This blog is now closed. You can find all of our coronavirus coverage at the link below:
Michael Gove minister says no final decision on the domestic uses of certification will be announced until 7 June at the earliest, when MPs return to Westminster from a week-long recess. He stressed it might not be introduced in time for the planned fourth stage of the roadmap, from 21 June.
Gove was asked to carry out a review of the potential for certification three months ago, when Boris Johnson announced his roadmap to reopening the economy.
Confirmation of people’s vaccine and testing status – most likely through the NHS app – was initially envisaged as a way of allowing many
Argentina posts record daily rise in Covid cases
Argentina reported a record one-day number of new Covid-19 cases of 41,080 on Thursday, amid a second wave of infections that has made the country one of the hardest hit in the world, pushing the local health care system to its limit.
The nation of 45 million inhabitants has so far registered a total 3,663,215 cases and 76,135 deaths, according to official data, making it one of the countries with the most deaths per capita along with neighbouring Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil.
Argentina began a strict lockdown for nine days on Saturday to get the virus under control. But the rollout of its vaccination program has been slower than promised by the centre-left government of the president Alberto Fernandez.
Current lockdown measures include a suspension of in-person school classes, a nightly curfew and take-out-only restaurant service.
The Covax global vaccine-sharing programme said on Thursday it needs $2bn in additional funding by the beginning of June in order to boost coronavirus inoculation programmes in lower-income countries, AFP reports.
“We need an additional $2bn to lift coverage ... up to nearly 30%, and we need it by 2 June to lock in supplies now so that doses can be delivered through 2021, and into early 2022,” the mechanism’s organisers – which include the World Health Organization and the Gavi alliance – said in a statement.
“If the world’s leaders rally together, the original Covax objectives – delivery of two billion doses of vaccines worldwide in 2021, and 1.8 billion doses to 92 lower-income economies by early 2022 – are still well within reach,” the statement said.
“But it will require governments and the private sector to urgently unlock new sources of doses, with deliveries starting in June, and funding so we can deliver.”
Covax said it has already delivered 70 million vaccine doses to 126 countries, but faces a shortfall of 190 million at the end of June because of the “severe impact on Covax’s supply in the second quarter of this year ... [from] the terrible surge of the virus in India”.
India’s Serum Institute is the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer by volume, producing 1.5bn doses a year even before the coronavirus pandemic hit.
Even though Covax will have larger volumes available later in the year through the deals it has secured with several manufacturers, “if we do not address the current, urgent shortfall the consequences could be catastrophic,” the organisers warned.
Covax welcomed the vaccine pledges made so far by countries such as France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden and the United Arab Emirates.
The United States has promised to supply around 80 million doses – the largest donation from a single country – but has so far not said how the jabs would be distributed or which countries would receive them.
Updated
Matt Hancock is under mounting pressure to explain why the UK government failed to protect care home residents at the outset of the Covid pandemic, as he sought to salvage his reputation after Dominic Cummings accused him of lying.
The health secretary claimed for the first time it “wasn’t possible” to test all care home residents for Covid before they were discharged from hospital last March, because the testing capacity was not yet available.
But the shadow social care minister, Liz Kendall, said that explanation “simply doesn’t stack up”.
“There were over 530,000 tests carried out in the UK by 20 April, yet they couldn’t test 25,000 people discharged from hospitals to care homes, after we saw it sweep through care homes in Italy, France and America?” she said. “The reality is, they wanted to free up the beds and they didn’t prioritise older people.”
She accused Hancock, who previously claimed to have thrown a “protective ring” around care homes, of changing his story to “wriggle out” of responsibility.
My colleague Aubrey Allegretti has the story:
Shipping Covid-19 vaccines to Africa is not just a moral duty but it is also in Europe and the world’s interest in order to prevent the resurgence of new virus variants, the French president Emmanuel Macron said in Rwanda.
Macron said France was on track to deliver 30 million Covid-19 vaccination doses to Africa by year-end, that Germany would also deliver 30 million doses and that collectively the European Union would deliver more than 100 million doses to Africa this year.
“To help Africa get vaccinated ... is first of all a duty of solidarity, and it’s also quite simply ...in the interest of all European countries, all the countries in the world,” said Macron during a visit to a vaccination centre in Kigali on the sidelines of a state visit.
He said that if all countries did not get vaccinations, the virus will continue to spread and develop new variants which then in turn may reappear in countries that have already vaccinated their populations.
“Therefore this strategy is not just a moral duty, but a health requirement,” Macron said.
The Covax facility, backed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), aims to secure 2 billion vaccine doses for lower-income countries by the end of 2021.
Updated
The first winner of Ohio’s first $1 million Vax-a-Million vaccination incentive prize was driving home when she received a call about the good news from the state governor Mike DeWine, AP reports.
“A whirlwind,” Abigail Bugenske, 22, said on Thursday morning during a news conference. “It absolutely has not processed yet. I am still digesting it — and I like to say that it feels like this is happening to a different person. I cannot believe it.” Bugenske said she plans to donate to charities but then invest most of it.
The winner of a full college scholarship was eighth grader Joseph Costello of Englewood near Dayton. “Very excited,” Costello said as he sat between his parents, Colleen and Rich, during the virtual news conference. Although it’s a long way off, Joseph said he’s thought about Ohio State or Miami of Ohio for college.
Bugenske said she received the Moderna vaccine as soon as she was eligible, long before the lottery was announced. The Costellos said they were already vaccinated and had planned to have their children vaccinated by the end of the month, but the lottery announcement inspired them to move those appointments up.
During a scheduled visit to Cleveland, the US president Joe Biden said, “Ohio has a new millionaire! I tell you what, who wouldathunk it, a million bucks for getting a vaccine? But it’s working.”
More than 2.7 million adults signed up for the $1 million prize and more than 104,000 children aged 12-17 entered the drawing for the scholarship, which includes tuition, room and board, and books. Four more $1 million and college scholarship winners will be announced each Wednesday for the next four weeks.
DeWine, a Republican, announced the program May 12 to boost lagging vaccination rates.
The Ohio Lottery conducted the first drawing Monday afternoon at its draw studio in Cleveland using a random number generator to pick the winners ahead of time, and then confirmed the eligibility of the ultimate winner.
Participants must register to enter by phone or via the Vax-a-Million website. Teens can register themselves, but parents or legal guardians must verify their eligibility. The names of entrants who don’t win will be carried over week to week. The deadline for new registrations is just before midnight on Sunday.
“I know that some may say, DeWine, you’re crazy! This million-dollar drawing idea of yours is a waste of money,’” the governor said when he announced the incentive. But with the vaccine now readily available, the real waste, “is a life lost to Covid-19,” the governor said.
The concept seemed to work, at least initially. The number of people in Ohio aged 16+ who received their first dose jumped 33% in the week after the state announced the lottery, according to an Associated Press analysis.
But the same review also found that vaccination rates are still well below figures from earlier in April and March.
More than 5.2 million people in Ohio had at least started the vaccination process as of Monday, or about 45% of the state. About 4.6 million people are done getting vaccinated, or 39% of the state.
Nationally, more than 165 million Americans have started the vaccination process, or about nearly 50% of the population. More than 131 million are fully vaccinated, or nearly 40%.
Vax-a-Million is open to permanent Ohio residents who have received either the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine or their first part of the two-dose Pfizer or Moderna vaccination.
DeWine’s proposal inspired similar vaccine-incentive lotteries in Colorado, Maryland, New York state and Oregon.
In Colorado, the Democratic governor Jared Polis said the state will have a weekly lottery for five residents to win $1 million to incentivise vaccinations. Colorado is setting aside $5 million of federal coronavirus relief funds that would have gone toward vaccine advertising for five residents to win $1 million each.
Africa needs at least 20m doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine within six weeks if those who have had their first shot are to get the second in time, the WHO said on Thursday.
“Africa needs vaccines now,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa. “Any pause in our vaccination campaigns will lead to lost lives and lost hope.”
The WHO statement underlined the importance of respecting the recommended interval of eight to 12 weeks between doses to ensure a recipient’s prolonged 81 per cent protection rate.
“In addition to this urgent need, another 200m doses of any WHO Emergency Use Listed Covid-19 vaccine are needed so that the continent can vaccinate 10% of its population by September 2021,” the statement added.
As of 26 May the continent had registered more than 4.7m cases of coronavirus with nearly 130,000 deaths attributed to the virus.
Updated
The United States called on Thursday for the World Health Organization to carry out a second phase of its investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, with independent experts given full access to original data and samples in China, Reuters reports.
The US president Joe Biden ordered aides to find answers to the origin of the virus that causes Covid-19, saying on Wednesday that US intelligence agencies are pursuing rival theories potentially including the possibility of a laboratory accident in China.
“It is critical that China provides independent experts full access to complete, original data and samples relevant to understanding the source of the virus and the early stages of the pandemic,” the US mission to the UN in Geneva said in a statement.
My colleague Peter Beaumont has put together this explainer on what we know so far about the animal host and lab leak theories:
Up to three-quarters of new UK Covid cases are thought to be caused by the variant first detected in India, as the reported number more than doubled to almost 7,000, Matt Hancock said on Thursday.
The variant, known as B.1.617.2, is now dominant in the UK and has been linked to a rise in cases in hotspots around the country. Data released on Thursday by Public Health England (PHE) shows 6,959 cases have been confirmed so far in the UK, up from 3,424 the week before.
Meanwhile, experts said the link between Covid cases and hospital admissions had been greatly weakened but not broken. Speaking in the Commons on Thursday, the health secretary said Covid cases were now at their highest level since 12 April, with 3,180 reported in the UK on Wednesday, but thanks to vaccinations the “link from cases to hospitalisations and to deaths is being severed”.
But experts say the link is not yet broken because only 44% of adults have received both Covid jabs and the vaccines do not offer 100% protection against hospitalisation. “You can see that in Bolton but you can see [it] most clearly in Scotland,” said Prof Christina Pagel, director of UCL’s clinical operational research unit.
The full story is here:
Good evening from London. I’m Lucy Campbell, I’ll be bringing you all the latest global developments on the coronavirus pandemic for the next few hours. Please feel free to get in touch with me as I work if you have a story or tips to share! Your thoughts are always welcome.
Email: lucy.campbell@theguardian.com
Twitter: @lucy_campbell_
Here is a quick recap of all the main Covid related updates from around the world:
- The US intelligence community acknowledged its agencies had two theories on where Covid-19 originated, with an element embracing a possible laboratory accident as the source of the pandemic.
- US President Joe Biden said he is likely to release a report detailing the US intelligence community’s findings on the origins of Covid-19 in full.
- Sweden will go forward with its plan to ease some of its Covid curbs from June 1, prime minister Stefan Lofven said.
- Germany plans to make enough Covid vaccine doses available to offer a first shot to all children aged 12 and over by the end of August, a draft health ministry document showed.
Canada backs US President Joe Biden’s efforts to get to the bottom of the origin of the virus that causes Covid-19, Justin Trudeau told reporters on Thursday.
Canada’s prime minister said:
We support the call by the United States and others to better understand the origins of Covid-19. I know there are a lot of theories out there, but we need to make sure we’re getting to a full and complete airing of the facts to actually understand what happened and how to make sure it never happens again.
Update from earlier post:
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) statement did not identify which two of the 17 agencies constituting the US intelligence community believed that the virus had originated with infected animals and which agency believed it originated with a laboratory accident.
In both cases, however, ODNI said the agencies which did lean to one or the other explanation did so with “low or moderate confidence” - which in spy jargon means they believe the evidence supporting their view is far from conclusive.
Officials declined to discuss which agencies had voiced tentative views on the virus’ origin, Reuters reports, but stressed that a large majority of US agencies believe information is insufficient to determine that one scenario for the virus’ origin was more likely than the other.
The first group of foreign tourists in more than a year touched down in Israel on Thursday, after the government began opening its borders following a drop in Covid infections.
Small groups of vaccinated foreign tourists - up to 30 people - have been allowed to enter as of last Sunday, Reuters reports.
The tourism ministry expects 20 such groups to come from countries, including the US, Britain and Germany, under a pilot programme until 15 June.
The ministry then hopes to expand the number of groups and, in July, allow individual tourists.
Element of US intelligence community says lab accident could have caused pandemic
Reuters reports:
The US intelligence community on Thursday acknowledged its agencies had two theories on where Covid-19 originated, with two elements believing it emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals and a third embracing a possible laboratory accident as the source of the global pandemic.
“The US Intelligence Community does not know exactly where, when, or how the Covid-19 virus was transmitted initially but has coalesced around two likely scenarios,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said, adding that the majority believes there is not “sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other.”
Updated
France has reported that the number of people in intensive care units with Covid-19 fell by 124 to 3,206, according to Reuters.
The health ministry also reported 142 new coronavirus deaths in hospitals.
Biden says he is likely to release full report on Covid origins
President Joe Biden has said he is likely to release a report detailing the US intelligence community’s findings on the origins of Covid-19 in full.
As noted in an earlier post, Biden ordered the US intelligence community to “redouble” its efforts studying the origins of coronavirus, adding that it will continue to press for China to participate in a full investigation.
The deputy White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed the investigation would include any possibility the trail might lead to a Chinese lab. “China wasn’t transparent enough,” she said.
We have been saying that for a very long time, that China needed to provide more access to the lab, cooperate more fully with the scientific investigators.
This has been shared by Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic governor of New York:
Today's update on the numbers:
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) May 27, 2021
Total COVID hospitalizations are at 1,223.
Of the 162,450 tests reported yesterday, 1,055 were positive (0.65% of total).
Sadly, there were 10 fatalities. pic.twitter.com/I0s0WTxKDk
Italy reported 171 Covid linked deaths on Thursday against 121 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 4,147 from 3,937.
Italy has registered 125,793 deaths linked to coronavirus since February last year, the second-highest toll in Europe.
Patients in hospital with Covid-19 - not including those in intensive care - stood at 7,707 on Thursday, decreasing from 8,118 a day earlier, Reuters reports.
Facebook has lifted a ban on posts claiming Covid-19 was man-made, following a resurgence of interest in the “lab leak” theory of the disease’s onset (see earlier post).
The social network says its new policy comes “in light of ongoing investigations into the origin”.
On Wednesday, the company said:
In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of Covid-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that Covid-19 is man-made from our apps. We’re continuing to work with health experts to keep pace with the evolving nature of the pandemic and regularly update our policies as new facts and trends emerge.
You can read the full story by Alex Hern, the Guardian’s UK technology editor, here:
That’s it from me, Rhi Storer, for now. I will now hand the liveblog over back to Yohannes Lowe for the rest of the afternoon.
Sweden to ease some Covid restrictions next week, PM says
Sweden will press ahead with its plan to ease some of its Covid-19 restrictions from June 1, as the number of new infections has fallen sharply in recent weeks, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said on Thursday.
“We are beginning to glimpse the beginning of the end,” Lofven told a news conference.
The previously announced easing includes longer opening hours for restaurants and cafes, as well as raising the number of spectators at sports events and visitors at museums and amusement parks.
Sweden registered 1,366 new Covid cases on Thursday, health agency statistics showed, the lowest number of new daily cases for more than seven month. See post here for more details.
Updated
Reuters reports that Russia has signed an agreement to supply UNICEF, the United Nations’ children’s fund, with enough doses of its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine to vaccinate 110 million people, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which markets the shot internationally, said on Thursday.
Procurement and delivery of the vaccine is subject to Sputnik V receiving an emergency use listing from the World Health Organisation, a decision which the RDIF said is expected soon.
Updated
Did coronavirus come from a Wuhan lab?
Despite President Biden ordering US intelligence agencies to conduct a 90-day review of what is known about the origins of Covid-19, and various stories in the US media claiming support is growing for the Wuhan lab leak theory, the answer is that surprisingly little has changed in terms of good quality evidence – at least in the public domain.
The most striking new claim in recent days, ahead of Biden’s announcement, was in the Wall Street Journal, which reported that US intelligence agencies were told that three unnamed staff at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) were sick enough to go hospital in November 2019 with symptoms that might have been coronavirus.
My colleague Peter Beaumont has all the analysis and key questions answered in his piece below:
Here’s a new story about vaccines via Associated Press.
Two vaccines made by China’s pharmaceutical firm Sinopharm appear safe and effective against coronavirus, according to a study published in a medical journal.
The report, published online in the Journal of the American Medical Association, concluded the two vaccines are about 73% and 78% effective, as Sinopharm has previously claimed.
Researchers from Sinopharm and local partners based in the Middle East say the trial involved 40,380 participants with the company’s two vaccines. One vaccine was developed by the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products and the other by the Beijing Institute of Biological Products — and an additional placebo.
The trial, mainly performed on young men, was carried out in four countries — Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Jordan. However, the study only provided data from Bahrain and the UAE.
“There’s nothing very surprising. It’s consistent with what they have claimed previously, but it does not completely eliminate the doubts about Sinopharm,” said Jin Dong-yan, a medical professor at the University of Hong Kong who was not involved with the study.
Some experts also expressed concern at the shortage of female participants, with nearly 85% being male.
“It’s important to make sure you have tested it in enough women to be able to start seeing any possible safety concerns,” said Ashley St. John, an associate professor at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore.
Updated
Hi there, this is Rhi Storer taking over from Yohannes Lowe this afternoon. Please feel free to email me your contributions at rhi.storer@guardian.co.uk or alternatively you can message me on Twitter.
Saudi Arabia will allow entertainment activities to resume for those who are vaccinated against Covid-19, state TV has reported, according to Reuters.
Entertainment venues will be allowed to open at 40% capacity, it has been reported.
British participation in at the Cannes film festival is under threat after new quarantine regulations put into place by the French government as the country seeks to successfully exit lockdown.
After delays caused by Covid, the festival confirmed it would take place in early July, but France has announced a seven-day isolation period for visitors from the UK in response to rising concerns over the Covid variant B.1.617.2, first detected in India.
The move is likely to affect thousands, both among the press corps and industry delegates, and large numbers of unregistered attendees.
A government spokesperson said:
There is a new situation with the progression of the so-called Indian variant in the United Kingdom. [France] will set up compulsory isolation for people coming from the United Kingdom.” The spokesperson added that more details would be made available “in the next few hours”.
You can read the full story by Andrew Pulver, the Guardian’s film editor, here
Reuters reports:
India is considering Pfizer’s request to grant it indemnity from costs relating to severe vaccine side-effects, a government advisor said on Thursday, adding that the company had signalled availability of its Covid-19 shot, possibly from July.
“We are engaged with Pfizer because they have indicated availability of... certain volume of vaccines, in the coming months, possibly starting in July,” V K Paul told a news conference.
Sweden registered 1,366 new Covid cases on Thursday, health agency statistics showed, the lowest number of new daily cases for more than seven months.
The country of 10m registered 15 new deaths, taking the total to 14,451, Reuters reports.
Germany plans to offer first Covid shot to children aged 12 and over by end of August- document
Germany plans to make enough Covid vaccine doses available to offer a first shot to all children aged 12 and over by the end of August, a draft health ministry document showed.
With more than 40% of the population of around 83m having received at least one dose, attention has turned to the question of extending vaccinations to adolescents.
Chancellor Angela Merkel will later on Thursday discuss the question with the premiers of Germany’s 16 federal states, Reuters reports.
Opinion is divided and Germany’s main expert panel on vaccinations has expressed caution.
Some scientists say that, due to a lack of data on long-term effects, it might be better to vaccinate only adolescents with risk factors.
A document made available before the talks made clear the government wants to push ahead and aims to have offered all 12-18 year olds at least a first shot by the end of August.
Updated
Ireland’s deputy prime minister has said it is too soon to withdraw Covid related benefits that are still supporting more than 300,000 people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic, Reuters reports.
Next week, ministers are due to decide whether to extend fiscal support beyond the end of June.
Leo Varadkar has said the government would aim to allow firms and people time to reopen and recover in the third quarter with those payments.
Russia’s Supreme Court has rejected a lawsuit from US company Gilead Sciences challenging the Russian government’s decision last year to let a Russian pharmaceutical firm develop the Covid drug remdesivir without Gilead’s consent.
Pharmasyntez on Tuesday shipped a generic version of the drug - called Remdeform - to India as part of humanitarian aid contributions, Reuters reports.
Reuters reports:
Israel will release next week its findings on heart inflammation cases in Covid-19 vaccine recipients and then decide whether to approve inoculations of youngsters aged 12-15, a senior health official said on Thursday.
Israel’s health ministry said in April it was examining a small number of such cases among people who received Pfizer/BioNtech’s PFE.N Covid-19 vaccine.
The US Centers for Disease Control made a similar statement earlier this month.
“We will release our final report which will say whether there really is a link to the vaccine and what the implications are,” said Sharon Alroy-Preis, the ministry’s head of public health.
Once the report is made public next week, she told Army Radio: “we will issue the most responsible recommendation we can to Israelis, and of course, ultimately, it will be up to parents” to decide whether to vaccinate their children.
Taiwan’s government has said that the first batch of 150,000 doses of Moderna Inc’s Covid vaccine would arrive on the island on Friday, Reuters reports.
As noted earlier, Taiwan has reported 401 new local cases confirmed today, 13 deaths, and an additional 266 backlogged results from the previous week.
It is an indicator that the island’s worst outbreak of the pandemic is still spreading consistently despite restrictions on social movement.
Update on earlier post:
Portuguese authorities have relaxed Covid safety rules for thousands of English fans coming to Porto for Saturday’s Champions League final, no longer requiring them to stay in bubbles and lifting restrictions on movement, Reuters reports.
Porto police superintendent Cardoso da Silva told a news briefing:
The borders are open. The city and the country are opening up little by little. Within what is possible, freedom (of movement) will not be conditioned. There are no restrictions of movement for fans.
Updated
The Morrison government has come under attack over “failed” quarantine arrangements and the sluggish pace of the national vaccine rollout as Victoria enters a seven-day “circuit breaker” lockdown.
There is mounting concern the latest virus wave could have become “uncontrollable” with almost 30 cases in the Melbourne-based cluster.
The acting Victorian premier, James Merlino, on Thursday pointed to vaccine delays and “aged care facilities where not one person has been vaccinated” as practical problems in managing the response. Both are the responsibility of the federal government.
You can read the full story by my colleagues Katharine Murphy and Sarah Martin here:
Russia has administered at least one dose of a Covid vaccine to almost 17m people, the RIA news agency has cited health minister Mikhail Murashko as saying.
The figure suggests Russia has given the first dose of one of its vaccines to about 3m people in the past two weeks.
Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova said on 12 May that 14m Russians had received one vaccine dose, according to Reuters.
Some of Russia’s regions have complained that the vaccination process is not going fast enough despite the country having begun rolling out its Sputnik V shot in December.
This has been shared by ABC 7.30. In Australia, the Northern Territory government has said domestic arrivals from Melbourne’s highest risk exposure sites must self-isolate and get tested, rather than enter supervised quarantine at Howard Springs, a government run quarantine facility.
"Hotel quarantine has done well until now, but particularly with the deluge of cases that are coming from overseas ... we need to find longer term solutions which include places like Howard Springs." – Chris Moy, Australian Medical Association #abc730
— abc730 (@abc730) May 27, 2021
Updated
Hello everyone, this is Yohannes Lowe. I’ll be running the blog until the evening (UK time). As always, feel free to get in touch on Twitter if you have any story tips.
Today so far…
- Joe Biden has ordered the US intelligence community to ‘redouble’ its efforts studying the origins of coronavirus, adding that it will continue to press for China to participate in a full investigation.
- China has pushed back, saying that the US “does not care about facts and truth, nor is it interested in serious scientific origin tracing.”
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Facebook is changing its policy to allow posts saying Covid is “man-made”. A statement from the US tech giant said “In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of Covid-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that Covid-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps.”
- Japan pledged on Thursday to keep in close contact with Olympics stakeholders at home and abroad to ensure a safe and secure Games even as it prepared to extend a state of emergency across much of the nation, including host city Tokyo.
- The head of a Japanese doctors union warned holding the Olympic Games in Tokyo this summer, with tens of thousands of people gathering from around the world, could lead to the development of a new “Olympic” strain of the coronavirus.
- India is changing its approach to vaccines – announcing that it has scrapped local trials for “well-established” foreign coronavirus vaccines to fast-track imports. The government said it was in talks with Pfizer for “earliest possible” imports of its shots and that it had also had discussions with Johnson & Johnson and Moderna.
- Taiwan has reported 401 new local cases confirmed today, 13 deaths, and an additional 266 backlogged results from the previous week, in a sign that the island’s worst outbreak of the pandemic is still spreading consistently despite restrictions on social movement.
- Taiwan’s president has accused China of interfering in its vaccine acquisition. President Tsai Ing-wen said Taiwan had made successful deals for AstraZeneca and Moderna, and were engaging with BioNTech for the Pfizer vaccine. “We had almost completed the contract signing with the German manufacturer at one point, but it has been delayed till now because China has interfered.
- Ireland’s health minister has said it was unclear whether enough supplies of Covid-19 vaccines would arrive in the country by the end of June to meet the government’s target of administering at least one dose to 82% of all adults.
- The European Commission demanded an urgent court order requiring AstraZeneca to deliver millions more vaccines to the bloc or face a hefty fine, in a case that may reflect its anger more than its need for doses.
- From 8am this morning, all adults in Northern Ireland have been able to book a vaccination.
- Switzerland is to re-open indoor restaurants and people will no longer be required to work from home, the government announced, saying it was lifting restrictions faster than previously planned.
- Two Covid-19 vaccines from China’s Sinopharm showed more than 70% efficacy against symptomatic cases, but it remains unclear how much protection they provide against severe or asymptomatic cases, according to the first detailed result of a large late-stage study published to the public.
- French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi and Britain’s GSK have announced the start of final tests of their belated Covid vaccine as they race to add their jab to the world’s arsenal against the pandemic.
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A major Australian retail group has been hit with $630,000 in fines for multiple breaches of consumer law related to pandemic-related health products, including hand sanitiser with alcohol levels far lower than advertised.
British politics is almost entirely dominated today by responses to yesterday’s assertions by former government adviser Dominic Cummings about how the UK government handled the pandemic. Andrew Sparrow has the latest on our UK live blog…
Yohannes Lowe will be with you shortly to take you through the rest of the day.
In a not entirely unexpected move, China has this morning pushed back against new moves to investigate the origins of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan. It accused the Biden administration in the US of playing politics and shirking its responsibility in calling for a renewed investigation.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a daily briefing that President Joe Biden’s order showed the US “does not care about facts and truth, nor is it interested in serious scientific origin tracing.”
Biden told US intelligence officials to redouble their efforts to investigate the origins of the pandemic, including any possibility the trail might lead to a Chinese laboratory.
After months of minimizing that possibility as a fringe theory, the Biden administration is joining worldwide pressure on China to be more open about the outbreak, in part aiming to head off domestic US complaints from Republican that the president has not been tough enough to press China on alleged obstruction.
Regular watcher of US-China relations will know that in the daily press briefings Zhao usually has something to say about the US, and today has said the country must open itself up to investigations into its biological laboratories, including at the military’s Fort Detrick base.
“The US side claims that it wants China to participate in a comprehensive, transparent, evidence-based international investigation,” Zhao said. “We would like to ask the US side to do the same as China and immediately cooperate with the World Health Organization on origin tracing research in a scientific manner.”
Ireland: vaccine supply issues may hamper attempt to reach June jab target
Ireland’s health minister has said it was unclear whether enough supplies of Covid-19 vaccines would arrive in the country by the end of June to meet the government’s target of administering at least one dose to 82% of all adults.
Half of Ireland’s 3.8 million adult population will have received at least one dose by the end of this week, Stephen Donnelly told parliament. But he cautioned that there was continued uncertainty around the arrival of AstraZeneca and in particular Johnson & Johnson vaccines.
Reuters report that Ireland had been due to receive 600,000 shots of Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose Janssen vaccine in the April-June period but only 26,400 shots had been delivered as of 9 May, with the vast majority set to be delivered next month.
“For June we were contracted to receive about 470,000 doses of Janssen. The best case I have as of this morning is that we would receive about half of that and the worst case could be as low as around 60,000 in June,” Donnelly said.
“With regards to AstraZeneca, we don’t know yet but as we know unfortunately, the supplies from AstraZeneca have consistently been under. The company has not been able to give detail as to how much it will be under for June.”
Porto hospitality venues get ready for influx of fans visiting Champions League final
Catarina Demony and Silvio Castellanos report from Porto that as thousands of English football fans flock to Portugal’s city of Porto for Saturday’s Champions League final, hotels and bars are hoping the tourism boost will be a prelude to their emergence from a collapse brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.
“It is definitely a boost for most hotels,” hotel general manager Francisco Brito told Reuters as a couple checked in behind him. “No one ever thought we could experience such a brutal hit ... it is a huge satisfaction to be back in business.”
Portugal’s once-booming tourism sector suffered its worst results since the mid-1980s last year as Covid-19 grounded flights and kept visitors away. Tourism businesses across Porto have been mostly empty, leaving workers in a tight spot. Many were pushed into unemployment.
Those who managed to stay afloat breathed a sigh of relief when this month UEFA moved the final from Istanbul to Porto’s Dragao Stadium after Turkey was added to the British government’s coronavirus travel-ban “red list”.
Some of the city’s hotels were able to finally reopen as demand grew exponentially due to the match, Brito said.
Although most of the 16,500 fans who will be allowed into the stadium will have to complete the trip within 24 hours of the final and remain in a bubble during their stay, many others have been travelling to Porto to support their teams from the sidelines.
Olivier Ramadas, co-owner of sports bar Adega, said calls and emails from fans wanting to book a table for match day started pouring on the day of UEFA’s announcement.
“When we received the news we felt a huge joy,” he said as English fans who arrived a few days early drank pints of beer and chatted. “It will revive the city.”
Two Covid-19 vaccines from China’s Sinopharm showed more than 70% efficacy against symptomatic cases, but it remains unclear how much protection they provide against severe or asymptomatic cases, according to the first detailed result of a large late-stage study published to the public.
A vaccine developed by a Wuhan-based subsidiary of Sinopharm was 72.8% effective against symptomatic COVID-19 at least two weeks after second injection, based on interim results, the peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed on Wednesday.
Reuters note that this is slightly better than the 72.5% rate announced in a company statement in February.
Another vaccine developed by a Beijing-based institute linked to Sinopharm, which this month obtained emergency use approval by the World Health Organization, showed a 78.1% efficacy, the paper said.
India simplifying vaccine approval to speed up rollout
India is changing its approach to vaccines – announcing that it has scrapped local trials for “well-established” foreign coronavirus vaccines to fast-track imports.
The country has been inoculating its people with the AstraZeneca vaccine produced locally at the Serum Institute, Covaxin made by local firm Bharat Biotech, and has begun rolling out Russia’s Sputnik V.
But supplies are far short of the millions of doses the world’s second-most populous country needs. The government said it was in talks with Pfizer for “earliest possible” imports of its shots and that it had also had discussions with Johnson & Johnson and Moderna.
Last month, India pledged to fast-track approvals for foreign vaccines but its insistence on local trials was a key reason for stalled discussions with Pfizer.
“The provision has now been further amended to waive the trial requirement altogether for the well-established vaccines manufactured in other countries,” the government said in a statement.
None of drugmakers has sent in applications for approval with India’s drugs regulator, it said.
Reuters have reported that desperate Indian states have been launching global tenders or seeking expressions of interest from firms including Pfizer and Moderna, but vaccine makers said they would only talk with the federal government.
The government said supplies were tight.
“The fact that global tenders have not given any results only reaffirms what we have been telling the states from day one: that vaccines are in short supply in the world and it is not easy to procure them at short notice,” it said.
Updated
Andrew Sparrow is up and running for the day with our UK Covid live blog, so the latest fall-out from the Dominic Cummings revelations will be with him over there, and I’ll be continuing with global coronavirus news here.
Indonesia has resumed usage of a temporarily suspended batch of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, the country’s food and drug agency (BPOM) said this morning.
Reuters report that the agency suspended use of one batch of the vaccine to conduct an investigation after a young man died after being inoculated earlier this month.
“According to test results, it can be concluded that there was no relation between the quality of Covid-19 vaccine batch number CTMAV547 with the post immunization event reported,” said BPOM.
Victoria’s hotline for booking Covid vaccines crashes after being inundated with calls
The hotline for booking a Covid-19 vaccine in Australia was unavailable for hours following the Victorian government’s decision to open up vaccinations to those aged over 40.
As the acting premier, James Merlino, announced Victoria would go into a seven-day lockdown to get on top of a growing number of cases of Covid-19, he announced people aged between 40 and 49 would be able to get the Pfizer vaccine at state-run clinics from Friday.
Merlino said it would be a matter for the federal government on whether the vaccine would be available for those in that age group at GP surgeries, but said the decision was arrived at due to frustration over the slow pace of the vaccine rollout.
“If we had the vaccine, the commonwealth’s vaccine program effectively rolled out, we may well not be here today talking about these circuit-breaker restrictions that we must impose to keep our community safe.”
Read more here: Victoria’s hotline for booking Covid vaccines crashes after being inundated with calls
Joe Biden has ordered the US intelligence community to ‘redouble’ its efforts studying the origins of coronavirus, adding that it will continue to press for China to participate in a full investigation.
The deputy White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed the investigation would include any possibility the trail might lead to a Chinese lab. “China wasn’t transparent enough,” she said. “We have been saying that for a very long time, that China needed to provide more access to the lab, cooperate more fully with the scientific investigators.”
Adam Taylor at the Washington Post has this to say about the re-emergence of theories about a Wuhan lab leak being the source of the novel coronavirus. He writes:
Well over a year since a novel coronavirus began to spread in Wuhan, the idea that the deadly outbreak could be linked to a virus research center in the Chinese city has lingered, unproven but not eliminated.
Although the resurgent chatter may suggest new clues or proof, the inverse is in fact true. It is the persistent absence of any convincing evidence either for or against the theory that has prompted calls for more investigation.
At least publicly, the evidence in favor of a link between the outbreak and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) has not changed significantly in months, and many virologists still have persistent doubts that such a link exists.
What has clearly changed, however, is the political debate. Most obviously, a new U.S. administration that is not so openly anti-China has led some former skeptics to reconsider the existing evidence. And public health experts — most of whom never ruled out the lab theory outright — have expressed disappointment with a World Health Organization-backed investigation that dismissed a link between WIV and the outbreak.
Read more here: Washington Post – The Wuhan lab-leak theory is getting more attention. That’s because key evidence is still missing
Australian retailer fined for misleading hand sanitiser claims
A major Australian retail group has been hit with $630,000 in fines for multiple breaches of consumer law related to pandemic-related health products, including hand sanitiser with alcohol levels far lower than advertised, the consumer watchdog has announced.
Mosaic Brands Limited, an ASX-listed retail conglomerate that counts Katies, Rivers, Noni B and Rockmans among its stable of brands, has admitted to making false or misleading claims pertaining to hand sanitiser and face mask products between March and June 2020.
The deputy chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Delia Rickard, said they were particularly concerned about the misleading claims because they were made during a global pandemic.
The fines come following tests by Choice, which found that the group was selling hand sanitiser with alcohol levels far lower than advertised.
Choice issued a complaint to the ACCC, which conducted independent tests and found “one of the sanitisers tested contained an alcohol content of 17% and another had an alcohol content of 58%, below the percentage advertised on Mosaic Brands’ websites in each case. This was also below the minimum 60% alcohol concentration recommended by Australian health authorities,” Rickard said.
Read more here: Australian retailer Mosaic Brands fined $630,000 for misleading hand sanitiser claims
UK housing minister Robert Jenrick must be thrilled he got the job of facing the media this morning. He’s just had Susanna Reid open his section with the simple question: “Where is the prime minister this morning?”
'Where is the Prime Minister this morning?' - @susannareid100
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) May 27, 2021
Susanna challenges Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick on why Boris Johnson is not answering our questions himself after Dominic Cummings' explosive testimony. pic.twitter.com/ocpIzzFutc
Zachary Wolf at CNN had this an analysis overnight on how the US government now sees the search for the origins of the global pandemic as an intelligence-led operation. He writes:
Intel operation, not scientific inquiry. Biden wants the intelligence community to cooperate with other elements of the government, but getting to the bottom of how this disease occurred, at least in the eyes of the president dealing with obstruction from China, is now fully an intelligence operation. But that order likely poses a complicated challenge for intelligence agencies, which, as CNN has repeatedly reported, are limited in their ability to confidently answer the question of what actually happened. While the intelligence community has been actively engaged on the issue since it broke, Biden’s order is a public call for more, despite the fact that it has been unable to make significant progress for more than a year.
So it’s the CIA, not the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that the government is now looking to. And it’s the scientists, who were adamant a year ago that the lab theory was extremely unlikely, now saying it needs more exploration. That appears to be what caused this change. But while intelligence professionals have been more cautious in characterizing their own findings, the lack of apparent progress over the last year should temper expectations, especially considering that China is uninterested or unwilling to help any effort aimed at discovering the truth.
Read more here: CNN – The origin of Covid is now an intelligence operation
Taiwan has reported 401 new local cases confirmed today, 13 deaths, and an additional 266 backlogged results from the previous week, in a sign that the island’s worst outbreak of the pandemic is still spreading consistently despite restrictions on social movement.
Among the 13 deaths - the highest daily toll for Taiwan so far - was a woman in her 40s. Health and welfare minister Chen Chih-Shung said most of the fatalities were elderly people.
More than half of the new cases were in people under the age of 40, including 45 children aged up to nine. The new cases remain concentrated in the northern cities of New Taipei and Taipei.
Issues with Taiwan’s test recording system has resulted in a backlog of thousands of results, with clearance work producing hundreds of cases to revised totals each day, making it difficult to determine clear trends. The number of backlogged cases is reportedly still growing as more tests come in, despite clearance efforts.
Here's a chart on the daily trend of Taiwan's #COVID19 cases, including the backlogged cases–after a dip on May 25 and 26, cases have increased again over today (based on latest confirmed and backlogged numbers). https://t.co/Jo1VW2Dp7u pic.twitter.com/hYfYfBiNux
— Roy Ngerng 鄞義林 (@royngerng) May 27, 2021
Taiwan remains under a level 3 alert, which is not a full lockdown but instead restricts personal gatherings to five indoors and 10 outdoors, encourages but does not require working from home, and which has ordered entertainment and recreation venues to close. Yesterday restaurants were ordered to transition to takeaway services only.
Alarmed by their first significant outbreak since the pandemic began, Taiwan’s population has largely complied with both mandatory and requested restrictions, staying home and avoiding travel. Almost 1500 people are in centralised quarantine facilities, established for people with asymptomatic or mild cases of Covid-19 to reduce pressure on hospitals - several of which have recorded their own clusters of infections.
Chen has said Taiwan will only move to level 4 alert - a lockdown - if there are 14 consecutive days of more than 100 cases (a milestone likely to be reached tomorrow), with 50% untraced (which has not been reached - just 145 of the total caseload remain unsourced).
“I’m just off to drive forward the vaccine programme and then I’ll be going to the House of Commons and I’ll answer questions there.”
That’s UK health minister Matt Hancock leaving his house this morning, being asked if the country can still have confidence in him. It was a suit today, not his running gear like yesterday.
'I'm just off to drive forward the vaccine programme.'
— ITV News Politics (@ITVNewsPolitics) May 27, 2021
After Dominic Cummings' scathing attack on the Health Secretary on Wednesday, Matt Hancock told reporters he will answer questions in the House of Commons laterhttps://t.co/6LqlpOw48l pic.twitter.com/Ka02K5S4Bb
As you might expect, UK health secretary Matt Hancock is to respond today to those accusations by Dominic Cummings yesterday that he repeatedly lied and that he should have been fired 15 or 20 times over his handling of the early days of the pandemic.
Hancock is to answer urgent questions in parliament at 10.30am and will later lead a Downing Street press conference, likely to be around 17.00.
Sanofi-GSK vaccine candidate to go into phase 3 clinical study with 35,000 adult volunteers
French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi and Britain’s GSK have announced the start of final tests of their belated Covid vaccine as they race to add their jab to the world’s arsenal against the pandemic.
AFP state that the companies reported positive results from interim human trials earlier this month after a disappointing outcome from initial studies last year left France without its own vaccine.
Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline have started enrolment for Phase 3 of a clinical study that will include more than 35,000 adult volunteers at sites in the United States, Asia, Africa and Latin America, the firms said.
Sanofi and GSK will also study their vaccine’s ability to work as a booster shot in people who had previously received another vaccine.
The Phase 2 trials already showed a strong immune response after a single shot in participants who had previously contracted the coronavirus.
The companies hope to launch their vaccine by the end of 2021 - one year after Pfizer and Moderna jabs were approved by regulators.
“We have adapted our vaccine development strategy based on forward-looking considerations as the virus continues to evolve, as well as anticipating what may be needed in a post-pandemic setting,” Sanofi executive vice president Thomas Triomphe said in a statement.
Like most of the other jabs in circulation, the Sanofi-GSK vaccine would require two doses.
Taiwan accuses China of interfering with Covid vaccine deals
Taiwan’s president has accused China of interfering in its vaccine acquisition, as the island continues to battle hundreds of daily new cases of Covid-19 with low supplies of vaccines.
Taiwan has received about 700,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine so far, for a population of 24 million. While the island had been largely Covid-free since the pandemic began, an outbreak in late April has so far infected more than 5,000 people, and killed at least 47. Less than 2% of the population are vaccinated.
President Tsai Ing-wen said Taiwan had made successful deals for AstraZeneca from the UK and Moderna from the US, and were engaging with Germany’s BioNTech for the Pfizer vaccine.
“We had almost completed the contract signing with the German manufacturer at one point, but it has been delayed till now because China has interfered,” Tsai told a party meeting on Wednesday, in the most explicit comments to date, after months of suggestions that Beijing had been getting in the way of Taiwan’s procurement process.
Pfizer-BioNTech reportedly has an exclusive deal with the Shanghai-based Fosun pharmaceuticals company to distribute the vaccine to the Greater China region, including Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. Fosun has offered to supply Taiwan with vaccine doses, but Taiwan has said it is not possible.
Beijing denies obstructing Taiwan’s deal with BioNtech and has accused Taiwan’s leaders of sacrificing the health of residents for politics. Taiwan’s opposition Kuomintang party has accused Tsai of bungling the vaccine rollout.
“Taiwan access to vaccines continues to be slowed down by Chinese interference, while they insist we buy Chinese-made ones,” said Taiwan’s presidential spokeswoman, Kolas Yotaka. “If you really want to help, please don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall.”
Read more here: Taiwan accuses China of interfering with Covid vaccine deals
'Demoralising' how UK government ignored scientific advice – Prof Susan Michie
Professor Susan Michie has ben on Sky News. She is a clinical psychologist at UCL. She described the lack of action and feedback from the UK government on scientific advice as “demoralising” and said that yesterday Dominic Cummings presented a “depressing” picture. She said:
As a scientist, spending a lot of my last year, along with many other colleagues, thinking about science, writing about science, providing scientific advice on top of our day jobs, it is quite depressing to think that all that work, and all the many reports that we’ve produced weren’t landing, and possibly weren’t being considered.
She went on to say:
I think one of the frustrations about having given scientific advice over this last year is that there isn’t feedback … whether it was rejected because it wasn’t thought to be good, or maybe there are other political priorities. One never really knows what the explanation is when the advice we give isn’t being implemented. And I think that’s a shame because I think it’s quite demoralising for scientists.
She also made a value for money argument about scientific advice being sidelined, saying: “I think it’s important for the public to know how taxpayers money is being spent, because obviously there’s a substantial expense to serving a big scientific infrastructure.”
"He did paint a very depressing picture."
— Sky News (@SkyNews) May 27, 2021
Reflecting on Dominic Cummings' claims about the actions of the govt during the #COVID19 pandemic, Prof Susan Michie says scientists were not given feedback on why some of their advice was not acted on.
More: https://t.co/3SSMYnaDka pic.twitter.com/xdZMtrLYc7
Prof Ferguson: '20,000 to 30,000 lives' could have been saved
Professor Neil Ferguson, from Imperial College London, whose modelling was instrumental in persuading the UK government to bring in the first lockdown, said scientists had become increasingly concerned in the week leading up to 13 March 2020 about the lack of a clear plan, and 20,000 to 30,000 lives could have been saved with earlier action.
Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme when the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), of which he was part, determined that a policy of pursuing herd immunity would lead to a vast number of deaths, he said a key meeting was held with the NHS on 1 March “which finalised estimates around health impacts, so the week after that really.”
PA report Ferguson said he “wasn’t privy to what officials were thinking within government”, but added: “I would say from the scientific side there was increasing concern that week leading up to the 13 of March about the lack of clear, let’s say, (a) resolved plan of what would happen in the next few days in terms of implementing social distancing.”
He said: “I think one of the biggest lessons to learn in such circumstances is we really need good surveillance within the country at a much earlier point than we actually had it back in March last year. As we saw the data build up, and it was matching the modelling, even worse than the modelling, let’s say it focused minds”.
He then said locking down a week earlier would have saved 20,000 to 30,000 lives “and I think that’s unarguable. I mean the epidemic was doubling every three to four days in weeks 13th to 23rd of March, and so had we moved the interventions back a week we would have curtailed that and saved many lives”.
Needless to say, lockdown sceptic Fraser Nelson, editor of the Spectator, is having none of it.
Prof Neil Ferguson says on R4 that his claim that a week’s delay on lockdown cost 20,000 lives is “unarguable”. On the contrary, other academics have shown in detail how his figure was cooked up using now-debunked assumptions. https://t.co/9t7c6dT9J0
— Fraser Nelson (@FraserNelson) May 27, 2021
Northern Ireland's vaccination programme open to everyone aged 18 and over
From 8am this morning, all adults in Northern Ireland will be able to book a vaccination.
Health Minister Robin Swann said: “I am delighted that our vaccination programme is now open to all adults in Northern Ireland. I know this will be very welcome news for young people who have been waiting patiently for their turn to get the jab.”
You can check on the latest status of vaccination in all of the UK’s constituent countries here:
Minister: 'next spring' for UK Covid response inquiry
As part of UK housing minister Robert Jenrick’s media round this morning, he is repeatedly trying to bat away accusations from former adviser Dominic Cummings by saying there will be a full inquiry in due course. This, in turn, is leading to him being pressed on the timing of that. He has roughly indicated “next spring”.
Jenrick on inquiry
— Tamara Cohen (@tamcohen) May 27, 2021
"Do I think holding a full public inquiry right now - whilst we're still responding to the pandemic, whilst we're still grappling with some of the issues you've just set out like the new variants.... no I don't think that would be the sensible thing to do."
"...Next Spring feels like the logical time because hopefully the county will be in a vastly different and improved situation by then. Public inquiries are lengthy processes...and they're better to occur when we are out of the immediate response phase."
— Tamara Cohen (@tamcohen) May 27, 2021
Updated
'Olympic strain' warning from head of Japanese doctors union
The head of a Japanese doctors union on Thursday warned holding the Olympic Games in Tokyo this summer, with tens of thousands of people gathering from around the world, could lead to the development of a new “Olympic” strain of the coronavirus.
With people from over 200 nations and territories set to arrive in Tokyo, it will be dangerous to host the Games in July, said Naoto Ueyama, head of the Japan Doctors Union.
“All of the different mutant strains of the virus which exist in different places will be concentrated and gathering here in Tokyo. We cannot deny the possibility of even a new strain of the virus potentially emerging after the Olympics,” he told a news conference.
“If such a situation were to arise, it could even mean a Tokyo Olympic strain of the virus being named in this way, which would be a huge tragedy and something which would be the target of criticism even for 100 years.”
Japan pledged on Thursday to keep in close contact with Olympics stakeholders at home and abroad to ensure a safe and secure Games even as it prepared to extend a state of emergency across much of the nation, including host city Tokyo.
Concerns remain rife about the safety of the 2020 Olympics, postponed for a year due to the coronavirus pandemic, with public opinion polls showing a majority of Japanese are opposed to holding the Games this summer amid struggles to control a fourth wave of the coronavirus and sluggish vaccine rollout.
Elaine Lies reports for Reuters that the government is currently preparing to extend a state of emergency across much of the nation originally set to be lifted on 31 May, most likely well into June, officials have said - just weeks before the Games are set to open on 23 July.
Earlier this week, the United States advised against travel to Japan, but Olympics organisers have said this will not affect the Games. The White House on Wednesday said it had been assured by the Japanese government that it will keep in close contact about concerns over the Olympics.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said Japan would continue making every effort to control the virus irrespective of the Olympics, and would be in close contact with concerned parties at home and abroad about the measures being taken in connection with the Games.
“Careful anti-infection measures are a crucial part of being able to deliver a safe and secure event,” he told a news conference. “We will maintain close and periodic contact with all those concerned, both within the country and without, to explain what we’re doing on this score.”
Minister: health secretary Hancock 'worked exceptionally hard over the course of this pandemic'
Robert Jenrick is the UK government minister out on media duties this morning – you can’t imagine he’s going to asked about anything else at all except Dominic Cummings.
He’s just been on Sky News where he got quite an abrasive questioning and wasn’t exactly effusive in his defence of health secretary Matt Hancock. Asked if Hancock had lied repeatedly, as Cummings asserted yesterday, Jenrick fell back on standard lines about vaccine rollout and didn’t really address the question.
He was pressed: “It’s no good you appearing on this programme if you are not prepared to answer questions, and with the greatest of respect, we’ve heard all about what the government’s doing with the rollout and we hear that every single day. But what people will take from your response to that first answer is you’re not prepared to back the health secretary. Why not?”
Jenrick again responded with a fairly generic line, saying “I think that the department for health and the health secretary, have worked exceptionally hard over the course of this pandemic. This was an unprecedented situation, it was a national effort involving all parts of government, and all parts of the country. I think the public will appreciate, if you think back to the events of this time last year, how challenging it really was. Many things happen, of course they’ll be things which we could have done better and we’re learning those lessons as we go along.
“The public inquiry will air that and hear the evidence in a reasoned and reflective manner. I think that is the right way to do that. But absolutely, I think the country responded phenomenally to the events of last year. My point was that we are still responding to the pandemic, and that has to be the focus of government right now.”
You can watch it here:
"We've heard one side of the story. There will be a full public inquiry next year, and that's absolutely the right thing to do."@RobertJenrick is asked about claims by Dominic Cummings that the health secretary lied about the #COVID19 pandemic.
— Sky News (@SkyNews) May 27, 2021
Latest: https://t.co/3SSMYnaDka pic.twitter.com/6vS0PS50sQ
Alexander Britton at PA has had a quick whizz round the British newspapers to gauge their reactions to the testimony yesterday of former UK government adviser Dominic Cummings on the early days of handling the Covid pandemic.
The Independent, i and Daily Mirror all use the same quote headline: “Tens of thousands died who didn’t need to die”, with the latter carrying a leader column headlined “damning testimony”.
The paper points out the problem of only hearing one side of the story, but that the Government “failed in this fundamental duty”.
It says: “Cummings’ evidence may have been one-sided and selective but it should not be ignored. His criticisms of the Government’s handling of Covid demand an explanation.
“The coward Johnson is trying to hide from accountability by delaying the public inquiry into Covid until next spring. We need to learn lessons now, not at his convenience.”
The Daily Telegraph takes a different angle, suggesting an element of revenge from Cummings with associate editor Camilla Tominey writing “having expended his nine lives in government, this was also about settling scores”.
The Sun’s headline - “Do you need a hindsight test, Mr Cummings?” - pokes fun at his well-publicised trip to Barnard Castle during the pandemic, while its leader column claims Mr Johnson will “dodge Dom’s bombs”.
It adds people “recognise that our Government was one of many whose Covid response was found wanting.
“The key difference since being the stellar success of our world-leading vaccine rollout. Voters are more likely to credit the Government with that and our rosier future than rake over the terrible bleakness of 2020 and the chaos in Downing Street.”
Melbourne's Rising festival ‘hits pause’ the day after opening due to lockdown
Melbourne’s newest major arts festival, Rising, has been thrown into turmoil the day after opening with the Victorian government announcing a seven-day statewide lockdown from Thursday night.
The hotly anticipated winter arts festival opened on Wednesday after an extended wait, only to “hit pause” on Thursday as the city entered a “circuit-breaker” lockdown that closed indoor and outdoor entertainment and arts venues and prohibited public gatherings.
The acting premier, James Merlino, announced the lockdown on Thursday morning to halt the spread of what he called a “highly infectious” Covid-19 variant, spreading “faster than ever recorded”.
Rising was due to run until Sunday 6 June. At the time of writing, the lockdown was scheduled to run until Friday 4 June.
In response to the public health directive, Rising cancelled all events from 5pm Thursday until 4 June and committed to issuing refunds for all tickets for that period. “A decision in relation to events scheduled between 4 June and 6 June will be made over the coming week,” a statement issued by the festival said.
Rising had been initially scheduled for 2020 but was cancelled due to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, which hit Melbourne particularly hard, sending the city into back-to-back lockdowns that extended from March until October, and into a third snap lockdown earlier this year.
Read more of Stephanie Convery’s report here: Rising festival ‘hits pause’ the day after opening as Melbourne enters lockdown
Good morning from London, it is Martin Belam here. I’ll be with you for the next few hours. We’ve just published this from Dr Deepti Gurdasani, who is a clinical epidemiologist and senior lecturer in machine learning at Queen Mary University of London:
Amid the select committee revelations from Dominic Cummings, and in his recent claims on social media, there has been a lot of focus on suggestions that the UK government was following a “herd immunity” policy at the start of the pandemic, costing thousands of lives in the process. Of course, none of this is surprising.
It is very clear that this was the flawed policy of the government through early March last year, not least because it was publicly discussed by the prime minister and by many scientific advisers to the government – including Patrick Vallance, who spoke of “enough people becoming immune to this” with mild illness, to help build herd immunity.
The alternative strategy of high suppression or elimination of the virus was rejected by the government very early on, despite strong evidence from other countries around the world showing that this could be successfully applied.
There were several elements that underpinned the devastating herd immunity strategy. It was believed that infection of large swathes of the population was inevitable, and acceptable, and that there was no way to prevent it. This came with the tacit acknowledgment that hundreds of thousands of deaths were acceptable, most of which would occur among vulnerable and elderly people. A sense of national exceptionalism held by some suggested that other countries’ experiences didn’t apply to us – despite that by March we had had months to observe and learn from countries in south Asia, and seeing the devastating impact of late action in Italy.
Real-world evidence was ignored in favour of models and flawed thinking. The government’s strategy repeatedly conflated Covid-19 with flu, ignoring the much higher transmissibility, higher susceptibility, which would lead to many more people getting infected and dying, and unknown long-term impacts from a novel virus. Finally, there was the idea that the health of the economy needed to be balanced with public health. A lot of emphasis was placed on the disruption lockdowns would cause, with attempts to slow down such decisions, without understanding that delays would inevitably lead to even longer lockdowns and more economic damage.
Read more here: Deepti Gurdasani – The UK government’s Covid strategy was discredited but we’re still paying the price
Updated
Facebook to allow posts saying Covid ‘man-made’
This is Facebook’s statement on its change of policy:
In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of Covid-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps. We’re continuing to work with health experts to keep pace with the evolving nature of the pandemic and regularly update our policies as new facts and trends emerge.
How credible is the Wuhan lab-leak theory?
In February this year, the World Health Organization team that visited Wuhan to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic all but dismissed a theory that the virus leaked from a laboratory.
But their investigation was inconclusive as to what the origins of the theory actually were, and the theory that the virus was manufactured in a laboratory and escaped accidentally has again been raised in recent days as the United States and other countries call for a more in-depth investigation of the pandemic’s origins.
Determining how the virus that causes Covid-19 began spreading is seen as vital to preventing future outbreaks.
A long-delayed report by the team of international experts sent to Wuhan and their Chinese counterparts drew no firm conclusions as to the origins of the pandemic. Instead, they ranked a number of hypotheses according to how likely they believed they were.
The report said the virus jumping from bats to humans via an intermediate animal was the most probable scenario, while it said a theory involving the virus leaking from a laboratory was “extremely unlikely”.
After the report was released, however, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus insisted all theories remained on the table.
On Wednesday, Joe Biden has ordered the US intelligence community to intensify its efforts to study the origins of coronavirus, adding that it will continue to press for China to participate in a full investigation.
Biden’s request included asking the US intelligence community to explore the unlikely possibility that the origins of the virus trace to Chinese lab. After months of minimizing the possibility as a fringe theory, the Biden administration is responding both to domestic and geopolitical concerns about putting pressure on China to be transparent about the outbreak.. After months of minimizing the possibility as a fringe theory, the Biden administration is responding both to domestic and geopolitical concerns about putting pressure on China to be transparent about the outbreak.
Summary
Hello and welcome to our ongoing live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
Facebook has lifted a ban on posts claiming that Covid-19 was “man-made” or “manufactured” in “In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of Covid and in consultation with public health experts”.
Here are the other key recent developments:
- Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot Covid vaccine is to be limited in Belgium to people aged 41 and over, authorities said following the death of a woman who received the jab.
- Switzerland is to re-open indoor restaurants and people will no longer be required to work from home, the government announced, saying it was lifting restrictions faster than previously planned.
- China accused the US of “spreading conspiracy theories and disinformation” after health chief Anthony Fauci said he was no longer convinced the coronavirus originated naturally – propelling the theory that it emerged from a Wuhan laboratory back into mainstream debate.
- The European Commission demanded an urgent court order requiring AstraZeneca to deliver millions more vaccines to the bloc or face a hefty fine, in a case that may reflect its anger more than its need for doses.
- Slovakia became the second EU country to authorise the use of the Russian-made Sputnik V Covid vaccine, which has not yet been approved by the bloc’s drug regulator.
- France will impose a compulsory quarantine on travellers arriving from the UK because of growing concerns over the spread of the Indian variant of the coronavirus, the government’s spokesman has said.
- Whistleblower protection groups urged the World Health Organization to launch an independent review into the case of an Italian researcher who reported being pressured to falsify data in a now-spiked WHO report into Italy’s coronavirus response.
- Perhaps conveniently for an incumbent candidate, Zambian president Edgar Lungu banned campaign rallies ahead of elections scheduled for 12 August, saying large gatherings risked spreading the Covid-19 virus.
- Vets in several parts of Russia reportedly started vaccinating cats against Covid-19. Russia in March said it had registered the world’s first coronavirus vaccine for animals. Only two animals in Russia, both cats, have so far tested positive for the virus.
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