This blog is now closed. A summary of key recent developments can be found here. For up to date coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, head to the link below:
Covid-19 will eventually have to be managed in a similar manner as serious seasonal viruses such as flu, England’s chief medical officer has said.
Speaking at a Royal Society of Medicine webinar, Prof Chris Whitty said it was ‘not realistic’ to believe border policy could stop new variants of coronavirus entering the UK:
France to ban outdoor drinking under new virus restrictions
Alcoholic drinks will be prohibited in French parks and other outdoor public spaces as part of the new limited nationwide lockdown to stem the Covid-19 crisis, Prime Minister Jean Castex announced Thursday, AFP reports.
Addressing the National Assembly, Castex also said authorities would be quick to disperse groups of more than six people on riverbanks or squares after the new restrictions unveiled by President Emmanuel Macron late Wednesday.
Castex said he “unreservedly” condemned people who had not been respecting the rules, after images emerged of beer-swigging crowds on riverbanks in the spring sunshine in cities including Paris and Lyon.
Meanwhile, prosecutors should “systematically” probe organisers of clandestine parties for putting the lives of others in danger, he added.
By decreeing school closures and systematic work-from-home protocols, Macron hopes to ease pressure on hospitals facing a new surge in coronavirus cases that are overwhelming intensive care units.
But he refrained from demanding that people stay in their homes or avoid socialising completely, and authorised travel between regions over the coming Easter weekend.
The measures were met with a mix of resignation and anger, despite Macron’s suggestion that France could begin envisioning a return to normalcy by mid-May.
“Lockdown, the sequel... and the end?” Le Figaro headlined its front page Thursday, while mass-market Le Parisien said Macron was defending his strategy of “slowing without shutting down” even though “the situation has never been so dangerous or complicated”.
Summary of key developments:
Here is a quick recap of recent Covid-related events from around the world:
- India’s temporary hold on the Covid-19 vaccine, Oxford/AstraZeneca, will undermine Africa’s vaccination plans and potentially have a “catastrophic” impact, the head of the continents disease control body said on Thursday.
- The Canadian province of Ontario will enter a lockdown for at least four weeks on Saturday.
- France records 50,659 new coronavirus cases on Thursday and 308 new deaths in hospital, Reuters reports.
- Mexico reports 5,381 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 454 more fatalities, bringing the country’s total to 2,244,268 infections and 203,664 deaths.
- Police on horseback charged a crowd of people gathered in a Brussels park on Friday for a fake concert announced on social media as an April Fool’s Day prank.
- Brazil’s biggest city sped up efforts to empty old graves to make room for Sao Paulo’s record daily burials this week. They also registered 91,097 new cases of Covid-19 and 3,769 deaths, the health ministry reports.
- The Irish government has added 26 countries to a list of states subject to mandatory hotel quarantine on arrival.
- After months of resistance from the president, Madagascar joins the COVAX vaccine sharing programme, the health minister announced on Thursday, following a recent pledge to rollout Covid-19 jabs.
Madagascar joins the COVAX vaccine sharing programme the health minister announced on Thursday, following a recent pledge to rollout Covid-19 jabs after months of resistance from the president.
President Andry Rajoelina took a hard-line stance against jabs that other governments had gone to secure, meaning that vaccinations have yet to begin on the island nation.
The president instead defended a locally made herbal infusion he claims is a “cure” for coronavirus. Rajoelina said last month that he was in no rush to launch a mass inoculations programme for his citizens or himself.
AFP reports:
Heavy criticism forced him to make a U-turn last week, when his office said the government would “seek” and “use” vaccines against Covid-19. Health Minister Jean Louis Hanitrala Rakotovao on Thursday said Madagascar had successfully signed up for vaccine procurement through the Covax facility.
“There are still many stages to go through, but we have made a first step,” Rakotovao announced on a video posted online by the health ministry.
The presidency has not yet disclosed which jabs would be procured. Madagascar is struggling to curb a second wave of coronavirus infections, likely due to the presence of a highly transmissible variant first detected in South Africa.
Rakotovao told local media on Thursday that the number of severe cases had risen and warned that hospitals were running out of oxygen.
Updated
The Irish government has added 26 countries to a list of states subject to mandatory hotel quarantine on arrival. But, the list did not include additional countries from the EU or the United States.
The states that were added on Thursday are: Albania, Andorra, Aruba, Bahrain, Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba, Ethiopia, Israel, Jordan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Lebanon, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Oman, Palestine, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Saint Lucia, San Marino, Serbia, Somalia and Wallis and Futuna Islands.
Reuters reports:
According to a report in the Irish Independent newspaper, the government had been advised by the Chief Medical Officer to add 43 countries, including the United States, France, Germany and Italy, to a list of jurisdictions subject to 12-day hotel quarantine on arrival.
A decision regarding “additional states will be considered in advance of the next Government meeting”, said the Minister for Health and the Minister for Foreign Affairs in a joint statement.
[…]
Ireland has some of the strictest travel restrictions in the European Union and last week followed England in bringing in hotel quarantine for arrivals of people from countries deemed “high risk” or those without a negative COVID-19 test.
Including the new additions, there are 58 countries on the “designated States” list, most of which are in the Middle-East, Africa, Central and South America.
Austria is currently the only EU member on the list. Arrivals must quarantine for up to 14 days in a hotel room or can leave after 10 if they test negative for COVID-19.
Travellers from newly-added states will have to book accommodation for mandatory hotel quarantine if they intend to arrive in Ireland after 4 am on April 6. The Republic of Mauritius was removed from the list.
Brazil registers 91,097 new cases of Covid-19 and 3,769 new Covid related deaths, the health ministry reports.
According to ministry data, Brazil has registered nearly 13 million cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 325,284.
Updated
Covid-19 vaccine delays hit vulnerable communities in Melbourne, Australia, as community health workers built trust in the towering Richmond housing estate.
The team had been told to expect roughly 100 doses per week from 22 March, a supply so low that it had already caused concern among staff.
The first shipment was only 80 doses.
The second shipment never arrived - forcing staff to suddenly cancel vaccination clinics on estate residents and others in the community, wasting weeks of planning.
My colleague Christopher Knaus has more on the vaccine delays in Melbourne:
Due to the rising death toll, Brazil’s biggest city sped up efforts to empty old graves to make room for Sao Paulo’s record daily burials this week.
Gravediggers in the Vila New Cachoeirinha cemetery worked in white hazmat suits as they bagged decomposed remains to move them to another location.
The municipal secretary responsible for funeral services said in a statement that relocating remains is standard in cemetery operations. However, since the pandemic worsened, the practice has taken on renewed urgency.
Reuters reports:
On Wednesday, Brazil’s health ministry registered its highest daily COVID-19 death toll for the second day in a row, with 3,869 people succumbing to the virus.
Brazil’s outbreak is the second-deadliest in the world after the United States, averaging about 3,000 deaths and 75,500 new cases per day over the past week - a rate that has climbed steadily since February.
Sao Paulo has also resorted to late-night burials to keep up with demand, with some cemeteries authorized to stay open until 10 p.m.. In the Vila Formosa cemetery, workers in masks and full protective gear have been digging rows of graves under flood lights and a full moon this week.
The coffins have followed. A 32-year-old man lowered down in a plain wooden box. A 77-year-old woman, whose masked relatives gathered near the grave.
The city of Sao Paulo registered 419 burials on Tuesday, the most since the pandemic began. If burials continue at that pace, city hall said it will need to take more contingency measures, without specifying.
Brazil currently accounts for about a quarter of COVID-19 daily deaths worldwide, more than any other country.
Infectious disease experts warn that it will only get worse, given President Jair Bolsonaro’s attacks on efforts to restrict movement and a slow rollout of vaccines.
Police on horseback charged a crowd of up to 2,000 people gathered in a Brussels park on Friday for a fake concert announced on social media as an April Fool’s Day prank.
The police wore protective helmets as they moved in to enforce strict Covid-19 social distancing rules that prohibit gatherings of more than four people outdoors.
AFP reports:
Brussels law enforcement authorities on Wednesday had issued a warning that the announcement on social media of a “party” was illegal and that its organisers could be prosecuted.
Belgium on Saturday imposed tighter restrictions aimed at curbing surging Covid infection numbers.
They include closing schools, keeping borders closed, limiting access to non-essential shops and lowering the number of people able to meet outdoors to four.
One participant, Selim Jebira, told AFP that “we were tear-gassed for no reason at all”.
Brussels mayor, Philippe Close, tweeted that, while he could understand people wanting to go outside in the springtime weather, “we can’t tolerate such gatherings”.
He thanked the police “for the difficult job, and for people who have respected the rules for more than a year” since the start of the pandemic.
The U.S. could be in the early stages of a fourth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic that is taking renewed hold across the country, with cases increasing in 25 states, according to reports.
On average, the US has tallied 63,000 new cases over the past week, an increase of 17% from the week prior, news website Axios reported. Only five states have recently seen declines in new cases. The third wave of the pandemic, which peaked in January, saw about 250,000 people daily testing positive for Covid-19, the Hill reported.
My colleague Victoria Bekiempis has more on the U.S’s rising cases here:
Updated
According to the health ministry, Mexico reports 5,381 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 454 more fatalities, bringing the country’s total to 2,244,268 infections and 203,664 deaths.
Reuters reports that the Mexican government has said that the actual case number is likely significantly higher, with separate data recently published by the health ministry suggesting that coronavirus’s actual death toll may be at least 60% higher than the confirmed figure.
Updated
France reports 50,659 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, down from Wednesday’s figures of 59,038, the health ministry data showed. The country also recorded 308 new deaths in hospital, bringing the total tally to 69,904.
In seven to 10 days, France could hit its peak of the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, with new restrictive measures announced on Wednesday by French President Emmanuel Macron, Health Minister Olivier Veran told France Inter radio, Reuters reports.
Since the pandemic began, the country’s third lockdown will see the closures of schools for three weeks to help ease the pressure on hospitals.
As of Thursday, 8.8m people have now received a first vaccination dose.
Updated
The Canadian province of Ontario will enter a lockdown for at least four weeks on Saturday due to Covid-19 cases and intensive care unit occupancy rises, Premier Doug Ford said.
This is the third lockdown in Canada’s most populous province and will see the closing of all indoor and outdoor dining. However, retailers will be allowed to remain open with capacity limits, and schools will remain open.
Updated
India’s temporary hold on major exports of the Covid-19 vaccine, AstraZeneca, will undermine Africa’s vaccination plans and potentially have a “catastrophic” impact, the head of the continents disease control body said on Thursday.
John Nkengasong, the director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, told a news conference in Addis Ababa that the hold-up “will definitely impact our ability to continuously vaccinate people.”
Reuters reports that India had decided to delay significant exports of the vaccine made by the Serum Insitute of India (SII) to make sure that it was able to meet local demand.
However, due to the African Union’s plans to vaccinate 30-35% of the continent’s population by the end of the year, Nkengasong said, that delays could cause the target to be missed.
So far, Ghana has received 600,000 of the 2.4m AstraZeneca jabs it was supposed to receive through the COVAX scheme by the end of May, with more shots now only arriving in June, Kwame Amponsa-Achiano, head of the vaccine roll-out, told Reuters.
On Monday, Johnson & Jonhson announced that they would supply the AU with up to 400m doses of its Covid-19 vaccine, with delivery expected to begin in the third quarter of the year and continue through 2022.
Since the pandemic began, African countries have reported 4.25 million coronavirus infections and 112,000 related deaths; however, experts have said the actual numbers could be higher.
Hi I’m Edna Mohamed, I’ll be taking over the blog for the next few hours. You can contact me for any tips through Twitter or by emailing me at: edna.mohamed.casual@theguardian.com
Early evening summary
Here is a quick recap of recent Covid-related events from around the world:
- Turkey recorded 40,806 new Covid cases in the last 24 hours, health ministry data showed, the highest level since the beginning of the pandemic.
- More than 65,000 people in Brazil died of Covid in March, more than double the previous monthly record, figures show.
- Sicily’s health chief resigned after being targeted in an investigation over the alleged falsifying of Covid-19 figures to avoid a strict lockdown.
-
Two shots of the Pfizer vaccine produce high levels of protective antibodies in people 80 and over, the largest independent study yet into older people’s immune responses to the jab found.
- Pfizer Inc and BioNTech said their Covid vaccine has about 91% efficacy at preventing the disease, citing updated trial data. The shot also showed 100% efficacy in preventing illness among trial participants in South Africa.
A number of states in Brazil are in critical condition and hospitals are overwhelmed by the pandemic, World Health Organization epidemiologist Maria van Kerkhove told a briefing on Thursday.
“Indeed there is a very serious situation going on in Brazil right now, where we have a number of states in critical condition,” she said, adding that many hospital intensive care units are more than 90% full.
Turkey's new daily Covid cases exceed 40,000- highest level yet
Reuters reports:
Turkey recorded 40,806 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, health ministry data showed on Thursday, the highest level since the beginning of the pandemic.
Cases have surged since the government eased measures to curb the pandemic in early March.
On Monday, president Tayyip Erdogan announced a tightening of measures, including the return of full nationwide weekend lockdowns for the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, which starts on 13 April.
The total number of cases stands at 3.358 million, the data showed. The latest daily death toll was 176, bringing the cumulative toll to 31,713.
French culture minister Roselyne Bachelot has been released from hospital where she was admitted after testing positive for Covid-19, BFM TV has reported.
Kuwait has said it will extend a month-long partial curfew that had been due to end next week until 22 April as part of efforts to curb the spread of Covid-19, Reuters reports.
In a statement on Twitter, the cabinet said the curfew would be from 7pm to 5am, as of 8 April.
The Gulf Arab state, which recorded 1,282 new infections on Thursday, had seen daily cases fall below 300 in December from close to 1,100 last May.
In France, 5,109 people are in intensive care units in with Covid, the health ministry said on Thursday, up by 56 from a day earlier.
On Wednesday, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said the country’s schools are to close for at least three weeks and travel within the country will be banned for a month after Easter in an attempt to curb a dramatic surge in Covid-19 cases.
Italy reported 501 Covid-linked-deaths on Thursday against 467 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections decreased to 23,649 from 23,904.
Some 356,085 tests for Covid-19 were carried out in the past day, compared with a previous 351,221, the health ministry confirmed.
This just in from the World Health Organization:
"The extra 10M doses would be an urgent stop-gap measure so that 20 countries, which are ready but haven’t got the supply needed to start vaccinating their health workers & older people, could begin before the 100th day – 10 April"-@DrTedros #VaccinEquityhttps://t.co/IWcMRQMnZ6
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) April 1, 2021
In the UK, the government said a further 51 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Thursday, bringing the UK total to 126,764.
The government also said that, as of 9am on Thursday, there had been a further 4,479 lab-confirmed cases in the UK. It brings the total to 4,350,266.
Read the official release here.
The German chancellor Angela Merkel has appealed for people to stay at home over Easter and meet up with fewer friends and relatives to help curb a third wave of the pandemic, as the capital Berlin announced a nighttime ban on gatherings from Friday. She said:
It should be a quiet Easter, with those closest to you, with very reduced contact. I urge you to refrain from all non-essential travel.
Reuters reports:
Merkel was accused of losing her grip on the crisis last week after she ditched plans for an extended Easter holiday agreed two days earlier with governors of Germany’s 16 states.
She has since tried to shift the blame for the third wave of the pandemic on to state premiers, accusing them of failing to stick to earlier agreements to reimpose restrictions if infections rose.
On Thursday, the city government of Berlin said it will impose a nighttime ban on gatherings from Friday and only allow children of essential workers to attend nursery from next week.
As the weather has turned warm in recent days, Berliners have been flocking to public spaces. About a hundred youngsters threw bottles and stones at police in one park on Wednesday when they tried to break up the party, the Berliner Zeitung reported.
Merkel said it was no longer the elderly who were fighting for their lives in the pandemic, but the middle-aged and even younger patients who were ending up on ventilators in hospital.
She held out hope, however, that the sluggish distribution of vaccinations would speed up after Easter, when family doctors will start giving shots.
Christian Karagiannidis, the scientific head of the DIVI association for intensive and emergency medicine, said Germany needs a two-week lockdown, faster vaccinations and compulsory tests at schools if hospitals are not to be overwhelmed.
“If this rate continues, we will reach the regular capacity limit in less than four weeks,” he told the Rheinische Post daily. “We are not over-exaggerating. Our warnings are driven by the figures.”
The Berlin city government said people would only be allowed to be outside on their own or with one other person from 9pm until 5am, though children under 14 are exempted.
This will be the first limited curfew imposed in Berlin since the pandemic began a year ago. The city of Hamburg already announced on Wednesday it will restrict nighttime outings from Friday, with supermarkets and takeaways shut from 9pm.
Unlike Britain and France, Germany’s states – which run their own healthcare and security affairs – have been reluctant to impose drastic limits on movement out of fear of further damaging the economy, as well as an aversion to far-reaching restrictions on freedoms in a country wary of its Nazi past.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany, Europe’s most populous country and largest economy, rose 24,300 to 2.833m on Thursday, the biggest daily increase since 14 January. The reported death toll rose by 201 to 76,543.
Organisers of the 2021 Eurovision song contest have welcomed the news that as many as 3,500 fans may be allowed to attend the popular music competition when it is staged in the Netherlands next month, the Associated Press reports.
The Dutch government has said it plans to make the annual contest of singers representing their countries part of a series of test events it is using to evaluate how to safely reopen large-scale public events amid the pandemic.
The government said it wants to allow a maximum of 3,500 people to attend a total of nine shows in the city of Rotterdam – rehearsals, semi-finals and the 22 May final, if the state of the pandemic allows it. The Netherlands was set to host the contest last year, but the event was canceled due to the pandemic.
“We welcome this decision by the Dutch government and the possibility that we can invite fans to join us as we bring the Eurovision song contest back in May,” the executive supervisor Martin Osterdahl said in a statement on the event’s website.
“We will consider the options now available and announce more details in the coming weeks on how we can safely admit audiences to the Ahoy venue in Rotterdam, should the situation allow,” Osterdahl said. “The health and safety of all those attending the event remains our top priority.”
The government’s test procedures allow limited numbers of people with proof of negative Covid-19 tests to attend events and divides them into bubbles so they can be closely monitored. Previous tests have included soccer matches and music festivals.
Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, has given firm backing to the use of Covid passports after the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, suggested the measure would be against “British instinct”.
Read the latest here first:
This is from Darran Marshall, a BBC Politics producer:
#Coronavirus
— Darran Marshall (@DarranMarshall) April 1, 2021
Northern Ireland's seven day incidence rate has dropped below 50 per 100,000 for the first time in more than six months.
Now sitting at 48.6 per 100,000. @mlchealth @LouiseMCullen pic.twitter.com/YodVqfuMzl
Updated
Commenting on the French Covid situation, the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, has said:
I’m afraid you can see what’s happening in France ... It’s very sad actually – it’s very, very sad. When they get it in France and they get it bad, two or three weeks later it comes to us.
Updated
Reuters reports:
The European Union has asked India to allow it to buy 10m doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine from the Serum Institute of India, a government official told Reuters, the latest sign of growing pressure on Delhi to export more of its production to other countries.
The EU wants the doses from Serum, the world’s largest vaccine-maker, to offset supply shortfalls from AstraZeneca’s European plants and speed up the bloc’s vaccine roll-out.
Any quick approval of the EU request is unlikely, however, with India scrambling to expand its own domestic vaccination drive, said the Indian government official, who asked not to be named as the discussions are private.
Britain is also pressuring India to export the second half of 10m doses it had ordered from Serum, the source said.
Updated
More than 65,000 people died of Covid in March in Brazil – double previous high
Brazil has suffered by far its heaviest month of Covid-19 losses after the deaths of nearly 67,000 people were confirmed in March.
The figure – more than double the previous high, when 32,912 deaths were recorded last July – underscored how the South American country has been plunged into the most devastating chapter of its epidemic.
A record 3,950 deaths were recorded on Wednesday, with experts warning the number of daily fatalities is likely to rise to about 5,000 as the situation deteriorates further in April.
Earlier in the day opposition politicians demanded the impeachment of Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has been accused of catastrophically mismanaging an epidemic that has killed more than 322,000 of his citizens.
Only the US has a higher official death toll. Bolsonaro continues to resist containment measures such as lockdown.
“He will go down in history as the governor ... who most inflicted tragedy on the Brazilian people,” said Randolfe Rodrigues, one of the senators behind the impeachment attempt.
Polls show support for Brazil’s far-right leader is slipping as a result of his reaction to Covid, although he retains the support of about a third of voters.
A simply horrendous graph laying bare the scale of Brazil's Covid disaster. Nearly 67,000 Brazilian lives lost in March 2021 alone. That's 20% of all🇧🇷deaths since pandemic began. In just one terrible month. ht @TaschnerNatalia pic.twitter.com/MHdJELR5ZL
— Tom Phillips (@tomphillipsin) April 1, 2021
Updated
German president receives AstraZeneca jab
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier became the first high-profile German official to receive a dose of the AstraZeneca jab on Thursday, as politicians in the country joined an effort to shore up confidence in the troubled Anglo-Swedish vaccine.
Steinmeier, who is 65, received his shot at Berlin’s military hospital under new guidelines that restrict the vaccine’s use for those below 60 but relaxes prioritisation rules for those above.
Chancellor Angela Merkel announced the decision on Tuesday this week after Germany’s vaccine regulator reported 31 cases where people who had received the AstraZeneca jab developed cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, a rare blood-clotting disorder.
Gregor Gysi, an influential figure in the leftwing party Die Linke and the former leader of the opposition in the Bundestag, also shared a picture of himself receiving the Oxford-developed vaccine.
The health minister, Jens Spahn, had appealed to politicians over 60 to show their faith in AstraZeneca’s product.
General practitioners are being integrated in the vaccination roll-out from today, administering the BioNTech vaccine and, from 18 April, the AstraZeneca jab too.
Updated
This just in from Public Health England on weekly hospital admissions for new Covid positive cases:
Hospital admissions for #COVID19 remain highest in those aged 85 and over.
— Public Health England (@PHE_uk) April 1, 2021
See our weekly surveillance report here: https://t.co/8dYt9zEVk9 pic.twitter.com/d0WoInhRXe
Reuters reports:
India’s temporary hold on major exports of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 shot will undermine Africa’s vaccination plans, and could have a “catastrophic” impact if extended, the head of the continent’s disease control body said on Thursday.
India decided to delay big exports of the shots made in its territory by the Serum Institute of India to make sure it could meet local demand, two sources told Reuters last week.
The hold “will definitely impact our ability to continuously vaccinate people”, the director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, John Nkengasong, told a news conference in Addis Ababa.
The African Union had planned to vaccinate 30-35% of the continent’s population by the end of the year he said. “If the vaccines are delayed we are unlikely to meet our target,” he added.
Updated
Sicilian health chief investigated over 'altered' Covid data to avoid red zone
Sicily’s health chief resigned on Tuesday after being targeted in an investigation over the alleged falsifying of Covid-19 figures to avoid a strict lockdown.
According to prosecutors, who put a number of people under house arrest and the Sicilian health chief, Ruggero Razza, under investigation, health authorities in Sicily allegedly altered the number of new Covid cases and the number of Covid tests as part of a “grievous political design” to avoid the region being classed as a high-risk red zone and put on hard lockdown.
Early in October, Italy introduced a three-tiered, coloured system to combat the spread of the virus. Regions are divided into three zones: red for the highest risk, then orange and yellow. In the red zones, residents can only leave home for work, health reasons, essential shopping, or emergencies.
In the orange and yellow zones, slightly less severe restrictions have been introduced. Italy’s regional governments send daily data to Rome on infection rates and deaths, which is used to decide the intensity of the restrictions.
According to investigators, reports of deaths and new cases in the region were spread out over time to paint a rosier picture than was actually the case.
Razza, who has denied wrongdoing but decided to step down to avoid further controversy, was caught on wiretap discussing numbers of deaths with a local health official, and said: “Let’s spread them around a bit”, AFP has reported.
“I would like to reiterate that in Sicily, the epidemic has always been carefully monitored,” Razza said. “We did not need to hide the number of infected people or lower the epidemiological impact because we have ourselves often anticipated the decisions of Rome and adopted stricter measures.”
Last November, Italy’s national health inspectors were dispatched to investigate whether there was a concerted attempt in Sicily to avoid going into the high-contagion-risk red zone by inflating the availability of ICU beds.
Palermo’s mayor, Leoluca Orlando, said in a statement that the Sicilian capital would join as a civil plaintiff in any legal action, given the impact coronavirus measures have had in the city.
Updated
Malaysia has detected nine cases of a highly contagious Covid variant first identified in South Africa, a senior health official has confirmed.
The variant, also known as B.1.351, was found among locally transmitted cases between January and March, the director-general of health, Noor Hisham Abdullah, said in a statement.
Two of the cases involved workers from a firm based at Kuala Lumpur International airport, Reuters quoted him as saying.
Noor Hisham noted:
However, it is difficult to determine or verify how the B.1.351 variant was spread or transmitted to those workers.
Updated
Sweden registered 8,304 new Covid cases on Thursday, health agency statistics showed.
The country of 10 million inhabitants registered 33 new deaths, taking the total to 13,498, Reuters reports.
On Wednesday, the government said it will postpone a planned easing of some curbs until at least 3 May amid a severe third wave.
President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement of new Covid restrictions across France are part of a strategy of “freiner sans fermer” – stopping the virus without shutting down the country, according to Elysée advisors.
There had been fears the French leader would announce a repeat of the strict three-month lockdown imposed this time last year as a third wave of infections hit the country putting pressure on hospitals and frontline health staff.
Instead, Macron urged the country to make one last effort over the coming month. Schools are to be closed for three weeks, non-essential shops shut and people restricted to travelling within 10km of their homes.
In an unexpected concession, Macron announced that travel over the Easter weekend would be tolerated for those seeking to escape to second homes or rental properties, but he said once there, they would be expected to stay and inter-regional travel would be clamped down on after Monday’s bank holiday. Family gatherings over the Easter holidays were discouraged, he said.
The Elysée said the measures were necessary in the face of virus variants, including the English variant, that were “more contagious and spreading more rapidly causing more serious infections”.
“The idea was to avoid a strict lockdown and let the vaccine take the relay. We are following this logic of putting the brakes on 9the virus) without closing down (the country),” an official said.
Libération reported: “It’s a tightening up with the closure of schools, but without a new lockdown.”
In the Assemblée nationale, the opposition Les Républicains described the health situation as a “catastrophic stalemate”.
Damien Abad, president of the centre right party’s parliamentary group, said its MPs would not be voting for the new measures accusing the government of “impotence” faced with the third wave.
He acknowledged the “economic management of the crisis is satisfactory and generally effective, but attacked what he described as the “calamitous, ponderous and chaotic” management of the health crisis.
Updated
Health workers and pharmacists in Italy are now obliged to take the Covid-19 vaccine, or risk being suspended without pay.
Mario Draghi’s government approved the mandatory vaccinations “to protect as much as possible medical and paramedical staff as well as those who are in environments that may be more exposed to the risk of infection”.
The move comes after recent Covid-19 outbreaks in some Italian hospitals are believed to have been linked to health staff who refused to take the jab.
The law obliges public and private health staff, as well as pharmacists, to have the vaccination or risk being demoted or assigned to non-public facing roles, or being suspended for eight months without pay.
In March, a judge in the Veneto city of Belluno rejected an appeal from 10 healthcare workers, who were suspended without pay by two care homes in February after refusing the vaccine.
In her ruling, Anna Travia said:
The effectiveness of the vaccine in preventing the negative evolution of disease caused by the virus is widely known, as evidenced by the drastic drop in deaths among the categories that can take advantage of it, such as health workers and care home residents.
Italy has also introduced a law protecting health staff who administer the Covid-19 vaccine from legal action if a patient dies after receiving one. The measure was introduced in response to a manslaughter investigation launched after a Sicilian man died after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine.
The health minister, Roberto Speranza, said Italy’s vaccination programme has produced “visible results” in areas where the administration had been highest, such as within hospitals and care homes.
As of Thursday, more than 10 million people in Italy had received the first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, of whom 3.1 million have had both doses.
Updated
Pfizer shots produce strong antibody responses in those over 80 – study
Two shots of the Pfizer vaccine produce high levels of protective antibodies in people 80 and over, according to the largest independent study yet into older people’s immune responses to the jab.
Blood tests on 100 people aged 80- to 96-years-old found that 98% produced strong antibody responses after two doses of the vaccine given three weeks apart. After the second shot, antibody levels more than tripled.
The findings, released in a preprint that has yet to be peer-reviewed, will boost confidence that the Pfizer vaccine can be highly effective against Covid even in older people who tend to generate far weaker immune responses to both vaccines and natural infections. But it is unclear what the findings mean for the UK where second shots of vaccine are given up to three months after the first.
Paul Moss, professor of haematology at the University of Birmingham, who led the study with Dr Helen Parry, also at Birmingham, said the team was “surprised” and “very pleased” to see the results which tallied with the “excellent clinical protection” the vaccine appears to provide. The first major real-world study of the Pfizer vaccine in Israel found that two shots prevented 94% of symptomatic cases across all age groups.
Some of the participants in the UK study had been infected with Covid in the past. In these people antibody levels rose 28-fold after vaccination. Levels of antibodies and protective T cells were measured two to three weeks after the second shot. How long the levels remain high for is unknown.
The scientists went on to examine another branch of the immune defences raised by the vaccine, known as the T cell response. While antibodies protect against infection by gumming up the virus and preventing it from infecting cells, T cells destroy human cells that are already infected, and may also support antibody production over time.
After both shots of the vaccine, two-thirds of the participants had detectable T cell responses. “We know that as people age, their cellular immune responses are more difficult to elicit,” said Moss, “so that is something that we will need to keep an eye on very closely.”
Further work at Public Health England’s Porton Down lab showed that blood serum taken from the volunteers after two shots of vaccine strongly neutralised the original coronavirus that spread around the world last year. But the serum was on average 14 times less effective against the new P.1 variant first seen in Brazil, and which is now found in the UK and elsewhere.
“The variant from Brazil reduces neutralisation response but at this early stage after the vaccine, where we’re seeing such high antibody levels, we are still quietly confident that this should still provide valuable protection against this variant of concern,” said Parry.
The researchers expect to have further data on the vaccine’s effectiveness against another worrisome variant in the UK known as B.1.351 which was first spotted in South Africa. You can read the study about the Pfizer jab in people over 80 here.
Updated
South Korean authorities are facing a backlash for relying on the global vaccine-sharing scheme Covax for a bulk of its Covid shots, as shipment delays threaten to slow the country’s inoculation programme.
The country is facing criticism at home as the government scrambles to meet the supply shortfall, Reuters reports.
South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam are among countries to be hit by shipment delays to vaccines they have been promised after export curbs by the manufacturer in India.
Updated
Update on earlier post:
“These data reinforce our view that we have some really potent vaccines,” said Danny Altmann, a professor of immunology at Imperial College London, who was not involved in the Pfizer trial.
He said the effectiveness against the South African variant was “especially noteworthy”, since it showed the vaccine is likely to offer effective protection in real-world settings where several different coronavirus variants could be circulating.
France’s prime minister has defended new nationwide Covid measures that include closing schools for at least three weeks and putting in place a month-long domestic travel ban, AP reports.
Jean Castex, who has noted that more than 8 million people in France have received at least one dose of vaccine, said:
The vaccination campaign is progressing and is being simplified every day. We have now reason to believe that we are advancing along the path of the possible exit to the crisis.
The National Assembly, France’s lower house, is voting on the new measures Thursday morning, which is expected to be marked by a massive boycott by opposition parties.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the leftist La France Insoumise party denounced the vote as a “bad April fools”. He has dismissed the measures as being half-baked.
Updated
Pfizer Covid shot has 100% efficacy in participants in small South African trial
Reuters reports:
Pfizer Inc and BioNTech said on Thursday their Covid-19 vaccine has about 91% efficacy at preventing the disease, citing updated trial data that included participants inoculated for up to six months.
The shot also showed 100% efficacy in preventing illness among trial participants in South Africa, where a new variant called B1351 is dominant, although the number of those participants was relatively small at 800.
While the new overall efficacy rate of 91.3% is lower than the 95% originally reported in November for its 44,000-person trial, a number of variants have become more prevalent around the world since then.
Pfizer’s chief executive officer, Albert Bourla, said the updated results, which include data on more than 12,000 people fully inoculated for at least six months, positions the drugmakers to submit for full US regulatory approval.
Updated
Here is an update from Our World in Data about the proportion of people who have received at least one does of Covid vaccine:
Our data is updated: https://t.co/03pQ8rRViP
— Edouard Mathieu (@redouad) April 1, 2021
Share of people with at least 1 dose:
🇮🇱 Israel 61%
🇧🇹 Bhutan 49%
🇬🇧 UK 46%
🇨🇱 Chile 36%
🇧🇭 Bahrain 30%
🇺🇸 US 29%
🇭🇺 Hungary 21%
🇷🇸 Serbia 21%
🇺🇾 Uruguay 18%
🇸🇬 Singapore 16%
🇫🇮 Finland 16%
🇪🇪 Estonia 15%
🇨🇦 Canada 13%
🇸🇰 Slovakia 13% pic.twitter.com/lSRZINhhl8
Updated
Almost one in seven people who test positive for Covid-19 are still suffering symptoms three months later, according to new UK figures.
The largest study of its kind on long Covid from the Office for National Statistics, found that people with coronavirus are significantly more likely than the general population to report ongoing issues, which can include muscle pain and fatigue.
Among a sample of more than 20,000 people who tested positive for Covid-19 between April last year and March this year, 13.7% continued to experience symptoms for at least 12 weeks, PA Media reports.
Updated
Europe’s vaccination campaign is “unacceptably slow” while rising infection rates in most countries across the region mean its virus situation is “more worrying than we have seen in several months”, the World Health Organization has said.
The WHO regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, said on Thursday that vaccines “present our best way out of this pandemic. Not only do they work, they are highly effective in preventing infection. However, their rollout is unacceptably slow.”
Kluge said falling infections among the over-80s in Europe reflected “early signs of the impact of vaccination”, while data from the UK’s campaign suggested vaccines had so far “saved, at the very least, over 6,000 lives among people over 70”.
You can read the rest of the story by Jon Henley, the Guardian’s Europe correspondent, here:
This is a global chart of Covid-linked deaths, as of 31 March:
More updates in our daily #covid19 roundup: https://t.co/9jYtful7C3 pic.twitter.com/X3wppPcVDu
— New Scientist (@newscientist) April 1, 2021
Hello everyone, this is Yohannes Lowe. I’ll be running the blog until the early evening (UK time). As always, feel free to get in touch on Twitter if you have any story tips.
Today so far…
- The World Health Organization has said Europe’s virus situation was “more worrying than we have seen in several months” and that the continent’s vaccine rollout was “unacceptably slow”.
- Poland has extended vaccine availability to the over-40s in an unexpected overnight move after demand for appointments dropped among the over-60s.
- A shortage of vaccines means Sweden expects to offer all adults a first dose of a vaccine against Covid-19 by 15 August, later than its original plan of the end of June.
- France’s health minister, Olivier Veran, has said this morning “we could reach a peak of the epidemic in seven to 10 days if all goes according to plan” following the imposition of new measures.
- Doctors in Germany have warned that the country’s ICU capacity could be overwhelmed within weeks without a short, sharp lockdown.
- Italy has made coronavirus vaccinations mandatory for all health workers, in a potentially controversial move aimed at protecting vulnerable patients and pushing back against significant ‘no-vax’ sentiment in the country.
- Doctors in Nigeria in state-run hospitals have today begun a strike over pay and inadequate facilities to deal with the pandemic.
- Vietnam will receive its first doses from AstraZeneca under the Covax vaccine scheme tomorrow, while Hong Kong will resume use of the BioNTech’s Covid vaccine on Monday after it receives new supplies.
- WTO’s head, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has called for a greater sharing of vaccine technology with poorer countries.
- Johnson & Johnson has said that a batch of 15m Covid-19 vaccines manufactured in the US failed quality standards and can’t be used.
That’s it from me, Martin Belam, for this week. I’m handing over to my colleague Yohannes Lowe who will guide you through the next few hours. See you here next week…
Updated
Vaccine shortage forces Sweden to push back target to vaccinate all adults into August
A quick snap from Reuters that a shortage of vaccines means Sweden expects to offer all adults a first dose of a vaccine against Covid-19 by 15 August, later than its original plan of the end of June, officials said on Thursday.
“As the delivery forecast looks today, everyone over 18 should be able to have their first dose of the vaccine at the latest by 15 August,” Marie Morell, the health care chief of the Swedish association of local authorities and regions, told reporters at a news conference.
The health minister, Lena Hallengren, said the delay was due to a shortage of vaccines and changes in recommendations over how the vaccines are used.
Updated
The US has been on high alert for incidences of coronavirus variants which experts fear could push the world’s highest national case count even higher. Christina Maxouris reports for CNN that the US has recorded more than 11,500 cases of the B117 variant first spotted in the UK, but that the federal health agency has said the number is likely larger. She writes:
The highest B117 case counts are in Florida, which has welcomed crowds of spring breakers, followed by Michigan, where officials say another surge is well on its way.
“We’ve got a high proportion of variants, and that means coronavirus spreads faster,” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer told CNN on Wednesday. “These are much more contagious and we’re seeing that whether it is at youth sports or it is the reengagement of some of our restaurants.”
Whitmer said the variants, combined with ongoing pandemic fatigue and more travel, are behind the state’s worrying trends. New Jersey officials also noted the B117 variant as they reported a rise in cases and hospitalizations and warned the numbers could stay high into the summer.
“It is believed that the uptick in cases is due primarily to more contagious variants, for example B117, the UK variant, coupled with less cautious behaviors,” the state health commissioner, Judy Persichilli, said on Wednesday.
At least 97.6 million people in the US have now received one or both doses of a vaccine. The infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci urged the nation to hold fast.
“We’re vaccinating about 3 million people a day. Every day that goes by we get closer and closer to a greater degree of protection. So now is just not the time to pull back and declare premature victory,” Fauci told CNN on Wednesday.
“Hang in there a bit longer,” he said. “Just hang on, continue to do the public health measures and then we can pull back later, when we get a greater degree of protection from the vaccines.”
Updated
Doctors in Nigeria in state-run hospitals have begun a strike over pay and inadequate facilities to deal with the pandemic
The strike by the National Association of Resident Doctors (Nard), which represents about 40% of Nigeria’s doctors, is the latest in a string of work stoppages to hit the country as it struggles with Covid.
“The strike commenced at 8am this morning. But the National Executive Committee will convene this afternoon to review the situation,” Nard’s president, Uyilawa Okhuaihesuyi, told AFP.
He said the review became necessary after a meeting with government representatives yesterday. Nard had threatened to strike if the government failed to meet demands that include non-payment of allowances and lack of facilities at state-run hospitals.
On Wednesday, a government team led by the Labour minister Chris Ngige met with the doctors in a move to head off the strike. Ngige appealed to aggrieved doctors to consider the damage the strike would inflict to a health system already stressed by the coronavirus.
Authorities fear any reduction in capacity could harm the country’s ability to tackle the pandemic and impact on it vaccine programme, but doctors have long complained of a lack of beds and drugs in hospitals as well as inadequate protective kits. Other demands include life insurance coverage, a pay rise and payment of unsettled wages.
Updated
Krutika Pathi and Sheikh Saaliq report for the Associated Press from New Delhi on the latest situation in India. They say that there is no room at Sion hospital in Mumbai – approximately all 500 beds reserved for Covid patients are occupied. And with new patients coming in daily, a doctor said the hospital is being forced to add beds every second day.
Waiting lists in some hospitals in the city are so unreasonable that “numbers can’t define the burden on hospitals”, said Dr Om Shrivastava, an infectious diseases expert.
Scenes like this were common last year, when India looked set to become the worst-affected country with daily cases nearly surpassing 100,000. For several months, infections had receded, baffling experts, but since February, cases have climbed faster than before with a seven-day rolling average of 59,000. On Thursday, India reported more than 72,000 cases, its highest rise in six months.
“I think it’s going to be worse (than last year),” said Shrivastava. “If it doesn’t quell in a few months time, we may be in for the long haul.”
Experts say there is a pressing need for India to bolster vaccinations, which started sluggishly in January. The country is expanding its drive to include everyone over 45 from Thursday.
After a grinding lockdown and falling cases, life in India had returned to normal in many places. Markets are teeming with people, politicians are addressing massive rallies in local elections and a religious gathering in Uttarakhand state is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of devotees in April.
International travel has also resumed in high volumes, bringing in variants first detected in the UK, South Africa and Brazil. India also confirmed a new and potentially troublesome variant at home. Officials have cautioned against linking the variants to the surge, and experts say more expansive genomic analysis is needed to determine how much they are contributing to the rise.
“It’s a perfect storm of careless crowd behaviour, laxity in government vigilance and a misleading perception of herd immunity,” said K Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India. “The virus rode through gates which were left wide open.”
Updated
Poland extends vaccine availability to over-40s in unexpected move
A sudden shift in policy in Poland has lead to a surge in demand for vaccines which has caused an online system to crash. The Polish government unexpectedly opened registrations for people aged over 40 overnight.
More than 2 million Poles have so far received both shots of a vaccine, but the prime minister’s top aide, who has been put in charge of the vaccination programme, said slower rates of registration among older Poles meant the government had decided to widen access.
The nation of 38 million people is in the grip of a damaging third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has pushed its health service to its limits, with some regions close to running out of ventilators.
“At the moment, we have registration open for all people over 60 years of age,” Michal Dworczyk told the private radio station RMF FM. “In the last two days, this registration for people over 60 years old has slowed down, so we decided to start the registration of people who reported their readiness to register in January.”
He added that people aged 40 to 60, who had declared their readiness to be vaccinated, had been sent referrals overnight. Opposition lawmakers criticised the unexpected nature of the move.
“Dear ministry, such changes should be announced publicly at the time of launch! People shouldn’t find out about this from your reply on my Twitter,” tweeted the leftwing lawmaker Adrian Zandberg.
Oficjalne potwierdzenie. To nie błąd, zapisy na szczepienia dla osób 40+ ruszyły.
— Adrian Zandberg (@ZandbergRAZEM) April 1, 2021
Szanowne ministerstwo, takie zmiany powinno się ogłaszać publicznie, w momencie uruchomienia! Ludzie nie powinni dowiadywać się o tym z Waszej odpowiedzi na moim Twitterze. https://t.co/HsTGgiVlmz
Reuters reporters attempted to register after 0700 GMT for vaccinations, but the online system had stopped working. Dworczyk said at a news conference the registration of 40- to 59-year-olds would be suspended for a few hours to correct a technical glitch.
Updated
WHO says Europe vaccine rollout 'unacceptably slow' amid 'worrying' case surge
The World Health Organization has said Europe’s virus situation was “more worrying than we have seen in several months”.
AFP reports that the WHO director for Europe, Hans Kluge, said in a statement: “Vaccines present our best way out of this pandemic ... However, the rollout of these vaccines is unacceptably slow” and is “prolonging the pandemic”.
“We must speed up the process by ramping up manufacturing, reducing barriers to administering vaccines, and using every single vial we have in stock, now,” he added.
Five weeks ago, the weekly number of new cases in Europe had dipped to under 1m, but “last week saw increasing transmission of Covid-19 in the majority of countries in the WHO European region, with 1.6 million new cases”, it said.
The total number of deaths in Europe “is fast approaching 1m and the total number of cases about to surpass 45m”, it said.
The WHO’s European region comprises 53 countries and territories and includes Russia and several central Asian nations.
The organisation warned that the rapid spread of the virus could increase the risk of new variants of concern developing.
“The likelihood of new variants of concern occurring increases with the rate at which the virus is replicating and spreading, so curbing transmission through basic disease control actions is crucial,” Dorit Nitzan, WHO Europe’s regional emergency director, said in the statement.
Updated
Hong Kong to resume use of BioNTech vaccine next week
Hong Kong authorities have said they will resume the use of the BioNTech’s Covid vaccine on Monday after abruptly halting inoculations nine days ago due to defective packaging.
A 300,000 dose batch is due to arrive in Hong Kong tomorrow that was produced and packaged at a different plant to the two batches whose use was halted by authorities.
The announcement comes as the city’s government seeks to convince residents to get vaccinated after a sluggish take-up due to dwindling confidence in a rival vaccine from China’s Sinovac and fears of adverse reactions.
“We want to enhance public confidence in the vaccine program,” Patrick Nip, secretary for the Civil Service, told a briefing on Thursday.
Farah Master reports for Reuters that with low levels of infection in the city, many people feel less urgency to get a vaccination quickly and some residents have criticised the lack of data available for the Sinovac vaccine compared to the BioNTech offering.
Prior to its suspension, the number of Hong Kong residents booking the BioNTech shot was more than double the number for the Sinovac shot, according to government figures.
The Hong Kong government said BioNTech was still conducting investigations into the previous two batches and it would wait for a final conclusion before using them. It added that the safety and efficacy of the vaccine has not been affected.
ABout 7% of Hong Kong’s 7.5 million population has been vaccinated, one third of which have taken the BioNTech vaccine.
The BioNTech vaccine is distributed in Hong Kong and Macau via a partnership with China’s Fosun Pharma, while BioNTech partners with Pfizer in markets outside greater China.
Updated
A quick note from Reuters that the DIVI association for intensive and emergency medicine in Germany has said the country urgently needs a two-week lockdown, faster vaccinations and compulsory tests at schools to break a third wave of the pandemic.
Christian Karagiannidis, the DIVI’s scientific head, said about 1,000 additional patients had ended up in intensive care since the middle of March. On Wednesday, 3,680 people were in intensive care in Germany, DIVI data show.
“If this rate continues, we will reach the regular capacity limit in less than four weeks,” he told the Rheinische Post daily. “We are not overexaggerating. Our warnings are driven by the figures.”
Welsh first minister warning about Cardiff Bay parties
The Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford, has expressed concern that Covid rates could rise again if a minority of people continue to act as if they are “immune” after crowds gathered on Cardiff Bay again to drink and party.
Speaking on BBC Radio Wales, Drakeford said: “If people think that because we are able to do more, they can stretch that and act as if they are immune from coronavirus the risk is everything we have worked so hard to achieve could go into reverse.”
Describing the scenes on the bay as “shocking”, Drakeford said: “Where people deliberately and intentionally set out to do thing a that can cause a risk to other people the local authority and police have further powers they can use.”
Asked if he was worried such behaviour could cause the efforts to tackle the virus to “go backwards”, he said: “I am concerned. When you see those scenes, it does tell us there is a small minority of people in Wales who still somehow believe that coronavirus does not mean them.”
Earlier in the week three police officers reported suffering minor injuries in a disturbance at Cardiff Bay.
Drakeford is expected to announce how Wales will move out of lockdown measures later today.
Updated
French health minister: We could reach epidemic peak in 7-10 days if all goes according to plan
The situation in France has been deteriorating, with health minister Olivier Veran telling Inter radio this morning that “We could reach a peak of the epidemic in seven to 10 days if all goes according to plan. Then we need two extra weeks to reach a peak in intensive care units (ICUs) that could occur at the end of April.”
Reuters note that daily new Covid infections in France have doubled since February to average nearly 40,000. The number of Covid-19 patients in intensive care breached 5,000 this week, exceeding the peak hit during the six-week second lockdown enforced late last year.
Meanwhile prime minister Jean Castex has told parliament this morning that the French government is still expecting that upcoming regional elections will be held in June as planned, providing health conditions allow it.
Vietnam received 811,000 doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccines today, its first batch of vaccines under the global COVAX scheme, following a week-long delay caused by limited supply.
The Southeast Asian country, which began its coronavirus vaccination programme last month, is aiming to secure 30 million doses in total via the vaccine-sharing facility.
Thursday’s delivery took Vietnam’s number of AstraZeneca doses to nearly 930,000 so far, but the country is looking to diversify its procurement from more sources, including Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, China’s Sinovac and Russia’s vaccine, Sputnik V.
In a meeting with health minister Nguyen Thanh Long, Russia’s embassy in Hanoi on Wednesday offered to help Vietnam manufacture Sputnik V locally, the health ministry said in a statement.
Long also said Vietnam would approve the Chinese vaccine within weeks, after Sinovac submits the required documents. Vietnam is among only a few countries in Asia yet to use the Chinese vaccine.
Phuong Nguyen reports for Reuters that Vietnam has been praised for its record in containing the virus through mass testing and tracing and strict quarantining, which has kept its cases to just 2,603, with 35 deaths. Nearly 50,000 people have been vaccinated. Vietnam’s population is 96 million.
Four Vietnamese companies are engaged in vaccine research and production and two are at the human trial stage. Vietnam’s first domestically developed vaccine, called Nanocovax, is expected to be put into use in 2022.
Andreas Rinke and Paul Carrel of Reuters have written this morning an analysis piece looking at the state of the pandemic in Germany. They write that a year into the crisis, Germany’s patchwork federal system is fraying. The unity between Berlin and the regions that marked the first year of the crisis is unravelling as many state premiers, facing pressure from business and voters, press for life to get back to normal.
They note that the approach of a federal election in September is straining those political threads even further. State leaders including North Rhine-Westphalia premier Armin Laschet, chairman of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and her would-be successor, are more eager to open up as they look ahead to the election in September, when Merkel is stepping down. In contrast Merkel, who doesn’t have to face the verdict of voters again, wants to double down with her push for tougher measures.
Fractious federal-state relations are not entirely to blame for Germany’s fumbling pandemic response they say: Berlin has also been accused of cautiousness and investing too much faith in the European Union for its vaccine rollout. But they have become an obstacle to taking coordinated, quick action as patience wears thin on all sides, resulting in policy flip-flops and waning support for Merkel’s conservative camp.
The increasingly tense relationship between Merkel and state leaders “only exacerbates pandemic mismanagement and comes back to hurt the CDU and CSU,” the Bavarian sister to Merkel’s party, said Naz Masraff at political risk consultancy Eurasia.
And while the politicians bicker, time is running short. Germany’s vaccine supplies are due to ramp up from April, though changing guidance on the AstraZeneca shot has put many Germans off it. The country’s leading virologist has warned a tougher lockdown will be needed anyway. None is in sight.
The intransigence is costing the CDU/CSU alliance, which has lost 10 points in polls since early February. “We are in a miserable state at the moment, and we have to get out of it,” lamented one conservative lawmaker. “I have never experienced the mood like this in our ranks before.”
China’s CanSino Biologics has said that the efficacy rate for its single-dose Covid vaccine may fall over time although it should still have a rate of 50% or more five to six months after inoculation.
A second shot given to trial participants six months after their first injection could offer substantial protection, Zhu Tao, CanSinoBIO’s chief scientific officer, said in an online presentation late yesterday reported by Reuters.
The vaccine has been approved in China, Pakistan, Hungary and Mexico, and CanSinoBIO is also planning a clinical trial in China for an inhaled version of the vaccine.
“A booster shot six months later led to a seven times to 10-times increase in neutralising antibody levels, so we expect in this case efficacy could reach over 90%,” Zhu said, though he cautioned more clinical trial data was needed for more precise estimates.
The company in February reported interim data that showed the shot was 68.83% effective at preventing symptomatic Covid-19 two weeks after vaccination but the rate fell to 65.28% after four weeks.
WTO head calls for wider licensing of Covid vaccines with poorer countries
The BBC are reporting that Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iwealam, the newly installed head of the World Trade Organization, has called for as wider distribution of the technology behind the manufacture of Covid vaccines.
She told BBC’s Economics Editor Faisal Islam that it was “not acceptable” that currently the poorest countries are at the “end of the queue” for vaccines.
She spoke in praise of the AstraZeneca licensing deal that is allowing the manufacture of its vaccine in different remote facilities, suggesting that “voluntary licensing” by other pharmaceutical companies “could save many more people.”
“There is some capacity in developing countries unused now. Let’s have the same kind of arrangement that AstraZeneca has with the Serum Institute of India. Novovax, Johnson and Johnson and all the others should follow suit.”
The call is likely to arouse some controversy, as some WTO member states are opposed to relaxing the rules on intellectual property which currently allows pharmaceutical firms to maintain a monopoly on the drugs that they develop.
Over the last year the Guardian and other media organisations have been using numbers collated by the COVID tracking project in the US. It was put together by a bunch of volunteers who worked together to bring national numbers into one place as the pandemic worsened in the US, and the federal government under Donald Trump’s failed to provide any similar kind of overview of the scale of the pandemic as it unfolded across the US.
They’ve bought the project to a close after a year, and one of the co-founders, Erin Kissane, has written today about what they learnt about Covid data and the way it was collected and interpreted during the course of the year.
We founded the project to count tests, and soon found that we needed to capture other basic public health data that wasn’t being published by the federal government: most notably cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. These metrics quickly fragmented into categories like unique people tested, specimens tested, suspected COVID-19 hospitalizations, confirmed COVID-19 hospitalizations, and so on.
A lot of our research and context work was about trying to find out what the numbers states published actually represented. We discovered early on that many states weren’t actually explaining what numbers they were publishing: Some states would post “total tests” but not say whether they were counting people tested or all tests ever performed or something else. Others would post cases, but never say—even in response to direct and repeated questions—whether those cases included probable and confirmed cases, or just confirmed ones.
This lack of clarity was present in most of the metrics we collected, and meant that we spent hundreds, maybe thousands, of person-hours reading footnotes in obscure state PDFs and watching press conferences to try to catch any turns of phrase that would tell us what—and who—was really represented in a given figure. Definitional problems substantial enough to shape whole narratives about the pandemic haunted our work all year, and we tried to communicate both the answers we found and the uncertainty we encountered. For some wings of the project, like the COVID Racial Data Tracker, we had to say as much about the dramatically incomplete state of the data than about what the data itself showed.
Read more here: Covid Tracking Project – The decisions we made
New emergency measures to be imposed in three prefectures in Japan from 5 April
Reuters report the worsening situation in Osaka, Japan, where the government has said it will impose emergency measures, such as shorter business hours and asking people to work from home and refrain from activities like karaoke, to try and halt a rebound in Covid cases.
Osaka governor Hirofumi Yoshimura called for Olympic torch events in the prefecture’s main city to be cancelled, a day after he raised the alarm about an emerging fourth wave of infections.
The infection control measures will cover the prefectures of Osaka, Hyogo, and Miyagi and will last from 5 April until 5 May, said economy minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, who also heads the nation’s coronavirus response.
The controls allow regional governments to order businesses to shorten hours and to impose fines of 200,000 yen ($1,806.52) or publish the names of those that do not comply.
A final decision on enacting the measures will be made at a task force meeting headed by prime minister Yoshihide Suga this afternoon.
The new measures are based on a revised infection control law and can be applied to a narrower area than a state of emergency, which Suga declared for most of the country in early January.
New infections in Osaka have exceeded those of the much larger metropolis of Tokyo in recent days. Osaka emerged early from the state of emergency, but then experienced a sharp rebound in cases toward the end of March.
“In Osaka in particular, the number of infected individuals in their 20 and 30 is increasing as people continue to go out at night,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said on Thursday. “Reports of mutant strains are also increasing, and the contagion is expected to continue.”
Summary
- France has imposed a nationwide month-long lockdown to curb a rising third wave of coronavirus. Schools will close for at least three weeks, workers will work from home, and travel within the country will be banned for a month after Easter. “We will lose control if we do not move now,” president Emmanuel Macron said.
- Johnson & Johnson has said that a batch of its Covid-19 vaccines failed quality standards and can’t be used. The drugmaker didn’t say how many doses were lost, and it wasn’t clear how the problem would impact future deliveries.
- Keir Starmer has dealt a blow to government hopes of pushing through a domestic Covid passport scheme, expressing scepticism about the idea and saying the “British instinct” could be against them.
- Italy has made coronavirus vaccinations mandatory for all health workers, in a potentially controversial move aimed at protecting vulnerable patients and pushing back against significant ‘no-vax’ sentiment in the country.
- Brazil has detected a new Covid variant in São Paulo state that is similar to the one first seen in South Africa, it was reported earlier.
- Rates of stillbirth and maternal death rose by about one-third during the coronavirus pandemic, with the impact most acute in poor and developing countries, a study published in the Lancet Global Health journal reported.
- Finland’s government has withdrawn a proposal to confine people largely to their own homes in several cities to help curb the spread of Covid, the prime minister said.
- Europe’s drug regulator is investigating 62 cases worldwide of a rare blood clotting condition which has prompted some countries to limit the use of AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine, its chief said in a briefing.
- Sweden’s government will postpone a planned easing of some Covid restrictions until at least 3 May amid a severe third wave, the prime minister said.
- The premiers of two southern German states badly hit by the pandemic (Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg) urged leaders in the rest of the country to reintroduce tougher lockdown measures to try to contain a third wave of infections.
- Israel plans to administer the Pfizer Inc/BioNTech Covid vaccine to 12- to 15-year-olds upon FDA approval, the health minister said after the manufacturer deemed the shots safe and effective on the cohort.
Almost third of UK Covid hospital patients readmitted within four months – study
Nearly a third of people who have been in hospital suffering from Covid-19 are readmitted for further treatment within four months of being discharged, and one in eight of patients dies in the same period, doctors have found.
The striking long-term impact of the disease has prompted doctors to call for ongoing tests and monitoring of former coronavirus patients to detect early signs of organ damage and other complications caused by the virus.
While Covid is widely known to cause serious respiratory problems, the virus can also infect and damage other organs such as the heart, liver and kidneys.
Updated
India opened up its coronavirus inoculation programme to people aged over 45 on Thursday as infections surge, which will delay vaccine exports from the world’s biggest maker of the drug, Reuters reports.
The country, with the most number of reported Covid-19 cases after the United States and Brazil, has so far injected 64 million doses and exported nearly as many. This has raised criticism at home as India’s per-capita vaccination figure is much lower than many countries.
The government has previously said that people over 45 can register for inoculation from 1 April.
India initially focused on front-like workers, the elderly and those suffering from other health conditions, unlike some richer countries that have made all their adults eligible to get inoculated.
New Delhi says it is working towards that goal, and health minister Harsh Vardhan tweeted that there would be no vaccine shortage in the country as it opens up the vaccination programme.
“Centre to continually replenish states’ supplies,” he said. “Avoid overstocking and under stocking.”
India has already decided to delay big vaccine exports for now, including to the WHO-backed global vaccine alliance Covax.
It is currently using the AstraZeneca vaccine and a shot developed at home by Bharat Biotech, which is struggling to step up supplies. India’s drug regulator is soon expected to approve Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.
India has reported more than 12 million infections. Deaths stand at more than 162,400.
Diplomatic allies Taiwan and Palau have opened their coronavirus travel bubble. AFP reports.
Taiwan and Palau launched what is being billed as Asia’s first coronavirus travel bubble on Thursday as the two diplomatic allies try to kickstart their battered tourist industries after successfully keeping infections at bay.
Around 100 excited Taiwanese tourists arrived at Taoyuan international airport near Taipei on Thursday morning, checking in some five hours before their afternoon flight in order to be tested for the coronavirus.
“I haven’t been on an aeroplane for over a year and I am so excited,” one passenger told SET TV at the airport.
“This is the inaugural tour and we are on the same flight with Palau president,” he added.
President Surangel Whipps has been on a visit to Taiwan since Sunday and will accompany the Taiwanese tourists back to his Pacific island nation.
Palau lies about 1,000 kilometres east of the Philippines and is one of the few places on Earth never to have recorded a Covid-19 case.
It is also one of only 15 nations that still recognises Taiwan over China, despite intense pressure from Beijing to switch sides.
Taiwan was hit early by the coronavirus when it spread from China last year.
But it defeated its own outbreak and has managed to keep infections controlled thanks to strict border controls, quarantine and tracing.
“It takes so long for the (launch) of the travel bubble and a lot of long-term efforts by everyone,” Taiwanese health minister Chen Shih-chung, told reporters.
“Both sides are pandemic-safe so the journey can begin,” he added.
The plan is to eventually have 16 flights a week on the route, a major lifeline for Palau’s economy, which before the pandemic relied on tourism for more than half its gross domestic product.
Despite Taiwan’s coronavirus free status, strict measures will still be enforced to protect Palau’s 18,000-strong population from the risk of infection.
All tourists must test negative before the flight. They can travel only in tour groups and are barred from making individual excursions.
Contact with Palau locals will be kept to a minimum, with tourists staying at designated hotels, eating in separate restaurant areas and allowed to shop only at set times.
Taiwan - population 23 million - has been hailed as a global success story in containing the virus, with some 1,030 confirmed cases and 10 deaths.
Whipps has acknowledged no system is foolproof but said health experts had calculated that the chance of Covid-19 reaching Palau via the travel bubble was one in four million.
Earlier, Bernadette Carreon in Koror, and Erin Hale in Taipei, filed this report for the Guardian on how the travel bubble will work.
Keir Starmer has dealt a blow to government hopes of pushing through a domestic Covid passport scheme, expressing scepticism about the idea and saying the “British instinct” could be against them.
Ministers are consulting on the possibility of obliging people to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative coronavirus test to access crowded spaces such as pubs or sports events, with Downing Street insisting no decision has been made yet.
To the large island west of New Zealand, where your correspondent currently sits. In Queensland, a snap lockdown imposed this week has been lifted a day early after just one local case was recorded.
Ben Smee reports:
In New Zealand, the country that has, by many reckonings, led the world in responding to Covid-19, a microbiologist and science communicator at the University of Auckland has been named New Zealander of the Year.
Siouxsie Wiles said the honour was “lovely, and a real privilege … I hope to do us proud”.
— Toby Manhire (@toby_etc) March 31, 2021
Former US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has tested positive for Covid-19 and has urged people to take steps to guard against the coronavirus, such as wearing masks in public.
“Through it all, I view wearing that cumbersome mask indoors in a crowd as not only allowing the newfound luxury of being incognito, but trust it’s better than doing nothing to slow the spread,” Palin told People magazine.
This was reported a few hours ago, but, given the dramatic, and tragic, findings, is worth highlighting again.
Rates of stillbirth and maternal deaths rose by around a third during the Covid-19 pandemic, with pregnancy outcomes getting worse overall for both babies and mothers worldwide, according to an international data review published on Wednesday.
Reuters reports the review pooled data from 40 studies across 17 countries, and found that lockdowns, disruption to maternity services, and fear of attending healthcare facilities all added to pregnancy risks, leading to generally worse results for women and infants.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on healthcare systems,” said professor Asma Khalil, who co-led the research at St George’s University of London.
“The disruption caused ... has led to the avoidable deaths of both mothers and babies, especially in low- and middle-income countries.”
Published in the Lancet Global Health journal, the review found an overall increase in the risks of stillbirth and maternal death during the pandemic, and found the impact on poorer countries was disproportionately greater.
It also found significant harm to maternal mental health. Of the 10 studies included in the analysis that reported on maternal mental health, six found an increase in postnatal depression, maternal anxiety, or both.
The study did not analyse the direct impact of Covid-19 infection itself during pregnancy, but was designed to look at the collateral impact of the coronavirus pandemic on antenatal, birth and postnatal outcomes.
Commenting on the findings, Jogender Kumar of the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in India said they highlighted worrying disparities in healthcare.
“In resource-poor countries, even under normal circumstances, it is a challenge to provide adequate coverage for antenatal checkups, obstetric emergencies, universal institutional deliveries and respectful maternity care,” he wrote in a commentary.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has widened this gap.”
More on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine batch failure:
Johnson & Johnson has said that a batch of its Covid-19 vaccines failed quality standards and can’t be used.
The drugmaker didn’t say how many doses were lost, and it wasn’t clear how the problem would impact future deliveries.
The drugmaker said on Wednesday it had found a problem with an ingredient used in the Covid vaccine, which was being produced at a production site in Baltimore, Maryland, belonging to Emergent Biosolutions, one of about 10 companies that J& J is using to speed up manufacturing.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s continuing live coverage of the global coronavirus pandemic. Ben Doherty with you from the Guardian’s Sydney newsroom.
France has imposed a nationwide month-long lockdown to curb a rising third wave of coronavirus. Schools will close for at least three weeks, workers will work from home, and travel within the country will be banned for a month after Easter. “We will lose control if we do not move now,” president Emmanuel Macron said.
Johnson & Johnson has said that a batch of its Covid-19 vaccines failed quality standards and can’t be used. The drugmaker didn’t say how many doses were lost, and it wasn’t clear how the problem would impact future deliveries.
Here are some of the other key developments from the last few hours:
- Italy has made coronavirus vaccinations mandatory for all health workers, in a potentially controversial move aimed at protecting vulnerable patients and pushing back against significant ‘no-vax’ sentiment in the country.
- Brazil has detected a new Covid variant in São Paulo state that is similar to the one first seen in South Africa, it was reported earlier.
- Rates of stillbirth and maternal death rose by about one-third during the coronavirus pandemic, with the impact most acute in poor and developing countries, a study published in the Lancet Global Health journal reported.
- Finland’s government has withdrawn a proposal to confine people largely to their own homes in several cities to help curb the spread of Covid, the prime minister said.
- Europe’s drug regulator is investigating 62 cases worldwide of a rare blood clotting condition which has prompted some countries to limit the use of AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine, its chief said in a briefing.
- Sweden’s government will postpone a planned easing of some Covid restrictions until at least 3 May amid a severe third wave, the prime minister said.
- The premiers of two southern German states badly hit by the pandemic (Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg) urged leaders in the rest of the country to reintroduce tougher lockdown measures to try to contain a third wave of infections.
- Israel plans to administer the Pfizer Inc/BioNTech Covid vaccine to 12- to 15-year-olds upon FDA approval, the health minister said after the manufacturer deemed the shots safe and effective on the cohort.
