The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine has 76% efficacy against symptomatic infection for three months after a single dose, with efficacy improving when a second shot is given later, a new preprint study shows.
Oxford University said the findings supported a decision made by the UK to extend the interval between initial doses and booster doses of the shot to 12 weeks.
AstraZeneca has welcomed the move, saying flexibility to extend the time between doses is the best strategy for the shot.
The results, gathered from trials in Britain, Brazil and South Africa, indicated some protection was given after one shot and that immune responses were boosted with a longer interval to the second dose among participants aged 18 to 55 years.
“Vaccine efficacy after a single standard dose of vaccine from day 22 to day 90 post vaccination was 76%, and modelled analysis indicated that protection did not wane during this initial 3 month period,” Oxford academics said.
The paper said that vaccine efficacy was 82.4% with 12 or more weeks to the second dose, compared to 54.9% for those where the booster was given under 6 weeks after the first dose.
VACCINE UPDATE: New study shows that the #OxfordVaccine offers protection of 76% up to 12 weeks after a single dose, with further data supporting a 4-12 week dosing interval: https://t.co/7aZAWgFqQH
— University of Oxford (@UniofOxford) February 2, 2021
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Spain has recorded 724 Covid deaths over the past 24 hours - the highest daily total since the first wave of the virus hit the country last April. To date, 59,805 people have lost their lives to Covid in Spain, according to official figures.
The country also logged 29,064 cases between Monday and Tuesday, bringing the total to 2,851,869. However, the number of cases per 100,000 people over the past fortnight fell once again, dropping from 866 on Monday to 847 on Tuesday.
Spain has so far administered 1,673,054 doses doses of the vaccine to its population of nearly 47 million people. More than 418,500 people have already received both doses.
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The Palestinian Authority has begun vaccinating its health workers in the occupied West Bank against Covid-19 after receiving doses from Israel, Palestinian officials said, AFP reports.
Israel’s defence ministry said on Sunday that it would send 5,000 vaccine doses to the Palestinian Authority to inoculate medical workers. “We started today,” Palestinian health minister Mai al-Kaila said.
She added that on Wednesday a supply of doses would be sent to Gaza, an Israeli-blockaded territory controlled by Hamas Islamists, so that inoculation of front line workers could begin in the enclave.
“We have given highest priority to health personnel... and those working in intensive care units,” she said in a video distributed by Palestinian television.
Merkel says all approved vaccines welcome after Russian Sputnik posts strong data
Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel has said “all vaccines” approved by the EU’s medicines regulator are welcome, including Russian and Chinese shots, Reuters reports.
In a TV interview, she said Germany welcomed the strong data from trials of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine.
Every vaccine that is approved by the European Medicines Agency is welcome. I’ve spoken to the Russian president about this. We saw good data today [about the Russian vaccine]. Every vaccine is welcome in the EU as long as it is approved by the EMA.
It comes after she said last month she was “open to the idea” of using European manufacturing capacities to increase the production of the Russian vaccine.
Earlier today, Merkel said Germany will have vaccinated 10 million people against the new coronavirus by the end of the first quarter.
Merkel added that the EU had been right not to go for the emergency approval that had allowed Britain to release the first vaccine for public use before anyone else, since it was crucial to maintain people’s confidence in vaccines.
“You could either say that we will already be able to vaccinate 10 million people using both vaccines in the first quarter, or others will say ‘only’ [10 million]; but either way it will go up from there,” she said.
She also said consideration would be given to whether those who refuse a vaccination should at some stage face restrictions.
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France’s top health advisory body has approved the use of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, four days after a green light given by the European Medicines Agency, but said the shot should only be administered to those aged under 65.
The Haute Autorite de la Sante, an independent body whose recommendations are usually closely followed by the government, added that people aged 50 to 65 with health issues and medical staff should get priority access to the AstraZeneca vaccine.
It comes after Poland said it would not be giving the vaccine to elderly people in the country (see 12.00pm), after German and Austrian medical experts last week recommended it should not be used on people aged 65 or above, citing a lack of data. It has already been rolled out across the elderly in the UK.
An 89-year-old Swiss passenger ship, out of commission due to the coronavirus pandemic, has been re-purposed as a vaccination centre for thousands of residents from cities on Lake Constance, Reuters reports.
The 500-passenger MS Thurgau normally carries tourists and commuters between German and Swiss cities on Europe’s third-largest lake. In coming weeks it will serve as a floating inoculation hub for northern Swiss towns Romanshorn, Arbon and Kreuzlingen.
Regional officials emphasized the ship’s practicality since it can sail from harbor to harbor, earning it the nickname “vaccine vaporetto” with some locals.
“I’ve heard of a fondue ship, and a spaghetti ship, but this is my first shot ship,” Switzerland’s health minister Alain Berset told reporters just after the first people to be vaccinated walked the gangway.
Last year, Covid-19 spread around the world, sending millions of people into lockdown as health services struggled to cope. The surge in new variants of the virus has prompted fresh questions and concerns. The Guardian’s health editor, Sarah Boseley, explains what we now know about the Covid-19 variants and what they could mean for the future of the pandemic
More than 17,000 people have lost their jobs at Australian universities since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, with further job cuts expected this year.
The job losses equate to 13% of Australia’s pre-Covid university workforce, and the chief executive of Universities Australia, Catriona Jackson, said more cuts were “probable” as the border remained closed.
At least 17,300 people lost their jobs in universities last year – including permanent staff as well as casuals who did not have their contracts renewed – according to the latest data from Universities Australia. It’s an increase on the 12,500 job losses reported by the National Tertiary Education Union in October.
Pfizer has said it is launching a study to look into whether a third dose of the Covidvaccine it developed with German partner BioNTech administered six to 12 months after the initial shots would extend or improve the vaccine’s efficacy, Reuters reports.
Pfizer chief scientific officer Mikael Dolsten said a booster shot of the company’s vaccine could help protect recipients against new, more transmissible variants of the coronavirus.
Captain Sir Tom Moore, the second world war veteran who raised almost £39m for UK NHS charities during the first coronavirus lockdown in spring 2020, has died aged 100 after testing positive for coronavirus.
Moore was admitted to Bedford hospital on Sunday 31 January, after being treated for pneumonia for some time and testing positive for Covid-19 last week. In a statement posted on the veteran’s Twitter page that same day, his family said he had been treated at home until Sunday when he needed additional help with his breathing.
His daughter Hannah Ingram-Moore said her father had not needed to be taken to an intensive care unit. A spokesperson for Moore’s family told the BBC at the time that he had not received a Covid-19 vaccine because of the medication he had been taking for pneumonia.
Swedish health officials have recommended that the newly approved AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine primarily be used for those under the age of 65, citing a lack of evidence for its efficacy among the elderly.
The country’s Public Health Agency (FHM) said the British-Swedish pharma giant’s vaccine should “firstly” be offered to people between 18 and 65 years old. Conversely, previously approved vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna should primarily be offered to people 65 and over.
The move follows other countries, such as Germany and Italy (see 12.00pm), which have also advised that other vaccines be prioritised for the elderly, even though the AstraZeneca vaccine was approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for all ages last week.
FHM noted that the EMA had signalled a lack of evidence to document efficacy of the vaccine among elderly.
Soren Andersson, head of the unit for vaccination programmes at FHM, told a press conference:
However, there is nothing that says that it doesn’t have a protective effect or that it would have any negative effects in those age groups,”
Andersson said the change in priorities would mean a temporary delay in the rollout of Sweden’s Covid-19 vaccination programme, but also noted there were more vaccine candidates coming up and large volumes being shipped to Sweden.
“It’s a partial shortage, but there are vaccines and we’ll have to make sure they are used in the most effective way,” Andersson said.
Sweden, a country of 10.3 million, began vaccinations on December 27 and so far 256,978 people have received the first dose.
Spain has announced that it would restrict arrivals from Brazil and South Africa by air to try to reduce the spread of new coronavirus variants, AFP reports.
Only legal residents or nationals of Spain and the neighbouring microstate of Andorra will be allowed in from Brazil and South Africa, government spokeswoman Maria Jesus Montero told a news conference.
Passengers stopping in Spain while on their way to another country will be allowed to enter as long as they will remain for less than 24 hours and do not leave the airport, she added. The new rules will take effect tomorrow and will remain in force for two weeks although it could be extended depending how the pandemic evolves, the minister said.
Madrid has since the end of December banned arrivals by sea and air from Britain except for residents or nationals of Spain and Andorra because of the discovery of a new more contagious virus strain there last year.
Uganda has announced it will reopen schools closed nearly a year ago due to the pandemic, and outlined plans to soon start vaccinating essential workers, AFP reports.
Cabinet had “approved the recommendations for reopening educational institutions” to all students, spokesman Dennis Katungi said. Classroom learning was made partially available to a small number of final year graduates in December.
Students doing their final year examinations would return first, with classes for younger learners reopening from 6 April “in a staggered fashion that will ensure compliance” with social distancing measures in schools, Katungi said.
Preschools would remain closed, while universities and other centres of learning would also be reopened in phases. Uganda closed schools in March 2020 as coronavirus spread across East Africa. More than 15 million students were sent home, according to the UN’s children agency UNICEF.
The country has recorded 39,606 cases and 325 deaths from Covid-19, according to the latest health ministry figures, with new infections surging in the latter months of 2020 before tapering off earlier this year.
The government also said it has approved the purchase of 18 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India. No date was provided for when these vaccines were expected to arrive in Uganda.
A teenager in the UK who is emerging from a 10-month long coma has no knowledge of the coronavirus pandemic despite having caught the disease twice.
Joseph Flavill, 19, was hit by a car while walking in Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, on 1 March last year, three weeks before Britain’s first national lockdown began. He has spent months in a coma after he suffered a traumatic brain injury but is slowly beginning to recover and has started responding.
Dutch PM under pressure to ease lockdown as cases fall
Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte faces pressure to ease the country’s lockdown as coronavirus infections continue to decline, Reuters reports.
Rutte’s office has so far said only that primary schools and daycares will reopen on 8 February, despite rioting sparked by a decision to impose a curfew last month.
The National Institute for Health (RIVM) said there had been 28,628 cases in the past week, down 20% from the week before and now at the lowest level since lockdown measures were introduced in October.
However, this week’s decline “would have been greater without the new variants of the virus that have entered the Netherlands, especially the British variant”, the RIVM said in a statement.
Health minister Hugo de Jonge said yesterday that half of the cases in the country were being caused by the new variant as of 26 January, up from around a third the week before. The government fears the variant may cause a new wave of infections ahead of 17 March elections.
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The German health ministry has confirmed that it is seeking a German partner to work with Russia to potentially produce the Sputnik V vaccine for Germans.
It comes two days after health minister Jens Spahn said that the Chinese and Russian vaccines would certainly be considered if they had passed the relevant clinical trials.
Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine has 91.6% efficacy against symptomatic coronavirus, interim trial results have suggested.
That’s it from me, Caroline Davies. Thank you for your time.
Russia will be able to vaccinate 700 million people with the Sputnik V coronavirus jab this year, the Tass news agency cited the head of the RDIF sovereign wealth fund as saying on Tuesday.
“There are some restrictions on production, so this year, most likely, we will be able to provide only about 700 million people with the vaccine,” the official, Kirill Dmitriev, was quoted as saying.
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A Belgian restaurant owner near Brussels says she misses her customers so much since her restaurant was forced to close last October under coronavirus restrictions, she has replaced them with mannequins.
Thérèse Mahieu began serving glasses of red wine to dummies with wigs, hats and scarves sitting at the bar this week in protest against Belgium’s Covid-19 measures, Reuters reports.
She said the dummies, made of balloons, give her a sense of community that has been lost at restaurant Chez Thérèse de la Saladelle in the town of Rixensart, in Brussels’ commuter belt, since customers were barred from entering to prevent infections.
Photograph: Stéphanie Lecocq/EPA
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High infection rate makes the effort to contain Covid variants even more vital.
You can read Ian Sample’s analysis of the scramble to stop the spread of the South African variant in the UK here:
Sweden has seen an increased spread of the British Covid-19 variant, with 11% of randomly screened positive tests last week showing the mutation, thought to be a more contagious form of the virus, the Public Health Agency said on Tuesday.
Sweden, which has seen a marked decrease of cases in recent weeks, found a total of 250 cases of the British variant last week out of 2,200 positive samples screened for the strain.
“We have a spread of this variant and it’s not only tied to travel,” Health Agency official Sara Byfors told reporters. She added that both the total number of cases of the variant and the share of the total positive tests was relatively low compared to many European countries.
The Health Agency also said it would not use AstraZeneca’s vaccine for people over 65, citing lack of evidence it was effective for that group.
Hi. Caroline Davies here, taking over the blog for a short while. You can get in touch on caroline.davies@theguardian.com
As researchers around the world scramble to understand the dangers of several newly discovered variants of the deadly coronavirus, the US remains woefully behind in its ability to track the mutations, scientists say.
The federal government has had its “head in the sand”, failing to develop a coordinated surveillance system for tracking the genetic footprints of the virus, according to academic researchers, scientific panelists and private entrepreneurs, who say they have been urging US officials for months to make better use of the hi-tech resources already sitting in labs around the country.
Genomic sequencing looks at the entire genetic code – or genome – of viruses obtained from samples from infected patients. The technique allows researchers to watch for dangerous mutations and to track movements of specific variants, like detectives following footprints.
Canada has said it regrets a “misunderstanding” after a diplomat ordered a custom T-shirt showing the word “Wuhan” over the bat-like emblem of hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan, prompting a formal complaint from China, Reuters reports.
The American group’s logo is a stylised “W”. Reports of the T-shirt order circulating on China’s Twitter-like Weibo described it as depicting a bat, without mentioning Wu-Tang Clan. Many scientists suspect bats to have been a reservoir for Cocivd-19 before it jumped to humans.
It was not immediately clear how images of the T-shirt logo, which the Canadian embassy said was created early last year, came to circulate on Chinese social media.
China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Monday: “We are very shocked by this and have lodged representations with Canada, asking for a thorough investigation and a clear explanation.” The virus should not be linked to specific countries or regions, he told the daily briefing.
Beijing has been highly sensitive about the source of the virus, and has sought to cast doubt on the notion that it originated in China.
Hungary will today receive its first 40,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, enough to vaccinate 20,000 people, the country’s foreign minister Péter Szijjártó has said, Reuters reports. It comes amid highly promising indications of the vaccine’s efficacy.
“The first shipment will arrive today based on the deal we signed in Moscow,” Szijjártó said in a video on his Facebook page. Under a deal signed last month, Russia will ship 2 million doses of the vaccine to Hungary in the coming three months, enough to inoculate 1 million people, Szijjártó said.
He said the National Public Health Centre would put the vaccine shipment through tests before the shots are distributed. EU countries so far are relying almost entirely on the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but Hungary’s drug regulator approved Sputnik V for use last month.
Hungary’s drug regulator has also granted emergency use approval to Chinese Sinopharm’s vaccine, rather than waiting for the bloc’s European Medicines Agency (EMA) to give the go-ahead. Hungary has also approved the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines.
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Colombia’s capital Bogota will lift tough restrictions and a city-wide red alert against Covid tomorrow, mayor Claudia Lopez has announced, with the second peak of the virus having passed, Reuters reports.
Surging infections in the new year following celebrations in December saw intensive care unit (ICU) occupancy rates rise above 94%, prompting Lopez to impose curbs on movement, neighbourhood quarantines, and nightly curfews.
ICU occupancy rates for patients with coronavirus have since fallen to 81%, according to local government figures. “We have passed the peak of the second wave of COVID-19. With this favourable trend we will be able to lift the red alert and zonal quarantines from tomorrow and get back to business,” Lopez said in a message on Twitter. “This afternoon we will announce how we will proceed.”
Restrictions in Bogota, which has more than 8 million inhabitants, delayed children returning to schools and caused setbacks for economic recovery due to limits on entering shops and other businesses.
Colombia, which has 50 million people, has reported 2.1 million cases of coronavirus, as well as 54,272 deaths from Covid. There are 89,582 active cases in the South American country.
Spain’s best-known bull-running festival held in the northern city of Pamplona has been cancelled for the second year in a row because of the pandemic, the regional head of Navarre has said announced, AFP reports.
The San Fermin festival, which is normally held in July and was immortalised in Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel “The Sun Always Rises”, “won’t be possible” this year, Maria Chivite told an economic forum. “It is not responsible to create expectations which will be impossible to fulfill,” she added.
Contacted by AFP, a spokesman for Pamplona city hall said it is up to the regional government of Navarre to formally cancel the event held each year from July 6-14, but that as of now “that decision has not been taken”.
The last time Pamplona did not celebrate the festival two years in a row was during Spain’s 1936-39 civil war. Other major Spanish events have already been called off for the second year in a row. Seville has cancelled Easter week processions while the Mediterranean port of Valencia has postponed until the second half of the year the Las Fallas festival usually held in March.
A fresh wave of Covid infections in Vietnam was caused by a more contagious variant first spotted in Britain, authorities have said, AFP reports.
Schools have been shut early ahead of the Lunar New Year and hundreds of thousands of people are in lockdown after more than 300 cases were detected in less than a week.
The government said 12 cases have so far been identified as the British variant, which has swept the UK and been found in more than 60 nations. Prior to the new cluster, Vietnam - population 96 million - had recorded just over 1,500 cases, with the communist country widely praised for its successful handling of the pandemic. It has reported just 35 deaths.
But the latest outbreak - which began in the north and has since spread to central and southern areas - is proving more complicated to contain, authorities say. “We have been very quick in quarantine and contact tracing... but whether we can eliminate the outbreaks, it depends on the whole political system, authorities and the people,” warned Mai Tien Dung, chairman of the government’s office.
German football club RB Leipzig has asked the German authorities to grant Champions League opponents Liverpool an exemption to strict new coronavirus entry rules to the country, AFP reports.
“On Monday, we requested an exemption for Liverpool’s entry into the country,” said Leipzig spokesman Till Mueller. The Bundesliga club are set to host English champions Liverpool in a Champions League last-16 game on February 16, but the match has been thrown into doubt by a partial travel ban which Germany introduced last weekend.
The new rules, slated to last until the day after the game, ban travellers from countries hit by new, more contagious coronavirus variants such as Britain. Though there are some exceptions for medical workers and others in key professions, an interior ministry spokesperson told AFP on Monday that the new rules contained “no special provision for professional sportspeople”.
Yet Mueller said Leipzig were working on a solution to the problem. “We are of course in discussions with the authorities, with Liverpool and with UEFA,” he said, adding that the club had filed an exemption request with the federal police. “We hope that we receive a quick response because a lot depends on this,” he added.
The great hope for drug treatments against Covid-19 – the monoclonal antibodies – are failing against variants of the virus, such as those that have emerged in South Africa and Brazil, scientists have found.
There have been high expectations of the drugs. One, made by Regeneron in the US, was given to Donald Trump and may have played a part in his recovery. It is being trialled in hospital patients in the UK.
But to the dismay of those who work on therapies against the disease, all three leading contenders – Regeneron’s, and drugs from Eli Lilly and GlaxoSmithKline – fail against one or more of the variants.
The antibodies have huge advantages as treatments, said Nick Cammack, who leads the Covid-19 therapeutics accelerator at Wellcome. They are derived from cloning a human white blood cell and mimic the effects of the immune system. They are very safe, specifically engineered to target the virus and their use looked highly promising in the early stage of disease to stop it progressing.
He said:
The challenge came at Christmas when these new variants appeared – the South Africa and Brazil ones particularly. The changes the virus makes in its spike proteins actually throw off these antibodies.
So basically, most of the front-running antibody therapies for Covid which are the front-running therapies for Covid, I should say – so the great hope – are lost to the South African and Brazilian variants.
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The European commission has announced it has temporarily stood down EU officials assisting border checks in two Northern Ireland ports. It also denied a row over vaccine exports had provoked extremist threats.
Northern Irish officials have halted some animal-based food checks that were imposed under the terms of the Northern Ireland protocol in the EU-UK Brexit agreement after an upsurge in threats “in recent weeks”, AFP reports.
Political controversy over the protocol mounted on Friday when the European commission briefly proposed and then withdraw a text threatening to invoke the treaty to control vaccine imports from the EU to the UK.
But European commission spokesman Eric Mamer said there could be no excuse for threats of violence and insisted that the ugly mood had pre-dated Brussels’ mistaken threat to invoke article 16 over the vaccine issue.
Whatever the reason was for the threat of violence is simply unacceptable. Full stop. You don’t look for excuses. That must be very, very clear. The second thing is that according to the information we have received, the situation had actually arisen some time ago already. So before the events that you mentioned. So I think it’s very clear that the threats have originated before this discussion on article 16.
Obviously, the security of our staff in Northern Ireland is as high a preoccupation as that of any other person working in Northern Ireland on the implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement. We have asked them not to attend to their duties today, and we will continue to monitor the situation and adapt accordingly.
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Japan’s government has extended its Covid state of emergency for another month, less than six months before the pandemic-postponed Olympic Games are due to open in Tokyo, AFP reports.
Prime minister Yoshihide Suga said the measures that will now run through 7 March in several parts of the country had helped bring down infections but more needed to be done. “Hospitalisation will remain high for some time to come, that is why we have to continue with these measures,” he said. “Each and every one of us needs to change the way we act if we are to contain the virus’s spread.”
The extension will apply to 10 of the 11 areas currently under the measure, including greater Tokyo, which had been due to end on 7 February. It will not be extended in Tochigi, north of the capital, where cases are judged to have dropped sufficiently. Suga said the state of emergency could be lifted before 7 March “in prefectures where the virus situation improves”.
Japan’s virus emergency is significantly looser than the lockdowns seen elsewhere in the world, and primarily calls for increased teleworking and the closure of bars and restaurants from 8pm.
Japan’s coronavirus outbreak has been comparatively small nationwide, with around 5,800 deaths overall. But the country’s healthcare system has become increasingly overburdened, and public support for both the initial imposition of the emergency, and today’s extension, is strong.
Earlier today, Tokyo 2020 president Yoshiro Mori said the Games would go ahead “however the coronavirus [pandemic] evolves.”
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Sputnik vaccine has 92% efficacy against Covid, trial suggests
Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine has 91.6% efficacy against symptomatic coronavirus, interim trial results have suggested. The preliminary findings are based on analysis of data from more than 20,000, mostly white, participants, three-quarters of whom received the vaccine. The remainder received a placebo.
No serious adverse events were deemed to be associated with vaccination, and most reported adverse events were mild, including flu-like symptoms, pain at the injection site and weakness or low energy.
The vaccine, which is backed by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), is administered in two injections 21 days apart. In the 21 days after the first dose, there were 16 cases of Covid-19 in the 14,964 people (0.1%) in the vaccine group, and 62 cases of the disease in the 4,902 individuals (1.3%) in the placebo group.
The trial included 2,144 participants aged 60 and older – in this subset, the vaccine had 91.8% efficacy against symptomatic disease, researchers wrote in the journal The Lancet.
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Chinese police have arrested more than 80 suspected members of a criminal group that was manufacturing and selling fake vaccines, including to other countries, AP reports.
Police in Beijing and in Jiangsu and Shandong provinces broke up the group led by a suspect surnamed Kong that was producing the fake vaccines, which consisted of a simple saline solution, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The vaccines were sold in China and to other countries, although it was unclear which ones. The group had been active since last September, according to state media. “China has already reported the situation to the relevant countries,” foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a daily briefing today.
“The Chinese government highly values vaccine safety and will continue to take efforts to strictly prosecute any counterfeits, fake sales and illegal business, and other related actions that involve vaccines,” Wang said. “At the same time, China will strengthen our law enforcement cooperation with the relevant countries, to earnestly prevent the spread of this type of illegal and criminal action.” He did not offer further details.
Pfizer has forecasted sales of about $15bn from the coronavirus vaccine that it is making along with German partner BioNTech. The company said it expects total 2021 revenue of between $59.4bn and $61.4bn, Reuters reports.
The vaccine was among the first to be authorised for emergency use in the US and several other countries, and analysts have forecast billions in sales.
In the fourth quarter, the vaccine brought in sales of $154m, below expectations of $462m, according to consensus estimates compiled by brokerage Mizuho.
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AstraZeneca vaccine not to be used on elderly in Poland, in break with EU
Poland will not be giving the AstraZeneca vaccine to elderly people in the country, the prime minister’s top aide has announced.
Michal Dworczyk, who is in charge of vaccinations, said today that the country of 38 million people would only use the vaccine for people aged 18-60 following a recommendation from the country’s medical council.
Yesterday evening, the medical council submitted recommendations regarding the AstraZeneca vaccine, on the basis of which it was decided that it will be used in Poland for people between the ages of 18 and 60.
It comes after German and Austrian medical experts last week recommended it should not be used on people aged 65 or above, citing a lack of data.
Some experts have warned against confusing an absence of evidence with evidence of absence, but others have said there simply is not enough causative data proving its efficacy for the elderly.
However, the European Medicines Agency authorised the vaccine for use in all adult age groups across the 27 member states – although it acknowledged there were not yet enough results for people aged over 55 to determine how well the vaccine will work – meaning that Poland would be breaking from that decision.
Authorities in the UK – which has already vaccinated many elderly people with the vaccine – last week defended the vaccine’s efficacy and said there was evidence of a strong immune response among over-65s.
Italy’s medicines agency on Saturday approved the vaccine for all adults but recommended alternatives for people aged over 55, AFP reports.
France is set to be the next EU nation to announce its own recommendation on the vaccine, which was shown in clinical trials to be 62 percent effective in preventing Covid-19.
President Emmanuel Macron waded into the row last week, citing reports that the vaccine was “quasi-ineffective” for people over 65. “What I can tell you officially today is that the early results we have are not encouraging for 60- to 65-year-old people concerning AstraZeneca,” he said.
Developers AstraZeneca and Oxford University have been transparent in disclosing that fewer than 10% of those it tested the vaccine on were 65 or older. Just 450 participants were over 70. This compares with more than 40% of participants in the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine trials who were over 55.
The EMA said there was insufficient data to know for certain how effective the AstraZeneca vaccine is in older individuals. “However, protection is expected, given that an immune response is seen in this age group,” it said.
Disease specialist Eric Caumes pointed out yesterday that several countries including France were vaccinating people over 80 with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. “We don’t know it’s efficacy in this age group,” he told BFMTV.
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Death rates among people who end up in intensive care with Covid-19 have improved dramatically since the start of the pandemic thanks to advances in treatment, new research has found.
The proportion of those worst affected by the disease who die from it has fallen from 60% when it first appeared early last year to 36% by October, the study of global trends shows. That drop continues a positive trend that saw the mortality of almost 60% seen at the end of March decrease to 42% at the end of May, it reports.
The findings, based on 52 studies around the globe involving 43,128 patients, have been published in the medical journal Anaesthesia.
However, the doctors who have undertaken the research caution that the huge progress seen in Covid mortality over the last year may have reached a plateau. The emergence of new variants of coronavirus that have left more people critically ill could increase death rates, they say. Equally, the vaccination programme unfolding across the world could reduce the number needing potentially life-saving treatment in intensive care.
Dubai is to start vaccinating people with the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, the state media office has announced, as the United Arab Emirates battles its biggest outbreak since the pandemic begun, Reuters reports.
The first shipment has arrived from India, the state media office said in a tweet. It did not provide details on how many doses were received or when inoculations would start. India’s foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar tweeted: “Made in India vaccines reach Dubai. A special friend, a special relationship.”
Dubai is already inoculating residents, free of charge, with the Pfizer-BioNTech and China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) vaccines. The National Emergency Crisis and Disaster Management Authority reported 3,310 new cases today, down from a peak of 3,966 on 28 January.
The UAE does not disclose where in the country cases are being reported, though Dubai has recently tightened restrictions on hotels, bars, restaurants and shopping centres, where capacity has been limited.
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Tanzania’s health ministry has said it has no plans in place to accept Covid-19 vaccines, just days after the president of the country of 60 million people expressed doubt about the vaccines without offering evidence, AP reports.
Health minister Dorothy Gwajima told a press conference in the capital, Dodoma, yesterday that “the ministry has no plans to receive vaccines for Covid-19”. Any vaccines must receive ministry approval. It is not clear when any vaccines might arrive, though Tanzania is eligible for the Covax global effort aimed at delivering doses to low- and middle-income countries.
The health minister insisted Tanzania is safe. During a presentation in which she and others didn’t wear face masks, she encouraged the public to improve hygiene practices including the use of sanitisers but also steam inhalation – which has been dismissed by health experts elsewhere as a way to kill the coronavirus.
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The vaccination programme in the UK has enjoyed a head-start through compromising on “safety and efficacy” safeguards, the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has claimed.
The former German defence minister, who took command of the EU’s executive branch in 2019, said she had a responsibility to take time to ensure the success of the bloc’s mass vaccination programme.
She said:
Some countries started to vaccinate a little before Europe, it is true. But they resorted to emergency, 24-hour marketing authorisation procedures.
The commission and the member states agreed not to compromise with the safety and efficacy requirements linked to the authorisation of a vaccine. Time had to be taken to analyse the data, which, even minimised, takes three to four weeks.
So, yes, Europe left it later, but it was the right decision. I remind you that a vaccine is the injection of an active biological substance into a healthy body. We are talking about mass vaccination here, it is a gigantic responsibility.
Updated
The World Health Organization mission investigating the origins of Covid-19 in China was going “very well”, one of its members said, as the team visited an animal disease control centre in the city where the first cases were reported.
China has faced criticism for playing down the initial outbreak and concealing information when it first emerged in Wuhan in December 2019, raising doubts over the usefulness of the WHO trip.
The investigative team arrived at the Hubei province animal disease prevention centre in Wuhan on Tuesday morning, where the group donned white hazmat suits for a tour of the facilities.
Team member Peter Daszak told journalists the mission was “excellent” and proceeding “very well” as the group was driven into the facility, while team lead Peter Ben Embarek nodded when asked if the experts were being given sufficient access in Wuhan.
The mission - delayed by China and weighed down by political baggage - has a remit to explore how the virus jumped from animal to human, but questions remain over what the experts can hope to find, one year on.
Beijing is keen to put the focus on its recovery from the outbreak. The team of scientists toured a propaganda exhibition celebrating China’s recovery from the pandemic in Wuhan on Saturday.
Daszak said after the tour that the team had held a “very informative meeting” and also tweeted that WHO experts had met with “key staff in charge of livestock surveillance” and had “in-depth discussion.”
The experts also received a visit at their hotel on Tuesday from officials of the Wuhan Blood Centre, which collected blood plasma last year from recovered Covid-19 patients.
On Sunday, the team went to the market in Wuhan where one of the first reported clusters of infections emerged over a year ago, which Daszak tweeted was a “critical” stop.
The UN agency hit back at critics on Monday, telling a press conference in Geneva, “if you have the answers … please let us know.”
Updated
The coronavirus mutation “of most concern” has occurred spontaneously in the UK variant, a professor of outbreak medicine who is part of a panel that advises the British government said.
The E484K mutation, which occurs on the spike protein of the virus, is the same change as has been seen in the South African and Brazilian variants that have caused international concern.
“The mutation of most concern, which we call E484K, has also occurred spontaneously in the new Kent strain in parts of the country too,” said Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, said on BBC radio.
He was referring to the UK variant, which scientists call B.1.1.7 and which was first detected in the southern English county of Kent.
The fact that the E484K mutation had occurred spontaneously in Britain had already been reported in a technical briefing published by Public Health England, but this had not been widely noticed outside of scientific circles.
“A limited number of B117 VOC (a variant of concern) … genomes with E484K mutation have been detected,” said the summary of the briefing. Semple was speaking in the context of an interview about the issue of how to suppress the South African variant.
Updated
Summary
Here is a review of the latest updates around coronavirus from around the world.
- European Union curbs on exports of novel coronavirus vaccines could delay Japan’s inoculation drive, the minister in charge of the campaign said on Tuesday, while the government is expected to extend a state of emergency in a bid to rein in the epidemic.
- Austria will start relaxing its third coronavirus lockdown from 8 February, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced on Monday, with schools, museums and shops set to reopen.
- Australia’s three-test cricket tour of South Africa has been postponed due to Covid-19 and concern around a second wave and new variant of the virus. Cricket Australia released a statement on Twitter, saying the decision had not been made “lightly” but that the risks were too great to health and safety.
- China’s Shenzhen Kangtai Biological Products said on Tuesday it had completed a facility designed to be able to produce 400m doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine per year, doubling a capacity target promised in 2020.
- China reports lowest cases in a month. China reported the fewest new coronavirus cases in a month as imported cases overtook local infections, official data showed on Tuesday, suggesting the country’s worst wave since March 2020 is being stamped out ahead of a key holiday.
- The first vaccine doses have arrived in South African, where president Cyril Ramaphosa hailed their arrival on Monday as a chance to “turn the tide” on a disease that has devastated the country.
Updated
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has said six new cases of the British variant of coronavirus were found in the West African nation at the weekend.
NCDC director general Chikwe Iheakwazu said the variant was detected in samples collected by scientists at the Africa Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID) at a university in south-western Osun state.
The variant, known as B117, has swept Britain and been found in more than 60 nations. The British government last month said early data suggested the strain could be deadlier as well as more transmissible.
Iheakwazu said five cases had been detected in Osun state and one in Kwara state. “This is the variant of concern that first emerged in the UK,” he said, during a Monday briefing.
“The five in Osun is most likely related to the fact that this is where ACEGID is and where they get a lot of samples from. In total, we have detected the B117 variant in seven cases within Nigeria.”
He said Nigeria had begun sequencing positive samples among travellers from Britain and South Africa.
Updated
Singapore will only allow police to access personal data from its coronavirus contact-tracing app for “serious” criminal investigations, a move aimed at addressing privacy concerns among users and to safeguard against its unauthorised use.
An amendment to a Covid-19 bill – tabled in parliament this week – will only allow authorities to use data collected from contact tracing in investigations into seven types of crime, with strict penalties including jail for unauthorised use.
When the coronavirus pandemic is over, the government will stop using the contact tracing systems, and public agencies must stop collecting data and delete all personal information collected, according to the bill.
The changes to the law relating to the use of data from the app
– developed to curb the spread of the virus and used by nearly 80% of Singapore’s 5.7 million population – are expected to be enacted this month.
Updated
Human Rights Watch on Tuesday urged support for aid groups to ensure “equitable” distribution of coronavirus vaccines across all of war-torn Syria, warning against any discriminatory approach by Damascus.
“Those supplying vaccines for Syria should do everything in their power to ensure that … (they) reach those most vulnerable no matter where they are in the country,” HRW researcher Sara Kayyali said.
“The Syrian government has never been shy about withholding healthcare as a weapon of war, but playing this game with the vaccine undermines the global effort to control the pandemic.”
“International aid groups should have support to secure the widest and most equitable distribution … including (in) all areas controlled by different groups,” the rights organisation said.
The New York-based group made the call following restrictions to aid deliveries to the country’s rebel-held northwest and Kurdish-held northeast Syria in recent years, under pressure from Damascus’ ally Moscow at the UN security council.
Aid can only enter north-west Syria from a single border crossing from Turkey, which backs rebels in that area, while aid to north-east Syria now needs to transit through Damascus, where HRW says authorities often withhold or delay permission.
Updated
More than 100m Covid-19 vaccines have been given around the world, according to an AFP tally from official sources.
But none of the world’s 29 poorest countries has formally started mass vaccination drives, while the richest nations have given more than two-thirds of jabs administered.
Israel leads the race by far, with 37% of its population having received at least one dose, while more than a fifth have already got their second. Yet more than a third of humanity (35%) live in countries where vaccination has yet to begin.
After Israel, the countries that have given the most doses are in North America, Europe and the Persian Gulf.
The UK heads this group in per capita terms with shots given to 13.7% of its people, ahead of the US (32.2m shots, or 7.9%).
The European Union has been clashing bitterly with AstraZeneca over access to supplies of its vaccine, with only 12.7m shots given to 2.3% of its people.
China, by contrast, has given 24m shots, while India – where many of the vaccines are made – has given only 4m shots to a tiny percentage of its vast population.
The EU’s best-performing countries are tiny Malta (5.4%), Denmark (3.2%) and Poland (3.1%).
The UK’s nearest competitor in Europe is Serbia, which is also outside the bloc.
Updated
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Zimbabwe will have access to a Chinese Covid-19 vaccine soon, China’s ambassador in Harare said, as Beijing ramps up its availability to developing nations.
Last week, Zimbabwe health officials said Russia and China had approached it about supplying coronavirus vaccines. Coronavirus infections have risen in Zimbabwe this year, with about 60% of its 33,548 cases and more than two-thirds of its 1,234 deaths recorded since New Year’s Day.
Only a handful of African nations have begun giving doses as the continent scrambles to obtain supplies for its 1.3 billion people – at a time when many richer nations are racing ahead with mass immunisation campaigns.
Updated
Australia’s three-test cricket tour of South Africa has been postponed due to Covid-19 and concern around a second wave and new variant of the virus.
Cricket Australia released a statement on Twitter, saying the decision had not been made “lightly” but that the risks were too great to health and safety.
“We have a duty of care to our people and safety cannot be compromised,” the statement continued.
They said the new date would be confirmed in due course.
Today we informed Cricket South Africa that we believe we have no choice but to postpone the forthcoming Qantas Tour of South Africa due to the coronavirus pandemic. Full statement 👇 pic.twitter.com/mYjqNpkYjp
— Cricket Australia (@CricketAus) February 2, 2021
EU vaccine curbs may delay Japan's inoculation drive
European Union curbs on exports of novel coronavirus vaccines could delay Japan’s inoculation drive, the minister in charge of the campaign said on Tuesday, while the government is expected to extend a state of emergency in a bid to rein in the epidemic.
Japan is set to begin its vaccination campaign this month, later than most major economies, and any delay could sow doubts about a government aim to secure enough doses for everyone before the Tokyo Olympics this summer.
“The EU has enacted this export transparency mechanism, and it is affecting Japan’s supply schedule,” Taro Kono, the minister in charge of the vaccine effort, told reporters. Kono did not elaborate on the length of any possible delay.
The EU has not imposed any curbs on vaccine exports yet but it reserves the right to do so if overseas shipments undermine the bloc’s own supplies.
Kono later told a briefing that negotiations with the EU were going on and there was no change to the plan to start inoculations in the latter half of February.
Japan is relying on foreign vaccine manufacturers and Kono warned last week that growing nationalism over the shots could lead to retaliation and disruptions to global supplies.
Japan has secured rights to more than 500 million vaccine doses from several western developers, more than enough for its 126 million population.
Updated
Welcome to the Guardian’s live feed, where I will bring you the latest updates on coronavirus from around the world. If you want to share any comments or news tips with me then please email or message me using the contact details below.
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Austria to relax lockdown next week despite being 'far from ideal scenario'
Austria will start relaxing its third coronavirus lockdown from February 8, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced on Monday, with schools, museums and shops set to reopen.
The relaxation of restrictions, which have been in place since December 26, is being undertaken even though “we are far removed from our ideal scenario of a seven-day average of 50 new cases”, Kurz told a press conference.
“For this reason only careful steps towards opening are possible,” he said, speaking after a day of talks with scientists, the opposition and heads of regional governments.
He said that while from an epidemiological point of view the ideal course of action would be to continue the lockdown, the government also had to consider wider social and psychological effects of lockdown.
School pupils will have to be tested every two days, with older pupils attending according to a rotating timetable.
Shops, museums and zoos will be able to reopen but customers and visitors will have to wear medical-grade face masks.
Services such as hairdressers and beauticians will also be allowed to reopen but customers will have to show proof of a negative coronavirus test.
Meetings of people from more than two households will once again be allowed but Kurz pleaded for social contacts to be kept to a minimum.
Updated
China’s Shenzhen Kangtai Biological Products said on Tuesday it had completed a facility designed to be able to produce 400m doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine per year, doubling a capacity target promised in 2020.
“Kangtai is actively pushing forward procedures for the vaccine’s clinical trial and registration in China, and has completed a manufacturing plant and started trial production,” the Shenzhen-based firm said in a press release.
The firm obtained rights to supply the AZD1222 vaccine, developed by the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker and Oxford University, in mainland China last year in return for having the capacity to produce at least 200m doses by the end of 2021.
Updated
Teachers in Turkey will get Covid-19 vaccinations in February as they prepare for a nationwide gradual reopening of schools as of 1 March, the education minister, Ziya Selçuk, said on Tuesday.
President Tayyip Erdoğan announced the reopening on Monday after a cabinet meeting, saying some schools in small villages would resume general education on 15 February while other grades and age groups would reopen on 1 March.
In a TV address, Selcuk said all pre-schools would also reopen full-time on 15 February, while other grades will start on 1 March. “We plan to administer vaccines to our teachers, who will be starting in-person education, throughout February,” he said.
Updated
The US government on Monday promised undocumented migrants the same access to Covid vaccines as other civilians and said inoculation centres would be immigration enforcement-free zones.
The announcement marked the latest in a series of moves by President Joe Biden to reverse the hardline strategy on immigration adopted by his predecessor, Donald Trump.
“It is a moral and public health imperative to ensure that all individuals residing in the United States have access to the vaccine … once eligible under local distribution guidelines,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.
Updated
A British minister said it was not feasible to order all international arrivals to quarantine in a hotel in a drive to prevent the spread of coronavirus variants.
Junior education minister Michelle Donelan was asked on BBC TV about a suggestion that Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, could require all arrivals to stay in a hotel, rather than just those coming from high-risk areas.
“We will continually evolve our strategies but that is unfeasible and we have to be realistic about what we adopt and what we do. And what is deliverable as well,” she said.
“(We have to be) targeted in our approach to making sure that we minimise the risk and identify those countries where we can see the risk. So a blanket policy that Nicola Sturgeon is proposing would not necessarily be as effective as the one we are suggesting, and also it is much more doable.”
Updated
BP reported on Tuesday that it tumbled into a masive $20.3bn (€16.8bn) net loss last year, despite a slender fourth-quarter profit, as the coronavirus pandemic ravaged global energy demand.
The enormous loss contrasted sharply with a net profit of $4.0bn in 2019, the British energy major said, adding that the oil sector had been hit hard by the Covid-19 crisis.
The London-listed giant said the loss was driven by tumbling oil and gas prices, as well as significant impairments and exploration write-offs during a tumultuous year for the energy industry.
However, in the fourth quarter – the three months to December – net profit hit $1.36bn after the sale of BP’s petrochemical business to privately owned rival Ineos for $5.0bn.
BP last year axed almost 10,000 jobs, or 15% of its global workforce, and embarked upon major asset disposals after the pandemic caused huge asset writedowns.
“2020 will forever be remembered for the pain and sadness caused by Covid-19. Lives were lost – livelihoods destroyed,” chief executive Bernard Looney said in a statement. “Our sector was hit hard as well. Road and air travel are down, as are oil demand, prices and margins. It was also a pivotal year for the company.
“We launched a net-zero ambition, set a new strategy to become an integrated energy company and created an offshore wind business in the United States,” Looney said.
Updated
Britain begins door-to-door Covid-19 testing of 80,000 people on Tuesday in a bid to stem the spread of a new highly infectious South African variant of the novel coronavirus.
To contain the outbreaks, residents in eight areas of the country will be tested whether or not they are showing symptoms, a process known as “surge testing”.
There are about 10,000 people in each area. Three are in London, two in the south-east, one in central England, one in the east and another in the north-west.
“It is concerning – it’s deeply concerning,” junior education minister Michelle Donelan told Sky. “It’s still a very perilous stage of this virus and we’ve got these new variants spreading.”
Updated
Johnson & Johnson is seeking Thailand’s approval for its Covid-19 vaccine, a senior Thai health official told Reuters on Tuesday.
The request makes J&J’s one-dose vaccine the third Covid-19 vaccine to seek registration with Thailand’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after requests from AstraZeneca Plc and China Sinovac Biotech.
Last month, Thailand’s FDA granted a one-year emergency use approval for imported AstraZeneca’s vaccine. J&J had started the request process for its vaccine late last month, but the timing of any approval will depend on when the company submitted all required documents, Surachoke Tangwiwat, deputy secretary general of the FDA, said.
“They have submitted some documents for us to assess,” Surachoke said. “We can proceed with the approval within 30 days after all documents are submitted.”
Updated
Hello everyone, I am running the Guardian’s live feed, bringing you the latest information on coronavirus from around the world. Please get in touch with me while I work via any of the channels below.
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That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. My colleagues in London will bring you the latest developments for the next few hours.
For now, I leave you with today’s most famous mask wearer:
A dancer filming an exercise routine in front of Myanmar’s parliament unwittingly captured the first moments of a dramatic coup in the background of her video: https://t.co/NXSfDveURk
— Helen Sullivan (@helenrsullivan) February 2, 2021
Summary
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
- Many places in China plan to suspend religious gatherings during the upcoming Spring Festival holidays to control the coronavirus outbreak, the Global Times newspaper reported on Tuesday.
- Black Americans make up only 5.4% of Covid-19 vaccine recipients, CDC finds. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found only 5.4% of coronavirus vaccine recipients were black, in its first analysis of how vaccines were given out among different demographic groups in the first month of US distribution.
- Biden and Republicans agreed to further Covid relief talks but deep divisions remain. Ten Republican senators have agreed to carry on talks with the White House in an attempt to negotiate a bi-partisan coronavirus relief package, after a two-hour meeting with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on Monday night ended short of a breakthrough.
- China reports lowest cases in a month. China reported the fewest new coronavirus cases in a month as imported cases overtook local infections, official data showed on Tuesday, suggesting the country’s worst wave since March 2020 is being stamped out ahead of a key holiday. Thirty cases were reported in the mainland on 1 February, the National Health Commission said in a statement, down from 42 cases a day earlier and marking lowest total since 24 cases were reported on 2 January.
- Chinese police busted a fake vaccine ring. Chinese police arrested more than 80 people and confiscated over 3,000 fake doses of Covid-19 vaccine as part of a campaign to combat vaccine-related crimes, state news agency Xinhua reports.
- The first vaccine doses have arrived in South African, where president Cyril Ramaphosa hailed their arrival on Monday as a chance to “turn the tide” on a disease that has devastated the country.
- The European Union tightened its rules for visitors from outside the bloc, specifying that they would only be allowed in freely from countries with very few coronavirus cases and almost none of the more transmissible variants.
Cutting social security benefits such as universal credit has a detrimental effect on mental health, particularly for the most vulnerable groups hit hardest by the Covid-19 pandemic, according to new research.
The study of major welfare reforms in high-income countries including the UK, the US and Canada also found that policies aimed at making benefits more generous were associated with positive mental health outcomes.
The authors of the study said making permanent beyond April the 12-month, £20-a-week Covid top-up to universal credit – and extending the boost to claimants on other benefits – would help prevent a decline in the mental health of the least well-off:
Chinese police bust fake vaccine ring
Chinese police arrested more than 80 people and confiscated over 3,000 fake doses of Covid-19 vaccine as part of a campaign to combat vaccine-related crimes, state news agency Xinhua reports, via Reuters.
The suspects had been carrying out the ruse since at least September last year, Xinhua said on Monday, adding that all fake doses had been tracked down.
The fake vaccines were made by injecting saline into syringes, it said. The suspects may have intended to send the vaccines abroad, the government-backed Global Times newspaper reported, citing a source close to a major Chinese vaccine producer.
The police operation was carried out by police in multiple places including Beijing, Shanghai and the eastern province of Shandong, Xinhua said.
Countries around the world from have been rolling out vaccine programmes in the hope of bringing the year-long coronavirus pandemic to an end.
China reports lowest cases in a month
China reported the fewest new coronavirus cases in a month as imported cases overtook local infections, official data showed on Tuesday, suggesting the country’s worst wave since March 2020 is being stamped out ahead of a key holiday.
Reuters: Thirty cases were reported in the mainland on Feb. 1, the National Health Commission said in a statement, down from 42 cases a day earlier and marking lowest total since 24 cases were reported on 2 January.
The commission said 18 of the new cases originated overseas, overtaking locally transmitted cases for the first time in about a month. Out of the 12 local cases, northeastern Heilongjiang province accounted for eight while the neighbouring Jilin province reported the remaining four.
The surge in infections last month raised fresh worries about the risk of another national paralysis ahead of the Lunar New Year holidays this month, when hundreds of millions travel. Authorities in areas where new clusters emerged rolled out aggressive measures, including lockdowns, travel curbs and mass testing, in a bid to contain the disease.
Authorities also continue to discourage travel, imposing testing requirements and offering refunds for trips booked during the break.
The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed Covid-19 cases, fell to 15 from 16 a day earlier.
The total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in mainland China now stands at 89,594, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,636.
Podcast: what can we learn about Covid-19 from Manaus?
The rainforest city of Manaus in the north-west of Brazil was the first in the country to be struck by the pandemic. The virus rapidly spread, and by October last year it was estimated that 76% of the population had been infected – a number higher than the theoretical threshold for herd immunity. Yet, in January 2021, cases surged and the health system was once again overwhelmed, with hospitals running out of oxygen and doctors and nurses required to carry out manual ventilation.
To find out what might be behind this second wave, Sarah Boseley speaks to the Guardian’s Latin America editor, Tom Phillips, and Dr Deepti Gurdasani, asking why Manaus has been hit twice and what it might mean for our understanding of immunity, new viral variants, and the path through the pandemic:
Tokyo Olympics: definitely going ahead unless cancelled again?
The Olympic rings have been spruced up and are once again overlooking Tokyo Bay. Countdown clocks have been reset, telling passersby there are just 171 days to go until the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games begin.
They are supposed to build excitement optimism in the host city and among sports fans around the world. But Japan’s Olympic dream is quickly turning sour in the face of the worst global health crisis for a century.
Almost a year after Tokyo 2020 became the first Games to be postponed in the modern Olympics’ 125-year history, officials and politicians face opposition from the Japanese public and, crucially, scepticism among athletes, sponsors and volunteers.
As the world grapples with a pandemic that has killed more than 2 million people, the official line is that the Games will open, as planned, on 23 July. This week the organisers and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) are due to release Covid “playbooks” detailing exactly how they intend to make that happen.
“We are not speculating whether the Games will take place,” Thomas Bach, the head of the IOC, said recently. “We are working on how the Games will take place.”
The Olympics have been thrust back to the predicament they faced early last spring, when the pandemic forced organisers to concede that the Tokyo Games would have to be delayed by a year:
Here is a non-pandemic story, though it does centre on someone who was wearing a facemask as a precaution against the virus:
A dancer filming an exercise routine in front of Myanmar’s parliament has gained global fame after she unwittingly captured the first moments of a dramatic coup in the background of her video.
In the extraordinary footage in capital Naypyidaw, a woman reported to be Khing Hnin Wai continues to work out as black SUVs drive up to a security checkpoint on the road leading to the Assembly of the Union complex behind her. As the upbeat song she is dancing to builds in tempo, the convoy swells almost in time to the music.
The dancer does not appear to know what is happening behind her. She continues – at one stage making small punching motions – as the cars behind her come briefly to a standstill. Then, as she moves spryly side to side, small figures in silhouette can be seen rushing to open the barricade and let the cars through.
The Australian opposition has blasted the decision to allow British pop star Rita Ora – who has made headlines for hosting a lockdown-violating party in London – to enter Australia and quarantine ahead of the almost 40,000 Australians stranded overseas.
Ora arrived at a Sydney hotel for two weeks of forced quarantine on Monday ahead of filming for her role as a coach on Channel Seven’s The Voice. The opposition home affairs spokeswoman, Kristina Keneally, said Ora’s hotel spot meant her quarantine was at the expense of Australians desperately seeking to return home.
“It’s another example of Scott Morrison leaving Australians behind,” Keneally told the Guardian.
“There are still 40,000 Australians stranded overseas. Every celebrity who takes up a place in quarantine is a place denied to a stranded Australian,” she said.
Reports of celebrities, including Matt Damon and Miranda Kerr, being granted permission to isolate in self-organised private residences to avoid Australia’s strict hotel quarantine regime have generated backlash within Australia:
Universities in England are to be given an additional £50m by the government to support students who are struggling financially as a result of the pandemic, in an attempt to stem growing anger and frustration within the student body.
The new funding has been made available after a wave of rent strikes and protests by furious students, many of whom paid for accommodation they could not use after being told to study online from home during lockdown.
It follows a £20m government funding package in December and is aimed at students who are most in need, particularly those who are struggling to meet additional costs for alternative accommodation and access to remote teaching during the pandemic.
The Guardian’s Sally Weale and Rachel Hall report:
Podcast: Inside LA’s Covid crisis
Southern California is by many measures battling the worst Covid catastrophe in the US. In Los Angeles, one person is contracting Covid every six seconds, one person is dying every eight minutes and one in 17 residents may now be infectious. Hospitals are so overrun that officials have directed ambulances not to transport patients who have little chance of survival, and some crews are waiting eight hours to offload patients:
Chicago Public Schools said it made progress in talks on Monday with the city’s teachers union on a Covid-19 safety plan that could prevent a possible work stoppage and allow thousands of students to resume in-person classes, Reuters reports.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Public Schools Chief Executive Janice Jackson said in a joint statement that the two sides secured agreement on one issue and made substantial progress on the framework that addresses the remaining issues.
As a result, teachers will not be locked out from their online systems and all students will remain virtual on Tuesday and Wednesday, the statement said.
“We had a positive day of bargaining today, and have made some progress, but there is still progress to be made,” the Chicago Teachers Union said in a tweet. “In order for schools to reopen safely, we must work together to put a plan in place that keeps safety at the forefront of everything we do.”
The two sides have been at odds for months on teachers’ demands for stronger safety protocols to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus in classrooms. The dispute came to a head over the weekend when talks stalled between the two sides.
Chicago Public Schools, the country’s third-largest school district, canceled in-person classes for nearly 70,000 students on Monday after teachers threatened to stay away from classrooms until an agreement was reached.
Updated
Celebrations for Waitangi Day are pressing ahead, with the Labour party’s Māori caucus arriving on Tuesday afternoon, after New Zealand logged the fifth consecutive day with no new Covid-19 cases in the community.
Labour members were greeted by a small number of protesters calling on Crown institutions such as local councils and courts to better honour their Treaty of Waitangi obligations and uphold more treaty claims.
Four cases of coronavirus were reported on Tuesday but all were in managed isolation. Two were travellers from the UK, one from India and a fourth case from the US was deemed historical.
The Ministry of Health said 347 of the 349 people at the Pullman Hotel – the isolation facility closed down for investigation after three cases emerged last week – had tested negative. Results of the remaining two were awaited:
French border police turned away some passengers bound for non-EU destinations Monday as new rules came into force banning flights to and from countries outside the bloc, AFP reports.
Prime Minister Jean Castex announced the measure Friday as part of new efforts to contain Covid-19 infections and avoid another nationwide lockdown.
Travellers must also present proof of a recent negative Covid test.
Only urgent reasons for travel are accepted and border police require written proof before allowing passengers to board, as Toure, a Malian national, found out when he tried to leave France for Bamako without the necessary document.
“I said that my mother, whom I hadn’t seen in a while, was ill but they told me I needed proof,” Toure, who withheld his last name, told AFP in the 2E terminal at Paris’s main airport Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle.
After being turned away Toure, who works for a French public works foundation, managed to get hold of his mother’s doctor in Bamako who sent him a barely legible note by WhatsApp. He tried again, and this time was waved through.
By curbing international travel, the government hopes to get a better grip on the circulation of the coronavirus and its recent variants, which have been spreading at a fearsome pace.
“The idea is to limit the outbound-inbound loops between France and abroad,” Julien Gentile, head of the border police for the Roissy and Le Bourget airports, told AFP.
Biden and Republicans agree to further Covid relief talks but deep divisions remain
Ten Republican senators have agreed to carry on talks with the White House in an attempt to negotiate a bi-partisan coronavirus relief package, after a two-hour meeting with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on Monday night ended short of a breakthrough.
The meeting lasted much longer than expected, providing a visible statement of the president’s stated ambition to reach across the aisle. But the group of senators who emerged from the Oval Office shortly after 7pm did so empty-handed.
The leader of the Republican pack, Susan Collins of Maine, described the meeting with the president and the vice-president as “excellent”, and “frank and very useful”. But she was clear about the huge gulf that still exists between Biden’s proposed $1.9tn package and the alternative posed by the 10 senators, which is less than a third in size:
Family members of Captain Sir Tom Moore are with him in hospital after he tested positive for Covid-19, Bedford hospital has said.
The 100-year-old charity fundraiser was admitted to hospital on Sunday, after being treated for pneumonia for some time and testing positive for the virus the week before last.
On Monday, Bedford hospital released a statement with the agreement of Moore’s daughters, Hannah Ingram-Moore and Lucy Teixeira, saying: “Bedford hospital continues to care for Captain Sir Tom Moore. At this time members of Captain Tom’s family are with him.
“We respectfully request that media give the family space and privacy and do not contact them directly so they can focus on their father, grandfather and father-in-law.”
The veteran’s family had confirmed his illness on Sunday, releasing a statement on Twitter that said he had needed additional help with his breathing and was being treated on a ward but not in ICU.
A spokesperson for the veteran’s family told the BBC that he had not yet received a Covid-19 vaccine because of the medication he has been taking for pneumonia:
Black Americans make up only 5.4% of Covid-19 vaccine recipients, CDC finds
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found only 5.4% of coronavirus vaccine recipients were black, in its first analysis of how vaccines were given out among different demographic groups in the first month of US distribution.
That is lower than the proportion of black people who are either residents of long-term care homes in the US (14%) or who work in the healthcare field (16%). Both were in the highest priority groups for immunisation.
However, the federal health agency emphasized its analysis was hampered by lack of data. While the 64 states and territories and five federal jurisdictions that undertook vaccination reported age and gender in nearly all cases, just over half of records included data on race or ethnicity.
“More complete reporting of race and ethnicity data at the provider and jurisdictional levels is critical to ensure rapid detection of and response to potential disparities in Covid-19 vaccination,” researchers wrote.
More than 97% of the data the CDC received contained information about age and 99.9% contained information on gender. However, just over half, 51.9%, of data contained an entry for race or ethnicity:
Many places in China to suspend religious gatherings
Many places in China plan to suspend religious gatherings during the upcoming Spring Festival holidays to control the coronavirus outbreak, the Global Times newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Authorities of Ninghai county, Ningbo of East China’s Zhejiang Province will temporarily close all religious venues and suspend all religious activities from 6 February, the newspaper reported.
Apart from Ninghai, Beijing, Chengdu of Southwest China’s Sichuan Province, and many other places across China have also ordered the suspension of all religious venues, according to the newspaper.
The Global Times is published by the ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily newspaper.
EU steps up guidance on non-essential travel from outside bloc
The European Union toughened its restrictions on visitors from outside the bloc on Monday, with travellers only allowed to enter freely from countries with very low numbers of cases and almost none of the more virulent variants.
Ambassadors for the bloc agreed the new measure for travel from non-EU countries, including Britain, at a meeting in Brussels, an EU diplomat told Reuters. Its copy outlined the following EU guidelines on non-essential travel:
EU countries are encouraged to grant access without restrictions, such as mandatory quarantines, only under strict criteria.
The visitor would have to come from a country with no more than 25 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people over 14 days, an infection rate lower than in all EU countries.
Travel curbs should also rapidly be reintroduced for countries where a high incidence of more infectious coronavirus variants is detected, the text says.
The agreement serves as a guideline for member states, which can make their own final decision on their specific border policies. Some EU countries, such as Germany, have imposed tougher restrictions, while Belgium has banned non-essential travel into or out of the country until March.
Last Thursday, the bloc excluded Japan from its list of countries able to visit the bloc without restrictions. The exemptions now include seven countries - Australia, China, New Zealand, Rwanda, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand, although China’s inclusion is dependent on China allowing in EU visitors.
First Covid vaccines arrive in South Africa
The South African president Cyril Ramaphosa hailed the arrival of the first doses of Covid-19 vaccine on Monday as a chance to “turn the tide” on a disease that has devastated the country.
Once testing of the batches is completed, the first shots will be given to health workers, who have been stretched during a second wave of infections and have been critical of the government for not securing supplies sooner.
Ramaphosa and other top officials were at the OR Tambo international airport to receive the 1 million shots of the AstraZeneca vaccine, produced by the Serum Institute of India (SII).
“The arrival of these vaccines contains the promise that we can turn the tide on this disease that has caused so much devastation and hardship in our country and across the world,” Ramaphosa said in an address to the nation.
South Africa has recorded the most Covid-19 infections and deaths on the African continent, at more than 1.4 million cases and over 44,000 deaths to date.
Since late last year, it has battled a more contagious virus variant called 501Y.V2 that has also been detected in countries in Europe, the Americas and Asia.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan.
As always, I can be found on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
The first vaccine doses have arrived in South African, where president Cyril Ramaphosa hailed their arrival on Monday as a chance to “turn the tide” on a disease that has devastated the country.
Meanwhile the European Union tightened its rules for visitors from outside the bloc, specifying that they would only be allowed in freely from countries with very few coronavirus cases and almost none of the more transmissible variants.
Here are the other key recent developments:
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Denmark, which has been under a tough lockdown since December, will reopen schools for the youngest children from next week.
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South African nurses have called on the government to ensure rural healthcare workers are able to access Covid-19 vaccines as the hard-hit country received its first batch of doses.
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The UK has reported a further 18,607 lab-confirmed coronavirus cases – the lowest daily total of new cases since 15 December, when 18,450 cases were recorded.
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Women made up nearly all of Italy’s job losses in the month of December, when the country’s unemployment level rose to 9.0% from 8.8% in November, national statistics bureau ISTAT said on Monday.
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Austria has announced it will relax its coronavirus lockdown from Monday next week, moving to a nighttime curfew and allowing non-essential shops and schools reopen while toughening border restrictions.
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Greece reported 543 new coronavirus cases on Monday, with almost half found in the Attica region.
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Germany’s military will send more than 20 doctors and nurses to Portugal, where hospitals are close to being overwhelmed as the country reports the world’s biggest seven-day rolling average of new daily cases per capita.
- Palestinians will receive an initial batch of 50,000 coronavirus vaccines by mid-February, when inoculations will begin in the West Bank and Gaza, their prime minister has announced.
- The variant of the coronavirus first discovered in the UK now represents half of infections in the Netherlands, according to the Dutch health minister Hugo de Jonge.
