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The millionaire Canadian couple who chartered a private plane to a remote community and jumped the coronavirus vaccine queue to receive doses intended for elderly Indigenous people have been fined C$2,300 but were not sentenced to jail after pleading guilty to breaking public health rules.
The size of the fine imposed on the former casino executive Rodney Baker and his wife, the actor Ekaterina Baker, on Wednesday prompted frustration amid members of the White River First Nation, many of whom wanted the couple to face stiffer repercussions.
Pfizer Inc said its oral rheumatoid arthritis drug Xeljanz reduced death or respiratory failure in hospitalized Covid19 patients with pneumonia in Brazil, meeting the study’s main goal.
Results of the study, which tested the drug in 289 hospitalized adult patients with the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus, were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Pfizer said the incidence of death or respiratory failure was 18.1% for patients treated with the drug compared to 29% for placebo. Serious adverse events occurred in 20 patients treated with the drug compared to 17 patients on placebo.
Xeljanz, which belongs to a class of drugs called JAK inhibitors and also treats the autoimmune disease ulcerative colitis, has not been approved or authorized for use in any country for the treatment of COVID-19.
Pfizer and German partner BioNTech SE’s vaccine is one of the three vaccines currently approved for emergency use in the US, Reuters reports.
Brazil has had 95,367 new cases of coronavirus reported in the past 24 hours and 2,997 deaths, the health ministry said on Wednesday.
The South American country has now registered 17,628,588 cases since the pandemic began while the official death toll has risen to 493,693, Reuters reports.
The UK’s “public health crisis is over” if Covid vaccines continue to offer high protection against hospital admission, despite the virus spreading in the community, a leading scientist told MPs.
Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, said society would need to learn to live with Covid-19 going forward, and also suggested it was not feasible in the short-term to keep producing new vaccines for every variant.
It comes as an expert from Public Health England said the global pandemic would last another two years.
Sir Andrew told MPs that the emergence of new variants “will happen, is going to continue to happen” as he urged people to continue having vaccines.
Fully vaccinated people in Britain could be allowed to travel to amber list countries without quarantining, The Daily Telegraph reported.
Amber list countries includes Spain, France, Italy and the US.
CureVac Covid-19 vaccine misses study goal
German biotech group CureVac said its Covid-19 vaccine was shown to be 47% effective in a late-stage trial, missing the study’s main goal.
It throws in doubt the potential delivery of hundreds of millions of doses to the European Union, Reuters reports.
Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, has called for global cooperation to ensure peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific, lashing China for undermining the rule of law and threatening a world order that “favours freedom”.
“This region is at the centre of significant economic and geopolitical change, and it’s in all of our interests that it recovers quickly from the pandemic and this downturn.
“That it remains open, inclusive, secure and resilient,” he said.
Abu Dhabi received its first shipment of the coronavirus Sotrovimab medication, becoming the first city globally to receive it, the media office said on a tweet on Wednesday.
The Ministry of Health and Prevention approved the emergency use of Sotrovimab in May, saying it “ offers the prospect of reducing hospitalisation for more than 24 hours and fatalities by as much as 85% when administered to patients as an early treatment for Covid-19”, the state news agency reported., Reuters reports.
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A summary of today's developments
- MPs in England have voted 461 to 60 to approve regulations that delay the easing of coronavirus restrictions in England to 19 July.
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South Africa’s Covid-19 infections jumped by 13,246 on Wednesday, the highest daily total in five months, its government said.
- US president Joe Biden said China was trying to project itself as a responsible nation in regard to the Covid-19 pandemic, but it remained unclear whether Beijing was really trying to understand the origins of the coronavirus.
- Johnson & Johnson is expected to miss its Covid vaccine supply target to the EU for the second quarter after millions of doses were banned for use in Europe over safety concerns, according to the European Commission.
- France and Spain are moving to ease rules around wearing face masks outside, in a development attributed by both countries to their Covid-19 vaccination campaigns.
- Australia’s second largest city will allow its five millions residents to travel more than 15 miles from home and end mandatory masks wearing outdoors from Friday.
- Ursula von der Leyen signed off on the first plans by EU member states to spend Brussels’ €800bn (£687bn) Covid recovery fund, as she sought to reverse the reputational damage inflicted on the bloc by the pandemic during a visit to Portugal and Spain.
- All care home staff in England will need to be fully vaccinated against coronavirus under a controversial new law, the government announced.
- Codogno, the town where the first domestic transmission of Covid-19 was detected in Italy, has registered zero infections among its inhabitants for the first time since February 2020.
- Companies in Germany will from the end of June no longer be forced to allow working from home, chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff was quoted as saying.
- The Taj Mahal reopened to the public as India pushes to lift restrictions in a bid to revitalise its economy.
People refusing to have the coronavirus vaccine in England should be at the end of the queue for hospital treatment, a Tory former minister said.
Speaking in a debate at Westminster, Lord Blencathra said they ought to be behind patients who have had the jab but requiring other medical treatment.
The Conservative peer, who was an MP for nearly three decades, made the call as the House of Lords backed the extension of Covid-19 restrictions in England.
Lord Blencathra said he “reluctantly” supported the four-week delay to easing restrictions on June 21, which the government argued is needed to give more time for people to receive vaccinations in the face of the rapidly spreading Delta variant, which was first identified in India, PA reports.
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Mexico reported 3,789 coronavirus cases and an additional 196 fatalities on Wednesday, according to health ministry data.
It brings the total number of cases to 2,463,390 and the overall death toll to 230,624, Reuters reports.
US president Joe Biden said China was trying to project itself as a responsible nation in regard to the Covid-19 pandemic, but it remained unclear whether Beijing was really trying to understand the origins of the coronavirus.
Asked if he would call Chinese President Xi Jinping as “old friend to old friend” to ask him to re-admit World Health Organization investigators, Biden said: “Let’s get something straight: We know each other well, we’re not old friends. It’s just pure business.”
Biden made clear that he remained skeptical about China’s cooperation with the WHO investigation, Reuters reports.
“China is trying very hard to project itself as a responsible and very, very forthcoming nation, and they are trying very hard to talk about how they’re helping the world in terms of Covid-19 and vaccines,” Biden said.
“Look, certain things you don’t have to explain to the people of the world, they see the results. Is China really actually trying to get to the bottom of this?”
Biden in May ordered aides to find answers to the origin of the virus that causes Covid-19, which was first reported in the Chinese city of Wuhan, and said U.S. intelligence agencies are looking at rival theories, potentially including the possibility of a lab accident in China.
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Robots began handing out bottles of sacred water this week in preparation for a socially distanced Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca.
Saudi Arabia announced on Saturday that 60,000 residents vaccinated against the coronavirus would be able to perform the July pilgrimage, a number up from last year but drastically lower than in normal times.
Officials hoping to prevent any coronavirus outbreaks rolled out the small black-and-white robots, each loaded with three shelves of water bottles, AFP reports.
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Bahrain has approved the emergency use for regn-cov2 medicine, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc’s and Roche’s newly authorised Covid-19 antibody combination as part of its coronavirus treatment protocol to treat existing cases with mild and moderate symptoms, the state news agency (BNA) reported.
The report said updating the corona treatment protocol in the kingdom would reduce symptom complications, Reuters reports.
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South Africa records highest daily cases in five months
South Africa’s Covid-19 infections jumped by 13,246 on Wednesday, the highest daily total in five months, its government said.
AFP reports:
The figure is almost double the weekly average for the past seven days, and compares to 8,436 cases recorded the previous day.
“These concerning figures represent the highest number of daily cases and positivity rate recorded since January 2021,” the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said in a statement. President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday extended a nightime curfew and limited alcohols sales in a bid to contain a third wave of infections.
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Politicians in England have voted 461 to 60 to approve regulations that delay the easing of coronavirus restrictions in England from 21 June to 19 July.
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UK health secretary Matt Hancock has rejected criticism of his handling of the pandemic after private WhatsApp exchanges emerged in which he appeared to be described as “totally hopeless” by prime minister Boris Johnson.
The PM’s former chief aide Dominic Cummings - who stepped down from the role in December - posted exchanges between himself and Johnson on social media.
After Cummings commented that Hancock was unsure he would reach a target of 10,000 virus tests per week on schedule, the prime minister apparently responded: “Totally fucking hopeless”.
In another message, Johnson blamed Hancock for the UK’s difficulty in getting hold of ventilators. “It’s Hancock. He has been hopeless,” the message said.
Johnson’s spokesman said Wednesday the prime minister had full confidence in the under-fire health secretary but declined to comment on the messages.
Asked whether he believed he had been hopeless, Hancock replied from the backseat of his ministerial car: “I don’t think so.”
The WhatsApp exchanges published by Cummings also appear to show he played a key role in his dealings with Johnson, who at one point asks him: “Wtf do we do?”
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The primary issue with lagging Covid-19 vaccinations in the Americas is access to doses, not acceptance of vaccine safety or efficacy, according to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).
It urged donor countries to send shots as soon as possible after a G7 pledge to provide 1 billion vaccine doses over the next year to help poorer countries inoculate their populations was widely deemed insufficient.
PAHO director Carissa Etienne said:
I want to be clear that the primary issue in the Americas is vaccine access, not vaccine acceptance. We’re counting on our leaders and the support of the global community to ensure the Americas have the doses they need as soon as possible to save lives.
We hope G7 nations will prioritise doses for countries at greatest risk, especially those in Latin America that have not yet had access to enough vaccines to even protect even the most vulnerable. Vaccines are urgently needed today.
Today so far...
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Johnson & Johnson is expected to miss its Covid vaccine supply target to the EU for the second quarter after millions of doses were banned for use in Europe over safety concerns, according to the European Commission.
- France and Spain are moving to ease rules around wearing face masks outside, in a development attributed by both countries to their Covid-19 vaccination campaigns.
- Australia’s second largest city will allow its five millions residents to travel more than 15 miles from home and end mandatory masks wearing outdoors from Friday.
- Ursula von der Leyen signed off on the first plans by EU member states to spend Brussels’ €800bn (£687bn) Covid recovery fund, as she sought to reverse the reputational damage inflicted on the bloc by the pandemic during a visit to Portugal and Spain.
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All care home staff in England will need to be fully vaccinated against coronavirus under a controversial new law, the government announced.
- Codogno, the town where the first domestic transmission of Covid-19 was detected in Italy, has registered zero infections among its inhabitants for the first time since February 2020.
- Companies in Germany will from the end of June no longer be forced to allow working from home, chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff was quoted as saying.
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The Taj Mahal reopened to the public as India pushes to lift restrictions in a bid to revitalise its economy.
Reuters reports that a rise in the number of homeless people in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighbourhood after an emergency move by New York City to ease crowding in shelters is leading to criticism of the authorities.
Giselle Routhier, policy director for the Coalition for the Homeless advocacy group, faulted the state and city for not providing enough mental health services and for “shuffling people” between locations.
“What we actually need for the city to do is to offer folks on the streets access to single occupancy rooms where they can come inside and feel that they’re safe from the elements and from the spread of the coronavirus,” she said.
Longer term, the city needs “more robust housing production for extremely low-income and homeless households, particularly for single adults,” many of whom were pushed into homelessness by the economic fallout of the pandemic, Routhier said.
Several of the eight Democrats running for mayor in next Tuesday’s primary election also have called for converting hotels into housing for the homeless.
As the pandemic began last spring, the Department of Homeless Services relocated 10,000 people from crowded shelters to 67 hotels whose tourism, business and convention bookings had dried up.
Romania has said it will give more than 150,000 coronavirus vaccine doses to neighbouring Ukraine and Serbia, and partially suspend some imports for June because it has a “surplus.”
AFP reports that besides sending 108,000 doses to Ukraine and 50,400 to Serbia as “humanitarian aid”, the government plans to resell some doses, Monica Althamer, a state secretary in the health ministry, said.
With vaccines outstripping demand, Romania’s government is asking manufacturers to suspend some deliveries planned for June. The move comes despite the government missing its inoculation targets. Therefore, it is understood that there is significant hesistancy among the population to receive the jab.
Romania, a country of about 19 million people, was due to receive more than 7.1 million doses of vaccine in June, but it will settle for 2.6 million doses, Baciu said.
More than 4.5 million Romanians have received at least one dose of an EU-approved Covid-19 vaccine so far, with 30,000 people on average getting vaccinated every day for the past week.
The government missed its target of inoculating five million people by the end of May in the country of almost 20 million, despite organising vaccination marathons, 24/7 drive-throughs and opening centres in places like open-air markets and at airports.
“It was predictable that a populist and aggressive campaign of relaxation... can’t stimulate vaccination,” said doctor Octavian Jurma, a vocal critic of Romania’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic wrote on his Facebook page.
Romania has recorded almost 32,000 deaths and more than one million cases of Covid-19.
All England care home staff set to need jab by law
All care home staff in England will need to be fully vaccinated against coronavirus under a controversial new law, the government has announced.
If approved by parliament, the new legislation means that from October, anyone working in a care home must have two doses of a vaccine unless they have a medical exemption.
The rules will apply to all workers employed directly by the care home, agency workers and volunteers deployed in the care home.
“Vaccines save lives and while staff and residents in care homes have been prioritised and the majority are now vaccinated we need to do everything we can to keep reducing the risk,” said health minister Matt Hancock.
NHS figures to June 6 show that 84% of staff in care homes in England have had one dose of vaccine, and almost 69% have had both jabs, although there is a wide geographical disparity in uptake, AFP reports.
Some light relief from my colleague Zoe Williams, who observes that male politicians have appeared to be keen to take their shirts off for a photo opportunity when receiving the Covid jab.
Internationally, there are subtle variations, she writes, French ministers like to drape or hold their spare sleeve over their exposed nipple, while proudly exposing tremendous biceps and noble shoulders. Their finance minister, Olivier Véran, in particular, looks as if he’s been caught unawares straight from the shower by a hot delivery driver at the start of an 1980s porn film.
Here’s the full story from my colleague Sarah Boseley on a new drug which has been found to cut Covid deaths by a fifth among the sickest patients in hospital and may change official practice so that every patient with coronavirus will have an antibody test before they are admitted.
Russian’s Sputnik Covid jab has not yet been approved by Thai regulators as important data remains unsubmitted, the country’s Food and Drug Administration said today according to local media.
The Russian company’s representative in Thailand reportedly sent the same set of incomplete data again last week to the regulator, after a request for the full information, secretary-general Dr Paisal Dunkhum said. It has now been requested again.
Thailand has so far approved five jabs for emergency use, those from: Sinovac, Sinopharm, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Moderna. Sputnik has been authorised for emergency use in some 67 countries.
The Associated Press has this dispatch from Quito, Ecuador, where a pair of young doctors who delayed their marriage to focus on their life-saving work saw their dreams together almost snatched from them.
La historia de los médicos ecuatorianos que aplazaron su boda por el Covid-19 vive una nueva dificultad: ahora él está intubado en UCI. ► https://t.co/t1ftLlusz4 pic.twitter.com/JMfD1jAQwP
— El Universo (@eluniversocom) January 19, 2021
As the pandemic raged in Ecuador last year, they posted a social media photo of themselves dressed in biohazard suits kissing and holding a sign saying: “Today was to be our wedding day, but instead
David Vallejo and Mavelin Bonilla’s decision to postpone their 23 May 2020, wedding to treat Covid-19 patients at a large public hospital in southern Quito moved many people in Ecuador and beyond. A second photo posted later showed them holding a sign reading: “We are working for you. BE CAREFUL! Don’t let your guard down.”
But within months, both would come down with what appeared to be Covid-19. Vallejo would be fighting for his life in intensive care. Bonilla, who experienced only mild symptoms, would be shattered after being told her fiancée had a less than 10% chance of survival.
Bonilla, 26, told the Associated Press that she had been sad when the couple posted the initial photo announcing the wedding delay. “It really was a dream — I don’t know if for all girls but at least for me it was — to leave my house in white and marry David. It was my longing, my dream.”
In January, both of the couple exhibited Covid-19 symptoms and Vallejo’s condition deteriorated rapidly. He was told he would be intubated for seven days to save his life. “I never felt more scared,” he recalled. On 17 January, he was sedated and his memories went on hold, but the ordeal was just beginning for Bonilla.
She recalls that at the end of January a doctor informed her that “David was very ill and only has a 10% chance of surviving.” She cried uncontrollably but had to keep their families informed.
Vallejo was still unconscious and in intensive care on 2 February, his 28th birthday. Bonilla and his medical colleagues brought a birthday cake and a loudspeaker and sang “Happy Birthday” to him from outside the hospital holding hands in the shape of a heart. After 17 days, Vallejo emerged from sedation, but was then overtaken by a hospital infection that almost claimed his life again. It took 30 days to recover from that.
The young doctor emerged from the ordeal with a facial paralysis and no strength in his muscles from his prolonged immobility. He “couldn’t even raise his hand,” he recalls. He communicated with his fiancée by moving his eyelashes. “I had to learn to speak again with therapy, learn to walk, to do all things,” he said.
“Even before this, I always thought you had to value the little things, the little shared moments,” Vallejo said. “Now I believe this more than ever. To go for a walk holding her hand is a great moment for me.”
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UK reports 9,055 new cases – highest daily total since February
The UK has reported its highest daily total of new coronavirus infections since February, adding to signs that a new, more infectious variant of the disease first found in India is spreading.
The government reported a further 9,055 cases today, the highest since 25 February, and up by almost a fifth compared to a day earlier.
This week, the UK delayed plans to lift most remaining Covid-19 restrictions by a month, saying the extra time would be used to speed up Britain’s vaccination programme - already one of the world’s furthest advanced.
The UK recorded another nine deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test.
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At least 200,000 refugees are among the worst affected by India’s Covid-19 outbreak as they have no access to welfare schemes or free healthcare, a report by an international consortium of rights groups has said.
“The stateless in India have not received economic relief packages provided by the government...they don’t have a bank account or proof of citizenship,” stated the report compiled by the Europe-based Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion.
“The Covid-19 pandemic and state responses to it have had a significant negative impact on the lives, wellbeing, and rights of the approximately 15 million stateless people around the world,” said the report, which also focused on refugees living in Kenya, Bangladesh, Malaysia, among other countries.
India is not party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol and does not have a national refugee protection framework. But it continues to grant asylum to a large number of refugees from neighbouring states and respects UNHCR’s mandate for other nationals, mainly from Afghanistan and Myanmar, Reuters reports.
The federal government has announced free food for roughly 800 million poor Indians till November this year. But refugees may not be able to get free rations or medicine from government hospitals because of a lack of documentation.
After a controversial citizens register was published in 2019, India declared almost 125,000 people as foreigners in the eastern state of Assam. India is also home to more than 40,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled to the country from neighbouring Myanmar.
Here’s the full story from my colleagues Sam Jones and Kim Willsher on France and Spain moving to ease rules around wearing face masks outside, in a development attributed by both countries to their Covid-19 vaccination campaigns.
A musical composition inspired by research into the Covid pandemic and featuring a bagpipe solo by one of the UK’s government’s scientific advisers is to have its world premiere tomorrow.
Prof Calum Semple, one of UK leading virologists and a keen Highland piper, says practising for the piece, sometimes in his garden, has helped him deal with the stress of his Covid research.
“I’ve never worked harder and without breaks for months on end,” he said. “It was really wearing me down, so making time to play music has been very healthy.”
Animal activists in Bangladesh have warned of a growing crisis among horses used for tourism during the country’s lockdown, after reports of five more dying of starvation in a popular resort town.
Twenty-one horses that used to carry tourists along Cox’s Bazar beach in south-eastern Bangladesh died in one month, their owners said, after a lockdown imposed from 14 April led to visitors to the scenic spot drying up.
The owners, who make ends meet through providing horse-riding services for tourists on the beach, said they had no income to buy fodder for the animals, and had to take out micro-loans just to feed their own families.
“Tourist arrivals in the beaches have ground to a halt. My horses are idle,” Farida Begum, spokeswoman of the Cox’s Bazar Horse Owners Association and a horseowner herself, told AFP.
“Five more horses have died since the start of the month … I’ve borrowed money from a micro-lender to buy food for the horses. I had to mortgage my sister-in-law’s ornaments to pay a loan instalment.”
Begum said another five of the remaining 64 horses at Cox’s were “ill due to starvation … If we soon cannot start feeding them properly, they will die as well.”
Another horse owner, Rezaul Karim, said he was struggling with “neck-deep debt”. He added: “The horses are turning violent and bad-tempered due to hunger. Often they bite each other while roughhousing. This is a matter of concern as they are usually very tame animals.”
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Portugal has said it would allow US visitors into the country, as it scrambles to shore up its tourism sector, but added Nepal to a list of “red” nations amid concerns over Covid variants.
Reuters reports that Portugal is now open to tourists from EU countries and Britain but they must show a negative Covid-19 test result on arrival. Since 15 June, rules applied to UK visitors also apply to those coming from the US, the government said.
Travellers from Japan, Australia, South Korea, China, Israel, New Zealand, Rwanda, Singapore and Thailand will also be able to travel to Portugal as long as their governments adopt equivalent reciprocal measures.
All travellers except children under the age of two must present a negative Covid-19 test taken 72 hours before boarding. A rapid antigen test, taken 24 hours before boarding, is also valid.
The decision to allow US tourists into the country came after Britain’s announcement earlier this month that it would reimpose a quarantine regime for travellers coming from Portugal, a major blow to its tourism sector, after a resurgence of reported infections there.
Official figures showed that about 1.2 million tourists from the US visited Portugal in 2019 but only 135,229 managed to make it there last year as the pandemic grounded flights and forced countries to impose travel restrictions.
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Cristiano Ronaldo’s removal of two Coca-Cola bottles during a press conference coincided with a $4bn fall in drinks company’s share price. But with obesity being one of the main risk factors for the worst cases of Covid, what have governments done to ensure people have lived as healthily as possible during stringent lockdowns?
Well, on the whole, not much. Though, notably, the Mexican state of Oaxaca is among a number of regions in the country to have at least taken some robust public health action on nutrition. With soft drink consumption the highest in the world in Mexico, the state banned the sale of sugary drinks and high-calorie snack foods to children in an effort to curb obesity, with diabetes another key risk factor for Covid.
“Parents have the responsibility of giving their children healthy food. But having access to nutritious food is also a human right,” Magaly Lopéz, a Oaxaca lawmaker who led the junk food ban, told Vice. “Healthy, nutritious food is critical to children’s physical and mental development. And the state also has to ensure that this type of food reaches them.”
It remains to be seen what effect the policy has had, with no provision for financial penalties to those who sell junk food to children in violation of the ban, but as we learn more about the dangerous role of sugar in the development of a number of chronic diseases, it may well be a move others will follow.
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China’s state-run Xinhua news agency has mocked the US for its donation of 80 vials of Pfizer coronavirus vaccine to Trinidad and Tobago.
“Would this be selected for the Worst Public Relations Award of the Year?” Xinhua said on Wednesday in an article on WeChat, seen by the Reuters news agency.
Each vial of Pfizer coronavirus vaccine contains up to six doses, making the US donation to to the Caribbean nation amount to a total of 480 doses – enough to fully vaccinate 240 people.
Trinidad and Tobago has a population of 1.4 million.
USA Donates Vaccines to Trinidad and Tobago pic.twitter.com/5S0OTQfJU5
— U.S. Embassy POS (@USinTT) June 14, 2021
In May, China delivered 100,000 donated doses of Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine to Trinidad and Tobago.
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The coronavirus pandemic has contributed to an increase in anti-migrant rhetoric in many countries, according to the Global Detention Project.
In a submission to the UN special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, GDP warned that blame for spreading Covid-19 was being laid on refugees and migrants.
Drawing on data gathered by its Covid-19 global immigration detention platform, the NGO concluded that some states had been reluctant to “establish firewalls between health and immigration authorities, resulting in many non-nationals fearing arrest and detention should they seek Covid-19 testing, treatment, and vaccination”.
Among the states highlighted was the UK. According to a report by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies cited by GDP:
Undocumented migrants, for example, have reported being anxious about seeking medical help and fearful of charges or being reported to immigration authorities and deported in the UK.
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Canada seems set for a boom in fake coronavirus vaccine documentation, as a survey shows one in five people in the country who do not want to be vaccinated would lie about their status to travel.
According to a survey reported by CTV News, about 14% of Canadians have no intention of getting vaccinated against coronavirus. Of those, 20% would lie about it if vaccines were a requirement for travel or entry into large events.
Will McAleer, spokesperson for the Travel Health Insurance Association of Canada (THIA), which conducted the research, said that the finding was expected, given the numbers already caught faking documentation to travel during the pandemic. He told CTV News:
We saw a virtual cottage industry in the international travel space with fake Covid-19 tests, the PCR tests that are required in order to get back into the country. All around the globe, there were fake ones popping up just so people could travel.
Thirty-one per cent of unvaccinated Canadians would take the vaccine if it was required for international travel, the survey found. McAleer said this could give the government a “good carrot approach” to persuading people to get vaccinated.
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Nearly three-quarters of people in the Netherlands want mask mandates to be ended sooner, a survey has found.
According to the poll, reported in the NL Times, 72% of people living in the country want the government to scrap the face mask rule sooner. But they are keen on maintaining other Covid safety measures, with only 11% calling for an earlier end to 1.5-metre social distancing guidelines and just 10% keen to see an earlier return to the office.
People nonetheless indicated that they were willing to adhere to the rules as long as they are in place, with 73% saying they still wear a mask when they have to, 19% saying they don’t always wear a mask, and only 7% claiming to never wear a mask.
This is Damien Gayle covering the live blog for a while, while Mattha takes a well-earned break.
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Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has said people would be able to stop wearing masks outside “soon” but gave no firm date for the lifting of the restriction.
Masks have been compulsory on the streets and in public places since May 2020, although there are exemptions for children under the age of six, people exercising, and those with health conditions that make their use difficult or dangerous.
“We’ll soon be able to stop wearing masks in the street,” said Sánchez, explaining that the abandonment of masks was down to the speed at which the country’s vaccination programme was progressing.”
In a few weeks, 50% of the population will have received at least one dose,” he said, adding that Spain was on course to meet its target of vaccinating 70% of its 47 million inhabitants by the end of the summer.
To date, health authorities have administered 33,632,590 doses of the vaccine, and 13,007,731 people have received both doses.In April, the government attempted to clear up confusion over whether people needed to wear masks on beaches.
It repeated its assurance that masks did not need to be worn during exercise, adding they would not be obligatory for those going swimming in pools, the sea, rivers, reservoirs or lakes either – as long as social distancing could be maintained.
The European Commission has given Portugal the first green light for its recovery plan funding from the bloc’s multi-billion-euro coronavirus fund.
In visiting Portugal to mark the occasion, EC chief Ursula Von der Leyen began activating the €750 billion recovery plan, Next Generation EU, which was drawn up nearly a year ago.
“It is the first national plan endorsed by the commission, here in Portugal,” she said in Lisbon alongside Portuguese prime minister Antonio Costa whose country currently holds the EU’s six-month rotating presidency,
She will now fly to Madrid then to Greece and Denmark tomorrow on a tour that will take her to most of the European Union’s 27 member states.
Portugal was the first country to submit its own plan back in April and is set to receive 16 billion euros in funding. AFP reports that as holder of the rotating presidency, it has made the rapid adoption of these recovery plans a priority following their recommendation by the commission.
Spain is also a significant choice in that it will be the second-largest beneficiary of the rescue fund after Italy, with Madrid to receive 140 billion euros, half of which will take the form of direct grants and loans.
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Malaysia’s king Al-Sultan Abdullah has called for the country’s parliament to reconvene as soon as possible to allow emergency ordinances and a recovery plan to be debated by lawmakers, according to a national palace statement cited by Reuters.
The country has been under a state of national emergency since January to help curb the spread of Covid-19, with deaths just above 4,000. Parliament has also been suspended.
Meanwhile, Malaysia’s council of rulers – made up of the country’s nine sultans including the king – today said they were of the view that there was no need for a state of emergency imposed since January to be extended beyond 1 August.
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France to end mandatory mask wearing outside, curfew lifting moved forward
France is to end the obligation to wear masks outside and will bring forwards the lifting of a nighttime curfew by 10 days, as Covid infections fall and the country’s vaccine drive picks up.
Prime minister Jean Castex said the requirement for people to wear masks outdoors would be lifted from Thursday, with some exceptions, while an unpopular 11pm Covid curfew will end on 20 June – 10 days earlier than planned. “The health situation of our country is improving faster than we expected,” Castex told a press conference.
Masks will still be required outdoors in crowded places and in stadiums. The average number of new daily infections fell to 3,200 on Tuesday, France’s lowest level since August 2020, and far below the upper limit of 5,000 cases president Emmanuel Macron had set as his goal late last year.
Castex said the government aimed to have around 35 million people completely vaccinated by the end of the summer, representing a little over half of the population amid serious and longstanding vaccine scepticism throughout the country.
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Another quick snap from Reuters as Moderna says the US government has purchased another 200 million doses of its authorised Covid-19 shot, including the option to purchase other coronavirus vaccine candidates from the company’s pipeline.
The US has now ordered a total of 500 million Moderna vaccine doses to date, with 110 million set for delivery in the fourth quarter and 90 million to be delivered in the first quarter of 2022.
Moderna, which has supplied 217 million doses of its shot to the US as of Monday, said the additional doses were bought to ensure continuous supply through the first quarter of next year.
More than 129 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine have so far been administered in the US, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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British tourists face continued restrictions on travelling to the EU this summer even as the bloc opens up to others, including US residents.
Eight countries are to be added to a list of countries from where the EU says non-essential travel is safe, but the UK has not been included.
Albania, North Macedonia, Serbia, Lebanon, the US, Taiwan, Macau and Hong Kong will join Australia, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Rwanda, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and China on a “white list”.
Vietnam has reported 423 new coronavirus cases, the highest number of new infections reported since the start of its latest outbreak late in April.
Most cases were in the business hub Ho Chi Minh City and the northern province of Bac Giang, home to suppliers to global tech firms. Vietnam has recorded 11,635 infections overall, 72% of which have been reported in the current outbreak. It has recorded 61 fatalities, according to Reuters.
Thailand will reopen to visitors within 120 days after more than a year of coronavirus travel curbs, a calculated risk needed to revive its troubled economy, prime minister Prayuth Chan-ocha has said.
Prayuth said that the country plans to administer an average of 10 million shots of coronavirus vaccine each month from July onwards and aims to reopen the tourism-reliant country to fully vaccinated travellers, local and foreign, without a quarantine requirement, Reuters reports.
“Re-opening the country is one of the important ways to start reducing the enormous suffering of people who have lost their ability to earn an income,” he said.
“When we take into consideration the economic needs of people, the time has now come for us to take that calculated risk.
He said he aimed to declare Thailand fully open within 120 days and for tourism centres that are ready, “to do so even faster”. He said the risk was necessary and the country could not afford to wait to complete all of its vaccinations and for the spread of the virus to halt.
It will start with a pilot reopening from 1 July on its most popular island, Phuket, which has been vaccinating most of its local population. Thailand lost about $50 billion in tourism revenue last year - an 82% plunge.
The Taj Mahal has reopened to the public as India pushes to lift restrictions in a bid to revitalise its economy.
The 17th-century white marble mausoleum in the northern city of Agra, built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his wife who died during childbirth, was closed in early April as India introduced strict lockdown measures.
Only 650 tourists will be allowed inside the premises of the Taj Mahal at any time, said Prabhu Singh, district magistrate of Agra. The spectacular monument, whose ornate reflection glistens in a canal set in front of it, normally attracts 7 million to 8 million visitors annually, or over 20,000 people per day. A local tourist guide told Reuters he had only seen about 120 people at the monument today.
The state of Uttar Pradesh, where Agra is located, reported 270 new infections overnight and 56 deaths. It is among India’s hardest-hit states in terms of total Covid-19 cases.
Other federally protected monuments, including New Delhi’s Red Fort and Qutub Minar, were also reopened to tourists on Wednesday.
Today, India’s health ministry reported 62,224 new Covid-19 infections overnight, slightly higher than the previous day’s figure. The country added 2,542 Covid-related deaths overnight to bring its total to 379,573.
A Covid-19 antibody cocktail developed by Regeneron and Roche reduced deaths in hospitalised patients whose own immune systems had failed to produce a response, a large British study has found.
It found that the antibody therapy reduced by a fifth the 28-day mortality of people admitted to hospital with Covid whose immune system had not mounted an antibody response. The result translates into six fewer deaths for every 100 such patients treated with the therapy, researchers said.
The therapy, REGEN-COV, has been granted emergency use authorisation for people with mild-to-moderate Covid-19 in the US, but results from the UK Recovery trial provide the clearest evidence of its effectiveness among hospitalised patients, according to Reuters.
There was no discernible effect of the treatment on those who had generated natural antibody responses.
“People have been very, very sceptical, that any treatment against this particular virus would work by the time people get in hospital,” Martin Landray, the joint chief investigator on the trial said. “If you haven’t raised antibodies of your own, you really would benefit from getting some.”
Regeneron had previously said its treatment had shown enough promise in hospitalised patients to warrant continuing its trial. This data provides the first large-scale confirmation of that assertion.
The trial also showed the steroid dexamethasone and Roche’s arthritis drug Actemra cut deaths in hospitalised patients thanks to their focus on reducing inflammation.
Here’s a quick snap from Reuters. Japan will lift the state of emergency on June 20 for nine prefectures including Tokyo and Osaka, public broadcaster NHK has reported, adding the government will instead introduce “quasi-emergency” in seven of those prefectures.
Prime minister Yoshihide Suga earlier told reporters the decision would be made tomorrow. We’ll bring you more details on this one as it comes in.
Melbourne to significantly ease restrictions after hard lockdown
Australia’s second largest city will allow its five millions residents to travel more than 15 miles from home and end mandatory masks wearing outdoors from Friday.
Melbourne exited a two-week hard lockdown late last week, its fourth since the pandemic began, after an outbreak that has seen about 100 cases since 24 May.
“Victoria is at its best when we are all together ... the state will come back together from tomorrow night”, Victoria state acting premier James Merlino said.
Although cases linked to a fresh cluster in rose slightly today, Melbourne will gradually ease restrictions. Public gatherings will increased to 20 people while the ban on home gatherings will be lifted. Gyms can open across Melbourne but must comply to strict distancing rules and salon services can operate without masks during service.
Victoria reported five new local cases on Wednesday, all linked to a residential townhouse complex, taking total infections there to eight.
Officials deemed the new cases pose low risks of community spread as all have been linked to the existing outbreak. Nationwide, Australia has seen just under 30,300 cases and 910 deaths.
Vaccination experts are not planning to recommend Covid-19 jabs for children in the UK, a minister has said.
It comes as prominent academics suggest that existing doses should be used to immunise vulnerable people around the world before those in the UK who are relatively safe.
Prof Calum Semple, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said: “The risk of death [from Covid in children] is one in a million. That’s not a figure and plucking from the air, that’s a quantifiable risk.”
Businesses in Togo are under continued strain as the country continues to live under emergency health restrictions despite a low level of coronavirus infections and deaths.
AFP reports that one taxi driver, Kossigan, lost his lucrative business ferrying people across the frontier when the government closed its land borders and is now earning his keep as a parking lot attendant.
“Covid-19 has killed off our business. Some of my colleagues got sick by doing nothing, others have returned to their villages,” he said.
In a nearby market stall, Edith, a cosmetics seller, said the situation was critical. “The authorities really have no pity on us. Air travel restarted in August, so why are the land borders still closed? It is really unjust.”
Frustrations are growing too for hotel owner Evariste Govi who let go of half of the hotel staff six months ago. “I really have the impression that the authorities must have their own reasons for this, because the number of deaths from coronavirus are far less than those from malaria,” Govi said. “At this pace, I will have to shut the place up by July.”
Some business associations and trade organisations are already warning of worse to come if the borders stay closed. “We have alerted the government several times about the situation in the country. We have to reopen the borders quickly and reduce taxes,” said Emmanuel Sogadji, president of a consumer association in Togo.
While the official figures show a low level of coronavirus infections at 13,000 cases and 125 deaths, Togo has kept up tight restrictions and the economy has been hit hard.
Cross-frontier trade is essential for a small, agriculture-dependent economy like Togo’s, with business coming from across neighbouring West African states like Ghana, Benin and Ivory Coast.
“Should we reopen the borders for fun or keep the current state of affairs? The situation is under control, that is what is important,” said one member of the government’s scientific advisory council earlier this year.
Companies in Germany will from the end of June no longer be forced to allow working from home, chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff was quoted as saying.
After first introducing a working from home obligation in January, the measure was anchored in emergency temporary legislation that could be reimposed depending on the vaccine rollout and the spread of new variants, Helge Braun told the WirtschaftsWoche weekly.
However, Labour minister Hubertus Heil said in April he was working on legislation to give employees the right to work from home even when the coronavirus crisis is over.
Germany has gradually lifted lockdown measures in the last six weeks as infections have fallen, but many Germans are likely to wish to continue to work from home for at least part of the week.
Reuters reports that at the height of the third wave of the pandemic in March, almost a third of employees in Germany were working from home at least some of the time, but that had fallen to 31% in May, according to the Ifo economic institute.
Codogno, the town where the first domestic transmission of Covid-19 was detected in Italy, has registered zero infections among its inhabitants for the first time since February 2020.
Mattia Maestri, 38, tested positive for coronavirus after he was hospitalised with severe pneumonia in Codogno on 20 February, leading the town and nine others in the Lombardy region, along with one in Veneto, to become the first in Europe to be quarantined. Maestri survived the virus after several weeks in intensive care.
Codogno was at the epicentre of the early stages of the pandemic in Italy before the entire country went into lockdown on 9 March.
“For the first time since that terrible 20 February, Codogno has recorded zero Covid infections among residents,” Francesco Passerini, the town’s mayor, wrote on Facebook. “It’s an important milestone and a further step towards the return to normality for our community. The vaccination campaign continues to progress quickly and we have reached a percentage of 63.15% [of the population vaccinated].”
Meanwhile, the Italian government is reportedly considering extending the state of emergency, which gives it powers to impose coronavirus restrictions and lockdowns if needed. The state of emergency was declared by Giuseppe Conte’s government in January 2020 and has been extended several times since. It is due to expire at the end of July.
Italy registered 1,255 new infections on Tuesday and 63 deaths.
Updated
Johnson & Johnson is expected to miss its Covid vaccine supply target to the EU for the second quarter after millions of doses were banned for use in Europe over safety concerns, an EU Commission spokesman said.
Reuters reports that the European drugs regulator last week said J&J doses sent to Europe from a factory in the US would not be used as a precaution after a case of contamination. EMA said in a statement that 17m doses had been forbidden from being used in the bloc.
“Following the non-release of these batches, the company is not expected to be in a position to deliver 55m doses by the end of this quarter,” the EU commission spokesman said.
The EU has ordered a total of 200m doses from J&J, of which 55m were to be delivered by the end of June. The company has so far delivered around 12m doses.
“Johnson & Johnson remains committed to supplying 200m doses of its Covid-19 vaccine to the European Union, Norway and Iceland and will continue to update the European Commission and member states in a timely manner as we refine delivery timelines,” a spokeswoman for J&J said in a statement.
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to everyone reading. Mattha Busby here taking over from my colleague Martin Belam. Hope everyone reading is well. I’ll be bringing you updates for the next few hours. Do drop me a line with any tips or thoughts via Twitter or to my email (mattha.busby.freelance@guardian.co.uk).
Updated
Today so far…
- India’s main opposition party, Congress, has questioned the decision by Narendra Modi’s government to double the gap between the doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, asking whether it was prompted by a vaccine shortage.
- North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned about possible food shortages and called for his people to brace for extended Covid-19 restrictions as he opened a major political conference to discuss national efforts to salvage a broken economy.
- Authorities in Moscow will make vaccination against Covid-19 compulsory for 60% of employees in the services sector. Mayor Sergey Sobyanin has described the situation in Russia’s capital as “dramatic”, saying there were more than 12,000 people hospitalised with coronavirus.
- European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen visits Lisbon and Madrid today where she will begin approving recovery plans submitted by nations seeking funding from the bloc’s coronavirus recovery fund.
- New York governor Andrew Cuomo said on Tuesday 70% of adults in the state have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, a threshold he said the state would celebrate by easing many of its remaining social distancing rules and shooting off fireworks.
- Singapore is evaluating the timing and scope of the next stage of its easing of coronavirus measures, originally planned for next Monday, after a new coronavirus cluster and cases were detected.
- Malaysia’s foreign minister Hishammuddin Hussein said China has agreed to contribute 500,000 doses of Covid vaccines made by its drugmaker Sinovac.
- China continues to close in on administering 1bn vaccines – official figures reported by Reuters show that yesterday China administered about 19.8m doses. That takes the overall tally to 923m.
- An outbreak of Covid-19 in southern China has combined with the rapid reopening of the world economy and a shortage of shipping containers to cause a surge in transport costs that could fuel inflation and cause shortages of goods across the globe.
- All care home staff in England should be vaccinated, a senior government minister has urged, saying she would not want her own relatives to be looked after by unvaccinated carers.
- The NHS National Booking Service in England has opened up vaccine shots to 21 and 22-year-olds for the first time.
- A 57-year-old man has been charged after a BBC journalist was confronted and chased by anti-Covid lockdown protesters near Downing Street.
- A man who lives in Sydney’s eastern suburbs in Australia, and who works as a driver for international flight crews has tested positive to Covid-19 – and anyone who shared a cinema with him on Sunday has been ordered to isolate for 14 days.
Andrew Sparrow has the UK Covid news in his live blog, and Mattha Busby will be here shortly to continue with our global coronavirus news coverage. I’m Martin Belam, and I will see you again tomorrow morning. Take care and stay safe.
Updated
A fraction more on Moscow – authorities in will make vaccination against Covid-19 compulsory for 60% of employees in the services sector, as coronavirus cases continued to tick up in the Russian capital.
Reuters note that Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the coronavirus situation in the city was developing dramatically and urged people to get vaccinated in an effort to drive down hospitalisations and deaths.
Moscow mayor describes Covid situation in Russia's capital as 'dramatic'
A couple of quick bits from Russia. The official tally of Covid cases has risen again by 13,397. That includes 5,782 new cases in Moscow.
Regular readers will know that there are always some question marks around these numbers. The government coronavirus taskforce said 396 people had died of coronavirus-linked causes in the past 24 hours, pushing the national death toll to 127,576. However, the federal statistics agency has kept a separate count and puts the total number of deaths in Russia at over 270,000.
Separately, Reuters reports that Moscow’s mayor, Sergey Sobyanin, has been addressing the press, and has described the situation in Russia’s capital as “dramatic”, saying there were more than 12,000 people hospitalised with coronavirus.
Updated
A man who lives in Sydney’s eastern suburbs in Australia, and who works as a driver for international flight crews has tested positive to Covid-19 – and anyone who shared a cinema with him on Sunday has been ordered to isolate for 14 days.
The new case was reported by NSW Health on Wednesday afternoon, after the man in his 60s tested positive on a saliva test on Tuesday. The positive result was confirmed by a PCR test.
Health authorities in New South Wales were conducting “urgent investigations into the source of the infection”, a NSW Health statement said. Contact tracing and genomic sequencing was under way.
Read more here: New Sydney Covid case visited Bondi venues while potentially contagious
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Singapore may delay next stage of easing Covid measures over new cluster
Another quick Reuters update: Singapore is evaluating the timing and scope of the next stage of its easing of coronavirus measures, originally planned for next Monday, after a new coronavirus cluster and cases were detected, its finance minister said.
The government was studying the situation carefully with public health experts and will provide further updates soon, said Lawrence Wong, finance minister and co-chair of government coronavirus taskforce.
That also seems like it will be bad news for the much-vaunted and repeatedly delayed Singapore-Hong Kong travel bubble, which is also under review.
China agrees to send 500,000 doses of vaccine to Malaysia
A quick snap from Reuters here, Malaysia’s foreign minister Hishammuddin Hussein said China has agreed to contribute 500,000 doses of Covid vaccines made by its drugmaker Sinovac BioTech to the Southeast Asian country.
“This timely contribution will bolster the vaccination process and assist the ongoing rollout of Malaysia’s national Covid-19 immunisation programme,” Hishammuddin said.
Updated
Andrew Sparrow has launched our UK live blog for the day. With parliament set to be debating the delay in the lifting of England’s lockdown restrictions he’ll be covering the UK’s Covid stories. I’ll be continuing to bring you global coronavirus news here.
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen visits Lisbon and Madrid today where she will begin approving recovery plans submitted by nations seeking funding from the bloc’s coronavirus recovery fund.
“This is a historic achievement,” von der Leyen told the European parliament last week in announcing the imminent activation of the landmark €750bn ($910bn) recovery plan that was drawn up nearly a year ago.
The choice to start in Portugal and Spain is symbolic, AFP suggests.
Portugal, which holds the EU’s six-month rotating presidency, has made the rapid adoption of these recovery plans a priority following their recommendation by the commission. And the government of Socialist prime minister Antonio Costa set a good precedent by being the first country to submit its own plan in April.
Spain is also a significant choice in that it will be the second-largest beneficiary of the rescue fund after Italy, with Madrid set to receive €140bn (£120bn), half of which will take the form of direct grants and loans.
With both countries hugely dependent on tourism, their economies have been significantly affected.
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Questions in India over doubling of gap between AstraZeneca doses
India’s main opposition party, Congress, has questioned the decision by Narendra Modi’s government to double the gap between the doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, asking whether it was prompted by a vaccine shortage.
Reuters yesterday reported that the government had increased the gap without the agreement of the scientific group that it said recommended the move, citing three members of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI) advisory body.
Congress leaders, including former party president Rahul Gandhi, said the government was trying to cover up a vaccine shortage. “India needs quick & complete vaccination,” Gandhi said in a tweet.
The AstraZeneca shot accounts for nearly 90% of the 257.5m vaccine doses administered in India, where some states have curtailed vaccination programmes over supply constraints.
The government said that the gap was increased based on scientific evidence and that the issue had been discussed in detail by members of NTAGI as well as its working group on Covid.
“We have a very open and transparent system where decisions are taken on scientific basis,” said NK Arora, chairman of the working group, according to a government statement.
Arora said that the decision to expand the gap to up to 16 weeks had been made to provide “flexibility” for those who may not be able to get the second dose at 12 weeks.
India’s health minister, Harsh Vardhan, said India has a robust mechanism to evaluate data, reiterating that the decision to increase the gap was based on science. “It’s unfortunate that such an important issue is being politicised” he said in a tweet.
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A 57-year-old man has been charged after a BBC journalist was confronted and chased by anti-Covid lockdown protesters near Downing Street.
PA Media reports that Martin Hockridge is accused of using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour towards another person with the intention to cause them harassment, alarm or distress.
It comes after footage shared on social media showed demonstrators shouting abuse in the face of Newsnight political editor Nicholas Watt.
Watt, who was wearing his BBC lanyard, was forced to run through the mob beyond a line of police officers as people shouted “traitor” and other abuse near Downing Street on Monday.
Hockridge, of Harpenden, Hertfordshire, is charged under Section 4A of the Public Order Act and is due to appear at Westminster magistrates court on Tuesday 29 June.
London’s Metropolitan police, who were yesterday branded “institutionally corrupt” by a report into the murder of Daniel Morgan, initially said an investigation would be launched into a “number of offences” but that officers “were not in the immediate vicinity of the incident”.
However, following the emergence of another longer video showing police present at the scene, the force said it would also be “reviewing our actions with a view to improving the policing of events”.
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All care home staff in England should have Covid vaccine, says minister
All care home staff in England should be vaccinated, a senior government minister has urged, saying she would not want her own relatives to be looked after by unvaccinated carers.
Speaking on behalf of the government on Wednesday, the international trade secretary, Liz Truss, said it was incredibly important for staff to get the jab, though she refused to confirm reports ministers were poised to make it mandatory.
Truss said: “It’s incredibly important that staff in care homes are vaccinated. We have got a hugely vulnerable population in our care homes and making sure that staff are vaccinated is a priority.”
Speaking to Sky News, she refused to prejudge the government’s response to a consultation on the issue. But, pressed for her view if she had a parent in a care home, she said: “I would want the staff to be vaccinated, of course I would, because I would want my parent to be protected.”
Read more of Kevin Rawlinson’s report here: All care home staff in England should have Covid vaccine, says minister
In the UK, cabinet minister Liz Truss said the government’s decision on mandatory vaccination for care home staff was “very imminent”. Our health policy editor Denis Campbell had this as an exclusive for us yesterday evening, writing:
Covid vaccinations are to become mandatory for care home staff under plans to be announced by ministers, as they consider extending the move to all NHS staff.
The controversial measure sets up a likely battle with staff in both services and could lead to the government being sued under European human rights law or equalities legislation for breaching the freedom of people who work in caring roles to decide what they put into their bodies.
The Guardian understands that ministers will confirm they are pushing ahead with compulsory vaccination for most of the 1.5 million people working in social care in England, despite employer and staff organisations in the sector warning that it could backfire if workers quit rather than get immunised. Under the plans those working with adults will have 16 weeks to get vaccinated or face losing their jobs.
There’s been some reaction on the airwaves, with Mike Padgham, chairman of the Independent Care Group (ICG), which represents care homes in Yorkshire, saying he fears people will be put off entering the social care sector if vaccinations become mandatory for workers.
PA Media reports he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
It’s not unexpected, I’m disappointed because I think persuasion is the way forward still because those taking the vaccination has gone up but I also say that I do believe people should be vaccinated, every member of staff should take up the vaccine. But I just think persuasion rather than coercion or compulsion is the way we have to deal with it.
What I’m worried about is the recruitment crisis already in social care, is that we’re frightened that this is going to put more people off coming into social care and that’s going to be difficult. I’m also worried about any legal action against providers, because if you’ve only got 16 weeks and you lose your job where does that put people? We’re already short of staff.
Updated
Commentator Allison Pearson is calling for Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance to be “censured by the UK statistics authority”, for using percentages rather than raw numbers, because, as far as I can tell, she is still refusing to grasp the idea that a small number that doubles every few days rapidly becomes a larger number.
For example, at the moment the number of patients with Covid in hospital is, according to UK government data, 1,136.
On 15 September 2020, the number of patients in hospital was at a lower level, at 1,057. By 5 October, due to the rate of increase, that number had reached 3,376. Four weeks later it had reached over 14,000.
That is the scenario that Vallance and Whitty believe a four week delay to get more people in loosening restrictions can avoid again.
I feel so strongly about this. Scientists paid out of the public purse presenting NHS data in a totally misleading way to deceive the public into accepting ongoing restrictions.
— Allison Pearson (@AllisonPearson) June 16, 2021
I hope Whitty and Vallance are censured by the UK statistics authority. https://t.co/v18I6HZniz
Updated
China continues to close in on administering 1bn vaccines – official figures reported by Reuters show that yesterday China administered about 19.8m doses. That takes the overall tally to 923m.
Kim Jong Un warns over North Korea food shortages and extended Covid restrictions
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un warned about possible food shortages and called for his people to brace for extended Covid-19 restrictions as he opened a major political conference to discuss national efforts to salvage a broken economy.
The North’s fragile economy has decayed further amid pandemic border closures, which choked off trade with China, while devastating typhoons and floods last summer decimated crops.
Monitors assessing the situation in North Korea have yet to see signs of mass starvation or major instability, but some analysts say conditions could be aligning for a perfect storm that undercuts food and exchange markets and triggers public panic. The Korea Development Institute, a South Korean government think tank, said last month the North could face food shortages of around a million tons this year.
Kim Tong-Hyung reports for Associated Press that experts widely doubt North Korea’s claim that it has not had a single Covid case, given its poor health infrastructure and a porous border with China, its major ally and economic lifeline.
Politico’s London Playbook this morning has what it is labelling a scoop about a government document setting out proposals for what life in the UK might look like once step 4 of the unlocking roadmap is reached. The key points from the White Hall document include:
- Some form of working from home is set to continue for the long haul, offices could be required to install ventilation systems and a raft of other measures are likely to be needed.
- The paper draws up three potential options on work-from-home messaging: the government could either tell the public to go back to work, remain neutral, or encourage people to work from home. Ministers are being advised to reject the first option, and instead err toward caution with a “hybrid approach.”
- There is stinging criticism of the existing government policy on sick pay, urging ministers to do more to support people isolating.
Read more here: Politico London Playbook – Living with corona
In the UK, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has not made many friends in the NHS overnight with his statement in his ConservativeHome podcast: “Ultimately, the NHS is there to serve the British people, not the British people there to serve the NHS, and therefore we may need to spend more money on hospitals but you can’t run society just to stop the hospitals being full, otherwise you’d never let us get in our cars and drive anywhere or do any of the other things that people want to do, so there has to be some proportionality.”
The quote seems to ignore there that we do in fact in the UK take a great deal of precautions – speed limits, seat belts, an entire system for punishing dangerous driving – over driving but that’s by-the-by.
You can expect some media follow-up to those comments later on from Dr Julia Grace Patterson, who heads up the EveryDoctor campaign.
I’ll be on LBC at 8am to discuss Rees-Mogg’s comments regarding lockdown release. He believes that “the NHS is there to serve the British people, not the British people there to serve the NHS”.
— Dr Julia Grace Patterson💙 (@JujuliaGrace) June 16, 2021
Obviously this is nonsense during a pandemic - we must conserve healthcare resource🚨
In the meantime, Rees-Mogg’s colleague Liz Truss is doing the media round, and PA report she had this to say on Sky News about his views. Truss is International Trade Secretary and presumably was hoping to talk about things other than this:
We are taking a pragmatic approach. The key is making sure that everybody gets vaccinated - by July 19 we will have all over-40s vaccinated so we are protected as a society. That’s what we need to do in order to be able to fully open up the economy.
Jacob has his views and those are his views. But what I’m telling you is the reason we are doing this, the reason we are taking these measures is to protect lives and that’s what’s important.
England opens vaccine appointment to all over 21s
The NHS National Booking Service in England has opened up to 21 and 22-year-olds for the first time. Readers in England can book or manage their vaccination appointment on the NHS website.
Other nations in the UK can find out the latest status for booking a vaccine here:
Northern Ireland had previously opened up jabs to anyone over 18. Authorities in Wales say that every adult should have already been offered their first shot of the Covid vaccine, some six weeks ahead of schedule.
Good morning, it is Martin Belam here in London, taking over from Helen Sullivan. The UK media round this morning is likely to feature lots of questions about whether there will be a parliamentary revolt in the UK today over the government’s decision to push back the lifting of restrictions in England until 19 July.
Sam Blewett, PA Media’s deputy political editor, reminds us that the House of Commons will vote this evening on the four-week delay to the end of lockdown measures, aimed at buying more time for the vaccine programme.
Labour, the largest opposition party, has signalled it will back the extension. That means it will pass for sure, but the usual Conservative lockdown-sceptic suspects are likely to express their anger during a debate.
Johnson will face Sir Keir Starmer at prime minister’s questions at noon, but it will be health secretary Matt Hancock who will open the debate on extending the restrictions.
Delays are also expected to hit Scotland after the first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said the mainland’s move to the lowest level of restrictions will “likely” be delayed by three weeks.
Updated
Covid outbreaks in Chinese ports could cause global goods shortages
Martin Farrer and Helen Davidson:
An outbreak of Covid-19 in southern China has combined with the rapid reopening of the world economy and a shortage of shipping containers to cause a surge in transport costs that could fuel inflation and cause shortages of goods across the globe.
China reported 21 new coronavirus cases in the mainland on Wednesday, with 15 of them in the vital industrial province of Guangdong where restrictions have been in place for several weeks to contain an outbreak linked to the Delta variant first detected in India.
There are now 150 cases of the variant, mostly in Guangzhou city, and the lockdown has caused the city’s massive port to be severely disrupted. A separate outbreak in neighbouring Shenzhen has also added to the problem. The ports are the third and fifth largest in the world and shipping costs have spiked as a result.
Transporting a 12.2-metre (40ft) steel container by sea from Shanghai to Rotterdam now costs a record $10,522, which is nearly 300% higher than it was last year, according to Drewry Shipping.
Factory costs in China, the workshop of the world, had already risen 9% in May – the most for more than a decade – because of a rapid increase in demand as the global economy reopens and as glitches in supply chains continue to be ironed out.
Read more of Martin Farrer and Helen Davidson’s report here: Covid outbreaks in Chinese ports could cause global goods shortages
Updated
Jobs fears as Italy eyes end to Covid ban on layoffs
Trade unions warn about a “social tsunami”, leftwing parties of a “massacre for employment” – the imminent end of Italy’s coronavirus freeze on layoffs is causing tensions in Mario Draghi’s national unity government, AFP reports.
Supporters say the freeze, which is unique in Europe, saved thousands of jobs after the pandemic plunged Italy into deep recession – but the European Union has been disparaging, and employers are angling for its end.
Companies were first banned from sacking workers under former premier Giuseppe Conte in February 2020, when a wave of Covid-19 sparked Europe’s first nationwide lockdown in Italy. The measure was later extended.
Updated
More on New York, where some rules will remain: for now, people will continue to have to wear masks in schools, subways, large sports arenas, homeless shelters, hospitals, nursing homes, jails and prisons. Unvaccinated New Yorkers will still be subject to a mask mandate while indoors in public places.
New York has, essentially, been at that 70% mark for days. It reached 69.5% of adults vaccinated Saturday, and 69.9% on Monday.
But Cuomo said New York would remember Tuesday, 15 June — also the birthdate of his late father, the former Gov Mario Cuomo – as the date when New York “rose again.”
It’s unclear how many more people have to get vaccinated to reach herd immunity from the coronavirus, which is when so many people are resistant to the virus that it has trouble spreading.
Many experts say it’s 70% or higher. So far, about 50% of New Yorkers, of all ages, are fully vaccinated, according to federal data.
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New York hits 70% vaccination target
New York governor Andrew Cuomo said on Tuesday that 70% of adults in the state have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, a threshold he said the state would celebrate by easing many of its remaining social distancing rules and shooting off fireworks.
AP: “What does 70% mean? It means that we can now return to life as we know it,” Cuomo told an invitation-only crowd at the World Trade Center in Manhattan.
Effective immediately, he said, the state is lifting rules that required many types of businesses to follow cleaning protocols or take people’s temperatures or screen them for recent Covid symptoms.
Movie theaters will no longer have to leave empty seats between patrons. Restaurants will no longer be forced to sit parties at least 6ft (2 metres) apart. Stores won’t have to limit how many customers they admit. New York had previously allowed businesses to stop enforcing social distancing and mask rules for vaccinated patrons.
Cuomo, a Democrat, said there would be fireworks displays around the state Tuesday evening to celebrate and honour essential workers.
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Japan considering 10,000 fans at Olympics
Japan could allow up to 10,000 fans at sports events ahead of the Olympics, media reported Wednesday, as organisers weigh how many domestic fans can attend the Games, AFP reports.
The measure, intended to come into force after a coronavirus state of emergency ends on June 20, will be discussed by the government’s virus taskforce on Wednesday, the Nikkei business daily and Kyodo news agency said.
The plan would limit spectators to 50% of a venue’s capacity or 10,000 people, whichever is lower. It could set the boundaries for a decision by Olympic organisers on how many domestic fans, if any, can attend Games events. Overseas spectators have already been banned.
The Olympic decision is expected only after the virus emergency in Tokyo ends on June 20 and the government clarifies what measures will replace it.
Experts and officials have expressed concerns that huge crowds attending the Games could accelerate virus infections after the emergency ends.
Japan has so far seen a comparatively small virus outbreak, with slightly more than 14,000 deaths despite avoiding harsh lockdowns. But its vaccination programme has moved slower than many other developed nations, with just over 5% of the population fully inoculated so far.
Under the current state of emergency, spectators are capped at 5,000 people or 50% of a venue’s capacity, whichever is smaller.
The decision on Olympic fans is expected by the end of the month.
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Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday that 70% of adults in New York have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, a threshold he said the state would celebrate by easing many of its remaining social distancing rules and shooting off fireworks.
Meanwhile Japan could allow up to 10,000 fans at sports events ahead of the Olympics, media reported Wednesday. The measure, intended to come into force after a coronavirus state of emergency ends on June 20, will be discussed by the government’s virus taskforce on Wednesday, the Nikkei business daily and Kyodo news agency said.
Here are the other key recent developments:
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Every adult in England will be able to book their first Covid-19 vaccination from the end of this week, the head of the NHS said, with appointment slots to be opened to everyone aged 18 and above within a few days.
- The European Medicines Agency denied that a top official suggested dropping the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine, saying that he had been misinterpreted in an interview. However, it did not appear to provide a clarification.
- A further relaxation of Covid controls across Scotland is likely to be pushed back by three weeks, Nicola Sturgeon said, meaning that the next significant easing could coincide with England on 19 July after Boris Johnson announced a four-week delay on Monday.
- Ireland will double the quarantine period for unvaccinated or partially vaccinated arrivals from Britain to 10 days but still plans to allow people to move more freely between the two countries from mid-July, transport minister Eamon Ryan said.
- The pandemic saw corruption worsen across the EU, Transparency International said. The anti-graft watchdog said citizens have at times needed personal connections to get medical care and that some governments have used the crisis for their own gain.
- China is on track to deliver 1 billion vaccine doses by the end of this week, after ramping up production and distribution networks in an ambitious drive to vaccinate 40% of the population by this month.
- A 12-year-old French boy, Perceval Gete, became one of the youngest people in Europe to receive a Covid-19 vaccination, on the first day the age eligibility in France was lowered to 12, the lowest of any major EU state.
- Vermont became the first US state to reach its 80% Covid-19 vaccination goal and is now shedding all its statewide pandemic restrictions, including letting a state of emergency expire tonight.
- Oman announced that its doctors have detected a potentially fatal fungal infection afflicting some coronavirus patients, the first such known cases on the Arabian peninsula as the sultanate faces a surge in Covid-19 infections.
- Slovenia ended its state of emergency declared due to the pandemic today after eight months, lifting most remaining restrictions. Cultural and sports events will be able to reopen at 75%-capacity for people who can demonstrate they have been vaccinated, tested negative or recovered from a previous infection.
