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Summary
Here is a recap of the main developments from the last few hours.
- Cyprus has announced partial lockdowns in the towns of Limassol and Paphos to curb a surge in Covid-19 cases. The local measures, which include a ban on travel into and out of the towns and a nightly curfew, will take effect from Thursday and last until the end of November.
- Texas became the first US state with more than 1 million confirmed Covid-19 cases. California is also closing in on that mark as a surge of coronavirus infections engulfs the country from coast to coast.
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Sweden’s PM, Stefan Lofven, said his government plans to ban nationwide the sale of alcohol after 10pm in bars, restaurants and night clubs from 20 November in an effort to curb the spread of Covid-19. Sweden has witnessed record numbers of new coronavirus infections in past weeks, which is burdening the country’s health care system and intensive care wards.
- Spain’s coronavirus death toll surged to over 40,000 with infections passing the 1.4 million mark, while the rate of new cases continued to grow, health ministry data showed. A further 349 people died in the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 40,105 in Spain - the fourth-highest within the European Union after the United Kingdom, France and Italy.
- Despite having the highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases on the continent, South Africa will open up travel to all countries and restore normal trading hours of alcohol in an effort to boost the tourism and hospitality sectors, the president Cyril Ramaphosa said.
- Officials and doctors in Pakistan urged people to stay at home as the air quality in Lahore deteriorated to hazardous levels, putting an additional burden on the fragile healthcare system amid a surge in coronavirus deaths and new infections.
- The New York governor Andrew Cuomo imposed a new round of restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus as the infection rate climbed and hospitalisations soared in the state. Taking effect on Friday, Cuomo ordered bars, restaurants and gyms in the state to shut down on-premises services at 10pm nightly, and capped the number of people who could attend private parties at 10.
- Turkey banned smoking in crowded public places to slow a recent surge in symptomatic patients with coronavirus, as the government warned citizens to abide by protective measures. It comes as daily cases surged to 2,693 on Wednesday.
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Greek authorities announced stricter restrictions on movement, extending a curfew nationwide after infections broke fresh records, reporting 2,752 new cases on Wednesday. Four days after the country went into a second lockdown to curb the surge in cases, the government said all circulation would be banned between 9pm and 5am.
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Spain will demand a negative Covid-19 test for all travellers arriving from countries with a high risk for coronavirus from 23 November. Visitors will need to show evidence of a negative PCR test result within the previous 72 hours to be granted entry and officials will be allowed to ask for proof of the test results.
- The total number of coronavirus cases registered in Italy since the start of the pandemic surpassed the one million mark, the health ministry said.
- Slovakia’s government will extend its state of emergency powers for the rest of the year to battle a surge in coronavirus cases.
Cyprus announces local lockdowns to curb virus spread
Cyprus on Wednesday announced partial lockdowns in its virus hotspots on the Mediterranean coast and other measures in an effort to curb a surge in coronavirus cases.
The resort towns of Limassol and Paphos on the south coast are to go into partial lockdown from Thursday until the end of November.
The health minister Constantinos Ioannou said that travel into or out of the towns would be banned, and a curfew in force from 8pm to 5am.
After keeping daily infection numbers low through most of the summer, the island has seen them rise to record three-digit figures and the health system has started to feel the strain, with a dedicated Covid-19 hospital at capacity.
Whereas at the end of June it had a total of 1,000 coronavirus cases, the figure has shot up to almost 6,500 in the second wave that is now gripping Europe.
Forty-nine of 68 patients in hospital with Covid-19 are from Limassol and Paphos, as well seven of the last eight deaths from the coronavirus.
Hospitality and catering venues are to close in the two towns, and gatherings banned in public places like parks. Primary schools will remain open, while higher and secondary education will operate remotely.
Museums, cinemas and theatres will shut until 30 November in Limassol and Paphos, and attending church is prohibited. Shopping malls, department stores, hair salons, gyms and beauty parlours will also have to close.
In the rest of Cyprus, a curfew remains in place until 30 November from 11pm to 5am, while bars, cafes and restaurants have to close by 10.30pm.
The Republic of Cyprus, which registered 165 new virus cases on Wednesday, has officially recorded 6,461 infections and 33 deaths.
The island had largely kept a lid on the pandemic by introducing an early lockdown in March that was gradually eased from early May. Authorities are keen to avoid another draconian lockdown, with the economy already in recession.
Health authorities blame the surge on Cypriots flouting hygiene rules, including on mask-wearing and social distancing. Face masks are mandatory indoors and outdoors, except at home, while household gatherings are limited to 10 people.
The breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is recognised only by Ankara, has registered 986 coronavirus cases, including five deaths.
Updated
Texas tops 1 million cases as Covid-19 surge engulfs US
Texas on Wednesday became the first US state with more than 1 million confirmed Covid-19 cases, and California closed in on that mark as a surge of coronavirus infections engulfs the country from coast to coast, AP reports.
The country’s second-most populous state, Teas has recorded 1.01 million coronavirus cases and over 19,000 deaths since the outbreak began in early March, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. California, the most populous state, has logged more than 991,000 cases.
The US has recorded more than 240,000 deaths and about 10.3 million confirmed infections, with new cases soaring to all-time highs of well over 120,000 per day over the past week. The country also surpassed 1 million new confirmed cases in just the first 10 days of November (see 1.04pm.).
Health experts have blamed the increase in part on the onset of cold weather and growing frustration with mask-wearing and other precautions.
Cases per day are on the rise in 49 states, and deaths per day are climbing in 39. A month ago, the US was seeing about 730 Covid-19 deaths per day on average; that has now surpassed 970.
The Swedish prime minister has said his government will present a law proposal that would ban nationwide the sale of alcohol after 10pm in bars, restaurants and night clubs from 20 November in an effort to curb the spread of Covid-19.
Stefan Lofven said that “we are facing a situation that risks becoming pitch-black” and added that Sweden “currently is risking a situation like the one we had last spring”.
Sweden has witnessed record numbers of new coronavirus infections in past weeks, which is burdening the country’s health care system and intensive care wards.
“All indications point in the wrong direction,” Lofven said at a joint news conference with the social affairs minister Lena Hallengren.
Hallengren said that all places with a permission to serve alcohol must close 30 minutes after 10pm, and described these places — particularly bars and night clubs — as “risk environments”.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Swedish capital reintroduced a ban on visiting elderly care homes after a coronavirus surge was reported in retirement facilities in Stockholm.
Sweden, which has opted to keep parts of its society open, lifted in September a national ban on visiting elderly care homes, saying the need for a restraining order there had decreased.
Overall, the country of 10 million has now reported 166,707 cases and 6,082 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
Spain’s coronavirus death toll surged to over 40,000 on Wednesday with infections passing the 1.4 million mark, while the rate of new cases continued to grow, health ministry data showed.
With 349 people dying in the past 24 hours, the death toll now stands at 40,105 in Spain, which has the fourth-highest death rate within the European Union after the United Kingdom, France and Italy.
Spain passed the grim landmark a day after logging 411 deaths, the highest daily death toll of the second wave.
Over the past 24 hours, health authorities also registered more than 19,000 new cases, bringing the overall number of people infected to 1,417,709, the second-highest figure within the EU after France.
Pressure on hospitals is increasing with around a third - 31.78% - of all ICU beds taken up by Covid-19 patients.
Despite the figures, top health official Fernando Simon said on Tuesday there were signs of a “clear stabilisation” in the 14-day incidence rate although it would take “several days” for that to be reflected in the death toll and bed-occupancy rates in ICUs.
He said the figures had stabilised “at around 525 cases per 100,000 inhabitants”.
By Wednesday, that rate had fallen to 514 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, with the health minister Salvador Illa cautiously welcoming the numbers at a news conference:
The figures are starting to confirm a stabilisation. There is a downward trend but the figures are still worrying. We must keep our guard up.
Despite its high caseload, Spain has been slow to follow the example of other European nations which have imposed new lockdowns to try and curb spiralling cases.
The UK, France and several other countries have recently re-imposed lockdowns as the virus shows no sign of abating, while other European nations like Portugal have entered partial lockdowns.
Until now, Spain has resisted, with the government hoping a national night-time curfew and other restrictions, put in place by regional authorities who are responsible for managing the pandemic, would be enough to slow the rate of infection.
South Africa will open up travel to all countries in an effort to boost the tourism and hospitality sectors, the president Cyril Ramaphosa said on Wednesday, despite having the highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases on the continent.
Africa’s most advanced economy, which has recorded more than 740,000 Covid-19 cases and over 20,000 deaths, has seen infections rise since it eased lockdown restrictions in September to their lowest levels.
In a televised national address, Ramaphosa said normal trading hours of alcohol would be restored too, after sales were restricted on weekends in an effort to reduce pressure on hospitals due to alcohol-related accidents.
We are also opening up international travel to all countries subject to the necessary health protocols and the presentation of a negative Covid-19 certificate.
By using rapid tests and strict monitoring we intend to limit the spread of the infection through importation. We expect that these measures will greatly assist businesses in the tourism and hospitality sectors.
The president did not give further details, or a specific date for the reopening. A presidency spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.
South Africa opened its borders to some international travellers at the beginning of October after a six-month ban, but restricted entry from high-risk countries, with the latest list including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Brazil and India.
The country depends heavily on tourism, which prior to the pandemic contributed nearly 9% of its gross domestic product and employed over 4% of the workforce.
The economy was already in recession before the pandemic struck, and one of the world’s strictest lockdowns has exacerbated its woes with millions of its citizens losing their jobs or being pushed deeper into poverty.
Ramaphosa, however, warned of a potential resurgence in infections, saying the number of new cases in the Eastern Cape province was 50% higher than the week before, with higher infection rates also seen in the Northern Cape and Western Cape regions.
We have also seen in other countries how a resurgence can dash hopes for a swift economic recovery.
A thick blanket of smog enveloped Pakistan’s cultural capital of Lahore on Wednesday, prompting officials to warn that tens of thousands of the city’s residents risk respiratory disease and eye-related problems while doctors urged people to stay at home, the Associated Press reports.
The air quality in Lahore deteriorated to hazardous levels, putting an additional burden on the fragile healthcare system amid a surge in coronavirus deaths and new infections. The Air Quality Index at one point rose to 750 in the city’s poorer areas — about 12 times the recommended level.
Earlier in the day, Switzerland-based air quality information platform IQair declared Lahore the second most polluted city, after New Delhi, India’s capital. Pollution indexes peak dramatically in Pakistan in winter, when farmers burn off stubble in the fields. Winds worsen the pollution by further spreading smog across the region.
“The air quality level was hazardous today,” said Sajid Bashir, a spokesman for Environmental Protection Department. By mid-day the situation had improved, he said, as authorities took steps to keep smoke emitting vehicles off the roads and shut brick kilns across the province of Punjab, where Lahore is the provincial capital.
Lahore, once dubbed as the city of gardens, remained pollution-free for months after March, when the government imposed a lockdown to contain the spread of coronavirus. But the restriction was lifted in May, allowing a return to industrial activities and normal businesses. With cars back on the roads, the air quality gradually deteriorated, falling again to unhealthy levels.
Pollution is no stranger to Pakistan, a country of 220 million — or Lahore, with some 12 million people. Cars are the top pollutants in Lahore but the city also has other sources of pollution, including the stubble burning, steel manufacturing furnaces and the city’s famous brick kilns.
“Coughing, throat infection and irritation in the eyes are common,” said Anza Farid, an environmental expert, warning that the situation could worsen in the coming weeks as more people burn garbage in the cities and farmers burn off the stubble in their fields.
Dr Talha Ayub urged people to wear face masks for protection, both from pollution and the coronavirus. “People should try to stay at home if they can,” he appealed.
Pakistan on Wednesday said it registered a further 21 Covid-19 deaths and 1,708 new infections over the past 24 hours — despite a government-imposed partial lockdowns in 4,136 residential areas across the country. The government is turning to sealing off hotspots in a bid to contain rising fatalities and infections from coronavirus.
Authorities also banned large gathering, shut shrines, cinemas and theatres to contain the spread of the virus, which has infected more than 348,000 people in Pakistan and killed 7,021 since February.
Updated
An update on our earlier post from Reuters.
The New York governor Andrew Cuomo has imposed a new round of restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus as the infection rate climbed and hospitalisations soared in the state that was the epicentre of the American outbreak in its early stages.
Cuomo ordered bars, restaurants and gyms in the state to shut down on-premises services at 10pm nightly, and capped the number of people who could attend private parties at 10.
The new measures, which take effect on Friday, came a day after California and several states across the Midwest tightened restrictions on residents on Tuesday to try to curb the rapid spread of the virus.
“This is our LAST chance to stop a second wave,” the New York City mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted on Wednesday, as he announced the city-wide seven-day average rate of coronavirus tests coming back positive had hit 2.52%.
The city’s public school system, the nation’s largest, would be shut to in-person learning if that figure reaches 3%. “We can do it, but we have to act NOW,” de Blasio said.
As Covid-19 infections, hospitalisations and deaths surge across the United States, more signs emerged that a second wave could engulf areas of the Northeast, which had managed to bring the pandemic under control after being battered last spring.
The United States as a whole reported more than 1,450 deaths on Tuesday, the highest single-day count since mid-August, according to a Reuters analysis. It has also emerged that the country surpassed 1 million new confirmed cases in just the first 10 days of November (see 1.04pm.).
Here is the moment the UK prime minister said “anti-vaxx is total nonsense” and that everyone entitled to get a Covid-19 vaccine should take it if it becomes available.
Likening the combination of an effective vaccine and mass testing to a pair of boxing gloves with which the virus could be “pummelled”, Boris Johnson said:
Of course everybody should get a vaccine.
Turkey has banned smoking in crowded public places to slow a recent surge in symptomatic patients with coronavirus, the interior minister said, as the government warned citizens to abide by protective measures.
Daily coronavirus cases in Turkey have recently surged, with 2,693 patients identified on Wednesday. Ankara only reports the number of those who show symptoms, a decision which critics have said hides the true scale of the outbreak in the country.
In a nationwide notice, the Interior Ministry said the smoking ban aimed to ensure citizens comply with rules to wear protective masks properly in public because people were seen to lower them while smoking.
For this reason, in order to ensure that masks are worn at all times and properly, as of November 12, 2020, a smoking ban will be imposed in areas and regions such as streets and avenues where citizens are or can be crowded together, necessary public squares and public transportation stops.
Earlier, the health minister Fahrettin Koca urged citizens to comply fully with mask wearing and social distancing rules. “I am only asking you to do what you can. Nothing more,” Koca wrote on Twitter.
Earlier this week, a partial lockdown on senior citizens was also imposed in some provinces, including the capital Ankara and its largest city Istanbul, banning citizens over 65 from being outside between 10am and 4pm.
The president Tayyip Erdogan announced last week that all business, including restaurants, cafes, pools and cinemas, would close at 10pm daily as part of measures against the pandemic.
More than 400,000 people have been infected with Covid-19 in Turkey and 11,145 have died, according to Health Ministry data.
This is from the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo
New York follows the science.
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) November 11, 2020
We know indoor gatherings and parties are a major source of COVID spread.
To slow the spread, NYS will limit indoor gatherings at private residences to 10 people.
This limit takes effect Friday at 10pm.
It comes as the state’s positivity rate climbed above 3% for the first time in weeks and following a worrying rise in the seven-day average infection rate.
As Covid-19 infections, hospitalisations and deaths soar across the United States, more signs emerged that a second wave could engulf areas of the Northeast, which managed to bring the pandemic under control after being battered last spring.
In New Jersey, one of the early hotspots, a surge in cases in Newark, the state’s largest city, prompted the mayor Ras Baraka to implement aggressive measures, including a mandatory curfew for certain areas, to contain the spread of the virus.
New York state and city officials also reported a worrying rise in the seven-day average infection rate that raised the spectre of stricter mitigation measures adopted at the height of the pandemic.
“This is our LAST chance to stop a second wave,” the New York City mayor Bill de Blasio wrote on Twitter on Wednesday as he announced the seven-day average positivity rate citywide was 2.52%. The city’s public school system, the largest in the country, would have to shut down if that figure reached 3%. “We can do it, but we have to act NOW,” he said.
Today’s indicators:
— Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) November 11, 2020
• 94 patients admitted to the hospital
• 817 new cases
• The infection rate 7-day average is 2.52%
This is our LAST chance to stop a second wave.
We can do it, but we have to act NOW.
The United States as a whole reported more than 1,450 deaths on Tuesday, the highest single-day count since mid-August, according to a Reuters analysis.
US Covid-19 cases climbed for seven days straight to reach more than 136,000 as of late Tuesday while hospitalisations, a key metric of the pandemic, crossed 60,000 for the first time since the pandemic began.
In Newark, the positivity rate hovered at 19%, more than double the state’s 7.74% seven-day average, Baraka said in a statement released on Tuesday. He added:
Stricter measures are required in the city’s hotspots in order to contain the virus and limit the spread.
The New Jersey governor Phil Murphy announced some restrictions on Monday in response to a rise in Covid-19 cases in the state, and outbreaks among bartenders.
And New York’s governor Andrew Cuomo said in a press release on Tuesday that the state’s positivity rate had climbed above 3% for the first time in weeks.
In Maryland, where the positivity rate stood at 5.6% on Wednesday, officials warned about rising Covid-19 hospitalisations. More than 800 people were being treated for the coronavirus at state hospitals as of Wednesday, according to Mike Ricci, the communications director of the governor Larry Hogan, the highest daily count since April, a Reuters tally showed.
France reported 35,879 new confirmed Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, up from the 22,180 reported on Tuesday but staying well below the record high of 86,852 reported on Saturday and below several highs of more than 58,000 and more than 60,000 reported last week.
The country also reported a further 328 coronavirus deaths over the past 24 hours, compared to 1,220 on Tuesday, which included a multi-day tally of 754 deaths in retirement homes.
Updated
Covid-19 cases are still surging in the Americas, averaging 150,000 a day in last week, the World Health Organization’s regional office said.
The United States continues to report record-breaking numbers, while parts of Canada and some states in Mexico, including the capital, are experiencing surges, the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) said.
The United States became the first country to surpass 10 million Covid-19 infections, according to a Reuters tally, as the third wave of the virus surges across the nation.
Other countries in the Americas are doing better. Argentina, Costa Rica and Jamaica have curbed the outbreak with effective contact tracing, and most Caribbean nations have avoided surges by acting fast, PAHO assistant director, Jarbas Barbosa, said.
Europe has been a cautionary tale on the danger of a resurgence of the virus when restrictive measures are lifted too quickly, he said in a briefing. Central America is seeing a steady decrease in Covid-19 cases due to better control measures, he added.
Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay have flattened their curves, and cases in Argentina are decreasing due to improved coordination between the federal and provincial governments, Barbosa said.
Chile’s effective epidemic surveillance systems allowed it to bounce back after unprecedented surges earlier this year, while in Cuba and Costa Rica, universal health care systems have ensured the Covid-19 pandemic never got out of control, he said.
Updated
Stockholm scrambled on Wednesday to curb Covid-19 infections at its nursing homes, reimposing a ban on visits and piloting rapid-result coronavirus testing of staff, Reuters reports.
Sweden’s nursing homes, particularly in the capital, were ravaged by the initial wave of the pandemic, prompting the prime minister Stefan Lofven’s sombre admission in May that the country failed to protect its elderly.
After slowing to a trickle in summer, infections at Stockholm’s nursing homes have shot up in recent weeks. Of the region’s 313 facilities, 48 now have cases, data showed, an increase of more than 20 from last week.
“It’s really, really frightening,” said Johan Styrud, chairman of the Swedish Medical Association in Stockholm and doctor at Danderyd Hospital.
We must do everything we can to keep the infection from getting back into nursing homes again.
More than 1,000 residents with Covid-19 have died at Stockholm’s nursing homes during the pandemic and with new cases climbing, local authorities on Wednesday to reimposed a ban on visitors which was dropped nationally last month.
“We are seeing a huge increase of confirmed cases and the past week has been dramatic,” Maria Rotzen Ostlund, acting chief epidemiologist in region of Stockholm, said.
We’ve had fantastic increase in testing capacity [since the spring outbreak] but right now it’s not enough.
Surging demand has forced regions such as Stockholm to tighten requirements for standard laboratory PCR tests. Now a pilot project is being rolled out at city homes using rapid antigen tests to show within 15 minutes if a member of staff is infected.
Sweden’s health agency has estimated about 90% of confirmed cases at nursing homes were infected by staff amid a lack of safety equipment and testing during the early stages of the pandemic.
“This can be a game changer because now we can identify carriers of the virus before they spread it to elderly people,” said Stefan Amer, CEO of Familjelakarna, which provides medical services at roughly half the region’s nursing homes.
If successful – antigen test results will be compared with PCR test also being carried out – the system could be rolled out broadly and used whenever a staffer, or visitor when such are allowed, enters the building, Amer said.
Updated
Good evening from London. I’m Lucy Campbell, I’ll be bringing you all the latest global developments on the coronavirus pandemic for the few eight hours. Please feel free to get in touch with me as I work if you have a story or tips to share! Your thoughts are always welcome.
Email: lucy.campbell@theguardian.com
Twitter: @lucy_campbell_
Lockdown tightened in Greece
Greek authorities have announced stricter restrictions on movement, extending a curfew nationwide after infections broke fresh records this evening.
Four days after the country went into a second lockdown to curb the spike in coronavirus cases, Athens’ civil protection minister in charge of the government’s response to the pandemic said all circulation would be banned between 9pm and 5am.
“The following weeks are especially critical,” said Nikos Hardalias in a televised address. “We recognise the fatigue we all feel but we are at a critical juncture and we have to be armed with patience and perseverance to protect each other and confront the second wave,” he said. “Restricting unnecessary movement nationwide we restrict the transfer and transmission of the virus and we reduce the possibility of new clusters.”
From Friday, public and private organisations will also have to demonstrate they can work with skeleton staff, he warned, saying enterprises would be subject to checks.
Greek health officials confirmed a further 2,752 coronavirus cases on Wednesday, bringing the total tally to 63,321. Of that number, 347 people are in intensive care, with the health ministry saying emergency Covid wards are now 70% full.
On the back of the surge, fatalities have increased with a further 43 deaths being recorded in the last 24 hours. In total 909 people have died in Greece.
Updated
Sweden’s government plans to ban the sale of alcohol in bars, restaurants and nightclubs after 10pm as it fights to contain a surge in Covid-19 infections.
Sweden did not lock down households and businesses as much of Europe did during the pandemic’s first wave in the spring, preferring mostly voluntary measures to control the spread of the virus.
With case numbers rising again, many countries have reimposed strict controls, but Sweden has left its measures broadly unchanged.
But the country’s prime minister, Stefan Lofven, said some people had begun to ignore recommendations aimed at preventing the spread of infection and the government now needed to do more.
“All the indicators point in the wrong direction,” Lofven told a news conference on Wednesday.
“The infection is spreading quickly and just in the last week the number of people with the coronavirus who are being treated in intensive care more than doubled.”
Lofven said the planned ban on late-night alcohol sales would be in place from 20 November until the end of February.
Sweden has had record numbers of new infections in recent weeks, straining the health system. One in four intensive care beds is now taken by a Covid patient, the government said.
Since the start of the epidemic Sweden has had 166,707 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 6,082 people have died.
Deaths from the virus are many times higher per capita than in Sweden’s Nordic neighbours, though less than countries such as Britain and Spain.
Updated
More detail from our Madrid correspondent, Sam Jones, on new rules for arrivals in Spain:
From Monday 23 November, anyone travelling to Spain from a country with a high number of Covid-19 cases will need to show evidence of a negative PCR test result within the previous 72 hours to be granted entry, the health ministry has just announced.
Those entering the country from that date will need to fill out a form on arrival to say whether or not they have tested negative for the virus. Officials will be allowed to ask for proof of the test results.
“The document will need to be the original, in Spanish or English, and can be in paper or electronic form,” the ministry said in a statement.
“Any passenger who is suspected of having Covid-19 following temperature, visual and paperwork controls will have to undergo a diagnostic test at the airport on arrival in Spain.”
The ministry said that risk assessments for those in EU and Schengen area countries would be carried out in accordance with EU guidelines on free movement during the pandemic.
Those guidelines rate countries: green if the number of cases per 100,000 people over the previous fortnight is fewer than 25 and the test positivity rate is less than 4%; orange if it’s fewer than 50 but the test positivity rate is less than 4% or more; red if it’s 50 or more and the test positivity rate is 4% or more – or if the 14-day cumulative case notification rate is more than 150 per 100, 000 people – and grey if there is insufficient data.
Those entering Spain from third countries will be assessed on the number of cases per 100,000 people over the previous fortnight in their countries of origin.
The statement added: “Travel agents, tourism operators and air or maritime transport companies, or any other agent that sells tickets, will need to inform passengers that it is compulsory to have a negative PCR test result before travelling.”
In Spain, which has logged almost 1.4 million Covid-19 cases, the number of cases per 100,000 people over the past fortnight is 524.6.
Updated
More vaccine logistics chat: Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has warned it will be challenging to distribute some of the new Covid-19 vaccines in developing countries, owing to their cold storage requirements.
Pfizer’s much-lauded vaccine, which is showing 90% efficacy in initial trials, uses synthetic messenger RNA to activate the immune system against the virus and needs to be kept at -70C (-94 F) or below.
“It does have cold-chain challenges as it were. In a country like the UK and the United States we can address them and it still would be challenging. But, probably much more challenging in countries in the developing world,” Fauci said at the Financial Times’ global pharmaceutical and biotechnology conference.
The experimental vaccine from US firm Moderna Inc, which is on track to report early data from a late-stage trial later this month, also uses mRNA technology and needs to be stored at -20C (-4 F).
Updated
Italy passes 1m cases
The total number of coronavirus cases registered in Italy since the start of the pandemic surpassed the one million mark on Wednesday, the health ministry said.
About 32,961 new infections were recorded in the past 24 hours, down from the 35,098 cases reported on Tuesday.
The ministry also reported 623 Covid-related deaths, up from 580 the day before and the highest figure since April 6.
A total of 42,953 people have now died because of coronavirus in Italy since the disease came to light in February.
Updated
Visitors to Spain will have to test negative on arrival
Spain will demand a negative Covid test for all travellers arriving from countries with a high risk for coronavirus from 23 November, the health ministry said.
Spain, one of Europe’s worst Covid-19 hotspots, had increasingly become an exception for its policy of not asking visitors to provide a test on arrival.
Brazil’s health regulator has approved the restart of clinical trials of China’s coronavirus vaccine after their suspension sparked a furious political row in one of the countries worst-hit by Covid-19.
Trials of the CoronaVac shot – which is being developed by the Chinese biopharmaceutical firm Sinovac – were halted on Monday after a participant took their own life.
Brazil’s rightwing president, who is known for his hostility to China, caused outrage by commemorating the suspension as “another victory for Jair Bolsonaro”.
That remark fuelled anger and speculation that the decision to interrupt the trial had been based on ideology and politics, not science or the public interest.
As well as a Beijing-basher, Bolsonaro is also a sworn enemy of João Doria, the governor of São Paulo state, where the Chinese vaccine is being partly developed by a local research institute.
According to Brazilian media reports, the head of Brazil’s health regulator, a navy rear admiral called Antônio Barra Torres, is a close Bolsonaro ally. In March, at the height of Brazil’s Covid-19 epidemic, Torres accompanied the rightwing populist to an anti-democracy protest outside the presidential palace.
In a statement on Wednesday morning announcing the trial’s resumption, the regulator, Anvisa, claimed the decision to suspend testing had been “exclusively technical” and based on legal and scientific principles.
But writing in the O Globo newspaper, the political commentator Bernardo Mello Franco accused Bolsonaro of “waging war on the CoronaVac” for political reasons. Franco claimed Anvisa’s “exotic decision” to halt the trial demonstrated how the government body had, like others, now been “captured” by Bolsonarismo.
Updated
Here is some analysis from our Moscow correspondent, Andrew Roth, on what to make of Russia’s claims that its Sputnik V vaccine is 92% effective against the novel coronavirus (see post at 09.30):
The announcement is clearly aimed at keeping pace with western drugmakers, particularly Pfizer-BioNTec, which has already begun inking deals to supply up to 300m doses of its Covid-19 vaccine.
Estimating the potential market at above $100bn (£75bn), Vladimir Putin has called the development of Russia’s own vaccine “good business with a clear humanitarian component”.
The project has become something of a patriotic endeavour. “It’s part of the Russian mentality to save the world,” Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s RDIF sovereign wealth fund, said in an interview with the Guardian earlier this year.
But despite claims about the vaccine’s efficacy, there are growing questions about whether Russia will be able to enter mass production on schedule, putting those business goals and the country’s own strategy for fighting the coronavirus at risk.
The head of Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute, which has developed the vaccine at breakneck speed, was quoted as saying that mass vaccinations could begin “within weeks”. Other officials have promised mass vaccination programs by year’s end.
Yet Putin indicated there were production problems last month as he urged businesses to invest more in the development of the vaccine.
“The only question now is to ensure the needed volume of industrial production,” Putin said at an investment forum last month. “There are certain problems linked to the availability or lack of the necessary equipment ... for mass production.”
The Russian business news site the Bell reported that developers were having trouble “scaling up” production of the drug. “We can’t achieve a stable vaccine and nor can anyone else,” the co-owner of one of four pharmaceutical companies tasked with developing the drug told the news site.
Russia has resisted returning to lockdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus and the country has had record numbers of infections and deaths. Analysts say the government is placing its hopes in a mass vaccination program to chart a way out of the crisis. Yet it’s unclear when the population will have access to a mass vaccination program.
On Wednesday, Russia’s health minister noted that Pfizer had not registered its vaccine in Russia and said he did not know what the drug company’s plans were in Russia. He also put in a quick plug for the Russian equivalent. “According to the clinical results the effect of the Russian vaccine Sputnik V is even a bit better than Pfizer’s,” Mikhail Murashko, the health minister, said.
Updated
Brazil’s polemicist president, Jair Bolsonaro, has generated further revolt by declaring that citizens needed to cease fretting over a coronavirus pandemic that has killed 163,000 Brazilians and “stop being a country of poofs”.
Bolsonaro, who has become notorious for his insensitive, politically-driven handling of the crisis, made the homophobic remark on Tuesday as another 201 citizens were reported to have died from Covid-19.
“I’m sorry about the deaths, I really am. But we’ll all die one day ... There’s no point in trying to escape this reality. We’ve got to stop being a country of maricas,” Bolsonaro told an event in the capital Brasilia. The homophobic slur roughly translates as poof or pansy in English.
That widely condemned comment came just hours after the rightwing populist celebrated the suspension of a trial of a Chinese coronavirus vaccine after one of the participants committed suicide. “Another victory for Jair Bolsonaro,” a message posted on the president’s official Facebook account.
Some believe Bolsonaro’s latest offensive remarks were designed to distract from snowballing corruption scandals involving two of his politician sons, Carlos and Flávio Bolsonaro. Last week prosecutors filed embezzlement and money laundering charges against Flávio, while reports on Wednesday morning suggested anti-corruption investigators were also closing in on Carlos.
Updated
The race to become the first company to come to market with an effective Covid-19 vaccine is hotting up: the American firm Moderna Inc says it is on track to report early data from a late-stage trial of its experimental coronavirus vaccine later this month, Reuters reports.
Phase 3 of the randomised, placebo-controlled trial, which began in July, aimed to involve 30,000 participants aged 18-plus. Phase 3 is the final stage of a trial before it is granted regulatory approval and can start to be rolled out among the population.
Moderna’s announcement comes two days after the rival Pfizer said its vaccine was 90% effective, based on interim trial results.
Updated
More than 1m new cases in the US in first 10 days of November
The US has hit a record number of coronavirus hospitalisations and surpassed 1 million new confirmed cases in just the first 10 days of November.
Infections are now running at all-time highs of well over 100,000 per day, pushing the total to more than 10 million and eclipsing 1 million since Halloween.
There are now 61,964 people hospitalised, according to the Covid Tracking Project.
Several states posted records on Tuesday, including more than 12,600 new cases in Illinois, 10,800 in Texas and 7,000 in Wisconsin.
Deaths – a lagging indicator, since it takes time for people to get poorly and die – are climbing again, reaching an average of more than 930 a day.
“The virus is spreading in a largely uncontrolled fashion across the vast majority of the country,” Dr William Schaffner, an infectious-disease expert at Vanderbilt University, told AP.
State governors have made increasingly desperate pleas for people to take the fight against the virus more seriously.
In an unusual prime-time speech hours after Wisconsin set new records for infections and deaths, its Democratic governor, Tony Evers, advised people to stay in their houses and said businesses should allow people to work remotely, require masks and limit the number of people in stores and offices.
Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, a Democrat, ordered bars and restaurants to close at 10pm. His Iowan Republican counterpart, Kim Reynolds, said she will require masks at indoor gatherings of 25 or more people, inching toward more stringent measures after months of holding out.
In Massachusetts, the Republican governor, Charlie Baker, is warning the health care system could become overwhelmed this winter. He recently ordered restaurants to stop table service, required many businesses to close by 9.30pm, and instructed residents to stay home between 10pm and 5am.
Updated
Slovakia’s government will extend its state of emergency powers for the rest of the year to battle a surge in coronavirus cases, the justice minister, Maria Kolikova, said on Wednesday.
The state of emergency, put in place at the start of October, gives the government extra powers to implement strict measures. It had been due to expire on Saturday.
The country of 5.5 million has seen a surge of Covid-19 cases since the end of summer, like the rest of Europe, after it managed to keep infections low during the first wave of the global pandemic.
To battle the latest surge, the government has pushed mass testing using antigen tests - which produce faster but often less accurate results than laboratory tests.
It has also put in lockdown measures including banning indoor dining at restaurants, closing public places such as gyms, cinemas and theatres, and limiting gatherings.
In total, 414 people have died from coronavirus in Slovakia so far, a fraction of other countries in western Europe and 12 times less than in the neighbouring Czech Republic, which has seen Europe’s highest per-capita infection and death rates in recent weeks.
Updated
European commission seals deal for 300m Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine doses
The European commission says it has sealed a deal with Pfizer and BioNTech for the supply of up to 300m doses of their Covid-19 vaccine.
Under the deal, the 27 EU countries could buy 200m doses, and have an option to purchase another 100m.
The UK, which left the EU in January, has negotiated its own deal for 40m doses – enough for 20m people (two doses are required).
The move follows Pfizer’s announcement on Monday that its experimental vaccine was more than 90% effective, making them the first drugmakers to show successful interim data from a large-scale clinical trial of a coronavirus vaccine.
Updated
Texas becomes first US state to record more than 1 million cases
Texas has become the first US state with more than 1 million confirmed Covid-19 cases, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
The second-most populous state in the US has recorded 1,010,364 coronavirus cases since the pandemic began in early March, according to the count on the Johns Hopkins website. About 19,337 Texans have died from the virus in that time.
Texas had recently surpassed California, the most populous state, in recording the highest number of positive coronavirus tests. The true number of infections is likely to be higher because many people have not been tested, and studies suggest people can be infected and not feel sick.
Texas recorded 10,865 cases on Tuesday, setting a new daily record, state officials said. An estimated 132,146 cases are active, with 6,170 Texans currently in hospital with the virus, the most since 18 August, according to state figures released on Tuesday.
Updated
Germany has reported the biggest surge in deaths linked to Covid-19 since April, as its health minister warned that the number of daily infections had not fallen enough yet to flatten the curve.
Europe’s biggest economy, in a partial lockdown since 2 November, recorded 18,487 new infections and 261 deaths in a day, the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases said.
The chancellor, Angela Merkel, has said the emergency month-long lockdown that includes the closure of restaurants, gyms and theatres was necessary to reverse a spike in coronavirus cases that risks overwhelming hospitals.
“The numbers are rising but not as strongly,” the health minister, Jens Spahn, told German broadcaster RTL. “This is encouraging but it is not enough.”
Even though the number of confirmed daily new infections has remained below 20,000 for four days straight, the number of deaths has been rising, and hospitals are reporting higher intensive care occupancy, Spahn said.
“We are definitely seeing signs of change, but we still cannot talk of a trend reversal,” he said, adding the number of deaths and patients needing intensive care would only fall if infection numbers dropped significantly.
Unlike its first lockdown earlier this year, Germany is keeping its schools and daycare centres open so that parents can go to work and limit the damage to an economy expected to suffer its worst recession since the second world war.
The head of Germany’s teachers union said, however, that at least 300,000 pupils and more than 40,000 teachers were currently in quarantine, either because they had the virus or had come into contact with an infected individual.
Updated
France is doubling the number of intensive care (ICU) beds to cope with the second wave of Covid-19 patients.
Before the first wave in March/April, France was estimated to have an intensive care capacity of around 5,000 ICU beds.
Declaring a new national lockdown at the end of last month, President Emmanuel Macron also announced the number of beds would be gradually increased to 10,000.
On Tuesday, official figures suggested 92.5% of the country’s current capacity of beds were occupied by patients with coronavirus. Some areas where hospitals are under pressure have been transferring patients to neighbouring regions with more hospital capacity.
The French government website suggests there are currently 4,750 patients in intensive care. There were 22,180 new confirmed contaminations in the previous 24 hours, down from a spike of more than 50,000 last week, and 472 deaths reported. However, the authorities said the sudden rise in deaths was due to a catch up in reporting from the previous week.
The French prime minister, Jean Castex, will outline the evolution of the current lockdown – due to last until 1 December – tomorrow evening. French media is speculating whether he will announce a maintaining, relaxing or hardening of the current restrictions. With the R number (rate of Covid-19 contaminations) still over 1, it is unlikely there would be any relaxing of the rules.
Updated
Ian Jones, professor of virology at the University of Reading, has cautiously welcomed news of the Russian Sputnik vaccine. He said:
The Sputnik data is yet more good news for Covid-19 vaccine development. Although based on fewer cases than the recent Pfizer data, the vaccine looks as efficient and, like the Pfizer data, confirms and extends the earlier phase 2 results. We still need to know about the longevity of the response and the efficiency in different age groups, but the result bodes well for the other trials currently in progress and for having enough vaccine in geographically diverse regions to enable a comprehensive vaccination program on a global scale.”
I’m Helen Pidd, the Guardian’s north of England editor in normal times (remember those?). I will be helming this live blog for the rest of the day. Feel free to email me helen.pidd@theguardian.com
Updated
That’s it for me. I’m now handing over to my esteemed colleague Helen Pidd.
Indonesia has reported 3,770 new coronavirus infections, taking its total number of cases to 448,118, according to the country’s Covid-19 taskforce. It also reported 75 more deaths, taking total fatalities to 14,836.
Updated
The race to produce the world’s first Covid-19 vaccine is not only a matter of public health. It’s also an issue of fierce geopolitical rivalry, akin to the moon landings.
Hot on the heels of Monday’s announcement that the Pfizer-BioNTec vaccine had proven 90% effective in interim trials, Russia has claimed that its own candidate, Sputnik V, is even more effective – reducing the likelihood of catching the disease by 92%.
Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, which has been backing the vaccine, said on Wednesday its interim results were based on data from the first 16,000 trial participants to receive both shots of the two-dose vaccine.
“We are showing, based on the data, that we have a very effective vaccine,” the RDIF head, Kirill Dmitriev, was quoted by Reuters, adding that it was the sort of news that the vaccine’s developers would talk about one day with their grandchildren.
The chances of contracting Covid-19 were 92% lower among people vaccinated with Sputnik V than those who received the placebo, the RDIF said.
The phase 3 trial of the shot developed by the Gamaleya Institute is taking place in 29 clinics across Moscow and will involve 40,000 volunteers in total, with a quarter receiving a placebo shot.
Despite the claims, Sputnik V is not one of the vaccines generally considered to be the most promising. Those are listed below:
Updated
Mongolia has reported its first domestic transmissions of the coronavirus, from a truck driver who infected his wife and two other relatives after three weeks of quarantine, according to the AFP news agency.
The landlocked country bordering Russia and China has so far reported only 376 virus cases – all imported – and enforced strict arrival controls that have prompted protests by Mongolians stranded abroad.
But national emergency committee officials said a truck driver who had arrived in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, from Russia last month had infected three relatives despite being quarantined for three weeks as required by Mongolian law.
The national health committee published his movements – including attending a concert with about 3,000 others – and told anyone who might have crossed paths with him to get tested.
The city has closed its borders with other provinces and closed schools for a three-day-lockdown, prompting panic-buying.
Updated
Dr David Nabarro, one of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) special envoys on Covid-19, urged people to be “careful” when students in the UK return to university after Christmas to prevent a spike in Covid-19 cases.
Asked about students returning to UK universities in January, and if there was an argument for keeping students at home for longer, Dr Nabarro told Sky News:
We did see that there was quite a big increase in cases in Europe in October and November. We think that was to do with movements that took place in September, including students coming to university.
So if there’s going to be a big return in January, all I’m going to say is, everybody be careful. Because that’s when the virus can really move around quickly.
He asked people to “stick with the instructions”, such as social distancing, wearing face coverings and self-isolating when ill.
Updated
The Philippine health ministry has recorded 1,672 new coronavirus infections and 49 additional deaths.
In a bulletin, the ministry said total confirmed cases have increased to 401,416 while deaths have reached 7,710.
Russia reports record daily deaths
Russia has reported a record high of 432 new deaths related to Covid-19, taking the official death toll to 31,593.
Authorities also reported 19,851 new coronavirus infections in the last 24 hours, including 4,477 in the capital, Moscow, Reuters reports. This brings the national tally to 1,836,960.
Its infections tally is the fifth highest in the world, behind the US, India, Brazil and France. Its death toll is the 13th highest, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Updated
The World Health Organization has posted this handy graphic showing the number of Covid cases and deaths in the western Pacific.
It confirms that the previously Covid-free Vanuatu has recorded its first case. The country’s director of public health said the patient was a 23-year-old man who had recently returned from the US. He was confirmed to have the virus on Tuesday after being tested on the fifth day of his quarantine.
#COVID19 confirmed cases and deaths in the @WHO Western Pacific Region as of 10 AM Manila time on 11 November 👇
— World Health Organization Western Pacific (@WHOWPRO) November 11, 2020
➡ For more info on #coronavirus cases in the region, see the dashboard here: https://t.co/qQ2L141byK pic.twitter.com/9MNUJDYtgW
Updated
The UK’s airline industry has been battered by eight months of on-off travel restrictions. The country’s biggest airport, Heathrow, on Wednesday criticised a “lack of government action” after it recorded a “catastrophic” 82% fall in passenger numbers last month.
1.25 million people travelled through the London airport last month, compared with 7.06 million during October 2019. North American routes saw the biggest drop, down 95% year-on-year.
Heathrow said October was “the eighth consecutive month of catastrophic decline” and warned that England’s ban on leisure travel means “November is likely to be even worse”.
Updated
The Czech Republic has reported 9,016 new coronavirus cases, a drop of 3,072 from a week earlier.
The country of 10.7 million had one of Europe’s highest infection rates for several weeks and recorded a total of 429,880 infections.
Its health ministry ministry on Wednesday reported 249 new deaths, including 109 on Tuesday and adding in revisions to previous days. Overall, 5,323 people in the Czech Republic have died after testing positive for Covid-19.
Updated
Officials in Japan have warned of an impending third wave of coronavirus infections amid a rise in cases blamed on colder weather and a government campaign to encourage domestic tourism.
As the prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, vowed to secure enough vaccines to cover Japan’s entire population, the number of daily cases continued to rise after several weeks of staying relatively stable.
Japan reported 1,284 new Covid-19 infections on Tuesday, bringing its total to 111,222 according to a Kyodo news agency tally based on official data. The death toll stood at 1,864.
While Japan has avoided the large number of cases and deaths seen in the UK, US and other countries – with widespread mask-wearing often cited as a factor – the decision to press ahead with a heavily subsidised tourism campaign in July appears to have contributed to a new wave of infections.
You can read the full story here:
Updated
Good morning/evening. Josh Halliday here in Manchester, England. I can’t promise you 100-year-old monkey faeces but I’ll try keep the news swinging. (I’ll also work on my puns).
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, on the day that will forever be known as the day I wrote this headline about a monkey called a Popa that was just discovered via its faeces. You are welcome.
For over half a century, a massive graveyard on the edge of Iran’s capital has provided a final resting place for this country’s war dead, its celebrities and artists, its thinkers and leaders and all those in between.
But Behesht-e-Zahra is now struggling to keep up with the coronavirus pandemic ravaging Iran, with double the usual number of bodies arriving each day and grave diggers excavating thousands of new plots, AP reports.
With 1.6 million people buried on its grounds, which stretch across more than 5 square kilometers, Behesht-e-Zahra is one of the world’s largest cemeteries and the primary one for Tehran’s 8.6 million people. The golden minarets of its Imam Khomeini Shrine, the burial site of the leader of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, are visible for kilometres.
But it was not big enough for the coronavirus, which roared into Iran early this year, seeding the region’s worst outbreak.
Iran has reported over 700,000 infections and more than 39,000 deaths — and has set single-day death records 10 times over the past month. Almost half of the country’s reported virus fatalities have happened in Tehran, putting pressure on the cemetery.
Tehran’s leaders announced in June that they were preparing 15,000 new graves there — about 5,000 more than in a typical year.
Satellite pictures from September show the plots — deep enough to allow for as many as three bodies in each — newly dug, each separated by a layer of dirt and bricks.
While not all of the new graves are for coronavirus victims, most are.
A care home called the police when a woman who had been denied visits to her 83-year-old husband for eight months amid the Covid pandemic sneaked in to get him out.
Patricia Hodges, 75, used to visit her husband, Graham, daily at Wayside House in Bromsgrove, where he was being cared for with Lewy Body dementia. But her anguish at being prevented from seeing him from March to October, and a row over fees, sparked an attempt to move him to another home, she said.
The incident on 28 October followed a dispute between the Hodges and the care home, which began with requests for visits being denied. It ended with the home’s owner being accused of “holding” Graham Hodges over missing fees, which the home strongly denies:
Graduate recruitment suffered the biggest drop this year since the 2008 financial crash as employers cut back on hiring workers to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic.
The latest survey by the Institute of Student Employers (ISE) found that the number of graduate jobs declined by 12% and that the majority of employers anticipated a further decline next year.
Employers in the retail and consumer goods sectors made the biggest cuts, slashing 45% of graduate jobs as the first coronavirus lockdown hit business income and clouded the outlook for employment:
Brief respite from coronavirus news:
Sharing excellent content with my grateful followers pic.twitter.com/S8So9Xkqlb
— Don "Big Chooch" Moynihan (@donmoyn) November 11, 2020
Summary
Here are the key global developments from the last few hours:
- Vanuatu, one of the last remaining countries to be free of Covid, confirms first case. One of the last remaining Covid-free countries in the world has announced its first positive test.Vanuatu Prime Minister Bob Loughman made the announcement in an address to the nation. Loughman told a press conference that the indigenous Ni-Vanuatu person had arrived from the USA, transiting through Sydney and Auckland.
- Iran imposed a lockdown. Iran imposed a nightly curfew on businesses in Tehran and other cities on Tuesday, as it battles a major surge in coronavirus infections. Restaurants and nonessential businesses in Tehran and 30 other cities were ordered to close at 6pm for one month, to keep hospitals from becoming overwhelmed and to slow the worsening outbreak, which has killed more than 39,000 — the highest toll in the Middle East.
- Lebanon imposed a lockdown. In Lebanon, caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab announced a lockdown on on Tuesday night that will begin on Saturday and last until the end of the month. Lebanon has broken daily records in recent weeks, straining the country’s medical sector where intensive care units are almost full and cannot take more cases. The World Health Organization says 1,527 health workers have tested positive since the first case was reported in Lebanon in late February.
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More than 15,000 mink in the United States have died of the coronavirus since August, and authorities are keeping about a dozen farms under quarantine while they investigate the cases, state agriculture officials said.
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England’s students to get six-day window to get home before Christmas.
Students in England will be given a six-day window next month in which to travel home before Christmas, with mass testing carried out on campus before they are allowed to leave. - Hong Kong-Singapore travel bubble to begin on 22 November. A travel bubble between Hong Kong and Singapore will begin on 22 November, Singapore’s airlines regulator announced on Wednesday, as the two cities move to re-establish overseas travel links and lift the hurdle of quarantine for visiting foreigners.
- China reports 17 new cases, down from day before. Mainland China reported 17 new Covid-19 cases on 10 November, down from 22 reported a day earlier, the country’s health authority said on Wednesday. The National Health Commission said one of the new cases was a local infection reported in Anhui, the first such infection in the eastern Chinese province since 27 February. The other 16 cases were imported infections originating from overseas, it said.
- US sees record Covid hospitalisations. The Covid-Tracking project reports that the US on Tuesday saw its highest number of people hospitalises with coronavirus of the pandemic so far – a day after braking the record on Monday. The number of hospitalisations currently stands at 61,964.
New Zealand’s central bank introduced a new funding programme on Wednesday that would reduce costs for lenders, while holding its benchmark interest rate at record lows and signalling its readiness to shift to negative rates to support the economy, Reuters reports.
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) held the official cash rate (OCR) steady at 0.25%, as markets expected, and re-iterated rates would stay there until March 2021.
That commitment and the new funding-for-lending programme (FLP) for banks led markets to pare chances of negative rates, sending the New Zealand dollar to the highest since March 2019 at $0.6884.
Government bonds sold off, too, with five-year yields up 10 basis points at 0.3% from Tuesday. The bank also retained its large scale asset purchase (LSAP) programme at NZ$100 billion ($66.32 billion).
The RBNZ said earlier on Wednesday that it would consult next month on whether to reintroduce limits on the amount of “high-risk lending” banks can make, amid growing concerns of a housing bubble.
New Zealand fell into its deepest recession on record in the second quarter, but markets now believe further stimulus may not be necessary as the government has reopened the economy after containing the coronavirus.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 18,487 to 705,687, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday.
The reported death toll rose by 261 to 11,767, the tally showed.
Wales faces a wave of mental health problems in the wake of Covid-19 - with younger adults, women and people from deprived areas suffering the most, according to a study.
PA: Researchers at Swansea and Cardiff universities examined the pandemic’s impact on the mental wellbeing of the Welsh population. The initial findings reveal around half of the 13,000 participants showed clinically significant psychological distress, with around 20% suffering severe effects.
Their responses were given during June and July, when the pandemic was seen to be having a dramatic effect on psychological wellbeing.
Professor Nicola Gray, from Swansea University, said: “We examined psychological wellbeing and the prevalence of clinically significant mental distress in a large sample 11 to 16 weeks into lockdown and compared this to population-based data collected pre-Covid-19.
“It showed a large decrease in wellbeing from pre-Covid-19 levels.”
Gray said the effects in Wales, and by implication those in the UK and beyond, are larger than previous studies had suggested.
In more cheerful news from the natural world:
They hatched six weeks ago, watched by thousands of Melburnians who were stuck inside under the coronavirus lockdown. Now, as life is beginning to return to the city below them, three peregrine falcon chicks roosting on a city centre skyscraper are also preparing to leave the nest.
The hatchlings – all female – have been obsessively monitored by cooped-up Victorians who turned to the Collins Street falcons livestream during lockdown.
By Friday they will be ready to take flight, says Victor Hurley, the founder of the Victorian Peregrine Project which monitors the birds in conjunction with Birdlife Australia. Then they will be made to move on – peregrines are fiercely territorial, and won’t tolerate their chicks remaining near home:
If you, like me, find that murder hornets help to take your mind off coronavirus for a moment, have I got the right story:
When scientists in Washington state destroyed the first nest of so-called murder hornets found in the US, they discovered about 500 live specimens in various stages of development, officials said Tuesday.
Among them were nearly 200 queens that had the potential to start their own nests, said Sven-Erik Spichiger, an entomologist leading the fight to kill the hornets.
“We got there just in the nick of time,” he said.
Still, that didn’t end the threat from the giant insects that can deliver painful, though rarely deadly, stings to people and wipe out entire hives of honeybees.
Scientists think other nests already exist and say it’s impossible to know if any queens escaped before the first nest was destroyed.
Updated
Faced with closures because of coronavirus measures and fierce competition from retail giant Amazon, 250 independent UK bookshops have banded together on a new online platform called Bookshop.org, which started in Britain on November 2 after being launched in the United States.
Its arrival could provide a lifeline to small bookshops, particularly as England has effectively gone into lockdown again for a month to cut virus infection rates.
Unlike other European nations such as Belgium, authorities in Britain, where more than 48,000 people have died in the outbreak, have deemed books non-essential items.
According to a report published in May by market research company Nielsen, two out of five adults said they read more during the first UK-wide lockdown, introduced in late March.
The average reading time in the country rose from 3.5 hours to six hours a week.
South Korea’s spy chief has proposed a summit of the leaders of the United States, Japan and the two Koreas during the Tokyo Olympics next year, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Reuters: Park Jie-won made the proposal in Japan, where he arrived on Sunday for his first trip as head of the National Intelligence Service (NIS) aimed at improving relations strained by a feud over compensation for Koreans forced to work for Japanese firms during its 1910-45 colonial rule.
Park suggested the summit during a Tuesday meeting with new Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, saying it could take up the issues of North Korea’s denuclearisation and the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korean agents, the newspaper said.
Japan’s relations with both North and South Korea have long been difficult, largely because of its colonisation of the Korean peninsula.
Park conveyed South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s willingness to normalise ties with Japan, for which he said there needed to be some Japanese apology or expression of regret for the wartime forced labour, the newspaper said.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that Park had suggested that Moon and Suga announce a new declaration to build on a 1998 joint pledge of a “future-oriented relationship”.
“Both leaders are strongly willing to resolve current issues,” the news agency quoted Park as saying.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s attendance at such a summit would be a landmark. The NIS declined to comment on the reports.
Updated
As the coronavirus pandemic rocks international commerce, knock-on effects are being felt in poor corners of the world like Albania, where chromium miners have nowhere to sell their goods due to a drop off in purchases from China, AFP reports.
The Balkan country’s chromium sector is entirely dependent on exports, leaving the men and women who extract it at the mercy of world prices.
“These last few months have been very difficult with the pandemic, the fear of losing our work,” says Florent Veseli, a 33-year-old drilling inside a cold, damp mine under a mountain in the Bulqize region.
“If the mine closes, we will have nothing left, we will no longer be able to feed our families.”
Chromium, a hard metal used chiefly to make stainless steel, has been a struggling commodity for more than two years owing to a shrinking appetite from leading consumer China. A trade war between Washington and Beijing had also injected volatility into the market.
But Covid-19 “dealt the final blow” because “many industries at the end of the value chain have slowed down,” Sheraz Neffati, executive director of the International Chromium Development Association, told AFP.
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said orders made during its Singles’ Day mega-shopping festival had exceeded $56bn by Wednesday morning, as consumers sought to cash in on a deluge of discounts, Reuters reports.
This year’s shopping extravaganza comes a week after Alibaba lost almost $76bn of its market value following China’s suspension of the $37bn listing of Ant Group, the financial technology firm Alibaba owns a third of.
It also takes place as China experiences an economic rebound after getting the spread of the novel coronavirus under control within its borders, following the virus’ emergence in the central city of Wuhan late last year.
Alibaba launched the annual online blitz early this year, with two primary discount periods taking place from 1 November through 3 November and again on 11 November.
The company will calculate gross merchandise volume (GMV) over the full 11-day period, as opposed to the usual 24 hours.
As of 12:30 am local time (1630 GMT) on 11 November, the campaign’s GMV had surpassed 372.3bn yuan ($56.3bn) with the order rate hitting a record peak of 583,000 per second, Alibaba said.
Alibaba has said it will introduce more than 2m new products, double last year’s amount. Other companies such as Douyin - the Chinese version of Beijing ByteDance Technology Co Ltd’s TikTok - JD.com Inc and Pinduoduo Inc are also holding their own Singles Day shopping events.
Analysts expect this year to be a boon for luxury brands, as Chinese consumers accustomed to going overseas to buy high-end goods are now stuck at home due to coronavirus border closures.
More than 15,000 mink have died in US from coronavirus since August
More than 15,000 mink in the United States have died of the coronavirus since August, and authorities are keeping about a dozen farms under quarantine while they investigate the cases, state agriculture officials said.
Global health officials are eying the animals as a potential risk for people after Denmark last week embarked on a plan to eliminate all of its 17 million mink, saying a mutated coronavirus strain could move to humans and evade future Covid-19 vaccines.
The US states of Utah, Wisconsin and Michigan - where the coronavirus has killed mink - said they do not plan to cull animals and are monitoring the situation in Denmark.
“We believe that quarantining affected mink farms in addition to implementing stringent biosecurity measures will succeed in controlling SARS-CoV-2 at these locations,” the US Department of Agriculture told Reuters on Tuesday.
The USDA said it is working with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, state officials and the mink industry to test and monitor infected farms.
Updated
Lebanon imposes lockdown
In Lebanon, caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab announced a lockdown on on Tuesday night that will begin on Saturday and last until the end of the month.
Lebanon has broken daily records in recent weeks, straining the country’s medical sector where intensive care units are almost full and cannot take more cases. The World Health Organization says 1,527 health workers have tested positive since the first case was reported in Lebanon in late February.
The Lebanese announcement came despite harsh criticism by business sectors that have been suffering for more than a year as the country passes through its worst economic and financial crisis.
The head of Lebanon workers union, Bechara el Asmar, warned on Monday the effects of a complete lockdown “will be catastrophic for workers and economic activities.” Daily laborers cannot afford to stay at home, he said.
Aya Majzoub of the Human Rights Watch said the crisis has thrown more Lebanese below the poverty line, adding that the government is obliged to ensure that everyone has adequate food, water, health care, and other basic needs, “including when the population is subject to stay-at-home orders.”
Lebanon, a country of 6.8 million – 1.5m of whom are Syrian refugees – has registered 95,355 cases and 732 deaths of the virus but the real numbers are believed to be much higher. Those numbers began rising quickly following a massive 4 August, blast at Beirut’s port that killed and wounded many and caused damage worth billions of dollars.
Many intensive care units meant for coronavirus cases have been used to treat thousands of injured in the port explosion.
Iran imposes lockdown
Iran imposed a nightly curfew on businesses in Tehran and other cities on Tuesday, as it battles a major surge in coronavirus infections.
AP: Restaurants and nonessential businesses in Tehran and 30 other cities were ordered to close at 6pm for one month, to keep hospitals from becoming overwhelmed and to slow the worsening outbreak, which has killed more than 39,000 — the highest toll in the Middle East.
Iran has set single-day death records 10 times over the past month, a sign of how quickly the virus is spreading, even as the government claims to have ramped up testing in recent days.
The announcement of new limits on Tehran’s bustling cafes and shops, the strictest since a brief nationwide business shutdown in April, reflects the growing sense of urgency among officials. In a first, Iranians’ phones lit up on Monday with a personal appeal from Saeed Namaki, the health minister.
“Do not leave your house for as long as you can and stay away from any crowded places,” his text read. “Coronavirus is no joke.”
Yet in the face of a steep economic decline, Iran continues to avoid a tougher lockdown.
The country is already squeezed by unprecedented American sanctions reimposed in 2018 when the Trump administration withdrew from Tehran’s nuclear accord with world powers. Iran’s currency has plunged to new lows in recent weeks, hurting millions of citizens already living in poverty.
Updated
Some more detail on that travel bubble between Hong Kong and Singapore:
A travel bubble between Hong Kong and Singapore will begin on 22 November, the two cities announced on Wednesday, as they moved to re-establish overseas travel links and lift the hurdle of quarantine for visiting foreigners.
Hong Kong’s commerce secretary and Singapore’s transport minister said the scheme would begin with one flight a day into each city, with a quota of 200 travellers per flight. This would be increased to two flights a day into each city from 7 December.
If the Covid-19 situation deteriorated in either city the travel bubble would be suspended, they said.
Singapore’s transport minister Ong Ye Kung said the travel bubble enabled both cities to open up borders in a controlled manner, while maintaining safety.
“While we may be starting small, this is an important step forward ... It will be a useful reference for other countries and regions that have controlled the epidemic, and are contemplating opening their borders.”
Travellers from both cities must travel on designated flights and must undertake Covid-19 tests. No quarantine would be required in either place and there would be no restrictions on the purpose of travel.
For Hong Kong, which has banned non-residents since March, the deal with Singapore is its first resumption of travel ties with another city. Travellers from mainland China and neighbouring Macau still face 14 days in quarantine.
Singapore already has pacts on essential business and official travel from China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, and opened unilaterally to general visitors from a handful of countries including Brunei, New Zealand and Vietnam.
Updated
GP services will be cut back well into 2021 so family doctors can immunise millions of people against coronavirus at new seven-day-a-week clinics, NHS England has said.
Health leaders warned that surgeries will not be able to offer their full range of care for patients from next month as doctors and nurses will be immersed in administering jabs at more than 1,200 mass vaccination centres across England, potentially including sports halls, conference centres and open air venues.
It came as Britain reported 532 new deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test on Tuesday, the highest daily figure since May. Some 20,412 people tested positive for Covid-19, down slightly from the previous day:
Hong Kong-Singapore travel bubble to begin on 22 November
A travel bubble between Hong Kong and Singapore will begin on 22 November, Singapore’s airlines regulator announced on Wednesday, as the two cities move to re-establish overseas travel links and lift the hurdle of quarantine for visiting foreigners.
China reports 17 new cases, down from day before
Mainland China reported 17 new Covid-19 cases on 10 November, down from 22 reported a day earlier, the country’s health authority said on Wednesday.
The National Health Commission said one of the new cases was a local infection reported in Anhui, the first such infection in the eastern Chinese province since 27 February. The other 16 cases were imported infections originating from overseas, it said.
The commission also said the number of new asymptomatic cases fell to 15 from 25 reported a day earlier. China does not classify symptomless patients as confirmed Covid-19 cases.
The total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases reported in mainland China now stands at 86,284, while the death toll remains unchanged at 4,634.
England's students to get six-day window to get home before Christmas
Ben Quinn and Sally Weale report:
Students in England will be given a six-day window next month in which to travel home before Christmas, with mass testing carried out on campus before they are allowed to leave.
A mass exodus will take place on staggered departure dates set by universities from 3 December to 9 December after England’s four-week lockdown, under plans announced by the Department for Education (DfE)on Tuesday night. Students testing positive would need to remain in self-isolation for 10 days.
In a major shift, the government said it would also instruct universities to then move learning online by 9 December so that students can have the option of returning home to study from there. It is not known what the plan is for after the Christmas period though a DfE spokesperson said details would be published “in due course”:
Asian shares rose on Wednesday as hopes for a successful coronavirus vaccine lifted expectations of a swift reopening of the global economy, which would help the region’s heavily trade-dependent markets.
Reuters: Australia’s benchmark S&P/ASX 200 climbed 1.05% with energy stocks and miners boosted by higher crude and commodity prices.
New Zealand’s benchmark S&P/NZX 50 index rose around 0.6% in early trade ahead of the country’s central bank meeting.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 added 1.1%, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index futures rose 0.09%.
“Investors anticipate a lift in economic activity and a swing back to physical businesses, judging by their support for travel, consumer, financial, materials and energy stocks,” Michael McCarthy, chief market strategist for CMC Markets in Sydney, wrote in a note Wednesday.
The gains in Asia came despite the S&P 500 index slipping slightly and the Nasdaq closing sharply lower on Tuesday as vaccine optimism led investors away from market leaders and toward cyclical stocks associated with economic recovery.
Work to distribute the experimental Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE is gearing up after the companies announced successful interim data earlier on Monday, but it will not be coming to local pharmacies for the general public any time soon, Reuters reports.
The data, which sentUS stocks to record highs, showed that the two companies’ experimental vaccine is 90% effective at preventing Covid-19. They are still awaiting data on safety, which could come later this month.
Pfizer and BioNTech need to get regulators to sign off on the shot before it can start shipping vaccines to those considered most in need by government. Healthcare workers and people living in nursing homes will likely top that list.
But the vaccine’s complex and super-cold storage requirements are an obstacle for even the most sophisticated hospitals in the United States and may impact when and where it is available in rural areas or poor countries where resources are tight.
The main issue is that the vaccine, which is based on a novel technology that uses synthetic mRNA to activate the immune system against the virus, needs to be kept at minus 70 degrees Celsius (-94 F) or below.
“The cold chain is going to be one of the most challenging aspects of delivery of this vaccination,” said Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Centre for Health Security.
“This will be a challenge in all settings because hospitals even in big cities do not have storage facilities for a vaccine at that ultra-low temperature.”
Mexico’s health ministry on Tuesday reported 5,746 more coronavirus cases and 617 more deaths, bringing the official toll to 978,531 cases and 95,842 deaths.
Health officials have said the real number of infections and deaths is likely significantly higher.
Here is the full story on California’s surge in coronavirus hospitalisations:
Multiple counties in California will move back into more restrictive Covid-19 rules amid a surge in hospitalisation, as health officials warning the latest numbers paint a troubling picture as the state heads into winter.
The number of patients hospitalised with coronavirus in California has risen by 32% over the past two weeks, and intensive-care admissions have spiked by 30%, Dr Mark Ghaly, the state’s health and human services secretary, told reporters on Monday.
As a result, Ghaly announced that three counties that are home to about 5.5 million people – San Diego, Sacramento and Stanislaus - must reverse their reopening plans and go back to the most restrictive category of regulations under which indoor dining in restaurants is not allowed and gyms and religious institutions are also not permitted to hold indoor activities:
In more news from Asia Pacific: AAP reports that growing confidence among business and consumers suggests the recovery from Australia’s first recession in nearly 30 years is well under way.
National Australia Bank’s business survey shows confidence is at its highest level since mid-2019. Industries like retailing have seen a strong recovery from the depths of the pandemic.
Consumer confidence has also strengthened for 10 weeks in a row through a combination of falling coronavirus cases, easing restrictions, personal tax cuts and more recently lower interest rates.
The ANZ-Roy Morgan consumer confidence index - a pointer to future household spending - also topped the 100-point mark for the first time since the pandemic was declared in March.
The monthly Westpac-Melbourne Institute consumer sentiment survey for November is released on Wednesday.
In October, its sentiment index soared to its highest level since July 2018 in response to the federal government’s tax-cutting budget.
For the first time in at least a decade, consumers thought the budget would improve their finances.
It suggests retailers could be in for a buoyant Christmas shopping period.
“A potential spending splurge - on the back of pent up demand - in the lead up to Christmas trading could encourage more casual and part-time workers to be hired in retail stores,” Commonwealth Securities senior economist Ryan Felsman said.
Vanuatu, one of the last remaining countries to be free of Covid, confirms first case
Dan McGarry reports for the Guardian from Port Vila:
One of the last remaining Covid-free countries in the world has announced its first positive test.
Vanuatu Prime Minister Bob Loughman made the announcement in an address to the nation. Loughman told a press conference that the indigenous Ni-Vanuatu person had arrived from the USA, transiting through Sydney and Auckland.
“The country remains safe,” Loughman said, adding that the Covid-19 Task Force, operating under the National Disaster Management Office, had upgraded their response to a pre-arranged scenario.
The person was removed to a purpose-built isolation facility for treatment and monitoring. Contact tracing will be conducted, and all close contacts will be quarantined, he said.
“The Covid-19 pandemic is a reminder that we must all work together to address every disaster.”
Vanuatu is ranked by the World Bank as the most at-risk country in the world to natural disaster. This year alone, it has dealt with volcanic ashfall, a category 5 cyclone, the collapse of its tourism industry, and now the risk of an epidemic on its shores.
Airport staff and Royal Australian Air Force personnel transfer boxes of humanitarian aid transported by a Royal Australian Air Force C-17A Globemaster III to Port Vila airport, following Cyclone Harold, in Vanuatu April 13, 2020. Picture taken 13 April 2020. Photograph: Australian Department Of Defence/Reuters
Vanuatu has spent over US$80 million this year to cope with the virus, with the majority of funds going to financial assistance for unemployed and underemployed workers.
Talks had been under way with Australia and New Zealand to establish what was termed a ‘Tamtam bubble’. It’s not clear how this announcement will affect those plans.
In more vaccine news:
Australia could have its doses of the Pfizer treatment as early as March.
The country’s health minister, Greg Hunt, said this morning:
I’m also delighted to announce that the government has secured as part of its agreement with Pfizer, full cold chain logistics, distribution for the Pfizer vaccine.
It’s what you call an mRNA vaccine, we have 10m units of that, part of a 134.8m unit, four-vaccine strategy …
We have secured that for Australia, well ahead of expectations and on schedule, to deliver vaccines to Australians, commencing in March 2021.
That is I think extremely important news. While, again, the advice is today that we may well have another zero community transmission case day for Australia, they are still waiting on two jurisdictions, we nevertheless have to be aware that we will not be out of this until we have a nation which has had a full vaccination program.
US infections top 100,000 for seventh day in a row
The Unites States has confirmed more than 100,000 cases per day – a 24 hour total not seen by any other country – every day for the last week, according to Johns Hopkins University figures.
A tenth of the country’s 10m case total were added since the start of November, alone.
Governments scramble to secure vaccine doses
A potential breakthrough in the race to develop a Covid-19 vaccine has left governments scrambling to secure access to the vaccine and meet the logistical challenge of distributing hundreds of millions of doses once it becomes available in coming months, Reuters reports.
The Covid-19 death toll in Europe was set to pass 300,000 and authorities feared that despite hopes for a new vaccine, fatalities and infections would continue to rise.
The European Commission will discuss the adoption of a contract for the supply of the vaccine being developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.
Spain will get the first of these vaccines in early 2021, while Italy expects to receive an initial 3.4m shots in January.
If Pfizer Inc submits the positive initial data from trial to health regulators as quickly as expected, the US government plans to begin vaccinating Americans in December, Health Secretary Alex Azar said.
In Africa, Botswana signed an agreement with the global vaccine distribution scheme co-led by the World Health Organization, giving it the option to buy coronavirus vaccines for 20% of its population.
The WHO’s chief said it hopes to have a Covid-19 vaccine by year-end and that Pfizer’s experimental remedy is “a very promising one”, with more expected.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
My name is Helen Sullivan and I’m typing these words from the Guardian offices in Sydney for the first time in months! This is the first exclamation point I have ever used in this blog.
You can get in touch with me on Twitter here.
Other than this and the vaccine, the news remains bleak.
The US has for the seventh day in a row confirmed more than 100,000 cases, while Europe’s death toll has passed 300,000.
Here are the other key developments from the last few hours:
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Brazil passed 5.7 million Covid-19 cases, as the country reported another 25,012 confirmed infections in the past 24 hours. The country has registered 5,700,044 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll rose by 201 to 162,829, according to health ministry data.
- GP services in England will be scaled back well into 2021 so family doctors can deliver Covid-19 vaccines to millions of people at new seven-day-a-week clinics, NHS England said. Health leaders warned that surgeries will not be able to offer their full range of care for patients from next month as doctors and nurses will be redeployed to administering jabs at more than 1,200 mass vaccination centres across the country.
- Three Californian counties that are home to about 5.5 million people - San Diego, Sacramento and Stanislaus - must reverse their reopening plans and go back to the most restrictive tier of public health regulations aimed at slowing the spread of the virus, the US state’s health and human services secretary, Dr Mark Ghaly, said. More counties will likely be required to roll back reopening in coming weeks, he added.
- More than 300,000 people have died of Covid-19 across Europe, according to a Reuters tally, and authorities fear that fatalities and infections will continue to rise as the region heads into winter despite hopes for a new vaccine. With just 10% of the world’s population, the continent accounts for almost a quarter of the 1.2 million deaths globally, and even its well-equipped hospitals are feeling the strain.
- The UK reported its highest daily death toll since May, as a further 532 deaths of people who died within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test were recorded on Tuesday. The figure is the highest since 614 deaths were reported on 12 May.
- France reported the highest number of daily coronavirus deaths of the second wave, as another 551 fatalities were recorded on Monday evening, according to French public health director Jérôme Salomon.
- The Italian government imposed tighter restrictions on another five regions as it tries to stem escalating new cases of coronavirus, while still resisting a nationwide lockdown. A total of seven out of Italy’s 20 regions are now so-called “orange” zones, signifying medium-high risk, after a new decree signed by the health minister, Roberto Speranza, overnight.
- The European commission will on Wednesday formally authorise for the EU member states the purchase of 300m doses of the potential coronavirus vaccine produced by the German drugs company BioNTech and the US firm Pfizer. Ursula von der Leyen, the commission president, said the drug appeared to be the “most promising so far”.
