At least 27 people were killed and 46 injured in a fire on Saturday at a hospital in south-east Baghdad that had been equipped to house Covid-19 patients, medical sources at three nearby hospitals said.
The fire at the Ibn Khatib hospital in the Diyala Bridge area of the Iraqi capital occurred after an accident caused an oxygen tank to explode, the sources said.
Many ambulances were rushing towards the hospital, ferrying away those hurt by the fire, a Reuters photographer said.
Patients not injured in the incident were also being transferred out of the hospital.
Costa Rica on Saturday registered 1,830 new Covid-19 infections, its highest daily increase since the start of the pandemic, health authorities said.
There have been 238,760 cases and 3,143 deaths from Covid-19 in the Central American country of five million people, Reuters reports.
“We are living through the darkest health moment of Costa Rica in modern times,” health minister Daniel Salas said in a televised address to the nation.
He added that the 125 beds in intensive care units allocated for severe Covid-19 cases are 94% full, and said the remaining space could be filled in the coming days.
23 dead and 44 injured after fire at hospital in Iraq
At least 23 people have now died and 44 injured after the fire at a hospital in Baghdad that had been equipped to house Covid-19 patients (22:54), medical sources told Reuters.
The head of Iraqi civil defense unit said the fire broke out in the floor designated for the pulmonary intensive care unit and that 90 people have been rescued from the hospital out of 120, state news agency INA quoted him as saying.
Major General Kadhim Bohan added that the flames have been put out.
Updated
India’s daily Covid deaths and infections hit new records on Saturday, but doctors and bereaved families have warned that even these bleak official statistics are seriously underestimating the scale of the country’s tragedy.
As a court in Delhi said India is facing not just a second wave but a “tsunami”, and hospitals had to turn patients away as they ran out of both beds and oxygen, people in many parts of India are still avoiding testing or struggling to access it.
“The figures on Covid infections that the government is releasing are actually an underestimate,” Dr Manas Gumta, general secretary of the Association of Health Service Doctors in West Bengal, told the Observer.
Reported casualties after fire breaks out at hospital in Iraq
At least 10 people were killed and 30 injured in a fire at a hospital in south-eastern Baghdad, Iraq, that had been equipped to house Covid-19 patients.
Reuters reports:
The fire at the Ibn Khatib hospital in the Diyala Bridge area of the Iraqi capital occurred after an accident caused an oxygen tank to explode, the sources said.
Many ambulances were rushing towards the hospital, ferrying away those hurt by the fire, a Reuters photographer nearby said.
Patients not injured in the incident were also being transferred out of the hospital, medical sources said.
Updated
Brazil has recorded 71,137 new cases of coronavirus and 3,076 further deaths, the health ministry said on Saturday.
Following an anti-lockdown protest in London, the Metropolitan Police said: “Eight officers were injured as they worked to disperse crowds in Hyde Park this evening.
“Missiles including bottles were thrown in small pockets of disorder. “Two officers were taken to hospital. Thankfully, they are not believed to be seriously injured. “Three people were arrested for offences including assault on police and are now in custody.”
Immunologists and virologists are questioning the ability of populations to ever achieve herd immunity to Covid-19.
They say gradually waning immunity to the virus after infection or vaccination, and the impact of variants, mean it is likely annual vaccinations will be required and cases will continue to occur.
Prof Miles Davenport, the program head of the Kirby Institute’s infection analytics program at the University of New South Wales in Australia, says “the concept of herd immunity is that once it’s achieved, then you will not have circulation of virus in the community”.
The Indian government has asked Twitter to take down dozens of tweets, including some by local lawmakers, that were critical of the handling of the coronavirus outbreak.
Twitter has withheld some of the tweets after the legal request by the Indian government, a company spokeswoman told Reuters.
The government made an emergency order to censor the tweets, Twitter disclosed on Lumen database, a Harvard University project. In the government’s legal request, dated April 23 and disclosed on Lumen, 21 tweets were mentioned.
The law cited in the government’s request was the Information Technology Act, 2000.
“When we receive a valid legal request, we review it under both the Twitter Rules and local law,” the Twitter spokeswoman said.
“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,” she said.
The spokeswoman confirmed Twitter had notified account holders directly about withholding their content and let them know that it received a legal order pertaining to their tweets.
In Bangalore, a city besieged by India’s disastrous second wave of coronavirus, Pippa Baxter and her young family remained stoic.
From their empty house, living out of bags packed in anticipation, they could see a way out.
They would be on a repatriation flight back home to Australia in little over a week, leaving a nation where crematoriums and burial grounds are being overwhelmed by the dead.
Mexico has reported 3,308 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 349 fatalities, according to the country’s health ministry data.
It brings the country’s total to 2,326,738 infections and 214,853 deaths, Reuters reports.
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.
The US administered 225,640,460 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country as of Saturday morning and distributed 290,685,655 doses, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.
That is an increase from the 222,322,230 vaccine doses the CDC said had been administered by April 23 out of 286,095,185 doses delivered, Reuters reports.
The agency said 138,644,724 people had received at least one dose while 93,078,040 people had been fully vaccinated as of Saturday.
Two men have been arrested after the anti-lockdown protests in Hyde park, London, today.
The Metropolitan Police said a 38-year-old man was arrested near Embankment on suspicion of a public order offence, while a 37-year-old man was arrested near Trafalgar Square on suspicion of being drunk and disorderly and a public order offence.
Thank you to everyone who was safe during today’s demonstration in central London.
— Metropolitan Police Events (@MetPoliceEvents) April 24, 2021
Two men were arrested for public order offences and are currently in custody. Our policing operation will continue into the evening in and around London.
France has reported 32,633 new coronavirus cases, Reuters reports.
The country has recorded over 5.44 million cases in total.
Angela Merkel has urged Germans to accept nationwide pandemic restrictions that took effect at midnight, resulting in a 10 p.m.-to-5 a.m. curfew and further limits on personal contacts and access to nonessential stores in regions with high infections.
Merkel acknowledged the new rules are “tough” but insisted they are needed to curb the spread of the virus in the country, Associated Press reports.
She said the new measures, which automatically take effect in regions with more than 100 new cases a week per 100,000 inhabitants, are “urgently needed.”
“No country that managed to break the third wave of the pandemic and then loosen restrictions again did so without tough measures such as nighttime curfews,” Merkel said.
Updated
Indian authorities scrambled to get oxygen tanks to hospitals for Covid- 19 patients amid the world’s worst coronavirus surge, as the government came under increasing criticism for what doctors said was its negligence in the face of a foreseeable public health disaster.
Associated Press reports:
For the third day in a row, India set a global daily record of new infections. The 346,786 confirmed cases over the past day brought India’s total to more than 16 million, behind only the United States.
The health ministry reported another 2,624 deaths in the past 24 hours, pushing India’s Covid-19 fatalities to 189,544. Experts say even those figures are likely an undercount.
The government ramped up its efforts to get medical oxygen to hospitals using special Oxygen Express trains, air force planes and trucks to transport tankers, and took measures to exempt critical oxygen supplies from customs taxes.
“Every hospital is running out (of oxygen). We are running out,” Dr. Sudhanshu Bankata, executive director of Batra Hospital, a leading hospital in the capital, told New Delhi Television channel.
Updated
France reported a further 220 Covid-19 deaths in hospitals in the last 24 hours, Reuters reports.
The country has registered more than 102,000 fatalities in total.
Official figures published on Saturday showed the number of Covid patients in intensive care units in France dipped from the previous day to stand at 5,958.
Updated
Thousands of protesters marched through central London on Saturday demanding a ban on vaccine passports and an end to lockdown.
Carrying banners displaying messages such as “vaccine passports = a two-tiered society” and “give flu a chance”, protesters rallied down Oxford Street, Victoria Embankment, Parliament and back to Hyde Park.
“Give flu a chance.” #Antilockdownprotests #londonprotest pic.twitter.com/GNFO8AfFRD
— Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) April 24, 2021
London mayoral candidates Piers Corbyn and Lawrence Fox – two of the four anti-lockdown candidates running for election in May – were among those on the march.
The Metropolitan police tweeted: “We have a policing operation in central London today as a result of a number of demonstrations. “Anyone coming into London for a protest must make sure their gathering is lawful, with a risk assessment carried out by the organiser.”
The protest comes as the UK passes the milestone of vaccinating half its population, with more than 33m first vaccinations and 11m second doses administered.
Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has suggested that the army might be called on to the streets to restore order if lockdown measures against Covid-19 that he opposes lead to anarchy.
He repeated his frequent criticism of restrictions imposed by local governments to curb infections – measures he claims do more harm than good, Reuters reports.
“That lockdown policy, of quarantine, is absurd. If we have problems … we have a plan of how to act. I am the supreme head of the armed forces,” Bolsonaro said in an interview with TV Criticia in Manaus.
He said the army could be summoned to “re-establish article 5 of the constitution,” which mentions the right to freedoms of movement and of religion.
Bolsonaro also said the restrictive measures were aggravating hunger in the country.
“I am, together with my 23 ministers, talking about what to do if a generalised chaos is implanted in Brazil because of hunger, because of the cowardly way of how some are making the people stay at home,” he said.
Updated
Thailand’s capital Bangkok has ordered the closure of public venues and sports premises after the country reported a record daily rise in coronavirus cases and deaths amid a third wave of infections.
Reuters reports:
Bangkok and 40 provinces have also ordered the mandatory wearing of face masks in public.
The new measures come after the Thai Retailers Association restricted opening hours for shopping malls to between 11am and 8pm for a week from Sunday.
Restaurants in the malls will be allowed to stay open an hour later, while convenience stores will be permitted to operate from 5am to 10pm.
Schools, bars and massage parlours were shut a week ago and will remain closed until next month, while alcohol sales have been banned in restaurants in an effort to increase social distancing.
Officials reported 2,839 new coronavirus cases and eight new deaths on Saturday, bringing Thailand’s total to 53,022 cases and 129 deaths.
The closures, effective from Monday until 9 May, apply to venues including public parks, gyms, swimming pools, meeting halls, internet shops, daycares centres, sports fields, museums and libraries, said Pongsakorn Kwanmuang, a Bangkok Metropolitan Administration spokesman.
Updated
The Syrian government received the first batch of 150,000 Chinese Covid-19 vaccines on Saturday.
Associated Press reports:
The Chinese vaccines arrived in Damascus airport where they were received by Syria’s health minister Hassan Ghabbash and China’s ambassador to Damascus.
It comes a few days after more than 200,000 jabs were delivered to Syria through the United Nations-led platform which provides vaccines to the needy.
The new jabs are likely to speed up the inoculation campaign in the war-torn country where a battered health sector has been overwhelmed by the pandemic, and where infections have been on the rise.
Syria’s government has registered nearly 22,000 infection cases, including more than 1,500 deaths in areas under its control.
Updated
UK records a further 32 deaths
The UK government said a further 32 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Saturday, bringing the total to 127,417.
Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies show there have been 151,000 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.
The government said that as of 9am on Saturday there had been a further 2,061 lab-confirmed cases in the UK. It brings the total to 4,403,170.
Updated
Italy reported 322 coronavirus-related deaths on Saturday compared to 342 the day before, the health ministry said.
The daily tally of new infections fell to 13,817 from 14,761, Reuters reports.
Italy has registered 119,021 deaths linked to Covid-19 since its outbreak last year, the second highest toll in Europe after Britain and the seventh highest in the world.
The country has reported 3.95 million cases to date.
Patients in hospital with Covid-19 – not including those in intensive care – stood at 20,971 on Saturday, down from 21,440 a day earlier.
There were 143 new admissions to intensive care units, down from 153 on Friday. The total number of intensive care patients fell to 2,894 from 2,979.
Updated
Summary of key developments
I’ll be handing over the blog soon to my colleague, so here’s a round-up of all the key coronavirus headlines today:
- India’s coronavirus infections rose by 346,786 overnight, setting a new world record for the third consecutive day.
- Germany reports 23,392 confirmed coronavirus cases and a further 286 deaths, bringing the death toll to 81,444.
- Parts of western Australia begin a three-day lockdown after a coronavirus outbreak in a hotel quarantine facility led to community transmission.
- Cambodia closed all markets in the capital, Phnom Penh, to contain a rise in coronavirus infections as thousands of families plead for food during a two-week lockdown.
- Russia recorded 8,828 new coronavirus cases, including 2,541 in Moscow, taking the national tally to 4,753,789 since the pandemic began.
- Iran has said that it will bar travellers from India over a Covid-19 variant to avert its spread.
- Germany and Kuwait also shut out travellers arriving from India.
- A man who infected 22 people with Covid-19 in Mallorca has been arrested on suspicion of assault for going to work and the gym despite signs he had the virus.
- A daily high of more than 893,000 Covid-19 cases globally has been recorded, led mainly by India’s devastating second wave.
- Switzerland has detected its first case of a coronavirus variant initially discovered in India, the public health authority said on Saturday.
- Thousands descended on London for an anti-lockdown, and vaccine passports protest march.
- According to government figures, more than half of the population in the UK has now had the first dose of a coronavirus vaccine.
- Cambodia recorded a daily record of 10 new coronavirus deaths, its health ministry said, as infections have risen following an outbreak first detected in late February.
Updated
Updated
Cambodia recorded a daily record of 10 new coronavirus deaths, its health ministry said, as infections have risen following an outbreak first detected in late February.
The latest figures take the country’s overall number of cases to 9,359. Until recently, Cambodia had one of the world’s lowest infection rate.
However, in the past two months, 71 deaths were reported.
Updated
A delivery of 150,000 Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccines arrived in Damascus, with another batch of the same size planned, Syrian officials said.
The health minister, Hassan Ghabash, told reporters: “We appreciate this aid which will allow the health ministry to combat the pandemic, to curb its impact on health, society and the economy.”
He added that the shots would go to healthcare workers first and then to the elderly and people with chronic diseases.
Officials have said the country is also discussing vaccines with Russia, but no announcements have been made over receiving shots from Moscow.
This week Damascus got its first delivery of vaccines from the global Covax initiative, of nearly 200,000 AstraZeneca shots, UN officials said. More deliveries are expected in the coming weeks.
Updated
UK vaccinates more than half of its population
More than half of the population in the UK has now had the first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, according to government figures.
NHS England data shows that of the 38,189,536 total doses given in England so far, 28,102,852 were first doses, a rise of 107,656 on the previous day.
The UK population is estimated to be 66,796,807, which means that, added to the figures from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, more than half the population have now had the first dose of a coronavirus vaccine.
Updated
Thousands have descended on London for an anti-lockdown and vaccine passports protest march. Protesters include the anti-lockdown campaigner Piers Corbyn, as people chant “take your masks off”, “freedom”, “get up off your knees”.
From the BBC’s Marianna Spring:
Anti-lockdown protesters - predominantly organised in Telegram channels promoting conspiracy theories about vaccines and pandemic are marching in Central London.
— Marianna Spring (@mariannaspring) April 24, 2021
There are placards claiming covid is a hoax, “the experimental vaccine kills” and the QAnon “Save Our Children”. pic.twitter.com/6anw6iRhkx
The Guardian’s Jason Rodrigues and Damien Gayle have more from today’s protest:
London’s Oxford Street right now. Thousands of anti-lockdown and anti-vax protestors here. pic.twitter.com/dFsoiw3LY8
— Jason Rodrigues (@RodriguesJasonL) April 24, 2021
Vast numbers of people on this #Antilockdown #VaccinePassports march, which is now heading down Oxford St. pic.twitter.com/yRY9ATIr35
— Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) April 24, 2021
Updated
Switzerland has detected its first case of a coronavirus variant initially discovered in India, the public health authority said on Saturday.
“The first case of the Indian variant of Covid-19 has been discovered in Switzerland,” Switzerland’s federal office of public health tweeted.
Il primo caso della variante indiana del COVID 19 è stato trovato in Svizzera. Si tratta di un passeggero che era entrato attraverso un aeroporto di transito. La consultazione sull'inserimento dell'India sulla lista dei Paesi a rischio è in corso.#CoronaInfoCH #Coronavirus
— BAG – OFSP – UFSP (@BAG_OFSP_UFSP) April 24, 2021
The virus variant was found in “a passenger who was transiting through an airport”, it said.
India is facing a devastating rise in infections, recording another 346,786 cases on Saturday – the highest figure recorded by a single country since the start of the pandemic.
Countries have been on high alert for the variant, known as B1617, with several halting flights from India.
Updated
Highest number of global cases recorded
A daily high of more than 893,000 Covid-19 cases globally has been recorded, largely led by India’s devastating second wave, according to an AFP tally on Saturday.
More than a third of the infections were registered in India, which announced 332,730 new cases on Friday and another 346,786 on Saturday, also a record for a single country since the start of the pandemic.
The total for cases recorded throughout Friday is based on official figures at 10am GMT on Saturday. The previous daily record was some 819,000 cases on 8 January.
More than 5.5m cases were recorded worldwide this week, including almost 2m in India. The US has the second highest number of infections (490,000 cases in one week), while Brazil recorded around 459,000 and Turkey some 404,000.
Updated
Scientists are recommending “smell training” for people who have lost the sense due to Covid, as one in five with the symptom report it has not returned to normal eight weeks after becoming ill.
The exercise involves sniffing at least four different odours twice daily for several months, which experts say is a “cheap, simple and side-effect free” way of treating the common symptom that affects some people for several weeks after contracting the virus.
Prof Carl Philpott, a smell loss expert at the University of East Anglia’s Norwich Medical School, said the method aimed to help patients’ recovery based on neuroplasticity, which he defined as “the brain’s ability to reorganise itself to compensate for a change or injury”.
A man who infected 22 people with Covid-19 in Mallorca has been arrested on suspicion of assault for going to work and the gym despite signs he had the virus, AFP reports.
Police on the Spanish island began investigating at the end of January after an outbreak in the town on Manacor following reports an employee had “become infected but hidden his illness”, a statement said.
Days before the outbreak was detected, he began to show symptoms causing his colleagues concern but did not want to go home.
Despite later going for a PCR test, he did not wait for the result, returning the next day to his job and attending his local gym.
Five of his coworkers tested positive for coronavirus, which had led to their families, including three one-year-old babies, also testing positive. Police said his actions resulted in a total of 22 infections, although none of them needed hospital treatment.
Updated
In trials for Covid-19 vaccines, children have been frustratingly “left behind”, a member of the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has said.
From the University of Bristol, Prof Adam Finn told BBC Breakfast:
I’m a paediatrician, and in my normal life, I spend my time doing vaccine trials in children, and children are very much prioritised for most vaccines, so it’s a very weird and unusual situation we’re in now because I and other colleagues have spent the last year doing vaccine trials in adults and mostly in older adults, because of the nature of the problems that Covid presents.
So the children have really got very much left behind in this programme because the children, for the most part, have not been affected by Covid in any serious way.
Very, very small numbers of children have been seriously affected, but we’re impatient now to get on and do the necessary trials in children so that these vaccines can start to be used, and actually circumstances are holding us back, so it is a very frustrating situation to be in.”
While children are unlikely to fall ill with the virus, they can transmit it.
Earlier this month, Pfizer’s vaccine trial in children aged 12 to 15 showed 100% efficacy and robust immune response, while the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine was paused due to concerns around unusual blood clots.
Updated
Germany restricts travel from India
Germany is the latest country to shut out travellers arriving from India, the health minister, Jens Spahn, has said, as a new variant has made the south Asian country the latest coronavirus hotspot.
From Monday, only German citizen will be allowed to enter the country when arriving from India.
Spahn told the Funke newspaper group: “We’re very worried about the new mutation of the virus discovered in India. So as not to endanger our vaccination programme, India travel has to be significantly limited.”
So far, the UK, Canada, Kuwait and Iran have restricted travel from India over the new variant.
Updated
Kuwait suspends all flights from India until further notice as cases in India continues to break records, AFP reports.
The regions busiest international air hub, the United Arab Emirates, had already announced on Thursday that it would suspend flights to and from India from Sunday.
The Kuwaiti government tweeted late on Friday: “In view of the health situation, it has been decided to suspend direct commercial air links with India until further notice.”
#مجلس_الوزراء : نظرا للاوضاع الصحية في جمهورية #الهند الصديقة تقرر ايقاف الرحلات التجارية المباشرة مع جمهورية الهند حتى اشعار آخر#COVID19#وزارة_الإعلام_الكويتhttps://t.co/YWyswOhdxn pic.twitter.com/gqRTCNWNUi
— MOI - وزارة الإعلام (@MOInformation) April 23, 2021
It added that Kuwaiti residents would only be allowed to return via third countries if they stopped over for at least 14 days.
Fares soared as the clock ticked down to the shutdown of the air corridor between the UAE and India, as Indians who could afford it scrambled to escape the rising cases.
With price comparison websites showing that one-way commercial flights from Mumbai to Dubai on Friday and Saturday were costing as much as 80,000 rupees ($1,000) – nearly 10 times the usual rate.
Outside of the Gulf, Canada has also suspended flights from both India and Pakistan for 30 days.
Updated
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has called on citizens to stick to tighter coronavirus restrictions in areas with higher infection rates over the weekend, Reuters reports.
Both chambers of Germany’s parliament approved the amendments to the Infection Protection Act earlier this week to give the federal government more powers to fight the third wave in the pandemic.
The law was drawn up after some of the country’s 16 states refused to implement stricter measures despite a surge in Covid-19 cases and in defiance of a lockdown agreement.
In Merkel’s weekly video podcast, she said: “This is something new in our fight against the pandemic. And I am convinced that it’s urgently needed.
“It serves the goal of first slowing down the third wave of the pandemic, then stopping it and finally reversing it.”
The new law allows the government to impose curfews between midnight and 5am in areas where the virus incidence exceeds 100 cases per 100,000 residents three days in a row.
The rules include stricter limits for private gatherings, sport and shop openings.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 23,392 over the past 24 hours to a national total of 3,268,645, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed.
Updated
US health officials have lifted an 11-day pause on Johnson & Johnson vaccinations following a recommendation by an expert panel. Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday the benefits of the single-dose Covid-19 shot outweigh a rare risk of blood clots.
Panel members said it is critical that younger women be told about that risk so they can decide if they’d rather choose another vaccine. The CDC and Food and Drug Administration agreed.
European regulators earlier this week made a similar decision, deciding the clot risk was small enough to allow the rollout of Johnson & Johnson’s shot.
The change comes after the distribution of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was temporarily halted while scientists investigated rare but dangerous blood clots with low platelet counts linked to the shot.
More here:
Updated
Iran to bar travellers from India
Iran has said that it will bar travellers from India over a Covid-19 variant to avert its spread.
Officials, however, did not say if any cases of the variant first recorded in India in late March had been detected in Iran, Reuters reports.
In a broadcast on state TV, the president, Hassan Rouhani, said: “The Indian coronavirus is a new threat we face.”
“The Indian virus is more dangerous than the English and Brazilian variants. All the eastern provinces should make sure people infected with the virus do not cross the borders into the country.”
Iran’s civil aviation organisation announced on local media that all flights to and from India and Pakistan would be halted from midnight.
Most of Iran has been under lockdown for the past two weeks as it deals with a fourth wave of the pandemic.
The health ministry has reported a daily average of over 20,000 infections, and nearly 70,000 have died. At the same time, the country’s vaccination drive continues to go slowly.
Updated
Russia recorded 8,828 new coronavirus cases, including 2,541 in Moscow, taking the national tally to 4,753,789 since the pandemic began.
The coronavirus crisis centre said 399 more deaths were confirmed in the past 24 hours, taking the national death toll to 107,900.
The federal statistics agency has kept a separate count and reported a toll of more than 225,000 from April 2020 to February.
Scientists have recommended that people who have experienced smell loss due to Covid-19 should try “smell training,” PA Media reports.
Involving sniffing at least four different odours twice daily for several months, smell loss expert Prof Carl Philpott, from the University of East Anglia’s Norwich Medical School, said the method “aims to help recovery based on neuroplasticity - the brain’s ability to reorganise itself to compensate for a change or injury”.
Research by an international group of smell experts, published in the journal International Forum of Allergy & Rhinology, advised against using steroids to treat smell loss.
Prof Philpott said that Covid-19 led to a rise in smell loss globally, with around one in five people who experience smell loss due to coronavirus reporting that their sense of smell has not returned to normal eight weeks after falling ill.
Updated
Millions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine shipped to Mexico that were manufactured at a US plant and had a contamination issue are safe and have been approved by two regulators, Mexico’s deputy health minister said.
As part of an agreement with the Biden administration, 2.7 million shots of the AstraZeneca vaccine were sent to Mexico to help supplement the country’s vaccination campaign amid global delays and shortages.
The country’s deputy health minister, Hugo López-Gatell, said the vaccines were safe and had been evaluated by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Mexican health regulator, Cofepris.
López-Gatell said during a news conference: “We are certain that it was a safe, quality product, the one that we put to Mexican people, 2.7 million.
“No dose would have been released if not all requirements had been met.”
The FDA previously halted production at Baltimore while it investigated an error that led to millions of doses being ruined last month.
Updated
Cambodia closed all markets in the capital, Phnom Penh, on Saturday to contain a rise in coronavirus infections as thousands of families plead for food during a two-week lockdown, Reuters reports.
Phnom Penh went into lockdown on 15 April, declaring some districts as “red zones”, which ban people from leaving their home except for medical reasons.
In the new market order, Phnom Penh City Hall said all markets are to be closed from Saturday until 7 May, saying that they have seen rising infections in markets and urged vendors and guards to get tested for Covid-19.
As part of the efforts to provide food for people who could not leave their homes in lockdown areas, city officials have given thousands of families 25kg of rice, a box of soy sauce, a bag of fish sauce and a bag of canned fish, according to the City Hall’s Facebook page.
While the south-east Asian country has one of the worlds smallest coronavirus caseloads, there have been 8,848 cases and 61 deaths in the latest outbreak.
Updated
After the country recorded another record daily rise in Covid-19 cases and deaths amid a third wave of the pandemic, Thailand curbed shop operating hours on Saturday in shopping malls in 18 provinces, including the capital, Bangkok.
The new hours will restrict operations between 11 am and 8pm for a week from Sunday, the Thai Retailers Association said in a statement.
Restaurants in the malls will be allowed to stay open an hour later, while convenience stores will be permitted to operate from 5am to 10pm.
Officials reported 2,839 new coronavirus cases and eight new deaths on Saturday, bringing Thailand’s total to 53,022 cases and 129 deaths.
Parts of Western Australia begin a three-day lockdown after a coronavirus outbreak in a hotel quarantine facility led to community transmission, Reuters reports.
The Western Australia premier, Mark McGowan, said that while the quarantine system had primarily worked, the national government must find new facilities outside crowded downtown locations.
McGowan added, “I have been calling for the commonwealth’s assistance with quarantine for many months now.”
“(Downtown) hotels are not fit for purpose quarantine facilities, and quarantine is the responsibility of the commonwealth government under the constitution.”
The latest lockdown was ordered after a returning traveller, who had been released from the quarantine facility, later tested positive, with authorities suspecting that the traveller became infected while in the hotel.
The latest lockdown measures in the state capital Perth and the neighbouring Peel region have been asked to stay home except for essential work and medical and shopping purposes.
Good morning! I’m Edna Mohamed, and I’ll be taking you through the latest Covid-19 developments worldwide. If you wanted to send me any tips, you can do so by either messaging me on Twitter or emailing me on edna.mohamed.casual@theguardian.com
Updated
From Saturday, six people from different households will be allowed to meet outdoor in Wales, with outdoor hospitality allowed to open from the following Monday, the Welsh government announced.
While up to six people (not including children under 11 or carers) were allowed to meet, they had to have only come from a maximum of two households.
On Monday, the Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford, said:
The public health context in Wales remains favourable, with cases falling and our vaccination programme continues to go from strength to strength.
Because meeting outdoors continues to be lower risk than meeting indoors, we are able to bring forward changes to allow any six people to meet outdoors.
This will provide more opportunities for people, especially young people, to meet outdoors with their friends. This will undoubtedly have a significant positive impact on people’s wellbeing.
I’m also pleased to confirm outdoor hospitality will be allowed to reopen from Monday 26 April. These changes will help the hospitality sector recover after a difficult 12 months.”
More on Wales’ lifting restrictions here:
Germany reports 23,392 confirmed coronavirus cases and a further 286 deaths, bringing the death toll to 81,444, the Robert Koch institute reports.
India's daily cases hit 346,786
India’s coronavirus infections rose by 346,786 overnight, setting a new world record for the third consecutive day, the health ministry said.
India is in the middle of a raging second wave of the pandemic, which has overwhelmed hospitals and left its oxygen level in critical conditions, after hitting a rate of one Covid-19 death in just under every four minutes in Delhi, Reuters reports.
The government has deployed military planes and trains to get oxygen from other parts of the country to the nation’s capital. Delhi’s chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, appealed to the prime minister, Narendra Modi, in a conference on Friday and said: “Please help us get oxygen, there will be a tragedy here.”
Other parts of the country are also struggling with a lack of medical oxygen, with reports of people dying in the cities of Jaipur and Amritsar due to the lack of crucial gas.
