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US urged to fast-track vaccine approval for children under 12 as cases rise
As Covid cases among children continue to rise in the US due to spread of the Delta variant, experts are urging the federal government to fast-track vaccine approval for those under the age of 12.
New data analysis from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) indicated that children accounted for 15% of new cases reported last week, with a total of almost 94,000 cases. There was a 4% increase in child cases over the past two weeks, the AAP found.
While children still make up a small fraction of hospitalised patients with Covid, up to 1.9% in states reporting such data, there is anecdotal evidence in areas that have seen a significant Covid surge in recent weeks that more children are being admitted for care.
In Louisiana, which saw a significant surge of 16,000 new Covid cases and 50 deaths over the weekend as the Delta variant rips through the region, paediatricians in New Orleans expressed concerns about an uptick in child Covid admissions.
Dr Mark Kline, chief of Children’s Hospital New Orleans, told local news that outpatient Covid positivity rates had risen from 1% a month ago to 20%. The hospital was treating 18 child Covid inpatients with six in intensive care. There were three on ventilators, including a three-month-old baby, Kline told WDSU News.
“It is heartbreaking, honestly, to take care of potentially dying children,” Kline told the news channel.
All of this was likely unnecessary if we as adults did what we needed to do and get the vaccine. We could have protected these children.
Louisiana has one of the lowest rates of vaccination in the US with just 37% of the state fully vaccinated.
The full story is here:
Updated
School districts in Florida and Texas are bucking their Republican governors’ bans on requiring masks for children and teachers as coronavirus cases soar in conservative areas with low vaccination rates, Reuters reports.
The Broward County school board in Florida on Tuesday became the latest major district to flout an order by the governor Rick DeSantis outlawing mask requirements in that state. The Dallas Independent School District said late Monday that it would also require masks, despite an order banning such mandates from the governor Greg Abbott.
The acts of rebellion by school officials come as these US states - along with Louisiana, Arkansas and others - are flooded with new cases after people resisted vaccines and mask mandates. Teachers and administrators are seeking to protect students, many of whom are under 12 years old and cannot get vaccinated.
Fuelled by the highly contagious Delta variant, US cases and hospitalisations have soared to six-month highs with no flattening of the curve in sight.
Based on population, Florida, Louisiana and Arkansas are leading the nation with new cases and how many patients with Covid fill their hospitals. Texas is not far behind.
In Arkansas, where only eight intensive care beds were available for patients with Covid on Monday, the governor Asa Hutchison said he regrets supporting a ban on mask mandates in his state.
In Florida, where nearly one out of every three hospital beds are occupied by a patient with coronavirus, a surgeon in Orlando said hospitals in the area were “overflowing” with the unvaccinated.
“We need a field hospital. Please help us,” Sam Atallah, a surgeon at AdventHealth wrote on Twitter on Monday. “We are in a state of emergency in Orlando.”
In Dallas, where some staff had threatened to quit if masks were not mandated to protect children, teachers and others, school district officials said they did not believe the governor’s order should be applied to them. Schools in Austin also plan to require masks.
“Governor Abbott’s order does not limit the district’s rights as an employer and educational institution to establish reasonable and necessary safety rules for its staff and student,” the Dallas district said on its website.
Dallas county judge Clay Jenkins, the county’s top executive, said late on Monday that he asked a district court to block Abbott’s July order that prevents local governments from implementing mask mandates.
“The enemy is not each other,” Jenkins said in a statement. “The enemy is the virus, and we must all do all that we can to protect public health.”
In Florida, where lawsuits have also been filed challenging the anti-mask order, DeSantis has threatened to withhold salaries from school district officials who flout his ban.
The threat prompted a response from the administration of the president Joe Biden, a Democrat, which is considering reimbursing school officials who lose their pay if DeSantis follows through on his threat.
“We’re continuing to look into what our options are to help protect and help support these teachers and administrators who are taking steps to protect the people in their communities,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Tuesday.
DeSantis stood by his statewide order banning mask mandates on Tuesday, saying it would allow parents to decide whether to mask their children for class.
“It’s about parental choice, not government mandate, and I think ultimately, parents will be able to exercise the choices that they deem appropriate for their kids,” DeSantis said at a briefing.
New Zealand should take a phased approach to reopening its border but not before a high percentage of the population is vaccinated, according to an expert governmental advisory panel.
The advice’s release comes a day before the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, is expected to make an announcement on the government’s approach to the reopening of the country on Thursday.
New Zealand, which is closed to most international visitors, has extremely strict border controls in place, requiring returnees to spend two weeks in a government-run managed isolation and quarantine facility (MIQ) in order to sustain its Covid-19 elimination strategy.
While those strict border protections have kept the country largely safe from Covid-19, it has also frozen international tourism, separated families and left some expats and migrants feeling alienated and abandoned.
Up until now, there has been very little information about what New Zealand’s roadmap for reopening might look like, but the advice from the Strategic Covid-19 Public Health Advisory Group, led by epidemiologist Sir David Skegg, provides some clues.
The group of six scientific experts recommends that once the vaccination program is fully rolled out, the country can begin slowly admitting more travellers, without needing to go into MIQ, based on risk-based factors such as their vaccination status and the state of the pandemic in their country of origin.
It also proposes that travellers be subjected to pre-departure testing and rapid testing on arrival in New Zealand.
The full story is here:
The UK government is coming under pressure to intervene amid concerns that its Covid testing regime for travellers is close to collapse, with thousands failing to be properly tested on their return.
As photos posted online showed drop-off boxes run by Randox, the UK’s largest PCR testing provider, overflowing with unprocessed swabs, growing numbers of returning holidaymakers are reporting that their test kits are failing to arrive, or are taking up to six days to process.
Even before France came off the amber-plus list on Sunday, private testing companies approved by the government were struggling to cope with the demand. MPs and users have led a chorus of disapproval against the testing regime, which looks set to be overwhelmed as more travellers start returning from August getaways.
The Labour MP Ben Bradshaw said he had been inundated with messages from people all over the UK whose test kits hadn’t arrived on time.
He questioned the need for PCR tests on those who were fully vaccinated and returning from countries where Covid rates are lower than the UK.
“They are completely unnecessary,” he said. “It is a complete scam and completely unacceptable.”
There has also been growing anger about the government receiving millions of pounds from the testing regime – the tests are subject to VAT at 20%.
The full story is here:
Updated
Over in the US, the Biden administration is reviewing how it can get money to Florida school districts if the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, makes good on threats to withhold pay from school leaders who require masks for students, Reuters reports.
Most of Florida’s schools reopen this week at full capacity. DeSantis, a Republican, has warned the state could level financial penalties to districts that mandate masks, the latest in a series of actions aimed at burnishing his laissez-faire credentials.
But many school officials and public health experts say masks are needed to protect students and teachers, and the president Joe Biden has clashed with DeSantis over the issue.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Tuesday that the administration is looking at whether it can use unspent Covid-19 relief funds to combat any pay cuts imposed by DeSantis.
“We’re continuing to look into what our options are to help protect and help support these teachers and administrators who are taking steps to protect the people in their communities,” Psaki said.
DeSantis’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Republican rising star is closely tied to former president Donald Trump and has become a national figure for opposing pandemic restrictions, even as Florida has become a hotbed of infections and hospitalisations have hit record levels.
He is widely seen as weighing a potential 2024 challenge for the presidency.
Last week, Biden asked Republican governors like DeSantis to “get out of the way” of efforts to contain the virus. The willingness to call out Republicans marked a shift in tone from Biden, who has tried to take politics out of the vaccination drive.
At the time, DeSantis fired back at Biden, saying that he did not want to “hear a blip about Covid from you, thank you,” adding, “Why don’t you do your job?”
Updated
WHO urges end to 'disgraceful' global vaccine inequity
The World Health Organization has urged the 20 most powerful world leaders to overturn the “disgraceful” global imbalance in access to Covid-19 vaccines to reverse the tide before October, AFP reports.
The WHO’s Bruce Aylward said the world should be “disgusted” - and asked whether the situation could have been any worse had there been an active effort to block the planet’s poor from getting vaccinated.
The UN health agency has been increasingly infuriated by what it sees as the moral outrage of rich countries hogging vaccine supply while developing nations struggle to immunise their most vulnerable populations.
Aylward, the WHO’s frontman on accessing the tools to fight the coronavirus pandemic, urged people to tell politicians and business tycoons that it was electorally and financially safe to increase vaccine coverage in poorer nations.
“There’s probably 20 people in the world that are crucial to solving this equity problem,” he told a WHO social media live interaction.
They head the big companies that are in charge of this; they head the countries that are contracting most of the world’s vaccines, and they head the countries that produce them.
We need those 20 people to say, ‘we’re going to solve this problem by the end of September. We’re going to make sure that 10% of every country ... is vaccinated’.
Nearly 4.5bn vaccine doses have been administered around the world, according to an AFP count.
In high-income countries, as categorised by the World Bank, 104 doses have been injected per 100 people. In the 29 lowest-income nations, just two doses have been administered per 100 people.
“We should be collectively disgusted with ourselves,” said Aylward.
I can’t help but think: if we had tried to withhold vaccines from parts of the world, could we have made it any worse than it is today?
We need 20 people to lead the world’s effort to change what is a disgraceful situation we’re in.
The WHO wants every country to have vaccinated at least 10% of its population by the end of September; at least 40% by the end of this year, and 70% by the middle of 2022.
Updated
Good evening from London. I’m Lucy Campbell, I’ll be bringing you all the latest global developments on the coronavirus pandemic for the next few hours. Please feel free to get in touch with me as I work if you have a story or tips to share! Your thoughts are always welcome.
Email: lucy.campbell@theguardian.com
Twitter: @lucy_campbell_
Today so far...
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The UK health secretary, Sajid Javid, said preparations are being made to offer Covid booster jabs in the UK from next month, but a leading expert suggested that such a move would not be supported by the science and that it was likely to be unnecessary. The head of the Oxford Vaccine Group, Prof Andrew Pollard, said data so far suggested that the vaccines were holding out against the virus that causes Covid-19 and that the doses would be much better used elsewhere in the world.
- Reaching herd immunity is “not a possibility” with the current Delta variant, Pollard told MPs, since the vaccines do not stop the spread of Covid. Therefore reaching the threshold for overall immunity in the population is “mythical”, although the existing vaccines are very effective at preventing serious Covid illness and death, he said.
- Germany’s leaders are expected to set out new coronavirus regulations for the coming months, including abolishing free testing to incentivise people to get vaccinated. The unvaccinated will be expected to undergo tests which they must pay for themselves as a condition for attending all manner of events, from indoor gatherings to restaurant visits to church services.
- Thailand’s government backed down from widely criticised regulations that would enable it to prosecute people for distributing “news that may cause public fear”. They also gave Thai regulators the ability to force internet service providers to turn over the IP address of the person or entity distributing such news, and to “suspend the internet service to that IP address immediately”.
- Also in the south-east Asian country today, police fired teargas and rubber bullets at protesters calling for the government to resign over its handing of the pandemic. Lines of police, backed by trucks spraying jets from water cannons, fired tear gas and rubber bullets at scores of demonstrators in Bangkok, as they threw rocks and fireworks and set fire to a traffic police booth.
- Myanmar’s army has carried out at least 252 attacks and threats against health workers since the February coup, killing at least 25 medics and hampering the response to a resurgent outbreak of Covid-19, rights groups have said. More than 190 health workers have been arrested and 86 raids on hospitals carried out since the coup, said the report.
- Researchers are aiming to find out whether ashwagandha, a traditional but increasingly popular Indian herb, can help promote recovery from long Covid. The herb is traditionally used in the Indian Ayurvedic system of medicine and recent trials have reportedly proven it reduces anxiety and stress, improves muscle strength and reduces fatigue in patients with chronic conditions.
- Donald Trump was “afraid” when he put on a display of bravado at the White House after being treated for a severe coronavirus infection, his estranged niece Mary Trump has claimed. The then US president had a pained expression that Mary recognised from her grandmother, but dared not admit his fear even to himself.
- Coldplay, Billie Eilish and Ed Sheeran are among those who will perform a day of concerts across multiple cities on 25 September to raise awareness about vaccine distribution, climate change and poverty. New York, Paris and Lagos are the first cities to be announced for Global Citizen Live, which will run for 24 hours and be screened around the world via TV stations and social media.
Updated
The world’s major economies have seen their rapid recovery after easing Covid restrictions begin to run out of steam in the last month as a resurgence in the virus depressed consumer spending, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
There are signs that the recovery in the US and Japan is losing momentum, the OECD said, while parts of Europe and China have slowed as consumers remain reluctant to eat out, visit attractions and shop as they did before the pandemic.
The Paris-based organisation said data supplied by its 38 member countries showed that most major economies had passed their 2021 peak levels of growth and while they were still expanding, it was at a slower pace.
Picking out the UK, France and Germany as among those countries in Europe that have begun to see domestic industries stutter and trade with the rest of the world slip down a gear, the OECD said they had been joined by Brazil and Russia in the slow lane.
Reaching herd immunity is “not a possibility” with the current Delta variant, the head of the Oxford Vaccine Group has told MPs in Britain, writes Natalie Grover.
Giving evidence to MPs on Tuesday, Prof Sir Andrew Pollard said the fact that vaccines did not stop the spread of Covid meant reaching the threshold for overall immunity in the population was “mythical”.
“The problem with this virus is [it is] not measles. If 95% of people were vaccinated against measles, the virus cannot transmit in the population,” he told the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on coronavirus.
“The Delta variant will still infect people who have been vaccinated. And that does mean that anyone who’s still unvaccinated at some point will meet the virus … and we don’t have anything that will [completely] stop that transmission.”
Although the existing vaccines are very effective at preventing serious Covid illness and death, they do not stop a fully vaccinated person from being infected by the virus that causes Covid-19.
The concept of herd or population immunity relies on a large majority of a population gaining immunity – either through vaccination or previous infection – which, in turn, provides indirect protection from an infectious disease for the unvaccinated and those who have never been previously infected.
As Covid cases among children continue to rise in the US due to spread of the Delta variant, experts are urging the federal government to fast-track vaccine approval for those under the age of 12, writes Oliver Laughland in New Orleans for the Guardian US.
New data analysis from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) indicated that children accounted for 15% of new cases reported last week, with a total of almost 94,000 cases. There was a 4% increase in child cases over the past two weeks, the AAP found.
While children still make up a small fraction of hospitalised Covid patients, up to 1.9% in states reporting such data, there is anecdotal evidence in areas that have seen a significant Covid surge in recent weeks that more children are being admitted for care.
In Louisiana, which saw a significant surge of 16,000 new Covid cases and 50 deaths over the weekend as the Delta variant rips through the region, paediatricians in New Orleans expressed concerns about an uptick in child Covid admissions.
Dr Mark Kline, chief of Children’s Hospital New Orleans, told local news that outpatient Covid positivity rates had risen from 1% a month ago to 20%. The hospital was treating 18 child Covid inpatients with six in intensive care. There were three on ventilators, including a three-month-old baby, Kline told WDSU News.
Updated
Police in Thailand have fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters calling for the government to resign over its handing of the coronavirus pandemic and lack of progress in political reform.
Lines of police, backed by trucks spraying jets from water cannons, fired tear gas and rubber bullets at scores of demonstrators in Bangkok, according to an Associated Press wire report.
Protesters responded rocks and fireworks and set fire to a traffic police booth, sending flames and smoke billowing into the sky.
The protest on Tuesday began as a “car mob”, with protesters driving to different locations in the Thai capital to evade curbs on public gatherings. The confrontation with police came after some broke away, according to AP.
Thailand has struggled to handle a dramatic spike in cases of Covid, for which protesters blame the government. But the protests are also part of a wider push for sweeping political change that includes the resignation of the prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, a new constitution and – most contentious of all – fundamental reform of the monarchy.
Updated
Lincoln continues to have the highest rate of cases of Covid-19 of any local authority area in England, according to the most recent published data.
The east Midlands city reported 617 new cases in the seven days to 6 August – the equivalent of 621.4 per 100,000 people. That was down from 716.0 per 100,000 in the seven days to 30 July.
Of the 315 local areas in England, 187 (59%) have seen a week-on-week rise in rates, 126 (40%) have seen a fall and two are unchanged, according to a list calculated by the PA news agency, based on data published by Public Health England today.
The figures are based on the number of people who have tested positive for Covid-19 in either a lab-reported or rapid lateral flow test, by specimen date. Data for the most recent four days (7-10 August) has been excluded as it is incomplete and does not reflect the true number of cases.
Exeter had the second highest rate, up from 541.1 to 601.2, with 790 new cases. Hull had the third highest rate, up from 512.7 to 580.1, with 1,507 new cases.
The five areas with the biggest week-on-week rises were:
- Peterborough (up from 301.1 to 441.0)
- Oadby and Wigston (249.1 to 384.1)
- Hinckley and Bosworth (272.2 to 394.2)
- Derby (235.1 to 338.1)
- Cambridge (322.1 to 423.1)
(This is Damien Gayle stepping in for the next few minutes, while Mattha takes a well-earned rest.)
Updated
A teacher in eastern France will go on trial next month accused of seeking to incite racial hatred after holding a sign at a protest against new Covid-19 restrictions that police said was antisemitic, prosecutors have said.
AFP reports that Cassandre Fristot, 34, was seen at a protest on Saturday in the eastern city of Metz holding a sign denouncing Emmanuel Macron’s enforcement of a controversial health pass in France restricting access to indoor venues, trains and elsewhere only to those who have been vaccinated.
The sign contained the names of several prominent politicians, businesspeople and intellectuals in France, most of them Jewish, and police said it “had a message that was manifestly antsemitic”.
Fristot, a former local councillor for the far-right National Rally (RN), was detained yesterday and had her home searched. Metz prosecutor Christian Mercuri said her trial would start on September 8. If convicted, she risks up to one year in prison and a €45,000 (£38,000) fine.
The interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, yesterday shared the image of Fristot brandishing the sign on his Twitter account, describing it as “despicable” and then announcing she had been arrested.
“Antisemitism is a crime, not an opinion. Such words will not go unpunished,” he said.
Updated
Senior US and Mexican officials will meet today to discuss plans to reopen their shared border, and Washington has agreed to send Mexico up to 8.5m more coronavirus vaccine doses, the Mexican foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, has said.
Ebrard said US homeland security chief Alejandro Mayorkas and national security adviser Jake Sullivan will meet in Mexico City for talks with their Mexican counterparts as part of a drive to get cross-border activities back to normal, Reuters reports.
The meeting comes after the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, spoke to the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, on Monday, discussing migration, the fight against Covid-19, and the need to strengthen central American economies.
The US agreed to send Mexico 3.5m doses of drugmaker Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine and up to 5m doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, Ebrard said The vaccines would likely arrive later this morning, he said.
Ebrard added that he did not expect the US-Mexico land border to reopen by 21 August, and that more time would be needed to resume transit for so-called nonessential trips, including for those who cross the border to work or attend school, according to Reuters.
Speaking at the same news conference, Lopez Obrador added that Harris agreed with him on the need to reopen their shared land border, but did not provide a specific timetable.
Updated
Most UK deaths with Covid recorded in day since March
The number of people who died in the UK within 28 days of a positive Covid test, whose death was recorded in the last 24 hours, is at its highest since March.
Official data shows 146 people have been recorded as dying within the past day – the highest since 175 were recorded on 12 March, with the number of positive tests also now up 7.4% on last week despite the number of new cases reported today falling to 23,510 from 25,161 yesterday.
Rates of excess deaths have remained stable and mostly below average since the end of winter in England. For the week ending 23 July, of 9,100 total deaths over seven days there were 308 fatalities in which Covid was mentioned on the death certificate.
But experts will be closely studying the latest figures when they are released following the relaxation of the remaining restrictions in the UK over the past couple of weeks.
Earlier today, Prof Paul Hunter, from the University of East Anglia, said the way infections are reported needed to change as the reported statistics do not necessarily reflect Covid’s impact.
“We need to be moving towards reporting hospital admissions that are admitted because of Covid, not because they just happen to be positive and they’re being admitted for something else,” he told MPs
“Otherwise as the infection becomes endemic we are going to be frightening ourselves with very high numbers that actually don’t translate into disease burden.”
Updated
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has launched a new study to assess how patients on immunosuppressive therapy after kidney transplant, who did not respond to the first two doses of Covid-19 vaccine, respond to a third dose.
The study, sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Niaid), aims to determine whether a third dose of either Moderna or Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine could help kidney transplant patients overcome the problem of not developing immune response to the coronavirus even after vaccination.
US health regulators have said more scientific evidence was needed to ascertain the need for booster vaccine shots, but have indicated that a third shot may be needed for people with compromised immune systems, Reuters reports.
Infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci last week said the US was working to give additional Covid-19 booster shots to Americans with compromised immune systems as quickly as possible.
The pilot study is being conducted at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and will enrol up to 200 adults aged 18 years or older who have received a kidney transplant at least a year prior.
The study also aims to identify characteristics that could help distinguish those kidney transplant recipients who would benefit from a third dose from those who might require a different approach to achieve protection, according to Reuters.
Findings from the study will inform a subsequent, larger phase of the trial that will include other strategies to induce an immune response against the coronavirus, NIH said.
Updated
Sri Lanka’s government has rejected mounting calls for an immediate lockdown to contain rising Covid-19 cases and deaths that is severely stretching hospitals.
AFP reports that the government spokesperson and media minister Keheliya Rambukwella said the country had not reached a critical stage even as the island nation records more than 100 deaths a day on average.
“Curfews or a lockdown is the last resort, but we are not there yet,” Rambukwella said. “Our target is to get everyone over the age of 18 vaccinated by September and thereafter it is in the hands of the gods.”
His comments came despite the Sri Lanka Medical Association (SLMA) issuing what it called a “final warning” to the government to restrict the movement of people immediately or risk a bigger catastrophe.
“We have given the final warning to the government to take urgent steps to lock down at least for two weeks,” said a spokesperson for the SLMA, a professional body of medical experts.
On Friday, the government tightened some restrictions, banning state ceremonies and public gatherings until 1 September. But most activity is allowed, with shops, restaurants and offices open and public transport still operating, AFP reports.
The number of deaths in the country of 22 million hit a daily record of 111 yesterday with the daily average in the past week crossing 100 – more than double the average of 40 in the previous week.
The number of infections more than doubled to nearly 3,000 this week. Sri Lanka has recorded 5,222 deaths to date and almost 333,000 infections, according to official data.
Updated
Germany to abolish free Covid testing in bid to get more people vaccinated
Moving away from the UK for now, my colleague Kate Connolly reports that Germany’s leaders are expected to set out new coronavirus regulations for the coming months, including abolishing free testing to incentivise people to get vaccinated.
Widespread restrictions are likely to stay in place in an effort to tackle a growing case rate that is only expected to worsen in the coming weeks as holidaymakers return. The most controversial rules apply to people who are not vaccinated. They will be expected to undergo tests as a condition for attending all manner of events, from indoor gatherings to restaurant visits to church services.
The system of free coronavirus testing, which has been widely available for months, is expected to be abolished from October, after which those who are unvaccinated – except for pregnant women, children or those advised against getting a vaccine on medical grounds – will have to pay for antigen tests.
A bit more from the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) meeting in the UK, where the paediatric critical care consultant Dr Ruchi Sinha said children’s intensive care doctors had seen “a lot” of children with obesity with Covid-19.
“I do think we should be offering the vaccine to children who are vulnerable and more likely to suffer,” she said. “Vaccine escape is inevitable and I think that it adds to the argument not to have a blanket rollout of the vaccine to children aged 12-15 because I think that will minimise that.”
She added: “With kids, they’re not going to stop transmission, they won’t stop escape variants, nothing is. It is about the risk to the child themselves. So, yes, we should offer it to vulnerable children. But I don’t think that currently, the way it stands, that vaccine rollout to all of them is the way forward.”
But other experts have called for a more holistic approach, alongside vaccination, to safeguarding obese people from Covid. A wraparound set of policies to increase access to healthier food options relative to unhealthier options while encouraging exercise would appear a sensible and long-sighted public health measure during a pandemic that hits obese people much harder, they say.
Meanwhile, UK government plans to restrict junk food advertising on television and online have been criticised by campaigners who say they contain too many exemptions to affect rising levels of obesity in the UK.
The new rules, which do not come into force until the end of next year, will ban adverts for products deemed to be high in fat, salt and sugar before the 9pm watershed. Paid-for ads on sites including Facebook and Google by big brands will also be banned. However, the government has allowed numerous exceptions and carve-outs.
Updated
More than 75% of UK adults now fully vaccinated
More than three-quarters of adults in the UK have now received both doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said,
A total of 86,780,455 doses have been administered in the UK, with 47,091,889 people having received a first dose (89%) and 39,688,566 of them having received a second (75%), according to DHSC statistics.
The prime minister, Boris Johnson, said: “Our incredible vaccine rollout has now provided vital protection against the virus to three-quarters of all UK adults. This is a huge national achievement, which we should all be proud of. It’s so important that those who haven’t been vaccinated come forward as soon as possible to book their jab - to protect themselves, protect their loved ones and allow us all to enjoy our freedoms safely.”
The health secretary, Sajid Javid, added: “Three in four adults across the UK have now had both doses of the vaccine, which is incredible and a testament to the fantastic work of the NHS, volunteers and everyone involved in the rollout.”
Updated
Prof Pollard also told the meeting that herd immunity is “not a possibility” with the current Delta variant. He referred to the idea as “mythical” and warned that a vaccine programme should not be built around the idea of achieving it.
We know very clearly with coronavirus that this current variant, the Delta variant, will still infect people who have been vaccinated and that does mean that anyone who’s still unvaccinated, at some point, will meet the virus.”
He said while vaccines might “slow the process” of transmission down, at the minute they cannot stop the spread completely, while suggesting that the next thing may be “a variant which is perhaps even better at transmitting in vaccinated populations”.
I think we are in a situation here with this current variant where herd immunity is not a possibility because it still infects vaccinated individuals.
Meanwhile, Prof Paul Hunter, from the University of East Anglia, said the way infections are reported needed to change as the reported statistics do not necessarily reflect Covid’s impact and cause undue fear.
I think we need to start moving away from just reporting infections, just reporting positive cases admitted to hospital, to actually start reporting the number of people who are ill because of Covid, those positives that are symptomatic. We need to be moving towards reporting hospital admissions that are admitted because of Covid, not because they just happen to be positive and they’re being admitted for something else.
But he acknowledged that deeming the distinction between someone being ill with Covid or because of Covid was not always easy for clinicians to make. “I think we’ve got to start moving to that, otherwise as infection becomes endemic we are going to be frightening ourselves with very high numbers that actually don’t translate into disease burden,” he added.
It comes after NHS data last month reportedly suggested that more than half of recorded Covid hospitalisations in England represented those who tested positive after admission.
Greg Clark, chair of the Commons science and technology select committee, told the Telegraph: “While some of these people may be being admitted due to Covid, we currently do not know how many. And for those who are not, there is a big distinction between people who are admitted because of Covid and those are in for something else but have Covid in such a mild form that it was not the cause of their hospitalisation.”
Updated
Answering questions from MPs on the all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus earlier, Prof Pollard also said of the UK’s vaccination strategy:
At this moment, those doses that are available that could be used for boosting or for childhood programmes and much better deployed for people who will die over the next six months rather than that very unlikely scenario of a sudden collapse in the programmes in countries that are highly vaccinated. If there is a stockpile of doses, then they really need to go where they can have the greatest impact.
Dr Gregg Gonsalves, associate professor of epidemiology at Yale University, told the meeting that countries should prioritise vulnerable people in other parts of the world before considering booster programmes – despite evidence of waning protection from the jabs.
Every country in the world that is sitting on doses needs to get them on a plane and get them to the places that need them now. You have vaccinated most people in the UK. If we’re going to boost people in the UK and US before the rest of the world, we have to ask really what we’re doing and whom we’re doing it for.
I have two doses of Pfizer, I’ll be protected against serious disease and death. I don’t need another booster, the data shows that I’m adequately protected against serious disease and hospitalisation. So, let’s get the doses on the plane, let’s move them quickly.
UK Covid booster jabs could be offered from next month, says health secretary
The health secretary, Sajid Javid, has said preparations are being made to offer Covid booster jabs in the UK from next month, but a leading expert has suggested that such a move would not be supported by the science.
He said:
When it comes to booster jabs we are waiting for the final advice from JCVI, that’s our group of independent clinical advisers, and when we get that advice we will be able to start the booster programme, but I anticipate it will begin in early September, so I’m already making plans for that.
It’s really important that when we start that programme, the sort of first cohorts, the ones that got the jabs early on when we started our programme – the first in the world back in December last year – that those cohorts come first and so we will be prioritising it.
He said the plan was for the flu jab to be offered, especially to over-50s, at the same time as their Covid booster jab.
But it comes as one of the country’s leading vaccination experts suggested an autumn booster programme may not be needed. Prof Andrew Pollard said data so far suggested that the vaccines were holding out against the virus that causes Covid-19 and protecting the double-jabbed from severe disease and death.
He told MPs there was no reason “to panic” and suggested vaccine stockpiles would be better used in countries where vulnerable people are yet to be vaccinated, ahead of booster programmes or vaccinating children.
The decision to boost or not should be scientifically driven. The time which we would need to boost is if we saw evidence that there was an increase in hospitalisation or people dying amongst those who are vaccinated. That is not something that we’re seeing at the moment.
But we have to also have an understanding scientifically about how the vaccines work and they are providing very high levels of protection against that severe end of the spectrum, but also, even as the levels of immunity start to drop that we can measure in the blood, our immune system still remembers that we were vaccinated and we’ll be remembering decades from now that we have those two doses of vaccine. So there isn’t any reason at this moment to panic. We’re not seeing a problem with breakthrough severe disease.
Last week the World Health Organization called for a moratorium on Covid-19 vaccine boosters to enable at least 10% of the population of every country to be vaccinated, while WHO officials have also said it is not proven that giving booster shots to people who have already received two vaccine doses is effective.
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Researchers are aiming to find out whether ashwagandha, a traditional but increasingly popular Indian herb, can help promote recovery from long Covid.
The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) will work with the All India Institute of Ayurveda (AIIA) on a trial to ascertain whether it can definitively help people recover from the condition.
Commonly known as Indian winter cherry, the herb is traditionally used in the Indian Ayurvedic system of medicine to boost energy, reduce stress and strengthen the immune system, PA reports.
Recent trials have proven its efficacy in reducing anxiety and stress, improving muscle strength and reducing fatigue symptoms in patients with chronic conditions, experts say.
People experiencing long Covid can suffer from a number of symptoms including cognitive dysfunction, poor mental health, extreme fatigue and muscle weakness.
Researchers estimate these symptoms affect 10- 20% of coronavirus survivors, and can last for between one and three months or longer in many cases. There is currently no evidence on its effective treatment or management.
The double-blind clinical trial will involve 2,000 people living in the UK with long Covid and will take place over one year. One thousand of the trial participants will take 500mg ashwagandha tablets twice a day for three months, while another 1,000 participants will be given a placebo.
The randomly selected participants will have a monthly follow-up of self-reported quality of life, impairment to activities of daily living, mental and physical health symptoms, supplement use and adverse events.
The study is funded by the ministry of Ayush of the government of India, with the proposal developed with support from the UK’s all-party parliamentary group on Indian traditional sciences and the traditional complementary and integrative medicine unit at the World Health Organization (WHO).
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Myanmar’s army has carried out at least 252 attacks and threats against health workers since the February coup, killing at least 25 medics and hampering the response to a resurgent outbreak of Covid-19, rights groups have said.
Reuters reports that more than 190 health workers have been arrested and 86 raids on hospitals carried out since the coup, said the report by Insecurity Insight, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), and Johns Hopkins University Center for Public Health and Human Rights (CPHHR).
They identified 15 incidents in which the response to the Covid-19 outbreak had been obstructed – including confiscation of personal protection equipment and oxygen supplies for the exclusive use of the army. Some Covid-19 care centres were forced to close, it said.
“Health workers have been forced into hiding for fear of being arrested or after having arrest warrants issued against them,” said the report. “In some cases, their family members were arrested instead.”
Myanmar’s healthcare system has largely collapsed since the army overthrew the elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi, with many medical workers joining a civil disobedience movement in strikes to protest against junta rule.
An average of nearly 300 people have died a day with Covid-19 over the past week, according to official figures that medics believe to be underestimates because of a lack of testing.
The report by the rights groups said that while the army had been behind most of the attacks on medical workers, some had been carried out by armed groups opposing the junta – including bomb blasts near hospitals and an attack on a military convoy that was reported to be carrying medicines, Reuters reports.
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The UK Information Commissioner’s Office has confirmed it will look into the private use of WhatsApp and other phone messaging apps and channels to conduct government business as well as emails, after Labour asked for more details of its investigation into Lord Bethell, the health minister.
Labour wrote to Elizabeth Denham, the information commissioner, after it emerged Bethell replaced his mobile phone before it could be searched for information relevant to £85m of Covid test deals that are subject to a legal challenge.
After the revelation, the party’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, wrote to the ICO, asking it to confirm that the minister’s use of WhatsApp would be covered by an inquiry into the use of private communications for government business at the Department of Health and Social Care.
In a reply to Rayner, the Information Commissioner’s Office said its investigation “includes messenger apps such as WhatsApp and any other private channels that fall outside of the DHSC’s corporate systems”.
“This includes looking at the retention, security and deletion of matters relevant to the corporate record to ensure that these have been handled appropriately,” it said.
Coldplay, Billie Eilish and Ed Sheeran are among those who will perform a day of concerts across multiple cities on 25 September to raise awareness about vaccine distribution, climate change and poverty.
New York, Paris and Lagos are the first cities to be announced for Global Citizen Live, which will run for 24 hours and be screened around the world via TV stations and social media, AFP reports.
Joining Eilish and Coldplay in Central Park, New York, are Jennifer Lopez, Camila Cabello, Shawn Mendes and Burna Boy, among others. Sheeran headlines the French gig, with Doja Cat, HER and Black Eyed Peas supporting, while Fema Kuti will top the bill in Nigeria. More locations and artists are due to be announced in the coming weeks.
“Across six continents, artists will help rally citizens in demanding that governments, major corporations, and philanthropists work together to defend the planet and defeat poverty,” the NGO Global Citizen said. It said it was focusing “on the most urgent, interrelated threats hitting those in poverty the hardest – climate change, vaccine equity, and famine”.
The event is designed to coincide with the UN General Assembly in September, and push for action at the G20 the following month and the COP26 climate meeting in November.
Global Citizen said it urgently wanted 1bn trees planted, 1bn vaccines delivered to the poorest countries and meals for the 41 million people on the brink of famine.
The WHO director-general Tedros Ghebreyesus lent his support to the campaign: “We now face a two-track pandemic of haves and have-nots. Over 75% of the more than 4bn doses administered to date have occurred in just 10 countries. We cannot disregard this gross inequity or become complacent.”
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A few US judges order those on probation to get jab or face return to prison
The New York Times reports that in at least two cases in Ohio, and elsewhere in the US, judges are controversially setting vaccination as a condition for probation, though it is certainly not a widespread practice.
Judge Christopher A. Wagner of the Court of Common Pleas in Hamilton County told a man convicted of drug offences last week that as part of his probation he had to get vaccinated against Covid within two months.
The man told local media:
I don’t plan on getting it. I don’t want it. So, for him to tell me that I have to get it in order for me to not violate my probation is crazy because I’m just trying to do what I can to get off this as quickly as possible, like finding a job and everything else, but that little thing can set me back.
It’s not like I’m out here getting into any more trouble or anything like that. But because I don’t take a shot, they can send me to jail. I don’t agree with that.”
His attorney, Carl Lewis, said of the judge’s order: “When you hear that, you’re like, ‘Whoa, I don’t think the judges are within their powers to do that.’”
Another Court of Common Pleas judge, Richard A. Frye in Franklin County, in June gave another man who pleaded guilty to drugs and firearms offences 30 days to get vaccinated as part of a set of conditions that if breached could send him to prison for 36 months.
The cases raise significant concerns over personal freedoms and shine a spotlight on the experiences of people who pass through the criminal justice system in the US.
David J. Carey, the deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, told the NYT: “Judges do have a lot of leeway in imposing conditions on behaviour while on probation,” said “But that leeway is not unlimited. They still need to establish it has a clear connection to a person’s individual case.”
Siti Sarah Raisuddin, a popular Malaysian singer, has died with Covid-19 just days after giving birth to her fourth child.
The BBC reports that the 37-year-old, who was eight months pregnant, had experienced low oxygen levels and was put into an induced coma so her baby boy could be delivered safely via surgery. However, she never got to hold him.
Her husband, the comedian Shuib Sepahtu, said he spoke to her over a videocall before her death, where she had tears running down her cheeks. “[It’s] as if she understood what we were saying to her,” he told local reporters. “It’s just that it will be really challenging for me to break the news to my three kids on the death of their mother.”
The entire family reportedly tested positive for Covid-19 on 25 July. Yesterday, Malaysia, which has a population of about 32 million, recorded 17,236 Covid infections and 212 deaths, bringing the country’s Covid death toll to 10,961.
Pregnant, COVID-19 positive Malaysian singer Siti Sarah Raisuddin dies https://t.co/mJrXmM72nW pic.twitter.com/ktSKhjFJmN
— CNA (@ChannelNewsAsia) August 9, 2021
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Donald Trump was “afraid” when he put on a display of bravado at the White House after being treated for a severe coronavirus infection, his estranged niece Mary Trump has claimed.
The then US president had a pained expression that Mary recognised from her grandmother, but dared not admit his fear even to himself, she recalls in a scathing new book seen by the Guardian.
The Reckoning argues that the US is suffering a national trauma manifest in rising levels of rage and hatred and exacerbated by her uncle’s assault on democracy. It follows the psychologist’s memoir, Too Much and Never Enough, which portrayed Trump as the product of a dysfunctional family.
Last October Trump was discharged from a military hospital after three days of treatment and made a typically theatrical return to the White House, landing on the south lawn and climbing a grand exterior staircase to the Truman balcony.
It can be confusing to know how to live in this new situation, where vaccines have transformed but not solved the Covid crisis in richer countries, writes Prof Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh.
Legal restrictions have lifted across the UK, but people have not resumed their pre-Covid behaviours. Most are still acting cautiously. This is wise: we know how serious the virus is, and we know that underestimating it is foolish.
At the same time, the collective experiences denied to us during the pandemic are part of being human. Whether it’s going to live music concerts, sitting in the cinema or lifting weights in the gym, the rituals and experiences that were dangerous because of the virus are those which give us meaning and joy. I have started doing some of the things I love again, taking part in hot yoga and spin classes. Life is better and brighter when we can do the things that make our lives meaningful.
German train drivers have voted to go on strike over a wage dispute, their union said, with train operator Deutsche Bahn claiming it jeopardises a nascent upswing “that we urgently need given the huge damage from the pandemic”.
The walkout will affect cargo trains from 7pm today, before extending to passenger traffic at 2am tomorrow, said the leader of the train drivers’ GDL union, Claus Weselsky. Some 95% of union members had voted for the first round of industrial action, which is due to end on Friday, AFP reports.
Deutsche Bahn board member for human resources and legal affairs Martin Seiler said: “Just as people are travelling more again and using trains, GDL leaders are destroying the upswing that we urgently need given the huge damage from the coronavirus pandemic.”
But Weselsky argued that the GDL “intentionally chose this timeframe in the week to limit the impact on weekend and holiday traffic” and that it was “never the best time” for a strike. He accused DB managers of “lining their pockets while the little guys are getting their pockets picked.”
GDL said it was fighting for a better remuneration deal for train drivers. Among its demands are 1.4% pay hike and a bonus of €600 for 2021, and a further wage rise of 1.8% in 2022. Deutsche Bahn had offered to phase in a 3.2% wage increase in two steps but the two parties were unable to agree on when the hikes would apply.
Staying in Australia, Reuters has juxtaposed life on the sands of Bondi Beach, one of Sydney’s wealthiest suburbs – where surfers and seaside walkers jostle for space – and in the city’s western suburbs.
There, stores sit shuttered on empty streets as some of Australia’s most ethnically diverse neighbourhoods endure heightened lockdowns, enforced by high-visibility policing backed up by the military.
About three-quarters of New South Wales state’s nearly 5,000 active cases come from nine Sydney local government districts, urban sprawl stretching from about 12km south-west of the Sydney Harbour Bridge to the Blue Mountains foothills.
“The community here is really struggling at the moment and they feel there’s a double standard,” said Bilal El-Hayek, a councillor from the city’s west who spends most days helping deliver food packages to people who don’t qualify for pandemic-related support payments. “You see photos and videos coming out of the east, people on the beach, whereas here the streets are absolutely empty,” he said.
As Australia’s largest city struggles to contain its worst outbreak of the pandemic, the harsher restrictions and tougher policing in its most-affected neighbourhoods have stoked resentment in its most vulnerable people. That feeling is especially raw since the Delta outbreak began in Bondi, with an unmasked, unvaccinated airport driver.
Though the whole East Coast city of 5m is in lockdown, around 1.8m in its ethnically diverse west are banned from leaving their immediate surroundings and doing any face-to-face work. Authorised workers must be tested every three days, and masks are mandatory outside homes.
The rest of the city is getting by with construction and property maintenance allowed, fewer movement restrictions and masks not required outdoors. Schools, which have been closed citywide since June, are returning everywhere but the west.
“Even the refugee communities who came here 40 years ago, how do we think these people will feel in a situation like this?” said Elfa Moraitakis, CEO of SydWest Multicultural Services, which provides aged care and settlement services for refugees. “Of course they feel targeted.”
Mervat Altarazi, a Palestinian refugee who is also a SydWest case worker, said the police and army presence had raised doubts in her clients, many of them from countries like Iraq and Syria. “It’s like a shock for them as they believed they arrived in a free country and they say, ‘we face same what we face in our (home) country’,” she said. “Some of them told me, ‘we are not the virus’.”
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In Australia, the National party MP George Christensen has been accused of spreading Covid misinformation about Covid-19 in the House of Representatives by the opposition Labor party.
Labor leader Anthony Albanese said:
This house condemns the comments of the member for Dawson prior to question time designed to use our national parliament to spread misinformation and undermine the actions of Australians to defeat Covid ... The house calls on all members from making ill-informed comments at a time when the pandemic represents a serious threat to the health of Australians.
The intervention came after Christensen claimed:
Its time we stopped spreading fear and acknowledged some facts ... Masks do not work ... Lockdowns don’t work, they don’t destroy the virus but they do destroy people’s lives ... Domestic vaccine passports are a form of discrimination, we are all human beings, no-one should be restricted from everyday life because of their medical choices, especially when vaccinated people can still catch and spread Covid-19 ... [It’s] going to with us forever, just like the flu ... We should never accept a systematic removal of our freedoms based on a zero-risk health advice from a bunch of unelected medical bureaucrats.
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The Jamaican government has called on the UK Home Office to halt a controversial deportation flight to the island nation scheduled to leave tomorrow due to concerns over “importing” the Delta variant of Covid, the Guardian has learned.
A flight is scheduled to take off from Birmingham airport at 1am with about 25 Jamaican nationals expected to be onboard. Many of those due to be removed have convictions for drug offences, some relatively minor ones and some more major.
It is understood many of those due to board the flight have not been deemed dangerous in assessments by Home Office officials. Many have British children and some have partners who are key workers such as nurses for the NHS.
A Buddhist monk and a budding sailor are among the outcasts squatting in an abandoned building in Myanmar while they help bury coronavirus victims and their worried families tell them to keep away.
AFP has the story:
A surge in infections across the country has been aggravated by a lack of formal medical care, with many hospitals empty of staff joining nationwide strikes against a February military coup.
Thar Gyi, one of the 20-odd volunteers living in the building, has not been home to his family in almost three months after a patient he was transporting in his ambulance tested positive for the virus.
“Since then ... they asked me not to come back. They sent my bags here,” he told AFP in Taungoo, a few hours’ drive north of commercial hub Yangon. His team run an ambulance service that transports sick patients and picks up bodies for cremation and burial.
At night they return to the building – once part of the city’s university, but now empty – to eat together, relax and play on their phones. Thar Gyi should be at sea or preparing for a voyage – he had secured a position with a western shipping firm, but then the pandemic struck and put the job on hold.
Like most of the group he has caught the virus and recovered, but his family still want him to stay away while he goes about his job as a corpse carrier. “Even if I go back, I talk to them from the entrance without going inside the house,” he said. “They cook whatever I want to eat. But they put it at the entrance of the house. They don’t let me come in.”
Fellow ambulance worker Kumara has been a monk for 17 years, but left his monastery to organise the volunteer group when the third wave of infections hit in June. He has had the virus too and is keeping away from his fellow devotees, who like most of the town are wary of potential infection.
“People do not like ambulances parking in front of their house,” he said. “They run away and cover their noses ... They think our ambulance is carrying viruses.”
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Thailand backs down from decree to restrict 'news that may cause public fear'
Thailand’s government has backed down from widely criticised regulations to broaden its ability to restrict media reports and social media posts about the pandemic.
AP reports that prime minister Prayuth Chan-ocha had long sought to crack down on what he deems as misleading reports. But the new regulations, enacted at the end of last month, included the ability to prosecute people for distributing “news that may cause public fear.”
They also gave Thai regulators the ability to force internet service providers to turn over the IP address of the person or entity distributing such news, and to “suspend the internet service to that IP address immediately.”
Thai media organisations said the restrictions were overly broad and an attack on freedom of expression, giving authorities license to crack down on the public or news organisations for publishing factual reports that the government did not like, AP reports.
A group of media organizations appealed the measures, and last week a court issued a temporary injunction against the enforcement of the regulations until the case could be heard.
Due to the pandemic, however, it was not clear when it would be able to hear the case and Prayuth decided instead to revoke it, according to the official announcement published in the Royal Thai Government Gazette.
Before the Gazette was published today, Thai opposition parties submitted a complaint to the National Anti-Corruption Commission accusing Prayuth of abusing his power by violating constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech with the new regulations.
If the commission were to question Prayuth and find him guilty, it would then send the case to the country’s supreme court, which could, in turn, suspend Prayuth from office as the case is heard. With his decision to revoke the regulations, however, it was not clear whether the anti-corruption commission would take up the complaint.
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Nearly 45% of A-level entries across the UK have been awarded top grades in A-level results, a record-breaking return for students after more than a year of disruption and school closures during the pandemic, my colleagues Richard Adams, Niamh McIntyre and Ashley Kirk report.
The 44.8% in top grades in England, Wales and Northern Ireland matched earlier predictions by university admissions officers but was lower than others had feared, following a 13 percentage point increase between 2019, the last time formal exams were held, and 2020.
In Scotland, school results are consistently lower than last year but have shown a sharp rise since 2019, figures show. Students have known their individual grades since the end of June, due to the use of an alternative grading model focused more heavily on teacher judgment.
But in general, the rate of students receiving between an A and a C – known as the attainment rate – fell in all of the qualifications published by the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA).
New South Wales police are investigating a man who reportedly left a Covid-infected family member in a Sydney hospital and travelled to Byron Bay while infectious with coronavirus to inspect property.
The man, understood to be in his 50s, drove with his two children to Byron and was in the Northern Rivers community for four days while infectious last week, during which time he reportedly did not comply with QR code check-in requirements at venues. It is not clear if the man knew he was infectious or not.
Today, with the Byron Shire, Ballina Shire, Richmond Valley and Lismore in the first full day of a snap week-long lockdown, NSW health minister Brad Hazzard said “police are looking extremely closely” at what the man was doing in the Byron area.
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Germany needs to increase testing and boost vaccinations to avoid another Covid-19 lockdown, the conservative candidate to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor said on Tuesday, before government talks to curb a rise in new cases.
Less than seven weeks before a federal election, Merkel and leaders of the 16 federal states will try to agree on measures to avoid a new wave of infections, driven by the spread of the Delta variant, and avert unpopular restrictions, Reuters reports.
“We want to and will test more to avoid a new lockdown,” Armin Laschet told the North Rhine-Westphalia assembly.
Hoping to become chancellor after a 26 September election, Laschet is desperate to avoid new restrictions and said Germany should introduce incentives to encourage more people to get vaccinated and also ramp up compulsory testing.
A draft document prepared for the talks, due to start in the afternoon, proposes that people who are neither vaccinated nor recovered must test negative for Covid-19 to be able to enter indoor restaurants, take part in religious ceremonies and do indoor sport.
The document also showed that the leaders will agree to end free coronavirus tests in October in an effort to encourage more people to get vaccinated.
“I expect that this free offer will be lifted from the middle of October,” Berlin mayor Michael Mueller, a member of the Social Democrats who share power on the federal level with Merkel’s conservatives, told ZDF television.
Germany had made the tests free for all in March to make a gradual return to normal life possible after a lockdown to break a third wave of Covid-19. Although around 55% of Germans are fully vaccinated, the pace of jabs has slowed.
Germany has recorded more than 3,000 cases a day in the last week, bringing the total to 3.79m. Germany’s death toll is 91,803. The nationwide seven-day incidence rose on Tuesday to 23.5 per 100,000 people, up from 23.1 on Monday.
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Martinique hits 'dramatic' Covid case rate of 1,166 per 100,000
The Covid situation has is being described as “dramatic” on the French Caribbean island of Martinique, a French overseas department, where the number of cases has soared from 700 per 100,000 a few days ago to 1,166 per 100,000 at the latest count. (The number of new cases on mainland France is currently 232 per 100,000 people.)
Officials say there have been at least 563 new cases of infection recorded and 11 people have died of Covid-19 on Martinique in the last 48 hours. They added that only 18% of islanders are fully vaccinated and all those in i/c and who have died were non-vaccinated.
The local prefect has announced further restrictions as part of a lockdown and 7pm curfew that has been in effect for two weeks. Officials said existing measures had slowed the rise in cases, but not stopped it. New measures include the closure of non-essential business for the next three weeks and beaches and a limit of 1km from home for all personal trips.
Tourists, especially those deemed “vulnerable” have been advised to return home.
Stanislas Cazelles, the prefect, told journalists:
Leisure and cultural sites are closed. Beaches will not be accessible to the public. Travel by boat from the marinas will no longer be possible.
We are not expelling people from the island but inviting them to leave because they are not safe.
He added that hotels and local holiday rental homes were to be closed to tourists.
Guadeloupe has also been subject to tighter restrictions introduced a week ago.
On Tuesday, 250 medical personnel and 70 pompiers – firefighters who are also first responders – were flying to Guadeloupe from mainland France to help with the health crisis on the two islands. The French Overseas Minister Sébastien Lecornu was also flying to Guadeloupe on Tuesday and will be travelling on to Martinique later.
Benjamin Garel, the director general of Martinique hospital, said it was “completely saturated” with Covid patients.
France television reported the Covid-19 situation on the 23 islands of French Polynesia is equally serious with 1,180 cases for 100,000 people. Local health officials warned this figure was “probably an under-estimate” because testing facilities were currently overwhelmed. Only 11.7% of islanders are fully vaccinated.
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Until now India’s vaccination campaign has been tilted towards people in urban areas, who have received more vaccines than in those in rural areas, but the latest figures show that this disparity has been rectified.
An average of 60% of doses have been given to the rural population in the past three weeks. In some states such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh the figure was even higher at around 72% and in Kerala the figure was 74%. Around mid-May, only 12.7% of people in the countryside had received one dose as compared with 30.3% of urban residents.
Public health experts say the shift is welcome because two-thirds of India’s 1.3 billion population lives in villages. During the devastating second wave, millions of villagers were vulnerable to the virus with little testing or medical treatment available. With more of them vaccinated, a possible third wave will be less likely to overwhelm the limited medical infrastructure and cause fewer deaths.
It also shows that the earlier reluctance seen in parts of rural India – fuelled by rumours and misinformation on social media – about getting the vaccine has faded. It’s not clear, though, whether rural Indians are finding it any easier to register on the government app for doses as poor internet connectivity has hampered registration.
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East Timor has recorded its first case of community transmission of the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus, raising concerns by its health ministry about a possible surge.
Genomic sequencing by Australia’s Doherty Institute in the first week of August found that of 27 samples taken in the country’s Ermera region from people infected with the coronavirus, 12 were of the Delta variant, Reuters reports.
Ermera has the highest number of active cases and lowest vaccination rate in East Timor, which borders Indonesia, where the Delta variant has been fuelling one of Asia’s worst coronavirus epidemics.
The health ministry in its 8 August report said Delta variant transmission “is likely to cause a significant increase in case numbers, including severe cases and deaths,” with those with limited vaccine access most at risk.
Home to 1.3 million people, the Southeast Asian nation has recorded just 11,579 cases and 28 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
About 8.5% of its 1.3 million people have been fully inoculated so far, using the vaccines of AstraZeneca and Sinovac.
Samples from other regions have yet to be tested but public health experts said growing case numbers elsewhere in the country could indicate that Delta was also present there.
Danina Coelho, the government’s spokesperson on Covid-19 vaccines, said the Ermera cluster showed how critical it was to boost vaccine coverage.
She said:
The government is very concerned about those cases specifically as the rate of vaccination is very low. That’s why the government is reinforcing the vaccine campaign.
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Members of the US military will be required to have the Covid-19 vaccine beginning on 15 September, under a plan announced by the Department of Defense (DoD) on Monday and endorsed by Joe Biden.
That deadline could be pushed up if the vaccine receives final US regulatory approval, beyond its current emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), or if rising infection rates continue.
The defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, said:
To defend this nation, we need a healthy and ready force. I strongly encourage all DoD military and civilian personnel – as well as contractor personnel – to get vaccinated now and for military service members to not wait for the mandate.
All FDA-authorized Covid-19 vaccines are safe and highly effective. They will protect you and your family. They will protect your unit, your ship, and your co-workers. And they will ensure we remain the most lethal and ready force in the world.
Austin’s plan provides time for the FDA to give final approval to the Pfizer vaccine, which is expected early next month.
The president said:
I strongly support Secretary Austin’s message to the force today on the department of defense’s plan to add the Covid-19 vaccine to the list of required vaccinations for our service members not later than mid-September.
Biden said the country is still on a wartime footing and “being vaccinated will enable our service members to stay healthy, to better protect their families, and to ensure that our force is ready to operate anywhere in the world”.
Read the full story here:
Bangladesh begins Covid-19 vaccinations for Rohingya refugees
Bangladesh has begun vaccinating Rohingya refugees living in congested camps as the south Asian nation battles a record surge in coronavirus cases, officials said.
Health officials say 2,600 Covid-19 cases and 29 deaths have been recorded in the camps housing 850,000 Rohingya but many experts say this is likely to be a gross underestimate. In the initial inoculation phase, about 48,000 refugees aged over 55 will get Chinese-made Sinopharm shots in the coming three days, local health chief Mahbubur Rahman told AFP.
Officials said they have carried a massive vaccination awareness campaign in the camps with volunteers going door to door to inform the refugees about the importance of getting jabbed.
Shams ud Douza, Bangladesh’s deputy refugee commissioner, told AFP that a vaccination drive would also begin this week for the 18,000 Rohingya controversially relocated to an island in the Bay of Bengal.
Bangladesh has been hit by a major surge in cases in recent months and much of the country of 169 million people is under lockdown, including the Rohingya camps. The coronavirus has killed nearly 23,000 people and infected 1.4 million in Bangladesh, most of them in recent months. Some 98% of new infections are from the more transmissible Delta variant first detected in neighbouring India.
Romain Briey, head of the medical charity MSF in Bangladesh, said:
Vaccination of all age groups is the only effective way to stop the virus (from) spreading further among the Rohingya population in the camps.
Most of the Rohingya in Bangladesh fled an offensive by security forces in neighbouring Myanmar in 2017 and four years later, there remains little prospect of them returning home.
Hrusikesh Harichandan from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said the Rohingya were “living in the shadow of the global vaccine divide”.
Vaccinations are vital for families to live with dignity because staying home is so tough for people in these cramped camps and most still have limited access to water and sanitation facilities, escalating risks from Covid-19.
Hello, I’m Nicola Slawson and I’ll be leading this liveblog today. Do email me nicola.slawson@theguardian if you think I’m missing anything, You can also find me on Twitter: @Nicola_Slawson.
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Public support for the government of Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, has slumped to an all-time low, despite evidence that most people support the decision to go ahead with the Tokyo Olympics during the coronavirus pandemic.
Suga had been hoping to bask in the afterglow of the Games, which ended on Sunday, but support for his cabinet has dipped below 30% for the first time since he became prime minister last September, largely over its response to a recent surge in infections.
Approval for the cabinet dropped to 28% according to a poll by the Asahi Shimbun, down three percentage points from the middle of last month, while 56% said the decision to host the Games, in which Japan won a record 58 medals, had been the right one.
But the results suggest Suga’s gamble on a “safe and secure” Olympics has not paid off, amid a surge in Covid-19 infections and renewed pressure on hospitals. Two-thirds of those surveyed said they had “no faith” in his approach to the pandemic.
While there is no evidence that athletes, officials and tens of thousands of other Olympic-related visitors were directly responsible for the rise in cases, experts say people were less vigilant about anti-virus measures during the 16 days of sport in the capital.
Hidemasa Nakamura, the Tokyo 2020 delivery officer, said the positivity rate among athletes and Olympic-related visitors was 0.02% – proof, he added, that the Games had been held safely.
But over the same period, infections in Japan rose by 170,000, with Tokyo reporting record daily cases.
Nobuhiko Okabe, a public health expert who advised the government on infection controls during the Games, said the “party-like mood” had had an “indirect impact” on the surge in cases. “The fact that people’s defences are down poses a risk,” he said, according to the Asahi.
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Record hospitalisations in US state of Arkansas
Arkansas on Monday set a new record for the number of people in the state hospitalised because of Covid as its coronavirus surge continued.
The state reported its Covid hospitalisations rose by 103, its biggest one-day increase, to 1,376. The state’s previous record during the pandemic for Covid hospitalisations was in January when it reported 1,371 virus patients in the hospital.
The Department of Health reported that there were only eight intensive care unit beds available in the state. There were 509 Covid patients in ICUs around the state and 286 on ventilators.
Governor Asa Hutchinson tweeted:
Today’s report shows some very startling numbers.
Arkansas ranks third in the US for new virus cases per capita, according to numbers compiled by Johns Hopkins University researchers. The state’s cases have skyrocketed in recent weeks, fuelled by the Delta variant of the virus and the state’s low vaccination rate.
Only about 37% of the state’s population is fully vaccinated against the virus.
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India reports 28,204 cases, lowest since March
India on Tuesday recorded 28,204 Covid infections over the past 24 hours, the lowest since 16 March, according to government data.
The country’s overall case load touched 32 million, the health ministry data showed. Overall deaths increased by 373 overnight, pushing the tally to 428,682.
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China reports highest cases since January
China reported 143 new cases on the mainland for 9 August, up from 125 cases a day earlier, the health authority said on Tuesday.
China’s latest clusters are mainly driven by the highly transmissible Delta variant, officials have said.
Among the new confirmed infections – the highest number China has reported since 20 January – 108 were locally transmitted, up from 94 a day earlier, while the remainder were imported from abroad, the National Health Commission said.
Most local infections were in the eastern province of Jiangsu and the central province of Henan.
The number of new asymptomatic infections was 38, from 39 a day earlier. China does not classify them as confirmed cases.
China has reported a total of 93,969 infections since the outbreak began. The number of reported deaths remained at 4,636.
Updated
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
China reported 143 new cases on the mainland for 9 August, up from 125 cases a day earlier, the health authority said on Tuesday.
Among the new confirmed infections – the highest number China has reported since 20 January – 108 were locally transmitted, up from 94 a day earlier, while the remainder were imported from abroad, the National Health Commission said.
In better news, India reported on Tuesday 28,204 infections over the past 24 hours, the lowest since 16 March, according to government data.
Here are the other key recent developments:
- The UK is on course to “hoard” up to 210m spare coronavirus vaccines by the end of the year, new research suggested, as ministers were accused of leaving poorer countries “fighting for scraps” after the UK opposed a move to allow more companies abroad to manufacture the doses themselves.
- An extension to France’s “health pass” covering activities including going to restaurants and cafes, taking long-distance train journeys and visiting hospitals has come into effect after a fourth weekend of protests. Opponents believe the pass sanitaire violates the most fundamental of French principles: the liberté and egalité of the national motto.
- The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has put the issue of vaccine mandates firmly in the hands of employers, saying government legal advice backs the view that bosses may be able to require workers to get a Covid-19 jab, particularly in high-risk fields.
- Canada today lifted its ban on Americans entering the country, though under a strict regime they must be both fully vaccinated and test negative for Covid-19 within three days. Long delays were reported at as tourists rushed to travel north during the busy summer season.
- One person is now dying with Covid-19 every two minutes in Iran, state TV has said, as the Middle East’s worst-hit nation reported a new record daily toll of 588 fatalities. It compares to a reported rate of about one death per three minutes a month ago.
- Fake versions of anti-Covid “green passes” have begun to circulate in Italy days after they were introduced to gain entry to a number of indoor places, police said. One network selling false evidence of vaccination, recovery or testing has been broken up, they claimed, saying they have identified four suspects, including two minors.
- California’s ambitious programme to provide rent relief to every low-income tenant struggling during the pandemic has been plagued by delays and challenges, and some renters who are waiting for the aid to arrive say they are now facing eviction threats.
- Saudi Arabia is from today taking travel requests from vaccinated foreign visitors seeking to visit the holy city of Mecca as part of the Umrah pilgrimage. The tight restrictions, including rules on which vaccines are considered acceptable, means that millions of Muslims could be prevented from going on the pivotally important journey.
- Scottish clubbers have vowed to be “out every night” as the easing of coronavirus restrictions allowed venues to reopen for the first time in more than a year. Nightclubs across the country opened their doors as the clock moved a minute past midnight today.
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