This blog is now closed. For up to date coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, head to the link below:
Summary
Here the latest key developments at a glance:
- Half of all adults in the US have received at least one Covid-19 shot, the government announced Sunday, while nearly one third of all adults (32.5%) have been fully vaccinated.
- Dr Anthony Fauci expects the use of Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine to be resumed in the US after it was temporarily suspended, he said.
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Turkey recorded a further 318 deaths from Covid-19 in the space of a day, its highest daily total so far, data from the Health Ministry showed on Sunday, as well as 55,802 new infections.
- Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said on Sunday he would send federal healthcare workers to help Toronto and the province of Ontario battle a third wave of infections that has forced shutdowns of schools and businesses.
- More hospital beds will be freed for Covid-19 patients, India’s health ministry said Sunday, as states appealed for additional supplies of oxygen and treatment drugs amid a worsening wave of infections gripping the country.
- The UK recorded 10 further deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test on Sunday, the lowest death toll since September, as well as 1,882 new infections.
- A “huge” backlog of patients in English hospitals caused by the coronavirus pandemic could take up to five years to clear, NHS Providers has said. Around 4.7 million people were waiting to start treatment at the end of February - the highest figure since records began in August 2007 - according to data from NHS England.
- Muslims hoping to perform the Umra pilgrimage to Mecca must be vaccinated against coronavirus, Saudi state TV said on Sunday.
That’s all from me, I’m now going to hand over to my colleague Helen Sullivan.
Updated
Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro said on Sunday that the government will on Monday make its second payment to the COVAX initiative to access some 11 million coronavirus vaccines.
Earlier this week Venezuela’s government said it wants funds frozen in the US to be used to pay for vaccines and will keep working with the opposition to negotiate this payment.
Allies of opposition leader Juan Guaido have for months been in talks with state officials to buy vaccines through the COVAX programme using funds frozen by the US Treasury as part of sanctions against Maduro’s administration.
Brazil recorded 42,980 additional confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, along with 1,657 deaths from the virus, the health ministry said on Sunday.
A week ago, Brazil logged 37,017 fresh infections, though over the past week the country’s seven-day average of new cases has slightly fallen.
Brazil has registered more than 13.9 million cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 373,335, according to ministry data.
Mexico’s health ministry on Sunday reported 1,506 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 111 further fatalities, bringing the country’s total to 2,305,602 infections and 212,339 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.
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said on Sunday he would send federal healthcare workers to help Toronto and the province of Ontario battle a third wave of infections that has forced shutdowns of schools and businesses.
“We are mobilizing federal healthcare workers from across government departments to deploy on the front lines in Ontario and specifically the Greater Toronto area where the situation is most critical,” Trudeau said in a video posted on Twitter.
Reuters reports:
Other provinces, especially on the Atlantic coast, are working “to determine what human resources and equipment they could free up over the coming days,” Trudeau said, adding that the federal government would cover the costs of that help.
The government will also seek to boost rapid testing, especially for essential workers, Trudeau said.
The government of Ontario, Canada’s most-populous province and industrial powerhouse, has moved schools online and announced more stringent public health measures on Friday, including shutting the provincial borders to non-essential travel.
On Saturday, federal Public Safety Minister Bill Blair deployed two mobile health units to set up more hospital beds in Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario, and the prime minister said he stood ready to send the Red Cross to staff mobile vaccination clinics in Ontario if help is requested.
Canada’s seven-day average of new infections was 8,669, the chief medical officer said on Sunday, a 26% increase compared with the previous seven days. Ontario reported 4,250 new cases on Sunday.
Canada has been ramping up its vaccination campaign but still has a smaller percentage of its population inoculated than dozens of other countries, including the United States and Britain.
More than 48 million doses are to be delivered by the end of June, which is enough for all of Canada’s population of some 38 million to receive at least one shot, with a total of 100 million doses expected by the end of September.
Half of adult US population has received at least one vaccine dose, nearly a third fully vaccinated
Half of all adults in the US have received at least one Covid-19 shot, the government announced Sunday, marking another milestone in the nation’s largest-ever vaccination campaign but leaving more work to do to convince skeptical Americans to roll up their sleeves.
The Associated Press reports:
Almost 130 million people 18 or older have received at least one dose of a vaccine, or 50.4% of the total adult population, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. Almost 84 million adults, or about 32.5% of the population, have been fully vaccinated.
The US cleared the 50% mark just a day after the reported global death toll from the coronavirus topped a staggering 3 million, according to totals compiled by Johns Hopkins University, though the actual number is believed to be significantly higher.
The country’s vaccination rate, at 61.6 doses administered per 100 people, currently falls behind Israel, which leads among countries with at least 5 million people with a rate of 119.2.
The US also trails the United Arab Emirates, Chile and the United Kingdom, which is vaccinating at a rate of 62 doses per 100 people, according to Our World in Data, an online research site.
Guinea received on Sunday a shipment of 300,000 Sinovac Covid-19 vaccines purchased from China and is also set to receive a donation of 200,000 Sinopharm shots, Guinean foreign minister Ibrahima Khalil Kaba said.
Reuters reports:
Kaba gave no further details on the Sinopharm donation. Guinea is reporting 93 new coronavirus infections on average each day, 59% of the peak in March.
There have been 21,460 infections and 138 coronavirus-related deaths reported in the country since the pandemic began.
The West African country has administered at least 109,296 doses of Covid vaccines so far, according to government data compiled by Reuters.
Assuming every person needs two doses, that’s enough to have vaccinated about 0.4% of the country’s population.
The World Health Organization will decide late this month or in May on emergency use listings for Covid-19 vaccines from Sinopharm and Sinovac following an extended review, a WHO European region official said on Thursday.
France on Sunday reported 140 further fatalities from Covid-19, and 29,344 new infections.
On Saturday the country had recorded 35,861 new cases, and on Sunday last week 34,895.
As of Sunday, 12.5 million people in France have received their first vaccine dose against the virus.
The UK’s Labour shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds said almost 100,000 people had flown between India and the UK during January and February, as he accused the British government of not doing enough to keep out coronavirus mutations.
PA reports:
The opposition party said that, according to data from the Civil Aviation Authority and other international air passenger sources, 631,500 air travellers arrived in the UK in January, with only around 1% undertaking a hotel quarantine.
Mr Thomas-Symonds said:
This UK government is putting lives at risk by failing to protect our borders against Covid.
Now we are seeing the results of a disastrous policy that has let thousands of people enter the UK without a proper quarantine system.
Large numbers of cases of two deeply worrying variants, first discovered in South Africa and India, have been discovered in the UK.
We are at a critical moment in the fight against the pandemic, as the sacrifices of the British people and the vaccine give us hope of reopening large parts of life.
This British reopening is being put at risk by ministers’ reckless refusal to protect our borders against Covid.
Turkey reports record daily death toll
Turkey recorded a further 318 deaths from Covid-19 in the space of a day, its highest daily total so far, data from the Health Ministry showed on Sunday.
55,802 new cases were recorded.
Turkey’s official cumulative death toll stands at 35,926.
The country currently ranks fourth in the world in the number of daily cases based on a seven-day average, according to a Reuters tally.
The Scottish government on Sunday reported 211 fresh cases, and no new deaths, meaning the country’s official death toll remains at 7,642.
As of Sunday, 2,744,231 people in Scotland have received a first jab and 738,420 have received their second dose.
The number of coronavirus patients in intensive care units (ICU) in France rose by 16 on Sunday, the health ministry said, bringing the total of people in ICUs with the disease to 5,893.
The health ministry registered 140 new coronavirus deaths in hospitals in the last 24 hours. Overall, France’s Covid-19 death toll breached the 100,000 mark on Thursday, the eighth-highest in the world.
Canada will set aside C$12bn ($9.6bn) to extend its main pandemic support measures in a budget to be presented on Monday, the Toronto Star reported, as much of the country battles a virulent third wave of new infections.
Reuters reports:
The emergency wage subsidy and the emergency rent subsidy, due to expire in June, will be extended to the end of September, the Star reported on Sunday.
Separately, the government will create the “Canada Recovery Hiring Program” in June meant to help those companies depending on the wage subsidy to pivot to hiring again, the newspaper said.
The Finance Ministry declined to confirm or comment on the report. However, Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp on Sunday that government pandemic supports would continue for as long as needed.
“If Canadians need that support and the pandemic continues, the government will certainly have their backs,” Wilkinson said.
Wilkinson also confirmed that the budget would be “ambitious” and that the government would “invest for jobs and growth to rebuild this economy,” though he also said there would be “fiscal guardrails” to put spending on a “sustainable track”.
Italy reported 251 coronavirus-related deaths on Sunday against 310 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections edged down to 12,694 from 15,370.
Italy has registered 116,927 deaths linked to Covid-19, the second-highest toll in Europe after the UK’s and the seventh-highest in the world.
More hospital beds will be freed for Covid-19 patients, India’s health ministry said Sunday, as the country of 1.39 billion grappled with a worsening virus crisis and states appealed for additional supplies of oxygen and treatment drugs.
AFP reports:
The country of 1.3 billion people added a record-high of 261,500 new cases on Sunday, with one-in-six people who underwent tests returning positive coronavirus results, the ministry said.
India is the world’s second most-infected nation with almost 14.8 million cases.
Hospitals usually reserved for employees of ministries or public sector companies should convert some of their wards into Covid-19 facilities equipped with ICU and oxygen-supported beds, ventilators, laboratories and healthcare staff, the government said.
“This will go a long way to address the shortage of beds being reported from some states,” the ministry added.
The railway ministry said special trains would transport oxygen tankers to needy states.
In the capital New Delhi - the worst-hit city in India - 25,500 infections were reported in the past 24 hours.
“The cases are rising very fast,” Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said in a video statement.
“Only 100 beds left. Even oxygen is in short supply.”
Kejriwal said additional beds would be set up at some schools and a sport complex.
His government added that millions of pilgrims who attended an ongoing religious festival - the Kumbh Mela - had to quarantine for two weeks if they returned to Delhi.
Nearly 3,700 people have tested positive in the past week in the city of Haridwar, which lies along the Ganges river where the Kumbh Mela is being observed, the Uttarakhand state government said.
Health experts have warned the festival could become a “super-spreader” event.
The UK recorded ten further deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test on Sunday, as well as 1,882 new infections.
A week ago, the government had logged 7 new deaths from the virus and 1,730 new cases.
As of Sunday, 32.8 million people in the country of around 68 million have received their first Covid jab in total.
Of the 42,780,069 jabs given in the UK up to 17 April, 32,849,223 were first doses - a rise of 139,445 on the previous day.
Some 9,930,846 were second doses, an increase of 499,635.
I’m Jedidajah Otte and will be taking over for the next few hours. Feel free to get in touch if you have anything to flag you think we should be covering, I’m on Twitter @JedySays.
Updated
Summary of recent updates
Hello everyone, I’m going to be handing over the blog shortly, but before I go, here’s a summary of key updates from the past few hours.
- A “huge” backlog of patients in hospitals caused by the coronavirus pandemic could take up to five years to clear, NHS Providers has said. Around 4.7 million people were waiting to start treatment at the end of February - the highest figure since records began in August 2007 - according to data from NHS England.
-
Restaurant and pub bosses are urging the UK government to commit to reopening indoor hospitality in England on 17 May.
Chief executives from prominent chains including JD Wetherspoon, Greene King and Pizza Hut signed a letter to the prime minister calling for him to stick to the planned roadmap out of lockdown and not be “derailed” by suggestions of vaccine passports. - No further coronavirus deaths have been reported in Northern Ireland over the past 24 hours. This means the death toll remains at 2,135.
- Muslims hoping to perform the Umra pilgrimage to Mecca must be vaccinated against coronavirus, Saudi state TV said on Sunday.
- Dr Anthony Fauci expects the use of Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine to be resumed in the US after it was temporarily suspended, he said.
- The EU has hinted that it might not order AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine again, following delays with shipments of the first batches.
Backlog of patients due to Covid could take up to five years to clear
A “huge” backlog of patients in hospitals caused by the coronavirus pandemic could take up to five years to clear, NHS Providers has said.
The organisation represents every NHS hospital, and mental health, community and ambulance service in England, and warned that said tackling the problem could take three to five years in the worst hit areas.
What’s the situation like?
Around 4.7 million people were waiting to start treatment at the end of February - the highest figure since records began in August 2007 - according to data from NHS England.
The number of individuals waiting more than 52 weeks to start hospital treatment stood at 387,885 - the highest for any calendar month since December 2007.
For context, in February last year, the number having to wait more than 52 weeks was 1,613.
What can be done?
NHS Providors said the government needed to take a “bold transformative approach” and supply additional funding to clear the backlog.
“What’s needed now is a team approach - the NHS transforming how it provides care and the Government providing the extra funding required to enable that transformation,” said chief executive Chris Hopson.
“We need to work together over the next few months to create a joint plan to deliver for patients and service users to be announced in the multi-year spending review we are expecting at the end of the year.”
Updated
The US top infectious diseases expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, said he expects the use of Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine to be resumed in the country after it was temporarily suspended.
Earlier this week, US health agencies recommended last week that states pause the administration of the vaccine, after reports of rare blood clots in six women. More than 6.8m doses of the vaccine have been administered nationally.
But Fauci said he expected the administration of the doses to get back on track.
“My estimate is that we will continue to use it in some form. I doubt very seriously if they just cancel it. I don’t think that’s going to happen. I do think that there will likely be some sort of warning or restriction or risk assessment,” he told NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’.
It came after he told CBS that he expected a decision from US regulators on the use of Johnson & Johnson on Friday.
A leading epidemiologist has said that the emergence of new coronavirus variants is to be expected, but that local areas might need to take targeted action against them.
“It’s not surprising that new variants emerge. They’re emerging all the time,” said Dr Mike Tildesley, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (Spi-M) group which supports the Government’s Sage committee.
“But as we get more information, if we do get evidence that they are evading the vaccine and they are more transmissible, what we need to do is take action to really suppress those,” he told BBC News on Sunday.
“It may be that surge testing is needed to stamp down on local clusters of infection if we do get evidence that this is a real variant of concern.”
Can vaccines be adapted against new variants?
Tildesley said that scientists would be able to adapt vaccines to tackle new variants - like the flu vaccine, which is adjusted most years to address mutations in the virus.
“Every time you have a (flu) vaccine... it’s not the same one you have every year. It will be tweaked to combat whatever happens to be circulating at the time,” he said.
“We’re not quite there yet of course with Covid vaccines that can be tweaked to protect against new variants, but my understanding is the vaccine companies are working on this, and in the longer term we should be able to provide boosters to people to protect against whatever new variants are circulating.”
The EU has hinted that it might not order AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine again, following delays with shipments of the first batches.
“We’re pragmatic. My priority, as far as the vaccines are concerned, is to ensure that the firms we have contracts with deliver them punctually,” the EU’s internal markets commissioner Thierry Breton told BFMTV television.
Brussels had originally ordered 120 million doses of jab for use across its 27 member states in the first quarter, and 180 million in the second quarter.
However, AstraZeneca “only delivered 30 million, thus creating the problems that everyone has seen,” Breton said, adding that only another 70 million will be delivered in the second quarter.
However, he insisted decisions hadn’t been made.
“Nothing is decided. Talks are still ongoing,” he said.
Updated
Some good news today: no further coronavirus deaths have been reported in Northern Ireland over the past 24 hours.
This means the death toll remains at 2,135.
A further 83 cases of the virus were recorded, according to the Department of Health. At present, there are 68 confirmed Covid patients in hospital; seven are in intensive care, and five of these are on ventilators.
The Department of Health #COVID19 dashboard has been updated.
— Department of Health (@healthdpt) April 18, 2021
82 individuals have tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 24 hours. No deaths have been reported.https://t.co/UGfvjcqAlm pic.twitter.com/nl4JRGn9sa
Updated
A total of 35,882,008 Covid-19 vaccinations were administered in England between December 8 and yesterday, according to NHS England data.
This marks an increase of 570,975 on the previous day.
Of these...
- 27,559,381 were the first dose of a vaccine, a rise of 112,095 on the previous day.
- 8,322,627 were second doses, an increase of 458,880.
Muslims hoping to perform the Umra pilgrimage to Mecca must be vaccinated against coronavirus, Saudi state TV said on Sunday, according to Reuters.
Umra is a shorter version of the annual Hajj pilgrimage and it can be performed any other time of the year.
Updated
Restaurant and pub bosses are urging the UK government to commit to reopening indoor hospitality in England on 17 May.
Chief executives from prominent chains including JD Wetherspoon, Greene King and Pizza Hut signed a letter to the Prime Minister calling for him to stick to the planned roadmap out of lockdown and not be “derailed” by suggestions of vaccine passports.
The 38 signatories warned around two-thirds of hospitality venues were not able to open outdoors when that was allowed this week, and “none is breaking even”.
“We must be driven by data not dates - and the data say it is safe to confirm now the reopening of indoor hospitality on May 17 and the lifting of all social-distancing restrictions on hospitality on June 21,” the letter reads.
“This is vital as Government support for hospitality tapers away then, and without it many businesses will be unviable. The prime minister set out the right path. He should stick to it and not let it be derailed by talk of vaccine passports in pubs and restaurants.”
There have been a further 94 cases of coronavirus in Wales, taking the total number of confirmed cases to 210,823.
Public Health Wales said the country recorded three further deaths, taking its total death toll since the start of the pandemic to 5,538.
In Wales, 1,685,298 first doses of coronavirus vaccines have now been administered, the body said, along with 601,458 second doses.
Updated
The US chief medical advisor, Dr Anthony Fauci, said that he expects a decision about the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the country by Friday.
It comes after US health agencies recommended last week that states pause the administration of the vaccine, after reports of rare blood clots in six women. More than 6.8m doses of the vaccine have been administered nationally.
The infectious diseases expert told CBS that he expected regulators to come to a decision on whether to resume the use of the vaccine on Friday. He said he would not be surprised if there is a “resumption in some form”.
Updated
China is looking to approve its first imported coronavirus vaccine, with pharmaceuticals firm Fosun submitting data to the country’s regulator, according to state media outlet Global Times.
Citing a source close to Fosun, the news outlet said that the firm was taking steps to get approval for the vaccine it has developed in partnership with BioNTech.
On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Chinese regulator is expected to approve the vaccine within the next 10 weeks, but the timeline is currently unclear.
Summary of key updates
Hello, if you’re just joining us, here is a summary the key updates in the coronavirus pandemic over the past few hours...
In the UK:
- The Indian variant of coronavirus is not thought to be more infectious or more resistant to vaccines than other variants, according to both a UK government minister and Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon.
- In light of the new variant, there is a debate raging over whether or not Boris Johnson should go ahead with a planned trip to India later this month. The Labour Party said it should be cancelled, but the environment secretary George Eustice insisted it should go ahead.
- International travel restrictions are likely to be in place for some time in Scotland, first minister Nicola Sturgeon suggested earlier today. She said that new variants being imported from abroad posed the biggest threat to ending of lockdown restrictions.
- It’s too early to say if hospitality venues can reopen fully as planned in England on 17 May, environment minister George Eustice said today. However, he said the country was “on track” with the vaccine rollout.
... And around the world:
- AstraZeneca could release a modified vaccine against South African variant by end of the year, an official told an Austrian newspaper this weekend. Sarah Walters, AstraZeneca’s Austria country manager, told the Kurier newspaper that the firm had “started modifications to the vaccine for the South African variant and we expect it will be ready by the end of the year, should it be needed”.
- The Gaza Strip has recorded its highest daily death toll from coronavirus, amid a surge in cases.
- Germany held a national memorial service for the nearly 80,000 lives it has lost to coronavirus, with Chancellor Angela Merkel and president Frank-Walter Steinmeier present to commemorate the dead.
- Israel has ended its outdoor mask-wearing mandate and remote learning for middle schools. The country has fully vaccinated 54% of its population, allowing for greater easing of lockdown measures.
If there’s any particular information you’d like to know, or points you’d like expanded on, do get in touch on Twitter and I’ll do my very best to find it and add it to the blog. I won’t always be able to reply, but will try to read everything.
Updated
AstraZeneca could release modified vaccine against South African variant by end of the year
AstraZeneca could release a modified version of its coronavirus vaccine which can tackle the South African variant by the end of 2021, according to an official from the firm reported in an Austrian newspaper.
Sarah Walters, AstraZeneca’s Austria country manager, told the Kurier newspaper that the firm had “started modifications to the vaccine for the South African variant and we expect it will be ready by the end of the year, should it be needed”.
According to Reuters, Walters also said that studies which have so far suggested that the vaccine was less effective against the South African variant were “too small to draw final conclusions”.
Gaza Strip marks a record death toll
The Gaza Strip has recorded its highest-ever daily toll of coronavirus deaths, AFP reports.
The Strip had managed to avoid a surge in coronavirus for much of last year, but cases began to crop up in August amongst densely-populated refugee camps.
In recent weeks, cases have sky-rocketed, forcing the introduction of a curfew and other public health measures.
On Sunday, the Strip’s health ministry announced that there had been 23 deaths in the past 24 hours, taking the total death toll in the area to 761.
Mutassim Salah, a senior health official, said it was “the largest number of deaths” in one day, and that 305 people were hospitalised with the disease.
So far, authorities have so far only received 80,000 vaccine doses for the population of some two million people.
Updated
Germany held a national memorial service for the nearly 80,000 lives lost to coronavirus in the country on Sunday.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and president Frank-Walter Steinmeier joined an ecumenical service in the morning at Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin - a memorial against war and destruction. The pair will later attend a ceremony at Berlin’s Konzerthaus concert hall, with the president set to make a speech.
The ceremony was broadcast live, as coronavirus restrictions meant the number of people allowed to attend in person was limited.
“As president I believe it is very important for us to stop to say goodbye in dignity to those who died during the pandemic - including those who did not fall victim to the virus but who also died in loneliness,” said Steinmeier as he announced the national service.
Should Boris Johnson cancel his trip to India amid concerns about a new coronavirus variant in the country?
Yes, Labour said this morning.
“I think he shouldn’t be [going], no,” said shadow communities secretary Steve Reed on Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday. “There are new variants emerging all around the world, the government is telling people don’t travel if you don’t have to absolutely travel and I can’t see why the prime minister can’t conduct his business with the Indian government by Zoom, so many of us do that these days and I think the prime minister, all of us in public life, need to try and set an example so I’d much rather the prime minister did it by Zoom than by travelling to India.”
But earlier on the show, environment secretary George Eustice said Johnson should not cancel the trip, which is due to take place later this month.
“Public health does come first but there doesn’t mean that there should be no visits at all for business purposes,” he said, adding “for something like this, I think yes it is appropriate.”
“But absolutely measures will be taken to ensure that the visit is Covid-secure. But I think it is important that the business and the business of politics if you like does continue and doesn’t stop completely - we just need to make sure we take the right precautions.”
Nicola Sturgeon also said that her understanding was that the Indian strain of coronavirus was no more transmissible and no more likely to evade vaccines.
“At the moment it is a variant of interest as opposed to a variant of concern but I think the thing we’ve got to recognise about Covid is that it is mutating and we are seeing new variants appear in different parts of the world,” she told Sophy Ridge on Sunday, on Sky News.
“We don’t know where the variants of real concern are going to come from which is why an approach to international travel that tries to categorise risk with some countries categorised as red list countries and other countries deemed to be safer, I think poses a risk because none of us know right now where the next variant that might be problematic is going to occur.”
First Minister of Scotland @NicolaSturgeon criticises the government's #COVID19 traffic light system for international travel because "we don't know where the next dangerous variant will come from".#Ridge: https://t.co/jC2xzcMCbv pic.twitter.com/ZJ2tjsupJK
— Sophy Ridge on Sunday (@RidgeOnSunday) April 18, 2021
Updated
Sturgeon: international travel restrictions likely to be in place for some time
Easing restrictions on international travel could lead to a new surge in coronavirus cases, Scotland’s first minister has warned, as she suggested that travel restrictions were likely to be in place for some time.
Sturgeon said that she hoped that the reopening plans would not be delayed due to new variants, and that the country was making “good progress” but that the “big risk” was international travel.
“The big risk that we face, not just in Scotland but across the UK right now, is the importation of new variants of the virus… we’ve got to be very careful about that which is why I think one of the restrictions we are all going to have to live with for longer is a restriction on international travel..,” she told Sophy Ridge on Sunday, on Sky News.
Updated
There’s been much debate about the use of lateral flow tests, and it turns out their accuracy depends on context and is based on the theories of a 18th-century cleric.
The government says – accurately – that the “false positive rate”, the chance of a test returning a positive result in a person who does not have the disease, is less than one in 1,000. And that’s where we came in: you might think that that means, if you’ve had a positive result, that there’s a less than one in 1,000 chance that it’s false.
It’s not. And that’s because of a fascinating little mathematical anomaly known as Bayes’s theorem, named after the Rev Thomas Bayes, an 18th-century clergyman and maths nerd.”
Tom Chivers takes you through the statistics and debate on the tests, in this interesting and highly informative read:
Updated
The leader of the Welsh conservatives has said the party would end all social distancing measures on 21 June if it was in power, in line with England’s reopening roadmap.
Andrew RT Davies said it would be a “sensible” move to align the reopening of the two countries - if the ending of social distancing was backed by science.
The Welsh Labour government has not yet set a date for the full ending of social distancing rules. First minister Mark Drakeford’s roadmap goes up to late May, with the potential reopening of indoor hospitality and holiday accommodation.
Updated
Germany has recorded a further 19,185 cases of coronavirus, and a further 67 deaths, according to data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases on Sunday.
This takes the country’s total number of confirmed cases to 3,142,262 and the total number of lives lost to 79,914.
Too early to say if hospitality can reopen on 17 May, minister says
It is “too early to say” whether all hospitality businesses can open fully as planned on May 17, the UK government’s environment minister has said.
“Well, it is too early to say. But I think we are on track in the sense that we are on track with the rollout of the vaccination programme,” George Eustice told Andrew Marr. “We have now vaccinated everybody over the age of 50 and this week they are offering vaccinations as well to those under the age of 50, starting with the 45 to 59-year-olds - so that bit is on track.”
“But we are being a bit cautious here. So although we have now got 60% of the adult population vaccinated we do just have to keep a close eye on these variants of concern.
“Also, see what the impacts are of the easements we have just made, the loosenings we have just made, before moving to the next stage.”
Updated
Should India be added to the UK’s travel red list, amid concerns about a new variant in the country?
Not at the moment, but it’s being kept under regular review, according to environment secretary George Eustice.
“Well, we’re allowing people in from India provided they have had a pre-departure test, provided they then quarantine - albeit not in a hotel or a designated facility, but quarantine at home - and then have a test at two and eight days,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show. “So there are quite a lot of robust tests and checks for anybody coming into the country.
“But, look, we keep this under regular review. We take the advice of the scientific experts on this. If the advice is we should change that and move to the red list we would.”
Pfizer has agreed to supply Japan with additional doses of its coronavirus vaccine, the country’s vaccine minister said on Sunday.
“They have agreed on the essentials of the matter,” vaccine minister Taro Kono said during a TV interview on Fuji TV, but that they needed to iron out further details including the timeframe.
Kono did not reveal how many extra doses the country had requested from Pfizer, but that Japan would secure enough by the end of September to inoculate all people over 16.
The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is the only coronavirus inoculation approved in the Japan at present, and the vaccine rollout isn’t moving particularly quickly - as of Friday, 0.9% of the population had received their first vaccine shot, compared to 2.5% in South Korea, and 48% in the UK.
All this comes amid a surge in the number of coronavirus cases in the country, which health experts have warned could mark a fourth wave of the pandemic.
Updated
Dr Susan Hopkins also said that there was not enough information about the Indian variant of coronavirus to classify it as a “variant of concern”, but that scientists were investigating.
“We have seen a couple of cases (of the Indian variant) that haven’t arisen from travel but we’re still trying to undergo the investigations to look in great detail at where they might have acquired it from,” she said.
“To escalate it up the ranking we need to know that it is increased transmissibility, increased severity or vaccine evading, and we just don’t have that yet.”
The chief medical adviser for NHS Test and Trace said it appears to be possible to become reinfected with a different strain of coronavirus, and that there had been cases of this happening.
“We have seen some people who have had their first dose of vaccine who have had the South African variant and the variant that arose in Kent,” Dr Susan Hopkins told BBC’s Andrew Marr show. “That’s to be expected, we know that these vaccines aren’t 100% protecting you against infection and that’s why we ask people to take caution.
“You can see that they’re not as good against the South African variant as they are against our own (variant) B117 at preventing infection and transmission.”
Dr Hopkins said that vaccines were a “primer” for the immune system and would help reduce hospitalisations and deaths from the virus.
Russia has recorded a further 8,632 cases of coronavirus in the last 24 hours, including 2,252 in the capital Moscow, Reuters reports.
This takes the total number of cases in the country to 4,702,101.
The country also reported another 389 deaths, raising the official toll to 105,582.
Australia is in no hurry to open up its international borders, prime minister Scott Morrison said on Sunday. The country has managed to return to something close to normality in recent months.
Australia closed its borders to everyone except citizens and residents in March 2020, and has been allowing just a small number of international arrivals in recent months - mainly citizens returning from abroad. This measure, alongside swift lockdowns, successful contact tracing, and high rates of compliance with public health measures, has been credited with making Australia’s response to the pandemic highly successful.
The country has recorded 29,500 cases of coronavirus, and 910 deaths. While there is of course a population difference, this stands in stark contrast to many other countries across the world - with the UK recording more than 4 million cases and 125,000 deaths.
“Australia is in no hurry to open those borders, I assure you,” Morrison said at a TV briefing. “I will not be putting at risk the way we are living in this country which is so different to the rest of the world today.”
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The Labour Party has called for a thorough investigation into lobbying in the UK government, amid a series of high profile lobbying scandals linked to coronavirus contracts in recent months.
What’s the background?
This week, health secretary Matt Hancock came under fire for reportedly waiting two months to declare his shares in a firm which was approved for NHS contracts.
Meanwhile, former prime minister David Cameron has been criticised for lobbying contacts at the treasury for a firm for which he was a senior adviser with share options reportedly worth $60 million.
What do Labour want?
Speaking on Sophy Ridge’s Sky News programme, Labour’s shadow communities secretary said the government needed an “open inquiry” into lobbying.
“What we need is an open inquiry and not one where the Conservatives are marking their own homework because Boris Johnson has shown repeatedly over the past year that he is not interested in exposing what is going wrong or stopping what’s going wrong,” Steve Reed said.
“If we have an independent parliamentary inquiry into what’s going on, open and transparent - and in David Cameron’s own words, sunlight is the best disinfectant - let’s expose this whole situation to sunlight, let’s see exactly what’s going on, let’s pull in everybody to public hearings that the public can see as well as MPs and find out what’s going on and let’s put in measures that prevent it from occurring.”
“One of them might well be that the Prime Minister should not be the person who decides whether there are investigations into his own ministers for breaches of the ministerial code.”
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No evidence the Indian variant is more contagious or more resistant to vaccines, minister says
Eustice said there is no evidence that the Indian variant of coronavirus is able to “get around” the vaccine, or was more contagious than other variants.
The environment secretary also said that cases of the variant were “fairly small” at present.
“The last I think I saw... there were around 70 cases. But I think I’ve seen lots of different numbers on different variants... so it is a fairly small number at the moment. But it is something that we are watching,” Eustice told Sophy Ridge’s Sky News programme.
“I’m told that there is no evidence at the moment that this particular variant is able to get around the vaccine, for instance, or indeed that it is necessarily more contagious than the others.”
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Israel is today ending its outdoor mask-wearing rule and reopening middle schools, in the country’s latest step towards normality.
The country has had a highly successful vaccine rollout, with 54% of its 9.3 million population having received both shots of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, and has recorded sharp drops in the spread of the virus.
Despite the end of the mask-wearing mandate outside, citizens must still wear face coverings indoors.
Israeli kindergarteners, elementary and high schools were already open, but Sunday marks the reopening of middle schools.
The environment secretary George Eustice has defended health secretary Matt Hancock over his ownership of shares in a company which was approved as a potential supplier for the NHS.
This week, Hancock came under fire for failing to declare his interest Topwood to parliamentary authorities for more than two months, and never previously mentioning his family’s longstanding involvement with the firm.
Topwood won a tender competition to get approval as a contractor for the NHS in Wales in early 2019. At this time, the firm was owned by Hancock’s sister and other family members.
Speaking on Sky News on Sunday morning, Eustice said there was “nothing wrong with ministers having financial interests and declaring them”.
He said that Hancock’s involvement in Topwood was only public knowledge because he had declared it, and that Hancock had not been involved in any decisions on procurement - removing the conflict of interest.
Hello everyone, and welcome to our coronavirus live blog. I’ll be sharing key breaking news updates about the pandemic in the UK and around the world.
If you spot something you think we should be reporting on in this blog, please feel free to send me a message on Twitter. Tips and pointers always appreciated!
