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Evening summary
As Australia wakes up, here is a summary of the latest developments from the last few hours:
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Chile will extend the closure of its borders for another 30 days as hospitals remain near-full and Covid-19 cases high despite a gradual improvement in recent weeks. Chile is running one of the world’s fastest vaccination campaigns, with half of its target population already inoculated with one shot and 38.8% with two. Authorities also announced a gradual easing of lockdowns in the capital Santiago after a month of strict confinement.
- The German government is looking at relaxing curbs for people who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19, as the pace of inoculations picks up. The chancellor Angela Merkel said people who have received both jabs should be allowed to get a haircut or go into a shop without having to show a negative coronavirus test, and be exempt from quarantining after close contact with an infected person. The same would apply to people who can prove they have recovered from a coronavirus infection, for instance by showing a positive PCR test that is at least 28 days old. The government is to prepare a decree setting out its proposals which will then be discussed in parliament.
- Non-essential shops and services reopened after a seven-week shutdown in Malta as infection rates fell and the Mediterranean island prepares for what it hopes will be a busy tourist season. With new virus cases at a low, the country plans to reopen to tourism on 1 June.
- Pakistani troops have been deployed in 16 major cities to assist civilian authorities in enforcing measures meant to curb the spread of the coronavirus, including the wearing of masks in public and the closing of non-essential businesses after 6pm. The announcement came as Pakistan recorded its highest daily death toll in recent days since the start of the pandemic, and officials said the health care system was nearing its breaking point.
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India is reportedly running out of Covid-19 vaccines just as a virulent second wave continues to devastate the country, threatening the government’s plans to ramp up the vaccination programme by the weekend in an effort to curb the spread of the virus. From Saturday, everyone in India over the age of 18 will be eligible for a vaccine, a decision made by the government as the virus has brought India’s healthcare system to its knees, with more than new 352,000 cases on Monday and over 2,800 more deaths. So far almost 10% of the population of 1.3 billion have received one jab, but just over 1% have received both vaccines.
- Turkey announced a full lockdown starting from the evening of 29 April, in a bid to curb the spread of a fresh coronavirus outbreak. The president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that the lockdown will last until 17 May, in contrast to previous weekend lockdowns and local curfews. Inter-city travel will also be restricted, public inter-city transport will operate at 50% capacity, and schools will stop in-person education until the lockdown ends.
- The United States will start to share up to 60 million doses of AstraZeneca Plc’s Covid-19 vaccine doses with other countries in coming months after a federal safety review. It comes as the White House is increasingly confident the country has enough vaccine supply for its own population, particularly following the restart of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson shot over the weekend.
- France reported 23 more patients in ICU with Covid-19, bringing the total to 6,001, the first time the 6,000 limit was breached since 17 April last year. Starting from next week, France’s ban on domestic travel will be lifted. The nighttime curfew, now in place from 7pm to 6am, will stay in place. The country intends to gradually reopen nonessential shops, some of its cultural venues and cafe and restaurant terraces starting from mid-May.
- The situation in India, where Covid-19 cases have surged dramatically, is “beyond heartbreaking”, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, adding that the WHO is sending extra staff and supplies there to help fight the country’s catastrophic fresh outbreak.
- Portugal reported no coronavirus-related deaths in the last 24 hours for the first time in nearly nine months as the country emerges from a two-month lockdown. The country, which imposed a lockdown in January to curb what was then the world’s worst Covid-19 surge, started lifting restrictions in March and has since reopened some schools, restaurant and cafe terraces, museums and hair salons.
New cases of Covid-19 in the United States fell 16% last week to about 409,000, the biggest percentage drop in weekly new cases since February, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county data.
Deaths from Covid-19 fell 4% to 4,972 in the week ended 25 April, dropping below 5,000 for the first time since October.
Michigan still led the states in new cases per capita, though new infections fell 29% last week compared to the previous seven days. New cases also fell by over 20% in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the states with the next highest rates of infection based on population.
New infections are still rising on a weekly basis in 12 out of 50 states, down from 30 states last month. The states with the biggest percentage increases are Tennessee, Oregon and Arizona.
As of Sunday, 43% of the US population has received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, and 29% was fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nationally, the pace of vaccinations fell 14% from the previous week to an average of 2.7 million shots per day. The average number of patients with coronavirus in hospitals across the country held steady at about 41,000, according to the Reuters analysis.
Chilean authorities announced on Monday that they would extend the closure of the country’s borders for another 30 days as hospitals remain near-full and Covid-19 cases high despite a gradual improvement in recent weeks.
The health minister Enrique Paris said seven and 14-day averages each showed a 7% decrease in confirmed cases and Covid-19 positivity test rates were down. On Monday, 6,078 new infections were identified, compared to a record high of 9,171 cases on 9 April.
“The health situation is showing some signs of improvement. We are seeing changes but that doesn’t mean we can stop fighting,” Paris said.
Chile is running one of the world’s fastest vaccination campaigns, with half of its target population already inoculated with one shot and 38.8% with two.
That has prompted hospital admissions to drop for older age groups who were vaccinated first. But the younger, more active population is now being hospitalised in greater numbers and is proving less enthusiastic about getting vaccinated, according to health officials.
Authorities also announced a gradual easing of lockdowns in the capital Santiago after a month of strict confinement. Seven boroughs, mostly in the city’s more affluent east, will be freed from lockdown during weekdays and schools will be able to reopen provided they comply with strict sanitary measures.
Testing and tracing will be bolstered, with mobile testing units stationed outside malls, metro stations, and restaurants, better tracing following outbreaks in workplaces, and more local inspectors to check on people in quarantine and raid clandestine parties. Paula Daza, Chile’s top public health official, said gyms and casinos would remain closed.
She urged those being liberated from lockdowns to tread carefully and keep their masks on. “It’s fundamental that everyone plays their part in helping us to keep moving forward,” she said.
The Indian government asked Twitter to take down dozens of tweets – including some by local lawmakers – that were critical of its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, as cases of Covid-19 hit a new world record.
Twitter has withheld some of the tweets after the legal request by the Indian government, a company spokeswoman told Reuters on Saturday.
The government made an emergency order to censor the tweets, Twitter disclosed on the Lumen database, a Harvard University project.
India’s Information Technology ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
In the government’s request, dated 23 April and disclosed on Lumen, 21 tweets were mentioned. Among them were tweets from a lawmaker named Revnath Reddy, a minister in the state of West Bengal named Moloy Ghatak, and a filmmaker named Avinash Das.
In its request, the government cited the Information Technology Act of 2000, according to Lumen. Reuters was unable to independently confirm Lumen’s information.
India has, in the past, used the IT Act to block information in a bid to protect the “sovereignty and integrity of India” and maintain public order, among other things. Last June, India invoked the IT Act to ban TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps, saying they were prejudicial to India’s sovereignty and integrity as well as to the “security of state and public order”.
India and Twitter locked horns in February when the US social media giant did not fully comply with a government order to take down over 1,100 accounts and posts that New Delhi said spread misinformation about farmer protests against agricultural reforms. Twitter later blocked access to the bulk of accounts it was ordered to take down, an IT ministry source told Reuters previously.
“When we receive a valid legal request, we review it under both the Twitter rules and local law,” the Twitter spokeswoman said in an emailed statement on Saturday. “If the content violates Twitter’s rules, the content will be removed from the service. If it is determined to be illegal in a particular jurisdiction, but not in violation of the Twitter rules, we may withhold access to the content in India only.”
The spokeswoman confirmed that Twitter had notified account holders directly about withholding their content and let them know that it received a legal order pertaining to their tweets.
Asked about the request, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday: “That certainly wouldn’t be aligned with our view of freedom of speech around the world.”
The development was reported earlier by technology news website TechCrunch, which said that Twitter was not the only platform affected by the order.
Updated
Egypt’s drug authority said on Monday it had granted approval to China’s Sinovac coronavirus vaccine for emergency use, Reuters reports.
Egypt has so far approved and received shipments of the Sinopharm and AstraZeneca vaccines, and has said it is preparing to produce up to 80 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine locally. It has also granted approval to Russia’s Sputnik vaccine.
Germany is moving to relax Covid-19 restrictions for vaccinated people, AFP reports.
The chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday that the German government was looking at relaxing curbs for people who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19, as the pace of inoculations picks up.
Speaking after talks with the regional premiers of Germany’s 16 states, Merkel said people who have received both jabs should “obviously” be allowed to get a haircut or go into a shop without having to show a negative coronavirus test, and be exempt from quarantining after close contact with an infected person.
The same would apply to people who can prove they have recovered from a coronavirus infection, for instance by showing a positive PCR test that is at least 28 days old.
The government would prepare a decree setting out its proposals, she told a Berlin press conference, which will then be discussed in parliament.
The veteran leader did not give a timeframe for when the relaxations might come into force.
Merkel said the move to give those with immunity back some of their basic rights comes after the country’s Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases recently found that fully vaccinated people and those who have recovered, “no longer pose a relevant infection danger”.
But she warned that Germany faced a “difficult transition phase” as a growing number of people get their shots and will be hungry for more freedoms, while a significant part of the population will still be living with tough restrictions.
Just 7% of the population has so far received both doses of a Covid vaccine in Germany and around 23% have had their first jab, but the pace of the rollout is accelerating as doctors’ offices receive more vaccine doses.
Merkel reiterated that she expected Germany would be able to ditch its strict vaccine priority list in June and allow every adult to seek a jab.
The hopeful mood comes despite a vicious third wave that has seen German case numbers stabilise at a very high level.
Germany at the weekend imposed a nationwide “emergency brake” that includes sweeping shutdowns and school closures in hard-hit regions to bring down infections.
“Several more weeks of efforts are necessary,” Merkel told reporters. Although it was important to give people back their basic rights “as soon as possible”, she said, “we will have to live with the virus for a long while to come.”
Non-essential shops and services reopened after a seven-week shutdown in Malta on Monday as infection rates fell and the Mediterranean island prepares for what it hopes will be a busy tourist season.
Reuters reports:
Clothes shops, hairdressers, florists and museums reopened as the number of new virus cases dropped to a daily average of 25 from a record 510 on March 10. The positivity rate from tests for the virus is at a low of 1.8%.
“The Covid-19 situation is under control and the situation at the hospital is very good,” prime minister Robert Abela said on Sunday as he laid out plans to further ease the curbs on May 10 when restaurants and bars will reopen until 5 p.m.
“We have to ease in the restrictions gradually to monitor their impact,” Charmaine Gauci, the superintendent for public health, told the same news conference.
The country plans to fully reopen for tourism on June 1 and is holding talks with Britain - its biggest source of tourist arrivals - for seamless travel for those who are vaccinated or can show a negative test result before boarding a plane.
Health minister Chris Fearne said Malta would show it is one of the safest destinations.
“Half of Malta’s adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine. The UK reached this milestone yesterday, we will reach it this evening,” he said on Sunday.
Tourism, directly and indirectly accounts for a quarter of Malta’s GDP.
Abela said the government will issue consumer vouchers of 100 euros ($120.83) per resident in Malta aged over 16 to get the economy going.Earlier this month, the tourism authorities said Malta will pay tourists who visit this summer up to 200 euros each if they stay at least three days this summer.
People wearing protective face masks queue to enter a shopping arcade as non-essential shops and services reopen for business after a seven-week-long shutdown because of the pandemic in Valletta, Malta on 26 April, 2021. Photograph: Darrin Zammit Lupi/Reuters
I’m now handing over to my colleague Lucy Campbell.
The US has administered 230,768,454 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country as of Monday morning, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Monday.
The figure is up from the 228,661,408 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by Sunday out of 290,692,005 doses delivered, meaning the over 2.1 million vaccine doses were given in 24 hours.
The agency said 140,969,663 people had received at least one dose while 95,888,088 people are fully vaccinated as of Monday.
The CDC tally includes two-dose vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, as well as Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine as of 6am ET on Monday.
A total of 7,791,592 vaccine doses have been administered in long-term care facilities, the agency said.
The number of vaccine doses delivered remained at 290,692,005, as of Monday morning as shipments are not always sent on Sundays, according to the CDC.
Pakistani troops have been deployed in 16 major cities to assist civilian authorities in enforcing measures meant to curb the spread of the coronavirus, including the wearing of masks in public and the closing of non-essential businesses after 6pm.
“Starting at 6am this morning, troops have been sent to aid the civilian administration in each district,” military spokesperson major general Babar Iftikhar said on Monday.
Reuters reports:
The announcement came as the country recorded its highest daily death toll in recent days since the start of the pandemic, and officials said the health care system was nearing its breaking point.
Iftikhar said 570 people were on ventilators in the country and 4,300 in critical condition. In some cities more than 90% of ventilators were occupied, and industrial production of oxygen could soon be diverted for health purposes.
“Ensuring adherence to precautionary measures [for the pandemic] and maintaining law and order will still be the responsibility of civilian authorities,” Iftikhar said.
“The Pakistani army will aid other law enforcement agencies as emergency responders to stop the spread of the virus.”
Pakistan has recorded 17,187 deaths and 800,452 cases so far, and is in the midst of a third wave.
The federal government has opted not to impose nationwide lockdowns seen in some other countries, saying such measures could endanger the lives of many who rely on daily wages. Instead, officials have said the percentage of tests returning positive would dictate what lockdown measures are taken in a given area.
But even in those areas measures such as markets being closed after 6pm each day, and mask wearing mandates have gone largely unenforced. With only around 2 million vaccine doses administered and supplies short, officials have pleaded with the public to follow the precautionary guidelines.
On Friday, Prime Minister Imran Khan asked the public to wear masks and follow other precautionary guidelines, and said the military would be called on to enforce the measures. Pakistan risked finding itself in a situation like in neighboring India otherwise, Khan said.
India is reportedly running out of Covid-19 vaccines just as a virulent second wave continues to devastate the country, threatening the government’s plans to ramp up the vaccination programme by the weekend in an effort to curb the spread of the virus.
From Saturday, everyone in India over the age of 18 will be eligible for a vaccine, a decision made by the government as the virus has brought India’s healthcare system to its knees, with more than new 352,000 cases on Monday and over 2,800 more deaths.
Hospitals across the capital, Delhi, continued to issue SOS calls over acute oxygen shortages, with eight patients dying in private hospitals on Sunday when oxygen supplies ran dry. Many of the biggest hospitals in the capital said they had stopped admitting new patients as all beds were full and oxygen was running out, while Delhi’s Ganga Ram hospital said it was on “beg and borrow mode” for oxygen cylinders used in its ambulances.
High hopes have been placed on an expanded vaccine rollout to help halt the spread of the virus. However, in several of the worst affected states including Rajasthan, Punjab, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, state governments have said there is already a shortage or complete lack of availability of jabs and they had been unable to order more, throwing doubts on any expansion of vaccine rollout by 1 May when about 900 million more people will become eligible.
So far in India almost 10% of the population of 1.3 billion have received one jab, but just over 1% have received both vaccines.
Full story here:
Turkey announces full lockdown from 29 April
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Monday announced a full closure starting from the evening of 29 April, in a bid to curb the spread of a fresh coronavirus outbreak.
Daily new infections in Turkey had peaked above 63,000 on 16 April before dropping sharply to below 39,000 on Sunday, while the daily death toll has remained above 300 for the past week.
Speaking after a cabinet meeting, Erdoğan said that the lockdown will last until 17 May, in contrast to previous weekend lockdowns and local curfews.
Erdoğan added that inter-city travel will also be restricted, and public inter-city transport will operate at 50% capacity, Hurriyet Daily News reports.
Schools will also stop in-person education until the lockdown ends, he said.
However, the manufacturing and food sectors will be exempt from the restrictions.
US will share up to 60m AstraZeneca doses with other countries as shots are 'not needed'
The US will start to share up to 60 million doses of AstraZeneca Plc’s Covid-19 vaccine doses with other countries in coming months after a federal safety review, the Associated Press reports, citing the White House.
The move greatly expands on the Biden administration’s action last month to share about 4 million doses of the vaccine with Mexico and Canada. The AstraZeneca vaccine is widely in use around the world but not yet authorised by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The move comes as the White House is increasingly confident the country has enough vaccine supply for its own population, particularly following the restart of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson shot over the weekend.
White House Covid-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said:
Given the strong portfolio of vaccines that the US already has and that have been authorized by the FDA, and given that the AstraZeneca vaccine is not authorized for use in the US, we do not need to use the AstraZeneca vaccine here during the next several months.
Therefore the US is looking at options to share the AstraZeneca doses with other countries as they become available.
Updated
Number of intensive care unit Covid patients in France above 6,000 mark for first time in a year
French health authorities on Monday reported 23 more patients in intensive care units with Covid-19, bringing the total to 6,001, the first time the 6,000 limit was breached since 17 April last year.
Starting from next week, France’s ban on domestic travel will be lifted. The nighttime curfew, now in place from 7pm to 6am, will stay in place, France 24 reports.
“We’re going to gradually reopen,” president Emmanuel Macron said while visiting a primary school on Monday in Melun, south of Paris. “We will do this very slowly to avoid [the virus] to start spreading again.
Macron said he is anticipating a better situation next month when a greater proportion of the population will be vaccinated and positive effects of the partial lockdown will show in the numbers.
He added the government would try to push back the evening curfew a bit “because 7 pm is early.”
France intends to gradually reopen nonessential shops, some of its cultural venues and cafe and restaurant terraces starting from mid-May.
The World Health Organization expects to decide whether to give conditional emergency approval for China’s two main Covid-19 vaccines in the next two weeks, assistant director-general Mariângela Batista Galvão Simão told a briefing on Monday.
Simao said the WHO could decide on a vaccine made by Sinopharm by the end of this week, and a vaccine made by Sinovac Biotech next week.
China has deployed millions of doses of both vaccines at home and has exported them to many countries, particularly in Latin America, Asia and Africa.
Authorities in northern Italy announced Monday they had identified two cases of the Indian variant of coronavirus, in a father and daughter recently returned from India.
AFP reports:
The news follows reports of another case in the central region of Tuscany last month, and comes after the Italian government banned arrivals from the virus-hit country.
“Today in [the city of] Bassano we have the first two patients, two Indians,” announced Luca Zaia, head of the Veneto region.
Bassano, in the province of Vicenza, lies some 65 kilometres (40 miles) north-east of Venice.
The two patients were identified as a father and adult daughter of Indian origin who recently returned from a trip to India. They are currently isolating at home.
Health Minister Roberto Speranza on Sunday announced a new ban on anyone entering Italy who has been in India in the past 14 days.
India is battling a catastrophic, record-breaking outbreak that has overwhelmed hospitals and set crematoriums working at full capacity.
The situation in India, where Covid-19 cases have surged dramatically, is “beyond heartbreaking”, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday, adding that the WHO is sending extra staff and supplies there to help fight the country’s catastrophic fresh outbreak.
“WHO is doing everything we can, providing critical equipment and supplies, including thousands of oxygen concentrators, prefabricated mobile field hospitals and laboratory supplies,” Tedros told a briefing.
He said he had already announced 2,600 extra WHO staff members were going to India to help support the effort to fight the disease.
A bar in Copenhagen has started offering customers a Covid-19 test and a beer while they wait for the result to help get business moving again after months of restrictions.
Punters hand over about $25 to get tested in a booth at Warpigs Brewpub. After about half an hour, they are allowed inside - if their test result is negative.
It works under Denmark’s “corona-passport” system where people can either use a mobile app or a government-approved form to show if they have been vaccinated, previously infected or have had a negative test in the past 72 hours.
Under the scheme, which started on Wednesday, staff at museums, bars, cafes and restaurants check customers’ status before they let them in.
Denmark is also offering free Covid tests - but customers at the bar said the paid-for versions, sold by the company Practio, let them avoid the queues.
“We saw the line [at the closest testing centre] which was maybe an hour or two,” Nicolai Marteens told Reuters.
The UK recorded 2,064 new cases of Covid-19 and six deaths within 28 days of a positive test on Monday, according to official government data.
That compares to 1,712 new cases and 11 deaths reported a day earlier.
The government said 33,752,885 people had received a first vaccination dose, and 12,897,123 had received a second dose.
Italy reported 301 coronavirus-related deaths on Monday, versus 217 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections fell to 8,444 from 13,158.
A weeek ago, the country had reported 8,863 fresh cases of the virus.
Italy has registered 119,539 deaths linked to Covid-19 so far, the second-highest toll in Europe after the UK’s and the seventh-highest in the world.
There were 132 new admissions to intensive care units, up from 114 on Sunday. The total number of intensive care patients fell marginally to 2,849 from a previous 2,862.
Bars, restaurants, cinemas and concert halls will partially reopen across Italy from today, in a boost for coronavirus-hit businesses, as parliament debates the government’s 220 billion euro ($266bn) EU-funded recovery plan.
After months of stop-start restrictions imposed to manage its second and third waves of Covid-19, Italy hopes this latest easing of lockdown rules will mark the start of a return to normality.
The World Health Organisation and partners called for action to boost vaccination against measles and other diseases worldwide after the pandemic severely disrupted access to routine jabs.
The WHO, along with the UN children’s agency and the vaccine alliance Gavi, said their new global strategy had the potential to save 50 million lives within less than a decade.
“If we’re to avoid multiple outbreaks of life-threatening diseases like measles, yellow fever and diphtheria, we must ensure routine vaccination services are protected in every country in the world,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
The push comes as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to disrupt essential health services worldwide.
While the situation has improved somewhat from last year, a WHO survey showed more than one-third of countries were still seeing disruptions to their routine immunisation services.
And around 60 mass vaccination campaigns were currently postponed in 50 countries, putting around 228 million people, mostly children, at risk for diseases such as measles and polio, the joint statement said.
“Millions of children across the world are likely to miss out on basic vaccines as the current pandemic threatens to unravel two decades of progress in routine immunisation”, Gavi chief Seth Berkley warned.
Portugal reports no Covid-related deaths in past day, first time since August 2020
Portugal reported no coronavirus-related deaths in the last 24 hours on Monday for the first time in nearly nine months as the country emerges from a two-month lockdown, the health authority said.
The country has reported a total of 16,965 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic and 834,638 infection cases, 196 more than reported the day before. The last time Portugal reported no coronavirus-related deaths was on August 3.
The health authority highlighted that it remains in the green zone of the risk matrix, with a transmission risk below 1 and a national incidence rate of 70.4 cases of infection per 100,000 inhabitants.
About 20% of its 10 million people have now been inoculated with one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine and 7% with two doses, while more than 90% of the people aged 80 or more - the group with the most deaths - has been vaccinated with at least one dose.
Portugal, which imposed a lockdown in January to curb what was then the world’s worst Covid-19 surge, started lifting restrictions in March and has since reopened some schools, restaurant and cafe terraces, museums and hair salons.
Updated
Restaurants in France will reopen in a staggered fashion and on a regional basis depending on the extent to which the epidemic is brought under control, President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday in comments reported by Reuters.
Bars and restaurants have been closed since the end of October, when France started a second month-long nationwide lockdown, and did not reopen in December when non-food shops were allowed to.
“I think we cannot reopen the restaurants at the end of May or in June in those departments where the virus still circulates a lot. Elsewhere, where [circulation] has dropped a lot, we will take a staggered approach,” Macron said during a visit to a school near Paris on the first day of their reopening after a three-week closure.
He said that bar and restaurant open-air terraces would be allowed to reopen nationwide around mid-May with a decision to be taken in coming days. But he added that a full reopening of indoor venues would depend on the health situation, possibly from early to late June in regions with low virus circulation rates.
“For restaurants, we know that infection rates are higher in enclosed spaces, and when people eat, sing and talk. That is what we will have to try and limit for a while,” he said.
EU officials confirmed the purpose of the legal action against drugmaker AstraZeneca - over under-delivered vaccines for the bloc - was to ensure more supplies than what the company has said it would aim to deliver.
Reuters reports:
The move follows months of rows with the company over supply issues and amid concerns over the efficacy and safety of the vaccine. Still, while the shot has been linked to very rare cases of blood clots, the EU drugs regulator has recommended its use to contain the spread of Covid-19.
“We had to send a message to [Pascal] Soriot,” an EU official said, referring to AstraZeneca’s chief executive.
Germany, France and Hungary were among EU states that were initially reticent to sue the company, mostly on the grounds that the move might not speed up deliveries, diplomats said, but eventually they supported it.
After the announcement of the legal action, AstraZeneca said it was in the process of delivering nearly 50 million doses by the end of April, a goal which is in line with the revised-down target of supplying only 100 million shots by the end of the quarter.
The EU wants AstraZeneca to deliver the promised 300 million doses, but in a further sign of its irritation towards the company, it has already forgone another 100 million shots that it had an option to buy under the contract signed in August.
The spat with AstraZeneca has also stoked a dispute over supplies with former EU member Britain. AstraZeneca said it was prevented from exporting doses from UK factories to make up for some of the shortfalls in the EU, EU officials have said.
Now the EU is opposing the export of AstraZeneca shots to Britain from a factory in the Netherlands.
Cafes, beer gardens, non-essential shops and museums have started reopening in Scotland as lockdown easing continues.
Early-morning queues formed outside shops in Edinburgh’s Princes Street with shoppers keen to snap up a bargain in person, PA reports.
The country moved from Level 4 to Level 3 of the Scottish government’s five tiers of restrictions on 26 April.
First minister Nicola Sturgeon announced last week that the continued suppression of coronavirus and the success of the vaccine rollout meant some restrictions could be lifted on Monday.
Gyms, swimming pools, libraries and museums can reopen along with cafes, restaurants and beer gardens, but hospitality venues will need to close at 8pm indoors, with alcohol only allowed to be served outside.
Close-contact services, such as beauty parlours, can also return.
People will be able to meet others for a meal or drink, with up to six people from two households allowed to socialise indoors in a public place such as a cafe or restaurant.
But some in the trade have said the industry needs more clarity in the guidance issued by the Scottish Government as the sector reopens.
Colin Clydesdale, co-owner of the Ubiquitous Chip in Glasgow, told PA he needs “longitudinal tables” to work out how many people will be allowed to sit in the bar’s outdoor spaces at any one time.
All non-vaccinated travellers visiting Bermuda will have to quarantine for 14 days from 6 June, premier David Burt said late on Sunday, tightening restrictions after a rise in coronavirus cases and deaths.
Reuters reports:
Burt announced a raft of new measures as Bermuda suffered its worst month since the pandemic began, with the Atlantic island in April recording 11 of its 23 deaths from the coronavirus and 1,118 of its 2,335 positive cases so far.
Bermuda has been hit by the fast spread of the highly infectious B.1.1.7 coronavirus variant first found in Britain, and Burt said the government would implement stricter border controls to “reduce the possibility that another dangerous variant is introduced into our community”.
He said Bermuda will ban flights originating from Brazil, India and South Africa, while passengers who have travelled to those countries within the previous two weeks face mandatory quarantine for 14 days.
Travellers who have not been vaccinated will also face growing restrictions in the British overseas territory of about 60,000 people. From 2 May to 5 June, all non-inoculated travellers will have to quarantine for four days, pending a negative coronavirus test on the fourth day.
From 6 June, all non-vaccinated travellers will be subject to supervised quarantine for 14 days at a designated facility at their own expense. Vaccinated travellers entering with a negative pre-arrival test will not have to quarantine after testing negative on arrival, but must test again on days four, eight and 14.
“We must achieve long-lasting protection from the virus and its variants so that our healthcare system can turn its attention to much-needed reform,” said Burt.
He said 50% of people in Bermuda have had at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine and he was hoping to have 70% of the population fully inoculated in the coming weeks.
Updated
Poland’s government will discuss the “Own Resources Decision” concerning the European Union’s Covid-19 recovery fund at its meeting on Tuesday, spokesman Piotr Muller said on Monday.
EU governments agreed in December that the bloc would borrow 750 €750bn ($906.00bn) to help it bounce back from the economic damage caused by the pandemic, Reuters reports.
However, all of the EU’s 27 governments need to ratify the decision to increase the bloc’s resources, raising the upper limit for national contributions to the EU budget, for the recovery plan to go ahead.
Updated
Vincent Ni, China affairs correspondent
Despite their ongoing border tensions, China on Monday said it is “in communication” with India about helping its neighbour battle the health crisis. In the past week, Beijing has repeatedly offered help to Delhi.
The Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Monday China has been “paying close attention” to the Covid situation in India and has offered Delhi help to battle the new wave of infections.
It began to extend an olive branch last week, after Washington’s refusal to export the raw materials needed for vaccines to Delhi. “When developing countries are struggling with the epidemic, how can the US remain safe and sound?” Wang quipped on Tuesday.
On Thursday, Wang said China “stands ready to provide India with necessary support and assistance to get the epidemic under control.” The message was repeated on Friday by another spokesperson in the foreign ministry.
Beijing denies it is using “vaccine diplomacy’ for geopolitical gains, but some analysts in China see the offer also as an opportunity to improve the bilateral relations. A blogpost published on state media Xinhua on Saturday said recent offers from Beijing should be understood as “China’s most friendly signal to India in recent times”.
Before Washington reversed its policy, China’s nationalist tabloid Global Times also seized on the opportunity to attack the US.
“The US’ indifferent response ignited a wave of anti-US sentiment on social media in and out of India,” it wrote, “the US is not a world leader as it claims but a selfish, irresponsible and unreliable country that plays geopolitics to serve its own interests.”
Chinese media have been following the situation in India closely. This is, in part, because India is China’s immediate neighbour. An editorial, written on the website of the Shanghai-based publication The Paper, today said that the deterioration of the situation in India “poses a new challenge to global pandemic control.”
The editorial also cautioned that although China has achieved a ‘significant victory’, it cannot drop its guard. “The deterioration of the situation in India poses a new challenge to global pandemic control. And as India’s neighbour, we have an extra reason to be vigilant.”
Updated
In response to the European commission’s announcement that it had launched legal action against AstraZeneca for breach of contract and delivery shortfalls, AstraZeneca said that the legal action by the EU was without merit and pledged to defend itself strongly in court.
A company statement said:
AstraZeneca has fully complied with the Advance Purchase Agreement with the European Commission and will strongly defend itself in court. We believe any litigation is without merit and we welcome this opportunity to resolve this dispute as soon as possible.
Under the contract, the case will need to be resolved by Belgian courts, Reuters reports.
European commissioner for health and food safety Stella Kyriakides wrote on Twitter: “Our priority is to ensure [Covid-19] vaccine deliveries take place to protect the health of [the EU].
“Every vaccine dose counts.”
Our priority is to ensure #COVID19 vaccine deliveries take place to protect the health of 🇪🇺.
— Stella Kyriakides (@SKyriakidesEU) April 26, 2021
This is why @EU_Commission has decided jointly with all Member States to bring legal proceedings against #AstraZeneca.
Every vaccine dose counts. Every vaccine dose saves lives.
Updated
In a bid to admit more patients in the Philippines’ capital Manila, tents have been turned into Covid-19 emergency rooms at the National Kidney Transplant Institute, a government hospital.
“All in all we waited for almost six hours It’s a long difficult wait,” Covid-19 patient Roel Galan told Reuters, speaking outside a makeshift emergency room.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said on Monday 289 additional ICU beds would be made available in the capital.
To free up beds for critically ill Covid-19 patients, the Philippine Red Cross said on Monday it has set up field hospital tents and converted unused classrooms and buildings into quarantine facilities to care for patients with moderate and mild symptoms.
Photograph: Aaron Favila/AP
Dr John Wong, a member of the government’s coronavirus task force’s data analytics team, told Reuters authorities must ramp up vaccinations to contain the virus and allow the economy to reopen.
He said 350,000 people needed to be vaccinated a day so the government could meet its target of immunising 70 million, or a third of the country’s population, this year.
Since the Philippines started its vaccination drive in March, 1.5 million people have received a first dose of vaccine, with close to 231,000 people getting two doses, officials said.
The Philippines recorded 70 new deaths from the virus on Monday, bringing total fatalities to 16,853.
Updated
Biotech startup Vaccitech, which owns the technology behind the Covid-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca Plc and Oxford University, said on Monday it was aiming for a valuation of up to $613m in its US initial public offering.
Reuters reports:
The company, which has development programs for conditions including hepatitis B, prostate cancer and non-small cell lung cancer, has raised $216m to date from Gilead Sciences , Sequoia Capital China and Oxford Sciences Innovation among others.
The UK-based company, spun out of Jenner Institute at the Oxford University in 2016, said it plans to list its American Depositary Shares (ADS) on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “VACC”.
It said it was offering 6.5m ADSs, each representing one ordinary share, priced between $16 and $18 each. At the top end of the range, the IPO would rake in $117 million for Vaccitech.
The company intends to use proceeds from the offering to fund its ongoing clinical programs and its early-stage research and development.
Updated
Mass cremations have been taking place in the Indian capital, Delhi, in makeshift facilities set up to cope with the huge rise in coronavirus deaths.
The country recorded another 352,991 new coronavirus cases on Monday, the fifth day of record highs, and 2,812 new deaths, its highest daily figure so far.
India has asked the EU to send medical oxygen and Gilead’s antiviral drug remdesivir to fight a relentless rise in Covid-19 cases, an EU official said on Monday, adding that the aid could be made available soon.
“The Indians have asked for medical oxygen and antivirals, notably remdesivir,” a spokesman for the EU Commission told a news conference, adding that so far, among EU states, Ireland has offered to send oxygen, while Germany and France have also indicated they will help.
“We can expect that in the next hours and days we can confirm more help,” the spokesman added.
The EU signed a contract in October with Gilead which allowed its 27 member states and 10 partner countries including Britain to order up to 500,000 remdesivir courses over six months, Reuters reports.
However, it is unclear how many doses have actually been bought by EU states after a trial conducted by the World Health Organization suggested remdesivir had little or no effect on mortality or length of hospital stays among patients with the respiratory disease.
The drug is considered more effective for patients in less serious conditions.
Asked about whether the EU would limit flights from India, the spokesman said the EU continued to discourage non-essential travel to and from third countries.
EU launches legal action against AstraZeneca over vaccine delivery delays
The EU has launched legal action against pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca for not respecting its contract for the supply of Covid-19 vaccines and for not having a “reliable” plan to ensure timely deliveries, the European commission said on Monday.
All 27 EU member states have backed the move.
An EU spokesman told a news conference:
The commission has started last Friday a legal action against AstraZeneca.
Some terms of the contract have not been respected and the company has not been in a position to come up with a reliable strategy to ensure timely delivery of doses.
We want to make sure there is a speedy delivery of a sufficient number of doses that European citizens are entitled to and which have been promised on the basis of the contract.
This from Reuters:
Under the contract, [AstraZeneca] had committed to making its “best reasonable efforts” to deliver 180m vaccine doses to the EU in the second quarter of this year, for a total of 300m in the period from December to June.
But the company said in a statement on 12 March it would aim to deliver only one-third of that. A week after that, the EU commission sent a legal letter to the company in the first step of a formal procedure to resolve disputes.
EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen tweeted about an hour ago:
Vaccination has helped us beat many diseases. It can be the lasting way out of the [Covid-19] pandemic. Today, at the start of European Immunization Week, we reached 129 million vaccinations in EU.
We’ll have enough doses to have 70% of adults vaccinated in July.
Updated
British prime minister Boris Johnson denied on Monday that he has said he would rather bodies piled “high in their thousands” than order a third coronavirus lockdown.
Asked whether he had made the remark, as reported by the Daily Mail newspaper, Johnson said:
No, but again, I think the important thing, I think, that people want us to get on and do as a government is to make sure that the lockdowns work, and, and they have.
A minister for tourism in Spain, Reyes Maroto, has received a knife covered in red stains by post, an interior ministry source said on Monday, days after senior security officials and the leader of the Unidas Podemos party were sent death threats.
An investigation has been opened, the source said, without providing more details.
A separate source from Maroto’s ministry said it was unclear whether the red stains on the knife were blood or paint.
Maroto has served as minister of industry, trade and tourism in Spain’s left-wing government since 2018.
Last week, Spain’s tourism minister Fernando Valdés said his country was “desperate” to welcome back millions of British holidaymakers, and stressed Spain would be ready open up to large scale tourism this summer.
Last week, interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, Pablo Iglesias of the far-left Unidas Podemos party and Maria Gamez, who heads the Guardia Civil police force, also received death threats in the mail.
“Your wife, your parents and you are sentenced to capital punishment, your time is running out,” said the letter to Iglesias, a former deputy prime minister.
He shared the letter on Twitter along with a picture of four bullets that he said came in the envelope.
Updated
French pharmaceutical company Sanofi will fill and pack millions of Moderna Covid-19 vaccines from September in an effort to help meet the demand for the US drugmaker’s shots, the French company said on Monday.
Reuters reports:
Sanofi said it would help supply up to 200m doses of Moderna’s vaccine at its Ridgefield facility in New Jersey. Financial details of the arrangement were not disclosed.
The deal marks Sanofi’s third such agreement this year. In January, Sanofi pledged to help supply over 125m doses of a Covid-19 vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech from this summer.
A month later, it said it would fill and finish vials of Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot vaccine at a rate of approximately 12m doses per month.
Sanofi said it was still working on developing two Covid-19 vaccines, one in partnership with Britain’s GlaxoSmithkline for which it has started new clinical trials after disappointing early-stage results last year, and another with U.S. company Translate Bio.
Updated
A pill that could prevent Covid-19 drugmaker Pfizer is developing could be available by the end of the year if human trials in the US and Belgium are successful.
Mail Online reports:
There are currently no drugs other than vaccines that can stop people developing Covid-19 – but if one is discovered it could spell the end of lockdowns forever, one expert has said.
Pfizer, the company that made one of the most-used jabs in Europe and North America, is already testing its experimental pill on people.
The antiviral drug, named PF-07321332, could be given to stop the illness getting severe in people who have started showing signs of coronavirus infection.
Although most people will get vaccinated against Covid, jabs aren’t 100 per cent effective and some people can’t have them or don’t benefit as much, meaning coronavirus will still spread and still be dangerous for unprotected people.
Pills could help to prevent severe illness in people for whom jabs don’t work as well, or be a second line of defence in case an immune-resistant new variant emerges.
Around 60 people are currently involved in the first phase of Pfizer’s PF-07321332 trial, which is expected to come to an end on May 25.
After this, if the pill turns out to be safe, larger trials with more people will be done to prove that it definitely does stop Covid, as lab tests suggested it will.
Thailand’s prime minister Prayuth Chan-ocha was fined 6,000 baht ($190) on Monday for breaching rules aimed at containing the coronavirus by not wearing a face mask, the governor of Bangkok said.
“I informed the prime minister this was a violation of rules”, Bangkok governor Aswin Kwanmuang wrote on his official Facebook page.
The move came after a photograph of the prime minister appeared on his Facebook page showing him not wearing a mask in a meeting. The photograph was later removed, Reuters reports.
The prime minister made an inquiry to city hall about the restrictions, which specify that masks should be worn at all times outside residences, prompting his fine, said Aswin.
Russian president Vladimir Putin and Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad discussed Russian vaccine supplies to Syria and cooperation against Covid-19 during a phone call on Monday, the Kremlin said.
In a readout of the call, the Kremlin also said Assad had told Putin about preparations ahead of a presidential election in May.
Syria got its first delivery of vaccines from the global COVAX initiative last week, a batch of nearly 200,000 AstraZeneca shots, U.N officials said.
A donation by China of 150,000 doses of its Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine arrived in Damascus on Saturday, with another batch of the same size planned, Syrian officials said.
More deliveries are expected in coming weeks, Reuters reported.
Nine out of 10 people in England required to self-isolate after being in contact with someone who tested positive for coronavirus said they fully adhered to the rules, new figures have shown.
Experimental data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), published on Monday, found 90% of respondents reported being fully adherent to self-isolation requirements throughout their 10-day self-isolation period.
But of the respondents who did not follow self-isolation requirements, 78% reported they left the house for non-permitted reasons during their 10-day self-isolation period, the ONS said.
Of those who left their homes, 27% said they had gone to the shops for groceries, toiletries, medicine or other items, while 13% went out for outdoor recreation or exercise.
The data, collected between 1 and 10 April, also found 6% of all respondents had contact with people outside their household during their isolation period, with 57% allowing visitors into their home and 55% having contact somewhere outdoors.
Tim Gibbs, of the ONS public services analysis team, said: “It’s reassuring to see that a high percentage of survey respondents are self-isolating after being in contact with someone who has tested positive for Covid-19.
“Adhering to self-isolation rules is key in reducing the transmission of Covid-19, even after vaccination.”
The British government made it a legal duty in September for people in England to self-isolate if they tested positive or were contacted by the National Health Service’s Test and Trace programme.
Around a third (30%) of respondents developed symptoms of coronavirus, the ONS said.
The president of the European commission has offered fresh hope of a summer holiday in the EU for those living outside its borders.
Ursula von der Leyen suggested in an interview with the New York Times that Americans who were fully vaccinated would be able to visit the EU in what would be a change of policy on non-essential travel.
The EU adopted tough restrictions on travel into the the bloc’s 27 member states last year. Non-essential trips are permitted only from Australia, New Zealand, Rwanda, Singapore, South Korea, and Thailand.
To qualify for the list, countries must record no more than 25 new Covid cases per 100,000 people over the last 14 days and no more than 4% of tests carried out in the previous week can return positive.
The latest statistics, dated 20 April, shows the UK recorded 24.7 cases per 100,000 across a seven-day period. The list of countries exempt from the ban is reviewed every two weeks.
Von der Leyen suggested, however, that the EU’s rules on non-essential travel would change in time for summer to also take into account vaccination coverage.
Full story here:
Updated
Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy’s far-right League, has started a campaign to scrap the country’s Covid-19 overnight curfew.
Italy started easing coronavirus restrictions on Monday, with more than half of the country in the more lenient ‘yellow zone’, but the 10pm-5am curfew has been maintained.
Salvini timed the launch of a petition on Sunday against the curfew to coincide with the marking of Liberation Day, a commemoration of the ending of Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime and Nazi occupation during the second world war.
“On Liberation Day, the League is in the field to restore rights, work and freedoms to Italians. No to the curfew!” he wrote on Facebook.
Salvini has also created a website dedicated to his cause, called ‘No coprifuoco’ (no curfew).
His campaign comes despite the League, which is part of prime minister Mario Draghi’s broad coalition, supporting a decree that included keeping the national curfew. As of Monday morning, the petition had attracted over 65,000 signatures.
The League flocked to join Draghi’s government when it was formed in February. But Salvini has since maintained one foot in opposition, particularly with the next general election due to be held in 2023 and as his smaller far-right ally, Brothers of Italy, which stayed in opposition, gains popularity.
Enrico Letta, who leads the centre-left Democratic, said that if Salvini doesn’t want to be in the government, then he should withdraw his party.
Updated
Authorities in Nepal are grappling to contain a surge of new infections, with experts fearing that thousands of people in the Himalayan state have caught the more infectious mutant strains emerging out of India.
Nepal, which shares a 1,751km (1,094 miles) long porous border with India, reported 3,032 new infections on Sunday, the highest daily rise recorded this year.
The country’s overall tally of logged infections now stands at 300,119, and there have so far been 3,164 deaths, according to government data.
“We have detected the UK variant and the double mutant variant detected in India,” Krishna Prasad Paudel, the director of Nepal’s Epidemiology and Disease Control Department told Reuters, adding that experts were checking for other variants too.
Since Nepal’s vaccination programme launched in January, 1.9 million people have received jabs, all provided by India and China.
But now that India is battling a terrifying new wave and prioritising the vaccination of its own population, the future Nepal’s the inoculation drive is uncertain after officials had failed to procure more vaccine from India or any other source.
Over 90 developing nations, including Nepal, rely on vaccine deliveries from India, home to the Serum Institute, the world’s largest vaccine maker.
Nepal’s border with India was closed for some time during a lockdown last year, but has since been reopened.
“The situation is really frightening,” said Prakash Thapa, a doctor at Bheri hospital in Nepalgunj, a city in the southwest plains bordering India. He told Reuters the hospital was inundated with coronavirus patients requiring intensive care and ventilators.
“This time even children and young people are brought in critical condition and patients are even sleeping on the floor and corridors,” he said.
I’m Jedidajah Otte and will be taking over for the next few hours. Feel free to get in touch with updates, tips and comments, I’m on Twitter @JedySays or you can email me.
Updated
Today so far …
- In India, hoarding oxygen and vital medicines in homes is “creating panic” and causing shortages in hospitals, according to senior Indian doctors, prompting fears of shortages for critically ill patients amid the worsening Covid crisis.
- It comes as India recorded 352,991 new cases, breaking the global record it set the day before, and 2,812 new deaths, its highest daily figure for fatalities. It was the fifth day in a row that cases topped 300,000.
- UK defence secretary Ben Wallace has said the Covid-19 pressures in India were becoming “unbearable” and that the UK would “do everything we can to alleviate their suffering”.
- Germany will send oxygen and medical aid to India in the coming days to help it tackle its Covid crisis, foreign minister Heiko Maas said.
- The World Health Organization has said it will start a technical assessment of the Moderna Covid vaccine on Friday.
- Greece will lift quarantine restrictions on coronavirus-free visitors from more countries including Australia and Russia from Monday as it extends exemptions ahead of formally opening up to tourists on 15 May.
- Turkey’s cabinet will discuss adopting a tighter lockdown as the government tries to prevent a second lost year of tourism revenues.
- Forty-four-year-olds in England are being urged to take up the Covid vaccine from today when about half a million of them will receive a text inviting them to get their jab through the national booking service.
- In Northern Ireland, the vaccination programme will fully open to all those aged between 35 and 39 from Monday.
- France’s infant and primary schools have reopened for the first time in three weeks with strict health rules and increased coronavirus testing.
- New Covid-19 restrictions came into force in Thailand today to try to halt a spiralling outbreak that saw deaths hit a record single-day high over the weekend.
- In Cambodia, the World Health Organization (WHO) has urged factory owners in the key garment sector to help protect workers.
- Japan’s vaccination programme still lags behind the rest of the developed world, raising questions about its preparedness and doubts about the wisdom of holding the Olympics in Tokyo in less than three months’ time. Tokyo 2020 organising committee president Seiko Hashimoto has said today that the committee will decide on rules for limiting spectators in April.
- Kazakhstan has rolled out its homegrown coronavirus vaccine, with the central Asian country’s health minister receiving the jab on live television. QazCovid-in, also known as QazVac, is a two-shot vaccine that is in third-stage trials.
- The Philippines announced that the total number of coronavirus cases it had recorded had exceeded 1 million.
- Hong Kong and Singapore have announced plans to resurrect their scrapped coronavirus travel bubble with dedicated flights between the two cities restarting on 26 May.
- Facebook has removed Australia’s federal independent MP Craig Kelly’s page for repeatedly breaching the social media company’s misinformation policy.
That is it from me, Martin Belam. Jedidajah Otte will be along shortly to keep you up-to-date with global coronavirus news. If you are looking for the UK angle – then Andrew Sparrow is your man, over on the UK live blog.
Updated
Turkey’s cabinet will discuss adopting a tighter lockdown as President Tayyip Erdoğan tries to prevent a second lost year of tourism revenues, officials have told Reuters.
After the last cabinet meeting two weeks ago, as coronavirus cases surged, Erdoğan reined in social activities and travel. Total daily cases then peaked above 63,000 on 16 April before dropping sharply to below 39,000 on Sunday.
But government officials said the fall was not enough and ministers would look into imposing new measures to last through holiday at the end of Ramadan, in a way that does not hit economic production.
“Cases … have been falling for a few days but this is not enough. A full shutdown will be on the cabinet’s agenda and this option should be implemented,” one official told Reuters, requesting anonymity.
The measures, while careful to allow economic production to continue, could close shopping malls and require special permits for intercity travel, the person said. Cafes and restaurants are already shut.
Last Friday, health minister Fahrettin Koca said the latest restrictions had shown some results, including a 20% fall in cases in Istanbul and fewer hospital patients, though they were still a burden on intensive care units.
He also said measures would be tightened if the targeted fall in cases did not materialise.
Updated
In Cambodia, the World Health Organization (WHO) urged factory owners in the key garment sector to help protect workers.
“The current outbreaks in factories and markets serve as a painful reminder of the importance of investing in mitigation measures before cases occur, to help prevent the virus spreading,” Li Ailan, WHO representative in Cambodia, said in a statement.
Li urged factory owners to do more temperature screening and rearrange workshops to allow social distancing.
The capital Phnom Penh has been under lockdown for 12 days now and last week the authorities ordered all wet markets in the city to close for 14 days. Prime Minister Hun Sen on Sunday ordered tougher enforcement of lockdown measures.
Agence France-Presse note that Cambodia has reported 9,975 cases in total and 74 deaths including 10 on Saturday - a single-day record for the country.
This is the latest dispatch from Justin McCurry in Tokyo where Japan’s slow Covid vaccine rollout is casting a cloud over the Olympics:
More than two months after it began its vaccine rollout, Japan still lags behind the rest of the developed world, raising questions about its preparedness and doubts about the wisdom of holding the Olympics in Tokyo in less than three months’ time.
To date, 1.3% of Japan’s population have received at least one of two doses, compared with 40% in the US, 49% in the UK and 20% in France, according to Our World in Data. Neighbouring South Korea, which has also been criticised for a slow vaccine uptake, has inoculated more than 4% of its people.
The health ministry has so far approved only the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, leaving Japan dependent on imports from theEU until the AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccines are given the green light, possibly next month.
As of 23 April, just over 1.74 million frontline medical staff had received their first dose, with 878,000 fully vaccinated. About 74,000 people aged 65 and over had been given their first jab as of Sunday, according to the Prime Minister’s Office.
Extreme caution and red tape are causing frustration among the public. A Kyodo news agency poll this month found more than 60% of people were dissatisfied with Japan’s vaccine rollout, while more than 90% were worried about another wave of infections.
Read more of Justin McCurry’s report here: Japan’s slow Covid vaccine rollout casts cloud over Olympics
Updated
Here’s a bit more on that Reuters story about the WHO assessing the Moderna vaccine for possible emergency authorisation. Please note that earlier Reuters – and I – reported wrongly that the review would start today. The actual start date is Friday 30 April.
“We are discussing the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine on Friday …” WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said in reply to a Reuters query.
A decision on the vaccine, now being evaluated under the abridged procedure on the basis of prior review by the European Medicines Agency, was expected in one to four days after that, Lindmeier said.
The WHO committee of technical experts were on Monday reviewing the Covid-19 vaccine of Chinese drugmaker Sinopharm and is due to review the Sinovac product at its next meeting on 3 May, according to the WHO.
Stephane Bancel, Moderna CEO, told an event last Friday that it was on track to make up to 1bn doses of its Covid-19 vaccine this year and 1.4bn next year.
“We’re in the final stretch to get an agreement with Covax,” Bancel said, referring to the vaccine-sharing facility run by the Gavi Vaccine Alliance and WHO to bring doses to lower income countries.
Updated
New Covid-19 restrictions came into force in Thailand today to try to halt a spiralling outbreak that saw deaths hit a record single-day high over the weekend.
In Bangkok - where the latest outbreak has been traced back to a nightlife district - as well as 47 other provinces, wearing masks is now compulsory in public spaces, with some locations backing it up with the threat of a 20,000 baht ($640) fine.
Agence France-Presse note that authorities in the capital have also closed a raft of venues including cinemas, parks, gyms, swimming pools, spas and nurseries. The new restrictions come a week after authorities ordered bars and nightclubs to close and banned restaurants from serving alcohol.
The tightening comes as total infections reached 57,500 on Monday, up from just 29,000 in early April. Until the latest outbreak, Thailand had managed to keep infections down, thanks to strict travel restrictions and swift action to isolate confirmed cases.
But there have been complaints about the slow rollout of vaccines, with Thailand lagging behind other countries in the region. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha said on Facebook the government was trying to source more doses and ramp up the programme to inoculate 300,000 people a day.
Nina Lakhani and Jessica Glenza report from the US for us that preventative care has hit a cliff in the US as health resources have been diverted to fight Covid:
Many of the routine measures meant to keep Americans healthy – and keep American health from slipping further behind that of other developed, peer nations – have hit a worrying cliff.
As attention has focused on the immediate crisis of the pandemic and the hundreds of thousands of lives lost in America, there has been a major drop in critical preventative care including childhood vaccinations and lead screenings, sexually transmitted disease testing and substance abuse services.
“This is either the second or first worst pandemic in modern human history,” said Dr Howard Markel, a pandemic historian and pediatrician at the University of Michigan. “We knew there would be repercussions and unintended consequences.”
Now, there is a “whole menu of neglect” to address as a national vaccine campaign allows people to slowly emerge from a year of lockdowns and social distancing. “There is no historical precedent for this,” added Markel.
In the first few months of the pandemic alone, at least 400,000 children missed screenings for lead, a toxic heavy metal. Doctors and nurses ordered 3m fewer vaccines for children and 400,000 fewer for measles specifically.
For the first time, clinics were forced to ration lab tests for sexually transmitted diseases as lab capacity and supplies were diverted to test for Covid-19. Contact tracers were also re-deployed from tracking chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis cases to finding people in contact with Covid-19 patients.
Read more of Nina Lakhani and Jessica Glenza’s report here: ‘Menu of neglect’: preventative care hits cliff as US health resources diverted to fight Covid
The southern Indian state of Karnataka, home to technology hub Bengaluru, will impose a lockdown for 14 days starting from 27 April evening in an effort to contain a surge in COVID-19 cases, the state’s chief minister has said.
Karnataka is the latest region to enter a lockdown after similar curbs in many parts of India, which is battling a massive second wave of infections that has pressured its health system.
Chandini Monnappa reports from Reuters in Bengaluru that the city of 12 million had more than 20,000 new infections on Sunday, its highest single-day tally so far and second only to India’s capital, Delhi.
My colleague Andrew Sparrow has the UK live blog up and running. He opens it with more on that briefing war about the alleged comments by British prime minister Boris Johnson. Andrew writes:
It is well known that Johnson was reluctant to order all three lockdowns - in the case of the second one in particular, waiting weeks before agreeing to the move recommended by his scientific advisers - and there is strong evidence that tens of thousands of deaths might have been avoided if the government had locked down much more promptly on each occasion. But the public has been understanding, and the polls suggest his lockdown record has done little to damage his standing with the public.
But this morning the Daily Mail has published a story presenting this story with a new twist. The key allegation is that in October, as Johnson gave in to pressure from colleagues to order the second lockdown, he made a particularly tasteless comment about future lockdown policy. The Mail says Johnson agreed to fresh restrictions but his frustration is said to have boiled over after the crucial meeting at No 10 in October. ‘No more fucking lockdowns – let the bodies pile high in their thousands!’ he is alleged to have raged.
You can follow that story as it develops with Andrew…
I’ll be concentrating here on coronavirus news from around the globe – and in particular India where the situation seems increasingly dire.
Philippines exceeds one million Covid cases
The Philippines announced on Monday that the total number of coronavirus cases it had recorded had exceeded 1 million as it continued to record thousands of new infections in the capital region, the epicentre of its latest outbreak.
The health ministry said it recorded 8,929 Covid-19 cases on Monday, bringing the total to more than 1 million, while fatalities increased to 16,853 after it recorded 70 new deaths.
Reuters note the Philippines has the second highest number of cases and casualties in south-east Asia, next to Indonesia.
Updated
Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine being reviewed for possible use by WHO
Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine is being reviewed on Friday by technical experts for possible World Health Organization emergency use listing, a WHO spokesman has told Reuters.
“Moderna is being reviewed at the TAG (technical advisory group) meeting today,” WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said in reply to a query. A decision on the US drugmaker’s vaccine was expected in one to four days, he said.
So far Covid-19 vaccines made by Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson have already received WHO approval, which is a signal to national regulatory authorities on a product’s safety and efficacy.
- This block has been updated to reflect that Reuters have corrected their story. Originally they reported that the review was commencing today.
Updated
Tokyo 2020 organising committee president Seiko Hashimoto has said today that the committee will decide on rules for limiting spectators in April.
Hashimoto said she hopes to reach consensus among the parties involved including the IOC and the Japanese government so that they could take flexible measures depending on changes in the coronavirus infection situation, Hashimoto said.
The organising committee is making preparations for thorough coronavirus measures during the summer games, she added.
While Japan has not suffered as badly as other nations, the government has struggled to cope with a recent surge in cases and on Friday imposed a third state of emergency on parts of the country just three months before the Olympics are set to open.
Updated
As members of India’s 700,000-strong diaspora in Australia watch events unfolding in the subcontinent “with angst and anguish”, Sydney-based cardiologist Dr Yadu Singh has called on the Australian government to consider sending vaccines and distributing them from its four diplomatic postings in the country.
He initially accepted the government’s decision on Friday to cut flights from India by 30% – announced last Thursday – but Singh shifted his position as the situation worsened over the weekend.
“My God, the numbers are horrendous and we think even they are underreported.”
In light of the rapidly rising case numbers, Singh said the Australian federal government should set up new quarantine facilities – separate to the existing system – to allow for a mass repatriation from the country that does not risk infecting arrivals from other countries with the more virulent strain from India.
However, the federal government is instead reportedly considering a further reduction, or even a ban on all flights from India due to the high case numbers.
Cabinet’s national security committee will meet on Tuesday to discuss stricter measures and decide on assistance for the ailing country.
Read more of Elias Visontay’s report here: Australia ‘morally obliged’ to help repatriate citizens caught in India’s Covid crisis
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Forty-four-year-olds in England are being urged to take up the Covid vaccine from today when about half a million of them will receive a text inviting them to get their jab through the national booking service.
The last cohort offered the jab was those aged 45 to 49. There was high uptake among this group and within a week of the booking system opening, two-thirds had received their first vaccine. The NHS website briefly crashed under the demand
NHS England chief executive Sir Simon Stevens said: “Thanks to NHS staff, people aged 45-49 have been hot on the heels of millions of people most at risk who were quick to take up the offer of a vaccine with more than two thirds getting their lifesaving jab, marking another medically important milestone in the biggest vaccination campaign in NHS history.
“When the time comes, and you get that text, book an appointment to get your vaccine – it is the best protection you and your loved ones will receive from this deadly virus.”
Catherine Wylie at PA Media reports that NHS medical director Prof Stephen Powis said: “It is testament to the hard work of NHS staff that we are now able to vaccinate people in the next age group.
“If you are aged 44, when you are invited to do so, please do book your jab as appointments become available – it is simple, effective and provides vital protection against the coronavirus.”
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France reopens infant and primary schools after three week shutdown
French infant and primary schools have reopened for the first time in three weeks with strict health rules and increased coronavirus testing.
While younger pupils were expected to turn up, older students in secondary schools and lycées will continue with online classes and distance learning for another week after which most will physically return to schools for half days.
About 400,000 Covid tests are being distributed to elementary schools this week and this number is expected to increase over the next month. Areas most affected by coronavirus contaminations will be prioritised for tests. For pupils aged over 15 years and teachers, the government has ordered 64m quick-result home tests. Older lycée students will be tested once a week at their school on a “voluntary basis” when they return to classes next week.
Teachers over the age of 55 are now being given priority status for vaccinations, but the French secondary school teachers’ union says only 16% of them fall into this age group.
Prime minister Jean Castex said the health protocol concerning schools would be “very strict” and the capacity for carrying out Covid-19 tests “massively reinforced”.
“We will close a class if there is just one case of contamination,” education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer said last week to reassure teachers and parents. “This will obviously mean there will be a certain number of closures, but obviously it’s far more preferable to have 1% of classes in France closed than to have 100% of schools shut,” Blanquer added.
With warmer weather on the way, the government is also encouraging schools to hold classes outside if and where possible.
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Minister: UK will 'do everything we can' to alleviate suffering in India
Defence secretary Ben Wallace has said the Covid-19 pressures in India were becoming “unbearable” and that the UK would “do everything we can to alleviate their suffering”.
He told Sky News: “The United Kingdom is going to send to India oxygen compressors and ventilators, things that are really needed in the now.
“The pressure on hospitals in India is getting unbearable and we are going to do our part to make sure our friends in India get all the support they can. If you remember, we commissioned a huge number of ventilators to alleviate the pressure on our hospitals - it is only right that we share and help them in their time of need.”
Asked whether he wished the decision had been taken sooner to provide aid to India, PA Media reports the minister replied: “It is not like we just woke up this morning and thought we’d do it, it has been properly worked out and planned with the Indian government and made sure it became available as soon as needed
“If necessary, we’ll put military planes together there or charter other planes – we’ll do everything we can to alleviate their suffering.”
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Vaccine roll-out extended in England to those aged 44
From Monday in England, people aged 44 will be invited to book their jab, with NHS England saying around half a million 44-year-olds will receive a text inviting them to get their jab through the national booking service.
It is the first time that the vaccine rollout in England has been extended by a single year group – previously the age-based approach to the programme had offered the jab to people in age brackets.
PA Media reports that the NHS in England said it will set out plans to offer a Covid vaccine to those aged 40 to 43 in coming days “in line with JCVI advice and as supply allows”.
In Northern Ireland, the vaccination programme will fully open to all those aged between 35 and 39 from Monday.
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If you’ve been following British politics you’ll know there’s something of a briefing war going on behind the scenes about who leaked what, when, and to whom. Defence secretary Ben Wallace has been out in the media round this morning denying reports from Sunday that prime minister Boris Johnson had said he would rather the bodies pile high in their thousands than order another lockdown.
Reuters report Wallace told Sky News: “It’s not true – it’s been categorically denied by practically everyone. We’re getting into the sort of comedy chapter now of these gossip stories – you know unnamed sources by unnamed advisers talking about unnamed events. You know – look – none of this is serious. The prime minister has been utterly focused on delivering, alongside cabinet colleagues, the response to Covid.”
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Kazakhstan begins rollout of homegrown QazVac vaccine
Kazakhstan has rolled out its homegrown coronavirus vaccine, with the central Asian country’s health minister receiving the jab on live television. QazCovid-in, also known as QazVac, is a two-shot vaccine that is in third-stage trials.
Agence France-Presse reports that state broadcaster Khabar said 50,000 doses of the vaccine developed by the state-backed Research Institute for Biological Safety Problems have been distributed across the country.
Health minister Alexei Tsoi told Khabar he felt “well” after receiving his shot and said the government was negotiating with partners in Turkey to produce future batches of the vaccine.
In a tweet last week, Kazakhstan’s president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev hailed the former Soviet republic’s achievement in becoming “one of the few states” to develop and produce a national vaccine.
Kazakhstan became the first foreign country to produce Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine earlier this year, and the Russian jab has dominated the mass inoculation drive in the nation of nearly 19 million people.
Health minister Tsoi told Khabar that “one in 20” Kazakh citizens have been vaccinated against the coronavirus since the campaign began in February.
As of Monday, Kazakhstan had registered 309,116 coronavirus cases and 3,570 deaths.
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Hong Kong and Singapore have announced plans to resurrect their scrapped coronavirus travel bubble with dedicated flights between the two cities restarting on 26 May.
The two business hubs had to abandon a highly anticipated quarantine-free travel corridor late last year after Hong Kong was hit with a fourth wave of infections, report Agence France-Presse.
From 26 May, one flight per day carrying up to 200 passengers will shuttle between the two cities. Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines will share the route with two daily flights planned from June 10 onwards.
Hongkongers heading to Singapore will have to have received two doses of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Sinovac vaccines - an attempt to encourage inoculation in a city where take-up so far has remained a tepid 11% despite ample supplies.
Travellers from Singapore – where the vaccination rate is around 20% – will not be required to have been inoculated but must test negative before departure and on arrival.
Both Hong Kong and Singapore maintain strict quarantine rules for all arrivals, a measure that has kept infections comparatively low. But the restrictions have battered tourism and the wider economy.
Both sides have agreed that the bubble will be suspended for two weeks if the daily average of untraceable infections in one week reaches more than five in either city.
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Facebook removes Australian MP's page for breaching Covid misinformation policy
Facebook has removed Australian federal independent MP Craig Kelly’s Facebook page for repeatedly breaching the social media company’s misinformation policy.
The member for Hughes, who quit the Liberal party in February in part because he wanted to keep posting about unproven treatments for Covid-19, had amassed a following on the site of more than 86,000 followers at last count, and was frequently one of the highest performers among politicians on Facebook.
His profile was suspended for a number of weeks earlier this year due to posting Covid-19 misinformation. Facebook has now made the ban permanent.
“We don’t allow anyone, including elected officials, to share misinformation about Covid-19 that could lead to imminent physical harm or Covid-19 vaccines that have been debunked by public health experts,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. “We have clear policies against this type of content and have removed Mr Kelly’s Facebook Page for repeated violations of this policy.”
He was suspended in February over three posts related to unproven claims about hydroxychloroquine by professor Dolores Cahill; a profile of professor Thomas Borody in the Spectator, which includes advocacy of ivermectin to treat coronavirus; and claims by pathologist Roger Hodkinson that masks are “useless” for children and “paper and fabric masks are simply virtue signalling”.
At the time of publishing, a backup page Kelly set up in March was still up and running, and still posting.
An Instagram account also remains active. While Facebook owns Instagram, it treats Instagram pages separate to Facebook pages. The Instagram account of Celebrity chef turned Covid-19 conspiracy theorist Pete Evans was banned in February, months after his Facebook page was removed in late December.
Kelly told Guardian Australia he was “absolutely outraged” by Facebook’s conduct, labelling it “censorship” and “interference in Australian democracy”.
Read more of Josh Taylor’s report here: MP Craig Kelly ‘absolutely outraged’ after Facebook removes his page for misinformation
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Snap lockdown in Perth to be lifted from midnight as planned
The government of Western Australia state said it will lift a three-day Covid-19 lockdown in Perth and neighbouring Peel region as planned from midnight on Monday after no new cases were found in the past two days.
Perth and the Peel region were placed into a hard lockdown from Saturday after an infected traveller from overseas, who likely contracted the novel coronavirus during his two-week quarantine in a Perth hotel, visited several venues while unknowingly infectious.
“The short three-day lockdown has done the job it was designed to do,” state Premier Mark McGowan told reporters in Perth. “It was a circuit-breaker we needed to limit community spread and keep our community healthy.”
Renju Jose reports for Reuters that two million people in Perth and Peel’s near 150,000 residents were ordered to stay home until 12.01 am on Tuesday, except for essential work, healthcare, grocery shopping or exercise.
People can leave their homes when the lockdown ends but will have to wear masks at all times. Home gatherings will be limited to 20 guests while restaurants and supermarkets will need to follow strict social-distancing rules.
These interim restrictions will remain until Friday night, McGowan said, when they would be reviewed.
Good morning, it is Martin Belam here in London. Reuters have a quick snap from South Africa, where a research study in further evaluating Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine in the field will resume on Wednesday, the health ministry said, after the study was paused over rare cases of blood clots in people given the vaccine.
Local regulator SAHPRA, the South African Medical Research Council and the health ministry have worked to ensure there is intensified pre-vaccination assessment and post-vaccination monitoring when the Johnson & Johnson study resumes, it added.
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. Thanks for following along – my colleague Martin Belam will take it from here.
Germany to send oxygen and medical aid to India
Germany will send oxygen and medical aid to India in the coming days to help it tackle its Covid crisis, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Monday.
India is suffering from a spike in coronavirus infections, with the number of cases surging by 349,691 in the past 24 hours, the fourth straight day of record peaks, Reuters reports.
Hospitals are turning away patients after running out of medical oxygen.
“The second wave is currently rolling over India with unprecedented power. It was right that we acted quickly to stop the entry of the new mutation in Germany,” Maas told the Rheinische Post newspaper.
Germany has classified India as a coronavirus high incidence area and also put the country on a separate warning list for coronavirus variants.
From Monday onwards, Germans arriving from India will only be allowed to enter the country with a negative test result and will then have to begin a 14-day quarantine. Foreign travellers coming from India will no longer be allowed to enter Germany.
Mass said Germany would do its utmost to help India overcome the emergency.
A German defence ministry spokeswoman said the foreign ministry had asked the military to look into providing a mobile oxygen production facility as well as support to transport other emergency and relief goods to India.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday expressed her “sympathy over the terrible suffering” that the pandemic had brought to India.
“Germany stands in solidarity with India and is urgently preparing a mission of support,” Merkel said in a statement.
The European Commission has also said it aims to send oxygen and medicines to India after receiving a request from Delhi. Britain and the United States are also sending assistance including medical equipment.
Greece expands no-quarantine list
Greece will lift quarantine restrictions on coronavirus-free visitors from more countries including Australia and Russia from Monday as it extends exemptions ahead of formally opening up to tourists on May 15, the transport ministry said on Sunday.
Reuters: The change, which came as Greece crossed the threshold of 10,000 deaths from Covid-19, follows a move this month to lift restrictions on visitors from EU countries, the United States and Britain, among other countries.
Visitors from these countries are allowed into Greece without spending a week in quarantine as long as they are vaccinated or test negative for the coronavirus.
As well as Australia and Russia, Greece will lift restrictions on visitors from New Zealand, South Korea, Thailand, Rwanda and Singapore, the ministry said in a statement. Visitors from Serbia, Israel and the United Arab Emirates are also exempt from quarantine requirements following the earlier changes affecting the EU and other countries.
Greece, which emerged from the first wave of the pandemic last year in much better shape than many other countries in Europe, has been hit badly in recent months, with rising numbers of patients putting hospitals under severe strain in many areas.
However, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said last week the pandemic was showing signs of stabilising and he confirmed plans for a 15 May opening of the vital tourism sector, which accounts for a fifth of economic output.
Despite a stuttering start to vaccinations in the European Union, the Greek government says it is better placed this summer than last year thanks to widespread testing, quarantine hotels and vaccination drives on small islands and among tourism workers.
Authorities reported 1,400 new cases and 57 deaths on Sunday. The pandemic has now caused a total of 333,129 infections in Greece and 10,007 deaths.
India daily cases top 300,000 for fifth straight day
Hoarding oxygen and vital medicines in homes is “creating panic” and causing shortages in hospitals, according to senior Indian doctors, prompting fears of shortages for critically ill patients amid the worsening Covid crisis.
It comes as India recorded 352,991 new cases, breaking the global record it set the day before, and 2,812 new deaths, its highest daily figure for fatalities. It was the fifth day in a row that cases topped 300,000.
The last week has seen a cumulative 89% increase in Covid-19 deaths in India on the week ending 18 April, and a total of 2.2m new cases, the highest seven-day increase experienced by any country.
Total infections in the country have passed 17m.
“Hoarding of injections like remdesivir and oxygen in homes is creating a panic and this hoarding is causing a shortage of these medicines,” said Dr Randeep Guleria, the director of the countries Institute of Medical Sciences, in a statement released by the ministry of health on Sunday night.
Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Alison Rourke report:
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’a live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan. As always, you can find me on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
Devastation continues in India, which recorded 352,991 new cases in the last 24 hours, breaking the global record it set the day before, and 2,812 new deaths, its highest daily figure for fatalities.
Meanwhile Greece will lift quarantine restrictions on coronavirus-free visitors from more countries including Australia and Russia from Monday as it extends exemptions ahead of formally opening up to tourists on May 15, the transport ministry said on Sunday.
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Foreign governments are deploying resources to India, as the nation of 1.3 billion people struggles to cope with a growing Covid-19 crisis during which infections and deaths have hit record highs. The UK said it would send more than 600 pieces of equipment – including ventilators and oxygen concentrators from surplus stocks – to India while the EU and US also said they would rapidly deploy resources there. India recorded 349,691 fresh cases and 2,767 deaths in the last 24 hours – the highest since the start of the pandemic.
- Greece today became the latest European nation to say it has detected a case of the Covid-19 variant that has helped drive the explosion in infections in India. The virus strain was detected in a foreign woman aged 33 who lives in the Athens area and had travelled to Dubai on 4 April.
- A fire on Saturday at a hospital in south-eastern Baghdad that had been equipped to house Covid-19 patients killed 82 people and wounded 110 more, the Iraqi interior ministry said The fire at the Ibn Khatib hospital in the Diyala Bridge area of the Iraqi capital is believed to have occurred after an accident caused an oxygen tank to explode.
- Coronavirus has killed at least 3,100,659 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP
- A Spanish man with Covid symptoms who coughed on work colleagues and told them “I’m going to give you all the coronavirus” has been charged with intentionally causing injury after allegedly infecting 22 people. Police said none of those infected at his workplace on the island of Mallorca required hospitalisation.
- Germany’s finance minister Olaf Scholz said he did not expect moves to ease curbs before the end of May as its seven-day average of cases per 100,000 people rose to 166.
- Thailand has announced its highest number of coronavirus deaths, for the second consecutive day. It reported 2,438 new coronavirus cases and 11 new deaths, bringing the total number of infections to 55,460 and fatalities to 140 since the pandemic started last year.
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