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Updated
US declares support for patent waiver on Covid-19 vaccines
The US has declared its support for a patent waiver on Covid-19 vaccines to boost their production and distribution around the world.
The waiver will not take place immediately as it has to be approved by consensus at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), but the decision of the Biden administration to throw its weight behind a waiver will have a strong influence on the outcome of that decision.
“This is a global health crisis. The extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures,” Katherine Tai, the US trade representative, said in a written statement.
“The administration strongly believes in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for Covid-19 vaccines. We will actively participate in text based negotiations at the WTO needed to make that happen”:
Updated
Brazil recorded 73,295 additional confirmed cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, along with 2,811 deaths from Covid-19, the country’s health ministry said on Wednesday.
Brazil has registered nearly 15 million cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 414,399, according to ministry data, Reuters reports.
Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro said coronavirus may have been made in a laboratory to wage “biological warfare,” in the latest comments likely to strain the country’s relations with China.
“It’s a new virus. Nobody knows whether it was born in a laboratory or because a human ate some animal they shouldn’t have,” said the far-right leader. “But the military knows all about chemical, biological and radiological warfare. Could we be fighting a new war? I wonder. Which country’s GDP has grown the most?”
Bolsonaro did not name China, but the country where the pandemic began was the only G20 economy to grow last year, notching a 2.3 per cent expansion, Reuters reports.
Novavax Inc’s Covid-19 vaccine had efficacy of 43% against infections caused by the South African variant in a group that included people with and without HIV, and 51% in people who were HIV negative, according to a new analysis.
The post-hoc analysis was published in the New England Journal of Medicine along with full data from the company’s trial in South Africa, which included nearly 2,700 volunteers who had not been previously infected with the coronavirus. Results announced in January showed efficacy of 49.4% against symptomatic Covid-19 in the South African trial looking at a mixture of the original virus and the South African variant, and 60.1% among those who were HIV-negative, Reuters reports. The study also showed that prior infection with an earlier version of the virus did not reduce the risk of Covid-19 caused by the South African variant among people who got placebo shots. The average age of trial volunteers was 32. Most cases were mild-to-moderate. The study did not provide data on efficacy of the Novavax vaccine in preventing severe disease or hospitalization, “one of the most important factors in determining the usefulness of a vaccine,” said Dr Peter English, a retired consultant in communicable disease control and former chair of the British Medical Association’s Public Health Medicine Committee.
Guatemala took delivery of its first consignment of Russian Sputnik V vaccines, with 50,000 doses arriving despite concerns Russia could cancel the deal after the confidential vaccine contract was leaked, Reuters reports.
Guatemala’s government at the end of March acquired 16 million doses from Russia for $79.6 million. A week later, half the amount was paid and Russia offered to ship 100,000 doses in the last week of April, but the vaccines were delayed.
Over the weekend Guatemalan newspaper El Periodico published the contract online, prompting president Alejandro Giammattei on Tuesday to suggest in an interview that deal could be canceled due to a breach of confidentiality.
Updated
Foreign ministers from the G7 group of industrialised nations have committed to working with industry to expand the production of affordable coronavirus vaccines, PA reports.
But the ministers stopped short of putting their support behind a campaign, led by India and South Africa, which calls for intellectual property rights on Covid vaccines to be waived so that production can be ramped up globally.
The UK’s foreign secretary Dominic Raab and his counterparts from the US, Canada, Japan, France, Germany, Italy and the EU met for a two-day summit hosted in London, where the pandemic was on the agenda.
The foreign ministers said they supported “affordable and equitable” global access to jabs, therapeutics and diagnostics.
It also said they would further increase efforts to support access for people in need, while working with the industry on “licensing, technology and know-how transfers”.
But Oxfam said that G7 countries had “failed to take back control” of vaccines from pharmaceutical companies and urged them to put their support behind the waiver of intellectual property protections on the jabs.
Updated
Moderna Inc said its early human trial data shows that a third dose of either its current Covid-19 jab or an experimental new vaccine candidate increases immunity against variants of the virus first found in Brazil and South Africa.
The booster shots, given to volunteers previously inoculated with Moderna’s two-dose vaccine regimen, also boosted antibodies against the original version of Covid-19, Reuters reports. The early data comes from a 40-person trial testing both Moderna’s existing shot and a version developed to protect against the South African variant of Covid-19 called mRNA-1273.351. Moderna is also studying a shot that combines both the new and existing vaccine.
Paulo Gustavo, a popular comedian in Brazil has died of Covid-19 aged 42.
Gustavo died Tuesday evening in a Rio de Janeiro hospital after spending nearly a month in intensive care, the Associated Press reports. Conservative President Jair Bolsonaro tweeted his regret at the death of Gustavo, “who with his talent and charisma conquered the affection of all Brazil.”
His leftist archrival, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, mourned Gustavo as “a great Brazilian, who celebrated our country with so much joy.”
Brazil’s Senate held a moment of silence in Gustavo’s memory Wednesday before resuming a hearing into the president’s handling of the pandemic, which has killed more than 400,000 Brazilians.
Officials now say a more-contagious variant of the virus is spreading across the South American nation.
A summary of today's developments
- Germany’s constitutional court said on Wednesday it rejected emergency appeals against the government’s decision to impose night curfews in areas with high Covid-19 infections, Reuters reports.
- The number of new Covid-19 infections in France is rising much more slowly and hospitalisations declined on Wednesday, in the first week after the French government eased its third nationwide lockdown. The number of new positive cases rose by 26,000 for a total of 5.71 million, an increase of 2.52% compared to a week ago and the lowest week-on-week increase since late July 2020, health ministry data showed.
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Serbia’s president said his country would pay each citizen who gets a Covid jab before the end of May, in what could be the world’s first cash-for-jabs scheme, AFP reports.
- The US supports waiving intellectual property protections for Covid-19 vaccines, U.S. trade representative Katherine Tai said, Reuters reports.
- Negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to waive intellectual property protections for jabs will take time given the consensus-based nature of the institution and the complexity of the issue, a Biden administration official added.
- Alberta will become the first Canadian province to offer Covid vaccines to everyone aged 12 and over from 10 May, premier Jason Kenney said.
- Ireland’s deputy premier, Leo Varadkar, has said he is hoping for a return to normality by late summer with the “vast majority” of curbs removed by August and a “normal Christmas”.
- Canada is authorising the use of Pfizer Inc’s Covid vaccine for use in children aged 12 to 15, the first doses to be allowed for people that young, the federal health ministry said.
- In Egypt, the closing hours of stores, malls and restaurants will be brought forward to 9pm to help contain the coronavirus for two weeks from Thursday, the prime minister said.
- Italy will allow tourists to enter quarantine-free as soon as this month, the prime minister, Mario Draghi announced.
- A Covid variant first diagnosed in India has been detected in Kenya, the health ministry confirmed.
- Norway will introduce verifiable vaccine certificates from early June, allowing holders to use them for admittance to events held in Norway, prime minister Erna Solberg said.
- World Athletics president Sebastian Coe has reiterated that the Tokyo Olympics will take place in July despite the rising number of Covid-19 cases in Japan.
Letters have been sent to eight hospitals in the UK formally requiring them to take action to remedy contraventions of health and safety law following a Covid-related inspection, PA reports.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said four hospitals were given advice, while five were assessed as having high levels of compliance. An HSE spokesman said the inspections’ findings had been shared widely with NHS trusts and health boards across England, Scotland and Wales “as an opportunity to share learning and swiftly identify any common areas that may need improvement”.
An NHS spokesman said: “As HSE recognise, hospitals have invested significant time and effort to implement a host of Covid-secure measures throughout the pandemic and have been asked to review this report to ensure they are rigorously following Public Health England guidance.
“Dedicated expert teams support trusts with their infection prevention control where it is needed.”
The US supports waiving intellectual property protections for Covid-19 vaccines, U.S. trade representative Katherine Tai said, Reuters reports.
Negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to waive intellectual property protections for jabs will take time given the consensus-based nature of the institution and the complexity of the issue, a Biden administration official added. President Joe Biden said on Wednesday he plans to back a WTO waiver for vaccine intellectual property.
The world cannot act soon enough to put idle manufacturing capacity to work making Covid-19 vaccines to help redress a massive imbalance in global supply, the head of the World Trade Organization (WTO) said.
WTO director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said equitable access to vaccines, diagnostics and treatments was “both the moral and economic issue of our time”.
The World Health Organization said in April that of 700 million vaccines globally administered, only 0.2% had been in low-income countries.
Okonjo-Iweala told a meeting of the 164-member WTO that those who had ordered more vaccines than they needed must share with others. Members should also address export restrictions and bureaucracy disrupting vital medical supply chains. She urged governments to work with manufacturers to use production capacity available in countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, South Africa, Indonesia and Senegal that could be turned around in months.
Serbia’s president said his country would pay each citizen who gets a Covid jab before the end of May, in what could be the world’s first cash-for-jabs scheme, AFP reports.
The Balkans country bought millions of doses - from Western firms as well as China and Russia - and briefly became a regional vaccine hub when it offered foreigners the chance to be inoculated.
“All those... who received the vaccine by May 31 will get 3,000 dinars (25 euros, $30),” President Aleksandar Vucic told local media, adding that he expected three million to be vaccinated by the end of the month.
Vucic said the country wanted to “reward people who showed responsibility”. But he added that public employees who did not receive a vaccine would not get paid leave if they contracted the virus.
The United Nations Children’s Fund said 50 freezer kits had arrived in Venezuela to boost the OPEC nation’s capacity to store coronavirus vaccines.
The freezers are the first of 100 to arrive this week to “support the country’s efforts to plan the introduction and deployment of vaccines,” said Dr. Melvin Moran, UNICEF’s immunisation specialist. Earlier this week Venezuela’s health minister, Carlos Alvarado, said the country had already received about 1.48 million vaccines between doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine and the Russian Sputnik V, both of which require two shots for full protection. The refrigerators, which have a 256-liter capacity, can hold some 8,500 vaccine doses and will be handed over to authorities for distribution to 100 hospitals in the country, Moran told Reuters.
The number of new Covid-19 infections in France is rising much more slowly and hospitalisations declined on Wednesday, in the first week after the French government eased its third nationwide lockdown.
The number of new positive cases rose by 26,000 for a total of 5.71 million, an increase of 2.52% compared to a week ago and the lowest week-on-week increase since late July 2020, health ministry data showed. Late March to mid-April, week-on-week increases were as high as 5% to 6%, Reuters reports. The number of patients with Covid-19 in French hospitals dropped by 741 to 27,686 in the sharpest one-day drop since the end of November, in the last days of France’s second nationwide lockdown.
Germany’s constitutional court said on Wednesday it rejected emergency appeals against the government’s decision to impose night curfews in areas with high Covid-19 infections, Reuters reports.
“This does not mean that the curfew is compatible with the Basic Law,” the court said in its ruling, adding that the judges would take a closer look into the issue during the main hearing.
Germany last month passed a law giving chancellor Angela Merkel’s government more powers to fight a third wave of the coronavirus, including curfews between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. in regions with high infection rates.
Updated
World Bank president David Malpass has urged wealthy countries to free up excess vaccines for developing economies that are now facing greater needs, by exporting stockpiled doses and giving up options for future deliveries, Reuters reports.
Malpass told a Financial Times online event that the World Bank now has “robust” vaccine financing operations in about 18 countries, a figure that will expand to 50 countries and about $4 billion by mid-year. He said advanced countries “need to give up the options and the control mechanism that they have for the vaccines and let the countries that have deployment systems begin to make those deployments.”
New York’s Major League baseball teams, the Yankees and the Mets, will give free tickets to fans who get vaccinated for the coronavirus at their ball parks before the games, governor Andrew Cuomo said.
“If you get a vaccination, they will give you a free ticket to the game,” Cuomo added. In a further move toward returning the US’s largest city to pre-pandemic normality, Cuomo also announced that tickets to Broadway shows would go on sale on Thursday for performances beginning on September 14, Reuters reports.
Early evening summary
Here is a quick recap of the main Covid updates from around the world:
- Alberta will become the first Canadian province to offer Covid vaccines to everyone aged 12 and over from 10 May, premier Jason Kenney said.
- Ireland’s deputy premier, Leo Varadkar, has said he is hoping for a return to normality by late summer with the “vast majority” of curbs removed by August and a “normal Christmas”.
- Canada is authorising the use of Pfizer Inc’s Covid vaccine for use in children aged 12 to 15, the first doses to be allowed for people that young, the federal health ministry said.
- In Egypt, the closing hours of stores, malls and restaurants will be brought forward to 9pm to help contain the coronavirus for two weeks from Thursday, the prime minister said.
- Italy will allow tourists to enter quarantine-free as soon as this month, the prime minister, Mario Draghi announced.
- A Covid variant first diagnosed in India has been detected in Kenya, the health ministry confirmed.
- Norway will introduce verifiable vaccine certificates from early June, allowing holders to use them for admittance to events held in Norway, prime minister Erna Solberg said.
- World Athletics president Sebastian Coe has reiterated that the Tokyo Olympics will take place in July despite the rising number of Covid-19 cases in Japan.
The number of new international students at Australian universities has nearly halved since prior to the pandemic, and new enrolments from China fell 22% last year, according to new federal government data.
Overall, there are now 43,000 fewer international students enrolled at Australian universities compared with last year, as the total number of enrolled students continues to drop.
My colleague Naaman Zhou has the latest here:
Alberta drops vaccine age to 12 as Covid cases surge
Alberta will become the first Canadian province to offer Covid vaccines to everyone aged 12 and over from 10 May, premier Jason Kenney has said, a day after he introduced tighter measures to combat a third pandemic wave.
Alberta, home to Canada’s oil patch, has the highest rate per capita of Covid-19 in the country, with nearly 24,000 active cases and 150 people in intensive care, Reuters reports.
“We must act to bend the curve down one last time,” United Conservative Party premier Kenney told a news conference, adding based on current trends Alberta’s health care system will be overwhelmed within a month.
Under the new curbs, schools will be confined to online learning for two weeks, while other measures including restaurant patios being closed will last for three weeks.
On Tuesday, Alberta recorded 1,743 new daily cases, exploding from less than 200 in early February.
Leo Varadkar hopes for return to normality in Ireland by late summer
Ireland’s deputy premier, Leo Varadkar, has said he is hoping for a return to normality by late summer with the “vast majority” of curbs removed by August and a “normal Christmas”, PA Media reports.
On Wednesday, Varadkar was questioned about restrictions at the launch of a minimum pricing for alcohol policy at the department of health in Dublin.
He said case numbers are stable and hospital and intensive care numbers are falling, adding if he was working in hospitality he would be planning for outdoor dining in June and indoor dining by July.
Varadkar said:
What I am looking at very closely is what is happening in countries that are a bit ahead of us in terms of vaccination, the United Kingdom and Israel, and life in Israel is pretty much back to normal, they’re welcoming tourists again and they’re having not very large gatherings, but they are having mass gatherings.
Varadkar said he would hope to see the “vast majority of restrictions gone” by August, adding: “Kids going back to school as normal in September, college happening on campus, all those things and a pretty normal Christmas in terms of seeing our friends and relations.”
But nobody can promise that. This is a new virus which is only around a year or so and the vaccines aren’t even around a year. It’s possible that the efficacy of the vaccines could wear off after a certain point in time, we don’t know what might happen in terms of variants that may be vaccine resistant and we don’t know what will happen when the winter comes.
Wednesday saw seven further deaths linked to Covid-19 and an additional 418 confirmed cases, the Department of Health have said.
This has been shared by Lord Newby, leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords:
WHO says poor countries getting just 0.2% of #vaccines, as Pfizer make a windfall profit of $6bn. Its CEO says making vaccine available at no profit would be “very fanatic and radical”. But it would also be the right thing to do. Ask AZ. #covid
— Dick Newby (@RichardNewby3) May 5, 2021
Canada permits Pfizer vaccine for 12-15 year olds
Reuters reports:
Canada is authorising the use of Pfizer Inc’s Covid-19 vaccine for use in children aged 12 to 15, the first doses to be allowed for people that young, the federal health ministry said on Wednesday.
The US Food and Drug Administration is expected to take a similar step “very soon,” US health officials said.
Supriya Sharma, a senior adviser at the Canadian federal health ministry, said the Pfizer vaccine, produced with German partner BioNTech SE, was safe and effective in the younger age group.
“We are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel,” she told a briefing.
Separately, authorities reported the third death of a Canadian from a rare blood clot condition after receiving AstraZeneca PLC’s’s Covid-19 vaccine.
The man, who was in his sixties, lived in the Atlantic province of New Brunswick.
Jennifer Russell, the chief medical officer of health in New Brunswick, said the province would continue using the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Alberta reported a death from clotting on Tuesday and Quebec announced one on 27 April.
Updated
In France, the number of patients in intensive care with Covid-19 dropped by 102 to 5,402 on Wednesday, health ministry data showed.
France also reported 244 new Covid deaths in hospitals, virtually unchanged from Tuesday’s 243, Reuters reports.
Italy reported 267 Covid related deaths on Wednesday against 305 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 10,585 from 9,116.
Italy has registered 122,005 deaths linked to Covid-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year, the second-highest toll in Europe.
The country has reported 4.07m cases, as Reuters notes.
Patients in hospital with Covid-19- not including those in intensive care - stood at 17,520 on Wednesday, down from 18,176 a day earlier.
Covid-19 infections continue to spread fast across the Americas as a result of relaxed prevention measures and intensive care units are filling up with younger people, Reuters quotes the director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Carissa Etienne as saying.
In Brazil, mortality rates have doubled among those younger than 39, quadrupled among those in their 40s and tripled for those in their 50s since December, she said.
Hospitalisation rates among those under 39 years have increased by more than 70% in Chile and in some areas of the United States more people in their 20s are now being hospitalised for Covid-19 than people in their 70s.
The vaccine produced by China’s Sinovac Biotech is efficacious in preventing Covid-19 in adults aged younger than 60, but some quality data on the risk of serious adverse effects is lacking, Reuters reports World Health Organization experts as having found.
The independent experts on the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (Sage) reviewed Sinovac’s CoronaVac jab from phase 3 clinical trials in China, Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey and Chile.
The assessment came shortly after WHO Sage experts had voiced “very low confidence” in data provided by Chinese state-owned drugmaker Sinopharm on its Covid-19 vaccine regarding the risk of serious side-effects in some patients, but overall confidence in its ability to prevent the disease, a document showed.
The Sinovac vaccine has been authorised in 32 countries and jurisdictions, with 260 million doses distributed, the Sage experts said.
“We are very confident that two doses of CoronaVac are efficacious in preventing PCR confirmed Covid-19 in adults (18-59 years),” Sage in an assessment posted on the WHO website.
It cited evidence gaps in safety in pregnancy, and on safety and clinical protection in older adults, those with underlying disease, and evaluation of rare adverse events detected through post-authorisation safety monitoring.
The experts said they had a “moderate level of confidence” that the risk of serious adverse effects was low in people aged 59 and younger, but had a “low level of confidence” in the quality of evidence that such risk was also low for adults older than 60.
“We have low confidence in the quality of evidence that the risk of serious adverse events in individuals with comorbidities or health states that increase risk for severe Covid-19 following one or two doses of CoronaVac is low,” they added.
A separate group of WHO technical experts was reviewing Sinovac’s shot on Wednesday for possible WHO emergency use listing, which would not only pave the way for its use in the global Covax vaccine sharing platform but also provide a crucial international endorsement for a vaccine developed in China.
Egypt to close stores and restaurants early for 2 weeks
In Egypt, the closing hours of stores, malls and restaurants will be brought forward to 9pm to help contain the coronavirus for two weeks from Thursday, straddling the last days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and Eid celebrations, the prime minister has announced.
Large gatherings and concerts will be banned over the same period and beaches and parks will be shut between 12-16 May, Mostafa Madbouly said in a televised address.
The number of new Covid cases has been steadily rising in Egypt in recent weeks and officials have warned of infections spreading further as families meet during Ramadan, which ends next week, with Eid festivities to follow.
Reuters quotes Madbouly as saying:
As a government and as officials, we are deeply worried that citizens are not fully complying with health precautions... we are beginning to see that infections are happening on a familial scale, when one person gets sick (they infect) the whole family.
Updated
This has been (re) shared by Nadhim Zahawi, the UK’s vaccines minister:
66.1% of all adults in the U.K. with at least one dose protection and 30.2% of all adults in the U.K. with two dose protection. What a team! 💉💉💉@NHSuk @Emily_JR_Lawson @maddymcternan @AHamiedNHS @NikkiKF https://t.co/vzuqsXvFpl
— Nadhim Zahawi (@nadhimzahawi) May 5, 2021
Nepal’s decision to allow people to continue to climb its Himalayan peaks as a vicious Covid-19 wave sweeps the country was dealt a further blow after 19 more climbers tested positive for the virus.
Last month it was reported that the pandemic had reached Everest base camp and though officials later denied it, climbers have reported a wave of infections that were being covered up.
Now it has emerged that 19 people, both foreign climbers and sherpas, at the base camp of Dhaulagiri, the world’s seventh highest mountain and part of the same range as Everest, have tested positive.
You can read the full story here:
A total of 42,408,492 Covid vaccinations took place in England between 8 December and 4 May, according to NHS England data, including first and second doses, which is a rise of 310,900 on the previous day.
NHS England said 29,124,310 were the first dose of a vaccine, a rise of 99,261 on the previous day, while 13,284,182 were a second dose, an increase of 211,639, PA Media reports.
Reuters reports:
North Korea’s state media warned of the prospect of a lengthy battle against the coronavirus and said vaccines developed by global drugmakers were proving to be “no universal panacea”.
The country has not officially confirmed any infections, although South Korean officials have said an outbreak there cannot be ruled out, as the North had trade and people-to-people links with China before shutting its border early last year.
The Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ party, said on Tuesday the global pandemic was only worsening, despite the development of vaccines.
“Novel coronavirus vaccines introduced competitively by various countries were once regarded as a glimmer of hope for humanity that could end the fight against this frightening disease,” Rodong Sinmun said.
“But the situations in many countries are clearly proving that the vaccines are never a universal panacea,” it said, citing news reports of rising numbers of new cases overseas and safety concerns surrounding some vaccines.
Updated
Dr David Nabarro, a special envoy on Covid-19 for the World Health Organization, warned the “majority of the world is heading into a very, very dark period”.
He told BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme:
This pandemic is fearsome and it’s accelerating faster than ever and it’s a global phenomenon. There are a few countries that are able to demonstrate that they’ve got much lower levels of disease and they’re actually feeling that they’re recovering, but the majority of the world is heading into a very, very dark period. The reason why it’s particularly dark is that now we don’t have the full data because more and more the pandemic is spreading in places where testing is not available, so the numbers that we have we know are a major under-estimate. It’s bigger than ever, it’s fiercer than ever and it’s causing more distress than ever, this is a bad phase.
Italy could reopen to foreign tourists from mid-May, PM says
Italy will allow tourists to enter quarantine-free as soon as this month, the prime minister, Mario Draghi, has announced, saying the country was “ready to welcome back the world”.
Visitors who have had an EU-approved Covid-19 vaccine, recovered from the disease, or tested negative 48 hours prior to travelling will be allowed entry without restrictions, a tourism ministry source said.
The new rules will apply to all countries apart from those on Italy’s travel restrictions blacklist, including Brazil and India.
Italy’s government is racing to save its summer tourism season in the hope of salvaging an industry badly damaged by the coronavirus pandemic.
Angela Giuffrida, the Guardian’s Rome correspondent, has the full story here:
German health minister Jens Spahn called for a “global reset” in the fight against pandemics as Germany and the World Health Organization announced the creation of a new global hub in Berlin for gathering data on pandemics.
Speaking at a virtual news conference attended also by chancellor Angela Merkel and the head of the WHO, Spahn said the world was still insufficiently prepared for pandemics.
Spahn said:
We need to identify pandemic and epidemic risks as quickly as possible, wherever they occur in the world. For that aim, we need to strengthen the global early warning surveillance system with improved collection of health-related data and inter-disciplinary risk analysis.
The new hub in Berlin, bringing together governmental, academic and private sector institutions, aims to harness global data to predict, prevent and respond to pandemic and epidemic risks worldwide, Reuters reports.
“There will be more viruses that will emerge with the potential of sparking pandemics,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the news conference.
The Wall Street Journal’s Mike Bird has shared this:
Excess mortality since the beginning of 2020 in Peru has got to be running fairly close to 0.5% of the entire population. 334,680 deaths in the last 70 weeks, 151,833 deaths in the same period 2018-19.
— Mike Bird (@Birdyword) May 5, 2021
Equivalent would be in the range of 1.8 million excess US deaths. pic.twitter.com/3bKttYrW6f
Kenya reports cases of Covid variant first detected in India
A Covid variant first diagnosed in India has been detected in Kenya, the health ministry has said, days after the same variant was detected in neighbouring Uganda.
The health ministry last week said Kenya was suspending flights to and from India, Reuters reports.
Updated
Sweden registered 7,041 new Covid cases on Wednesday, health agency statistics indicated.
The country of 10m registered 60 new deaths, taking the total to 14,151, as Reuters reports.
India has seen fewer cases of infections by the Covid variant first spotted in Britain in recent weeks but more by a local variant in some states, Sujeet Kumar, the director of the National Centre for Disease Control, is referenced as saying by Reuters.
On Tuesday, India passed a grim milestone of 20m Covid-19 cases amid growing calls for the country to go into a national lockdown.
Many health experts believe India’s true death toll to be five to 10 times higher than official data.
Egypt has said it will receive another 4.9m doses of different types of Covid vaccines in May, Reuters report.
The earliest of these will be a shipment of 1.7m doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine which is due to arrive next week as part of the global Covax agreement, the Egyptian cabinet said in a statement.
Egypt will also receive 1m doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine to arrive in two shipments, and 500,000 doses of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine, the cabinet added.
This has just been shared by the World Health Organization:
"Hosted in Berlin, the WHO Hub will be a global centre that works with partners around the world to lead innovations in pandemic and epidemic intelligence, data, surveillance and analytics."-@DrTedros
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) May 5, 2021
Staff at an Indonesian pharmaceutical company have been accused of washing and repackaging used Covid nasal swabs, which were then sold to thousands of unsuspecting travellers.
Five employees from the state-owned Kimia Farma have been arrested, while the company may also face a civil lawsuit over the claims.
Rebecca Ratcliffe, the Guardian’s south-east Asia correspondent, has the full story:
Updated
Norway to introduce vaccine certificates – prime minister
Norway will introduce verifiable vaccine certificates from early June, allowing holders to use them for admittance to events held in Norway, prime minister Erna Solberg has said.
About a quarter of Norway’s population, as Reuters reports, has received a first dose of a Covid vaccine, while 6.8% has received two doses.
Updated
More than 40 Covid cases have been associated with a school in Moray, in Scotland, the BBC reports.
NHS Grampian said 46 cases had been associated with Elgin Academy since 10 April.
Public health officials are meeting to discuss the situation.
Moray’s rate was originally among the lowest in Scotland, but is now standing at more than three times the national average.
Despite Scotland due to move to level two on 17 May, a senior public health official warned earlier this week that level three Covid restrictions could remain in Moray if infection rates do not fall.
This Covid dashboard update has been shared by Public Health Wales:
The rapid COVID-19 surveillance dashboard has been updated
— Public Health Wales (@PublicHealthW) May 5, 2021
💻 https://t.co/zpWRYSUbfh
📱 https://t.co/HSclxpZjBh
Read our daily statement here: https://t.co/u6SKHz0zsG pic.twitter.com/6F1I89fdyH
The parents of a man who died when his car was trapped in New South Wales flood waters have said farewell to their son at a prayer service in Sydney after flying in from Pakistan.
Ayaz Younus, 25, was travelling to his first day at a new job in Glenorie on 24 March when his car got stuck in flood waters and he was unable to escape. He was on the phone to emergency services for almost 40 minutes before he died.
His grieving parents were given permission to enter Australia for the funeral. They arrived in Sydney on Sunday and followed strict protocols. The emotional couple were unable to touch their son’s body or coffin and were kept apart from Younus’s friends due to Covid restrictions.
My colleague Mostafa Rachwani reports:
Updated
WHO experts voice 'very low confidence' in some Sinopharm Covid vaccine data
World Health Organization experts have expressed “very low confidence” in data provided by the Chinese state-owned drugmaker Sinopharm on its Covid vaccine regarding the risk of serious side-effects in some patients, a document seen by Reuters shows.
The “evidence assessment” document was prepared by the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (Sage) for its review scheduled this week of the Sinopharm shot, authorised by 45 countries and jurisdictions for use in adults, with 65m doses administered.
The experts review evidence and give recommendations on policy and dosages associated with a vaccine.
The document includes summaries of data from clinical trials in China, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.
Vaccine efficacy in multi-country phase 3 clinical trials was 78.1% after two doses, the document said. This was a slight drop from 79.34% announced previously in China.
The document said:
We are very confident that 2 doses of BBIBP-CorV are efficacious in preventing PCR confirmed Cov0d-19 in adults (18-59 years) … Analysis of safety amongst participants with comorbidities (was) limited by the low number of participants with comorbidities (other than obesity) in the Phase 3 trial.
Among “evidence gaps”, it cited data on protection against severe disease, duration of protection and safety for use in pregnant women and in older adults, Reuters notes.
Updated
Rates of depression have more than doubled since before the pandemic, with young people hit the hardest, figures suggest.
More than a fifth (21%) of people aged 16 and over in Britain experienced some form of depression between 27 January and 7 March, according to the Office for National Statistics.
This is up from 10% before the pandemic, between July 2019 and March 2020, as PA Media reports.
The ONS analysed responses from 23,935 people aged 16 and over in 2021 and compared them with data collected before and during the pandemic.
Depression rates were based on those who indicated moderate to severe depressive symptoms.
You can read the full findings here.
Updated
Reuters reports:
Going door-to-door in a Manila suburb, Philippines health workers administered Covid-19 vaccinations on Wednesday to those unable to visit clinics due to illness or old age as part of efforts to protect more vulnerable groups in the area.
The Philippines is battling one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in Southeast Asia, with the capital region, an urban sprawl of 16 cities that is home to at least 13m people, the epicentre for the latest wave of infections.
In Marikina City, east of central Manila, residents unable to make it to inoculation centres can register for vaccinations.
“Other people are afraid of being vaccinated, but I am not afraid. I want it,” said Ederlina Barrida Paraiso, 81, speaking just after receiving a shot of the Chinese vaccine developed by Sinovac Biotech.
Sebastian Coe expects Tokyo Olympics to go ahead after test event in Japan
World Athletics president Sebastian Coe has reiterated that the Tokyo Olympics will take place in July despite the rising number of Covid-19 cases in Japan – and promised that the competition will be “extremely good” even if there are no spectators.
Coe was speaking after attending a half-marathon test event in Japan’s northern city of Sapporo, which he said made him confident that the Olympic marathon and race walk events would be held successfully in the city after the Games open in 78 days’ time.
However, he conceded that there concerns, with 70-80% of the Japanese public opposed to the Games and only about 2% of the population vaccinated for Covid-19.
The country has reported over 10,000 deaths from the coronavirus.
“You can understand the concern,” Coe told a news conference.
The challenges are big. I don’t believe any Olympic Games has been delivered under more difficult circumstances. These Games have an overlay of complexity that is beyond most comprehension.
You can read the full story by Sean Ingle, the Guardian’s chief sports reporter, here:
Updated
Hello everyone, this is Yohannes Lowe. I’ll be running the blog until the evening (UK time). As always, feel free to get in touch on Twitter if you have any story tips.
Today so far…
- India accounted for nearly half of the Covid-19 cases reported worldwide last week and one in four of deaths, the World Health Organization has said.
- Deaths in India from Covid rose by a record 3,780 in the past 24 hours, health ministry data showed, while daily infections rose by 382,315.
- The G7 meeting in London is getting under way for a second day of their first summit for two years. The meeting will be without the delegation from India, who are self-isolating after two of the party tested positive for Covid. Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyan Jaishankar has tweeted to say he will join virtually.
- India has released $6.7bn in cheap financing for vaccine makers, hospitals and other health firms. Reserve Bank of India governor Shaktikanta Das also vowed to deploy “unconventional” measures if the crisis worsens. “The devastating speed with which the virus affects different regions of the country has to be matched by swift and wide-ranging actions,” Das said.
- Eight of England’s 11 Indian Premier League cricket players returned to Heathrow this morning and are beginning a 10-day hotel quarantine after the tournament was suspended due to the Covid crisis.
- A New South Wales man in Australia has tested positive for Covid-19 in a new case of community transmission that has health authorities concerned due to his level of activity while potentially infectious.
- Lawyers have made an urgent application to the federal court in Sydney for a judge to review the Australian travel ban imposed under the biosecurity act by health minister Greg Hunt.
- UK vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi says the UK government is assessing the possible need for a third Covid-19 vaccine dose for the elderly and vulnerable, to be given in the autumn, after all adults are given their initial two-shot regime.
- The total number of deaths registered in England and Wales was below the five-year average for the seventh consecutive week, the ONS said
- Gibraltar has announced it will not require UK tourists to be tested for coronavirus when foreign holidays resume.
- Health officials have rushed to vaccinate thousands of people in Bangkok as new Covid-19 cases spread through densely populated low-income areas in the capital’s central business district.
That is your lot from me, Martin Belam, this morning. I’m not sure John Edward Taylor could have imagined live-blogging a pandemic when the Manchester Guardian published its first edition 200 years ago today. Andrew Sparrow has our UK politics live blog , which is very election focussed today, and Yohannes Lowe will be along shortly with all the global coronavirus news and the top UK Covid lines.
Health officials have rushed to vaccinate thousands of people in Bangkok as new Covid-19 cases spread through densely populated low-income areas in the capital’s central business district.
The current outbreak spread from night entertainment spots to the Klong Toey area, an area of Bangkok with about 100,000 people living in a 1 square mile area. There, health workers are trying to vaccinate up to 3,000 people per day, hoping to have at least 50,000 people inoculated within two weeks. They are also testing intensively to try to identify and isolate those who are infected.
But that may not be enough, local leaders say.
“There are all kinds of people in Klong Toey, from day laborers and taxi drivers to business owners. They travel to work in different areas, not only in Bangkok but also other provinces. We cannot seal the area and cannot stop them from moving around,” Sittichat Angkhasittisiri, chairman of the Klong Toey Block 1-2-3 community, told the Associated Press.
Chalida Ekvitthayavechnukul and Patrick Quinn report for AP that Thailand recorded 2,112 new cases and 15 deaths on Wednesday. The country has been reporting about 2,000 cases a day recently, often with double-digit deaths in the third mass outbreak since the pandemic started.
About 30,000 people were being treated in hospitals and in field hospitals constructed to make up for the lack of enough hospital beds and intensive care units, especially in Bangkok.
Health officials warned that caseloads were bound to jump after millions traveled around the country during Songkran national holidays in mid-April, even as authorities were urging people to stay home and take more precautions against the virus.
The country has vaccinated only 2% of its 60 million people in a faltering, delayed inoculation programme.
Many of the newly reported cases were in the nearby Lumphini district, which is home to nearly 30,000 people, most of them also living in crowded old houses in narrow alleys squeezed between massive construction projects, canals, factories, expressways and embassies.
“We found a confirmed case on 20 April. He tried to get a (hospital) bed but could not, so finally he had to isolate himself in his car . . . because he was afraid of spreading it to family members,” Angkhasittisiri said. “After that, more cases were found.”
The tens of thousands of foreigners legally living in Thailand do not know if there will be any way to be vaccinated anytime soon.
“The vaccines right now are only reserved for Thai people who are now at a high-risk level or living in the severe outbreak areas. Expats should wait for a clear policy from the government,” the newspaper Bangkok Post quoted Rungrueng Kitphati, spokesperson for the Public Health Ministry, as saying. There will soon be a surplus of vaccines so it will not be difficult to get them.”
Updated
Gibraltar: UK tourists will not need Covid tests in summer
Gibraltar has announced it will not require UK tourists to be tested for coronavirus when foreign holidays resume.
In a phrase further torturing the very concept of what a “staycation” actually is, chief minister Fabian Picardo said the Rock offers a “great British staycation in the Mediterranean”.
PA Media reports he told Sky News: “Gibraltar has an open frontier with Spain and the rest of the European Union, and we don’t require PCR testing for those who come across our land frontier.
“We therefore don’t think it would be appropriate for us to require PCR testing of those who are coming from the United Kingdom, which has a higher vaccinated population and a lower incidence of Covid than the rest of the European Union.
“When you’re coming to Gibraltar you’re coming to a part of Britain, and therefore you’re going to be very welcome here without the need for a PCR test. It’s thanks to the United Kingdom government that Gibraltar can proudly say that all of our adult population is now vaccinated. Gibraltar has zero cases of Covid today.”
Updated
Andy Bruce and Alistair Smout at Reuters have summed up one of the key moments from this morning’s UK media round – vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi says the UK government is assessing the possible need for a third Covid-19 vaccine dose for the elderly and vulnerable, to be given in the autumn, after all adults are given their initial two-shot regime.
“The clinicians haven’t yet made their decision when they will need to boost, whether to give more immunity to the most vulnerable, to increase the durability of the protection, or to deal with a variant,” Zahawi told Sky News.
Asked by the BBC about a Times newspaper report that over-50s would be targeted with the booster shots, Zahawi reiterated that no decisions had been taken.
Last week, a Public Health England official said that any booster programme would be led by the need to protect against against variants, as high levels of protection offered by the current shots looked unlikely to wane quickly.
In order to boost research into vaccines against new variants, Britain said it would invest a further £30m into laboratory facilities at Porton Down. Alexandra Topping reports for us on that: UK pledges £29m more to fast-track vaccines against Covid variants
Updated
The G7 meeting in London is getting under way for a second day of their first summit for two years. Here’s the UK’s foreign secretary Dominic Raab meeting with US secretary of state Antony Blinken.
The meeting will be without the delegation from India, who are self-isolating after two of the party tested positive for Covid. Aubrey Allegretti, our political correspondent, has the latest on that.
And if you do fancy your regular helping of UK politics, then my colleague Andrew Sparrow has got the UK live blog underway over here…
I’ll be here continuing with global coronavirus news and the top UK lines on Covid.
Updated
Unlike their Australian counterparts, who face a travel ban on returning home, eight of England’s 11 Indian Premier League players returned to Heathrow this morning and are beginning a 10-day hotel quarantine, the England and Wales Cricket Board has announced.
Australia’s cricketers will escape the worsening Covid-19 situation in India by flying to Sri Lanka or the Maldives before taking a chartered flight home once the government’s controversial travel ban is lifted.
PA Media reports Cricket Australia and the players’ union have said they were working on arrangements to repatriate the group of 38 players, coaches and staff who remain in India as quickly and as safely as possible.
Updated
The total number of deaths registered in England and Wales was below the five-year average for the seventh consecutive week, the ONS said this morning.
PA Media reports 9,941 deaths were registered in the week to 23 April, which is 5.3% below the average for the corresponding period in 2015-19. Before the seven most recent weeks, the last time deaths were below average was in the week to 4 September 2020.
Additionally, a total of 152,491 deaths have now occurred in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate, the ONS said.
Fifty care home resident deaths involving Covid-19 in England and Wales were registered in the week to 23 April, down 28% on the previous week.
In total, 42,381 care home residents in England and Wales have had Covid-19 recorded on their death certificate since the pandemic began. The ONS figures cover deaths of care home residents in all settings, not just in care homes.
Updated
Joe Pike from Sky News has this latest on the two positive Covid cases among the Indian delegation to the G7 meeting in London.
I'm also told:
— Joe Pike (@joepike) May 5, 2021
-Indian delegation were given diplomatic exemptions to quarantine rules on arrival to UK.
-But a daily testing regime is in place.
-Indian delegates had meetings yesterday but due to social distancing/ mask wearing, PHE says not need for contacts to self-isolate.
Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyan Jaishankar has tweeted to say he will join ongoing G7 meetings in London virtually after he was informed about exposure to people with possible coronavirus infection.
“Was made aware yesterday evening of exposure to possible Covid positive cases,” Jaishankar said in a tweet. “As a measure of abundant caution and also out of consideration for others, I decided to conduct my engagements in the virtual mode. That will be the case with the G7 meeting today as well.”
Was made aware yesterday evening of exposure to possible Covid positive cases. As a measure of abundant caution and also out of consideration for others, I decided to conduct my engagements in the virtual mode. That will be the case with the G7 Meeting today as well.
— Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) May 5, 2021
Updated
India delegation to G7 meeting self-isolating after two members tested positive for Covid
India’s entire delegation to the G7 summit in London is self-isolating after two of its members tested positive for Covid-19, the British government said this morning.
“Two delegates tested positive so the entire delegation is now self isolating,” a British official told Reuters.
“The meeting had been enabled by a strict set of Covid protocols, including daily testing of all delegates,” the British official said.
Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar did not test positive for the virus, Sky News reporter Joe Pike said on Twitter. Jaishankar was pictured meeting British interior minister Priti Patel on Tuesday.
The delegation will be attempting to meet virtually, Pike added.
Senior diplomat tells @SkyNews:
— Joe Pike (@joepike) May 5, 2021
"We deeply regret that Mr Jaishankar will be unable to attend the meeting in person today and will attend virtually. But that is exactly why we have put in place strict COVID protocols and daily testing."
India is not a G7 member but was invited by Britain to this week’s summit, along with Australia, South Africa and South Korea
Updated
Iraq’s vaccine rollout had been faltering for weeks, but a populist Shiite cleric’s public endorsement of vaccinations – and images of him getting the shot last week – have begun to turn things around.
Abdulrahman Zeyad at Associated Press reports from Baghdad that hundreds of followers of Muqtada al-Sadr are now heading to clinics to follow his example, underscoring the power of sectarian loyalties in Iraq and deep mistrust of the state.
“I was against the idea of being vaccinated. I was afraid, I didn’t believe in it,” said Manhil Alshabli, a 30-year-old Iraqi from the holy city of Najaf. “But all this has changed now.”
“Seeing him getting the vaccine has motivated me,” said Alshabli, speaking by phone from Najaf where he and many other al-Sadr loyalists got their shots. Alshabli compared it to soldiers being energized when they see their leader on the frontline.
Iraq has grappled with a severe second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. New case numbers spiked to over 8,000 per day last month, the highest they have ever been. The surge was driven largely by public apathy toward the virus. Many routinely flout virus-related restrictions, refusing to wear face masks and continuing to hold large public gatherings. Daily rates have decreased in the last week, with 5,068 new cases reported on Monday.
Iraq’s health ministry has repeatedly tried to reassure Iraqis that the vaccines are not harmful, but this has not convinced many who harbour long-standing distrust of the health care system.
The ministry has introduced measures to push Iraqis to get the shots. They include travel restrictions for those unable to produce a vaccination card and dismissals of employees at shops, malls and restaurants. While the measures have led more people to seek out vaccinations, they have also confused and angered a still largely reticent public.
Restaurant owners said they were blindsided by the measures, uncertain if it meant they would face closure if they refused them.
“There is no clear law to follow,” said Rami Amir, 30, who owns a fast food restaurant in Baghdad. “I don’t want all my staff to be vaccinated because they might have severe side effects or complications,” he said, echoing widespread skepticism.
Omer Mohammed, another restaurant owner, said applicants for a new job at his eatery dropped out when he said vaccination cards were a necessary prerequisite.
Updated
A member of the UK government’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation said unregulated international travel “can be very dangerous indeed” but there are steps which can minimise the risk.
PA Media reports Prof Adam Finn told Sky News: “We certainly got our hands very comprehensively burned in in March 2020 when very large numbers of people returned from holidays in Europe with the virus and set the pandemic going in the UK at a very fast rate.
“So, we’ve learned our lesson that international travel in an unregulated way can be very dangerous indeed. I think while travel is inevitably going to start happening, we really do need to do everything we can to minimise the risks associated with that: think about the places where people are going to travel; to make sure that people have been immunised before they travel; and if necessary, implement quarantine and control measures to stop the virus being imported and spreading about.”
Asked about the proposed traffic light system, he added: “The principle of trying to think carefully about how this is done and to minimise the overall risks is clearly a sensible one. I think the plans need to be thought through carefully and put in place and not done in too much of a rush, because we don’t want to now lose ground and have to catch back up again to where we are in the later part of the year.”
Updated
The other big line that is coming out of Australia this morning is the legal challenge to the government’s travel ban on people returning from India.
Rod McGuirk reports for Associated Press from Canberra that lawyers for Gary Newman – not that one – one of 9,000 Australians prevented from returning home from India, has made an urgent application to the federal court in Sydney for a judge to review the travel ban imposed under the biosecurity act by health minister Greg Hunt.
Lawyer Christopher Ward told the court one of the grounds was related to questions of proportionality and reasonableness. Two grounds were based on statutory interpretation and a fourth questioned the ban’s constitutionality.
Justice Stephen Burley said an expedited hearing date would be announced within 48 hours.
Hunt announced late Friday that anyone who sets foot in Australia during the travel ban within 14 days of visiting India faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to AU$66,000 Australian dollars (£36,600).
The Australian Medical Association this week called on Hunt and prime minister Scott Morrison to withdraw the order, which the nation’s top doctors’ group condemned as “overreach”.
Some critics have accused the government of racism because such drastic travel restrictions were not introduced when infection rates were rapidly increasing in the US and Europe.
A libertarian group, meanwhile, will challenge in the federal court on Thursday Australia’s tight restrictions on its citizens leaving the country for fear that they would bring the virus home. LibertyWorks will argue that Hunt does not have the power under the biosecurity act to ban most Australians from leaving the country.
Updated
Man tests positive in New South Wales after being ‘very active’ in Sydney while infectious
A New South Wales man in Australia has tested positive for Covid-19 in a new case of community transmission that has health authorities concerned due to his level of activity while potentially infectious.
The premier, Gladys Berejiklian, said the man, in his 50s, had been “very active in the inner east” areas of Sydney prior to being tested on Tuesday. She said he had been “very good” at registering his details at locations he visited, including a cinema at Bondi Junction and several barbecue stores.
As contact tracers scramble to identify people who may have been exposed to the virus, Berejiklian praised the man for using venue QR codes, making it easier for them to issue a list of venues of concern.
Health authorities were also working to identify how the man could have contracted the infection as he had not travelled overseas recently and does not work in a hotel quarantine, border or health role.
The state’s chief health officer Dr Kerry Chant said the case was cause for concern because his test result, returned on Wednesday, shows he has a high viral load, making him potentially more infectious.
“The next ring of testing around this case will actually tell us whether he’s passed it on,” Chant said.
“But also in this case we’re really interested in how this person acquired the infection to understand the broader risk in the community. That’s why we’re asking people that have symptoms compatible with Covid to redouble your efforts and come out and get tested.”
Berejiklian also reminded people to check-in to venues to ensure all contacts were identified.
Read more here: NSW Covid case – man tests positive after being ‘very active’ in Sydney while infectious
Updated
UK vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi has been very quotable on his media round today. PA Media reports he has said the NHS is piloting Covid vaccine and test certification on its smartphone app.
When asked how soon this will be up and running, he told Sky News: “The app is one part of the certification process, so it’s very important that people have the capability to be able to demonstrate they’ve had a test, as we require other essential travel from non-red list countries to have a pre-departure test.”
He said the NHS will make provisions for those without a smartphone, adding that transport secretary Grant Shapps is “leading his G7 colleagues to agree the protocols for travel around the world”.
On the subject of that G7 meeting, he was also asked about reports of delegates self-isolating following a Covid scare.
When asked on Sky News whether he knew how many were self-isolating, he said: “I don’t I’m afraid, but obviously Public Health England and the team that are organising G7 take this very seriously.
“We continue to have one of the most robust set of protocols around testing and so we will make sure that happens, but I don’t know the numbers.”
Updated
Jessica Glenza writes for us this morning asking “How will the US live with Covid?” if it won’t reach herd immunity this year:
For many months, members of the public have equated a return to “normal life” with the phrase “herd immunity”: that threshold reached when the Covid-19 pandemic would be boxed in by immunization campaigns, find no new hosts and society would return to a 2019-style normal.
However, many scientists and experts have also warned for months that the US will not reach this threshold this year, or perhaps even next. That is because of a number of important factors including high levels of vaccine hesitancy in the US, and a still globally widespread Covid-19, which is leading to new variants.
The “new normal” is going to depend on where you live, and how local officials have decided to implement or ignore public health measures.
Oregon is limiting indoor dining in half the state after Covid-19 cases grew for five weeks straight, to 123 new cases per 100,000. But in Michigan, where the per capita case rate is 3.5 times that of Oregon, the governor is avoiding new restrictions in favor of advertising reopening once vaccinations reach a certain level.
In another recent example, Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, just lifted all pandemic mitigation orders through executive order on Monday, and enacted a permanent law allowing state officials to overrule local health authorities at anytime.
All this means that even as the science of Covid-19 has not changed – social distancing, masking, testing, contact tracing and vaccination all limit new infections – how these measures are carried out has become distinctly local and political. Localized outbreaks will test leaders’ resolve and consumers’ patience as the US enters fall 2021.
Read more of Jessica Glenza’s explainer here: The US won’t reach herd immunity this year. So how will we live with Covid?
India accounted for one in four Covid deaths globally last week
India accounted for nearly half of the Covid-19 cases reported worldwide last week and one in four of deaths, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.
“India accounts for over 90% of both cases and deaths in the WHO southeast Asia region, as well as 46% of global cases and 25% of global deaths reported in the past week,” the Geneva-based agency said in its weekly epidemiological report, report Reuters
Updated
Iris Samuels reports for Associated Press today on one cross-border vaccine initiative that has been a success.
The Blackfeet tribe in northern Montana in the United States provided about 1,000 surplus vaccines last month to its First Nations relatives and others from across the border in Canada, in an illustration of the disparity in speed at which the two countries are distributing doses. While more than 30% of adults in the US are fully vaccinated, in Canada that figure is about 3%.
Among those who received the vaccine at the Piegan-Carway border crossing were Sherry Cross Child and Shane Little Bear, of Stand Off, about 50km (30 miles) north of the border.
They recited a prayer in the Blackfoot language before nurses began administering shots, with Chief Mountain – sacred to the Blackfoot people – rising in the distance. The prayer was dedicated to people seeking refuge from the virus, Cross Child said.
Cross Child and her husband have family and friends in Montana but have not been able to visit them since the border closed last spring to all but essential travel.
“It’s been stressful because we had some deaths in the family, and they couldn’t come,” she said. “Just for the support they rely on us, and we rely on them. It’s been tough.”
On the Montana side of the border, vaccine recipients were often emotional, shedding tears, shouting words of gratitude through car windows as they drove away, and handing the nurses gifts such as chocolate and clothing. Some shared stories about what the vaccine meant to them the possibility of safely caring for vulnerable loved ones, reuniting with grandparents or traveling again.
More than 95% of the Blackfeet reservation’s roughly 10,000 residents who are eligible for the vaccine are fully immunized, after the state prioritized Native American communities – among the most vulnerable US populations – in the early stages of its vaccination campaign.
The tribe received vaccine allotments both from the Montana health department and the federal Indian Health Service, leaving some doses unused. With an expiration date fast approaching, it turned to other nations in the Blackfoot Confederacy, which includes the Blackfeet and three tribes in southern Alberta that share a language and culture.
“The idea was to get to our brothers and sisters that live in Canada,” said Robert DesRosier, emergency services manager for the Blackfeet tribe. “And then the question came up what if a nontribal member wants a vaccine? Well, this is about saving lives. We’re not going to turn anybody away.”
Updated
Incidentally Graeme Wearden has just launched our Business Live blog, which is currently leading on the news that UK car sales are recovering as showrooms being to reopen after lockdown. You can follow that here …
Updated
UK vaccines minister: no decision on booster shots yet
British officials are looking at which Covid-19 vaccines would offer the best booster shot for vulnerable people later this year and no decisions have been taken yet, UK vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi has said this morning.
“The clinicians haven’t yet made their decision when they will need to boost, whether to give more immunity to the most vulnerable, to increase the durability of the protection, or to deal with a variant,” Reuters report Zahawi telling Sky News.
He was responding to media reports that a third jab will be offered to over-50s in the UK in the autumn.
I learn that a third vaccine jab is to be offered to all over 50s in the autumn, and that is likely to eradicate the threat from all Covid-19 variants by Christmas. My story in @TheTimes this morning. https://t.co/uhw5DvG5wY
— Tom Newton Dunn (@tnewtondunn) May 5, 2021
Zahawi has also said that a multimillion pound investment in testing facilities at Porton Down would “future-proof” the UK against new variants of Covid-19.
Speaking to Sky News, he said: “We need to make sure we have vaccine variants that are ready for any virus variant that may escape.”
He said the new investment will deliver in January next year, adding the current vaccination programme was “working effectively against the dominant virus in the UK”.
PA Media reports that when asked why the announcement was being made the day before local and national elections on 6 May, he said: “Until you make the investment and they’re ready, we announce when we sign, when the system is ready to accept that investment when the plans are signed off.
“Ministers have very little to do with the timing,” he said, with the implication that it was just a coincidence.
Updated
India makes $6.7bn bank move to boost financing for healthcare efforts
India has released $6.7bn in cheap financing for vaccine makers, hospitals and other health firms, to counter the devastating coronavirus surge gripping the country.
Reserve Bank of India governor Shaktikanta Das also vowed to deploy “unconventional” measures if the crisis worsens. “The devastating speed with which the virus affects different regions of the country has to be matched by swift and wide-ranging actions,” Das said.
He spoke as India announced a record 3,780 deaths in 24 hours as well as 382,000 new cases.
Agence France-Presse report that the new measures – making it easier for banks to give cheap loans to hospitals, oxygen manufacturers and even patients – aim to improve access to emergency health care, he said. The central bank will also give some general business borrowers more time to repay loans to help underpin the economy, Das said.
“The immediate objective is to preserve human life and restore livelihoods through all means possible,” he added. Experts have warned that case numbers will keep rising until the end of May and could reach 500,000 new infections a day.
Updated
On 22 June 1918, the Manchester Guardian reported that a flu epidemic was moving through the British Isles. It was noted to be ‘by any means a common form of influenza’. Eventually, it took the lives of more than 50 million people around the world.
In a special episode of our Science Weekly podcast to mark the Guardian’s 200th anniversary, Nicola Davis looks back on the 1918 flu pandemic and how it was reported at the time. Speaking to science journalist Laura Spinney, and ex-chief reporter at the Observer and science historian Dr Mark Honigsbaum, Nicola asks about the similarities and differences to our experiences with Covid-19, and what we can learn for future pandemics.
You can listen to it here …
Updated
From one Martin to another, this is Martin Belam in London picking up the blog for the next few hours. Reuters have a quick blast on real world data from South Korea about the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines.
Data by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) showed that in people over 60 the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was 89.7% effective in preventing infection at least two weeks after a first dose was given, while the AstraZeneca shot was 86.0% effective.
Its analysis is based on more than 3.5 million people in South Korea aged 60 and older for two months from 26 February and included 521,133 people who received a first dose of either shot. There were 1,237 Covid-19 cases in the data and only 29 were from the vaccinated group, the KDCA said.
“It is shown that both vaccines provide a high protection against the disease after the first dose. People should get full vaccinations according to recommended schedule, as the protection rate will go up further after a second dose,” it said.
“Around 95% of people who died from the coronavirus in our country were senior citizens aged 60 or older, and the vaccines will sharply lower risks for those people,” health ministry official Yoon Tae-ho told a briefing.
The findings come as South Korea seeks to drum up participation in its immunisation drive after reports about potential safety issues discouraged some people from getting vaccinated.
The birth rate in the US has seen its biggest fall for nearly 50 years, according to government data, with the economic uncertainty of the pandemic believed to have contributed to a fall in pregnancies.
A study by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the rate of births per woman fell to 1.6 last year, which is well below the 2.1 required for a generation to replace itself.
The rate has been trending downwards for more than 10 years but it is thought that anxiety about the economic impact of Covid has contributed to the biggest fall in the birth rate since the early 1960s.
You can read the full story on one of the possible long-term impacts of the pandemic here:
Updated
On a lighter note, a town in Japan has used Covid relief funds to pay for a statue of a giant squid.
The creatures are considered a delicacy in Noto on Japan’s west coast and local officials believe the 13-metre long sculpture will boost tourism in the region.
Updated
Britain’s successful vaccination programme and staggered reopening out of lockdown has provided genuine grounds for optimism in tackling the pandemic, writes our science editor, Ian Sample.
But he argues that with fatalities and infections continuing to fall, the next step is crucial, especially persuading more young people to get vaccinated.
He writes:
Many young people won’t be fully vaccinated until later in the year, but it is crucial to get high coverage in these age groups, not only to reduce the chances of infections reaching more vulnerable people, but to spare the younger people themselves from the risk of severe disease or the debilitating impact of long Covid.
Read the full piece here:
Cricketers from around the world who travelled to take part in the Indian Premier League face a battle to return home after the competition was suspended amid the country’s worsening Covid crisis.
Three of the eleven English players in the league – Chris Woakes, Sam Billings and Tom Curran – have booked flights home but will have to quarantine on their arrival in Lndon. Others may have to wait longer, while Australian players face beiung stuck in limbo because their government has banned anyone travelling between the two countries. Test stars Pat Cummings and Steve Smith are among those starnded in India.
Meanwhile, the blame game has begun in India over whether the IPL, the world’s richest competition, should ever have gone ahead at all given the rise in cases since the new year.
Anand Vasu, a cricket writer based in Bangalore, argues that cricket chiefs ignored warninsg that their “bio-bubble” system would not work.
India deaths rise by record 3,780
Deaths in India from Covid rose by a record 3,780 in the past 24 hours, health ministry data showed, while daily infections rose by 382,315.
It comes a day after India followed the United States by passing 20 million infections as the virus continues to squeeze the world’s second-most populous nation in its grip.
Prime minister Narendra Modi’s government has been widely criticised for not acting sooner to suppress the second wave of the virus amid a severe shortage of hospital beds, oxyden and ventilators to treat the disease.
Religious festivals and political rallies have attracted tens of thousands of people in super spreader events. India’s opposition has called for a nationwide lockdown, but the government is reluctant to impose a shutdown for fear of the economic fallout.
Hong Kong will lift its ban on flights from the UK and Ireland this week, if the local coronavirus situation and other “relevant overseas places” does not change, our correspondent in Taiwan, Helen Davidson reports.
The ban on incoming flights has been in place since December, when it was announced suddenly in response to the virulent strain emerging in the UK. It left a number of Hongkongers stranded in the UK.
Late on Tuesday the government said it would resume the flights this Friday “after having considered the stabilising local epidemic situation and the relatively satisfactory vaccination rate in the UK and Ireland”.
Travelers must obtain a negative Covid-19 test before boarding and another on arrival at Hong Kong airport, before being sent to the 21-night hotel quarantine.
The government statement said:
Considering that the epidemic situation is still unstable in the existing extremely high-risk places such as India, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Brazil and South Africa, the Government will continue to restrict people who have stayed in those places from boarding a flight for Hong Kong.
Hong Kong has kept its borders closed to non-residents since early in the pandemic, and has on occasion banned flights from particular hot spots, or suspended particular airlines who have brought in passengers who test positive on arrival.
On Wednesday a DNA specialist told Hong Kong Today the government should consider going further, by enacting an Australian-style cap on the number of arrivals.
Dr Gilman Siu from the Department of Health Technology and Informatics at Polytechnic University told local radio he was concerned about an impending travel bubble with Singapore, and proposed relaxations of quarantine measures.
“I think we should consider limits on how many people can return to Hong Kong, because we are getting more and more imported cases, and more would be hard for the quarantine hotels. The quarantine hotels are not hospital.”
New South Wales, the largest state in Australia, has recorded its first Covid case for a month, health officials said.
It is understood that the case, a man in his 50s living in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, has not travelled overseas in recent times and he does not work in a hotel quarantine, border or health role.
The source of the infection is being investigated urgently and contact tracing is underway.
Tokyo could face extended lockdown – reports
Tokyo could be be placed under extended lockdown to contain the spread of coronavirus less than three months before the city hosts the Olympic Games, according to local media reports.
The Japanese capital and other cities including Osaka and Kyoto were placed into emergency lockdown on 25 April and were expected to emerge from restrictions next Tuesday, 11 May.
But Yomiuri newspaper reports today that it could be extended when the prime minister Yoshihide Suga meets key ministers today.
The total number of Covid-19 deaths in Japan recently passed 10,000 – the highest in the region – while media reports said the number of people with severe Covid-19 symptoms reached a record 1,050 at the weekend.
Summary
Good morning/afternoon/evening wherever you are. I’m Martin Farrer and welcome to our live coverage of the global coronavirus pandemic.
Here are some of the main developments from the the past few hours to get you up to speed with what is going on:
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Japan is considering extending the lockdown currently in place in Tokyo and other cities, according to Japanese media. The capital city is under a 17-day state of emergency until next Tuesday along with along with Osaka, Kyoto and Hyogo. But prime minister Yoshihide Suga will meet ministers today to discuss an extension, the Yomiuri newspaper reported.
- The rightwing, anti-lockdown leader of Spain’s Madrid region has won a snap election dominated by the coronavirus pandemic. Isabel Díaz Ayuso has won popularity as Madrid became one of the few large European cities in Europe that has kept bars, restaurants and theatres open since the national lockdown ended in June 2020.
- The G7 will try to agree a plan to send more vaccine supplies to poorer countries as foreign ministers wrap up three days of talks in London today. Measures could include exporting surplus doses and increasing production.
- Australia’s prime minister said the country’s controversial “pause” on flights to India is working, with case numbers in its quarantine holding centre falling. Scott Morrison’s comments came as the UN said the ban raised “serious human rights” issues. The policy revents Australians returning home from India, enforced with the threat of fines and even jail time.
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Surge testing is not being carried out in England for coronavirus variants first detected in India, despite the government claiming it would be deployed, the Guardian has learned.
- Brazil’s president ignored warnings that his Covid response would lead to a disaster, a parliamentary inquiry has heard. A former health minister said Jair Bolsonaro had understood that ignoring scientific advice could cause death on an “enormous scale”.
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The birth rate in the United States has seen its biggest fall for nearly 50 years, according to government data to be published on Wednesday, with the economic uncertainty of the pandemic believed to have contributed to a fall in pregnancies.
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Hong Kong will lift its ban on flights from the UK and Ireland this week, if the local coronavirus situation and other “relevant overseas places” does not change, our correspondent in Taiwan.
Updated
