That’s all from us for tonight. Thanks to all of you for reading along and to everybody who got in touch, especially those thanking the Guardian for its coverage. You can continue to follow all the latest updates on the coronavirus pandemic over on the Australian live blog. It’s here:
Updated
Pfizer Inc and BioNTech Se plan to give volunteers who received a placebo in its Covid-19 vaccine trial an option to receive a first dose of the vaccine by 1 March 2021, while staying within the study, Reuters reports.
The trial’s Vaccine Transition Option allows all participants aged 16 or older the choice to discover whether they were given the placebo, “and for participants who learn they received the placebo, to have the option to receive the investigational vaccine while staying in the study,” the companies said on their website.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and a panel of its outside advisers have expressed concerns over Pfizer’s “unblinding” plan, saying it could make it harder to continue collecting data on safety and effectiveness needed to win full FDA approval of the vaccine.
Trial participants who received the placebo will have two doses of the investigational vaccine reserved for them within the study, the companies said on the website.
“The study doctor will follow the latest guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and their local health authorities to offer the Vaccine Transition Option to participants in a prioritized manner,” the companies said.
Updated
Dr Anthony Fauci, the US’s top infectious disease expert, has told CNN on Friday that the United States would not follow the UK’s lead in front-loading first vaccine injections, potentially delaying the administration of second doses.
This week the UK announced plans to delay second shots of its two authorised vaccines, developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Oxford/AstraZeneca, in an attempt to dole out to more people the partial protection conferred by a single dose.
“I would not be in favour of that,” Dr Fauci said. “We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing.”
While clinical trials tested the efficacy of second doses delivered three or four weeks after the first, UK officials said they would allow a gap of up to 12 weeks. Such delays have not been rigorously tested in trials. The Pfizer vaccine, for instance, was shown to be 95% effective at preventing Covid-19 when administered as two doses, three weeks apart.
Widening the gap between vaccine doses could risk blunting the benefits of the second shot, which is intended to boost the body’s defences against the coronavirus, increasing the strength and durability of the immune response. In the interim, the protective effects of the first shot could also wane faster than anticipated.
The New York Times (paywall) has the story.
Updated
About two million doses of Covid-19 vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca are set to be supplied every week by the middle of January in the UK, The Times reports.
AstraZeneca expects to supply two million doses of the vaccine in total by next week, the newspaper reported, citing an unnamed member of the Oxford/AstraZeneca team. “The plan is then to build it up fairly rapidly – by the third week of January we should get to two million a week,” the report added.
The company was not immediately available to respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The report comes after the UK on Wednesday approved the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, hoping that rapid action will help it stem a record surge of infections driven by a highly contagious form of the virus.
The prime minister Boris Johnson has ordered 100 million doses for the country as part of an agreement with AstraZeneca. The company had said it aims to supply millions of doses in the first quarter, adding that first vaccinations are slated to begin this year.
The UK, which has recorded more than 50,000 new daily cases of Covid-19 for the last four days, is dealing with a rapid spread of a much more infectious variant of the coronavirus. As of Friday, the UK has recorded 53,285 new Covid-19 cases and another 613 deaths.
Updated
Brazil death toll surpasses 195,000
Brazil reported another 24,605 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, and 462 deaths from Covid-19, the health ministry said on Friday. The country has now registered 7,700,578 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 195,411, according to ministry data, in the world’s third worst outbreak outside the United States and India.
What difference will the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine make in the UK? In this Guardian explainer, our health editor Sarah Boseley answers some frequently asked questions about how the introduction of a new vaccine in the fight against Covid-19 will work.
The French health ministry reported 19,348 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours on Friday, slightly less than Thursday’s 19,927 and well below Wednesday’s more than one-month high of 26,457, but still far from the government’s target of less than 5,000 daily additional infections.
France’s cumulative total of cases now stands at 2,639,773, the fifth highest in the world. The Covid-19 death toll was up by 133 at 64,765.
Summary
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All primary schools in London are set to close for the start of the new term after the UK government bowed to protests and legal pressure from local authorities amid surging infection rates. The U-turn comes after the government omitted several London areas where Covid-19 transmission rates remain high from a list of education authorities where primary schools would be closed to most pupils for the first two weeks of term. Following protest from local authority leaders, including threats of unilateral closure and legal action, and an emergency cabinet meeting, the education secretary Gavin Williamson was forced to backtrack, adding the remaining 10 London education authorities to the government’s contingency areas.
- The United States became the first country to pass 20 million lab-confirmed Covid-19 cases, though the true number of infections is thought to be much higher. Back in June, US public health experts said they believed more than 20 million Americans could have contracted the respiratory virus – 10 times more than official counts at the time. Almost 350,000 Americans have now died of Covid-19, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally, by far the world’s highest death toll.
- Arrivals to Turkey from the UK have been temporarily suspended after 15 confirmed cases of the Covid-19 variant, the country’s minister of health announced.
- Ireland plans to end a ban on travel to the country from Great Britain on 6 January and replace it with stricter testing measures as it seeks to stop the spread of the new variant of the virus, the foreign minister said. Passengers flying on non-essential business from Britain after that date will need to produce a negative test taken three days before their flight. They will also be asked to restrict their movements for at least five days from their arrival and can move freely only if they then receive a second negative test.
- The UK recorded a further 613 Covid-related deaths since yesterday, after one of the highest daily tolls since April earlier this week of 981. It also registered 53,285 new cases in the last 24 hours, similar to the figure in previous days, as the number of lab-confirmed cases rises above 2.5 million.
- France will impose an earlier curfew in 15 north-east and south-east departments from Saturday to combat the spread of coronavirus, starting at 6pm instead of 8pm.
- The Philippines is to ban visitors coming from the US from entering the country from 3 to 15 January as an additional measure to contain the spread of the new, more contagious coronavirus variant.
- India’s drug regulator approved a coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University for emergency use, paving the way for its rollout in the world’s second worst affected country. India wants to start administering the shots soon. It is also considering emergency-use authorisation applications for vaccines made by Pfizer Inc with Germany’s BioNTech, and by India’s Bharat Biotech. At more than 10 million, India has reported the second highest number of coronavirus cases after the US, though its rate of infection has come down significantly from a mid-September peak.
- Norway will lift its ban on flights arriving from the UK, the Norwegian health ministry said. Flights will resume on 2 January at 4pm GMT.
Ireland said on Friday it had under-reported coronavirus cases in recent days by thousands more than previously known as its system came under strain, suggesting the EU’s fastest growing outbreak is worsening even more rapidly than figures showed.
More than 9,000 people who have tested positive for Covid-19 have yet to been added to the official tally of confirmed cases, the National Public Health Emergency Team said. A day earlier it had estimated the number of positive tests still pending registration at just 4,000.
Ireland has gone from having the lowest infection rate in the European Union just two weeks ago to having the fastest rate of deterioration, after shops and large parts of the hospitality sector were allowed to reopen for most of December.
A very large volume of positive tests since Christmas has led to a delay in positive swabs being formally confirmed as new individual cases. Ireland formally reported a daily record 1,754 confirmed cases on Friday, surpassing 1,500 daily cases for the fourth day in a row.
Senator Mitt Romney on Friday urged the US government to immediately enlist veterinarians, combat medics and others in a sweeping proposal to administer coronavirus vaccinations and slow the rising death toll.
The 2012 Republican presidential nominee called for action after it emerged that 2.8 million Americans had received their first dose, far short of the 20 million the Trump administration promised by the end of 2020.
“That comprehensive vaccination plans have not been developed at the federal level and sent to the states as models is as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable,” Romney said in a statement.
The vaccination program is falling woefully behind. With hundreds of thousands of lives at stake, urgent action is needed on a comprehensive vaccination plan that states can use as a model. https://t.co/M6gvUyUKmv
— Senator Mitt Romney (@SenatorRomney) January 1, 2021
More than 345,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the United States, equal to one in every 950 people and ranking 16th in per capita deaths in the world. Meanwhile, the US was set to pass another milestone on Friday, surpassing 20 million cases since the start of the pandemic with a record number of 125,000 patients in hospital with Covid-19.
With the Democratic president-elect Joe Biden not taking office until 20 January, Romney is one of the few leading Republicans to openly criticise fellow Republican President Donald Trump.
Romney called for deploying veterinarians, emergency medical workers and medical students to deliver vaccinations and setting up sites such as school buildings that are largely empty because of the pandemic.
He also recommended establishing a clear order for Americans to receive their shots using priority groups and birthdays, while welcoming other ideas from medical professionals.
Trump has repeatedly emphasised that he, not Biden, deserves credit for the speedy development of the vaccine, even as he has left vaccination efforts largely to US state and local officials to administer with the help of private pharmacies.
The states and localities, already hammered by the months-long fight against the outbreak and its economic fallout, only recently received federal money for vaccinations under the latest relief passage signed into law on Sunday.
Trump has spent the weeks since his 3 November loss rarely focusing, at least in public, on the worsening pandemic. Instead, he has alleged widespread election fraud, without evidence, while claiming falsely that he won the election.
Romney said the country needed to acknowledge the current plan “isn’t working” and was “woefully behind,” and that leaders must urgently find ways to quickly bolster capacity.
It was unrealistic to assume that the healthcare workers already overburdened with Covid care could take on a massive vaccination program.
Biden has vowed to use the Defense Production Act to boost the vaccination program and to send mobile vaccination units to help deliver shots in under-served areas.
As of midnight on Thursday, the United States had reported 19.91 million cases, according to a Reuters tally of official data.
Some residents of Mexico City spent New Year’s Eve in lines that snaked down a street and around a corner, waiting to refill oxygen canisters for relatives suffering from Covid-19, AP reports.
The city of 9 million has seen a surge in coronavirus infections and hospitals are 87% occupied, straining oxygen supplies.
That has resulted in long lines and price hikes that make it hard or impossible for some to refill tanks that, in some cases, last for only a few hours.
Blanca Nina Méndez Rojas was waiting in line Thursday to refill a tank for her brother, who was recently discharged from a public hospital after contracting Covid-19.
“We just left him disconnected [from oxygen], so he has to stay completely reclined so he won’t get agitated or have a problem, until we return with the tank,” Méndez Rojas said, noting “two weeks ago a refill cost 70 pesos ($3.50), and now it is 150 pesos ($7.50)”.
In a city where people are afraid to go to hospitals, and where those that will go have trouble finding a bed, it becomes a question of life and death.
Juan José Ledesma, a Mexico City retiree, got sick along with his wife and son. When his test came back positive on 16 December, he had to stay home — and consult a private doctor — because the local hospital had no room.
“I have been taking medication prescribed by a private doctor because what happened was we went to a health centre and there was no room,” Ledesma said. “There was no room because too many people were coming in” for treatment.
Since then, his son, who recovered, has had to go out three or four times every day to try to refill his father’s oxygen tank.
“The price has risen two or three times,” Ledesma said. Reflecting on the problem, he began to weep softly. “I think about rural areas, where things are tougher, tougher, and people have to wait longer, or they really can’t afford it.”
Iván, an employee of one oxygen refill store who gave only his first name because his bosses hadn’t authorised him to speak to reporters, acknowledged that sometimes there were so many people waiting, desperate for gas, that they couldn’t fill all of their canisters completely.
“There are times when we don’t have enough oxygen to fill everybody’s tanks completely,” he said. “There are times when we have to reduce the refill, so that everybody who is line can at least bring some oxygen home to their relatives.”
To top off the problems, city officials have done little to combat price hikes that doubled or tripled the price of a refill, but they have shut down a black market in which producers of industrial-grade oxygen were selling canisters for medical use. Industrial oxygen, used to operate acetylene torches, is not as pure as the medical-grade gas.
The city government has started a program to give some people oxygen canisters or oxygen concentrators, which are machines that pull oxygen from the air and don’t need to be refilled. But there aren’t enough to go around, and buying one of the machines on the private market is prohibitively expensive for most families.
Before the pandemic, basic machines started around $900, but prices have since reported risen to $1,500 or more.
“The prices for concentrators have gone through the roof, there has been too much profiteering,” Méndez Rojas said.
Updated
All primary schools in London are set to close for the start of the new term after the UK government bowed to protests and legal pressure from the capital’s local authorities amid fears of Covid-19 infection rates, Richard Adams and Simon Murphy report.
The U-turn comes after the government initially named 50 education authorities in the south of England, including many of those in and around London, where primary schools would be closed to most pupils for the first two weeks of term.
But the list omitted several London areas where Covid-19 transmission rates remain high including the borough of Haringey, whose leaders said they were prepared to defy the government and support any schools that decided to close to protect staff and pupils.
The protests from local authority leaders came to a head with a letter to the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, from nine London authorities, including Islington, Lambeth and the City of London, asking for their primary schools to be closed and suggesting they were prepared to take legal action.
The action provoked an emergency Cabinet Office meeting on New Year’s Day, which signed off on the revision, adding the remaining 10 London education authorities to the government’s contingency areas.
You can read the full exclusive story here:
Updated
The US has become the first country to pass 20m lab-confirmed Covid cases, though the true number of infections is thought to be much higher.
Back in June, US public health experts said they believed more than 20 million Americans could have contracted the respiratory virus – 10 times more than official counts at the time.
Almost 350,000 Americans have died because of Covid-19, according to the coronavirus resource center at Johns Hopkins University, by far the world’s highest death toll. The country with the second most fatalities is Brazil, where 195,000 people have died from coronavirus.
According to John Hopkins University, India has the second-most number of lab-confirmed cases across the world, followed by India, Brazil, Russia, France and the UK.
Updated
Turkey bans UK arrivals after 15 Covid variant cases in the country
Arrivals to Turkey from the UK have been temporarily suspended after 15 confirmed cases of the Covid variant, the country’s minister of health has announced.
Dr Fahrettin Koca tweeted: “In the investigations made due to the mutation originating from the UK, the mutated virus was detected in 15 people who entered the country from this country and were taken under control. Entries from the UK [to Turkey] have been temporarily suspended.”
Earlier, he tweeted: “We have 1,908 [new] patients detected today. The number of active cases and the number of serious patients continues to decrease. Our losses started to fall. Our losses will decrease due to the decrease in the number of severe patients. I believe the destructive effect of the epidemic will decrease.”
Turkey’s coronavirus death toll rose by 212 in the last 24 hours, health ministry data showed on Friday, as a four-day curfew began to curb the pandemic that has killed a total of 21,093 in the country.
The current nationwide lockdown will lift at 5am local time on 4 January, though the government in Ankara has also imposed weekday curfews in some cities.
Updated
Ireland plans to end a ban on travel to the country from Great Britain on 6 January and replace it with stricter testing measures as it seeks to stop the spread of the new variant of the virus, foreign minister Simon Coveney has said.
Ireland banned passenger flights and ferries on 21 December from Great Britain. About 30,000 people had travelled to Ireland from Britain in the previous two weeks, during which time the new variant was spreading rapidly in parts of Britain.
Passengers flying on non-essential business from Britain after 6 January will need to produce a negative test taken three days before their flight, Coveney told the Irish Independent newspaper.
They will also be asked to restrict their movements for at least five days from their arrival and can move freely only if they then receive a second negative test.
“We’re planning to end the travel ban with the UK on 6 January but replace it with a more restrictive set of travel regulations between Britain and Ireland,” he said.
“We are anxious to move away from a travel ban, which we don’t think is realistic and there does need to be travel facilitated between Britain and Ireland for lots of reasons.”
Covid-19 is spreading rapidly again in Ireland and health officials have said that it has found seven cases of the new variant from 77 positive tests that subsequently underwent genomic sequencing, Reuters reported.
Updated
Residents of Mexico City spent New Year’s Eve queuing to refill oxygen canisters for relatives suffering from Covid-19, the Associated Press reported.
The city of 9 million people has had a surge in coronavirus infections and its hospitals are 87% occupied, straining oxygen supplies. That has resulted in long lines and price increases that make it difficult for people to refill tanks that, in some cases, last for only a few hours.
Blanca Nina Méndez Rojas was waiting in line on Thursday to refill an oxygen tank for her brother, who was recently discharged from a public hospital after contracting coronavirus.
“We just left him disconnected [from oxygen], so he has to stay completely reclined so he won’t get agitated or have a problem, until we return with the tank,” she said, noting “two weeks ago a refill cost 70 pesos [£2.61], and now it is 150 pesos.”
City officials have allegedly done little to combat price hikes that doubled or tripled the price of a refill – but they have shut down a black market in which producers of industrial-grade oxygen were selling canisters for medical use.
The city government has started a programme to give people oxygen canisters or oxygen concentrators, which are machines that pull oxygen from the air and do not need to be refilled. But there are not enough to go around, and buying one of the machines on the private market is prohibitively expensive for most families.
Updated
UK records 613 Covid-related deaths and 53,285 new cases
The UK has recorded 613 Covid-related deaths since yesterday, after one of the highest daily tolls since April earlier this week of 981. It also registered 53,285 new cases in the last 24 hours, similar to the figure in previous days, as the number of lab-confirmed cases rises above 2.5 million.
The daily figure, which accounts for those who have died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19, brings the UK total compiled by Public Health England and NHSX to 74,125.
Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies for deaths where Covid-19 has been mentioned on the death certificate, together with additional data on deaths that have occurred in recent days, show there have been 90,000 deaths involving Covid-19 in the UK.
The number of excess deaths in the UK this winter – after the first wave of the virus when deaths reached the highest levels of the pandemic – have remained at levels not incomparable with recent years amid restrictions on public and private life. There were 1,342 more deaths than expected in the last week for which there is official data, ending 18 December, with the total excess figure consistently less than the number of deaths with a mention of Covid, indicating fewer deaths from other causes than expected.
This could well change, however, once the excess death data catches up with the increasing deaths from the past two weeks. There have been 67,452 excess deaths since March, of 425,699 deaths from all causes, according to Public Health England. This means there have been 1.19 times the expected deaths between 20 March and 18 December.
Updated
Calls to mental health helplines and prescriptions for antidepressants in England have reached an all-time high, while access to potentially life-saving talking therapies has plunged during the coronavirus pandemic, a Guardian investigation has found.
More than 6 million people received antidepressants in the three months to September, equivalent to more than one in 10 people and the highest figure on record.
This is thought to have been a result of counselling services going online, which some doctors may have deemed inappropriate for certain patients, while some patients were reluctant to seek face-to-face help or add extra pressure to health services.
Concerns have been raised that vital early intervention treatment will not have been given, with experts saying the longer people wait for appropriate help the “more severe and complex their difficulties and their lives can become”.
Updated
France brings curfew forward to 6pm in 15 departments
France will impose an earlier curfew in 15 north-east and south-east departments from Saturday to combat the spread of coronavirus, starting at 6pm instead of 8pm.
Government spokesman Gabriel Attal told TF1 television:
We are taking a decision for 15 departments. In a week’s time we will assess the impact of this earlier curfew on these 15 departments, on the circulation of the virus elsewhere in the country. Obviously if the situation were to deteriorate further in some regions, we would take the necessary decisions. The measures are incremental and can of course – in principle – go as far a lockdown.
He reiterated that cultural venues would not reopen on 7 January. Restaurants and bars remain closed and it is not clear when they might reopen, although 20 January was initially floated as an initial target date.
Updated
A disease control official in China has said there is no sign that new coronavirus variants will affect the immune impact of a vaccine that China has just authorised for public use.
The shot by an affiliate of state-backed company Sinopharm was approved on Thursday, the day after news of China’s first imported case of a variant first identified in the UK.
“No need to panic,” Xu Wenbo, an official at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told state television. “The mutated variant, compared with previous mutated variants ... has no obvious change so far in its ability to cause disease.”
He said no impact of variants on the vaccine’s immune effect had been detected. The variant which British scientists have named “VUI * 202012/01” includes a genetic mutation in the spike protein, which could theoretically result in easier spread of Covid-19, Reuters reported.
Xu added that mutation in the virus protein would not effect the sensitivity of most Chinese-made Covid-19 tests that target the virus’s nucleic acids, which carry genetic information.
Updated
Jeeves Wijesuriya, a junior doctor working at a London hospital and a member of the Healthcare Workers’ Foundation, writes that Covid conspiracies are “a kick in the teeth” for exhausted healthcare workers like her.
Covid is ripping through hospitals at an unprecedented rate, while an exhausted workforce, already running on fumes not from “just another winter surge”, but due to a second wave of Covid cases worse than the first, attempts to battle it. For us, the objective truth is undeniable: patients are desperately sick. Patients who often decline quickly and suddenly, needing intensive care, ventilation and specialist support.
And yet in the outer world, our social media and even newspapers amplify a different ‘truth’. That there is no major emergency, that it’s misdiagnosis or global hysteria, which every major country, and their established academic and medical bodies, has inexplicably and simultaneously fallen prey to.
Updated
Singer Tom Jones has announced he has had the coronavirus vaccine in the UK, saying it is a perk of being 80.
After performing on Jools’s Annual Hootenanny broadcast on New Year’s Eve, Jones said:
I’ve had my jab already. That’s one good thing about being 80, you’re first in line for the jab. It was fine, it was like getting the flu jab.
When Holland jokingly asked if it was a legitimate vaccine, Jones said: “It wasn’t a black market one. It was the real deal.”
Updated
India has asked China to allow two Indian cargo ships that have been stranded for months near two Chinese ports because of the pandemic to rapidly unload their cargoes or replace their 39 crew members.
“There is growing stress on the crew members on account of the long delay,” Indian external affairs ministry spokesman Anurag Srivastava said. “We expect that this assistance will be provided in an urgent, practical and timebound manner, given the grave humanitarian situation that is developing onboard the ships.”
The vessels are among ships from various countries waiting to unload their cargoes at Jintang and Caofeidian ports, he said, according to the Associated Press.
Chinese authorities have conveyed that a crew change is not permitted at the ports because of Covid-related restrictions. Beijing has suggested that the shipping company may apply for a crew rotation at Tianjin port, the spokesman said.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said local authorities have been maintaining close communication with Indian officials and were providing assistance.
“Some Chinese ports allow crew changes under the premise of complying with the relevant epidemic prevention regulations, but Jintang port and Caofeidian port are not included in this list. It is up to the freighter to decide whether to adjust its operating arrangements,’’ Wang said last week.
The Indian cargo vessel MV Jag Anand of the Great Eastern Shipping Company has been at anchor near Jingtang in Hebei province since 13 June with 23 Indian crew members on board. Another vessel, MV Anastasia, with 16 Indian crew members, has been near Caofeidian since 20 September. Both are waiting to discharge their cargoes before leaving the ports.
Updated
The UK economy begins 2021 on the back foot as record numbers of coronavirus infections and tougher restrictions cloud the outlook for growth and limit the chances of a rapid recovery from the country’s worst recession in 300 years.
There had been hopes that the arrival of successful Covid vaccines could prompt a rebound in activity. But with new government controls to combat the rising infection rate, the outlook is deteriorating.
Global humanitarian figures and NGOs have urged world leaders to urgently make Covid-19 vaccinations available to millions of refugees and others displaced by war, as the pandemic continues to overwhelm some of the world’s most vulnerable communities.
The impact of the contagion has sharply intensified across the Middle East in recent weeks, matching soaring global numbers. It has been further amplified by drastically under-resourced medical responses that cannot cope with the numbers of dying or seriously ill people.
Updated
Philippines to ban arrivals from US until mid-January
The Philippines is to ban visitors coming from the US from entering the country, a presidential spokesman said on Friday.
The ban will be in place from 3 to 15 January as an additional measure to contain the spread of the new, more contagious coronavirus variant.
The US is the 20th area to be included in the Philippines’ list of countries subjected to travel restrictions.
Passengers coming from the US, or that have passed through the US, who will arrive before Sunday are allowed to enter the country, but they are required to complete the 14-day facility-based quarantine regardless of their RT-PCR test result, CNN Philippines reports.
The US confirmed its first known case of the new coronavirus variant on 30 December. The patient, a man in his 20s, was found to have the new Covid-19 variant.
Updated
About 2,500 partygoers attended an illegal New Year’s Eve rave in an empty warehouse in north-west France, violently clashing with police who failed to stop it and sparking concern the underground event could spread coronavirus, authorities said on Friday.
The revellers had set up the illegal rave in Lieuron, south of Rennes in Brittany after skirmishes with police, said a statement from the local prefecture. Many were still on the site on Friday as a sanitary cordon was thrown up around it.
Local gendarmes tried to “prevent this event but faced fierce hostility from many partygoers” who set one of their cars of fire and threw bottles and stones, the statement said, adding that those present had come from across France and even abroad.
Such mass gatherings are strictly prohibited across France to prevent the spread of Covid-19 and an 8pm curfew – which was not lifted for New Year’s Eve – applies across the country.
Prosecutors have opened an investigation into the illegal organisation of a musical gathering and premeditated violence against persons in authority.
Vehicles registered from all over France were still parked at the site on Friday and many revellers were present as loud music continued, an AFP journalist said.
In the southern city of Marseille, security forces halted an illegal party of about 300 people, police said. More than 150 people were warned and the three suspected organisers have been arrested.
The interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, said that 132,000 police had been deployed across France for the new year celebrations to ensure security and that the curfew was respected.
Updated
France is to speed up its Covid-19 vaccination programme after the government was criticised for being overly cautious in favour of vaccine sceptics.
The health minister, Olivier Véran, announced on Thursday evening that the vaccine would be made available to health workers over the age of 50 from Monday.
Nursing and medical staff had not been expected to get the vaccination until the end February according to the government’s original timetable.
The announcement came after ministers and officials were accused of pandering to anti-vaxxers in rolling out the vaccine.
Five days after launching its vaccine programme, the last figures available suggest just 332 people in France have been inoculated. Germany reported having given about 130,000 people the Covid-19 vaccine in the same period, and Italy 8,300. Spain said it was on track to have administered 1.3m doses by Thursday evening.
My colleague Kim Willsher has more.
Updated
India approves Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine
India’s drug regulator on Friday approved a coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University for emergency use, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
A representative of India’s Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), whose experts were meeting for the second time this week, declined to comment.
The approval paves the way for its rollout in the world’s second worst affected country.
The UK and Argentina have already authorised the vaccine for urgent public use.
India wants to start administering the shots soon. It is also considering emergency-use authorisation applications for vaccines made by Pfizer Inc with Germany’s BioNTech, and by India’s Bharat Biotech.
At more than 10 million, India has reported the second highest number of coronavirus cases after the US, though its rate of infection has come down significantly from a mid-September peak.
Updated
Covid-19 has killed at least 1,818,946 people worldwide since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by Agence France-Presse at 11am GMT on Friday.
At least 83,381,330 cases of coronavirus have been registered. Of these, at least 52,534,200 are now considered recovered.
These figures are based on daily tolls provided by health authorities in each country and exclude later re-evaluations by statistical organisations, as has happened in Russia, Spain and the UK.
Since the start of the pandemic, the number of tests conducted has greatly increased while testing and reporting techniques have improved, leading to a rise in reported cases.
The number of diagnosed cases, however, is only a part of the real total number of infections as a significant number of less serious or asymptomatic cases always remain undetected.
On Thursday, 13,629 new deaths and 728,621 new cases were recorded worldwide.
Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were the US with 3,426, followed by Brazil with 1,074 and the UK with 964.
Updated
In the early days of the pandemic, Israel began using a mass surveillance tool on its civilians, tracking people’s cellphones in hopes of stopping the spread of the coronavirus.
The government touted the technology, normally used to catch wanted Palestinian militants, as a breakthrough against the virus. But months later, the tool’s effectiveness is being called into question and critics say its use has come at an immeasurable cost to the country’s democratic principles, the Associated Press reports.
“The idea of a government watching its own citizens this closely should ring the alarm,” said Maya Fried, a spokeswoman for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which has repeatedly challenged the use of the tool in court. “This is against the foundations of democracy. You can’t just give up on democracy during a crisis.”
Little is known about the technology. According to the Yediot Ahronot daily, the Shin Bet internal security service has used the tool for two decades, sweeping up metadata from anyone who uses telecom services in Israel.
Information collected includes the cellular device’s location, web browsing history and calls and texts received and made, but not their content. That has reportedly helped the agency track militants and halt attacks, although it is unclear what happens to all of the data.
Israel first brought the Shin Bet into its virus outbreak battle in March. By tracking the movements of infected people, it could determine who had come into contact with them and was at risk of infection, and order them into quarantine.
With the limited contact tracing capabilities of Israel’s health ministry, the Shin Bet was seen as the best option to pick up the slack, even though its own leaders were reluctant to deploy the tool. The Shin Bet declined to comment.
Officials say the technology has been a critical tool in keeping track of the outbreak and insist they have struck a balance between protecting individual rights and public health.
“We believe that the cost is certainly reasonable,” Yoav Kisch, the deputy health minister, told a parliamentary committee last month. “We haven’t seen this tool be used exploitatively. This tool saves lives.”
Initially, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu used emergency regulations to approve the use of the tool. After the hasty deployment was challenged in court, the government was forced to legislate limits on its use in July, submitting it to some parliamentary oversight.
Critics say there is no proper oversight on how the Shin Bet data is gathered, stored, used or deleted.
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Ireland correspondent
Surging Covid-19 infection rates in Northern Ireland have stretched hospitals and the ambulance service to breaking point.
Overall bed occupancy is at 100%, with just six beds left empty, and people in need of ambulances have been warned of lengthy delays in response times.
About 160 Northern Ireland ambulance service employees – a third to a quarter of frontline staff – are off work for pandemic-related reasons, the agency said in a statement. “This has put our service under even more pressure and we anticipate that callers to 999 may, at times, experience a delay in having their calls answered.”
Nigel Ruddell, the ambulance service medical director, put the crisis in starker terms. “It’s like fighting with one’s hand tied behind one’s back,” he told the BBC.
On Thursday there were 467 hospital inpatients who had tested positive for coronavirus, with 34 in intensive care units. The region recorded 11 deaths and 1,929 infections.
The health minister, Robin Swann, appealed to people to avoid socialising. “If you choose to meet others outside your household this new year you may well be inviting an unexpected guest to the party.”
Health Minister Robins Swann's plea to the public of Northern Ireland this New Year's Eve.#StayAtHome #StaySafe #notgoingout #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/tu9FAyOn84
— Department of Health (@healthdpt) December 31, 2020
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Norway will lift its ban on flights arriving from the UK, the Norwegian health ministry said on Friday.
Flights will resume on 2 January at 4pm GMT.
Following the lead of other European nations, Norway halted travel from Britain on 21 December after news that the new variant of the Covid-19 virus was rapidly spreading.
In the government’s latest update on travel restrictions it has been decided that anyone who arrives in Norway from a country with high transmission must provide a negative Covid-19 test when entering the country, either directly upon arrival or up to 24 hours later.
“If this strain should spread in Norway, it will probably mean a full lockdown of society,” prime minister Erna Solberg said on Thursday.
Norway’s 14-day cumulative number of coronavirus cases per 100,000 inhabitants was down to 113.6 as of Wednesday, the fourth lowest in Europe behind Iceland, Greece and Finland, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has said.
Most people who don’t have a place of residence in Norway must stay in a quarantine hotel for 10 days after arrival.
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A new poll has found that 41% of all Poles plan to get vaccinated against coronavirus.
According to the poll by Social Changes for the wPolityce website, the number of people willing to get vaccinated rose by 8% compared with the previous poll, FirstNews reports.
Of those willing to get the jab, 20% were “determined” to get vaccinated, while 21% “rather” planned to do so.
39% do not want to be vaccinated, down by 5% compared with the previous survey. Around 20% were undecided.
The poll comes after the Polish authorities started a nationwide vaccination programme, under which medical staff will be the first to get the jabs, followed by senior citizens, uniformed services and teachers.
All Poles will be able to sign up for vaccination against the coronavirus on 15 January.
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The Royal College of Nursing’s England director, Mike Adams, said the National Health Service (NHS) was under “intense pressure” due to the rising number of coronavirus patients.
He told Sky News that it was “infuriating” to see people not following the guidance or not wearing masks.
“It is actually not that difficult to wear a mask, if you are healthy it doesn’t do you any harm to wear a mask – it’s slightly inconvenient.
“The result of people not following the simple guidelines is that more people will get the virus.
“The virus is rapidly moving through the population again, we have seen the figures, we have seen that the death rate is now up to 1,000 people a day losing their lives because of this virus, and all the nursing professionals, the healthcare professionals, are asking people to do is keep their distance, wear a mask and that will help stop the spread of this disease.”
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India’s drug regulator is set to approve on Friday the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine for emergency use, three sources have said.
The decision would pave the way for the vaccine’s rollout in the world’s second-most populous country. After the United States, India has the highest number of Covid-19 infections in the world.
The UK and Argentina have already authorised the vaccine for urgent public use.
India’s Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO), whose experts were meeting for the second time this week, could also approve a vaccine developed locally by Bharat Biotech, two of the sources said on condition of anonymity.
“Both AstraZeneca and Bharat Biotech will get approval today,” said one of the sources. “All preparations are on with today’s date in mind.”
The other sources were less certain about Bharat Biotech’s prospects, Reuters reports.
A CDSCO representative declined to comment. The group is meeting a day ahead of a nationwide trial run for vaccine delivery in the country, which has had more than 10m coronavirus infections.
More than 50m doses of the Oxford vaccine have already been stockpiled by its local manufacturer, Serum Institute of India (SII), and one of the sources said the shots could start to be transported from cold storage to Indian states as early as Saturday.
SII did not immediately respond to an email request seeking comment.
The government said on Wednesday that Pfizer had sought more time to present data for emergency authorisation of a vaccine it has developed with Germany’s BioNTech.
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Australia welcomed 2021 with subdued celebrations as fresh coronavirus restrictions and border closures at its two most populous states forced people to ditch new year plans.
Media reported traffic jams at border checkpoints stretching as long as 25 miles (40km) as people rushed to avoid border restrictions that kicked in from midnight.
New South Wales (NSW), the centre of the latest outbreak, reported three new cases overnight from more than 32,000 tests. Its largest cluster, in Sydney’s Northern Beaches, is now at 146 cases.
“The strong message from us is to be on high alert, come forward and get tested with the mildest of symptoms,” the NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, told reporters in Sydney, urging people to wear masks.
Sydney’s famous fireworks went ahead above deserted streets as gatherings were banned, while its harbour sported just 20% of the vessels typically seen on New Year’s Eve.
Neighbouring Victoria state reported no new cases since Thursday afternoon, though authorities expect numbers to rise in coming days. The state has a cluster of eight cases, with some believed to be linked to the Sydney outbreak.
The outbreaks in the two states occurred after weeks without any community transmission, Reuters reports.
“The NSW link is still our primary line of investigation for this outbreak,” said Martin Foley, the health minister for Victoria state, which this week limited indoor gatherings to 15 people and reintroduced mandatory masks indoors. “We expect genomic testing to come through very shortly.”
South Australia said the infections in Sydney had led it to put up a hard border with NSW starting on Friday.
“I think we have to keep reminding ourselves that there is no simple easy way of this all being fixed. It is a global pandemic and that means that there will be frustrations from time to time,” the prime minister, Scott Morrison, said, while welcoming the low case numbers in the two states.
Australia has reported just over 28,400 Covid-19 cases and 909 deaths since the pandemic began.
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The more infectious variant of Covid-19 that has swept through the UK and has been discovered in a growing list of other countries too has been identified in Florida, state health officials said on Thursday, marking the third known US state to identify such a case.
The Florida Department of Health said the case involved a male in his 20s in Martin County with no history of travel. Two other cases involving the UK variant have been identified in Colorado and California.
“The Department is working with the CDC (US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) on this investigation,” it tweeted.
On Wednesday, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, said the coronavirus variant B117 had been identified in southern California.
A day earlier, the Colorado governor, Jared Polis, had said the variant had been identified there, while another state health official said a second possible case was being investigated.
The cases, found in individuals who had not travelled recently, showed the likely community spread of the variant from person-to-person in the US.
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Gaps in Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine supply likely
BioNTech is working flat out with partner Pfizer to boost production of their Covid-19 vaccine, its founders have said, warning there would be gaps in supply until other vaccines were rolled out.
The German biotech startup has led the vaccine race but its shot has been slow to arrive in the EU due to relatively slow approval from the bloc’s health regulator and the small size of the order placed by Brussels.
The delays have caused consternation in Germany, where some regions had to temporarily close vaccination centres days after the launch of an inoculation drive on 27 December.
“At the moment it doesn’t look good – a hole is appearing because there’s a lack of other approved vaccines and we have to fill the gap with our own vaccine,” BioNTech’s CEO , Uğur Şahin, told news weekly Spiegel in an interview.
A vaccine from Moderna is expected to be cleared by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) on 6 January.
The German health minister, Jens Spahn, has urged the EMA to also quickly approve the vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca that Britain cleared this week. The EU timeline for that treatment remains uncertain.
Şahin said the Pfizer vaccine, which uses messenger RNA to instruct the human immune system to fight the coronavirus, should be able to cope with a new variant first detected in Britain that appears to be more contagious.
“We are testing whether our vaccine can also neutralise this variant, and will soon know more,” he said.
Asked about coping with a strong mutation, he said it would be possible to tweak the vaccine as required within six weeks, although new treatments might require additional regulatory approval.
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Brazilians saw in 2021 with fireworks under unusual social distancing measures, while in a hospital intensive care ward outside São Paulo, doctors tending Covid-19 patients held one minute of silence for the passing of a deadly year.
Medical staff stood at the foot of beds with people on ventilators, and then went round wishing their patients a happy new year through face shields and masks.
The sound of fireworks in the streets outside broke the monotony of whirring ventilators and beeping monitors.
There was little to celebrate, with 195,000 Brazilians losing their lives in the world’s second-deadliest coronavirus outbreak after the US, but there is hope that vaccines will arrive in the New Year.
In the intensive care ward at the field hospital erected in the industrial city of Santo André, adjacent to Brazil’s largest metropolis, patients on ventilators received the new year in silence, and hoping for a better 2021.
Doctors and nurses said they were exhausted by the endless battle they have waged since March to save lives, Reuters reports.
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Russia on Friday reported 27,039 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, including 5,907 in Moscow, pushing the national tally to 3,186,336.
Authorities said 536 people had died overnight, taking the official death toll to 57,555.
The Thai capital of Bangkok will close all schools for two weeks after the new year holiday as it tightens measures in an attempt to control a new wave of coronavirus, the city said on Friday.
Thailand confirmed 279 new coronavirus cases on Friday, with the majority of them linked to a cluster among migrant workers in Samut Sakhon province, south of Bangkok, and another cluster linked to illegal gambling dens that started in the eastern province of Rayong.
These new clusters have started to spread into Bangkok, prompting the city’s administrator to tighten measures to curb the spread of the virus.
“We have begun to detect new cases linked to students and other service businesses,” said Pongsakorn Kwanmuang, the spokesman for the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration.
“Therefore we decided to close more places,” he said.
All schools, daycare centres for the young and elderly, preschool and tutorial centres will be close from 4 to 17 January, while other public facilities, including amusement parks, playgrounds, public baths and massage parlours, will be closed starting from Saturday, he said.
Pongsakorn said the city was considering restrictions on eating-in at restaurants but said more discussions were needed with the government Covid-19 taskforce on Saturday.
Thailand recorded two new deaths from coronavirus on Friday, taking the total number to 63, and the total number of infections to 7,163, since the outbreak started last January.
The majority of the new cases resulted from local transmission of the disease while six were imported from abroad, the government Covid-19 taskforce said.
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South Korea reported 1,029 new coronavirus cases on Friday amid subdued new year’s celebrations.
The tally was up from 967 the day before, and brought total cases to 61,769, with 917 deaths, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said.
After success in containing earlier waves of infections, South Korea has struggled to reduce this latest and largest surge, with daily cases hovering around 1,000 for weeks, Reuters reports.
Amid the strictest social distancing restrictions yet, authorities shut down the beaches on the country’s east coast where people traditionally gathered to watch the first sunrise of the new year.
In Seoul, the Bosingak bell-ringing ceremony was cancelled for the first time since 1953, though it was streamed on the city’s website.
Global K-Pop sensation BTS celebrated New Year’s Eve with an online concert on Thursday along with other K-pop groups from its management agency Big Hit Entertainment and fans from around the world.
This week South Korean health officials transferred dozens of elderly coronavirus patients from nursing homes to hospitals after criticism that government policy had led to a spike in deaths among vulnerable residents.
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The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 22,924 to 1,742,661, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Friday.
The reported death toll rose by 553 to 33,624, the tally showed.
On Wednesday, the German health minister Jens Spahn, medics and epidemiologists had warned that the coronavirus disease was in danger of spiralling out of control, after the country reported more than 1,000 Covid-19 deaths in a single day for the first time.
Germany is under a partial lockdown until 10 January, with most shops closed along with schools, restaurants, cultural and leisure facilities.
German chancellor Angela Merkel has continued to call for cohesion in the fight against the coronavirus in the New Year, emphasising hope through gradual vaccination.
“It will be up to all of us for quite some time how we get through this pandemic,” the CDU politician said in her New Year’s address, according to text circulated in advance.
“The most effective means besides the vaccine are in our own hands, by following the rules, each and every one of us.”
Merkel also made a “personal” comment about this being “in all likelihood” her last New Year’s address, the German press agency DPA reports.
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New Year’s Eve was “quite quiet” in London, UK, where Tier 4 restrictions meant that most places are closed, Ken Marsh, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, has said.
Sporadic gatherings of people “who just won’t take note of what is being said” were quickly dealt with by officers and smaller gatherings were also dispersed, Marsh said.
He told BBC Breakfast: “I think the public have really cottoned on that this is really serious, the position that we are in, and we did not see the numbers we thought we would.”
He said the number of officers who are off now with Covid-19 or are self-isolating has been peaking over the last three or four weeks.
More than a million people have now received their first coronavirus vaccination but the UK’s chief medical officers have urged doctors to back “decisive action” to combat the “pandemic which is running rampant in our communities”, the Press Association reports.
On Tuesday, police in London burst in on about 50 people smoking shisha pipes, watching football and playing loud music inside a cafe, a major breach of strict Covid-19 regulations banning any kind of socialising between people from different households.
The group fled when the police arrived, but officers who searched the venue in Wembley, northwest London, found 21 shisha pipes lit and still warm, the Metropolitan Police said in a statement on Friday.
Coronavirus infection rates are soaring in London, hospitals are reporting severe strain on their intensive care units, and schools in most of the capital have been ordered to close.
Tokyo confirmed 783 new coronavirus cases on Friday, according to national broadcaster NHK.
The number of new daily coronavirus infections in Japan’s capital topped 1,000 for the first time on Thursday, reaching a record 1,337, as the country battles a third wave of the pandemic.
New Year’s Day is the biggest holiday in Japan’s calendar, but this year’s festivities have been subdued following record highs in new coronavirus cases nationwide and calls from the government to stay home.
Japan’s Emperor Naruhito appealed to the public to work together through the pandemic in a videotaped New Year’s Day address to the nation released on Friday.
“I am wishing from my heart that everyone can move forward during this hard time by supporting and helping one another,” he said in the address, which was released in place of an annual public appearance by the imperial family during the new year holidays.
The prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, also released a written statement, vowing he would “protect the lives of the people” and promising to work on “virus countermeasures and economic recovery”.
“The Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games will be held this summer,” he added, saying that preparations for the delayed events were under way.
On Wednesday, however, Tokyo’s governor, Yuriko Koike, said that the capital could face an “explosion” of cases, sparking fresh fears that the Olympics could be in jeopardy.
Only 24 hours later, Koike told the Kyodo news agency that Tokyo had 1,300 new infections, beating the previous one-day high of 949 from last Saturday. About 3,480 people have died in Japan from around 235,700 cases during the pandemic so far.
New Year’s Day festivities in Japan involves spending time with family and praying at local temples, where hordes of people wish for good luck in the coming year.
Today at Meiji Jingu, a shrine in central Tokyo, masked visitors were queuing behind tape on the ground to stay socially distant from one another.
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Mexico registered 12,159 new confirmed coronavirus cases and 910 additional fatalities on Thursday, bringing its total to 1,426,094 infections and 125,807 deaths, according to the health ministry’s official count.
The government says the real number of infected people and deaths is likely significantly higher than the confirmed figures.
Mexico has the fourth highest death toll in the world, behind India, Brazil and the US.
Chad has locked down its capital N’djamena for the first time since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and has declared a dusk to dawn curfew due to a rise in infections, a decree signed by president Idriss Deby showed on Friday.
The West African nation has until now reported a relatively low number of cases compared with other countries in the region, with 2,113 Covid-19 cases since March, and 104 deaths.
New daily cases fell into the single digits in early December, according to Reuters data. It has risen to double digits in recent days, mostly in the capital, including 36 on Friday, health ministry data showed.
Covid-19 infections are increasing in Chad, with 19 new infections reported on average each day. The highest daily average was reported on 10 May, as a second wave of infections hit the region.
The decree said the lockdown that starts on New Year’s Day will last for a week, and could be extended. The city’s borders will close. Chad’s airspace will also close, allowing only cargo flights.
Schools, universities, places of worship, bars, restaurants and non-essential public services will shut down. Gatherings of over 10 people are banned.
Africa has recorded 2.7 million coronavirus infections and 64,000 deaths as of Thursday.
China reported 19 new Covid-19 cases on 31 December, down from 25 cases a day earlier, the national health authority said on Friday.
The National Health Commission said in a statement that 10 of the new cases were imported infections originating from overseas.
The nine locally transmitted cases came from the northeastern province of Liaoning and the capital city of Beijing, Reuters reports.
The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, rose to 19 from eight a day earlier.
The total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in mainland China now stands at 87,071, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
New coronavirus variant may have been in US since October
A coronavirus variant carrying some of the same mutations as the highly contagious British variant may have been in the US since October and already be widespread, a re-analysis of more than 2m tests suggests.
Genome sequencing to confirm whether the variant observed in Americans is the same as the so-called B117 variant currently circulating in the UK is under way.
Results are expected within days but the revelations have prompted fresh questions about where the altered virus originated, including a small possibility that it began in the US, not the UK, or elsewhere altogether. The variant has also been found in at least 17 countries, including South Korea, Spain, Australia and Canada.
My colleagues Linda Geddes and Amanda Holpuch report.
