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Summary
Here’s a quick recap of what has happened in the past few hours:
- US House lawmakers may have been exposed to someone testing positive for Covid-19 while they sheltered at an undisclosed location during the Capitol siege by a violent mob loyal to Donald Trump. The Capitol’s attending physician notified all lawmakers Sunday of the virus exposure and urged them to be tested.
- A new coronavirus variant has been detected in four travellers from Brazil’s Amazonas state, Japan’s health ministry has said, in the latest recorded instance of the virus evolving.
- Seven people in Marseilles, southern France, have tested positive for the new, more infectious variant of Covid-19 first found in Britain, local authorities have announced.
- Russia has detected its first case of the more infectious coronavirus variant found in England, in a Russian who returned from Britain and tested positive late last month.
- 563 further deaths of coronavirus have been reported in the UK today according to the latest official figures. A total of 54,940 people have tested positive for Covid in the past 24 hours.
- Italy reported 361 coronavirus-related deaths on Sunday, down from 483 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections fell to 18,627 from 19,978.
- Brazil recorded 29,792 additional confirmed cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, along with 469 deaths from Covid-19, the Health Ministry said on Sunday.
- Northern Ireland’s health minister said Covid-19 was placing the healthcare system under pressure “like never before,” as one hospital appealed on social media for the immediate help of all off-duty healthworkers nearby.
- One in five people in England may have had coronavirus, new modelling suggests, equivalent to 12.4 million people, rising to almost one in two in some areas.
Updated
Brazil records 469 further deaths from coronavirus
Brazil recorded 29,792 additional confirmed cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, along with 469 deaths from Covid-19, the Health Ministry said on Sunday.
Brazil has registered more than 8.1 million cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 203,100, according to ministry data.
Dubai has been added to Scotland’s quarantine list with travellers returning from the country told to self-isolate for 10 days from 4am on Monday, PA reports.
Passengers who have travelled to Scotland from Dubai since 3 January now have to self-isolate for 10 days dating from when they arrived back in the country.
The Scottish government said the change is due to a number of positive cases identified in passengers who have flown into Glasgow from Dubai since the new year.
One in five people in England may have had coronavirus, modelling suggests
One in five people in England may have had coronavirus, new modelling suggests, equivalent to 12.4 million people, rising to almost one in two in some areas.
It means that across the country as a whole the true number of people infected to date may be five times higher than the total number of known cases according to the government’s dashboard.
In some areas, however, the disparity may be even greater. Parts of London and the south are estimated to have had up to eight times as many cases as have been detected to date.
Read more from my colleagues Ashley Kirk, Anna Leach and Pamela Duncan:
Updated
Northern Ireland hospitals are facing into an abyss, health leader says
Anne Kilgallen, chief executive of Western Trust, said Northern Ireland hospitals are facing into an abyss.
She said:
We can say that this situation is more grave than it has ever been in the course of this pandemic. I would go so far as to say our hospitals are facing into an abyss.
At the moment one in four of the people in our hospitals have Covid-19. It’s about 700 people. At the peak of the first surge there were 400 people in hospital so already we’re in a very grave situation.
The projections show this is likely to double by the third week of January.
Kilgallen said health chiefs were asking people to work with them.
“We want to protect our emergency departments for the sickest people,” she said.
We want to make them available for people who are in emergency need whether that’s medical, or surgical or mental health crisis. We want you to know the emergency department is open for business but that involves all of us thinking carefully before we use it.
She said once people are medically fit for discharge they’ll be asking families to take their loved one home even if they haven’t arranged a care package.
All but the most immediately urgent surgical procedures have been deferred, she added.
She said:
This has been a heartbreaking decision for each of us as chief executives and it’s a decision that has not been taken lightly but we’re absolutely certain we need to do this now if we’re going to be able to provide essential services to those who are the sickest in our society.
Russia has detected its first case of the more infectious coronavirus variant found in England, in a Russian who returned from Britain and tested positive late last month, RIA news agency reported on Sunday, citing the consumer health watchdog.
Russia suspended flights to Britain last month until 13 January because of the virus variant detected in the UK. It also introduced a mandatory two-week self-isolation period for people arriving from Britain.
Russia on Sunday reported 22,851 new Covid-19 cases including 4,216 in Moscow, pushing its national infection tally to 3,401,954 – the world’s fourth highest – since the pandemic began.
France has recorded 15,944 new confirmed Covid-19 cases and 151 more deaths from the coronavirus in hospitals in the last 24 hours, data from the country’s health ministry showed.
US lawmakers may have been exposed to coronavirus during siege on Capitol
House lawmakers may have been exposed to someone testing positive for Covid-19 while they sheltered at an undisclosed location during the Capitol siege by a violent mob loyal to Donald Trump.
The Capitol’s attending physician notified all lawmakers Sunday of the virus exposure and urged them to be tested. The infected individual was not named, Associated Press.
Brian Moynihan wrote that “many members of the House community were in protective isolation in the large room — some for several hours” on Wednesday. He said “individuals may have been exposed to another occupant with coronavirus infection.”
Dozens of lawmakers were whisked to the secure location after pro-Trump insurrectionists stormed the Capitol that day, breaking through barricades to roam the halls and offices and ransacking the building.
Some members of Congress huddled for hours in the large room, while others were there for a shorter period.
No further details were provided on which person has tested positive for the virus.
Some lawmakers and staff were furious after video surfaced of Republican lawmakers not wearing their masks in the room during lockdown.
Newly elected Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, a presidential ally aligned with a pro-Trump conspiracy group, was among those Republicans not wearing masks
Italy reports 361 further coronavirus-related deaths
Italy reported 361 coronavirus-related deaths on Sunday, down from 483 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections fell to 18,627 from 19,978.
Italy has registered 78,755 coronavirus deaths since its outbreak came to light on 21 February, the second-highest toll in Europe and the sixth-highest in the world. The country has reported 2.276 million cases to date, the health ministry said.
Patients in hospital with Covid-19 – not including those in intensive care – stood at 23,427 on Sunday, up 167 from a day earlier, Reuters reports.
There were 181 admissions to intensive care units, versus with 183 on Saturday. The current number of intensive care patients rose by 22 to 2,615.
When Italy’s second wave of the epidemic accelerated quickly in the first half of November, hospital admissions were rising by about 1,000 per day, while intensive care occupancy was increasing by about 100 per day.
Updated
A further 563 have died from coronavirus in the UK
563 further deaths of coronavirus have been reported today according to the latest official figures.
This represents those people who died in the UK within 28 days of a positive Covid test, and which have been recorded today.
A total of 54,940 people have tested positive for Covid in the past 24 hours.
Meanwhile, 4066 people have been admitted to hospital.
The government in the Philippines has signed a deal to secure the supply of 30 million doses of the Covid vaccine Covovax from Serum Institute of India (SII), the company’s local partner said, according to Reuters.
The agreement was signed on Saturday by Carlito Galvez, a former military general in charge of the Philippines’ strategy to fight the coronavirus, according to a statement issued by Faberco Life Sciences.
The Department of Health, which helped distribute the Faberco statement to local media, has yet to issue its own statement.
Health secretary Francisco Duque in a tweet said: “We’re in the final stages of closing agreements with various manufacturers to vaccinate at least 60-70% of the (population).”
SII partnered with US-based Novavax for the development and commercialisation of Covovax, which is in third-stage trials and expected to be approved for use by international regulators, Faberco said.
The vaccine will be available locally in the second half of 2021 and would be used to inoculate 15 million vulnerable Filipinos, it said.
With total confirmed Covid infections of 487,690 and deaths reaching 9,405, the Philippines has the second-highest number of cases and fatalities in Southeast Asia, after Indonesia.
Seven people in Marseilles, southern France, have tested positive for the new, more infectious variant of Covid-19 first found in Britain, local authorities have announced.
Mayor Benoit Payan said the seven were among 23 people identified as having come into contact with the new variant, as well as a further 30 people from one residential building, who were undergoing tests.
“Right now, every minute counts in terms of preventing the spread of this English variant,” Payan told reporters at a news conference.
In response to the discovery of the new variant in Marseille, the city imposed an earlier evening curfew, moving the start time to 6pm from 8pm, until 6am the following morning. In Paris, the 8pm to 6am curfew hours remain unchanged.
New Covid variant from Brazil detected in Japan
A new coronavirus variant has been detected in four travellers from Brazil’s Amazonas state, Japan’s health ministry has said, in the latest recorded instance of the virus evolving, Reuters reports.
A ministry official said studies were underway into the efficacy of vaccines against the new variant, which differs from highly-infectious variants first found in Britain and South Africa that have driven a surge in cases.
“At the moment, there is no proof showing the new variant found in those from Brazil is high in infectiousness,” Takaji Wakita, head of the national institute of infectious diseases, told a health ministry briefing.
Of the four travellers who arrived at Tokyo’s Haneda airport on 2 January, a man in his forties had a problem breathing, a woman in her thirties had a headache and sore throat and a man in his teens had a fever, while a woman in her teens showed no symptoms, the health ministry said.
After seeing a steep rise in coronavirus cases, Japan declared a state of emergency for Tokyo and three prefectures neighbouring the capital on Thursday. Nationwide cases have totalled about 289,000, with 4,061 deaths, public broadcaster NHK said.
Updated
The new variant of coronavirus that is sweeping the UK is extremely unlikely to evade immune responses generated by vaccines or a previous Covid infection, scientists say.
Researchers in the US found that antibodies collected from former patients very rarely targeted parts of the virus that were mutated in the new variant. Their work suggests only half a percent of individuals are at risk of having reduced protection against the variant, named B.1.1.7.
The findings will come as a relief to scientists and public health officials who have been concerned that vaccines being rolled out worldwide might be less effective against the new variant, and that cases could soar on the back of reinfections.
Based on the new analysis, Akiko Iwasaki, professor of immunobiology at Yale University, said: “The B.1.1.7 variant is unlikely to escape recognition by antibodies generated by prior infection with [older versions of the] virus or the vaccines.”
A further 508 people who tested positive for Covid have died in hospital in England, bringing the total number of confirmed deaths reported in hospitals to 55,580, NHS England has said. The deaths were between 17 December and 9 January. There were 25 other deaths reported with no positive Covid-19 test result.
Meanwhile, 17 more Covid-related deaths have been reported by the Department of Health in Northern Ireland in the past 24 hours, bringing its death toll to 1,460. Two deaths happened outside the last day.
New restrictions came into force in the nation on Friday which forbade people from leaving home for non-esssential reasons.
In Scotland, another 1,877 new cases of Covid were reported, with three new reported deaths of people who have tested positive.
Updated
Liberal Democrat education spokeswoman Daisy Cooper has questioned UK health secretary Matt Hancock’s assertion this morning that teachers are “no more at risk” of catching Covid than other groups. She said:
Pupils, parents and teachers will be hugely frustrated by these mixed messages on schools. They deserve to know why the health secretary is saying that teachers are no more at risk of catching Covid whilst just a few days ago, the prime minister said that schools are vectors of transmission. Schools have been trying for months to get this vital information and have been blocked at every turn. The government needs to come clean and publish the figures.
“When people from other places come to Wuhan now, they would have a feeling that nothing ever happened here,” said Ai Xiaoming, sitting in the book-filled study of her home in the city at the heart of China’s coronavirus outbreak last January.
“It feels like they know nothing about the dead, or the families’ feelings,” said the 67-year-old writer and documentary film-maker. “The [Chinese] media rarely reports on these issues. There is no space for these people to tell their stories.”
Ai was one of three female writers censored for sharing diary entries on major Chinese social media platforms during the 76-day Covid-19 lockdown in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. They continue to struggle to make their voices heard, nearly a year later.
Healthcare workers in Madrid have gone to extreme lengths – some walking for hours – to relieve their exhausted colleagues as Spain grapples with the double whammy of a deadly storm and the coronavirus pandemic.
Storm Filomena hit Spain on Friday, blanketing large parts of the country in snow and bringing Madrid to a standstill as the city saw its heaviest snowfall in 50 years. Across the country the storm claimed at least four lives, affected around 20,000km of roads and left thousands trapped in their cars for as many as 12 hours without food and water.
In Madrid’s hospitals, already stretched by a coronavirus case load that ranks among the highest in the country, weary staff scrambled to cope. Healthcare workers doubled and tripled their shifts to cover for colleagues who were unable to make it in, while one hospital turned its gym into an impromptu dormitory for workers who couldn’t get home.
With roads blocked to cars and commuter trains cancelled, nursing assistant Raúl Alcojor walked 14km to make it to his shift at a hospital on the outskirts of the city. “Morally I couldn’t stay at home,” he said, citing colleagues that had been working for more than 24 hours.
An intensive care doctor has pointed out that in the UK hospital admissions are still rising beyond what the country saw in the first wave of infections, adding that “staying power” is the superhero skill the NHS needs more. He writes:
NHS hospital admissions came and went in 4-6 weeks, briefly peaking at 3000 patients/day. The second wave has lasted for 12 weeks so far, has passed 4000 patients/day, and is STILL rising. Staying power is the superhero skill we need most.
My biggest pandemic anxiety is uncertainty. We're franticly planning for an uncertain situation. The NHS is not used to doing this, not at this speed. What I most want to know is how high this second wave will get. Feels even a bad answer would be better than uncertainty. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/5sAFWqSoCM
— Rupert Pearse (@rupert_pearse) January 10, 2021
Also worth noting the first wave of NHS hospital admissions came and went in 4-6 weeks, briefly peaking at 3000 patients/day. The second wave has lasted for 12 weeks so far, has passed 4000 patients/day, and is STILL rising. Staying power is the superhero skill we need most. 2/2 pic.twitter.com/drVgfWnRWp
— Rupert Pearse (@rupert_pearse) January 10, 2021
People in the UK who file their tax returns late won’t face a fine this year, as long as they can show that the delay was due to coronavirus.
In a show of forbearance that could offer relief to millions of workers, HM Revenue & Customs will take a lenient stance towards people who file after 31 January for Covid-related reasons.
The pressures of home schooling will be deemed a valid reason for delay, while people who can show that either they or their accountant has recently been ill with the virus will also be shown clemency.
HMRC said:
We want to encourage as many people as possible to file on time even if they can’t pay their tax straight away. But where a customer is unable to do so because of the impact of Covid-19 we will accept they have a reasonable excuse and cancel penalties, provided they manage to file as soon as possible after that.
Israel’s coronavirus vaccination campaign, the world’s fastest per capita, has today shifted to booster shots in a bid to protect the most vulnerable citizens by next month and ease curbs on the economy. The country’s lighting-fast vaccine campaign had been expected to slow down this week as the first batches of Pfizer/BioNTech doses ran low.
However, on Saturday night, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had secured a commitment from the pharmaceutical company to bring forward deliveries in return for Israel providing “statistical data” – effectively making the country a mass test case to see how vaccines might halt the pandemic.
Israelis over the age of 60, those with health problems and medical personnel have been receiving first injections of Pfizer’s vaccines since 19 December. As three weeks have passed, they are now beginning to be due for follow-up, final doses, Reuters reports.
“It changes everything,” said Guy Choshen, a director of the Covid-19 ward at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital, who got his second injection. “I’m really happy that I’m over that [and] looking forward for all this epidemic to be finished.”
The health ministry said 19.5% of the population have been vaccinated, including more than 72% of the over-60s. Latecomer elderly will be admitted for first shots, officials say, but otherwise vaccines will be reserved for boosters.
Israel’s vaccination rate is by far the fastest compared to the rest of the world, according to the Our World in Data website, which is run by research organisation Oxford Martin School.
One in five Israelis have been given first doses of coronavirus vaccines, roughly ten times higher than the UK and US, with the country aiming to have inoculated all eligible age groups within two months.
In second place is the United Arab Emirates, which as of Sunday had inoculated 10% of its population, followed by Bahrain and the US at 5% and 2%, respectively.
Netanyahu has said vaccinating vulnerable cohorts will allow Israel to emerge from the pandemic in February. Yet while speeding ahead with vaccinations, Israel is currently in lockdown as it suffers a dangerous rise in infections. The health ministry is reporting around 8,000 new cases per day, with record numbers in critical conditions.
“We will be the first country in the world to emerge from the coronavirus,” Netanyahu said. “The agreement that I have made with Pfizer will enable us to vaccinate all citizens of Israel over the age of 16 by the end of March and perhaps even earlier,” he added. Later, while receiving his second dose of the vaccine on Saturday, Netanyahu said the country could do it within two months.
“As part of the agreement with Pfizer, we decided that Israel will be a global model state for the rapid vaccination of an entire country,” he said, adding that Israel will share data with the world that will “help develop strategies for defeating the coronavirus”. Pfizer did not independently confirm the deal.
More than 1.8m Israelis – around 20% of the 9m population – have received their first jab, with initial doses focused on over-60s, healthcare workers, carers and high-risk people. With more shipments arriving on Sunday, it is expected that teachers and younger age groups will be given access in the coming days.
As well as being a small country by size and population, Israel’s vaccine success has been attributed to its highly-digitalised healthcare system and a strong public awareness campaign. An election set for 23 March has also given Netanyahu a massive incentive to get the country back to some form of normality quickly.
However, officials say public over-confidence in the vaccines may have led to laxity in other precautions and stoked fresh contagions. Hospitals worry about being overwhelmed by patients and personnel being more exposed.
“We have quite a rise in the numbers of medical staff which are infected in the last 10 days - an extreme increase - and we are afraid that we’ll be short of people,” Chosen said.
The country is also facing criticism for not offering vaccines to millions of Palestinians living under its occupation. Last week, Amnesty International, said the disparity was an “illustration of how Israeli lives are valued above Palestinian ones”.
Israel says the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, which has limited self-rule and is seeking vaccines independently, and the militant group Hamas, which rules in Gaza, are responsible for their populations.
Updated
Growing frustration in Germany over slow vaccine rollout
People in Germany are growing increasingly frustrated by the slow rollout of a Covid-19 vaccine its scientists helped develop, Reuters reports.
Scarce vaccine supply, cumbersome paperwork, a lack of healthcare staff and an aged and immobile population are hampering efforts to get early doses of a vaccine made by US-based Pfizer and German partner BioNTech into the arms of the people.
Germany has set up hundreds of vaccination centres in sports halls and concert arenas and has the infrastructure to administer up to 300,000 shots a day, health minister Jens Spahn said.
But the majority are standing empty, with most states not planning to open centres until mid-January as they prioritise sending mobile teams into care homes. A day spent with a vaccination team in the small town of Dillenburg, 100 km (60 miles) to the north of Germany’s financial capital Frankfurt, shows just how painstaking the task is.
The team starts out by loading a cool-box containing 84 doses of the Pfizer vaccine defrosted overnight into a waiting ambulance, and setting out for the Elisabeth residential care home.
There they are met by manager Peter Bittermann, who has already dealt with the forms needed to vaccinate residents and staff, and provided space for the shots to be administered and recipients monitored post-vaccination.
The four-member immunisation team, plus two trainees, has just a few hours to dispense the temperature-sensitive Pfizer vaccine before it is no longer fit for use.
The German Red Cross needs an extra 350 people to run its local vaccination campaign, said Nicole Fey, spokeswoman of the local district administration.
“We’ve been able to recruit some, but there can never be enough,” she told Reuters TV.
In the first two weeks of its vaccination drive Germany has given 533,000 shots, just two-fifths of the 1.3 million doses received. The UK, by contrast, has reached the 2 million mark.
Israel, the world leader in terms of the share of population covered, is inoculating 150,000 people daily, with its universal and digitally enabled healthcare system making it easier to schedule appointments.
Germany’s larger size and federal set-up are complicating operations, a problem also faced in the US. Elsewhere in Europe, the decentralisation of Spain’s vaccination operation has exposed differences between regions and led to tensions with the central government.
Updated
UK ambulance crews wait up to nine hours to transfer patients to hospital
Ambulance services in the UK are under “unprecedented pressure” with handover delays at a scale never seen before, a leading paramedic has said.
Tracy Nicholls, chief executive of the College of Paramedics, said some ambulance crews have reported waiting up to nine hours to transfer a patient to hospital staff in areas where there is increased pressure on NHS services.
She told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme there have also been delays in getting ambulances to people in need, with some waiting “up to 10 hours” in high-pressure areas.
Nicholls said:
It (the ambulance service) is under unprecedented pressure. We are very used to seeing ambulance services take some strain over the winter months due to the normal pressures we would see any particular year. But this year particularly has seen incredible pressure because of the clinical presentation of the patients our members are seeing. They are sicker.
We are seeing the ambulance handover delays at a scale we haven’t seen before. Our members have reported to us they can wait as little as half an hour. We’ve had some members wait five, six, seven, eight and even nine hours. But I would say the hidden risk - your viewers can see the ambulances at the hospitals - that doesn’t take into account the huge number of patients that are waiting for an ambulance that can’t get to them.
Updated
Belgium’s death toll from coronavirus infections, one of the highest per capita in the world, has breached the 20,000 mark, according to official data.
The country, home to the headquarters of the European Union and NATO, has played down comparisons that show it to be one of the world’s worst hit by the pandemic, but virologists point to some missteps and systemic problems.
A country divided by language, Belgium gives regions substantial autonomy and has nine health ministers, Reuters reports.
Public health institute Sciensano said 20,038 people have died in Belgium, according to the official count as of Sunday. An average of 58 people in Belgium died from COVID-19 each day in the seven days to 6 January, a decrease of 15% from the previous seven-day period.
Belgium is the second-highest in the world for deaths in proportion to its overall population, behind the tiny city state of San Marino, according to a tracker by Johns Hopkins University updated on Saturday.
Belgium’s government imposed tighter restrictions in October to rein in a surge in infections, including a night curfew, mandatory working from home and the closure of bars and restaurants, but cases have started to tick up again in recent days.
The government said on Friday it would not tighten restrictions for now, but would review these at its next meeting on 22 January when it should be clearer how the festive season and the reopening of schools has affected the caseload.
A number of studies have suggested a link between vitamin D deficiencies and worse Covid outcomes. Though it is only a Spanish study, conducted in early September, that comes close to incontrovertibly proving low vitamin D levels have a pivotal role in causing increased death rates. There, 50 patients with Covid-19 were given a high dose of vitamin D, while another 26 patients did not receive the nutrient. Half of patients who weren’t given vitamin D had to be placed in intensive care, and two later died. Only one patient who received vitamin D required ICU admission, and they were later released with no further complications.
To Tory MP David Davis, all of this emerging research pointed towards vitamin D’s efficacy, which made the apparent reluctance across the world of governments, philanthropic organisations and the private sector to fund high- quality studies seem curious.
“All the observational studies show strong vitamin D effects on infectiousness, morbidity and mortality,” Davis says. “This disease exists seriously above 40 degrees latitude, because that’s where the UV light disappears in the winter.” All of this evidence together, he says, makes it “very, very plain that vitamin D has a material effect”.
Updated
Before the pandemic Bruce Goodchild split his time between Australia, his home country, and New Zealand’s far north, where his work and family are based. When travel restrictions stopped him from skipping back and forth across the Tasman Sea, he decided to explore the waters closer to home – by buying a boat of his own.
In November, Goodchild bought a 60ft-long wooden schooner. A keen sailor, he had had his eye on the local yacht market at the start of 2020, but the emergence of coronavirus focused his mind. “I thought, ‘I’m stuck over here – this is a way I can spend my time.”
“To me, a boat was a good lifestyle change to have over the next few years as the dust settles with Covid,” he said.
Goodchild was not alone. A global boating boom has been reported in response to the pandemic. Travel restrictions and months in lockdown have prompted people to pursue bucket-list life goals or take up new outdoor pastimes – sending boat sales soaring.
The New Zealand Marine Industry Association has said boat sales since June have doubled compared with those in the same period in 2019 – more than compensating for a sharp pandemic-driven drop from April to June. Enrolment in marine courses has also seen an uptick.
In a pandemic where global leaders have peddled quack treatments and miracle cures, Germany has often stood out as a shining beacon for science.
It is the country that developed the first diagnostic test to detect the coronavirus, and the first vaccine approved in the west to shield people against the disease. It is a country whose physicist chancellor told parliament she passionately believes “there are scientific findings that are real and should be followed.”
But Germany is also a country where some people who fall severely ill with Covid-19 can find themselves taken to hospitals where they are treated, under sedation and without a formalised opt-in procedure, with ginger-soaked chest compresses and homeopathic pellets containing highly diluted particles of iron supposedly harvested from shooting stars that have landed on earth.
Followers of the “spiritual scientist” and self-proclaimed clairvoyant Rudolf Steiner advocate such therapies to fight the coronavirus because of a supposed “anxiety-relieving effect on the soul and the body” and ability to “strengthen the inner relationship to light”.
South Africa is struggling to contain a second wave of Covid-19 infections, fuelled by a virulent new local variant of the virus, “Covid fatigue” and a series of “super-spreader” events.
On Thursday health officials announced 844 deaths and 21,832 new cases in a 24-hour period, the worst toll yet. Experts believe the second wave has yet to reach its peak in the country of 60 million, and fear healthcare services in the country’s main economic and cultural hub may struggle to cope with the influx of patients.
Unlike wealthier countries, South Africa cannot afford to repeat the hard lockdown imposed last year, which caused massive economic and social damage. Some predict a third wave when winter comes in the southern hemisphere in May and June and there are fears that current vaccines may be less effective against the new variant.
“We are going to get a third wave, even a fourth. This pandemic has only just started,” said Tivani Mashamba, professor of diagnostic research at the University of Pretoria.
Fuelled by black coffee, yellow-tipped cigarettes and white, incandescent rage, the faceless sleuth lurks on social media poised to unmask his next target.
“It’s outrageous, bizarre, it’s horrifying – a collective genocide,” fumed the twentysomething activist who burns the midnight oil scouring the internet for footage of parties being thrown despite a rapidly deteriorating Covid crisis that has killed more than 200,000 Brazilians.
“I truly believe people have been infected with the stupidity virus,” added the amateur investigator who publishes images of the hedonism on a Twitter account called Brazil Covidfest.
The smartphone gumshoe, a journalist from the southern city of Curitiba who asked not to be named, is one of several Brazilian activists who have begun shaming unrepentant party people online as their country’s epidemic again spirals out of control.
People should be paid to self-isolate as part of a new Covid-19 strategy in the UK, a public health expert has said.
Prof Devi Sridhar told Times Radio that the UK would need to overhaul its thinking on coronavirus using methods already tried in other countries, including improving test and trace systems and stricter measures at international borders.
Currently, people may need to take unpaid leave from work in order to self-isolate, though the government does now offer in England a £500 “test and trace support payment” but only for those who either already receive state support or can prove they will face financial hardship for self-isolating.
In a three-pronged plan, Sridhar - who is also an adviser to the Scottish government, said:
First, they have a strategy that from the start they said there was no acceptable level of infection, I think in Western countries, in the UK, there was always the idea that you could have a certain level of infection as long as it didn’t really reach your hospital capacity.
The second thing is they have functional testing, tracing and isolating, test results within 24 hours - which we still do not have - isolation, paying people to stay home as an act of good will not just requesting it and having people be penalised for it.
And third, robust border measures so you don’t keep having lockdowns and reimporting new strains. I find it amazing that schools are shut, I can’t visit my neighbour’s home, unemployment’s rising, businesses are shut. We’re having 1,000 Covid deaths a day but the one thing I can do is I can go on holiday to Dubai easily and return easily back without any testing at the airport.
Three-week lockdown begins in Cyprus
A three-week lockdown has begun in Cyprus where authorities have been battling a surge in coronavirus cases over the past month.
Restrictions aimed at curbing rising Covid-19 infections were reintroduced at 5am local time with all retail businesses, including department stores, malls, restaurants, hairdressers and beauty parlours, being ordered shut.
The island nation has been hit by what some have called an explosion in transmissions attributed in part to the arrival in recent weeks of the new UK variant of the virus. The highly contagious strain has been detected in a number of visitors flying in from Britain. As a former British colony, war-split Cyprus has strong ties with the UK.
Under the measures citizens will be permitted to leave their homes only twice a day - after informing authorities by text beforehand - either for exercise or reasons deemed essential such as stocking up on food and groceries and visiting doctors or pharmacies. Churches will close while schools will also be shuttered with on-line teaching being reintroduced.
Announcing the measures, health minister Constantinos Ioannou sounded the alarm saying the country’s intensive care system had reached breaking point because of the sudden rise in Covid-19 patients. The tougher restrictions were required to prevent “people dying helpless because we don’t have available beds,” he said, adding that Covid-19 tests will also be increased.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic authorities in the island’s Greek-Cypriot run south have reported more than 27,000 cases and 147 deaths.
President Nicos Anastasiades says his government has also requested that close ally and neighbour Israel dispatch extra vaccines to supplement those already dispensed to the island from the EU.
A rise in cases has been similarly reported by health authorities in the Mediterranean island’s Turkish-controlled north where officials keep their own tally of cases. A further 22 people were confirmed as having been diagnosed positive with coronavirus on Saturday bringing the total number of cases to 1,765 in the territory.
Updated
As Covid-19 cases rise across the world, hopes that life could get back to some semblance of normality by summer are fading. What chance do we have of going to a festival, flying off for a holiday or attending a major sporting event? My colleagues Tom Wall, Vanessa Thorpe and Harriet Sherwood have the answer.
Labour leader Keir Starmer has said the UK’s coronavirus rules may not be tough enough but he was not sure what tougher measures could be introduced.
“They are tough and they’re necessary,” he tells Andrew Marr on the BBC. “They may not be tough enough. In a sense, I think the most important thing is people get that message about stay at home. And it’s up to the government to put that message out there the whole time. We’ve had mixed messages I’m afraid for the last nine months which is why we’ve got a problem.
“I would like to see the prime minister out there every day with a press conference making sure that message is absolutely getting through ... We’ve had all this mixed messaging, stay at home, don’t stay at home, eat out, don’t eat out, go back to work, don’t go back to work. All of that has led us to where we are.”
However, he acknowledges, “its very hard to see what tougher measures can be put in place because the measures are pretty tough.”
Starmer also says he thinks it would “probably” be best to close nurseries. “Closing schools should be the last resort and it has a huge impact, particularly on vulnerable children.”
Pressed on his own messaging, since he said last Sunday he didn’t want schools to close. “I didn’t want schools to close, I’m not going to shy away from that. I did say on Sunday it was inevitable and we needed a plan for it.”
He said earlier the police “by and large” have upheld coronavirus rules well, but appeared to say the case of walkers in Derbyshire being fined was not a shining example of best practice by officers.
Updated
Russia has reported 22,851 new Covid cases including 4,216 in Moscow, pushing the national infection tally to 3,401,954 - the world’s fourth highest - since the pandemic began. Authorities have also confirmed 456 deaths in the past 24 hours, taking the official death toll to 61,837 – although this is likely to be an underestimate.
At the end of last month, Russia admitted that its coronavirus death toll was more than three times higher than it had previously reported, making it the country with the third-largest number of fatalities.
For months, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, had boasted about Russia’s low fatality rate from the virus, saying in December that it had done a better job at managing the pandemic than western countries.
But since early in the pandemic, some Russian experts have said the government was playing down the country’s outbreak, and officials eventually admitted as much. The Rosstat statistics agency said that the number of deaths from all causes recorded between January and November had risen by 229,700 compared with the previous year.
“More than 81% of this increase in mortality over this period is due to Covid,” said the deputy prime minister, Tatiana Golikova, meaning that more than 186,000 Russians have died from Covid-19.
The country launched a mass vaccination programme last month, first inoculating high-risk workers aged 18-60 without chronic illnesses. Then, the over-60s got the green light to receive the shot, though it is unclear how many have been vaccinated so far.
Spain’s government will today send convoys carrying the Covid vaccine and food supplies to areas cut off by Storm Filomena, which brought the heaviest snowfall in decades across central Spain and killed four people.
In the Madrid area, rescuers reached 1,500 people trapped in cars, while police broke up a large snowball fight after authorities appealed for citizens to stay at home for risk of accidents or spreading coronavirus.
Forecasters warned of dangerous conditions in the coming days, with temperatures expected to fall to up to minus 10 C next week and the prospect of snow turning to ice and damaged trees falling.
Madrid’s main international airport was closed and the operator said would not re-open until Sunday afternoon at the earliest, when flights would resume gradually.
About 20,000 km of roads across central Spain were affected by the storm and the government would send convoys transporting the vaccine and food supplies to those in need, transport minister Jose Luis Abalos said, according to Reuters.
UK on course to vaccinate 13m by mid-February, says health secreatary
UK health secretary Matt Hancock said the government was on course to reach its target of 13 million people vaccinated by mid-February and that the only rate limiting factor was supply. He told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge:
Yes we’re on course. The rate limiting factor at the moment is supply but that’s increasing. I’m very glad to say that at the moment we’re running at over 200,000 people being vaccinated every day. We’ve now vaccinated around one third of the over-80s in this country so we’re making significant progress but there’s still further expansion to go.
This week we’re opening mass vaccination centres. Big sites for instance at Epsom racecourse, there’s seven going live this week with more to come next week where we will get through very large numbers of people.
He adds that it is “highly likely” people will be vaccinated against Covid annually, as with the flu.
I think it’s highly likely that there will be a dual-vaccination programme for the foreseeable, this is the medium-term, of flu and Covid. Flu vaccination rates are at their highest level ever. Over 80% of the over-65s have been vaccinated for flu this year. That’s the biggest increase, a jump on last year when it was around 70%. That’s very good news. It’s good news for two reasons. Firstly, to protect people against flu and secondly because it shows the vast, vast majority of over-65s are up for getting vaccinated.
Hancock also says more people are respecting the lockdown rules in the UK than in November, but that the government’s new data surveillance systems were not in place during the first lockdown so it is difficult to compare compliance from then to now.
I don’t want to criticise the public bc the majority of people are following the rules ... And we can see the amount of people staying at home has increased.
We always knew these winter months were going to be the most difficult, even with that hope on the horizon, in GP surgeries right across the land. But just because the vaccine’s coming, we can’t let up, because the pressure on the NHS is right here, right now.
Questioned on whether people should be fined for driving to go for a walk, he does not provide a specific answer but says he backs the police.
Updated
With up to 40% of frontline workers in LA county, in the US, refusing Covid-19 inoculation, experts warn that understanding and persuasion are needed, writes my colleague Amanda Holpuch.
Susan, a critical care nurse based in Alaska has been exposed to Covid-19 multiple times and has watched scores of people die from the illness. But she did not want to get the vaccination when she learned it would soon be available.
“I am not an anti-vaxxer, I have every vaccine known to man, my flu shot, I always sign up right there, October 1, jab me,” said Susan, who didn’t want to give her last name for fear of retaliation. “But for this one, why do I have to be a guinea pig?”
The two authorized vaccines, made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, are safe according to leading experts and clinical trials – for one thing they contain no live virus and so cannot give a person Covid – and with tens of thousands of patients, they have had about 95% efficacy. But across the country, health workers with the first access to the vaccine are turning it down.
The rates of refusal – up to 40% of frontline workers in Los Angeles county, 60% of care home workers in Ohio – have prompted concern and in some cases, shaming. But the ultimate failure could be dismissing these numbers at a critical moment in the US vaccination campaign.
Dr Whitney Robinson, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, told the Guardian if these early figures coming from healthcare workers are not addressed: “It could mean after all this work, after all this sacrifice, we could still be seeing outbreaks for years, not just 2021, maybe 2022, maybe 2023.”
Health officials in Ireland, where a more infectious variant of the coronavirus first discovered in England has been surging, have said they believe three cases of another new variant found in South Africa has been contained.
Ireland is grappling with a Covid-19 surge that has exceeded last year’s first wave. It confirmed the first cases of the more infectious variant found in South Africa on Friday in people who had travelled to Ireland from South Africa over the Christmas holidays.
Ireland has reported an increasing presence of the variant first found in England. It was detected in 25% of positive cases that underwent further testing in the week to 3 January, up from just 9% two weeks earlier.
Cillian De Gascun, the head of Ireland’s national virus laboratory, told national broadcaster RTE:
The UK variant is of more concern to us purely because of the amount of virus that’s on the island, and we know that it’s transmitting in the community. The good thing about the South African variant is we know exactly where those cases came from, they have been contained, controlled and contact traced, and to the best of my knowledge there was no onward transmission.
The government announced its strictest lockdown measures since early last year on Wednesday, warning that a “tsunami” of infections fuelled by the UK variant and the relaxation of curbs ahead of Christmas could overwhelm the healthcare system.
The UK home secretary, Priti Patel, has defended the way police have handed out fines for lockdown breaches, stressing that there is a “need for strong enforcement”.
Police tactics have come in for scrutiny after Derbyshire police handed out £200 fines to two women who drove separately to go for a walk at a remote beauty spot situated around five miles from their homes, a move that was branded “bonkers”.
One of the would-be walkers, Jessica Allen, told the BBC that officers also informed her that a hot drink she had brought with her was not allowed as it was “classed as a picnic”.
“We are yet to hear anything regarding our fine but if we have managed to save somebody the worry of going for a walk and fearing they would be fined then we have done what we set out to do,” she said.
The force has since confirmed that it would be reviewing all fixed penalty notices issued during the new national lockdown in England after it received clarification about the coronavirus regulations from the National Police Chiefs’ Council.
West Mercia police also tweeted on Friday that people in Shropshire should be aware that having a snowball fight was “obviously not a justifiable reason to be out of your house” and warned that such frolicking in the cold weather was “likely to result” in a £200 fine for breaking lockdown rules.
But despite former police chiefs arguing that damage had been done to public trust by Derbyshire constabulary’s actions, Patel praised officers’ efforts to tackle the spread of Covid-19.
Ex-Durham Police chief constable Mike Barton told BBC Breakfast that “for the public to comply with the law, they have got to think and see the police are acting fairly”.
Patel said:
Our police officers are working tirelessly to keep us safe. Not only are they continuing to take criminals off our streets, but they are also playing a crucial role in controlling the spread of the virus. The vast majority of the public have supported this huge national effort and followed the rules.
But the tragic number of new cases and deaths this week shows there is still a need for strong enforcement where people are clearly breaking these rules to ensure we safeguard our country’s recovery from this deadly virus.
Enforcing these rules saves lives. It is as simple as that. Officers will continue to engage with the public across the country and will not hesitate to take action when necessary.”
Her comments follow a report in the Daily Telegraph suggesting that ministers are considering a “tough crackdown” to pressure more Britons to stay at home following record daily coronavirus death figures being reported on Friday.
However, some critics have questioned the link between stronger enforcement and levels of public respect for the restrictions – calling for more consistent messaging from the government as well as limits on international travel.
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Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to everyone reading wherever you are in the world. Its Mattha Busby here taking the blog from my colleague Helen Davidson - many thanks.
Do drop me a note on Twitter or email me on mattha.busby.freelance@guardian.co.uk if you’d like to share anything.
Summary
I’m now handing the blog reins over to my colleagues in London. Before I go, here’s a quick summary of the latest international developments in the pandemic.
Thanks and take care.
- Rapid testing to find symptomless carriers of Covid-19 is to be launched in England this week.
- Cuba will run phase three trials of its vaccine candidate in Iran, due to the difficulty of testing in Cuba where the outbreak is not as bad, and Iran banning the importation of US and British-produced vaccines.
- Pope Francis said he wishes to have a Covid vaccination as early as next week, as he urged others to get a shot in order to protect their own life as well as everyone else’s. The Vatican City confirmed it will shortly launch a vaccination campaign.
- Mexico reported a record 16,105 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Saturday, and 1,135 additional deaths. The true number is likely far higher.
- The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 16,946 to 1,908,527, with 465 deaths.
- Mainland China reported 69 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday, more than double the 33 reported a day earlier. 46 were in Hebei, which entered a “wartime mode” this week as it battles a new cluster.
- Twenty-one people in Marseille have tested positive for the new Covid variant initially found in England, with officials saying the cases had been discovered within a family cluster.
- Marseille has also joined Strasbourg and Dijon in having its curfew moved forward to 6pm from 8pm, running through to 6am.
- Vietnam will limit repatriation flights bringing citizens home from now until the end of the Lunar New Year in mid-February.
- Another 1,035 people have died within 28 days of testing positive in the UK, bringing the total to 80,868. It is the fourth day in a row that the UK has recorded more than 1,000 deaths.
- Thousands of Israelis on Saturday renewed weekly demonstrations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calling for the long-serving leader to resign over corruption charges against him and his alleged mishandling of the coronavirus crisis.
- France has recorded 171 new Covid-related deaths in hospitals in the past 24 hours, with the number of new, confirmed cases up by 20,177.
- Brazil recorded 62,290 additional confirmed cases in the 24 hours to Saturday, and 1,171 deaths.
- In Australia, three new locally transmitted cases have been recorded in New South Wales. Two are linked to the Berala cluster, and one to the northern beaches cluster. The three-week lockdown of 70,000 people in Sydney’s northern beaches region is over. Brisbane remains in lockdown, despite reporting no new cases for the second day in a row.
Rapid testing to find symptomless carriers of Covid-19 is to be launched in England this week. The aim of the programme is to identify some of the tens of thousands of infected people who are unwittingly spreading the virus across the country.
The dramatic escalation of the programme – which uses detectors known as lateral flow devices – comes as Covid death rates have continued to soar and hospitals have reported alarming numbers of patients needing intensive care.
On Saturday it was revealed a further 1,035 Covid deaths had occurred in the UK, bringing the nation’s total to 80,868. In addition, the daily number of those testing positive increased by 59,937.
Under the new, expanded testing scheme, local authorities will be encouraged to identify more positive cases of Covid and ensure those who are infected isolate. The use of lateral flow devices, which can confirm if a person is infected in under 30 minutes, will allow quick detection of infected individuals at test centres.
Read more:
A medical college in western Ukraine has been transformed into a temporary hospital as the coronavirus inundates the Eastern European country.
The foyer of the college in the city of Lviv holds 50 beds for Covid-19 patients, and 300 more are placed in lecture halls and auditoriums to accommodate the overflow of people seeking care at a packed emergency hospital nearby.
The head of the hospital’s therapy division, Marta Sayko, said the college space has doubled treatment capacity. She hopes a broad lockdown ordered Friday will reduce the burden on the Ukrainian health care system.
“Considering that now the number of cases is growing, more patients arrive in a grave condition with signs of respiratory failure,” Sayko said.
The government’s wide-ranging lockdown closed schools, gyms and entertainment venues and prohibits table service at restaurants through Jan. 25. Ukraine, which has a population of 42 million, has reported more than 1.1 million confirmed coronavirus cases and nearly 20,000 deaths in the pandemic.
Many medical workers have criticized the government for ordering the lockdown only after the Christmas and New Year’s holidays rather than risk angering the public.
“We saw large-scale New Year’s festivities almost in every city,” Borys Ribun, chief of the regional pathology bureau in Lviv, said. “I think there will be consequences. We shall see them in a week or two.” (AP)
Vietnam limiting flights for Lunar New Year
Vietnam will limit flights bringing citizens home from now until the end of the Lunar New Year in mid-February, when big gatherings indoors are expected, to reduce coronavirus risks, the country’s prime minister said.
With a new Covid-19 variant spreading around the globe and the upcoming Lunar New Year, the country’s most important holiday, only necessary flights approved by health, foreign, defence, public security and transport ministry are allowed to enter the country, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said.
After the Lunar New Year, which falls on February 10-16, the transport ministry will study the possibility of international flights resumption, Phuc added.
Vietnam has suspended all inbound international commercial flights since late March, but the government has been operating repatriation flights to bring home Vietnamese citizens stuck abroad amid the pandemic.
Some special flights carrying foreign experts and investors have been allowed to fly into Vietnam. All people entering the country have to spend 14 days in quarantine. The country on Tuesday suspended inbound flights from countries with new Covid-19 variants, initially Britain and South Africa.
Thanks to strict quarantine and tracking measures, Vietnam fared much better than many nations, registering a total of 1,513 coronavirus infections and 35 deaths. It has gone 38 days with no locally transmitted cases. (Reuters)
Updated
Now the UK has the coronavirus vaccine, how soon can we get back to normal life? Robin McKie takes a look at the key questions.
The government has ordered sufficient doses to inoculate the entire population of the UK against Covid-19 but we are in for a long haul.
Residents on Sydney’s northern beaches have welcomed the end of a tough three-week lockdown and praised the “amazing” community solidarity that helped avert a disastrous outbreak.
The past three weeks proved an immense challenge for the northern beaches, particularly the northernmost zone. The lockdown ruined Christmas holiday plans and robbed local businesses of revenue during their busiest trading period.
“It’s the sense of time, it slips away – you’re just one day to the next,” Libby Armstrong, the owner of Beachside Bookshop in Avalon told the Guardian on Sunday.
An alarming but informative data visualisation from the Straits Times, on the environmental impact of all the disposable medical masks being used during the pandemic.
Experts now estimate that each month, 129 billion face masks and 65 billion gloves are used and disposed of globally. With a surgical mask weighing roughly 3.5g, that would equate to 451,500 tonnes of masks a month and, when placed next to one another, cover an area roughly three times the size of Singapore.
Conservationists and non-governmental organisations are increasingly concerned that a lot of the plastic waste, especially pandemic-related waste, is ending up in landfills, waterways and oceans, adding to the millions of tonnes of plastic waste already dumped into the world’s oceans every year.
Germany records almost 17,000 new cases
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 16,946 to 1,908,527, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Sunday.
The reported death toll rose by 465 to 40,343, the tally showed.
Thousands of Israelis on Saturday renewed weekly demonstrations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calling for the long-serving leader to resign over corruption charges against him and his alleged mishandling of the coronavirus crisis.
Protesters held signs reading “Go,” and “Bibi, let my people go,” referring to Netanyahu by his nickname.
The protest in a Jerusalem square near Netanyahu’s official residence comes as Israel is the midst of its third national lockdown, which was recently tightened to shutter schools, and as the country presses forward with a world-leading vaccination drive. Netanyahu’s trial was set to resume this week, but was postponed indefinitely amid the tighter restrictions.
Netanyahu has been indicted on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust connected to three long-running investigations. He has denied any wrongdoing and says he is the victim of a “witch hunt” by hostile media, law enforcement and judicial officials. Protesters argue that Netanyahu cannot properly lead the country while under indictment.
Israel has seen a recent surge in cases despite unleashing one of the world’s fastest vaccination campaigns. The country has given the first of two vaccine doses to nearly 20% of its population, and Netanyahu said Thursday that Israel has secured enough vaccines to inoculate the whole adult population by the end of March.
Netanyahu has placed the vaccination drive at the centre of his campaign for reelection that same month. On March 23, Israel will hold its fourth nationwide vote in less than two years. In the meantime, he has called on Israelis to make “one last big effort” to halt transmission by adhering to the tightened restrictions. (AP)
Here’s today’s wrap on pandemic-related events in Australia, by Christopher Knaus.
It includes Brisbane’s three-day lockdown continuing despite no new cases, and the lifting of lockdowns in Sydney’s north, despite one new case.
In New South Wales three new locally transmitted cases were recorded from 24,000 tests, two linked to the Berala cluster in Sydney’s west, which has grown to 23 cases, and one linked to the northern beaches cluster, now responsible for 150 cases.
All three had been in the community while infectious and the state has updated its list of potential exposure sites
Read the full story here:
Monday marks the anniversary of China confirming its first death from Covid-19, a 61-year-old man who was a regular at the now-notorious Wuhan wet market, writes AFP.
Nearly 2m deaths later, the pandemic is out of control across much of the world, leaving tens of millions ill, a pulverised global economy and recriminations flying between nations.
Yet China, which has broadly controlled the pandemic on its soil, is still frustrating independent attempts to trace the virus’s origins and the central question of how it jumped from animals to humans.
There is little dispute that the virus which brought the world to its knees sparked its first known outbreak in late 2019 at a wet market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan where wildlife was sold as food, and the pathogen is believed to have originated in an undetermined bat species.
But the trail ends there, clouded by a mishmash of subsequent clues that suggest its origins may predate Wuhan as well as conspiracy theories – amplified by US president Donald Trump – that it leaked from a Wuhan lab.
Establishing the source is vital for extinguishing future outbreaks early, leading virologists say, providing clues that can guide policy decisions on whether to cull animal populations, quarantine affected persons, or limit wildlife hunting and other human-animal interactions.
“If we can identify why [viruses] keep emerging, we can reduce those underlying drivers,” said Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a global NGO focused on infectious disease prevention.
Updated
A fascinating read by my colleagues Melissa Davey, Elle Hunt, and Justin McCurry on some of the most successful nations not rushing to vaccinate.
They are the nations that have been held up as shining examples of coronavirus management. In Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan, daily Covid infections are in the single digits and outbreaks are quickly suppressed.
But there is one area where these nations lag well behind the pack: vaccination. Countries with some of the most enviable healthcare systems in the world – including Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea – will not begin to inoculate until the end of February or later.
The delay is deliberate. The millions of people already being vaccinated against Covid-19 will provide valuable data to those countries who have – for various reasons – decided to wait for more information about the vaccine, its efficacy and side effects before rolling it out to vulnerable populations and the public ...
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In Western Australia a crew member of a bulk carrier ship who allegedly jumped into the water and swam ashore at a port has been charged with failing to comply with quarantine directions.
WA police said the 37-year-old Vietnamese national was a crew member on a bulk carrier which berthed at the Albany port on Thursday. On Saturday he allegedly swam ashore in contravention of border and maritime crew directions.
Crew of ships are not permitted ashore on to WA land under the emergency management quarantine directions.
The man was found by police shortly before 7pm on Saturday at an Albany backpackers’ lodge. He was tested for Covid-19, which was negative, and his health assessed.
The man was charged with failing to comply with a direction and will appear in Perth magistrates court on Sunday. (AAP)
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“Too often, panic and isolationism seem to be playing major parts in [Australian] headlines, opinions and decision making,” writes professor of infectious diseases, Peter Collignon, in the Sun Herald. Collignon says demands for lockdowns have been wrong and he urged Australians, in particular decision-makers, “not to overreact or catastrophise”.
If we look at past outbreaks in Australia – Adelaide, Logan in Brisbane, Sydney’s Crossroads Hotel – they, like the current clusters, have all been controlled by a combination of good testing, contact tracing, quarantining of close contacts and limits on the size of indoor events.
Melbourne’s devastating second wave last winter was our major exception, but many important factors were poorly managed and these have now been markedly improved.
Why, then, is there now such a sense of panic that Covid-19 will spiral out of control?
Updated
China reports 69 new Covid cases
Mainland China reported 69 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday, more than double the 33 reported a day earlier, the country’s national health authority has said today.
Of the new cases, 21 were imported and the bulk of the locally transmitted cases, 46 out of 48, were recorded in Hebei, the province surrounding Beijing. Hebei entered a “wartime mode” this week as it battles a new cluster of coronavirus infections.
Another 27 asymptomatic cases were also reported on Saturday, down from 38 a day earlier. China does not classify these patients, who have been infected by the Sars-Cov-2 virus that causes the disease but are not yet showing any Covid-19 symptoms, as confirmed cases.
Updated
In the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec, a curfew meant to curb a surge in coronavirus infections took effect on Saturday evening.
The measure is needed to prevent gatherings that have fuelled the rampant spread of the virus, premier Francois Legault said.
“The situation is critical and a shock treatment is needed,” he said in a Facebook post earlier Saturday. “Our hospitals are filling with Covid-19 patients. Hundreds of people are in intensive care, fighting for their lives. Tens of people die every day.”
The rules will see most of Quebec’s 8.4m residents face police questions or fines of up to $6,000 Canadian (US$4,728) if they’re out between 8pm and 5am for the next four weeks.
There are exceptions for essential workers, people walking dogs, and those who have medical reasons to be out, such as a doctor’s appointment. Under the terms of the curfew, grocery stores and convenience stores will have to close by 7.30pm in order to allow workers and customers to get home. Stores connected to petrol stations can stay open to serve essential workers.
The curfew has seen sharp resistance from some. Just before the curfew was set to take effect, a few dozen people walked through the streets of Montreal’s Plateau district, chanting “Freedom!” as five police cruisers with lights flashing trailed behind them. A helicopter hovered overhead, and police cruisers lined the streets.
The curfew comes as Quebec’s Covid cases and deaths continue to rise, with hospitals saying they are filling up and risk becoming overwhelmed. On Saturday the province reported 3,127 new cases in 24 hours, passing 3,000 for the first time; 41 people died. (AP)
Updated
Hongkongers stranded in the UK are contemplating a six-week journey to get home, the South China Morning Post is reporting today.
A couple of days before Christmas the Hong Kong government announced an entry ban on anyone who had been in the UK for longer than two hours in the previous 21 days. The shock announcement caught many people out, including those who had travelled to the UK to visit family for the holidays. Hong Kong, under British rule until 1997, has strong ties with the UK.
That ban was extended for another two weeks on Thursday, and came on top of other restrictions including a now three-week period of mandatory hotel quarantine for people arriving home.
It meant the only way for people to get home was to leave the UK for another country, stay there for 21 nights before flying on to Hong Kong and spending another 21 nights in hotel quarantine.
Those trying to get back home had been advised to consider stopping over in Dubai for three weeks before continuing home. Dubai allows people from the UK to enter, as long as they take a Covid-19 test on arrival. If it’s negative they are not required to quarantine.
But now the Hong Kong government has banned all Emirates flights from Dubai and Bangkok and three passengers tested positive on arrival.
“Had we known what would happen, we would never have got on that plane,” one woman, who traveled with her family to visit sick relatives, told the Post.
The ban on UK arrivals, even for Hong Kong residents, has been labeled potentially unconstitutional but the government has maintained it is both legal and necessary.
Updated
Britain said on Sunday it had helped raise $1bn from global donors towards the drive to help “vulnerable countries” access coronavirus vaccines, by match-funding contributions.
It has also committed £548m ($743.4m) to the Covax Advance Market Commitment after matching with £1 for every $4 pledged by other donors.
Canada, Japan and Germany are among the countries to make contributions that it matched, helping the AMC raise more than $1.7bn so far.
The fund will allow for the distribution of 1 billion Covid vaccine doses to 92 developing countries this year, according to Britain’s Foreign Office.
“We’ll only be safe from this virus, when we’re all safe – which is why we’re focused on a global solution to a global problem,” foreign secretary Dominic Raab said. (AFP)
Updated
Record number of cases in Mexico
Mexico reported a record 16,105 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Saturday, and 1,135 additional deaths, according to health ministry data, bringing its total tally to 1,524,036 infections and 133,204 deaths.
The new daily death toll marks the fifth consecutive day that officials have reported more than 1,000 fatalities due to the highly contagious disease caused by the virus.
The real number of infected people and deaths is likely to be significantly higher than the official count, the ministry has said, due to little testing. (Reuters)
Updated
Six new cases in Victoria, all in hotel quarantine
In Victoria, Australia, health minister Martin Foley has reported six new cases – all in hotel quarantine, including one flight crew member.
He’s welcomed the two days of zero cases in Brisbane, but Victoria will wait for the final report tomorrow as well as the prime minister’s announcement before changing any policy.
96 travellers were given permits to go into isolation at home in Victoria yesterday. They came through Melbourne airport “in breach” of Queensland’s restrictions, but they have been assisted to go home and isolate anyway, he said.
About 900 permits have been approved for Victorians trying to get home from NSW.
“This isn’t over until the Australian population is vaccinated,” he said.
(You can catch up on earlier and detailed Australian updates in our previous blog here.)
Updated
Cuba will run phase three trials of its vaccine candidate, Sovereign 02, in Iran, after institutes in the two countries signed an agreement in Havana.
Cuba’s state-run Finlay Vaccine Institute announced on Twitter the clinical trial would run in Iran to “move forward faster in immunisation against Covid-19 in both countries”.
The Sovereign 02 is the country’s most advanced coronavirus vaccine candidate, showing “an early immune response [at 14 days],” institute director Vicente Verez said last month.
It has been difficult to do phase 3 clinical testing in Cuba because its outbreak has not been as serious as those in many larger countries, he said.
The Islamic republic has reported more than 1.2m cases of the virus, including more than 56,000 deaths.
It comes after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, banned the importation of US and British-produced vaccines saying they were “completely untrustworthy”.
“It’s not unlikely they would want to contaminate other nations,” he said in a tweet.
Cuba has reported about 14,000 cases among its population of 11.2m, and 148 people have died. While its case numbers are lower than other countries in the region, it is seeing an increase after opening its borders. The Cuban government intents to vaccinate the whole population in the first half of this year.
Updated
Pope urges people to get vaccinated
On Saturday Pope Francis and Britain’s Queen Elizabeth became the latest high-profile figures to join the global vaccination campaign against the coronavirus, as the UK reported it had surpassed more than 3m cases since the pandemic began more than a year ago.
Francis urged people to get the vaccination, calling opposition to the jab “suicidal denial” and saying he would get inoculated next week when the Vatican would begin its campaign.
“There is a suicidal denial which I cannot explain, but today we have to get vaccinated,” he said in an interview with Canale 5 due to be broadcast in full on Sunday.
The Queen and her husband, Prince Philip, were vaccinated on Saturday, Buckingham Palace said, in a rare public comment on the private health matters of the long-serving monarch.
A source told the domestic Press Association news agency that the Queen, 94, and Philip, 99, were given the injections by a royal household doctor at Windsor Castle.
Updated
Hello, and welcome to our continuing coverage of the pandemic. As it’s the weekend we’re running just one of our coronavirus blogs, so I’ll be bringing you a mix of international updates as well as Australian news.
You can catch up on detailed Australian updates in our previous blog here.
You can also reach me on Twitter @heldavidson with your thoughts and updates.
A quick summary of the latest so far:
- Pope Francis said he wishes to have a Covid vaccination as early as next week, as he urged others to get a shot in order to protect their own life as well as everyone else’s. The Vatican City confirmed it will shortly launch a vaccination campaign.
- Twenty-one people in Marseille have tested positive for the new Covid variant initially found in England, with officials saying the cases had been discovered within a family cluster.
- Marseille has also joined Strasbourg and Dijon in having its curfew moved forward to 6pm from 8pm, running through to 6am.
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Another 1,035 people have died within 28 days of testing positive in the UK, bringing the total to 80,868. It is the fourth day in a row that the UK has recorded more than 1,000 deaths.
- France has recorded 171 new Covid-related deaths in hospitals in the past 24 hours, with the number of new, confirmed cases up by 20,177.
- Brazil recorded 62,290 additional confirmed cases in the 24 hours to Saturday, and 1,171 deaths.
- In Australia, three new locally transmitted cases have been recorded in New South Wales. Two are linked to the Berala cluster, and one to the northern beaches cluster. The three-week lockdown of 70,000 people in Sydney’s northern beaches region is over. Brisbane remains in lockdown, despite reporting no new cases for the second day in a row.
Updated
