That’s it from the UK blog team, thanks for following our coverage.
Immediate action must be taken to save the UK’s music festivals from another “lost summer” due to Covid, a cross-party committee of MPs said.
Ministers must create a government-backed insurance scheme for festivals as soon as possible, given their long lead times, a report from the Commons digital, culture, media and sport committee argued, saying even now it would be too late for many events.
Another summer without income would not only cause the demise of many smaller festivals, but could threaten the long-term future of the sector as companies in the supply chain also close down and skilled specialist staff move to other jobs.
The problems had been exacerbated by a lack of access to the government’s culture recovery fund and by the fact no festivals were included in the series of pilot schemes designed to test the viability of mass events, the committee said.
Rule changes in the National Hockey League in the US.
The NHL has announced a change to COVID Protocols for Round 2 of the playoffs.
— Jesse Granger (@JesseGranger_) May 28, 2021
Fans will no longer be required to wear masks at games. However, individual teams can make their own policies based on local health guidelines.#VegasBorn
Also:
— Jesse Granger (@JesseGranger_) May 28, 2021
The glass behind the penalty boxes and team benches will be put back if both teams are 85% vaccinated.
Updated
A last-minute decision to relax Covid-19 safety rules for Saturday’s Champions League final has angered locals as hundreds of English fans not wearing masks packed Porto’s riverside bars on Friday night.
European football’s governing body UEFA moved the final between Manchester City and Chelsea from Istanbul to Porto to allow English fans to travel to the match under Covid-19 restrictions, Reuters reports.
Some Porto residents fear a spike in infections because of the highly contagious coronavirus variant spreading in parts of England after first being identified in India.
Others are upset that foreign fans can go into the stadium but locals have been banned from attending matches for months.
“If they open (the stadiums) for the English, they should open (them) for all,” said Alexandre Magalhaes.
Portugal’s government initially said English fans must fly in only on the day of the match, stay in a “bubble” and fly home straight after the game.
But on Thursday authorities dropped the requirement for fans to stay in bubbles and lifted restrictions on movement.
Masks are no longer required at the three main cinema chains in the US for people who are fully vaccinated against coronavirus, Reuters reports.
AMC Entertainment, Cinemark and Regal Cinemas said on their websites that movie goers who are not fully vaccinated will be asked to continue wearing masks, and that other social-distancing measures and cleaning protocols will remain in place.
The front page of Saturday’s Guardian in the UK.
Guardian front page, Saturday 29 May 2021: Lifting lockdown in June is risky, warns key academic pic.twitter.com/GrGTYSkZ9f
— The Guardian (@guardian) May 28, 2021
Brazil registered 49,768 new cases of coronavirus and 2,371 new Covid-19 deaths in the last 24 hours, the health ministry said on Friday.
The country has recorded more than 16.3 million cases in total and over 456,000 deaths, Reuters reports.
Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, has described vaccine distribution in Africa as “scandalously inefficient” and warned against building an “invisible wall” around parts of the world unable to secure jabs.
“The fact that Africa is not receiving vaccines, in the end, is not good even for those getting the vaccines,” Kagame told AFP and France Inter.
“The backlash will be there, it will come back to them. If we do it equitably, then we have the chance of eradicating it globally.
I hope we don’t find ourselves in a situation where it’s like building an invisible wall. Those who have been vaccinated saying ‘we need to remain safe so we need to keep away those who are not vaccinated’.”
Kagame said it was essential Africa start manufacturing its own vaccines but pointed to hurdles in the way of investment, intellectual property rights and technology.
Updated
Victoria has entered its fourth Covid lockdown – but it is the first without jobkeeper and boosted jobseeker payments. Businesses and workers are worried.
Here they tell Guardian Australia who they think is to blame and what assistance they require.
Mexico’s health ministry on Friday announced 3,006 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the country and 411 more fatalities, Reuters reports.
It brings the total to 2,408,778 infections and 223,072 deaths.
The government has said the real number of cases is likely significantly higher, and separate data published recently suggested the actual death toll is at least 60% above the confirmed figure.
Updated
Updated
Kosovo has agreed to buy 1.2 million Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccines, the first shots bought by the government as it works to speed up inoculations.
Kosovo so far has received around 180,000 vaccines, mostly from an EU-funded programme, Reuters reports.
“Kosovo has secured 1.2 million vaccines in a deal with Pfizer,” the country’s health minister, Arben Vitia, told a news conference.
“We are determined to continue with a much faster process to vaccinate 60% of the population by the end of 2021.”
Updated
A summary of today's developments
- The European Medicines Agency (EMA) backed the use of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine for children as young as 12, paving the way for a broader rollout in the region after similar clearances in the US and Canada.
- EMA task force chair Marco Cavaleri said that additional reports of blood clots in people after having the AstraZeneca jab since mid-April shows no change in frequency, but the fatality rate has decreased.
- World Health Organization experts are preparing a proposal on the next studies to be carried out into the origins of the virus that causes Covid-19, after the last investigating team said a lab leak was “extremely unlikely” and not worthy of further study before the WHO head swiftly said all hypotheses remained under consideration.
- A single-shot coronavirus vaccine from Johnson & Johnson was approved for use in the UK. The vaccine, developed by Johnson & Johnson’s pharmaceutical arm Janssen, has been shown to be 67% effective overall at preventing moderate to severe Covid-19, with studies suggesting it also offers complete protection from admission to hospital and death.
- The World Health Organization called for access to patients in the Gaza strip and free passage to evacuate them for medical treatment as health workers struggle to care for the sick and wounded after 11 days of violence.
- Hotels in Ireland can reopen on 2 June and pubs and restaurants can resume outdoor service on 7 June, the government announced. Ireland will also adopt the European Union’s Covid-19 certificate to help citizens move more freely across the bloc from 19 July and broadly apply the same approach to arrivals from elsewhere including Britain and the US.
- Indian authorities announced a tentative easing of the lockdown in the capital, Delhi, as coronavirus infections fall in major cities after weeks of restrictions.
- US secretary of state Antony Blinken said at a meeting with India’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, that their two countries were united in tackling the Covid-19 pandemic together, Reuters reports.
- Fuelling doubts about whether the Olympics can go ahead safely, Japan’s government has, as expected, extended a coronavirus emergency in Tokyo and other parts of the country until just a month before the Games.
- Lockdown measures in the Netherlands will be eased as of next week, allowing bars and restaurants to serve customers indoors and museums to reopen, the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, said.
- All Italians aged over 16 will be able to be vaccinated from 3 June onwards, the government’s Covid-19 commissioner has said, with the country also preparing to extend the campaign to 12 to 15-year-olds.
- The Greek government unveiled the first EU Covid passport, described by the country’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, as a “fast lane to facilitate travel”, after a successful dry run of the technology.
Updated
Beachgoers in the US will be able to get vaccinated against the Covid-19 virus over the Memorial Day weekend, Associated Press reports.
Governor Phil Murphy announced the “Shots At The Shore” campaign that will offer free vaccinations Saturday and Sunday at Sandy Hook, Long Branch and Asbury Park in Jersey Shore. The announcement came on the day that New Jersey dropped its indoor mask mandate, which Murphy called “one of the biggest steps we can take to move forward with our recovery.” “We’re going to make it possible for beachgoers to get some sun and at the same time get their first shot,” the governor said.
Ireland hopes to permit a staggered return of employees to their offices from August, the government said, with the advice to continue to work from home unless necessary “as strong as ever” until then.
Reuters reports:
The message is to continue to work from home if at all possible and we anticipate that is going to be the advice until September,” deputy prime minister Leo Varadkar told a news conference.
“However we will give consideration, if things continue to improve (in managing Covid-19), to some kind of phased return perhaps in August around people going in on a staggered basis or for training or induction or reasons such as that.”
U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken said at a meeting with India’s foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar that their two countries were united in tackling the Covid-19 pandemic together, Reuters reports.
Jaishankar, who has spent the past week in the US seeking help to deal with India’s coronavirus crisis, told reporters while standing with Blinken at the State Department India was grateful to the U.S. administration for strong support and solidarity.
Denmark this week began incinerating 4 million mink that had been culled to curb Covid-19 mutations but began to resurface from mass burial sites, prompting renewed health concerns.
The government last year decided to cull all of the country’s 17 million mink to curb a coronavirus mutation and because the mammal was considered likely to host future mutations, Reuters reports.
Some were buried in pits in a military area in western Denmark under two metres of soil only for some to resurface in less than a month.
Contaminants were later found under the graves in an examination carried out on behalf of the Danish Environmental Protection Agency, prompting the government to order the incineration of the the animals.
“There’s not supposed to be any virus left, but we burn it at more than 1,000 degrees (Celsius), so if there were any virus left it would definitely disappear,” said Jacob Hartvig Simonsen, the CEO of the ARC waste-management plant.
The Taoiseach said the sense of “hope, excitement and relief” is palpable as he confirmed the widespread reopening of Ireland over the summer.
Micheal Martin said that while the end of the pandemic is “within our grasp”, he urged the public to “remain vigilant against the terrible virus”, PA reports.
As Martin unveiled the government’s plans over June, July and August, he said that the reopening of society and the economy will depend on Irish people following the guidelines in place.
Martin confirmed that on June 2, hotels, B&Bs, guesthouses and self-catering accommodation will reopen.
On June 7, outdoor services in bars and restaurants will reopen along with cinemas and theatres.
On the same date, up to 200 people can attend outdoor events in venues with a minimum capacity of 5000, and up to 100 can attend other outdoor events.
In what can only be described as a comedy of errors, an Argentinian TV news channel delivered a stunning, if slightly flawed, scoop when it reported that William Shakespeare, “one of the most important writers in the English language” had died after receiving the Covid vaccine.
The mistake of well, Shakespearean, proportions happened on Thursday night after Noelia Novillo, a newsreader on Canal 26 mixed up the Bard with William “Bill” Shakespeare, an 81-year-old Warwickshire man who became the second person in the world to get the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine.
William Shakespeare died in 1616, while his namesake – an inpatient in the frailty ward at University hospital, Coventry, at the time of his first vaccination – died this week from a stroke unrelated to the jab.
The World Health Organization’s (WHO) top emergency expert Mike Ryan has urged for the separation of the “politics” of the question of the origin of the coronavirus from the science of it, days after US president Joe Biden ordered aides to find answers to the question.
“We would like for everyone out there to separate, if they can, the politics of this issue from the science. This whole process is being poisoned by politics,” Ryan said during a press conference, adding further studies are going to be needed to find the origins of the virus.
It comes after the last WHO investigating team said a lab leak was “extremely unlikely” and not worthy of further study before the organisation head swiftly said all hypotheses in fact remained under consideration.
WHO experts are preparing a proposal on the next studies to be carried out into the origins of the virus that causes Covid-19,
Summary
- The European Medicines Agency (EMA) backed the use of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine for children as young as 12, paving way for a broader roll-out in the region after similar clearances in the US and Canada.
- EMA task force chair Marco Cavaleri said that additional reports of blood clots in people after having the AstraZeneca jab since mid-April shows no change in frequency, but the fatality rate has decreased.
- World Health Organization experts are preparing a proposal on the next studies to be carried out into the origins of the virus that causes Covid-19, after the last investigating team said a lab leak was “extremely unlikely” and not worthy of further study before the WHO head swiftly said all hypotheses remained under consideration.
- A single-shot coronavirus vaccine from Johnson & Johnson was approved for use in the UK. The vaccine, developed by Johnson & Johnson’s pharmaceutical arm Janssen, has been shown to be 67% effective overall at preventing moderate to severe Covid-19, with studies suggesting it also offers complete protection from admission to hospital and death.
-
The World Health Organization called for access to patients in the Gaza strip and free passage to evacuate them for medical treatment as health workers struggle to care for the sick and wounded after 11 days of violence.
- Indian authorities announced a tentative easing of the lockdown in the capital Delhi as coronavirus infections fall in major cities after weeks of restrictions.
- Fuelling doubts about whether the Olympics can go ahead safely, Japan’s government has, as expected extended a coronavirus emergency in Tokyo and other parts of the country until just a month before the Games.
- Lockdown measures in the Netherlands will be eased as of next week, allowing bars and restaurants to serve customers indoors and museums to reopen, Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte said.
- Hotels in Ireland can reopen on 2 June and pubs and restaurants can resume outdoor service on 7 June, the government announced.
- All Italians aged over 16 will be able to be vaccinated from 3 June onwards, the government’s Covid-19 commissioner has said, with the country also preparing to extend the campaign to 12 to 15-year-olds.
-
The Greek government unveiled the first EU Covid passport, described by the country’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, as a “fast lane to facilitate travel”, after a successful dry run of the technology.
The Greek government has unveiled the first EU Covid passport, described by the country’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, as a “fast lane to facilitate travel”, after a successful dry run of the technology.
Holland: indoor eateries and museums to reopen next week
Lockdown measures in the Netherlands will be eased as of next week, allowing bars and restaurants to serve customers indoors and museums to reopen, Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte said. “We are taking another calculated risk”, Rutte said at a news conference.
Here’s more on our brief bit earlier, courtesy of Reuters.
A total of 316 cases of rare blood clots with low platelets have been recorded in adults who received AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine in the European Economic Area, an executive of the region’s drug regulator said.
The figure as of yesterday includes 174 new reports since the European Medicines Agency (EMA) provided an update in April, Georgy Genov, the chief of the watchdog’s safety monitoring operations, said during a briefing today.
The EMA has been looking into cases of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) since March and has found a possible link to the vaccine developed with Oxford University, Vaxzevria, and to Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose shot.
It has, however, maintained that overall benefits of both the vaccines outweigh any risks posed by them.
Genov said a further 19 million people had received the first dose of Vaxzevria in the EEA since the April update, adding that the frequency of TTS has not changed - it is still extremely rare - but the fatality rate following symptoms has decreased.
He said the drop in death rates possibly indicated that awareness among those vaccinated and those administering the vaccine and treating patients had gone up, leading to early diagnosis and treatment.
France has reported that the number of people in intensive care units with Covid-19 fell by 102 to 3,104 today, while the overall number of people in hospital with the disease fell by 669 to 17,272.
Reuters reports that both numbers have been on a strong downward trend in recent weeks. The health ministry also reported 98 new coronavirus deaths in hospitals. Later, it is set to report the death tally for retirement care homes over the past three days as well as data on new cases.
The WHO’s European director has warned that the pandemic would not end until at least 70% of people are vaccinated as he criticised Europe’s vaccine rollout as “too slow”.
The World Health Organization’s regional director for Europe Hans Kluge said countries and their populations must not become complacent about the pandemic.
Don’t think the Covid-19 pandemic is over. The pandemic will be over once we reach 70 percent minimum coverage in vaccination.
Our best friend is speed, time is working against us, [and] the vaccination roll-out still goes too slow. We need to accelerate, we need to enlarge the number of vaccines.
It is not acceptable that some countries start to vaccinate the younger, healthy part of the population, while other countries in our region still did not cover all the health care workers and the most vulnerable people.
In the 53 countries and territories that make up the WHO’s European region, including several in Central Asia, 26% of the population has received a first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.
In the EU, 36.6% of the population has received at least one dose and 16.9% have been fully vaccinated, according to a count by AFP.
French president Emmanuel Macron has pledged that his country will invest in boosting the production of Covid-19 vaccines in Africa, to help close a gap in the availability of the shots between African and Western nations.
Speaking at a joint news conference with South African president Cyril Ramaphosa in Pretoria, Macron said Africa made up around 20% of the world’s need for vaccines but only 1% of vaccine production.
How do we boost the production of vaccines on the African continent? On this, we will this afternoon have an investment strategy to help these industrials produce more, and quite quickly.
We need to vaccinate as quickly as possible the maximum number of people ... all over the world. It is our moral duty; it is also in everyone’s interests.
He said France already had a partnership with South Africa’s Biovac Institute and would soon launch a project with South African pharmaceutical company Aspen.
He reiterated support for waiving intellectual property rights for Covid vaccines, a move also supported by US president Joe Biden but opposed by Germany and the UK among other states.
Updated
Fatality rate from blood clots after AstraZeneca jab has decreased, says EMA
The European Medicines Agency task force chair Marco Cavaleri has said that additional reports of blood clots in people after having the AstraZeneca jab since mid-April shows no change in frequency, but the fatality rate has decreased, according to Reuters.
As of yesterday, the EMA had recorded a total of 316 cases of blood clots with low platelets among people who have recently had the AstraZeneca jab in the European Economic Area. Some 17 million people had received at least one dose by 13 April, and since then another 19 million doses have been administered.
Updated
Hotels in Ireland can reopen on 2 June and pubs and restaurants can resume outdoor service on 7 June, the government has announced.
Cinemas and gyms can reopen on 7 June and bars and restaurants can serve customers indoors on 5 July. Non-essential international travel can resume on 19 July in accordance with the EU travel certificate.
The announcement heralded a significant easing of one of Europe’s strictest, longest lockdowns. However, Ireland will not restore the Common Travel Area with Britain because of concerns over the Covid-19 variant first identified in India.
The government, a coalition comprising Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the Green party, also approved plans to hold test entertainment and sports events with up to 500 people at outdoor venues.
The taoiseach, Micheál Martin, is to outline the plan in a televised address this evening.
Everyone arriving in Ireland from abroad, with the exception of Northern Ireland, must complete a passenger locator form and provide evidence of a negative or “not detected” RT-PCR test result. People from countries deemed high-risk – including France and the US – must quarantine in a designated hotel for 14 days. Those from other countries, such as Britain, are advised to self-isolate for 14 days.
Travellers going the other way from Ireland to Britain face no such restriction. Ferry companies are urging the Irish government to fully reinstate the Common Travel Area and open a de facto “bubble” with British travellers.
The Biden administration is taking “a very close look” at the possibility of vaccine passports for travel into and out of the US, the homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said today.
Like so many other public health measures meant to mitigate Covid-19’s spread, vaccine passports have drawn support and ire.
Some welcome the fast pass to normalcy, sick of extended quarantines and tedious testing requirements. Others harbour unsubstantiated concerns that the certificates could chip away at their privacy. Still others worry about vaccine inequality, with the life-saving shots going disproportionately to residents of the world’s wealthiest nations.
Updated
Vaccine equity campaigners have said it would be “obscene” to allow Johnson & Johnson to put company profits before people’s lives, as their vaccine is approved for use in the UK.
Global Justice Now, part of the People’s Vaccine Alliance, is calling on the company to share its vaccine technology and know-how through the World Health Organisation’s Covid-19 technology access pool (C-TAP).
The group’s director, who was a trial volunteer for the company’s vaccine, has said he and his fellow volunteers wanted “a people’s vaccine”.
Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, said:
A single-dose vaccine has huge advantages and could be easier to roll out in low and middle income countries, but we won’t be able to fully utilise this vaccine unless Janssen shares its patents and technological knowhow with the world.
NHS staff and trial volunteers like myself poured time and resources into this vaccine. Governments and charities have fronted billions of dollars to make it a reality. The only return we wanted was a vaccine for the world – a people’s vaccine.
This is an unprecedented pandemic. Johnson & Johnson is one of the wealthiest companies in the world. We need to put people’s lives before this company’s profits. Anything less would be obscene.”
Earlier this month, 450 academics, public health experts, charities, NGOs, unions, MPs, peers, faith leaders, doctors, and patients wrote to Boris Johnson, calling for the UK to support an intellectual property waiver on Covid-19 vaccines and treatments.
The UK has today reported 4,182 new cases of Covid-19, up from 3,542 yesterday, and 10 new deaths within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test.
The official data showed 38.87 million people had received their first dose of the vaccine, equivalent to 73.8% of the total adult population.
The government also said that, as of 9am today, there had been a further 4,182 lab-confirmed cases in the UK. It brings the cumulative total to 4,477,705.
Updated
That’s it from me, Rhi Storer, for now. I will now hand over the live blog back to Mattha Busby for the rest of the afternoon.
Here’s what we know about the European’s Medicines Agency (EMA) approval of the Pfizer vaccine on children:
- It will be expanded to children ages 12 to 15, a decision that offers younger and less at-risk populations across the continent access to a coronavirus vaccine for the first time during the pandemic.
- The recommendation follows similar decisions by regulators in Canada and the US last month.
- The EMA’s recommendation that the vaccine can safely be used on adolescents was based on a study of more than 2,000 adolescents in the U.S. that showed the vaccine was safe and effective. Researchers will continue to monitor the shot’s long-term protection and safety in the children for another two years.
Marco Cavaleri, who heads the EMA body, said the European Union regulator had received the necessary data to authorise the vaccine for adolescents and found it to be highly effective against coronavirus.
The decision will need to be rubber-stamped by the European Commission and individual national regulators, he said.
Updated
European Medicines Agency endorses Pfizer vaccine use for children
Breaking news coming in via Reuters, as the European Medicines Agency backs the use of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for children as young as 12, paving way for a broader roll-out in the region after similar clearances in the US and Canada.
The European Medicines Agency’s endorsement comes weeks after it began evaluating extending use of the vaccine, developed with Germany’s BioNTech, to include 12- to 15-year olds.
It is already being used in the European Union for those aged 16 and older.
This story will be updated as more details emerge.
Updated
Over in Vietnam, the health ministry is in talks to secure COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna through its distribution partner in Asia, Zuellig Pharma, as the country battles a new outbreak.
Health minister Nguyen Thanh Long asked Zuellig Pharma to supply Moderna vaccines to Vietnam as soon as possible so the country can cope with the pandemic effectively, Vietnam’s health ministry said in a statement on Friday.
After successfully containing the new coronavirus for most of last year, Vietnam is now battling an outbreak which includes the highly transmissible B.1.1.7 variant and B.1.617.2 variant.
The country has placed orders for vaccines from several suppliers and has received around 2.9 million doses from its purchases and via the international COVAX scheme.
Vietnam has registered 6,396 coronavirus cases so faf, half of which were recorded in the latest outbreak.
At least 1.04 million people in Vietnam have had one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, but only 28,529 have been fully vaccinated, according to official data.
Updated
A quick news story from Reuters as Russia declines to approve combined AstraZeneca and Sputnik V vaccine trials.
The Russian health ministry has declined to approve clinical trials in Russia of a vaccine against COVID-19 combining Russia’s Sputnik V and AstraZeneca’s shots, an AstraZeneca official told Reuters on Friday.
Human trials of a COVID-19 vaccine combining a shot from AstraZeneca and Britain’s Oxford University with Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine were approved in Azerbaijan, the United Arab Emirates and Belarus, said Irina Panarina, AstraZeneca general director in Russia and Eurasia.
She said AstraZeneca was preparing a response to questions from Russia’s health ministry.
Japan extends its coronavirus state of emergency for 20 more days
Japan has extended its coronavirus state of emergency in Tokyo and other areas for 20 more days, with infections still not slowing as it prepares to host the Olympics.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said: “I am aware that many people are voicing concern about holding the Olympics and Paralympics.
“I take them seriously, and I will proceed with preparations for a safe and secure games.”
He said the next three weeks are “an extremely important time for us to achieve results” in a two-pronged battle to control infections while expanding vaccinations.
The state of emergency, covering Tokyo and eight other metropolitan areas, was expected to end next Monday, but hospitals in some areas are still overflowing with coronavirus patients and serious cases have recently hit new highs.
The 20-day extension covers nine areas ranging from Hokkaido in the north to Fukuoka in the south. A 10th area, the southern island prefecture of Okinawa, is already under emergency status through June 20.
The Olympics are scheduled to start July 23, after a one-year postponement due to the pandemic. Worries about new variants and Japan’s slow vaccination rollout have triggered calls from the public, medical experts and even a sponsor to cancel the games.
Only 2.3% of the population has been fully vaccinated. Japan has reported about 730,000 coronavirus cases and more than 12,700 deaths.
Hi there, this is Rhi Storer taking over from Mattha Busby for the next hour. Please send me your contributions to rhi.storer@guardian.co.uk, or alternatively, you can message me on Twitter.
All Italians aged over 16 will be able to be vaccinated from 3 June onwards, the government’s Covid-19 commissioner has said, with the country also preparing to extend the campaign to 12 to 15-year-olds.
Reuters has more:
Prime minister Mario Draghi has so far urged regional health authorities to give priority to the elderly, who are especially vulnerable to the disease.
“From 3 June, all regions will be able to open up to all age groups [over 16],” commissioner Francesco Paolo Figliuolo said.
Some 11.2 million Italians, or 19% of the population, have completed their vaccination cycle as of Friday, while more than 20 million people have received a first shot.
The country has registered more than 125,000 coronavirus deaths so far, the second highest toll in Europe after Britain.
With many more vaccinations starting to arrive from the various manufacturers, the government is looking to ramp up its inoculation campaign with the aim of covering the entire adult population by September.
Figliuolo said vaccinations might soon be opened up to some 2.3 million Italians aged between 12 and 15 if the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and Italian regulators give the green light.
The EMA is expected to approve shots for youngsters later today. “We are ready to vaccinate them,” Figliuolo said.
World Health Organization (WHO) experts are preparing a proposal on the next studies to be carried out into the origins of the virus that causes Covid-19, a spokeswoman has said.
The US called yesterday for the WHO to carry out a second phase of its investigation into the origins, with independent experts given full access to original data and samples in China. The UK made a similar appeal.
WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told a UN briefing today that experts would prepare a proposal for WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, but that there was no set timeline. Earlier this week WHO’s top emergency expert Mike Ryan said that talks with member states would continue in coming weeks.
Illustrating the potential dangers of social media regulation of news content, due to its u-turn, Facebook yesterday lifted a ban on posts claiming Covid-19 was man-made after the Wall Street Journal reported that three staff members at the Wuhan Institute for Virology sought hospital treatment for flu-like symptoms in November 2019.
It comes after Adhanom Ghebreyesus in February almost immediately undermined the dismissal by a WHO team that visited Wuhan to investigate the origins of the pandemic of the lab leak theory. The original mission oversaw tens of thousands of tests on animals which did not make any suggestion there was a natural cause to the virus.
Updated
Prince Charles has suggested that people struggling to return to full health after having the coronavirus should practise yoga.
In a video statement to the virtual yoga and healthcare symposium Wellness After Covid, the heir apparent said doctors should work together with “complementary healthcare specialists” to “build a roadmap to hope and healing” after Covid.
This pandemic has emphasised the importance of preparedness, resilience and the need for an approach which addresses the health and welfare of the whole person as part of society, and which does not merely focus on the symptoms alone.
As part of that approach, therapeutic, evidenced-informed yoga can contribute to health and healing. By its very nature, yoga is an accessible practice which provides practitioners with ways to manage stress, build resilience and promote healing.”
The prince said those attending the symposium shared an ambition “to help those for whom the mental anguish and physical challenges of long Covid have been devastating”.
He added: “When we work together with a common interest we can build on each other’s ideas and, perhaps, build a roadmap to hope and healing.”
Speaking to attendees at the event co-organised by the Yoga In Healthcare Alliance and the Give Back Yoga university, the Prince of Wales also acknowledged his own brush with Covid in March last year, saying: “I seem to have got away with it quite lightly … unfortunately, that is not the case for millions of people in the UK and across the globe.”
Travelers coming from Nordic countries will no longer have to show a negative Covid test to enter Sweden from next week, the minister for the interior has said.
“We have decided to go ahead with the Nordics first, it’s a priority for us,” the minister, Mikael Damberg, said.
Travelers from other countries within the EU will still have to show a negative test until 30 June, Reuters reports. Travelers from outside the EU are still banned.
DR Congo: 32 MPs have died from Covid over pandemic, says national assembly VP
Thirty-two members of parliament in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or about 5% of the total, have died from Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, the vice-president of the national assembly said.
Reuters has the story:
Even as Congo, like many other African countries, has officially reported relatively few cases and deaths, the virus has rippled through the corridors of power, killing prominent lawmakers and members of the president’s entourage.
“The latest update announced by the government reports 31,248 confirmed cases and 780 deaths, among them 32 members of parliament,” said Jean-Marc Kabund, the first vice president of the lower house of parliament.
In December, lawmakers and others in the parliament building flung chairs and buckets at one another during a brawl caused by a rift between president Felix Tshisekedi and his predecessor, Joseph Kabila. Most wore their masks below their chins.
Tshisekedi raised eyebrows earlier this month when, during a dinner with supporters in the southeastern city of Kolwezi, he noted jokingly that attendees were violating a curfew imposed in response to the pandemic and said, “Today, you have permission.”
Congo’s vaccination campaign has stuttered after it delayed the rollout because of safety concerns about the AstraZeneca shot. As a result, around 75% of the 1.7 million doses it received in March were reallocated the following month to make sure they were used before they expired.
Updated
Lockdown easing to start 'very slowly' in Delhi
Indian authorities have announced a tentative easing of the lockdown in the capital Delhi as coronavirus infections fall in major cities after weeks of restrictions.
AFP reports:
Rural areas of the country are now seeing the brunt of a surge in cases that has overwhelmed the health care system and killed at least 160,000 people since the start of March.
Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi’s chief minister, said that from Monday construction work and factories can resume, “keeping the poorest section of our society, the labourers and daily wage workers, in mind”.
“We are starting the process of reopening very, very slowly. We will reassess it after a week based on experts and people’s opinions,” he said.
Daily infections reported across India have more than halved from more than 400,000 earlier this month, according to official statistics.
Deaths per day have also fallen but by much less, with 3,660 reported on Friday in the previous 24 hours. This is widely seen as a major underestimate. Delhi reported about 1,100 new infections today, down from about 25,000 daily cases when the lockdown was announced six weeks earlier.
Even as he announced reopening from Monday, Kejriwal urged people of Delhi to “not step out of your homes unnecessarily”. He said: “This is a very sensitive time and we have to function with full responsibility so that we can together save our Delhi and our country.”
Updated
A single-shot coronavirus vaccine from Johnson & Johnson has been approved for use in the UK.
PA Media reports:
The vaccine, developed by Johnson & Johnson’s pharmaceutical arm Janssen, has been shown to be 67% effective overall at preventing moderate to severe Covid-19, with studies suggesting it also offers complete protection from admission to hospital and death.
The health secretary, Matt Hancock, welcomed the news. He said: “This is a further boost to the UK’s hugely successful vaccination programme, which has already saved over 13,000 lives, and means that we now have four safe and effective vaccines approved to help protect people from this awful virus.
“As Janssen is a single-dose vaccine, it will play an important role in the months to come as we redouble our efforts to encourage everyone to get their jabs and potentially begin a booster programme later this year.”
Updated
The Danish government has presented its digital coronavirus passport enabling people to travel abroad or, in Denmark, go to the hairdresser, a tattoo parlour, dine inside a restaurant or wherever else it is needed.
“The corona passport we present today can be used from 1 July when you can travel within the EU,” said finance minister Nicolai Vammen.
AP has the story:
Some 20% of Denmark’s population of 6 million have been fully vaccinated, according to the latest figures, he said.
During a press conference outside the Copenhagen airport, health minister Magnus Heunicke held up his phone to show the app, which only features a QR code and a green bar if the person has been vaccinated twice or recently tested negative for Covid-19.
“What we get now is an app that makes it easier and simpler to use,” Heunicke said. “There is no doubt that we will have to use it over the summer, but it is of course something that needs to be phased out.”
People will either have the code scanned or will flash it before entering an airport, a harbor, a train station, a hairdresser or an eatery. In certain cases, a physical document can be sent in the mail to serve the same purpose as the app.
However, there have been warnings from across Europe that vaccine certificates could create a form of “medical apartheid”. Last month, more than 1,200 church leaders in the UK said in a letter they are an “unethical form of coercion” and would strengthen the “surveillance state”.
This scheme has the potential to bring about the end of liberal democracy as we know it and to create a surveillance state in which the government uses technology to control certain aspects of citizens’ lives. As such, this constitutes one of the most dangerous policy proposals ever to be made in the history of British politics.
Updated
Holland’s first choice goalkeeper Jasper Cillessen has tested positive for coronavirus and will not travel with the team for a week-long European Championship training camp in Portugal.
The Valencia keeper will miss the preparations on the Algarve, which include a friendly international against Scotland on Wednesday. “The medical staff of the Dutch team are monitoring his condition closely and as soon as it is medical responsible, he will be drafted back into the squad,” a statement from the Dutch football association said.
Marco Bizot, who was not named in the final 26-man squad by coach Frank de Boer, was already scheduled to travel to the camp in Portugal as a standby keeper, so no replacement is necessary, Reuters reports.
Hungary has identified two cases of the coronavirus variant first detected in India, the government official in charge of vaccinations has said.
Reuters reports:
The central European country has been badly hit by the pandemic, and according to Johns Hopkins University data is the country with the most deaths per 100,000 people. An especially lethal third wave has been easing after an aggressive vaccination campaign.
“The Indian variant is present in Hungary, according to experts we cannot exclude the possibility of a new wave of the pandemic,” Istvan Gyorgy, deputy minister and head of the government’s task force on vaccinations, told a news conference.
Surgeon General Cecilia Muller added one of the two patients has recovered already. Contact tracing was unable to establish how they were infected. Neither of them spent time abroad recently.
The World Health Organization has called for access to patients in the Gaza strip and free passage to evacuate them for medical treatment as health workers struggle to care for the sick and wounded after 11 days of violence.
Reuters reports:
WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told a Geneva briefing that around 600 patients, including some with chronic conditions, needed to be referred outside of the Palestinian enclave since the start of the hostilities, but had been unable to due to crossing closures.
“It’s very important that we help Palestinians get the care they need, especially helping them get treatment outside the Gaza strip,” she said.
WHO has a presence on the ground, Chaib said, but was unable to confirm whether it currently had any access from the outside. Other aid agencies have complained about limited humanitarian access and drug supplies.
Dozens of health centres were damaged during Israeli bombings earlier this month, prompting the WHO to warn that facilities risked being overwhelmed.
“The capacity of the health system to respond is completely crushed,” Helen Ottens-Patterson, MSF head of mission in Gaza, told journalists earlier this week.
In an indication of the challenges ahead, she said that an MSF team had to “wade through rubble and glass” to access a ministry of health compound earlier this week.
AFP have this dispatch from Finland as the Scandinavian country opens drive-in voting for local elections on 13 June to manage the risk of Covid transmissions at traditional polling stations.
Cars are queued up on an old airport runway on the outskirts of the Finnish capital Helsinki - not for coronavirus tests but for drivers to cast their vote.
Outdoor polling stations have sprung up across the Nordic country as authorities try to make voting as socially distanced as possible ahead of the country’s local elections.
“Signing in and filling out the ballot paper went brilliantly,” retiree Joukko Salminen tells AFP from inside his white car. “And corona safe too!”
Finland’s municipal vote was due to take place in April but was postponed due to the pandemic, after which officials began looking for ways to cast ballots outside during a two-week advance voting period, while protecting the legally protected privacy of voters.
“We’ve built screens that stop people being able to see the voting happening,” polling station manager Vesa Kouvonkorpi said. “Because the car is the polling booth, and by law you’re not allowed to see into the polling booth.”
Although processing the drive-in votes takes about four times as long as the regular process, the outdoor polling station has proven popular and received 500 voters on its first day, Kouvonkorpi says.
Mexico has administered roughly 27.7m doses – about 10.9% of the population – and president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has expressed hopes all adults will have had at least one dose by October.
But vaccines have still been denied to many doctors, dentists and medical workers in private medicine – and also some physicians in public institutions. More health workers have died during the pandemic in Mexico than any other country in the hemisphere, according to the Pan-American Health Organisation.
Fuelling doubts about whether the Olympics can go ahead safely, Japan’s government has, as expected extended a coronavirus emergency in Tokyo and other parts of the country until just a month before the Games.
Organisers said they would now wait to take a decision on whether to allow local fans at the Games until the period ends on 20 June. AFP reports that fans from overseas have already been barred, in an unprecedented decision.
Japan has seen a comparatively small virus outbreak, with around 12,500 deaths, and has avoided tough lockdowns. But a fourth wave has prompted the government to put emergency measures in place in 10 regions including the capital.
The measures mostly limit the sale of alcohol in bars and restaurants and ask them to close early, while encouraging telework and capping audience numbers at events.
“The number of new cases has been declining since the middle of the month but the situation continues to be uncertain,” said prime minister Yoshihide Suga, announcing the extension.
Tokyo 2020 chief Seiko Hashimoto told reporters that with the measures being taken “we expect the infection situation to improve.” But she acknowledged that a decision on local fans, originally expected in early June, would now not be taken until the end of the month.
“Once the state of emergency is lifted, we will assess how many spectators we can allow in,” she said, adding that there could be different rules for indoor and outdoor venues and the decision would be based on government guidelines.
Even under the current state of emergency, sports venues in Japan are allowed to seat 5,000 spectators or 50 percent capacity, whichever is smallest.
As pharmaceutical companies face growing pressure to waive patents to allow Covid vaccines to be manufactured quicker to allow more even distribution around the globe, Russia has provided an interesting model on what to do if you would like a certain medicine to be available in your country.
Late last year, the Russian government granted Russian drugmaker Pharmasyntez a compulsory licence for one year to manufacture the anti-Covid-19 drug remdesivir under a different name without creator Gilead Science’s permission.
Pharmasyntez had asked the Kremlin to allow it to produce a generic version of remdesivir before the decree was issued. Now, Russia’s supreme court has rejected a lawsuit from the US company that challenged the Russian government decision to let the firm develop and market the drug without their consent.
Reuters reports that the government said in a decree at the time that the move was in the interests of Russia’s own security. According to the decree, Russia had to pay compensation to the drug’s patent-holder. The amount was not specified.
Vikram Punia, its director, said the company had also written to Gilead in July last year to try to obtain their consent in the form of a voluntary licence, but had not heard back. Pharmasyntez produces remdesivir under the name Remdeform. A shipment of the drug was sent by Russia to India on Tuesday as part of a delivery of humanitarian aid.
Gilead said in a statement it was disappointed by the ruling and called the issuance of a compulsory licence “unnecessary and counterproductive ... We have stood ready to work with Russia to expand access to Veklury [remdesevir] since [the] mid-2020. Intellectual property is not, and has never been, a significant barrier to access to medicines in Russia.”
Its Mattha Busby here taking over the blog from my colleague Martin Belam. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to everyone reading, do get in touch via Twitter with any thoughts or tips. Stay tuned for updates.
Today so far…
- Greece has said it is ready to use a Covid-19 travel certificate before its EU-wide launch on 1 July to attract foreign travellers and save its tourism sector from a second summer lost to the coronavirus.
- Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sanchez also confirmed his country would take part in the trials from 7 June. “This will be decisive in getting the certificate ready before summer begins and is big news for our tourism industry.”
- The deputy prime minister of Ireland, Leo Varadkar, has said that Irish citizens should be able move more freely across the European Union from mid-July, but cast doubt on whether it would also apply to Britain.
- South Africa is in a race against time to vaccinate as many people as possible amid signs the virus may be surging again with the approach of winter in the southern hemisphere, when people spend more time indoors, typically allowing for more spread of disease.
- Japan is expected to extend emergency coronavirus measures in Tokyo and several other regions by about three weeks, according to officials, as the country struggles to rein in a fourth wave of infections less than two months before the Olympics.
- Japan said it would consider sharing its Covid vaccines with other countries as a ruling party committee urged it to provide a portion of its AstraZeneca vaccine stock to Taiwan. Japan has also today approved the use of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine for those aged 12 and above.
- Weeks into Taiwan’s worst outbreak since the pandemic began, and 10 days after the island was put on the third highest level of social restrictions, daily totals of new cases are still not decreasing, the health minister has conceded.
- India reported on Friday 186,364 new coronavirus infections during the previous 24 hours, for its lowest daily rise since April 14, while deaths rose by 3,660.
- The south Asia region - India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives and Sri Lanka – accounts for 18% of global cases and almost 10% of deaths according to analysis by Reuters. The region has exceeded 30 million cases in total.
- Australia’s government is scrambling to administer first doses of Covid vaccines to unvaccinated aged care homes across Victoria on the first day of a week-long lockdown.
- Overcrowding in Victoria’s healthcare system is a “bigger public health emergency than Covid”, according to a leading emergency physician who says the state’s doctors and nurses were exhausted even before the latest outbreak in Australia.
- Czech restaurants will open to indoor diners from Monday. The Czech Republic will also open up to tourists from seven countries – Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Croatia, Austria and Germany – under reciprocal agreements.
- A €2.5bn (£2.15bn) package has been agreed by Germany’s government to help the culture industry get back on its feet as the country slowly emerges from a third wave of the Covid pandemic.
- The UK business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, has defended health secretary Matt Hancock against criticism that he failed to protect people in care homes at the outset of the Covid pandemic, saying residents “were protected as far as we could”.
- Professor Christina Pagel, from University College London and a member of Independent Sage, said the India variant was causing concern in England and the road map for reopening the economy should be delayed.
- Murdo Fraser of the Scottish Conservatives has criticised the continued restrictions in place across Glasgow. He has said if the latest data shows infections are still high then a “more targeted” approach was needed in Scotland.
- A royal academy chaired by Princess Chulabhorn, the youngest sibling of Thailand’s king, has said it would import 1 million doses of Sinopharm’s Covid-19 vaccine next month, after the Food and Drug Administration authorised its use.
- The Philippines has suspended the deployment of workers to Saudi Arabia after it received reports that their employers and recruiters were making them pay for Covid-19 testing, quarantine and insurance upon arrival in the kingdom.
- Russia has registered the world’s first vaccine for animals against Covid, its agricultural regulator said on Wednesday, after tests showed it generated antibodies against the virus in dogs, cats, foxes and mink
- Health ministers around the world are being urged to sign off on plans to create 6m more nursing jobs by 2030, amid warnings that Covid-19 has exacerbated a global shortage and could spark a “brain drain” from the developing world.
That’s it from me, Martin Belam. I will be back on Tuesday. Harry Taylor has our UK live blog, Mattha Busby will be joining you here shortly to carry on bringing you the latest global Covid developments.
The Philippines has suspended the deployment of workers to Saudi Arabia after it received reports that their employers and recruiters were making them pay for Covid-19 testing, quarantine and insurance upon arrival in the kingdom.
Reuters report that Labour secretary Silvestre Bello said in an order that his department will issue an official statement on resumption of deployment “after this matter has been clarified accordingly”.
It was not immediately clear how many Filipinos bound for Saudi Arabia would be directly affected. Saudi Arabia was the most preferred destination of overseas Filipino workers in 2019, government data showed, hosting one out of five Filipinos who landed jobs abroad during that year.
Updated
Australia's federal government scrambles to vaccinate Victorian aged care homes as state enters lockdown
The Scott Morrison government in Australia was scrambling to administer first doses of Covid vaccines to unvaccinated aged care homes across Victoria on the first day of a week-long lockdown, as federal ministers rejected criticism of the programme’s rollout.
Facilities hurriedly prepared residents for rushed vaccines on Friday as the commonwealth raced to vaccinate neglected populations within the highest priority group it had initially promised to two months ago.
The federal health minister, Greg Hunt, had said on Thursday there were 74 residential aged care homes across Australia that had not yet received an initial dose of Covid vaccine, including 16 in Victoria.
But he went on a media blitz on Friday morning insisting every aged care home in the state would have received at least one dose by the weekend.
The government’s push to vaccinate the remaining aged care homes in Victoria came a day after Hunt announced the recommended two-week interval between flu and Covid shots would be scrapped for aged care settings in Victoria.
The operator of one aged care home in Melbourne, who asked not to be identified, told Guardian Australia they were surprised to learn vaccination teams were being sent to their facility on Friday. It presented logistical hurdles to prepare residents at such short notice, they said.
Read more here: Federal government scrambles to vaccinate Victorian aged care homes as state enters first day of lockdown
Updated
My colleague Haroon Siddique has a fuller write-up of those quotes from the UK business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng that we were carrying on this blog earlier: Kwasi Kwarteng defends Hancock over Covid care home claims
As a reminder, UK Covid news is now being blogged by Harry Taylor over here:
Thailand seeks to import 1m doses of newly-approved Sinopharm vaccine
A royal academy chaired by Princess Chulabhorn, the youngest sibling of Thailand’s king, has said it would import 1m doses of Sinopharm’s Covid-19 vaccine next month, after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorised its use.
The announcement in the official Royal Gazette surprised some members of the government, which had until now insisted on being the sole importer of Covid-19 vaccines.
The FDA on Friday approved the Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine for emergency use, making it the fifth authorised by Thailand after AstraZenaca, Sinovac’s CoronaVac, Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen and Moderna
“We want to help plug in the gaps for business, schools, so they can move forward,” Nithi Mahanonda, secretarygeneral of the Chulabhorn Royal Academy told a news briefing.
Reuters report that earlier this week, the academy announced it would import “alternative vaccines” to supplement the government campaign. The government says it will have 6m AstraZenaca doses and 3 million Sinovac doses available in June. Just over 1 million of Thailand’s more than 66 million people are fully vaccinated.
Nithi said other organisations would be able to buy from the academy’s 1m Sinopharm doses, adding that it did not seek profit.
Updated
Greece and Spain among countries agreeing to early trial of EU Covid-19 travel certificate
Greece has said it is ready to use a Covid-19 travel certificate before its EU-wide launch on 1 July to attract foreign travellers and save its tourism sector from a second summer lost to the coronavirus.
The free certificate will take the form of a QR code on a smartphone or paper, letting authorities determine the status of a visitor based on records in their home EU country.
Greece was one of the early advocates of a certificate that would ease European Union travel curbs and help pull the country’s economy from recession by lifting tourism revenues.
The European Council and parliament last week reached a deal on the digital green certificate following a rapid pick-up of vaccinations allowing widespread lifting of coronavirus curbs.
The European parliament is expected to pass a law in the week from 7 June and more than a dozen EU countries, including France and Spain, have agreed to test the system before a launch on 1 July.
The certificate would show if a person had received a vaccine, had a recent negative test or had immunity based on recovery.
“It is very, very simple. Essentially, it includes all the information that a member-state would need to welcome a traveller without imposing additional restrictions,” Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said at a presentation of the pass on Friday.
Lefteris Papadimas and Angeliki Koutantou report for Reuters that Mitsotakis added: “Greece is ready to launch this digital certificate earlier than 1 July.”
He called on EU countries to ensure they stick to the deadlines and facilitate travel over the summer.
In a separate event in the northern Spanish city of Soria, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez also confirmed his country would take part in the trials from 7 June.
“This will be decisive in getting the certificate ready before summer begins and is big news for our tourism industry.”
Updated
South Africa is in a race against time to vaccinate as many people as possible amid signs the virus may be surging again with the approach of winter in the southern hemisphere, when people spend more time indoors, typically allowing for more spread of disease.
It is also a critical front in the fight against the virus in Africa, with South Africa recording 40% of the continent’s Covid-19 deaths.
Since January, South Africa has vaccinated nearly 500,000 of its 1.2 million healthcare workers and now is adding its older citizens to the campaign. In the past two weeks, nearly 200,000 have received their Pfizer jabs with instructions to come back in six weeks to get their second dose.
After a plateau of the disease that lasted a few months, South Africa’s new cases, hospitalisations and deaths are trending up. The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases has risen over the past two weeks from 3.33 per 100,000 people on 12 May to 3.97 per 100,000 on Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins University. The seven-day rolling average of deaths is also on the rise: from 0.10 deaths per 100,000 people to 0.11 per 100,000 over the same period.
The increase may seem small, but experts warn it may be the start of a resurgence as the country enters the colder winter months, which start in June.
The national coronavirus task force met this week and President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government is pondering the possibility of reimposing restrictions, such as reducing the hours that alcohol can be sold and limiting the number of people at gatherings.
“We’re under pressure to reach higher levels of vaccination,” Mosa Moshabela, professor of public health at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, told the Associated Press.
“New vaccination centers are opening every day and the numbers being given shots should quickly go from 20,000 elderly per day to 50,000 and then 100,000 per day,” he said. “By June we should reach 200,000 per day. We need to have that kind of volume to get close to vaccinating 5 million elderly by the end of June.”
South Africa’s overall goal is to vaccinate 67% of its 60 million people by February.
Updated
Indoor dining to be allowed in Czech Republic – borders will reopen to seven countries
Czech restaurants will open to indoor diners from Monday, health minister Adam Vojtech said this morning, announcing a quicker-than-planned easing of Covid-19 restrictions.
Reuters report that the Czech Republic will also open up to tourists from seven countries – Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Croatia, Austria and Germany – under reciprocal agreements.
Updated
Harry Taylor is on our UK live blog duties this morning, and he’s just got that started for the day. If you are after UK news, then you can follow that with him here …
I’ll be continuing here with the latest global coronavirus news.
Updated
The deputy prime minister of Ireland, Leo Varadkar, has said that Irish citizens should be able move more freely across the European Union from mid-July, but cast doubt on whether it would also apply to Britain.
“The advice that we have, and we’re accepting this advice, is that there are real concerns about the Indian variant and for that reason, we’re not in a position to restore the common travel area just yet,” Varadkar told national broadcaster RTE.
Reuters report he said there would continue to be restrictions for arrivals from Britain, including requirements to have a vaccine or a negative Covid-19 test, even once travel opens up using the EU’s “green certificate”.
Updated
Japan approves Pfizer vaccine for 12- to 15-year-olds
Very quick snap from Reuters that a Japanese health ministry panel has approved the use of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine for those aged 12 and above.
The move, which lowers the threshold from 16, follows approvals in the US and other nations this month for the vaccine to be used for adolescents.
Updated
On the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, UK business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng was pushed on the issue of people being discharged from hospital to care homes without testing.
"They were protected as far as we could"
— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) May 28, 2021
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng talks to @MishalHusain about Matt Hancock’s actions on protecting care homes from Covid#R4Today https://t.co/ugRWAQVKiY pic.twitter.com/DQ8lkVm8GK
He was fairly steadfast in repeatedly saying that testing capacity had to be built from scratch, and that is what Matt Hancock and the department did.
Taiwan moves closer to level 4 lockdown after third consecutive day of record deaths
Weeks into Taiwan’s worst outbreak since the pandemic began, and 10 days after the island was put on the third highest level of social restrictions, daily totals of new cases are still not decreasing, the health minister has conceded.
In today’s daily press conference, minister Chen Chih-shung reported 19 new deaths, 297 new cases and an additional 258 cases from a backlog of cases stretching as far as 10 days. He said the trends appeared stable, and were not rising, but the fact they were not visibly decreasing suggested there was still unidentified spread. The 19 deaths is the third consecutive record for daily fatalities.
After including the backlogged cases today, Taiwan's #COVID19 cases aren't going down:https://t.co/rykK8Zu917 pic.twitter.com/MCjFv8gVRG
— Roy Ngerng 鄞義林 (@royngerng) May 28, 2021
Taiwan is currently on alert level 3, of a four-tier system. Recreation, entertainment and sporting venues have closed, restaurants ordered to do take-away only, and working from home encouraged but not enforced.
The backlog of cases has made assessment of trends - and the effectiveness of the response measures - difficult, with up to 95 cases at a time being added to previous daily totals.
For the first time in this outbreak, Chen has flagged a possible move to level 4, requiring a lockdown. Until now he has said it would not happen unless there were 14 consecutive days of more than 100 cases (which has happened) and a rate of at least 50% untraced (which has not happened).
He said they need to get a clearer picture of the trends, and would have more information early next week.
Chen also announced local governments would be allowed to facilitate their own vaccine purchases, with FDA approval, acknowledging the central government’s processes were not procuring fast enough to meet Taiwan’s needs in the context of the current outbreak.
About 330,000 people have received at least one vaccine so far, from a population of 24 million. Taiwan’s hospitals have also been told to double their Covid patient capacity by allowing two patients to a room, instead of one.
Germany agrees €2.5bn package to help revive Covid-hit culture sector
A €2.5bn (£2.15bn) package has been agreed by the German government to help the culture industry get back on its feet as the country slowly emerges from a third wave of the Covid pandemic.
The finance minister, Olaf Scholz, has called the package “the biggest cultural subsidy programme” since the end of the second world war.
The coronavirus cultural fund is intended to give organisers of events assurances that they will be compensated if performances and concerts are not able to go ahead as planned, as well as making up for the loss of ticket sales due to reduced seating as a result of social distancing regulations.
Initially the measures will protect events of up to 500 participants, so that if from 1 July an event has to be cancelled, the organiser will be fully compensated. From the end of August, in anticipation of events being able to increase in size, that will go up to 2,000 participants.
The measures, coming as Germany starts to open up after months of tight restrictions, are on top of a multimillion-euro neustart kultur (new start culture) programme announced last year to cover events across the country.
“Life is starting again after a long coronavirus winter,” Scholz said. Monika Grütters, the culture minister, said the fund sent a signal to the cultural industry that its “resuscitation deserves the same amount of effort which is being given to other branches”.
Read more of Kate Connolly’s report from Berlin: Germany agrees €2.5bn package to help revive Covid-hit culture sector
Yesterday UK housing minister Robert Jenrick was touting next spring as a possible starting date for a Covid inquiry. Opposition Labour MP David Lammy has just joined calls to rapidly bring that date forward in the light of the revelations from Dominic Cummings earlier in the week.
Start the Inquiry into how the U.K. has been left with the highest Covid death toll in Europe this Summer. No excuses for a delay.
— David Lammy (@DavidLammy) May 28, 2021
Meanwhile on LBC, shock-jock Nick Ferrari has been lambasting business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng saying he should be “kicking the door down” of the prime minister, “banging the desk and saying ‘We have got to stick to 21 June, prime minister!’”.
Kwarteng replies “You know what Nick, that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
The rest of his answer doesn’t make it sound like he is doing that, however, as he reiterates form his earlier media appearances that “What I can’t do is give guarantees on the 28 May” and continues to hold the line that the government will be following the data and there will not be a decision until 14 June.
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng refuses to guarantee that lockdown will be eased on 21 June. @NickFerrariLBC pic.twitter.com/gwHT3yKJO5
— LBC (@LBC) May 28, 2021
Mario Koran reports for us from Milwaukee that Wisconsin is the ground zero of America’s battle against vaccine hesitancy:
Vaccination rates in Wisconsin vary widely between rural and urban areas and political, religious and racial divides – a pattern that mirrors the divide across the nation.
In the progressive stronghold of Dane county – home to the University of Wisconsin-Madison – more than 65% of the population has received one dose. In the state’s rural north, Taylor county has vaccinated only 23.5% of the population, state data shows.
Vaccine availability once posed the biggest barrier to immunization. But as availability increased, demand plateaued. Now, healthcare professionals are strategizing ways to reach those who haven’t yet been vaccinated but remain open to it.
“Most of our rural residents have the information they need about where and when to get vaccinated. So this is no longer primarily an issue about access to the vaccine. It truly is an issue of what is commonly called vaccine hesitancy,” said Tim Size, executive director of the Rural Wisconsin Health Cooperative, a network of 43 rural hospitals.
“I’m not talking about those who just say hell will freeze over before they get the vaccine. That’s not where I think any of us probably need to spend our energy because it’s unlikely to get much traction. I’m talking about the number of people who are communicating that they’re not quite ready yet, but with more information and conversation, they may get there.”
Read more of Mario Koran’s report from Milwaukee here: Wisconsin: ground zero of America’s battle against vaccine hesitancy
Prof Christina Pagel, from University College London and a member of Independent Sage, said the India variant was causing concern and the road map should be delayed.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Certainly we have weakened the link significantly between cases and hospitalisations, but we haven’t broken it.”
She added: “We now have fewer restrictions in England than we’ve had since the pandemic started, so if enough people get infected, even a really small proportion who need hospital can still end up being quite large absolute numbers.”
Asked whether the planned further lockdown easing for 21 June should not go ahead, she said: “So far we’ve kind of been crossing our fingers a little bit, Sage and Public Health England both say it’s a more transmissible variant, we know it has some levels of vaccine escape.
“So we’re in a situation where, compared to two months ago, we now have a dominant variant, it transmits faster, and our vaccines are less effective against it.”
PA Media reports that asked if it would be “very demoralising” to remain as we are now, she said: “I think what’s demoralising is having a third wave. If we can just delay international travel, delay stage 4 of the road map until we have a much higher proportion of people vaccinated with two doses, we’re in a much, much better position.
“We’re only two months away from that, it’s not long to wait. What I don’t want is for us to have new restrictions.”
Updated
In the UK, business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has become the latest minister to defend health secretary Matt Hancock, saying “Very few people – if anyone – worked as hard as he did.”
Hancock had an awkward time in front of parliament yesterday following accusations by former government adviser Dominic Cummings that he had lied to colleagues and the public during the early stages of the pandemic.
"Very few people, if anyone, worked as hard as he did."
— Sky News (@SkyNews) May 28, 2021
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng says he "fully believes" Health Secretary Matt Hancock was "absolutely focussed" and "very committed" to saving lives since the start of the pandemic.
Follow: https://t.co/qUF6tScpZN pic.twitter.com/HCdQDv1TEu
Kwarteng said: “I think what Matt stressed very carefully yesterday was that he was absolutely focused, right from the start of the pandemic, on saving people’s lives.
“He was in a difficult situation as the Health Secretary, in a pandemic, the like of which we hadn’t seen for 100 years. He was under huge pressure.
“And as a Cabinet colleague, I know that he worked really hard and very few people - if anyone - worked as hard as he did and he was very committed to saving lives. Now, he said what he said, I fully believe him but we’ll have an inquiry and that will iron out all these facts.”
Updated
Poulomi Ghosh reports for the Hindustan Times on a vaccine mix-up causing concern:
At least 20 people in Uttar Pradesh’s Siddharthnagar district bordering Nepal were administered with different doses of vaccines, in a case of “negligence”.
The 20 people who received two different vaccines in two slots are all from Audahi Kalan village and are aged above 45 years. On 1 April, there were given a dose of Covishield, which was their first dose. On 14 May, they were administered the second dose and as the health workers did not check the card to find out which vaccine was administered to them earlier, they were given Covaxin, by mistake.
Reports said none of them reported any adverse effect.
There are controlled trials ongoing in some countries of mixing vaccines to see if it increases effectiveness.
Updated
Murdo Fraser of the Scottish Conservatives has criticised the continued restrictions in place across Glasgow. PA Media reports that he has said if the latest data shows infections are still high then a “more targeted” approach was needed.
Areas of Glasgow with higher concentrations of coronavirus infections should be targeted with testing and vaccinations rather than the whole city being subject to “blanket” restrictions, the Scottish Conservatives have said.
Fraser told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland: “Our view is the current council-wide lockdown in Glasgow has not been the right approach.
“Large parts of Glasgow do not see large numbers of people infected with Covid and yet are affected by these lockdown restrictions.
“If the data is still showing a specific problem in Glasgow what we should be doing is isolating that problem … localised surge testing, accelerating vaccinations in those communities and greater support for local businesses who have been really suffering.”
Glasgow has been under strict coronavirus restrictions for 270 days and is the only part of the country under tougher Level 3 constraints.
An update on restrictions in Scotland’s largest city is expected later today from first minister Nicola Sturgeon.
Updated
Overcrowding in Victorian hospitals ‘bigger emergency than Covid’, expert warns
Overcrowding in Victoria’s healthcare system is a “bigger public health emergency than Covid”, according to a leading emergency physician who says the state’s doctors and nurses were exhausted even before the latest outbreak.
Victoria is in a seven-day lockdown with 30 cases of community transmission, more than 120 exposure sites, and 15,000 primary and secondary contacts of cases in isolation.
The Australasian College for Emergency Medicine Victoria faculty chair, Dr Mya Cubitt, said on Friday that doctors and nurses in public hospitals had been dreading such a situation because they were still recovering from Victoria’s second wave in 2020.
At its height, there were more than 700 new cases in a single day. There were 768 deaths overall with hundreds of healthcare workers infected.
“We are in the worst crisis that healthcare has faced in many years,” Cubitt said.
“You could even say – and I’d love to speak with [chief health officer Prof] Brett Sutton about this – that the access block and overcrowding of the system is the bigger public health emergency at the moment. Whether we have a Covid outbreak or not, emergency clinicians, and all of the many colleagues that we intersect with in the healthcare system, are under extreme pressure.”
Read more of Melissa Davey’s report here: Overcrowding in Victorian hospitals ‘bigger emergency than Covid’, expert warns
Updated
Sky News have just posted a clip of that Kwasi Kwarteng interview on Twitter.
"I think that the numbers of [Indian variant] cases is a matter of concern," says Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, but "the effectiveness of the vaccine is what can give us some confidence that we can reopen on the 21 June".#COVID19 updates live: https://t.co/6NgLKgejfN pic.twitter.com/7VmakwQtOM
— Sky News (@SkyNews) May 28, 2021
Reuters have been looking at the impact of Covid in the South Asia region, and have found that the tally of cases there, according to their figures, passed 30 million today.
They report that the south Asia region - India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives and Sri Lanka – accounts for 18% of global cases and almost 10% of deaths. But there is growing suspicion that official tallies of infections and deaths are not reflecting the true extent of the problem.
India’s decision to halt the export of vaccines until at least October has had a knock-on effect, with other South Asia countries such as Nepal and Bangladesh making diplomatic efforts to secure Covid-19 vaccines to prop up their faltering inoculation drives as their stocks run out.
India’s western neighbour Pakistan, with purchases and donations from China and allocations from the World Health Organisation and the GAVI Vaccine Alliance, has now secured more than 18m doses. Pakistan has opened its vaccination campaign to everyone aged 19 or older.
Updated
Number of cases in England 'a matter of concern' – UK minister
As I mentioned, business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has been on Sky News, and he was rather downbeat when asked about the prospects for the roadmap out of lockdown. He said:
We don’t want to proceed with the roadmap without considering all the information that we have. I think that the numbers of cases, is a matter of concern. Today’s the 28th of May. It’s impossible for anyone to know what the situation will be like in a week or two weeks time.
On the positive side, he said “the other thing that’s very helpful and encouraging, is the fact that the numbers of hospitalizations, and the number of fatalities as well, is considerably lower than it was even just two months ago”
Ultimately he keep reiterating that the UK government would be guided by data:
There’s lots of facts that we have to consider. I, as business secretary, I’m very committed to try to reopen on 21 June, I can’t guarantee that. And as I’ve said, we’re looking at the data, every day.
The UK government dashboard shows that cases, deaths and hospitalisations are all going up, albeit at much lower levels than they were at the height of the pandemic. Kwarteng confirmed that there would be no decision before 14 June.
Updated
Good morning from London, it is Martin Belam here – you can get in touch with me at martin.belam@theguardian.com. The UK’s business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng looks to have drawn the short straw for media duties this morning – he’ll be on Sky News in a few moments. While we wait for that, here’s Lizzy Davies on calls for 6m more nurses worldwide:
Health ministers around the world are being urged to sign off on plans to create 6m more nursing jobs by 2030, amid warnings that Covid-19 has exacerbated a global shortage and could spark a “brain drain” from the developing world.
Delegates meeting virtually this week at the World Health Assembly, the key decision-making body of the World Health Organization, are expected to adopt a resolution calling on countries to transform the nursing profession through more investment, support and training.
The WHO director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called on countries to invest in healthcare workers, nearly 50% of whom are nurses and midwives, saying the pandemic had reminded everyone “that these are incredible people doing incredible jobs under incredible circumstances”.
“We owe them so much, and yet globally health and care workers often lack the protection, the equipment, the training, the decent pay, the safe working conditions and the respect they deserve,” he said in his opening remarks. “If we have any hope of achieving a healthier, safer, fairer future, every member state must protect and invest in its health and care workforce as a matter of urgency.”
Read more here: ‘Protect and invest’: WHO calls for 6m more nurses worldwide
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today.
And if, for a break from pandemic news, you’d like to see a praying mantis wearing “tiny homemade 3D glasses”, might I suggest:
Russia registers world's first Covid vaccine for animals
Russia has registered the world’s first vaccine for animals against Covid, its agricultural regulator said on Wednesday, after tests showed it generated antibodies against the virus in dogs, cats, foxes and mink, Reuters reports.
Mass production of the vaccine, called Carnivac-Cov, can start in April, regulator Rosselkhoznadzor said.
The World Health Organization has expressed concern over the transmission of the virus between humans and animals. The regulator said the vaccine would be able to protect vulnerable species and thwart viral mutations.
Russia has so far only registered two cases of Covid among animals, both in cats.
Denmark culled all 17 million mink on its farms last year after concluding that a strain of the virus had passed from humans to mink and that mutated strains of the virus had then turned up among people.
Rosselkhoznadzor said Russian fur farms planned to buy the vaccine, along with businesses in Greece, Poland and Austria. Russia’s fur farm industry accounts for around 3% of the global market, down from 30% in the Soviet era, according to the main trade body.
Thailand’s food and drug regulator on Friday approved for emergency use the coroanvirus vaccine developed by China’s Sinopharm, Reuters reports, citing a senior official.
“The FDA has approved the Sinopharm vaccine,” senior health official Paisan Dankhum told a news conference, making it the fifth Covid-19 vaccine Thailand has approved.
Updated
Japanese shares jumped on Friday, as investors scooped up stocks after sell-offs due to MSCI’s reshuffle in the previous session, while progress in the country’s vaccination drive lifted risk appetite on prospects of a swift economic recovery, Reuters reports.
The Nikkei share average crossed the 29,000 level for the first time since 11 May, jumping 1.95% to 29,106.86, as of 0205 GMT. The index is poised for a weekly gain of 2.8%.
Rollouts of Covid vaccines have contributed to positive sentiment as investors hope a steady vaccination drive can help accelerate economic recovery, market participants said.
Updated
Japan considering sharing vaccines with Taiwan, which is battling surge in infections
Japan said on Friday it would consider sharing its Covid vaccines with other countries as a ruling party committee urged it to provide a portion of its AstraZeneca Plc vaccine stock to Taiwan, Reuters reports.
Taiwan is battling a spike in domestic infections and has vaccinated only about 1% of its population, while Japan has secured more than 400 million doses, double what it needs for its adult population.
“We think it’s important to ensure fair access to safe and effective vaccines in every country and region towards achieving universal health coverage,” Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato told a news conference.
“We will swiftly consider and look into a concrete course of policy with regard to how we provide other countries and regions with vaccines that exceed the amount for those needed at home.
Masahisa Sato, the head of a Japanese ruling party committee on Taiwan relations, said earlier on Friday the government should provide Taiwan with vaccines as soon as possible, adding “when Japan was in need Taiwan sent us 2 million masks.”
Kato declined to comment whether Tokyo had received supply requests from specific countries.
India sees lowest new cases in six weeks
India reported on Friday 186,364 new coronavirus infections during the previous 24 hours, for its lowest daily rise since April 14, while deaths rose by 3,660.
The South Asian nation’s tally of infections now stands at 27.56 million, with the death toll at 318,895, health ministry data show.
Updated
Japan expected to extend restrictions
Japan is expected to extend emergency coronavirus measures in Tokyo and several other regions by about three weeks, according to officials, as the country struggles to rein in a fourth wave of infections less than two months before the Olympics.
The state of emergency – the third in the capital since the start of the pandemic – was called in late April and was originally due to end on 11 May, but was extended until the end of this month, as restrictions on businesses failed to make a dent in infections. Media reports said the latest extension could last until 20 June.
Infections have fallen in Tokyo in recent days, but the daily caseload is still too high to justify an end to the measures, according to medical experts, while hospitals are contending with a record number of critically ill Covid-19 patients:
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan.
As always, you can get in touch with me on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
India reported on Friday 186,364 new coronavirus infections during the previous 24 hours, for its lowest daily rise since April 14, while deaths rose by 3,660.
The South Asian nation’s tally of infections now stands at 27.56 million, with the death toll at 318,895, health ministry data show.
Meanwhile Japan is expected to extend emergency coronavirus measures in Tokyo and several other regions by about three weeks, according to officials, as the country struggles to rein in a fourth wave of infections less than two months before the Olympics.
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
- Argentina reported a record one-day number of new Covid-19 cases of 41,080 on Thursday, amid a second wave of infections that has made the country one of the hardest hit in the world, pushing the local health care system to its limit.
- Africa needs at least 20m doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine within six weeks if those who have had their first shot are to get the second in time, the WHO said on Thursday.
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Up to three-quarters of new UK Covid cases are thought to be caused by the variant first detected in India, as the reported number more than doubled to almost 7,000, Matt Hancock said on Thursday.
- The United States called on Thursday for the World Health Organization to carry out a second phase of its investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, with independent experts given full access to original data and samples in China.
- The US intelligence community acknowledged its agencies had two theories on where Covid-19 originated, with an element embracing a possible laboratory accident as the source of the pandemic.
- US President Joe Biden said he is likely to release a report detailing the US intelligence community’s findings on the origins of Covid-19 in full.
- Sweden will go forward with its plan to ease some of its Covid curbs from June 1, prime minister Stefan Lofven said.
- Germany plans to make enough Covid vaccine doses available to offer a first shot to all children aged 12 and over by the end of August, a draft health ministry document showed.
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