This blog is now closed. Follow our continuing coronavirus coverage here:
Summary
Here is a quick re-cap of some of the main recent events in the UK and from around the world:
- French prime minister Jean Castex has acknowledged the country’s Covid situation is “worrying” but there is a last chance to avoid a third national lockdown that would be economically damaging (see 20:18).
- The crisis over vaccine shortages in the EU has erupted into a full-scale diplomatic row after Brussels triggered a Brexit deal clause to establish border controls on doses moving into Northern Ireland from the Republic (see 17:13).
-
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has announced stricter restrictions on travellers in response to new, likely more contagious variants of Covid — including reportedly suspending airline services to Mexico and all Caribbean destinations until 30 April (see 17:16).
- The German government has agreed on the introduction of unprecedented and drastic travel restrictions – effectively banning travellers from the UK, Portugal and Ireland from entering the country (see 17:01).
- The EU’s medicines regulator has authorised AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine for use in adults throughout the bloc. It is the third Covid vaccine given the green light by the European Medicines Agency, after those made by Pfizer and Moderna.
- The pace of the Covid pandemic has slowed in every region of the world for the second week in a row, an AFP tally up to Thursday shows, with an average of 11% fewer new cases per day, or 564,300, compared to the previous week.
Updated
Australia not on list of 120 countries exempted from new EU vaccine export restrictions
Australia has not been included in a list of more than 120 countries exemption from a controversial European Union decision granting itself the power to block vaccine manufacturers from exporting the jab overseas.
On Friday Australia’s health minister Greg Hunt confirmed the country would raise the bloc’s threat to limit vaccine exports with officials on the continent, as well as with the World Health Organisation.
But overnight the European Commission unveiled new export restrictions which give it final say on whether vaccines, including those produced by pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and AstraZeneca, can leave Europe.
The EU published a list of more than 120 countries exempted from the controls, but it did not include Australia.
That will cause major concerns for the Australian government, which is relying on receiving about 10m doses of the Pfizer vaccine this year.
It is also due to receive 1.2m doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from Europe, already less than it was initially expecting due to the company’s well-publicised production shortfall.
Pfizer this week told a Senate hearing that it would consider shifting production of its vaccine to the United States in a bid to avoid any export ban.
“It’s obviously critical that governments don’t impose export restrictions or trade barriers,” Pfizer Australia and New Zealand medical director Krishan Thiru said.
Should that happen we will explore what options are available. We have large scale of manufacturing across the US and Europe. No determination has been made at this point in time about switching the source of our manufacture of vaccinations.
Updated
This is the latest update on the EU invoking Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol from the Guardian’s political editor Heather Stewart:
A No10 spokesman said:
The prime minister this evening had a constructive discussion with the Taoiseach Micheál Martin. The PM set out his concerns about the EU’s use of Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol and what these actions may mean for the two communities in Northern Ireland.
The PM stressed the UK’s enduring commitment to the Belfast/Good Friday agreement and said the EU must urgently clarify its intentions and what steps it plans to take to ensure its own commitments with regards to Northern Ireland are fully honoured.
The PM stressed the UK’s commitment to working together with other countries in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
France’s decision to close its borders to countries outside the EU to contain the spread of the coronavirus does not apply to hauliers travelling between the UK and France, Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, has said.
French PM Jean Castex has announced that France is to close its borders to all countries outside the EU from Sunday. However, I can confirm that this does NOT apply to hauliers, so trade will continue to flow smoothly.
— Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP (@grantshapps) January 29, 2021
Reuters reports:
Novavax Inc expects to produce up to 150m Covid vaccine doses monthly by May or June, its chief executive told Reuters on Friday, a day after reporting interim data that showed its shot to be 89% effective in a UK trial.
Novavax expects to complete the clinical trial for its experimental Covid vaccine in the next few weeks, but is already working on manufacturing to be able to reach full production capacity quickly, chief executive officer Stanley Erck said.
We should be at full capacity starting in May or June, maybe as much as one hundred and fifty million doses per month globally,” he said.
The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has said the EU was undercutting its own ethics by seeking to control the export of Covid vaccines.
The European Union was originally inspired by Christian social teaching - at the heart of which is solidarity.
— Archbishop of Canterbury (@JustinWelby) January 29, 2021
Seeking to control the export of vaccines undercuts the EU’s basic ethics. They need to work together with others.
Updated
More reaction to the EU introducing controls on vaccines to Northern Ireland.
A Number 10 spokesperson said:
The UK Government is urgently seeking an explanation from the European Commission about the statements issued by the EU today and assurances as to its intentions. The UK has legally-binding agreements with vaccine suppliers and it would not expect the EU, as a friend and ally, to do anything to disrupt the fulfilment of these contracts. The UK government has reiterated the importance of preserving the benefits of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement and the commitments that have been made to the two communities.
The Czech government banned non-essential entry into the country as of Saturday, the Foreign Ministry has announced.
The decision, part of the government’s tightening of restrictions amid concern about the spread of the UK Covid variant, left a range of exceptions such as commute for travel for work and family visit, Reuters reports.
⚠️ The Czech Goverment decided to ❌ ban all NON-ESSENTIAL TRAVELS to the Czech Republic 🇨🇿, regardless of which country (green, orange or red) you are travelling from. The decision will enter into force at this midnight from Friday to Saturday (30/01/2021 0:00).
— Czech MFA (@CzechMFA) January 29, 2021
France can still avoid third coronavirus lockdown, prime minister says
French prime minister Jean Castex says the coronavirus situation in the country is “worrying” but there is a last chance to avoid a third national lockdown that would be economically damaging.
After an emergency meeting with president Emmanuel Macron on Friday evening, Castex announced what he called “drastic border controls” and said all travel in and out of France from non EU countries was banned from Sunday midnight except for “exceptional reasons”.
Anyone coming into France from an EU country must have a PCR test, except for cross-border workers.
Shopping centres of more than 20,000m/2 not selling food are to be closed. Schools will remain open “at this stage”. Homeworking is to be a priority where possible.
Police and gendarmes to be mobilised to punish any non respect of the curfew. Castex said any breaking of the 6pm-6am curfew would be treated “firmly”.
“The question of a lockdown is a legitimate one…we can give ourselves a chance to avoid it,” he said.
Updated
The government has warned the EU it is considering action after the bloc imposed export controls on Covid vaccines and impinged on the post-Brexit deal on Northern Ireland (NI).
Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove spoke to the EU on Friday to express concern at its triggering of an aspect of the NI Protocol to stop the unimpeded flow of jabs from the bloc into the region, PA media reports.
Gove, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, spoke to his counterpart on the EU-UK joint committee, Maros Sefcovic, to “express the UK’s concern over a lack of notification from the EU about its actions in relation to the NI protocol”.
“CDL said the UK would now be carefully considering next steps,” a statement from Downing Street added.
The chairman of the Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, Simon Hoare, meanwhile, said it was “unconscionable folly” for the EU to escalate its vaccines row by triggering an aspect of the Northern Ireland Protocol (see earlier post).
Hoare said:
Vaccines from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, which account for 100% of Northern Ireland’s coronavirus vaccines, will continue so the public have no reason for fear, but it’s unconscionable folly to escalate a contract dispute with a supplier to affect the so recently agreed, and still bedding in, NI Protocol. We need calm, stability and level-headedness.
Updated
This is from Brandon Lewis, the secretary of state for Northern Ireland:
NI receives its vaccines as part of UK-wide procurement - with over 220,000 vaccines administered to date.
— Brandon Lewis (@BrandonLewis) January 29, 2021
The Govt has contracts with AstraZeneca & others to ensure vaccines are delivered on schedule & guarantee reliable vaccine provision across the whole of the UK.
1,245 further Covid-linked deaths registered in the UK
In the UK, 1,245 more people have died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19, bringing the total to 104,371, according to government data.
This daily number is up from 1,239 recorded on Thursday. See the official release here.
Updated
An international team of World Health Organization experts has visited a hospital in Wuhan, China, that saw some of the first cases of Covid in December 2019, my colleague Emma Graham-Harrison reports. Read the full story here:
Spain’s Covid death toll rose by 513 on Friday to 58,319, in one of the highest one-day increases since the first wave of the pandemic, health ministry data indicates.
It said 38,118 new infections had also been detected, off last week’s record of 44,357, as pressures on hospitals continue to mount.
Reuters report that, in another alarming sign, the Madrid region has reported an outbreak in a nursing home that has caused 11 deaths and infected all its 48 residents, as well as 17 staff.
Updated
EU moves to stop Northern Ireland being used as a vaccine backdoor
The EU has moved to prevent Northern Ireland (NI) from being used as a back door to funnel Covid vaccines from the bloc into the rest of the UK.
Arlene Foster, Northern Ireland’s (NI) first minister, has branded the EU’s triggering of article 16 of Brexit’s NI Protocol to stop the unfettered flow of inoculations from the EU into the region an “incredible act of hostility”.
The protocol, which is part of the Brexit withdrawal deal, normally allows for free movement of goods from the EU into NI, PA media reports.
Under its terms, goods should be able to move freely between the bloc and NI as the region remains in the single market for goods, operating under EU customs rules.
Amid an escalating row over provision of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, the EU has triggered article 16 of the protocol to temporarily place export controls on this movement in respect of vaccines.
The move to activate article 16 will frustrate any effort to use NI as a back door to bring vaccines into Great Britain.
Foster said:
By triggering article 16 in this manner, the European Union has once again shown it is prepared to use Northern Ireland when it suits their interests but in the most despicable manner – over the provision of a vaccine which is designed to save lives. At the first opportunity, the EU has placed a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland over the supply chain of the coronavirus vaccine.
Updated
Hello everyone. I’ll be running the live blog for the rest of the evening. As always, feel free to get in touch on Twitter if you have any story tips or coverage suggestions.
Wealthy countries must avoid repeating past mistakes of hoarding medicines and vaccines, the World Health Organization has said, warning it would only drag out the pandemic, AFP reports.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus decried the skirmish in wealthy countries to secure large amounts of various vaccines against the coronavirus while few doses have yet to reach poorer nations.
“The pandemic has exposed and exploited the inequalities of our world,” he told journalists, warning that there now was “the real danger that the very tools that could help to end the pandemic - vaccines - may exacerbate those same inequalities.”
“Vaccine nationalism might serve short-term political goals. But it’s ultimately short-sighted and self-defeating,” he said.
The WHO co-leads the COVAX facility, which is working to procure vaccines and ensure doses are delivered equitably around the world. The facility expects to begin delivering doses within a few weeks, and Tedros said the aim was for vaccination of health workers and older people to be underway in all countries within the first 100 days of 2021.
Tedros urged the world avoid repeating past mistakes, pointing to the HIV/AIDS crisis, where wealthy countries acquired life-saving medicines nearly a decade before they became affordable in poorer countries.
He also pointed to the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009, when vaccines only reached poorer nations after the outbreak was over. “I don’t think that is a good history. It is bad history,” he said.
Africa’s biggest film festival, which had been scheduled to run in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou from 27 February to 6 March, has been postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic, AFP reports.
The Pan-African Festival of Cinema and Television of Ouagadougou, known by its acronym in French of FESPACO, is an eagerly-awaited showcase held every two years.
Burkina’s cabinet today “took the decision to postpone the holding of FESPACO to a later date,” government spokesman Ousseni Tamboura told a press conference.
Founded in 1969, FESPACO stipulates that films chosen for competition have to be made by Africans and predominantly produced in Africa.
Burkina Faso, a landlocked country in the Sahel, has so far recorded 10,423 Covid-19 cases, of which 120 have been fatal, but like other countries in Africa is struggling with a worrying second wave of the virus.
“Given the health situation, both nationally and internationally, in relation to the coronavirus pandemic, it will be hard to hold FESPACO at the scheduled time,” Tamboura said. “It won’t be easy for us to decide (a new date) because this is linked to developments in the health situation.”
Here are Emmanuel Macron’s remarks which he made to reporters earlier, as cited in the AstraZeneca press conference (see 6.03pm).
He has said Europe would not block or ban exports of coronavirus vaccines but that they should be “controlled”, accusing AstraZeneca of a lack of transparency after the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company said it could not fulfil the whole of its contract with the EU.
Macron also said the AstraZeneca vaccine, given approval by the EU regulator today for use on all adults, appeared to be “quasi-ineffective” on people older than 65, though he acknowledged he had no figures or official information.
Imagine the hypothesis that the British finish their vaccine campaign with success, what will they do? Stop European lorries from entering, when there is a total dependence on the continent. Bon courage [good luck]!.
And imagine the hypothesis that France, Italy, Germany have a vaccine strategy that is extremely ambitious and rapid. It will quickly fail if our neighbours don’t have the same vaccine strategy because our economies are integrated. France has 500,000 trans-border workers. So all this will only work if we do it together.”
Vaccine exports should be controlled, not blocked or banned, which would make no sense because we are also dependent on non-European production.
It should be controlled because there is questionable behaviour and we will be receiving fewer deliveries that do not honour the contractual engagements agreed.
He added that Europe’s response to the contractual failure “will be proportional”.
But we cannot have contractual agreements made with laboratories then reviewed because of pressure from one or other countries. The situation with vaccines is unusual, but I believe strongly in the benefits of cooperation.
AstraZeneca is a major laboratory that has its base in the UK, but which is also very present in France and Europe. There is no benefit to having a strategy of non-cooperation.
There has been a lack of transparency in the lack of information given, particularly from AstraZeneca … we have doubts and we want to be sure that if a company is not able to honour its contract, it’s not because it has over-delivered elsewhere. And that’s why cooperation is so important.
Going further than German authorities, who had assessed only that efficacy had not yet been demonstrated for over-65s, Macron suggested the vaccine was less useful in the immediate crisis at hand.
We have to be realistic: the real problem with the AstraZeneca vaccine is that it doesn’t work in the way we expected,” Macron said. “We have very little information … but all the indications today are that it is quasi-ineffective for those over 65 years old.
Our vaccine strategy is to inoculate health workers and the elderly because it is they who have the most serious symptoms. Today, when I look at our hospitals, 80% of the patients [with Covid-19] are over 65 years old, and two thirds of those in intensive care are over 65.
The [AstraZeneca] vaccine is no doubt superb in the long term and it will be useful, but it’s not exactly what we need now.”
AstraZeneca is not a vaccine-producing company. I have a lot of respect for the researchers who have tried to participate in the collective effort, they have done great research at Oxford, but they clearly have problems with the development as we have seen. We hope it can be improved.
Macron said it was not his role to question other countries’ vaccination policies, but did suggest the British government was playing fast and loose with the science by extending the period between Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses to 12 weeks.
When you read all the health notices, when even the producers say that for it to work there has to be two injections, which is the case with the Pfizer, when you listen to the scientists … I’m not sure you can say you are vaccinated when you have had the first injection of a vaccine that needs two.
If, and I say ‘if’ because I don’t have the figures, you inoculate the over 65s with the AstraZeneca vaccine and if, as I have heard it may be only around 10% effective, then your figures make no sense. What I do know because it is established is that if you give two injections of the Pfizer-BioNTech 28 days apart then you are covered at 90%.
The Oman Open golf tournament, which was scheduled to take place in March, has been postponed after the nation called an immediate and sweeping halt to all sporting events, AFP reports.
The European PGA Tour event was due to take place from 4-7 March at Al Mouj Golf in Muscat. The ruling decreed all gatherings, international functions and sporting events would be stopped in the country with immediate effect.
Organisers and hosts are hoping to reschedule the event but no plans or dates have been revealed at this stage.
France’s coronavirus death toll has risen above 75,000 as the government reported 820 new deaths, taking the cumulative total to 75,620, Reuters reports.
Today’s figure included 355 deaths in hospitals, compared with 344 yesterday, and 465 deaths in retirement homes over the past three days, health ministry data showed. The seven-day moving average of deaths increased to 425 from 400 yesterday.
France’s Covid-19 death toll is the seventh highest in the world. The ministry also reported 22,858 new confirmed Covid-19 cases in past 24 hours - down slightly from 23,770 on Thursday and from 23,292 last Friday - taking the total to 3,15 million.
The number of people in intensive care with the virus increase by another 19 to 3,130 and has now been above a government target of less than 3,000 for five days. The number of people in hospital with the virus increased by 142 to 27,308.
Asked for a response to Emmanuel Macron earlier today saying the AstraZeneca vaccine was “quasi-ineffective” among people over 65, Pollard says there is good evidence on its efficacy but this is “much more limited data in the elderly” - though this doesn’t mean there was a lack of protection
It’s a lack of evidence, not a lack of protection ... It’s perhaps a misunderstanding of evidence [by Macron]. Having less evidence doesn’t mean there’s a negative there.
The press conference now ends.
Asked if the company could have informed the European Commission any earlier regarding the slowing yield, Soriot says AstraZeneca made them aware as soon as it was clear there was a significant issue.
Soriot says AstraZeneca is now producing 100 million doses of the vaccine per month across the world.
Pollard says the immune response in older patients and younger patients were identical among healthy patients during their first trial.
In the later phase trials where we have people with many different health condition, we do see slightly lower immune responses ... But those differences are very small and we wouldn’t see it as translating into any problem regarding efficacy.
Asked if he would have done anything differently to avoid the rows of this week, Sorior says “we’ve done a lot to make sure we provide the vaccine to the EU”.
Criticising naysayers who claimed the company was going too fast, he turns his attention to current issues, “Everyone needs to recognise this is a complicated process ... Some issues will happen ... We’re trying to really catch up [on the volumes produced]. We have a large quantity we are delivering this month to the EU, but it’s not as much as we would have hoped.”
A reporter then asks why Switzerland has not yet made a decision over the vaccine, to which she is told the country will be assessing it and was perhaps waiting for the EMA.
Updated
Pollard says it’s likely that the changes to the spike proteins in some of the variants may make the vaccines less effective.
If indeed we need to make new vaccines, those can be done within a matter of months, it’s not like the situation we were in a year ago where we had to go through nearly a year of development. We’ll be in a position to respond to the virus if it changes.
It’s still possible the vaccines are still adequate to prevent severe disease and hospitalisation.
Soriot says, “Unfortunately the yield hasn’t been what we were expecting at some of the sites”.
He adds there were “teething issues” and that, the issues varied from site to site. “We believe we have now fixed most of the issues, and productivity should improve rapidly over the next few months. We really are trying to do everything at full speed.”
Soriot says AstraZeneca is working “hand in hand” to manufacture the vaccine in the US and should be ready to launch as soon as it is approved.
He now comments on the row with the EU over supplies.
We’ve said what had to be said as far as the legal aspects of the contract. We’re working 24/7 to improve the supply we have. We have millions of doses which we are ready to start shipping to the EU ... We have quite a substantial quantity already to ship to the respective countries.
On the nature of EU row over the contract, he adds: “It is very unfortunate and concerning actually, but apart from this there’s not much more that we can say.”
In a press conference, AstraZeneca’s Pascal Soriot refuses to respond to a question about the company’s dispute with the EU over shortfalls of deliveries of the vaccine. He says he is preferring to focus on today’s good news, following the vaccine’s approval by the EU’s drugs regulator.
Prof Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, says it is working hard to ascertain the nature of all of the new variants. He says it’s a complex process to obtain all the necessary samples but that his team is making good progress.
Other representatives from the pharmaceutical group restate the data released earlier showing the vaccine’s efficacy in reducing symptomatic cases by 60%.
“The efficacy data we have is a bit more limited,” says Pollard, regarding over 65’s, noting how older adults have been more cautious to take part in trials. Soriot says a US study would be published soon, as well as trials from the UK and Brazil.
Updated
The Western Isles have entered full lockdown after an increase in local cases, as the Scottish government announced the area would move into level four of the country’s 5-tier Covid controls.
The move comes after Scotland’s health secretary Jeane Freemansaid the Stornoway hospital, the largest in the area, was reaching full capacity and that the isles had had six new Covid cases today and nine on Thursday.
Freeman told islanders to stay at home and only leave for essential reasons.
“These cases follow on from quite a high number of cases two weeks ago including a significant community outbreak in Barra. All of that is placing significant strain on hospital capacity in the Western Isles health board area.”
Barra and Vatersay were placed under level four restrictions last week. The rest of the isles will move up from level three at midnight tonight.
Canada imposes strict new rules on incoming travellers
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has announced stricter restrictions on travellers in response to new, likely more contagious variants of Covid — including making it mandatory for travellers to quarantine in a hotel at their own expense when they arrive in Canada and suspending airline service to Mexico and all Caribbean destinations until 30 April, AP reports.
Trudeau said in addition to the pre-boarding test Canada already requires, the government will be introducing mandatory PCR testing at the airport for people returning to Canada.
Travellers will then have to wait for up to three days at an approved hotel for their test results, at their own expense, which is expected to be more than $2000. Those with negative test results will then be able to quarantine at home under significantly increased surveillance and enforcement.
The PM said those with positive tests will be immediately required to quarantine in designated government facilities to make sure they’re not carrying variants of particular concern.
Trudeau also said the government and Canada’s main airlines have agreed to suspend service to sun destinations right away. He said Air Canada, WestJet, Sunwing, and Air Transat are cancelling air service to all Caribbean destinations and Mexico starting Sunday until 30 April.
They will be making arrangements with their customers who are currently on a trip in these regions to organise their return flights.
He said starting next week, all international passenger flights must land at the following four airports: Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary and Montreal.
We will also, in the coming weeks, be requiring nonessential travelers to show a negative test before entry at the land border with the US, and we are working to stand up additional testing requirements for land travel,” Trudeau said.
Canada already requires those entering the country to self-isolate for 14 days and to present a negative Covid-19 test taken within three days before arrival. The move to require a hotel stay upon return would discourage vacations as people would not want to have to quarantine at a hotel at their own expense upon return.
Updated
Germany bans travellers from UK, Ireland and Portugal
The German government has just agreed on the introduction of unprecedented and drastic travel restrictions – effectively banning travellers from the UK, Portugal and Ireland from entering Germany – in an attempt to combat the spread of highly contagious coronavirus variants.
Travellers from Brazil and South Africa are also affected by the ban, which will initially last until February 17. It covers air, train, bus, ship and road routes into the country.
Exceptions will be given to people who are resident in Germany, citizens who are returning to Germany, as well as transit passengers and various other categories such as freight traffic, or medically necessary travel, including the transport of medical staff, ambulance planes, the transport of human organs for transplant and other humanitarian reasons.
Those seeking permission to enter Germany will need to register with the police three days in advance of arrival.
The extraordinary measures will be valid from Saturday. EU states had agreed on joint measures to combat the spread of the more infectious variant, but Germany, situated in the centre of Europe bordering nine countries, insisted they did not go far enough.
The countries have been singled out because they are recognised as locations where the mutations are spreading most virulently.
“In addition to existing test and quarantine rules ... a temporary limitation shall be imposed on carriage of travellers from countries designated as regions with variants,” reads the regulation (see 3.54pm).
Leading politicians have been grappling with the issue for several days, with health minister Jens Spahn insisting a week ago that shutting Germany’s borders was not a viable option. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor had reportedly suggested behind closed doors reducing air traffic to the extent it was “impossible to get anywhere” to lower the incentive for travel.
Sweden’s health agency has recommended the government require travellers show a negative Covid test result before entering the country, Reuters reports.
The situation is changing extremely rapidly in the outside world and different virus variants can be found in more countries than those we currently know.
The test would have to be taken a maximum of 48 hours before entering the country. The health agency also proposed that newly arrived travellers self-quarantine for one week and take an additional test after five days. Cross-border commuters would need to get tested once a week.
Sweden, which spurned a lockdown but did introduce a number of significant restrictions, already has travel controls in place for people from Britain, Denmark and Norway, as well as travellers from outside the EU.
It has seen a rapid decline in new cases in recent weeks, today registering the lowest daily increase in over three months: 2,400. The country of 10 million inhabitants also registered 71 new deaths, taking the total to 11,591. The deaths registered have occurred over several days and weeks.
Updated
A 10-year-old boy who spent 11 days fighting a severe Covid infection on an intensive care ward in Spain has been given the all-clear, prompting an outpouring of affection from the staff who helped him, Reuters reports.
Medical personnel at the Mancha Centro hospital in Ciudad Real whooped and cheered when Mateo Roman was allowed to go home. “Thank you so much to everyone who has sent me good wishes, I love you all,” he told state broadcaster TVE.
Lucas Salcedo, head of paediatric services at Mancha Centro, congratulated him and his family for “never throwing in the towel, even in the most painful moments”. One of just three children under 14 to have been admitted to the hospital’s intensive care unit since March, Mateo’s case became well known in Spain after a nurse published a photo of the two of them on social media.
On his last day at the hospital, the medical team presented him with a basketball, a car-themed colouring book and a powder-blue superman cape. Mateo’s father Javier thanked the doctors and nurses for going above and beyond their professional duty in caring for him: ‘They treated him with a lot of affection, and gave us strength and hope when we needed it.’
Updated
The World Health Organization hopes to give emergency use listing for the AstraZeneca vaccine within two weeks, Soumya Swaminathan, WHO’s chief scientist has said.
We are hopeful that in the next two weeks at the most this should happen. We should have an emergency use listing, providing of course that everything goes to plan and all the data is there and that we can then start receiving doses from the manufacturing sites in India and South Korea.
Mariangela Simao, WHO assistant director for access to medicines and health products, also told reporters the WHO had a team in China to inspect vaccine facilities.
If a vaccine demonstrates it is safe and efficient against the coronavirus, European health authorities must at least review its possible use, Alain Fischer, the immunologist coordinating France’s vaccination strategy, has said.
Fischer made the comments on BFM television after being asked about Hungary agreeing to buy doses of Chinese firm Sinopharm’s vaccine (see 12.33pm), Reuters reports.
Hungary today became the EU’s first member to approve the vaccine, sealing a deal for 5m doses just a week after also becoming the first member member of the bloc to buy Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.
Prime minister Viktor Orban, whose nationalist government often goes against the consensus of its EU neighbours, said he would personally opt to receive the Chinese vaccine, as he trusted it more than others.
On Wednesday, Hungary’s government issued a decree calling for any vaccine that had been administered to at least 1 million people elsewhere in the world to be given emergency approval.
Foreign minister Peter Szijjarto said on his Facebook page that the Sinopharm vaccines would be delivered in four batches over four months. The 5m doses would enable Hungary to inoculate 2.5 million people, about a quarter of its population, he said.
However, the Hungarian Medical Chamber (MOK) said Budapest should continue “to follow drug safety rules in a transparent manner and only approve marketing of products after a review respecting European Medicines Agency rules”.
In Hungary, which has close to 10 million people, 364,909 people have been infected and 12,374 people have died of Covid-19 so far.
Updated
Germany is to impose restrictions on travel from Brazil, Britain, Portugal and South Africa, the countries in which more infectious variants of the coronavirus are in wide circulation, according to a draft government regulation seen by Reuters.
“In addition to existing test and quarantine rules ... a temporary limitation shall be imposed on carriage of travellers from countries designated as regions with variants,” reads the regulation.
Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine approved by EU regulator
The EU’s medicines regulator has authorised AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine for use in adults throughout the bloc, despite concerns that not enough data exist to prove it works in older people.
It is the third Covid-19 vaccine given the green light by the European Medicines Agency, after those made by Pfizer and Moderna. Trials showed a 60% reduction in the number of symptomatic Covid-19 cases in people given the vaccine – 64 of 5,258 got Covid-19 with symptoms, the EMA said, compared to 154 of 5,210 in the control group.
There are not yet enough results in older participants (over 55 years old) to provide a figure for how well the vaccine will work in this group. However, protection is expected, given that an immune response is seen in this age group and based on experience with other vaccines; as there is reliable information on safety in this population
EMA’s scientific experts considered that the vaccine can be used in older adults. More information is expected from ongoing studies, which include a higher proportion of elderly participants.
Emer Cooke, executive director of EMA, said:
With this third positive opinion, we have further expanded the arsenal of vaccines available to EU and EEA member states to combat the pandemic and protect their citizens. As in previous cases, the CHMP has rigorously evaluated this vaccine, and the scientific basis of our work underpins our firm commitment to safeguard the health of EU citizens.
The EMA statement added that vaccine the second dose of the vaccine should be given between 4 and 12 weeks after the first.
The decision requires final approval from the European Commission, a process that occurred swiftly with the other vaccines.
Many older people have already received the first dose of the shot in the UK, with some having received the second too. The country’s medicines regulatory agency also acknowledged the limited data in older people but still cleared the shot last month for all adults, with some caution for pregnant women.
While the AstraZeneca vaccine has been authorised for all adults in other countries, only 12% of the participants in its research were over 55 and they were enrolled later.
In arriving at its decision, the EMA assessed four trials in the UK, Brazil and South Africa. The agency said the research showed the vaccine proved to be about 60% effective by reducing the number of people who got sick. The trials have not yet shown whether the vaccine can stop disease transmission.
The EU bet heavily on the AstraZeneca shot, which is cheaper and easier to handle than some other vaccines, with orders for 300 million doses to be delivered after authorisation and options for another 100 million doses, AP reports.
Yesterday, a draft recommendation from Germany’s vaccination advisory committee said the AstraZeneca vaccine should only be given to people aged 18-64 for now.
Julian Tang, a virologist at the University of Leicester, said he thought any recommendation to limit the vaccine’s use to people under 65 was understandable, but “overly cautious.” He said that although data on the vaccine’s effectiveness in older populations was limited, it was reasonable to extrapolate that it would help protect older people against COVID-19.
The vaccine clearly offers some protection and since the older 65’s are your most vulnerable population, I’d think you want to get some vaccine into them sooner rather than later. If Europe and the Germans want to be nitpicky, they can restrict its use, but I think giving older people this vaccine is better than nothing.
Updated
Leandro Aparecido Ferreira laid bricks and flipped burgers for a living until becoming one of Brazil’s most famous funk musicians.
This year, the 26-year-old – whose stage name is MC Fioti – has added a new and unexpected string to his bow: as an unlikely champion of science and vaccinology in a country being pounded by coronavirus.
A remix of Fioti’s biggest hit – celebrating Covid inoculation and boasting a music video shot at one of Brazil’s top biomedical research centres – has become a viral sensation, notching up millions of YouTube views and sparking a nationwide outpouring of emotion.
“I’m still trying to get my head around everything that’s happened but I can see I quit my job in that fast-food restaurant to make history,” the rapper said this week as his “vaccine anthem” made headlines and playlists around the world.
Spread of Covid-19 pandemic slows down in every region of the world this week
The pace of the pandemic slackened in every region of the world for the second week in a row, with an average of 11% fewer new cases per day, or 564,300, compared to the previous week, according to an AFP tally up to Thursday.
There were 18% fewer cases in Africa, 16% fewer in the United States and Canada, 10% fewer in Europe, eight percent fewer in Latin America and the Caribbean, a decline of seven percent in the Middle East and a drop of five percent in Asia.
This week, Europe and the US/Canada were home to nearly two-thirds, or 65 percent, of the new cases.
On a country level, Kazakhstan is the country where the epidemic is spiking most, with 42% more, or 1,400 new cases per day, among the countries which have registered more than 1,000 daily cases over the past week. The country had also seen a surge the previous week.
Portugal follows with 17% more (12,900 cases), Belgium with 10% more (2,200 cases), Peru with seven percent more (5,300 cases), and the United Arab Emirates with six percent more (3,700).
The biggest decrease was again in Ireland with 43% fewer, or 1,500 new cases per day, after a comparable decrease the week before.
Tunisia follows with 33% fewer or 1,900 cases, South Africa down 32% or 8,100, Denmark down 30% or 700 cases, and Britain down 29% or 28,600 cases.
Nearly 1 million Russian citizens have received Covid-19 vaccine doses as part of a programme aimed at reaching 20m vaccinations by April, Reuters reports.
The country’s mass inoculation drive with the domestically produced Sputnik V vaccine began in December for certain groups and was then opened up to the general population in early January.
Updated
The Swiss pharmaceuticals company Novartis has agreed to help produce the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, AFP reports.
The two-dose vaccine is in limited supply as nations around the world race to immunise their populations against the coronavirus, which has killed nearly 2.2 million people in just over a year.
Once a final agreement is reached, Novartis plans to begin production in spring, with the vaccine ready to be shipped in autumn.
The rare act of cooperation – in an industry usually marked by cut-throat competition – comes after the French pharma group Sanofi announced earlier this week it would also team up with rivals Pfizer and BioNTech to help produce 125m doses of their jab.
Updated
The UK is confident it will receive sufficient Covid-19 vaccine doses to keep its programme on track despite a dispute between the European Union and the drugmaker AstraZeneca, Reuters reports.
The EU commission head, Ursula von der Leyen, has demanded that AstraZeneca deliver contracted vaccine supplies from Britain to EU states, and has dismissed the notion that the UK should have first rights to doses produced there.
The EU has warned drug companies that it would use all legal means or even block exports unless they agreed to deliver shots as promised.
The bloc published its contract with AstraZeneca on Friday, which said the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker should use facilities in Britain as well as continental Europe in its best efforts to manufacture its vaccines for the EU.
Boris Johnson’s spokesman said on Friday the government would not discuss contractual matters. But he said the government expected contracts to be “facilitated” and he was confident of its supply.
Updated
Here’s analysis from the Guardian’s international correspondent Michael Safi on what the success of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine means for poorer countries.
This week has seen a strong focus on the need for vaccines to be widely distributed to end the pandemic sooner, reduce the economic toll and make it less likely that dangerous new mutations emerge.
On that metric, the successful results of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine is good news for poorer countries. It is a hardy formulation that can be stored for two years at -20C, and three months at room temperature, meaning it is within reach for places that do not have advanced cold-chain storage networks. It also requires just one shot to be effective, meaning significantly more people can be protected with smaller batches than those needed for other vaccines, who require two doses about three weeks apart.
Covax, an alliance that aims to distribute vaccines equally around the world, says it has a non-binding memorandum of understanding for about 500m doses of the Johnson & Johnson shot. How many of those shots it will receive, and at what schedule, is a key question – as we’ve seen in Europe, there is often a gap between what is delivered and what is promised in contracts, let alone non-binding memoranda of understanding. Covax aims to get the bulk of those half-a-million doses in the second half of this year, but it may face delays if the pharmaceutical giant chooses to fulfil its bilateral deals first or if production capacity is less and slower than expected.
Johnson & Johnson has said it will sell its vaccine on a not-for-profit basis, saying it would go for approximately $10 (£7.20)/dose during the course of the pandemic. That is more expensive than several of the other vaccines being produced, though the price is unlikely to be prohibitive.
Updated
Mozambique’s president, Filipe Nyusi, has warned that southern Africa’s hospitals are struggling with a second coronavirus wave partly driven by a new variant that emerged in South Africa last year, AFP reports.
Speaking as chairperson of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Nyusi said the region was “deep into the second wave of the pandemic” and urged members to step up efforts to curb outbreaks.
The 16-member bloc now accounts for more than half of Africa’s new daily infection figures.
The variant identified by South African health officials in December is thought to be more contagious than the earlier forms of coronavirus. It has so far been detected in six African nations.
Updated
Kenya said on Friday it was seeking an extra 11m doses of Covid-19 vaccines, on top of the 24m already ordered with a view to inoculating 16 million people by June next year, Reuters reports.
The East African nation of more than 50 million people aims to vaccinate 1.25 million in phase one of the campaign by June this year, a senior health ministry official, Mercy Mwangangi, told reporters. This would cover health and care-home workers as well as security and immigration personnel.
As wealthier nations race ahead with mass immunisation campaigns, Africa is scrambling to obtain supplies for its 1.3 billion people. Only a few nations on the continent have begun administering vaccines.
This is Rachel Hall taking over from Mattha Busby. Do send any thoughts or tips to rachel.hall@theguardian.com or DM me on Twitter.
Updated
Italy is expected to announce an easing of regional coronavirus restrictions, AFP reports.
Veneto, the region around Venice, was set to be downgraded from an “orange” to a “yellow” zone, which would allow the daytime reopening of bars and restaurants and greater freedom to travel.
A similar change was on the cards for Calabria in the south and Emilia-Romagna in the north, according to La Repubblica daily. The move would come as other countries in Europe are mulling hardening restrictions.
The World Health Organization’s European branch warned yesterday it was “too early to ease up” due to a “still very high” presence of the virus.
“Yes, Italy is bucking the trend,” said Walter Ricciardi, a public health expert who advises Italy’s health minister on the pandemic.
He told AFP lockdown measures adopted in Italy over Christmas and New Year helped stabilise virus numbers, without lowering them. Nevertheless, “right now it is extremely difficult to propose stricter measures due to resistance from both politicians and public opinion”, Ricciardi said.
France, meanwhile, is looking at a third lockdown, with President Emmanuel Macron expected to make an announcement on new measures over the weekend or on Monday.
Updated
Deaths on French roads dropped to their lowest level since World War II last year as Covid-19 restrictions sharply reduced car traffic, the national road safety agency has said, AFP reports.
A total of 2,550 people died on the roads of mainland France, a drop of 21.4 percent from 2019. The Sécurité Routière agency said the fall was recorded in “exceptional” circumstances brought about by restrictions on movement due to the coronavirus pandemic, which had “a massive impact on road traffic”.
France imposed two lockdowns in 2020, as well as night-time curfews in areas where coronavirus cases were particularly high. The number of accidents resulting in injury and the number of injured people both fell by around 20 percent, the agency reported.
The number of cyclists killed eased back only marginally, which the agency said was due to a sharp rise in the use of bicycles as people switched from public transport to bikes. The increase in bicycle use was particularly noticeable in non-urban areas where cyclists are more likely to be killed because people tend to drive faster in the countryside, it said.
Updated
The Australian government will make urgent representations to the EU after it threatened to block companies from exporting doses of the Covid-19 vaccine amid problems with AstraZeneca’s international supply chain.
The federal health minister, Greg Hunt, has today confirmed the government would approach both the World Health Organization and the EU to ensure “certainty” for Australia’s vaccine supplies after the European commission threatened to impose export bans on companies manufacturing the shots.
It comes after AstraZeneca told EU officials last week it would cut deliveries of its vaccine by 60% in the first quarter due to production problems. It said the problems stemmed from a production factory in Belgium which is run by a partner company called Novasep.
The company had been expected to deliver about 80m doses to the EU by the end of March but waited until last week to inform the bloc that it would have to reduce that to 31m doses.
The disclosure prompted the Australian government to admit it would not receive as much of the drug as quickly as expected.
Updated
Johnson & Johnson says single-dose vaccine works against Covid
Johnson & Johnson has said its single-dose vaccine was 72% effective in preventing Covid-19 in the US but a lower rate of 66% was observed globally in the large trial conducted across three continents and against multiple variants, Reuters reports.
In the trial of nearly 44,000 volunteers, the level of protection against moderate and severe Covid-19 was 66% in Latin America and just 57% in South Africa, where a particularly worrying variant of the novel coronavirus is circulating.
Those results compare to the high bar set by two authorised vaccines from Pfizer Inc/BioNTech SE and Moderna Inc, which were around 95% effective in preventing symptomatic illness in pivotal trials when given in two doses. Those trials, however, were conducted mainly in the United States and before the broad spread of new variants now under the spotlight.
J&J’s main study goal was the prevention of moderate to severe Covid-19, and the vaccine was 85% effective in stopping severe disease and preventing hospitalisation across all geographies and against multiple variants 28 days after immunisation.
In the trial of nearly 44,000 volunteers, the level of protection against moderate and severe Covid-19 was 66% in Latin America and just 57% in South Africa, where a particularly worrying variant of the novel coronavirus is circulating.
Those results compare to the high bar set by two authorised vaccines from Pfizer Inc/BioNTech SE and Moderna Inc, which were around 95% effective in preventing symptomatic illness in pivotal trials when given in two doses. Those trials, however, were conducted mainly in the United States and before the broad spread of new variants now under the spotlight.
J&J’s main study goal was the prevention of moderate to severe Covid-19, and the vaccine was 85% effective in stopping severe disease and preventing hospitalisation across all geographies and against multiple variants 28 days after immunisation.
Updated
Epidemiologists in Greece are reportedly recommending that restrictions eased only last week to enable the country’s retail sector to reopen must now be rolled back after a new surge in coronavirus cases.
Shops were allowed to open their doors after more than two months of being closed as part of a national lockdown that came into effect on 7 November.
But local media say several new measures, including the return of the click away and click- in-shop systems, are now being mulled in a meeting of infectious disease experts.
The sight of congested shops in the capital, home to almost half the country’s 11 million population, had increasingly prompted speculation of crowd controls returning.
Allowing people to move around according to the last digit on their identity cards is another measure also being considered along with extending a nightly curfew from 6pm to 5am.
The measures, due to be formally announced this evening, have triggered alarm among those working in the retail sector amid warnings of mass bankruptcies. In the hospitality sector alone, an estimated 80,000 restaurants have been forced to close on account of the pandemic despite the centre-right government weighing in with financial support.
A sharp rise in infection rates in the greater Athens district has spurred fears of already overstretched health authorities having to handle a third wave of the pandemic.
On Thursday the Public Health Organisation, EODY, said 716 diagnoses had been confirmed – almost double those on Monday – in what has been a worrying upward trend. Athens in particular has been branded a “red zone” with the western parts of the capital hard hit.
Despite the Greece’s deputy education minister, Zeta Makri, announcing earlier that high schools in “red zones” would not be reopened as planned, this Monday (see 10.14am), local news outlets reported that experts advising the government were considering allowing junior high schools to open. Schoolchildren, from as young as four, have been long-distance learning since November as a result of curbs to stem the spread of Covid-19.
Updated
The row between the EU and AstraZeneca has contributed to the FTSE 100 falling and being set to record its worst week since October.
Reuters reports:
The blue-chip FTSE 100 index dropped 0.9%, with energy and mining stocks being top drags for the week, while the mid-cap index fell 0.7%.
Drugmaker AstraZeneca fell 3.6% for the week and was one of the top drags on the blue-chip index on Friday, as a tussle with the EU on vaccine rollouts continued to weigh on the stock.
“Clearly, there have been a few new concerns with the relationship with the European Union on the vaccine in recent days and that hurt the markets. It has also led people to take some profits,” said Chris Bailey, a strategist at Raymond James.
Updated
Vietnam’s health minister has said that a new Covid-19 outbreak was “basically under control” in the areas most affected, as cases spread to Hanoi, the capital, where the ruling Communist party is holding its five-yearly congress, Reuters reports.
The health minister, Nguyen Thanh Long, told reporters that 3,674 tests had been conducted, adding that testing capacity was 50,000 a day, and the outbreak was under control in areas where the most cases had been found. “In a very short period of time, we’ve controlled the situation and I see a ray of hope,” Long said.
Vietnam has been one of the world’s virus mitigation success stories. Its total number of cases since the coronavirus was first detected in Vietnam a year ago stands at 1,695, including imported cases, with 35 deaths.
Vietnam reported 53 new cases today (see 10.39am), including one in Hanoi and eight in nearby Haiphong city and Hai Duong, Quang Ninh and Bac Ninh provinces. That brought the total number of cases in the outbreak that began on Thursday to 149, the government said in a statement.
Updated
The Spanish airport operator Aena will lease out areas for Covid-19 testing clinics in 15 airport departure lounges, including in Madrid and Barcelona, the company has said, as it seeks to help facilitate travel in the pandemic era, Reuters reports.
The diagnostic facilities will provide quick PCR, antigenic and serological tests to detect both active infections and the presence of Covid-19 antibodies, and will have isolation areas for travellers awaiting their results.
Aena will launch the service in airports with the highest volume of international flights, or serving Spain’s key tourism hubs, such as Malaga and Seville on the Costa del Sol, the Balearic Islands’ Mallorca, Ibiza and Menorca airports, as well as the Canary Islands’ four main airports.
The testing clinics will be set up for an initial six-month period, although the contracts – signed primarily with the laboratory testing and diagnostics company Eurofins – can be extended until the end of 2021.
“The clinics will be in departure lounges ... [for] passengers who will need [tests] in their destination airports, not for those who land in our airports, who will need to bring their tests from their places of origin to pass the health controls in place since May across our network,” the company said in a statement.
The state-owned operator said it hoped the new service would facilitate tourism, as continued restrictions on mobility hurt the industry, which is vital to Spain’s economy. Over 2020, a year in which global travel was dramatically curtailed, tourism accounted for just 4-5% of Spain’s GDP, according to estimates from the Funcas analyst Maria Jesus Fernandez. That compares with a 12% share in 2019.
Updated
Elsewhere, Hungary, which last week became the first EU member to buy Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, has become the bloc’s first to approve China’s Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine, Reuters reports.
Prime minister Viktor Orban told state radio his government was closely monitoring the outcome of mass inoculations with the vaccine in neighbouring Serbia. Orban also said he would personally choose the Chinese vaccine as he trusted it the most.
“Today the OGYEI (Hungarian drug regulator) has issued the permission to use the Sinopharm vaccine as well, so after Pfizer, Moderna, Astra Zeneca and the Russian Sputnik vaccine, we can also count on the Sinopharm shot,” surgeon general Cecilia Muller told a briefing.
Hungary, which has often gone its own way in its migration and economic policies in the EU, has opted to acquire vaccinations from Russia and China in order to speed up its vaccination drive.
In the country of close to 10 million people, a total of 364,909 people have been infected and 12,374 people have died of Covid so far, according to government data.
Even though new infections have been dropping, more than 3600 people are in hospital still, straining the healthcare system, so the government has extended restrictions until March 1. These include a 7pm GMT night curfew, and all restaurants and cafes are closed except for takeaway meals.
This month, Serbia received one million doses of Sinopharm’s Covid-19 vaccine, becoming the first European country to start a mass inoculation programme with it.
More on the EU/AstraZeneca contract saga: Brussels has insisted that UK manufacturing plants should be used to help supply doses of the AstraZeneca jab to the EU.
Eric Mamer, the chief spokesman for the European commission, said:
We have always said that indeed there are a number of plants which are mentioned in the contract we have with AstraZeneca, some of which are located in the UK, and it is foreseen that these plants will contribute to the effort of AstraZeneca to deliver doses to the European Union.
There is absolutely no question for us that this is what the contract specifies.
Updated
Just to recap on what was reported this morning (see 6.54am), EU commission head Ursula von der Leyen urged AstraZeneca to fulfil its obligations and said it had paid the company in advance.
“There are binding orders and the contract is crystal clear,” she told Deutschlandfunk radio, adding that it contained the amount of doses for December and the first three quarters of 2021.
The EU, whose member states are far behind Israel, the UK and the US in rolling out vaccines, is scrambling to get supplies just as the west’s biggest drugmakers slow deliveries to the bloc due to production problems.
AstraZeneca said last week it would cut deliveries in the first quarter due to production issues at a Belgian factory. An EU official said that meant the EU would receive 31m doses in the period, or 60% less than initially agreed.
In a bid to break the deadlock, AstraZeneca offered 8m more doses of its shot to the EU, but the bloc said that was too far short of what was originally promised, an EU official told Reuters.
Under a contract agreed in August, the company should have supplied at least 80m doses to the EU in that period, the official said, and possibly even 120m “depending on how you read the contract”.
The AstraZeneca chief executive, Pascal Soriot, said earlier this week that the EU contract was based on a “best-effort” clause and did not commit the company to a specific timetable.
He has also said the EU was late to strike a supply contract so the company did not have enough time to iron out production problems at a vaccine factory run by a partner in Belgium.
However, Von der Leyen said the “best-effort” clause was only valid as long as it was not clear whether AstraZeneca could develop a vaccine. She also said commitments with other buyers should not affect the order in which supplies are delivered.
Meanwhile, the UK said today it could not publish details of its AstraZeneca Covid-19 supply contract because it would jeopardise national security.
Updated
The EU has claimed AstraZeneca has not kept to its promises, but the drug company has been rebutting this and pointing to the contract. And here’s the passage.
Under paragraph 1.9, headlined “Best Reasonable Efforts means”, it says:
(a) in the case of AstraZeneca, the activities and degree of effort that a company of similar size with a similarly-sized infrastructure and similar resources as AstraZenece would undertake or use in the development and manufacture of a Vaccine at the relevant stage of development or commercialization having regard to the urgent need for a Vaccine to end a global pandemic which is resulting in serious public health issues, restrictions on personal freedoms and economic impact, across the world but taking into account efficacy and safety; and
(b) in the case of the Commission and the Participating Member States, the activities and degree of effort that government would undertake or use in supporting their contractor in the development of the Vaccine having regard to the urgent need for a Vaccine to end a global pandemic which is resulting in serious public health issues, restrictions on personal freedoms and economic impact, across the world.
“Best reasonable efforts”... defined... contract included the UK as EU manufacturing for purposes of a clause seeking to keep manufacture mainly in Europe... pic.twitter.com/R3C8yyOiOJ
— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) January 29, 2021
Leave it to the lawyers - but it seems 5.1 mandates AZ to manufacture “initial Europe doses” within EU and that the reference to the UK being considered as EU manufacture is specifically limited to 5.4... pic.twitter.com/YP7RnkRv19
— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) January 29, 2021
Under paragraph 5.4, the contract states under the heading “Manufacturing Sites”:
AstraZeneca shall use its Best Reasonable Efforts to manufacture the vaccine at manufacturing sites located in the EU (which, for the purpose of this section 5.4 only shall include the United Kingdom).
This seems to be the paragraph Ursula von der Leyen meant when she said the contract contained a clause stipulating that two out of AstraZeneca’s four vaccine factories are in the UK and should be included in deliveries to the EU (h/t my colleague Jedidajah Otte).
Updated
AstraZeneca publishes redacted vaccine contract with EU
AstraZeneca has published its Covid-19 vaccine contract with the European commission amid a row over cuts in supplies, Reuters reports.
The contract was signed on 27 August. The published version contains redacted parts related to some information including invoices and volumes of promised deliveries.
The EU executive said in its statement:
The commission welcomes the company’s commitment towards more transparency in its participation in the rollout of the EU vaccines strategy.
Transparency and accountability are important to help build the trust of European citizens and to make sure that they can rely on the effectiveness and safety of the vaccines purchased at the EU level.
The commission hopes to be able to publish all contracts under the Advance Purchase Agreements in the near future.
AstraZeneca and the EU had signed a deal for up to 400m doses of the vaccine. The firm unexpectedly announced cuts in supplies to the region last week, citing production problems at a Belgian factory, triggering a furious response from the bloc.
Updated
Moderna to cut deliveries to Italy by 20%
The US pharmaceutical company Moderna will deliver 20% fewer vaccines to Italy than promised in the week starting 7 February, the country’s special commissioner for Covid has said, Reuters reports.
“Minutes ago, Moderna told us about the cut in the distribution of its vaccines. In the week beginning 7 February, only 132,000 doses will arrive, 20% less than agreed,” Domenico Arcuri said.
Italy, the country with the second highest toll of Covid-19 deaths in Europe after Britain, is also grappling with delays in vaccine deliveries by the US firm Pfizer, to which Rome has already sent a formal warning letter.
“As of today, we are missing 300,000 vaccine doses. Every day there is worse news than the day before. Vaccines are not soft drinks or snacks, they are the only antidote to the dark night that has lasted a year,” Arcuri told a news conference.
He said the decisions on deliveries were being taken unilaterally and without notice. Italy has also asked the European commission to take action against Pfizer, which has said it is slowing supplies to Europe temporarily in order to make changes that will allow it to boost output.
Updated
The number of people confirmed to have died at a hospital in Bucharest, Romania, where Covid patients are among those being treated, has risen to five, authorities have said, Reuters reports.
The fire broke out at about 5am local time on the ground floor of the hospital and forced the evacuation of more than 100 people. Some hospital staff could be seen still wearing protective suits and face masks after rushing out.
An unspecified number of people were injured before firefighters put out the blaze, Romanian emergency services said in a preliminary report. It was not immediately clear what caused the fire.
This is the third such incident in the past several months. A fire at a Covid-19 intensive care unit in north Romania last November killed 10 people and another at a psychiatric hospital in the same region the following month killed one more person.
“We found open flame at the ground floor of the building ... There was a lot of smoke, and there was a chance the fire would spread to the second floor,” said Orlando Schiopu, the fire commander at the scene.
Updated
German health minister expects EMA not to recommend AstraZeneca vaccine to over-65s
Germany’s health minister has said he expects the EU’s drug regulator to authorise the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine today, but that he expected the bloc to follow the German public health body in not recommending it for older adults due to a lack of clinical data, AP reports.
Jens Spahn said authorities are waiting to see what advice the European Medicines Agency issues with regard to vaccinations for people over 65, and Germany would then adjust its own guidance for doctors in the country: “We don’t expect an unrestricted approval.”
Questions remain about how well the AstraZeneca vaccine protects older people. Only 12% of the participants in the AstraZeneca research were over 55 and they were enrolled later, so there hasn’t been enough time to get results.
Yesterday, a draft recommendation from Germany’s vaccination advisory committee said the AstraZeneca vaccine should only be given to people aged 18-64 for now. Britain’s medicines regulatory agency also acknowledged the limited data in older people when it cleared the shot last month for people over 18.
The shot would be the third Covid-19 vaccine given the green light by the EMA, after ones made by Pfizer and Moderna. Those were authorised for all adults.
Spahn’s comments come amid a bitter dispute between AstraZeneca and the 27-nation bloc over delayed supplies. Earlier this week, the 27-nation EU lashed out at AstraZeneca after the British-Swedish drugmaker said it would sharply reduce initial deliveries from 80m doses to 31m, blaming manufacturing problems. The EU has threatened to stop any vaccines made in Europe from leaving its borders.
It’s Mattha Busby here taking over from Ben Quinn. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to everyone reading across the world. Please get in touch on Twitter or on email (mattha.busby.freelance@guardian.co.uk) with any tips or thoughts.
Updated
The poorest countries are missing out on adequate doses of vaccines – and the health implications should concern everyone, warns the executive director of UNAids and UN under-secretary general.
Winnie Byanyima writes in the Guardian that nine out of 10 people living in the poorest countries are poised to miss out on a vaccine this year.
Production delays put even this figure in doubt. Unjustifiably high prices block access and threaten to push more countries into an ever-deeper debt crisis. If we continue to pursue the vaccine model we have, we will fail to get this pandemic under control for years to come.
Failure to change course will come at the cost of millions of lives and livelihoods around the world; to our progress on tackling poverty; to businesses, including those represented here at the World Economic Forum this week; and to our collective public health and economic security. Make no mistake, the costs of vaccine inequality will not be confined to those living in the poorest countries.
Updated
The global vaccine sharing scheme Covax plans to ship enough Covid-19 shots to cover about 3% of the populations of low-income countries in the first half of this year, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) official.
Covax, co-led by the Gavi vaccine alliance, the WHO and others, wants to deliver at least 2bn doses across the world this year, and said as many as 1.8bn doses would be available to 92 poorer countries, which would correspond to approximately 27% coverage in those countries.
But it has struggled to secure enough shots due to a shortage of funds, while production problems and bilateral deals between wealthy countries and drugmakers have raised concerns over unequal distribution.
Diah Saminarsih, a senior adviser to the director-general of WHO, told Reuters in an interview that the 92 countries were likely to get enough vaccines for 3% of their populations by the end of the first half.
It comes as the WHO director-general, Tedros Adhanom, has been lobbying to ensure that “vaccine equity” remains an international priority.
Just met with Francophone Ambassadors in Geneva to discuss #VaccinEquity. We must #ACTogether as one 🌍 family to prioritize those most at risk of severe #COVID19 disease & death in all countries. I thank 🇨🇦 Amb @LeslieENorton & @OIFrancophonie Rep Nakseu Ngfang for their support
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) January 29, 2021
Updated
Vietnam has reported 53 more Covid-19 infections on Friday as a new outbreak spreads to the capital Hanoi, where the ruling Communist party is holding its key five-yearly congress.
Of the new cases, 47 were detected in Hai Duong province, the epicentre of the outbreak, the government said in a statement on its website.
The remaining were found in nearby Quang Ninh, Hanoi and Bac Ninh provinces, it said, adding that 149 people have tested positive to the virus in the outbreak which began on Thursday.
Updated
Public health officials in Ireland have rejected a “zero-Covid” strategy as as impractical and risky.
In what the Irish Times described as an unusually forthright criticism, members of Ireland’s National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) said that advocates of the strategy of making “false promises” that an end to lockdown can be achieved soon through virus elimination.
“It is an utterly false promise to say we can go to Level 0 or 1 in the space of weeks or months,” Prof Philip Nolan, chair of Nphet’s epidemiological modelling advisory group, said on Thursday evening
“That won’t happen, and it would be an incredibly risky thing to do because we will inevitably be a leaky country and get reintroduction of disease, and that could easily be new variants.”
The strategy has been proposed by Irish opposition politicians, but has also been championed elsewhere.
Prominent advocates of the approach in the UK include Devi Sridhar, professor of global public health at Edinburgh University and a member of the Scottish Government’s Covid-19 Advisory Group, who has also pointed out the need for cross border co-operation were such a strategy to be pursued.
Ireland can’t do zero COVID without N.Ireland which can’t do it without Scotland which can’t do it without England which can’t do it without Wales. The two islands are tied together and have to cooperate to make elimination happen. https://t.co/JVD7DZFSzS
— Prof. Devi Sridhar (@devisridhar) July 15, 2020
Public Health experts also argued for the strategy in the Guardian on Thursday, listing 16 reasons why they think all countries should at least consider an elimination approach:
Updated
Greece postpones school reopenings amid infections rise
Greece has postponed plans to reopen all high schools next month following a fresh rise in Covid-19 infections, saying schools in critical “red zones” would continue with distance learning.
Athens said last week it would let high schools reopen on 1 February for the first time in more than two months as pressure on its public health system had eased in the last few weeks.
“High schools in red zones will continue to teach lessons from distance,” the deputy education minister, Zeta Makri, said in an interview with state TV ERT.
Parts of northern Greece and West Attica are the regions suffering most from a fresh surge in Covid-19 cases, which have doubled since the beginning of the week.
Updated
The Miami Heat basketball team is to employ dogs to sniff out the virus among fans attending games. But sports fans and others are wondering if dogs could be trained in time to work at other major set piece events, including the Super Bowl?
Nearly 100 million people are expected to watch Super Bowl LV in Tampa, the first time the big game has been held during a pandemic (the World Series has survived two). But only 22,000 of those viewers, 7,500 of them vaccinated healthcare workers, will be in actual attendance, representing just one-third the capacity of Raymond James Stadium.
But an unconventional solution may be in the works, reports Jonathan Gelber for the Guardian.
Recently, the Miami Heat announced they are trying a new tactic to screen fans beyond the now familiar temperature checks and questionnaires.
The NBA franchise will employ Covid-19 sniffing dogs. While the idea may seem far-fetched, there is some basis in science and actual application. Dogs have been employed to sniff out drugs and explosives and even some medical conditions such as cancer.
Updated
Malaysia has reported 5,725 new coronavirus cases, the highest daily increase since the start of the pandemic a year ago.
The new cases took the cumulative total of infections past the 200,000 mark. Health authorities also reported 16 deaths, raising total fatalities to 733.
There is some stark reportage from Reuters on the approach take towards a shortage of vaccine doses in the EU, where a doctor likened the situation to “Russian roulette”.
Laurent Fignon, a geriatric doctor in the south of France, is having to improvise as he gives shots of the Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech to care home residents and health staff because supplies of the right needles and syringes are short.
Getting the full six doses from vials of the Pfizer/BioNTech shot – as allowed this month by the European Union’s health regulator – requires needles that are both thin enough to minimise waste and long enough to deliver the jab, as required, into the recipient’s shoulder muscle.
Fignon’s hospital in the Mediterranean resort of Cannes was sent needles from the French public health authority that were too short, he said, forcing it to hunt locally for supplies. Other nearby hospitals got the right needles and were generous enough to share some.
“To us, it looks like Russian roulette,” Fignon told Reuters. “You do not know what you will be getting.”
Similar shortages are cropping up elsewhere in Europe, complicating a stuttering start to vaccination efforts that have been compounded by warnings from Pfizer and AstraZeneca , its Anglo-Swedish peer, that they will not be able to meet vaccine supply commitments in the near term.
Updated
EU medicines regulator updates on Pfizer vaccine safety
The Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus jab has no link to reported post-vaccination deaths and no new side effects, the EU’s medicines regulator has said.
The European Medicines Agency said it had looked at the deaths, including a number in the elderly, and “concluded that the data did not show a link to vaccination with Comirnaty (the vaccine) and the cases do not raise a safety concern.”
In its first safety update since the EU started its vaccination campaign in December, the Amsterdam-based EMA said that data “is consistent with the known safety profile of the vaccine, and no new side effects were identified.”
Reports of occasional severe allergic reactions did not go beyond what had already been found about this “known side effect”, it added.
“The benefits of Comirnaty in preventing Covid-19 continue to outweigh any risks, and there are no recommended changes regarding the use of the vaccine,” the EMA said.
The EU watchdog has so far approved two vaccines, by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna.
It is set to give its verdict on a third, by AstraZeneca, later today.
A World Health Organization team has visited a hospital where China says the first Covid-19 patients were treated more than a year ago as part of the experts’ long-awaited fact-finding mission on the origins of the coronavirus.
The WHO team members and Chinese officials earlier had their first in-person meetings at a hotel, which WHO has said were to be followed by field visits in the central city of Wuhan.
“First face to face meeting with our colleagues. Correction: facemask to facemask given the medical restrictions,” Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans tweeted.
“Discussing our visiting program. China teamleader prof Wannian joking about some technical glitches. Nice to see our colleagues after lengthy Zoom meetings,” Koopman tweeted, referring apparently to top Chinese epidemiologist Liang Wannian, who has been a leader of China’s response team.
Another team member, Peter Daszak, tweeted: “Extremely important 1st site visit. We are in the hospital that treated some of the first known cases of COVID-19, meeting with the actual clinicians & staff who did this work, having open discussion about the details of their work.”
The singer and activist, Charlotte Church, has said she is “disappointed” that the British government has not done more for the arts in the pandemic.
A £1.57 billion ‘Culture Recovery Fund’ has been launched to save cultural institutions on the brink of collapse but Church said more help is needed.
She told Good Morning Britain, a morning television show, that the arts are important “not just from an economic standpoint (as)... the fastest growing industry in the whole of the UK... but vastly important for our wellbeing and for our entire culture”.
“So I’m really disappointed with the way the Government has treated the arts, especially the retrain scheme which I just found quite insulting... the idea if you’re an artist of any type, just retrain,” she told the ITV show.
Charlotte Church on ‘Good Morning Britain.’ Photograph: ITV/REX/Shutterstock
An ad campaign had suggested a ballet dancer could “reboot” their career by moving in to cyber security
The poster - one of a series which featured people from a variety of other professions - was heavily criticised on social media and was scrapped after Britain’s culture minister described it as “crass”.
The First Minister of the devolved administration in Wales has said teachers would only be prioritised for a vaccine if an official regulatory panel changed its advice.
Referring to Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), Mark Drakeford said: “We follow the advice of the JCVI. If the committee tell us to prioritise teachers, that is what we will do.”
“While its advice remains that the top nine priority groups should be the focus of our attention, that is what we will do.
“If the advice were to change, then we would follow the changed advice,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today:
Asked about the prospect of the UK sharing some of its vaccine supplies with the European Union, Drakeford said negotiation was required.
He added: “The disputes across the European Union, they need to be resolved by careful talking and proper negotiation and in that way we can make sure we get the supplies we need and others will be able to catch up with where we are in the United Kingdom today.”
The makers of Russia’s Sputnik vaccine have delved into the ongoing row over vaccine shortages in Europe by tweeting that it can provide tens of millions of doses to the European Union.
After completion of the main part of mass vaccination in Russia, RDIF can provide EU with 100 mln doses of #SputnikV vaccine for 50 mln people in Q2 2021 (subject to EMA approval). Sputnik V is registered in 15 countries and documents have been submitted for EMA rolling review. pic.twitter.com/27Ncwns24n
— Sputnik V (@sputnikvaccine) January 29, 2021
Hungary has already licensed Russia’s coronavirus vaccine, breaking ranks with other EU countries and ignoring calls to stick to a common European vaccine policy.
Sputnik was developed and trialled at breakneck speed, leading some scientists to fear that a desire to be first in the international vaccine race was taking precedence over proper testing.
Stanley Erck, CEO of Novavax, has said numbers show ‘dramatic demonstrations’ of the new vaccine’s ability to develop an immune response against different strains of Covid-19.
Russia has reported 19,238 new Covid-19 cases, including 2,799 in Moscow, taking the national tally to 3,813,048 since the pandemic began.
Authorities said 534 people had died of COVID in the last 24 hours, pushing the official death toll to 72,185.
Updated
AstraZeneca has offered the European Union eight million more doses of its Covid-19 vaccine this quarter, which the EU has deemed inadequate because it would still leave a large shortfall from what was originally expected, an EU official has told Reuters.
Last week the Anglo-Swedish firm unexpectedly announced cuts in supplies to the EU, citing production problems at a Belgian factory. EU officials said that meant a 60 percet cut to 31 million doses in the period to end-March.
The EU official, who was directly involved in talks with the company, told Reuters that AstraZeneca had later offered to increase deliveries to possibly 39 million doses in the first quarter, which the EU considered insufficient.
Under a contract agreed in August the company should have supplied at least 80 million doses to the EU in that period, the official said, and possibly even 120 million “depending on how you read the contract”.
The French economy plunged into a deep recession last year as the coronavirus pandemic slashed total output by 8.3 percent, official figures showed today.
The figures were however slightly better than the 9.0 percent shrinkage initially indicated by the official statistics office INSEE as France suffered less in the latter part of the year from a second coronavirus lockdown.
The French economy contracted by a relatively modest 1.3 percent in the last three months of 2020.
The government for its part had estimated the economy would shrink by a much worse 11 percent for the year.
The head of Britain’s vaccine taskforce, which was charged with securing supplies for the UK, has said that she doesn’t believe that a row involving the EU and AstraZeneca will result in an export ban on vaccines from the union.
“I just don’t believe it will ever come to that. We have worked very co-operatively the European union,” said Kate Bingham, adding that it was crucial for the UK and EU to instead work on developing “tweaks” to vaccines that will inevitably needed for Covid-19 variants.
Authorities and companies needed to improve the vaccine formats because two injections delivered by health care professionals was not an efficient way of delivering vaccines, she said on BBC Radio 4. The new formats could include pills and patches.
Bingham was asked about fears that millions of doses of coronavirus vaccine could be blocked from entering Britain from the EU within days after Brussels said it had to respond to shortages emerging in member states.
Following reports of a lack of doses across the bloc, the European commission announced plans to give national regulators the power to reject export requests. The development raises concerns over the continued flow of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, for which the UK has a 40m-dose order, from its plant in Belgium.
Britain had been successful in pushing ahead with vaccine supply, in comparison with other countries, because efforts to “scale up” the AstraZeneca vaccine, developed with Oxford University, had started very early last year.
Updated
Vaccines dominate on the front pages of newspapers in Britain this morning, with the news last night about Novavax coming in time for editions
THE SUN: Union Vacc #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/CI9jgnJfqj
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) January 28, 2021
THE TIMES: PM insists Oxford jab does work on over 65’s #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/NDck0fr1D0
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) January 28, 2021
DAILY MAIL: ANOTHER shot in the arm for Britain! #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/nSOCSq4TXV
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) January 28, 2021
The Daily Telegraph leads with allegations by Conservative politicians that Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of the Scottish government was “siding with the EU” after she pledged to publish vaccine supply data.
Tomorrow’s Telegraph front page: “Sturgeon accused of siding with EU on jabs”
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) January 28, 2021
Read here: https://t.co/k34l23huGi#TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/bSVXdjk8h8
Britain will not publish vaccine supply data for security reasons, a junior minister said, although the Scottish government said it would do so.
“The government isn’t hiding anything at all and my understanding is that that’s for security reasons,” prisons minister Lucy Frazer told the BBC this morning asked why the government was not publishing the data.
The EU’s contract with AstraZeneca for its Covid-19 vaccine contains binding orders, EU Commision Head Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday, demanding a plausible explanation from the drugmaker for delivery hold-ups.
A member of the World Health Organisation team in China to probe the origins of Covid-19 has been tweeting that they are on their first visit to the city of Wuhan now.
The team are in China to interview people from research institutes, hospitals and a seafood market linked to the initial outbreak last year.
Heading over the famous Yangste River on our first site visit in Wuhan. pic.twitter.com/gGgx9pVFO6
— Peter Daszak (@PeterDaszak) January 29, 2021
A senior scientist in the Novavax trials has said he believed that vaccines could be adapted “at pace” to target new variants of coronavirus after the company’s jab was found to be effective against the so-called ‘Kent variant,’ a strain which was identified int the south east of England..
Professor Paul Heath, Phase 3 Chief Investigator for the Novavax vaccine, told BBC Radio 4’s Today : “I think the technology we have both with this vaccine, the Novavax technology, and the other vaccines, it is such that they can adapt quickly so we can expect to see, if required, new vaccines or bivalent vaccines, where two different strains are joined together in the one vaccine.
“And that now can be done at pace so that we can keep up with these variants should they prove to be difficult to prevent with the vaccine that we have at the moment.
“We’ve seen for the UK that the UK variant can be successfully prevented with this vaccine, which is great. Yes, the South African variant is more difficult and hopefully there will not be more variants but we may expect to see some as time goes on.”
Surplus Covid-19 vaccines have been given to healthy young people in parts of England and some GPs have “run out” of eligible patients to vaccinate in the scramble to inoculate the country.
While supplies have been cut in some areas, one GP in the Midlands told the Guardian he had “hundreds of unused vaccines” which he is not allowed to use, having already inoculated all priority patients.
Other vaccination centres have taken a more liberal approach, inviting younger patients for jabs at the end of the day if they find themselves with surplus doses of the Pfizer vaccine, which has a shelf life of three days.
Currently, only four groups are eligible for vaccines in England: the over-70s, the clinically extremely vulnerable, care home residents and frontline health and social care workers.
There is more coming out from that interview on German radio in which EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said that the union’s contract with AstraZeneca contains binding orders.
Demanding a plausible explanation from the drugmaker for delivery hold-ups.
Von der Leyen told Deutschlandfunk radio the best-effort delivery cause in the contract was only valid as long as it was not clear whether AstraZeneca could develop a vaccine.
It appears that she also mentioned two production facilities in Great Britain which she said were intended for the production of the vaccine for the EU,
“How you manage it is up to you,” she added.
Her comments come as it is feared that millions of doses of coronavirus vaccine could be blocked from entering Britain from the EU within days after Brussels said it had to respond to shortages emerging in member states.
Following reports of a lack of doses across the bloc, the European commission announced plans to give national regulators the power to reject export requests.
The development raises concerns over the continued flow of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, for which the UK has a 40m-dose order, from its plant in Belgium.
Good morning from London, where this is Ben Quinn picking up the blog now. Vaccines continue to feature heavily in news from the UK and the rest of Europe after it was announced that a new vaccine from Novavax has been shown to be 89% effective in preventing Covid-19.
The vaccine – which will be manufactured in the north east of England as well as at other locations and which has been found to have an 89 percent efficacy in trials - could be approved for use in the UK within weeks as late-stage trials.
But as a focus shifts towards how quickly coronavirus vaccines can be deployed across Europe almost a year on since the pandemic spread to this part of the world, the societal and economic costs continue to be grave.
Britain’s economy is suffering the most damage since the first wave of Covid-19 as persistently high infection rates and renewed lockdown measures delay the economic recovery from the pandemic, according to a Guardian analysis.
I’ll continue to bring you coverage from around the globe, as well as from here in the UK this morning. Events later today include (at local time):
• 9.30am: Results from from a weekly Covid-19 social impacts survey conducted by Britain’s Office of National Statistics (ONS)
• Noon: A weekly ONS Covid-19 infection survey
• 1215am A Welsh Government coronavirus briefing
• 2pm West Midlands Mayor coronavirus briefing;
• The latest ‘R rate’ is expected to be published on Friday afternoon
Also expected later today is an announcement by the the European Medicines Agency on the approved use - or otherwise - of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine across the European Union.
That announcement is coming at a time after the makers of the vaccine and UK government agencies have defended the vaccine’s efficacy after German authorities recommended it should not be used on people aged 65 or above, citing a lack of data.
You can email me or reach me on Twitter if you would like to flag up any news stories which you think we should be covering
Updated
Summary
This is Ben Doherty, signing off. It is now Friday evening in Sydney. I can report, looking once more out my window, it has been solidly raining all day here. Australian summers hey? Thank you all for your correspondence and company today. I am handing this live coverage to my colleague Ben Quinn in the UK. You are in good hands.
I leave you with a summary of recent events. Be well, and look after each other.
- The European Union’s contract with AstraZeneca for its Covid-19 vaccine contains binding orders, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday, demanding a plausible explanation from the drugmaker for delivery hold-ups.“There are binding orders and the contract is crystal clear,” she said.
- A fire has killed four patients in a Covid-19 hospital in the Romanian capital, Bucharest, the second such tragedy of the pandemic.
- Emirates has suspended all flights out of the UK, effective from 1pm Friday (GMT).
-
Mexico has surpassed India as the country with the third highest coronavirus death toll.
- Novavax Inc has said its coronavirus vaccine is 89.3% effective in preventing Covid-19 in a trial conducted in the United Kingdom, and was nearly as effective in protecting against the more highly contagious variant first discovered in the UK, according to a preliminary analysis. A mid-stage trial of the vaccine in South Africa, where a troubling new variant of the virus is common, showed 60% effectiveness among people who did not have HIV.
- France’s health ministry has announced supplies of the Moderna vaccine expected during February will be reduced by 25%. Elsewhere, a shortage of vaccines has forced Paris and two other regions – that together account for a third of the French population – to postpone giving out some first doses.
- French health authorities reported 23,770 new coronavirus infections over the previous 24 hours on Thursday, down from 26,916 on Wednesday. The country’s Covid-19 death toll rose by 344 to 74,800, the world’s seventh-highest, after an increase of 350 on Wednesday.
- Brazil president, Jair Bolsonaro, who says he won’t take any Covid vaccine, has vowed to quickly inoculate all Brazilians, tempering his tone after his support fell due to a patchy vaccine rollout and a brutal second wave of infections, Reuters reports.
- The coronavirus crisis cost the global tourism sector $1.3tn in lost revenue in 2020 as the number of people travelling plunged, the United Nations has said, calling it “the worst year in tourism history”.
- A man has died of his wounds in Lebanon after clashes last night between security forces and protesters angered by the combined impact of a severe economic crisis and a coronavirus lockdown.
- German authorities have blocked the use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine on people aged over 65.
Eu-AstraZeneca contract "crystal-clear": Von der Leyen
The European Union’s contract with AstraZeneca for its Covid-19 vaccine contains binding orders, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday, demanding a plausible explanation from the drugmaker for delivery hold-ups.
Von der Leyen told Deutschlandfunk radio the best-effort delivery cause in the contract was only valid as long as it was not clear whether AstraZeneca could develop a vaccine.
She said the contract contained very clear delivery amounts for December and the first three quarters of 2021, and also mentioned four production sites, two of which are in Britain.
“There are binding orders and the contract is crystal clear,” she said.
More on the tragic hospital fire in Bucharest in which four people have died. AFP reports...
At least four people died Friday after a fire broke out in Romania’s main hospital treating Covid-19 patients, officials told AFP.
Three patients were found dead at the Matei Bals hospital in Bucharest and a fourth died despite attempts at resuscitation, state secretary of the Ministry of Interior Raed Arafat told reporters.
The fire reportedly broke out on the ground floor around 5:00am (0300 GMT), said Orlando Schiopu, head of the inspectorate for emergency situations.
Four wards were affected and 102 people had been evacuated and transferred to other hospitals, he added.
Romania is still reeling from a similar tragedy in November, when ten people suffering from Covid-19 died in a fire in an intensive care unit of a hospital in the northeastern town of Piatra Neamt.
Five others injured in the fire later died of their injuries.
The prosecutor general has opened an enquiry into the tragedy, while the health ministry has suggested the fire could have been caused by an electrical short circuit.
The incident sparked wider safety warnings in a country marked by crumbling infrastructure and a culture of makeshift repairs.
The country of 19 million is one of the poorest in the European Union and is trying to manage the Covid-19 pandemic with a dilapidated and understaffed health system.
We are getting initial reports that he head of the EU commission has said AstraZeneca has not given “plausible reasons” for delays in the delivery of vaccines.
More information is coming in. We will keep you abreast of developments.
But the delay in vaccine roll-outs across Europe could have impacts for the UK and around the world.
Daniel Boffey reports from Brussels...
Millions of doses of coronavirus vaccine could be blocked from entering Britain from the EU within days after Brussels said it had to respond to shortages emerging in member states.
Following reports of a lack of doses across the bloc, the European commission announced plans to give national regulators the power to reject export requests. The development raises concerns over the continued flow of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, for which the UK has a 40m-dose order, from its plant in Belgium.
“There is a possibility in certain circumstances not to allow the export to come forward,” an official said. “Indeed, that would be the final option.”
Some primary school students in Wales could return to classes 22 February
Some primary pupils in Wales could return to classrooms after the February half-term as long as the Covid infection rate continues to fall, the Welsh government has revealed, in contrast to English plans for no return until at least 8 March.
As expected, the lockdown in Wales, which began before Christmas, will stay in place for at least another three weeks – until 19 February.
But a “phased and flexible” return to school for some pupils is being planned for the week beginning 22 February.
Updated
Ministers are drawing up plans to stagger the return of children to classrooms in England from 8 March, with some year groups likely to be back earlier than others.
Boris Johnson announced on Wednesday that he hoped “all schools will go back” on 8 March; but government insiders say a “big bang” approach, with all pupils returning at once, currently looks unlikely.
“You could certainly see a situation where you started slowly, with pupils in particular year groups,” said an official.
Fire kills four in Bucharest Covid-19 hospital
A fire killed four people at a Covid-19 hospital in the Romanian capital Bucharest early on Friday and 102 other patients have been evacuated, officials said.
The fire, which has since been extinguished, broke out at around 0300 GMT in one of the buildings of the Matei Bals hospital in Bucharest.
An investigation into the cause of the fire is ongoing.
Returning to this story about the effects of ‘long Covid’ on sufferers.
Science correspondent Linda Geddes writes...
Scientists are studying the similarities between long Covid and ongoing symptoms experienced by survivors of Ebola and Chikungunya virus in the hope of devising new treatments to improve their health.
Experts from the World Health Organization met Chinese officials Friday ahead of their first site visits in Wuhan for a coronavirus origins probe which will take in a food market presumed to be “ground zero” of the pandemic.
The fieldwork was set to begin in earnest in the afternoon, after being hobbled by delays - and amid fears over access and the strength of evidence a year after the virus emerged.
The team will visit hospitals, as well as meeting scientists, first responders and some of the early patients to be hit by the then-unknown coronavirus that has gone on to kill more than two million people across the world and flatline the global economy.
Crucially, “field visits will include the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Huanan market, Wuhan CDC laboratory”, the WHO said in a tweet late Thursday - three sites now indelibly linked with the virus.
The international team working to understand the origins of the #COVID19 virus completed its 2-week quarantine in Wuhan, #China on Thursday. As members start their field visits on Friday, they should receive the support, access and the data they need.
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) January 28, 2021
The Huanan market, which remains boarded up, is believed to have been the outbreak’s first major cluster.
Meanwhile, the Wuhan Institute of Virology houses a virus testing facility which was weaponised by former US president Donald Trump, who until his final days in office pushed the unsubstantiated theory that the virus escaped from there.
The mission’s exact itinerary remains unclear - tweets from the WHO and their experts are so far the main source of information.
The highly politicised mission has been beset by delays with China refusing access until mid-January, while Washington has demanded a “robust and clear” investigation.
China on Thursday warned the US against “political interference” during a trip which the WHO insists will be tethered tightly to the science behind how the virus jumped to humans.
Beijing is desperate to take the air out of the blame game and instead train attention on its handling and recovery from the outbreak.
In a tweet late Thursday, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he had had a “frank discussion” with China’s health minister Ma Xiaowei.
“I asked that the international scientists get the support, access & data needed, and the chance to engage fully with their Chinese counterparts,” he said.
The experts left a two-week quarantine on Thursday under the glare of the global media.
China’s National Health Commission says 4,636 people have died in the country as a result of the virus.
The nation’s GDP grew 2.3 percent in 2020, the only major economy to do so.
In comparison, more than 400,000 Americans have died so far as the sickness rips through its population and economy, while the UK recorded its 100,000th fatality this week.
The Serum Institute of India, the world’s biggest vaccine makers, has sought the drug regulator’s permission to conduct a small domestic trial of the Novavax Inc Covid-19 vaccine that was found to be 89.3% effective in a UK trial, its CEO told Reuters on Friday
Emirates suspends flights out of the UK
The full details on that Emirates suspension of flights out of the UK are here.
The airline says:
As directed by the UK government, Emirates will be suspending passenger services between Dubai and all our UK points – Birmingham, Glasgow, London, Manchester, - effective 1300hrs GMT on 29 January 2021 until further notice.
Our last flights to the UK on 29 January are:
- EK 07 from Dubai to London Heathrow
- EK 01 from Dubai to London Heathrow
- EK 39 from Dubai to Birmingham
- EK 27 from Dubai to Glasgow
Our last flights from the UK on 29 January are:
- EK 08 to Dubai from London Heathrow
- EK 02 to Dubai from London Heathrow
- EK 40 to Dubai from Birmingham
- EK 28 to Dubai from Glasgow
We regret the inconvenience caused, and affected customers should contact their booking agent or Emirates call centre for rebooking.
Travellers seeking to enter the UK should refer to the UK government website for the latest information on entry requirements and isolation / quarantine arrangements on arrival.
Updated
Emirates airline has suspended all flights from the UK from Friday after the British government on Thursday announced it was closing its border to passenger flights from the United Arab Emirates in an attempt to stop new Covid-19 strains entering the country.
There will be cascading effects for nationals of third countries. The number of Australians stranded overseas could rise after the Emirates suspension, effectively cutting off one of the last major routes home for Australians in Europe.
The Philippines will relax travel curbs on foreigners coming from more than 30 countries that have detected cases of the more contagious British variant of the coronavirus starting from next month, the presidential spokesman said on Friday.
The move covers foreigners previously allowed to enter the Philippines, including those holding work visas and spouses of Filipinos, presidential spokesman Harry Roque said in a statement, adding that tourists would remain banned.
Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte last year barred foreigners coming or transiting from countries with confirmed cases of the British coronavirus variant.
The list, which includes the United States, China, Japan and Australia, has expanded to more than 30 countries, and the ban is due to be in effect until the end of January.
The Philippines this week confirmed domestic transmission of the British variant, which has infected 17 so far, including a dozen in a mountainous northern province.
I am very thankful to the City of New York for including @UN staff and diplomats in their #COVID19 vaccination programme.
— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) January 29, 2021
Solidarity is crucial in our global fight against the pandemic.pic.twitter.com/z9WXm60OiS
Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s health is improving and he is practically without symptoms of Covid-19 after he announced on Sunday he had caught the virus, deputy health minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell said on Thursday.
Mexico surpasses India as country with third-highest death toll in the world
Mexico on Thursday surpassed India in confirmed Covid-19 deaths, giving the Latin American country the third-highest toll worldwide, according to a Reuters tally of official data.
Mexico’s health ministry reported 18,670 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections and 1,506 additional fatalities, bringing the total to 1,825,519 cases and 155,145 deaths.
The latest total death toll in India, a country with a population more than 10 times that of Mexico’s 126 million inhabitants, stood at 153,847, according to a Reuters tally.
When adjusted for deaths per head of population, Mexico’s toll is lower than several other countries, including the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Italy, the United States, Peru and Spain, according to data published by Johns Hopkins University.
Mexico’s ballooning death toll underscores its struggle to contain the pandemic, which is worsening despite government restrictions on movement and commerce.
In Mexico City hospitals are nearing capacity and a shortage of oxygen tanks has complicated treatment of patients.
Updated
More on Vietnam, for so long the global exemplar of combatting Covid-19’s spread, as it battles a new, troubling outbreak. AFP reports...
Vietnam reported nine more new Covid-19 infections early on Friday as the country’s first outbreak for nearly two months spread to Hanoi, the capital, where the ruling Communist party is currently holding its key five-yearly congress.
The new cases, including one in Hanoi and eight across nearby Haiphong city and Hai Duong, Quang Ninh and Bac Ninh provinces, brought the total number of cases in the outbreak that began on Thursday to 93, the ministry of health said.
One of the first two cases recorded on Thursday was exposed to an individual who had tested positive in Japan for the more contagious UK variant. The ministry said it was still analysing gene sequences to determine if the new patients had contracted the new variant.
The total number of cases recorded since the coronavirus was first detected in Vietnam a year ago stands at 1,651, including imported cases, with 35 deaths.
The ministry said the case in Hanoi is linked to an airport worker in Quang Ninh province who tested positive on Thursday along with 83 others, the first locally transmitted cases in the country for 55 days and the biggest single-day outbreak so far.
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc urged calm and promised swift action at an urgently called meeting on the sidelines of the congress on Thursday, when the wearing of face masks at the event was made mandatory.
Against a backdrop of a buoyant economy, bolstered by keeping coronavirus cases in check so far, the congress will select Vietnam’s leadership and shape policy for the next five years and beyond.
Anti-virus measures were stepped up at the congress venue on Friday, with all support staff and media in attendance scheduled for another round of testing - the third for those involved since the run-up to the event began. The health ministry previously said it conducted 10,000 tests in association with the congress.
At an urgent meeting held on Thursday night, Hanoi authorities said they were ramping up tracking and testing capabilities, adding that the city can conduct 10,000 tests a day. State television quoted the coronavirus taskforce chief as saying preparations should be made for a scenario of up to 30,000 Covid-19 cases.
The health ministry has proposed halting international flights and banning large gatherings ahead of the lunar new year holiday season, just two weeks away. The government late on Thursday said it will build three field hospitals in Hai Duong province, without giving their sizes.
A variant of Covid-19 similar to the one that spread rampantly in the UK would likely have developed in Victoria during last year’s second wave had Melbourne not gone into an extended lockdown, a leading virologist says.
Updated
India’s health minister, Harsh Vardhan, has claimed it has “successfully contained the pandemic” and “flattened its Covid-19 graph” as the country of 1.34 billion people reported just 12,000 new cases in the past 24 hours – a stark contrast to the 90,000 cases a day being reported in September.
Why has Germany advised against the AstraZeneca vaccine for over-65s? Nicola Davis explains.
A millionaire Canadian couple who secretly travelled to a remote community to receive a coronavirus vaccine meant for vulnerable and elderly Indigenous residents may now face jail sentences for breaking public health rules.
Casino executive Rodney Baker and his wife, Ekaterina Baker, an actor, were widely condemned after it emerged that they had chartered a plane to a remote community in the Yukon territory, where they posed as local motel employees to receive the vaccine.
Nine Roman Catholic nuns in southern Michigan have died in January due to a Covid-19 outbreak at their retirement home, which had gone for months without a single case, officials said Thursday.
The women lived at the campus of the Adrian Dominican Sisters in Adrian, 120 kilometres southwest of Detroit. They had been teachers, nurses and pastoral ministers before retiring to a life of “prayer and presence,” said Sister Patricia Siemen, leader of the religious order.
“Of course, our hearts are breaking,” she said.
“We’re grieving, but we also know that we are not alone in this,” Siemen told The Associated Press. “We are not alone in the suffering of the world.”
Covid-19 has been cited in the deaths of dozens of retired or infirm nuns who lived in congregate settings in the US. Eight nuns in suburban Milwaukee died of virus complications in one week in December, including four in one day. Thirteen died in suburban Detroit last year.
Nine of the 12 deaths of Adrian Dominican sisters this month were linked to Covid-19, Siemen said. They ranged in age from 79 to 97. The latest was Sister Helen Laier on Tuesday.
Siemen said many had health problems that were exacerbated by the virus.
After more than nine months without a Covid-19 case among residents, the Adrian Dominican Sisters announced an outbreak on Jan. 14. It said “stringent protocols,” including quarantines, were being followed.
Forty-six sisters have tested positive, 12 cases remain active and 25 women are recovering, spokeswoman Angela Kessler said. More than 200 sisters who are retired from active ministry live in Adrian.
“It slips in. That’s the heartache of this virus,” Siemen said.
“We’ve had no guests on campus. Our sisters have not seen their family members. They haven’t even seen our other sisters who live off campus since this started in the middle of March. And yet that virus is very sneaky.”
Residents received the first dose of the Moderna vaccine on 15 January, along with more than 50 employees, Kessler said.
Thousands of Australians are trying to get home, but have been stopped by quotas at the Australian border, and by scores of cancelled flights.
This is further bad news.
As directed by @GOVUK, Emirates will be suspending passenger services between from all their UK points tomorrow at 1.00pm Emirates advises that their last flights are
— Australia in the UK 🇦🇺🇬🇧 (@AusHouseLondon) January 28, 2021
29JAN
EK 08 from Heathrow
EK 02 from Heathrow
EK 40 from Birmingham
EK 28 from Glasgowhttps://t.co/yc0j6NplWR https://t.co/WJ0rAqX40w
A Lancet Public Health Journal has confirmed earlier research that black and ethnic minority community members are at a significantly higher risk of dying of Covid-19. It found the ‘English ethnic health gap’ was similar to a 20-year age difference.
AFP reports...
People over 55 belonging to minority ethnic groups in England have poorer health-related life quality compared to their white British counterparts, with the impact equivalent to being 20 years older, a study concluded Friday.
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, there was a large body of evidence to suggest that individuals from Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Arab and traveller backgrounds fare below average when it comes to a host of health conditions.
Writing in the Lancet Public Health Journal, researchers analysed data taken from patients over 55 at registered doctors practices across a three-year period.
They looked at how ethnicity was associated with five self-reported health issues: mobility, self-care, activity such as working or housework, pain or discomfort, and anxiety or depression.
They then gave each patient a “health-related quality of life” for each ethnic group, ranging from perfect health (1) to poorest health (-5.94).
The found that on average each of the five main ethnic groups scored poorer than white Britons, to the extent that it was as if patients from these groups were 20 years older than their counterparts.
Authors said that social deprivation, which is more common among non-white communities across England, likely played a role in the relatively poorer health of minority ethnic groups.
But they stressed that other factors such as institutional racism in local health care provision also played a role.
The study complements a host of research showing that black and ethnic minority individuals in Britain are at significantly higher risk of dying of Covid-19.
“The disproportionate number of deaths due to Covid-19 in minority ethnic groups has highlighted ethnic inequalities in health among older adults in England,” said lead author Ruth Watkinson, from the University of Manchester.
“We need decisive policy action to improve equity of socioeconomic opportunity and transformation of health and local services to ensure they meet the needs of all people in the multi-ethnic English population.”
Of the 17 minority ethnic groups identified in the study, only two - Chinese men and women. and black men - outperformed whites health-wise.
Co-author Alex Turner said the data showed the need for “more nuanced research” to understand the specific barriers to good health in older ethnic groups.
“For example, Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Chinese ethnicities are often all categorised as ‘Asian’,” he said.
“In our study, people of Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnicity had the worst disadvantage in health, compared with White British, whereas people of Chinese ethnicity had a relative advantage.”
Vietnam reported nine more Covid-19 infections early on Friday as the new outbreak spreads to Hanoi, the capital, where the ruling Communist party is holding its key five-yearly congress.
The new cases, including one in Hanoi and eight across Haiphong, Hai Duong, Quang Ninh and Bac Ninh provinces, brought the total number of cases in the Southeast Asian country to 1,651, with 35 deaths, the ministry of health said.
In Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales, no new locally acquired cases...
NSW recorded no new locally acquired cases of #COVID19 in the 24 hours to 8pm last night.
— NSW Health (@NSWHealth) January 29, 2021
There were three cases acquired overseas, bringing the total number of COVID-19 cases in NSW since the beginning of the pandemic to 4,910. pic.twitter.com/IpNTbO7YhW
In New Zealand, the minister of Covid-19 response Chris Hipkins said there are no new cases of the virus in the community today, and this “does provide reassurance” for the upcoming long weekend and Waitangi next week.
“There is no reason people’s travel plans should change,” the minister said.
This week there have been three positive tests of Covid-19 in the community, all of the South African variant and thought to have been contracted in managed isolation at the Pullman Hotel in Auckland.
Novavax vaccine nearly 90% effective in trial
More detail on the Novavax announcement can be found in the company’s statement here.
The Guardian’s reportage, from Sarah Boseley and Nicola Davis, is here.
Updated
A little more on Germany’s decision to not recommend the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine for over-65s. AFP reports...
Germany’s vaccine commission said Thursday it could not recommend the use of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine for older people, the latest twist in a row over the jab that has put Britain and the EU on a collision course.
The panel of scientific experts, called STIKO, said the vaccine should only be given to people aged 18 to 65 years old as “there is currently insufficient data to assess the efficacy of the vaccine for persons aged 65 years and older”.
AstraZeneca and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson immediately defended the jabs, which have already been widely used in Britain on older people.
A spokesperson for the British-Swedish company said the latest clinical trial data for its vaccine, developed with Oxford University, “support efficacy in the over 65 years age group”.
Johnson told reporters the UK’s own regulator had established “that they think the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is very good and efficacious, gives a high degree of protection”.
AstraZeneca’s vaccine has not been granted approval yet for general use in the European Union.
But the bloc’s medicines regulator EMA is poised to authorise it on Friday.
The latest doubt over the vaccine came as AstraZeneca was already locked in an increasingly bitter spat with the EU over delivery problems.
Citing issues with its European factories, the company has informed the EU that it could only supply a quarter of the doses it had promised for the first quarter of 2021.
The huge delivery delay adds a further stumbling block to the EU’s already sluggish rollout of the vaccine compared to Britain or the United States.
With tempers flaring, Chancellor Angela Merkel called a high-level meeting for February 1 with her cabinet, Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers and leaders of Germany’s 16 states.
- ‘Best efforts’ -
Countries around the world are scrambling to get hold of the life-saving jabs to inoculate their populations against the virus that has claimed more than 2.1 million lives and infected more than 100 million people.
The emergence of more contagious variants first seen in Britain, South Africa and Brazil is putting further pressure on governments to speed up their immunisation programmes.
The EU-AstraZeneca dispute escalated Tuesday when the company’s chief executive Pascal Soriot said in an interview that it was prioritising supplies to Britain, which signed its contract three months before Brussels.
He argued that his company was only required to make a “best effort” to supply the bloc.
The European Commission erupted in fury, demanding on Wednesday that AstraZeneca make up for the delays by supplying doses from its UK factories.
But Britain insists it must receive all of the vaccines it ordered - and there are simply not enough to go round.
The EU said it would now require companies to declare any export of vaccines made in the bloc, a sign of growing distrust in AstraZeneca.
“The EU needs to take robust action to secure its supply of vaccines and demonstrate concretely that the protection of its citizens remains our absolute priority,” said European Council President Charles Michel.
- ‘Limited information’ -
Germany’s STIKO did not detail the data from clinical trials on the vaccine on older people.
However, prominent German media outlets Handelsblatt economic newspaper and Bild had reported that the efficacy on over-65s was below 10 percent - claims rejected by Germany’s health ministry and AstraZeneca.
A ministry spokesman said Wednesday: “A false claim does not become true just because it is repeated.”
He said however that AstraZeneca trials involved fewer older people than other manufacturers.
Around eight percent of the volunteers in AstraZeneca’s studies were around 56 and 69 years old and three to four percent were above 70, according to the ministry.
But “that the efficacy is only eight percent is incomprehensible and in our view, wrong,” the spokesman added.
In comparison, 41 percent of participants in BioNTech-Pfizer’s vaccine trials have been aged 56-85.
Britain’s MHRA regulator said in its consideration of the vaccine that “there is limited information available on efficacy in participants aged 65 or over, although there is nothing to suggest lack of protection”.
Mary Ramsay, head of immunisations at government agency Public Health England, also backed the AstraZeneca vaccine for older recipients.
“There were too few cases in older people in the AstraZeneca trials to observe precise levels of protection in this group, but data on immune responses were very reassuring.
“The risk of severe disease and death increase exponentially with age - the priority is to vaccinate as many vulnerable people as possible with either vaccine, to protect more people and save more lives.”
Good morning/afternoon/evening, wherever these words might find you. This is Ben Doherty in an uncharacteristically wet Sydney with our continuing rolling coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. Our earlier liveblog has closed. My thanks to my colleagues for their earlier stewardship.
To begin, a summary of the most recent developments.
- Novavax Inc said on Thursday its coronavirus vaccine was 89.3% effective in preventing Covid-19 in a trial conducted in the United Kingdom, and was nearly as effective in protecting against the more highly contagious variant first discovered in the UK, according to a preliminary analysis. A mid-stage trial of the vaccine in South Africa, where a troubling new variant of the virus is common, showed 60% effectiveness among people who did not have HIV.
- France’s health ministry has announced supplies of the Moderna vaccine expected during February will be reduced by 25%. Elsewhere, a shortage of vaccines has forced Paris and two other regions – that together account for a third of the French population – to postpone giving out some first doses, a source familiar with the discussion and health officials said on Thursday. The public health agency for Paris and the surrounding region, an area of 12.1 million people, told regional hospitals on a conference call on Wednesday that from 2 February, all deliveries of first doses of the Covid-19 vaccine to medical establishments would be suspended, the source said.
- French health authorities reported 23,770 new coronavirus infections over the previous 24 hours on Thursday, down from 26,916 on Wednesday. The country’s Covid-19 death toll rose by 344 to 74,800, the world’s seventh-highest, after an increase of 350 on Wednesday.
- Brazil president, Jair Bolsonaro, who says he won’t take any Covid vaccine, has vowed to quickly inoculate all Brazilians, tempering his tone after his support fell due to a patchy vaccine rollout and a brutal second wave of infections, Reuters reports.
- The coronavirus crisis cost the global tourism sector $1.3tn in lost revenue in 2020 as the number of people travelling plunged, the United Nations has said, calling it “the worst year in tourism history”.
- A man has died of his wounds in Lebanon after clashes last night between security forces and protesters angered by the combined impact of a severe economic crisis and a coronavirus lockdown. There were fresh protests today.
- Denmark will extend its current coronavirus restrictions by three weeks to curb the spread of a more contagious coronavirus variant first registered in the UK, its prime minister said on Thursday.
- The US has detected its first cases of a coronavirus variant first detected in South Africa, health officials in South Carolina said.
- German authorities have blocked the use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine on people aged over 65, the Financial Times has reported.
- Spain has insisted it supported the European Union’s handling of a shortfall in Covid-19 vaccines after a leaked document suggested the health ministry was blaming Brussels, Reuters reports.
