Hungary will maintain restrictions, including a 8pm curfew, until at least 11 January, the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has said. He added in a Facebook video that New Year’s Eve celebrations would not be held this year.
Updated
Petsas said the restrictions would expire at 6am on 7 January.
The nationwide lockdown already includes a 9pm to 5am curfew. He said new measures would apply to schools, courts, restaurants, gyms and ski resorts, and that travel between different districts in Greece would be prohibited.
Depending on epidemiological data, it remained to be seen whether retail stores, hairdressers and churches would reopen in the coming weeks, he said. Arrivals from abroad will be subject to rapid coronavirus tests and will have to quarantine for 10 days.
The end date in the new year will effectively mark two months of the country being under lockdown. Although infection rates have begun to stabilise, they remain frustratingly high: the public health organisation EODY reported 904 new cases on Sunday, bringing the total to 115,471.
Petsas noted that despite the restrictions, movement of people was up by 20% compared with the first lockdown. Athens’ health minister, Vassillis Kikilias, had previously said the economy would reopen once daily case numbers fell to 500 a day.
Updated
Schools, restaurants and courts in Greece will not reopen until 7 January, the government’s spokesman Stelios Petsas has said.
Greece was forced to impose a nationwide lockdown in November, its second this year, after an aggressive rise in Covid-19 cases. It has extended it twice since then, most recently until 14 December.
But Petsas said progress was still slow and some restrictions will not be lifted until next month, including a night curfew.
Updated
Denmark will implement further lockdown measures in parts of the country to curb a recent spike in infections, the prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has said.
Bars, restaurants, museums and cinemas will have to close on 9 December in 38 municipalities, including Copenhagen, and students in upper primary school, high schools and universities will be sent home. The new restrictions will be in place until 3 January.
Updated
Some 3,000 to 5,000 Hungarians could participate in clinical trials of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, the Hungarian human resources minister Miklos Kasler said on his Facebook page on Monday.
Kasler said a Hungarian delegation of medical experts had received “detailed notification” about the Russian vaccine in Moscow and observed “that the vaccine is being manufactured with the latest technology and with WHO protocols being applied”.
Next year’s Paris airshow has been cancelled as the aerospace industry continues to weather the coronavirus crisis, a spokesman for the French organisers said today.
Together with Britain’s Farnborough airshow, with which it alternates every other year, the event is the industry’s largest showcase. Its cancellation is the latest sign of the depth of the pandemic-related crisis hitting airlines and manufacturers.
Updated
More than 66.66 million people have been reported to be infected by coronavirus globally and 1,533,752 have died, according to the latest Reuters tally.
Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
The number of new Covid-19 infections per day in France is unlikely to fall to a 5,000 target by 15 December as the population is not sufficiently respecting social distancing measures, one of France*s top coronavirus experts said today.
Eric Caumes, head of infectious diseases at Paris hospital La Pitié-Salpêtrière, told LCI television that if the French are not cautious enough over Christmas and year-end holidays, it will lead to a third wave of the virus in mid-January.
President Emmanuel Macron has said the French lockdown that started on 30 October could be lifted on 15 December, if by then the number of new infections per day has fallen to 5,000.
“No, I do not think this target can be reached as the trend downward stopped, it is stabilising. So it will be difficult to reach that target,” Caumes said.
French health authorities reported 11,022 new confirmed Covid-19 cases on Sunday, down from the 12,923 new infections detected the previous day.
It’s back to school today for some New York City schoolchildren, weeks after the schools were closed to in-person learning because of rising Covid-19 infections.
The city’s public school system, which shut down in-person learning earlier this month, will bring back preschool students and children in kindergarten through fifth grade, whose parents chose a mix of in-school and remote learning. Special education students in all grades who have particularly complex needs will be welcomed back starting Thursday.
Middle school and high school will remain all remote at least until after the holiday break, Mayor Bill de Blasio has said.
De Blasio announced on 18 November that public school buildings would close because the city had crossed a threshold set earlier of 3% of all the coronavirus tests performed over a seven-day period coming back positive.
The rate of positive Covid-19 tests is now over 5%, according to the city’s figures, but de Blasio has said it’s safe to reopen schools with beefed-up testing protocols — in part because few infections have been linked to the schools. On Friday, he told WNYC radio:
We have facts now for two straight months of extraordinarily low levels of transmission in our schools, our schools are clearly safer. This is what our health care leaders say. Our schools are safer than pretty much any place else in New York City. So, I really think everyone in the school community can feel secure because so many measures are in place to protect everyone.
De Blasio announced on 29 November that school buildings serving younger children and special-needs students would reopen with coronavirus testing increased from monthly to weekly. Masks and social distancing are required at all city schools.
About 190,000 students will be eligible to return to school buildings starting today. After closing schools in March, New York City was one of the first large US cities to reopen school buildings in September, but the majority of parents chose online-only learning for their children.
Children whose parents chose the hybrid model were previously inside physical classrooms from one to three days a week, but de Blasio said some students will now be in their school buildings five days a week.
Updated
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. Thanks for following along – and stay tuned for the latest with my colleague Haroon Siddique.
Summary
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
- UK to administer first vaccine doses on Tuesday. Britain is set to administer the first doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday, with the NHS giving top priority to vaccinating the over-80s, frontline healthcare workers and care home staff and residents. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine needs to be kept at -70C (-94F) and only lasts five days in a regular fridge. For that reason, it will first be administered in 50 hospitals. About 800,000 doses are expected to be available within the first week.
- Giuliani in hospital – reports. Multiple news outlets are reporting that Rudy Giuliani, personal lawyer to Donald Trump, has been admitted to hospital following the announcement by Trump on Twitter that Giuliani had tested positive for coronavirus. CNN, the New York Times and the ABC, citing unnamed sources familiar with the situation, report that Giuliani has been admitted to Georgetown University Hospital.
- President-elect Joe Biden has picked California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to be his health secretary, putting a defender of the Affordable Care Act in a leading role to oversee his administration’s coronavirus response. If confirmed by the Senate, Becerra, 62, will be the first Latino to head the Department of Health and Human Services.
- Biden expected to nominate Massachusetts General Hospital chief to run US CDC. US President-elect Joe Biden is expected to nominate Rochelle Walensky, chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, to run the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Reuters reports, citing a person familiar with the decision.
- In Australia, the city of Melbourne has welcomed its first international passenger flight in five months, an arrival that will test the state of Victoria’s revamped hotel quarantine system. Australia has since March closed its borders to non-citizens, but airports serving Victoria’s capital stopped accepting any arrivals in late June after an outbreak of Covid-19 that began at two hotels where arrivals were quarantining.
- South Korea expands testing. South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Monday ordered testing for the new coronavirus to be expanded by mobilizing the military and more people from the public service, as the country continued to report triple-digit daily new cases.
- South Korea reported 615 new coronavirus cases on Monday, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said, capping a month of triple-digit daily increases that have driven the nation’s largest wave of infections in nine months. Monday’s total was down slightly from Sunday, when the agency reported 631 new cases, the largest daily tally since a peak in February and early March.
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Public support for Japan’s new prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, has plummeted over the past month amid mounting criticism of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. A new poll by the Kyodo news agency shows support for his cabinet at 50.3%, down 13 percentage points from a month earlier. Disapproval rose from 19.2% to 32.6%.
- The Serum Institute of India has sought emergency use authorisation from India’s drug regulator for AstraZeneca Plc’s Covid-19 vaccine on Sunday, according to several reports in Indian media, citing the Press Trust of India. It applied to the Drugs Controller General of India, citing unmet medical needs due to the pandemic and in the interest of the public at large, the agency report said, citing official sources. The Serum Institute was not immediately available to Reuters request for comment.
- Japan is preparing to send nurses from the Self-Defence Forces to Osaka and Hokkaido to help treat a surge in coronavirus infections as soon as the two prefecture governments request it, chief government spokesman Katsunobu Kato said on Monday.
- Indonesia receives first vaccine shipment from China. Indonesia received its first shipment of coronavirus vaccine from China on Sunday, President Joko Widodo said, as the government prepares a mass inoculation programme.The vaccine still needs to be evaluated by the country’s food and drug agency while his administration prepares to distribute it across the vast archipelago of 270 million people, Jokowi said.
- The Arizona Capitol Times reports that the Arizona state legislature will close for the whole of this coming week, “after at least 15 current or future Republican legislators may have been directly exposed to Covid-19 by meeting with Rudy Giuliani.”
Some of England’s most ethnically diverse areas have suffered up to four times more coronavirus infections than mostly white neighbourhoods only a few miles away, a Guardian analysis reveals, as health experts said the UK had paid the price for failing to tackle structural racism.
A study of England’s 10 worst-hit council areas found huge disparities in the effect of Covid-19 on residents living alongside one another, with densely packed Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities bearing the brunt of the pandemic.
In Blackburn with Darwen, which has experienced the UK’s highest coronavirus cases per capita, the contrast between neighbouring areas is stark. One in 10 people have had the virus in Bastwell, where 85.7% of residents come from a BAME background – four times higher than a neighbourhood five miles away where only 2% of people are non-white:
The World Health Organization is holding discussions on Monday about the feasibility of trials in which healthy young volunteers are deliberately infected with coronavirus to hasten vaccine development – amid questions over whether they should go ahead given the promising data from the frontrunner vaccine candidates.
Some scientists have reservations about exposing volunteers to a virus for which there is no cure, although there are treatments that can help patients. However, proponents argue that the risks of Covid-19 to the young and healthy are minimal, and the benefits to society are high:
Indonesia receives first vaccine shipment from China
Indonesia received its first shipment of coronavirus vaccine from China on Sunday, President Joko Widodo said, as the government prepares a mass inoculation programme.
The vaccine still needs to be evaluated by the country’s food and drug agency while his administration prepares to distribute it across the vast archipelago of 270 million people, Jokowi said.
UK to administer first vaccine doses on Tuesday
Britain is set to administer the first doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday, with the NHS giving top priority to vaccinating the over-80s, frontline healthcare workers and care home staff and residents, Reuters reports.
The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine needs to be kept at -70C (-94F) and only lasts five days in a regular fridge. For that reason, it will first be administered in 50 hospitals. About 800,000 doses are expected to be available within the first week.
Provincial governments across China are placing orders for experimental, domestically made coronavirus vaccines, though health officials have yet to say how well they work or how they may reach the country’s 1.4 billion people, AP reports.
Developers are speeding up final testing, the Chinese foreign minister said during a US meeting last week, as Britain approved emergency use of Pfizer Inc’s vaccine candidate and providers scrambled to set up distribution.
Even without final approval, more than 1 million health care workers and others in China who are deemed at high risk of infection have received experimental vaccines under emergency use permission. Developers have yet to disclose how effective their vaccines are and possible side effects.
China’s fledgling pharmaceutical industry has at least five vaccines from four producers being tested in more than a dozen countries including Russia, Egypt and Mexico. Health experts say even if they are successful, the certification process for the United States, Europe, Japan and other developed countries might be too complex for them to be used there.
However, China said it will ensure the products are affordable for developing countries and has been actively pursuing deals across the world.
A plea from Dr. Anthony Fauci for people to “wear a mask” to slow the spread of the coronavirus tops a Yale Law School librarian’s list of the most notable quotes of 2020.
The list assembled by Fred Shapiro, an associate director at the library, is an annual update to “The Yale Book of Quotations,” which was first published in 2006, AP reports.
Also on the list is “I can’t breathe,” the plea George Floyd made repeatedly to police officers holding him down on a Minneapolis street corner. Several quotes from the presidential campaign appear including Joe Biden telling a student: “You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier.”
Shapiro said he picks quotes that are not necessarily admirable or eloquent, but rather because they are famous or particularly revealing of the spirit of the times.
In case you missed this earlier: Jerrold M Post, a psychiatrist who profiled dictators for the CIA and who declared Donald Trump a “dangerous, destructive charismatic leader”, has died of Covid-19. He was 86.
A pioneer in his field, Post’s assessments of leaders such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and Kim Jong-il helped guide presidents and other US officials.
He brought his work closer to home in his final years, assessing Trump’s rise to power and his relationship with his followers, thoughts he published in book form in late 2019. In an interview at the time, Post accurately predicted the aftermath of Trump’s election defeat:
China reported 15 new Covid-19 cases on Dec. 6, down from 18 cases a day earlier, the national health authority said on Monday.
The National Health Commission said in a statement 12 of the new cases were imported infections originating from overseas. Three locally transmitted infections were reported in the Inner Mongolia region.
The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, rose to six from two cases a day earlier.
The total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in mainland China now stands at 86,634, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
South Korea confirms 615 new cases, slightly down from Sunday
South Korea reported 615 new coronavirus cases on Monday, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said, capping a month of triple-digit daily increases that have driven the nation’s largest wave of infections in nine months.
Monday’s total was down slightly from Sunday, when the agency reported 631 new cases, the largest daily tally since a peak in February and early March.
On Sunday authorities said they will impose heightened social distancing rules for the capital Seoul and surrounding areas that will last until at least the end of the month.
South Korea avoided lockdowns but used an intensive system of tracing, testing and quarantining to tamp down two earlier waves of infection.
With this third wave, however, the government has faced increasing criticism as cases continue to rise despite unprecedented measures such as mask mandates, curfews for restaurants and other restrictions.
In total, South Korea has reported 38,161 cases, with 549 deaths.
Health authorities have said that if the current trend of cases continues, the hospital system could become overloaded.
Updated
Arizona legislature to close for a week following Giuliani's Covid diagnosis
The Arizona Capitol Times reports that the Arizona state legislature will close for the whole of this coming week, “after at least 15 current or future Republican legislators may have been directly exposed to Covid-19 by meeting with Rudy Giuliani.”
The decision seems to contradict a statement released earlier by the Trump campaign, saying Giuliani no legislators or members of the press were on Giuliani’s contact tracing list because he had tested negative and not experienced symptoms until at least 48 hours after meeting with any of them.
New statement concerning @RudyGiuliani covid diagnosis from Trump campaign. pic.twitter.com/ZfUrmZF0Hg
— Kelly O'Donnell (@KellyO) December 7, 2020
According to the Arizona Capitol Times:
Several lawmakers who attended the unofficial hearing on 30 November also attended the Legislature’s new member orientation later in the week, potentially exposing even more lawmakers and many state government employees. Nguyen, Burges and Rogers were at both events.
Sen. Andrea Dalessandro, D-Sahuarita, said she’s making plans to take a test Wednesday after learning that several of the GOP legislators she attended the orientation with had spent time with Giuliani.
Only one of the nearly dozen new Republican lawmakers consistently wore a mask at the three-day event, though attendees had been assured ahead of time that anyone who chose not to wear a mask would be asked to watch presentations remotely, [Senator Andrea] Dalessandro said.”
Mexico’s Health Ministry on Sunday reported 7,455 new cases of coronavirus infection and an additional 261 fatalities, bringing the country’s totals to 1,175,850 cases and 109,717 deaths.
The government says the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
Japan preparing to send military nurses to Osaka and Hokkaido
Japan is preparing to send nurses from the Self-Defence Forces to Osaka and Hokkaido to help treat a surge in coronavirus infections as soon as the two prefecture governments request it, chief government spokesman Katsunobu Kato said on Monday.
Kyodo News reported that Japan’s northern Hokkaido prefecture was planning to ask the government to send Self-Defense Force nurses. The prefecture has seen infection clusters at two hospitals, Kyodo said.
In western Japan’s Osaka, the local government said on Sunday that daily new cases had exceeded 300 for the sixth straight day, according to public broadcaster NHK.
India's Serum Institute seeks emergency use nod for AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine
The Serum Institute of India has sought emergency use authorisation from India’s drug regulator for AstraZeneca Plc’s Covid-19 vaccine on Sunday, according to several reports in Indian media, citing the Press Trust of India.
It applied to the Drugs Controller General of India, citing unmet medical needs due to the pandemic and in the interest of the public at large, the agency report said, citing official sources.
The Serum Institute was not immediately available to Reuters request for comment.
More on Japan’s prime minister now: Suga has defended his support for Go To Travel and the Olympics, which could see “large-scale” numbers of sports fans arriving in Tokyo from overseas, including those who have not been vaccinated.
Suga, who became prime minister in September after Shinzo Abe resigned on health grounds, said the government was tackling the latest surge in Covid-19 infections with a “strong sense of crisis”.
“Protecting the lives and livelihoods of the people is my administration’s top priority,” Suga, who did not hold a single press conference in November, told reporters on Friday.
Earlier, in a pre-recorded address to a US general assembly session on the pandemic, he insisted the Tokyo Games would be “proof that humanity had defeated the pandemic,” adding, “I will continue to spare no effort to bring about a Games that are safe and secure”.
Public support for Japan's prime minister plummets
Public support for Japan’s new prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, has plummeted over the past month amid mounting criticism of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
A new poll by the Kyodo news agency shows support for his cabinet at 50.3%, down 13 percentage points from a month earlier. Disapproval rose from 19.2% to 32.6%.
The poll, conducted over the weekend, revealed widespread opposition to the Go To Travel campaign to encourage domestic travel in an attempt to prop up regional economies during the pandemic. Just over 48% of respondents wanted the scheme to be suspended, soon after the government announced that it would be extended by five months until the end of June. Just 11.6% believed the government was managing the programme properly.
A separate poll in the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper found that 57% of respondents want Go To Travel to be temporarily halted, reflecting concerns that it has contributed to a recent rise in infections in several parts of the country.
Japan has reported 163,654 cases and 2,372 deaths - modest numbers compared to many other countries - but the recent surge in infections, particularly in the cities of Tokyo, Osaka and Sapporo, have prompted concern that Suga’s focus on the economy is frustrating efforts to bring the pandemic under control.
The Kyodo poll suggests the public do not share Suga’s enthusiasm for the postponed Tokyo Olympics, which are due to open next July - a year later than planned. More than 60% of respondents said current plans to hold the Games should be revised, with almost a third of them calling for a further postponement and 29% saying they should be cancelled.
South Korea expands testing
South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Monday ordered testing for the new coronavirus to be expanded by mobilizing the military and more people from the public service, as the country continued to report triple-digit daily new cases, Reuters reports.
Moon said testing sites should operate longer hours to allow people working to get tested at their convenience and more drive-through testing facilities should be set up, presidential Blue House spokesman Chung Man-ho told a briefing.
Biden expected to nominate Massachusetts General Hospital chief to run US CDC
US President-elect Joe Biden is expected to nominate Rochelle Walensky, chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, to run the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Reuters reports, citing a person familiar with the decision.
Melbourne welcomes first international flight in five months
In Australia, the city of Melbourne has welcomed its first international passenger flight in five months, an arrival that will test the state of Victoria’s revamped hotel quarantine system.
Australia has since March closed its borders to non-citizens, but airports serving Victoria’s capital stopped accepting any arrivals in late June after an outbreak of Covid-19 that began at two hotels where arrivals were quarantining.
More than 20,000 infections were recorded in Victoria when hotel staff contracted the virus from people returning from overseas. The outbreak was chiefly blamed on failures of private contractors to follow protocols.
Under the new quarantine system, arrivals will no longer be allowed to leave their hotel rooms. The system is similar to the model used in Sydney, which has accommodated thousands of people returning without any clusters emerging.
More on the lockdown in California now, from AP:
In California, the first place in the US to enact a statewide lockdown last spring, new stay-at-home orders were set to take effect Sunday night in Southern California, much of the San Francisco Bay area and other areas.
The new rules in the state of 40 million people prohibit residents from gathering with those outside their household. Retailers including supermarkets and shopping centers can operate with just 20% capacity, while restaurant dining, hair salons, movie theaters, museums and playgrounds must shut down.
Hospitals in California are seeing space in intensive care units dwindle amid a surge in infections. California health authorities imposed the order after ICU capacity fell below a 15% threshold in some regions.
Some law enforcement officials, though, said they don’t plan to enforce the rules, and some business owners are warning that they could go under after a year of on-and-off closings and other restrictions.
California Governor Gavin Newsom said he hopes the new lockdown order is the last one he has to issue, declaring the vaccine offers “light at the end of the tunnel.
Questions, comments or news tips? Get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
Here is the full story on Biden’s pick for Health and Human Services secretary:
Biden picks California Attorney General Becerra to lead pandemic response
President-elect Joe Biden has picked California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to be his health secretary, putting a defender of the Affordable Care Act in a leading role to oversee his administration’s coronavirus response, AP reports.
If confirmed by the Senate, Becerra, 62, will be the first Latino to head the Department of Health and Human Services, a $1-trillion-plus agency with 80,000 employees and a portfolio that includes drugs and vaccines, leading-edge medical research and health insurance programs covering more than 130 million Americans.
As California’s attorney general, Becerra has led the coalition of Democratic states defending “Obamacare” from the Trump administration’s latest effort to overturn it, a legal case awaiting a Supreme Court decision next year.
A former senior House Democrat, Becerra played a role in steering the Obama health law through Congress in 2009 and 2010. At the time he would tell reporters that one of the primary motivations for him was having tens of thousands of uninsured people in his Southern California district.
Overseeing the coronavirus response will be the most complicated task Becerra has ever contemplated. By next year, the US will be engaged in a mass vaccination campaign, the groundwork for which has been laid under the Trump administration.
Updated
Crowded scenes on the first weekend of Christmas shopping after the easing of lockdown in England have prompted fears about a lack of social distancing and the risk of spreading coronavirus.
Despite overall footfall being down on the same period last year, images emerged on Sunday of busy high streets with shoppers standing close together, and a Christmas market in Nottingham had to be shut for good within 24 hours of opening. In addition four people were arrested as a crowd tried enter Harrods in the West End in London:
Doctors are stepping up a legal effort to force a public inquiry into Covid-19 deaths among NHS staff and care workers because of a lack of personal protective equipment.
Doctors Association UK (DAUK), a union that represents frontline medics, has escalated its threat of judicial review against the government.
At least 126 health and care workers died of Covid between April and October in cases where their employers believe they had contracted the virus as a result of their work, official reports to the Health and Safety Executive show.
One of the first was Dr Peter Tun, who died on 13 April. He had warned Royal Berkshire hospital three weeks before his death that unless it supplied the vital kit he and his colleagues needed to avoid infection “it will be too little and too late”:
Giuliani in hospital – reports
Multiple news outlets are reporting that Rudy Giuliani, personal lawyer to Donald Trump, has been admitted to hospital following the announcement by Trump on Twitter that Giuliani had tested positive for coronavirus.
CNN, the New York Times and the ABC, citing unnamed sources familiar with the situation, report that Giuliani has been admitted to Georgetown University Hospital. The Guardian has not been able to verify this independently.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coronavirus news with me, Helen Sullivan.
I’ll be bringing you the latest updates for the next few hours. As always, you can get in touch with me on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has been admitted Georgetown University Hospital with coronavirus, according to CNN, which cited a source familiar with the situation - though the Guardian has not been able to confirm this. Late on Sunday, Trump tweeted that Giuliani had the virus, though it is unclear what his condition is.
Meanwhile more than 23 million people in Southern California were preparing on Sunday for the harshest lockdowns in the United States as Covid-19 cases spiked to record levels in the country’s most populous state.
The restrictions in California, ordered by Governor Gavin Newsom to take effect on a region-by-region basis as hospital intensive care unit beds are filled almost to capacity, call for bars, hair and nail salons and tattoo shops to close again.
As of 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, the affected regions were also required to shut down even outdoor restaurant dining.
Here are the other key developments from the last few hours:
- Tunisia has extended a night-time curfew until the end of the year in a bid to tackle rising coronavirus cases, amid growing discontent and anti-government protests in the North African country.
- France has recorded 11,022 new coronavirus infections and 174 deaths over the last 24 hours. The figures compare to 9,784 cases and 198 fatalities announced last Sunday.
- Pfizer Inc has applied for emergency use authorisation of its coronavirus vaccine in India, a top government health adviser has said, the first company to do so in the country with the world’s second-highest number of infections.
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Turkey recorded 30,402 new coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours, the health ministry has announced. The Covid-19 death toll rose by 195 in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of fatalities to 14,900, the ministry data also showed.
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The South African government has urged school students who attended a series of end-of-year “Rage” parties to quarantine for 10 days after identifying four such parties as coronavirus “super-spreader events”.
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There have been a further 17,272 lab-confirmed coronavirus cases in the UK, according to government data. This compares to 12,155 cases registered last Sunday.
- Italy has reported 18,887 new coronavirus cases, compared with 20,646 last Sunday. A total of 1.728 million cases have been registered to date.
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Indonesia has received its first shipment of vaccine from China, its president, Joko Widodo, has said, as the government prepares a mass inoculation programme.
- Bavaria, which has so far recorded the Germany’s highest death toll, has announced it will impose a tougher lockdown from Wednesday until 5 January.
