The loudspeaker before the briefing told reporters not to block the aisle, but no one budged.
The questions covered a wide range — a sign that there are still plenty of tensions, emergencies and unknowns to consume any administration’s time. The topics included Russia, China, Afghanistan, cyberattacks, infrastructure, voting rights, vaccinations and Supreme Court decisions. Presidents might campaign on policies and promises, but most administrations must deal with a daily degree of chaos, sometimes of their own making.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan also took the podium at Monday’s briefing to preview the president’s first foreign trip, which will begin this week with a G7 summit meeting in the UK.
South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa has placed the country’s health minister on “special leave” over alleged links to a corruption scandal involving coronavirus communications funding.
Graft investigators opened a probe into two of Zweli Mkhize’s close aides last month. The pair, Mkhize’s former spokeswoman and ex-personal assistant, are accused of pocketing public funds set aside to fund South Africa’s coronavirus response plan.
AFP reports that around 90 million rand ($6.6 million) were allegedly syphoned off using a front company, Digital Vibes, awarded a 150 million rand tender in March 2020 to handle the health ministry’s communications campaign.
Ramaphosa has “placed minister of health Dr Zweli Mkhize on special leave,” the presidency said in a statement. It said the leave period “will enable the minister to attend to allegations and investigations concerning contracts” between his department and Digital Vibes.
Revelations about the alleged mishandling of coronavirus funds surfaced last year and have led investigators to believe that billions of rands have fallen into the hands of politically connected companies, sparking public outrage.
Mkhize has previously denied any involvement with Digital Vibes, claiming he had no knowledge of the company or the tender process. He wrote to the ruling African National Congress party last week to request a meeting of its integrity committee to state his case.
Ministers are said to be considering delaying the easing of lockdown in England on 21 June for somewhere between two weeks and a month. My colleague Nicola Davis looks at what a delay could mean, and how long it may need to last.
In the UK, 6,048 positive coronavirus cases have been confirmed on Tuesday, and 13 further deaths within 28 days of a positive test, according to official data.
That brings the UK total deaths to 127,854.
Separate figures published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show there have been 153,000 deaths registered in the UK where coronavirus was mentioned on the death certificate.
The number of people who have received the first dose of a vaccine rose to 40,573,517, a rise of 112,941 on the previous day.
28,227,362 were recorded as second doses, an increase of 306,068.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) will give a verdict on the use of Moderna Covid-19 vaccine in 12- to 17-year-olds next month, following an application by the drugmaker.
The committee said it would “speed up” assessment of data submitted adding that a delay would happen if the EMA required any additional information.
It’s worth bearing in mind the two-dose vaccine is already being used in the EU, the US, and Canada for people over 18 years of age. The company has also sought approval in Canada for use in adolescents and plans for a US application.
If approved, the Moderna vaccine would become the second shot to be allowed for use in teenagers in the EU after Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine was approved last month.
Updated
In England, measures to try to halt the rise of the Delta variant of will cover 10% of England’s population.
Health secretary Matt Hancock has announced a “strengthened package of support” to be provided for Greater Manchester and Lancashire, where case numbers remain high. Other areas, such as Bolton, will continue to receive support.
Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham stressed this was “not a lockdown” but “advice”.
At a press conference he said: “Obviously what we’re seeing here is a localised approach to messaging, more localised support on testing and on tracing and isolation. We are also saying that also should apply to vaccination.
“We are not asking for any more vaccine here than our fair share, what we are asking for is the bringing forward of Greater Manchester’s supplies, so that we can run a surge vaccination programme over the next three weeks.”
On Monday, Hancock told the House of Commons that out of 12,383 cases of the Delta variant, 464 people went on to seek emergency care and 126 were admitted to hospital.
Of these, 83 people were unvaccinated, 28 had one dose of vaccine and just three had had both doses.
Pfizer to test larger cohort of children under 12 years old
Pfizer will begin testing its Covid-19 vaccine on a larger cohort of children under 12 years old after selecting a lower dose of the shot in an earlier stage of the trial.
The study will enrol up to 4,500 children at more than 90 clinical sites in the US, Finland, Poland, and Spain, the company said.
Based on safety, tolerability and the immune response generated by 144 children in a phase I study of the two-dose shot, Pfizer said it will test a dose of 10 micrograms in children between five and 11 years of age. They will also test 3 micrograms for the age group of six months to five years old.
The vaccine has been authorised for use in children as young as 12 in Europe, the US and Canada. They receive the same dose as adults: 30 micrograms.
Inoculating children and young people is considered a critical step toward reaching “herd immunity” and taming the Covid-19 pandemic.
Nearly 7 million teens have received at least one dose of the vaccine in the US, according to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.
Updated
The husband and wife team who helped make the first Covid-19 vaccine are contributing to a book about their efforts.
BioNTech founders Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci, from Germany, are collaborating with Joe Miller of the Financial Times on The Vaccine. Publication of the book is scheduled for 2 November.
According to the publishing group St Martin’s, the book will detail how the pair were able to develop a panel of vaccine candidates within a matter of weeks, how they convinced major pharmaceutical companies to support their work, and how in partnership with Pfizer they managed to produce more than 2bn doses for countries around the world.
Meanwhile, the Pfizer chairman and CEO, Albert Bourla, is also working on a book, announced last month. Harper Business is publishing Bourla’s Moonshot: Inside Pfizer’s Nine-Month Race to Make the Impossible Possible on 9 November.
You can read more about Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci here:
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A dope idea? Washington state is to give adults a free cannabis spliff after they receive a Covid jab in an attempt to accelerate vaccination uptake.
The promotion, coined “Joints for Jabs” by the state’s liquor and cannabis board, was announced yesterday and will run until 12 July. Participating cannabis retailers will give the pre-rolled spliffs to those who have received their first or second dose, if they wish to get high.
According to the New York Times, 58% of people in Washington have received at least one dose and 49% are fully vaccinated.
The state also recently instituted plans to allow a free beer, wine or cocktail to residents with proof of vaccination, the Washington Post reports.
Elsewhere in the US, the paper reports that after the pace of vaccinations began to seriously decline in April, states and cities began promotions including a raffle for full college scholarships and lotteries including prizes of $1m of more – with only those who had been vaccinated eligible.
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Plans to allow an NHS system to extract patient data from doctors’ surgeries in England have been delayed amid concerns around privacy. But Jo Churchill, the public health minister, said the data programme would still go ahead this year.
The World Bank has raised its global growth forecast to 5.6% for 2021, marking the strongest recovery from a recession in 80 years due to US stimulus spending and faster growth in China but held back by “highly unequal” access to Covid-19 vaccines.
Reuters has the story:
The development lender’s latest Global Economic Prospects report showed a 1.5% point increase from forecasts made in January, before the Biden administration took office and enacted a $1.9 trillion US Covid-19 aid package.
Since then, vaccines have become much more widely distributed in the US and some other wealthy countries, boosting their output, as forecasts lag for emerging market and low-income countries.
“This recovery is uneven and largely reflects sharp rebounds in some major economies - most notably the US, owing to substantial fiscal support - amid highly unequal vaccine access,” the World Bank said in the report.
Many emerging market and developing economies were seeing elevated Covid-19 caseloads, obstacles to vaccination and withdrawal of support, the bank said.
By 2022, this will leave global output about 2% below pre-pandemic projections, and about two thirds of emerging market economies will still not have made up last year’s per-capita income losses.
If vaccine distribution to developing countries can be accelerated, World Bank economist Ayhan Kose said that 2022 global GDP growth, currently forecast at 4.3%, could increase substantially to around 5%.
A small addendum on the final paragraph: one wonders to what extent the profits from an acceleration of vaccine distribution to developing countries would further entrench the north-south global divide.
Thousands of jabs destroyed in African countries after expiring
Many thousands of vaccine doses have been destroyed in African countries after exceeding their expiry dates amid a reluctance to be inoculated and a lack of medical infrastructure, the BBC reports.
Malawi has destroyed almost 20,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, while South Sudan said it would safely dispose of 59,000 doses and hand back another 72,000 to the global Covax scheme for poorer countries.
The Democratic Republic of Congo said it could not use most of the 1.7 million AstraZeneca doses it received through Covax, so they were sent to Ghana, Madagascar and elsewhere. Nigeria was also unable to use some doses.
Some vaccines are given with a short shelf life before expiry, such as a batch of one million doses South Africa received from India in February with an expiry date of 13 April. However, the the country’s government opted not to use them due to concerns the jabs did not offer sufficient protection from the prevalent Covid variant.
Malawi virologist Gama Bandawe told the BBC that mistrust of vaccines has played a role in the country being unable to use all the supplies it has received.
A study commissioned by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention on Covid-19 vaccine perceptions in 15 countries suggests that a significant proportion of people on the continent harbour concerns around vaccine safety.
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Unions representing teachers and other school staff are calling on the government to reinstate masks in classrooms in England in response to a growing number of Covid outbreaks, particularly among secondary pupils.
Authorities in 92 countries shut down 113,000 websites and online marketplaces selling counterfeit or illicit medicines and medical products last month, including vast quantities of fake Covid-19 tests and face masks, Interpol has said.
“As the pandemic forced more people to move their lives online, criminals were quick to target these new ‘customers’,” Jurgen Stock, secretary general of the international police agency, said in a statement.
AFP reports that unauthorised Covid testing kits accounted for over half of all the medical devices seized from 18-25 May, the agency said, while Italian authorities found more than 500,000 fake surgical masks and 35 machines for their production and packaging.
Police arrested 227 people worldwide and recovered pharmaceutical products worth $23m.
“Whilst some individuals were knowingly buying illicit medicines, many thousands of victims were unwittingly putting their health and potentially their lives at risk,” Stock said.
Fake and illicit drugs were also found concealed in shipments of clothes, jewellery, toys and food. The roughly 9m devices and drugs seized was the highest number since Interpol began coordinating the fake medicine campaigns, known as Pangea operations, in 2008.
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Researchers in Denmark are using virtual reality to encourage more Covid-19 vaccinations, through a game of manoeuvring through a virus-infected crowd in a city square.
In an experiment by the University of Copenhagen, participants wear goggles to play an elderly person crossing the square while avoiding red-clothed by-passers infected with Covid-19. Vaccinated characters dress in blue.
“It was fun, definitely. It felt like you were there,” said Adam, a participant who got infected in the game he played in a Copenhagen park.
“We know from similar studies that after people went through a virtual reality experience like this, their vaccination intention increases. We have observed this with Covid already,” said Robert Bohm, professor of psychology at the University of Copenhagen, citing a prior online study by the researchers.
The World Health Organization estimates that immunisation prevents 4 million to 5 million deaths every year. In February-March, more than a quarter of European Union adults said they would refuse a Covid-19 shot, a survey by the EU agency Eurofound showed.
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Music fans flocked to the first unrestricted European festival since the pandemic began over the weekend at an event in Albania that had 10,000 attendees across four days.
The open-air Unum music festival saw performances by 50 international and local musicians, as people embraced the chance to hear nonstop music for five days at Thrown Sand beach, 75km north-west of the capital, Tirana.
AP reports that organisers claimed that everyone at the festival was free of Covid-19. “Once everyone is tested, It’ll be safer among thousands of people inside the festival than it will be outside in the general population,” Grego O’Halloran, the head organiser, told Mixmag ahead of the event. “We went to the Albanian government and said that we have a way of testing people and they were like ‘Alright great, well that sounds good!’
“There will be testing stations all around the city that you can pop in to, or if you’ve got a negative PCR test arriving into Albania that will cover you for a certain period. There’ll be a double check mid-festival to make sure everything is as secure as possible.”
Raresh getting @UnumFestival - the first unrestricted European festival since the pandemic began - bouncing ☀️
— Mixmag (@Mixmag) June 6, 2021
Read more 👉 https://t.co/u3byoxo7gX pic.twitter.com/kupnfUIWAP
The main stage near the beach was on top of a sailboat, while another was under the pine trees close to the beach. Festivalgoers came from all across Europe, even as far away as Uruguay.
“[It’s] awesome … crazy … insane to see so many people in one place … [after] sitting in one room in your apartment alone in lockdown,” said one German attendee.
The event was possible because of Albania’s low contagion rate. It recorded only two new infections on Saturday. The foreign ministry noted there were no pandemic restrictions for anyone wanting to come to Albania.
The motto of the festival was for people to become “one” and unite over music, and some said music was more important than most people realised.
“It was necessary for our mental health,” said Ron Kurtolli, a DJ from Kosovo. “People don’t pay much attention to mental health, but it’s really important for the well-being of everything.”
The first European festival of the year, @UnumFestival, is in full swing 🇦🇱
— Mixmag (@Mixmag) June 5, 2021
Here's how: https://t.co/u3byoxo7gX pic.twitter.com/yFrXILsYEo
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Thousands of US families with children in foster care have seen reunifications snarled as courts delayed cases, went virtual or temporarily shut down, according to an Associated Press analysis of child welfare data from 34 states.
The decrease in children leaving foster care means families are lingering longer in a system intended to be temporary, as critical services were shuttered or limited. Vulnerable families are suffering long-term and perhaps irreversible damage, experts say, which could leave parents with weakened bonds with their children.
The AP’s analysis found at least 8,700 fewer reunifications during the early months of the pandemic compared with the March-to-December period the year before – a decrease of 16%. Adoptions dropped too — by 23%. Overall, at least 22,600 fewer children left foster care compared with 2019.
“The systemic problems around racism and poverty in Covid and how people are treated in the child welfare system may be compounding,” said Sharon Vandivere of the group Child Trends, who noted that longer stays in foster care are inherently traumatic and make reunifications less likely.
Many more men in India have received Covid-19 vaccines than women, government data shows, highlighting gender disparity in the country’s immunisation drive that has also disadvantaged the rural population.
Reuters reports that India has partly or fully vaccinated about 101 million men, nearly 17% more than women. Men account for 54% of the total number of people inoculated, according to the data.
Many federally administered regions, the capital Delhi, and big states such as Uttar Pradesh have seen some of the worst inequities. Only Kerala in the south and Chhattisgarh in central India have vaccinated more women than men.
“We are noticing that men, especially in towns and villages, prefer to take the vaccine before women as they have to travel for work, while women are relegated to domestic chores,” said Prashant Pandya, medical superintendent at a big government hospital in the western state of Gujarat.
India, with a population of 1.3 billion, has about 6% more men than women.
Fifteen of the UK’s Nobel prize-winning scientists, economists and peace activists have called on the country to “play a historic role” in removing “artificial” intellectual property barriers that are “restricting” Covid-19 vaccine production.
In a letter to the UK prime minister, the Nobel laureates caution that “last year, science was the main barrier to beating this disease; but today, it is inequality”, with highly effective vaccines largely available only to wealthy countries.
An intellectual property waiver is “an essential step to increase production”, the letter said, calling for pharmaceutical giants to be forced to share their vaccine technology and know-how through the World Health Organisation’s Covid-19 Technology Access Pool.
India and South Africa first proposed a Covid vaccine waiver at the World Trade Organisation eight months ago, with the support of more than 100 mostly low and middle-income countries, but the move was blocked by a small number of rich countries including the US, Japan, the UK, and EU.
Sir Richard Roberts, awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in medicine, said:
The scientific case for this is clear. If we allow Covid-19 to spread around the globe for years, not only will millions needlessly die, but the virus will continue to mutate into more virulent strains. That could undo all of our work – including the work of British scientists – in developing effective vaccines and will likely prolong the pandemic for years. We don’t have time for politicking. The intellectual property barriers to vaccine production are hindering local production of vaccines, especially in low and middle income countries, and they must be cleared away.
Sir Christopher Pissarides, awarded the 2010 Nobel prize in economic sciences, said:
British scientists have created life-saving vaccines that can help save the lives of millions. But it would be a tragedy if in these exceptional times they are locked away and kept secret, shared among only a handful of pharmaceutical companies.
Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, awarded the 1976 Nobel peace prize, said:
With high vaccination rates in rich countries while low and middle-income nations suffer, we are watching a system of vaccine apartheid develop. There is no justification for the needless loss of life in the months since India and South Africa first requested an intellectual property waiver. These are global public goods, developed largely with public funding; they belong to all of us. Boris Johnson must do what is right and support this waiver, for all of humanity.
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A host of celebrities including David Beckham, Olivia Colman and Billie Eilish have written to world leaders calling for surplus coronavirus vaccines to be shared with poorer countries.
In an open letter, published ahead of the G7 summit on Friday, the Unicef ambassadors said the meeting was a “vital opportunity” for action to be taken.
The world has spent a year and a half battling the Covid-19 pandemic, but the virus is still spreading in many countries and producing new variants with the potential to put us all back where we started. This means more school closures, more healthcare disruptions and greater economic fallout - threatening the futures of families and children everywhere.
The pandemic will not be over anywhere until it is over everywhere, and that means getting vaccines to every country, as quickly and equitably as possible. This weekend’s G7 summit is a vital opportunity for you to agree the actions that will get vaccines where they are most needed, fast.
Other signatories include actors Liam Neeson, Orlando Bloom, Gemma Chan, and Whoopi Goldberg, singers Katy Perry and P!nk, and UK tennis ace Andy Murray.
The letter also warned that Covax, the global initiative supporting poorer countries in gaining access to vaccines, is facing a shortfall of 190 million doses. Unicef has proposed that G7 countries should donate 20% of their vaccines between June and August to help address the shortages temporarily.
“As a Unicef goodwill ambassador I believe in the crucial benefit of vaccinations,” said former England footballer Beckham. “The pandemic won’t be over until it’s over everywhere, so it’s vital that all communities around the world have fair access to Covid-19 vaccines urgently.”
More than 1m Europeans get Covid health pass for travel within EU
More than 1 million Europeans have received the new EU Covid health certificate being rolled out to unlock travel within the bloc, the European Commission has said.
AFP reports:
EU justice commissioner Didier Reynders announced the figure to the European parliament ahead of a vote to enshrine the document in law in time for the continent’s summer tourism season.
The certificate – showing the bearer’s immunity to Covid-19 either through vaccination or previous infection, or their negative test status – is to be used for intra-EU travel from 1 July. But the commission wants as many EU countries as possible to start earlier.
“The more certificates we can already issue, the easier the process will be during the summer - otherwise, we risk a big bang on the first of July, which we cannot afford,” Reynders said. As of today, nine EU countries were already issuing the documents, with more than a million citizens have received such certificates – which can be presented either online or on paper – already.
EU lawmakers and capitals also agreed that, when it comes to proof of vaccinations, only the jabs authorised by the European Medicines Agency – so far those from BioNTech/Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson – would be accepted in all EU countries.
But individual countries can also decide to accept, for their territory only, others, such as one produced by China, or Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.
To prevent discrimination against the unvaccinated - particularly younger Europeans who have not yet been able to access jabs given in priority to the elderly - much emphasis has also been put on testing.
The parliament failed to make Covid tests for travel free of charge, but extracted money and concessions from the European Commission to make them more affordable.
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As we emerge from a widespread internet outage, a top Japanese virologist and government adviser has said there is a risk of spreading Covid-19 during the Tokyo Olympics.
Tohoku University professor Hitoshi Oshitani was an architect of Japan’s “Three Cs” approach to the pandemic, which advises avoiding closed spaces, crowds and close contact situations. He told the Times:
The government and the organising committee, including the IOC (International Olympic Committee), keep saying they’re holding a safe Olympics. But everybody knows there is a risk. It’s 100% impossible to have an Olympics with zero risk … of the spread of infection in Japan and also in other countries after the Olympics.
There are a number of countries that do not have many cases, and a number that don’t have any variants. We should not make the Olympics [an occasion] to spread the virus to these countries.
Already postponed from last year because of the pandemic, a scaled-down version of the Games with no foreign spectators is set to start on 23 July despite public fears the event could spread the coronavirus and drain medical resources.
However, a former Olympian turned public health expert, said she believed the Games can be pulled off with an acceptable level of risk. “There will be cases, but having one case or a couple of cases doesn’t mean that it was a failure,” Tara Kirk Sell, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Reuters.
Sell, a silver medallist swimmer at the 2004 Games, added: “These Games are very much a symbol of the whole world emerging from this terrible, global pandemic … If we wanted to be as safe as possible, we’d never leave our house.”
Amid the outage, my colleague Martin Belam handed over the blog, so it will be me Mattha Busby bringing you global coronavirus updates for the next couple of hours. You may contact me via email on mattha.busby.freelance@guardian.co.uk or on Twitter. Please do get in touch with any tips or thoughts.
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Today so far…
- China has approved the emergency use of a Covid-19 vaccine for those as young as three, according to a spokesperson for Sinovac. That would make it the first country to offer jabs to young children.
- Britain ignored scientific advice and instead took a political decision when it failed to put Malta on its list of safe travel destinations, Malta foreign minister Evarist Bartolo said.
- Visitors to Portugal must now quarantine for 10 days on return to England, as the county’s move to the “red list” came into effect.
- Vietnam has started asking for public donations to buy vaccines as it struggles to contain a new coronavirus wave.
- Unicef has urged rich members of the G7 to start donating vaccines to poor countries now, instead of waiting to donate leftovers all at once, saying many nations don’t have capacity to roll out huge amounts in one go.
- India’s government will provide free vaccinations for all adults, Prime Minister Narendra Modi says, as the capital New Delhi and financial hub Mumbai ease lockdowns on falling infection levels.
- The state of Uttar Pradesh in India has announced that it will end some Covid restrictions. The weekday daytime curfew would be lifted in all 75 districts of the state, as all of them have fallen below 600 active Covid cases.
- The president of the Tokyo 2020 organizsing committee, Seiko Hashimoto, has announced that there will be restrictions on the movement media using GPS tracking during the Games.
- New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Tuesday that she would get her first Covid-19 shot at the end of next week.
- Canada is preparing to ease birder restrictions for vaccinated travellers, Bloomberg reports.
- The Czech Republic has announced it will reopen its borders to EU and Serbian citizens on June 21.
- Spain’s football squad will be get a Covid-19 vaccine shot, less than a week before their opening Euro 2020 match, after captain Sergio Busquets tested positive.
- Health officials in New South Wales, Australia, have had to reiterate advice over Covid-19 after a number of businesses in Byron Shire were witnessed asking vaccinated customers not to enter their premises under the misapprehension they could shed the virus.
Vietnam, once a model for its successful handling of the pandemic, has started asking for public donations to buy vaccines as it struggles to contain a new coronavirus wave.
AFP reports that the south-east Asian country has vaccinated only about 1% of its population of nearly 100 million, and authorities have become increasingly alarmed by a recent spike in cases.
Since last week, mobile phone users have received up to three text messages urging them to contribute to a Covid-19 vaccine fund, while civil servants have been encouraged to part with a day’s pay.
Some residents, fearful of the virus’ impact on Vietnam’s economy – one of the few in the world to expand last year – told AFP they support the fundraising drive.
Nguyen Tuan Anh, a civil servant, told AFP he had sent about $50 via bank transfer and SMS payment, as vaccines would mean “Vietnam’s economy will be stable and develop again”.
Vietnam’s industrial northern provinces – home to key factories such as Samsung and Foxconn – have been particularly badly hit by the latest outbreak.
Across the country, tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs, according to state media, with bars and restaurants forced to close in major hubs such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and public gatherings cancelled.
Cases have more than tripled since April to reach almost 9,000. Although the number is low in comparison to most of its south-east Asian neighbours, Vietnam’s vaccination rate per capita is the lowest in the region, and among the lowest in Asia, according to an AFP tally.
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Spain's Euro 2020 squad to get early vaccinations after positive test
The Spanish football squad’s players will be get a Covid-19 vaccine shot tomorrow, less than a week before their opening Euro 2020 match, after captain Sergio Busquets tested positive, Sports Minister Jose Manuel Rodriguez Uribes said.
Busquets’ positive has thrown Spain’s tournament preparations into chaos with the remaining 23 players going into isolation along with the coaching staff.
An Under-21 side led by their coach Luis de la Fuente will face Lithuania tonight in what was supposed to be the nation’s final warm-up game before the Euros.
Coach Luis Enrique called up a group of six players, including Chelsea goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga, to complement the squad. They will train separately in “parallel bubble” away from the main Euros squad with a view to them being added should the need occur.
Reuters report that so far, all the other players and staff have tested negative.
“We are making an exception because they represent us in a top level competition,” Rodriguez Uribes told Cadena Ser radio station, adding that they were already planning to give them the shots before Spain’s captain had tested positive.
Health officials in New South Wales, Australia, have had to reiterate advice over Covid-19 after a number of businesses in Byron Shire were witnessed asking vaccinated customers not to enter their premises under the misapprehension they could shed the virus.
The New South Wales department of health has stressed that it is impossible for people to develop, shed, or spread the virus through receiving a vaccine.
The advice comes after some businesses in the small town of Mullumbimby placed signs in their windows that read: ‘If you have had the Covid-19 vaccine we ask you not to enter for two weeks or longer until any symptoms subside’.
One of the signs falsely states that the spread of the virus following vaccination was emerging from “first hand accounts” and that vaccinated people were “inadvertently harming” the health of others.
The town is located in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales and is about 15km inland from Byron Bay. It is a region with a high level of vaccine hesitancy and refusal, with childhood vaccination rates among the lowest in Australia.
A former paramedic who runs a World Health Organisation [WHO] approved vaccination information website, Heidi Robertson, said she was appalled to see the signs as she walked down Stuart Street on Monday.
She and health professionals living in the region, including intensive care specialist Dr Rachael Heap, have been working hard for several years to educate the community about vaccination.
“We wanted to change the narrative around the region, because we’ve got such a shocking rate of vaccination uptake and we are known for that in Mullumbimby,” Robertson said.
Read more of Melissa Davey’s report here: ‘Vaccine won’t give you Covid’: health officials battle anti-vaccination messages in Northern Rivers
Andrew Sparrow’s UK live blog is up and running for the day if it is UK developments that you are after. I’ll keep my focus on international Covid news here.
A total of 95 deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending 28 May mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) - the lowest number since the week ending 4 September 2020.
PA note that the figure is down 11% on the previous week.
It is the first time the number of deaths has been below 100 since the week ending 11 September.
Around one in 100 deaths registered in the week to 28 May mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate.
Sinovac says its vaccine has been approved for use in children aged 3 and above
China has approved the emergency use of a Covid-19 vaccine for those as young as three, according to a spokesperson for Sinovac who spoke to AFP. That would make it the first country to offer jabs to young children.
“In recent days, the Sinovac vaccine was approved for emergency use in three- to 17-year-olds,” the spokesperson said.
But they did not confirm when the young children would be able to start receiving the shots, saying the schedule for the rollout will be decided by the National Health Commission “according to China’s current epidemic prevention and control needs and vaccine supply”.
The company has completed early phase trials of the vaccine in children and adolescents, with results to be published shortly in the Lancet scientific journal, the spokesperson added.
State broadcaster CCTV reported over the weekend that an unnamed official in the State Council’s epidemic response task force had said vaccines had been approved for children, and “the safety and effectiveness” had been proven.
A spokesperson for China’s other major vaccine, Sinopharm, said that experts had demonstrated the effectiveness of its vaccine in children, but didn’t confirm whether it had been approved for use.
A quick one from Reuters: Russia reported 9,977 new Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, including 3,817 in Moscow.
The government coronavirus task force also said that 379 people had died of coronavirus-related causes in the last 24 hours, pushing the official death toll to 124,496. That’s far fewer than the 270,000 that the state statistics service says had died from Covid-19 and related causes from April 2020 to April 2021.
Britain ignored scientific advice and instead took a political decision when it failed to put Malta on its list of safe travel destinations, Malta Foreign Minister Evarist Bartolo said.
Britons traditionally account for a third of all arrivals on the small Mediterranean island, and opposition politicians criticised the government for failing to convince London that Malta was a safe tourist destination.
Britain last week revised its so-called “green list” of countries, that do not require quarantine on return, choosing not to put any new country on it, while removing Portugal.
But Bartolo said the British government did not want its nationals to go abroad because of concerns over growing coronavirus cases at home.
“The British government is ignoring scientific advice. It has taken a political decision not to allow travel anywhere, despite the pressure it faces from airlines, tourism operators and the people in general,” he wrote on Facebook.
Chris Scicluna reports from Valetta for Reuters that Malta on Monday reported no new Covid-19 cases for the first time in 11 months. Half of its adult population has been fully vaccinated and 75% have received a first dose of a vaccine - the highest rate within the European Union.
Dr Nikki Kanani, director of primary care at NHS England, said that vaccine confidence in younger people had increased in the UK.
Speaking as over-25s were invited to book their Covid-19 jabs, PA report Dr Kanani told BBC Breakfast: “We’re still seeing great uptake and we are definitely seeing younger people coming in and asking more questions, which is absolutely fine.
“More than four in five 40 to 49-year-olds have had their first dose and two-thirds of 30 to 39-year-olds have already had theirs, and that is still going to increase, of course, as people come forward, so uptake remains high.
“We had additional polling over the weekend that shows that the confidence in the vaccine has increased by a fifth - by 20% - in those under-40s.
“What’s really important as we go into the younger categories is really appealing to people in their own communities and what our teams have done so well is reflect what a community needs locally - whether that’s setting up pop-up vaccination centres in Gurudwaras or temples, or in shopping malls or at workplaces, that has been critical to making sure that people feel confident to take up the vaccine when they’re asked to do so.”
Visitors to Portugal must now quarantine for 10 days on return to England
Overnight saw a rush to travel back to the UK from Portugal, as travellers had until 4am to return to avoid having to quarantine for 10 days after the country was moved from the “green” list to the “amber” list, without being placed on a watchlist first.
The UK’s environment minister has been getting a tough ride on the media morning round in the UK – being asked whether the travel rules, and government advice, have to be this complicated, and why there was so little warning of the change of status.
"Does it need to be this difficult?"
— LBC (@LBC) June 8, 2021
Nick Ferrari urges Environment Secretary George Eustice to confirm whether people can travel to amber list countries or not.@NickFerrariLBC pic.twitter.com/Cadw5WCiGC
Eustace said “Our advice has always been that you should not travel to countries on the amber list.”
The Gaby Hinsliff column today asks the question before Britain vaccinates children, should it vaccinate the world? She writes:
Personally I was thrilled to get my vaccine and would be more than happy for my son to have it, but what brought me up short was the question I saw posed recently by the epidemiologist Adam Kucharski: if rich countries have enough vaccine left to jab children at incredibly low risk of serious illness and death, why aren’t they offering it to poorer countries where people are dying for lack of it? Shouldn’t we be taking more seriously the threat not just of humanitarian crises, but of a more resistant variant emerging in some place where the virus is currently raging out of control, fatally undermining the vaccines that remain our only real route to freedom?
Only 2% of sub-Saharan Africa has had a first dose. Thailand, engulfed by a severe outbreak, is only just beginning mass vaccinations. Even if the G7 summit agrees this week to invest billions in ramping up vaccine production for poorer countries – as a group of former world leaders led by Gordon Brown wants – that takes months to come on stream.
If Britain doesn’t want to seal its borders – and nothing in ministers’ confused approach to foreign holidays suggests they do – then digging an ever-stronger domestic firebreak against the more contagious Delta variant we have just imported from India won’t be enough. We’re going to need a global firebreak against something worse evolving too, and fast.
Read more here: Gaby Hinsliff – Before Britain vaccinates children, should it vaccinate the world?
Helen Davidson reports from Taipei:
Some tentative good news from Taiwan, with a second consecutive day of cases in the 200s and no new cases from backlogged test results. As long as results are not down because of lower weekend testing, the decline is a positive sign in Taiwan’s battle against its worst outbreak of the pandemic.
However with about 8,000 cases still active, fatalities have not stopped and authorities reported another 22 deaths.
The new cases were mostly in New Taipei city, with 123 recorded. Another 54 were reported from the capital Taipei, while 16 were found in Miaoli where there are growing concerns over an outbreak among employees from three factories which has so far infected 211 people.
Tuesday's Taiwan domestic Covid case count of 219 again comes with no backlog revisions. There'd been a sense that tests over the weekend has not yet come through.
— Tim Culpan (@tculpan) June 8, 2021
Without revisions, there's the chance that cases truly are declining.
Miaoli, with just 16, is the place to watch
Health and welfare minister, Chen Chih-shung, said the rate of positive cases in New Taipei was dropping but there was no room yet to relax current restrictions.
He urged people not to travel during an upcoming long weekend and dragon-boat festival, which authorities have not cancelled.
Vaccine supplies took another hit, with authorities saying expected shipments of AstraZeneca and from Covax had been delayed by about a month.
Half of the 150,000 recently obtained Moderna vaccines have been allocated to frontline medical staff.
China’s vaccination numbers are never low. Official figures reported by Reuters say that the nation administered about 16.3 million doses of vaccine on 7 June, bringing the total number administered to 794m.
Uttar Pradesh state moving to relax Covid restrictions in India
In India, the state of Uttar Pradesh has announced that it will end some Covid restrictions.
The Hindustan Times reports this morning:
The Uttar Pradesh government on Tuesday gave relaxations in ‘corona curfew’ in all 75 districts of the state. According to guidelines announced by the state government, districts with less than 600 active cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) can get relaxations.
A state government spokesperson said that there will be relaxation in coronavirus curfew in all the districts of the state from Wednesday onwards, from 7am to 7pm, for five days. However, the night curfew – 7pm to 7am and weekend curfew (for entire day) – will continue.
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The UK’s environment secretary George Eustace – a man who clearly isn’t in the position where he hasn’t seen family and loved ones abroad for over a year due to travel bans – has told Sky News this morning: “I have no intention of travelling or going on a holiday abroad this summer.”
"I have no intention of travelling or going on a holiday abroad this summer"
— Sky News (@SkyNews) June 8, 2021
Environment Secretary George Eustice says his advice for people would be to "holiday at home" this summer#KayBurley
Read more here: https://t.co/az8rdooU6Y pic.twitter.com/wKbeZPIAK2
He was being pressed by newly returned presenter Kay Burley on the scramble for flights back from Portugal after it was moved from the “green list” to the “amber list” with very little warning. PA Media quotes him saying:
Our advice has been don’t travel unless it’s absolutely necessary. Obviously we had hoped, with these three categories that we had, we had hoped that situation would be improving in other parts of the world, that we’d be able to progressively add other countries to the green list. Sadly, that’s not the situation, we do have this new variant of concern first identified in India that is now cropping up in other countries, and we’ve just got to take a very cautious approach.
Asked about the UK government’s delay in shutting down travel from India, he said “India was added as soon as we saw a spike in rates and as soon as we saw there was a reason to”, denying that the delay had been political.
At the time Indian case numbers were rising and the government took no action, UK prime minister Boris Johnson had been planning to visit India in his first major trip abroad since the pandemic, with the aim of pushing a post-Brexit UK-India trade deal.
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Unicef has urged rich members of the G7 to start donating vaccines to poor countries now, instead of waiting to donate leftovers all at once, saying many nations don’t have capacity to roll out huge amounts in one go.
Unicef’s vaccine lead Lily Caprani told BBC Newsnight governments in the UK and other G7 nations “need to donate their doses to those low income countries now, while still vaccinating their populations at home.”
“Low income countries need a steady supply that they can get off the tarmac and into the arms of health care workers... The unintended consequence of saving all these vaccines up to Christmas time is that countries won’t be able to absorb them and roll them out and therefore they could end up going to waste. We could see millions of doses of vaccines not used and expiring, and that will be a tragedy.”
The World Health Organization has also called on Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers to give the Covax scheme first refusal on new doses, or commit half of their volumes to the global jab equity scheme.
A medical worker prepares vaccination card for a person receiving a dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in Sudan’s capital Khartoum. Sudan was the first in the Middle East and North Africa to receive vaccines through Covax, a UN-led initiative that provides jabs to poor countries Photograph: Ebrahim Hamid/AFP/Getty Images
Our health editor Sarah Boseley asks the question this morning: Can we vaccinate the world against Covid by the end of 2022?
As ambitious declarations go – even for Boris Johnson – it was a big one. At the weekend, the UK prime minister said he would urge the G7 leaders to vaccinate the world against Covid by the end of next year.
But is this feasible? That rather depends on your definition. No country will vaccinate every adult. Vaccinating enough to achieve herd immunity, which could be 60% or 70%, is the real aim. It is possible to achieve that by December 2023, say experts, but only if the G7 leading economies move immediately to make it happen.
The Covax scheme under the UN umbrella should have been the route to vaccination for low-income countries. It was designed as their lifeline. Covax signed contracts with manufacturers to buy 2bn doses by the end of this year. But it is stymied. Its main supplier is the Serum Institute of India, which is now churning out vaccines in response to the terrible surge in domestic cases and deaths and will not be able to fulfil its contracts to Covax or individual countries before the end of the year.
Dr Bruce Aylward, senior adviser to the director general of the World Health Organization, who is heavily involved in the vaccine efforts, said: “This is where the UK becomes really important and the G7, because right now we’ve got this gap of death. In June, July, August, September, there’s no vaccine out there for love nor money, in terms of being able to procure it.”
Read more of Sarah Boseley’s analysis here: Can we vaccinate the world against Covid by the end of 2022?
The president of the Tokyo 2020 organising committee, Seiko Hashimoto, is speaking this morning, and she is setting out some of the procedures that will be undertaken to try to keep the games safe.
So far, she’s said that media will not be able to use shared accommodation, and that the media will be GPS-tracked to ensure they don’t go into unauthorised areas. She has also said that they expect to start vaccinating Olympics-related staff by mid-June.
Reuters note that foreign spectators have already been banned, and organisers are expected to make a decision late this month on domestic spectators.
Toshiaki Endo, the vice-president of the Tokyo organising committee, has previously suggested to Reuters some spectators could be allowed into venues, although he personally preferred a total ban to calm persistent public opposition to the Games.
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On the downside, I just saw this tweet today, and now I can’t stop thinking about it either…
I can’t stop thinking about this xkcd graphic this week pic.twitter.com/1m7lfJbWRd
— Kyle D Evans (@kyledevans) June 6, 2021
Good morning, it is Martin Belam here in London taking over today’s blog. The biggest news in England is the extension of vaccinations to those aged 25 and over this morning. If you fall into that category you can book your shot at the NHS England site here.
Northern Ireland has already been offering vaccines to anybody over 18, you can find out more here.
Those in Scotland and Wales can find out the latest information for them here:
Reuters:
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Tuesday that she would get her first Covid-19 shot at the end of next week, as the country prepared to receive another 1 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine. “For me, it’s been important that I allow those in the most at risk group... to be prioritised,” Ardern said in a news conference.
“I’m choosing to be vaccinated at this point in order to play my role in demonstrating that I consider it to be absolutely safe and also really critical to keep others safe,” she said.
China today pledged further assistance to Southeast Asian nations in battling the pandemic, the Associated Press reports.
The country’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, told his Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) counterparts that China had already delivered 100 million doses of vaccine to Asean nations along with other materials and technical help.
Wang said China would “urgently implement” the China-Asean Public Health Cooperation Initiative, continue to support the Asean Emergency Medical Materials Reserve and strengthen regional public health capacity-building. “China will work with Asean to overcome the outbreak as soon as possible,” Wang told a meeting of ministers.
He said the sides should explore establishing an expert panel to strengthen cooperation throughout the vaccine process, from research to use, and work to build production and distribution centres to help make vaccines affordable and accessible in the region.
Though Covid-19 was first detected in China in late 2019, the nation has largely stamped out domestic transmission, although it has been accused of insufficient transparency or even seeking to conceal the origins of the pandemic.
Beijing has been building influence with Asean, despite frictions with some members of the bloc over competing territorial claims in the South China Sea.
Welcome to another day of the pandemic, and our continuing global coverage of the latest developments.
Below are some of the key updates from the last day.
- Canada is preparing to ease birder restrictions for vaccinated travellers, Bloomberg reports.
- A top Japanese virologist and government adviser has warned of the risks of spreading infections during the Tokyo Olympics.
- Australia’s state of Victoria is on track to ease restrictions on residents, currently in a lockdown to deal with an outbreak of the Delta variant, authorities said.
- India’s government will provide free vaccinations for all adults, Prime Minister Narendra Modi says, as the capital New Delhi and financial hub Mumbai ease lockdowns on falling infection levels.
- A new coronavirus antibody drug appears to show promise in mouse studies, according to a study published in Nature.
- The Czech Republic has announced it will reopen its borders to EU and Serbian citizens on June 21.
- Just days before the start of the Euros, Spain’s football players and staff have returned negative Covid-19 tests after captain Sergio Busquets had to go home and quarantine.
- There was “delight across Ireland” as the country reopened pubs, restaurants and leisure facilities.
- Central Park is to host an “all-star” concert in August to mark New York’s comeback after the pandemic.
- New York governor Andrew Cuomo has announced that the state’s remaining coronavirus restrictions will be lifted when 70% of residents have had at least one vaccine dose.
