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Here’s a summary of tonight’s developments
- Tunisia has extended curfew hours to try and stop the rapid spread of coronavirus as it recorded a daily record number of cases.
- Maree Todd, Scotland’s minister for public health, has tested positive for coronavirus. Announcing the news on Twitter tonight, the SNP MSP for Caithness, Sutherland and Ross said she is self-isolating after testing positive today but has not had any symptoms.
- Brazil is to suspend its $324m Indian vaccine contract that has mired President Jair Bolsonaro in accusations of irregularities.
- Romania is to sell 1.7m excess doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to Denmark because it was unable to use them within its own population due to vaccine hesitancy.
- Guatemala has demanded its money back from Russia after it failed to deliver paid-for vaccines. Guatemalan health minister Amelia Flores has said the government has not received its promised Sputnik V vaccines.
That’s it from me for tonight. Handing over to my colleague Helen Sullivan. Thanks.
Updated
Tunisia has extended curfew hours to try and stop the rapid spread of coronavirus as it recorded a daily record number of cases.
Reuters reports:
The curfew will begin at 8:00 p.m. and end at 5:00 a.m. starting Thursday. The government said it will ban all gatherings until July 11.
Tunisia recorded 5,251 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Tuesday, the health ministry said, while 106 more deaths were reported, taking the death toll to about 15,000.
In the US, a man in Florida has pleaded guilty to stealing $24m in coronavirus relief money by fraudulently applying for financial assistance.
AP reports:
A Florida man on Tuesday pleaded guilty to stealing $24 million in Covid-19 relief money by using fake identities and shell companies to fraudulently apply for financial assistance, federal prosecutors said.
Hasan Hakim Brown, 45, pleaded guilty to a count of conspiring to commit bank fraud. He is facing up to 30 years in prison when he is sentenced in September.
According to federal prosecutors in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Brown and his co-conspirators used fake identities and shell companies to fraudulently apply for financial assistance from the federal Paycheck Protection Program.
The money was paid to companies registered to Brown and his co-conspirators, as well as to companies registered to fake identities that Brown and his co-conspirators controlled, federal prosecutors said.
Federal prosecutor said Brown and his colleagues had previously used the fake and stolen identities, and associated bank accounts and shell companies, to steal money from a bank in Texas.
Updated
Scotland's minister for public health has tested positive for Covid
Maree Todd, Scotland’s minister for public health, has tested positive for coronavirus.
Announcing the news on Twitter tonight, the SNP MSP for Caithness, Sutherland and Ross said she is self-isolating after testing positive today but has not had any symptoms.
I’ve received a positive Covid test result today.
— Maree Todd (@MareeToddMSP) June 29, 2021
No symptoms but am obviously self-isolating with my family now.
I also want to say thanks to the testing staff and the contact tracers for their work. They are on the frontline and are magnificent. Thank you all.
Here’s more on Brazil’s $324m Indian vaccine contract which Reuters reports has been suspended:
Brazil will suspend a $324 million Indian vaccine contract that has mired President Jair Bolsonaro in accusations of irregularities, the health minister said on Tuesday, following the guidance of the federal comptroller, the CGU.
The deal to buy 20 million doses of Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin shot has become a headache for Bolsonaro after whistleblowers went public with concerns over irregularities. One Health Ministry official said he personally alerted the president about his concerns.
Brazil’s Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga said at a news conference his team would probe the allegations while the suspension was ongoing.
“According to the preliminary analysis of the CGU, there are no irregularities in the contract but, for compliance, the Health Ministry chose to suspend the contract for a more in-depth analysis,” the ministry said in a statement.
Earlier on Thursday, Reuters reported a CNN Brasil report that the ministry had decided to cancel the contract.
Updated
Brazil recorded 64,903 new coronavirus cases today and 1,893 deaths, the health ministry said.
Brazil to reportedly cancel Covaxin contract after accusations of irregularities
Brazil’s health ministry will cancel a contract for Covaxin vaccines after accusations of irregularities, CNN Brasil reports.
The termination of the contract for the vaccine, developed by India’s Bharat Biotech, comes after whistleblowers went public with concerns over irregularities in the 1.6bn reais ($324m) deal. One official said he personally alerted President Jair Bolsonaro about his concerns.
The Health Ministry did not respond to Reuters request for comment.
Updated
Mexico’s foreign minister has said that his government has suggested to the US that travel restrictions should be lifted on their shared border as vaccinations progress.
Restrictions for non-essential travel across the border were put in place in March last year in reaction to the pandemic - impacting border towns and businesses - and have been extended every 30 days, Reuters reports.
Speaking at a G20 meeting of foreign ministers, Marcelo Ebrard said today:
What Mexico is proposing is that as vaccinations move forward on both sides of the border the criteria changes for determining what restrictions and what activities are considered essential.
It comes after President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday that his government will ask the US to reopen the border as soon as possible.
Cuba has started testing its Soberana 2 coronavirus candidate vaccine on children aged 3-18.
State-run television showed footage of children receiving the first of three doses yesterday, Reuters reports.
The home-grown vaccine, which has a 62% efficacy rate, is waiting for the final stage trial results.
The Communist-run country - which is in the midst of a surge in coronavirus cases - also has a second vaccine called Abdala, which has a final efficacy of 92% and is being distributed across the country as it waits for final emergency approval.
Cuba reported a record of more than 3,000 cases yesterday, but mortality rates remain low. There have been 188,023 cases to date and 1,270 deaths.
Romania is to sell 1.17m excess doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to Denmark.
The Danish health minister, Magnus Heunicke, said: “We can do this deal because Romania is experiencing low vaccination backing and therefore wants to sell excess vaccines which they won’t be able to use.” The first doses are expected to arrive in Denmark this week.
Just over a fifth of Romania’s population - 4.47m people - have been vaccinated but vaccine hesitancy is spreading amid distrust in the state, misinformation and insufficient vaccine education, Reuters reports.
Romania had aimed to vaccinate 5m people by the end of May.
Guatemala demands money back from Russia for undelivered vaccines
Guatemalan health minister Amelia Flores has said the government has asked Russia for its money back after it failed to deliver paid-for Sputnik V coronavirus vaccines, reports Reuters.
Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen today said that she will discuss loosening import and export of Covid vaccines with the US at trade talks tomorrow.
Reuters reports:
The two sides are due to resume long-stalled trade discussions on Wednesday as Washington seeks to deepen its support for the Chinese-claimed island, and at a time when Taiwan is dealing with a cluster of domestic COVID-19 cases.
In an address from her office, Tsai said the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement talks, or TIFA, would include what she referred to as an “important” topic.
“That is to simplify the import and export process of vaccines and other medical supplies. This substantive cooperation will bring important help to our current epidemic situation. I have asked our negotiating team to go all out,” Tsai said.
“If Taiwan’s epidemic is brought under control and economic fluctuations are reduced, it will be a further contribution to the peace and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific region.”
Taiwan is a major producer of semiconductors, a global shortage of which has reverberated around the world, though the island’s domestic Covid-19 outbreak has not had a substantial impact on supplies.
France has reported 2,314 new coronavirus cases today.
Hi. Taking over from my colleague Mattha Busby on the global coronavirus blog. Please get in touch with any tips or suggestions: miranda.bryant@guardian.co.uk
Today so far...
- More than three billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been given across the world, according to an AFP tally from official sources. It took 20 weeks to give the first billion, but it only took four to give the last one thousand million.
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The African Union criticised as “inequitable” an EU decision not to include Covishield, a version of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine used by the global Covax programme, on a list of approved vaccines for a digital certificate to ease travel in the bloc.
- Some doctors are telling young Australians to cancel their Covid-19 vaccine bookings and warning AstraZeneca will not be given to those aged under 40 because Scott Morrison’s comments do not accord with expert medical advice.
- Russia will fail to vaccinate 60% of its population against Covid by the autumn as planned due to sluggish demand for the shots, the Kremlin said, after the country recorded its highest number of daily deaths from the virus – with the situation “tense” as 150,000 Covid patients remain in hospital.
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Germany is to relax a discriminatory ban requiring gay and bisexual men to abstain from sex for a year before donating blood, as the pandemic increases pressure on global supplies.
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Ireland is to delay lifting indoor dining restrictions, prime minister Micheal Martin said, blaming the pause on the new Delta variant. The country will restrict indoor drinking and eating in bars and restaurants to those who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 or who have previously been infected by it.
- Greece is to allow people fully vaccinated against Covid inside restaurants without masks, the government said, as part of measures to boost inoculation rates after it offered young people a €150 cash card and a free month of phone data to get vaccinated.
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Health officials in Los Angeles county strongly recommended that people wear masks indoors in public places, regardless of their vaccination status, to prevent the spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant, in alignment with World Health Organization guidelines that conflict with those of US regulators.
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Malta will introduce tighter Covid-19 rules, banning British visitors who are not fully vaccinated in an effort to prevent the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus, the health ministry said.
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Overseas business leaders will no longer need to quarantine when arriving in England if their trip is likely to be of significant economic benefit to the UK, the UK government announced.
Earlier we reported on the split between World Health Organisation guidance and that of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, which as opposed to the WHO does not recommend vaccinated people wear masks indoors or distance from others.
But health officials in Los Angeles county now strongly recommend that people wear masks indoors in public places, regardless of their vaccination status, to prevent the spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus.
Here’s the full story:
Covid situation in Russia 'tense' with 150,000 in hospital, says minister
Russian health minister Mikhail Murashko has said that 151,000 people in the country are currently in hospital with Covid, amid a third wave driven by the highly contagious Delta variant.
Infections have especially spiked in the capital Moscow and second city Saint Petersburg, which hosts a Euro 2020 quarter-final on Friday. At a televised meeting of Russia’s coronavirus task force, Murashko said the “situation is tense, especially in large cities”.
He added: “182,000 hospital beds are allocated, 151,000 patients are receiving treatment.” Murashko said that there are currently enough vaccine doses available to fully inoculate 32 million people and there has been a “significant increase” in Russia’s vaccination rate.
In response to the recent surge, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin this month introduced mandatory vaccination for 60% of service sector workers, with over a dozen Russians regions following his lead.
Rwanda has tightened coronavirus restrictions, including closing schools, in an attempt to stem a rise in coronavirus cases.
Schools will be closed in the capital Kigali and eight other virus hotspots for two weeks starting 1 July. Restaurants will be limited to takeaway service while both private and public offices will be closed to everyone save for essential workers.
Social gatherings including those held in homes and family visits have been prohibited. A nighttime curfew has been lengthened by an hour. International travel and tourism will however continue, AFP reports.
“Citizens are reminded of the critical importance of complying with the health measures. Penalties will be applied for non-compliance,” prime minister Edouard Ngirente said in a statement, adding that the fresh measures will be reviewed after a fortnight.
The country of 13 million people has so far avoided the worst of the pandemic after it imposed one of Africa’s first lockdowns and implemented a rigorous regime of testing and contact tracing.
Last week, it banned weddings and prohibited all kinds of celebrations after hospital admissions shot up.
The country has counted 37,384 cases of coronavirus of which slightly more than 400 have been fatal.
Hospitalisation rates for children with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes rose sharply during the pandemic, two hospitals reported at the American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions, amid fears that lockdowns led to less healthy lifestyles.
Reuters reports that At Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, children with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes accounted for 0.62% of inpatients from March through December 2020, up from 0.27% the year before.
Those numbers are low, “but just the fact that this rate has more than doubled over the past year is ... significant,” said Dr. Daniel Hsia of Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge.
Children hospitalised in 2020 had more severe diabetes, with higher blood sugar and more dehydration, than children admitted in the prior year, he said. At Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC, cases of new-onset type 2 diabetes in children increased 182% from 2019 to 2020 - and the children were sicker than in previous years, a separate team reported.
Most of these children at both hospitals had not previously had Covid-19. Social distancing measures may have kept children from having regular physical activity and contributed to weight gain, and also kept parents from taking them for routine medical care, all of which may have contributed to more severe illness, researchers speculated.
“Our study reinforces the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle for children even under such difficult circumstances” Hsia said in a statement.
A refrigerator failure in Estonia has destroyed more than 68,000 doses of AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines last week after the temperature rose to 15 degrees celcius, the country’s health board has said.
The alarm system failed to report the failure, which lasted for more than 12 hours and was only detected after an employee entered the cold room. AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine must be kept at 2-8 degrees. At least 32,000 shots of other vaccines were also destroyed.
“Such cases are unacceptable,” said Kati Kusmin, head of Estonia’s state real estate management company which investigated the incident. The destroyed vaccines were marked for donation outside Estonia, so the country’s vaccination programme will not be disrupted, the Estonian public broadcaster reported.
Estonia has vaccinated 50.4% of its adults with at least one dose by Tuesday, below the European average of 58.7%.
Germany to relax controversial restrictions on gay men giving blood
Germany is to relax a discriminatory ban requiring gay and bisexual men to abstain from sex for a year before donating blood, as the pandemic increases pressure on global supplies.
Men in monogamous same-sex relationships will face no restrictions when donating blood, according to a new risk assessment by the health ministry and the German Medical Association, seen by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Men who engage in sexual activity with more than one man or with a new male partner and straight people with “frequently changing partners” will have to wait four months before being allowed to donate blood, the 77-page document says.
A health ministry spokeswoman said the provisions would be introduced in the next review of the blood donation rules but declined to say when this would take place.
The pandemic has led several countries, including Britain and Australia, to lift bans on blood donation imposed during the 1980s HIV/AIDS epidemic, which have been criticised by medical and LGBT+ groups as discriminatory and outdated.
Jens Brandenburg, LGBT+ spokesman for the opposition centre-right Free Democratic Party, welcomed the decision but called for rules that focus on individual risk, not sexuality.
Blood isn’t gay or straight. Safe sex between two single men is not a bigger risk that an unprotected one-night stand between heterosexual people. The potential infection risk does not depend on someone’s sexual orientation, but on the individual behaviour.”
Rules around the world vary. Spain, Italy and Portugal do not differentiate between donors on the grounds of sexual orientation, while Singapore and Greece have outright bans on men who have sex with men donating blood.
Poland could make vaccinations obligatory for some people at high risk from Covid-19 to mitigate against a feared new surge of infections from August, the country’s health minister has said.
The country of around 38 million has fully vaccinated 12.8 million people, but authorities have lamented being unable to persuade those not yet vaccinated to get a jab, so appear to be threatening a more strident approach.
“Unfortunately we have the impression that we have reached a certain ceiling - it is hard to convince those who are unconvinced because all the arguments and other types of actions have already been taken,” Adam Niedzielski told Catholic radio station Radio Plus.
“We are talking about such scenarios as making vaccination obligatory for those most exposed to the serious consequence of Covid - we are talking here about senior citizens, but first of all doctors.”
Poland reported 123 new Covid-19 cases today, a fraction of the number at the peak of the third wave in spring, when daily cases exceeded 35,000. In total, Poland has reported 2,879,811 Covid-19 infections and 75,005 deaths.
In the UK, as elsewhere, vaccination has been recommended but not compelled even for healthcare workers, as my colleague Sarah Boseley notes, with many concerned that the jabs have not received full approval due to an absence of long-term data.
For years, significant numbers of NHS staff have declined vaccination against flu, even though they could pass it to someone at risk of dying from it. As it is at the moment, the law protects their right to say no.
Ethical bodies say there is a balance to be struck between the freedom and self-determination of an individual and the gains to be made in public health. It is not a straightforward equation. Complications include the fact that these vaccines have emergency authorisation – not full approval from regulatory bodies. Although they are looking amazingly safe and effective, data is still being gathered on how well they work. Compelling people to be vaccinated, whether directly or for fear of becoming unemployed, could mean they have not given genuine consent.
Russia will fail to vaccinate 60% of its population against Covid by the autumn as planned due to sluggish demand for the shots, the Kremlin has said, after the country recorded its highest number of daily deaths from the virus.
Russian authorities have blamed a recent surge in Covid-19 cases on the infectious Delta variant, which they say accounts for around 90% of all new cases, and on the reluctance of many Russians to get vaccinated, Reuters reports.
Low uptake, despite free and widely available vaccines, has seen the authorities in some regions to introduce compulsory vaccination for some workers and to create incentives for others such as offering the chance to win a car or an apartment.
“It’s clear that this vaccination target cannot be achieved. Targets will be pushed back,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call.
At a government meeting today, health minister Mikhail Murashko said that 23 million people had received at least the first dose of a two-shot vaccine, while Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said he hopes that up to 2 million people would be vaccinated in the Russian capital within the next six weeks.
The government’s coronavirus task force said today that 652 people had died as a result of the virus in the past 24 hours, a record daily high.
In related news, the Scottish first minister has said she thinks there is a link between Scotland fans travelling for Euro 2020 games and the rise in Covid cases in Scotland.
At least 300 Finns who went to cheer on the national team at the Euro 2020 football tournament have contracted Covid, health officials have said.
The daily infection rate in Finland has gone up from around 50 a day to more than 200 in the past week and the figure is likely to grow in the coming days, they said, though the overall impact of the virus in the country remains limited.
It is evident that the returning fans caused a rise in Finland’s daily infections, Reuters reported Mika Salminen, head of security at the Finnish Health Institute, as saying. “Looking at their age division, it is clear that not that many of them have gotten two vaccine doses yet,” he added.
According to local health authorities, more than 200 infections caught in Russia have been detected in people living in the metropolitan area around the capital Helsinki.
“A key question is, will we see infection chains. It now looks like we cannot move to a level of lower restrictions in the Helsinki area,” Salminen told Reuters.
The institute has estimated that 4,500-6,000 football fans went over to the Russian city of St Petersburg to watch the games.
The authorities are still trying to track down everyone who attended the event and warn they may have passed the virus on to friends and family during the midsummer festivities last weekend.
Finland remains among the countries least affected by the pandemic. The nation of 5.5 million people has recorded 95,387 infections, 969 deaths and has 29 people hospitalised due to Covid-19.
Updated
The UK government has admitted a health minister used private emails for government business despite denying it 24 hours earlier, but defended Lord Bethell, saying he had abided by the guidance.
Bethell, a close ally of the former health secretary Matt Hancock, defended his use of email today.
The comments contradicted the defence No 10 made yesterday, when the spokesman said “both the former health secretary and Lord Bethell understand the rules around personal email usage and only ever conducted government business through their departmental email addresses”.
Bethell, who oversaw the award of Covid contracts, has faced calls for his resignation over his use of private email and his sponsorship of a parliamentary pass for Hancock’s aide Gina Coladangelo, with whom the former health secretary had an affair.
On Monday, the Guardian revealed that a number of emails were copied into Bethell’s private email account. His address was copied into at least four official exchanges relating to a businessman who was attempting to get government contracts during the pandemic.
In April 2020, the businessman had approached his MP, Oliver Dowden, as he believed his firm’s testing kits were cheaper than those being bought by the government.
Italy has reported 42 coronavirus-related deaths, compared to 28 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 679 from 389.
Reuters reports:
Italy has registered 127,542 deaths linked to COVID-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the eight-highest in the world. The country has reported 4.26 million cases to date.
Patients in hospital with COVID-19 - not including those in intensive care - stood at 1,676 on Tuesday, down from 1,723 a day earlier.
There were 9 new admissions to intensive care units, up from 5 on Monday. The total number of intensive care patients fell to 270 from a previous 289.
Some 190,635 tests for COVID-19 were carried out in the past day, compared with a previous 75,861, the health ministry said.
The UK has recorded 20,479 new COVID-19 cases and 23 deaths within 28 days of a positive test, according to official government data.
That compared to 22,868 cases and 3 deaths reported a day earlier.
The US first lady Jill Biden may go to Tokyo to attend the Olympics opening ceremony next month, her husband, President Joe Biden has said.
“We’re trying to work that out now. That’s the plan,” he told reporters at the White House as he departed for an unrelated trip to Wisconsin.
The ceremony, scheduled for July 23, has been beset by the Covid-19 pandemic that pushed back the 2020 Summer Games hosted by Japan to this year with the host country still grappling with the coronavirus pandemic.
The 15-day Olympic torch relay ahead of the ceremony will take place without spectators and off public roads. While many U.S. athletes have been vaccinated and will compete at the world’s largest sporting event, Covid-19 safety protocols and travel restrictions have largely curbed any expected crowds.
Malta to ban unvaccinated British visitors in attempt to stem Delta spread
Malta will introduce tighter Covid-19 rules, banning British visitors who are not fully vaccinated in an effort to prevent the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus, the health ministry said.
Unvaccinated children under 12 can enter with an adult, but the move will effectively prevent British families with teenagers from holidaying in one of the few destinations on Britain’s “green list” for quarantine-free travel, Reuters reports.
Malta has recorded just one case of the Delta variant, first identified in India, but fears this number will rise after Britain put it on the green list last week.
Britain has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, but has nevertheless faced a surge this month in cases caused by the Delta variant, mainly affecting under-40s who have only recently been eligible for vaccines or have yet to receive a second dose. It has not offered vaccines to those under 18.
Britain is the biggest source market for tourists to Malta, accounting for more than a third of arrivals, and the green list announcement by London was welcomed by Maltese hoteliers. Tourists from most other countries arriving in Malta will have to produce only a negative test result taken 72 hours before their arrival.
Brazilian health regulator Anvisa has canceled a request for emergency use authorisation for the Covid-19 vaccine developed by China’s CanSino Biologics Inc after the laboratory cut ties with its Brazilian representative.
Reuters reports that the move follows a wave of scrutiny in Brazil of vaccine contracts negotiated by intermediaries, a common local practice. Federal prosecutors and Senate investigators are probing a deal for an Indian vaccine, with one senator accusing President Jair Bolsonaro on Monday of turning a blind eye to alleged irregularities.
The president and companies involved in those talks have denied any wrongdoing. CanSino and its former Brazilian representative, Belcher Farmaceutica, did not immediately respond to emails requesting comment on the end of their relationship.
Brazil’s health ministry signed a letter of intent on June 4 with Belcher to buy 60 million doses of CanSino’s single-shot vaccine for delivery in the second half of this year, according to a document seen by Reuters.
The vaccine, branded Convidecia and developed by CanSino together with a research institute linked to the Chinese military, was priced at $17 per dose, the document said.
CanSino has asked to replace its representative in Brazil and that representative would have to apply again for emergency use authorization, Anvisa said.
Updated
The Associated Press has this dispatch from Malawi, where some struggling Malawian women are forgoing prenatal care due to Covid fears.
Prenatal services at the clinic were free, but the motorcycle taxi fare cost more than Monica Maxwell could afford. Just four weeks before delivering her baby, she cobbled together 1,400 kwacha ($1.75) for the 50-kilometer (31-mile) round trip. It was only her third visit -- fewer than her first two pregnancies. The money she made selling tomatoes dried up amid the pandemic. Her husband’s income selling meat also dwindled. “It was the most difficult period of our lives. We had no money for our daily survival,” Maxwell, 31, said. “Mostly we stayed home.”
In a country where hospitals are so bare that women are expected to bring their own razor blades for cutting umbilical cords, the deepening poverty sparked by Covid-19 is further imperiling women’s lives. Officials say far fewer pregnant women in Malawi are getting the health care they need amid the pandemic, with many forgoing medical visits and relying solely on traditional birth attendants, who provide emotional support and administer herbal treatments but are banned by the government from delivering babies because they lack formal training. Many families can’t afford clinic visits, or the needed transportation; they also fear they’ll catch coronavirus in hospitals.
At risk are the gains that Malawi — a largely rural sliver of a country, with 18 million people — has made over the past decade to combat its poor record of maternal deaths. Malawian women face a 1-in-29 lifetime risk of death related to a pregnancy or birth, according to the United Nations Population Fund.
India has authorised the emergency use of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine as it seeks to ramp up its vaccination drive in the wake of surging infections and deaths.
Moderna’s shot is the fourth to be approved by New Delhi after Oxford-AstraZeneca’s Covishield and Covaxin, which was developed by Indian firm Bharat Biotech, and Russia’s Sputnik V, AFP reports.
“I am pleased to inform that an application received from Moderna through an Indian partner of theirs, Cipla, has been granted EUA (Emergency Use Authorisation),” a member of government advisory body NITI Aayog, Vinod K. Paul, said at a health ministry briefing.
“Our efforts to invite and to have other internationally developed vaccines, specifically Pfizer and J&J, also continue.” Paul added that the approval would pave the way for other foreign-made vaccines to be imported into India.
A small number of Sputnik V shots have imported into India after the drug was granted approval in mid-April, but the majority are expected to be manufactured within the country, like Covishield and Covaxin.
India said two months ago that it would fast-track the approval of vaccines manufactured outside the country that have already been granted emergency use authorisation by major regulators such as the US Food and Drug Administration.
The government had been under pressure to speed up its flagging inoculation drive by allowing the import of foreign-made vaccines such as mRNA vaccines Pfizer and Moderna.
Nearly 327 million doses have been administered since the mass vaccination programme kicked off in mid-January. But just six percent of India’s adult population - or 57 million people - have received both doses of a two-shot regime.
Ireland to restrict indoor dining and bars to fully vaccinated people
Ireland is to delay lifting indoor dining restrictions, prime minister Micheal Martin said, blaming the pause on the new Delta variant.
The country will restrict indoor drinking and eating in bars and restaurants to those who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 or who have previously been infected by it.
The country joins a handful of places in Europe to introduce the measure, including Austria, Denmark and Israel, while Moscow has brought in similar restrictions.
Martin said health officials told him they thought that the variant made indoor hospitality too dangerous for the unvaccinated.
“The safest way to now proceed with a return to indoor hospitality is to limit access to those who have been fully vaccinated or have recovered from Covid infection,” Martin said.
Only 41% of Ireland’s adult population has been vaccinated, with 65% having received one dose, the health minister said on Monday.
A senior health official earlier this month said some in their 20s may have to wait until September for a first dose.
Indoor venues such as theatres and concert venues may also face restrictions, Martin later told journalists.
He explained that to allow Irish hospitality, which has been hit particularly hard in the pandemic, to reopen as early as possible the government would “work urgently with the relevant sectors to agree a practical and workable approach”.
The taoiseach said numbers permitted at outdoor events will increase as planned, with up to 500 attendees at larger stadiums, while limits on visits between households for individuals that have received a vaccine were also lifted.
Individuals were told to continue working from home where possible and the number of people attending wedding will increase to 50.
Most other members of the European Union have pushed ahead with reopening indoor dining.
Updated
Royal Caribbean International has said it would require unvaccinated guests over 12 years of age traveling from Florida to show proof of insurance that covers Covid-19 related medical expenses, quarantine and evacuation.
The latest policy change comes as the cruise operator’s parent Royal Caribbean Group began sailing from US ports and has a number of trips planned after more than a year of anchoring ships, Reuters reports.
African Union warns EU over vaccine certificate 'inequality'
The African Union has criticised an EU decision not to include Covishield, a version of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine used by the global Covax programme, on a list of approved vaccines for a digital certificate meant to ease travel in the bloc.
Covishield is produced by the Serum Institute of India (SII) and has been distributed to African nations as part of the Covax initiative to give poor and developing countries access to Covid-19 vaccines.
But Covishield is not one of four vaccines approved by the EU for its planned digital vaccination certificate, which is intended to allow people to travel freely within the bloc.
The 54-nation African Union said in a statement that Covishield’s exclusion could lead to discrimination against African travellers. Non-recognition of Covishield endangers the “equitable treatment of persons having received their vaccines in countries profiting from the EU-supported Covax Facility, including the majority of the African Union (AU) member states,” it said.
Those who have been inoculated with vaccines not approved by the EU for the certificate could still face restrictions on their movement and testing requirements with high financial costs, the AU said.
The travel certificate will show if a person has received a vaccine, had a recent negative test, or had immunity based on recovery.
The AstraZeneca shot is one of the four approved for the EU certificate, but the list does not extend to Covishield. The other EU-recognised vaccines are those made by Moderna, Pfizer and BioNTech, and Johnson & Johnson.
Updated
The European Commission has picked four antibody treatments and a repurposed rheumatoid arthritis drug by Eli Lilly for an initial portfolio of preferred drugs to treat Covid-19.
Reuters reports that the selection of drugs is part of the EU Strategy on Covid-19 Therapeutics, launched in May, to speed up EU approval and for a joint procurement plan on behalf of member states, complementing more advanced efforts on vaccines.
The commission’s pick of most promising treatments comprises Eli Lilly and Incyte’s Olumiant for hospitalised Covid-19 patients on oxygen, as well as new antibody drugs for early-stage disease developed by Regeneron, Eli Lilly , Celltrion and an alliance of GlaxoSmithKline and partner Vir.
The European Medicines Agency has recommended the antibody treatments by GSK, Celltrion, Eli Lilly and Regeneron for use in early-stage patients who are at risk of progressing to severe Covid-19 to support any use by individual member states. An EU-wide marketing authorisation has not yet been granted.
The only Covid-19 drug so far approved across the EU is Gilead’s remdesivir, which the EU bought with a joint procurement just before the World Health Organization said it was not effective on severely ill patients.
The Netherlands will offer Covid-19 vaccinations to all children aged 12 to 17 in an effort to prevent infections.
The Dutch health council said children as young as 12 should be offered the Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine, the injection which was authorised for use on children from the age of 12 by the European Commission in May.
“Taking everything into account we advise to offer the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to all 12-to-17-year olds who want one”, the council said.
A vaccination can help protect children against rare cases in which a coronavirus infection makes them seriously ill, the health council said.
By offering vaccinations to children, the Netherlands would follow similar moves by the US, Canada, France, Germany and other European countries who have already started injecting teenagers.
A total of around 15.3 million coronavirus vaccinations have been given in the Netherlands, with the country of 17.5 million en route to have offered at least one injection to all adults who want one by mid-July.
The New York Times has reported on the split between World Health Organisation guidance and that of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, which as opposed to the WHO does not recommend vaccinated people wear masks indoors or distance from others.
Asked yesterday about the new cautions expressed by the WHO – amid fears over the Delta variant – a CDC spokesman gave no indication its guidance would change.
Dr Mariângela Simão, WHO assistant director-general for access to medicines, vaccines and pharmaceuticals, has recently emphasised that even vaccinated people should continue to consistently wear masks, avoid crowds and maintain social distance from others, the NYT reports
“What we’re saying is, ‘Once you’ve been fully vaccinated, continue to play it safe, because you could end up as part of a transmission chain.’ You may not actually be fully protected,” Dr Bruce Aylward, senior WHO adviser, said on Friday.
In Israel, which has one of the highest vaccination rates, a rise in cases attributed to the Delta variant has seen mask mandates reimposed indoors and at large outdoor gatherings.
Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine is around 90% effective against the Delta variant of coronavirus, the RIA news agency cited Denis Logunov, deputy director of the Gamaleya Institute that developed the vaccine, as saying.
The shot was previously found by the researchers to be almost 92% effective against the original strain of coronavirus. Logunov said the Delta variant efficacy figure was calculated based on information from digital medical records and on vaccination records.
There are concerns that current vaccines used in most of Europe are less able to protect against the variant, although the latest UK public health figures suggest two doses of either vaccine are still highly effective against hospitalisation: 96% for Pfizer/BioNTech and 92% for Oxford/AstraZeneca.
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Greece will allow people fully vaccinated against Covid inside restaurants without masks, the government has said, as part of measures to boost inoculation rates.
Reuters reports that the country has been easing restrictions as Covid-19 infections fall, but concerns are rising over the more contagious Delta variant. Face masks have been mandatory in all indoor public spaces.
“The first target is to facilitate the vaccination project. To bring as many people as possible (to vaccination centres),” state minister George Gerapetritis said.
From 15 July, vaccinated spectators will be allowed at sports venues for the first time but they will have to wear masks. Mask wearing will still be required in theatres and cinemas.
More than 30.2% of Greece’s eligible population have been fully vaccinated so far and 43.1% have had at least one dose. The government aims to get to a 70% rate by the autumn.
People who are not fully vaccinated can still enter restaurants, theatres and cinemas but will need to show a negative rapid test, authorities said.
Restaurant and cafe owners can decide to accept only fully vaccinated customers using 85% of their space capacity or accept also unvaccinated clients using only 50% of their capacity, Gerapetritis added.
Earlier this week, the government said it would offer young people a €150 cash card and a free month of phone data to get vaccinated.
French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi has said that it would invest €2 billion in the mRNA vaccine technology behind the pioneering Covid-19 jabs developed by rivals BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna.
Sanofi, which was left trailing in the race to break out a Covid vaccine in 2020, said it would invest 400 million euros a year between now and 2025 to develop at least six vaccine candidates using messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), AFP reports.
It said it would set up an mRNA “centre of excellence” employing 400 people at its laboratories in the US city of Cambridge and Marcy-L’Etoile near the French city of Lyon.
“This massive new investment clearly puts us in the race to develop next-generation vaccines where mRNA technologies can have greatest impact,” Thomas Triomphe, global head of Sanofi Pasteur, said in a statement.
“While mRNA won’t be the solution for every infectious disease, its translation into routine prevention could have immense impact for many unmet public health needs.”
For Covid-19, mRNA works by providing human cells with the genetic instructions to make a surface protein of the coronavirus, which trains the immune system to recognise the real virus.
Jean-Francois Toussaint, head of R&D at Sanofi Pasteur, said that while mRNA had “demonstrated potential to deliver new vaccines faster than ever before” the technology still needed improvements to be used “in routine vaccination against a broader set of infectious diseases and across all ages.”
This month a German-made Covid jab flopped in a final-stage trial, highlighting the difficulties of creating an effective mRNA vaccine.
Nature reports that that experts said CureVac’s decision “not to tweak the biochemical make-up of its mRNA, as Pfizer–BioNTech and Moderna did, might be behind its poor performance — although it is too early to know for sure”.
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Nigeria has barred passengers who are not citizens or permanent residents from entering the country if they have been in South Africa in the past 14 days over Covid concerns.
AFP reports that the decision comes almost two months after a similar restriction on Brazil, India and Turkey because of concerns over rising cases of more virulent coronavirus strains. Those measures would remain for four more weeks, Boss Mustapha, the secretary to the government, said in a statement.
“South Africa, has... been added to this category once more,” he said, adding that Zambia, Rwanda, Namibia and Uganda would be on a watch list.
South Africa recorded more than 100,000 cases in the past week, with 20,000 in the past 24 hours alone, he said. Nigerians and permanent residents who have been in those countries in the previous 14 days must undergo mandatory quarantine in a government-approved facility for a week on arrival, the government said.
All passengers arriving in Nigeria will now have to show a negative Covid-19 test taken within 72 hours of travel rather than the previous 96 hour period.
The virus has infected 167,532 people and claimed 2,119 lives in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, since the first recorded case in February last year.
On internet censorship, US TV host Bill Maher said last week:
I find this outrageous, Facebook banned any post for four months about Covid coming from a lab. Of course, now even the Biden administration is looking into this. A Wall Street Journal reporter asked Google why they don’t do autofill searches for coronavirus lab leak, the way they do it for any other question. And the guy said. ‘Well we want to make sure the search isn’t leading people down pathways that we would find to not be authoritative information’.
Well you were wrong, Google and Facebook, we don’t know. The reason why we want you is because we’re checking on this shit. He said, ‘We want to ensure the first thing users see is information from the CDC and the WHO. That’s who I’m checking on ... The CDC has been wrong about a lot of shit.
Bill Maher slams Google, YouTube for limiting COVID-19 info: "Ivermectin isn't a registered Republican" https://t.co/uSwAB3va0p pic.twitter.com/rVkSsI5Jr0
— The Hill (@thehill) June 27, 2021
Facebook last month lifted a ban on posts claiming Covid-19 was man-made, following a resurgence of interest in the “lab leak” theory of the disease’s onset. The social network said its new policy comes “in light of ongoing investigations into the origin”.
In recent weeks there has been renewed focus on whether Covid could have escaped from a Chinese laboratory. However, new findings strengthen the case for a natural origin, in what has become a heavily politicised debate.
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A prominent American YouTuber and biologist Bret Weinstein has said the video hosting platform has demonetised his channel after he claimed antiparasite drug ivermectin is an effective treatment for Covid.
“YouTube just demonetized both DarkHorse channels, wiping out more than half our family income. Their message: Drop the science and stick to the narrative—or else,” he tweeted.
According to a screenshot he posted, YouTube said content which recommended the use of ivermectin for Covid was prohibited, as well as claims that it is an effective treatment. He appeared on a podcast with Joe Rogan last week amid warnings from YouTube.
While World Health Organization, US and European regulators have recommended against using ivermectin in Covid-19 patients – largely due to the absence of large, standalone trials – it is being used to treat the illness in some countries, including India, Mexico, Bolivia, and elsewhere in south America. Some doctors in those countries have reported impressive results.
A report in the Times in January, revealing the plans for the Oxford study, described Ivermectin as a Covid “wonder drug” saying the drug could save “thousands of lives a day” and that the data from where it was being used was “compelling” and suggested mortality had fallen.
The FT has meanwhile reported on a University of Liverpool metaanalysis which it said “could cut chance of Covid-19 deaths by up to 75%” – with striking results from a number of smaller RCTs. But the evidence base remains short of WHO standards for approval.
In March it said ivermectin – a widely used anti-parasite drug proven – should only be used for Covid patients within clinical trials due to the current evidence being inconclusive.
Ivermectin is a broad spectrum anti-parasitic agent, included in WHO essential medicines list for several parasitic diseases. It is used in the treatment of onchocerciasis (river blindness), strongyloidiasis and other diseases caused by soil transmitted helminthiasis. It is also used to treat scabies.
A guideline development group was convened in response to the increased international attention on ivermectin as a potential treatment for Covid-19. This group is an independent, international panel of experts, which includes clinical care experts in multiple specialties and also include an ethicist and patient-partners.
The group reviewed pooled data from 16 randomized controlled trials (total enrolled 2407), including both inpatients and outpatients with Covid-19. They determined that the evidence on whether ivermectin reduces mortality, need for mechanical ventilation, need for hospital admission and time to clinical improvement in Covid-19 patients is of ‘very low certainty,’ due to the small sizes and methodological limitations of available trial data, including small number of events.”
Three billion vaccine doses administered globally - report
More than three billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been given across the world, according to an AFP tally from official sources.
It took 20 weeks to give the first billion, but it only took four to give the last one thousand million. About four-in-10 of the jabs have been given in China (1.2 billion), with India (329 million) and the US (324 million) also in the top three.
But it is a trio of Middle Eastern countries that leads the way in terms of coverage, with the United Arab Emirates having given 153 doses per 100 people, ahead of Bahrain and Israel on 124. The three have nearly fully vaccinated 60% of their inhabitants.
Following them are Chile (118 doses per 100 people), the UK (113), Mongolia (111), Uruguay (110), Hungary (107), Qatar (107) and the US (98). These countries have fully vaccinated around half of their populations (between 46-54%).
The EU has given 357 millions shots to half of its population, with some 32 percent of the population having been fully covered. Its smallest member Malta has completely covered seven out of 10 of its people; its biggest countries, Germany, France, Italy and Spain are hovering around a third fully vaccinated.
But globally the vaccination drive is still hugely unequal. The world’s poorest countries have only been able to give one dose per 100 people, the richest have given one per 79 people.
Despite the controversies around it, the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab is still the most used in the world, given in eight of 10 countries. Then comes the Pfizer/BioNTech jab (used in 102 countries that have started vaccinating), with Sinopharm and Moderna used in at least 48 countries, Russia’s Sputnik V (at least 41), Johnson & Johnson (31) and Sinovac in 24.
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Overseas business leaders will no longer need to quarantine when arriving in England if their trip is likely to be of significant economic benefit to the UK, the government has announced.
PA Media reports that company executives wishing to travel to England to make a “financial investment in a UK-based business” or for “establishing a new business within the UK” will be exempt but they will need written permission first.
Some doctors are telling young Australians to cancel their Covid-19 vaccine bookings and warning AstraZeneca will not be given to those aged under 40 because Scott Morrison’s comments do not accord with expert medical advice.
The prime minister blindsided doctors with yet another change to the government’s approach to AstraZeneca on Monday night, allowing those under the age of 40 to volunteer for the vaccine at GP clinics.
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners said it was given “no warning” of the announcement and was “scrambling” to work out what it meant for patients, while the Australian Medical Association said it would continue to endorse the advice of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (Atagi) – that Pfizer was the preferred vaccine for under-60s.
The dollar has risen towards three-month highs against major currencies as responses to coronavirus outbreaks threatened to snuff out global economic recovery with the Australian dollar and the British pound leading losses.
Reuters reports that Australia is battling small outbreaks with snap lockdowns in several cities while the Red Cross said Indonesia’s Covid-19 surge is taking the south-east Asian nation to the edge of a “catastrophe”.
“Market sentiment is not that cheery at the start of this week with news of rising Covid cases, new lockdown measures and fresh travel restrictions pouring cold water on global markets,” said Ipek Ozkardeskaya, a senior analyst at Swissquote.
Against a basket of its rivals, the dollar rose 0.14% to levels not far from three-month highs hit earlier this month. The dollar and yen benefited from some safe-haven demand as the more contagious Delta coronavirus strain spread in Asia and elsewhere, stoking fears of further lockdowns.
“The market had been positioned long of the single currency on optimism regarding the vaccine catch-up trade in the region [but] forecasts that the Delta variant of Covid could spread through Europe [in] the summer months could now be undermining confidence in this trade,” Rabobank strategist Jane Foley wrote in a report.
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Amid chaos at the White House as the coronavirus pandemic worsened, Donald Trump took to referring derisively to the Covid taskforce chaired by his vice-president as “that fucking council that Mike has”.
My colleague Martin Pengelly reports that the revelation about the president’s contempt for his key advisory body is one among many in a new book, Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History, which is published in the US today. The Guardian obtained a copy.
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to everyone reading, wherever you are the in the world. Mattha Busby here to take you through the next few hours of global Covid developments. Thanks to my colleague Martin Belam. Please feel free to drop me a line on Twitter or message me via email (mattha.busby.freelance@guardian.co.uk) with any tips or thoughts on our coverage.
Today so far…
- The coronavirus pandemic is continuing to fade but the Delta variant now accounts for about 20% of all new confirmed cases in France, the country’s health minister, Olivier Véran, has said.
- “If you’re vaccinated, you can still be infected but the symptoms will not be severe,” he said. The French government’s aim was “zero health, social or educational impact” from a fourth wave as vaccination implied a 94-95% reduction in hospitalisations and severe cases, he said – although those who choose not to be vaccinated will be “particularly exposed”.
- A rise in daily cases of the coronavirus in Tokyo has triggered fears of a possible fifth wave of infections, less than a month before the city is due to host the Olympics. Tokyo reported 317 infections on Monday – an increase of 81 from the same day last week and the ninth week-on-week rise in a row.
- Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic party is set to propose to the government that it allow AstraZeneca’s vaccines to be used in corporate inoculation programmes. Japan has approved the use of AstraZeneca vaccines, but has avoided using them in its state mass inoculation drive amid lingering concern over reports of rare blood clots.
- Foreign ministers from the Group of 20 major economies have met face-to-face on Tuesday for the first time in two years, with host Italy aiming to push multilateral cures for global crises like the Covid-19 pandemic.
- The one-day gathering in the heat-soaked southern city of Matera will include debate on how to improve cooperation on an array of issues including global health, the climate emergency and international trade. “The pandemic has highlighted the need for an international response to emergencies that transcend national boundaries,” Italian foreign minister Luigi Di Maio told the gathering.
- Indonesia’s Covid surge is on the edge of a “catastrophe” as the more infectious Delta variant dominates transmission and chokes hospitals in south-east Asia’s worst epidemic, the Red Cross said.
- Bangladesh prepared to enter into its harshest lockdown yet, with people only allowed to leave their homes in an emergency and soldiers set to patrol the streets, as a deadly resurgence of Covid-19 infections swept the country.
- As the national Covid positivity rate exceeded 20% and Bangladesh recorded its highest single-day death toll of the pandemic so far, the government announced a set of tough measures to attempt to curb the spread, including the closure of public transport networks and confining the population to their homes for a week.
- Frustration is mounting in Australia over low vaccination rates and changing advice on the AstraZeneca jab after outbreaks of the highly contagious Delta variant sent more parts of the country into lockdown.
- Greece plans to boost its vaccination rates by offering young people €150 to take the vaccine. Prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called it “a gift out of gratitude” to young people.
- Ireland’s government is to decide today whether to permit only those who are fully vaccinated to eat and drink inside bars and restaurants.
- Ministers in England are expected to announce plans that will mean school pupils will no longer have to automatically isolate after contact with a positive Covid case. The proposals are that self-isolating will be replaced by a testing regime to prevent children from missing school.
- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and new health secretary Sajid Javid added their voice to condemnation of an incident in which chief medical officer Chris Whitty was apparently jostled and harassed in a park in central London. Andrew Sparrow has the latest UK Covid news on our live blog.
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Hong Kong has banned passenger flights from the UK and will stop anyone who has spent two hours in the UK from boarding a plane. The city has deemed the UK “extremely high risk” because of rising cases and the spread of the Delta variant.
- India has administered more vaccine doses in the last two weeks than the number of people who signed up for shots during the period, government data showed , signalling improving supplies after widespread shortages.
- Brazil could have saved 400,000 lives if the country had implemented stricter social distancing measures and launched a vaccination programme earlier, according to an eminent epidemiologist who is leading the first study to quantify the scale of the country’s Covid disaster.
- Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has prolonged restrictions on movement and businesses in the Philippine capital and nearby provinces until mid-July, and retained stricter Covid curbs in central and southern areas
That is your lot from me, Martin Belam, today. I will be back with you bright and early tomorrow. Mattha Busby is now taking the controls, so stay tuned…
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French government aim for 'zero health, social or educational impact' from fourth wave
The coronavirus pandemic is continuing to fade but the Delta variant now accounts for about 20% of all new confirmed cases in France, the country’s health minister, Olivier Véran, has said.
Véran told France Info radio the overall incidence rate of the virus was still falling fast, to 18 cases per 100,000 people, and said the variant’s impact could be reined in by effective contact tracing and continuing vaccination, adding: “We mustn’t give up.”
He said the variant, which is significantly more contagious, was becoming dominant in many countries including the UK, Russia and Australia, but could be contained, as had been shown in the Landes département where it was first detected in France.
“A rapid and effcective contact tracing campaign and mass vaccination has brought the incidence rate in the Landes down by 10% in a matter of days,” Véran said, adding that an eventual fourth wave this autumn should be much less severe.
“If you’re vaccinated, you can still be infected but the symptoms will not be severe,” he said. The government’s aim was “zero health, social or educational impact” from a fourth wave as vaccination implied a 94-95% reduction in hospitalisations and severe cases, he said – although those who choose not to be vaccinated will be “particularly exposed”.
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G20 foreign ministers meet face-to-face in Italy
Foreign ministers from the Group of 20 major economies met face-to-face on Tuesday for the first time in two years, with host Italy aiming to push multilateral cures for global crises like the Covid-19 pandemic.
The one-day gathering in the heat-soaked southern city of Matera will include debate on how to improve cooperation on an array of issues including global health, the climate emergency and international trade.
“The pandemic has highlighted the need for an international response to emergencies that transcend national boundaries,” Italian foreign minister Luigi Di Maio told the gathering.
Italy, which holds the rotating presidency of the G20, has said particular attention will be paid to Africa, with an emphasis on sustainable development.
The G20 members account for more than 80% of world gross domestic product, 75% of global trade and 60% of the population of the planet. Those in Matera included the top diplomats of the US, Japan, Britain, France, Germany and India.
The foreign ministers of China, Brazil and Australia opted to follow the discussions by video link, and Russia and South Korea sent deputy ministers.
Crispian Balmer reports for Reuters that German foreign minister Heiko Maas said he would raise his unhappiness at the way he thought China and Russia had offered their vaccines to boost their standing with certain countries.
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Madeline Holcombe reports for CNN that the Delta variant is forcing US officials to rethink Covid-19 measures, even for the vaccinated. She writes:
Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb said that in terms of Delta spread, the US is about a month or two behind the UK – a country that has been dealing with high numbers of cases despite relatively high vaccination rates. For those such countries, the World Health Organization advised last week that even the fully vaccinated should continue to wear masks.
Already in Los Angeles County, the pace of this variant’s spread has motivated officials to reinstate mask guidance for public indoor spaces, regardless of vaccination status.
Calling it a “precautionary measure”. the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health issued the voluntary mask guidance Monday, saying it was necessary until health officials can “better understand how and to who the Delta variant is spreading”.
But not all local leaders are reinstating preventative guidance at this time. New Jersey governor Phil Murphy announced Monday that masks will not be mandatory in the state’s school buildings.
Read more here: CNN – Delta variant is forcing officials to rethink Covid-19 measures, even for the vaccinated
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Brazil could have stopped 400,000 Covid deaths with better response, expert says
Brazil could have saved 400,000 lives if the country had implemented stricter social distancing measures and launched a vaccination programme earlier, according to an eminent epidemiologist who is leading the first study to quantify the scale of the country’s Covid disaster.
Such policies would have prevented 80% of the half a million Covid deaths registered in one of the hardest-hit countries in the world, said Pedro Hallal, a professor at the Federal University of Pelotas.
“The responsibility for these numbers is entirely on the federal government’s back – and particularly on the president’s,” Hallal told the Guardian.
“It was not the federal government who said that the pandemic was a ‘little flu’. It was not the government that encouraged people to go out without a mask, or who said that the vaccine could turn you into an alligator. That was all the president, and it’s his responsibility,” Hallal said.
Hallal said that the Covid-19 mortality average was more than four times higher in Brazil than the rest of world – 2,345 per million in Brazil versus 494 globally.
Hallal, who last week testified before a senate inquiry into the government’s handling of the crisis, also estimated that 95,000 to 145,000 deaths occurred due to the country’s inaction in acquiring vaccines. The inquiry has heard damning evidence that the government of Jair Bolsonaro dismissed several vaccine offers from pharmaceutical companies in 2020 even as coronavirus raged through Brazil.
Read more of Flávia Milhorance’s report from Rio de Janeiro here: Brazil could have stopped 400,000 Covid deaths with better response, expert says
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Just a quick one from Ritsuko Ando for Reuters here: Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic party is set to propose to the government that it allow AstraZeneca’s vaccines to be used in corporate inoculation programmes. Japan has approved the use of AstraZeneca vaccines, but has avoided using them in its state mass inoculation drive amid lingering concern over reports of rare blood clots.
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Bangladesh soldiers set to patrol streets as national Covid lockdown looms
Bangladesh prepared to enter into its harshest lockdown yet, with people only allowed to leave their homes in an emergency and soldiers set to patrol the streets, as a deadly resurgence of Covid-19 infections swept the country.
As the national Covid positivity rate exceeded 20% and the country on Monday recorded its highest single-day death toll of the pandemic so far, the government announced a set of tough measures to attempt to curb the spread, including the closure of public transport networks and confining the population to their homes for a week.
Cabinet secretary Khandker Anwarul Islam said troops would be deployed from Thursday to help enforce the lockdown. “The armed forces will be on patrol. If anyone ignores their orders, legal action will be available to them,” he told reporters late Monday.
Islam added that “if needed, it [lockdown] will be extended.”
Most of the south Asian nation’s 168 million population will be confined to their homes by Thursday as part of the restrictions. Only essential services and some larger garment factories supplying international markets will be allowed to operate.
The halting of buses and trains last week has already left tens of thousands of migrant workers living in the capital Dhaka stranded and unable to get home. In scenes reminiscent of India’s lockdown last year, many migrant workers began walking home along the roads in the sweltering summer heat while others crammed into ferries, with no social distancing possible.
Officials have linked the rise in infections to the deadly Covid-19 second wave that swept neighbouring India in April, fuelled in part by the transmissible Delta variant. India and Bangladesh share a long and porous border and thousands of migrant workers have crossed over from India in recent weeks.
More than two-thirds of new virus cases in Bangladesh’s capital are of the Delta variant, a recent study by the independent Dhaka-based International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research reported.
Authorities in Bangladesh feared a repeat of scenes in India, and more recently Nepal, where the deadly Covid-19 wave overwhelmed hospitals, led to oxygen shortages and brought the healthcare system to its knees.
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Andrew Sparrow has fired up the UK Covid live blog for the day, so if it is UK news you want, head that way. I’ll be carrying on here with the latest coronavirus news from around the world.
Ministers in England are expected to announce plans that will mean school pupils will no longer have to automatically isolate after contact with a positive Covid case. The proposals are that self-isolating will be replaced by a testing regime to prevent children from missing school.
Our community team would like to hear from teachers and parents what they think about the plans and how it will affect them and schoolchildren.
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Ireland’s government is to decide today whether to permit only those who are fully vaccinated to eat and drink inside bars and restaurants.
Speaking to journalists before a cabinet meeting, Reuters report that transport minister Eamon Ryan said the government was considering a recommendation by the National Public Health Emergency Team that would require people to “show vaccination status”.
The restrictions could mean delaying Monday’s planned re-opening of indoor hospitality to allow time to develop a system to manage the changes. Ireland would be one of the first places in Europe to introduce the measure.
Bars, restaurants, and cafes have been closed in Ireland for much of the past 16 months, with the latest national lockdown in place since late December. Outdoor dining and drinking has been allowed since 7 June.
The French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi has said today that it will invest about €400m ($476.4m) in research and development of next-generation vaccines using mRNA technologies, which proved their efficiency in the Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines.
Sanofi has lagged its US competitors on the Covid vaccines front, and says that its “mRNA center of excellence” would bring together approximately 400 employees.
“During the Covid-19 pandemic, mRNA technologies demonstrated potential to deliver new vaccines faster than ever before,” said Jean-Francois Toussaint, global head of R&D at Sanofi Pasteur, reports Reuters.
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There’s a lot of focus on schools and Covid in the UK media this morning. PA Media reports that Sarah Croft, senior statistician for the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Covid-19 Infection Survey, has told Times Radio that there has not been any recent leaps in cases among secondary school children years 7 to 11.
She said the main increase in infections appears to be among those in school year 12 up to those in their mid-20s.
Among older teenagers – including those in the final school years 12 and 13 – and young adults to the age of 24, the ONS estimated that around 0.79% would test positive for Covid-19, a rate that has been rising in recent weeks.
The latest data shows that 0.14% of children aged two to school year 6 are estimated to be infected, a rate which has remained largely unchanged in recent weeks.
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The tables inside the Primavera Italian restaurant in Moscow’s Shchukino district should have been packed on a Monday afternoon, but the only diners were sat outside braving a thunderstorm.
For Moscow’s bustling restaurant business, it was the first day of a tough new QR-code regime that requires diners to provide proof they’ve been vaccinated or have a negative PCR test to eat indoors. And the diners did not appear to have gotten the memo.
“It’s hell,” said Oksana, the Primavera’s manager, clutching a QR-code scanner after she turned away another dejected couple hoping to sit inside. “I’ve had two tables inside for the whole day because no one has a QR code. Thunderstorms. Stores, everywhere else is open. Why [are the restrictions] just for restaurants?”
For months, Moscow was the rare European capital where restaurants and bars remained packed through much of the pandemic, a parallel reality seemingly oblivious to the country’s estimated hundreds of thousands of Covid deaths and a vaccination drive that has inoculated only 11% of the population.
Now, Moscow’s cafes and restaurants look likely to take a hit from the city’s long-delayed response to the coronavirus epidemic. After the government’s lacklustre campaign to get Russians to get jabs of Sputnik and other domestically produced vaccines, cafe owners have said they feel like they’re being “sacrificed” as the government scrambles to contain an “explosion” in new cases.
Read more of Andrew Roth’s report from Moscow: Moscow’s cafes ‘sacrificed’ as Russian government plays Covid catch-up
Oh, and also from Labour’s Jim McMahon in the UK, asked if departed health secretary Matt Hancock was, as someone had suggested, “the stupidest man on earth”, McMahon said “There’s a lot of people in government in contention for that job.” ZING!
The second main thing that Labour’s Jim McMahon was talking about was transport policy – that is his brief. He was talking about the government’s lack of coherence on international travel, saying:
I think many travellers were really disappointed at the lack of a plan from the government, and so what we’re calling for is for the government to do what it promised to do. Which is have a coherent plan that allows us to reopen when it’s safe to do, so that we have real leadership at international level to make sure that our transatlantic routes routes to key tourist destinations are opened as soon as it’s safe to do so. And also that we capitalise on the success of the vaccination rollout. You know all those frontline staff in the NHS and that wider support network, have been working so hard to make sure that we are protected, but let’s see the benefit of that and given confidence to other nations that actually British people are safe on arrival.
He stuck to the Labour line that the government has muddled people’s minds with the traffic light system, in particular the amber list, which the party said it would scrap.
It’s a bad idea. I think the public believe it is a bad idea because it causes more and more confusion when people want simplicity. It’s already very difficult to have the green list, but they have a separate Foreign Office list, and then not know what the country you are going to might want and expect in terms of pre-testing or quarantine and the rest of it. So a simplified system is all about reinstalling confidence back into the travelling public so that when it’s safe to do so they’re confident to book a flight. And critical to that is not just a simplified list, but also having a country by country assessment which shows the direction of travel. So if you’re booking in two weeks time you’re going to want to know that the country is heading in the right direction and not the wrong direction. And at the moment I would say there are lots of people who are booking, who are very nervous about whether bookings are going to hold true or not.
Labour’s UK opposition transport spokesman Jim McMahon has been on Sky News this morning. He’s had two main points. First on schools he demanded some government action on the large numbers of children being sent into self-isolation, saying:
It’s got to be reviewed. I know in my own town there’s nearly 5,000 young people who are currently off school, and where they’re sent home as a bubble, they’ve currently made to self isolate for 10 days. In a town like mine, where deprivation is deep rooted, they’ve already lost a lot of education at the back end of last year. Factor that across the nation now where there are hundreds of thousands of young people who are being denied the education that they are due, and that will set us back for generations if we don’t get it in check. So the question is, how then do you again maximise on the rollout of the vaccination? That gives us confidence that children at school present a lower risk, and to make sure that staff in schools are vaccinated so they are safe.
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New UK health secretary Sajid Javid has added his voice to condemnation of an incident in which chief medical officer Chris Whitty was apparently jostled and harassed in a park in central London.
He tweeted: “The CMO works tirelessly on behalf of the country.We will not tolerate this sort of behaviour towards our public servants. The men behaving in this disgraceful way should be ashamed.”
I’ve seen the video of the CMO being harassed. It’s appalling and totally unacceptable. The CMO works tirelessly on behalf of the country. We will not tolerate this sort of behaviour towards our public servants. The men behaving in this disgraceful way should be ashamed.
— Sajid Javid (@sajidjavid) June 29, 2021
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Delta variant now 20% of cases in France – health minister
An extremely short snap from Reuters here, that French health minister Olivier Véran has said on the radio this morning that the Delta variant constitutes 20% of cases in France. That is up from a previous estimate of about 10%.
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Cambridge hospital’s mask upgrade appears to eliminate Covid-19 risk to staff
Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge is making headlines this morning after a study that claims that using an improved type of PPE in hospital settings reduced transmission of Covid to staff.
Data had suggested that staff working on Covid wards nearly 50 times more likely to contract the virus than staff working elsewhere in the hospital. They then made the decision to swap from one type of mask – fluid resistant surgical masks (FRSMs) – to another: filtering face piece 3 (FFP3).
Since the change, in December 2020, data shows that staff working the Covid wards were no more likely to contract Covid than people in the non-Covid areas of the hospital. Addenbrooke’s research has yet to be peer-reviewed.
Nevertheless, Dr Mike Weekes, who worked on the study, said it gives “some real world evidence that FFP3 masks are actually effective and more effective than the surgical masks. We should be thinking about is changing to use FFP3 masks for anyone caring for a patient with coronavirus.”
However, he did add a note of caution, saying: “Clearly, it’s a relatively small study in one trust and so we need to see these findings replicated elsewhere.
Read more here: Cambridge hospital’s mask upgrade appears to eliminate Covid-19 risk to staff
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Increased domestic production boosts India's vaccine drive
Krishna N Das for Reuters has some positive numbers for India’s vaccination programme to report. India has administered more vaccine doses in the last two weeks than the number of people who signed up for shots during the period, government data showed , signalling improving supplies after widespread shortages.
Indians struggled to book scarce inoculation slots after prime minister Narendra Modi opened up vaccinations to all of the country’s 930-940 million adults last month without a corresponding rise in output. Many immunisation centres ran out of vaccine shots and closed temporarily.
But rising production at the Serum Institute of India, the world’s biggest vaccine maker, has boosted availability. That has helped India administer 61m doses in the last two weeks starting 12 June, compared with 58m registrations for vaccination.
So far, more than 346 million people have registered for shots in India, which wants to cover all its adults this year. Cities are vaccinating much faster than the countryside.
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One suspects that the debate over whether England should unlock the economy as the government plans on 19 July will end up being polarised between, on the one hand, people pointing to rising case numbers as a reason to stay under some form of restrictions, and people pointing at hospitalisation numbers to argue the pandemic is over and Covid is manageable within the NHS.
As a pointer, the government’s own coronavirus dashboard this morning says there has been a near 70% rise in positive cases within the UK in the last seven days. There has only been an accompanying 10% rise in hospitalisations.
Politico’s London Playbook email puts it like this:
[UK health secretary Sajid] Javid’s Commons statement yesterday set the tone for the next three weeks, making clear that – barring any unforeseen disastrous developments – the decision has effectively already been taken that legal Covid restrictions will end. A minister told Playbook last night that case numbers by mid-July could quite easily be at 250,000 new infections per week, but they stressed that – thanks to the vaccine program – on the current data the NHS could sustain the level of hospitalizations, and the number of deaths would be relatively low. The minister said that “living with coronavirus” – the phrase Javid used yesterday – essentially means significant numbers of people continuing to get the virus for a while, but the vast majority having only relatively mild symptoms.
This will please Covid-sceptics who are anxious to “return to normal” as quickly as possible – but is likely to receive pushback from those concerned that a large pool of cases means more chance of further variants developing, and that merely looking at hospitalisation figures discounts the risk of “long Covid” and other associated issues with having a large chunk of the population suffering from the virus.
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Australia Covid lockdowns spread amid confusion over vaccine advice
Frustration is mounting in Australia over low vaccination rates and changing advice on the AstraZeneca jab after outbreaks of the highly contagious Delta variant sent more parts of the country into lockdown.
The outbreaks have grown to about 150 cases, and have forced lockdowns in four major cities and renewed restrictions in several others.
Queensland imposed a snap three-day lockdown in its capital, Brisbane, and some neighbouring regions from Tuesday evening. Perth, the capital of Western Australia, began a four-day lockdown on Tuesday, joining Sydney and Darwin.
While the country has suffered 910 deaths and fewer than 31,0000 cases over the course of the pandemic – a fraction of the impact worldwide – the success has been hard-won. Australia closed its borders in March 2020 and has strict two-week hotel quarantine requirements for international arrivals. Melbourne, in Victoria, endured one of the world’s strictest, longest lockdowns in 2020.
But with less than 5% of the population fully vaccinated, Australia is lagging far behind almost every other developed country, fuelling fears that these sacrifices will be wasted if vaccinations are not stepped up dramatically.
On Monday night, the prime minister, Scott Morrison, widened the guidance on the AstraZeneca vaccine, saying those under 40 – rather than 60 – could receive the jab after consulting their GP.
Australians under 40 have so far been shut out from the Covid vaccine rollout as a result of concerns over blood clotting and a shortage of vaccines besides locally-produced AstraZeneca jabs, in which the government has invested heavily.
Read more here: Australia Covid lockdowns spread amid confusion over vaccine advice
The reason that schools are the centre of attention in the UK this morning is because of this story that broke overnight – ministers set to end automatic isolation for pupils in England. My colleagues reported:
Hundreds of thousands of pupils will no longer have to automatically isolate after contact with a positive Covid case when schools return in September in England, ministers are expected to announce.
A quarter of a million children missed school in a single week because of coronavirus infections, self-isolation or school closures this month – the most disrupted week since schools fully reopened across the country in March.
The Guardian understands that ministers plan to overhaul the system for pupils, under which they are separated into bubbles – sometimes numbering more than 200 children – and forced to quarantine at home if anyone in their group tests positive for Covid.
An announcement is expected to be made in coming days to give schools time to prepare for the return in September, likely to be replaced with a testing regime.
A senior government source said: “We will have a different system when schools return in September which combines proportionate protections when someone tests positive with trying as much as possible to keep schools open.”
Read more here: Ministers set to end automatic isolation for pupils in England
The initial thrust of UK schools’ minister Nick Gibbs on Sky News this morning has been the issue of children having to stay off schools because of having to self-isolate due to proximity to positive Covid cases. He said:
We are conducting trials of daily contact testing as a possible alternative to self isolation. What matters is that we keep the school safe. You will see a raft of measures to reduce the infection rates within schools, such as extra hygiene, staggered breaks, we keep children in bubbles. And there’s extra ventilation in the classroom to minimise the risk of transmission. There are about 3% of students have self isolating environments. That’s lower than it was in the autumn, and it tends to correlate with the number of infections in the community. It’s very important that families continue to test the children, twice a week, so we can identify children who do have Covid, and then they don’t come into the school and spread that that virus to other children.
Red Cross: Indonesia Covid surge is on the verge of a 'catastrophe'
Indonesia’s Covid surge is on the edge of a “catastrophe” as the more infectious Delta variant dominates transmission and chokes hospitals in south-east Asia’s worst epidemic, the Red Cross said this morning.
Indonesia has reported record daily infections of more than 20,000 in recent days, in a new wave of infections fuelled by the emergence of highly transmissible virus variants and increased mobility after the Muslim fasting month.
“Every day we are seeing this Delta variant driving Indonesia closer to the edge of a Covid catastrophe,” said Jan Gelfand, head of the Indonesian delegation of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), urging better vaccine access globally.
Hospitals in several designated “red zone” areas have reported overcapacity, including the capital Jakarta, with its isolation beds 93% occupied as of Sunday.
“Hospitals are full because of the case surge caused by mobility and loosening health protocol adherence, worsened also by the Delta variant,” said senior health ministry official Siti Nadia Tarmizi, when asked about the IFRC’s assessment.
Stanley Widianto reports for Reuters that Indonesia is banking on mass vaccinations as a means of tackling the virus, but only 13.3 million of the 181.5 million targeted for inoculation have received the required two doses since January.
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Good morning, it is Martin Belam here taking on the blog in London. I’ll have coverage of the morning UK media round as it unfolds – I’m expecting reaction to new health secretary Sajid Javid’s rather bullish approach to lifting restrictions in England. Schools minister Nick Gibb is fronting up for the government today, and there will be a lot of questions about the level of school pupils having to self-isolate in the run-up to the summer holidays.
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Surge in Covid-19 cases in Tokyo, less than a month out from Olympics
A rise in daily cases of the coronavirus in Tokyo has triggered fears of a possible fifth wave of infections, less than a month before the city is due to host the Olympics.
Tokyo reported 317 infections on Monday – an increase of 81 from the same day last week and the ninth week-on-week rise in a row.
The rise in cases, coupled with evidence that the more transmissible Delta variant is spreading, raises the likelihood that Tokyo will still be subject to emergency measures in some form when the Olympics open on 23 July.
Yasutoshi Nishimura, the minister overseeing Japan’s pandemic response, this week said the government would “not hesitate” to call a new state of emergency if necessary.
“The number of new infections in the capital and other areas in the greater Tokyo metropolitan area is clearly trending upward,” he said in an interview with the public broadcaster NHK:
Philippines extends restrictions to mid-July
Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has prolonged restrictions on movement and businesses in the Philippine capital and nearby provinces until mid-July, and retained stricter Covid curbs in central and southern areas, an official said on Tuesday, AFP reports.
Infections in the capital region, home to at least 13 million people, have dropped since peaking in April, but some provinces are battling spikes as the country scrambles to distribute and administer vaccines.
Entertainment venues, amusement parks, and contacts sports are prohibited in the capital region and nearby provinces, while restaurants, gyms and indoor tourist attractions are allowed to operate at up to 40% capacity.
But 21 cities and provinces outside the capital remain under tighter measures to contain the virus.
A ban was extended on inbound travel from Oman, the United Arab Emirates and most countries in South Asia, to ward off highly contagious Covid variants. Local officials have two days to appeal to the president over the restrictions, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said in a statement.
The Philippines has fully vaccinated only 2.5 million people, or just 3.6% of the 70 million targeted for immunisation this year.
It has received 17.5 million vaccine doses, mostly those of Sinovac, among 40 to 55 million doses of various brands on order for June to September.
In a weekly national address, Duterte told local officials to prepare cold storage facilities for the vaccines.
With more than 1.4 million cases and 24,456 deaths, the Philippines has among the most coronavirus deaths and infections in Asia.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has prolonged restrictions on movement and businesses in the Philippine capital and nearby provinces until mid-July, and retained stricter Covid curbs in central and southern areas, an official said on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, a rise in daily cases of the coronavirus in Tokyo has triggered fears of a possible fifth wave of infections, less than a month before the city is due to host the Olympics.
More on these developments shortly. In the meantime, here are the key events from the last few hours:
- British health secretary Sajid Javid said restrictions must come to an end in July. He said taking the step on 19 July was “not only the end of the line, but the start of an exciting new journey for our country”.
- Hong Kong has banned passenger flights from the UK and will stop anyone who has spent two hours in the UK from boarding a plane. The city has deemed the UK “extremely high risk” because of rising cases and the spread of the Delta variant.
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Greece plans to boost its vaccination rates by offering young people €150 to take the vaccine. Prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called it “a gift out of gratitude” to young people.
- Russia has administered at least one dose to 23 million people and says there is increased demand. The country has been suffering a new spike in cases, including in Moscow and St Petersburg – where there are questions about insisting on hosting a Euro 2020 quarter-final on Friday.
- The head of Indian vaccine manufacturer Serum Institute India has lobbied the EU over excluding recipients of its vaccine from “green passes” for travel to Europe. SII licensed the vaccine from AstraZeneva and supplies most Indians and much of the world – especially low and middle-income countries that rely on the vaccine sharing initiative Covax.
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