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Immunity produced from Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine should last at least a year, the company has said.
The company’s vaccine, mRNA-1273, uses synthetic mRNA to mimic the surface of the coronavirus and teach the immune system to recognise and neutralise it.
Moderna said in December it would run tests to confirm the vaccine’s activity against any strain.
The company said on Monday it expects to deliver between 600m doses and one billion doses of its vaccine in 2021, and forecast vaccine-related sales of $11.7bn for the year, based on advance purchase agreements signed with governments.
“The team feels very comfortable with the track record we have now ... that we are on track to deliver at least 600 million doses,” chief executive officer Stéphane Bancel said.
Egypt expects to start receiving Covid-19 vaccines through the GAVI vaccine alliance in the coming weeks, the health minister said.
Egypt will get 40m doses via GAVI for 20 million people or 20% of the 100 million population, Hala Zayed said.
“Within two or three weeks maximum there will be the beginning of the influx of GAVI vaccines, which largely will be AstraZeneca (vaccines),” she said.
GAVI and the World Health Organization have established the COVAX initiative to secure fair vaccine access for lower and middle income countries.
Zayed said Egypt also expected to sign a contract with AstraZeneca once an Egyptian drug regulator approves the company’s vaccines and that approval was expected within a week.
Egypt received its first shipment of vaccines developed by China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) in December, but further shipments have been delayed. Zayed said more Sinopharm vaccines would arrive within days.
As of Monday, Egypt’s government has confirmed 150,753 infections and 8,249 deaths since the start of the pandemic. However, health officials say the real number is likely far higher because of the relatively low rate of coronavirus testing and the exclusion of private test results.
Summary
Here is a quick recap of the latest coronavirus developments across the globe over the last few hours:
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Portugal’s president tests positive for Covid-19. President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who is seeking a second term in an election on 24 January, has tested positive for the coronavirus but has so far shown no symptoms, his office said.
- ‘Reckless’ Christmas rule relaxation blamed for Ireland’s dire Covid surge. The country has the world’s highest rate of infection with critics blaming socialising over festive period.
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Lebanon tightens Covid-19 restrictions as infections skyrocket. Lebanon has tightened coronavirus measures by imposing a total lockdown for an 11-day period and introducing new travel restrictions to stem an unprecedented rise in infections.
- Spain sees record weekend rise in infections. Spain reported a record rise in coronavirus infections over the weekend and the number of new cases measured over the past 14 days rose to 436 per 100,000 people on Monday, from 350 on Friday.
- Verdict unlikely from WHO team exploring Covid origins in China. Expectations should be set very low that a World Health Organization team of experts investigating the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic will reach any definitive conclusion from their first trip to China, a health expert affiliated with the WHO has said.
- US lawmaker tests positive for Covid-19 after Capitol siege. A 75-year-old US lawmaker has tested positive for Covid-19 after being locked down to avoid a mob attacking the US Capitol last week, saying she believed she was exposed while sheltering in place with maskless colleagues.
- CDC says nine million Americans now vaccinated. The 8,987,322 people who have been given the first of two shots, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, represent less than one third of the total doses distributed to states by the government.
- Two gorillas at San Diego Zoo test positive for Covid-19. The animals tested positive for the coronavirus after exhibiting symptoms of the disease, in what is believed to be the first known transmission of the virus to apes.
- Dubai removed from UK’s travel corridor list. Transport secretary Grant Shapps confirmed on Monday the United Arab Emirates is being taken off the list and anyone arriving from the country from 4am on Tuesday will be subject to the new restrictions.
Nearly nine million Americans had been given their first Covid-19 vaccination dose as of Monday morning, as states scrambled to step up inoculations that have yet to slow rising cases.
The 8,987,322 people who have been given the first of two shots, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, represent less than one third of the total doses distributed to states by the US government.
Reuters reports that Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer has sought permission from the Trump administration to directly purchase 100,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which was cleared by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency use. The FDA has also approved a vaccine made by Moderna .
“We remain ready to accelerate distribution to get doses into arms,” Whitmer, a first-term Democrat, said in a letter to health and human services secretary Alex Azar.
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, who has pledged to inoculate one million residents by the end of January, told reporters the city could run out of vaccine doses if the federal government does not send more.
US president-elect Joe Biden, who takes office on 20 January, is considering releasing more vaccine doses that the federal government had stockpiled in an effort to ensure enough supply for a required second dose.
Second shots of both authorised vaccines are prescribed for three or four weeks after the first.
Public health experts have said no US state, including New York, has so far come close to using up its federal allotments of vaccines, due in some instances to rigid rules sharply limiting who can be inoculated.
The slow roll out of vaccinations has yet to make a dent in the health crisis as the pandemic claimed on average about 3,200 lives nationwide each day over the last week. Covid-19 has killed more than 374,000 people in the US since March.
In recent days states have been adding vaccination capacity with the ad hoc conversion of sports venues, convention halls and empty schools into vaccine centres. Los Angeles officials have said that a testing site at Dodger Stadium would be converted to a vaccination hub.
New York governor Andrew Cuomo last week relented on his demand that all healthcare workers be offered a vaccine before other groups become eligible, which led to hundreds of doses being wasted as half-finished vials were discarded at the end of each day.
He has since said that certain groups of other essential workers and people over age 75, as of Monday, can make appointments to receive a shot.
There are now over four million people in New York state eligible to receive the vaccine out of a population of about 19 million, Cuomo said, but only about one million doses on hand.
“We only receive 300,000 doses per week from the federal government,” he said. “At this rate, it will take us 14 weeks, just to receive enough dosages for those currently eligible.”
New York has so far recorded nearly 40,000 Covid-19 related deaths, by far the most of any US state.
Texas and Florida have been vaccinating people over age 65 since late December, although reports from those states have indicated that demand has far outstripped appointments.
• This post was amended on 12 January 2021 to correct a mention of Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer as “Whitman”.
Updated
Portugal's president tests positive for Covid-19
Portugal’s president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who is seeking a second term in an election on 24 January, has tested positive for the coronavirus but has so far shown no symptoms, his office said.
The 72-year-old had one major presidential debate scheduled for Tuesday, as well as a meeting with health experts to discuss the details of a planned lockdown to be announced on Wednesday, but his office said he had already cancelled all his public appearances.
In a statement shared on his official website, Rebelo de Sousa’s office said the president has already informed prime minister António Costa and health minister Marta Temido of the situation.
Rebelo de Sousa will self-isolate at his official residence in Lisbon, the statement said.
His positive test result comes after he tested negative on 6 January after being in contact with someone who was infected and so resumed his work schedule.
Updated
Tunisia has recorded 3,074 new confirmed coronavirus cases, the highest since the start of the pandemic, as intensive care units in most public hospitals reached maximum capacity.
Coronavirus cases have been rising fast in Tunisia, which managed to contain the virus last year. The country has now reached 162,350 cases and 5,284 deaths.
Officials said the health situation was “very critical”. Health authorities will meet on Tuesday to approve more measures. President Kais Saied called for a partial lockdown in the regions experiencing rapid infection.
Tunisia banned travel among the country’s regions and extended a curfew in October, as it tried to contain a surge of Covid-19 cases.
“The situation is very critical, and [...] doctors now will choose who should be taken in intensive care units”, said Dr Hichem Aouina, an official at Charles-Nicolle hospital in the capital, Tunis.
The official date for the start of vaccinations in Tunisia is not known, reinforcing fears the country will struggle to deal with rising cases.
Two gorillas at the San Diego zoo have tested positive for Covid-19 after exhibiting symptoms of the disease, California’s governor said, in what is believed to be the first known transmission of the virus to apes.
Governor Gavin Newsom, in his latest coronavirus update for the state, said the source of the gorillas’ infection was still under investigation to determine whether the virus was transmitted between animals or from humans to the apes.
A statement posted on the San Diego zoo safari park website said the gorillas were suspected of having contracted infection “from an asymptomatic staff member,” despite following all Covid-19 safety precautions recommended by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Zoo authorities initiated testing of fecal samples of the park’s gorillas after two of the apes began coughing last Wednesday, and preliminary results two days later found the presence of the virus “in the gorilla troop,” the statement said.
The US Department of Agriculture National Veterinary Services Laboratories confirmed the positive results on Monday.
“The test results confirm the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in some of the gorillas and does not definitively rule out the presence of the virus in other members of the troop,” it said.
“Aside from some congestion and coughing, the gorillas are doing well,” Lisa Peterson, executive director of the San Diego zoo safari park, said in the statement. “The troop remains quarantined together and are eating and drinking. We are hopeful for a full recovery.”
Gorillas are members of the family of primates known as the great apes, or hominids, that also include orangutans, chimpanzees and humans.
The coronavirus has also been found in a number of other wild animal species in captivity, including several lions and tigers at the Bronx zoo in New York and four lions at the Barcelona zoo in Spain.
But the gorillas in San Diego are believed to mark the first known case of infections confirmed in apes. The virus also has shown up in a number of household dogs and cats.
Last month, the USDA said it had confirmed the first known case of the coronavirus in an animal in the wild, a mink, following an outbreak among farmed minks that killed 15,000 of the animals.
Updated
A 75-year-old US lawmaker has tested positive for Covid-19 after being locked down to avoid a mob attacking the US Capitol last week, saying she believed she was exposed while sheltering in place with maskless colleagues.
US representative Bonnie Watson Coleman, a New Jersey Democrat, said in a statement that a rapid test result came back positive and she was awaiting the results of a more comprehensive test, noting she had already received the first shot of the two-dose coronavirus vaccine.
Congress’ attending physician said lawmakers who hid together for hours in a closed room to avoid Wednesday’s mob may have been exposed to the coronavirus by an infected person. Some 200 people, including scores of House members, sheltered for hours in a closed room where a number of Republicans did not wear masks.
“She believes she was exposed during protective isolation in the US Capitol building as a result of insurrectionist riots,” Watson Coleman’s office said in a statement.
Following the events of Wednesday, including sheltering with several colleagues who refused to wear masks, I decided to take a Covid test.
— Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (@RepBonnie) January 11, 2021
I have tested positive.https://t.co/wivlbwrmV0
Democratic president-elect Joe Biden, who has made tackling the Covid-19 pandemic a top priority, told reporters he was appalled that Republican lawmakers refused to wear masks while hunkered down even when others passed them out: “It’s not a political issue. It’s an issue of public safety.”
Health officials and experts have warned the attack will likely be a superspreader event, noting lawmakers were isolated for hours inside while a violent crowd of mostly maskless Trump supporters stormed inside in an unsuccessful bid to block lawmakers’ certification of Biden’s presidential win.
“You have to anticipate that this is another surge event,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr Robert Redfield told McClatchy News on Friday. “These individuals all are going in cars and trains and planes going home all across the country right now. So I do think this is an event that will probably lead to a significant spreading event.”
British supermarket group Sainsbury’s has said it will enforce the wearing of masks in stores with security guards who will also ensure that people shop alone, amid concern about the possibility Covid-19 is spreading in stores.
The company said in a statement it had reduced the number of customers allowed into stores at any one time, as it followed Morrisons in tightening the rules.
Dubai removed from UK's travel corridor list
The removal of Dubai from the UK’s travel corridor list could force a number of celebrities to have to self-isolate upon their return.
Transport secretary Grant Shapps confirmed on Monday the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is being taken off the list and anyone arriving from the country from 4am on Tuesday will be subject to the new restrictions.
The LATEST data indicates we need to immediately remove the #UAE from the #TRAVELCORRIDOR list.
— Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP (@grantshapps) January 11, 2021
From 0400 Tuesday 12 Jan anyone arriving from the UAE will need to SELF-ISOLATE.
A number of famous faces have been posting photos from the country on social media in recent weeks as they enjoy its warm weather and relatively relaxed coronavirus rules.
Celebrities who have uploaded photos which appear to show them in the city in recent weeks include Geordie Shore’s Chloe Ferry and The Only Way Is Essex’s James Lock. Love Island stars Georgia Steel, Laura Anderson and Jess Gale also appear to have recently been in Dubai.
Dubai has recently come under the spotlight after a number of UK-based athletes tested positive for coronavirus following trips there. Formula One driver Lando Norris tested positive while in the city and Celtic also recorded a positive coronavirus case after a trip to Dubai.
Updated
Lebanon tightens Covid-19 restrictions as infections skyrocket
Lebanon has tightened coronavirus measures by imposing a total lockdown for an 11-day period and introducing new travel restrictions to stem an unprecedented rise in infections.
The latest measures came as officials and health professionals warned that hospitals were quickly running out of beds, even though a lockdown has been in place since 7 January.
“It is forbidden to go out on streets and roads from 5am on Thursday 14 January until 5am on Monday 25 January,” said a statement, released after a meeting of the Higher Defence Council, the country’s top security body.
All residents are to remain at home at all times with few exceptions, including health professionals, journalists, those working in the food sector and other essential workers, the statement added.
Land and maritime borders will be closed to all travellers except those carrying a valid transit visa.
Travellers arriving from Addis Ababa, Baghdad, Cairo and Istanbul will need to quarantine in a hotel for seven days at their own expense. They must take a PCR test upon landing in Lebanon, and then again six days later.
Private hospitals will be obliged to expand intensive care units dedicated to coronavirus patients to help a strained public sector, the statement said.
Supermarkets will remain open, but only for delivery. Rumours they would be forced to shut completely sparked panic buying across the country on Monday, with crowds clearing supermarket stocks.
The World Health Organization has insisted the international investigation into the Covid-19 pandemic’s origins, set to start this week in China, is not looking for “somebody to blame”.
WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said the delayed mission - finally given the green light by Beijing - was about science, not politics.
Ten international experts will visit China from Thursday to probe the origins of the new coronavirus, more than a year after the pandemic began and amid accusations Beijing has tried to thwart the investigation.
“Understanding the origins of disease is not about finding somebody to blame,” Ryan told a press conference in Geneva.
It is about finding the scientific answers about the very important interface between the animal kingdom and the human kingdom.
It is an absolute requirement that we understand that interface.
We are looking for the answers here, not culprits and not people to blame.
Experts say solving the mystery of how the virus first jumped from animals to humans is crucial to preventing another pandemic.
The mission will visit Wuhan in China, where the first cluster of cases was detected in December 2019.
The WHO had expected the investigation to start last week but, to the UN health agency’s surprise and disappointment with two members already on their way, Beijing suddenly announced a last-minute hold-up over entry permission.
'Reckless' Christmas rule relaxation blamed for Ireland's dire Covid surge
Ireland emerged from a six-week lockdown in early December with the European Union’s lowest coronavirus infection rate.
It eased restrictions in belief it could contain a rise in the virus over Christmas unlike, say, Germany and the UK, countries that had more than four times the level of infection. Then all hell broke loose.
From mid-December, the virus started ripping across Ireland, gaining a speed unimagined in the worst-case scenarios and forming an almost vertical line that rushed up, up and up to give Ireland, on Monday, the world’s highest rate of Covid-19 infection.
The country’s seven-day rolling average is 1,394 cases per million – outstripping the UK on 810, Portugal on 735, the US on 653 and Germany on 248. On 12 December Ireland recorded 52.31 cases per million people. By Sunday the figure was 1,322.92.
Data compiled by Johns Hopkins University and the World Health Organization on Monday named Ireland as having the most infections per capita over the past seven days, followed by the Czech Republic, Slovenia and the UK.
Ireland’s vertiginous infection-rate swoop overtook the US on 5 January and the UK on 6 January and has continued climbing. Some 46,000 people have been infected in the past seven days – more than the total infected in the eight months from March to October.
The explosion has shocked and confounded the government and wider society, with theories, explanations and blame struggling to catch up with the grim daily updates.
France’s new Covid-19 infections are on average increasing by more than 18,000 a day, a seven-week high, and the number of people hospitalised is rising again as the country grapples with the more infectious variant of the virus first found in Britain.
These latest trends, published on Monday, will be discussed in the coming days by the government which is pondering whether to impose a third national lockdown and extend a 6pm curfew, now enforced in some areas, to all of France.
The French health ministry reported 3,582 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours, than last Monday’s 4,022.
The seven-day moving average of new infections, which smoothes out reporting irregularities, stands at 18,155, staying above the 18,000 threshold for the second day running.
France’s cumulative total of cases stands at 2,786,838, the sixth-highest in the world.
France has 24,846 Covid-19 hospital patients, a six-day high. After peaking at 33,497 on 14 November, numbers fell for a month due to the country’s second lockdown that ended on 15 December.
The number of people treated in intensive care units for the disease was up for the third time in four days, at 2,676, staying inside the 2,500-3,000 range the government had targeted to relax the lockdown last month.
The Covid-19 death toll was up by 310, to 68,060, the seventh-highest in the world.
Updated
BioNTech will offer its coronavirus vaccine to all its employees, sidestepping Germany’s official inoculation programme in what it said was a bid to protect its supply chain from Covid-19 outbreaks.
The German company, which developed the vaccine with US drugmaker Pfizer, said in a statement it would also offer the shot to its suppliers and distributors in Austria.
“To maintain the integrity of our supply chain, including the development, production, approval, supply and distribution of the vaccine, BioNTech has decided to offer a voluntary Covid-19 vaccination to its employees in Germany,” it said.
The company is under pressure to ramp up production of the shot that many hope will help the world defeat the pandemic.
“The additional small quantities of vaccine used for this purpose are separate and distinct from those committed under the supply agreements entered into with the European Commission and other governments, and will not impact BioNTech’s ability to meet its commitments under these supply agreements,” it added.
Hi everyone, this is Jessica Murray taking over the blog for the next few hours. Please do get in touch if you have any story tips or personal experiences you would like to share.
Email: jessica.murray@theguardian.com
Twitter: @journojess_
Summary of key events
Here’s a summary of recent events:
- The Republic of Ireland had the most confirmed cases of coronavirus per million people in the world last week, according to data from Johns Hopkins and the WHO set out in a Bloomberg report.
- Zimbabwe has banned families from transporting their dead relatives between cities, as part of new measures stop traditional funeral rites that are believed to be increasing the spread of coronavirus.
- Despite vaccines against Covid-19 being rolled out in a number of countries, the World Health Organization says that herd immunity would not be achieved this year.
- Spain reported a record rise in coronavirus infections over the weekend and the number of new cases measured over the past 14 days spiked to 436 per 100,000 people on Monday, from 350 on Friday, health ministry data showed.
- Italy’s education minister said online learning “no longer works” as pupils and teachers demonstrated across the country on Monday against the postponement of the reopening of schools.
- Malaysia will impose strict new curbs in more than half the country to fight a coronavirus surge, the prime minister said, warning that the healthcare system was at “breaking point”.
- More than half a million people were placed under lockdown in Beijing on Monday as the government in China imposed strict measures to stamp out a handful of Covid-19 cases.
That’s it from me. Jessica Murray will pick up the reins shortly.
Updated
Despite vaccines against Covid-19 being rolled out in a number of countries, the World Health Organization says that herd immunity would not be achieved this year.
The WHO’s chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan warned that it will take time to produce and administer enough doses to halt the spread of the virus.
“We are not going to achieve any levels of population immunity or herd immunity in 2021,” she told a virtual press briefing from WHO’s headquarters in Geneva. She hailed the “incredible progress” made by scientists who managed the unthinkable of developing not one but several safe and effective vaccines against a brand new virus in under a year.
But, she stressed, the rollout “does take time.”
“It takes time to scale the production of doses, not just in the millions, but here we are talking about in the billions,” she pointed out, calling on people to “be a little bit patient.”
Swaminathan stressed that eventually, “the vaccines are going to come. They are going to go to all countries.”
“But meanwhile we mustn’t forget that there are measures that work,” she said.
There would be a need to continue taking the public health and social measures aimed at halting transmission for “the rest of this year at least.”
Albania started vaccinating against Covid-19 on Monday as the prime minister, Edi Rama, accused the European Union of leaving the western Balkans behind in its immunisation efforts.
Rama, after receiving his injection inside a Tirana stadium set up for the vaccination programme, told AFP that his country had secured these initial Pfizer-BioNTech shots through an EU member state which he was not permitted to name.
“This is a sign of how frustrating the situation is,” said Rama, speaking in English.
“In these state-to-state deals, those who want to help have also to be careful to not show off, because then of course they will be assaulted by other requests,” he added.
Albania’s deal with the EU member included 975 doses for Monday’s launch, with 2,000 expected in the coming days, he added.
When the EU started delivering shots on 27 December, it could have given “access immediately also to the non-EU western Balkan countries to have at least some doses to vaccinate their front-liners,” Rama told AFP. “But they didn’t do it.”
In Albania and other western Balkan neighbours, coronavirus infections have started to stabilise following a surge late last year that pushed under-funded healthcare systems to the brink.
But doctors have warned of another increase looming after recent holiday festivities. In Albania, home to 2.8 million people, more than 63,000 have been infected with the virus while some 1,247 have died, according to official figures.
Updated
Spain sees record weekend rise in infections
Spain reported a record rise in coronavirus infections over the weekend and the number of new cases measured over the past 14 days spiked to 436 per 100,000 people on Monday, from 350 on Friday, health ministry data showed.
More than 61,000 new cases were reported since Friday – the largest weekend increase since the pandemic began – bringing the cumulative total to 2,111,782, the data showed. Deaths rose by 401 over the same period to 52,275.
Health emergency coordinator Fernando Simon blamed the surge on lax restrictions over the Christmas holidays and said he expected the increase to continue for some time, Reuters reported.
“We had a better Christmas than expected and perhaps better than we should have had, and now we are looking at the result,” he told a news conference. “It’s a problem of people’s behaviour over Christmas.”
He played down the effect of the so-called UK variant of the virus, which is more contagious and which has been detected across Spain, and said a return to confinement was not necessary just now, reiterating what ministry officials have said since cases began surging since the end of the festive period.
Regions have been toughening up measures, but they lack the power to enforce home confinement. Health ministry officials have repeatedly affirmed in the past week that a return to full lockdown should not be necessary.
Updated
More than 46,000 new cases in Britain
Britain recorded 46,169 new Covid-19 cases on Monday, government statistics showed, with 529 more deaths within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test.
Updated
The World Health Organization hopes to be able to launch Covid-19 vaccines in poor and lower middle-income countries in February through its Covax programme, WHO senior adviser Bruce Aylward said on Monday.
“Over 40 countries have now begun vaccinating against Covid-19. However all of that vaccination, or virtually all, was in high income or middle income countries so far,” he said. “We have got to see vaccines going into arms in lower and lower-middle income countries.”
He said the Covax programme could begin vaccinating people in February, and there was an effort to speed it up so some vaccinations in poor countries could take place this month.
Updated
In England, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, has ruled out support bubbles being removed if restrictions are tightened. But meeting a friend outside could be banned if people don’t follow current rules, he said.
You can follow that press conference here:
Updated
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday it had been notified by Japan of a new variant of the coronavirus discovered there.
WHO’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who was speaking at a press conference, echoed a statement from Japan’s health ministry on Sunday that it had detected a new coronavirus variant in four travellers from Brazil’s Amazonas state.
The variant featured 12 mutations, including one also found in highly infections variants discovered in England and South Africa.
Updated
The health ministry of the Palestinian Authority (PA) has approved the main Russian vaccine against Covid-19, known as Sputnik V, for use in Palestinian self-ruled territory, Russia’s sovereign wealth fund said on Monday.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Reuters reported that the Palestinian health minister, Mai Al-Kaila, confirmed that her ministry had granted “emergency approval” for the Russian vaccine to be administered in areas under limited Palestinian self-rule.
Deliveries are expected to be completed in the first quarter of this year.
The PA said later it was allocating $10.5m as a down-payment for the first stage of vaccination, to arrive within two months. The final cost will be $21m, Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh’s office said in a statement.
Asked if Israel would permit the Palestinians to import the vaccines, the deputy Israeli health minister, Yoav Kisch, told Army Radio: “Anything to do with Palestinian Authority public health is taken care of by them, (so) I think they have that freedom.”
While Israel has become the world leader in vaccinations per capita, Palestinians in the West Bank, and in the Gaza Strip – where Hamas Islamists rule – have yet to obtain their first supplies.
Updated
New lockdown unavoidable, says Portuguese PM
Portugal has suffered record numbers of coronavirus deaths and infections, making a new lockdown unavoidable, the prime minister, Antonio Costa, said Monday.
At a cabinet meeting Wednesday, the government will decide restrictions similar to those imposed during the first lockdown last March, AFP reported Costa saying.
He was speaking after health officials reported a record 122 deaths over the past 24 hours, bringing Portugal’s overall toll to 7,965 (see earlier post).
On Friday, officials logged a record 10,176 new cases over a 24-hour period.
A total of 3,983 Covid-19 patients are currently in hospital – a new high – including 567 in intensive care.
“We are certainly facing a third wave” of the virus, Costa told journalists Monday.
Health minister Marta Temido, blaming the recent surge in cases on the Christmas period and the cold snap, said the only solution was to bring down infection levels.
The government will consult public health experts on Tuesday before discussing how best to strengthen the restrictions already in place since early November.
President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said on Saturday: “There’s no alternative but a general lockdown.” The remark came during a debate ahead of 24 January polls in which Rebelo de Sousa is seeking re-election.
Updated
Bangladesh will begin inoculating people against Covid-19 in the first week of February as it hopes to get the vaccine by end of this month, a senior health ministry official said on Monday in remarks reported by Reuters.
The South Asian country of more than 160 million in November signed a deal with the Serum Institute of India to buy 30m doses of the vaccine developed by British drugmaker AstraZeneca.
The vaccine will arrive in the country by 25 January, Abul Bashar Mohammed Khurshid Alam, head of the Directorate General of Health Services, told a news conference.
“The vaccine will be first applied on the health workers and it will be monitored for the next seven days. After that, we’ll begin the vaccination across the country in the first week of February,” he said.
Frontline workers such as health service providers and police will be given priority, health ministry officials said.
Bangladesh has 523,302 confirmed cases, including 7,803 deaths.
Updated
Italy reported 448 coronavirus-related deaths on Monday, up from 361 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections fell to 12,532 from 18,627.
However, Reuters reported that the number of swab tests also fell, as often happens over the weekend, amounting to just 91,656 against a previous 139,758.
Italy has registered 79,203 COVID-19 deaths since its outbreak came to light on Feb. 21, the second-highest toll in Europe and the sixth-highest in the world. The country has also reported 2.289 million cases to date, the health ministry said.
Patients in hospital with COVID-19 - not including those in intensive care - stood at 23,603 on Monday, up 176 from a day earlier.
There were 168 new admissions to intensive care units, against 181 the day before.
The total number of intensive care patients rose by 27 to 2,642.
When Italy’s second wave of the epidemic accelerated quickly in the first half of November, hospital admissions were rising by about 1,000 per day, while intensive care occupancy was increasing by about 100 per day.
Johns Hopkins University data shows California has recorded more than 30,000 deaths since the pandemic started nearly a year ago.
Deaths have soared in America’s most populous state since a Covid-19 surge began in October, AP reported. It took California six months to record its first 10,000 deaths. But in barely a month, the total rose from 20,000 to 30,000.
Over the weekend, state officials reported a two-day record of 1,163 deaths.
California ranks third in the US in coronavirus deaths, behind Texas and New York, where there have been nearly 40,000.
Health officials have warned the worst is yet to come later this month when the full picture on infections from the holidays emerges.
The city of Los Angeles announced late on Sunday that its Covid-19 testing site at Dodger Stadium would be transformed into a vaccination centre by the end of the week.
Updated
Irish infection rate rockets to be worst in the world
The Republic of Ireland had the most confirmed cases of coronavirus per million people in the world last week, according to data from Johns Hopkins and the WHO set out in a Bloomberg report.
There were 10,100 cases per million over the seven days to Sunday, after a rapid acceleration in the number of cases detected in Ireland. Until the end of December it had largely avoided the sharp rises seen in the UK and other parts of Europe.
My colleague Rory Carroll, who will be covering this development more fully, reported earlier that hospitals were under severe strain, with one estimate suggesting the number of deaths could exceed 100 per day, far higher than during the first wave.
Updated
BioNTech ups vaccine production target to 2bn doses this year
The German company BioNTech, which developed the first coronavirus vaccine approved in the west, has said it expects to produce 2bn doses in 2021, up from the 1.3bn previously forecast.
“We now believe that we can potentially deliver approximately 2bn doses in total by the end of 2021, which incorporates the updated six-dose label,” the company said, referring to an additional dose that could be extracted from each vial of the vaccine.
European regulators last week approved doctors drawing six doses from each vial, boosting dosage capacity by 20%.
The Mainz-based company, which developed the jab with the US firm Pfizer, is planning to open a new factory in Marburg, Germany, in February, which is expected to ramp up production capacity by 750m doses a year.
The site will join five other sites in Germany, Belgium and the US shared with Pfizer.
The company said it had shipped nearly 33m doses by 10 January, more than a month after Britain became the first western nation to approve any vaccine, on 2 December.
The German company said last week that studies showed its vaccine works against the new mutation found in variants uncovered in Britain and South Africa.
Updated
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister has said the country has entered a “very critical zone” in the battle against the coronavirus as his government mulls tightening a nationwide lockdown announced last week.
Following a new post-holiday surge in infections, the Lebanese government imposed a nationwide lockdown and a nighttime curfew. But many were critical of the measures, calling them lax for exempting many sectors such as factories, plant nurseries and exchange bureaus.
An AP report notes that Lebanon’s handling of the virus surge amid a deepening economic crisis has been under scrutiny, with many saying hesitant policies have failed to contain it.
Doctors and experts say the extent of the spread has yet to be felt, predicting numbers will skyrocket in the coming days, overwhelming health facilities in the country of nearly 6 million. Daily infection rates have hovered above 3,000 and hit a record high of more than 5,000 last week.
On Monday, panic buyers swarmed supermarkets after reports the government planned to order them shut in the tightened lockdown. Long queues formed outside chain supermarkets, sparking fear the crowds could further spread the virus.
Before a ministerial meeting to consider new measures, the caretaker prime minister, Hassan Diab, blamed careless behaviour for the spread, saying many Lebanese still considered the virus a hoax and were not taking it seriously.
“We have entered a very critical zone in terms of the coronavirus spread or at a minimum, we are at the gates of that zone,” Diab said.
The World Health Organization said 81.7% of Lebanon’s hospital beds were occupied on Sunday and bed occupancy in intensive care units had reached 91.4%, with the highest in Beirut. Some 2,295 healthcare workers had been infected by 10 January, up from 2,015 last week.
Updated
France’s prime minister, Jean Castex, has reportedly said a third Covid lockdown should not be ruled out, according to French television.
He reportedly made the statement at a parliamentary committee on Monday. Others present at the meeting told BFMTV that Castex said: “We must not exclude a third lockdown as a last resort. For the moment, the latest figures lead us to believe a curfew is enough.”
Two cases of what the French are calling the “British variant” or “English variant” have been discovered in Lille, in northern France. Eight cases of the highly contagious form of Covid were discovered in the southern city of Marseille at the weekend.
President Emmanuel Macron will host a special meeting on France’s vaccine programme this evening at the Elysée. The health ministry says at least 100,000 people have been inoculated in France as the vaccine rollout enters its third week.
Updated
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has said global carbon emissions, which have been reduced by the Covid-19 pandemic, are set to rebound in 2021 unless governments take swift policy action.
Emissions declined by 7% in 2020 to levels last seen a decade ago, but the agency’s chief, Fatih Birol, said that as the economic damage from the crisis waned, “the early data … confirm our worry that global emissions in 2021 are set to rebound”.
Birol announced that the IEA’s first comprehensive roadmap for the global energy sector to reach net zero emissions by 2050 would be published in May.
Despite the gloomy outlook, the Paris-based watchdog believes that recent pledges by industrialised nations and a change in leadership in Washington mean that major powers could turn the tide in the climate crisis.
“This year can be a pivotal year,” Birol said. “There is a significant new political alignment on climate, which opens up a new world of possibilities for all of us. Many of the largest economies … committed themselves to a net zero target mid-century in the last few months. I am certain that the new US administration will join this group of countries.”
Joe Biden has pledged to rejoin the Paris agreement when he assumes office this month.
Updated
Portugal has hit a record of 122 coronavirus deaths logged over the last 24 hours, health authorities said.
Portugal reported the record daily increase as the country geared up for a new lockdown this week to tackle the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
Health authority DGS said the death toll registered over the last 24 hours reached 122, bringing the total to 7,925, while new infections rose by 5,604 from Sunday to a total of 489,293.
Updated
An international trial of the use of convalescent blood plasma on Covid patients with moderate and severe illness has halted enrolment of severely ill patients requiring intensive care after it found no benefit, trial investigators said on Monday.
According to Reuters, the decision by the REMAP-CAP trial leaders came after an initial analysis of more than 900 severely ill trial participants in intensive care showed that treatment with the product – an antibody-rich plasma taken from people who have recovered from the pandemic disease – did not improve outcomes.
“There was no evidence of harm associated with the administration of convalescent plasma” and the trial is continuing to recruit hospitalised Covid patients who are moderately ill but not in intensive care, scientists leading the trial said in a statement.
“It is biologically plausible that patients who are not producing antibodies at the time of convalescent plasma therapy and those patients with excess virus may benefit more than others. Our additional analyses will explore this,” said Manu Shankar-Hari, a clinician and professor of critical care medicine at Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospital who is co-leading the trial.
Updated
In the UK, Boris Johnson has said tougher lockdown measures may be needed as he announced that around 2.4m vaccines for Covid-19 had now been put in people’s arms.
The prime minister stressed that “now is the moment for maximum vigilance” amid increasing calls for tougher lockdown restrictions. He said stricter lockdown measures may be needed “if we feel that things are not being properly observed”.
During a visit to a vaccine centre at Ashton Gate stadium in Bristol, Johnson said: “As I speak to you today we’ve done about 2 million people, maybe a bit more. We’re at about 2.4 million jabs all in across the whole of the UK.”
You can follow all the UK coronavirus news, including a report that Johnson took a cycle ride seven miles from his home, with Andrew Sparrow here:
Updated
South Africa is struggling to cope with a surge in Covid cases that has already overwhelmed some hospitals, as people returning from widespread holiday travel along the coast spread the more infectious coronavirus variant.
AP reports that of particular concern is Gauteng province, the country’s most populous, which includes the cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria. Authorities say it is already seeing a rise in new infections after people travelled to coastal areas, where the variant is dominant.
“We expect that Gauteng is going to be hit very soon and very hard,” said Prof Willem Hanekom, the director of the Africa Health Research Institute. “It is anticipated Gauteng will have a steep curve of increased cases and hospitalisations.”
The Steve Biko hospital in the Pretoria area has already reached capacity and is putting Covid patients into a field hospital outside the main building.
South Africa has reimposed restrictions to curb the spread of the virus, including banning alcohol sales, closing bars, enforcing a night curfew and limiting attendance at public gatherings including church services and funerals.
President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has met with his national coronavirus command council and cabinet over the renewed public health crisis, is expected to address the nation on Monday night.
South Africa, with a population of 60 million, has reported 1.2 million confirmed cases of Covid-19, representing more than 30% of all the cases in Africa, which this week exceeded 3 million. It has reported more than 33,000 virus-related deaths. Experts say all numbers worldwide understate the true toll of the pandemic due to missed cases and limited testing.
Updated
Zimbabwe has banned families from transporting their dead relatives between cities, as part of new measures stop traditional funeral rites that are believed to be increasing the spread of coronavirus.
The announcement, reported by AP, stops the custom where families take the dead to their areas of birth for ceremonies and burial. Police have also banned public viewing of bodies and the tradition of having a corpse stay overnight in the family’s home before burial.
“Police will only clear body movements for burial straight from a funeral parlour/hospital mortuary to the burial site,” a police spokesman, Paul Nyathi, said in the state-run Herald newspaper.
Zimbabwe, like many other African countries, initially recorded low numbers of Covid-19 but has recently experienced a rise in cases. There are fears that a new, more infectious variant of the virus arrived from South Africa when some of the thousands of Zimbabweans living in South Africa returned home for the festive season.
Zimbabwe recorded 21,477 cases and 507 deaths on 10 January, up from the slightly more than 10,000 cases and 277 deaths at the beginning of December, according to government figures.
Updated
Italy’s education minister, Lucia Azzolina, said online learning “no longer works” as pupils and teachers demonstrated across the country on Monday against the postponement of the reopening of schools.
Azzolina also warned of the psychological impact of school closures and growing number of pupils abandoning online lessons.
While elementary and middle schools have not been affected by Covid restrictions, just three regions – Tuscany, Abruzzo and Valle d’Aosta – reopened high schools on Monday, and only for 50% of pupils.
A study by Ipsos and Save the Children last week showed that 34,000 pupils risked abandoning their education as they struggled to maintain online learning.
“I am very worried,” Azzolina told Rai Radio. “There is a blackout in sociality. The children are angry and disorientated and I’m worried about an explosion in school dropouts.”
Protests against distance learning among pupils and teachers have been building in recent days. One teacher from Ravenna, Gloria Ghetti, has been protesting in her classroom, including sleeping there overnight. She told the Italian media she wanted to demonstrate that “we want to be in school, and be there in safety”.
Italy registered 18,627 coronavirus cases on Sunday and 361 deaths. There were 167 more Covid patients admitted to hospital, and 22 to intensive care. Hospital admissions have fallen from highs of around 1,000 a day in mid-November.
Updated
Production of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine will total 4m doses over the next 30 days, the director of the Gamaleya Institute, which developed the vaccine, has said, according to the RIA news agency.
Separately, Reuters reports that Russia’s sovereign wealth fund says Palestine’s health ministry has registered the vaccine for domestic use. The first shipment of the shot is expected to arrive next month, with all deliveries expected in the first quarter of this year, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which is responsible for marketing the vaccine abroad, said. It did not disclose how many doses would be shipped to Palestine.
Updated
New restrictions as Malaysia reaches 'breaking point'
Malaysia will impose strict new curbs in more than half the country to fight a coronavirus surge, the prime minister said on Monday, warning that the healthcare system was at “breaking point”.
It joins other Asian nations, from Japan to Australia, that kept their outbreaks under control in the early stages but have been forced to introduce new measures in recent days.
Malaysia had relaxed restrictions as infections fell to almost zero last year but cases have crept up again, hitting record highs in recent days.
AFP said the prime minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, announced a two-week partial lockdown to be imposed in the worst-hit parts of the country from Wednesday, with all non-essential businesses to close.
“Our healthcare system is at breaking point, the situation today is indeed very alarming,” Muhyiddin said in a nationally televised address.
The curbs will be imposed in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, and five of the country’s 13 states, home to around 20 million of the country’s 32 million inhabitants.
Malaysia has recorded more than 138,000 infections and 555 deaths from Covid-19.
Updated
Russia will conduct a clinical trial of a one-dose “Sputnik-Light” version of its coronavirus vaccine, authorities said on Monday, describing it as a possible “temporary” solution to help countries with high infection rates make it go further.
The slimmed-down vaccine will be tested on 150 people in Moscow and St Petersburg, a government clinical trials register reported by Reuters showed.
According to authorities, more than 1 million Russians have so far been inoculated with the original two-dose version of Sputnik V, named after the Soviet-era satellite that triggered the space race in a nod to the project’s geopolitical importance for Moscow.
The two-dose vaccine will remain the main version used in Russia, said Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, which is responsible for marketing Sputnik V abroad. The one-dose version could, however, be used for export.
“‘Sputnik Light’ can serve as an effective temporary solution for many countries which are experiencing a peak of coronavirus infection,” said Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which is covering the costs of the Sputnik Light trial.
Vladimir Putin has said the single dose will provide less protection than the two doses but “will still reach 85%”.
The Gamaleya Institute that developed the vaccine says it is more than 91% effective after the two-dose course. The institute’s director, Alexander Gintsburg, has said protective immunity after just the first shot of Sputnik V lasts around three to four months, the Tass news agency reported.
Updated
Half a million placed under lockdown in Beijing
More than half a million people were placed under lockdown in Beijing on Monday as the Chinese government imposed strict measures to stamp out a handful of Covid-19 cases.
China has largely brought the virus under control, but is tackling a number of local infections with lockdowns and mass testing.
Authorities are keen to stem any outbreak in the capital – home to more than 20 million people – particularly ahead of a week-long national holiday next month.
All rural villages in Shunyi district on the outskirts of Beijing are locked down until a fresh round of mass testing has been completed, district official Zhi Xianwei said at a press briefing Monday, AFP reported.
The move means around 518,000 residents will not be permitted to leave their villages until they have undergone testing.
Officials also said locals would be under “closed management”, suggesting they will be barred from leaving their residential compounds.
The district, which has a total population of 1.2 million, is home to many rural migrant workers. Zhi said officials would “knock on doors … all migrants will be classified and accounted for.”
Experts have not yet identified the source of the outbreak, but one asymptomatic case confirmed on Sunday was a driver for an online ride-hailing service, and the government has suspended all taxi-hailing services in the district.
Updated
Hospitals in Northern Ireland have narrowly averted declaring a major incident after off-duty staff responded to an appeal to report for work.
Last weekend was the busiest 48 hours for the region’s hospitals since the pandemic began, and the pressure is expected to intensify further, with all six health trusts warning that the number of Covid patients could double by the third week of January.
“This is not a simple matter of putting up more beds. We need the staff to care for the increased number of patients. Pre-existing staffing pressures and staff absence because of Covid, and other reasons, mean that those staff simply aren’t there,” they said in a statement.
A quarter of hospital patients have Covid-19, and the figure is predicted to rise to a half. Hospitals are at or near full capacity and some are cancelling cancer operations.
Hospitals in the Republic of Ireland, where coronavirus infections have exploded since Christmas, are also under severe strain.
One estimates suggests the number of Covid-linked deaths could exceed 100 per day, far higher than at the peak of the first wave last spring.
“Whether it will break that limit and we will be in a situation where doctors will be forced to ration care, which would be horrendous for everybody involved, we just don’t know,” Gabrielle Colleran, of the Irish Hospital Consultants’ Association, told RTÉ.
Letterkenny university hospital in County Donegal apologised to patients who had to wait in a queue of ambulances for admission on Sunday.
Updated
Hi, this is Archie Bland picking up the liveblog, and beginning with the head of the World Travel and Tourism Council, who said on Monday morning that requiring Covid-19 vaccinations for international travel was akin to workplace discrimination and should be rejected.
“We should never require the vaccination to get a job or to travel,” said the industry body’s chief executive, Gloria Guevara, speaking on a Reuters Next conference panel.
As governments race to deploy vaccinations and stem the coronavirus pandemic, some policymakers have suggested immunisation should be necessary for air travel. Qantas Airways has said it plans to introduce such a requirement.
“I totally disagree with the approach from Qantas,” said Guevara, whose organisation represents a sector accounting for as much as 10% of global employment. “If you require the vaccination before travel, that takes us to discrimination.”
Updated
The director general of the World Health Organization, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has welcomed news that an international team of experts will travel to China.
We welcome #China's announcement regarding the intl. team examining the origins of virus that causes #COVID19. We look forward to working closely with our 🇨🇳 counterparts on this critical mission to identify the virus source & its route of introduction to the human population.
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) January 11, 2021
It is not clear whether or not the team will be able to visit Wuhan, where the pandemic began, and experts have played down the likelihood of hard conclusions being reached as a result of this trip alone.
Updated
A fresh lockdown will be imposed in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, and five other states, the prime minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, has said, as the country’s cumulative cases grew to more than 135,000 as of Sunday.
Muhyiddin said interstate travel would also be barred during the two-week lockdown, but five essential sectors would be allowed to continue operating under strict regulations.
Updated
A World Health Organization investigation team is unlikely to reach any conclusions on the origins of the pandemic as a result of its trip to China this month, a health expert affiliated with the body has said. Dr Dale Fisher told the Reuters Next conference:
I would be inclined to set the expectations of a conclusion very low for this visit.
A WHO team experts will arrive in China on 14 January, Chinese authorities have indicated. It is not clear, however, whether or not the team will visit the central city of Wuhan, where the outbreak began.
China has been accused by some of a cover-up that delayed its initial response, allowing the virus to spread. The United States has called for a more transparent WHO-led investigation and criticised the terms of the current effort, which have allowed Chinese scientists to do the first phase of preliminary research. Fisher, who took part in a WHO mission to Wuhan last year, said:
I think it’s an important meeting but it shouldn’t be overrated in terms of an outcome this time.
The experts will meet their Chinese counterparts and exchange notes on what data they have and what studies they will further have to do, Fisher added.
Though he did not expect all the answers from this trip, Fisher said he believed the chances of finding the origin of the pandemic were much better than a year ago because experts now knew a lot more about what data they would need to collect based on information they already had.
Updated
Business owners at France’s Chamonix ski resort, their earnings slashed because of the lockdown, are worried they might not be able to welcome back skiers at all before the snows melt and the season ends.
French ski resorts were prevented from opening their cable cars and ski lifts at the start of the season, driving away the large portion of their visitors who come for downhill skiing.
The French government had discussed the possibility of reopening the ski lifts from 7 January. But last week it said that with virus cases still high, that would be premature. A decision is now due on 20 January, leaving little time before the season ends. Mathieu Dechavanne, the head of Compagnie du Mont-Blanc, which operates cable cars in the region, said:
If we have to close to the end of season, that’s going to cost us several billion euros. The economic impact will be catastrophic.
At the weekend on the slopes above Chamonix, a few winter sports enthusiasts did their best to enjoy the mountains. Some hiked using snow shoes, others tobogganed, or walked up the slopes before skiing down. But the streets of Chamonix were unusually quiet.
Reuters reported that the restaurant Le Serac was shut, except for takeaway, and owner Francois Montorcier said he was taking just 10% of normal revenues. “It’s a catastrophe,” he said. “We don’t see things getting better.”
The French government provides financial assistance, but it does not cover all losses. At his ski equipment rental shop, co-owner David Pot said he and his partners had lost half their revenue since the pandemic began.
He was angry, he said, because skiing did not expose people to a high risk of infection, yet government ministers had still cracked down on ski resorts. “There’s no logic in the way they take decisions,” he said.
Updated
Pandu Riono, an epidemiologist at the University of Indonesia, said that a dangerous over-reliance on the coming vaccines by some governments meant herd immunity could not be achieved in the near term, telling the conference:
The Indonesian government thinks that vaccine is the best solution for controlling the pandemic, and they forget that surveillance like testing … communications, to educate public to practice low-risk behaviour, is also important because the vaccine itself needs time to cover most of the people who need it.
Updated
Vaccination programmes will not provide herd immunity from the pandemic this year, several health experts have said, citing limited access for poor countries, community trust problems and potential virus mutations.
Dr Dale Fisher, the chair of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) outbreak alert and response network, told the Reuters Next conference:
We won’t get back to normal quickly. We know we need to get to herd immunity and we need that in a majority of countries, so we are not going to see that in 2021.
There might be some countries that might achieve it but even then that will not create ‘normal’ especially in terms of border controls.
That was a best-case scenario, based on current knowledge of the vaccines being rolled out, Fisher said.
Herd immunity refers to a situation where enough people in a population have immunity to an infection to be able to effectively stop that disease from spreading.
Updated
Teachers in Malta have returned to their classrooms and ended a two-day strike after the government agreed to give them priority in the vaccination campaign.
Schools on the small Mediterranean island have been open since September but unions called a strike last week following a rise in infections, with a record 245 cases reported last Thursday.
The Malta Union of Teachers said that after talks with the government it was agreed that teachers would be vaccinated sooner than planned, immediately after medical staff and vulnerable elderly persons.
Malta’s medical authorities have said that to limit the spread of Covid-19, it is better to keep schools open rather than closed.
Charmaine Gauci, the superintendent of public health, said a study of virus cases had shown that children and their families did not have many social events while children were at school, and therefore mixed less.
The issue of whether to keep schools open has been a hot debate in many countries, with various governments opting for different policies.
In Malta’s closest EU neighbour, Italy, high schools have still not returned to normal after a nationwide shutdown was ordered last March. Face-to-face teaching had been expected to resume on Monday but the date has been put back to 18 January.
In Malta, the authorities have reduced the number of pupils in each classroom and created bubbles within which pupils cannot mix with other children. School arrivals and departures have been staggered.
“The measures have worked, we have not had any infection clusters in schools since September,” Gauci said.
Updated
Indonesia’s food and drug agency has granted emergency use approval to a vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech, as it becomes the first country outside China to give the regulatory green light to the vaccine.
Interim data from a late-stage human test in Indonesia showed the shot was 65.3% effective, said Penny K Lukito, who heads the country’s food and drugs authority BPOM.
Updated
England’s chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, has tacitly criticised Covid deniers who have sought to downplay the scale of the epidemic, saying this winter “is in a completely different league” for the NHS. He told the BBC:
We will get through together, but at this point in time we’re at the worst point in the epidemic for for the UK.
There are always going to be noises of people coming up with absurd theories, and suggestions of things that are either obviously not true, or a misunderstanding of what’s going on.
But I think anybody who looks at some of the reports that the BBC and other news outlets done from hospitals, anyone who talks to a doctor or a nurse working in the NHS, anybody who actually reads any newspaper, they will know this is a really serious problem – this is not a typical winter.
Every winter there are problems. This is in a completely different league.
Whitty also said during a Q&A on BBC Radio 5 Live that people may need to be revaccinated in the future.
I don’t think we’ll have anything on this scale that we’re going to have to do over the next several months but I think there is a reasonable chance that, rather like with flu, we have to vaccinate every year – we may well have to revaccinate for Covid.
Updated
England’s test and trace system does not work effectively and needs to be fixed, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation has said, as he warned of high infection rates. Speaking to Sky News, Danny Mortimer said:
We need the rate of infection to go down well in advance of the benefit of the vaccination programme. We still, for the last few weeks now, have seen growing incidences of infection in our communities.
We’ve struggled as a country to have a test, trace and isolate system that works effectively – it just doesn’t work as well as it does in countries like Australia and various other parts of the world. That has to be fixed.
Updated
Here’s a little more detail on Fontanet’s suggestion that France should think about closing its borders. He told BFM television
It is important that we consider whether we need to close the borders to a limited number of countries, notably the United Kingdom and Ireland. This is certainly a point for the agenda. It is not up to the scientific council to decide this, but we want to raise the issue.
French authorities said on Sunday that the more infectious variant had now been detected in the Mediterranean port of Marseille and in the Alps. And Fontanet said:
The new Covid variant is nearly a new epidemic within the epidemic.
He said it was more contagious but that for now there were no signs that its mortality rate was higher.
Updated
Russia has reported 23,315 new cases, including 4,646 in Moscow, taking the national tally – the world’s fourth highest – to 3,425,269 since the pandemic began. Authorities also confirmed 436 deaths in the last 24 hours, pushing the official death toll to 62,273.
France should consider closing borders, says government adviser
France should consider closing its borders with the UK and other countries that have a strong presence of the UK variant, a French epidemiologist and government adviser has said.
Arnaud Fontanet, a member of the French government’s scientific council, also said on BFM television that to get the epidemic under control, France needed to vaccinate 10-15 million people by the end of March and 25-30 million people by the end of June.
Updated
In Thailand, health officials believe the latest wave is likely to slow down before the end of January, but have urged the public to continue following preventive measures.
The country, which had gone for months with virtually no local transmission, recorded a surge in cases last month when the virus began spreading among migrants working in the fishing industry. Infections have since been recorded across more than half of the country’s provinces, prompting the closure of all state and private schools. In Bangkok, which was deemed a high-risk zone, entertainment venues, gyms and massage parlours were shut, though restaurants and shopping malls were kept open.
The number of cases has since doubled from a little more than 5,000 in late December, to more than 10,500 as of Monday.
Officials at the country’s Centre of Covid-19 Situation Administration said they believed the current wave was now stable and said 21 affected provinces had reported no new cases over the past seven days.
However, two field hospitals will begin operating this week in Samut Sakhon province, one of the worst-affected areas. On Sunday, almost 300 migrant workers were discharged from a separate field hospital set up in the province.
Updated
It will get worse before it gets better, warns UK health official
The worst is yet to come for the UK, as the new highly infectious variants of the virus rampages across the country, the government’s chief medical adviser, Chris Whitty, has warned. He told the BBC:
The next few weeks are going to be the worst weeks of this pandemic in terms of numbers into the NHS [National Health Service]. What we need to do before the vaccines have had their effect, because it will take several weeks before that happens, we need to really double down.
Updated
Zahawi said vaccinations were “the greatest invention known to humankind”, though told Times Radio they would not be made compulsory in the UK.
You don’t want to have to go down the route of mandating vaccines because that would be completely wrong, we don’t have those sorts of values in the UK. We want them to see the value ... to themselves and to the community. This is the greatest invention known to humankind.
But, the moment you say it is mandatory, there will be those that say ‘well, I don’t want to be vaccinated’ – hence why we have used the word ‘offered’.
Zahawi said the vaccination programme could run 24 hours a day when the UK has enough jabs, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
If we need to go to 24-hour work we will absolutely go 24 hours a day to make sure we vaccinate as quickly as we can.
Updated
In the UK, ministers appear to have downgraded their promise to vaccinate the most vulnerable by mid-February, committing only to offering them an inoculation by that point.
The prime minister, Boris Johnson, said last week that they would have received their first jab by that date – and that daily figures for vaccinations carried out would be published from this week. But, speaking to Sky News, the UK’s vaccines minister, Nadhim Zahawi, has said:
The top four categories, actually, for the UK, is 15 million people, [and] in England it’s about 12 million people, so we will have offered a vaccination to all of those people.
Pressed on the difference between being offered a jab and being vaccinated, he said:
When you offer a vaccination it doesn’t mean a Royal Mail letter, it means the vaccine and the needle and the jab are ready for you. What you will see us publishing is the total numbers of people being vaccinated, not being offered a vaccine, and that’s the number to hold us to account to.
Zahawi has used slightly more temperate language than the prime minister in the past, saying that meeting Johnson’s target would be “challenging” and pledging instead to offer vaccines to the most vulnerable by the date the prime minister set.
Updated
Passenger numbers at London’s Heathrow airport were down 72.7% in 2020, with 22.1 million people travelling through it.
In December, demand fell by 82.9% to 1.1 million as the new variant of the virus spread in the UK. Heathrow’s chief executive, John Holland-Kaye, said:
The past year has been incredibly challenging for aviation. While we support tightening border controls temporarily by introducing pre-departure testing for international arrivals, as well as quarantine, this is not sustainable.
The aviation industry is the cornerstone of the UK economy but is fighting for survival. We need a road map out of this lockdown and a full waiver of business rates.
This is an opportunity for the government to show leadership in creating a common international standard for pre-departure testing that will allow travel and trade to restart safely so that we can start to deliver the prime minister’s vision of a global Britain.
Updated
Hello, I’m taking over from Helen Sullivan and will be with you for the next few hours. If you’d like to draw my attention to anything, your best bet’s probably Twitter, where I’m KevinJRawlinson.
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. Thanks for following along.
Today marks a year since the first known coronavirus victim died.
Today marks a year since the first coronavirus death was reported in Wuhan. The global death toll just passed 1.9 million https://t.co/3GNFXBsLk6
— Helen Sullivan (@helenrsullivan) January 11, 2021
Little is still known about the first victim, including his name, while the market where the first reported clusters of cases were traced back remains closed, surrounded by boarding.
Summary
Here are the key global developments from the last few hours:
- China says WHO Covid-19 origins probe team to arrive 14 January. A World Health Organization team of international experts tasked with investigating the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic will arrive in China on 14 January, China’s national health authority said on Monday. The team was initially aiming to enter China in early January for the investigation but their arrival was delayed due to lack of authorisation from Beijing for their entry.
- Seven mass vaccination sites to open Monday in England. The new centres - including at a football stadium and a tennis club - will be joined later this week by hundreds more GP-led and hospital services along with the first pharmacy-led pilot sites, taking the total to around 1,200, NHS England said. The locations - Ashton Gate in Bristol, Epsom racecourse in Surrey, the Excel Centre where London’s Nightingale hospital is based, Newcastle’s Centre for Life, the Manchester Tennis and Football Centre, Robertson House in Stevenage and Birmingham’s Millennium Point - will offer jabs to people aged 80 and above, along with health and care staff.
- Two mass vaccination locations opened in New York City on Sunday. The mass sites were open for part of the day on Sunday before they start operating round the clock, seven days a week on Monday as part of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s push to set up 250 vaccination locations to meet the ambitious goal of inoculating 1 million New Yorkers by the end of the month. Three other smaller sites also opened on Sunday.
- India is preparing for a mass coronavirus vaccine rollout. India aims to begin vaccinating its 1.3 billion people against coronavirus from Saturday, a colossal and complex task compounded by safety worries, shaky infrastructure and public scepticism. In one of the world’s biggest rollouts, the planet’s second-most populous nation hopes to inoculate 300 million people - equal almost to the entire US population - by July.
- England’s chief medical officer has warned the NHS faces the “most dangerous situation” in living memory as the pandemic causes record deaths and hospital admissions. Chris Whitty has said the only way to prevent avoidable deaths is for the public to stay home wherever possible.
- Mainland China saw its biggest daily increase in Covid-19 cases in more than five months, the country’s national health authority said on Monday, as new infections in Hebei province surrounding Beijing continued to rise. Hebei accounted for 82 of the 85 new local infections reported on 10 January, the National Health Commission (NHC) said in a statement, with Liaoning Province also reporting two new cases and Beijing reporting one new case. The country also saw 18 new imported infections from overseas.
- A county in the northeastern China’s Heilongjiang province on Monday moved into lockdown after reporting new novel coronavirus infections, state television also reported separately.
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Monday marks a year since the first coronavirus death was announced in Wuhan. China announced the first death from a new virus in Wuhan on 11 January 2020. Twelve months later, Covid-19 has claimed 1.9 million lives worldwide.
- Coronavirus infections have now surpassed 90 million confirmed cases around the world, according to Johns Hopkins University, as more countries brace for wider spread of more virulent strains of a disease that has now killed1.9 million people worldwide.
- Mexican president’s spokesman tests positive for coronavirus. The spokesman for Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he tested positive for coronavirus on Sunday, the same day the country detected a case of a Covid-19 variant that is spreading in the United Kingdom.
- South Korea reported fewer than 500 new coronavirus infections on Monday for the first time since record high daily case numbers over the Christmas holiday period. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency reported 451 new cases as of midnight on Sunday, driven by a lull in testing as well as an apparent easing in infections. The country reported a record 1,241 cases in one day during the Christmas holiday, the peak of the country’s largest wave of infections yet.
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Headteachers in England forced to ration on-site lockdown learning. Nearly half of England’s headteachers are being forced to prioritise class places among vulnerable students and the children of key workers because of a huge increase in demand, according to a survey of school leaders.
- About 80% of people in Japan are against holding the Tokyo 2020 Olympics this summer, amid a surge in coronavirus cases in the host city and other parts of Japan. A weekend poll by the Kyodo news agency found that 35.3% wanted the Games to be cancelled, while 44.8% favoured another delay. Local organisers and the International Olympic Committee have said that it will not be possible to postpone a second time. The Games, which are due to open on 23 July, were delayed by a yeardue to the Covid pandemic.
With the City of London deserted once more, its streets only populated by the occasional Deliveroo driver or tumbleweed-seeking photographer, it seems a strange time to be completing the largest office building the capital has ever seen, not least because the very future of the workplace is now in question.
But, rising far above the Cheesegrater and the Walkie-Talkie, dwarfing the now fun-sized Gherkin and boasting the floor area of almost all three combined, 22 Bishopsgate stands as the mother of all office towers. It is the City’s menacing final boss, a glacial hulk that fills its plot to the very edges and rises directly up until it hits the flight path of passing jets. The building muscles into every panorama of London, its broad girth dominating the centre of the skyline and congealing the Square Mile’s distinctive individual silhouettes into one great, grey lump.
It is the absurdist conclusion of three decades of steroidal growth, the final product of superheated land values stretching loose planning rules to breaking point. And, just as the building is being handed over to its first tenants to fit out, it feels like a monument from another epoch. Remember when we used to commute to the office?
The full story now on China agreeing to let the WHO Covid investigators into the country:
Unclear whether WHO Covid investigators will travel to Wuhan
More now on China announcing that a group of experts from the World Health Organization are due to arrive this week for an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, AP reports.
A one-sentence announcement from the National Health Commission said the experts would arrive on Thursday and meet with Chinese counterparts, but it gave no other details.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether they would be traveling to the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first detected in late 2019.
Negotiations for the visit have long been underway. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed disappointment last week over delays, saying that members of the international scientific team departing from their home countries had already started on their trip as part of an arrangement between the WHO and the Chinese government.
China’s government has strictly controlled all research at home into the origins of the virus, an Associated Press investigation found, and state-owned media have played up reports that suggest the virus could have originated elsewhere.
Australia and other countries have called for an investigation into the origins of the virus.
Young women in colourful traditional costumes, masks and white stoles braved cold weather in lines and sat seats apart from one another in Yokohama on Monday to mark Japan’s Coming of Age Day, even though the city is under a state of emergency, Reuters reports.
The ceremonies, typically full of kimono-clad women and smartly-dressed men, were cancelled in many cities and parties were discouraged to stem a rise in Covid-19 infections.
On the second Monday in January every year, people who have turned or are about to turn 20 take part in ceremonies in local event halls or other large-scale venues to celebrate the rite of passage to adulthood.
The occasion, which is observed with a national holiday, serves in effect as class reunions for some and represents one of the major child-rearing milestones for parents.
Of Tokyo’s 23 wards, all but one have cancelled or postponed the ceremonies, opting instead to offer mayors’ congratulatory remarks online. The government last week declared a state of emergency for the capital and three surrounding prefectures.
Yokohama city, south of Tokyo, went ahead with celebrations at Pacifico Yokohama North convention hall and Yokohama Arena event hall.
“I decided to carry out today’s ceremonies as I strongly hoped everyone takes part in celebrating this once-in-a-lifetime milestone,” said Mayor Fumiko Hayashi, in a message read out to attendees who had to abide with anti-infection measures.
Participants wore face masks, had their temperature checks and were asked just to listen to the national anthem, instead of singing it out loud.
Japan has seen coronavirus cases total around 289,000, with 4,067 fatalities, according to public broadcaster NHK.
India prepares for mass coronavirus vaccine rollout
India aims to begin vaccinating its 1.3 billion people against coronavirus from Saturday, a colossal and complex task compounded by safety worries, shaky infrastructure and public scepticism, AFP reports.
In one of the world’s biggest rollouts, the planet’s second-most populous nation hopes to inoculate 300 million people - equal almost to the entire US population - by July.
First to get one of two vaccines granted “emergency approval” will be 30 million health and other frontline workers, followed by around 270 million people aged over 50 or deemed high-risk all over the vast nation.
About 150,000 staff in 700 districts have been specially trained, and India has held several national dry runs involving mock transportation of vaccines and dummy injections.
Authorities will use the experience from holding elections in the world’s biggest democracy, and from regular child immunisation programmes for polio and tuberculosis.
But in an enormous, impoverished nation with often shoddy transport networks and one of the world’s worst-funded healthcare systems, the undertaking is still daunting.
Regular child inoculations are a “much smaller game” and vaccinating against Covid-19 will be “deeply challenging”, said Satyajit Rath from the National Institute of Immunology.
The two vaccines approved by India - AstraZeneca’s Covishield, made by local partner the Serum Institute, and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin - need to be kept refrigerated at all times.
A total of 29,000 cold-chain points, 240 walk-in coolers, 70 walk-in freezers, 45,000 ice-lined refrigerators, 41,000 deep freezers and 300 solar refrigerators are at the ready.
China says WHO Covid-19 origins probe team to arrive 14 January
A World Health Organization team of international experts tasked with investigating the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic will arrive in China on 14 January, China’s national health authority said on Monday.
The team was initially aiming to enter China in early January for the investigation but their arrival was delayed due to lack of authorisation from Beijing for their entry.
The National Health Commission, which announced the date, did not offer details on the team’s itinerary.
The pandemic first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.
In France, every child is now obliged to have 11 vaccinations. If parents want their children to attend school, or take part in many extracurricular activities, they must accept. There is no opt-out or concessions made to vaccine doubters.
On Monday France’s government and health authorities are speeding up the country’s Covid-19 vaccine drive – a process complicated by widespread scepticism about the inoculation that has encompassed the usual global conspiracy theories.
For weeks, polls have suggested up to 60% of the French population do not wish to be vaccinated. As the government’s vaccine operation enters its third week, official figures show that as of Saturday at least 93,000 people had been given the jab – a much lower number than elsewhere in Europe, including the UK, Germany and Italy:
Seven mass vaccination sites to open Monday in England
Over 200,000 people are being vaccinated every day in England – including a third of over-80s already jabbed. All adults are expected to have been offered an injection by the autumn.
Thousands more people are expected to be given a vaccine soon, with the opening of seven mass vaccination sites across England on Monday, PA media reports.
The new centres - including at a football stadium and a tennis club - will be joined later this week by hundreds more GP-led and hospital services along with the first pharmacy-led pilot sites, taking the total to around 1,200, NHS England said.
The locations - Ashton Gate in Bristol, Epsom racecourse in Surrey, the Excel Centre where London’s Nightingale hospital is based, Newcastle’s Centre for Life, the Manchester Tennis and Football Centre, Robertson House in Stevenage and Birmingham’s Millennium Point - will offer jabs to people aged 80 and above, along with health and care staff.
The number of patients with Covid-19 in hospital has reached a record high in England, while the official Government coronavirus death toll for the UK passed 81,000 at the weekend and lab-confirmed cases hit more than three million.
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 now been 97,000 deaths involving Covid-19 in the UK.
One year has passed since first coronavirus death announced in Wuhan
One year ago, China announced the first death from a new virus in Wuhan - 12 months later, Covid-19 has claimed 1.9 million lives in an unrelenting march across the world.
AFP: But in the central Chinese city of 11 million where the first known outbreak started, the virus has been extinguished.
On Monday morning, the anniversary slipped by unmarked in Wuhan - commuters moved freely to work while parks and riverside promenades buzzed with walkers in a city determined to banish its tag as the coronavirus ground zero.
Today marks a year since the first coronavirus death was reported in Wuhan. The global death toll just passed 1.9 million https://t.co/3GNFXBsLk6
— Helen Sullivan (@helenrsullivan) January 11, 2021
In a sparse report on January 11, 2020, China confirmed its first death from an unknown virus - a 61-year-old man who was a regular at the now-notorious Wuhan wet market linked to many of the early cases.
Updated
China sees biggest daily Covid-19 case rise in over 5 months
Mainland China saw its biggest daily increase in Covid-19 cases in more than five months, the country’s national health authority said on Monday, as new infections in Hebei province surrounding Beijing continued to rise, Reuters reports.
A county in the northeastern Heilongjiang province on Monday moved into lockdown after reporting new novel coronavirus infections, state television also reported separately.
Hebei accounted for 82 of the 85 new local infections reported on Jan. 10, the National Health Commission (NHC) said in a statement, with Liaoning Province also reporting two new cases and Beijing reporting one new case. The country also saw 18 new imported infections from overseas.
The total number of new Covid-19 cases stood at 103, the highest since 127 cases were reported on July 30.
Though the new cases being reported in recent days remain a small fraction of what the country saw at the height of the outbreak in early 2020, authorities are moving aggressively to curb the spread of the disease and prevent another national wave of infections.
The NHC reported 76 new asymptomatic patients for all of mainland China, up from 27 a day earlier. China does not count these individuals, who are infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes the disease but not exhibiting symptoms, as confirmed COVID-19 cases.
Total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in mainland China now stands at 87,536, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
More now on the opposition to the Tokyo Olympics:
The Kyodo poll results show a hardening of opposition to the Olympics among the Japanese public, despite repeated claims by the organisers, the IOC and government officials that it will be possible to host a “Covid- safe” Games under plans to be released in the spring.
But with the vaccine rollout in Japan expected to start several months later than those in the US, Britain and other European countries, doubts are growing about the wisdom of allowing 11,000 athletes, as well as large numbers of officials and other Games-related staff to enter Japan. No decision has been made on whether to admit overseas sports fans.
Concern that the Games may have to be called off has spread to the organising committee itself, according to the Asahi Shimbun.
“The Tokyo Olympics could be canceled if the state of emergency is not lifted by March,” a Tokyo 2020 official told the newspaper. Another Olympic-related official cited the difficulty in winning over the public when medical workers are struggling to cope with an influx of Covid patients in the capital.
The IOC’s official line is that the Games will go ahead as planned, but last week, the organisation’s longest-serving member, Dick Pound, said he was uncertain about Tokyo 2020’s prospects. “I can’t be certain because the ongoing elephant in the room would be the surges in the virus,” Pound told the BBC.
Opposition to Tokyo olympics grows
About 80% of people in Japan are against holding the Tokyo 2020 Olympics this summer, amid a surge in coronavirus cases in the host city and other parts of Japan.
A weekend poll by the Kyodo news agency found that 35.3% wanted the Games to be cancelled, while 44.8% favoured another delay. Local organisers and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have said that it will not be possible to postpone a second time.
The Games, which are due to open on 23 July, were delayed by a year due to the Covid pandemic.
The survey was conducted as experts warned that the recent rise in cases was putting hospitals under extreme pressure, forcing the prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, to bow to pressure from the governors of Tokyo and three neighbouring prefectures to declare a state of emergencythat will last until at least early February.
Suga’s handling of the pandemic since he took office four months ago has seen his approval ratings fall 9 percentage points since December to just 41.3%. The poll found that disapproval of Suga stood at 42.8%, with “lack of leadership” over the pandemic the most commonly cited reason.
The daily tally of infections in Japan exceeded 7,000 for the third day in a row on Saturday, although the country’s cumulative death toll, at just over 4,000, is much lower than those in many other countries.
Updated
New UK Covid strain confirmed in Mexico
The new strain of the coronavirus first detected in Britain has been confirmed in Mexico for the first time, health officials in northern Tamaulipas state said in a statement on Sunday, adding a new layer of concern to an already severe national outbreak.
A 56-year-old man who flew on 29 December from Mexico City to the city of Matamoros, just south of the U.S.-Mexico border, tested positive for the new strain, according to Tamaulipas Health Minister Gloria Molina.
The man was described as an “international traveler,” and his name and nationality were not disclosed.
The fast-spreading new strain of the virus has also been found in South Africa and Australia, prompting authorities to take more aggressive action to prevent even greater contagion as countries across the globe struggle to contain the pandemic.
England's chief medical officer warns NHS facing 'most dangerous situation' in living memory
England’s chief medical officer has warned the NHS faces the “most dangerous situation” in living memory as the pandemic causes record deaths and hospital admissions, PA Media reports.
As the country awaits the ramping up of coronavirus testing and vaccinations this week, Chris Whitty has said the only way to prevent avoidable deaths is for the public to stay home wherever possible.
“Hospitals are always busy in winter, but the NHS in some parts of the country is currently facing the most dangerous situation anyone can remember,” Prof Whitty wrote in the Sunday Times.
“If the virus continues on this trajectory, hospitals will be in real difficulties, and soon.
“Staff-to-patient ratios - already stretched - will become unacceptable even in intensive care.”
The number of patients with Covid-19 in hospital is at a record high in England, while the official coronavirus death toll for the UK passed 80,000 on Saturday and lab-confirmed cases hit more than three million.
Calls to escalate English lockdown amid fears one in five may have had Covid
Ministers were under pressure on Sunday night to escalate the current lockdown in England amid warnings that current measures may not be tough enough.
They came as the health secretary, Matt Hancock, said about 2 million people – including about a third of people over the age of 80 – had already been vaccinated, and the opening of the mass vaccination sites is intended to accelerate the process.
More than half a million people over the age of 80 are to receive letters inviting them to attend one of seven large coronavirus vaccination centres opening in England, where they will be able to book an appointment online or over the phone.
But, in an interview on Sunday, Hancock also said that, with hospital cases and deaths still rising sharply, the NHS was “probably under the greatest pressure it ever has been”:
Headteachers in England forced to ration on-site lockdown learning
Nearly half of England’s headteachers are being forced to prioritise class places among vulnerable students and the children of key workers because of a huge increase in demand, according to a survey of school leaders.
The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), which carried out the survey, said the government’s “confused” messages to parents on school attendance risks defeating its aim of suppressing the virus:
Small businesses and manufacturers in the UK are bracing themselves for a fight for survival this year, according to fresh survey data, as they negotiate the twin threats of Covid-19 and weaker post-Brexit trade with the EU.
More than 250,000 small firms expect to fold without further government financial support, according to a quarterly poll by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB).
Manufacturers’ trade body Make UK said its members expected lower investment in the UK and to have a harder time recruiting talent:
South Korea daily virus cases under 500 for first time since record highs in December
South Korea reported fewer than 500 new coronavirus infections on Monday for the first time since record high daily case numbers over the Christmas holiday period, Reuters reports.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) reported 451 new cases as of midnight on Sunday, driven by a lull in testing as well as an apparent easing in infections.
The country reported a record 1,241 cases in one day during the Christmas holiday, the peak of the country’s largest wave of infections yet.
South Korea stopped short of a complete lockdown or stay-at-home order, but has imposed unprecedented restrictions for weeks, including banning private gatherings of more than four people.
In the capital Seoul and surrounding areas a number of high-risk businesses such as bars and gyms were ordered to close and coffee shops can only offer takeaway service.
The country employs aggressive tracing and testing which has allowed it to blunt successive waves of infections, though the latest surge threatens to overwhelm that system.
Overall South Korea has reported a total of 69,114 cases, with 1,140 deaths.
Mexican president's spokesman tests positive for coronavirus
The spokesman for Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he tested positive for coronavirus on Sunday, the same day the country detected a case of a Covid-19 variant that is spreading in the United Kingdom, AP reports.
Spokesman Jesús Ramírez Cuevas wrote on his Twitter account, “I am in good health and I will be working from home.” There was no word on whether the president had been tested:
Informo que di positivo a Covid-19. Estoy bien de salud y estaré trabajando desde casa siguiendo todos los protocolos sanitarios.
— Jesús Ramírez Cuevas (@JesusRCuevas) January 10, 2021
Ramírez Cuevas is close to López Obrador, often handing him documents or going on trips with the president.
López Obrador is 67 and has high blood pressure, but almost never wears a mask.
On Sunday, López Obrador toured the Pacific coast seaport of Manzanillo and gave a speech, as usual without a mask on.
Also on Sunday, health authorities in the northern border state of Tamaulipas detected a case of the UK variant, known as B.1.1.7. That strain has also been found in the United States, Canada, Italy, India and the United Arab Emirates.
Scientists in the U.K. have said the variant may be more contagious than previously identified strains.
The Tamaulipas state health department said the case was detected in a 56-year-old man who arrived on 29 December at an airport in the border city of Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, aboard a flight from Mexico City. No one else on the flight tested positive.
Updated
Global coronavirus cases pass 90m
Coronavirus infections have now surpassed 90 million confirmed cases around the world, according to Johns Hopkins University, as more countries brace for wider spread of more virulent strains of a disease that has now killed nearly 2 million worldwide.
The number of infections worldwide has doubled in just 10 weeks, according to a tally by John Hopkins University on Sunday. Covid-19 infections had hit 45 million as recently as late October.
As of Sunday afternoon, John Hopkins counted 90,005,787 infections around the world.
The United States, now with more than 22.2 million infections, led the world with the highest number of infections recorded since the global pandemic began.
The number of US cases is more than double that of India, which has recorded nearly 10.5 million infections.
Updated
New York opens mass vaccination sites
Brooklyn Army Terminal is one of two mass vaccination locations that opened in New York City on Sunday. The second one is located at Bathgate Contract Postal Station in the borough of the Bronx.
Reuters: The mass sites were open for part of the day on Sunday before they start operating round the clock, seven days a week on Monday as part of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s push to set up 250 vaccination locations to meet the ambitious goal of inoculating 1 million New Yorkers by the end of the month.
Three other smaller sites also opened on Sunday in Brooklyn, the Bronx and in Queens.
In New York, like in much of the United States, efforts to get the two vaccines that have so far been authorised into the arms of Americans have moved slower than hoped due to a slew of issues.
They included strict rules controlling who should get inoculated first, with some healthcare workers at the front of the line declining the shots, and a lack of planning or direction on the federal level.
As of early Sunday, New York City had administered 203,181 doses of the vaccines to its residents out of more than 524,000 doses that have been delivered, data from the city’s health department showed.
On Friday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who previously said all healthcare workers should be inoculated before the state moved on to other categories, changed course, saying people aged 75 and over could receive the shot starting on Monday.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said healthcare workers and nursing home residents and staff should have priority for the limited supply of vaccines. The agency softened that guidance on Friday, recommending that states move to those next on the list - people over age 75 and so called “essential” workers - to accelerate lagging vaccination programs.
Updated
Summary
Hello and welcome to our live coronavirus coverage with me, Helen Sullivan.
I’ll be bringing you the latest good and bad pandemic developments worldwide for the next few hours.
You can get in touch with me on Twitter @helenrsullivan or via email: helen.sullivan@theguardian.com – news, comments, questions all welcome.
Two mass vaccination locations opened in New York City on Sunday.
The mass sites were open for part of the day on Sunday before they start operating round the clock, seven days a week on Monday as part of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s push to set up 250 vaccination locations to meet the ambitious goal of inoculating 1 million New Yorkers by the end of the month.
Three other smaller sites also opened on Sunday.
Meanwhile the global coronavirus case total has come another sad milestone closer to a staggering 100m, with the total passing 90m on Sunday, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers. The death toll stands at 1,932,266.
Here are the other key recent developments:
- US House lawmakers may have been exposed to someone testing positive for Covid-19 during the Capitol siege by a violent mob loyal to Donald Trump. The Capitol’s attending physician notified all lawmakers Sunday of the virus exposure and urged them to be tested.
- A new coronavirus variant of coronavirus has been detected in four travellers from Brazil’s Amazonas state, Japan’s health ministry has said, in the latest recorded instance of the virus evolving.
- Seven people in Marseilles, southern France, have tested positive for the new, more infectious variant of Covid-19 first found in Britain, local authorities have announced.
- Russia has detected its first case of the more infectious coronavirus variant found in England, in a Russian who returned from Britain and tested positive late last month.
- Northern Ireland’s health minister said Covid-19 was placing the healthcare system under pressure “like never before,” as one hospital appealed on social media for the immediate help of all off-duty healthworkers nearby.
- One in five people in England may have had coronavirus, new modelling suggests, equivalent to 12.4 million people, rising to almost one in two in some areas.
