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New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian is expected to shortly announce a four-week extension to the Greater Sydney lockdown.
The Guardian understands Berejiklian will not be introducing curfews, but the government is exploring rapid antigen testing for year 12 students to allow them to return to school ahead of their HSC exams. Other years will be expected to remain at home for their schooling over the additional four-week period.
These rapid tests may also be used at essential workplaces such as supermarkets.
A singles bubble, which would allow those who live alone to visit one other person in the same circumstances, is also likely to be introduced for this next phase of the lockdown.
Flexible working should become the “new normal” after the experience during the coronavirus pandemic, Labour said.
With millions moving to home working almost overnight in March 2020 in response to the first national coronavirus lockdown, the opposition party in England is calling for the right to flexible working to be made mandatory in all jobs to ensure that “work fits around people’s lives instead of dictating their lives”.
Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner said the concept would not just be about allowing people to work from home, as they have done to reduce Covid-19 transmissions over the past 16 months, but should also include flexible, compressed, staggered or annualised hours.
Updated
Kuwait’s civil aviation authority said all arrivals must have a negative Covid-19 PCR test before they board their flights and must not be showing any symptoms.
All arrivals will have to be home quarantined for seven days unless they take a Covid-19 PCR test inside Kuwait that comes out negative, Reuters reports. The Kuwaiti government on Monday eased some coronavirus related restrictions and resumed all activities except for gatherings which include conferences, weddings and social events.
US president Joe Biden will announce on Thursday a requirement that all federal employees and contractors be vaccinated against Covid-19 or be required to submit to regular testing, CNN reported.
The latest Covid situation in Australia:
Americans fully vaccinated against Covid-19 should go back to wearing masks in indoor public places in regions where the coronavirus and especially the Delta variant are spreading rapidly, US authorities said.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also recommended all students and teachers at kindergarten up to 12th grade schools wear masks regardless of vaccination status. The CDC said children should return to full-time, in-person learning in the autumn with proper prevention strategies.
The changes mark a reversal of the CDC’s announcement in May that prompted millions of vaccinated Americans to shed their face coverings, Reuters reports.
Updated
A summary of today's developments
- Plans to significantly open up international travel are expected to be announced on Wednesday, with UK ministers poised to let people who have been fully vaccinated in the US and EU avoid quarantine if arriving from amber list countries.
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Kuwait said it will allow only vaccinated citizens to travel abroad starting 1 August, the government communication office reported.
- Iran’s Covid-19 cases hit a record high for the second time in as many days today, rising to almost 35,000, as the health minister warned there was little hope of improvement unless the public followed health precautions, state TV reported.
- The UK and Germany “have protected Covid vaccine patents over human lives”, campaigners have said as the World Trade Organization is reportedly about to delay a decision on whether to waive patents on Covid vaccines. The two countries are expected to resist efforts to allow poorer countries to produce their own vaccines, thus speeding up the global rollout of the jabs.
- The US’s top health agency is expected to backpedal and recommend that even vaccinated people wear masks indoors in parts of the US where Covid is surging, according to reports. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is expected to make an announcement later in the day revising guidance issued in May, which said vaccinated individuals did not need to wear masks in most indoor settings.
- Schools closed due to the pandemic must reopen as soon as possible, the United Nations said, estimating that the education of more than 600 million children was at stake. A spokesman said it was a “terrible mistake” to reopen bars and pubs before schools, after reports that an estimated 40% of children in eastern and southern Africa are not attending school due to closures.
- Ireland is set to open its vaccination programme to those aged 12 to 15 after its national immunisation advisory committee made a favourable recommendation. Foreign minister Simon Coveney said the decision meant “the benefit of vaccination can be extended to this much younger cohort” but that parents would retain the right to decide how to proceed.
- Almost 99% people who have died of Covid-19 in Italy since February this year were not fully vaccinated, the National Health Institute said. The study released by the public health body added that the few fully vaccinated people who died of Covid were also significantly older than those who died without full vaccination, at 88.6 years of age versus 80.
- An additional 18,000 New Zealand children were pushed into poverty in the first year of the pandemic, according to research, despite child welfare being one of prime minister Jacinda Ardern’s main concerns. The Child Poverty Action Group – which focuses on eliminating poverty – put much of the increased poverty, inequity, homelessness and food insecurity down to government neglect as it created its policies during the pandemic, with indigenous children hardest hit.
- The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, announced the EU has met the target of administering a Covid jab to 70% of adults by July, making good on the promise to “catch up” after a rocky start to the bloc’s vaccination rollout. The EU’s executive branch had been heavily criticised at the start of the year after promised vaccine doses did not materialise and national health systems failed to swiftly distribute those that did.
- Tokyo’s 2,848 daily coronavirus infections on Tuesday were the Olympic host city’s highest since the pandemic began, officials said, but Japanese prime minister Yoshihide Suga said it was “not a problem” for the Games and that Tokyo residents should focus on working from home to suppress the movement of people
- Germany is planning to introduce tighter controls on citizens returning from holiday in an attempt to control the growth in coronavirus cases. Jens Spahn, the health minister, is reported in German media to be gathering support for his plan for all returnees to have to test for the virus, regardless of whether they have been in a high-risk area or how they have travelled.
- People advised to shield during the first wave of the pandemic were eight times more likely to get Covid-19 and five times as likely to die following infection than the general population, a study indicated. Researchers also said people deemed at moderate risk from the virus due to health conditions such as diabetes were four times more likely to have confirmed infections than the low-risk group, and five times more likely to die following confirmed infection.
- Greater Sydney will remain locked down for a further four weeks but neighbouring Victoria will tentatively emerge from its fifth lockdown tomorrow, with the easing of restrictions accompanied by a tightening of the border with New South Wales.
Updated
Theatre lovers in Northern Ireland have been treated to a live performance for the first time since the start of the pandemic.
Only 90 minutes after regulations formally changed to permit theatres to reopen, the lights went down at the Lyric Theatre for the opening night of Dracula in Belfast.
It was the first audience the venue had hosted for 16 months.
Rules meant the 390-capacity theatre was only a third full and all audience members had to comply with a range of Covid mitigation measures, including the wearing of face masks, PA reports.
Updated
The US had administered 342,607,540 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country and distributed 395,460,845 doses as of Tuesday morning, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The figures are up from the 342,212,051 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by 26 July, out of 394,949,575 doses delivered.
It said 188,996,475 people had received at least one dose, while 163,312,474 people were fully vaccinated as of Tuesday, Reuters reports.
Updated
Kuwait said it will only allow vaccinated citizens to travel abroad starting August 1, the government communication office reported.
The statement excepted children under age 16, those with a health ministry certificate saying they cannot be vaccinated, and pregnant women who get a pregnancy proof certificate from authorities, Reuters reports.
Plans to significantly open up international travel are expected to be announced on Wednesday, with UK ministers poised to let people who have been fully vaccinated in the US and EU avoid quarantine if arriving from amber list countries.
The move would benefit millions of people by finally letting them be reunited with family and friends based in the UK, as well as businesses in the aviation and tourism sectors that have been hit hard by the pandemic.
Currently, only those who have been inoculated by the NHS are eligible for a “Covid pass” to show upon return that would allow them to skip the self-isolation period of up to 10 days if coming from an amber list country, under the rules of the traffic light system that grades countries according to their case, variant and vaccination rates.
Corporate landlords in the US continue to evict tenants - many of them people from ethnic minorities during the Covid-19 pandemic, despite a federal ban on evictions, a congressional panel was told.
The hearings followed last week’s announcement by the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis of an investigation into the practice, Reuters reports.
“Let me be clear, the aggressive actions of these large corporate landlords are unacceptable, and they must stop immediately,” said Representative James Clyburn, the panel’s chairman.
British prime minister Boris Johnson is expected to approve the reopening of England’s doors to double-vaccinated tourists from the EU and the US, Financial Times reported.
UK ministers pushed the prime minister to act, arguing that it was safe to start re-admitting foreign tourists without the need for quarantine if they had received two vaccine doses, the newspaper said.
Major aged care providers in the UK have warned vaccination rates for their home care staff remain extraordinarily low, just days after the government conceded it still has no specific plan for vaccinating the workforce.
About 150,000 aged care workers provide care to about 1 million older Australians in their own homes across the country, but the government revealed on Friday it still has no dedicated plan for vaccinating home care staff and has given the issue little focus.
It has not extended the vaccine mandate for residential workers to home care workers, despite warnings weeks ago that it was an “obvious blind spot” in the rollout.
Northern Ireland’s Covid-19 certification service, which provides digital proof of coronavirus vaccination, has been temporarily interrupted after a technical fault saw some users presented with data related to other users.
A Department of Health statement said: “The Department is aware that a limited number of users in limited circumstance may be presented with data relating to other users.
“The Department of Health takes the privacy of citizen’s data very seriously and contact has been made with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) as part of due diligence in protecting citizen’s data.
“Immediate action has also been taken to temporarily remove a part of the service that manages identity.”
Many users will not be affected by the interruption, and those who have already been issued with a certificate can still use them, PA reports.
Others will face delays accessing electronic versions of their certificates and some will find their accounts on the NIDirect website locked, pending the resolution of the technical issue.
Australia’s health department was urged by the government’s vaccine advisory group to order as many Covid-19 vaccines as possible from different sources after a meeting in August last year, my colleagues Sarah Martin and Katharine Murphy report.
The health department secretary, Prof Brendan Murphy, said on Friday that the government’s procurement strategy was based on advice from the Science and Industry Technical Advisory Group (Sitag) – a group he chairs – as he sought to deflect criticism of the troubled vaccine rollout.
The comments disgruntled some members of Sitag. Multiple sources have told Guardian Australia that the group was asked to provide feedback on a procurement strategy that had already been prepared by the department after its negotiations with pharmaceutical companies.
Iran’s Covid-19 cases hit a record high for the second time in as many days today, rising to almost 35,000, as the health minister warned there was little hope of improvement unless the public followed health precautions, state TV reported.
The epicentre of the pandemic in the Middle East, Iran reported 34,951 new cases today, after registering a record 31,814 cases yesterday in a fifth wave blamed on the highly transmissible Delta variant. Deaths rose by 357 to 89,479 today, though the number of excess deaths were not reported by Reuters.
“If health protocols are followed as they are now, we will not have much hope of getting out of the [high risk] ‘red’ situation,” health minister Saeed Namaki told state TV.
Officials say less than 40% of Iranians wear masks and follow other precautions.
State television broadcast scenes from burials of Covid-19 victims with crying relatives appealing to the public to follow safety precautions.
The government has been accused on social media of mismanagement over the country’s slow vaccination drive, with just 2.5 million people fully vaccinated from a population of 83 million. Officials have blamed US sanctions for hampering efforts to buy foreign vaccines and delays in deliveries, Reuters reports.
Major aged care providers have warned vaccination rates for their home care staff in Australia remain extraordinarily low, just days after the government conceded it still has no specific plan for vaccinating the workforce.
About 150,000 aged care workers provide care to about 1 million older Australians in their own homes across the country, but the government revealed on Friday it still has no dedicated plan for vaccinating home care staff and has given the issue little focus.
Big Tech giants to report unprecedented profits as pandemic creates 'perfect positive storm'
Google, Apple and Microsoft are expected to report record-breaking quarterly sales and profits on Tuesday night as the firms continue to benefit from a pandemic that has created a “perfect positive storm” for big tech.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is expected to report second-quarter revenue of $56bn. That would be a 46% increase on the same period a year earlier, and mean that the company collected $622m-a-day on average between April and June. Earnings per share (a measure of profit) are expected to increase 90% on the same period a year earlier.
Updated
Today so far...
- The UK and Germany “have protected Covid vaccine patents over human lives”, campaigners have said as the World Trade Organisation is reportedly set to delay a decision on whether to waive patents on Covid vaccines. The two countries are expected to resist efforts to allow poorer countries to produce their own vaccines, thus speeding up the global rollout of the jabs.
- The US’ top health agency is expected to backpedal and recommend that even vaccinated people wear masks indoors in parts of the US where Covid is surging, according to reports. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is expected to make an announcement later in the day revising guidance issued in May, which said vaccinated individuals did not need to wear masks in most indoor settings.
- Schools closed due to the pandemic must reopen as soon as possible, the United Nations said, estimating that the education of more than 600 million children was at stake. A spokesman said it was a “terrible mistake” to reopen bars and pubs before schools, amid reports that an estimated 40% of children in eastern and southern Africa are not attending school due to closures.
- Ireland is set to open its vaccination programme to those aged 12 to 15 after its national immunisation advisory committee made a favourable recommendation. Foreign minister Simon Coveney said the decision meant “the benefit of vaccination can be extended to this much younger cohort” but that parents would retain the right to decide how to proceed.
- Almost 99% people who have died of Covid-19 in Italy since February this year were not fully vaccinated, the National Health Institute said. The study released by the public health body added that the few fully vaccinated people who died of Covid were also significantly older than those who died without full vaccination, at 88.6 years of age versus 80.
- An additional 18,000 New Zealand children were pushed into poverty in the first year of the pandemic, according to new research, despite child welfare being one of prime minister Jacinda Ardern’s main concerns. The Child Poverty Action Group – a group focused on eliminating poverty – put much of the increased poverty, inequity, homelessness and food insecurity down to government neglect as it created its policies during the pandemic, with indigenous children hardest hit.
- European commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced the EU has met the target of administering a Covid jab to 70% of adults by July, making good on the promise to “catch up” after a rocky start to the bloc’s vaccination roll out. The EU’s executive branch had been heavily criticised at the start of the year after promised vaccine doses failed to materialise and national health systems failed to swiftly distribute those that did.
- Tokyo’s 2,848 daily coronavirus infections today were the Olympic host city’s highest since the pandemic began, officials said, but Japanese prime minister Yoshihide Suga said it was “not a problem” for the Games and that Tokyoites should focus on working from home to suppress the movement of people
- Germany is planning to introduce tighter controls on citizens returning from holiday in an attempt to control the growth in coronavirus cases. Jens Spahn, health minister, is reported in German media to be gathering support for his plan for all returnees to have to test for the virus, regardless of whether they have been in a high-risk area or how they have travelled.
- People advised to shield during the first wave of the pandemic were eight times more likely to get Covid-19 and five times as likely to die following infection than the general population, a study indicated. Researchers also said people deemed at moderate risk from the virus due to health conditions such as diabetes were four times more likely to have confirmed infections than the low-risk group, and five times more likely to die following confirmed infection.
- Greater Sydney will remain locked down for a further four weeks but neighbouring Victoria will tentatively emerge from its fifth lockdown tomorrow, with the easing of restrictions accompanied by a tightening of the border with New South Wales.
Two ministers in the French government promoted the Covid-19 vaccine through their own example today, with one of them administering the shot to the other.
Health minister Olivier Veran, a doctor by profession, delivered the jab to Olivia Gregoire, junior economy minister, as France steps up its controversial efforts to cajole its populace into getting vaccinated.
As he got ready to give the injection in front of television cameras at Necker Hospital in Paris, Veran struggled to put on a surgical glove, which he put down to being out of practice, Reuters reports.
But Gregoire, who is pregnant and was getting her second dose of the vaccine, said she was not worried about his professional abilities. “I have complete faith,” Gregoire said.
💉 La grossesse ne protège pas contre le #COVID19, le vaccin si.
— Olivia Gregoire (@oliviagregoire) July 27, 2021
Merci à @olivierveran et à l’@hopital_necker pour cette deuxième dose ✅ pic.twitter.com/3afUASSTAj
After the injection was done, she told Veran she had not felt a thing. “You haven’t lost the knack,” she told him.
In the UK, pregnant women are being given dangerously mixed messaging from health professionals, with figures suggesting a “very high” vaccine hesitancy among the vulnerable group, according to campaigners.
A group said it had been inundated with stories of negative messaging given to pregnant women from healthcare professionals.
Updated
Almost 99% of Covid deaths in Italy since February were among not fully vaccinated, say authorities
Almost 99% people who have died of Covid-19 in Italy since February this year were not fully vaccinated, the National Health Institute (ISS) has said.
The study, contained in a regular report on Covid-19 deaths released by the public health body, added that the few fully vaccinated people who died of Covid were also significantly older than those who died without full vaccination, at 88.6 years of age versus 80.
Reuters reports that they also had more underlying health problems before contracting the virus.
Italy last week followed France in announcing that proof of vaccination or immunity from Covid-19 would shortly be mandatory for an array of activities, including indoor dining and entering places such as gyms, pools, museums and cinemas.
To date, almost 57% of the population over the age of 12 are fully vaccinated. Italy reported 24 coronavirus-related deaths today against 22 yesterday, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 4,522 from 3,117.
From 1 February to 21 July, there were 423 Covid deaths among fully vaccinated people, representing 1.2% of the total of 35,776 Covid deaths, the institute said.
Italy’s vaccination campaign began around the start of this year, so by the start of the study the first people to be vaccinated could have completed their two-jab vaccination using Pfizer or Moderna.
Studying the medical records of 70 of the 423 fully vaccinated people who have died of Covid, the ISS said their average number of underlying illnesses was 5.0, compared with 3.7 for Covid deaths among people not fully vaccinated.
Vaccinated Americans expected to be asked to weak masks indoors
The US’ top health agency is expected to backpedal on its masking guidelines today and recommend that even vaccinated people wear masks indoors in parts of the US where the coronavirus is surging, according to media reports.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is expected to make an announcement later in the day revising guidance issued on 13 May, which said vaccinated individuals did not need to wear masks in most indoor settings.
The guidance still called for wearing masks in crowded indoor settings, like buses, planes, hospitals, prisons and homeless shelters, but it cleared the way for reopening workplaces and other venues. Subsequent CDC guidance said fully vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks at summer camps or at schools, either.
“Nobody wants to go backward but you have to deal with the facts on the ground, and the facts on the ground are that it’s a pretty scary time and there are a lot of vulnerable people,” Robert Wachter, chairman of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told the Washington Post. “I think the biggest thing we got wrong was not anticipating that 30% of the country would choose not to be vaccinated.”
Ireland to inoculate children against Covid after expert recommendation
Ireland is set to open its vaccination programme to those aged 12 to 15 after its national immunisation advisory committee made a favourable recommendation.
The minister for health, Stephen Donnelly, was quoted as saying by RTE:
Yesterday, I announced that the vaccine registration portal was opening to all those aged 16 and 17 years old and today’s announcement is an important step in offering that same protection to our younger population.
Support for parents and young people will be made available to help them make the best decision for them ... We’ll make clear information for parents available in the coming days and announce soon when registration can begin.”
Minister for foreign affairs, Simon Coveney, said the decision meant “the benefit of vaccination can be extended to this much younger cohort” but that parents would retain the right to decide how to proceed.
He said that more than 83% of the Irish population have been inoculated with a first dose of a vaccine and over 70% have both jabs. According to RTE, Coveney added that once 80% of the population were fully vaccinated “you are in a very strong space” to develop herd immunity.
The European Medicine’s Agency has approved use of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines for children.
But the UK has stopped short of rolling out the jabs to children. Prof Calum Semple, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said last month: “The risk of death [from Covid in children] is one in a million. That’s not a figure and plucking from the air, that’s a quantifiable risk.”
Prof Robert Dingwall, a sociologist on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, has meanwhile said that “it is not immoral to think that [children] may be better protected by natural immunity generated through infection than by asking them to take the possible risk of a vaccine”.
Saudi Arabia will impose a three-year travel ban on citizens travelling to countries on the kingdom’s “red list” under draconian new measures, state news agency SPA has said.
Reuters reports that it cited an unnamed interior ministry official as saying some Saudi citizens, who in May were allowed to travel abroad without prior permission from authorities for the first time since March 2020, had violated travel regulations.
“Anyone who is proven to be involved will be subject to legal accountability and heavy penalties upon their return, and will be banned from travel for three years,” the official said.
Saudi Arabia has banned travel to or transit at a number of countries including Afghanistan, Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Pakistan, South Africa, Turkey, Vietnam and the United Arab Emirates.
“The ministry of interior stresses that citizens are still banned from travelling directly or via another country to these states or any other that has yet to control the pandemic or where the new strains have spread,” the official said.
The kingdom, the largest Gulf state with a population of some 30 million, today recorded 1,379 new Covid-19 infections, bringing its total to 520,774 cases and 8,189 deaths.
The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, has said it was important that people did not draw premature conclusions about several days of better Covid case data and urged the public to remain cautious.
“I’ve noticed that obviously that we’re six days into some better figures, but it is very, very important that we don’t allow ourselves to run away with premature conclusions about this,” Johnson said. “People have got to remain very cautious and that remains the approach of the government.”
Responding to the number of deaths reported in the UK, the medical director at Public Health England Dr Yvonne Doyle, has said:
Rates are still high and the pandemic is not over yet, today we have recorded the highest number of deaths since March.
This is in part due to the high number of cases recorded in recent weeks. We know deaths follow when there are a high number of cases and data today highlights we are still in the third wave.
We can all help. Meeting outside is safer than inside, get two doses of the vaccine as soon as you can and isolate if you are told to by NHS Test & Trace. If you show symptoms, stay home and get a PCR test. Limiting your contacts is the best way to stop the virus spreading.
UK government data also shows that, of the 84,112,856 Covid jabs given up to 26 July, 46,653,796 were first doses; a rise of 64,585 on the previous day. Some 37,459,060 were second doses; an increase of 171,676.
UK caseload deceleration continues for a seventh day
A further 23,511 lab-confirmed Covid-19 cases have been identified in the UK, the government has said, meaning daily reported cases have fallen for a seventh day in a row.
But the UK also saw the greatest day-on-day increase in death toll since 17 March, with a further 131 people dying within 28 days of testing positive. It brings the UK’s total to 129,303.
Separate figures published by the Office for National Statistics show there have been 154,000 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.
Iraq has recorded its worst daily increase in infections, with 12,185 new cases, Reuters reports, citing the health ministry. That takes its total so far to 1,577,013.
It reported 71 fatalities to take its death toll to 18,418, official data published by the health ministry showed.
The daily tally of cases has been rising since marking the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday, which traditionally includes social gatherings where infections could spread and as many Iraqis flout safety and health measures. The health ministry also said 1,480,784 people have been vaccinated so far.
The former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders has urged people in Arkansas to “pray about it” before considering whether to get what she dubbed the “Trump vaccine” against Covid-19.
Sanders is running for Arkansas governor. In an opinion piece for the Arkansas Democrat Chronicle, headlined “The reasoning behind getting vaccinated”, she mostly used her platform to criticise Democrats and Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden.
Sanders did offer tentative encouragement for people in her state to get the coronavirus vaccine.
To anyone still considering the merits of vaccination. I leave you with this encouragement: Pray about it, discuss it with your family and your doctor. Filter out the noise and fear-mongering and condescension, and make the best, most informed decision you can that helps your family, community, and our great state be its very best.
Argentina’s government has signed a deal with US pharmaceutical company Pfizer to acquire 20 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines to be delivered this year, health minister Carla Vizzotti has said.
Reuters has the story:
The agreement comes after Argentina modified at the beginning of the month the law regulating purchases of vaccines against Covid-19 to be able to access the doses of US companies. Those companies had been reluctant to sign with the South American country under previous regulations.
“Yesterday a binding agreement was signed with the Pfizer laboratory for 20 million doses during 2021. The final agreement that remains is based on logistical issues to start the delivery schedule,” Vizzotti said.
Argentina last week sent a letter to Moscow complaining about delayed delivery of doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine. The opposition to centre-left president Alberto Fernandez in Argentina had criticised his administration for slow action in signing vaccine deals with US companies.
In mid-July, Argentina signed an agreement with American laboratory Moderna Inc for 20 million vaccine doses. In all, the country, with a total population of about 45 million people, has received almost 42 million doses, Vizzotti said.
The Pfizer, Moderna and Sputnik V vaccines each require two doses to be fully effective.
Russia to test mixing of AstraZeneca and Sputnik V shots
Russia’s health officials have given a go-ahead to testing a combination of the AstraZeneca coronavirus shot and the single-dose version of the domestically developed Sputnik V vaccine, according to the country’s registry of approved clinical trials.
AP has the story:
The small study, which was scheduled to start yesterday and end in March, will enroll 150 volunteers and look at the mixed regimen’s safety and capability to trigger immune response, records show. It will be conducted in five medical facilities in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
AstraZeneca developed its vaccine with Oxford University. Sputnik V was developed by the state-run Gamaleya Center in Moscow, and the Russian Direct Investment Fund bankrolled the project. Both shots use a similar technology, employing a harmless virus to deliver genetic material from the spike protein of Covid-19 into the body, which then prompts an immune response.
Russian officials introduced Sputnik V last year as a two-shot vaccine using different viruses in each dose, but they also have separately marketed the first shot as a single-dose alternative dubbed Sputnik Light.
The developers of Sputnik V proposed combining the shots to AstraZeneca in November, suggesting it could increase the effectiveness of the British vaccine. AstraZeneca announced a study to test the combination in December.
Researchers in Britain and elsewhere have been testing whether combining AstraZeneca’s vaccine with other products, including the vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, are safe and effective. Early results have shown that combining the AstraZeneca vaccine with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine produces a strong immune response.
Updated
Reopen schools closed due to pandemic as soon as possible, urges UN
Schools closed due to the pandemic must reopen as soon as possible, the United Nations has said, estimating that the education of more than 600 million children was at stake.
“This cannot go on,” James Elder, spokesman for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), told reporters in Geneva. “Reopening schools cannot wait for all teachers and students to be vaccinated.”
While acknowledging the difficult choices that governments have to make when facing the Covid-19 crisis and the possible spread of the disease, “schools should be the last to close and the first to reopen,” he added, calling it a “terrible mistake” to reopen bars and pubs before schools.
AFP reports that children in the northern hemisphere are on their summer holidays, in eastern and southern Africa, an estimated 40 percent of school-age children are currently out of school.
Across that region, schools are being closed due to Covid-19 surges, with more than 32 million children estimated to be out of school due to pandemic-related closures or having failed to return after their classrooms reopened. That comes on top of the estimated 37 million children who were out of school before Covid-19 struck.
In nearly half the countries in Asia and the Pacific, schools have been closed for more than 200 days during the pandemic. In South America and the Caribbean, there are 18 countries and territories where schools are either closed or partially closed, Elder said.
Around the world, “education, safety, friends and food have been replaced by anxiety, violence, and teenage pregnancy”, he said.
Remote learning remains out of reach for a third of pupils around the world, UNICEF said. In southeast Asia and the Pacific, 80 million children had no access to remote learning while their school was closed.
The world economy risks losing $4.5tn from highly-infectious variants of Covid-19 spreading through poor countries where vaccination rates are lower, the International Monetary Fund has warned
Calling on rich countries to take urgent action to share at least a billion doses with developing nations, or risk severe economic consequences, the Washington-based fund said the gap between rich and poor economies had widened during the pandemic and risked worsening further next year.
Warhammer retailer Games Workshop is handing its shop workers, model makers, designers and support staff a £5,000 bonus after sales and profits surged during the pandemic.
Hundreds of Mexican workers at factories in Tijuana are being vaccinated in San Diego, US, without requiring visas before returning to the production lines later that day in mostly American-owned companies.
The New York Times reports that US and Mexican officials have agreed to soon allow the sale of San Diego’s excess vaccines, all Johnson & Johnson, to American companies with factories in Mexico.
“If the maquiladoras can’t operate, then we don’t get our Coca-Cola,” Lydia Ikeda, the senior director of Covid operations at the University California San Diego Health, which is helping run the program, told the NYT.
Greta Thunberg has criticised “extremely unequal” vaccine distribution around the world, but after receiving her first shot of a jab the 18-year-old said people should not hesitate if they are offered the opportunity of getting inoculated against Covid.
Today I got my first COVID-19 vaccination dose. I am extremely grateful and privileged to be able to live in a part of the world where I can already get vaccinated. The vaccine distribution around the world is extremely unequal. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/C7vVEpEiGt
— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) July 27, 2021
During the first year of the pandemic 25 children and teenagers died as a direct result of Covid-19 in England and about 6,000 were admitted to hospital, according to the most complete analysis of national data on the age group to date.
Indonesia, which uses the Sinovac vaccine as its main Covid-19 jab, is considering providing a booster shot, after a study showed antibodies provided by the two-dose shot fade over time, a senior health ministry official has said.
Reuters reports that concerns about the vaccine’s effectiveness, which Indonesia relies heavily on, have mounted in recent weeks as hundreds of medical workers, most of whom were fully vaccinated with the Sinovac shot, have died of Covid-19 since June.
A study published this week showed that antibodies triggered by the Sinovac vaccine declined below a key threshold from around six months after a second dose for most recipients, although a third shot had a strong booster effect.
While researchers said it was unclear how the decrease in antibodies would affect the shot’s effectiveness, Siti Nadia Tarmizi, a senior health ministry official, told Reuters that the reduced antibody level is still enough to provide protection, based on clinical data from Indonesia.
“Right now, the immunisation advisory board recommends a booster vaccination 12 months after the second dose,” she said, adding that the government is still considering whether the booster shots should be one or two-dose schedule.
She did not say which vaccines would be used as a booster shot, but Kusnandi Rusmil, who heads the clinical trials of the Sinovac vaccine in Indonesia at Padjadjaran University, claimed any approved Covid-19 vaccine could be used as a booster.
“Lots of medical workers have died, so they need to be given further immunity,” Kusnandi said.
The World Health Organization said earlier this month it was not clear whether Covid-19 booster vaccines would be useful to maintain protection against the virus, while its chief scientist, Soumya Swaminathan has called moves towards “mix-and-match” strategies a “dangerous trend”, saying: “We are in a bit of a data-free, evidence-free zone.”
An illusion of incompetence has obscured the UK government’s responsibility for creating the conditions that contributed to the Covid crisis in the first place, writes Jana Bacevic, assistant professor of sociology at Durham University, and Linsey McGoey, professor of sociology at the University of Essex.
The twin alibis of incompetence and ignorance enables politicians to deny responsibility for the consequences of their own inaction. If, as the head of NHS test and trace, Dido Harding argued, no one could have predicted the virus would mutate, then no one can be held accountable for the surge in infections and the inevitable harms created by the removal of masks and social distancing.
Updated
Here’s the full story on Indonesia reporting a record 2,069 coronavirus deaths over the last 24 hours.
AFP has it:
Today’s grim tally was nearly 600 deaths higher than the previous day and topped last week’s daily record 1,566 deaths, the health ministry said. New infections also shot up to just over 45,000, from about 28,000 yesterday. The data comes after Indonesia this week loosened virus curbs by allowing small shops, streetside restaurants and some shopping malls to reopen after a three-week partial lockdown.
But health experts warned it could trigger a fresh wave of cases, as the highly infectious Delta variant tears across the vast archipelago, which has overtaken India and Brazil to become the global pandemic epicentre.
Shopping malls and mosques in less affected parts of the Muslim-majority nation also got the green light to open their doors from Monday, to limited crowds and with shorter hours. Offices were still under shutdown orders.
Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation where tens of millions live hand to mouth, has avoided strict lockdowns seen in some other countries. But the government has been widely criticised for its handling of the pandemic and policies that critics say prioritised south-east Asia’s largest economy over public health.
President Joko Widodo has pointed to falling daily infection and hospital occupancy rates, including in the hard-hit capital Jakarta, as justification for the easing.
Indonesia’s vaccination levels remain well below the government’s one-million-a-day target for July and less than 7% of its 270 million people have been fully inoculated with two jabs.
The country has reported a total of more than 3.2 million cases and 86,835 virus deaths, but those official figures are widely believed to be a severe undercount due to low testing and tracing rates.
Updated
Indian cricketer Krunal Pandya has tested positive for Covid-19, causing the postponement by a day of the second T20 international between India and Sri Lanka.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) said that everyone in the Indian camp are now having Covid tests to detect whether there has been a wider outbreak. The third international between the countries remains scheduled for 29 July.
NEWS : Krunal Pandya tests positive.
— BCCI (@BCCI) July 27, 2021
Second Sri Lanka-India T20I postponed to July 28.
The entire contingent is undergoing RT-PCR tests today to ascertain any further outbreak in the squad.#SLvIND
NHS data reportedly suggests that more than half of recorded Covid hospitalisations in England represent though who tested positive after admission
The NHS said that many patients are admitted to hospital because of their Covid symptoms and complications, with are then confirmed with a test, while others may initially be presymptomatic or asymptomatic.
But Prof Carl Heneghan, director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, said the figures could lead the public “towards false conclusions” and urged the government to publish data on whether the virus was the primary cause of admission.
The Telegraph reports that leaked data, not routinely published, shows that 44% of 780 patients classed as hospitalised with Covid had tested positive by the time of admission, as of Thursday, across NHS trusts in England.
Greg Clark, chair of the Commons science and technology select committee, told the paper:
If hospitalisations from Covid are a key determinant of how concerned we should be, and how quickly restrictions should be lifted, it’s important that the data is not presented in a way that could lead to the wrong conclusions being drawn.
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.
Bhutan has inoculated most of its eligible population with second doses of Covid-19 vaccinations in a week, in a speedy rollout hailed by Unicef as a “success story” for international donations.
More than 454,000 shots were administered over the past week in the remote Himalayan kingdom – more than 85% of the eligible adult population of about 530,000 – after a recent flood of foreign donations, AFP reports.
Unicef’s Bhutan representative, Will Parks, said the ambitious vaccination drive was a “great success story for Bhutan”.
We really need a world in which the countries which have surplus vaccines really do donate to those countries that haven’t received [shots] so far.
And if there’s anything that I hope the world that can learn, is that a country like Bhutan with very few doctors, very few nurses but a really committed king and leadership in the government mobilising society – it’s not impossible to vaccinate the whole country.
Germany’s health minister is planning to introduce tighter controls on citizens returning from holiday in an attempt to control the growth in coronavirus cases.
Jens Spahn is reported in German media to be gathering support for his plan for all returnees to have to test for the virus, regardless of whether they have been in a high-risk area or how they have travelled.
Until now only airline passengers and people who have holidayed in areas with a high incidence rate have had to undergo tests, while those who have been fully vaccinated have been exempt from doing so.
A spokesman for the health ministry confirmed the reports in newspapers from the Funke Mediengruppe. Spahn is said to be trying to win support across the cabinet.
However, he is facing opposition from justice minister Christine Lambrecht, who has argued that an obligatory test for everyone is “disproportionate”.
Germany has an incidence rate of 14.9 cases per 100,000 over a seven-day period. About 1,309 cases were reported yesterday, a 37% increase on last week. Numbers in Germany had been steadily going down until three weeks ago. Just under 50% have received a full vaccine.
Martin Stürmer, a virologist and leading voice during the pandemic, has said he would support a blanket test policy. “We are already seeing that returning holiday makers are increasingly bringing new infection to Germany,” he told German television.
Stürmer said it was “careless” to avoid testing those who had been vaccinated or those who had recovered from the virus, if they had been in high risk areas. “It’s already known that those who are vaccinated can get the Delta variant,” he said.
In less than three weeks’ time, schools in parts of Germany, such as Berlin and Brandenburg will return from the summer break. Fears are growing that this may coincide with a fourth wave, driven by returning holidaymakers, which could disproportionately affect children the vast majority of whom will not have been vaccinated.
Pressure is growing on politicians to work out a sustainable plan to allow schools to continue to operate regardless of how the virus develops.
Updated
Authorities in Thailand have today been transporting some people who tested positive for the coronavirus from Bangkok to their hometowns for isolation and treatment to alleviate the burden on the capital’s overwhelmed medical system.
AP reports that a train carrying more than 100 patients and medical workers in full protective gear left the city for the northeast. It will drop patients off in seven provinces, where they will be met by health officers and taken to hospitals.
Medical authorities in Bangkok said yesterday that all ICU beds for Covid-19 patients at public hospitals were full and that some of the sick were being treated in emergency rooms. Officials said they have asked army medics to help out at civilian hospitals.
“These are patients from Bangkok who haven’t received treatment in hospitals. We want to bring them to doctors in their hometowns. And the traveling process is controlled all through the journey,” said deputy prime minister and Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, who was on hand to watch the operation. “We will continue this service until no Covid-19 patients who cannot get beds in Bangkok are left.”
Bangkok governor Aswin Kwanmuang said the city government will coordinate with the state railway to install 240 beds in 15 railway carriages in a maintenance shed in the city’s huge Bang Sue station as a “pre-admission centre” for coronavirus patients without symptoms.
UK and Germany 'have protected Covid vaccine patents over human lives'
Campaigners have criticised the World Trade Organisation, which is reportedly set to delay a decision on whether to waive patents on Covid vaccines, for prioritising pharmaceutical company profits over allowing developing countries from more swiftly inoculating their people.
The UK is expected to join Germany and the EU in resisting efforts which have been led by South Africa and India in waiving intellectual property rights to allow poorer countries to produce their own vaccines, thus speeding up the global rollout of the jabs.
More than 130 countries, including the US, back the idea – first officially proposed by South Africa in October – and campaigners warn that further delays will mean many lives avoidably lost.
Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, said:
Every one of those deaths is a mark of shame for the governments of countries like the UK and Germany who have protected patents over human lives. It beggars belief that governments could delay progress for another three months.
The virus is ravaging the world’s poorest while rich governments buy booster shots and vaccinate low-risk groups. Extreme vaccine inequality will be never-ending unless we remove the corporate monopolies which are preventing the world from ramping up production. Many of the deaths we mourn today could have been prevented if not for the shameful intransigence of governments like our own.
Oxfam’s health policy manager Anna Marriott told the Independent:
In the UK vaccines are giving us hope, yet our government continues to prevent developing countries from having the same. As the number of cases increases in many poorer countries, the UK government continues to block the Trips waiver, which would allow qualified manufacturers around the world to ramp up production so everyone can access them.
We know this would help increase vaccine supplies and save lives, yet the UK government continue to put pharmaceutical company profits first.
Updated
An additional 18,000 New Zealand children were pushed into poverty in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to new research, despite child welfare being one of prime minister Jacinda Ardern’s main concerns.
The Child Poverty Action Group – a group focused on eliminating poverty – put much of the increased poverty, inequity, homelessness and food insecurity down to government neglect as it created its policies during the pandemic.
Its 72-page report shows that demand for food banks spiked during the March 2020 lockdown and remained at roughly double pre-Covid levels; that those getting in debt through loans was at a record high; and that Māori and Pasifika children are more likely to have been pushed into poverty since last year.
Meanwhile, Greater Sydney will remain locked down for a further four weeks after the NSW cabinet agreed to the plan at a crisis meeting to discuss the rising number of Delta cases within the state.
It is understood the premier, Gladys Berejiklian, will announce the extension on tomorrow morning after NSW reported a record 172 local cases of Covid today. A third of the new cases were in the community while infectious.
Berejiklian will not be introducing curfews, however, because the government does not believe they would be effective in preventing the spread of the virus which is mainly occurring among households and via essential workers.
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, says the state will tentatively emerge from its fifth lockdown tomorrow, with the easing of restrictions accompanied by a tightening of the border with New South Wales.
At midnight, Victoria’s 12-day lockdown will end, but a new raft of Covid-19 restrictions will be in place for the next fortnight. The 5km travel limit and stay-at-home requirements have been removed, but masks will still be required in all settings and no visitors to the home are allowed. Schools will reopen on Wednesday.
Public gatherings of up to 10 people are permitted, and hospitality will open for seated service only, with a maximum of 100 people per venue subject to density limits.
While Andrews said repeatedly that he did not wish to lecture NSW, he made it clear he believed the outbreak to the north should be handled differently, and that decisions made by his NSW counterpart Gladys Berejiklian forced his hand on border restrictions.
People advised to shield during the first wave of the pandemic were eight times more likely to get Covid-19 and five times as likely to die following infection than the general population, a study has indicated.
Researchers also said people deemed at moderate risk from the virus due to health conditions such as diabetes were four times more likely to have confirmed infections than the low-risk group, and five times more likely to die following confirmed infection, PA Media reports.
The study, led by the University of Glasgow and published in the journal Scientific Reports, also showed that people aged 70 and over accounted for almost half (49.55%) of deaths in a Scottish health board.
Indonesia recorded 2,069 deaths from Covid-19 - a new daily record, CNBC Indonesia reported on Tuesday. The country also recorded 45,203 cases on Tuesday, up from 28,228 cases the day earlier, CNBC Indonesia reported, citing Indonesia’s health ministry.
Senegal’s health ministry has raised alarm at a third wave of Covid-19 cases that has left health services in the capital Dakar nearly overwhelmed.
This month there has at times been around 1,700 new recorded cases a day, a sharp rise and the highest levels recorded.
The country has largely avoided the worst of the pandemic but with 99% of hospital beds in the city now occupied - 45% in the rest of the country - the country’s health ministry said yesterday that fears are growing concerning the latest surge.
Amid the rise in cases, new restrictions in Dakar feel more likely, while many businesses are still emerging from the effects of past lockdowns.
The context for Senegal, as with many countries in Africa, is the severe lack of vaccines. Senegal has been able to administer about 900,000 doses, much less than it needs for its 16 million people.
Work is underway on a new facility which will manufacture Covid-19 vaccines in Senegal, expected to start later this year, producing 25 million doses per month by the end of 2022.
The Institut Pasteur in Dakar, which will run the facility along with various development partners said the plant would help Africa reduce its dependence on vaccine imports, which it is virtually completely reliant on.
Only about 1% of the continent’s 1.2 billion people have been fully vaccinated, with many African countries experiencing a new rise in infections.
Many countries were reliant on Covax, a global vaccine distribution scheme that has been set back due to a slowdown in exported vaccines from India.
UK not 'out of the woods' yet despite falling case numbers
Caution is still needed and the UK is not “out of the woods yet” despite Covid infection numbers dropping, epidemiologist Neil Ferguson warned, as health chiefs said pressure on hospitals was as great as in January.
As scientists remain puzzled at cases dropping for a sixth day in a row in England, Prof Ferguson, from Imperial College London and a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), argued it was still “too early to tell” what effect the 19 July unlocking would have have.
He told the BBC’s Today programme:
We won’t see for several more weeks what the effect of the unlocking is.
We’re not completely out of the woods, but the equation has fundamentally changed. The effect of vaccines is hugely reducing the risk of hospitalisations and death. And I’m positive that by late September or October time we will be looking back at most of the pandemic.
We will have Covid with us, we will still have people dying from Covid, but we’ll have put the bulk of the pandemic behind us.
Clearly the higher we can get vaccination coverage, the better – that will protect people and reduce transmission – but there is going to be remaining uncertainty until the autumn.
The full story is here:
A week after “freedom day”, some good news for the UK on coronavirus: new cases fell for six consecutive days, the first time that’s happened without a lockdown in place.
But at the same time, hospitalisations and deaths – the result of a previous increase in cases – were still up week on week. And the “pingdemic”, in which 600,000 people were asked by the NHS Covid-19 app to self-isolate in a week, has caused consternation in businesses and hasty exemptions for key workers in an attempt to keep crucial industries afloat.
In Tuesday’s episode of Today in Focus, the Guardian’s science editor, Ian Sample, tells Nosheen Iqbal what the trend in case numbers could mean.
He looks at a series of questions raised in this new phase of the pandemic, from the likelihood of hospitalisation among people who have had two vaccinations to the prospect of new variants and the risk of long Covid, asking whether the evidence is yet in place to suggest we have turned a corner.
You can listen here and you can read Ian’s latest reporting and analysis on coronavirus here.
Updated
Endangered loggerhead sea turtles, or Caretta Caretta, make their main nesting spot on the Mediterranean island of Zakynthos – one of the most visited islands in Greece, with roughly 1 million yearly visitors, including many British tourists.
Mass tourism has long threatened the loggerheads: tourists frequently break rules designed to keep them away from nests. But new research suggests the Covid-19 pandemic has allowed these turtles to come up for air.
Here is Mia Alberti’s report:
Olympic host Tokyo hits record daily cases and seeks more hospital beds
Tokyo’s 2,848 daily coronavirus infections on Tuesday were the Olympic host city’s highest since the pandemic began, officials said, as media reported that authorities had asked hospitals to prepare more beds for patients.
Japan has avoided the devastating outbreaks suffered by other nations such as India, Indonesia and the United States, but the fifth wave of the pandemic fuelled by the Delta variant is piling pressure on Tokyo’s hospitals.
By Sunday, 20.8% of the Japanese capital’s 12,635 patients with Covid had been hospitalised. A government advisory panel sees rates of less than 25% as a trigger to consider imposition of a state of emergency.
Tokyo has already declared a fourth state of emergency this month, to run until after the Olympics, and Japan made the unprecedented decision to hold the Games, postponed from last year by the pandemic, without spectators to stem its spread.
As hospitals admit more patients, Tokyo aims to boost the number of beds to 6,406 by early next month from 5,967 now, broadcaster TBS said.
Hospitals should look at pushing back planned surgery and scaling down other treatments, the broadcaster said, citing a notice to medical institutions from city authorities.
Health experts had warned that seasonal factors, increased mobility, and the spread of variants would lead to a rebound in infections this summer.
While vaccinations boost protection for the oldest citizens most likely to need emergency care, just 36% of the population has received at least one dose, a Reuters vaccination tracker shows.
The inoculation push has recently ebbed amid logistics snags after having picked up steam last month from a sluggish start.
Many Japanese had wanted the Games postponed again or cancelled, fearing the influx of athletes and officials could fuel the surge.
Despite tight quarantine rules, 155 cases have emerged involving athletes and others.
A strict “playbook” of rules to avoid contagion requires frequent virus testing, restricted movement and masks worn in most situations.
Flooding in Myanmar has displaced hundreds of people, slowing efforts to battle a fast-growing coronavirus outbreak amid the chaos that followed the country’s military coup, residents told Reuters on Tuesday.
Heavy weekend downpours across southern states caused flooding in several towns, forcing healthcare workers to move patients with Covid-19 to dry areas across drenched streets and alleys.
“Hundreds of houses are submerged in water and only their roofs can be seen,” Pyae Sone, a social worker in the Kayin State town of Hlaingbwe told Reuters by telephone, adding that the water had begun rising early on Monday.
“Covid is spreading in the town. There are so many people who have lost their sense of smell and many who are sick, it’s not clear if it’s Covid or seasonal flu. But now people can’t stay at home or gather in shelters, so the spread could be serious.”
Groups of volunteers and medical workers trundled bedridden patients, still hooked up to oxygen tanks, over murky flood waters in the Kayin town of Myawaddy, Facebook photographs posted by the Karen Information Center (KIC) media group showed.
About 500 residential areas along the Thai border were affected, displacing hundreds of people, the group said.
Bo Bo Win, the head of a charity in the town of Mawlamyine, 120 km (75 miles) away, said at least another 500 people there had also suffered in the annual floods. “This year’s flood is not as bad as the one we experienced in 2019, but we are in the middle of a pandemic,” they said.
Infections in Myanmar have surged since June, with 4,630 cases and 396 deaths reported on Monday. Medics and funeral services put the toll far higher, in an outbreak also linked to scores of new cases in China’s border province of Yunnan.
Angered by doctors’ support for anti-junta protests, Myanmar’s military has also arrested several doctors treating patients with Covid independently.
The military has struggled to keep control since taking power in a February coup that triggered nationwide protests, strikes and fighting on multiple fronts in border regions as civilians take up arms against the junta.
The Philippines recorded 7,186 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, the highest single-day increase in more than six weeks, and another 72 deaths, the country’s health ministry reported.
The president Rodrigo Duterte warned on Monday of stricter virus curbs if the current outbreak worsens. According to one research group, daily cases could hit 8-10,000 infections a day without stronger countermeasures to contain the more contagious Delta variant.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European commission, has announced that the EU has met the target of administering a Covid jab to 70% of adults by July, making good on the promise to “catch up” after a rocky start to the bloc’s vaccination roll out.
The EU’s executive branch had been heavily criticised at the start of the year after promised vaccine doses failed to materialise and national health systems failed to swiftly distribute those that did.
In recent months, however, supplies have surpassed demand and the vast majority of the 27 member states have significantly improved their roll out of the vaccines.
In a statement issued on Tuesday morning, Von der Leyen said:
The EU has kept its word and delivered. Our target was to protect 70% of adults in the European Union with at least one vaccination in July. Today we have achieved this target. And 57% of adults already have the full protection of double vaccination.
These figures put Europe among the world leaders. The catch-up process has been very successful - but we need to keep up the effort.
The delta variant is very dangerous. I therefore call on everyone - who has the opportunity - to be vaccinated. For their own health and to protect others. The EU will continue to provide sufficient volumes of vaccine.
After almost two months of waiting, amid baseless claims of fraud and even rumblings of a military coup, Pedro Castillo will on Wednesday become Peru’s president.
His rise to the top on Peru’s 200th anniversary of independence is hugely symbolic, but Castillo faces huge challenges to unite a divided country that has been ravaged by the pandemic - Peru has the highest Covid-19 death rate per capita and the economic fallout has forced millions back into poverty.
Get the full story here:
The Catholic Church has converted a pastoral centre in Jakarta into an isolation ward to care for patients with Covid in the Indonesian capital as it battles a devastating second wave of the pandemic that has overrun hospitals.
Nearly 90 nuns, priests and other carers are looking after about 60 patients in the Samadi centre, said Father Yustinus Ardianto, a Catholic priest in charge at the facility.
“For me, the healing process is not just about medicines, but also a comfortable environment,” Father Yustinus, who has himself recovered from the coronavirus, told Reuters.
Encircling a central garden, there are 75 rooms at Samadi with most of the patients suffering milder symptoms. About 70 people have been treated and returned home, he said.
Funded by the Jakarta Roman Catholic Archdiocese and donations, it accepts people of any faith in a country that is predominantly Muslim but has large Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and other religious minorities.
“We’re brothers and sisters to each other,” he said, adding that patients were mostly from lower-income backgrounds and contributed what they could towards the treatment cost of at least 5m rupiah ($345.18) per patient.
“We accept patients here as long as first there are rooms available, second it is still possible to treat their condition,” added Father Yustinus, who had to anoint and give the last rites to another priest suffering from the coronavirus via Zoom before he died from the disease.
Hospitals, particularly on the islands of Java and Bali, have been flooded with patients during the past month, as infection rates and deaths have been driven to record high by the highly infectious Delta variant.
Florentina Suharni Caturwati, a teacher and a patient at Samadi, said authorities should try and find more similar facilities to use as isolation wards during the pandemic.
Father Yustinus said the staff running Samadi knew of the dangers of getting infected themselves. “It’s the risk of our service,” he said.
Updated
Antibodies triggered by Sinovac Biotech’s Covid-19 vaccine declined below a key threshold from around six months after a second dose for most recipients, although a third shot had a strong booster effect, according to a lab study.
Chinese researchers reported the findings from a study of blood samples from healthy adults aged between 18-59 in a paper published on Sunday, which has not been peer reviewed.
Among participants who received two doses, two or four weeks apart, only 16.9% and 35.2% respectively still had neutralising antibodies above what researchers regard as a detectable threshold level six months after the second shot, the paper said.
Those readings were based on data from two cohorts involving more than 50 participants each, while the study gave third doses of the vaccine or placebo to a total of 540 participants.
Researchers said it was unclear how the decrease in antibodies would affect the shot’s effectiveness, since scientists have yet to determine precisely the threshold of antibody levels for a vaccine to be able to prevent the disease.
“In the short-to-medium term, ensuring more people complete the current two-dose schedule of CoronaVac should be the priority,” the paper said.
Indonesia and Thailand have already agreed to give a third shot from Moderna and Pfizer respectively for some people who are fully vaccinated with the Sinovac vaccine, amid concerns over its effectiveness against the more transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus.
Turkey had started offering a third dose from either Sinovac or Pfizer to some people who have got Sinovac shots.
As of end-June, Sinovac has delivered more than 1 billion doses of the vaccine, a major vaccination tool in China, Brazil, Indonesia and Chile.
The Philippines’ health secretary Francisco Duque said on Tuesday there is no recommendation yet from the country’s vaccine expert panel on giving a booster shot but experts are discussing the possibility.
The study also said that participants in some cohorts who received a third dose of the Sinovac shot about six months after the second showed around a 3-5 fold increase in antibody levels after a further 28 days, compared with the levels seen four weeks after the second shot.
Researchers cautioned the study did not test the antibodies’ effect against more transmissible variants, and that further research was needed to assess antibody duration after a third shot.
The study was conducted by researchers at disease control authorities in Jiangsu province, Sinovac, and other Chinese institutions.
As Indonesia grapples with a devastating wave of coronavirus infections, Jakarta government data shows a fall in cases and easing pressure on hospitals in the capital, even as the situation worsens in other parts of the archipelago, Reuters reports.
The capital, home to about 10 million people and three times that figure when counting those who live in surrounding towns, has been the epicentre of an outbreak that has pushed hospitals to the brink, with desperate scenes of people queuing for oxygen and being treated in parking lots.
But over two weeks Jakarta’s daily cases dropped from 14,619 on 12 July to 2,662 on July 25, according to city data, while pressure on Covid-19 referral hospitals has eased.
“The situation is very different,” Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan said in a video address on Monday. “The hallways in front of emergency [hospital] units were always full … Now they’re mostly empty.”
The positivity rate, or the percentage of people testing positive, almost halved from 31.2% on July 15, to 15.9% on July 25, the data showed.
The bed occupancy rate in Jakarta hospitals has also fallen to 73% from 90% earlier this month, although the occupancy rate in intensive care remained high, at 89%, official data showed.
Still, Anies stressed the pandemic was not yet over, particularly with the positivity rate several times higher than the guideline set by the World Health Organization.
The president Joko Widodo announced on Sunday that some social restrictions would be eased in a move that public health experts said was largely driven by economic concerns.
Iwan Ariawan, a biostatistician at the University of Indonesia, told Reuters that Jakarta’s cases were falling and “the epidemic curve is beginning to show its decelerating phase”.
Adib Khumaidi, head of the mitigation team at the Indonesian medical association, told a news briefing that while Jakarta and some other areas in Java had seen lower cases, other regions, such as Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi, were seeing spikes.
Demand for oxygen in South Kalimantan doubled from June to July, said Muhamad Muslim, head of its provincial health agency while hospital emergency units filled as cases jumped by over 200%.
In Yogyakarta, also on Java, and in East Kalimantan, on Indonesian Borneo, bed occupancy rates have surpassed 80%, according to health ministry data.
Updated
Germany prepares to tighten entry requirements for travellers, reports say
Germany is preparing to tighten requirements for people entering the country by making travellers from any country provide a negative coronavirus test in an effort to curb a rapid rise in cases, the Funke media group reported on Tuesday.
The health ministry wants “an expansion of test requirements upon entry as quickly as possible”, the Funke group newspapers cited a document as saying.
Until now, only air passengers and those entering from high-risk areas have to provide a negative coronavirus test unless they are fully vaccinated or have recovered.
In future, the health minister Jens Spahn wants to make a test compulsory regardless of where travellers are coming from and the means of transport they use, said Funke. It was unclear whether the new testing requirements would also apply to fully vaccinated people.
“The coordination in the government on this is under way,” a spokeswoman for the ministry explains.
Covid-19 cases have been rising in Europe’s biggest economy since early July, due mainly to the spread of the more infectious Delta variant.
Updated
Downing Street and scientists are cautious about declaring a turning point in the UK’s outbreak despite a huge drop in Covid case numbers for the sixth day in a row, Warren Murray writes in Tuesday’s morning briefing.
Infections fell to their lowest level in three weeks at 24,950 confirmed cases. But the prime minister’s official spokesman highlighted the full impact of the 19 July unlocking is not yet reflected in case numbers.
Experts also point to the number of hospital patients with Covid-19 in England, which passed 5,000 for the first time since mid-March. The seven-day average for hospital admissions has risen by 26% in the last week, and hospital bed occupancy for patients with coronavirus has also increased.
So, after an 18-month rollercoaster of soaring and falling cases, and more than 100,000 UK deaths, is the epidemic really fizzling out?
One-third of trainee doctors in the UK are feeling burnt out to a high or very high degree amid the Covid pandemic, up from a quarter in previous years, a survey by the General Medical Council (GMC) has found.
Experts have said medics cannot continue to work at such a high level of intensity, warning that any gains made over recent years in terms of workload and wellbeing risk being reversed.
The survey found that responses in the GMC’s annual report to questions about burnout were the worst since their introduction in 2018.
Previous research has highlighted the problem of burnout among NHS staff, with a committee of MPs saying stress was prompting some to quit, causing medical blunders and putting patients’ safety at risk.
Charlie Massey, the GMC chief executive, said it was not surprising that burnout had worsened, but doctors could not be expected to continue working at that level of intensity.
The findings come amid growing anger over the government’s initial offer of a 1% pay rise that was recently upgraded to 3%. Many NHS staff have faced the hardest year of their career, battling wave after wave of coronavirus cases.
As health services emerge from Covid, pressures will remain, but we must not risk reversing the gains that have been made in recent years. The danger is that, unless action is taken, workloads and wellbeing will continue to suffer, and future burnout rates could get even worse.
The full story is here:
Good morning 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.
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More now from that NHS letter:
NHS Providers also pointed out that staff are “quite rightly” taking summer annual leave, including time off that was postponed earlier in the pandemic, PA Media reports.
The letter warned these pressures will probably intensify in the coming months due to Covid-19, expanded vaccination programmes and dealing with what is expected to be one of the most difficult winters the NHS has ever faced.
The NHS Providers chief executive, Chris Hopson, said: “The NHS has delivered in an extraordinary way over the last 18 months, often at the drop of a hat.
“Many NHS chief executives believe the next phase of our fight against Covid-19 is likely to be the hardest yet given the scale and breadth of pressures they face.
“They are clear that, now more than ever, the NHS must get the funding it needs to win that fight.
Greater and continued use of the private sector should also be established to help clear the backlog, while there should be no repeat of what happened previously when the NHS budget for six months was “confirmed just 13 days before the start of the new financial year”, they said.
Updated
The US will not lift any existing travel restrictions “at this point” due to concerns over the highly transmissible Covid-19 Delta variant and the rising number of US coronavirus cases, the White House confirmed on Monday.
The decision comes after a senior level White House meeting late on Friday. It means that the long-running travel restrictions that have barred much of the world’s population from the US since 2020 will not be lifted in the short term.
“Given where we are today … with the Delta variant, we will maintain existing travel restrictions at this point,” White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said on Monday, citing the spread of the Delta variant in the US and abroad. “Driven by the Delta variant, cases are rising here at home, particularly among those who are unvaccinated and appear likely continue to increase in the weeks ahead”:
Updated
England’s NHS ‘under similar pressure to January’
The NHS is as stretched now as it was at the height of the pandemic in January and things will get worse before they get better, health leaders have said.
In a letter to Boris Johnson, cabinet ministers and the NHS England chief executive, Sir Simon Stevens, the NHS Providers group says a combination of pressures are being experienced by the health service.
“This combination means that many trust chief executives are saying that the overall level of pressure they are now experiencing is, although very different in shape, similar to the pressure they saw in January of this year when the NHS was under the greatest pressure in a generation,” the letter says.
It calls on the government to make “the right decisions” over the next month as it finalises NHS funding for the second half of the financial year.
Pressures on the NHS include going “full speed” to address the backlog of care across hospital, mental health and community services; and record levels of demand for urgent and emergency care.
The letter also points to growing hospital admissions for Covid-19 alongside more cases of long Covid and people suffering poor mental health.
It says hospitals are currently running enhanced infection control measures, leading to “significant loss of capacity”, while more staff are off either self-isolating or suffering stress and mental health issues.
Updated
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan.
In England, the NHS is as stretched now as it was at the height of the pandemic in January and things will get worse before they get better, providers have said in a letter to the PM, cabinet ministers and the NHS England CEO.
Meanwhile the United States will not lift any existing travel restrictions “at this point” due to concerns over the highly transmissible Delta variant and the rising number of US coronavirus cases, the White House has confirmed.
Here are the other key recent developments:
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Developing countries will be able to buy Covid-19 vaccines collectively through the Covax facility using a new World Bank financing mechanism.
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The number of Covid-19 cases across the US may have been undercounted by as much as 60%, researchers at the University of Washington have found.
- California and New York City will mandate government workers to be vaccinated or regularly get tested for the virus.
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Russia has approved clinical trials combining the AstraZeneca and Sputnik V vaccines, according to Russia’s state drug register.
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The Tunisian president, Kais Saied, has ordered a month-long nighttime curfew, banning the movement of people and vehicles from 7pm to 6am.
- Cases fell in the UK fell for the sixth day running, to 24,950 new cases. That’s the lowest number of new cases since 4 July, three weeks ago.
- Tanzania received its first shipment of vaccines through the Covax facility, donated by the US.
- The White House has cited the Delta variant as reason to keep in place a travel ban from the UK and Schengen countries.
