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The US is shipping another 2.5 million Covid vaccine doses to Bangladesh, a White House official told AFP on Thursday, after the Biden administration announced a ramping up of global donations.
The latest shipment - 2,508,480 Pfizer doses - brings the total of US shots to the country above nine million.
Packing was underway and first deliveries, made through the World Health Organization’s Covax program, will arrive Monday, the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP.
Doctors in the US are using cutting-edge lung scans to better understand the effects of ‘long Covid’ among patients who suffer severe symptoms months after their initial bout of infection.
The scans by 4DMedical allow physicians to detect areas of high and low lung ventilation using existing equipment in hospitals, said founder and chief executive Andreas Fouras.
The ‘four dimensions’ refers to the scan’s ability to measure the phases of breath as it passes into and out of the lungs.
The hospital in California is one of several across the US where the technology is being tested, Reuters reports.
A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advisory panel recommended a booster shot of the Pfizer and BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for Americans aged 65 and older and some adults with underlying medical conditions that put them at risk of severe disease.
The panel by a vote of 9-6 declined to recommend boosters for adults ages 18 to 64 who live or work in institutions with high risk of contracting the virus, based on individual risk, such as healthcare workers, teachers and residents of homeless shelters and prisons. Some panel members cited the difficulty of implementing such a proposal.
Panel member Lynn Bahta, who works with the Minnesota Department of Health, voted against that measure, which would have broadly increased availability. “I don’t think we have the data,” to support boosters in that group yet, she said.
The guidelines voted on by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices still need to be signed off on by agency Director Rochelle Walensky, Reuters reports.
The recommendations are not binding, and states and other jurisdictions could disregard them and use other approaches to administering the booster shots.
The latest Covid developments in Australia:
Stormont ministers have made no changes to current Covid rules in Northern Ireland but have agreed a date when some regulations could be eased.
Following a marathon meeting of the Executive, first minister Paul Givan said ministers were looking towards October 14 as a “significant date” but added that this would be subject to final decisions made the week before. Deputy first minister Michelle O’Neill said it was too early to say they were looking at any date as an “endpoint”. Remaining restrictions in Northern Ireland include social distancing and mask wearing in some indoor hospitality and retail settings, PA reports.
U.S. vice president Kamala Harris has welcomed India’s announcement that it will resume Covid-19 vaccine exports.
India announced this week that it resume exports of vaccines later this year.
India, the world’s biggest maker of vaccines, stopped exports of jabs in April to focus on inoculating its own population as infections soared, Reuters reports.
Biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong said he will begin transferring technology to make Covid-19 and cancer vaccines in South Africa.
The US-based doctor, provided details of the plan that will see coronavirus vaccine production starting next year in an online press conference with president Cyril Ramaphosa, AFP reports.
Soon-Shiong’s company NantWorks will transfer the technology within the next three months and vaccine production is expected to begin in 2022.
In addition to the vaccines, the NantWorks initiative will work on cell-based immunotherapies that could lead to new cancer treatments.
The California-based physician Soon-Shiong, who was born in South Africa, said: “We are now set with the knowledge, technology to manufacture vaccines in Africa.
“It is my goal and hope that Africa will benefit from this technology.”
Delta Air Lines wants other U.S. airlines to share lists of passengers who have been banned during the Covid-19 pandemic for disruptive behavior to help deter the rising number of incidents, according to a memo seen on Thursday by Reuters.
Delta said since the Covid-19 pandemic it has put more than 1,600 people on its “no fly” list. “We’ve also asked other airlines to share their ‘no fly’ list to further protect airline employees across the industry,” the memo seen by Reuters said. “A list of banned customers doesn’t work as well if that customer can fly with another airline.”
Life expectancy for men in the UK has fallen for the first time since current records began 40 years ago because of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, figures show.
A boy born between 2018 and 2020 is expected to live until he is 79 years old, down from 79.2 for the period of 2015-17, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
It is the first time there has been a decline when comparing non-overlapping time periods since the research began in the early 1980s.
Pamela Cobb, of the ONS centre for ageing and demography, said: “Life expectancy has increased in the UK over the last 40 years, albeit at a slower pace in the last decade. However, the coronavirus pandemic led to a greater number of deaths than normal in 2020.”
Summary
Here’s a round up of the latest key developments:
- Coronavirus has caused male life expectancy in the UK to drop for the first time since records began. A boy born between 2018 and 2020 is expected to live until he is 79 years old - a drop from 79.2 years for 2015-2017, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.
- The number of people testing positive for Covid-19 in England has dropped to its lowest level since the end of June.
- Novavax has announced that it has applied to the World Health Organization for an emergency-use listing of its Covid-19 vaccine. The listing is a prerequisite for export to several countries participating in the Covax vaccine-sharing facility
- Covid-19 could resemble the common cold by spring next year as people’s immunity to the virus is boosted by vaccines and exposure, a leading British expert has said. Prof Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, said the UK was “over the worst”.
- Portugal will lift almost all remaining Covid-19 restrictions, allowing full occupancy in restaurants and cultural venues from 1 October, the prime minister, Antonio Costa, said on Thursday.
- Thailand is considering cutting hotel isolation requirements for vaccinated tourists in half to one week in a bid to attract foreign visitors again. It comes amid delays to plans to waive quarantine and reopen Bangkok and other tourist destinations from next month after the pandemic caused a collapse in the country’s tourism industry
- Covid deaths in Russia, where 820 people died from the virus in the last 24 hours, matched the all-time one-day high reached in August. Since the start of the pandemic, Russia has recorded 7,354,995 coronavirus cases.
- The US Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized a booster dose of the Pfizer and BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for those ages 65 and older and some high-risk Americans, paving the way for a quick rollout of the shots, Reuters reports.
- In the UK, record numbers of children and young people are seeking access to NHS mental health services, figures show, as the devastating toll of the pandemic is revealed in a new analysis. In just three months, nearly 200,000 young people have been referred to mental health services – almost double pre-pandemic levels, according to the report by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
- More than 100 countries face cuts to public spending on health, education and social protection as the Covid-19 pandemic compounds already high levels of debt, a new report says. The International Monetary Fund believes that 35 to 40 countries are “debt distressed” – defined as when a country is experiencing difficulties in servicing its debt, such as when there are arrears or debt restructuring.
- A judge in the Netherlands has ruled that a 12-year-old boy can be administered a Covid vaccine against the wishes of his father. The unnamed boy in the city of Groningen had argued that he needed a vaccine to safely visit his dying grandmother.
- AstraZeneca has announced a deal with a startup founded by an Imperial College London vaccinologist to develop and sell drugs based on its self-amplifying RNA technology platform in other disease areas.
That’s it from me. I’m handing over to my colleague Nadeem Badshah now. Thanks so much for joining me today.
The US Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized a booster dose of the Pfizer and BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for those ages 65 and older and some high-risk Americans, paving the way for a quick rollout of the shots, Reuters reports.
The booster dose is to be administered at least six months after completion of the second dose, and the authorization would include people most susceptible to severe disease and those in jobs that left them at risk, the FDA said.
Those people include “healthcare workers, teachers and daycare staff, grocery workers and those in homeless shelters or prisons, among others,” said Janet Woodcock, acting commissioner of the FDA.
This pandemic is dynamic and evolving, with new data about vaccine safety and effectiveness becoming available every day.
Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said the agency will “continue to analyze data submitted to the FDA pertaining to the use of booster doses of Covid-19 vaccines and we will make further decisions as appropriate based on the data”.
A US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advisory panel could vote on Thursday on the use of a third shot of the vaccine, an agency official said at a public meeting of the panel on Wednesday. The CDC will have to approve any booster shot before it can be given.
Joe Biden announced in August the government’s intention to roll out booster shots for people ages 16 and older this week, pending approval by the FDA and CDC.
Read more here:
Portugal to lift most remaining Covid-19 curbs
Portugal will lift almost all remaining Covid-19 restrictions, allowing full occupancy in restaurants and cultural venues from 1 October, the prime minister, Antonio Costa, said on Thursday.
Costa told a news conference:
As most of the restrictions imposed by law disappear, we are going to enter a phase that is based on the responsibility of everyone.
We must not forget that the pandemic is not over.
Among the few measures that remain in place, mask-wearing is compulsory in public transport, at large events, in nursing homes, hospitals, shopping malls and hypermarkets. Masks ceased being compulsory outdoors last week, Reuters reports.
As Portugal has now fully vaccinated more than 8.5 million people – or 83.4% of its population – nightclubs and bars will be allowed to reopen, after having been shut since March 2020, Costa said.
However, customers will have to show a digital vaccination certificate or a negative Covid-19 test.
Portugal reported 885 new coronavirus cases on Thursday and five deaths. That brings the total tally of cases to 1,064,876 - or around one in 10 Portuguese - and 17,938 deaths.
Updated
Further evidence has emerged that the British government operated a “VIP” fast-track process for favoured companies, leading to accusations that ministers misled the public about billions of pounds of Covid-19 testing contracts.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has previously denied operating any VIP process for companies referred by ministers for possible Covid contracts.
In June, when it emerged that civil servants had passed on referrals labelled “fast track” from ministers, a government spokesperson said:
These claims are completely false – there was no high priority lane for testing suppliers. All offers of testing went through the same robust assurance checks and there was no separate ‘fast track process’.
However, internal emails between DHSC civil servants, discussing the Rapid Testing Consortium (RTC), a group of companies led by York-based Abingdon Health, which was awarded huge government contracts without a competitive tender, did describe the process as “the VIP route”. The then health minister, Lord Bethell, was described by officials as a “sponsor” of the consortium.
The DHSC disclosed the June 2020 emails during a legal challenge brought by the Good Law Project (GLP), which argues there was “apparent bias” in the award of the contracts to Abingdon Health, and that the government “failed to undertake any transparent or lawful process”. The DHSC is defending the case, arguing that the emergency of the pandemic justified it making direct contract awards.
Read more here:
Updated
More than 100 countries face cuts to public spending on health, education and social protection as the Covid-19 pandemic compounds already high levels of debt, a new report says.
The International Monetary Fund believes that 35 to 40 countries are “debt distressed” – defined as when a country is experiencing difficulties in servicing its debt, such as when there are arrears or debt restructuring.
However, this figure is a “gross underestimation”, according to the study, led by the Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies, based at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation.
Unsustainable rising debt levels have seen inequality widening between high-income countries and those in the global south, researchers said.
The report said:
We compiled a list of countries that are labelled as debt-distressed across a number of criteria, and estimate around 100 countries will have to reduce budget deficits in this period, even though the majority are still facing the third or fourth wave of the [Covid-19] pandemic.
Furthermore, the ability to cancel this debt is complicated because many of these countries have taken on debt under non-concessional terms from private lenders. The trends in [the UN’s] Financing for Development (FFD) were entirely insufficient to meet the SDGs [sustainable development goals] even prior to Covid-19. Now there is a full-blown crisis.
Countries falling into debt distress include Tunisia, which has seen political upheaval, as well as Zambia and Ghana, said Faiza Shaheen, lead author of the report, which is being launched to coincide with a UN general assembly meeting of world leaders on Thursday.
Zambia was the first African county to default on debt last year during the pandemic and now has to allocate 44% of its annual government revenue to creditors, Shaheen said. Ghana spends about 37% of its national budget on debt interest payments.
Read the full story here:
Italy reported 63 more coronavirus-related deaths on Thursday, according to the latest figures.
On Wednesday, the figure was 67, the health ministry said.
The daily tally of new infections rose to 4,061 from 3,970.
Italy has registered 130,551 deaths linked to Covid-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year.
The country has reported 4.65 million cases of the virus to date.
182 deaths reported in UK amid 36,710 new Covid cases
The British government said a further 182 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Thursday, bringing the UK total to 135,803.
Meanwhile, separate figures show that 158,664 deaths have been registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.
As of 9am on Thursday, there had been a further 36,710 lab-confirmed Covid-19 cases in the UK, the government said. That’s an increase of 9,799 on last Wednesday.
There have been 231,241 confirmed cases in the last seven days, which is a 9.4% rise on the previous week.
Updated
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are in New York as part of a push to urge leaders to adopt a vaccine equity policy to help end the Covid-19 pandemic.
The couple will take part in a worldwide event on Saturday to raise awareness of the importance of equity in vaccine distribution.
They are joining the 24-hour broadcast Global Citizen Live, which is being staged in New York’s Central Park and around the world.
It is part of a number of shows being held in cities from London to Lagos by the organisation Global Citizen, with artists including Ed Sheeran, Sir Elton John, Kylie Minogue, Metallica and Coldplay scheduled to perform.
As part of their visit, the duke and duchess were shown around One World Trade Center, built on the site of the twin towers destroyed in the 11 September 2001 attacks.
The couple were dressed sombrely for the occasion, which comes two weeks after the 20th anniversary of the terrorist atrocity.
Updated
A judge in the Netherlands has ruled that a 12-year-old boy can be administered a Covid vaccine against the wishes of his father. The unnamed boy in the city of Groningen had argued that he needed a vaccine to safely visit his dying grandmother.
Children aged 12 to 17 in the Netherlands can choose to be vaccinated but need permission from both parents. In this case, the boy’s parents were divorced and only his mother agreed. Dutch law says judges can make decisions in the best interests of children if their parents cannot agree.
The French news agency AFP reported that court papers from the case said the boy’s father was critical of the Covid vaccine and testing for coronavirus. The court papers said:
The boy wanted to be vaccinated because he did not want to get infected and wanted to limit the chance of infecting others.
On top of this, his grandmother is suffering from metastatic lung cancer and is in the final stages of her life.
The minor wants to spend as much time as possible with her, but he is not vaccinated. He is afraid that he may infect his granny and is convinced that if he did it would be life-threatening.
His father argued that vaccines “were still in a test phase” and said it was possible there would be “great risks for the reproductive organs in the long term”. But Judge Bart Tromp, of Groningen district court, said there appeared to be no scientific basis for such concerns. He ordered that the boy be administered the vaccine “shortly” because his interests were more important than any possible appeal by the father’s lawyers.
Covid vaccine scepticism is growing in the Netherlands, with the leader of one far-right party espousing anti-vaccine views in parliament. Protests are also expected this weekend when the government introduces a Covid pass to enter restaurants and bars.
Updated
More than 123,000 deaths have been prevented in England by Covid vaccinations, according to figures calculated by Public Health England and Cambridge University.
About 23.9 million infections have also been prevented by the vaccine rollout, along with 230,800 hospital admissions among people aged 45 and over, according to the calculations, which cover the period up to 17 September.
More than 89% of all people aged 16 and over in England have now received one dose of vaccine. Nearly 82% have received two doses. Third doses are being made available for some people who had their second dose six or more months ago.
Vaccine take-up continued to be lower among younger age groups. An estimated 83% of 30- to 39-year-olds in England have had one jab, along with just under 74% of people aged 18 to 29, the PA news agency reported.
Updated
Report anti-vax protests, schools told
The government has asked schools in England to report any anti-vaccination intimidation or protests, with ministers advising headteachers to ignore legal threats claiming they would be liable for injuries to pupils occurring during vaccinations, writes Richard Adams, the Guardian’s education editor.
Kate Green, Labour’s shadow education secretary, told Alex Burghart, the minister filling in for education secretary Nadhim Zahawi:
Shockingly, there are reports that some schools are experiencing anti-vaccination protests. What action is being taken to ensure that no school faces threats and intimidation?
Burghart replied that anti-vaccination protests at schools would be “totally unacceptable,” and urged schools to report any incidents to the Department for Education.
“I’d be grateful if any school that was facing intimidation would let the department know about it, so we can follow it up,” Burghart said. He added:
I want to make absolutely clear to any headteachers and teachers, contrary to what you have been told, legal liability does not rest with schools at all, it rests with the health service and those providing vaccinations.
Some schools have already started hosting school-aged immunisation teams to vaccinate pupils aged 12 to 15, following last week’s approval by the chief medical officers. So far no protests have been reported.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: “Pupils have endured enough disruption to their education in recent months, so there is absolutely no place for angry protests outside school gates.”
Green accused the government of treating children and young people “as an afterthought” despite Covid continuing to spread, noting that 122,000 children were out of school last week.
Updated
Novavax applies for WHO emergency use listing
Novavax has announced that it has applied to the World Health Organization for an emergency-use listing of its Covid-19 vaccine. The listing is a prerequisite for export to several countries participating in the Covax vaccine-sharing facility, the UN-led initiative to get vaccines to poorer countries.
The company has already signed an agreement to provide 1.1bn doses to Covax. They will be manufactured by Serum Institute, the world’s largest vaccine producer. It also has manufacturing agreements in Britain, which has ordered 60m doses, and where some clinical trials were carried out.
The protein-based Novavax vaccine has shown 90.4% efficacy overall, according to clinical trials.
Updated
On 14 September, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced “the first substantial decline in weekly [Covid] cases in more than two months” after new infections during the week of 6 September totalled four million.
That number fell again the following week to 3.6 million as did the number of deaths, to “just under 60,000”, the WHO said in its most recent update this week.
But it’s far too soon to declare victory, say experts, who warn that unequal vaccine access could still lead to the emergence of new and more deadly variants of the virus.
The virologist Julian Tang told AFP that statements about how the pandemic is progressing “have to be very country- or region-specific”.
I think it is too early to say just yet for everyone, though in the highly vaccinated parts of the world, this will be more true.
There are now clear inequalities in terms of vaccination coverage across the world.
Less than 2% of the world’s poorest populations have received even a first dose of vaccine, Antoine Flahault, the director of the University of Geneva’s Institute of Global Health, said.
In certain places – eastern and central Europe, Africa, Asia, Israel, Canada, El Salvador, Belize – cases are increasing exponentially, so we can’t say the pandemic is behind us.
Even in rich, well-vaccinated countries showing a downward trend, things could reverse, experts caution. As the northern hemisphere approaches winter, people will once again gravitate toward large, indoor gatherings that boost circulation of the virus.
Flahault said:
What we know about this pandemic is that it is unpredictable.
No one foresaw the appearance of the Delta variant in India last spring, even though we feared that kind of thing might happen.
If a mutation of the Delta variant made it more resistant to existing vaccines, it could reverse the improvement we are currently seeing.
Since a huge proportion of the population of poor countries is not vaccinated, it is likely that major spikes in infections could cause new variants to emerge, he added.
“As long as the virus is circulating at a high rate somewhere in the world, we won’t be safe from new waves,” Flahault said.
“Right now for world safety we must vaccinate as many people on Earth as possible.”
Updated
The African Union’s health watchdog warned that the UK’s pandemic travel restrictions could make people across the continent more reluctant to get vaccinated, AFP reports.
Under the restrictions, the UK only recognises vaccines administered in a few countries.
For most of the world, and all of Africa, the UK won’t recognise locally-administered vaccines – even if the jabs came from Britain.
John Nkengasong, the head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), said:
If you send us vaccines and you say: ‘We don’t recognise those vaccines,’ it sends a very challenging message for us.
It is “a message that creates confusion within our population ... creating more reticence, reluctance for people to receive vaccines”, he told a weekly news conference.
Under the rules that take effect on 4 October, travellers arriving in the UK from so-called red-listed countries are required to quarantine in government-approved hotels even if they are vaccinated.
Travellers from countries not on the red list still face tougher restrictions, including additional testing and home isolation.
Nkengasong said:
We regret that the UK will take this position, and we really will call on them to review this.
The UK has been an active donor of coronavirus vaccines to Africa, sending more than 5m shots to Africa, according to UN data.
Nkengasong feared that Africans would question why they should take vaccines when some European countries are refusing to recognise them.
He said:
That is clearly not acceptable. We should be raising our voices against such behaviours, that is not what we need for this pandemic.
The UK approach creates a stigma around locally administered vaccines, he said, and “will lead to eventually harming efforts of what we are doing in Africa”.
Updated
Prof Neil Ferguson, whose modelling was instrumental to the UK going into lockdown in March 2020, said there had not been a “rapid increase” in Covid cases since schools have gone back, PA news reports.
The scientist, from Imperial College London, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), added:
The challenge will be as we head into the autumn and winter. We would expect indoor mixing to increase and we’re still not at normal contact levels, but we’d also expect the vaccination currently rolled out in the country, the protective effect of that to wane very slightly, and so there is likely to be some upward pressure on case numbers.
He said “case trends in the UK are cautiously encouraging in the sense that we have flat or even slightly declining case numbers”.
Ferguson said:
As long as we can roll out the booster programme and the vaccination of teenagers as promptly as possible – and I do think we’ll probably have to move to second doses in teenagers as well to get effective levels of protection against Delta – as long as that is done in a prompt way, I’m moderately optimistic.
We can’t rule out some need for additional measures, but I very much doubt we will need to go back into lockdown again.
The expert said there may need to be the reintroduction of some degree of social distancing or other measures if there was a “really significant uptick” in hospital admissions.
Updated
Covid-19 could resemble the common cold by spring next year as people’s immunity to the virus is boosted by vaccines and exposure, a leading British expert has said.
Prof Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, said the UK was “over the worst” and that things “should be fine” once winter has passed, adding that there was continued exposure to the virus even among people who were vaccinated.
It comes after Prof Dame Sarah Gilbert told a Royal Society of Medicine webinar that viruses tend to become weaker as they spread around.
She said:
We normally see that viruses become less virulent as they circulate more easily and there is no reason to think we will have a more virulent version of Sars-CoV-2.
We tend to see slow genetic drift of the virus and there will be gradual immunity developing in the population as there is to all the other seasonal coronaviruses.
Seasonal coronaviruses cause colds, and Gilbert said: “Eventually Sars-CoV-2 will become one of those.”
Asked about the comments on Times Radio, Bell said:
If you look at the trajectory we’re on, we’re a lot better off than we were six months ago. So the pressure on the NHS is largely abated. If you look at the deaths from Covid, they tend to be very elderly people, and it’s not entirely clear it was Covid that caused all those deaths. So I think we’re over the worst of it now.
And I think what will happen is, there will be quite a lot of background exposure to Delta [variant], we can see the case numbers are quite high, that particularly in people who’ve had two vaccines if they get a bit of breakthrough symptomatology, or not even symptomatology – if they just are asymptomatically infected, that will add to our immunity substantially, so I think we’re headed for the position Sarah describes probably by next spring would be my view.
We have to get over the winter to get there but I think it should be fine.
Bell said “it’s pretty important that we don’t panic about where we are now”, adding that “the number of severe infections and deaths from Covid remains very low”.
He said it was worth remembering that Covid vaccines work to prevent serious illness and death but “don’t really effectively reduce the amount of transmission”.
Updated
Updated
People in New Zealand looking to get a fast-food fix could soon be asked if they would like a vaccine with their meal. The country aims to vaccinate at least 90% of its population and the government is now in talks with the fast-food giant KFC to help reach that goal.
“We just want to reach out to where people are,” the deputy prime minister Grant Robertson told RNZ on Thursday morning.
New Zealanders love fast-food. Its per-capita distribution of KFC and McDonald’s outlets is one of the highest in the world. When Auckland’s lockdown lifted on Tuesday night, people rushed to queue up for a meal, and just a day prior, two gang associates were caught trying to smuggle a boot-full of KFC and $100,000 in cash into Auckland, despite strict border controls.
Roberston said:
Given that under level 3, we know that a lot of Aucklanders are going to be really excited about getting their takeaway fix and could we use that possibility?
Ensuring people wait for 20 minutes after their vaccine dose could be challenging if they are waiting in a drive-through for food, Robertson said, adding that such logistics would need some work before the plan could go ahead.
He said the government was looking at other spots that people frequently venture, not just fast-food joints.
Read more here:
Updated
England: number of positive tests drop 22% in one week
The number of people testing positive for Covid-19 in England has dropped to its lowest level since the end of June.
A total of 161,923 people tested positive at least once in the week to 15 September, down 22% on the previous week, according to the latest Test and Trace figures, PA news reports.
This is the lowest number of people testing positive since the week to 30 June.
Test and Trace figures peaked at 390,234 cases in the week to 6 January, at the height of the second wave of coronavirus.
A more recent spike in cases saw the number hit 309,297 in the week to 21 July. But since then, the weekly figure has been about or just below 200,000.
Updated
Russia matched its previous highest coronavirus death toll on Thursday as the Delta variant and a slowing vaccine drive pushed up infections, AFP reports.
A government tally reported 820 fatalities over the past 24 hours and 21,438 new cases. It previously reported the same death toll in late August.
Russia, the fifth worst-hit country in terms of its overall number of cases, has seen infections climb since August as vaccinations stall. Moscow, the epicentre of Russia’s pandemic, has had a spike over the past week with officials warning of rising hospital admissions. Daily cases in the capital rose to 3,445, compared with 1,991 a day earlier.
The deputy mayor, Anastasia Rakova, said the increase was due in part to a seasonal spike in respiratory illnesses and contact between people after the summer vacation. She said the Delta variant now accounted for all cases in Moscow.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic, Russia has registered more than seven million cases and 201,445 deaths, the highest death toll in Europe. Authorities have been accused of downplaying the effects of the pandemic and, after a tight first lockdown in 2020, have refrained from introducing new restrictions.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday he was unaware of plans to reintroduce lockdowns “despite the increase in numbers”.
Under a broader definition for deaths linked to the coronavirus, the statistics agency Rosstat reported in late August that Russia had suffered more than 350,000 fatalities.
Several Russian vaccines have been available for months, but authorities have struggled to inoculate a vaccine-sceptic population. Only 28% of the population has been fully vaccinated, government data showed on Thursday.
Updated
Just as the pandemic has fuelled a burnout crisis among frontline medical staff, it has been calamitous for the mental health of workers in public health – the data analysts and policy advisers whose recommendations are supposed to shape the nation’s pandemic response. Many feel stonewalled by elected officials and scapegoated for the death toll of Covid-19.
Some are opting to leave the job for good.
The results of a nationwide CDC survey of public health workers in the US, released this July, were revealing. Of the more than 26,000 surveyed individuals working in public health departments across the US, more than half reported recent symptoms of at least one major mental health condition. Their reported prevalence of PTSD was 10% to 20% higher than among frontline medical workers and the general public.
Some public health workers cite a lack of cooperation from elected officials as a driving source of widespread overwork and discontent. Others even say they have faced pressure from elected officials to alter their findings to fit a political agenda.
“When they didn’t like how our [data on] vaccination coverage by race/ethnicity was looking, they actually asked me – the least senior member of the health department – to edit the data to artificially inflate BIPOC [black, indigenous, and other people of colour] categories,” alleges Kristine*, an epidemiologist at a Connecticut health department.
Meanwhile, public health workers are at the receiving end of mounting resentment. Since last March, threats against public health officials have increased. In a high-profile incident in July, an angry crowd targeted Dr Faisal Khan, the acting director of the St Louis department of health, at a meeting on mask mandates. The disgruntled attendees lobbed racial epithets and surrounded Khan after the meeting.
“I don’t tell strangers what I do for a living any more,” says Rey*, a recent public health graduate who joined the New York City department of health and mental hygiene as a data analyst during the pandemic. Rey says that even some family members, who were once supportive of her decision to study epidemiology in graduate school, have become openly dismissive of expert guidance from the CDC and local public health departments.
“It’s hard to gauge whether people will have a visceral reaction to what I do,” she says.
* Names have been changed
Read the full story here:
Updated
Here's a summary of the latest developments
- Coronavirus has caused male life expectancy in the UK to drop for the first time since records began. A boy born between 2018 and 2020 is expected to live until he is 79 years old - a drop from 79.2 years for 2015-2017, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.
- The Nobel prize banquet in Stockholm will not be held in-person for the second consecutive year due to the pandemic. Instead of travelling to Sweden for the event, laureates will receive their medals and diplomas in their home countries.
- Thailand is considering cutting hotel isolation requirements for vaccinated tourists in half to one week in a bid to attract foreign visitors again. It comes amid delays to plans to waive quarantine and reopen Bangkok and other tourist destinations from next month after the pandemic caused a collapse in the country’s tourism industry
- Covid deaths in Russia, where 820 people died from the virus in the last 24 hours, matched the all-time one-day high reached in August. Since the start of the pandemic, Russia has recorded 7,354,995 coronavirus cases.
- In the UK, record numbers of children and young people are seeking access to NHS mental health services, figures show, as the devastating toll of the pandemic is revealed in a new analysis. In just three months, nearly 200,000 young people have been referred to mental health services – almost double pre-pandemic levels, according to the report by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
- More than 100 countries face cuts to public spending on health, education and social protection as the Covid-19 pandemic compounds already high levels of debt, a new report says. The International Monetary Fund believes that 35 to 40 countries are “debt distressed” – defined as when a country is experiencing difficulties in servicing its debt, such as when there are arrears or debt restructuring.
- Lord Bob Kerslake , former head of the UK civil service and chair of the Kerslake Commission on Homelessness and Rough Sleeping, has warned that there could be “a surge of homelessness” in the coming weeks and months if the government does not learn the “positive lessons” of the pandemic.
- AstraZeneca has announced a deal with a startup founded by an Imperial College London vaccinologist to develop and sell drugs based on its self-amplifying RNA technology platform in other disease areas.
- UK business minister Paul Scully has claimed the energy price cap is “keeping prices down” and that the government is in talks with regulator Ofgem. He said the government has also had conversations about how much a price cap may have to go up.
That’s it from me for today. Handing over now to my colleague Nicola Slawson. Thanks for reading!
Updated
Covid causes life expectancy for UK males to fall for first time since records began
Coronavirus has caused male life expectancy in the UK to drop for the first time since records began.
A boy born between 2018 and 2020 is expected to live until he is 79 years old – a drop from 79.2 years for 2015-2017, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.
The ONS said the figures reflected the impact of Covid, which caused a greater number of deaths than usual last year.
Life expectancy estimates for females are largely unchanged. A baby girl born in 2018-2020 is expected to live for 82.9 years - the same figure for the 2015-2017 period.
Pamela Cobb, of the ONS centre for ageing and demography, said:
Life expectancy has increased in the UK over the last 40 years, albeit at a slower pace in the last decade.
However, the coronavirus pandemic led to a greater number of deaths than normal in 2020.
Consequently, in the latest estimates, we see virtually no improvement in life expectancy for women, while for men life expectancy has fallen back to levels reported for 2012 to 2014.
This is the first time we have seen a decline when comparing non-overlapping time periods since the series began in the early 1980s.
Updated
The Nobel prize banquet in Stockholm will not be held in-person for the second consecutive year due to the pandemic.
Instead of travelling to Sweden for the event, laureates will receive their medals and diplomas in their home countries, the Nobel Foundation announced today.
“I think everybody would like the Covid-19 pandemic to be over, but we are not there yet,” they said in a statement.
Last year’s event was held online.
Updated
Thailand considering cutting hotel isolation requirements by half for vaccinated tourists
Thailand is considering cutting hotel isolation requirements for vaccinated tourists in half to one week in a bid to attract foreign visitors again, reports Reuters.
It comes amid delays to plans to waive quarantine and reopen Bangkok and other tourist destinations from next month after the pandemic caused a collapse in the country’s tourism industry.
“Reducing the quarantine is not only about tourism, but will help business travel and foreign students,” senior health official Opas Karnkawinpong told a news conference. But he added that tests would also be required.
Under the proposal, which will be presented to the government on Monday, those without proof of vaccination would be isolated for 10 days if arriving by air and two weeks if by land.
Under a quarter of Thailand’s estimated 72 million population has so far been fully vaccinated and it is still fighting its worst wave of infections to date. The country has recorded 1.5m cases and 15,884 deaths.
Updated
Covid deaths in Russia match one-day all time high reached in August
Covid deaths in Russia, where 820 people died from the virus in the last 24 hours (see 09:46), matched the all-time one-day high reached in August.
Since the start of the pandemic, Russia has recorded 7,354,995 coronavirus cases, reports Reuters.
Updated
Russia has recorded 21,438 new coronavirus cases and 820 Covid deaths in the last 24 hours, reports Reuters.
For the latest UK politics news, Andrew Sparrow’s live blog is up and running:
Uganda aims to vaccinate at least 6 million people, the equivalent of more than 10% of its population, by the end of the year before schools can resume, reports the BBC.
Around 4.8 million of the 6 million are regarded as high priority, including health workers, teachers, security workers and students aged 18-plus.
Once those people are vaccinated, the education will be permitted to reopen in January. Universities and other higher education institutions, however, will reopen on 1 November.
Since the first doses arrived in the country in March, 600,000 people have been fully vaccinated, or little more than 1% of the population.
Updated
Children’s NHS mental health referrals double in pandemic
From the UK:
Record numbers of children and young people are seeking access to NHS mental health services, figures show, as the devastating toll of the pandemic is revealed in a new analysis.
In just three months, nearly 200,000 young people have been referred to mental health services – almost double pre-pandemic levels, according to the report by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Experts say the figures show the true scale of the impact of the last 18 months on children and young people across the country.
“These alarming figures reflect what I and many other frontline psychiatrists are seeing in our clinics on a daily basis,” said Dr Elaine Lockhart, the college’s child and adolescent faculty chair. “The pandemic has had a devastating effect on the nation’s mental health, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that children and young people are suffering terribly.”
The college analysed NHS Digital data on mental health referrals for children and young people aged 18 and under. It found that between April and June this year, 190,271 children aged 18 and under were referred to children and young people’s mental health services – almost twice the number (97,342) referred during the same period in 2019.
Coronavirus in the UK could be more like the common cold by next spring as immunity to Covid is increased by vaccines and exposure, according to a leading expert.
Prof John Bell, a professor of medicine at Oxford University, said the country “is over the worst” and “should be fine” after the winter.
He told Times Radio:
If you look at the trajectory we’re on, we’re a lot better off than we were six months ago.
So the pressure on the NHS is largely abated. If you look at the deaths from Covid, they tend to be very elderly people, and it’s not entirely clear it was Covid that caused all those deaths. So I think we’re over the worst of it now.
And I think what will happen is, there will be quite a lot of background exposure to Delta [variant], we can see the case numbers are quite high, that particularly in people who’ve had two vaccines if they get a bit of breakthrough symptomatology, or not even symptomatology - if they just are asymptomatically infected, that will add to our immunity substantially.
He added:
We have to get over the winter to get there but I think it should be fine.
Here’s more detail on what UK business minister Paul Scully said earlier (see also 07:24) about removing PCR test requirements for travellers.
Asked on Sky News whether PCR tests will be removed in time for half term, he said:
That’s absolutely the aim. We’ve got to get the systems in place because we want to move to lateral flow tests to make it easier and cheaper for people to be able to enjoy those holidays at half-term.
The aim is later on in October. We know that half-term is looming, we know people want to get away, but we also want to encourage business travel as well, because that is investment in the UK, it is investment in jobs and creates opportunities for people.
Vaccination progress in the US is the slowest it has been since July, reports CNN citing government data released on Wednesday.
The broadcaster reports that data from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that 312,000 people got their first dose over the last week, marking a 7% drop on the previous week and a fall of 35% on the previous month.
It comes as flu season approaches which it is feared could increase deaths and put additional pressure on hospitals.
About 182m people in the US (54.9% of the population) are so far fully vaccinated.
Updated
More than 100 countries face spending cuts as Covid worsens debt crisis, report warns
More than 100 countries face cuts to public spending on health, education and social protection as the Covid-19 pandemic compounds already high levels of debt, a new report says.
The International Monetary Fund believes that 35 to 40 countries are “debt distressed” – defined as when a country is experiencing difficulties in servicing its debt, such as when there are arrears or debt restructuring.
However, this figure is a “gross underestimation”, according to the study, led by the Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies, based at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation.
Unsustainable rising debt levels have seen inequality widening between high-income countries and those in the global south, researchers said.
“We compiled a list of countries that are labelled as debt-distressed across a number of criteria, and estimate around 100 countries will have to reduce budget deficits in this period, even though the majority are still facing the third or fourth wave of the [Covid-19] pandemic,” the report said.
“Furthermore, the ability to cancel this debt is complicated because many of these countries have taken on debt under non-concessional terms from private lenders. The trends in [the UN’s] Financing for Development (FFD) were entirely insufficient to meet the SDGs [sustainable development goals] even prior to Covid-19. Now there is a full-blown crisis.”
Countries falling into debt distress include Tunisia, which has seen political upheaval, as well as Zambia and Ghana, said Faiza Shaheen, lead author of the report, which is being launched to coincide with a UN general assembly meeting of world leaders on Thursday.
UK could see a 'surge of homelessness' in coming weeks, warns former head of civil service
Lord Bob Kerslake , the former head of the UK civil service and chair of the Kerslake Commission on Homelessness and Rough Sleeping, has warned that there could be “a surge of homelessness” in the coming weeks and months if the government does not learn the “positive lessons” of the pandemic.
He urged the government to “capture this moment to move forward”, telling Sky News: “It’s a pivotal moment.” He warned that the standard of living crisis could push people over the edge, amid rising costs and loss of benefits, and “push the numbers up” of people who are homeless.
Laying out a series of recommendations, he said the government needs to set out a long-term strategy, implement a duty to cooperate at a local level and see homelessness as both a housing and health issue.
He also said an additional £81m is needed to tackle homelessness.
It comes as the The Kerslake Commission on Homelessness and Rough Sleeping released its final report on tackling rough sleeping after the pandemic.
At the start of the pandemic, the UK government said that nobody should lose their home because of Covid.
But an investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found that hundreds of people in England and Wales have lost their homes because the legal system is failing to account for the impact of the pandemic.
An analysis of 555 recent posession court hearing involving rented properties in England and Wales found that 85% of cases left judges powerless to take into account a tenant’s circumstances. It also found that the impact of Covid was cited in a third of all hearings where a possession order was granted.
John Bird, founder of the Big Issue, told the Bureau:
It’s clear that the government must act now to suspend no fault evictions. We need to keep people in their homes at all costs – or we risk facing a mass homelessness crisis like never before.
England’s Covid travel rules are sparking outrage around the world, reports Tom Phillips, Flávia Milhorance and Emmanuel Akinwotu.
The government’s refusal to recognise vaccines administered across huge swathes of the world have been met with anger and frustration in Latin America, Africa and south Asia and have been criticised as illogical and discriminatory.
Under the new rules, travellers fully vaccinated with Oxford/AstraZeneca, Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna or Janssen shots in the US, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea or an EU country will be considered “fully vaccinated” and exempt from quarantine when they arrive in England from an amber list country. But people who have been fully vaccinated with the same vaccines in Africa or Latin America, as well as other countries including India, will be considered “not fully vaccinated” and forced to quarantine for 10 days on arrival from an amber list country.
Portugal could be just days away from hitting its goal of fully vaccinating 85% of its population against coronavirus.
Today, 84% of the country was fully vaccinated, the Associated Press reports, making it the most vaccinated country globally according to data from Our World in Data.
Much of the praise for the successful rollout has been directed at Rear Adm. Henrique Gouveia e Melo, the naval officer in charge of the vaccine’s distribution.
Portugal’s Covid infections and hospitalisations have sunk to their lowest levels in nearly 18 months. Its remaining restrictions could be removed next month, reports AP.
AstraZeneca announces deal with Imperial College London startup
AstraZeneca has announced a deal with a startup founded by an Imperial College London vaccinologist to develop and sell drugs based on its self-amplifying RNA technology platform in other disease areas.
Reuters reports that under the deal, Robin Shattock’s company VaxEquity could receive up to $195m if particular goals are met, plus royalties on approved drugs and equity investment from AstraZeneca and Morningside Ventures.
AstraZeneca, which already produces an adenoviral vector Covid-19 vaccine, said self-amplifying RNA (saRNA) technology could have potential uses in novel therapeutic programmes outside of the current pandemic.
“This collaboration with VaxEquity adds a promising new platform to our drug discovery toolbox,” said Mene Pangalos, an executive vice-president at AstraZeneca.
The technology works in a similar way to the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines made by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna.
UK business minister says energy price cap is 'keeping prices down' and that PCR testing for overseas travel could be removed in October
UK business minister Paul Scully has claimed the energy price cap is “keeping prices down” and that the government is in talks with regulator Ofgem.
He told Sky News that the government has also had conversations about how much a price cap may have to go up.
Asked about Tesco’s warning that empty shelves in supermarkets could be 10 times worse by Christmas, Scully said there is a “global issue with HGV drivers” and that the government wants to get more HGV drivers back to work.
Asked whether PCR testing requirements for overseas travel will be removed in time for half term, he said he expects it to happen “later on in October”, adding that he is aware that “half term is looming”.
Paul Scully, Business Minister, says the Government is working to keep energy prices down for consumers during these "extraordinary circumstances". https://t.co/md1d2KDm78 pic.twitter.com/GK8iDUMggE
— Sky News (@SkyNews) September 23, 2021
Hi, I’m looking after the global coronavirus blog for the next few hours. Please get in touch with any tips or suggestions: miranda.bryant@guardian.co.uk
South Korea urges testing amid holiday surge fears
South Korean authorities warned people returning from a holiday to get tested even for the mildest Covid type symptoms, especially before clocking in for work amid a new surge in coronavirus cases in and around the capital, Reuters reports.
The country, which has been grappling with a fourth wave of infections since early July, will on Friday roll back the allowance gatherings during the Chuseok holiday week to two people after 6 p.m. in the greater Seoul area.
Seoul saw 1,400 daily confirmed cases on average last week, up 11% from a record high of 1,268 the prior week, Vice Health Minister Kang Do-tae said on Wednesday.
Kang urged those returning from the three-day holiday, which started on Monday, to get tested to prevent transmission.
South Korea’s popular tourist island of Jeju saw an average of more than 41,000 visitors a day during the holiday, up from about 32,000 in the same period last year, the Jeju Tourism Association told Reuters. More than 258,000 people have visited the island in six days.
Despite the high daily case numbers, the mortality rate and severe cases have remained relatively low and steady at 0.83% and 312 respectively as of Wednesday, Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) data showed.
The KDCA reported 1,716 new Covid cases on Wednesday, raising the total to 292,699 infections, with 2,427 deaths.
South Korea struggled to get vaccine supplies initially, but has supercharged its campaign in recent months, administering 71.2% of the 52 million population with at least one dose through Wednesday and fully inoculated 43.2%.
Delta ‘crippling’ Alaska’s healthcare system
Alaska, which led most US states in coronavirus vaccinations months ago, took the drastic step on Wednesday of imposing crisis-care standards for its entire hospital system, declaring that a crushing surge in Cobid patients has forced rationing of strained medical resources, Reuters reports.
Governor Mike Dunleavy and health officials announced the move as the tally of newly confirmed cases statewide reached another single-day record of 1,224 patients amid a wave of infections driven by the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant among the unvaccinated.
“The Delta variant is crippling our healthcare system. It’s impacting everything from heart attacks to strokes to our children if they get in a bike accident,” Dr Anne Zink, Alaska’s chief medical officer, said at a news conference.
Idaho, another one of several largely rural states where COVID-19 cases have overwhelmed healthcare systems in recent weeks, activated its own crisis-care standards statewide last Thursday, citing a spike in hospitalisations that “has exhausted existing resources.”
Alaska’s health and social services commissioner, Adam Crum, announced that he signed an emergency addendum extending to the whole state standards of crisis care announced last week at the state’s largest hospital, Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage.
The new document limits liability faced by providers for crisis-level medical care in all Alaska hospitals.
Moreover, it acknowledges the realities of rationed care statewide, with scarce medical supplies and staff prioritised in a way that denies normal levels of care to some patients for the sake of others, depending on how sick they are and their chances for recovery.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coronavirus coverage.
Alaska, which led most US states in coronavirus vaccinations months ago, took the drastic step on Wednesday of imposing crisis-care standards for its entire hospital system, declaring that a crushing surge in Covid patients has forced rationing of strained medical resources.
Meanwhile South Korean authorities warned people returning from a holiday to get tested even for the mildest Covid-like symptoms, especially before clocking in for work amid a new surge in coronavirus cases in and around the capital.
More on these stories shortly. In the meantime here are the other key recent developments:
- The United States will buy 500 million more coronavirus vaccine shots to donate to other countries, president Joe Biden has confirmed today.
- Global Covid cases have fallen in the past week, the World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed. There were 3.6 million new cases reported around the world last week, down from 4 million new infections the previous week.
- Health authorities in Germany are planning new rules under which unvaccinated workers would not receive compensation for lost pay if coronavirus measures forced them to quarantine.
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Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert, who led the development of the UK’s Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, has warned governments and medical funding agencies have not learned the importance of pandemic preparedness.
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Police in the Canadian province of Quebec are searching for a man they suspect of punching a nurse in the face for giving his wife a Covid vaccine without his consent, a police spokesman said on Wednesday.
- Ukraine is planning to make coronavirus vaccinations mandatory for certain professions, including teachers and employees of state institutions and local governments.
- In Australia, police in Melbourne have again fired non-lethal rounds and teargas at anti-Covid lockdown protesters to end an almost three-hour standoff at the city’s war memorial during a third straight day of demonstrations.
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Italy confirmed 67 deaths from Covid on Wednesday, the same number as the day before, its health ministry said.
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England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty has told MPs this afternoon that the Covid transmission rate is currently highest among children compared to all age groups.
- France has no plans at this stage to relax its health pass restrictions set up to deal with a fourth wave of Covid infections.
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