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Summary
Here a summary of the latest key developments:
- Coronavirus vaccines from Pfizer and AstraZeneca are expected to be supplied to the UK as planned, despite the EU’s export controls and demands for British-manufactured jabs, after a discussion with EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen, the British Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove has said.
- Germany’s government threatened legal action against laboratories failing to deliver coronavirus vaccines to the EU on schedule, amid tension over delays to deliveries from AstraZeneca.
- The World Health Organization called on the UK to halt their vaccination rollouts after vulnerable people and healthcare workers have been inoculated. With many poorer countries struggling to access vaccine doses, the WHO argues this will ensure a “fair rollout”.
- French president Emmanuel Macron defended his decision to hold off on a third lockdown on Saturday, telling the public he had faith in their ability to rein in Covid-19 with less severe curbs even as a third wave spreads and vaccines are delayed.
- Five in six people in the UK aged 80 and above have now received the first dose of a coronavirus vaccine.
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About 130,000 people in Wales who are clinically extremely vulnerable are being asked to keep shielding until the end of March
- Colombia, Bolivia and Guatemala have secured a few million vaccine doses via the World Health Organization-backed COVAX mechanism.
- The US recorded half of its 26m total infections in past two months, with the country’s latest 13m cases recorded in just 64 days.
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Portugal has warned it has just seven vacant beds left in intensive care units set up for Covid-19 cases on its mainland.
- Health officials from the US state Maryland have confirmed a case of the more contagious South African coronavirus variant.
- The Australian state of South Australia has lifted its Covid-19 restrictions for travellers from the Sydney region, after
New South Wales reached two weeks without a locally transmitted case of the virus. - Cuba will tighten measures and require visitors to isolate at their own expense for several days until they have tested negative for coronavirus.
That’s all from me, I’m now handing over to my colleagues in Australia.
Updated
Germany threatens legal action over vaccine delivery delays
Germany’s government on Sunday threatened legal action against laboratories failing to deliver coronavirus vaccines to the European Union on schedule, amid tension over delays to deliveries from AstraZeneca, AFP reports.
“If it turns out that companies have not respected their obligations, we will have to decide the legal consequences,” economy minister Peter Altmaier told German daily Die Welt.
There has been growing tension in recent weeks between European leaders and the British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, which has fallen behind on promised delivers of its Covid-19 vaccine.
The company said it could now only deliver a quarter of the doses originally promised to the bloc for the first quarter of the year because of problems at one of its European factories.
Brussels has implicitly accused AstraZeneca of giving preferential treatment to Britain in the delivery of its vaccine, at the expense of the EU.
The EU briefly threatened to restrict vaccine exports to Northern Ireland by overriding part of the Brexit deal with Britain that allowed the free flow of goods over the Irish border. It backed down after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson voiced “grave concerns”.
AstraZeneca is not the only drugs company in the firing line.
Last week, Italy threatened legal action against US pharmaceutical firm Pfizer over delays to promised deliveries of its vaccine.
Top German officials are due to meet with the drugs manufacturers to thrash out the problems over the delays.
On Friday, the European Medicines Agency cleared the vaccine produced by AstraZeneca for use inside the EU, the third Covid-19 vaccine it has approved after Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
Updated
Colombia will receive up to an initial 4.4 million doses of coronavirus vaccines via the World Health Organization-backed COVAX mechanism, the government said on Saturday.
Reuters reports:
The Andean country will receive vaccines produced by Pfizer and BioNTech, as well as by AstraZenca via the scheme, president Ivan Duque said in a televised address.
“We have received information from the multilateral COVAX strategy indicating that Colombia has been ratified among 18 countries in which the administration of vaccines will begin,” Duque said.
Colombia is set to get 117,000 doses of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine in the first quarter of the year, according to a letter from COVAX published on Twitter by health minister Fernando Ruiz.
The country will also receive between 2.6 million and 4.3 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the letter said. Both vaccines require two doses per person.
Between 25% and 35% of the AstraZeneca vaccines will be delivered in the first quarter of 2021, with the remaining 65% to 75% expected to arrive in the second quarter.
So far, only the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been approved by Colombia’s food and drug regulator, INVIMA.
Almost 50 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been distributed in the US and nearly 30 million doses administered, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Saturday.
The amounts include the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines as of 6 a.m. ET, the agency said.
Compared to a CDC tally on Friday, the number of doses distributed increased by 716,350 and administered by almost 1.7 million, Reuters reports.
The agency said 24 million people had received one or more doses while 5.3 million received a second dose as of Saturday.
More than 3.5 million vaccine doses have been administered in long-term care facilities, the agency said.
US recorded half of its 26m total infections in past two months
The US has recorded over 26 million coronavirus infections since the pandemic began.
There country of about 328m people has recorded at least 26,012,880 total cases of coronavirus and at least 438,239 people have died from Covid-19 since the pandemic began, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
From the first case of Covid-19 in the US in January 2020, it took the nation 311 days, until 27 November 2020, to reach 13 million total Covid-19 cases, CNN reports.
It took the US just 64 days to reach the second 13 million cases.
South Australia lifts border ban
The Australian state of South Australia has lifted its Covid-19 restrictions for travellers from the Sydney region.
The change follows New South Wales reaching two weeks without a locally transmitted case of the virus. In Victoria, the state government has revealed figures that show it issued more than a million travel permits since virus border restrictions were imposed just over six weeks ago.
As of late Saturday 1,014,787 permits had been granted for travellers to enter Victoria, an average of almost fifteen permits for every minute of every day since restrictions were imposed on 16 December.
But while plenty of visitors are being granted permits to enter the state, authorities have detected evidence of virus fragments at six different locations, including the popular tourist towns of Cowes on Phillip Island, and Castlemaine in the northwest.
Fragments have also recently been found in wastewater at the satellite Melbourne suburb of Pakenham, rural Gisborne, Hamilton in the state’s southwest and the South Gippsland town of Leongatha.
The health department is urging residents and visitors to these locations to get tested if they have even mild symptoms.
On Saturday Victoria notched up 24 days since its last locally acquired case of the coronavirus. Meanwhile Victoria’s chief health officer will allow up to 30,000 people to attend the Australian Open in Melbourne each day, about half the usual attendance numbers.
The last players and participants still in the hotel quarantine system are expected to leave on Sunday.
Updated
Bolivian president Luis Arce said on Saturday that the country had reached a deal to receive some 1 million Covid-19 vaccine doses in February via the COVAX program backed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Gavi vaccine alliance.
This from Reuters:
The COVAX program is aiming to deliver 1.3 billion doses of approved vaccines to 92 eligible low- and middle-income nations in 2021, though it faces potential delays amid a global scramble for vaccines.
“In February we will receive almost a million vaccines. We are making progress, we have vaccines, we have hope, we will move forward,” Arce said in a televised message.
Bolivia, which has been trying to make up ground with vaccine deals as its hospitals strain under rising cases, received 20,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine this week to start inoculating high risk groups.
COVAX said earlier this month that it had agreements in place to access more than 2 billion doses.
Its suppliers include Pfizer and AstraZeneca.
French president Emmanuel Macron defended his decision to hold off on a third lockdown on Saturday, telling the public he had faith in their ability to rein in Covid-19 with less severe curbs even as a third wave spreads and the vaccine rollout falters.
Reuters reports:
From Sunday, France will close it borders to all but essential travel to and from countries outside the European Union, while arrivals from within the bloc will have to show a negative test. Large shopping malls will be shut and police patrols increased to enforce a 6pm curfew.
But Macron has stopped short of ordering a new daytime lockdown, saying he wants to see first if other measures will be enough to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
With 10% of cases now attributable to the more contagious variant first found in Britain, senior medics have recommended a new lockdown, and one opinion poll showed more than three quarters of French people think one is now inevitable.
The poll also showed falling public confidence in the government’s handling of the crisis.
Macron has also been under fire for rolling out vaccines at a slower pace than other big EU countries, and far slower than Britain or the United States.
France’s latest figures showed it had given just 1.45 million vaccine doses so far. Britain, by comparison, has recorded 8.4 million.
France’s number of Covid-19 patients in hospital stayed above 27,000 for a fifth straight day.
The rate of new infections is still lower than it was when the last lockdown was ordered in October, but hospitalisation rates are already comparable.
The public health authority said the number of Covid-19 patients in intensive care dipped slightly to 3,113.
In a sign of the pressure on hospitals, two critically-ill Covid sufferers were airlifted from Marseille to the western Brittany region on Friday.
Cuban authorities said on Saturday they will tighten measures against the spread of Covid-19, requiring tourists and others who visit the island to isolate at their own expense for several days until they have tested negative.
The Associated Press reports:
The announcement by Dr. Francisco Durán, Cuba’s director of epidemiology, came as the country announced 910 new infections of the new virus detected Friday, as well as three additional deaths.
Duran said that as of 6 February, arriving tourists and Cubans who live abroad will be sent to hotels at their own expense to wait for the results of a PCR test for the new coronavirus, which will be given on their fifth day in the country.
A similar measure was imposed in the spring, and apparently helped stem the spread of the virus.
Cubans returning home from abroad will be housed in other centers at government expense to await test results.Diplomats and some categories of foreign businesspeople will be allowed to isolate at home.
Cuba has recorded 25,674 infections with the new coronavirus and 213 deaths since March.
Cuba had eased restrictions in November, opening airports to tourist and others, but the number of infections detected has risen sharply so far this month.
The country’s GDP fell by 11% last year.
Custom officials at South Africa’s main international airport have seized hundreds of thousands of tablets of a drug some people claim could be a remedy against coronavirus, police said Saturday.
AFP reports:
The South African Police Service (SAPS) said in a statement that “tablets suspected to be ivermectin” worth six million rand (nearly $400,000) had been seized at Johannesburg’s OR Tambo international airport in the past two weeks.
Six suspects have been arrested, and charged with carrying unregistered medicine and importing drugs without a licence, the statement said.
“The unregistered medicine, which are mainly in tablet form, are believed to have been imported for sales purposes and would have been utilised in the treatment of the Covid-19 virus,” it said.
Ivermectin is an anti-parasitic agent that some people claim is a potential cure for the novel coronavirus.
Demand for the drug has surged as a result, even though scientists insist there is not yet enough evidence to promote it as a coronavirus remedy.
South Africa’s health products regulator tentatively approved the controlled use of ivermectin on humans this week, revoking a decision in December to block imports of the drug, which is not locally produced.
The ban had sparked outrage among doctors lobbying for more research into ivermectin and fuelled its underground trade.
Ivermectin is mainly used to kill parasites such as head lice on both animals and people, and has been widely distributed in sub-Saharan Africa since the 1990s to treat river blindness.
It is usually registered for veterinary use in South Africa but is not forbidden for humans.
Tourism to Costa Rica will likely stagnate this year at the sharply reduced levels of 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic, weighing on the economy of the Central American country, a top government official said on Saturday.
Reuters reports:
Tourism minister Gustavo Segura said Costa Rica will in 2021 probably receive about one-third of the 3,139,000 international tourists it had in 2019, on a par with last year, when some 1,011,000 foreign visitors arrived, official data shows.
In an interview, Segura said around 75,000 tourists came to Costa Rica in December, down from 327,000 a year earlier, underlining the challenge facing the popular tourist destination and the industry as a whole in Latin America.
“Though the figures are better than those of some competitor nations, many companies can’t get going again,” Segura told Reuters, noting that the extent of recovery would depend on how the pandemic developed and how vaccination efforts progressed.
Battered by the loss of tourists, the Costa Rican hotel and restaurant trade shrank by 40% last year, the central bank said.
In 2019, tourism represented 8.5% of gross domestic product and 9% of formal jobs in the country of 5 million people.
Segura projected that in 2021 it will only be worth around 3.5% of GDP and that the industry will shed about half the employment it generated, or about 100,000 jobs.
Costa Rica has to date registered 193,276 infections and 2,604 deaths linked to Covid-19.
Some five in six people in the UK aged 80 and above have now received the first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, the British health secretary Matt Hancock has revealed.
Hancock also announced that two thirds of those aged 75 to 79 have received their first jab, as the number of first doses administered in the UK surpassed 8.3 million.
The government appears to be on course to meet the target of getting the first dose to 15 million people in the top priority groups - including all over-70s - by 15 February.
In an update with the latest figures on Twitter, Hancock said: “THANK YOU to all involved in rolling-out the vaccine across the whole UK. We will get through this together.”
Government data up to 29 January shows of the 8,859,372 jabs given in the UK so far, 8,378,940 were first doses - a rise of 487,756 on the previous day’s figures, PA Media reports.
France reported 242 Covid-19 related deaths in hospitals on Saturday and said 192 people infected with the coronavirus were admitted into intensive care.
The health ministry also reported 24,392 new cases, up from 22,858 a day earlier.
On Friday, the country reported 820 further deaths.
In total, 27,242 Covid-19 patients are receiving treatment in hospital, and 75,862 people have died.
President Emmanuel Macron tweeted on Saturday: “I have confidence in us. The hours we live in are crucial. Let’s do everything to stop the epidemic together.”
Updated
Health officials from the US state Maryland have confirmed a case of the more contagious South African coronavirus variant, according to a press release from governor Larry Hogan’s office.
CNN reports:
The announcement comes after South Carolina identified the first known case of the Covid-19 variant in the US earlier this week.
The Maryland case “involves an adult living in the Baltimore metro region,” Hogan’s office said.
“The individual has not traveled internationally, making community transmission likely. Comprehensive contact tracing efforts are underway to ensure that potential contacts are quickly identified, quarantined and tested,” Hogan’s office added in its statement.
Updated
Guatemalan president Alejandro Giammattei said on Saturday his country expects to receive its initial Covid-19 vaccines from mid-February onward via the Covax mechanism backed by the World Health Organization (WHO).
It comes after repeated warnings from experts and the WHO that the world would not be able to return to normal unless poorer countries were equally included in vaccine distribution.
Dr Clare Wenham, assistant professor of global health policy at London School of Economics, told Sky News on Saturday: “If we want to return to global systems of trade and travel we need to make sure that the vulnerable globally are vaccinated.
“From an economic standpoint, to be able to relieve border controls and go back to some form of normalcy we need to make sure people around the world are vaccinated - so we don’t see these new variants created, so we are not risking bringing something new into the country which we might not have vaccine protection against.”
Sir Jeremy Farrar, a member of the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), has also warned that vaccinating “a lot of people in a few countries, leaving the virus unchecked in large parts of the world, will lead to more variants emerging”.
Tunisia has become the third country in Africa to register Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) said on Saturday.
Tunisian health ministry said the registration would be valid for one year, Reuters reports.
To date Sputnik V has been registered in Russia, Belarus, Algeria, Argentina, Bolivia, Serbia, Palestine, Venezuela, Paraguay, Turkmenistan, Hungary, the UAE, Iran and the Republic of Guinea.
Updated
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an order late on Friday that will require people to wear a mask while using any form of public transportation in the country.
The new rule will come into effect on Monday at 11:59 p.m.
A statement on the CDC website said:
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to surge in the United States, CDC is implementing provisions of President Biden’s Executive Order on Promoting Covid-19 Safety in Domestic and International Travel and will require the wearing of masks by all travelers into, within, or out of the United States, e.g., on airplanes, ships, ferries, trains, subways, buses, taxis, and ride-shares.
The mask requirement also applies to travelers in U.S. transportation hubs such as airports and seaports; train, bus, and subway stations; and any other areas that provide transportation.
Transportation operators must require all persons onboard to wear masks when boarding, disembarking, and for the duration of travel. Operators of transportation hubs must require all persons to wear a mask when entering or on the premises of a transportation hub.
The CDC said people can take their masks off briefly to eat, drink or take medication, to verify their identity to law enforcement or transportation officials, to communicate with hearing-impaired people, to wear an oxygen mask on an aircraft, or during a medical emergency.
Children under the age of 2, those who cannot safely wear a mask due to a disability, and some people who cannot safely perform their job while wearing a mask are exempt from the order.
Thousands of US tourists are flying to Mexico for holiday escapes, CBS News reports, despite the country’s raging battle with coronavirus.
Thousands of U.S. tourists are flocking to Mexican resort destinations, including Cancun and Tulum, as other countries maintain strict pandemic-related travel restrictions. Mexico now has the third highest COVID mortality rate in the world. pic.twitter.com/DjdC1qolRj
— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 30, 2021
On Friday, Mexico reported 1,434 new deaths, taking the country’s total official fatalities from Covid-19 to 156,579, the world’s third highest death toll after the US and Brazil.
Updated
Germany is ordering vaccines for 2022 in case regular or booster doses are needed to keep the population immune against variants of Covid-19, health minister Jens Spahn said on Saturday, amid growing frustration in Europe at the slow pace of vaccination.
Reuters reports:
Speaking at an online town hall of healthcare workers, Spahn defended the progress made on procuring and administering vaccines, saying 2.3 million of Germany’s 83 million people had already received a dose.
European governments have faced criticism over supply and production bottlenecks as vaccine makers AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna have all announced cuts to delivery volumes just as they were expected to ramp up production.
Germany – Europe’s largest economy – has been crippled by a second lockdown introduced in November, and many in the general public are looking enviously at the faster pace of vaccination in Britain, Israel and the US.
“We are now actually ordering further vaccines for 2022, to have at least some on hand,” Spahn said.
“Nobody knows if we’ll need a booster … With production capacities now being extended, we’ll order vaccines as a precaution. If we don’t need them, good, but if we do then they’ll be available.”
Peter Tschentscher, the mayor of Hamburg, wrote on Twitter on Saturday afternoon: “The Federal Chancellery has just announced that the promised deliveries of Moderna vaccines will now also be reduced. How is one supposed to plan vaccinations like that?”
Updated
About 130,000 people in Wales who are clinically extremely vulnerable are being asked to keep shielding until the end of March.
The BBC reports:
The group – many of whom have underlying health conditions – were originally advised to stay at home and isolate from others during the first wave last year.
This was paused in August, but resumed before Christmas amid a rise in cases linked to the new virus variant.
The Welsh government has extended the current shielding period from 7 February until 31 March. Guidance for those shielding elsewhere in the UK has yet to be updated.
All those deemed clinically extremely vulnerable are treated as a priority for the UK’s vaccination programme.
The UK’s foreign minister Dominic Raab said on Saturday the EU had reassured him it did not want to disrupt supplies of Covid-19 vaccines to the UK after the bloc said it planned to control exports.
Raab made the comments after what he described as a “constructive conversation” with European commission vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis.
“I was reassured the EU has no desire to block suppliers fulfilling contracts for vaccine distribution to the UK,” Raab said on Twitter.
“The world is watching and it is only through international collaboration that we will beat this pandemic.”
Updated
UK and EU agree 'a reset' after NI vaccine fiasco
Coronavirus vaccines from Pfizer and AstraZeneca are expected to be supplied to the UK as planned, despite the EU’s export controls and demands for British-manufactured jabs, after a discussion with EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen, the British Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove has said.
Gove said the EU recognises it “made a mistake” in its widely condemned attempt to override part of the Brexit agreement on Northern Ireland, to prevent shipments of vaccine entering the UK, in a move that risked imposing a hard border with the republic.
Gove said:
The prime minister [Boris Johnson] was very clear, we’ve entered into contractual arrangements with AstraZeneca and Pfizer and we expect those arrangements to be honoured.
And President von der Leyen was clear that she understood exactly the UK government’s position, so we expect that those contracts will be honoured, we expect that vaccines will continue to be supplied.
We’re confident that we can proceed with our vaccine programmes exactly as planned.
I’ve spoken to the European Commission vice-president Maroš Šefčovič about this and we both agreed that we need a reset, that we need to put the people of Northern Ireland first.
Updated
Life around the world will not return to normal for two or three years based on the rate of the current vaccination rollout, it has been warned – but there are early signs jabs are reducing cases in the UK.
Sky News reports:
Dr Clare Wenham, assistant professor of global health policy at London School of Economics, said the Covid-19 pandemic will not be over until the world’s population is protected.
At the moment, the data is showing it’s going to be 2023-24 before the global vaccines are distributed to everybody,” she said.
“That’s a long time. And distributing some now might be able to get us back to normal life sooner.”
Even once the UK population had been vaccinated, restrictions such as border controls would continue to exist because of the threat posed by resistant coronavirus variants being brought in from outside, she said.
The UK is leading in Europe in vaccines given per capita, followed by Malta, Iceland, Serbia, and Denmark.
Updated
Italy reported 421 coronavirus-related deaths on Saturday, down from 477 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections fell to 12,715 from 13,574.
Some 298,010 tests for Covid-19 were carried out in the past day, against a previous 268,750, the health ministry said.
Italy’s overall Covid-19 death toll now stands at 88,279, the second-highest toll in Europe after the UK’s and the sixth-highest in the world.
Patients in hospital with Covid-19 – not including those in intensive care – stood at 20,098 on Saturday, compared with 20,397 a day earlier, Reuters reports.
A further 132 people were admitted to intensive care units, down from 148 the day before. The total number of intensive care patients stood at 2,218, down slightly from 2,270 on Friday.
When Italy’s second wave of the epidemic was accelerating quickly in the first half of November, hospital admissions were rising by about 1,000 per day, while intensive care occupancy was increasing by about 100 per day.
Updated
A further 17 people have died after testing positive for Covid-19 in Northern Ireland.
PA Media reports:
This brings the toll in the region to 1,831 as hospitals remained under pressure on Saturday, caring for 713 Covid-positive patients, including 69 in ICU.
While strict lockdown measures remain in force across Northern Ireland, the number of new cases continues to rise each day.
On Saturday, the department of health confirmed another 455 positive cases.
There have been 3,841 new cases across the last seven days and 103,534 across the pandemic to date.
Meanwhile, more than 220,000 doses of coronavirus vaccines have been administered so far.
Updated
The UK government said a further 1,200 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Saturday, bringing the country’s official death toll to 105,571.
On Friday, the UK reported 1,245 deaths, and a week earlier, on 23 Januray, the daily death toll was 1,348.
Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies for deaths where Covid-19 has been mentioned on the death certificate, together with additional data on deaths that have occurred in recent days, show there have now been 122,000 deaths involving Covid-19 in the UK.
The government also said that, as of 9am on Saturday, there had been a further 23,275 lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK, which compares to Friday’s 29,079 positive tests.
It brings the total number of cases in the UK to 3,796,088.
Updated
Portugal has warned it has just seven vacant beds left in intensive care units set up for Covid-19 cases on its mainland.
A surge in infections in the country has prompted the authorities to send some critical patients to Portuguese islands.
Reuters reports:
Health Ministry data showed that, out of 850 ICU beds allocated to Covid-19 cases on its mainland, a record 843 beds were now occupied.
The nation of 10 million people has an additional 420 ICU beds for those with other ailments.
The ministry said the number of daily infections was 12,435, dipping from Thursday’s record, while there were 293 deaths.
Portugal, which has so far reported a total of 12,179 Covid-19 deaths and 711,018 cases, has the world’s highest seven-day rolling average of cases and deaths per capita.
I’m Jedidajah Otte and will be taking over for the next few hours. Feel free to get in touch if you have comments or updates to flag, I’m on Twitter @JedySays, or you can email me.
Summary of key updates
I’ll be handing over to my colleague shortly, but before I go, here’s a quick summary of key updates in the coronavirus pandemic over the past few hours:
- Early data from two new coronavirus vaccine trials has indicated that they have less efficacy at protecting from the South African variant of coronavirus. Clinical trial data showed that the vaccines from Novavax and Johnson & Johnson had significantly less efficacy at preventing coronavirus in trial participants in South Africa, where the new variant is widespread, compared with countries where the variant is less common.
- A further 681 people who tested positive for the coronavirus in England have died, taking the total number of confirmed deaths in hospitals to 71,226, NHS England has said.
- People arriving in Iran from Europe will be required to self-quarantine for two weeks after producing two negative coronavirus tests, a health official said on Saturday. Travellers from other regions, including neighbouring countries, will have to have tested negative before arrival in the country.
- The Vatican museums, including the Sistine Chapel, will reopen on Monday after being closed for 88 days due to the coronavirus pandemic, the longest closure since the second world war.
- Brussels will publish a revised regulation to potentially block vaccine exports out of the EU on Saturday, after an international outcry over its initial plans to erect an export border for doses on the island of Ireland.
- Pakistan has secured 17m doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, according to Reuters. It will receive roughly 6m doses in the first quarter of 2021, and the rest in the second quarter.
Pakistan has secured 17m doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, according to Reuters, which cites the country’s government health adviser.
It will receive roughly 6m doses in the first quarter of 2021, and the rest in the second quarter, special assistant to the prime minister on National Health Services Faisal Sultan said on Twitter.
Pakistan signed up last year to the Covax facility coordinated by the World Health Organization to support lower-income countries in accessing vaccines.
Updated
Earlier, the World Health Organization called for countries to halt their vaccination rollouts after vulnerable people and healthcare workers have been inoculated. With many poorer countries struggling to access vaccine doses, the WHO argues this will ensure a “fair rollout”.
You can read the full story here:
Dubai is set to roll out China’s Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine on Sunday, Reuters are reporting.
I’ll bring you more on this when I have it...
The total number of people who have received the coronavirus vaccine in England has reached 7,701,203.
The vast majority of these, 7,253,305, were first doses, and 447,898 were second doses.
This marks an increase of 436,360 first doses on the previous day’s figures, and a further 1,526 second doses.
The highest number of people have been vaccinated in the Midlands, 1,427,102, followed by the south-east with 1,222,319.
The south-west has given the fewest doses, with 877,526.
As of yesterday, 11.8% of the UK population had been vaccinated.
Updated
681 further deaths reported in England
A further 681 people who tested positive for the coronavirus in England have died, taking the total number of confirmed deaths in hospitals to 71,226, NHS England has said.
The youngest patient who died was aged 18, and the oldest was 101. The dates of their deaths range from 11 November 2020 to 29 January 2021.
All except 23 people, who were aged 47 to 92 years old, had known underlying health conditions.
The deaths are broken down by region as follows:
East of England - 93
London - 136
Midlands - 134
North East & Yorkshire - 57
North West - 88
South East – 155
South West - 18
Updated
The director general of the World Health Organization has warned about the dangers of “vaccine nationalism”, saying that the coronavirus vaccines could cause greater inequality.
Speaking at the Agenda Davos closing panel to discuss vaccine equity yesterday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “There is now the real danger that the very tools that could help to end it [coronavirus], vaccines, may exacerbate those same inequalities”.
In a tweet, he added: “If Covid-19 continues to circulate and vaccine nationalism causes us to lose trust in international collaboration, business operations & supply chains will remain disrupted & we will all pay the price in terms of a protracted economic recovery.”
Pleased to address the #DavosAgenda closing panel to talk about #VaccinEquity. #COVID19 has exposed and exploited the inequalities of our world. There is now the real danger that the very tools that could help to end it, vaccines, may exacerbate those same inequalities. https://t.co/jMV4quHOOE pic.twitter.com/eNxcFrVJ7G
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) January 29, 2021
Updated
The Vatican museums, including the Sistine Chapel, will reopen on Monday after being closed for 88 days due to the coronavirus pandemic, the longest closure since the second world war.
The public will be able to visit the museums from Monday to Saturday, but must pre-book tickets and will be given timed entry slots.
The museum’s curators used the time to carry out maintenance and refurbishment, including carefully dusting 5th-century frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. The chapel usually attracts six million visitors each year.
Rome’s Colosseum and the Forum were also set to reopen on Monday, although they are to remain closed on weekends.
Updated
Police are investigating the painting of a face mask onto the figure of a mysterious giant carved into a hillside in the south of England.
The Long Man of Wilmington, a 235-foot high chalk outline holding a white stick in each hand, has legal protections as an ancient monument. While its exact origins are not clear, archaeologists date it to the Anglo-Saxon or medieval times.
The mask has since been removed, according to a Reuters photographer who visited the scene.
“Whilst this damage may have been perpetrated for humour or some other reason, the actions that have been taken are unacceptable,” said Tom Carter, a sergeant with Sussex police. “The Long Man of Wilmington is protected by law as a Scheduled Ancient Monument for its historical significance.”
Updated
Brussels will publish a revised regulation to potentially block vaccine exports out of the EU on Saturday, after an international outcry over its initial plans to erect an export border for doses on the island of Ireland.
The European commission’s newly drafted implementing regulation is expected to be both unveiled and come into force on Saturday with officials insisting they would now “ensure that the Ireland-Northern Ireland protocol is unaffected”.
The original plans sought to avoid leaving a backdoor open for vaccines to be exported into the UK from the EU through Northern Ireland, as part of the commission’s new export register mechanism.
You can read the full piece here:
Two new Covid-19 vaccines less effective against South African strain, early data suggests
Data from two coronavirus vaccine trials has indicated that they are less effective against the South African variant of coronavirus.
Clinical trial data showed that the vaccines from The vaccines from Novavax Inc and Johnson & Johnson were significantly less effective at preventing coronavirus in trial participants in South Africa, where the new variant is widespread, compared with countries where the variant is less common.
Novavax reported that results from mid-stage trials on Thursday that showed its vaccine was 50% effective overall at preventing Covid-19 among people in South Africa. In late stage results from the UK, the vaccine was up to 89.3% effective.
On Friday, Johnson & Johnson said that a single shot of its vaccine was 66% effective, judging by a large scale trial which spanned three continents. In the US, which recorded its first cases of the South African variant this week, efficacy reached 72%, but it was just 57% in South Africa, where the new variants constituted 95% of the coronavirus cases in the trial.
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The former permanent secretary in the Department for Exiting the European Union, Philip Rycroft, has warned that EU’s attempt to invoke article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol risks undermining it.
“It was wholly disproportionate to what they were seeking to achieve - it was unnecessary. But it bears all the hallmarks for a bureaucracy that is under huge pressure, acting before it was thinking straight,” he told Sky News.
“This is an indication there will be lots of stress points in our relationship with the EU in the weeks and months ahead. That’s the reality we face now we’re not a member state.”
When asked if it lowered the standard for invoking the article, Rycroft responded: “There is of course a risk of that. There are concerns in Northern Ireland, there are concerns amongst British politicians, about how the rules are applied.”
If you’re new to this story, this post should bring you up to speed.
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The UK’s health secretary, Matt Hancock, has spoken to his counterpart in Northern Ireland, Robin Swann, over the supply of coronavirus vaccines after the EU imposed export controls.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “The health secretary and minister of health for Northern Ireland had a constructive discussion on the supply of Covid-19 vaccines.”
It comes amid the ongoing dispute over vaccine controls.
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Italy has extended by a further fortnight the suspension of flights from Brazil, the health minister, Roberto Speranza, said, Reuters reports.
I signed a new order pushing back the blockage of flights from Brazil and the ban to enter Italy to all those who have been through the country in 14 previous days,” Speranza said on Facebook, adding Italy kept “an extremely prudent approach” on the matter.
Rome had announced it would suspend flights from Brazil on 16 January until the end of the month, in response to the new coronavirus variant detected in the South American country.
The suspension would be until 15 February, and can “possibly be renewed” a spokesperson for the minister said.
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Stricter restrictions for Europeans arriving in Iran
Travellers to Iran from Europe will be required to self-quarantine for two weeks after testing negative upon arrival, a health official said, Reuters reports.
Travellers from other regions, including neighbouring countries, will have to have tested negative before arrival in the country, Alireza Raisi, spokesman for the national coronavirus taskforce, said on state TV.
Raisi said travellers arriving from Europe should have negative test results, would be tested again and would have to self-quarantine even if their test is negative, state media reported.
Previously, people coming from Europe were only required to test negative.
He did not say when exactly the new measures will go into effect, saying only “from now on”.
Meanwhile, health officials said the Iranian-manufactured Barekat vaccine was found to be effective against the highly contagious coronavirus variant that emerged in Britain.
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Algeria symbolically launched its vaccination campaign on Saturday in the town where the country’s first case of infection with the coronavirus was confirmed in March, Associated Press reports.
A 65-year-old retiree got the first shot of Russia’s Sputnik-V vaccine at a hospital in the town of Blida, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) southwest of the capital, Algiers, in the presence of health authorities.
“All measures have been taken to ensure a good rollout of the vaccination campaign on the national territory,” Health Minister Abderrahmane Benbouzid said.
Vaccines will start being administered in all regions of the country on Sunday. The campaign is set to start with health care workers, the elderly and other vulnerable populations.
Algeria received its first shipment of vaccines Friday at the Boufarik military airport, west of Algiers. Authorities did not indicate how many arrived, though the government had said it had ordered a first batch of 500,000 doses.
The government said it is also negotiating acquisition of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Algeria has lost at least 2,884 lives to the coronavirus pandemic and confirmed more than 106,000 cases.
Algerians have been frustrated by repeated broken promises of an imminent Covid vaccine rollout. Concerns are also growing about Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, convalescing for more than a month in an undisclosed location in Germany after suffering Covid side effects.
Summary of recent developments
If you’re just joining us, here’s a summary of key developments in the coronavirus pandemic over the past few hours:
- The WHO has called for countries to halt their vaccinations after healthcare workers and vulnerable people have been inoculated, in order to ensure a “fair” vaccine rollout around the world.
- More than 1,000 have died from coronavirus in the UK each day of January, on average. This makes the month the worst in the UK’s coronavirus pandemic so far.
- A man has been charged after a suspicious package was sent to a vaccine production plant in Wales. Anthony Collins, 53, was charged with “dispatching an article by post with the intention of inducing the belief it is likely to explode or ignite”, although the police said the device was “not viable”.
- Northern Ireland has strongly condemned the EU’s threat to introduce vaccine border controls along the island of Ireland, with first minister Arlene Foster calling the move “absolutely incredible act of hostility towards those of us in Northern Ireland”. The EU U-turned on the issue late last night.
- Indonesia and Malaysia have recorded their highest daily increases in coronavirus cases so far. Indonesia recorded a further 14,518 cases, taking its total to more than 1 million. Malaysia reported a further 5,728, taking its total number of infections to 209,661.
- Vietnam has approved its first coronavirus vaccine, the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. It was approved on Saturday morning amid the worst outbreak the country has seen during its highly successful response to the pandemic.
More information has emerged about Vietnam approving its first coronavirus vaccine, the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.
Vietnam has so far had a highly successful response to the coronavirus pandemic, recording just 1,767 cases and 35 deaths since the disease was first detected a year ago out of population of 98 million people, according to Reuters. Its success has been attributed to mass testing and a centralised quarantine programme.
However, the country is currently tackling its worst outbreak of the virus yet, recording 208 new cases after the discovery two locally transmitted cases in the northern province of Hai Duong on Thursday.
On Saturday, Vietnam locked down two remote districts in the coffee-growing central highlands province of Gia Lai after at least five people there tested positive for the virus, Reuters said, citing the government.
The virus has spread to Hanoi, where the ruling party is holding its five-yearly congress to select a new leadership. According to state media, congress has been cut short and will now end on Monday, although the reason for this has not been confirmed.
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If you spot something that you think we should be reporting on in this blog, you’re very welcome to drop me a message on Twitter. I won’t always be able to reply, but will do my best! Tips and pointers are always much appreciated, so thank you in advance.
Dozens of sex workers took to the streets in Malawi this week in protest against “targeted police brutality” following new Covid-19 restrictions.
The sex workers said that new coronavirus measures, including an 8pm curfew on bars, with customers required to take away drinks, and a ban on socialising between 9pm and 5am, had led police to target them.
“Because of the new Covid-19 laws, police have taken advantage of the law by coming and knocking in our rooms and beating us. We haven’t heard of a case where they went to married people’s homes to knock at their doors and beat them but because they know that we are found in the rooms they are coming there,” Zinenani Majawa, national coordinator of the Female Sex Workers Association, told the Guardian.
You can read the full story here:
Austrian police have fined 96 foreigners at the ski resort of St Anton am Arlberg for breaching public health rules on entering the country and the national lockdown.
The mayor of St Anton, which is one of Austria’s most popular resorts, said dozens of young tourists from across Europe had recently come to his town despite the lockdown restrictions in place. Ski lifts are open, but hotels in the area are closed to tourists.
Fifteen police officers were involved in the operation, and those caught in violation of the rules face fines of €2,180 (around £1,920).
Police said that “Britons, Danes, Swedes, Romanians, Germans, Australians, Irish people and Poles were checked and fined.”
Austria, which has a population of just under 9 million people, has recorded 413,208 cases and 7,703 deaths from coronavirus.
The country has been in its third national lockdown since Boxing Day, with non-essential shops closed. However, there have been some controversial loopholes in the restrictions. Regular skiers cannot stay overnight at a resort, but despite this, ski teacher training courses were allowed to be held for European visitors, and saw a number of coronavirus clusters emerged at the courses.
In St Antons, some travellers appear to have got round restrictions by fraudulently claiming to be looking for work. Tourist accommodation is only available to business travellers, and St Anton’s mayor Helmut Mall has said new arrivals there have registered a local address saying they are looking for work even though there are no jobs available.
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Man charged after suspicious package sent to Welsh vaccine production plant
A man has been charged after a suspicious package was sent to a coronavirus vaccine production plant in north Wales.
Kent Police said it was “not a viable device”, but it appears to have been intended as an explosive. Anthony Collins, 53, was charged with “dispatching an article by post with the intention of inducing the belief it is likely to explode or ignite”.
All staff had to be evacuated from the Wockhardt site in Wrexham, when it arrived on Wednesday morning as the package was investigated.
Wockhardt, a global pharmaceutical and biotechnology company, is involved in the production of the Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine. The firm provides fill-and-finish services - the final stage of production where the vaccine is put into vials
Collins was remanded in custody to appear at Medway magistrates court on Saturday, according to police.
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Malaysia records highest daily increase in coronavirus cases
Malaysia has reported its largest daily increase in coronavirus cases, recording 5,728 new cases and 13 further deaths.
The new cases takes the total of infections in the country to 209,661, and the number of fatalities from the pandemic to 746.
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Countries around the world have tackled coronavirus restrictions differently, diverging over their approach issues including to socialising, schools and travel.
From France to Brazil, Italy to China, our reporters look at how different countries have tackled the pandemic - and with what success.
When will the vaccine rollout start to impact the spread of coronavirus? One expert said that in the UK, it will be at least “a few more weeks yet”.
Virologist Dr Chris Smith said the vaccine should “start to put a barrier in the way of the virus” by “mid-to-late February”.
He said this was based on the fact that it takes “two to three weeks” after having a vaccine for immunity to start to kick in, plus “a further time to consolidate that”.
“Yes we’re making enormous strides, yes we’re getting the vaccine into lots of people, but we won’t expect to see it really begin to bite, I would say, for a few more weeks yet because as those numbers climb, and as people’s immunity builds, that’s when we’re really going to start to put a barrier in the way of the virus,” he told BBC Breakfast.
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Indonesia reports highest daily rise in cases
Indonesia has reported its highest ever daily increase in coronavirus cases, with a further 14,518 cases recorded. This takes its total number of recorded cases to just over 1.06 million.
A further 210 people lost their lives to the virus, taking the country’s national death toll to 29,728.
Experts have said that people should not delay getting one of the coronavirus vaccines currently being used in the UK because they want to wait for a specific type to become available later this year.
Prof Linda Bauld, professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh, told BBC Breakfast: “I don’t think people should be swithering about which jab to get, it’s not like choosing between different consumer products, for example. I think we should recognise that if we’re offered an appointment, we should take it up.”
Novavax and Janssen vaccines are not likely to be approved in the UK until “probably midway through the year” virologist Dr Chris Smith said.
Smith also suggested that there may be benefits to getting a first jab from one type of vaccine, and a second jab from another type.
“The trials haven’t been done yet, but as far as we know, and based on what we know about vaccines in general, were you to come along with a second different vaccine, the second time, actually this might not be such a bad thing,” he told BBC Breakfast.
“This is actually dubbed heterologous vaccination, a long word, but it basically means vaccinating you with two different products,” he said. “And there’s evidence this may result in a more resilient, more powerful immune response in the long run.”
However, according to Smith, the plan remains for people in the UK to get two doses of the same vaccine.
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Norway will start to gradually ease lockdown measures in its capital region from 3 February, with some shops and recreational activities able to reopen from then onwards, the health minister, Bent Høie, has announced.
The region had been under stricter measures following the outbreak of the new, more contagious variant of coronavirus, first discovered in the UK. It marked the first time that all non-essential shops had been closed.
“Infections are going down continuously in Norway and we now have a better overview over the outbreak and spread,” Høie said at news conference, although he said that situation around Oslo remained uncertain.
Stores that are not in shopping centres will be allowed to reopen on Wednesday, as will restaurants. However, they cannot serve alcohol.
Restrictions on schools will also be eased gradually, allowing for more classroom teaching and bigger groups of students, although this will depend on local conditions.
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Northern Ireland urges Johnson to replace protocol after EU vaccine supply threat
The first minister of Northern Ireland has urged Boris Johnson to replace the Northern Ireland protocol, after conflict with the EU over vaccine supplies entering its borders.
On Friday, Brussels announced a plan to establish border controls on vaccine doses moving into Northern Ireland from the Republic, over concerns about shortages of the vaccine within the EU.
However, the EU later U-turned after outrage in London and Dublin at the plan.
Speaking on BBC’s Today Programme, Arlene Foster called the move an “absolutely incredible act of hostility towards those of us in Northern Ireland”, adding: “It’s absolutely disgraceful and I have to say the prime minister now needs to act very quickly to deal with the real trade flows that are being disrupted between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”
Foster reiterated calls for Johnson to enact article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol over the shortage of some food. The protocol allows either the EU or UK to suspend aspects of its operations if either side thinks it is causing “economic, societal or environmental difficulties”. You can read more about what Article 16 is in this explainer.
“We’ve been asking the PM to deal with the flow problems and, indeed since 1 January, we’ve been trying to manage along with the government the many, many difficulties that have arisen between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and there are actions he could take immediately,” she said. “There is great unrest and great tension within the community here in Northern Ireland so this protocol that was meant to bring about peace and harmony in Northern Ireland is doing quite the reverse.”
“The protocol is unworkable, let’s be very clear about that, and we need to see it replaced because otherwise there is going to be real difficulties here in Northern Ireland,” she added.
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More than 1,000 people in the UK have died of Covid each day of January
More than 1,000 people in the UK have died of coronavirus on average each day in January, making it the deadliest month of the pandemic so far by the government’s official records.
The news comes as the UK marks the first anniversary of its first coronavirus death today.
As of Thursday, a total of 28,171 deaths had occurred in the UK between 1 and 28 January. The figures refer to the government’s count of Covid deaths occurring within 28 days of a positive test.
This easily tops the previous highest death toll, which was seen at the height of the first wive in April. Then, the equivalent death toll stood at 24,070 deaths, an average of 802 deaths a day.
You can read the full story here:
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A further 12,321 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in Germany, according to data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases.
This takes the country’s total recorded number of cases to 2,205,171.
A further 794 people lost their lives to the virus, taking Germany’s death toll to 56,546.
Sir John Bell, part of the team who developed the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, has suggested that the French president, Emmanuel Macron, was trying to lower demand for the vaccine when he claimed it was “quasi-ineffective” in people over the age of 65.
“I’m not sure where he got that from,” Bell said on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme. While Bell acknowledged that the study had only trialled the vaccine on small numbers of elderly people, he said that the data “still pointed toward a very highly effective vaccine”.
He said other studies had proved that “elderly people responded just as well in other age groups” and that “there’s really persuasive evidence that this is a protective vaccine in those populations”.
“I suspect this is a bit of demand management from Mr Macron,” he said. When pressed to say whether he thought Macron was trying to reduce demand for the vaccine, Bell said: “Well, if he didn’t have any vaccine the best thing you could do is reduce demand.”
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Stop vaccinations after health workers and vulnerable, WHO says
The World Health Organization is urging its member states to halt coronavirus vaccinations after their health workers and vulnerable groups have been inoculated, to ensure a “fair” vaccine rollout around the world.
WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris said it was “morally” and “economically” the right thing to do.
“We’re asking countries, once you’ve got those groups, please ensure that the supply you’ve got access to is provided for others,” she told BBC Breakfast. “While that is morally clearly the right thing to do, it’s also economically the right thing to do.
“There have been a number of very interesting analyses showing that just vaccinating your own country and then sitting there and saying ‘we’re fine’ will not work economically. That phrase ‘no man is an island’ applies economically as well.”
“We in the world, we’re so connected and unless we get all societies working effectively once again, every society will be financially effected,” she added.
Research suggested earlier this week that the world’s 84 poorest countries will not achieve mass immunisation from coronavirus until at least 2024 and some may never get there, due to a lack of vaccine doses.
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Russia has reported a further 512 deaths in the last 24 hours, taking its official death toll to 72,697.
Government authorities also recorded 19,032 new cases of coronavirus, taking Russia’s official national tally to 3,832,080.
Hello everyone, I’m Molly Blackall, taking over the blog in London. I’ll be bringing you all the key updates in the coronavirus pandemic around the world over the next few hours.
If you spot something you think we should be reporting on in this blog, please feel free to drop me a message on Twitter. Tips and pointers always much appreciated!
The former Northern Ireland secretary Julian Smith has weighed in to the row over the EU’s threat to override part of the Northern Ireland Protocol under its coronavirus vaccine controls, calling it “almost Trumpian”.
The Tory MP told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
Years have been spent trying to ensure goods will flow freely and there will be no hard border and last night the EU pulled the emergency cord without following any of the processes that are in the protocol if one side wants to suspend it.
And they did that, in my view, without anywhere near the understanding of the Good Friday Agreement, of the sensitivity of the situation in Northern Ireland, and it was an almost Trumpian act.
The relationships are complex, we need to spend much, much more time, much, much more money and much, much more resources in getting this relationship right. The EU cocked up big time last night, but we all need to work in the interests of preserving Northern Ireland.
It is not just a backdoor for goods going to Britain, it is a very sensitive place and we have a duty of care between the EU and the UK to preserve no hard border and stability in Northern Ireland.
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The Associated Press has a story on the ways the vaccine rollout in France is facing challenges in the country’s poorest region:
Samia Dridi, who was born, raised and works as a nurse in Saint-Denis, fears for her impoverished town, recalling how the coronavirus cut an especially deadly path through the diverse area north of Paris, a burial place for French kings entombed in a majestic basilica.
Dridi and her sister accompanied their frail 92-year-old Algerian-born mother to a vaccination centre for the first of two shots to protect against Covid-19 days after it opened last week for people over the age of 75.
While red tape, consent requirements and supply issues have slowed France’s vaccination rollout nationwide, the Seine-Saint-Denis region faces special challenges in warding off the virus, and getting people vaccinated when their turn comes.
It is the poorest region in mainland France and had the highest rise in mortality in the country last spring, largely due to Covid-19. Up to 75% of the population are immigrants or have immigrant roots, and its residents speak some 130 different languages. Health care is below par, with two to three times fewer hospital beds than other regions and a higher rate of chronic illnesses. Many are essential workers in supermarkets, public sanitation and health care.
Studies have since shown that some people are more vulnerable than others, notably the elderly, those with other long-term illnesses and the poor, often living on the edges of mainstream society, such as immigrants who don’t speak French.
Dridi, 56, a nurse for more than three decades, feels relieved there is currently “no significant evolution” of the virus in her town. But she doesn’t forget what happened when the pandemic first hit.
“We had entire families with Covid,” she said.
Many have multiple generations living together in small apartments, something experts say is an aggravating factor common in the region.
Despite those grim memories, local officials grapple with special challenges getting out word about vaccines to a population where many don’t speak French, lack access to regular medical care and, like in much of France, distrust the vaccine’s safety.
Next month, a bus will travel through the region, notably visiting street markets, to provide vaccination information. In addition, about 40 “vaccination ambassadors” who speak several languages are to be trained to reach out, starting in March, about vaccinations as well as “fake news” surrounding them.
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A patient’s unique response to the coronavirus has got experts calling it an “immunological unicorn”.
At a secret lab in Australia, where researchers walk through three negative-pressure chambers before entering the submarine-like structure, authorities are trying to understand the unique response.
Virologist Stuart Turville says the immunological response they found in this one case is remarkable.
But this guy’s response is 100 to 1,000-fold that. His response is that good.
To put it in context, we are eight or nine months out since he was infected. And he still ranks in the top 1% of responders, so what that means is if we could ever bottle a vaccine that could mimic his response, you’d want to do it.
I would say that we’re going to see him responding just as well probably a year out, and maybe after about two years we might start to see some response decay.”
You can read more on this remarkable story here:
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Taiwan reports first death since May
Taiwan’s government has reported the island’s first death from Covid-19 since May, as it battles a small and unusual outbreak of locally transmitted cases.
According to a Reuters report, a woman in her 80s with underlying health conditions died after being infected with the coronavirus as part of a domestic cluster connected to a hospital, the health minister, Chen Shih-chung, said today.
Taiwan took early and effective steps to control the virus, with the large majority of its 909 confirmed cases in people who caught Covid-19 abroad. The new outbreak has infected 19 people since the start of the month, centring on a hospital in the northern city of Taoyuan.
Chen, reporting four new cases from the hospital cluster, announced the death, bringing to eight the total number of deaths in Taiwan from the pandemic.
He said the woman, who had a history of kidney problems and diabetes, had died late Friday after developing symptoms including a high fever and subsequently tested positive for Covid-19.
The woman lived in the same household as a nurse who worked at the hospital and was infected there, according to a breakdown of the infections provided by Chen.
The government has instituted measures to control the hospital outbreak, including putting more than 4,000 people in quarantine and cancelling large-scale public events ahead of February’s week-long lunar new year holiday.
Taiwan’s case numbers remain low compared to many other countries, with 78 people now being treated in hospital. Taiwan has so few cases the government holds news conferences to announce details of each new one.
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Bereaved families may be asked to pay for any fines if a funeral service in the UK is in breach of coronavirus restrictions, the Press Association is reporting.
The National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD) has told the BBC it is considering suggesting to its members that they ask families in some areas to guarantee to pay the cost of any potential fines.
The NAFD reportedly added an alternative option could be to arrange funerals with no family members in attendance.
It comes a week after a funeral director from Mansfield, Nottinghamshire was fined £10,000 for holding a service in breach of coronavirus restrictions.
Under England’s lockdown rules, only 30 people are allowed to attend a funeral. However, Hertfordshire police said a service held in Welwyn Garden City on Thursday 21 January had close to 150 people in attendance.
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Vietnam’s ruling Communist party says it will cut short a key five-yearly congress amid a new Covid-19 outbreak in several northern provinces that was detected earlier this week.
The congress will end on Monday, a day earlier than previously scheduled, state media reports. The report does not say why the congress will end early.
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Pets may need to be vaccinated, experts say
Pets may have need to be vaccinated against the coronavirus as well, to prevent the continued spread of the virus, according to experts.
Experts from University of East Anglia, Earlham Institute and the University of Minnesota say they have found evidence that transmission of the virus from pet to humans “poses a significant long-term risk to public health”.
It is not unthinkable that vaccination of some domesticated animal species might … be necessary to curb the spread of the infection.
Molecular biologist Larisa Labzin told the Daily Telegraph that Australia could be well positioned to lead the world on animal vaccinations.
The health of our animals and what diseases they have will ultimately impact us, either by wiping out our food sources or by making us sick. We should be looking into this everywhere in the world but especially in Australia because our community transmission is low.
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From late on Monday, masks will be required on interstate transportation and at transit hubs in the United States, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an order late Friday.
The CDC said the mask mandate, effective from 1 February at 11.59pm EST, also covers ride-share vehicles and subways and makes not wearing a mask as instructed a violation of federal law.
“Requiring masks on our transportation systems will protect Americans and provide confidence that we can once again travel safely even during this pandemic,” said the 11-page order signed by Marty Cetron, the director for CDC’s division of global migration and quarantine.
The order does not apply to private cars or commercial trucks being driven by a sole operator.
The CDC directive follows an order from the president, Joe Biden, on 21 January directing agencies to “immediately take action” to require masks on transportation and at transit hubs.
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Pfizer has informed Panama that shipments of Covid-19 vaccine will resume to the Central American country the week of 15 February, the Panamanian foreign minister says.
Pfizer will deliver 450,000 doses in the first quarter of the year, the foreign minister, Erika Mouynes, says.
Panama’s first batch of Pfizer vaccines on 20 January was fewer than expected due to global delays by the company.
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Here is a quick snapshot of Covid stats in Australia today:
30/01/2021 2:30pm
— C🍩VID Australia (@COVID_Australia) January 30, 2021
🇦🇺 Total 28,806🔺6 HQ
🔬Tests 12.9m ↑ 34k
👨👩👧👦 CT 4,270
🔍Inv 6
🔴Deaths 909
🔵Vent 0
🟣ICU 0
🟡Hosp 13🔻7
🟠Active 72🔻12
🟢Recovered 26,045 ↑ 9
VIC🔺1 HQ
NSW🔺2 HQ
QLD-0
WA🔺3 HQ
SA-0
TAS-0
ACT-0
NT-0
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An interesting story out of Seattle last night, where a failed freezer led to people getting vaccinated in the middle of the night.
People turned up in their pyjamas at the Northwest and Montlake campuses of the UW Medical Center and the Swedish Medical Center, after a freezer malfunction meant they needed to administer over 1,300 vaccines by 5.30am local time.
By 12.30am, all the appointment slots had been taken.
Word of the unexpected doses spread on social media, and a line of hopeful vaccine recipients snaked out the clinic door and through a parking lot at UW Medical Center-Northwest.
You can read more on the story here:
Colombia has reached an agreement with Moderna Inc and Sinovac Biotech Ltd for the delivery of their vaccine, and intend to begin mass vaccination next month.
President Ivan Duque said the country’s government aims to have at least one million people vaccinated by the end of March.
The country had previously announced agreements to secure 10m doses each of vaccines developed by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE, and AstraZeneca PLC, as well as 9m doses of a vaccine developed by Janssen, the pharmaceutical wing of Johnson & Johnson.
It also has secured 20m doses of vaccines via the Covax mechanism backed by the World Health Organization.
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And that’s all from Australia’s acting chief medical officer.
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Kidd is asked whether the European decisions could impact Australia’s import dates – particularly given the involvement of European Union leaders in those decisions.
Minister Hunt is keeping in contact with the country leads of both Pfizer and AstraZeneca on a day-to-day basis to ensure that we continue to have certainty about the offshore production, but also the shipping of the two vaccines to Australia.
We have good news in that from March we will have the onshore production of the AstraZeneca vaccine beginning to roll out vaccines for the Australian population, subject to approval by the TGA.
Obviously Australia is reaching out to colleagues right across the world to ensure that we do have continuity of supply as these vaccines start coming towards Australia.
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Australia's acting chief medical officer says vaccine shipments on target
Prof Michael Kidd has given a very long response to the decision overnight from the European Union to impose export restrictions on vaccine manufacturers. He insists though that Australia remains on track to receive its allotted shipments.
Kidd says Australia’s health minister, Greg Hunt, has “reconfirmed” that “Australia’s current vaccine schedule is on track” and had spoken to the heads of both AstraZeneca and Pfizer.
As set out earlier this week, the government remains on track for a late February commencement of the Pfizer vaccine rollout, commencing with the availability of approximately 80,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine per week.
In addition, the rollout of the AstraZeneca international doses is on track for an early March rollout subject to TGA approval and final shipping confirmation ... the latest guidance of AstraZeneca is for supply of approximately 1.2m doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from offshore during March. And they remain committed to the full supply of 3.8m offshore doses and we will reconfirm shipping dates once global surveys are confirmed.
It is projected that 2m domestically produced doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine will be supplied in late March. These projections already take into account the global supply challenges for both Pfizer and AstraZeneca, and at the European regulatory proposals. All deliveries are subject to global production and shipping processes. The projections which we have are cautious and conservative. Our guidance remains for a late vaccine commencement, a late February commencement, with rollout to priority populations in accordance with the national vaccination strategy, and with all Australians who seek to be vaccinated having received their vaccines by the end of October.
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Kidd says Australian health officials will be meeting with colleagues in New Zealand tomorrow before providing a recommendation to the government on whether to extend the current 72-hour pause of no-quarantine flights from NZ.
The current pause expires at 2pm tomorrow.
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Australia’s acting chief medical officer, Prof Michael Kidd, is speaking in Canberra.
He says Australia has today marked “the longest stretch of no cases of Covid-19 in our country since March last year”.
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The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, posted a video of himself walking slowly through his offices on Friday and talking for about 13 minutes straight, saying he is recovering from Covid-19.
López Obrador has not been holding his famous hours-long daily press conferences for the first time since he took office on 1 December 2018, and he evidently misses the opportunity to talk.
The president, who has been in isolation since testing positive for the coronavirus over the weekend, said: “The doctors tell me I am getting through the critical stage. I am doing well.”
He has been receiving treatment at his apartment in the colonial-era National Palace, where he also has offices.
López Obrador said that Mexico will import the AstraZeneca vaccine from India and said that the government expects China’s CanSino vaccine to submit test results soon.
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Virus fragments found in three more Victorian towns
Virus fragments have been found in wastewater at three more towns in Victoria, including the popular holiday destinations of Cowes and Castlemaine.
AAP has the story:
The fragments were found at Castlemaine, Cowes and Pakenham on 27 January.
The department of health is urging residents and anyone who has visited these areas from 25 to 27 January to get tested if they have symptoms of the virus.
It says the virus detections at each of the locations were weak, and could be due to people who have recovered from Covid-19 continuing to shed the virus.
Viral fragments were also recently detected in wastewater in Gisborne, Hamilton and Leongatha.
People who were in Gisborne from 24 to 26 January, in Hamilton from 25 to 27 January or in Leongatha from 17 to 19 January are also being urged to get tested.
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We’re waiting on Australia’s chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, who is due to speak at 2.30pm.
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Mexico’s health ministry on Friday reported 16,374 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections and 1,434 additional fatalities, bringing the total in the country to 1,841,893 cases and 156,579 deaths.
The government says the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
It comes as the country plans to import about 870,000 doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine from India in February, as well as producing it locally, the president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, said on Friday.
Mexico and Argentina have a deal with AstraZeneca to produce its vaccine for distribution in Latin America, with financial support from the foundation of the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.
In a video broadcast on social media, Lopez Obrador stressed that some percentage of their vaccines will be made locally:
We are also getting AstraZeneca vaccines, apart from the agreement we have with them – these vaccines are being made here in Mexico – we will bring AstraZeneca from India.
Meanwhile, deliveries of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine to Mexico would “very probably” resume on 10 February, Lopez Obrador said, after global delivery delays by the US company.
Mexico was expecting about 1.5m doses from Pfizer, he noted. Mexico is trying to secure as much vaccine supply as possible amid delivery delays and a surge in cases.
Lopez Obrador, speaking publicly for the first time since revealing on Sunday he had Covid-19, said Mexico would also receive 870,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine in February.
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Still in Australia, the Australian Capital Territory has recorded another day of zero positive cases.
The ACT currently has no active cases, leaving its total at 118, and it recorded 267 tests in the past 24 hours.
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The Australian Open has reported another day of zero positive cases, with the number of total primary close contacts remaining at 255.
As of 11pm yesterday, 383 of the AO cohort were still in quarantine, after 459 exited yesterday morning.
In total, there have been eight positive cases since the cohort arrived in Australia.
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Victoria records no community cases but one in hotel quarantine
Victoria has recorded no new locally acquired cases, but recorded a new case in hotel quarantine.
A woman aged in her 20s tested positive overnight, and is a recently arrived international airline crew member, currently in quarantine.
This is the 24th consecutive day where Victoria has recorded no new locally acquired cases of coronavirus.
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Vietnam has approved the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Vietnam’s health ministry announced it had approved the AstraZeneca vaccine for domestic inoculation, the first coronavirus vaccine to be approved in the country, which is battling its biggest Covid outbreak yet.
The prime minister, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, has said Vietnam must try to obtain the vaccine in the first quarter to ensure people’s health.
Vietnam has kept its tally to a low 1,739 infections and 35 deaths.
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Western Australia reopens borders to Queensland and Victoria
From next week, Queenslanders and Victorians will be allowed into Western Australia quarantine-free.
People from those states currently in quarantine will be able to leave when their respective states of origin transition to the new levels.
New South Wales will remain low risk and travellers from that state will be permitted to enter subject to 14 days quarantine and Covid testing.
The WA premier, Mark McGowan, has thanked those who quarantined under the restrictions.
It’s definitely not how you would have wanted to spend your time in WA.
McGowan said “pending no further outbreaks”, WA’s controlled interstate border would reclassify Queensland as very low risk from 12.01am on Monday.
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WHO expert team visits hospital in Wuhan
The World Health Organization-led team of experts investigating the origins of Covid-19 yesterday visited a hospital in Wuhan, which was the first to treat patients in the early days of the outbreak.
The hospital visit was the team’s first in the field after two weeks in quarantine, and a WHO spokeswoman said the group’s contacts in Wuhan would be limited to visits organised by their Chinese hosts due to health restrictions.
A WHO spokeswoman told a briefing yesterday the team won’t be free to communicate with the community, doing only what was organised as part of the field trip.
The team will go out but they will be bussed to wherever, so they won’t have any contact with the community. They will only have contact with various individuals that are being organised as part of the study.
Extremely important 1st site visit. We are in the hospital that treated some of the first known cases of COVID-19, meeting with the actual clinicians & staff who did this work, having open discussion about the details of their work. https://t.co/yDEPedtC11
— Peter Daszak (@PeterDaszak) January 29, 2021
The team plans to visit labs, markets and hospitals during its remaining two weeks in Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first identified in late 2019.
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Coachella music festival cancelled by local authorities
In some disappointing news, the Coachella music festival has been cancelled.
The festival was due to be held in southern California in April this year, but was cancelled by local authorities on Friday because of the pandemic.
The order was issued by the Riverside county public health officer, Dr Cameron Kaiser, “based on concerns of a fall resurgence of Covid-19 both within the county of Riverside and worldwide”:
If Covid-19 were detected at these festivals, the scope and number of attendees and the nature of the venue would make it infeasible, if not impossible, to track those who may be placed at risk.
Coachella was also cancelled last year because of the pandemic.
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European Union approves AstraZeneca vaccine for people over 18
European Union medical regulators have approved the AstraZeneca and Oxford University Covid-19 vaccine for people over the age of 18, making it the third approved vaccine by the EU.
The AstraZeneca vaccine demonstrated an efficacy of around 60% in the trials on which the decision was based, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said in a statement.
The EMA executive director, Emer Cooke, said the decision expanded the EU’s arsenal to combat the pandemic.
With this third positive opinion, we have further expanded the arsenal of vaccines available to EU and EEA member states to combat the pandemic and protect their citizens.
The AstraZeneca vaccine is administered via two injections into the arm, the second between four and 12 weeks after the first.
The EU last year agreed to buy up to 400m doses of the vaccine, and Australia has bought 53m doses.
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Queensland reports another day of zero cases
Queensland has also gone another day with zero new cases, with the Australian state only having six active cases at the moment.
Saturday 30 January – coronavirus cases in Queensland:
— Annastacia Palaszczuk (@AnnastaciaMP) January 29, 2021
• 0 new cases
• 6 active cases
• 1,309 total cases
• 1,760,009 tests conducted
Sadly, six Queenslanders with COVID-19 have died. 1,287 patients have recovered.#covid19 pic.twitter.com/9P4wBOPNcp
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Australian government to hold talks with WHO about vaccine supplies
Australia’s government will hold talks with the World Health Organization to ensure the vaccine supply ordered from overseas companies is delivered on time.
The government frontbencher Darren Chester says his fellow ministers are working hard to ensure the shipments aren’t affected:
Our health minister, Greg Hunt, who I think has done a terrific job in managing the health response at a federal level to Covid-19, has had conversations today with our foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, who’s going to do representations to the World Health Organization to make sure we’re still on track.
It comes after the European Union imposed export controls on vaccines manufactured in Europe to protect its own supplies.
Australia has ordered 1.2m doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from Europe in March, before local production ramps up.
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NSW records no new cases
New South Wales has recored zero new locally acquired cases to 8pm last night.
Two cases were recorded in overseas travellers, brining total positive cases to 4,912.
There were 10,504 tests performed in the state yesterday, a drop from the previous day’s 11,897.
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Thanks Michael and good morning everyone, I hope you’ve been enjoying your Saturday. There’s a fair amount of news making the rounds, so let’s get stuck in.
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With that, I will hand you over to my colleague Mostafa Rachwani.
Irish prime minister Micheál Martin has welcomed the European Union’s decision not to invoke the safeguard clause in the Brexit Northern Ireland Protocol, having earlier expressed his concern to Brussels over initial plans to do so.
As I’ve already mentioned, the EU on Friday abruptly reversed course on a plan to use emergency Brexit measures to restrict exports of Covid-19 vaccines through the Irish border to the United Kingdom after it sent shockwaves through Belfast, London and Dublin.
Martin’s foreign minister, Simon Coveney, also welcomed the move and said lessons should be learned. Here’s what he has said about the decision on Twitter:
EU Com statement tonight confirming NI Protocol Art 16, safeguard clause, will not be triggered.
— Simon Coveney (@simoncoveney) January 29, 2021
Welcome news, but lessons should be learned; the Protocol is not something to be tampered with lightly, it’s an essential, hard won compromise, protecting peace & trade for many. pic.twitter.com/QLKpfhR9Yt
EU performs U-turn on Northern Ireland vaccine border controls
The European Union has performed an abrupt U-turn after it moved to trigger a Brexit deal clause to establish border controls on doses moving into Northern Ireland from the Republic.
Just hours after the decision, the European Commission said it had reconsidered their decision after pressure from the UK and Ireland. EU sources said the attempt to put controls on vaccines on the island of Ireland was “an error” but the crisis highlighted the growing political furore over vaccine supply.
Read the full story from Daniel Boffey in Brussels and Kim Willsher in Paris:
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Victorian government to allow crowds of 30,000 at Australian Open
Crowds of 30,000 will be allowed during the early stages of the Australian Open, the Victorian government has confirmed.
A week out from the beginning of the grand slam tournament, the state’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton, has signed off on allowing crowds of 30,000 to attend the early stages of the tournament.
On Saturday Victoria’s sports minister, Martin Pakula, said the tournament would see about 390,000 spectators over its two weeks, about 50% of the usual average.
Rod Laver Arena will have incredible atmosphere, not that different to the atmosphere we’ve seen at all the Opens in the years past. It will not be the same … but it will be the most significant international event with crowds that the world has seen in many, many months.
During the finals, Pakula said there would be crowds of 12,500 during the day session and 12,500 during the night sessions.
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Reuters reports that Brazilian health regulator Anvisa said on Friday that AstraZeneca Plc had applied for full regulatory approval for its Covid-19 vaccine.
The submission, the first of its kind in Brazil, was made by the federally funded Fiocruz Institute, which will manufacture the British vaccine locally.
A spokeswoman for AstraZeneca, whose vaccine is already approved for emergency use in Brazil, confirmed the submission.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who says he won’t take any COVID-19 shot, is under pressure for overseeing a slow and patchy vaccine rollout, just as a brutal second wave of infections gathers momentum.
The AstraZeneca vaccine is the central pillar of the federal government’s vaccine plan.
It has ordered material to make up to 100 million shots, which will be manufactured by Fiocruz.
However, the submission does not solve Brazil’s vaccine headache. A shipment of active ingredients needed to make the British vaccine locally has been repeatedly delayed, and has still not left China.
It remains unclear when it will arrive. Meanwhile, AstraZeneca is facing widespread problems in meeting demand for its vaccine in markets around the world.
For the time being, Brazil is reliant on a Chinese vaccine, developed by Sinovac Biotech Ltd, and 2 million ready-to-use AstraZeneca shots imported from India earlier this month to inoculate its 210 million people.
French president Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine appeared not to be effective for people over 65 years of age.
Speaking to reporters only hours before the European Medicines Agency (EMA) recommended the vaccine for adults of all ages, Macron also questioned Britain’s decision to delay the second dose of Covid vaccines to inoculate more people.
Macron said there was “very little information” available for the vaccine developed by the British-Swedish company and Oxford University.
“Today we think that it is quasi-ineffective for people over 65,” he told the reporters, his office confirmed to AFP.
“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.
Macron said he was awaiting the EMA’s verdict - which came later Friday - and also that of France’s own health authority “because they have the numbers”.
The French expert decision on the vaccine is expected at the start of next week, according to sources close to the health authority.
“I don’t have any data, and I don’t have a scientific team of my own to look at the numbers,” Macron acknowledged.
Addressing the UK’s vaccination strategy of stretching the time between first and second doses in order to give the protection afforded by the first dose to the maximum number of people, Macron said “the objective is not to have the largest possible number of first doses”.
In an attempt to speed up its vaccine rollout, UK health chiefs have delayed second doses for up to 12 weeks.
“When you have all the health agencies and the manufacturers who are telling you that for it to work you have to have two injections with a maximum of 28 days between the two, as is the case with Pfizer/BioNTech, and you have countries that have a vaccination strategy of only giving one injection, I am not sure that it’s totally serious,” said Macron.
“Scientists tell you that we accelerate mutations when you only give one injection because people are less well covered and therefore the virus adapts.
“We lie to people when we say ‘you are vaccinated’. You have a first dose of a vaccine that is made up of two,” he added.
Meanwhile, Germany’s vaccine commission on Friday maintained its advice against using AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccines on older people.
“The reason is because there is currently insufficient data on the effectiveness of the vaccines on people above 65 years old,” said the commission known as STIKO.
In more vaccine news revealed overnight in Australia, a single dose vaccine made by the US company Johnson & Johnson, has shown efficacy against the coronavirus, giving complete protection against hospitalisation and death.
The vaccine is one of six backed by Operation Warp Speed in the US. Dr Anthony Fauci, director for the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease and in charge of the US response to Covid under the Biden administration, said it was an “absolutely spectacular result”.
Read the full story here:
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Coronavirus fragments have been detected in wastewater at three Victorian towns, with residents urged to get tested if they have any symptoms.
Remnants of the virus were detected in Gisborne in the Macedon Ranges on Tuesday, Hamilton in the southwest on Wednesday and Leongatha in south Gippsland on 19 January.
The Department of Health says the results were unexpected because there were no confirmed cases in these communities at the time.
The government is urging anyone who lives in or has visited Gisborne from January 24 to 26, Hamilton from January 25 to 27 or Leongatha from January 17 to 19 to get tested if they have any symptoms.
There are 95 wastewater sites being tested at least weekly for viral fragments.
The minister for veterans affairs and defence personnel, Darren Chester, is speaking on the ABC now. He’s been asked about the European Union’s export control measures, and again confirms the government, through foreign minister Marise Payne, has been raising the issue with EU officials.
These conversations around the supply of vaccines have been happening for months. The cabinet has, without giving away cabinet conversations, cabinet has been meeting and discussing the issue of the vaccine since the middle of last year.
As I understand it, the conversations are still occurring, but the latest advice I’ve received from the HealthMinister and as late as yesterday ... was that the rollout is expected to occur towards the end of February and we will start with the most vulnerable Australians first, as you would expect, and I think Australians, rather than looking to find fault in the vaccination program, Australians can be confident that the steps they’ve taken, the steps state and federal governments have taken together have kept us safe. We are in a strong position as a nation because of the work the community has done, that governments have done.
Victoria has now gone 24 days with no new cases of community transmission of the coronavirus.
Yesterday there were 0 locally acquired cases and 1 case in hotel quarantine reported. It has now been 24 days since the last locally acquired case. 13,702 test results were received - thank you for getting tested.
— VicGovDHHS (@VicGovDHHS) January 29, 2021
More later: https://t.co/2vKbgKHFvv#COVID19Vic #COVID19VicData pic.twitter.com/e9aoFtrWFm
There has been not shortage of criticism of the European Union’s decision to place export control on vaccine’s produced on the continent.
After the decision was announced overnight, the World Health Organisation labelled it part of a “very worrying trend” that could jeopardise the global supply chain for vaccines.
Mariangela Simao, the WHO’s assistant director for access to medicines and health product, said:
It is not helpful to have any country at this stage putting export bans or export barriers that will not allow for the free movement of the necessary ingredients that will make vaccines, diagnostics and other medicines available to all the world”.
Similarly the United Kingdom has blasted the move after the EU established controls on the export of Covid vaccines from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland.
A spokesman for Downing Street said:
The UK has legally-binding agreements with vaccine suppliers and it would not expect the EU, as a friend and ally, to do anything to disrupt the fulfilment of these contracts.”
Welcome to the Guardian’s coronavirus liveblog.
The European Union’s decision to place export controls on Covid-19 vaccines produced on the continent has potentially dramatic repercussions for Australia.
Overnight the EU took the dramatic step of introducing new export restrictions which give it final say on whether vaccines, including those produced by pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and AstraZeneca, can leave Europe.
The decision could impact the 10m doses of the Pfizer vaccine Australia is due to receive this year. Australia was not included in a list of more than 120 countries exempted from the control.
On Friday the health minister, Greg Hunt, confirmed Australia was making representations to both the EU and World Health Organisation over the EU’s threats.
The EU’s decision comes after vaccine manufacturer AstraZeneca revealed to EU officials last week it would cut deliveries of its vaccine by 60% in the first quarter due to production problems.
- French prime minister Jean Castex has acknowledged the country’s Covid situation is “worrying” but there is a last chance to avoid a third national lockdown that would be economically damaging.
- The crisis over vaccine shortages in the EU has erupted into a full-scale diplomatic row after Brussels triggered a Brexit deal clause to establish border controls on doses moving into Northern Ireland from the Republic.
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Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has announced stricter restrictions on travellers in response to new, likely more contagious variants of Covid - including reportedly suspending airline service to Mexico and all Caribbean destinations until 30 April.
- The German government has agreed on the introduction of unprecedented and drastic travel restrictions – effectively banning travellers from the UK, Portugal and Ireland from entering the country.
- The EU’s medicines regulator has authorised AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine for use in adults throughout the bloc. It is the third Covid vaccine given the green light by the European Medicines Agency, after those made by Pfizer and Moderna.
- The pace of the Covid pandemic has slowed in every region of the world for the second week in a row, an AFP tally up to Thursday shows, with an average of 11% fewer new cases per day, or 564,300, compared to the previous week.
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