We are closing this blog now, but you can stay up to date on all our coronavirus news on our new blog below:
At Port Moresby General Hospital, about 20% of women presenting in labour have symptoms of Covid-19. Of these, about one-third (four to five women a day) test positive.
We get the test results back about two to three hours after we take the swabs, so often by the time the woman is delivering her baby it is too late to transfer her to the Covid isolation ward for the birth and staff have attended to her and been exposed to the virus, without being able to don the appropriate level of PPE and practice other precautionary measures to protect themselves.
The UK coronavirus variant spread rapidly through care homes in England at the end of 2020 and accounted for 60% of positive cases analysed in two weeks, government-funded research suggests.
In the South East, where the variant was most dominant, it accounted for 80% of positive test results in care home staff and residents processed in the second week of December and analysed by researchers from University College London (UCL).
Researchers analysed 4,442 positive PCR tests undertaken by care home residents and staff and processed between November 23 and December 13.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Protecting residents in care homes is a key priority and we are doing everything we can to support the sector, including offering free PPE, regular testing and providing over 1.1 billion for infection control measures.
“In the face of the new variant, we acted to protect those most at risk in care homes, with an additional 269 million to fund tests and increase staffing. In addition, we have prioritised residents for a vaccine in line with advice from the independent JCVI.
“This study helped inform our response to the new variant and the national restrictions and vaccination programme are helping to reduce transmission. It is vital we all continue to follow the latest guidance to reduce infections, stay safe and save lives.”
Australia will immediately provide 8,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses and critical health equipments to Papua New Guinea (PNG) due to the spike in new coronavirus infections in the country, prime minister Scott Morrison said on Wednesday.
It will also request AstraZeneca PLC and European authorities to grant access to one million doses of the country’s contracted vaccines for PNG, Morrison said.
Australia will also suspend all charter flights for two weeks from Wednesday midnight and outbound travel to the country, the prime minister said, Reuters reports.
The front page of Wednesday’s Guardian in the UK.
GUARDIAN: ‘We need to know’ Pressure on No10 to trigger Covid inquiry #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/J3FFRKH6Vu
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) March 16, 2021
Brazil death toll surpasses 282,000
Brazil on Tuesday registered a record 2,841 deaths in the past 24 hours.
In total, 282,127 people have died in Brazil. Cases rose on Tuesday by 83,926 to 11,603,535, Reuters reports.
Updated
Pregnant women vaccinated against Covid-19 could pass along protection to their babies according to a new study in Israel, Reuters reports.
According to the research conducted in February, antibodies were detected in all 20 women administered both doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine during their third trimester of pregnancy and in their newborns, through placental transfer.
“Our findings highlight that vaccination of pregnant women may provide maternal and neonatal protection from SARS-CoV-2 infection,” the study said.
The findings by researchers from Jerusalem’s Hadassah- University Medical Center were posted this month on medRxiv, an online distribution service for unpublished research manuscripts that have not been peer-reviewed.
The authors noted the small size of the study and said further research was necessary to gauge the effect of vaccination at different stages of pregnancy, and the safety and efficacy of the different vaccines now available.
One of the researchers, Dana Wolf, was quoted by the Jerusalem Post as saying the group will now start looking at how long the antibodies triggered by the vaccinations will last in the babies.
Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE said last month they had started a 4,000-volunteer international study to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of their Covid-19 vaccine in healthy pregnant women.
The trial will also assess whether vaccinated pregnant women transfer protective antibodies to their babies.
Londoners receiving the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine dismissed concerns about its potential risks, after several countries suspended its use due to fears about blood clots, AFP reports.
“I’ve just had the AstraZeneca jab and I’m very happy with that,” said Sofia Harding, a 57-year-old seamstress, at the Science Museum in the British capital.
“I’m not concerned about other countries being a bit cautious because I don’t think there’s enough evidence,” she told AFP.
The low-cost jab, developed by scientists at Oxford University with the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical giant, was initially hailed as a game-changer in the fightback against the virus.
But it has since faced problems internationally, with doubts expressed in some EU countries about its suitability for older people.
Further concerns over cases of blood clots have prompted several countries to halt its rollout, even as regulators and global health experts said it was safe to use.
Those receiving the jab in Britain include Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, who received her first dose earlier this year.
On a visit to a vaccination centre at a mosque in north London with her husband Prince Charles on Tuesday, she told a doctor she had received the AstraZeneca jab.
“Although it didn’t matter. I didn’t ask. I don’t even ask because I hate injections so much that I shut my eyes... whatever comes out,” she said.
Giles Johnson, a 57-year-old photographer, also insisted he was “completely relaxed” about getting the AstraZeneca jab rather than the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine also being used in the UK.
“Statistically, people have blood clots as a matter of routine,” Johnson said.
“I think the overall benefits of both vaccines... far exceed the possible negatives.”
Updated
An extra £12 billion a year investment is needed in the NHS and care system in England to try and recover the damage done by Covid-19, according to a report.
Covid-19 has inflicted such damage on England’s health and care services that it has undone years of progress and threatens “decade of health disruption,” the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said in its State of Health and Care report.
There have been 31 million fewer GP appointments, which will be most concerning for people with long-term conditions, and an additional 4,500 avoidable cancer deaths are expected this year because of pandemic disruptions, the report found.
Checks on people with severe mental illnesses have fallen below a third of their target levels, resulting in 235,000 fewer people having been referred for psychological therapies.
The IPPR says the severe strain being endured by the NHS in England can be tackled with an extra 2.2 billion per year for the next five years to try and pull back on the elective backlog and manage the mental health surge.
A government spokesman said: “We are backing the NHS in every possible way in our fight against this virus, investing 63 billion this year and 22 billion next year.
“This investment comes on top of 9.4 billion capital funding to build and upgrade 40 new hospitals and 3 billion we have earmarked for supporting recovery and tackling the NHS waiting lists.
“It is already making a difference, with average waiting times for elective treatment falling by 40% since July and we will continue to work with the NHS to ensure all patients receive the best quality care as quickly as possible.”
A Brazilian politician has suggested using helicopters and planes to spray his town with hand sanitizer in a desperate and futile bid to obliterate the coronavirus from above.
The mystifying proposal was floated in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul on Monday, as Brazil wrestles with the deadliest phase of its 13-month outbreak and the country’s Covid death toll rose to nearly 280,000.
A summary of today's developments
- The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said it was investigating more than 30 reported cases of unusual blood disorders out of 5 million recipients of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
- Sweden’s health agency said it was pausing vaccinations against Covid-19 using AstraZeneca’s vaccine as a precautionary measure. Latvia’s health agency on Tuesday also announced a “temporary suspension” of up to two weeks of the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
- The head of France’s vaccination programme, Alain Fischer, has said decisions by multiple EU countries to suspend inoculations with the AstraZeneca vaccine were due to the unusual nature of the side-effects reported rather than their number (see 10.28am).
- French prime minister Jean Castex has said that France had entered a third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, as the seven-day average of new cases rose above 25,000 for the first time since 20 November. Castex also said he intends to get an AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine once European health authorities confirm the jab is safe.
- Two cases of a new coronavirus strain first reported in the Philippines have been found in England. Public Health England said the variant contains a number of notable mutations, including the E484K spike protein found in the Manaus variant.
- Iceland is to allow entry to all visitors bearing proof of vaccination against Covid starting from Thursday, the country’s health ministry said. The move makes the country one of the first European nations to open its borders beyond the Schengen area (see 5.37pm).
- Former UK prime minister Tony Blair called for world leaders to make sure that groundbreaking future vaccines are not subject to restrictive intellectual property laws (see 3.54pm).
- The number of deaths from Covid-19 across Europe passed 900,000, according to an AFP tally. There were more than 530,000 additional deaths in the EU and EFTA countries from January to December 2020, against the average number of deaths during the same period between 2016 and 2019.
- There was chaos and confusion in Germany and Italy after their decisions to suspend use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid jab, with vaccination centres closing their doors and appointments being abruptly cancelled.
- The number of new coronavirus infections in the Netherlands increased by 24% in the last seven days, the biggest weekly jump since mid-December, Dutch health authorities said (see 3.16pm).
- Restaurant and hotel staff set up tables and beds in public squares across Lithuania, urging the government to provide more support to the pandemic-hit hospitality industry (see 2.45pm).
Nicaragua received a first batch of AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine doses, Vice President Rosario Murillo said on Tuesday, donated through the World Health Organization’s global vaccine-sharing COVAX program.
Murillo said Covax had donated 137,000 doses and that the Nicaragua would receive more shots through the Covax mechanism at the end of March, but did not specify how many.
In late February, Nicaragua received its first batch of vaccine doses from an initial donation of Russia’s Sputnik V product and has begun inoculating people with pre-existing conditions such as heart disease, kidney failure and cancer.
India has also already donated 200,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Nicaragua, and has agreed to deliver an additional 300,000 doses.
The UK’s health secretary Matt Hancock has sought to reassure the public that the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine is safe after some European nations halted its roll-out.
He told broadcasters: “The Oxford/AstraZeneca jab is safe, we know that over 10 million people have had it in this country, and that’s what the British regulator says but also the World Health Organisation and even the European regulator.
“We keep the effects of these vaccines under review all the time and we know that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is saving lives in the UK right now so if you get the call, get the jab.”
Asked if there has been evidence of people turning the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine down in the wake of the European suspensions, Hancock added: “We’re still getting huge numbers of people vaccinated every day and in fact the numbers yesterday were one of the highest numbers that we’ve seen.
The enthusiasm for getting the vaccine is incredibly strong and we’re still seeing that.”
French prime minister Jean Castex told BFM TV he intends to get an AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine once European health authorities confirm the jab is safe.
France and other major EU members - including Germany and Italy - suspended use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine on Monday pending the outcome of investigations into unusual cases of a rare cerebral thrombosis in people who had received it, Reuters reports.
Castex added the moment had come to think about measures to contain the spread of Covid-19 in the greater Paris region, with a weekend lockdown being the most likely outcome, as is already the case in other areas.
US President Joe Biden said he is in talks with several countries about extra doses of Covid-19 vaccines.
“We*re talking with several countries already,” he told reporters as he left the White House to promote his coronavirus stimulus package in Pennsylvania. “I’ll let you know that very shortly.”
Biden has promised to make sure every American has access to a vaccine before giving any to other nations. He did not identify the countries.
Mexico has asked the US to share doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine it has in stock, a senior diplomat said, following up on a request made by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to Biden.
Mexico’s deputy foreign minister for multilateral affairs, Martha Delgado, said that since the US had not yet approved the AstraZeneca vaccine, it would be a good candidate to offer to Mexico, which has started using it already.
The nominee for Brazil’s health minister, who will represent the ministry’s third change of leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic, said he plans to continue the controversial policies of far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro.
The initial comments by cardiologist Marcelo Queiroga dashed hopes for a change in course to curb a worsening pandemic that has killed over 270,000 people in Brazil, which had the worst weekly death toll in the world last week.
Outgoing health minister Eduardo Pazuello, an active duty army general, was under pressure as fatalities surged, even though he toed Bolsonaro’s line against lockdowns.
He also backed the president’s endorsement of anti-malarial drugs to treat Covid-19, the effectiveness of which is disputed by many healthcare providers.
“Minister Pazuello has been working hard to improve health conditions in Brazil and I was called upon by President Bolsonaro to continue this work,” Queiroga told reporters as he arrived for his first meeting at the ministry.
He said health policy is set by the president and the minister is there to implement it, Reuters reports.
Updated
Updated
Mexico has registered 1,278 new confirmed cases of coronavirus and 175 additional fatalities, bringing the totals to 2,169,007 cases and 195,119 deaths, health ministry data showed on Tuesday.
The government says the actual number of infected people and deaths is likely significantly higher than official figures reflect due to a lack of widespread testing.
Surge testing is being rolled out after new cases of the Brazilian and South African variant of Covid-19 have been identified in England.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said one case of the Brazilian variant was found in the West Midlands, while another was identified in Haringey, north London.
It comes as a case of the South African variant was also identified in the Sandwell area of the West Midlands.
Concerns have been raised that the P1 strain of the virus, first detected in the Brazilian city of Manaus, could be more contagious than the current dominant strain, with uncertainty also about how it responds to vaccines.
The case in the West Midlands was identified following a person’s arrival at Birmingham airport, where they were tested and quarantined as part of the managed hotel quarantine process.
The London case was picked up through surge testing, which will now be “stepped up” in the affected area, according to the DHSC.
Updated
New Philippines strain identified in England
Two cases of a new coronavirus strain first reported in the Philippines have been found in England.
Public Health England said the variant contains a number of notable mutations, including the E484K spike protein found in the Manaus variant.
Concerns have been raised that vaccines may not be as effective against this protein.
The new strain has been designated as a variant under investigation (VUI) rather than a variant of concern, such as the Manaus strain.
Public Health England said one of the cases was linked to international travel and the other is still being investigated, but did not confirm where either had been found.
It came after the Philippines reported 33 cases of a new variant on March 9.
Lithuania is the latest to suspend use of AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine as “a precaution” until the European Medicines Agency gives a final evaluation of its safety, the country’s health minister Arturas Dulkys has said.
“We are taking the decision now, because over the previous few hours we have received three reports about serious, unexpected, unwanted thromboembolic cases in patients who were given the AstraZeneca vaccine in Lithuania”, the head of the country’s medicine authority Gytis Andrulionis said. “We do not have proof whether this is a coincidence or due to the vaccine.”
But this morning Lithuanian prime minister Ingrida Simonyte told the public broadcaster her government would not suspend use of the vaccine, saying the harm due to the disruption to vaccination would be worse.
France has entered third wave of infections, says PM
French prime minister Jean Castex has said that France had entered a third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, as the seven-day average of new cases rose above 25,000 for the first time since 20 November.
Reuters reports:
French health authorities reported 29,975 new cases on Tuesday, a 4.5% jump versus last Tuesday’s total and the sharpest week-on-week rise in a month and a half.
President Emmanuel Macron is still hoping a vaccination drive can stave off the effects of a new pandemic wave triggered by more contagious variants, and thus prevent France from resorting to a third national lockdown.
But suspension of the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, announced on Monday over safety concerns, could jeopardise the government’s strategy.
The health ministry said there were 4,239 patients in intensive care units for Covid, up by 20 over 24 hours and setting a nearly four-month high. The total number of people hospitalised for the disease was up by 23, at 25,492, a high since 24 February.
The number of people who have died went up by 408, at 91,170, the world’s seventh-highest death toll. The seven-day moving average of deaths is 267.
My colleagues Ashifa Kassam and Kate Connolly report that German tourists hoping to visit Mallorca are being warned that coronavirus restrictions apply to everyone after the Spanish island was taken off Berlin’s high-risk list.
Officials in Mallorca are now bracing for an influx of German tourists, as they queue up by the thousands to book Easter getaways in the Mediterranean, escaping a country that seems to be entering a third wave of Covid-19 and whose vaccination programme is off to a stuttering start.
Summary
- The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said it was investigating more than 30 reported cases of unusual blood disorders out of 5 million recipients of the AstraZeneca vaccine. The EU regulator will release its findings on Thursday but its head, Emer Cooke, said she saw no reason to change its recommendation of AstraZeneca - one of four vaccines that it has approved for use. “The benefits continue to outweigh the risks, but this is a serious concern and it does need serious and detailed scientific evaluation,” Cooke told a news conference.
- Sweden’s health agency said it was pausing vaccinations against Covid-19 using AstraZeneca’s vaccine as a precautionary measure. Latvia’s health agency on Tuesday also announced a “temporary suspension” of up to two weeks of the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
- The head of France’s vaccination programme, Alain Fischer, has said decisions by multiple EU countries to suspend inoculations with the AstraZeneca vaccine were due to the unusual nature of the side-effects reported rather than their number (see 10.28am).
- Iceland is to allow entry to all visitors bearing proof of vaccination against Covid starting from Thursday, the country’s health ministry said. The move makes the country one of the first European nations to open its borders beyond the Schengen area (see 5.37pm).
- Former UK prime minister Tony Blair called for world leaders to make sure that groundbreaking future vaccines are not subject to restrictive intellectual property laws (see 3.54pm).
- The number of deaths from Covid-19 across Europe passed 900,000, according to an AFP tally. There were more than 530,000 additional deaths in the EU and EFTA countries from January to December 2020, against the average number of deaths during the same period between 2016 and 2019.
- There was chaos and confusion in Germany and Italy after their decisions to suspend use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid jab, with vaccination centres closing their doors and appointments being abruptly cancelled.
- The number of new coronavirus infections in the Netherlands increased by 24% in the last seven days, the biggest weekly jump since mid-December, Dutch health authorities said (see 3.16pm).
- Restaurant and hotel staff set up tables and beds in public squares across Lithuania, urging the government to provide more support to the pandemic-hit hospitality industry (see 2.45pm).
Nepalese drug regulators are reportedly investigating a gift of 2,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses brought to the country by a Bahraini sheikh who flew in to climb Mount Everest.
Sheikh Mohamed Hamad Mohamed Al Khalifa arrived in Kathmandu last night with 15 others including three British nationals to climb the world’s highest mountain as part of a Bahrain Defence Force.
Turkey has recorded 16,749 new coronavirus cases in the space of 24 hours, the highest daily increase this year, health ministry data shows, amid an easing of nationwide restrictions.
Turkey has recorded a total of 2,911,642 Covid cases since the beginning of the pandemic, the data showed, while 71 people have died due to Covid in the the last 24 hours, raising the cumulative death toll to 29,623.
Earlier, health minister, Fahrettin Koca, urged Turks to abide by measures to support a normalisation process started two weeks ago. Yesterday, the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, acknowledged the recent rise in infections, but said no new restrictions would be imposed for now.
Updated
Iceland extends vaccine proof entry scheme
Iceland is to allow entry to all visitors bearing proof of vaccination against Covid starting from Thursday, the country’s health ministry said.
AFP reports:
The policy, already in place since 20 January for visitors from anywhere in the passport-free Schengen area, will be extended to all arrivals regardless of their country of origin, the ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
Customs authorities will accept vaccination certificates from Schengen countries or the World Health Organization’s “yellow card”. “All those who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 will be allowed to travel to Iceland without being subject to border measures, such as testing and quarantine,” the statement said.
Alternatively, as has been possible since December, all travellers, not just those from the Schengen area, can produce antibody tests showing prior infection.
The move makes Iceland one of the first European nations to open its borders beyond the Schengen area, which covers 26 countries - most of the 27 EU members, plus Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Lichtenstein. Covid-19 has officially claimed 29 lives from 6,087 cases in Iceland.
Italy has reported 502 coronavirus-related deaths today against 354 yesterday, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 20,396 from 15,267 the day before.
Reuters reports:
Some 369,375 tests for Covid-19 were carried out in the past day, compared with a previous 179,015, the health ministry said.
Italy has registered 103,001 deaths linked to Covid-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the seventh-highest in the world. The country has reported 3.26 million cases to date.
Patients in hospital with Covid-19 - not including those in intensive care - stood at 26,098 on Tuesday, up from 25,338 a day earlier. There were 319 new admissions to intensive care units, compared with 243 on Monday. The total number of intensive care patients increased to 3,256 from a previous 3,157.
When Italy’s second wave of the epidemic was accelerating quickly in the first half of November, hospital admissions were rising by about 1,000 per day, while intensive care occupancy was increasing by about 100 per day.
Updated
The US is expected to respond by tomorrow to Mexico’s request to share doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine it has in stock, foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard has said.
Reuters has the story:
Reuters reported this week that Mexico had asked for doses of the British-developed vaccine, since it has yet to be approved for use in the United States. “I’d say we’ve made good progress, but the details, figures, provisions, won’t be known until Friday. We requested as many [AstraZeneca doses] as possible and we will have the answer on Friday,” said Ebrard.
Mexico’s president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador asked US president Joe Biden for a vaccine “loan” during a virtual meeting on 1 March, after Mexico’s vaccine strategy was knocked off course by a delay in deliveries of the vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech SE.
“We are hoping for the help, support and solidarity of the US government. I can confirm that in a month and a half, before the end of April, we will have [vaccinated] all the adults over 60 years of age,” Lopez Obrador said.
Mexico is to also sign a contract today with China’s Sinovac to purchase 20 million Covid-19 vaccine doses, Ebrard said.
HSBC’s main Hong Kong office has been closed indefinitely after three people working in the building were confirmed to have Covid, according to Bloomberg.
It reported on an internal memo which said visitors to the building between 2 March and 15 March who had stayed for more than two hours now had to be tested for the virus. It comes amid cases appearing among figures in the banking community in the city state.
Yesterday, the Financial Times reported that about 750 people including children were forced into government-run quarantine centres late last week, and hundreds of other families were locked in their homes as authorities scrambled to contain an outbreak at a gym popular with expats in the financial district.
One expat banking executive told the paper:
This is not about asking for special treatment. It’s about saying ‘get your act together’. Because [the rules] are undermining the position that Hong Kong is an important financial centre. Hong Kong’s Covid controls have been brought much closer to home for the expat community.
The prospect of seeing your kids go to a quarantine camp has been uncomfortable. International businesses are saying that if the government can’t articulate a better strategy, there will be a talent exodus from Hong Kong. A lot of families are rethinking their plans.
Updated
In the strict Protestant town where the first Dutch coronavirus riots broke out, feelings are riding high as voting starts in elections focused on the government’s handling of the pandemic.
AFP reports:
Posters and stickers for the populist, Covid-sceptic Forum for Democracy party are plastered in many places in Urk, a fishing community historically known for its hostility to vaccinations of all kinds.
“I don’t trust the government at all,” says Robert, an 18-year-old who did not give his surname. “The Forum is for freedom, I like their point of view about the coronavirus, that’s why I vote for them.”
Two weeks ago Urk, where just 60 percent are vaccinated against measles – the second-lowest figure in the country – warmly welcomed a visit by the Forum’s young leader Thierry Baudet, who has added strong opposition to coronavirus rules and scepticism about vaccines to his usual anti-immigration policies.
It was in Urk in January that the introduction of the Netherlands’ first curfew since World War II sparked unrest, culminating in the burning down of a Covid testing centre. Violence then flared across the country for three more nights, the worst riots the country had seen in four decades.
Updated
Russia’s Covid vaccines have proven effective against new variants of the coronavirus in trials, a scientist with Moscow’s consumer regulator has said, after the agency reported its first cases of a variant first detected in South Africa (see 10.02am).
Reuters has the story:
In fact, trials have already been done in Russia and we can say with confidence that the [Sputnik V and EpiVacCorona] vaccines registered in Russia also work against new strains,” Alexander Gorelov, deputy head of research at Rospotrebnadzor’s Institute of Epidemiology, said on state television.
Gorelov gave no details on trials that had tested vaccines against variants first discovered abroad. Researchers conducting trials under the review ordered by Putin said on 27 February that results were looking strong when volunteers were re-vaccinated with Sputnik V against new mutations of the virus.
Reporting on trial results last week, health minister Mikhail Murashko said that Sputnik V had shown itself effective against the virus variant that was first detected in Britain. The level of participants’ neutralising antibodies against that variant did not significantly differ from the level of those associated with the original strain of SARS-CoV-2, according to Murashko.
Updated
Public health experts in the US have called for access to vaccines to be widened to better cater for Latino migrants – among the groups hardest hit by Covid-19.
Zackary Berger and Kathleen Page, both associate professors at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and Alicia Fernández, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, write:
Current vaccine priority algorithms are inequitable, particularly those that focus on age. Almost 90% of deaths among whites have been in people over 65, but, as CDC data clearly indicate, among Latinos and African Americans more than one-third of those dying of Covid-19 have been younger than 65. And although shared living spaces have undoubtedly fueled the rapid transmission of Covid-19 in immigrant communities, living in a crowded house does not qualify people for the vaccine.
As for essential workers, it’s one thing for a hospital employee to prove they are a healthcare worker, but another thing entirely for a day laborer getting paid in cash to show proof of occupation. Finally, while people all over the country are struggling with poorly designed websites and busy call centers, these approaches are particularly insurmountable for low-income Latino workers who lack the digital skills, language capabilities and time to overcome these barriers.
Updated
Former UK prime minister Tony Blair has called for world leaders to make sure that groundbreaking future vaccines are not subject to restrictive intellectual property laws.
In an interview with Devex, he said in the future, the international community would have to “make sure that … the intellectual property around things — whether they’re vaccines or therapeutics or antiviral biologics — that are going to change the whole dynamic of a global pandemic, that these things are made freely available.”
Earlier this month, World Health Organization chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he supported a patent waiver to help countries make and sell cheap vaccine copies in order to ensure everybody is immunised against Covid.
Heidi Chow, senior campaigns and policy manager at Global Justice Now, said:
Tony Blair adds yet another voice to the outcry calling for global patent rules to be suspended during the pandemic – but Boris Johnson needs to stop standing in the way. The UK has already hoarded enough vaccines to reach herd immunity this year and it is now shamelessly bolting the door, preventing low and middle income countries from scaling up production.
As things stand, countries in the global south are set to wait up to 2023 for widespread vaccination. This pandemic is on course to go on for years longer than it should. Our government has no excuse – they must stop sacrificing lives to protect big pharma’s monopolies
However, a pharmaceutical industry association last month claimed exempting Covid-19 vaccines from intellectual property rights would not speed up production or distribution of the jabs.
Thomas Cueni, the head of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, said managing the complex logistics of rolling out vaccines was what was slowing down jabs, not patents.
Taking away patents now or imposing a waiver wouldn’t give you a single dose more ... It is really about the know-how, it is about the skill set ... You still wouldn’t know how to roll them out on a large scale.
Updated
The fourth season of Major League Rugby, in the US, will kick-off with Old Glory DC versus NOLA Gold on Saturday. Pandemic notwithstanding, league commissioner George Killebrew is feeling bullish.
If we actually get to that day, and the Western Conference finalists and the Eastern Conference finalists are playing each other, live on CBS … with Covid and everything else that’s going on? I will deem that a successful year.
My colleagues Kate Connolly, Angela Giuffrida and Jon Henley report on chaos and confusion in Germany and Italy after their decisions to suspend use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid jab, with vaccination centres closing their doors and appointments being abruptly cancelled.
The countries are two of the biggest on a growing list of European nations that have in recent days ordered a pause in the distribution of the AstraZeneca vaccine, after seven reported cases in Germany of blood clots including deep vein thrombosis in people who had recently received the jab, three of which were fatal. Among recipients of the vaccine in Italy, eight people have died and four more have suffered ”serious adverse events”, according to Nicola Magrini, head of the Italian medicines agency Aifa.
Lithuania, Luxemburg, Denmark, Romania, Bulgaria, Norway, Ireland, the Netherlands, France and Sweden are among other countries to have taken similar steps.
Updated
The number of new coronavirus infections in the Netherlands increased by 24% in the last seven days, the biggest weekly jump since mid-December, Dutch health authorities said today (via Reuters).
A total 39,527 new cases were confirmed in the country of 17 million people in the past week, taking the total number of Covid-19 patients since the start of the pandemic to almost 1.2 million, with 16,119 related deaths.
Three-quarters of the new cases were caused by a new, more contagious mutation of the virus first discovered in Great Britain, the Dutch Institute for Public Health (RIVM) said.
The RIVM has repeatedly warned about an imminent wave of infections as new mutations come to take the upper hand.
That prompted the government last week to extend a broad lockdown to fight the pandemic, including a night-time curfew that has angered some Dutch citizens, until at least the end of this month.
The government is facing a general election today and tomorrow in which Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s conservative VVD Party is expected to gain enough support to secure a fourth term, despite growing criticism of its coronavirus policies.
The European Commission expects to receive about 200 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in the second quarter, it said for the first time today (via Reuters):
The EU is aiming to vaccinate at least 255 million people, or 70% of its adult population, by the end of the summer but has faced criticism for the slow rollout of its inoculation drive.
Besides supply delays from some drugmakers and hiccups in vaccination plans, the suspension of inoculations using the AstraZeneca vaccine due to potential health issues is also affecting the bloc’s campaign.
The EU had not previously said how many doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which is administered in two shots, it would receive in the April to June period under two confidential supply contracts with the drugmakers.
The expected Pfizer second-quarter deliveries will include 10 million doses originally due in the third and fourth quarters of this year, the Commission said.
The announcement does not change the EU’s overall forecast for vaccine supplies of 300 million doses in the second quarter from all the drugmakers the bloc has signed contracts with.
“These accelerated 10 million doses will bring the total doses of BioNTech/Pfizer in quarter two up to over 200 million,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
“This is very good news. It gives member states room to manoeuvre and possibly fill gaps in deliveries,” she said.
Pfizer confirmed the EU statement regarding its second-quarter supply. The additional 10 million doses would be moved forward from an option for 100 million doses in a second contract the EU signed with the drugmakers in January, the EU statement said. In total, the EU has booked 600 million doses from the two companies in the two contracts.
A Commission spokesman told a news conference that the announcement would not lead at this point to a revision of the EU’s overall second-quarter delivery forecasts, even though the total announced and expected deliveries was now higher. The spokesman said delivery schedules could always change so forecasts were not always updated after announcements.
The EU expects to get 55 million vaccine doses from Johnson & Johnson and 35 million from Moderna in the second quarter, according to a delivery schedule published by the Italian government and an internal document on supply forecasts from Germany’s health ministry.
AstraZeneca last week announced that it aimed to deliver 70 million doses to the 27-nation bloc in the second quarter, well below its original contractual obligation of 180 million. In the first three months of the year, the EU expects to receive about 100 million doses from Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna.
Restaurant and hotel staff set up tables and beds in public squares across Lithuania today, urging the government to provide more support to the pandemic-hit hospitality industry, AFP reports.
Menus were replaced with signs saying “Last Supper”, tables were covered with black tablecloths and funeral wreaths were laid by hotels beds in front of the government building in the capital Vilnius.
Similar demonstrations were held in other cities in the Baltic EU state.
“The whole hospitality sector - restaurants, bars and especially hotels - is going through very difficult times and we need much more support from our government,” Juozas Vainora, a hotel employee, told AFP.
French cafe owner Vincent Degeorge said: “Restaurants, tourism is just dying, everything is going to bankruptcy. I don’t want to die without fighting.”
Evalda Siskauskiene, chief executive of the hotels and restaurants association, said the sector as a whole had lost more than €300m (£257m) because of the pandemic and a wave of bankruptcies could be imminent if the government does not increase subsidies.
“We have reached the bottom and cannot survive any more. The state support is ridiculous,” she said.
Lithuania’s economy ministry said it has provided the industry with €5m in subsidies this year and pledged to increase the support soon.
Lithuania, a eurozone nation of 2.8 million people, imposed a second partial lockdown in November, meaning that bars and restaurants have only been able to offer takeaway services for more than four months now.
The number of foreign tourists dropped 73% last year compared with 2019, according to official data.
Iran today launched human trials of its third domestic Covid-19 vaccine candidate, as authorities banned travel to 40 cities and towns during the Iranian new year holidays, Reuters reports:
Iran, which has the highest coronavirus death toll in the Middle East, is developing several vaccines, including one in cooperation with Cuba, to help it fight the pandemic despite US sanctions interfering with its ability to import vaccines.
The new vaccine has been named Fakhra in honour of assassinated nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who headed a defence ministry research body which helped develop the drug, according to state media.
A son of Fakhrizadeh received the first jab of the Fakhra vaccine in a ceremony on Tuesday which was carried live on state TV.
Authorities have banned travel to and from nine “red” (high risk) cities in the south-west and 31 “orange” (medium high risk) cities and towns across the country during the two-week new year holiday period starting on Friday.
To discourage gatherings, a night driving curfew will continue to be imposed on private cars in most cities across the country of 83 million, which has had nearly 1.8 million Covid 19 cases and more than 61,400 deaths.
CovIran Barakat, the most advanced, tested on 300 people so far, and Razi CovPars are other locally developed vaccines, which are in clinical trials, and Soberana-02 is being jointly produced with Cuba. Several other Iranian vaccines are in earlier stages of development.
Iran complains that its ability to buy vaccines is hampered by US sanctions, reimposed after Washington abandoned a 2015 nuclear agreement. Food and medicine are exempt from the sanctions, but banks have been discouraged from financing Iranian deals.
Iran says it has received more than 400,000 of the 2 million Sputnik V vaccines on order from Russia, and still awaits the delivery of 4.2 AstraZeneca vaccines. Tehran says it has received 250,000 doses of China’s Sinopharm vaccine and part of an order of 500,000 doses of India’s Covaxin.
Updated
Cooke defends the authorisation of the AstraZeneca shot.
We had very large clinical data sets that showed safety and efficacy in large populations. [For the AstraZeneca jab] We had efficacy in 18,000 patients, safety is 30,000 patients. We remain convinced the benefits outweigh the risks.
She stressed that “our evaluation is guided by science and independence and nothing but.”
And the press conference reaches its conclusion.
Updated
Some background reading:
Cooke says the vaccines are “very important in terms of preventing deaths from Covid-19”.
Asked how many cases of thromboembolic events there have been, Cooke says the numbers are “very, very dynamic” and that as of 10 March there were 30 reported cases, among close to 5 million people vaccinated. But there have been additional cases reported over the weekend so this figure is likely an underestimate, she adds.
Her colleague, whose name I haven’t yet caught, earlier added that the frequency of these events appeared lower than the overall incidence in the population.
Updated
Cooke says the EMA did initially investigate whether individual batches were possibly causing adverse events, after Austria banned a batch, and that as more events are reported “more batches are involved and therefore it is unlikely it is a batch specific event”.
Asked whether states would abide by any EMA recommendation regarding the jab following its review, Cooke does not explicitly respond but says that information sharing is a constant process.
She adds that the announcement of the review would be made on Thursday afternoon.
Asked if the decision of states to pause the vaccine could lead to lower trust in the AstraZeneca jabs, Cooke says trust in the safety of the vaccine was paramount and that scientific evaluations were the best way to maintain this.
We are worried that there may be an effect on the trust of the vaccines but our job is to make sure the products we authorise are safe.
Cooke says the EMA could take a number of different actions on Thursday at the conclusion of the expert review of the jab but would not be drawn to speculate.
The priority is to ensure that the vaccines can be used safely in the European population, if this means that an additional warning might be necessary we’d look into the that, if we believe there is a problem that can’t be solved we’ll take the necessary action to deal with that. It really depends on the outcome of the expert evaluation.
Cooke says it is important to reiterate that the EMA believes the benefits continue to outweigh the risks, but there is “serious concern” which demands “serious and detailed” scientific consideration, after she was asked about the conundrum facing states who have paused their rollout – thus potentially putting people at greater risk of fatal Covid.
Updated
On the divergent approach taken by EU states, she says these are being taken in the context of information available at the national level. “It is the country’s prerogative to do so,” she adds. “It is our responsibility to focus on the science associated with these risks and whether there is scientific evidence to show if they are causally related to the vaccine.”
Updated
Cooke acknowledges that some specific batches have been suspected of being behind adverse health events, and that this forms a plank of the EMA’s expert investigation.
Updated
Cooke says the EMA is receiving more information about German cases including three deaths and that its experts were assessing the details.
Asked about similar reports from the Pfizer and Moderna jab regarding blood clotting, Cooke says the EMA is looking at adverse events associated to all vaccines but that the current focus was on the AstraZeneca vaccine.
“It looks like there’s similar numbers coming in from across the world,” she says.
Cooke adds that the EMA remains “firmly convinced” that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine outweighs “the risks of these side effects”.
She urges anyone who suspects they have had a side effect after receiving the jab to contact their relevant health professional.
EMA: 'No indication that vaccination has caused these conditions'
The EMA’s expert committee is investigating each individual potentially adverse event. It will meet on Thursday to conclude their findings and advise the EMA on whether it needs to take any further action. The EMA will make an announcement immediately, she adds.
“We need to have the facts first, we cannot come to a conclusion until we’ve done a thorough scientific analysis.” Cooke says.
“At present, there is no indication that vaccination has caused these conditions. They have not come up in the clinical trials and they are not listed as known or expected side events with this vaccine.
“In clinical trials both the vaccinated people and those who received the placebo have shown very small numbers of blood clot developments.
“The number of thromboembolic events overall in the vaccinated people seems not to be higher than that seen in the general population.”
Updated
Cooke says events involving blood clots, “some with very unusual features”, have occurred in “a very small number of people who have received the vaccine”.
She says many thousands of people develop blood clots annually in the EU for various reasons and that the committee is assessing whether the vaccine “might have caused the adverse events or whether the events are due to be to other causes”.
Cooke says “a situation like this is not unexpected when you vaccinate millions of people. It’s inevitable that you have rare or serious instances of illnesses that occur after vaccination.”
It is “imperative”, she adds, to investigate all such events swiftly to determine whether the jab had a causative effect on the person.
She says an EMA committee has reviewed the preliminary results from the reported blood clot events from those who had received the jab, but that it is an ongoing process and there are no outcomes yet.
We said very clearly that the benefit risk remains positive. We have continued to evaluate and receive additional possible side events … We have pulled in events from across the network with specific expertise in coagulation and thromboembolic disorders, so it’s an ongoing process. I’m not here to give you the outcome of any scientific review, I’m here to explain the steps in the process what we’re doing and when you can expect us to come to a conclusion.
Updated
EMA director Emer Cooke says the briefing is intended to address the “unprecedented” interest in the safety of the AstraZeneca vaccine and to emphasise it is “evaluating any possible rare side effects relating to this vaccine”.
EMA begins news briefing on vaccine safety
The European Medicines Agency news conference is about to begin. The EMA is conducting an investigation into the safety of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 shot after Germany, France, Italy and other EU countries suspended the use of the vaccine over isolated cases of bleeding, blood clots and low platelet counts.
Updated
Canada once was hailed as a success story in dealing with the pandemic, faring much better than the US. But the trade-dependent nation has lagged on vaccinating its population because it lacks the ability to manufacture the vaccine and has had to rely on the global supply chain for the shots.
AP reports:
With no domestic supply, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government bet on seven different vaccines manufactured elsewhere and secured advance purchase agreements — enough to get 10 doses for each of Canada’s 38 million people. Regulators have approved the Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. While acquiring them has proven difficult, that gamble appears to be about to pay off.
Although Canada’s economy is tightly interconnected with the US, Washington hasn’t allowed the hundreds of millions of vaccine doses made in America to be exported, and Canada has had to turn to Europe and Asia.
“Our best friend and neighbour, the United States, has a Pfizer vaccine plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I can shoot a puck from Kalamazoo and hit Ontario, yet we’re not getting our Pfizer vaccine from them,” said Dr Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease scientist at the University of Toronto.
The vaccine supply chain difficulties have forced Canada to extend the time between the first shot and the second by up to four months so that everyone can be protected faster with the primary dose. The hope is to get all adults at least one shot by the end of June.
“It’s not just Canada that is experiencing turbulence. The entire globe is undertaking the largest mass vaccination campaign in its history with completely new supply chains,” said procurement minister Anita Anand.
According to the World Health Organization, nearly 80% of the vaccines manufactured so far have been administered in only 10 countries. Canada ranks about 22nd in the number of doses administered, with about 8% of the population getting at least one shot. That compares with 36% in the U.K, 21% in the U.S. and 8%. in the EU. Chile, which like many countries has turned to China, has vaccinated 25% with at least one dose.
Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has picked his fourth health minister since the pandemic began, this time the head of the country’s cardiology society who in the past has spoken favourably of the country’s controversial right-wing leader.
AP reports:
Marcelo Queiroga will replace Eduardo Pazuello, an active-duty army general with expertise in logistics who landed the position last May despite having no prior health experience.
Pazuello had presided over the healthy ministry for the longest period of the three pandemic ministers before Queiroga. The revolving door reflects the challenges for the government of Latin America’s largest nation to implement effective measures to control the virus’ spread – or even agree which measures are necessary.
Pazuello’s two predecessors left the position amid disagreements with Bolsonaro, who criticised broad social distancing and supported the use of an unproven anti-malarial drug to treat the disease. Pazuello backed use and distribution of the malaria pill immediately after taking the job,. On several occasions, he said that his boss tells him what to do, and he obeys.
“Queiroga is much more knowledgeable on the health issue, he is going to take action to reduce the number of people who die from this disease that’s been affecting the whole world,” Bolsonaro said, according to CNN.
China has approved a new Covid vaccine for emergency use, one that was developed by the head of its Center for Disease Control, putting a fifth homegrown jab at the country’s disposal.
AP reports:
Gao Fu, the head of China’s CDC, led the development of a protein subunit vaccine that was approved by regulators last week for emergency use, the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Microbiology said in a statement Monday.
The latest vaccine was developed jointly by Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biopharmaceutical and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The team finished phase 1 and phase 2 clinical trials in October and is currently conducting the last phase of trials in Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Indonesia, according to the statement.
The vaccine was approved for use in Uzbekistan on 1 March. It’s a three-dose shot that is spaced out with one month each between shots, a company spokesperson said. Like other vaccines China has developed so far, it can be stored at normal refrigeration temperatures.
There is no publicly available information in peer-reviewed scientific journals about the clinical trial data showing efficacy or safety. A spokesperson for the company said that the data could not be shared at this time but that the company was providing the information to health authorities.
The approved vaccines have previously been limited to adults 18-59 years old, as officials cited a lack of clinical trial data for those who are older, although the government appears to be signalling the limits are now being set aside.
Germany has met its national climate goal for 2020, it has announced, as the pandemic helped to drive the biggest reduction in emissions for three decades in Europe’s biggest economy.
AFP reports:
Greenhouse gas emissions last year were around 41 percent lower than 1990 levels, the biggest yearly decline in more than three decades, the environment minister said. “It’s clear that the coronavirus pandemic has fuelled the reduction in emissions,” Svenja Schulze said. “Catastrophes and economic crises cannot replace sensible climate policy and sustainable restructuring of our economy.”
The annual figures published today showed that Germany had emitted 739 million tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2020, a reduction of 70 million tonnes on 2019 levels. There were significant reductions in key areas.
With flights grounded and shops shuttered as governments scrambled to stop contagion of the coronavirus, emissions in the transport sector slumped 11.4% and those from the energy sector fell by 14.5%.
The only sector to miss its 2020 targets was buildings, with Schulze noting that people had spent more time at home with the heating on during the pandemic.
Germany began 2021 by shutting down a coal-fired power plant near Cologne as part of its phaseout of coal by 2038 and slapping a CO2 price on transport. As of this year, is charging €25 euros per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions released by the transport and heating sectors.
Canadian drug developer Medicago has said a started a late-stage study of its experimental Covid vaccine combined with a booster from GlaxoSmithKline has commenced.
The study plans to eventually enroll 30,000 participants and initially focus on healthy adults, followed by adults over the age of 65 and those with co-morbidities.
Medicago, which has Canada’s most advanced Covid vaccine project under development, expects to report results from a mid-stage trial of the vaccine in April. The Medicago vaccine uses a technology known as virus-like particles, which mimics the structure of the coronavirus, but contain no genetic material from it.
Moderna has begun dosing patients in a mid-to-late stage study of its Covid vaccine in children aged six months to less than 12 years, the company has said.
Reuters reports:
The study will assess the safety and effectiveness of two doses of mRNA-1273 given 28 days apart and intends to enroll about 6,750 children in the US and Canada.
The vaccine has already been authorised for emergency use in Americans who are aged 18 and older. In a separate study which began in December, Moderna is also testing a vaccine in adolescents between 12 and 18 years old.
The latest study is being conducted in collaboration with the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.
And here’s an interesting piece in the BMJ on whether children should be vaccinated against Covid.
The recent authorisation of vaccines against the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, raises important questions about prioritising the vaccine to those who are most likely to benefit from protection. Unlike influenza vaccines, it is currently not known whether any of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines can interrupt onward transmission to others.
The decision to vaccinate must, therefore, be made on the direct protection offered by the vaccine to those who are vaccinated. The highest burden of severe disease, hospitalisation and death lies among older adults, raising the question as to whether children and young people should be vaccinated during early deployment of any national immunisation programme.
Its Mattha Busby here taking over from my colleague Jedidajah Otte. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to everyone reading. Please do drop me a line on Twitter or via email on mattha.busby.freelance@guardian.co.uk with any tips or thoughts.
The European Medicines Agency will hold a news conference at 1pm, a spokesman for the EU’s executive arm said.
EMA is conducting an investigation into the safety of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 shot after Germany, France, Italy and other EU countries suspended the use of the vaccine over isolated cases of bleeding, blood clots and low platelet counts.
Updated
South Korea’s capital of Seoul will order hundreds of thousands of foreign workers, as well as their employers, to undergo coronavirus tests or face fines running into thousands of dollars, officials said on Tuesday.
Reuters reports:
The policy comes despite criticism that a similarly sweeping programme in a neighbouring province was xenophobic and indiscriminate.
From Wednesday Seoul city will issue a 15-day administrative order for testing on employers of at least one foreign worker, as well as the foreign workers, said Park Yoo-mi, a city quarantine officer.
“We will make Covid-19 diagnostic tests mandatory for foreign workers to preemptively head off the spread of infection,” she told a news briefing.
Last week, the neighbouring province of Gyeonggi drew flak for a similar order after at least 275 foreigners tested positive.
South Korea said infections among foreign workers presented a high risk situation, but it has not provided detailed numbers.
National health official Yoon Tae-ho told a briefing that mass testing at nearly 1,646 workplaces in the greater Seoul area and the province of Chungcheong that employ foreign workers had found no confirmed cases.
Seoul had 242,623 registered foreign workers by December 2020, the justice ministry says. But city officials estimate there may be as many as 390,000, if undocumented workers are included.
Hungary’s Covid-19 cases are expected to rise further in the coming weeks due to the spread of more easily transmissible variants of coronavirus, Surgeon General Cecilia Muller said on Tuesday.
143 further patients, most of them elderly with an underlying condition, died over the past 24 hours, and 4,926 new coronavirus infections were registered, koronavirus.gov.hu said on Tuesday.
In total 1,347,073 people in Hungary have received their first jab, and 399,505 have been fully inoculated, the website said.
Hungary closed most shops and services for two weeks and nurseries and primary schools for the next month in an effort to curb the third wave of coronavirus infections, Daily News Hungary reports.
The number of deaths from Covid-19 across Europe passed 900,000 on Tuesday, according to an AFP tally of official figures provided by health authorities.
As of Tuesday morning, the 52 countries and territories of the region - which includes Russia and Turkey - had officially registered 900,185 coronavirus deaths since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, out of a total of 40,083,433 confirmed cases.
This makes Europe the deadliest region, ahead of Latin America and the Caribbean (721,581 deaths), Canada and the United States (558,110 deaths) and Asia (263,250).
Last week Europe saw an average of 3,000 Covid deaths a day, a 2.3 percent drop on the previous week.
For a month now the region has seen less than 4,000 daily deaths - a figure which it had been surpassing since November - with a grim new record, 5,700 deaths in 24 hours, reached at the end of January.
The total number of infections in Europe since the start of the pandemic passed 40 million on Monday.
The UK is the region’s worst-hit country with a total of 125,580 deaths for 4,263,527 cases, followed by Italy (102,499 deaths, 3,238,394 cases), Russia (92,937 deaths, 4,409,438 cases), France (90,788 deaths, 4,078,133 cases) and Germany (73,656 deaths, 2,581,329 cases).
Together, these five countries represent more than half of Europe’s total coronavirus deaths.
Relative to the size of its population, the Czech Republic is the country with the highest death toll in Europe with 218 deaths per 100,000 people, followed by Belgium (194), Slovenia (189), the UK (185) and Montenegro (180).
The head of France’s vaccination programme, Alain Fischer, has said decisions by multiple EU countries to suspend inoculations with the AstraZeneca vaccine were due to the unusual nature of the side-effects reported rather than their number.
“There have been a number of alerts from several European countries over the past few days regarding somewhat atypical thrombosis anomalies which suggests an event could happen in which the vaccine might play a part,” Fischer told French radio.
“It is reasonable, when the alerts are clearly significant – more by their atypical nature than by their number, which remains very low in relation to the number of people vaccinated – for national health authorities to be cautious,” he said.
Fischer said some vaccinated people had developed thromboses “with coagulation anomalies we are not accustomed to seeing in ‘classic’ pulmonary embolisms – platelet anomalies, a type of coagulation called disseminated intravascular coagulation, that we usually see only associated with serious illnesses.”
In its statement advising the government to pause vaccinations, Germany’s Paul Ehrlich Institute said its experts had observed “a striking accumulation of a special form of very rare cerebral vein thrombosis … in connection with a deficiency of blood platelets and bleeding” following a small number of AstraZeneca vaccinations.
The head of the institute, Klaus Cichutek, told Die Welt on Tuesday that it had uncovered “one abnormality - namely six cases of sinus vein thrombosis in women between the ages of around 20 and 50 years, two of which tragically had a fatal outcome.”
Denmark and Norway last week reported incidents of bleeding, blood clots and a low count of blood platelets in several people who had received the AstraZeneca shot. Denmark’s national health agency said on Monday that “highly unusual” symptoms were seen in a 60-year-old recipient who died from a blood clot.
The agency said in a statement that the woman had “a low number of blood platelets and clots in small and large vessels, as well as bleeding”. Norway also spoke of “unusual symptoms” in three people under 50 being treated in hospital.
Two health workers in Norway, both aged under 50 and described as previously fit and healthy, have since died of brain haemorrhages, the national medicines agency said, adding that it could “neither confirm nor exclude that it has something to do with the vaccine”.
A total of 147,681 deaths have now occurred in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) said.
The most number of deaths to occur on a single day was 1,463 on 19 January.
During the first wave of the virus, the daily death toll peaked at 1,459 deaths on 8 April.
All regions of England recorded a week-on-week fall in the number of Covid-19 deaths registered in the week to 5 March, the ONS said.
Some 467 care home resident deaths involving Covid-19 in England and Wales were registered in the same week, down more than a quarter (26.5%) on the previous week.
A total of 41,458 care home residents in England and Wales have now had Covid-19 recorded on their death certificate since the pandemic began.
The figures cover deaths of care home residents in all settings, not just in care homes.
Russia has identified two cases of the new variant of the coronavirus first detected in South Africa, consumer health regulator Rospotrebnadzor said in a statement on Tuesday.
The variant was first identified in South Africa in December, where it now predominates. It has also now been detected in over 40 countries, according to the World Health Organization.
South African scientists say there is no clear evidence that the variant is associated with more severe disease or worse outcomes. However, it does appear to spread faster than previous iterations.
Russia’s Rospotrebnadzor said it is collecting and testing samples from a range of different people, including those who have recently travelled abroad, as well as people who are suspected to have been infected with coronavirus for a second time, Reuters reports.
It said it had also now found 28 cases of the coronavirus variant first detected in the UK. It reported the first case of that strain in January.
The Kremlin said on Tuesday that pressure on some countries to refuse to buy Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19 was at unprecedented levels, but that said such efforts had no chances of success.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made the remarks when asked to comment on a US government report which appeared to show that the United States had attempted to dissuade Brazil from buying Sputnik V.
He said Russia was against politicising the situation around vaccines.
Cyprus will acquire Russia’s Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine if it is approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), a senior official said on Tuesday, the latest European Union member to express interest in the shot.
Reuters reports:
The EU has approved four vaccines so far and has signed deals with Western vaccine makers on behalf of the 27-member bloc, but production glitches have slowed the rollout and some member states are seeking their own solutions.
Cypriot government spokesman Kyriakos Koushos was quoted by the semi-official Cyprus News Agency saying authorities would order 50,000 doses, subject to prior vetting and approval by the pharmaceuticals regulator.
Hungary and Slovakia have acquired the Russian vaccine, and the Czech Republic has said it may place an order.
A health ministry spokesperson in Cyprus told Reuters last week authorities could not take a position on whether the specific vaccine or any other vaccine should be approved unless all available data was assessed by the EMA.
The EMA had on March 4 announced it had started a rolling review of the vaccine. That review would speed up any approval process by allowing researchers to submit findings in real-time before final trial data is ready.
The shot’s efficacy was initially greeted with scepticism by some Western scientists after Russia approved it in August last year without waiting for the results of full clinical trials.
However, scientists said it was almost 92% effective in fighting Covid-19, based on peer-reviewed late-stage trial results published in The Lancet medical journal last month.
The two-shot vaccine uses two different weakened common cold viruses to deliver immune-building protein to the human body.
The German MP and professor of health economics and epidemiology at the University of Cologne Karl Lauterbach said he would “definitely” still accept the AstraZeneca vaccine, and that he cannot imagine that the vaccine will be taken off the German market entirely.
“I would definitely get vaccinated with AstraZeneca,” he said. “Because even considering the incidents that we now know of, the benefit is greater than the damage that can statistically arise. That’s why I would still be ready for the vaccination now.”
Germany’s decision to suspend the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine followed a recommendation from the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI), the country’s authority in charge of vaccines, following newly registered cases of a very rare deep cerebral vein thrombosis, including three deaths.
Lauterbach said the institute’s decision was neither right nor wrong.
“But I wouldn’t have made the decision based on the data,” he added.
Other countries such as the UK would have continued to vaccinate based on the same data, he said.
“This type of cerebral vein throbosis in combination with a hemolytic-uremic syndrome phenomenon is so rare that it can probably be traced back to the vaccination,” he said.
“The additional cases are of the order of magnitude that they could affect one in 250,000 - 350,000 people,” Lauterbach said. It is a serious complication, he added, “but you can usually take action against this complication during treatment.”
The comparison with the risk of thrombosis when taking the pill was not entirely permissible because the severity of the symptoms is completely different, he said.
He couldn’t imagine the AstraZeneca vaccine being withdrawn entirely. “These complication incidents are not enough [to justify] that,” Lauterbach told Deutschlandfunk. “I assume that we can restore confidence in this vaccine.”
Updated
AstraZeneca’s chief executive is in the “hot seat” over delays to deliveries of its Covid-19 vaccine shot to European countries and must provide more details of his production plans, France’s Industry Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher said.
Reuters reports:
AstraZeneca said last week it would try to deliver 30 million doses to the European Union by the end of March, down from a contractual obligation of 90 million and a previous pledge made last month to deliver 40 million doses.
The new target is not guaranteed as it hinges on regulatory approval of a vaccine factory in the Netherlands.
Asked if chief executive Pacal Soriot was under sufficient pressure from the EU, Pannier-Runacher told France Info radio: “I think he is in the hot seat and that he absolutely aware of it.”
“In any business, there is a fiduciary responsibility, you have to be accountable. When you do not honour a contract, this can cause problems, individual problems.”
Pannier-Runacher said France would receive just 25% of some 15 million doses it was expecting in March and April and that AstraZeneca was not giving enough details on production plans.
“We have identified contradictions in indications given by AstraZeneca,” she said.Pannier-Runacher’s comments come as a number of EU countries, including France and Germany, have suspended the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine after reports a small number of recipients have suffered blood clots, in some cases fatal.
“There must not be public mistrust. If you see decisions taken in other countries, the risk is that a mistrust of the vaccine develops,” the minister said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said there was no proven link and called on people not to panic.
Malaysian firm Top Glove, the world’s biggest latex glove maker, was charged Tuesday with providing poor housing for its workers after thousands were infected in a coronavirus outbreak last year, state media reported.
AFP reports:
Top Glove’s profits and stock price surged last year when countries worldwide rushed to buy protective gear as the Covid-19 pandemic intensified.
But more than 5,000 migrant workers, mainly from South Asia, who make gloves at its factories were infected when the virus surged through their dormitories - where dozens typically share a room.
The outbreak prompted Top Glove to temporarily close over half its Malaysian factories, triggering warnings of delivery delays and rising prices.
On Tuesday, it was hit with 10 counts of failing to provide certified accommodation for its workers in the northwestern city of Ipoh, state news agency Bernama reported.
Such certification from labour officials is required under laws related to providing workers with a decent standard of housing.
The charges followed raids on the dormitories in Ipoh in November. Officials also raided workers’ accommodation in other parts of the country.
Top Glove, which faces a fine of up to 50,000 ringgit ($12,000) for each count, pleaded not guilty.
It did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
German Covid infections rising exponentially
Coronavirus infections are rising exponentially in Germany, an expert at the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases said on Tuesday, adding that the risk of AstraZeneca’s vaccine was relatively low.
The number of cases per 100,000 reported on Tuesday was 83.7, up from 68 a week ago, and the RKI has said that metric could reach 200 by the middle of next month.
“We are exactly on the flank of the third wave(of the COVID-19 pandemic). That can no longer be disputed. And at this point we have eased the restrictions and that is speeding up the exponential growth,” Dirk Brockmann, an epidemiologist at the RKI, told Germany’s ARD television.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and state leaders agreed a phased easing of curbs earlier this month along with an “emergency brake” to let authorities reimpose restrictions if case numbers rise above 100 per 100,000 on three consecutive days.
On Tuesday, the number of cases per 100,000 rose to 83.7, up from 68 a week ago, and the RKI has said that metric could reach 200 by the middle of next month.
Updated
The Dutch government on Tuesday said that it would adjust rules for accepting mail-in ballots in an ongoing national election, after reports people had made a minor mistake in the proceedure.
The election, in which prime minister Mark Rutte’s conservative VVD Party is expected to gain enough support to secure a fourth term, is running for three days, on 15-17 March, to allow social distancing room at polling stations.
People 70 years and older were allowed to vote by mail for the first time, Reuters reports.
An estimated 6% of voters cast a ballot in person on the 15th, with the lion’s share expected to vote in person on the 17th. Mail-in votes have already been received but will not be tallied until the 17th, with roughly a third of eligible seniors expected to vote by mail.
With a ban on public gatherings, the election campaign focused on a series of televised debates in which Rutte maintained his image as a steady hand during a time of crisis.
But coronavirus infections in the Netherlands are rising at the fastest pace in months, and the National Institute for Health (RIVM) has advised against easing lockdown measures, saying that hospitals could still be overwhelmed in a third wave of the pandemic driven by more contagious variants.
Russia on Tuesday reported 9,393 new coronavirus cases, including 1,533 in Moscow, pushing the national infection tally to 4,409,438 since the pandemic began.
The government coronavirus task force also said that 443 people had died in the last 24 hours, taking Russia’s death toll to 92,937.
Since the end of December, recorded new infections in the country have been steadily declining.
Sweden and Latvia pause use of AstraZeneca vaccine
Sweden’s health agency said on Tuesday it was pausing vaccinations against Covid-19 using AstraZeneca’s vaccine as a precautionary measure.
Latvia’s health agency on Tuesday also announceda “temporary suspension” of up to two weeks of the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Germany, France and Italy said on Monday they would stop administering the AstraZeneca jab after several countries reported concerns about possible serious side-effects.
World Health Organization and European Medicines Agency safety experts will on Tuesday separately discuss data from AstraZeneca vaccinations, and the European regulator will hold a meeting on Thursday to decide on any further action.
Updated
France’s decision to suspend temporarily the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine was taken in co-ordination with other European countries, French industry minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher told France Info radio on Tuesday.
French vaccination chief Alain Fischer also said on Tuesday he expects the suspension of AstraZeneca’s vaccine to be temporary.
Fischer told France Inter radio that the number of cases of people showing adverse side-effects from the vaccine remained small.
He also said that the AstraZeneca vaccine was not a second-tier vaccine.
Germany’s health authorities have reported 5,480 new infections to the Robert Koch Institute, the country’s public health institution, almost 1,230 more than on Tuesday a week ago.
In addition, 238 other deaths related to Covid-19 were recorded.
The country’s seven-day incidence increased further to 83.7, compared to 82.9 on the previous day. About four weeks ago, on 16 February, the incidence had been 59, Tagesschau reports.
There have been at least 2,575,800 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Germany, according to the RKI. As of Tuesday morning, 73,418 people had died.
On 13 March 2,891,951 people, or 3.5% of Germany’s total population were fully vaccinated with two doses, while 7.8% of the population have received at least one dose.
A new coronavirus variant has been found in the French region of Brittany, said the French health ministry in a statement late on Monday, adding that initial analysis did not show this new variant to be more serious or transmissible than others.
The health ministry said the new variant had been found in a cluster of cases in a hospital centre in Lannion.
The Philippine capital Manila will widen a ban on minors leaving their residences to include youths of up to 18 years old for two weeks starting on Wednesday, in a bid to tackle a new surge of infections.
Only those aged 18-65 years old will be allowed out of their homes, the Metro Manila Development Authority said in a statement, citing an agreement among mayors.
The Philippines late last year started easing one of the world’s longest and strictest lockdowns though a rule that anyone under 15 must stay indoors in Manila remained in place, Reuters reports.
On Monday, the country recorded the largest daily increase since mid-August with 5,404 new infections.
Nighttime curfews have been reimposed since Monday for two weeks in Metropolitan Manila, the country’s coronavirus hotspot that is home to more than 12 million people.
Additional measures such as liquor bans and localised lockdowns in areas with high infection rates have also been put in place.
The extended age limit comes five months after authorities allowed people from 15 to 65 years of age to go out as part of efforts to revive an economy that suffered the worst slump on record last year.
Nearly 2.4 million vaccine doses are expected by early April, comprising 979,200 doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine through the COVAX facility and 1.4 million Sinovac shots including 400,000 donated by China.
Cambodia reported a daily record 105 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, as a rare outbreak spread further and authorities urged people not to travel between regions amid a sharp rise in infections.
Reuters reports:
Although Cambodia has recorded among the fewest number of confirmed cases in Asia, its 1,430 infections are nearly triple the number of a month ago, when its latest outbreak was first detected.
More than half of the new cases reported on Tuesday were in one district of Kandal province, which borders Vietnam, the ministry said in a statement.
The health ministry has been urging people not to travel between provinces and cities and a law has been passed that carries long jail terms for serious violations of health measures.
The law, which came into effect on March 11, lists punishments of three years in jail for breaking self-quarantine and 10 years in prison for leaving treatment facilities while infected, or intentionally spreading Covid-19.
Human Rights Watch has said the bill contains overly broad and vague provisions that authorities could easily abuse.
The Southeast Asian nation of about 16 million people has until recently been successful in keeping coronavirus outbreaks under control and reported its first death from Covid-19 last week.
Cambodia started its vaccination programme last month.
Hello, I’m Jedidajah Otte and I’ll be taking over for the next few hours.
AstraZeneca said on Tuesday it has modified an existing deal with the US to supply up to half a million additional doses of its experimental antibody-based Covid-19 treatment, bringing the total value of the deal to $726 million, Reuters reports.
If you would like to get in touch with updates or comments, you can contact me on Twitter @JedySays or via email.
Summary
I will be handing over to my colleagues in the UK shortly, but here’s a summary of the day’s news so far:
- World Health Organization vaccine safety experts will meet on Tuesday to discuss the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine after a number of countries temporarily suspended it over blood clot fears. The WHO, AstraZeneca, and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) have all insisted the shot is safe, and that there is no link between the vaccine and reported blood clots.
- The three largest EU nations – Germany, Italy and France – joined others in suspending the shot Monday, dealing a blow to the global immunisation campaign against a disease that has killed more than 2.6 million people. Spain, Portugal, Slovenia, Latvia, Indonesia and Venezuela have also temporarily suspended the jab.
- Australia has said it will continue to use the vaccine. The country’s chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, said in an emailed statement the government remained confident in the vaccine as there was no evidence that it caused blood clots though the side-effects reported would be investigated as a “precautionary measure”.
- Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, on Monday urged citizens to get the AstraZeneca shot after reports of hesitancy based on the suspensions in Europe.
- Thailand’s prime minister received a shot of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Tuesday, as much of Asia shrugged off concerns about reports of blood clots in some recipients in Europe, saying that so far there is no evidence to link the two. “There are people who have concerns,” Thai prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, said after he received the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine. “But we must believe doctors, believe in our medical professionals.”
- The UK’s cancer death rate could rise for the first time in decades if urgent action to address problems stemming from the pandemic is not taken, cancer charities have warned. “We are calling on the government to invest more money in ensuring the backlog of cancer cases is reduced and eliminated,” said Michelle Mitchell, the head of Cancer Research UK.
-
India reported 24,492 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, the sixth straight day of more than 20,000 infections, as curbs to try to stop the spread were expanded in parts of the country that have recorded a surge, including Maharashtra and Gujarat.
- China has reported 13 new Covid cases on 15 March, up from five cases a day earlier, the national health authority said on Tuesday.
- The Norwegian capital, Oslo, has on Monday closed secondary schools and restricted the number of visitors to homes to two, as Covid case numbers rise. Schools for younger children in the worst-hit districts will also close and kindergartens will be closed during the Easter holidays except for children of essential workers.
Updated
Thailand's PM gets AstraZeneca vaccine
Thailand’s prime minister received a shot of the Covid-19 vaccine manufactured by AstraZeneca on Tuesday, as much of Asia shrugged off concerns about reports of blood clots in some recipients in Europe, saying that so far there is no evidence to link the two.
AstraZeneca has developed a manufacturing base in Asia, and the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine maker, has been contracted by the company to produce a billion doses of the vaccine for developing nations, the Associated Press reports.
Hundreds of millions more are to be manufactured this year in Australia, Japan, Thailand and South Korea.
“There are people who have concerns,” Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said after he received the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine. “But we must believe doctors, believe in our medical professionals.”
Thailand last week was the first country outside Europe to temporarily suspend using the AstraZeneca vaccine. Indonesia followed on Monday, saying it was waiting for a full report from the World Health Organization regarding possible side effects.
But Thailand’s health authorities decided to go ahead with AstraZeneca, with Prayuth and members of his Cabinet receiving the first shots.
UK cancer charities warn death rate could rise because of backlog during pandemic
The UK’s cancer death rate could rise for the first time in decades if urgent action to address problems stemming from the pandemic is not taken, cancer charities have warned.
One Cancer Voice, a group of 47 British cancer charities, has told BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat more money and staff are desperately needed to reduce a growing backlog of cancer cases.
It has also asked for the NHS to be given greater access to private facilities.
Michelle Mitchell, the head of Cancer Research UK – which leads One Cancer Voice – told Newsbeat: “We are calling on the government to invest more money in ensuring the backlog of cancer cases is reduced and eliminated.
“We could face, in this country today, the prospect of cancer survival reducing for the first time in decades. That’s why urgent action is required by the government.”
Recent figures from NHS England show 171,231 urgent cancer referrals were made by GPs in January – an 11% drop on the 191,852 in the same month the year before.
Two new studies cited by the World Health Organization have found that thousands of neonatal healthcare workers are not allowing mothers with confirmed or suspected Covid-19 infections to have skin-to-skin contact with their newborns, and nearly a quarter of those surveyed are not allowing breastfeeding.
Yet keeping mothers and babies together and encouraging all babies to have so-called “kangaroo mother care” which involves early and very close contact between a mother and a newborn – could save more than 125,000 lives, according to a study published in the Lancet Eclinical Medicine journal.
The WHO says mothers should continue to share a room with their babies from birth and be able to breastfeed and have skin-to-skin contact even when COVID-19 is suspected or confirmed.
India records 6th day with more than 20,000 cases
India reported 24,492 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, the sixth straight day of more than 20,000 infections, as curbs to try to stop the spread were expanded in parts of the country that have recorded a surge.
The government has blamed crowding and a general reluctance to wear masks for the spike, ruling out mutations of the virus as a factor.
India’s worst-affected state, Maharashtra, on Monday ordered cinemas, hotels and restaurants to limit guests to half of capacity until the end of the month. Weddings and other social events will also have limited attendance.
Another western state, Gujarat, has also decided to not allow fans into the world’s biggest cricket stadium hosting international matches between India and England, after seeing a spurt in cases.
The United States on Tuesday accused Chinese state media of publishing “disinformation” about its diplomats in Hong Kong as it denied its staff invoked immunity to avoid isolating after positive coronavirus tests.
AFP reports that Washington temporarily closed its consulate on Monday to conduct deep cleaning and contact tracing after two employees were infected with the virus.
The consulate – and Hong Kong health authorities – have said the pair were headed to a hospital isolation ward as required by the city’s anti-coronavirus rules.
But state media outlets and a leading pro-Beijing trade union have accused the employees of invoking diplomatic immunity, which US officials rejected.
“The disinformation from PRC state media about these two cases not complying with quarantine is false,” a State Department spokesperson told AFP.
“We reject these efforts to spread disinformation about a critical public health issue.”
The reports of diplomatic immunity first ran on Monday in Dot Dot News, an online news outlet in Hong Kong.
It is part of an opaquely owned media group that answers to Beijing’s Liaison Office.
Following the reports, China’s state-run Global Times tabloid repeated the diplomatic immunity accusation and accused US officials of “arrogant outlaw behaviour”.
On Tuesday morning Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing leader said the two infected consulate workers were already in hospital and that US officials were complying with regulations.
“I’m happy to notice that the US consulate also issued a press release yesterday saying that they will follow our advice and support our work,” chief executive Carrie Lam told reporters.
Nonetheless Hong Kong’s largest pro-Beijing labour group - the Federation of Trade Unions - went ahead with a small protest outside the US consulate shortly after Lam finished speaking.
Four members of the union held up banners with slogans that included “No privilege, no exceptions” and “Strong condemnation of virus-spreading behaviour in spite of social morality”.
Public gatherings of more than four people are currently banned in Hong Kong because of the coronavirus.
Hong Kong has kept infections low thanks to some of the strictest quarantine measures in the world, recording some 11,000 infections and 200 deaths since the pandemic began.
Relations between the US and China have plunged in recent years, partly because of Beijing’s crackdown against dissent in Hong Kong following huge and often violent pro-democracy protests in 2019.
Professor Ben Cowling, of Hong Kong University’s School of Public Health, has posted an interesting string of tweets on the differences between some vaccines and how using one or both in a particular country could affect future quarantine arrangements and mutual travel arrangements.
Cowling is specifically talking about Hong Kong, which is administering either the Chinese-made Sinovac or the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine to its population, but says it’s relevant for anywhere using these vaccines.
The short version of his assessment: “I think vaccinated persons should still be isolated if testing positive, while quarantine duration could be reduced or even converted to medical surveillance for some fully vaccinated persons.”
You can read more below:
“Recovery [from Covid] could be quicker for vaccinated persons, but I think there is no reason that vaccinated-but-still-infected persons should be exempt from isolation. They may still be infectious, and they are in the best place if medical attention is needed.
If a close contact has been fully vaccinated, their risk of infection after exposure drops substantially, and there would not be as much effect on transmission of placing fully-vaccinated-close-contacts in quarantine. Particularly if they received the BioNTech vaccine.
We know the Sinovac vaccine is very good at reducing the risk of severe illness or death if a breakthrough infection occurs, but it only has a moderate effectiveness of around 50% against mild infection, and mild infections can be contagious.
It is not too surprising that mainland China has not yet announced a shorter quarantine duration for arriving travellers who have received mainland-produced vaccines like Sinovac, perhaps because it would be too much of a risk?
The BioNTech vaccine is much more effective, likely more than 90% effective against mild infections, meaning a close contact who was fully vaccinated with BioNTech might have on average less than a 0.5% chance of being infected rather than a 5% chance.
Perhaps close contacts who have received BioNTech could be placed under medical surveillance, and required to be tested multiple times during the 14 days since exposure, but could avoid being sent to a quarantine camp.”
Japan warns over daytime karaoke venues
A rash of Japanese coronavirus clusters linked to daytime karaoke sessions by the elderly, including several linked to 93 cases in one prefecture, prompted a stern warning on Tuesday and calls for caution from authorities.
Reuters reports that the recent clusters, which are spread across the country, come as the Tokyo metropolitan area is nearing the planned end of a state of emergency aimed at curbing the latest wave of coronavirus cases. The Olympics are set to begin in Tokyo in just over four months.
At least 215 people have recently tested positive in cases linked to daytime karaoke sessions, a pursuit especially popular with the retired and elderly, Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said on Tuesday.
Ninety-three were in Saga prefecture in southwestern Japan, with ages ranging from the 50s to the 80s, but clusters were also found in Saitama and Chiba prefectures, still under a state of emergency set to end on 21 March.
Many of Japan’s karaoke establishments feature small rooms lined with sofas in which groups can sing, eat and talk in privacy for hours.
“We realize that under normal circumstances, karaoke is almost a salon for older people to talk and enjoy themselves, but in the current situation of absolutely trying to prevent infection, these (venues) are rather confined,” Nishimura said.
“In my election district there are many places like this -– narrow rooms where people are packed in and singing. They have to take thorough steps including putting up acrylic panels, good ventilation and disinfecting the microphones.”
He also called on those in areas still under the state of emergency to refrain from unnecessary trips out of their homes.
Roughly 448,400 people have tested positive in Japan and about 9,000 have died since the pandemic began.
Updated
Australia continues to use AstraZeneca vaccine
Australia has no plans to halt the use of the AstraZeneca. The country’s chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, said in a statement: “While the European Medicines Agency is investigating these events, it has reinforced its view that the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine is successful in protecting against Covid-19 and should continue to be used in the rollout.”
Kelly said the government remained confident in the vaccine as there was currently no evidence that it caused blood clots though the side-effects reported would be investigated as a “precautionary measure”.
The United Kingdom and Poland are also continuing to use the vaccine.
AstraZeneca said on Sunday a review of more than 17 million people inoculated with its vaccine in the European Union and the UK showed no evidence of an increased risk of blood clots.
The majority of Australia’s 25 million people will be administered the AstraZeneca vaccine and authorities have secured nearly 54m doses, with 50m to be produced locally from the end of March.
Australia began its nationwide immunisation drive last month, much later than many other countries, and began first vaccinations using the AstraZeneca vaccine last week.
New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, reported no Covid-19 cases on Tuesday after recording its first local case in nearly two months a day earlier. Queensland, which reported a new case on Saturday, reported zero infections for the third straight day.
Australia has reported over 29,100 cases and 909 deaths since the pandemic began.
US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen will meet on Tuesday with Jubilee USA Network, a non-profit group that advocates for debt relief for developing countries, and senior religious leaders from large US Christian and Jewish faith groups, Reuters reports.
The online meeting will focus on ways to increase resources to help poor and middle income countries contain the Covid-19 pandemic, permanent debt restructuring and climate change, said Eric LeCompte, executive director of Jubilee USA Network.
LeCompte said it was common for religious leaders to meet once with a US president during a term, but a meeting with a Treasury secretary was unusual.
“What’s unique is that the major religious institutions are coming together to solve the current pandemic crisis and prevent future crises,” he said. The World Bank estimates the pandemic will push as many as 150 million people into extreme poverty.
He said the meeting reflected Yellen’s focus on the global nature of the pandemic, and her willingness to engage with a range of US leaders to hammer out solutions.
Faith groups have been outspoken in urging the Biden administration to back a big boost in the International Monetary Fund’s emergency reserve funds or Special Drawing Rights to help poor countries devastated by the pandemic.
Updated
China reports 13 new cases
China has reported 13 new Covid cases on March 15, up from five cases a day earlier, the national health authority said on Tuesday.
The National Health Commission said in a statement that all of the new cases were imported infections originating from overseas. The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, fell to seven from nine a day earlier.
The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in mainland China now stands at 90,062, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,636.
Venezuela will not authorise AstraZeneca’s vaccine, the vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, said on Monday, citing its “effects on patients.”
Oslo tightens Covid restrictions as cases rise
The Norwegian capital, Oslo, has on Monday closed secondary schools and restricted the number of visitors to homes to two, as Covid case numbers rise.
Schools for younger children in the worst-hit districts will also close and kindergartens will be closed during the Easter holidays except for children of essential workers.
It comes in the wake of mounting concern over the spread of the more contagious British variant. A record number of 1,960 cases were detected last week in Oslo which has a population of 700,000 people.
“We have never before seen such a high level of recorded cases,” the capital’s mayor Raymond Johansen told a press briefing.
“If the spread of the virus is too high for too long the system collapses and you lose control,” he added.
“These will be the most intrusive measures taking by Oslo during the pandemic,” said Johansen. “It’s tough, it’s difficult but it’s necessary”.
Oslo has already been subject to some strict containment measures, including the closure of non-essential shops and sports halls while bars and restaurants may only offer takeaway food.
According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), Norway has been relatively lightly-hit by the pandemic compared to other European nations, but the number of new cases has been on the rise in recent weeks.
Last week Norway suspend the use of the AstraZeneca jab.
Latvia temporarily suspends use of AstraZeneca vaccine
Latvia has added its name to the list of countries to temporarily suspending the use of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine.
Latvia’s health authorities are “asking doctors not to use the opened vials of the AstraZeneca vaccine and not to open new ones,” the Baltic state’s health agencies said in a joint statement.
They said they were halting the use of the vaccine “as a precautionary measure” based on reports of side effects from other EU countries, while adding that no such cases have been confirmed in Latvia.
The measure will be in effect for up to two weeks, they added.
New Zealand grants 'critical worker' status for Lion King production cast
Immigration New Zealand has granted 126 foreign nationals “critical worker” visas and hotly-contested spots in quarantine so as to stage The Lion King musical in Auckland in June.
The New Zealand Herald reports that Live Nation said it was necessary that the original cast travelled with the production.
Asia Pacific chairman Michael Coppel also stressed the economic impact of the tour for New Zealand: “The reality is we have to open up to the rest of the world. We can’t maintain a Covid-existence for ever.”
The largely Covid-free country has been a desirable destination for entertainment productions, putting more pressure on the limited managed isolation facilities at the border and generating controversy over those New Zealanders overseas facing a weeks-long wait to return home.
Previously the government came under fire for granting children’s entertainers The Wiggles a spot in quarantine ahead of a national tour.
Updated
Keep using Oxford vaccine, says WHO and European Medicine Agency
The World Health Organization has insisted countries should keep using the vaccine, adding that it had scheduled a meeting of its experts on Tuesday to discuss the vaccine’s safety.
“We do not want people to panic and we would, for the time being, recommend that countries continue vaccinating with AstraZeneca,” WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said.
“So far, we do not find an association between these events and the vaccine,” she said, referring to reports of blood clots from several countries.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA), which is holding a special meeting on Thursday, echoed the WHO’s calls for calm and said it was better to get the vaccine than not.
“The benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine in preventing Covid-19, with its associated risk of hospitalisation and death, outweigh the risks of side-effects,” the agency said in a statement Monday.
The three largest EU countries – Germany, Italy and France – all paused rollouts on Monday and were later joined by Spain, Portugal and Slovenia. Indonesia has also followed suit.
The UK has doled out more than 11 million doses of the AstraZeneca jab - more than the entire EU - apparently without major problems.
Updated
As I mentioned in the summary, the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine is under some fairly serious scrutiny, with a number of European countries pausing the jab over concerns about blood clots.
The Guardian’s health editor, Sarah Boseley, reports that there have been a handful of reports of blood clots in people recently vaccinated and also a rarer condition called thrombocytopenia, in which people do not make enough platelets. That can result in excessive bleeding. Deaths have been reported in Austria and Italy, which stopped the use of one batch of vaccine for fear it was contaminated. Meanwhile a further death from thrombocytopenia has been reported in Norway, as well as three hospitalisations.
But, Boseley writes, while governments are pulling the plug, most scientists are rolling their eyes, because, so far, there is no evidence that any were caused by the vaccine.
Experts say that the numbers of blood clots and thrombocytopenia cases in people who have been vaccinated is no higher than in the population that has not received the jab. The International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis, representing medical experts around the world, said on Friday that “the small number of reported thrombotic events relative to the millions of administered Covid-19 vaccinations does not suggest a direct link”.
Blood clots are common, they said, but not more common in people who have had a Covid jab, from evidence so far. They recommended that even people with a history of blood clots or taking blood-thinning drugs should go and get their vaccination.
So why are countries pausing the jab?
Boseley says one element is that nobody can rule out very rare side-effects on the basis of trials involving tens of thousands of people. There was such an issue during the swine flu pandemic of 2009. It was afterwards found that one in 55,000 jabs with a vaccine called Pandemrix caused the sleeping disorder narcolepsy in children. About 100 people in the UK are thought to suffer from the condition, which causes them to fall asleep without warning during the day.
For that reason there will be particularly careful scrutiny of any cases that do not look like ordinary blood clots.
And governments, unlike scientific bodies, have to weigh up other things besides evidence. They will worry about public confidence – in the vaccine and also in ministers’ handling of any concerns. France for instance has struggled over vaccination. There is a long history of public suspicion of drug companies, which contributed to a debacle over the swine flu vaccine. France bought millions of doses, which people turned down. It has low vaccination rates for measles, mumps and rubella jabs in children too.
You can read Sarah’s full story here.
Updated
In a moment I’ll bring you all the updates on the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine, but first to New Zealand. Elle Hunt reports that the opposition National party is ramping up pressure on the government to introduce quarantine-free travel with Australia, saying the risk of transmission of Covid-19 is “extraordinarily low”.
Currently New Zealanders can travel to Australia without having to spend 14 days in a quarantine facility, but not vice versa due to irregular community outbreaks in Australia.
Though a two-way bubble had been planned for the first quarter of 2021, prime minister Jacinda Ardern has said the timeline is now unrealistic as Australia moves from a country-to-country model to a state-by-state one.
National leader Judith Collins has said the one-way bubble is a case of New Zealand’s government refusing to “return the favour”. The National party has launched a petition calling for two-way travel to begin immediately.
Its policy would require Australians to provide a negative Covid-19 test 72 hours before departure, and would allow New Zealand to impose quarantine requirements in the event of an outbreak.
The proposal is likely to be popular as Kiwis hang out for an overseas holiday. In particular parts of New Zealand’s struggling tourism industry sees free travel with Australia as their best shot at survival while Covid restrictions remain mostly in place.
Hello and welcome to our ongoing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, with me Alison Rourke, where the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine is dominating the news.
Here’s a summary of the top points so far:
- The WHO has said countries should keep using the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine and has scheduled a meeting of its experts on Tuesday to discuss the vaccine’s safety.
- The European Medicines Agency echoed the WHO’s calls for calm and said it was better to get the Oxford vaccine than not.
- A number of countries have paused the vaccine, including Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Slovenia, Cyprus pending an assessment by the EU’s medicine regulator. Spain said it will stop using the AZ vaccine for at least two weeks.
- Australia has no plans to halt the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said.
- Brazil registered 1,015 new coronavirus deaths, the health ministry said, bringing the total to 279,286 since the pandemic began. Confirmed cases rose by 36,239 to 11,519,609. The country has also signed a deal with Pfizer to purchase 100m doses of its Covid-19 vaccine, a source told Reuters.
- Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas has tested positive for Covid-19 but is feeling well, the country’s government said.
- Turkey recorded 15,503 new Covid-19 cases in the space of 24 hours, the highest daily rise this year, health ministry data indicated.
