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Summary
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Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II said that getting her Covid shot did not hurt at all and urged those hesitant about getting the jab to “think about other people rather than themselves”. In the extraordinary intervention, the 94-year-old monarch, whose private health matters are rarely discussed publicly, marks a significant endorsement of the UK’s vaccination programme and furthers efforts by the government, NHS and other members of the royal family to address vaccine hesitancy across the country (see 10.07pm).
- One year after the first confirmed case of the coronavirus in Brazil, the country passed 250,000 Covid-19 deaths, with the virus still spreading freely as a national vaccination drive struggles to gain momentum. The country is facing a new stage of the pandemic with variants of the virus that are three times more contagious, the health minister Eduardo Pazuello said. Among them a new variant from Amazonas state, which has caused international alarm and has been identified in at least 17 Brazilian states, in addition to variants first identified in the UK and South Africa (see 9.28pm).
- Israel is to put on hold its programme to send Covid vaccines abroad amid legal scrutiny, according to Israeli defence minister Benny Gantz, following criticism at home and abroad of so-called vaccine diplomacy after it planned to send token amounts of jabs to foreign allies rather than Palestinians (see 6.39pm).
- Amid criticism from members of the European parliament, AstraZeneca boss Pascal Soriot said he hoped to meet its “best efforts” commitments on the number of Covid vaccines the company could deliver in the second quarter, after big cuts in the first three months of the year (see 6.09pm).
- The African Union is backing calls for drugmakers to waive some intellectual property rights on Covid-19 medicines and vaccines to speed up their rollout to poor countries (see 11.20am), but a pharmaceutical industry association claims managing the complex logistics of rolling out vaccines was what was slowing down jabs – although lower yields are hitting supply.
- Four out of five of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine doses delivered to EU countries are yet to be used on a patient, as the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, admitted to an “acceptance problem” among Europeans being offered the jab.
- Bahrain became the first nation to authorise Johnson & Johnson’s new single-dose coronavirus vaccine for emergency use, the government announced (see 5.20pm).
- Cyprus is to reopen high schools, gyms, pools, dance academies and art galleries on Monday in a further, incremental easing of the country’s second nationwide Covid-19 lockdown (see 2.26pm).
- Regeneron Pharmaceuticals said that an independent panel found the company’s Covid antibody cocktail to have “clear clinical efficacy” in reducing the rates of hospitalisation and deaths in patients (see 12.34pm).
- China denied that it subjected US diplomats to Covid-19 anal swab tests following reports from Washington that some of its personnel were being made to undergo the procedure (see 9.52am).
- The world’s largest brewer, AB InBev, reported that its annual profits were cut by half last year as bars and pubs closed around the world due to the pandemic, though it still made almost $4bn net profit as “consumers rapidly adjusted to the new reality by shifting to in-home consumption occasions” (see 4.14pm).
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The Czech prime minister Andrej Babis said on Thursday people’s movement needed to be “radically” limited over at least the next three weeks as his government prepared more restrictions to slow one of the world’s fastest spreads of Covid-19 infections.
Babis’s minority government has sought to shore up support from opposition parties to win an extension of state-of-emergency powers – needed to curb mobility – in a parliamentary vote on Friday.
If parliament rejected the extension of emergency powers into March, which it did in a previous vote, Babis said other solutions would need to be found.
Babis has come under fire for his handling of the pandemic from the opposition.
Lawmakers rejected extending a state of emergency two weeks ago when the Communist party, which props up Babis’s government, withdrew support after demands to reopen schools went unmet.
The government sidestepped lawmakers by calling a new state of emergency at regional governments’ request but still needs lawmakers’ approval to extend it beyond February.
The Communist party has not signalled how it would vote this time. Babis may gain support given the worsening situation.
On Wednesday, Babis said “hellish days” were ahead and hospitals faced “catastrophe” without action.
Over the past week, the country has had the highest per capita infection rate in the world and second highest death rate, according to the Our World in Data website. Its infection rate in the last two weeks is nine times higher than Germany.
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The Ecuadorian government said on Thursday it had negotiated the purchase of 2m doses of Covid-19 vaccines with Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac, which would allow authorities to start a mass inoculation programme in the coming weeks.
Ecuador began a pilot phase of vaccinations in January with doses of the Pfizer vaccine for medical personnel and elderly people in nursing homes, but has experienced delays in acquiring more doses.
“One million will arrive in March and the other [shipment] in April,” the health minister, Juan Carlos Zevallos, told reporters.
With the Sinovac vaccine deal, the government now expects to receive about 20m doses this year, enough to immunise 60% of the population over 18 years of age.
The minister said that this month about 34,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine will also arrive and, starting in April, about 290,000 will arrive from the Covax initiative, a programme led by the World Health Organization.
About 780,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine are slated to arrive in May as part of a bilateral negotiation.
The Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Sinovac vaccines have all been authorised for use, Zevallos said.
Ecuador has registered roughly 279,000 Covid infections and more than 10,800 deaths.
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Queen urges people unsure about Covid jab to get vaccinated
In an extraordinary intervention of vaccines, Britain’s 94-year-old Queen Elizabeth II, who last month had her first Covid-19 vaccination dose, has said that getting the shot did not hurt at all and urged those hesitant about getting the jab to “think about other people rather than themselves”.
The monarch and her 99-year-old husband Prince Philip, who is currently in hospital receiving treatment for a non-Covid infection, received their vaccines from a household doctor at Windsor Castle in January, with their age putting them in the priority group for England’s coronavirus vaccine rollout.
At the time, the Queen decided the information about their vaccination should be made public to prevent inaccuracies and further speculation.
“It was very quick, and I’ve had lots of letters from people who have been very surprised by how easy it was to get the vaccine,” the queen said in a video call on Tuesday with health officials overseeing the inoculations’ delivery across the four nations of the UK.
“And the jab didn’t hurt at all,” she said in remarks released by Buckingham Palace.
The intervention from the monarch, whose private health matters are rarely commented on publicly, is significant as an endorsement of the vaccination programme and will be welcomed by those in government and the NHS trying to encourage uptake across the country.
Acknowledging the reality of vaccine hesitancy from some, the Queen said: “I think the other thing is, that it is obviously difficult for people if they’ve never had a vaccine ... But they ought to think about other people rather than themselves.”
More than 18.6 million Britons have already received their first Covid vaccine injection, and celebrities including singer Elton John and actor Michael Caine have joined campaigns encouraging people to take up offers to have the shot.
Other members of the royal family, including Prince Charles and Prince William, have been visiting vaccination centres over the last fortnight to thank staff and volunteers for their work and to push the vaccination message.
On Monday, William visited a vaccination hub in Kings Lynn in Norfolk. Last Wednesday, Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall, who’ve both had their jabs, met volunteers who are undertaking clinical trials for the Covid vaccinations at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.
And the Countess of Wessex has joined the 10,000 volunteers trained up to keep the vaccination centres running by working as a St John Ambulance care volunteer.
The Queen has spoken to health officials leading the deployment of the COVID-19 vaccine across the four nations of the UK.
— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) February 25, 2021
Her Majesty heard about the vital importance of ensuring all communities have access to the vaccine, and shared her own experience. pic.twitter.com/Cululfsh4y
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Algeria has recorded its first two cases of the more infectious UK variant of the coronavirus, state research centre Pasteur Institute said on Thursday.
Two people, a healthcare employee working at a hospital in Algiers and a France-based Algerian returning home, have tested positive for the variant, it said in a statement.
Brazil's death toll passes a quarter million
One year after the first confirmed case of the coronavirus in Brazil, Latin America’s biggest country has passed 250,000 Covid-19 deaths, with the virus still spreading freely as a national vaccination drive struggles to gain momentum.
The outbreak has killed 251,498 people, Brazil’s health ministry reported on Thursday, as it recorded a further 1,541 fatalities in the last 24 hours, the second highest daily death toll since the pandemic hit the country a year ago.
With 65,998 new cases of coronavirus reported on Thursday, Brazil has now registered 10,390,461 cases, in the world’s third worst outbreak outside the United States and India and its second deadliest.
Its far-right populist president, Jair Bolsonaro,who railed against lockdown measures and said he would not take any Covid-19 vaccine, has been criticised for his response to the virus and the slow rollout of vaccines.
The country is facing a new stage of the pandemic with variants of the virus that are three times more contagious, the health minister Eduardo Pazuello told reporters.
Over the past two weeks, Brazil has recorded the highest daily average of coronavirus deaths since the start of the pandemic - nearly 1,100 - exceeding the previous peak at the end of July.
“The virus is circulating without any control,” said Christovam Barcellos, of the country’s federally funded Fiocruz biomedical institute, which is manufacturing Brazil’s allotment of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Brazil is experiencing “a second plateau,” he said. “It’s not a second wave, because we’ve been over five weeks with 1,000 deaths per day.”
The virus is now spreading mainly through cities in Brazil’s vast interior, officials say, aided by a lack of national or even local lockdowns, which means Brazilians are moving freely across the continent-sized country.
That has been crucial for the spread of the new variant from Amazonas state, which has caused international alarm and led to a frosty reception for Brazilians hoping to travel internationally. According to the health ministry, the new strain has been identified in at least 17 Brazilian states.
After a slow and politically turbulent start, the country has managed to begin vaccinations, with over 7.5 million shots given so far in a country of more than 210 million people.
Pazuello said Brazil had distributed 13 million to 14 million vaccine doses and the government plans to have inoculated half of the country’s 210 million residents by midyear.
Brazil is negotiating to buy all the vaccines it can and Congress is looking at legislation to allow the government to buy shots from Pfizer Inc and Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen subsidiary, Pazuello added.
The vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd, currently Brazil’s main tool to slow the virus, is effective against the UK and South African variants, the vaccine’s Brazilian partner said last week, with tests ongoing to see if it works on the Amazonas variant.
But Brazil is struggling to get hold of enough vaccines amid a global scramble for supplies. The health ministry, which only has two supply contracts, has so far received just 16 million doses.
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The French president Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday he would gladly accept being given the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine if it were offered when his turn comes.
“In view of the latest scientific studies, the efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine has been proven,” Macron told reporters after a virtual European Union summit. “My turn will come, but I’ve got time. If that’s the vaccine that’s offered to me, I will take it, of course.”
Macron had caused dismay in the UK after being quoted earlier this year as saying the shot appeared “quasi-ineffective” among those aged over 65.
The French leader, who is under pressure to accelerate a vaccine rollout in France that is badly lagging Britain’s, also said AstraZeneca had failed to meet its delivery targets and that EU leaders were putting pressure on the Anglo-Swedish company.
“We told them, you’re not being serious about the commitments you made, because you haven’t met them,” he said. “We’re putting pressure on them so they make up the ground lost and so that a precise timetable is met.”
Reuters reported on Tuesday that AstraZeneca expects to deliver less than half the Covid-19 vaccines it was contracted to supply to the European Union in the second quarter.
Macron said the EU’s export control mechanism for vaccines was satisfactory and helped transparency but should not be used to ban exports, which would be counterproductive.
He also said “vaccine passports”, as suggested by countries like Greece, would be unfair for young people, who are at the back of the queue for vaccination and could de facto be banned from travelling during the summer holidays.
An Oxford University biology lab researching Covid-19 has been hacked by a cyber gang amid fears they are trying to sell secrets to the highest bidder, the Daily Telegraph (paywall) reported on Thursday.
The hack occurred at the Division of Structural Biology, known as Strubi, which has been carrying out research into Covid-19, according to the newspaper.
Oxford University did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but confirmed to the newspaper that Strubi had been subject to a hack.
“We have identified and contained the problem and are now investigating further,” the newspaper quoted an Oxford spokesman as saying.
The newspaper quoted security sources as saying it was unclear who was behind the attack and that they could not rule out a hostile foreign state at this stage.
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The Bosnian government on Thursday denounced delays in the global Covax vaccine scheme, as the coronavirus epidemic worsens in the country which has received very few inoculation doses, AFP reports.
The Balkan nation has suffered a fresh flare-up of Covid-19 cases, with the toll now standing at over 5,000 dead among the 3.5 million population.
The government said it had been informed by the Gavi from the Covax scheme that manufacturer Pfizer is seeking further consultations with Bosnian authorities on the cooling chain and administrative procedures for delivering the vaccines.
The Pfizer jabs must be kept supercooled in transit and storage to remain effective.
But the Bosnian authorities have dismissed what they see as a pretext for delaying the delivery until April of doses due to arrive in the first quarter of the year.
So far Bosnia has received just 2,000 doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, which it ordered directly.
“It’s not true that Bosnia lacks the capacity to take charge of the vaccine. It’s just an excuse,” said Milorad Dodik, the current holder of Bosnia’s rotating tripartite presidency.
After meeting with other national leaders he evoked the possibility of suing the Covax management for damages “if the agreed deadlines are not respected”.
On Wednesday, Ghana became the first country to receive vaccines from the Covax scheme, paving the way for poorer nations to catch up with inoculation drives in wealthier parts of the world to stamp out the coronavirus pandemic.
Launched last April, Covax has said it plans to ship two billion doses by year’s end.
Just over 2% of Spaniards offered a coronavirus vaccine have rejected it, including people who avoided the shot for medical reasons, the health ministry said on Thursday, as the nation’s overall infection rate continued to decline.
“They are really positive data,” senior health official Silvia Calzon told reporters at a news conference. “This demonstrates the acceptance and confidence that the whole of Spanish society has in vaccination.”
As of Wednesday, a total of 45,611 people had chosen not to take the vaccine, while about 2.1 million people from priority groups such as nursing home residents and staff, people over the age of 80 and frontline medics, have taken a shot. About 1.2 million people have received a full course of two shots.
Spain’s two-week incidence of the virus fell to 206 cases per 100,000 people on Thursday, down from almost 900 cases at the end of January.
The steep descent prompted health emergency chief Fernando Simon to raise the possibility that some restrictions would be lifted in the coming days, though he stressed that pressure on hospitals remains fairly high.
Asked about the Madrid regional government’s decision to allow marches of up to 500 people to mark the International Women’s Day on 8 March, he said it was better to avoid large groups where possible.
The health ministry reported 9,568 Covid cases on Thursday, bringing the total to 3.18 million, while the death toll rose to 68,468 after a further 345 were recorded.
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The UN Security Council is voting on a British-drafted resolution that demands that all parties to armed conflicts “engage immediately in a durable, extensive, and sustained humanitarian pause” to allow for Covid-19 vaccinations.
The likely adoption of the draft resolution – diplomats said they expect it to pass – is a key test of cooperation at the United Nations between China and the new US president Joe Biden’s administration.
The 15-member Security Council took more than three months to back a call by secretary-general Antonio Guterres for a global pandemic ceasefire last year due to bickering between China and the former US president Donald Trump’s administration.
Under pandemic procedure, council members have 24 hours to vote in writing. The result will be announced on Friday. A resolution needs nine votes in favour and no vetoes by the United States, Russia, France, the UK or China to be adopted.
The draft resolution expresses its intention to review specific situations raised by Guterres where Covid-19 vaccination is being impeded and to “consider what further measures may be necessary to ensure such impediments are removed and hostilities paused to enable vaccination”.
It also asks developed countries to donate vaccine doses to low- and middle-income countries and other nations in need, particularly through the Covax vaccine sharing facility. This is co-led by by the GAVI alliance, which secures vaccines for poor countries, the World Health Organization, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the UN Children’s Fund.
The draft resolution “calls for the strengthening of national and multilateral approaches and international cooperation ... in order to facilitate equitable and affordable access to Covid-19 vaccines in armed conflict situations, post-conflict situations and complex humanitarian emergencies”.
It would also stress the need for international partnerships to scale up manufacturing and distribution capabilities.
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Ireland is beginning to see strong early evidence that its Covid-19 vaccine rollout is protecting healthcare workers and care home residents from catching the disease, health officials said on Thursday.
The country has administered almost 360,000 vaccines among its population of 4.9 million, so far to healthcare workers, care home residents and most recently people aged over 85. Just over 133,000 of those have received the second of their two doses.
The officials pointed to a sharp fall in the number of healthcare workers contracting the virus to below 300 last week from almost 1,400 in the final week in January.
There were also fewer than 200 cases in care homes last week versus 1,250 three weeks ago while the relative number of deaths in hospitals and homes are falling more rapidly than elsewhere after Ireland suffered its deadliest wave to date last month.
Ireland is mainly relying on the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and has administered much smaller amounts of the Moderna and Oxford/AstraZeneca shots.
“Very hearteningly, we think we are beginning to see strong early evidence of a protective impact of vaccination on those cohorts that are in the course of being vaccinated at present,” Ireland’s Covid-19 modelling chief Philip Nolan told a news conference.
The government has said if vaccines arrive on schedule, 55% to 60% of people will be fully vaccinated by the end of June.
Nolan added that even though the rate of decline in cases has slowed in the last two weeks, Ireland continued to make “significant progress” against all indicators of disease during a lockdown that was extended into April this week.
The R number remained steady at 0.6 and 0.9, despite the near dominance of the more infectious B1.1.7 variant first detected in the UK.
The number of cases per 100,000 people in the past 14 days has fallen to 226 from a high of over 1,500 less than six weeks ago.
“Continue doing what you’re doing. We’ve gone from a situation where six, seven weeks ago we were the worst in the world and through the actions of people, we are now in the top 10 in Europe,” the deputy chief medical officer Ronan Glynn said.
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Summary
- Israel is to put on hold its programme to send Covid vaccines abroad amid legal scrutiny, according to Israeli defence minister Benny Gantz, following criticism at home and abroad of so-called vaccine diplomacy after it planned to send token amounts of jabs to foreign allies rather than Palestinians (see 6.39pm).
- Amid criticism from members of the European parliament, AstraZeneca boss Pascal Soriot said he hoped to meet its “best efforts” commitments on the number of Covid vaccines the company could deliver in the second quarter, after big cuts in the first three months of the year (see 6.09pm).
- The African Union is backing calls for drugmakers to waive some intellectual property rights on Covid-19 medicines and vaccines to speed up their rollout to poor countries (see 11.20am), but a pharmaceutical industry association claims managing the complex logistics of rolling out vaccines was what was slowing down jabs – although lower yields are hitting supply.
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Four out of five of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine doses delivered to EU countries are yet to be used on a patient, as the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, admitted to an “acceptance problem” among Europeans being offered the jab.
- Bahrain became the first nation to authorise Johnson & Johnson’s new single-dose coronavirus vaccine for emergency use, the government announced (see 5.20pm).
- Cyprus is to reopen high schools, gyms, pools, dance academies and art galleries on Monday in a further, incremental easing of the country’s second nationwide Covid-19 lockdown (see 2.26pm).
- Regeneron Pharmaceuticals said that an independent panel found the company’s Covid antibody cocktail to have “clear clinical efficacy” in reducing the rates of hospitalisation and deaths in patients (see 12.34pm).
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China denied that it subjected US diplomats to Covid-19 anal swab tests following reports from Washington that some of its personnel were being made to undergo the procedure (see 9.52am).
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The world’s largest brewer, AB InBev, reported that its annual profits were cut by half last year as bars and pubs closed around the world due to the pandemic, though it still made almost $4bn net profit as “consumers rapidly adjusted to the new reality by shifting to in-home consumption occasions” (see 4.14pm).
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Israel suspends 'token' Covid vaccine donation plans after criticism
Israel is to put on hold its programme to send Covid vaccines abroad amid legal scrutiny, according to Israeli defence minister Benny Gantz, following criticism at home and abroad of so-called vaccine diplomacy after it planned to send token amounts of jabs to foreign allies rather than Palestinians.
Israeli public broadcaster Kan, which this week reported that Israel would send small shipments to 19 countries, said the country’s attorney general was seeking clarification about the programme.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu came under fire for donating Covid vaccines to foreign allies while Palestinians complained that, as an occupying power, it should be supplying more to them.
His office made no immediate comment after the reports that the initiative was on hold, Reuters reports. Netanyahu earlier this week defended the program as buying international “goodwill”.
Earlier today, Israel’s defence minister called for an immediate halt to the plans, accusing the Netanyahu of acting without oversight or transparency (see 2.33pm)
This week, Netanyahu’s office announced it would send a “token amount” of surplus coronavirus jobs to several countries (see 2.50pm on Tuesday), in the latest move to suggest limited global supplies will lead to a new form of diplomatic currency. The office said “it did not expect to have significant ability to assist until the vaccination campaign in Israel is completed”.
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Amid criticism from members of the European parliament, AstraZeneca boss Pascal Soriot said he hoped to meet its “best efforts” commitments on the number of Covid vaccines the company could deliver in the second quarter, after big cuts in the first three months of the year.
Reuters reports:
The Anglo-Swedish drugmaker has been under fire in the EU for its delayed supplies of shots to the 27-nation bloc, which ordered 300 million doses by the end of June.
“We are working 24/7 to improve delivery and hopefully catch up to the expectations for Q2,” Soriot told EU lawmakers in a public hearing. Under its contract with the EU, the company has committed to delivering 180 million doses in the second quarter.
Soriot confirmed the company was trying to get 40 million doses of the vaccine to the EU by the end of March, which is less than half the amount it promised for the quarter in its contract.
Lower-than-expected yields – the amount of vaccine that can be produced from base ingredients – at AstraZeneca’s factories hurt output in the first three months, but there were suggestions from MEP’s that the company may have over-promised.
"There's no such a secondary market for vaccines, we supply our vaccines directly to governments," says @AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot.
— Gerardo Fortuna (@gerardofortuna) February 25, 2021
(👇 here's a bit of background if you want to learn more about that https://t.co/M5T9ZOxliO) pic.twitter.com/dSAwZ1qYez
France would impose measures including weekend lockdowns in Paris and 19 other regions from the start of March if signs of accelerating Covid infections persist, the country’s prime minister Jean Castex has said.
He said a new nationwide lockdown was not on the agenda, but that the spread was worrying in 20 French departments - the country’s administrative regions - including Paris and the surrounding region. Those regions would now be subject to heightened scrutiny by public health officials.
If a week from now it was determined that infection rates were still rising in those regions, measures will be put in place, from 6 March, similar to those in force in the cities of Nice and Dunkirk, Reuters reports.
There, local authorities have imposed stay-at-home orders at weekends, stepped up checks at airports, cracked down on people gathering in public places and tightened rules on wearing masks outside.
France, population 67 million, registered roughly 25,000 new Covid cases today, 3,000 more than a week ago, figures confirming the recent upward trend of the disease, health minister Oliver Veran said.
He said that over the past week, France had lost all the progress it made over the two previous weeks due to the new, more contagious variants of the disease
A gorilla and two lions have tested positive for Covid at the Prague zoo, in the Czech Republic, which is closed amid lockdown restrictions in the country.
Director Miroslav Bobek said on Facebook:
Lions Jamvan and Suchi and male gorilla Richard tested positive today. Their symptoms have been mild so far. The lions have a cold and cough. Richard is tired and lost his appetite.
The animals were mostly likely infected by staff and other animals will be tested, Bobek said. Prague Zoo was in touch with other zoos that have seen Covid cases.
France has said it would bring in new Covid restrictions for the Moselle area around its border with Germany, as president Emmanuel Macron’s government tries to contain a coronavirus surge in the region.
Reuters reports:
Cross-border workers, who had exemptions until now, will need to present negative PCR tests to get through if travelling for reasons unrelated to their jobs, the ministers for European affairs and health said in a joint statement.
Working from home in the area will also be reinforced, they said. France and Germany said earlier this week they were trying to find ways to prevent a closure of their border while also controlling the virus.
The Moselle area, on the border with Germany and Luxembourg, has seen a surge in the variant of the coronavirus first detected in South Africa, prompting regional authorities to call for a local lockdown, which Paris has resisted imposing so far.
Joint France-German police patrols could be stepped up, the ministries said, adding that vaccinations in the region was also being sped up and testing would be boosted.
Germans, however, expressed surprise at the move, especially as a Franco-German task force had been set up to deal with the outbreak in the Moselle region.
Bahrain first nation to authorise Johnson & Johnson vaccine
Bahrain has become the first nation to authorise Johnson & Johnson’s new single-dose coronavirus vaccine for emergency use, the government has announced.
It comes just a day after US regulators indicated the shot was safe and offers strong protection (85%) against severe Covid, and is 66% effective at preventing moderate to severe infection.
The island kingdom off the coast of Saudi Arabia said it would provide J&J’s shot to the most vulnerable people, including older adults and those with chronic conditions, without specifying when, AP reports.
It was also unclear when doses would be delivered to the country, which already offers vaccines by Chinese firm Sinopharm, Pfizer-BioNtech and Oxford-AstraZeneca, as well as Russia’s Sputnik V, to its 2 million residents.
In an unusual move, South Africa started administering the J&J vaccine to health workers while it was still in testing. The country, where a virus variant is driving a new wave of infections, switched to J&J from AstraZeneca after a small study suggested it was poor at preventing mild to moderate Covid caused by the more contagious variant.
The tiny state of Bahrain has logged 119,858 coronavirus infections and 437 deaths. It boasts among the world’s fastest vaccination rates, with nearly 17% of the population having received at least one dose.
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Algeria has received 200,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine from China, the official APS news agency said, AFP reports.
China’s ambassador to Algeria, Li Lianhe, had said last week that Beijing would gift Algeria 200,000 vaccines. The delivery arrived late Wednesday at the Boufarik military airport west of the capital, Algiers, APS reported, citing communications minister Ammar Belhimer.
“There will be further deliveries of anti-Covid-19 vaccines until the country’s needs are fully met,” Belhimer added, saying that the drive would be complete by the end of the year.
Algeria and China are close allies, and when the pandemic started Beijing sent medical teams to help. China has been forging strong ties across Africa through its vaccine donations, including to Equatorial Guinea and Zimbabwe.
Algeria launched its vaccination campaign in January with a first shipment of 50,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V, and has since received 50,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
By the end of February, Algeria is due to receive up to 800,000 vaccines through the international Covax scheme, according to health officials.
The health ministry says that more than 112,000 coronavirus cases, including nearly 3,000 deaths, have officially been recorded since the pandemic began.
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Bulgaria last week announced it would make vaccinations available to everyone after low uptake within priority groups, leading to long queues this week at some hospitals, AFP reports.
Fewer than a third of those designated as first in line for Covid-19 jabs have chosen to take up the offer since they became available in late December.
Those now getting vaccinated, some as young as 20, are among the first non-priority Europeans to get vaccinated, after Bulgaria announced on Friday that some hospitals would start administering AstraZeneca shots to anyone.
The decision to scrap its original prioritisation lists came after Bulgaria recorded the lowest vaccination rate in the EU – largely due to worries over side effects and growing distrust of the government and its institutions. Other people, however, have been happy to take the place of the sceptics.
As of today, more than 15,100 Bulgarians under the age of 65 – mostly in their 30s and 40s – had gotten their first dose, according to health ministry data. There were 355,000 people in the first two priority groups, which included doctors, nurses and teachers. But of that number, fewer than 100,000 chose to get inoculated.
Most people have welcomed the decision, but some analysts have objected that the sudden announcement disrupted the priority group system just as elderly and chronically ill people were next in line. That meant that over the weekend, these vulnerable groups had to line up for hours in the same queues as healthy people in their 20s.
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Four out of five of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine doses delivered to EU countries are yet to be used on a patient, as the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, admitted to an “acceptance problem” among Europeans being offered the jab.
The decision by authorities in France, Germany, Poland and Italy to recommend use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine only for people aged under 65 is also likely to be a significant factor in its slow administration, with authorities failing to redirect jabs to younger people.
In an interview this week, Merkel conceded that the vaccine was also being rejected by those concerned over its efficacy and safety after a slew of bad publicity.
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California’s Covid-19 death toll rose above 50,000 yesterday, after Los Angeles county reported another 806 deaths during the winter surge.
The county, which has a quarter of the state’s 40 million residents, said the deaths mainly occurred between 3 December and 3 February. The department of public health identified them after going through death records that were backlogged by the sheer volume of the surge’s toll.
The world’s largest brewer, AB InBev, has reported that its annual profits were cut by half last year as bars and pubs closed around the world due to the pandemic, though it still made almost $4bn net profit.
The group, which includes the Budweiser, Stella Artois and Corona brands, said profits more than doubled to $2.2bn in the fourth quarter last year from $962m in the same period in 2019. It forecast “strong recovery” in sales and profits for 2021.
Following a strong start to the year, our overall results in 2020 were significantly impacted by the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
[But] consumers rapidly adjusted to the new reality by shifting to in-home consumption occasions, increasing adoption of the e-commerce channel and finding new ways to connect with others, reinforcing our confidence in the long-term potential of the beer category.
It said sales volumes declined 4.7%, but revenues fell by 3.7% to $46.9bn due to higher pricing.
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France’s Six Nations rugby match against Scotland has been postponed after another Les Bleus player tested positive for coronavirus ahead of the fixture on Sunday, taking the tally of confirmed cases among the French squad to 16.
AFP reports that tournament organisers said a new date for the match, which was due to take place at the Stade de France on Sunday, would be announced “in due course”, having previously announced that it would go ahead.
“The Six Nations testing oversight group met today to review the situation in the French camp. They unanimously recommended the postponement of the France v Scotland match,” the Six Nations said.
The French Rugby Federation (FFR) did not name the latest player to contract the virus, but they were already without star scrum-half Antoine Dupont, captain Charles Ollivon and coach Fabien Galthie who contracted the virus following their February 14 win over Ireland in Dublin.
On Wednesday, the French sports minister Roxana Mărăcineanu demanded that the FFR president, Bernard Laporte, launch an investigation into the outbreak. The minister asked health officials to examine “how the chain of contaminations was formed” within the squad.
“It’s always difficult to know the origin ... I would love to know, to tell you the truth,” said Laporte on Thursday. “This is something that concerns me and I would like to know really if anyone is to blame or not, quite simply.”
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There is currently a live feed at the top of this blog of a debate between EU health chiefs and pharmaceutical CEOs on how to increase capacity and improve delivery of Covid vaccines.
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Israel’s defence minister today called for an immediate halt in plans to ship surplus coronavirus vaccines to a group of allied nations, accusing the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of acting without oversight or transparency, AP reports:
In a letter to the prime minister, Benny Gantz said the decision to share vaccines was taken without “discussions in the relevant forums”. He also questioned Netanyahu’s claims that Israel has surplus vaccines to give away.
“We are talking about a significant diplomatic and security decision, and in accordance with that, it needs to be approved according to procedures established by law,” Gantz said.
Gantz demanded the matter be taken up by the country’s security cabinet. There was no immediate comment from Netanyahu’s office.
Gantz and Netanyahu are fierce rivals who battled to stalemates in three consecutive elections before agreeing last year to form an emergency government. Their power-sharing arrangement quickly unravelled, and the country is heading to its fourth election in two years next month.
Yesterday, Netanyahu announced that he had personally decided to send surplus vaccines to a series of diplomatic allies. He did not identify the countries, but a list obtained by an Israeli TV station suggested a number of them have supported Israel’s claim to the contested city of Jerusalem as its capital. Others have close or budding relations with Israel.
The new policy drew renewed criticism of Israel’s refusal to share significant quantities of its vast stockpile of vaccines with the Palestinians. US senator Bernie Sanders tweeted:
As the occupying power, Israel is responsible for the health of all the people under its control. It is outrageous that Netanyahu would use spare vaccines to reward his foreign allies while so many Palestinians in the occupied territories are still waiting. https://t.co/kx4qFPtRQl
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) February 24, 2021
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Cyprus will reopen high schools, gyms, pools, dance academies and art galleries on Monday in a further, incremental easing of the country’s second nationwide Covid-19 lockdown, AP reports:
Health minister Constantinos Ioannou said easing the six-week-old lockdown should proceed “slowly, cautiously and in a controlled manner”. He warned that the situation could easily get out of hand again as the country’s infection rate remains slightly above safety limits set by the European Union’s disease prevention agency.
According to Ioannou, the number of infections now stands at 164.3 per 100,000 people.
Middle school students are scheduled to return to classrooms on 8 March, Ioannou said, signalling the reopening of all schools after weeks of online instruction. Primary schools are already holding in-person classes. But the minister made it clear that twice-daily excursions requiring SMS approval and a 9pm-5am curfew will remain in effect.
“We’ll do without certain things for the next two or three months, some measures will carry on until there’s (sufficient) vaccination coverage which is estimated to happen by June,” Ioannou said.
A ban on public gatherings also continues to apply despite growing public fatigue that culminated with thousands demonstrating last weekend in the capital to protest the restrictions, alleged police heavy-handedness and corruption.
Police didn’t intervene in that protest, but used a water cannon, pepper spray and stun grenades to disperse a much smaller group of leftwing demonstrators a week earlier. One young woman required surgery for an eye injury following a blast from the water cannon.
The force’s actions triggered a public outcry and prompted a probe to determine whether riot police used disproportionate force.
Yesterday, Amnesty International urged Cypriot authorities to lift what it called “an unlawful and disproportionate blanket ban” on demonstrations.
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Hungarian hospitals will come under a strain not seen before over the next two weeks as the country enters the hardest period since the start of the pandemic, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán warned today. He said in a Facebook video (via Reuters):
I have only bad news. We are facing the hardest two weeks since the start of the pandemic. The number of infections is rising sharply and will continue to rise due to the new mutations.
Hungary yesterday became the first EU country to start using China’s Sinopharm vaccine.
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Norwegian Cruise has said its 2022 bookings were looking strong, after reporting a bigger-than-expected quarterly loss.
Reuters reports:
Cruise operators have been forced to raise high-interest-rate debt of billions to keep their heads above water as a nearly year-long sailing hiatus imposed by US authorities ravaged their business.
Earlier this month, Norwegian Cruise extended the suspension of all voyages globally through 31 May.
The Florida-based company said 2022 booking trends were very positive driven by strong pent up demand, and even though it was still early in the booking cycle, the overall cumulative booked position for the first half of 2022 were markedly ahead of 2019.
Bigger rival Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. has also been seeing an uptick in future bookings and said earlier this week that bookings for the first half of 2022 were within historical ranges and at higher prices, underlining a strong demand for cruises.
Pfizer has announced that it has begun studying a third dose of its Covid vaccine, as part of a strategy to guard against mutated versions of the virus.
AP reports:
Health authorities say first-generation Covid-19 vaccines still protect against variants that are emerging in different parts of the world. But manufacturers are starting to prepare now in case a more vaccine-resistant mutation comes along.
Pfizer said it would offer a third dose to 144 volunteers, drawing from people who participated in the vaccine’s early-stage US testing last year. It wants to determine if an additional booster shot given six to 12 months after the first two doses would rev up the immune system enough to ward off a mutated virus.
Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, also are tweaking their vaccine recipe. The companies are in discussions with US and European regulators about a study to evaluate doses updated to better match variants such as the one first discovered in South Africa.
A laboratory study suggests that the South African variant may reduce antibody protection from the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine by two-thirds, and it is not clear if the shot will be effective against the mutation.
Syria’s health minister has said the country has received Covid vaccine doses from a “friendly country” and that healthcare workers would start receiving inoculations next week.
Reuters reports:
Hassan Ghabash’s comments, carried by state news agency Sana, did not specify which country provided the vaccines or how many doses had arrived. Health officials had said Syria was engaged with Russia and China on vaccines but no bilateral deals have been announced yet.
China said earlier this month it would send 150,000 doses of vaccine to Syria as aid but a source told Reuters those had not been delivered yet.
Israeli media have reported that Israel agreed to fund the purchase of Russian vaccines for Syria, its longtime enemy, in order to secure the release last week of an Israeli woman who had been held there.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has declined to comment on those reports. It also declined comment on reports Syria had now received doses.
Rdif, the Russian sovereign wealth fund responsible for marketing Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine abroad, declined to comment.
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Swedes living in nursing homes allowed to see family if they've had two jabs
Swedes living at nursing homes can start seeing relatives again two weeks after having received two vaccine doses, the government has said.
“When they have, they can start hugging their grand children again,” Lena Hallengren, minister for health and social affairs, told a news conference.
While the Scandinavian country spurned a lockdown, it did not adequately protect elderly care home residents at the beginning of the pandemic, like in the UK and elsewhere, leading to hundreds of deaths related to Covid.
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US plastic surgeons have seen growing interest from people seeking cosmetic surgery, amid suggestions that life under lockdown and working evermore on screens could be playing a role in the spiking demand, AFP reports.
VIDEO: US plastic surgeons have registered a significant increase of people seeking cosmetic surgery, as virtual meetings and lockdown life have become the new normal for many due to Covid-19 pic.twitter.com/NRmmFnQHWy
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) February 25, 2021
China approves two more Covid-19 vaccines
China’s national medical products administration has said that it has approved two more Covid-19 vaccines for public use. The two vaccines are made by CanSino Biologics and Sinopharm’s affiliate Wuhan Institute of Biological Product.
The new approvals mean China now has four locally developed approved vaccines for Covid.
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Regeneron Pharmaceuticals has said that an independent panel found the company’s Covid antibody cocktail to have “clear clinical efficacy” in reducing the rates of hospitalisation and deaths in patients.
The cocktail, a combination of two antibodies casirivimab and imdevimab, was authorised in November for emergency use by the US food and drug administration.
The Independent Data Monitoring Committee found that both 1,200mg and 2,400mg doses of the cocktail reduced the rate of hospitalisation and deaths compared with the placebo, according to the company. The panel has recommended that Regeneron should stop enrolling patients in the placebo group for its ongoing late-stage trial.
The company plans to immediately follow the panel’s recommendation and also share details of unblinded data from the trial once it becomes available in March.
The Regeneron treatment, notably touted by Donald Trump, is part of a class of drugs known as monoclonal antibodies, which are manufactured copies of antibodies created by the human body to fight infections. The former president’s claims of its efficacy were met with scepticism.
In January, the US government said it would buy 1.25 million additional doses of the cocktail for about $2.63bn, bringing the total supply of the treatment to more than 1.5 million doses.
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Moderna has said it was expecting to post $18.4bn in sales from its Covid vaccine this year.
Pfizer, which makes the only other vaccine authorised for emergency use in the US so far, said earlier this month that it was expecting to record sales of about $15bn in 2021 from its vaccine.
Moderna said it was expecting to produce 700m doses in 2021, while attempting to scale up production to as much as 1bn doses, according to Reuters.
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Both the pandemic and the climate crisis demonstrate why we need a new social contract between old and young, writes London School of Economics director, Minouche Shafik.
Covid-19 continues to bring many inter-generational tensions to the fore. Older people bear the brunt of the disease’s impact on health; younger people have to make economic and social sacrifices to protect them. But the pandemic is just one reason why the social contract between the generations is under pressure.
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At least 400 health workers in the US have died since the vaccine became available in mid-December, narrowly missing the protection that might have saved their lives.
In California, which became the centre of the national coronavirus surge following Thanksgiving, 40% of all healthcare worker deaths came after the vaccine was being distributed to medical staff.
An analysis of the Guardian/KHN’s Lost on the Frontline database indicates that at least one in eight health workers lost in the pandemic died after the vaccine became available.
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The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Bahrain’s crown prince Sheikh Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa have been discussing the possible involvement of the Gulf state in establishing a vaccine plant in Israel.
“The Bahraini regent also stated that he was interested in examining the possibility of Bahrain joining an investment in a vaccine manufacturing plant that is planned to be established in Israel together with other countries,” a statement from Netanyahu’s office said.
Netanyahu said yesterday he was in talks with the heads of Pfizer and Moderna to open facilities in Israel.
Israel has been importing Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Covid vaccines. Israel expects trade with Bahrain to be around $220m in 2021, not including possible defence and tourism deals. Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates formalised ties with Israel on 15 September.
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African Union calls for drugmakers to drop patents to accelerate vaccine rollout
The African Union is backing calls for drugmakers to waive some intellectual property rights on Covid-19 medicines and vaccines to speed up their rollout to poor countries.
John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a news conference that IP transfer was a “win-win for everybody” that would address the huge inequalities in global public health.
Reuters reports that he gave two examples where the developing world had suffered because of restricted access to medicines: the swine flu pandemic in the late 2000s and HIV/AIDS in the 1990s.
In 1996, HIV drugs were available, and we saw how mortality in the developed world decreased drastically. But it would take 10 years before those drugs were accessible in Africa in any meaningful way.
In between, 12 million Africans died, so I just use those numbers to say: any IP transfer will be beneficial to everybody, because nobody wants to sit back and be proud of that sad event ... We want to be on the right side of history.
South Africa and India, which both manufacture drugs and vaccines, made the proposal at the World Trade Organization last year arguing that IP rules were hindering the urgent scale-up of vaccine production and provision of medical products to some patients.
On Tuesday (see 5.56pm), the head of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA), Thomas Cueni, claimed that exempting Covid-19 vaccines from IP rights would not speed up production or distribution.
However there is scepticism over such suggestions, and Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, said last week that G7 leaders were presiding over “global vaccine apartheid”.
Its Mattha Busby here taking over from my colleague Rachel Hall. Good day to everyone reading, please do send any tips or thoughts to me via Twitter or over email.
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Croatia will allow bars and restaurants to open their outdoor terraces next week after a more than three-month closure due to Covid-19 restrictions, Reuters reports.
The move comes despite a small rise in the number of daily infections over the seven days. Croatia reported some 4,500 new daily cases three months ago but that number has since fallen to several hundred a day. On Thursday there were 544 new cases reported, compared with 365 of a week ago, figures which count among the lowest weekly incidences in the European Union.
Thousands of people, mainly owners of small businesses like restaurants, bars and fitness centres, jammed the capital Zagreb’s main square a few weeks ago to protest at closures preventing them from working.
The indoor areas of bars and restaurants remain closed. Sports-training sessions indoors will also be permitted starting on Monday.
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From the World Health Organization news conference:
Public health measures that limit the spread of coronavirus such as social distancing must continue and vaccines should be seen as an “added tool” in the toolbox rather than a panacea, said Siddharta Datta, WHO programme manager.
Reopening too quickly will encourage the development of more dangerous variants since these originate in places with high community transmission, added Martin McKee, professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
“It’s crucial we get that message across given there are loud and vocal voices for reopening everything because the vaccine will save us,” he said.
McKee also urged countries to step up their sequencing to enable early detection of variants.
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The popular Austrian ski resort of Mayrhofen has been sealed off and shut down due to an outbreak of the South African variant of Covid-19 at a local kindergarten.
On Wednesday, 42 active positive cases of the virus were reported among the village’s almost 4,000 inhabitants, including 29 cases of the South African mutation. Authorities expect the number of positive cases to increase in the next few days.
On Wednesday, the Tyrolean task force said the village should be sealed off for at least a week, Austrian newspaper Der Standard reported on Wednesday. Anyone who wants to leave will have to show a negative PCR test no older than 72 hours. All residents will also be tested twice using a PCR test between Friday and Wednesday. In addition, schools, kindergartens, non essential shops, and churches have also all been closed.
In recent days the infection rate has risen in Austria, after the country relaxed a number of coronavirus lockdown measures on 8 February.
The first Covid-19 infections in Austria were recorded exactly a year ago, in Innsbruck on 25 February 2020. The Austrian skiing village of Ischgl was an early hotspot for the virus.
AstraZeneca vaccine doses that are left unwanted and on the shelf in Berlin could soon be given to the city’s homeless people.
Elke Breitenbach, Berlin’s senator for social services, has called for doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine that are left unused to be given to around 3,000 homeless people in the city’s emergency shelters.
“In the current situation it is unacceptable that vaccination doses are lying around,” Breitenbach told the Funke media group this week. “We could and should now offer all homeless people in emergency shelters a vaccination offer as soon as possible.”
Homeless people are currently categorised as priority level two in Germany, due to their increased risk of infection. Bretenbach says she wants to start the vaccinations for them as early as next week and hopes other federal states will follow suit.
Vaccine rollout in Germany has been slow and beset by problems, including a lack of supply. There has also been a reluctance amongst Germans to receive the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, after German authorities declared it had not been tested rigorously enough to allow its use on the over-65s. Reports of lingering side effects have not helped.
AstraZeneca will deliver 180 million Covid-19 vaccines to Europe in spring, but EU officials remain wary about supply, Reuters reports.
In a statement on Tuesday the company said it aimed to deliver 180 million doses to the EU in the second quarter, half from factories outside Europe.
EU officials remain sceptical, however. One official involved in talks with AstraZeneca told Reuters that the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker expected to deliver less than half the Covid-19 vaccines it was contracted to supply the European Union in the second quarter.
“AstraZeneca is behaving like an unreliable second-hand car salesman. Getting reliable data from this company is still a challenge,” said EU lawmaker Esther de Lange, vice-president of the European People’s party, the largest in the EU parliament.
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European Union leaders will meet on Thursday to speed up the production and rollout of Covid-19 vaccines in a race against the emergence of new variants that some fear could bring a third wave of the pandemic across the continent, Reuters reports.
They will also consider how to strike the right balance between restrictions to stop the spread of infections and keeping borders open for a smooth flow of goods and services across the single market.
Although infection rates are heading down in about 20 of the bloc’s member states, there are concerns of fresh spikes as a UK variant spreads to become the dominant strain.
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From the World Health Organization news conference:
The UK coronavirus variant is both more transmissible and results in more severe illness, said Catherine Smallwood, senior emergency officer at the WHO, adding that it has currently spread in roughly half of European Union member states, with reported numbers continuing to increase.
More from the World Health Organization news conference (tune in to the video at the top of the page):
Long covid is thought to result from the persistence of the virus in some parts of the body that are sheltered from the immune system, for instance in the brain, said Martin Mackee, professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
The likelihood of getting long covid isn’t associated with severe infection, and women are more likely to get it than men, he said, adding that fatigue and brain fog are amongst the most common symptoms identified.
Mackee recommended that the condition be tackled through a multidisciplinary approach - a challenge given how health systems are typically organised.
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Coronavirus is continuing to spread at high rates across Europe, with two variants posing the greatest threat, according to Dr Hans Henri Kluge, the World Health Organization’s director for Europe.
Speaking at a news conference, Kluge said that fewer than 1 million new cases have been reported for a second week in a row as transmission is slowing across Europe, while new reported cases have declined by almost a half since end of 2020. However, he cautioned against complacency given that the number of new cases in Europe is 10 times higher than in May last year, and most countries still have very high levels of community transmission.
One in 10 Covid-19 sufferers remain unwell after 12 weeks, and many for longer, he added. He advised health authorities to listen to the symptoms of long Covid sufferers in order to better understand the condition. This is a priority for the WHO, and should be for every health authority, he said.
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Hungary is predicting a difficult few weeks ahead as a result of rising coronavirus infections, Reuters reports.
Current coronavirus restrictions will be extended until 15 March while the government picks up the pace of the vaccination programme.
There’s not much available detail yet, but an update should follow shortly.
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China has denied that it subjected US diplomats to Covid-19 anal swab tests following reports from Washington that some of its personnel were being made to undergo the procedure, the Associated Press reports.
The procedure has been applied in China because it is reportedly more accurate than nasal or mouth swabs.
A US State Department spokesperson said Washington was “committed to guaranteeing the safety and security of American diplomats and their families while preserving their dignity, consistent with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations as well as other relevant diplomatic law provisions.”
China has not reported a new local case of Covid-19 in more than a week, but has maintained strict testing, especially for people arriving from abroad. Diplomats and other foreigners with special status are exempted from a ban on most foreigners entering the country.
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The Czech government is meeting on Thursday to decide on tougher lockdown restrictions to rein in one of the world’s fastest spreads of Covid-19, Reuters reports.
The prime minister Andrej Babiš, has warned that hospitals face “catastrophe” if no action is taken following a renewed surge in Covid-19 cases.
The country has been in varying levels of lockdown since October. Non-essential shops and restaurants have been almost continuously closed since then.
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India is struggling to convince health and frontline workers to take a homegrown Covid-19 vaccine controversially approved without late-stage efficacy data, Reuters reports.
The country has the world’s second-highest number of Covid-19 infections after the United States, with cases recently surging as mask wearing declines and states have eased social distancing measures. A lack of confidence in a homegrown vaccine country could prevent India from meeting its target of vaccinating 300 million of its 1.35 billion people by August.
India has vaccinated more than 10.5 million health and front-line workers since beginning its immunisation campaign on 16 January.
But only 1.2 million, or about 11%, of them have taken Covaxin, the locally developed vaccine from Bharat Biotech, while the remaining 9.4 million have used the vaccine licensed from AstraZeneca.
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The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation is formally expanding a $3m (£2.12m) financial relief fund to help people in the US struggling to make ends meet during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Associated Press reports.
The foundation, which launched earlier this month out of the eight-year-old Black Lives Matter movement, said it plans to make up to 3,000 microgrants of $1,000 each (£706).
So far the Survival Fund’s first recipients have included the families of people killed by police or who died while incarcerated, grassroots community organisers, people who identify as transgender, single parents and formerly incarcerated individuals.
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France will bring in new Covid-19 restrictions around its common border with Germany in a bid to contain a surge of coronavirus variants in the Moselle region, Reuters reports.
Cross-border workers, who had exemptions until now, will need to present negative PCR tests to get through if travelling for reasons unrelated to their jobs, France’s European affairs and health ministers said in a joint statement.
Home working in the area will also be reinforced, they said, after France and Germany said earlier this week they were trying to find ways to prevent a closure of their common border.
Joint France-German police patrols could be stepped up, the ministries said, adding that France’s vaccination programme in the region was also being sped up and testing would be boosted.
Finland announces lockdown plans
The Finnish prime minister said the country would go into a three-week lockdown beginning on 8 March in response to rising case numbers, Reuters reports.
The lockdown will not include a curfew but will involve the closing of bars and restaurants and ordering school students that are 13 or older to shift to remote learning as well as restrictions of gatherings of more than six people, the government said.
According to Finnish news source Yle, Prime Minister Sanna Marin said that the highly infectious British coronavirus variant had spread in the country since Christmas, which is thought to account for around three-quarters of cases. The worst-hit parts of the country will move to tier two of the government’s three-tier Covid-19 prevention plan.
Helsinki and Uusimaa hospital district (HUS) as well as hospital districts in the regions of Kanta-Häme, Southwest Finland, Satakunta and Vaasa are currently in the community transmission or “spreading” stage, according to information from the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL).
Reuters reported that the country is preparing to declare a state of emergency.
While Finland currently has the third lowest infection rate in Europe, after Iceland and Norway, the nation of 5.5 million people has seen a rapid rise in new daily cases, which on Wednesday reached 590.
During the past two weeks, the epidemic has worsened in many areas of the country, with the metropolitan area around the capital Helsinki hit the worst.
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Commuters in Melbourne will be able to see how crowded specific trains are on Google Maps as part of a Victorian government push to preserve social distancing on traditionally crowded services, Elias Visontay and Matilda Boseley report.
The integration of live passenger data in the mapping service – to be launched on Friday – comes as Victorian offices last week increased to 50% capacity. It is the latest move to help stagger when people use Melbourne’s public transport.
New South Wales earlier this week announced a $1bn plan to increase Sydney’s peak-hour train capacity by 80%. State governments across the country are grappling with how to enforce social distancing in cities where people are again adopting pre-pandemic attitudes amid zero community transmission.
Ukraine registers a 40% jump in new coronavirus cases in 24 hours
Ukraine has registered an almost 40% jump in new coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours, Reuters reports.
A total of 8,147 cases were registered on Wednesday, the highest figure since mid-January when the number of new cases stood at 8,199. The country is poised to begin its vaccination programme.
The ministry’s data show most of the new cases were registered in the western part of the country and in the capital Kyiv. The country has registered a total of 1,325,841 cases with 25,596 deaths from Covid-19 as of Feb. 25.
Rachel Hall here taking over from Helen Sullivan for the morning. If you have any thoughts or tips do send them my way - to rachel.hall@theguardian.com or on Twitter.
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today.
In closing, may I present my colleague Matilda Boseley’s TikTok vaccine myth-busting series. Here, she defends AstraZeneca:
In defence of AstraZeneca - TikTok myth-busting week continues @GuardianAus pic.twitter.com/MNJ768Iv51
— Matilda Boseley (@MatildaBoseley) February 25, 2021
Summary
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
- Toronto cancels outdoor events through July. Canada’s largest city Toronto is cancelling all large in-person, city-permitted outdoor events through July as the country seeks to stave off a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
- A new coronavirus variant is on the rise in New York City, researchers said on Wednesday. The new variant, known as B.1.526, was first identified in samples collected in New York in November, and by mid-February represented about 12% of cases, researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, said on Wednesday.
- India reported its highest cases in nearly a month. India reported 16,738 new coronavirus infections, health ministry data showed on Thursday, for the highest daily jump since January 29, according to a Reuters tally. More than half came from the western state of Maharashtra, India’s richest and home to its financial capital of Mumbai, which reported a record high of 8,807 cases on Wednesday.
- Olympic torch audience asked to applaud rather than cheer passing runners. People who turn out to catch a glimpse of the Olympic torch after it begins its journey through Japan at the end of the next month will be asked to applaud, rather than cheer passing runners, and the event could be suspended if crowds lining the relay route grow too large.
- One of UK’s largest care home firms introduced a ‘no jab, no job’ policy. One of the UK’s largest care home operators has instituted a no jab, no job policy for new staff amid ongoing concern about vaccine take-up among care workers.
- California vaccine sites are seeing a misuse of codes meant to prioritise Black and Latino residents. Access codes meant to give Californians of colour priority access to Covid-19 vaccine slots have been getting passed around among other residents in the state, allowing some to cut the line and get appointments meant for underserved Black and Latino residents.
- China’s Sinopharm vaccine 72.5% effective, company says. China is moving ahead with two more Covid vaccines in the regulatory process, one from state-owned company Sinopharm and another from a private company CanSino.
- Pfizer vaccine found 94% effective in landmark real-world study. The first big real-world study of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to be independently reviewed shows the shot is highly effective at preventing Covid-19, in a potentially landmark moment for countries desperate to end lockdowns and reopen economies.
- EU states split over vaccine passports, to debate issue on Thursday. EU leaders will on Thursday debate the issue of certificates of vaccination for EU citizens who have been vaccinated against Covid.
- Australian airline Qantas to resume international flights from October. Australian airline Qantas is preparing to resume regular international flights from late October, in line with Australia’s projected vaccine rollout.
- Australia’s Olympians to be encouraged to take vaccine but Games will be ‘safe’. Australia’s Olympics athletes will not be required to have a Covid-19 vaccination but will be encouraged to do so as planning ramps up for July’s delayed Tokyo Games.
California vaccine sites see misuse of codes meant to prioritize Black and Latino residents
Access codes meant to give Californians of color priority access to Covid-19 vaccine slots have been getting passed around among other residents in the state, allowing some to cut the line and get appointments meant for underserved Black and Latino residents.
Misuse of these codes was reported at vaccine sites in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, said Brian Ferguson, spokesperson for the California office of emergency services, to the Guardian.
The codes were one of the tools devised by California leaders to address inequities in vaccine distribution in the state.
They were given out to leaders and nonprofits in the Black and Latino communities in LA and the Bay Area to administer to eligible individuals – those 65 years or older, frontline healthcare workers, longterm care residents, and essential workers in the agriculture, food, education, childcare and emergency services sectors. Individuals then could use the code to book a vaccination appointment on the state’s vaccine scheduling website:
One of UK's largest care home firms introduces 'no jab, no job' policy
One of the UK’s largest care home operators has instituted a no jab, no job policy for new staff amid ongoing concern about vaccine take-up among care workers.
A spokesperson for Care UK, which runs 120 homes and has seen more than two-thirds of its staff vaccinated, said: “Everyone applying for a role which requires them to go into a home will be expected to have been vaccinated before they start work.”
The move comes after Barchester, which operates more than 220 private care homes, said it would insist that current staff are vaccinated, warning that if they “refuse … on non-medical grounds [they] will, by reason of their own decision, make themselves unavailable for work”.
Robert Booth and Ian Sample:
Updated
The Kaiviti Silktails, a rugby league team from Fiji, have thanked hotel staff after their mandatory quarantine by singing from their balconies. The squad has relocated to Sydney to play in the Ron Massey Cup competition that sits two levels below the NRL.
The Silktails made their competition debut last year, winning their opening game before the season was called off due to Covid-19 after one round. The singing follows the tradition of the men’s national team, Fiji Bati, who sing a pre-match hymn before international fixtures:
The full story on Tokyo 2020’s no-cheering request now:
People who turn out to catch a glimpse of the Olympic torch during its journey through Japan from the end of next month will be asked to applaud rather than cheer passing runners, and the event could be suspended if crowds lining the relay route grow too large.
The unusual provisions for the relay - the main precursor to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics - are another sign of the difficulties organisers face as they attempt to carry off an event involving tens of thousands of athletes, officials and journalists in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Tokyo Games organising committee said it would broadcast the relay live when it begins in Fukushima on 25 March to encourage people to watch it at home:
India reports highest cases in nearly a month
India reported 16,738 new coronavirus infections, health ministry data showed on Thursday, for the highest daily jump since January 29, according to a Reuters tally.
More than half came from the western state of Maharashtra, India’s richest and home to its financial capital of Mumbai, which reported a record high of 8,807 cases on Wednesday.
India’s tally of 11.05 million infections is the world’s second highest after the United States, and daily numbers are rising again after a lull in the last few months.
In England, an advertising blitz has been launched to encourage people to stay at home despite declining coronavirus transmission rates, the success of the vaccine rollout and the launch of the government’s roadmap out of lockdown, PA Media reports.
The campaign also urges people to keep going with behavioural changes including mask wearing, social distancing and hand washing.
The television advert was being shown for the first time on ITV on Wednesday night, but the campaign will also run on radio, advertising billboards and social media:
Australia on Thursday continued its downward trend of Covid cases, stoking hopes of a faster return to normal, Reuters reports.
Victoria, the country’s second-most populous state, recorded no cases for nearly a week, suggesting the most recent outbreak in Melbourne has been contained, prompting authorities to flag easing of more restrictions soon.
“With six days of zero cases, with the number of active cases falling each day... we can be quite positive about making some announcements tomorrow,” state Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters when asked about lifting of curbs on gatherings.
Queensland state said it would open its borders to residents of Melbourne from Saturday, following South Australia which plans to lift its border restrictions from Friday.
New South Wales state reported no new local cases for the 39th day in a row as it looks to relax curbs on dancing at weddings, singing at indoor venues and gatherings at home from Friday.
Olympic torch audience asked to applaud rather than cheer passing runners
People who turn out to catch a glimpse of the Olympic torch after it begins its journey through Japan at the end of the next month will be asked to applaud, rather than cheer passing runners, and the event could be suspended if crowds lining the relay route grow too large.
The unusual provisions for the relay - the main precursor to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics - are another sign of the difficulties organisers are facing as they attempt to carry off an event involving tens of thousands of athletes, officials and journalists in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Tokyo Games organising committee said it would livestream the relay, due to begin in Fukushima on 25 March, to encourage people to watch it at home.
About 10,000 torchbearers will carry the prestigious symbol of the Games through Japan’s 47 prefectures, culminating in its arrival at the Olympic stadium on 23 July. One prefecture recently said it was reconsidering its involvement due to concerns over the virus.
“No shouting, no cheering. Please cheer by clapping your hands, and maintain an appropriate distance in case there is overcrowding,” Yukihiko Nunomura, the vice director general of the organising committee, told a media briefing on Thursday.
The rules were part of a series of measures for torchbearers and and other participants unveiled on the same day.
Singapore received its first batch of the Covid vaccine made by China’s Sinovac Biotech on Tuesday, its health ministry said, although the shot is still awaiting approval for use in the city-state, Reuters reports.
Sinovac has started submitting initial data but the Health Sciences Authority is currently awaiting all the necessary information to carry out a thorough assessment, the ministry said in a statement late on Wednesday.
Singapore is the only wealthy country considering the use of Sinovac’s vaccine, which has been found to have an efficacy rate ranging from about 50% to 90% in studies.
The city-state have been rolling out its Covid vaccination programme over the last two months. It has approved shots from Pfizer-BioNTech, and Moderna .
Podcast: No sex please, we’re British. Dating in a pandemic
Lockdown rules have left little opportunity for people who aren’t already living with a partner to pursue romantic relationships, explains Zoe Williams:
In other news from Australia:
Australia's Olympians to be encouraged to take vaccine but Games will be 'safe'
Australia’s Olympics athletes will not be required to have a Covid-19 vaccination but will be encouraged to do so as planning ramps up for July’s delayed Tokyo Games, the Australian Associated Press reports.
IOC vice-president and AOC president John Coates said planning had reached the finite stage for the showpiece, set to begin one year later than first planned on 23 July:
China's Sinopharm vaccine 72.5% effective, company says
China is moving ahead with two more Covid vaccines in the regulatory process, one from state-owned company Sinopharm and another from a private company CanSino, AP reports.
Both vaccines have submitted been to regulators for approval this week.
CanSino said that Chinese regulators are reviewing its application for its Covid vaccine, in a stock filing on Wednesday.
Sinopharm’s subsidiary the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products announced Wednesday that it had submitted an application Sunday and that regulators were reviewing it.
China already has approved two vaccines that it has been using in a mass immunization campaign. One of them is also from Sinopharm, but it was developed by its Beijing subsidiary. The other is the Sinovac vaccine.
The Wuhan shot from Sinopharm is 72.51% effective, the company said. Both shots from Sinopharm rely on inactivated viruses, a traditional technology.
CanSino’s vaccine is a one-dose shot that relies on a harmless common cold virus, called an adenovirus, to deliver the spike gene of the virus into the body. The technology is similar to both Astrazeneca and Johnson & Johnson’s vaccines, which rely on different adenoviruses.
CanSino’s vaccine is 65.28% effective, the company said Wednesday. Neither company has published its trial data in peer-reviewed scientific journals yet.
Organisers of the Tokyo Olympics will give promoting gender equality as high a priority as efforts to ensure a coronavirus-free Games, their head said on Wednesday.
Reuters: Seiko Hashimoto, admitting that the Covid epidemic had left many people worried heading towards the Games, said organisers planned to release detailed coronavirus guidelines on Thursday for the torch relay starting in late March.
Hashimoto was named president of the Tokyo 2020 Organising committee last week, replacing 83-year-old former prime minister Yoshiro Mori, who resigned after setting off a furore with sexist remarks.
Hashimoto said the organising committee had set up a gender equality promotion team and reiterated a goal to boost the proportion of women on its board to 40%.
“Even with limited time until the Games, we will work hard so people can look back and say this is a big turning point for Japan,” Hashimoto told reporters in reference to the new equality team.
She spoke after a meeting with the International Olympic Committee board, and as - in remarks unlikely to calm public concerns over the Olympics - the minister overseeing Japan’s vaccination programme told a separate event that the Games were not part of his planning.
About 1,000 Games volunteers have quit since early this month, while four torch runners resigned so far, according to the organising team.
Ikea’s UK business dived nearly £33m into the red last year after it was forced to close stores for nearly three months during the pandemic.
The world’s largest furniture retailer said UK sales fell more than 10% to £1.9bn in the year to 31 August, even though online sales increased by nearly a third.
Ikea admitted that it had struggled to meet demand for home deliveries despite turning stores into distribution centres for online orders during the high street lockdowns:
New coronavirus variant spreading in New York
A new coronavirus variant is on the rise in New York City, researchers said on Wednesday.
The new variant, known as B.1.526, was first identified in samples collected in New York in November, and by mid-February represented about 12% of cases, researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, said on Wednesday.
Reuters: The variant was also described in research published online this week by the California Institute of Technology. Neither study has been reviewed by outside experts.
It shares some similarities with a more transmissible and intractable variant discovered in South Africa.
The Columbia researchers said an analysis of publicly available databases did not show a high prevalence of coronavirus variants recently identified in South Africa and Brazil in case samples from New York City and surrounding areas.
“Instead we found high numbers of this home-grown lineage,” Dr. Anne-Catrin Uhlemann, assistant professor in the division of infectious diseases at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, said in a statement.
The Columbia study found that B.1.526 shares some worrying characteristics with B.1.351, the variant first identified in South Africa, and P.1., which was first identified in Brazil. Several studies have suggested that those new variants are more resistant to some existing vaccines than earlier versions of the coronavirus.
The researchers said the main concern is a change in one area of the virus’ spike protein, called E484K, that is present in all three variants. The E484K mutation is believed to weaken the body’s immune response to the virus.
Studies have shown that recently launched coronavirus vaccines are still likely to neutralise the virus and protect against severe illness, even for infections with new variants. Vaccine makers are also working to develop booster shots to combat mutated versions of the virus.
Australian airline Qantas to resume international flights from October
Australian airline Qantas is preparing to resume regular international flights from late October, in line with Australia’s projected vaccine rollout.
Both Qantas and Jetstar will plan to ramp up regular services to New Zealand earlier, from July, and continues to consult with the federal government about the reopening of borders.
The airlines will offer unlimited flight changes for tickets on the reduced capacity services.
Qantas is planning to resume flights to 22 of its 25 pre-Covid international destinations including Los Angeles, London, Singapore and Johannesburg from 31 October 2021.
Qantas won’t initially resume direct flights to New York, Santiago and Osaka.
Jetstar will resume flying to all of its 13 international destinations.
The news follows several states shutting their quarantine-free border arrangements to arrivals from New Zealand following community cases this week.
Mainland China reported seven new Covid cases on 24 February, down from 12 cases a day earlier, the country’s national health authority said on Thursday.
The National Health Commission, in a statement, said all of the new cases were imported infections originating from overseas. The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, stood at nine, matching the total from a day earlier.
The total number of confirmed cases in mainland China now stands at 89,871, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,636.
Via Fijian-Australian rugby league player Nemani Nadolo:
After 14 days of Quarantine the @KaiVT_Silktails show their appreciation for the hotel staff who looked after them.. all the best for the season boys @fijirugbyleague @NRL @BillKikau1 🇫🇯❤️🇫🇯❤️ pic.twitter.com/FYb1hxUA4X
— nemzy (@nemani_nadolo) February 24, 2021
Nearly half of people believe those who lost their job during the pandemic were likely to have been underperforming, a survey has found.
In findings that will raise fears over inequalities in Britain, a study of attitudes by researchers at Kings College London showed a significant minority thought a widening post-Covid income gap between white people and BAME groups would not be a problem.
“This analysis throws up the complexity of people’s view about inequalities,” said Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which will use the research for its five-year review of inequalities.
“The British public is clearly concerned about some inequalities, but also sets great store by individual responsibility.”
People care more about differences between geographical areas than races, genders and generations, found researchers in the study entitled Unequal Britain.
The findings may suggest widespread support for the “levelling up” agenda espoused by the government as the country attempts to rebound after Covid, the authors said. But it will also raise questions about the popularity of anti-inequality policies focusing on ethnic minorities and women.
Unemployment rose to 1.74 million people this week, its highest level in five years and business shutdowns are disproportionately affecting women and ethnic minorities:
Toronto cancels outdoor events through July
Canada’s largest city Toronto is cancelling all large in-person, city-permitted outdoor events through July as the country seeks to stave off a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic, Reuters reports.
The city of Toronto announced Wednesday it is extending an existing cancellation of outdoor events, including the annual Pride Parade, which will be a virtual event, and 1 July Canada Day celebrations, which tend to cap off mid-summer festivities.
The announcement does not include professional sporting events, which need permission from provincial and federal governments in addition to Toronto Public Health.
“I want to thank all of these organisations for understanding the need to avoid large in-person gatherings in the coming months and thank you to those who have worked to offer virtual events to keep the spirit of these celebrations,” Mayor John Tory said in a statement.
Many Canadian provinces are gradually reopening businesses and cultural activities after a powerful second wave of the coronavirus forced authorities to issue stay-at-home orders.
More on the vaccine passports from Reuters:
Officials said the EU was working with the International Air Transport Association, which is keen to revive air travel, and with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the World Health Organization.
But travel with certificates also raised legal questions, officials said, because those last in line for vaccinations could argue their freedom of movement was unjustly restricted by the often months-long queues.
EU officials also point out there is no guidance yet from the WHO and EU agencies whether people who have received two shots of the Covid-19 vaccine can still carry the coronavirus and infect others, even if no longer vulnerable themselves.
It was also not clear if people could be infectious having already fought off the coronavirus themselves, for how long they remained immune and if they too should get certificates.
There is also suspicion that such schemes could provide a way in to greater monitoring of people’s movements and health statuses, a paper published in the Lancet says.
However, it added, they could facilitate safer movement and the privacy concerns are neither unique nor insurmountable.Earlier in February, Greece and Israel signed a deal to ease travel restrictions to Greece for Israelis with proof of vaccination.
EU states split over vaccine passports, to debate issue
EU leaders will on Thursday debate the issue of certificates of vaccination for EU citizens who have been vaccinated against Covid.
Reuters reports that with the rollout of vaccines now gathering pace, some governments, like those of Greece and Spain, are pushing for a quick adoption of an EU-wide certificate for those already inoculated so that people can travel again.
However, other countries, such as France and Germany, appear more reluctant, as officials there say it could create de facto vaccination obligation and would be discriminatory to those who cannot or would not take a jab.
France, where anti-vaccine sentiment is particularly strong and where the government has pledged not to make them compulsory, considers the idea of vaccine passports as “premature”, a French official said today.
Updated
Pfizer vaccine found 94% effective in landmark real-world study
The first big real-world study of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to be independently reviewed shows the shot is highly effective at preventing Covid-19, in a potentially landmark moment for countries desperate to end lockdowns and reopen economies, Reuters reports.
Up until now, most data on the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines has come under controlled conditions in clinical trials, leaving an element of uncertainty over how results would translate into the real world with its unpredictable variables.
The research in Israel– two months into one of the world’s fastest rollouts, providing a rich source of data – showed two doses of the Pfizer shot cut symptomatic Covid-19 cases by 94% across all age groups, and severe illnesses by nearly as much.The study of about 1.2 million people also showed a single shot was 57% effective in protecting against symptomatic infections after two weeks, according to the data published and peer-reviewed in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday.
The results of the study for the Clalit Research Institute were close to those in clinical trials last year which found two doses were found to be 95% effective.
The study also suggests the vaccine is effective against the variant first identified in the UK. Researchers said they could not provide a specific level of efficacy, but the variant was the dominant version of the virus in Israel at the time of the study.
The research did not shed light on how the Pfizer shot will fare against another variant, now dominant in South Africa, that has been shown to reduce the efficacy of other vaccines.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage o f the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan.
I’ll be bringing you the latest for the next few hours – as always, you can find me on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
The first big real-world study of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to be independently reviewed shows the shot is highly effective at preventing Covid-19, in a potentially landmark moment for countries desperate to end lockdowns and reopen economies.
And EU leaders will on Thursday debate the issue of certificates of vaccination for EU citizens who have been vaccinated against Covid.
Here are the key developments from the last while:
- A Danish study suggests that people infected with a British variant of the coronavirus codenamed B117 may have a 60% higher risk of being hospitalised, health minister Magus Heunicke said.
- Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose Covid vaccine protects against is about 66% effective at preventing moderate to severe forms of the virus, and is safe to use, according to an analysis by US regulators ahead of a final decision on the jab.
- The EU is “catching up” with the UK’s coronavirus vaccination programme, the European commission president has insisted as Hungary’s government started to administer a Chinese vaccine in the face of shortages, with Belgium the latest to warn of “serious delays” to its schedule.
- The Swedish government has said it would reduce opening hours for all restaurants, bars and cafes as well as tighten limits on the number of people allowed in shops as it seeks to ward off a third wave.
- Switzerland is to start easing out of its lockdown from 1 March, the government has said, confirming preliminary plans to open shops, museums and libraries and allow outdoor gatherings of up to 15 people.
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Denmark is also to ease some shopping restrictions and allow schools in parts of the country to reopen on 1 March, the government said, potentially allowing hospital admissions to triple in the coming month.
- EU leaders will tomorrow debate the issue of certificates of vaccination for citizens who have been vaccinated against Covid, amid reported disagreements within the bloc – with some firmly in favour and others more reluctant.
- Israel’s parliament has passed a law allowing the government to share the identities of people not vaccinated against Covid with other authorities, raising privacy concerns for those opting out of inoculation.
- A senior adviser to Democrat Joe Biden in his campaign for president believed “Covid is the best thing that ever happened to him”, a new book reports.
