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In the meantime you can catch up with all our coverage of the pandemic here.
The NSW state government in Australia has come under fire for sending in at least 100 extra police officers to patrol the streets of southwest Sydney as part of a “high-visibility” operation to ensure the community is complying with the lockdown.
Given the high multicultural and migrant populations in the area, this has raised conerns that the law enforcement’s approach to hardline Covid-19 rules enforcement may have been influenced by race and social class.
NSW assistant police commissioner Tony Cooke hit back against these comments during an interview with ABC radio:
The virus does not discriminate and neither do police...
WE will respond here for as long as it’s necessary, but in our message is really clear... the better that we comply, we will get in front of these so that will shorten it, so we won’t have illness in the community and so we will get back to being that vibrant community that Southwestern Sydney.
Brazil registered 53,725 new Covid-19 cases and 1,639 deaths in the past 24 hours, according to the country’s health ministry data.
This brings the total in Brazil to nearly 19 million cases and 530,179 deaths, Reuters reports. Meanwhile, Brazil registered the highest number of deaths and lowest number of births in the first six months of the year since comparable data was first compiled in 2003, the national association of notary offices said.
The latest Covid-19 situation in Australia:
Pfizer Inc plans to ask US regulators to authorise a booster dose of its Covid-19 vaccine within the next month, Reuters reports.
The drugmaker’s top scientist said on Thursday, based on evidence of greater risk of reinfection six months after inoculation and due to the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant.
Pfizer Chief Scientific Officer Mikael Dolsten said the recently reported dip in the vaccine’s effectiveness in Israel was mostly due to infections in people who had been vaccinated in January or February.
The country’s health ministry said vaccine effectiveness in preventing both infection and symptomatic disease fell to 64% in June.
“The Pfizer vaccine is highly active against the Delta variant,” Dolsten said in an interview.
But after six months, he said, “there likely is the risk of reinfection as antibodies, as predicted, wane.”
He stressed that data from Israel and Britain suggests that even with waning antibody levels, the vaccine remains around 95% effective against severe disease.
Covid-19 infections in California are on the rise, as public health officials in the US warn that the more transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus is fast gaining ground.
For the week-long period ending Tuesday, California saw an average of approximately 1,143 new Covid-19 cases a day, up 30% from mid-June. The increase started shortly after California’s reopening on 15 June, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Covid-19 hospitalisations have also increased by 34% since the middle of June. As of Tuesday, there were 1,228 Covid patients in California hospitals, compared with 915 reported on 12 June. That is still far less than hospitalizations at the pandemic’s peak, when hospital admissions totalled almost 22,000.
“This is the call to anyone who hasn’t been vaccinated: get vaccinated,” California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, said during a press briefing Wednesday. “What more evidence do you need?”
Argentina has announced it will sign a Covid-19 vaccine supply agreement with Moderna.
Cabinet chief Santiago Cafiero told Argentina’s Congress that a deal would be signed with U.S.-based Moderna on Monday, but did not detail the number of doses being bought or the agreed delivery dates, Reuters reports. Argentina has so far largely built its Covid-19 inoculation program around Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, China’s Sinopharm vaccine and British-Swedish firm AstraZeneca’s vaccine. It has vaccinated 23.7 million of its 45 million inhabitants with at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, and 4.9 million people have received two. As of Wednesday, Argentina registered 4.6 million cases of Covid-19 and 97,000 related deaths.
The US administered 332,345,797 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country as of Thursday morning and distributed 385,495,790 doses, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Those figures are up from the 331,651,464 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by July 7. The agency said 183,237,046 people had received at least one dose while 158,287,566 people are fully vaccinated as of Thursday.
A summary of today's developments
- Holidaymakers in Portugal will be required to show a negative Covid-19 test, a vaccination certificate or proof of recovery to stay in hotels or other holiday accommodation from Saturday, the government announced.
- Foreign tourists who are not vaccinated against Covid-19 will not be allowed to enter Canada for some time, with the government unwilling to jeopardise progress made on containing the virus, prime minister Justin Trudeau said.
- Olympic organisers decided to ban spectators from the Tokyo Games after Japan’s prime minister declared a state of emergency in the host city. Olympic minister, Tamayo Marukawa left open the possibility that some venues outside Tokyo could still have fans.
- Greece is to unveil plans to mandate vaccination for specific professional groups next week, the government said, after the country’s bio-ethics experts recommended compulsory shots for health workers and staff at elderly care facilities only “as a last resort measure” if efforts to encourage voluntary inoculation proved ineffective.
- Holidaymakers from England travelling to amber list countries will not have to quarantine on return if they are fully vaccinated, but Britons living overseas will not be able to prove their vaccine status if they have been jabbed abroad.
- Luxembourg’s prime minister Xavier Bettel left hospital today after treatment for Covid-19 and will resume work this week, officials said. A statement from Bettel’s government said his condition had improved, allowing him to work from home. He had been admitted to hospital on Sunday.
- Pharmacies across Indonesia are running out of ivermectin, an oral treatment normally used to parasitic infections, AFP reported, after it was used widely and reportedly with success in India, Mexico, Bolivia, and elsewhere.
- A case brought by more than 500 families of Covid victims seeking a total of €100m in compensation from the Italian government has reached court, as the first hearing into continental Europe’s deadliest outbreak got under way in Rome.
- US cases of Covid-19 are up around 11% over last week, believed to be almost entirely among people who have not yet been vaccinated against the novel coronavirus, according to officials.
- Zimbabwe received 2 million Covid-19 vaccines from China’s Sinovac, the single largest shipment aimed at boosting a vaccination campaign that had been slowed by shortages while infections and deaths rise as the World Health Organization vaccine sharing plan Covax continues to face criticism over a slow rollout.
- The world’s leading developed and developing countries have been told a tax on financial transactions could help them raise around $100bn a year to meet the costs of the pandemic, tackle climate change and boost job creation.
Russia’s coronavirus task force reported 24,818 new cases in the last 24 hours, including 6,040 in the capital.
Russia also reported 734 coronavirus-related deaths, close to a record daily high.
Around 66% of Covid-19 cases that Russia identified in June and early July were the Delta variant, Anna Popova, consumer health watchdog head, was quoted by TASS new agency as saying.
The mayor of Moscow old residents that hospital admissions for Covid-19 patients were still very high, though down slightly from a peak last week, Reuters reports.
Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the city of more than 12.5 million was now vaccinating around 100,000 people a day, giving authorities room not to impose new restrictions.
Foreign tourists who are not vaccinated against Covid-19 will not be allowed to enter Canada for some time, with the government unwilling to jeopardise progress made on containing the virus, prime minister Justin Trudeau said.
“I can tell you right now that’s not going to happen for quite a while,” said Trudeau, when asked by reporters when the country would allow unvaccinated tourists to enter the country.
Trudeau added there would be more to say in the “coming weeks” on when Canada’s borders might reopen to fully vaccinated tourists, Reuters reports.
Updated
Boris Johnson continued to defend his plan in England to delay the lifting of the self-isolation requirement for Covid contacts who have received both jabs until August 16.
With this coming a month after most of the remaining restrictions are expected to be lifted, there are concerns that vast numbers of people could be forced into quarantine, PA reports. Johnson told broadcasters: “I know how frustrated people are about this and I know that people are obviously fed up with Covid restrictions. “What we want to do is just keep going for a little bit longer so that we can get even more vaccinations into people’s arms, give ourselves even more protection.
“But as the Health Secretary has said, we are moving now from self-isolation, from quarantine approach, to test and release approach.
“The day is not too far off.”
The £22bn NHS test-and-trace system risks being overwhelmed by surging Covid infections after the planned wholesale lifting of restrictions in England this month, a leading academic has warned.
Jon Deeks, a professor of biostatistics at the University of Birmingham, said at least 660,000 gold-standard PCR tests are likely to be needed each day to discover 100,000 daily infections this summer – the number forewarned by the health secretary, Sajid Javid, after the government announced plans to drop restrictions from 19 July.
This level of testing is almost three times the current rate in the UK, more than double the highest volume achieved at any point during the pandemic, and at the peak of the system’s theoretical laboratory capacity calculated this spring by the National Audit Office (NAO).
Holidaymakers in Portugal will be required to show a negative Covid-19 test, a vaccination certificate or proof of recovery to stay in hotels or other holiday accommodation from Saturday, the government announced.
Portugal’s new daily case numbers have been rising steadily in recent weeks, returning to levels last seen in February when the country was under a strict lockdown. Nearly 90% of cases are of the more infectious Delta variant. Negative tests, vaccination certificates or proof of recovery will also be required to eat indoors at restaurants in 60 high-risk municipalities, including Lisbon and the city of Porto, on Friday evenings and at the weekend. Children under 12 accompanied by a parent or guardian are exempt, Reuters reports.
News from the boxing world:
The much-anticipated trilogy fight between Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder on July 24 is in jeopardy.
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) July 8, 2021
(via @MikeCoppinger) pic.twitter.com/12t3hf1Xf6
Qatar is to resume issuing family and tourist entry visas starting on July 12, its interior ministry said.
The health ministry said the new entry policies include providing a Covid-19 PCR test and classifying countries into three categories that would determine the quarantine policies, Reuters reports.
Entry for family visits, businessmen and tourists including GCC citizens who do not have Qatari ID numbers will be limited to vaccinated and recovered cases.
All those who want to travel abroad will also need to be issued a travel permit and unvaccinated travellers to destinations not listed as green will have to book their institutional quarantine before departing Qatar, the health ministry added.
Passengers transiting through Qatar will also have to provide a Covid-19 PCR test, while fully vaccinated arrivals will take an anti-bodies test upon arrival to determine if they need to be institutionally quarantined.
Fears that the fast-spreading Delta variant of Covid-19 will hurt the global recovery sent stocks sliding today, as investors worried that economic growth could be slowing.
Shares fell sharply in London and across other European exchanges, after losses in Asia-Pacific markets, on concerns that the economic rebound from the shock of the pandemic may have peaked, and on signs of a slowdown in China.
My colleague Amy Remeikis provides a timeline on Australia’s jab rollout which reports that the government’s vaunted vaccination targets dropped amid Pfizer delays and AstraZeneca rare blood clot risk in favour of allocation “horizons”.
Today so far...
- Olympic organisers decided to ban spectators from the Tokyo Games after Japan’s prime minister declared a state of emergency in the host city. Olympic minister, Tamayo Marukawa left open the possibility that some venues outside Tokyo could still have fans.
- Greece is to unveil plans to mandate vaccination for specific professional groups next week, the government said, after the country’s bio-ethics experts recommended compulsory shots for health workers and staff at elderly care facilities only “as a last resort measure” if efforts to encourage voluntary inoculation proved ineffective.
- Holidaymakers from England travelling to amber list countries will not have to quarantine on return if they are fully vaccinated, but Britons living overseas will not be able to prove their vaccine status if they have been jabbed abroad.
- Luxembourg’s prime minister Xavier Bettel left hospital today after treatment for Covid-19 and will resume work this week, officials said. A statement from Bettel’s government said his condition had improved, allowing him to work from home. He had been admitted to hospital on Sunday.
- Pharmacies across Indonesia are running out of ivermectin, an oral treatment normally used to parasitic infections, AFP reported, after it was used widely and reportedly with success in India, Mexico, Bolivia, and elsewhere.
- A case brought by more than 500 families of Covid victims seeking a total of €100m in compensation from the Italian government has reached court, as the first hearing into continental Europe’s deadliest outbreak got under way in Rome.
- US cases of Covid-19 are up around 11% over last week, believed to be almost entirely among people who have not yet been vaccinated against the novel coronavirus, according to officials.
- Zimbabwe received 2 million Covid-19 vaccines from China’s Sinovac, the single largest shipment aimed at boosting a vaccination campaign that had been slowed by shortages while infections and deaths rise as the World Health Organization vaccine sharing plan Covax continues to face criticism over a slow rollout.
- The world’s leading developed and developing countries have been told a tax on financial transactions could help them raise around $100bn a year to meet the costs of the pandemic, tackle climate change and boost job creation.
New research from France adds to evidence that widely used Covid-19 vaccines offer strong protection against the Delta variant that is spreading rapidly around the world, and is prevalent in the US and UK, AP reports.
Researchers from France’s Pasteur Institute reported new evidence today suggesting that full vaccination is critical.
In laboratory tests, blood from several dozen people given their first dose of the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines “barely inhibited” the Delta variant, the team reported in the journal Nature.
But weeks after getting their second dose, nearly all had what researchers deemed an immune boost strong enough to neutralise the Delta variant — even if it was a little less potent than against earlier versions of the virus.
The French researchers also tested unvaccinated people who had survived a bout of the coronavirus, and found their antibodies were four-fold less potent against the new mutant.
But a single vaccine dose dramatically boosted their antibody levels — sparking cross-protection against the delta variant and two other mutants, the study found. That supports public health recommendations that Covid-19 survivors get vaccinated rather than relying on natural immunity.
Researchers in Britain found two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, for example, are 96% protective against hospitalisation with the delta variant and 88% effective against symptomatic infection. That finding was echoed last weekend by Canadian researchers, while a report from Israel suggested protection against mild delta infection may have dipped lower, to 64%.
Germany plans to declare all of Spain a coronavirus risk area, the Funke group of newspapers reports, citing government officials, meaning tourists and returning Germans would need to present a negative test to avoid going into quarantine.
The Covid-19 infection rate in Spain has more than doubled in a week as the Delta variant spreads, particularly through unvaccinated younger adults, Reuters reports. Germany has previously designated only a few regions in Spain as risk areas.
The national infection rate in Spain as measured over the past 14 days soared to 252 cases per 100,000 people yesterday from 117.2 a week ago, ministry data showed, putting the country back above the 250-case extreme risk threshold.
Among 20 to 29-year-olds that figure climbed to 814 cases per 100,000, jumping by nearly 100 since Tuesday. Germany yesterday reported 970 new infections and 31 deaths. The 7-day incidence per 100,000 people stood at 5.2.
Funke said Germany also plans to designate Cyprus as a high incidence area, which means that incoming travellers must quarantine, which can be shortened if they test negative five days after entry.
My wife and I tried to fly to Malta last week from Heathrow, but were refused permission to board by Air Malta. Despite having written evidence of negative PCR tests within the last 72 hours and digital NHS app proof of two jabs plus written proof of double vaccination, complete with venues, dates and type of vaccine on a printout, which also had a QR code on it, we were refused permission and had to return home.
Apparently we were supposed to have an “NHS letter”, which could be sent to us by post, taking five to seven days. Seemingly no one told the NHS as they told us what we had was sufficient.
What we presented was, and I quote, “Your unique 2D barcode” pointing at the QR code. Underneath it says, “This is to confirm your Covid-19 vaccination record, it is important. Keep it safe. It proves that you have been vaccinated” – all written below the NHS blue banner.
If we had had an EU digital vaccination record on our phones that would have been sufficient. Not the NHS app though.
This has been a shambles, with advice differing from day to day and depending on which organisation is asked. I understand Malta’s wish to protect the health of its citizens, and step things up when going on the UK’s green list, but it has been chaotic. The UK and other countries want to get their tourist trade flowing again. This is not the way to achieve that aim.
Those staying at Portuguese hotels must show a negative coronavirus test, a vaccination certificate or proof of recovery, the government has said.
Those wanting to dine indoors in restaurants in municipalities where the risk of Covid-19 transmission is high must also present a negative test, vaccination or recovery proof on Friday evenings and at the weekend, cabinet minister Mariana Vieira da Silva said, Reuters reports.
One thousand Italy supporters are to be shuttled into the UK this weekend to provide an officially sanctioned Azzurri chorus for the Euro 2020 final against England.
While home fans come to terms with a historic semi-final victory and offer thousands of pounds to strangers on the internet in the hope of getting into Wembley on Sunday night, the UK government has eased the rules for a small number of travelling supporters and twice as many VIPs, meaning they can attend the match without Covid quarantine.
The Italian Football Federation will distribute 1,000 tickets at €610 a head to fans desperate to attend. The terms and conditions require that the fans travel in and out of the UK on Sunday. They will remain in a bubble, stewarded and segregated at all times, with no contact with the general public, and they will have to quarantine for five days upon return to Italy.
During India’s first surge of Covid-19, antibiotic sales soared, which suggests inappropriate use of these medications to treat mild and moderate cases of the virus, researchers have said, adding to the country’s growing antimicrobial resistance crisis.
Reuters reports that an interrupted time series analysis of antibiotic sales in India’s private health sector from January of 2018 through December of 2020 revealed that sales of adult doses rose from 72.6% of total antibiotic sales in 2018 to 76.8% in 2020.
The researchers estimate that Covid-19 likely contributed to 216.4 million excess antibiotic doses administered just between June and September 2020, according to the results published in PLoS Medicine.
Study coauthor Dr. Summanth Gandra, an associate professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at the Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis, Missouri, said:
The biggest take-home message is that it looks like everybody with a Covid-19 infection in India received an antibiotic. The recommendations generally are that if you have a mild or moderate infection you don’t need antibiotics. Across the world, 90% of people who are infected have a mild to moderate case. So, there’s a lot of misuse considering that most people don’t need an antibiotic.
There was already a problem with misuse, but it looks like the pandemic exacerbated it, Dr Gandra said. “On paper it says these drugs should be available only with a prescription. But everywhere in India you can get them over the counter.”
There were public health messages explaining that antibiotics were not required, said study coauthor Dr. Georgia Sulis, a postdoctoral researcher in the department of epidemiology, biostatistics and occupational health in the School of Population and Global Health at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
India’s ministry of health issued guidelines that recommended against antibiotic use in patients with Covid-19. Although we don’t have individual patient-level data, our numbers suggest a huge employment of antibiotics that is likely the result of Covid-19.
Updated
Quarantine rule scrapped for fully vaccinated amber-list travellers returning to England
Holidaymakers from England travelling to amber list countries will not have to quarantine on return if they are fully vaccinated, but Britons living overseas will not be able to prove their vaccine status if they have been jabbed abroad.
My colleagues Jessica Elgot and Glyn Topham report that the rule change, which will take effect from 19 July, could open up swathes of European tourist destinations such as France, Spain, Portugal and Greece to travellers, though countries could impose their own quarantine rules on arrivals from England.
However, although the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, said UK travellers would be able to “visit their family and friends who they’ve not seen for such a long time”, the government said it would not accept any proof of vaccination apart from the NHS app or certificate.
US cases of Covid-19 are up around 11% over last week, believed to be almost entirely among people who have not yet been vaccinated against the novel coronavirus, according to officials.
Reuters reports that around 93% of Covid-19 cases have occurred in counties with vaccination rates of less than 40%, said US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky, adding that nearly all deaths nationwide are among unvaccinated people.
Cases of Covid-19 are surging in counties representing 9 million people, Walensky said. The White House plans to concentrate federal assistance for vaccinating against and treating Covid-19 in states including Missouri, Nevada, and Illinois, said Jeff Zients, who leads the White House’s Covid-19 response team.
Italy reported 13 coronavirus-related deaths on Thursday against 14 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 1,394 from 1,010.
Reuters reports:
Italy has registered 127,731 deaths linked to COVID-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the eight-highest in the world. The country has reported 4.27 million cases to date.
Zimbabwe has received 2 million Covid-19 vaccines from China’s Sinovac, the single largest shipment aimed at boosting a vaccination campaign that had been slowed by shortages while infections and deaths rise.
Reuters reports:
The southern African nation imposed a dusk to dawn curfew and curbed the movement of people on June 29 in a bid to contain infections, which have since increased by 24% to 60,227.
Zimbabwe has only registered vaccines from China, India and Russia and not from Western countries. The three countries have made donations to Zimbabwe.
Thursday’s delivery took Zimbabwe’s total number of vaccines from purchases and donations to 4.2 million, after another consignment of 500,000 doses arrived from China last week.
Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said Zimbabwe had so far spent $40 million on vaccines.
Rachel Hall here taking over from Mattha Busby - do get in touch if you think we’ve missed anything - you can reach me at rachel.hall@theguardian.com
Updated
Justin McCurry in Tokyo and Sean Ingle have the full report on the decision by Olympic organisers to ban spectators from the Tokyo Games after Japan’s prime minister declared a state of emergency in the host city.
Mandatory jabs in Greece for some workers, government announces
Greece is to unveil plans to mandate vaccination for specific professional groups next week, the government has said.
The country’s bio-ethics committee last month recommended compulsory shots for health workers and staff at elderly care facilities only “as a last resort measure” with a specific time frame if efforts to encourage inoculation proved ineffective.
“The government ... has got the relevant recommendation by the national bio-ethics committee regarding mandatory vaccinations for specific professional groups,” government spokeswoman Aristotelia Peloni said. Relevant decisions would be announced next week, she added.
There has been debate about whether mandatory vaccinations are ethical, though a poll released by Greek Skai television suggested the majority of Greeks were in favour of the move for specific groups dealing with the public.
About 38% of Greece’s eligible population is fully vaccinated and the government has offered incentives to entice more people to get the shot, including cash and free mobile data for youth, aiming to bring the rate up to 70% by the autumn.
In the UK, as elsewhere, vaccination has been recommended but not compelled even for healthcare workers, as my colleague Sarah Boseley notes, with many concerned that the jabs have not received full approval due to an absence of long-term data.
Bloomberg columnist Andreas Kluth, who himself got the jab as soon as possible, wrote last week that research suggests that vaccine mandates could send psychological signals that actually hinder overall compliance since people resent being manipulated.
Mexico is seeking to complete Covid-19 vaccinations in towns and cities along the US border by August as part of efforts to speed up the re-opening of the shared frontier to non-essential travel, the government has said.
“We are thinking that in about a month we will finish the entire border,” security minister Rosa Icela Rodriguez said. The busy land border has been closed to non-essential travel for over a year under pandemic restrictions.
“When vaccination is concluded in the border municipalities, we will be in better conditions for the complete reopening of the border,” president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said.
It is “regrettable” that the Olympics are going to be held in a limited format, Tokyo 2020 president Seiko Hashimoto has said, adding her apologies to those who had bought tickets.
“First there was the announcement they’d cap spectators at 10,000, then I was hoping I’d still have a ticket after the lottery,” Tokyo resident Ryuichi Ishikawa, 54, referring to a planned draw for seats, told Reuters. “I thought ‘oh crap’ when the number of new daily cases hit more than 900 in Tokyo yesterday. I just got this feeling of dread.”
Other ticket holders were also saddened. “It’s really regrettable they haven’t been able to stamp out infections here,” said Keiko Otsubo, a woman in her 40s who works for an IT firm and had planned to watch the triathlon.
“If they’d been able to get vaccinations over earlier we could’ve been like America and other places, where everybody’s now going out to sports events just like normal.”
Some fans were upset the final decision on spectators came just two weeks before the start of the games. “I’m really annoyed at how long it’s taking organisers to decide,” said Shota Tabara, a 29-year-old who spent 100,000 yen on tickets to track, volleyball and basketball.
Others said they were now opposed to the Games and would not go even if they could, pointing to media reports that VIPs and some sponsors may still be allowed in to events like the opening ceremony, according to Reuters.
“It seems like bringing in all these people is just the perfect virus stew to produce another variant or spread the ones we already have,” said Alison, a 42-year-old teacher and long-term Scottish resident of Japan.
She had planned to take her parents to the games and bought nine tickets. She declined to give her last name. “I think a lot of people feel it’s kind of clear that it’s one rule for the people at the top and something else for everyone else.”
Tokyo Olympics to be held without spectators
The organisers of the Tokyo Olympics have agreed to hold the event without spectators under a Covid-19 state of emergency, Japan’s Olympics minister Tamayo Marukawa has said.
It comes after prime minister Yoshihide Suga said Tokyo’s fourth state of emergency would begin on Monday – 11 days before the Games open – and end on 22 August, two days before the start of the Paralympics.
Previously, the IOC and the Tokyo 2020 organising committee said last month that attendances would be capped at 50% of a venue’s capacity, or a maximum of 10,000 people.
Medical advisers have said that having no spectators at the Games would be the least risky option, amid public concern that the arrival of tens of thousands of athletes, officials, sponsors reports and support staff could trigger a new wave of infections.
Having banned overseas sports fans, the Olympic movement was pinning its hopes on a limited number of Japanese spectators creating a semblance of atmosphere.
Today’s talks between the IOC, organisers and Japanese government officials included the IOC’s president, Thomas Bach, who arrived in Tokyo to oversee the last phase of preparations.
Updated
In related news, the EU has proposed to Russia that they discuss the potential joint recognition of their Covid-19 vaccination certificates, TASS news agency cited the bloc’s ambassador to Moscow as saying.
Russia has approved four vaccines, none of which have been approved by the European Union. Moscow has not authorised any foreign vaccines for use.
TASS quoted EU ambassador Markus Ederer as saying the 27-nation bloc has digital certificates allowing its citizens to travel freely within the EU, as well as a law that envisages the possibility of recognising other similar certificates.
“In that spirit, we have approached the Russian ministry of health and proposed discussing whether Russia would be interested in such a process,” Ederer said.
Speaking to reporters on a conference call following Ederer’s comments, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said he thought a compromise could be found.
The EU and Switzerland will recognise each other’s Covid vaccination certificates from tomorrow, the European Commission has announced.
AFP reports:
This month, 27 EU member states along with Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein adopted common standards to read digital coronavirus certificates. Proof of vaccination or acquired immunity via a recognised certificate can help travellers avoid restrictions like quarantine on arrival.
But member states remain in charge of their own border rules, and reserve the right to impose emergency controls if the epidemic situation deteriorates.
“I warmly welcome that the Swiss authorities have decided to implement a system based on the EU digital Covid Certificate,” EU justice commissioner Didier Reynders said. “As a result, the certificate will not only facilitate free movement within the EU, but also between the EU and Switzerland.”
The EU document – essentially a QR code available on smartphones or paper – shows whether the bearer is vaccinated, recovered from an infection or recently tested negative.
The world’s leading developed and developing countries have been told a tax on financial transactions could help them raise around $100bn a year to meet the costs of the Covid-19 pandemic, tackle climate change and boost job creation.
Ahead of a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Venice on Friday, a letter from more than 100 economists said the immediate introduction of a financial transactions tax would make economies more resilient and generate much-needed public investment.
A case brought by more than 500 families of Covid victims seeking a total of €100m in compensation from the Italian government has reached court, as the first hearing into continental Europe’s deadliest outbreak got under way in Rome.
Lawyers representing the relatives of coronavirus victims filed a dossier on Thursday of more than 2,000 pages containing hundreds of testimonies and evidence of “systemic negligence” by the Italian authorities, which allegedly caused the deaths of thousands of people.
“Italy was late introducing measures to contain the outbreak of Covid,” Consuelo Locati, a legal representative of the families, told the Guardian. ‘‘And when they finally did, these measures were not adequate.”
Moscow police have launched dozens of criminal probes to crack down on fake inoculation certificates, as vaccine scepticism remains stubbornly high in Russia despite soaring infection rates.
AFP reports that Russia’s black market for falsified vaccine certificates is flourishing, largely fuelled by a mistrust of the homegrown Sputnik vaccine.
The underground trade has taken hold even as a third wave of the virus sweeps across the country, breaking national records for virus-related deaths in recent weeks. Senior Moscow police official Pavel Milovanov said 32 cases had been opened into the falsification of vaccine certificates, according to Russian news agencies.
Authorities launched a vaccination campaign in December, but so far only 18.5 million of 146 million Russians - or 13% of the population - have been fully vaccinated. Recent polling suggests around half of Russians do not intend to get inoculated.
In Moscow, the epicentre of the Russia’s outbreak, mayor Sergei Sobyanin recently introduced mandatory jabs for most service industry workers and introduced a QR code system for restaurant patrons recently vaccinated or recovered.
The theory that SARS-CoV-2 may have originated in a lab was considered a debunked conspiracy theory, the British Medical Journal reports, but some experts are revisiting it amid calls for a new, more thorough investigation.
It comes after the Lancet published a new letter this week supporting calls for further study of the pandemic’s roots after intense criticism over a statement in February 2020 that described the possibility of Covid-19 originating from the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab as a conspiracy theory, without disclosing that a key author’s non-profit steered US funding to the lab.
“It’s become a label you pin on something you don’t agree with,” Nicholas Wade, a science writer who has worked at Nature, Science, and the New York Times, told the BMJ. “It’s ridiculous, because the lab escape scenario invokes an accident, which is the opposite of a conspiracy.”
The journal cites emails obtained through freedom of information requests by the watchdog group US Right To Know which show Daszak – who was on the World Health Organization team investigating the origin of the virus in China earlier this year – considered removing his name from the Lancet statement “so it has some distance from us and therefore doesn’t work in a counterproductive way.”
The BMJ reports that “the framing of the lab leak hypothesis as a partisan issue was harder to sustain after Trump left the White House” and that his successor’s administration then released a statement making clear that it did not trust China’s propaganda denying that the virus could have come from one of the country’s labs.
It also cited Filippa Lentzos, co-director of the Centre for Science and Security Studies at King’s College, London, telling the Wall Street Journal: “Some of the scientists in this area very quickly closed ranks ... There were people that did not talk about this, because they feared for their careers. They feared for their grants.”
However, the authors of the new Lancet letter said that “new, credible, and peer-reviewed” evidence still suggests that the virus had a natural origin, while hints of a lab leak “remain without scientifically validated evidence that directly supports it in peer-reviewed scientific journals”.
Without mentioning conspiracy theories, they added: “Allegations and conjecture are of no help, as they do not facilitate access to information and objective assessment of the pathway from a bat virus to a human pathogen that might help to prevent a future pandemic.”
Luxembourg PM leaves hospital after Covid treatment
Luxembourg’s prime minister Xavier Bettel left hospital today after treatment for Covid-19 and will resume work this week, officials said.
A statement from Bettel’s government said his condition had improved, allowing him to work from home. He had been admitted to hospital on Sunday, AFP reports.
“Given the improvement of the prime minister’s health, Xavier Bettel has just left the hospital after four days of treatment,” the statement said. “The prime minister will resume his duties as from 9 July ... The prime minister will use teleworking for the rest of the week, which also corresponds to the end of his period of isolation.”
Finance minister Pierre Gramegna had been given authority to sign off on government business during the 48-year-old leader’s treatment. This would end on Friday.
Bettel, who has had only one of the expected two doses of coronavirus vaccine, is thought to have caught the coronavirus shortly before last week’s EU summit in Brussels.
At the meeting, during which Bettel reduced some leaders to tears with a personal intervention to decry Hungary’s controversial anti-LGBT law, he met his 27 colleagues. But EU officials said proper social distancing and hygiene measures were in place and none of the other heads of state or government were asked to self-isolate.
Bettel was admitted for what was supposed to have been 24 hours of observation on Sunday, but on Monday his office said his situation was “serious but stable” and he remained under treatment. An aide told AFP that at the time he was “short of breath but not intubated.”
Updated
Fibromyalgia sufferer Vicky Naylor was successfully managing her condition – until she developed Covid-19. In the second part of our exploration of chronic pain, the Guardian science correspondent Linda Geddes tells Anand Jagatia what we know about the connection between chronic pain, Covid and mental health, as well as why it affects women more than men
Europe is the world’s number one producer in mRNA vaccines, the European Commissioner has said.
More than 750 million #mRNA vaccines have been produced at 🇪🇺 factories!
— Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) July 8, 2021
Europe is now the world’s #1 producer in mRNA vaccines.
Our industrial capacity across vaccine technologies is critical to protect our citizens against Covid variants & help the world fight the pandemic. pic.twitter.com/Fp2Aot36Yg
Pfizer–BioNTech and Moderna use mRNA technology for their vaccines after recent innovations meaning this is the first time it has been used in this way. The commissioner, Thierry Breton, said 750 million doses had been manufactured on the continent.
The cutting edge technology works by introducing into the body genetic material, called mRNA, that contains the instructions to make the so-called “spike” protein of the coronavirus. In response to these proteins, the body’s immune pathways are activated – a response that offers protection should we encounter the virus itself.
Israel reported on Monday a significant decrease in the effectiveness of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in preventing infections and symptomatic illness but said it remained highly effective in preventing serious illness.
About 60% of Israel’s 9.3 million population have received at least one shot of Pfizer’s vaccine in a campaign that saw daily cases drop from more than 10,000 in January to single digits last month.
Last year, senior figures at the European Medicines Agency raised concerns over the quality of early supplies of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Leaked emails reported on by the British Medical Journal show there were worries unexpectedly low quantities of messenger RNA (mRNA) in batches of the vaccine.
Pfizer has said that all questions surrounding the efficacy, safety and quality of the vaccine were “addressed satisfactorily” and could be “demonstrated on the data submitted” to the EMA, according to the Independent.
Last month a German-made Covid jab flopped in a final-stage trial, highlighting the difficulties of creating an effective mRNA vaccine.
Russia has offered Covid vaccines to North Korea once again, after Kim Jong-un told citizens to prepare for the “worst ever outcome”.
The BBC reports that Russia has previously told North Korea that “not everyone can endure unprecedentedly strong, overarching restrictions”, amid suggestions that a harsh lockdown is leading to serious hunger.
Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow has offered Pyongyang vaccines on a number of occasions.
Pyongyang has refused vaccines and aid from a number of countries, instead sealing its borders – but that has affected trade with China, upon whom it relies for food and fuel amid crippling international sanctions.
The North Korean leader last month acknowledged that the country is facing food shortages, describing the situation as “tense”.
The BBC reports that a UN report yesterday said the country is facing food shortages of around 860,000 tonnes this year and it is forecasting a “harsh lean period”.
Last week, Jong-un has sacked several senior party officials over a “grave” coronavirus incident that had threatened public safety, fuelling speculation that the coronavirus has breached the country’s defences.
Hong Kong’s government has said that two officials were fined for violating social distancing rules in response to local media reports that they were both given fixed penalty tickets in March.
The city’s Customs and Excise Department Commissioner Tang Yi-Hoi and Immigration Department Director Au Ka-Wang were both fined HK$5,000 each according to local broadcaster RTHK.
In a government statement, the pair said they attended a dinner that exceeded the maximum number of people permitted, Reuters reports.
China has reported 17 new Covid-19 cases for yesterday compared with 57 a day earlier, the national health authority said. Two of the new infections were confirmed locally transmitted cases, both in Yunnan province, the National Health Commission said in a statement. The rest were imported. There were no new deaths.
The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, stood at 10. China has now reported 91,966 confirmed coronavirus cases, the commission said. The death toll from the coronavirus remained at 4,636, Reuters reports.
Pharmacies across Indonesia are running out of ivermectin, an oral treatment normally used to parasitic infections, AFP reports, after it was used widely and reportedly with success in India, Mexico, Bolivia, and elsewhere.
Yoyon, head of a pharmaceutical sales group at a market in the capital Jakarta, told AFP that surging demand had pushed the price of the drug up from around 175,000 to 300,000 rupiah ($12-$21) a bottle. “We are out of supplies at the moment after many people came to buy it,” he added.
Enthusiastic praise from popular online personalities are helping drive demand, in the absence of World Health Organization approval due to an absence of large high-quality lab trials.
“Ivermectin is one of the safe and effective keys to ending the pandemic from various doctors, with lots of scientific evidence,” Reza Gunawan, a self-described “holistic health practitioner”, wrote to his 350,000 Twitter followers.
Iman Sjafei, the cofounder of popular Indonesian media outlet Asumsi, used the same platform to say five of his acquaintances had recovered from Covid after taking the drug. “Maybe placebo. Maybe. But it might be true too,” he added.
Indonesian tycoon and government minister Erick Thohir has praised ivermectin and urged domestic production to fight the current outbreak.
However, he said more testing is required to ascertain its effectiveness against Covid-19 and urged users to get a prescription before taking the drug, which has won a Nobel prize and has a strong safety profile after billions of uses since it was first used to treat river blindness.
“I’m not a doctor, but in the midst of desperation and difficulty, I think anything is worth a try,” said Susi Pudjiastuti, a popular former fisheries minister, who has 2.5 million followers on Twitter.
In the Philippines, president Rodrigo Duterte has pressured regulators to approve the the drug as a Covid treatment.
“There are a lot of credible people... who swear by their fathers’ grave that ivermectin is doing good to their bodies while they are suffering from Covid,” Duterte recently told the chief of the country’s drug regulator.
Ivermectin is being studied by University of Oxford scientists as a possible Covid treatment as part of a UK government-backed study after a small pilot showed giving the drug early could reduce viral load and the duration of symptoms in some patients with mild Covid-19.
Updated
Western Sydney residents say they are being “scapegoated” as New South Wales police announced a major compliance crackdown, including mounted officers, and health authorities struggled to contain the city’s growing Covid-19 outbreak.
The New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, today apologised for singling out three council areas in Sydney’s west for apparent breaches of health orders as locals claimed they were being unfairly “branded as the reason the lockdown was extended”.
The Cumberland City councillor Kun Huang argued the police operation was harsher on the western suburbs than it had been in more affluent parts of Sydney, my colleagues Mostafa Rachwani and Naaman Zhou report.
Hello and greetings to everyone reading, wherever you are the in the world. Mattha Busby here to take you through the next few hours of global Covid developments. Thanks to my colleague Martin Belam for covering the blog up until now. Please feel free to drop me a line on Twitter or message me via email (mattha.busby.freelance@guardian.co.uk) with any tips or thoughts on our coverage.
Today so far…
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The global coronavirus death toll passed four million late on Wednesday as the crisis increasingly becomes a race between the vaccine and the highly contagious delta variant.
- The tally of lives lost over the past year and a half, as compiled from official sources by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the number of people killed in battle in all of the world’s wars since 1982, according to estimates from the Peace Research Institute Oslo.
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South Korea has recorded its highest one-day case total of the pandemic so far as Covid outbreaks in countries across the Asia Pacific region gather pace.
- Taiwan will extend its level 3 alert for another two weeks but with loosened restrictions after reporting just 18 new cases today. Six of the cases were already in quarantine after having been identified through contact tracing.
- Thailand’s health ministry says it has proposed new travel curbs and tighter restrictions in high-risk areas to contain Covid cases, as the country reported a daily record of 75 deaths from the coronavirus.
- Vietnam will impose restrictions on its largest city, Ho Chi Minh City, for 15 days from Friday to tackle rising cases, according to state media reports.
- The Southeast Asian Games due to be held in Vietnam later this year has been postponed until 2022 by the Games federation.
- In France, junior European affairs minister Clement Beaune said that he was advising French people to avoid Spain and Portugal for their summer holidays, due to risks tied to the Delta variant.
- Russia reported 24,818 new Covid cases today, including 6,040 in Moscow. The coronavirus task force also reported 734 coronavirus-related deaths in the last 24 hours, close to a record high.
- The EU has approached Russia about working on mutual vaccine recognition. EU ambassador to Moscow Markus Ederer said the EU has digital certificates allowing its citizens to travel freely within the bloc, as well as a law that envisages the possibility of recognising other similar certificates. “In that spirit, we have approached the Russian Ministry of Health and proposed discussing whether Russia would be interested in such a process.”
- The European Union’s executive meanwhile has approved Cyprus’ plan to spend €1.2bn (£1.03bn) worth of recovery funds aimed at restarting economic growth hampered by the pandemic.
- It is possible that later today authorities in Japan will reverse their earlier decision and announce that no spectators will be allowed at the Olympics after all.
- Australian prime minister Scott Morrison has dismissed suggestions Australia could have vaccinated enough people by now to have avoided a lockdown to control Sydney’s Covid outbreak as “completely and utterly false”.
That’s it from me, Martin Belam. I’m moving over to the comment thread to host our regular Thursday quiz. Andrew Sparrow has all the latest UK news on his live blog. Mattha Busby will be here shortly to continue our global coronavirus coverage. I’ll see you here again tomorrow.
Southeast Asian Games in Vietnam postponed until 2022 due to Covid
The Southeast Asian Games due to be held in Vietnam later this year has been postponed until 2022 by the Games federation, Malaysia’s Olympic Council said on Thursday.
“The SEA Games Federation members praised the work done thus far by the Vietnam organising committee but took note of the current conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Southeast Asian region,” Reuters report it said in an announcement on its website after a meeting of the federation today.
There’s a tiny little bit more detail on that proposal that the EU and Russia work more closely on mutual vaccine recognition. Reuters now have a quote from EU ambassador to Moscow, Markus Ederer.
Ederer said the EU has digital certificates allowing its citizens to travel freely within the bloc, as well as a law that envisages the possibility of recognising other similar certificates.
“In that spirit, we have approached the Russian Ministry of Health and proposed discussing whether Russia would be interested in such a process,” he was quoted as saying.
Andrew Sparrow has got our UK live coverage for up-to-the-minute Covid news domestically including the latest NHS figures, but worth a quick peek at this – Caroline Davies reports for us that the UK government is looking at changing the way the NHS app works after reports that people are deleting it in order to avoid having to go into self-isolation.
Acknowledging public “frustration”, he said on Thursday that the health secretary, Sajid Javid, was looking at an “appropriate, balanced and proportionate” approach for the app.
Sunak’s comments follow reports of numerous people deleting the NHS Covid app before the government’s planned lockdown easing on 19 July through fear of being contacted. A user is not legally required to self-isolate when alerted by the app because all data is anonymous.
With a decision on self-isolation rules delayed until 16 August, businesses have warned of “carnage” across the hospitality sector as staff are forced to take time off work. The concerns have been raised as more than 32,000 coronavirus cases were recorded on Wednesday, the highest daily figure since January.
Read more here: Sunak hints at changes to test-and-trace app to cut numbers told to isolate
Aya Elamroussi reports for CNN on concerns in the US over the spread of the Delta variant. She writes:
Twenty four states have seen an uptick of at least 10% in Covid-19 cases over the past week as health experts and the federal government keep pressing for more people to get vaccinated. The rapid spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus has only ratcheted up the pressure.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that the variant, first identified in India, has accounted for more than half of all new Covid-19 infections in the country.
“We should think about the Delta variant as the 2020 version of Covid-19 on steroids,” Andy Slavitt, a former senior adviser to Joe Biden’s Covid Response Team, told CNN on Wednesday. “It’s twice as infectious. Fortunately, unlike 2020, we actually have a tool that stops the Delta variant in its tracks: It’s called vaccine.”
For fully vaccinated people, the variant “presents very little threat to you, very unlikely that you’re gonna get sick,” he explained.
Read more here: CNN – Delta variant is ‘Covid-19 on steroids,’ expert says, with cases increasing in nearly half of US states
The TASS news agency in Russia is also carrying a little bit of news this morning that the EU and Russia may start working on mutual vaccine recognition.
Anton Kolodyazhnyy notes for Reuters that Russia has approved four vaccines, none of which have been approved by the European Union. Moscow has not approved any foreign vaccines for use.
The proposal that the EU and Russia work together on this appears to have come, according to the TASS report, from the bloc’s ambassador to Moscow.
Russia reported 24,818 new Covid cases today, including 6,040 in Moscow. Reuters note that the coronavirus task force also reported 734 coronavirus-related deaths in the last 24 hours, close to a record high.
There’s a lot of chatter this morning that Japan may be on the verge of banning all spectators from the Tokyo Olympics. Earlier Reuters carried a line from Fuji TV that at 8.00pm Japan time (1100 GMT) there would be a meeting that would decide to reduce the spectator cap from 10,000 to 5,000.
However they are now quoting Asahi daily saying that organisers were set to formally reach the decision on having no spectators during the five-way talks between key parties. The newspaper said it was citing people involved in the Games.
Andrew Sparrow has launched the UK Covid live blog for today – you can find that here.
I’ll be continuing here with global coverage of the pandemic.
Lizzy Davies and Simon Speakman Cordall report for us this morning on how vaccine inequity is affecting families spread across rich and poor countries:
In much of the world – from Kampala to Cape Town, the Philippines to Peru – the pandemic is not only ongoing but worsening. In low-income countries just 1% of the population on average has been given at least one dose of the vaccine.
Caught in the middle of this growing divide are millions of people with relatives in the developed and the developing worlds, who find themselves struck by the staggering global inequality in their daily family catchups, WhatsApp groups and Skype chats.
These huge differences have long been a facet of the diaspora experience, but the pandemic has magnified them. For many, the two-speed vaccination programmes have come to represent all that one part of the family has and the other has not.
“[I feel] a huge amount of guilt … and a lot of sadness,” says Isabella (not her real name), a law student born in Colombia but who has lived in Canada since she was four.
“You know, why is the world the way it is? Why is it that you have to leave your home country to be safe, to be healthy? Why couldn’t we have just stayed home and had the same experience as Canada’s having?”
Read more of Lizzy Davies and Simon Speakman Cordall’s report here: ‘A world problem’ – immigrant families hit by Covid jab gap
EU approves Cyprus Covid recovery stimulus plan
Marine Strauss reports for Reuters from Brussels that the European Union’s executive has approved Cyprus’ plan to spend €1.2bn (£1.03bn) worth of special funds from the EU, aimed at restarting economic growth hampered by the pandemic.
The aid is part of the EU’s unprecedented economic stimulus totalling €800bn to be distributed among the 27 member states.
Cyprus plans to use 41% of the total allocated funds to support climate objectives, including a green taxation, the liberalisation of the electricity market and facilitating energy renovations in buildings, the EU Commission said.
The plan also includes measures to promote the digitalisation of public services, to support early childhood education and to reduce risks in the banking sector related to the legacy non-performing loans.
China says it administered about 10.7m doses of Covid vaccines yesterday. Reuters report this takes the total to 1.342bn doses. That’s around a third of the vaccine shots that have been administered around the world, according to the figures being tracked by Johns Hopkins university, which puts total vaccinations at 3.3bn.
Just another quick quote from Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that there are risks to the NHS if England eases coronavirus restriction this month.
PA media quote him saying: “We need to be realistic and we need to be open and honest about the fact that there are risks if we relax these restrictions and there will be consequences.
“The NHS won’t be able to do everything given the demand pressures it has got and the fact that we have got reduced capacity in terms of both beds and staff numbers.”
He said there would be “very significant” pressure on the NHS and “we will have to dial back on elective recovery”.
He added: “(Health secretary) Sajid Javid was saying on Monday it is a reasonable expectation that we could hit 100,000 infections a day, and that basically will mean more staff having to self-isolate and it will mean more beds being taken out for Covid-19 patients.”
Updated
Prime minister Scott Morrison has dismissed suggestions Australia could have vaccinated enough people by now to have avoided a lockdown to control Sydney’s Covid outbreak as “completely and utterly false”.
In his first press conference in almost a week, Morrison defended his government’s vaccination rollout, insisting it was only two months behind schedule.
The rollout has been thrown off course more than once by delays, changes in advice, supply issues and vaccine hesitancy, but Morrison said even at its most optimistic point, Australia’s rollout would not have prevented the Sydney situation.
“The national vaccination plan that was adopted last year, and all of the targets even on their most optimistic scenarios which haven’t been realised, none of them put Australia in a position where a suppression strategy could have been lifted at any time at least by the end of October,” he said.
“So the suggestion that somehow there was a vaccination rate that would have put us in a different position right now to what was planned last year is simply not true.
“There was never a 65% opportunity for Australia at this time of the year.”
Read more of Amy Remeikis’ report here: Scott Morrison says ‘utterly false’ to suggest Sydney lockdown avoidable if vaccine targets met
If you missed it yesterday, our video team have put together this explainer on how masks are more about protecting others than protecting ourselves, and where we still might want to wear them. Do watch and share.
French minister: Avoid holidays in Spain and Portugal because of Delta variant
Across the channel the French finance minister Bruno Le Maire has also been on the airwaves. Reuters report that he said he still targeted economic growth of 5% this year and urged the French people to get a Covid jab, saying he would not want a worsening coronavirus situation to derail France’s economic recovery.
“We have an excellent economic situation and a worrying health situation. I would not want the health situation to compromise the economic situation,” Le Maire told BFM TV.
Also in the media in France this morning, junior European affairs minister Clement Beaune said that he was advising French people to avoid Spain and Portugal for their summer holidays, due to risks tied to the highly contagious COVID-19 Delta variant. Beaune made the comments on the France 2 television channel.
Taiwan to extend level 3 alert for another two weeks
Taiwan will extend its level 3 alert for another two weeks but with loosened restrictions after reporting just 18 new cases today. Six of the cases were already in quarantine after having been identified through contact tracing.
Taiwan has been under level 3 restrictions for about two months, with gatherings limited to five indoors and ten outdoors, bans on dine-in at restaurants, and businesses closed including all public and adult entertainment venues, sporting facilities, and schools.
The alert had been extended twice already to 12 July, but the central epidemic command centre has just extended it again to 26 July - a largely expected outcome given Taiwan’s high level of caution in approaching the virus since the pandemic began.
Minister Chen Shih-chung said level 3 would not lift until there were fewer than 10 cases of unknown origin and three separate clusters per day. So far Taiwan has recorded four days with fewer than 10 cases of unknown origin.
For a more complete picture, this is the 7-day rolling average of new #covid19 cases daily in #Taiwan for the last two months (5/8 to 7/8): pic.twitter.com/lWyrp4XKHb
— Ketagalan Media (@KetagalanMedia) July 8, 2021
Restrictions are being eased however. Gathering limits remain, as do the closure of entertainment venues. But some restrictions on parks and forests will lift, with limits on parking spaces, and continued closures of some popular sites. There will be adjustments made for museums and cinemas, according to local media translations of the press conference.
Schools will remain closed but can conditionally open up their outdoor areas for nearby residents to exercise. Pools will remain closed. Night markets can reopen for services beyond takeaway depending on their ability to maintain distancing and other measures.
The low case numbers are great news for the island, where less than half a percent of the population is fully vaccinated. Taiwan has suffered shortages due to global supply issues and alleged interference by China, as well as vaccine hesitancy fuelled by fake news and sensational reporting of side-effects and deaths (which are later found to be unrelated).
While there are still not enough doses, Taiwan has been receiving successive donated shipments from other countries, including the US and Japan, which just donated a second batch of 1.13m AstraZeneca.
It is the UK’s finance minister Rishi Sunak who is doing the media round this morning, although to be honest the first clip that Sky News put out was him talking about the football – he thought it was a soft penalty decision – but he’s mostly been hoping to talk about the Uk government’s post-Covid financial plans.
“Maybe a bit of a soft penalty but we got there in the end.”
— Sky News (@SkyNews) July 8, 2021
Chancellor Rishi Sunak says it was ‘amazing’ to watch England win their semi-final against Denmark and believes the team can go on and win #Euro2020.#KayBurley: https://t.co/kJaWhHxmtu pic.twitter.com/b8ghR4GSb1
There’s also a football-theme to the line of questioning he’s received on Times Radio.
Will you say no to England hero Marcus Rashford when he asks you to keep the Universal Credit uplift? Chancellor Rishi Sunak parries: "People appreciate what's right for a crisis isn't necessarily the right thing going forward. We need to get people back into jobs"@TimesRadio
— Tom Newton Dunn (@tnewtondunn) July 8, 2021
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has been forced to deny that he is the restraining hand on prime minister Boris Johnson in government when it comes to spending.
Rishi Sunak rejects idea he and PM are at odds over massive Govt spending: "The Prime Minister and I are on exactly the same page. I think it's wrong to try and make out that there's some difference between us." @TimesRadio
— Jack Elsom (@JackElsom) July 8, 2021
He has also confirmed again that the government intends to go ahead with its cut to the current level of Universal Credit payments.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak says he is scrapping the £20 uplift to universal credit because “it was always meant to be temporary”. Says the best way to help people is to “help them get fantastic jobs” #timesradio
— Kate Ferguson (@kateferguson4) July 8, 2021
Travel curbs and restrictions proposed in Thailand as it sets new record deaths
Thailand’s health ministry says it has proposed new travel curbs and tighter restrictions in high-risk areas to contain Covid cases, as the country reported a daily record of 75 deaths from the coronavirus.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha is due to consider the new restrictions in a meeting on Friday.
“The health ministry will propose measures first to limit travel and so that people do not leave their homes unless necessary,” the ministry’s permanent secretary, Kiatiphum Wongrajit, told reporters, noting a halt to inter-provincial travel was also being proposed.
Other measures being proposed include closing down non-essential venues and areas that attract crowds, Kiatiphum said.
The rules would be in place for 14 days and would cover the Bangkok metropolitan area and “buffer zones”, Kiatiphum said, without elaborating.
“This has similar intensity as April 2020,” he said referring to lockdown measures last year that included a nationwide curfew.
Panarat Thepgumpanat and Chayut Setboonsarng report for Reuters that currently, Thailand has in place measures in “high-risk zones”, including Bangkok and surrounding provinces, to close malls early and prohibit dining in at restaurants, but they have not been able to halt an acceleration of infections in the past month.
NHS chief: 'real nervousness' about unvaccinated young people developing severe long Covid-type symptoms
I imagine the airwaves in the UK – well at least in the England bit of it – may be a little bit preoccupied with a football result today rather than Covid. However, BBC Breakfast have had Chris Hopson on, who is head of NHS Providers.
He said there is a “real nervousness” about the number of unvaccinated young people who have mild Covid symptoms but go on to develop more severe long Covid.
PA media quote him as saying, that having spoken to the chief executive of an NHS trust about it yesterday:
The bit that was really striking for me yesterday... was they were saying they were really getting quite worried about the number of unvaccinated young people who were getting mild Covid symptoms because they caught Covid, but then quite quickly afterwards were developing much more severe long Covid-type symptoms.
And we just don’t know exactly how this is going to pan out so we just need to be careful about recognising the risks that we’re running here. It’s not just about hospitalisations, it’s actually potentially people having really quite serious long-term conditions once they have caught Covid.
What they were saying was it wasn’t just a few of these young people who had mild Covid symptoms and then really quite severe long Covid symptoms, it was actually quite a few.
So there’s a real nervousness here about we still don’t fully understand what the long-term health consequences are if you catch Covid. So we all need to be careful and aware of the risks here.
Good morning, it is Martin Belam here in London taking over from my colleague Helen Sullivan on the other side of the world. The United Nations has today warned that global efforts to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic are under threat because women are being excluded from critical decision-making roles.
Only 6% of coronavirus task forces, which are responsible for co-ordinating government responses to the deadly virus, have equal numbers of men and women, while 11% have no women at all, found the UN Development Programme (UNDP).
“The pivotal decisions being made today will affect the well-being of people and planet for generations to come,” Achim Steiner, UNDP’s administrator, said in a statement.
“Sustainable recovery is only possible when women are able to play a full role in shaping a post-Covid world that works for all of us.”
Sharon Kimath reports for the Thomson Reuters Foundation that while 58% of employees in health ministries are women, they only hold 34% of health policy decision-making positions, their research in 170 countries found.
Exscientia, an Oxford-based firm that uses artificial intelligence to develop medicines, has won a $1.5m grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create a Covid-19 treatment that also works for new mutations or other Sars viruses.
The company, a spin-off from the University of Dundee, is based at the Oxford Science Park. It counts Japan’s SoftBank, the fund manager BlackRock, and the US drug firm Bristol Myers Squibb among its financial backers.
Exscientia aims to develop a drug within 12 months, then recruit volunteers for clinical trials.
The company has used its AI technology to design a new class of inhibitors targeting the main protease enzyme of Sars-CoV-2, which is essential for replication of coronavirus. The firm will work on turning these small molecule inhibitors into a pill to treat Covid-19. It hopes the therapy will also be effective against new mutations and other coronaviruses:
Here is a look back at when we passed one million deaths, in September last year:
Japan set to declare state of emergency for Tokyo
Japan’s government is to declare a state of emergency in Tokyo that will be in force during the Olympics, as the capital battles a sharp rise in coronavirus infections.
The measure, expected to be made official by the prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, later on Thursday, increases the likelihood that the Games will be held without a single spectator.
The latest blow to Japan’s troubled Olympic preparations comes after Tokyo reported 920 new infections on Wednesday. That compares with 714 last Wednesday and is the highest total since 1,010 were reported on 13 May:
South Korea reports record new cases
South Korea has recorded its highest one-day case total of the pandemic so far as Covid outbreaks in countries across the Asia Pacific region gather pace.
In South Korea, where just 10% of the population is fully vaccinated, authorities on Thursday reported record new cases for the country, with 1,275 cases in the 24 hours to midnight on Wednesday, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).
The government warned on Wednesday it was considering raising movement restrictions to the highest level as the fourth wave was spreading rapidly, especially among unvaccinated people in their 20s and 30s. A growing number of highly contagious Delta variant cases raised new worries.
Of the country’s 52 million people, 30% have received at least one shot, the majority of them aged over 60. South Korea’s total Covid infections stand at 164,028, with 2,034 deaths:
With the advent of the vaccine, deaths per day have plummeted to around 7,900, after topping out at over 18,000 a day in January, the Associated Press reports.
But in recent weeks, the mutant delta version of the virus first identified in India has set off alarms around the world, spreading rapidly even in vaccination success stories like the U.S., Britain and Israel.
Britain, in fact, recorded a one-day total this week of more than 30,000 new infections for the first time since January, even as the government prepares to lift all remaining lockdown restrictions in England later this month.
Global death toll passes four million
The global coronavirus death toll passed a staggering four million late on Wednesday as the crisis increasingly becomes a race between the vaccine and the highly contagious delta variant.
The tally of lives lost over the past year and a half, as compiled from official sources by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the number of people killed in battle in all of the world’s wars since 1982, according to estimates from the Peace Research Institute Oslo.
Even then, it is widely believed to be an undercount because of overlooked cases, differing definitions of what constitutes a coronavirus death, and deliberate under-reporting.
The toll is equivalent to more than half of Hong Kong or close to half of New York City.
The United States suffered the greatest loss of life, with 606,217 people dying.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest as the world marks the devastating milestone of four million deaths since the outbreak began in late 2019.
The global death toll from Covid eclipsed 4 million late on Wednesday as the crisis increasingly becomes a race between the vaccine and the highly contagious delta variant.
The tally of lives lost over the past year and a half, as compiled from official sources by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the number of people killed in battle in all of the world’s wars since 1982, according to estimates from the Peace Research Institute Oslo.
Here are the other key developments from the last few hours:
- The Delta variant now represents around 40% of new Covid-19 infections in France, government spokesman Gabriel Attal said. The share of this variant has doubled each week over the past three weeks, from 10% of infections three weeks ago to 20% last week and 40% this week, he said.
- Indonesia has set new daily records for both deaths and cases again, with 34,379 infections and 1,040 deaths. It is the third consecutive day of record new infections in Indonesia and the fourth straight day for record deaths.
- Turkmenistan’s healthcare ministry has said it is making Covid vaccination mandatory for all residents aged 18 and over. Exceptions would only be made for those with medical issues preventing inoculation.
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Vietnam will impose restrictions on its largest city, Ho Chi Minh City, for 15 days from Friday to tackle rising cases, according to state media reports.
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Cases are rising in the 22 countries of the eastern Mediterranean region due to limited vaccination, the spread of the Delta variant and increased travel, the World Health Organization has warned. Increasing infection levels follow two months of maintained decline.
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The UK has reported 32,548 new Covid cases, with the weekly tally double that of the previous seven days amid surging cases in the runup to the lifting of all restrictions on 19 July.
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A hospital in Uganda has allegedly refused to hand over the dead body of a patient to their relative without payment of medical bills, the Associated Press reports, as the country’s residents struggle with Covid healthcare costs.
- Bangladesh has reported its highest daily number of Covid deaths, with 201 fatalities registered as the south Asian country battles a surge in cases.
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Japan’s government is expected to issue a state of emergency this month in Tokyo that will likely remain in place throughout the Tokyo Olympics, according to financial newspaper Nikkei.
- Authorities in Myanmar have ordered people in several regions of the country’s largest city, Yangon, to stay at home as coronavirus cases surged to almost 4,000 infections on Wednesday. In early May, there were fewer than 50 daily.
