That’s it from the UK blog team, thanks for following our coverage.
Victoria in Australia has imposed a seven-day “circuit-breaker lockdown” in response to a growing Covid cluster in Melbourne’s northern suburbs.
From 11.59pm Thursday, 27 May until 11.59pm Thursday 3 June, the following rules apply to the entire state of Victoria, not just Melbourne.
Authorities in Australia have released a list of public exposure sites in New South Wales visited by a confirmed case of Covid-19.
Here are the current coronavirus hotspots, Covid exposure sites, venues and case location alerts and what to do if you’ve visited them.
Israel’s health ministry said it found a small number of heart inflammation cases observed mainly in young men who received Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine in Israel that were likely linked to their vaccination, Reuters reports.
Pfizer has said it has not observed a higher rate of the condition, known as myocarditis, than would normally be expected in the general population.
In Israel, 275 cases of myocarditis were reported between December 2020 and May 2021 among more than 5 million vaccinated people, the ministry said, in disclosing the findings of a study it commissioned to examine the matter.
Most patients who experienced heart inflammation spent no more than four days in hospital and 95% of the cases were classified as mild, according to the study, which the ministry said was conducted by three teams of experts.
The study found “there is a probable link between receiving the second dose (of Pfizer) vaccine and the appearance of myocarditis among men aged 16 to 30,” it said in a statement.
⚠️PUBLIC HEALTH ALERT – JERVIS BAY⚠️
— NSW Health (@NSWHealth) June 1, 2021
NSW Health has been advised by the Victoria Department of Health and Human Services that a confirmed case of COVID-19 from Melbourne was in Jervis Bay, Goulburn, Hyams Beach and Vincentia while potentially infectious on 23 and 24 May. pic.twitter.com/h6FKv177wU
Ecuador this week launched a plan to vaccinate 9 million people against coronavirus in 100 days, part of recently installed President Guillermo Lasso’s plan to revive the economy by battling the pandemic, Reuters reports.
Lasso said the government was in talks with Russia over the purchase of some 18 million doses of the Sputnik V vaccine.
“All of our logistical effort will be successful once we have vaccines,” Lasso said.
“It is urgent, and we depend on the provision of vaccines from abroad.”
Ecuador began its inoculation campaign in January, but former President Lenin Moreno’s administration advanced slowly due to logistical issues, allegations of nepotism in the allocation of shots, and frequent changes of top health officials.
Brazil registered 2,408 Covid-19 deaths and 78,926 additional cases, according to data released by the country’s health ministry.
The South American country has now registered 465,199 total coronavirus deaths and 16,624,480 total confirmed cases, Reuters reports.
As Anthony Fauci, the US’s leading infectious diseases official, grappled with the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic last spring, he was pulled in many directions.
Donald Trump’s White House, which was downplaying the dangers, was demanding he portray the outbreak on their terms; the media was hungry for answers; and Fauci’s email inbox was constantly full with officials, the public and celebrities offering advice and seeking information about the world’s deadliest health crisis for a century.
The US administered 296,404,240 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country as of Tuesday morning and distributed 366,317,045 doses, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Those figures are up from the 294,928,850 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by May 30 out of 366,316,945 doses delivered.
The agency said 168,489,729 people had received at least one dose while 135,867,425 people are fully vaccinated.
Moderna Inc said it has entered into an agreement with Thermo Fisher Scientific for manufacturing and packaging its Covid-19 vaccine, as the US vaccine maker looks to scale up production, Reuters reports.
Under the terms, Moderna said Thermo Fisher’s commercial manufacturing site in Greenville, North Carolina will be used to provide fill/finish manufacturing services and supply packaging for hundreds of millions of doses of the vaccine.
“The addition of Thermo Fisher to our network will support our efforts to scale up our manufacturing ability,” Moderna’s chief technical operations and quality officer, Juan Andres, said in a statement.
Earlier on Tuesday, Moderna filed for full U.S. approval of its COVID-19 vaccine for adults
The UK has reported no deaths from Covid in a day, for the first time in 10 months, raising optimism in Downing Street that England could forge ahead with the final stage of the roadmap despite scientists warning that extra restrictions might be needed to control a third wave.
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, hailed the statistic as proof that vaccines were breaking the link between infection and severe illness, though scientists warned against reading too much into the numbers following a bank holiday weekend.
A summary of today's developments
- India said it is aiming to triple capacity to 10 million jabs per day by July to avert another wave of Covid-19 infections as deadly as the outbreak suffered since April.
- A Brazilian Supreme Court judge has given president Jair Bolsonaro five days to submit information regarding the government’s decision to host the Copa America football tournament despite the nation’s ongoing struggles with Covid-19.
- A decrease in local Covid-19 vaccine production has slowed the pace of Brazil’s inoculation drive and contributed to a growing number of people not taking their second doses, according to the latest data from the Fiocruz biomedical institute.
- Heathrow airport in London has begun processing arrivals from red list countries in a dedicated terminal following concerns about them mixing with other passengers. Travellers arriving from red list nations on direct flights are being taken to Terminal 3.
- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa called on faster delivery of vaccines to poorer countries, including by waiving patents on vaccine development.
- Peru has revised its official Covid-19 death toll to 180,764, nearly triple the previous official figure of 69,342, following a government review that shows the severity of the outbreak in the country.
- The World Health Organisation has recommended a new set of names for the coronavirus “variants of concern”, which will be known by letters of the Greek alphabet. Alpha is the new name for UK/Kent (B.1.1.7), Beta for South Africa (B.1.351), Gamma for Brazil (P.1) and Delta for the variant first detected in India (B.1.617.2).
- Malaysia has begun a tough nationwide lockdown to battle a worsening coronavirus outbreak. Of almost 2,800 deaths from Covid-19 recorded in the country of 32 million since the start of the pandemic, over 40 percent were in May alone.
- Israel announced it will begin phasing out coronavirus-related payments to the unemployed and Ireland announced similar steps later this year while maintaining other income and business supports as the economy fully reopens.
- The Coachella music festival will return to the US in April 2022 after being repeatedly delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic, organisers have announced.
Scotland is entering a “third wave” of coronavirus, according to the national clinical director, as Nicola Sturgeon paused plans to ease Covid restrictions in much of the country.
The First Minister insisted the country was still at a “delicate and fragile point” in the battle with the virus, in an announcement on restrictions which she described as a “mixed bag”.
Jason Leitch warned the Indian variant “is causing us some challenge and is spreading quicker than we hoped”.
When asked by BBC Radio Scotland’s Drivetime if the country was at the start of a third wave he replied: “Yes, I think we are.
“The question is how big that third wave is - everybody, every modelling higher education institution... they all said, if you open you will get more cases.
“Now I’m not sure I needed a university to tell me that, I think people in the street would have told me that.
“The question is, whether you control that to a level that doesn’t cause enough severe disease to fill hospitals, and enough severe disease to cause misery and death to families.
“That’s the balance we’re now trying to strike and the advice we’ve given and the decisions the First Minister and the Cabinet have made today.”
As part of those decisions the First Minister confirmed Glasgow, which had been under the strictest restrictions in Scotland, will see these relaxed, with the city moving to Level 2 from Saturday, PA reports.
On that date, many island communities will move to Level 0 - the lowest level there is under Scotland’s five tier system - while 15 council areas will step down to Level 1.
But 13 local authority areas, including Edinburgh, Dundee and Stirling, will remain in Level 2 for the time being.
Updated
A decrease in local Covid-19 vaccine production has slowed the pace of Brazil’s inoculation drive and contributed to a growing number of people not taking their second doses, according to the latest data from the Fiocruz biomedical institute.
Reuters reports:
Brazil administered 21 million COVID-19 shots in May, down 14.2% from the 24.5 million vaccines injected in April, according to data compiled by the federally funded Fiocruz and state Health Departments.
More than 10.5 million second doses were given in April, compared with 6.6 million last month, the data show. Experts said a lack of shots, coupled with misinformation about vaccines, had led millions of Brazilians to only take one dose so far. A lack of chemical ingredients, mainly delivered from China, has caused Brazil’s two main vaccine production hubs, Fiocruz and the Butantan institute in Sao Paulo, to temporarily pause production of their respective shots. Fiocruz is making the AstraZeneca PLC vaccine, while Butantan is manufacturing a shot developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd. Carlos Lula, president of the National Council of Health Secretaries (Conass), said about 5 million people had so far not shown up to take their second dose. “Conass is talking to the Health Ministry and seeing what we can do to speed up vaccinations,” he told Reuters.
The Coachella music festival will return to the US in April 2022, organisers have announced.
The 2020 event was scheduled for April of that year before being pushed to October.
It was then moved to April 2021 before again being cancelled due to the health crisis.
However promoter Goldenvoice has now confirmed Coachella will return over two weekends next year in California - April 15-17 and April 22-24.
Advance ticket sales begin on Friday, organisers added.
The Stagecoach music festival, a country music event scheduled for April on the same site as Coachella, is also making its return.
It is scheduled to take place over April 29-May 1.
New infection control guidance to help keep NHS workers safe from Covid-19 “falls short”, leading nurses in the UK said.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said that the updated official Covid-19 infection prevention and control guidance “focuses too much on aerosol generating procedures as the main risk”. But doctors have welcomed the new guidance as a “step in the right direction”, PA reports. Concerns were raised early on in the pandemic that medics were not able to get access to appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) amid a worldwide shortage.
The guidance, issued jointly by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) as well as public health agencies across the UK’s four nations and NHS England, has been updated to “strengthen existing messaging”, it states.
But “no changes to the recommendations, including PPE, have been made in response to the new variant strains at this stage”, the guidance adds, though this is under constant review.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has voiced concerns at the Covid-19 situation in South America, warning that outbreaks in the already hard-hit region were once again worsening.
The WHO’s emergencies chief Michael Ryan said eight of the 10 countries reporting the coronavirus highest mortality rates in the last week were in the Americas, AFP reports.
“The situation in South America right now remains of very high concern,” he told reporters.
“South America was really in a difficult situation only a couple of months ago, and that situation again is starting to turn in the wrong direction.”
“The disease transmission is intense, community transmission is widespread and healthcare systems remain under pressure,” he said stressing that those factors were being “reflected in mortality rates.”
A Brazilian Supreme Court judge has given president Jair Bolsonaro five days to submit information regarding the government’s decision to host the Copa America football tournament despite the nation’s ongoing struggles with Covid-19.
Reuters reports:
The demand by Ricardo Lewandowski came in response to a suit filed by the opposition Workers’ Party, which objected to hosting the tournament given the current public health situation in Brazil and plunged the fate of Latin America’s biggest sporting event into uncertainty once more.
Bolsonaro said earlier on Tuesday his government was on board with hosting the Copa America which starts on June 13, after planned host Argentina pulled out due to a dramatic worsening of the coronavirus pandemic there.
It comes as Brazil struggles to cope with the ravages of a virus that has killed 462,791 people, according to government figures, the second-highest tally in the world.
“Considering the importance of the matter and the public health emergency resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the urgency that the case requires, information from the president of the Republic is being requested within the legal deadline,” wrote Lewandowski in an order seen by Reuters.
Speaking to supporters in Brasilia, Bolsonaro said he consulted with Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga and they had agreed the four-week long tournament played by 10 South American nations could take place.
“As far as it is up to me, and all the ministers, including the health minister, it is all decided,” Bolsonaro said.
Updated
Key developments
- India said it is aiming to triple capacity to 10 million jabs per day by July to avert another wave of Covid-19 infections as deadly as the outbreak suffered since April.
- Brazil’s President Jair Bolsinaro has come under fire for agreeing to host the Copa America football tournament in two weeks, despite his country potentially facing a third wave of infections.
- Heathrow airport in London has begun processing arrivals from red list countries in a dedicated terminal following concerns about them mixing with other passengers. Travellers arriving from red list nations on direct flights are being taken to Terminal 3.
- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa called on faster delivery of vaccines to poorer countries, including by waiving patents on vaccine development.
- Peru has revised its official Covid-19 death toll to 180,764, nearly triple the previous official figure of 69,342, following a government review that shows the severity of the outbreak in the country.
- The World Health Organisation has recommended a new set of names for the coronavirus “variants of concern”, which will be known by letters of the Greek alphabet. Alpha is the new name for UK/Kent (B.1.1.7), Beta for South Africa (B.1.351), Gamma for Brazil (P.1) and Delta for the variant first detected in India (B.1.617.2).
- Malaysia has begun a tough nationwide lockdown to battle a worsening coronavirus outbreak. Of almost 2,800 deaths from Covid-19 recorded in the country of 32 million since the start of the pandemic, over 40 percent were in May alone.
- Israel announced it will begin phasing out coronavirus-related payments to the unemployed and Ireland announced similar steps later this year while maintaining other income and business supports as the economy fully reopens.
South Africa and India’s push for a patent waiver on coronavirus vaccines was backed by other major emerging economies on Tuesday, who together called for quicker delivery of vaccines.
Brazil, Russia and China echoed the call for a temporary waiver of intellectual property rights by the World Trade Organization, which they said would help poorer countries secure vaccine doses.
The five countries also said there needed to be more transparency on pricing, transfer of technology, more local production and sharing of vaccines.
The heads of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, WTO and World Health Organization published a joint op-ed in a dozen newspapers across the world on Tuesday calling for greater vaccine equality.
They said the World Bank’s $12 billion in financing to help buy and transport vaccines should soon support 50 countries but also warned that ensuring equal vaccine access needed solid commitments from richer nations.
“It calls for upfront financing, upfront vaccine donations, and upfront precautionary investments and planning – rather than commitments that may be slow to materialize,” they said.
Updated
After making $3 billion (£2.1 billion) selling Covid-19 tests last year, American company Abbott Laboratories has forecast its revenues to fall sharply, largely due to increased vaccination.
Reuters reports the company’s shares dropped 6% after its announcement on Tuesday, in major contrast to the more than 20% rise over the course of 2020.
The company said reduced demand for its tests has also been down to fewer cases in richer countries and US guidance that fully vaccinated people do not need to be tested to travel.
It had previously forecast revenues of up to $7 million but revised the figure to $4 billion to $4.5 billion.
France reported 127 new coronavirus deaths in hospitals on Tuesday, compared to 126 on Monday, and the number of Covid-19 patients remained on the decline, Reuters reports.
The number of people in hospital with the virus fell by 508 to 16,088 and the number of people in intensive care units with Covid-19 fell by 120 to 2,825 people. Both numbers have been falling steadily for weeks.
Italy reported 93 coronavirus-related deaths on Tuesday against 82 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 2,483 from 1,820, Reuters reports.
Italy has registered 126,221 deaths linked to COVID-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the eight-highest in the world. The country has reported 4.22 million cases to date.
Updated
The International Monetary Fund will provide grant financing for £25 billion of a proposed £35 billion project aimed at ramping up global vaccinations against the coronavirus, Reuters reports.
IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva said at a joint news conference with the World Health Organization, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization: “We are creating a breeding ground for variants unless we act decisively to end the pandemic everywhere.”
Meanwhile the World Bank announced that it has £8.5 billion in Covid-19 vaccine financing available and will have approved vaccination financing operations in over 50 countries by the end of June.
The development lender’s president, David Malpass, said it was “vital that we speed up the supply chain for vaccine distribution,” including shortening the manufacturing time, approvals and allocations of doses that have already been produced.
Updated
The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has sparked outrage after approving plans to hold South America’s answer to the European championship in his Covid-stricken country despite warnings Brazil is steaming into a potentially calamitous third wave of infections, Tom Philips reports.
Full story here:
Rachel Hall here taking over from Kaamil Ahmed. Do send over anything we’ve missed to rachel.hall@theguardian.com
After vaccinating large sections of the population and exiting lockdowns, several countries are evaluating the health of their economies and support packages they have had in place.
In Israel, where the economy has fully opened, the finance ministry announced Tuesday that it would be scaling down support for the unemployed, starting with under-28s without families, after complaints about businesses struggling to find workers.
Ireland, where 385,000 people were receiving unemployment support in April, according to AFP, has announced a €4bn package to rectify the “enormous damage” caused by the pandemic.
“Our core objective is to restore, and then go beyond pre-pandemic employment levels,” said Prime minister Micheal Martin.
Italy’s economy grew faster in the first quarter of this year than previously estimated, according to new data. Both Gross Domestic Product and unemployment grew 0.1 percent compared to the previous quarter.
“Italy is strong, alive and is yearning to restart. The pandemic months have been very tough, for workers and businesses,” Prime Minister Mario Draghi said during a visit in the northern Emilia Romagna region.
“But thanks to sacrifices made by Italians and the strong acceleration of the vaccination campaign, we are facing a new phase.”
WHO approves Chinese Sinovac vaccine for emergency use
The World Health Organization has approved the Chinese Sinovac vaccine for emergency use, it said in a statement.
The second Chinese vaccine against Covid-19 to be approved as safe by the WHO, it said the vaccine would be allowed to delivered under Covax, the global vaccine-sharing programme.
Updated
India aims for 10m Covid jabs a day by July
India wants to more than triple its supply of coronavirus vaccines to 10 million per day by July as it scales up a campaign seen as keen to avoiding another outbreak as disastrous as April’s, Reuters reports.
“We don’t doubt that we will be able to increase the pace of vaccinations, once supply is ramped up,” government advisor V K Paul told reporters on Tuesday.
Vaccine manufacturers such as Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech are scrambling to boost supplies, with the country is also in talks with major foreign vaccine producers such as Pfizer Inc, officials have said.
The health ministry said nearly 45 million people had been fully vaccinated - 4.7% of the country’s 950 million adult population. India administered nearly 2.8 million doses on Monday, according to data from its official vaccine portal.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has drawn criticism for a slow vaccine rollout even though India is one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of doses, including AstraZeneca’s shot.
Updated
WHO to administer vaccinations in rebel-held northern Yemen
Healthcare workers in Huthi-held territory in Yemen will be given vaccinations from next week, a World Health Organization official told Reuters.
Adham Abdel-Moneim, the WHO’s representative in Yemen, said 10,000 doses arrived in the capital Sanaa yesterday and were put in cold storage. The WHO will run the campaign.
Human Rights Watch on Tuesday accused the Huthi rebels of concealing the number of Covid-19 cases in areas it controls and blocking the delivery of vaccines, despite the country receiving 360,000 doses on 31 March.
Vaccinations began almost two months ago in parts of Yemen controlled by the Saudi-backed government.
Doctors marched throughout India to protest a popular guru who claimed yoga can defeat Covid-19, AFP reports.
The doctors denounced and called for the arrest for Baba Ramdev, who claimed modern drugs were “stupid and failed science”.
The doctors’ association at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), one of Delhi’s biggest government hospitals, called Ramdev’s comments “disgraceful”.
Ramdev, a keen supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, retracted his comments after an appeal by India’s health minister and the guru said he had been merely reading out other people’s WhatsApp messages.
But he then caused further outcry by saying that he did not need a coronavirus vaccine because he was protected by yoga and traditional medicine, or Ayurveda.
Moderna has followed Pfizer by filing for full approval of its coronavirus vaccine in the US, which is currently authorised for emergency use, Reuters reports.
The company said it will be submitting data to the US Food and Drug Administration over coming weeks as it seeks priority approval for the vaccine.
Scarce supplies of coronavirus vaccines are endangering refugees in Asia as their host countries experience surges in Covid-19 cases, the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, has warned.
It urged manufacturers and countries with surplus vaccines to give more vaccines to Covax. Low supplies to the global vaccine-sharing initiative has meant delayed deliveries to countries relying on it.
“These countries host the vast majority of more than 80 million forcibly displaced people in the world. Yet so far, they have benefited from only a fraction of the world’s Covid-19 vaccines,” UNHCR said on Tuesday.
Not a single vaccine has been delivered in the Rohingya refugees camps in Bangladesh, where the total number of cases identified more than doubled in May alone.
There were also increased among refugee populations in Nepal, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia, Iran and Indonesia, UNHCR said.
Updated
Poland to begin vaccinations of 12-to-15 year olds from 7 June
Reuters are reporting that Poland will offer Covid-19 vaccinations to children aged 12-15 from 7 June. Michal Dworczyk, the minister in charge of the country’s vaccination programme, announced the move this morning.
The European Commission on Friday authorized the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for use in children as young as 12.
Italy allocated €50m to help treat people suffering from 'long Covid'
The Italian government has allocated €50m to help treat the estimated 164,000 people suffering from serious health problems associated with ‘long Covid’.
The money will be used for regular check-ups, including of the heart, lungs and kidneys, of patients until the end of 2023 as part of a strategy also aimed at allowing medics to research the long-term impact of the virus.
More than a third of Italians suffering from serious symptoms of long-Covid are from Lombardy, the region hardest-hit by the pandemic.
Antonio Pisani, a neurologist at the Mondino research centre, told Il Sole 24 Ore that the risk of neurological disorders is high. Among the most common symptoms he sees among patients are ongoing fatigue, dizziness and difficulty concentrating.
He said there were also signs that the virus could predispose people to diseases including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. “I had two patients who, before March 2020, had never visited a neurologis … a month ago one was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and the other Alzheimer’s. Therefore it’s as if Covid was an accelerator for a disease that was already there but had not yet presented itself.”
Updated
Delivery to the Philippines of the first batches of a promised 17m doses of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine made in Thailand has been delayed by several weeks, a Philippine presidential adviser has said.
The delay raises questions about AstraZeneca’s vaccine distribution plan in Southeast Asia, which depend on 200m doses made by Siam Bioscience, a company owned by Thailand’s king that is making vaccines for the first time.
Joey Concepcion, a presidential adviser who has been coordinating vaccine procurement with the Philippine government and private sector, told Reuters that AstraZeneca had informed him delivery of the first batch of 1.3m doses would have to be pushed back from the third week of June to mid-July and also reduced to 1.17m doses.
Concepcion said he was in touch daily with AstraZeneca and was told there were delays in Thai production. “It is a new plant they are running … that is how it is when you start a new plant,” he said.
AstraZeneca has faced legal action in Europe over a failure to deliver supplies as promised.
Updated
Human Rights Watch says Yemen rebels blocking Covid vaccines
Yemen’s Huthi rebels, who control most of the country’s north including the capital Sanaa, have been blocking international efforts to supply Covid vaccines, Human Rights Watch said.
The New York-based group accused Huthi leaders of suppressing information about both the dangers of Covid and the prevalence of the disease in territory under their control.
“The deliberate decision of the Huthi authorities to keep the real number of cases of Covid-19 under wraps and their opposition to vaccines are putting Yemeni lives at risk,” said HRW’s deputy Middle East director Michael Page.
“Pretending Covid-19 does not exist is not a mitigation strategy and will only lead to mass suffering.
“Given the weakened healthcare system in Yemen, Huthi authorities should at least ensure transparency so that civilians living in their areas can understand the scale of the pandemic and facilitate an international vaccination plan that meets the needs on the ground.”
AFP report that Yemen received 360,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine on 31 March, the first of 1.9 million doses to be delivered this year through the Covax programme for poorer countries.
However, the rebels’ failure to cooperate with the World Health Organization and the Yemeni government has prevented any vaccines from reaching the north, HRW said citing a medical source with “direct knowledge of the circumstances”.
As a result, vaccinations have only been occurring in the government-held south. HRW quoted Huthi officials as dismissing Covid-19 as a “conspiracy”.
“America bears the primary responsibility for the Covid-19 epidemic,” it quoted rebel leader Abdul Malik al-Huthi, as saying in a televised speech last year.
Today so far…
- Heathrow airport in London has begun processing arrivals from red list countries in a dedicated terminal following concerns about them mixing with other passengers. Travellers arriving from red list nations on direct flights are being taken to Terminal 3.
- Russia has announced the resumption of air travel with Britain and a number of other countries – Austria, Hungary, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Croatia, Mauritius, and Morocco – which had been suspended due to coronavirus restrictions.
- Peru has revised its official Covid-19 death toll to 180,764, nearly triple the previous official figure of 69,342, following a government review that shows the severity of the outbreak in the country.
- The World Health Organisation has recommended a new set of names for the coronavirus “variants of concern”, which will be known by letters of the Greek alphabet. Alpha is the new name for UK/Kent (B.1.1.7), Beta for South Africa (B.1.351), Gamma for Brazil (P.1) and Delta for the variant first detected in India (B.1.617.2).
- Chinese authorities in Guangdong province have cancelled flights and locked down communities in response to what is believed to be the first community outbreak of the “Delta” or Indian variant in China.
- Malaysia has begun a tough nationwide lockdown to battle a worsening coronavirus outbreak. Of almost 2,800 deaths from Covid-19 recorded in the country of 32 million since the start of the pandemic, over 40 percent were in May alone.
- Taiwan has reported 13 new deaths from Covid-19, and 262 new cases. In a sign that authorities are also clearing the backlog of test results which had seen hundreds added to previous daily totals and caused difficulties in analysing any trends, there were just 65 new positive cases announced today.
- Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious disease is to reduce the coronavirus risk level for the country to “high” from “very high”, health minister Jens Spahn said.
- A leading scientific adviser to the UK government has repeated calls to delay the 21 June lifting of restrictions by “a few weeks”, warning the coronavirus’s ability to adapt in the face of vaccines has still left the UK in a vulnerable position.
- Ireland will begin to gradually phase out temporary coronavirus-related jobless payments later this year while maintaining other income and business supports as the economy fully reopens, public expenditure minister Michael McGrath.
- Australians who have been vaccinated against Covid would be able to leave the country and return with less strict quarantine requirements under a plan that could be trialled within six weeks.
Our community team are interested to hear about your experiences of travelling through Heathrow, now that London’s airport has opened up a terminal specifically to deal with arrivals from the so-called “red list” countries. If you’ve travelled and want to get in touch with them, you can find all the details here…
Trial allowing vaccinated Australians to travel overseas could start in six weeks
Australians who have been vaccinated against Covid would be able to leave the country and return with less strict quarantine requirements under a plan that could be trialled within six weeks.
The federal health minister, Greg Hunt, revealed the proposal in the Coalition party room on Tuesday following a question from Liberal MP Jason Falinski, who had asked whether vaccination could see people exempted from outbound and inbound travel restrictions.
Australia shut its borders in March 2020 in response to the coronavirus pandemic imposing two weeks hotel quarantine on those arriving into the country.
Outbound travel is also banned – which was upheld by the full federal court on Tuesday – although more than 140,000 Australian citizens and residents have travelled overseas for critical business, on compassionate grounds or for other exempted reasons.
With Australia struggling to vaccinate its population by the end of 2021, there is pressure on the federal government to provide incentives to get the jab and to ease the travel ban that has separated families.
About 40,000 Australians remain stranded overseas due to flight caps imposed as a result of limited hotel quarantine beds.
Read more of Paul Karp’s report here: Trial allowing vaccinated Australians to travel overseas could start in six weeks
This might be a useful ready-reckoner for some new language that you – and I – are going to need to get used to in the next few weeks, after the WHO recommended a new set of names for the coronavirus “variants of concern”. These are the four you need to know:
- Alpha - UK/Kent (B.1.1.7)
- Beta - South Africa (B.1.351)
- Gamma - Brazil (P.1)
- Delta - India (B.1.617.2)
For ease of use to start with, I’ll try to make sure I am using all three ways of naming each variant until we all get more acquainted with the new terminology.
There’s fuller details here: Covid-19 variants to be given Greek alphabet names to avoid stigma
Updated
Chile's Arturo Vidal in hospital with Covid amid confusion over Copa América
The proposed Copa América this summer is in some disarray, with reports that Brazil will replace hosts Argentina, just 13 days before it is due to start. “The Copa América 2021 will be played in Brazil,” an official Conmebol statement said. “Tournament start and end dates are confirmed. The venues and the fixtures will be announced by Conmebol in the next few hours.”
The tournament, featuring 10 South American nations, had been due to be held in Argentina and Colombia with joint hosts for the first time in its 105-year history. Colombia was removed as a co-host on 20 May after a wave of protests demanding social and economic change spread across the country, and Argentina has followed.
Now Reuters report that Chilean national soccer star Arturo Vidal has been diagnosed with Covid-19 and is in hospital in what appears to be a an isolated case as the squad readies itself for World Cup qualifying match against Argentina on 3 June.
“He was diagnosed positive for Covid in the daily preventive exam performed today,” the team said in a statement late yesterday. The team plan to travel to Argentina for the game today.
Germany to reduce national Covid risk level to 'high' from 'very high'
A quick Reuters snap here that Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious disease is to reduce the coronavirus risk level for the country to “high” from “very high” as the situation improves, health minister Jens Spahn said on Tuesday.
“We have grounds for optimism,” said Spahn at a news conference with the head of the RKI, Lothar Wieler, who said developments were improving but the pandemic was not yet over.
Ireland to begin phasing out 'Pandemic Unemployment Payment'
Ireland will begin to gradually phase out temporary coronavirus-related jobless payments later this year while maintaining other income and business supports as the economy fully reopens, public expenditure minister Michael McGrath said today.
Ireland is emerging from its third and longest lockdown having had one the strictest regimes in Europe for the last 15 months, leaving more than 300,000 people who lost their jobs claiming the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP).
Local media reported that the PUP, which is paid out at a higher rate than regular jobless benefits, would be reduced from September and withdrawn by February 2022.
“There won’t be a cliff edge in July, we will be looking at an extension of the PUP but also laying out a pathway towards the normalisation of our social welfare code and ultimately unwinding a payment that is pandemic related,” McGrath told national broadcaster RTE. “The changes will be gradual.”
The number of people temporarily or permanently unemployed in Ireland stood at 22.4% at the end April, with around three in four on the PUP. McGrath said he expected that cohort to fall very significantly over coming weeks as the economy reopens.
He added that additional supports for businesses reopening would be announced later today. Padraic Halpin reminds us for Reuters that the government allowed all shops to open for the first time this year two weeks ago with the hospitality sector to follow with limited capacity in coming days.
Nicola Slawson has launched our UK live blog for the day, with the leads line being the warning that the country is in a “perilous moment”. Join her for the latest UK Covid news as it comes in today.
I’ll be continuing here with the latest coronavirus news from around the world.
Taiwan has reported 13 new deaths from Covid-19, and 262 new cases. In a sign that authorities are also clearing the backlog of test results which had seen hundreds added to previous daily totals and caused difficulties in analysing any trends, there were just 65 new positive cases announced today.
The majority of the new cases remained in the north, with 166 in New Taipei city, 87 in Taipei city, and 23 in Taoyuan.
Health and welfare minister Chen Shih-Chung said reinfection rates had declined thanks to the measures introduced over the past two weeks - and the community’s cooperation with them - but said it was still not time to relax.
Chen the backlog of cases was expected to be cleared in the next day or two.
The daily number of vaccinations has increased, but Taiwan still remains far behind other countries, with less than 2% of its population having received a shot. Taiwan’s problems with a Covid-19 vaccination drive are complicated, and involved accusations of geopolitical interference as well as of government bungling, but the important news from recent days is that the government is now allowing private companies, religious groups and local governments to arrange imports.
Tech giant Foxconn and its billionaire founder Terry Gou have sought permission to buy 5 million vaccines from Germany’s BioNTech, to distribute among the general population. Gou said on Saturday they hope to airlift the shots from Germany to Taiwan without going via any middlemen.
This has received a lukewarm reaction from the government. Chen expressed his gratitude to Gou and said the government was reviewing the application, adding that while it welcomes help in obtaining vaccines from companies and religious groups, Taiwan’s government has stipulated that only it can distribute the shots.
Russia announces it will resume air travel to Britain from tomorrow
Russia has announced the resumption of air travel with Britain and a number of other countries which had been suspended due to coronavirus restrictions.
“Given the improvement of the epidemiological situation in the United Kingdom, a decision has been taken to resume regular air travel between Moscow and London from 2 June,” Russian health authorities said in a statement on Monday.
Russia will also resume air travel with Austria, Hungary, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Croatia, Mauritius, and Morocco from 10 June, it said. Flights to Turkey, a major tourist destination for Russians, will remain suspended until at least 21 June.
AFP note that since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, Russia’s borders have remained largely closed to foreigners.
Heathrow starts processing arrivals from 'red list' countries in separate airport terminal
Heathrow has begun processing arrivals from red list countries in a dedicated terminal following concerns about them mixing with other passengers. Travellers arriving from red list nations on direct flights are being taken to Terminal 3.
Passengers travelling to the UK on connecting flights from red list locations continue to transit through the airport alongside those from green and amber countries.
The red list currently consists of 43 nations from which arrivals are deemed to present a high risk of importing coronavirus. Red list countries from where direct flights to the UK are permitted include India, the Philippines, Pakistan, Kenya and Bangladesh.
Passengers arriving in the UK after being in one of those destinations during the previous 10 days must spend 11 nights in a quarantine hotel, costing 1,750 for solo travellers.
The decision to separate arrivals on direct flights from red list destinations was welcomed by the GMB union, which had previously warned that “bottlenecks” are putting passengers and staff at risk.
Heathrow insisted there were “several layers of protection to keep passengers and colleagues safe”, such as mandatory testing for all arrivals, segregation and ventilation.
PA Media notes that an airport executive said in April that passengers are being forced to queue for up to six hours to be processed through immigration halls. It is the first time Terminal 3 has been used since April 2020, when it was closed to save costs amid the collapse in demand for travel.
Heathrow plans to move its new facility for processing red list arrivals to Terminal 4 “as soon as operationally possible”.
Updated
The pressure to get England’s Covid restrictions dropped on 21 June is coming from several quarters, not least those sectors of the hospitality industry that are still unable to open their doors.
CEO of the Night Time Industries Association, Michael Kill, has been pushing for earlier clarification of when reopening might happen. He told Sky News:
Nine out of 10 late-night businesses feel that veering off the roadmap would threaten their survival. Ninety-five per cent of businesses have already made financial commitments in terms of stock, staff and entertainment. So this is a key time, and the government really needs to step up and make it very clear exactly what their intentions are.
“Late night businesses fear that veering off the roadmap would threaten their survival.”
— Sky News (@SkyNews) June 1, 2021
CEO of the Night Time Industries Association, Michael Kill says the government need to "make clear" whether restrictions will be lifted on 21 June in England.https://t.co/cb22OieRFB pic.twitter.com/QA3MYhKflf
Updated
The UK’s small businesses minister Paul Scully has been on LBC this morning reiterating the message from the government that people in the UK should use “caution” in the face of the growing number of cases of the “Delta” variant of coronavirus – the B.1.617.2 variant first detected in India. He stressed again that no decision would be taken until 14 June, saying:
I know for some people that won’t be quick enough, but we’ve got to make sure that we are working with the latest data, accurate data. Scientists have to be able to go through this with a fine tooth comb, because it’s a really really important decision that affects so many people.
Pressed about whether the country was in fact seeing increased hospitalisations and what the threat to the NHS currently was, he said:
We’ve just got to make sure that we are looking forward to see what happens in the next few weeks and months in terms of that modelling, based on the data. Because what we do know is that when case rates go up, hospitalisations to date have also gone up. But the vaccination progress is still continuing with 63 million vaccinations and that is what is going to help us win this race.
Small Businesses Minister Paul Scully has urged the public to be 'careful' and says the government will make a decision on lifting lockdown restrictions on 14th June.@NickFerrariLBC pic.twitter.com/YH0S1ucC14
— LBC (@LBC) June 1, 2021
Updated
Eddie Blake writes for us this morning, asking what should Britain’s memorial to the Covid pandemic look like?
Memorials aim to be an eloquent last word on an event. A key quality is that they resist change: they attempt to fix for us an abiding sense of what exactly has happened. They can be many things: columns, tombs, plaques, cenotaphs, village halls, even housing. But who are they for? The people who suffered, their families, the wider public or future generations?
At some point, inevitably, there will be an official, national memorial of the pandemic in the UK (as well as many more, surely, at local and international levels). What, then, should it look like? It will have to contend with how messy the past year has been – the death, the sorrow, the fear, but also the ensuing political and social division. Perhaps through all of that, memorialisation can play a therapeutic role.
Memorials naturally remove some of the complexity of the past, replacing it with something smoother, better suited to a broad audience: the tomb of the Unknown Warrior doesn’t address one specific loss, so it can talk of all loss. Because of this universal ambition it is vital public memorials hit the right tone – being both honest and broadly interpretable, tending to avoid friction. As a result, though, memorials can feel as if they don’t talk to you directly or seem too vague. But at a time when narratives are brutally contested, it seems unlikely that a pandemic memorial will avoid controversy, no matter how skilful the architect.
Read more here: Eddie Blake – What should Britain’s memorial to the Covid pandemic look like?
Prof Adam Finn, from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, is a second expert in the UK on the airwaves today warning against further easing of domestic restrictions on 21 June. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “There’s vulnerability across the country. The idea that somehow the job is done, is wrong.
“We’ve still got a lot of people out there who’ve neither had this virus … nor yet been immunised, and that’s why we’re in a vulnerable position right now.”
PA Media reports Finn added: “There are a lot of people who are very fed up about the idea of us even worrying about this. Since I’ve been saying in the last 24 hours that we should be cautious I’ve been getting lots of messages from people telling me to shut up basically.
“But the truth is that a more infectious virus, which is what it looks like we’ve got, will reach people who are vulnerable – those who did not make a good response to the vaccine, those who have not yet had their doses – and that will be a problem for everyone because in the end it will be worse economically as well as for public health if we end up having to shut down again.”
Updated
China locks down part of Guangzhou amid outbreak of 'Delta' Covid variant
Chinese authorities in Guangdong province have cancelled flights and locked down communities in response to what is believed to be the first community outbreak of the “Delta” or Indian variant in China.
Guangdong province had been reporting daily single figures of local cases, including asymptomatic cases, for more than a week, until the case load suddenly jumped to 23 on Monday, including three asymptomatic cases, and 11 on Tuesday. Most of Guandong’s cases are in the city of Guangzhou, with some in nearby Foshan, which has a population of 7.2 million.
Authorities said all cases were found to be the strain commonly known as the Indian variant of the virus, now renamed by the WHO as the “Delta” variant.
“In this race against the virus, we must run a bit ahead and run faster than before in order to block the spread of the virus and cut off the infection chain in time,” said Huang Guanglie, director of the Guangzhou municipal health commission.
Guangzhou deputy mayor, Li Ming, said the strain had a short incubation period, a high viral load, and spread quickly. However she said that the trajectory was “under control”.
In response hundreds of flights at the busy Guangdong Baiyun international airport have been cancelled, and authorities ordered some streets in the Liwan neighbourhood of Guangzhou city to isolate at home, with only one person per household allowed out to buy daily necessities.
On Sunday, all 15.3 million Guangzhou residents were barred from leaving via bus, air or train without a green code on the health management app and a negative Covid test taken in the preceding 72 hours.
Read more of Helen Davidson’s report here: China locks down part of Guangzhou amid outbreak of Indian Covid variant
Updated
Malaysia has begun a tough nationwide lockdown to battle a worsening coronavirus outbreak, AFP reports, as countries across Southeast Asia struggle with a resurgence in cases driven by infectious variants.
It writes,
Much of the region escaped the pandemic’s first wave last year relatively unscathed by rapidly closing borders and introducing curbs.
But countries from Thailand to Vietnam are being hammered by fresh surges, with efforts to quell outbreaks hampered by slow vaccine rollouts and populations weary of restrictions.
Malaysia is among the worst hit. Of almost 2,800 deaths from Covid-19 recorded in the country of 32 million since the start of the pandemic, over 40 percent were in May alone.
More than 570,000 infections have been reported, with a string of new daily records last week.
As well as variants, the outbreak has been fanned by gatherings in the Muslim-majority country during the holy month of Ramadan and the Eid al-Fitr holiday, often in defiance of coronavirus rules.
Under what authorities have termed a “total lockdown” in force from Tuesday, only essential businesses - such as supermarkets and medical clinics - can operate, people can only go outside for necessities, and most schools are closed.
Travel between most parts of the country had already been banned for months.
Just following up on Prof Ravi Gupta’s words there with a quick check on the UK government’s own coronavirus dashboard, and we can see that with data in from 31 May now, that the rolling seven-day averages of cases, deaths and hospitalisations are all up – all admittedly from a baseline much lower than was in the earlier peak of the second wave of the virus. You can have look for yourself here.
Updated
A leading scientific adviser to the UK government has repeated calls to delay the 21 June lifting of restrictions by “a few weeks”, warning the coronavirus’s ability to adapt in the face of vaccines has still left the UK in a vulnerable position.
Prof Ravi Gupta, a member of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), said the increased socialisation which has followed last month’s phase of restriction lifting could be expected to lead to “quite a lot” of hospital admissions.
PA Media reports that he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain that while the nation had performed “amazingly well” in its vaccination programme, it was still too early “to put the vaccine straight up against the virus”.
Gupta said a delay of a few weeks to the 21 June target could have a significant impact on Britain’s battle against the pandemic, and recommended it should be made clear to the public that it would be a temporary measure based on recent events, chiefly the emergence of the newly-designated “Delta variant”, which we had previously been calling the B.1.617.2 strain of the virus or the variant that was first detected in India.
“Even a month delay could have a big impact on the eventual outcome of this,” said Prof Gupta.
He continued: “As long as it’s clear to people this is not an unlimited extension of the lockdown but actually just a reassessment, that would be realistic.
“Because we didn’t plan for the 617.2 variant when the initial roadmap was made, and actually things have gone really well except for the fact that we have this new variant to complicate things.
“We must remember this is a virus that does adapt, and faced with vaccines it will eventually start to make mutations to avoid them even further, and then we could be in an even more precarious situation after that.”
Updated
Vietnam is seeking to buy Covid-19 vaccine production technology and wants to build a plant to supply the Covax programme, Reuters reports, as the country tries to step up vaccinations to stem a new outbreak of infections.
India and South Africa are among developing countries that have been pushing for an intellectual property waiver for Covid-19 vaccines. But even with a surprise US shift last month to support a waiver World Trade Organization talks on the issue on Monday failed to achieve a breakthrough.
“Vietnam would build the plant and would like to receive the patent so it could supply vaccines to Covax, to other countries as well as to Vietnam,” the health ministry said in a statement, following a meeting with Covax representatives overnight.
India has reported its lowest daily rise in new coronavirus infections since 8 April at 127,510 cases over the past 24 hours, while deaths rose by 2,795, Reuters reports.
The South Asian nation’s tally of infections now stands at 28.2 million, while the death toll has reached 331,895, health ministry data showed.
Summary
That’s it from me, Helen Livingstone, for today. I’m handing over to my colleague Martin Belam in London.
Here’s a quick roundup of what’s been happening so far:
- Peru has revised its official Covid-19 death toll to 180,764, nearly triple the previous official figure of 69,342, following a government review that shows the severity of the outbreak in the country.
- As new coronavirus variants continue to be discovered, the World Health Organization has revealed new names, after the letters of the Greek alphabet, to simplify the discussion around the variants and avoid stigma.
- Australia’s drug regulator says it may refer anti-vaccination Facebook posts to federal police after anti-vaccine campaigners targeted an MP who posted about getting the jab.
- Australia’s federal court has rejected a bid by a rightwing thinktank to overturn the country’s ban on outbound travel.
- US gun sales spiked during the pandemic and continue to rise, with first-time buyers making up more than a fifth of those who purchased guns
- Germany has pledged to crack down on fraud in coronavirus test centres, after evidence that some have been claiming for more tests than they have carried out.
- Scientists are urging the government to speed up second doses of Covid vaccines and delay a decision on easing lockdown restrictions in England on 21 June in an effort to tackle the creeping spread of new cases.
- France has opened up vaccines to all adults a week before Germany, as Europe rushed to avoid another wave of infections caused by new virus variants.
- Vietnam has announced the suspension of incoming international flights to its capital and tightened restrictions in its biggest city. The inbound flight suspension to Hanoi will apply from 1-7 June.
- Travellers from the UK will have to provide “compelling reasons” to enter France from Monday, as French authorities tighten curbs to halt the spread of the Indian Covid variant.
- The European Commission has proposed that all EU countries gradually ease travel measures over the summer.
- School closures in England during the Covid lockdown badly damaged the mental health of mothers but had no impact on fathers’ wellbeing, research has found.
Updated
Here’s a sobering, but important, feature by Guardian contributor V on the ways in which the pandemic has erased women’s rights and left them vulnerable to violence. She writes,
All over the world, patriarchy has taken full advantage of the virus to reclaim power – on the one hand, escalating the danger and violence to women, and on the other, stepping in as their supposed controller and protector.
And in more Australia-related Covid news, the country’s drug regulator is considering referring Covid vaccine misinformation posts to the federal police, after anti-vaccine campaigners targeted an MP who posted about getting the jab.
In response to a viral post of Labor backbencher Julian Hill receiving his vaccine, numerous users posted false material purportedly from the Therapeutic Goods Administration wrongly claiming Covid-19 vaccines have caused more than 200 deaths.
The figure they used was in fact the number of people who have died after receiving the vaccine, but apart from one case, none have been linked by the TGA to the vaccine.
The TGA told Guardian Australia the alleged posting of the death counter was “particularly concerning” and it would consider referring it to the federal police.
Australia’s federal court has rejected a bid by a rightwing thinktank to overturn the country’s ban on outbound travel.
Libertyworks had argued that the health minister, Greg Hunt, has no power to impose a blanket rule stopping citizens from leaving the country.
But Justices Anna Katzmann, Michael Wigney and Thomas Thawley dismissed the application and ordered Libertyworks to pay the commonwealth’s costs.
The federal government had argued that, if successful, the case would have “driven a truck” through Hunt’s powers under the Biosecurity Act to impose measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19 during the global pandemic.
If you’re looking for something to listen to, the latest edition of Today in Focus is here! In it, our Tokyo correspondent Justin McCurry talks to Anushka Asthana about the widespread opposition to the Olympic Games in Japan and whether the movement to cancel them can overcome huge commercial interests.
Summary
Hello, and welcome to today’s coronavirus live news blog with me, Helen Livingstone.
Peru has revised its official Covid-19 death toll to 180,764, nearly triple the previous official figure of 69,342, following a government review that shows the severity of the outbreak in the country.
As new coronavirus variants continue to be discovered, the World Health Organisation has revealed new names, after the letters of the Greek alphabet, to simplify the discussion around the variants and avoid stigma.
And Australia’s drug regulator says it may refer anti-vaccination Facebook posts to federal police after anti-vaccine campaigners targeted an MP who posted about getting the jab.
Here’s a roundup of what’s been happening over the past 24 hours:
- US gun sales spiked during the pandemic and continue to rise, with first-time buyers making up more than a fifth of those who purchased guns
- Germany has pledged to crack down on fraud in coronavirus test centres, after evidence that some have been claiming for more tests than they have carried out.
- The EU, UK and Japan have continued to voice doubts at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) about a proposed intellectual property waiver on Covid-19 products such as vaccines
- Scientists are urging the government to speed up second doses of Covid vaccines and delay a decision on easing lockdown restrictions in England on 21 June in an effort to tackle the creeping spread of new cases.
- France has opened up vaccines to all adults a week before Germany, as Europe rushed to avoid another wave of infections caused by new virus variants.
- The Philippines president, Rodrigo Duterte, has prolonged partial Covid curbs in the capital and nearby provinces until mid-June to contain infections.
- Vietnam has announced the suspension of incoming international flights to its capital and tightened restrictions in its biggest city. The inbound flight suspension to Hanoi will apply from 1-7 June.
- Travellers from the UK will have to provide “compelling reasons” to enter France from Monday, as French authorities tighten curbs to halt the spread of the Indian Covid variant.
- The European Commission has proposed that all EU countries gradually ease travel measures over the summer.
- School closures in England during the Covid lockdown badly damaged the mental health of mothers but had no impact on fathers’ wellbeing, research has found.
- Next month’s Copa America football tournament will take place in Brazil after original host Argentina pulled out after a surge of Covid-19 cases
