More cases of the coronavirus variant have appeared in Greece, local media are reporting, writes Helena Smith, our Athens-based correspondent.
Four more cases of the much more contagious strain, first spotted in the UK, have been recorded by Greek authorities. Three were travellers returning from Britain and tested upon arrival, the fourth a woman flying in from Dubai, according to news outlets.
To date the new variant has been detected in eight people – much lower than in Cyprus, a former British colony, which has strong links with the UK and where infection rates have increased aggressively in the last month prompting the government to announce a second national lockdown today.
Greece’s centre-right administration is also considering extending nationwide restrictions, first imposed on 7 November, amid concerns of a dramatic rise in virus transmissions following the easing of curbs over the festive period.
Epidemiologists have voiced fears that the Greek Orthodox Church’s decision to defy lockdown measures and open places of worship to celebrate the Epiphany on Wednesday could further exacerbate the situation. Public health authorities have struggled to contain a second wave of the pandemic since a surge of cases in November.
The prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, said earlier today that some 27,000 people had been inoculated so far under a vaccine programme rolled out in Greece, as in other EU member states, on 27 December. Vaccinations were expected to rise from 5,000 people to 8,000 people daily, he told a session of government officials called to discuss the Covid-19 crisis.
Even as some countries such as the UK, Israel and the US seem hell-bent on getting vaccines into as many people as possible as quickly as possible, there are others that haven’t offered their populations a single jab.
Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and Japan - countries hailed for their management of the pandemic crisis - are among those that won’t start vaccinating for months.
The delay is deliberate. The millions of people already being vaccinated against Covid-19 will provide valuable data to those countries who have – for various reasons – decided to wait for more information about the vaccine, its efficacy and side effects before rolling it out to vulnerable populations and the public.
The Guardian’s reporters in the region have set out to find out more.
The recovery in the US jobs market collapsed in December, the last full month of Donald Trump’s presidency, as coronavirus infections soared across the country, writes Dominic Rushe for the Guardian US.
The US lost 140,000 jobs in December, down from a gain of 245,000 in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The loss ended seven months of jobs growth, with the leisure and hospitality sector once again bearing the biggest losses.
The unemployment rate stayed at 6.7%, close to twice as high as it was in February before Covid-19 hit the US. It is also three percentage points higher than the 4.5% rate Trump inherited from his predecessor Barack Obama.
About 372,000 jobs were lost in food services and drinking places, offsetting gains in other areas, as Covid-19 infections and deaths rose sharply across the country. “The decline in payroll employment reflects the recent increase in coronavirus (Covid-19) cases and efforts to contain the pandemic,” the BLS said.
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The Louvre in Paris, the world’s biggest museum, lost more than 70% of visitors last year, with restrictions in France and across the world keeping art lovers away, it said on Friday. Receipts fell by more than €90m (£81.1m) compared with 2019.
The Louvre, which closed for six months during French coronavirus lockdowns, saw visitor numbers plunge to 2.7m in 2020, from 9.6m in 2019 and 10.2m in 2018, which was a record year, the French state-backed news agency AFP reported.
Visits by foreigners, notably from the US, China, Japan and Brazil, who usually make up three-quarters of total visits, all but dried up, especially during the usually busy summer months.
The museum managed to limit the damage with its blockbuster Leonardo da Vinci exhibition that attracted 1.1m visitors and ended before the first French lockdown in the spring.
The tourism minister, Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, called the annual shortfall “a shock”, but said France – the world’s number one tourist destination – had weathered Covid relatively well.
“France has been more resilient than other world destinations,” he told France Télévisions, thanks to visitors from neighbouring countries and French people holidaying at home.
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Vaccine passports are to be introduced in Denmark from this month, the country’s ministry of health and the elderly has confirmed.
Those who have had a coronavirus vaccine will be able to download the document, and to print it out for any circumstances that require them to prove their vaccination status.
It comes amid a raging debate over the human rights implications of vaccine or immunity passports, which have been previously touted as a means of restarting international travel and certain sectors of the hospitality industry.
Critics say that those who choose not to be vaccinated should not be discriminated against, a situation that would make the vaccine effectively compulsory for anyone who wanted to take part in everyday life again.
The Danish broadcaster TV2 quoted the ministry as saying:
The purpose of a Danish vaccine passport is to ensure that you as a citizen can document in a simple and safe way that you have been vaccinated, eg if you are going abroad, and documentation is required.
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The US-backed Moderna coronavirus vaccine has been approved for use in France, after the European Medicines Agency gave it a green light earlier in the week, according to Reuters .
Alain Fischer, the immunologist coordinating the French vaccination strategy, said earlier on Friday that the first shots of the Moderna vaccine should arrive in France in the coming days.
Health authorities in Sweden have recorded 7,187 new cases of coronavirus since Thursday, according to Reuters.
The country registered 171 new deaths, public health agency data showed on Friday, taking the total to 9,433. The deaths registered have typically occurred over several days and sometimes weeks.
The health agency has said statistics over the Christmas period are less reliable than usual because fewer tests are carried out and due to delays in reporting of deaths.
Sweden’s death rate per capita is several times higher than that of its Nordic neighbours’ but lower than in several other European countries that, unlike Sweden, opted for lockdowns.
Earlier on Friday, the Swedish parliament passed a new pandemic law giving the government power to close certain businesses or limit visitor numbers and opening hours.
Unlike the previously advisory approach taken by the country’s public health agency to persuade citizens to act to curb the spread of the virus, any measures introduced using the new law would be legally enforceable
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London mayor declares coronavirus emergency
The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has formally declared an effective emergency in the UK capital, as it grapples with a soaring number of coronavirus cases and hospitals struggle to cope with the influx of patients, write Guardian politics reporters Peter Walker and Heather Stewart.
Khan formally declared a “major incident”, in his dual role as mayor and chair of the London Resilience Forum, after discussions with NHS London, local authorities, Public Health England and emergency services in the capital.
London has been the worst-hit area of the UK so far in the winter peak of Covid-19 cases.
Check out our UK liveblog and click below for more on this developing story.
Experts at the World Health Organisation have said that two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine can be spaced up to six weeks apart - just half the 12 week gap that recipients in the UK are being told to wait.
WHO’s strategic advisory group of experts on immunisation, known as SAGE, formally published its advice after a full review of the vaccine, which is the first to get emergency approval from the UN health agency to fight the coronavirus pandemic. It said an interval of 21 to 28 days between the doses is recommended.
In the UK, patients are currently expected to wait up to 84 days for a second dose of the vaccine, after the government decided on a new protocol in an effort to get as many people vaccinated as possible.
The unilateral decision, not apparently backed by any scientific data, has led to criticism at home and abroad. But a spokesperson for the WHO, Dr Margaret Harris, said data from the British experiment could help contribute to possible revisions in the WHO recommendation.
In its new guidance, the WHO noted that “a number of countries face exceptional circumstances of vaccine supply constraints combined with a high disease burden,” and said some have been considering delaying the administration of a second dose as a way to broaden initial coverage.
The agency said this “pragmatic approach” could be considered as a response to “exceptional epidemiological circumstances.”
“WHO’s recommendation at present is that the interval between doses may be extended up to 42 days (6 weeks), on the basis of currently available clinical trial data,” it said, adding: “Should additional data become available on longer intervals between doses, revision of this recommendation will be considered.”
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UK authorises Moderna vaccine
Health authorities in the UK have authorised a third coronavirus vaccine, made by the US biotech firm Moderna, which has been heavily backed by the US government.
The Department of Health said Friday that the vaccine meets the regulator’s “strict standards of safety, efficacy and quality.” The government has ordered 10 million doses of the vaccine, though it is not expected to be delivered until spring.
So far Britain has inoculated .,5 million people with two other vaccines.
“Vaccines are the key to releasing us all from the grip of this pandemic, and today’s news is yet another important step towards ending lockdown and returning to normal life,’’ Business Secretary Alok Sharma said.
For more information on this story, follow our UK coronavirus blog or look below to read our standalone story on the approval.
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High daily death tolls are putting infrastructure in the Czech Republic under pressure, with the country’s largest crematorium struggling to keep up with overwhelming numbers of pandemic victims, according to the Associated Press.
The US-headquartered news agency reports that the crematorium, in the northeastern city of Ostrava, is receiving more than 100 coffins daily, about double its maximum cremation capacity.
On Thursday, the AP said, cars from funeral companies delivered caskets every few minutes, some with “COVID” written on them.
The Czech Republic, a country of 10.7 million has registered 794,740 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 12,621 deaths from Covid-19. November was the deadliest month, with 4,937 deceased.
It was spared the worst of the pandemic in the spring only to see its healthcare system approach collapse in autumn, about the time the spike began. It has been hard-hit again with new infections reaching a record high of 17,668 on Wednesday, a record set for the second straight day.
By per capita death tolls and infection rates, the Czech Republic is now one of the worst affected countries in the world by the pandemic.
At the Ostrava crematorium, all three cremation chambers were working round the clock, while storage capacity for caskets has been repeatedly boosted. Katerina Sebestova, a deputy mayor in Ostrava, said:
It’s an extraordinary situation. Nobody here remembers anything like that. It’s simply because we have 60% more deceased than we had a year ago. So, we have to deal with storage capacity and the capacity to cremate.
Crematorium director Ivo Furmancik said up to 1,000 bodies a month were cremated in Ostrava before the pandemic struck. The number rose to 1,550 in November and 1,570 in December after a surge at the end of October. A new increase in infections in the country seems set to lead to a further increase in demand for the crematorium. Furmancik said:
For two-and-a-half months we have been working nonstop with no pause for maintenance. So, this really is not an optimal situation. How long can this last? I am worried that because of this intensive use the crematories could get seriously damaged at any moment.”
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New lockdown in Cyprus from 10 January
Hairdressers, beauty salons and large department stores will close and schools will return to remote learning in Cyprus from 10 January, as the country enters a second national lockdown in response to a rise in coronavirus infections.
The health minister, Constantinos Ioannou, told a news conference that people will be allowed to leave home just twice a day for specific reasons such as buying groceries or medicines and taking exercise. A current curfew banning movement from 9pm to 5am daily will remain in force.
Cyprus has recorded 26,208 coronavirus infections since its first case was recorded in early March 2020, and 140 deaths. There has been an aggressive spike in infections over the past month, with cases regularly exceeding 300 a day.
Cyprus, like most European Union member states, began a vaccination programme on 27 December, starting with the elderly.
Authorities have also requested a supplementary amount of vaccines from neighbour and close ally Israel, the president, Nicos Anastassiades, told the daily Politis, according to Reuters.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the request would be considered in consultation with experts, Politis quoted Anastasiades as saying.
An interesting point to note on the European Union’s deal to double its order of Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccines is that it means the bloc now has dibs on nearly half the company’s total projected output of the vaccine for 2021.
Pfizer has said it can produce up to 1.3 billion doses around the world this year, according to a Reuters wire report. The new agreement with the EU - for 300m doses - comes on top of another order for 300m doses that the bloc agreed in November.
It seems that fears of wealthier countries monopolising the first tranches of the new vaccines - voiced repeatedly by the World Health Organisation and various NGOs - are coming to pass.
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A 6pm (5pm GMT) curfew is to be imposed in Strasbourg, France, according to a wire report from Reuters.
The city in eastern France, which is home to one of the two buildings of the European parliament, will be under the new, earlier curfew from Sunday, the news agency said, citing a report on French broadcaster BFM.
The French government imposed an earlier curfew in 15 northeastern and southeastern departments at the start of January, with residents required to stay indoors from 6pm to 6am.
Jean Castex, the prime minister, had said on Thursday that the government from considering adding a further 10 local regions to the 6pm curfew rule. For now, Paris is not on the list.
Hullo - Damien Gayle here taking the reins on the coronavirus world news liveblog now, with thanks to Amelia for keeping things going this morning.
If you have any comments, tips or suggestions for what we could be covering on here - and news and experiences from less well-covered regions are always welcome - then you can reach me via email at damien.gayle@theguardian.com, or via Twitter direct message to @damiengayle.
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The French government will only permit ski resorts to reopen lifts if the Covid-19 situation by January 20th allows, a minister said on Friday.
“The government’s decision on Januaryth 20 must by guided only by the situation of the epidemic,” French junior tourism minister Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne said on BFM television.
French Prime Minister Jean Castex said yesterday that restaurants would remain shuttered until at least mid February and ski resorts might not open before the February holiday because the coronavirus is still spreading too fast and hospitals remain under severe pressure.
Following on from this story earlier, Pfizer has said that it is in talks with the EU over a firm order for an additional 200 million doses of the Comirnaty vaccine to be supplied to its 27 member states, with an option for an additional 100 million doses.
This is in addition to the 300 million doses already committed to the EU for 2021.
Sweden passes new pandemic law
Sweden’s parliament has voted today in favour of a new pandemic law giving the government power to close certain businesses or limit visitor numbers and opening hours, which will come into effect from January 10th.
Parliament was recalled from its Christmas recess for the first time since 2005 in order to debate the coronavirus bill, reports Sweden’s English-language online newspaper, the Local.
“We know that Covid-19 is in the society and will be here for a long time to come. More precise measures are needed, that are possible to maintain over time,” Health Minister Lena Hallengren said.
The new pandemic law gives the government the possibility to shut down businesses, but Hallengren stressed that this is not the main goal of the legislation.
It also introduces extra measures, such as the possibility to introduce limits on visitor numbers or opening times in order to reduce the risk of infection spread. The new law means these measures could be applied to places including public transport, shops and shopping centres, cinemas and theatres, and public parks or beaches for example.
Any measures introduced using the new law would be legally enforced. This means people could face sanctions for violating them, which is not the case with the Public Health Agency’s recommendations, the main tool used thus far as part of Sweden’s non-coercive coronavirus strategy.
The pandemic law will come into force on Sunday January 10th and applies until September 2021.
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A Covid-19 vaccine produced by Sinovac Biotech is deemed halal, or permissible under Islam, Indonesia’s Ulema Council said today, days before the country is scheduled to start its inoculation programme using the Chinese vaccine.
Asrorun Niam Sholeh, of the council’s fatwa commission, told a news conference that the vaccine, named CoronaVac, was “holy and halal”, although authorisation still rests on the Indonesia’s food and drug agency.
Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, has received 3m doses of CoronaVac.
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Sri Lanka’s government insisted today on the cremation of all coronavirus victims, rejecting international pleas and recommendations from its own experts to allow the Muslim minority to bury their dead in line with Islamic custom.
The government first banned burials in April amid concerns – which experts say are baseless – by influential Buddhist monks that burying bodies could contaminate groundwater and spread the virus, the Channel News Asia is reporting.
The World Health Organization has said there is no such risk, recommending both burials and cremations of virus victims, but the Sri Lankan government has refused.
“This decision will not be changed for social, religious, political or any other personal reason,” health minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi said, according to ministry officials.
The announcement came despite a government-appointed expert committee noting this week that while it felt cremations were safest, burials could be allowed under strict conditions.
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EU countries are not allowed to negotiate separate vaccine deals with pharmaceutical companies in parallel to the efforts of the European Union as a whole, the president of the European commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has said.
“The only framework we are negotiating in is as 27. We do this together and no member state on this legal binding basis is allowed to negotiate in parallel or to have a contract in parallel,” Von der Leyen told reporters in Brussels.
“The whole portfolio covers 2.3bn doses of vaccines so this is more than enough to vaccinate the whole European population,” she said.
But health minister Marta Temido told reporters that member states were allowed to take further steps towards securing vaccines on their own if they deem them necessary. But she stressed that any vaccine side deals “couldn’t run any risk” to what was already agreed under joint purchases.
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The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has reported its first Covid-19 death 10 months after initially detecting the virus and managing to keep the disease under control by largely sealing off the tourism-dependent country.
In a statement issued late on Thursday, Bhutan’s health ministry said a 34-year-old man with chronic liver disease and renal failure, who tested positive for Covid-19, had died at a hospital in the capital, Thimphu.
Bhutan has reported 767 cases of the coronavirus, having conducted just over 300,000 tests since it detected the first infection in an American tourist last March.
Taking swift measures, the country of 750,000 people closed itself to visitors and imposed a mandatory quarantine for everyone returning from abroad.
Since then, Bhutan has kept its borders sealed, enforced lockdowns twice, intensified testing and screening at entry points, including at its only international airport at Paro.
The country is reporting 13 new infections on average each day, about 56% of the peak it reached in late December, according to a Reuters tally.
An adviser to Bhutan’s health ministry said the 34-year-old had been in isolation and had twice tested positive for Covid-19 this week.
“It was not easy and clear to include this as a Covid-19 death,” Dr Tshokey told Bhutan’s Kuensel newspaper, which gave only one name. “But since he died with Covid-19, we have included the death as a Covid-19 death.”
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Olympics official says he is not certain Tokyo Games will go ahead
Dick Pound, a senior member of the International Olympic Committee, has said he “can’t be certain” that the delayed Tokyo 2020 Games will go ahead this summer, as a coronavirus state of emergency was declared in the host city.
Asked about the prospects that the Games will open on 23 July, the Canadian told the BBC: “I can’t be certain because the ongoing elephant in the room would be the surges in the virus.”
Organisers and the IOC president, Thomas Bach, have insisted the Olympics, which were postponed by a year due to the pandemic, will go ahead, and have agreed it will not be possible to delay them a second time.
Tokyo, however, is at the centre of a third wave of infections that has struck Japan in recent weeks, prompting the prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, to declare a month-long state of emergency in the capital and three neighbouring prefectures.
The measures, which are not enforceable by law, went into effect on Friday but experts have warned they may have to stay in place beyond February to have any effect.
EU doubles Covid vaccine deal with Pfizer to 600m doses
The European Union has reached a deal with Pfizer and BioNTech for 300m additional doses of their Covid-19 vaccine, doubling the amount of doses from these producers, the head of the European commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said.
“The European commission today proposed to the EU Member States to purchase an additional 200m doses of the Covid-19 vaccine produced by BioNTech and Pfizer, with the option to acquire another 100m doses,” it said in a statement.
“This would enable the EU to purchase up to 600m doses of this vaccine, which is already being used across the EU,” the statement said.
Von der Leyen said 75m of the additional doses would be delivered in the second quarter of this year.
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Indonesia reported on Friday a record daily number of new Covid-19 cases for the third successive day with 10,617 infections, bringing the total to over 800,000.
The south-east Asian country also reported 233 new Covid-19 deaths, taking the total to 23,753.
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Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has banned Iran’s government from importing Covid-19 vaccines from the US and Britain.
“Imports of US and British vaccines into the country are banned. I have told this to officials and I’m saying it publicly now,” Khamenei said in a televised speech.
“If the Americans were able to produce a vaccine, they would not have such a coronavirus fiasco in their own country,” he said.
Iran, the Middle Eastern country worst hit by the coronavirus, launched human trials of its first domestic Covid-19 vaccine candidate late last month, saying it could help Iran defeat the pandemic despite US sanctions that affect its ability to import vaccines.
Khamenei praised Iran’s efforts to develop domestic vaccines but said Iran could obtain vaccines “from other reliable places”. He gave no details but China and Russia are both allies of Iran.
“I’m not optimistic about France either because of their history of infected blood,” Khamenei said, referring to the country’s contaminated blood scandal of the 1980s and 1990s.
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Germany is considering suspending flights from more countries, including Ireland, over concerns of a more transmissible Covid-19 variant, German broadcaster n-tv has reported, citing government sources.
The cabinet of chancellor Angela Merkel could discuss rules similar to those that are in place for Britain at a meeting next week, the report said. The rules would come into effect immediately.
An update to the UK story earlier about Grant Shapps and the efficacy of the vaccine against the South African variant.
He also told LBS radio that the new variant “is worrying the experts because it may be that the vaccine doesn’t respond in the same way or doesn’t work in quite the same way. This South African variant - this is a very big concern for the scientists.”
Russia has reported 23,652 new coronavirus cases and 454 deaths in the past 24 hours, compared with the 23,541 new cases and 506 deaths on the previous day, Reuters is reporting.
The first shots of the Moderna vaccine against the coronavirus should arrive in France in the coming days, Alain Fischer, the immunologist coordinating the country’s vaccination strategy, said on Friday.
Fischer also told BFM television there were still some uncertainties over AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine.
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Japan is considering extending a state of emergency from the Tokyo metropolitan area to other regions as coronavirus cases increase but that could raise the risk of a double-dip recession for the world’s third-largest economy.
Prime minister Yoshihide Suga conceded that the measures that took effect in the capital region on Friday might also be needed in other parts of the country as infections spread, Reuters is reporting.
The government has resisted calls from some experts for wider curbs beyond those imposed in Tokyo because of the economic pain they would cause.
Politicians, analysts and officials have warned that the limited, one-month state of emergency targeting Tokyo and neighbouring prefectures could lead to a contraction in economic growth for the current quarter.
The western prefecture of Osaka, the country’s second-largest urban area, plans to ask the government to impose a state of emergency there, its governor said on Friday. Kyoto and Hyogo – two other prefectures in western Japan – are expected to make the same request, media reported.
“We’ll work closely with the regions and respond as needed,” Suga told reporters earlier when asked about the expected requests from the prefectures.
Many policymakers say the hit to growth this time will not be as severe as last year’s state of emergency, which hurt retailers nationwide and forced many manufacturers to suspend production.
Robust overseas demand and the boost to growth from massive government stimulus will offset some of the pain, analysts say.
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The boss of Britain’s biggest airport, Heathrow, has said new rules requiring travellers to England to have a pre-departure Covid-19 test should replace the country’s quarantine requirement in the next few months as the pandemic eases.
Travel has been wiped out by Covid-19, leaving many airlines and airports fighting for survival. Passenger numbers in Britain have been decimated by rules requiring people arriving from most foreign countries to quarantine for 10 days.
The government tightened the rules for travellers on Friday when it said people entering England would from next week be required to present a negative Covid-19 test result to protect against new strains of the coronavirus.
Heathrow’s chief executive, John Holland-Kaye, said he welcomed new rules to keep the country safe but said having pre-departure testing on top of quarantine should only be a temporary measure.
He told Times Radio:
There needs to be a plan for what’s going to come next so that we can start to get aviation back to some level of normality while keeping people safe.
What we’d like to see is that testing before you take off becomes the standard as an alternative to quarantine.
He said the combination of quarantine and testing would only be tenable for a month or two, and that a lighter regime should be put in place as infection rates and deaths start falling and vaccinations ramp up to help airlines and UK trade recover.
Heathrow is the UK’s biggest port by value but with few passenger flights it is struggling. The airport’s passenger numbers fell 88% in November, the last month for which data is available.
Holland-Kaye also said vaccination programmes in Britain and other countries gave him hope for a travel recovery this year. “We’ll see flights starting to come back and passenger numbers building up through the summer and then into the autumn,” he told BBC radio.
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If I may intersperse the sad news with something slightly less traumatic: major retailers in South Korea are reporting that they have run out of plastic sledges as the nation takes up sledging in record numbers.
With ski resorts closed to help combat Covid-19, winter sports lovers have responded to heavy snowfalls by looking for family-friendly snow slopes closer to home.
E-Mart, the country’s biggest supermarket chain, has reported it sold nearly 2,200 sledges in six days, more than three times its total 2020 sales.
Competitor Lotte Mart said sales of sledges in the first six days of January were up more than six-fold from the same period last year and is also completely out of stock.
One family that visited the Olympic Park in Seoul said they had to bring picnic mats for their children to slide on. “We tried to buy sledges yesterday but couldn’t find one, so we brought these mats as substitutes. It’s still great that our kids can enjoy sledding and that we have a place near home where it can replace the sledding parks,” said Joe Choong-hyun, a father of two boys.
A photo of a person snowboarding on a snow covered road in the middle of Seoul went viral on Twitter, while a YouTuber who posted a video of himself skiing around his town scored nearly 43,000 views.
Ski resorts resumed business earlier this week but only with limited capacity and operating hours, following a cluster of infections at a resort in Pyeongchang county, site of the 2018 Winter Olympics.
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The British transport secretary, Grant Shapps has said there are concerns about how effective the Covid-19 vaccines are against the highly transmissible variant of the coronavirus discovered in South Africa.
“There are concerns that the South African one in particular
– about how effective the vaccine would be against it – so we simply cannot take chances,” Shapps told Sky.
His comments appear to contradict a not-yet peer reviewed study into the Pfizer Inc and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine, which found the vaccine was effective in protecting against a key mutation in the highly transmissible new variants of the coronavirus discovered in the UK and South Africa.
The laboratory study conducted by the US drugmaker Pfizer and scientists from the University of Texas Medical Branch indicated the vaccine did neutralise viruses with the so-called N501Y mutation of the spike protein.
The mutation could be responsible for greater transmissibility and there had been concern it could also make the virus escape antibody neutralisation elicited by the vaccine, said Phil Dormitzer, one of Pfizer’s top viral vaccine scientists.
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Ukraine closed schools, restaurants and gyms today as a new nationwide lockdown took effect.
Coronavirus infections in Ukraine began rising again in September and have remained relatively high, Reuters is reporting. The nation of 41 million has registered more than 1m coronavirus cases with 19,588 deaths as of 8 January.
The new measures, which include the closure of entertainment centres and a ban on mass gatherings, will be in force until 24 January.
Despite calls to ease or cancel the lockdown, which was decided in early December, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and health minister Maksym Stepanov have said the restrictions were urgently needed ahead of the usual seasonal flu period.
The number of new cases dropped in early January and this, together with the decision to leave public transport and some non-critical businesses operating, prompted local authorities and businesses to criticise the new restrictions.
The government says imposing restrictions now may help avoid the need for a stricter lockdown later that could do greater damage to the economy.
Ukraine’s economy is expected to contract by about 5% in 2020, dragged into recession by the coronavirus pandemic and a strict lockdown in March.
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US suffers more than 4,000 deaths in 24 hours
More than 4,000 people died in the US on Thursday, Johns Hopkins University data shows – a world record daily toll, and the first time it has passed 4,000.
In 24 hours, 4,085 Americans died, according to the data, while nearly 275,000 cases were confirmed.
The virus is surging in several states, with California hit particularly hard, reporting on Thursday a record two-day total of 1,042 coronavirus deaths. Skyrocketing caseloads there are threatening to force hospitals to ration care and essentially decide who lives and who dies.
“Folks are gasping for breath. Folks look like they’re drowning when they are in bed right in front of us,” said Dr Jeffrey Chien, an emergency room physician at Santa Clara Valley Regional Medical Center, urging people to do their part to help slow the spread. “I’m begging everyone to help us out because we aren’t the front line. We’re the last line.”
Meanwhile, the number of Americans who have had their first shot of the Covid-19 vaccine climbed to at least 5.9 million on Thursday, a one-day gain of about 600,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hundreds of millions will need to be vaccinated to stop the coronavirus.
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That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. Thanks for following along. Amelia Hill will now bring you more pandemic news.
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Australia has turned the screws on the Covid-19 super variant by reducing arrival caps, mandating masks and pre-departure tests for returning travellers, and requiring more regular testing for air crews and quarantine staff.
The measures were announced by Scott Morrison after national cabinet on Friday, as the Queensland government announced a three-day lockdown of Brisbane to deal with the first community case of the more infectious variant:
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British consumers spent a record £9bn on entertainment last year as the pandemic fuelled a boom in the popularity of digital services such as Netflix, Amazon and Spotify while the public sought to alleviate lockdown boredom:
Summary
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
- The world’s poorest countries can expect to start receiving their first Covid-19 vaccine doses between the end of January and mid-February, the World Health Organization said on Thursday. Vaccination is already under way in some of the world’s wealthiest nations, including the US, Britain, European Union countries and Canada.
- Brazil passed 200,000 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic Thursday. That is the second highest total in the world. The health ministry said the country had 1,524 deaths in the previous 24 hours, rising to a total of 200,498 for the pandemic.
- Australian city enters lockdown after UK strain detected. Australia’s Queensland state enforced a three-day lockdown in the city of Brisbane from Friday evening, after a hotel quarantine worker tested positive for the more contagious variant of Covid-19 that emerged in Britain last month.
- Sinovac vaccine 78% effective in Brazil trial, experts call for more details. A coronavirus vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech was 78% effective in a late-stage Brazilian trial with no severe Covid-19 cases, researchers said on Thursday, although a lack of data details stirred calls for more transparency.
- Arrivals to UK will need to show a negative Covid test before entry. International travellers will need to show a negative Covid-19 test before being allowed into the UK, the government has announced, in a significant toughening of border controls to try to stem the spread of new coronavirus variants.
- China reports 53 cases, down from day before as it seals city. The number of new Covid-19 cases reported in China’s Hebei province surrounding Beijing fell slightly from a day earlier, as authorities barred people in the provincial capital from leaving in order to curb the spread of the disease. China has sealed off Hebei’s Shijiazhuang, a city of several million in Hebei province whose surrounding areas take the total population to 11 million.
- US faces deadly post-holiday phase of pandemic: Fauci. Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious diseases expert, has warned the country faces the prospect of continued mass deaths from the Covid-19 crisis, predicting the situation there will worsen before it gets better. The US faced its deadliest month of the pandemic in December, and continues to post record death figures, including a record 3,854 deaths on 6 January alone.
- Pfizer vaccine protects against new UK and South African strains – research. Research suggests that Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine can protect against a mutation found in two contagious variants of the coronavirus that erupted in Britain and South Africa.
Updated
Pfizer vaccine protects against new UK and South African strains – research
New research suggests that Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine can protect against a mutation found in two contagious variants of the coronavirus that erupted in Britain and South Africa, AP reports.
Those variants are causing global concern. They both share a common mutation called N501Y, a slight alteration on one spot of the spike protein that coats the virus. That change is believed to be the reason they can spread so easily.
Most of the vaccines being rolled out around the world train the body to recognize that spike protein and fight it. Pfizer teamed with researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston for laboratory tests to see if the mutation affected its vaccine’s ability to do so.
They used blood samples from 20 people who received the vaccine, made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, during a large study of the shots. Antibodies from those vaccine recipients successfully fended off the virus in lab dishes, according to the study posted late Thursday on an online site for researchers.
The study is preliminary and has not yet been reviewed by experts, a key step for medical research.
But “it was a very reassuring finding that at least this mutation, which was one of the ones people are most concerned about, does not seem to be a problem” for the vaccine, said Pfizer chief scientific officer Dr. Philip Dormitzer.
Chinese city sealed off to squash virus outbreak
More now on China sealing off a large city near Beijing, cutting transport links and banning millions of residents from leaving, as authorities move to stem the country’s largest Covid-19 outbreak in six months.
The pandemic has so far broadly been brought to heel by Chinese authorities since its emergence in Wuhan in late 2019, with small outbreaks swiftly snuffed out with mass testing, local lockdowns and travel restrictions.
Around 100 new Covid-19 cases have been discovered in the past week in Shijiazhuang, a city of several million in Hebei province whose surrounding areas take the total population to 11 million.
All vehicles and residents were banned from leaving the city and train services suspended, authorities announced late Thursday.
Footage from state broadcaster CCTV showed residents being swabbed by medical workers in hazmat suits at community centres in Shijiazhuang while queues outside stretched around the block.
Virus control staff stood guard at highways entering the city, which had mostly been blocked by barricades, the images released on Thursday showed.
Hebei province reported 33 new confirmed Covid-19 cases on Friday in addition to 51 from the day before - pushing the nationwide daily total to the highest figure in five months.
The vast majority of the infections were found in Shijiazhuang.
Footage from state broadcaster CCTV showed residents being swabbed by medical workers in hazmat suits at community centres in Shijiazhuang while queues outside stretched around the block.
Virus control staff stood guard at highways entering the city, which had mostly been blocked by barricades, the images released on Thursday showed.
Hebei province reported 33 new confirmed Covid-19 cases on Friday in addition to 51 from the day before - pushing the nationwide daily total to the highest figure in five months.
The vast majority of the infections were found in Shijiazhuang.
Updated
Hi, Helen Sullivan back with you now after blogging US politics for a while.
As always, you can find me on Twitter here if you have questions or comments or want to see some retweets of other people’s good jokes.
Updated
Asian shares rose to record highs on Friday, with Japan’s Nikkei hitting a three-decade peak, Reuters reports.
Investors are thought to be looking beyond the worsening Covid-19 disaster and political crisis in the United States, instead focussing on hopes for an economic recovery later in the year. Wall Street also hit record highs on Thursday.
James Tao, an analyst at CommSec in Sydney, told Reuters:
Market participants are fairly optimistic with how things are progressing, whether it’s in the political landscape, particularly of course in the United States the potential for more stimulus certainly is a boon to the economy. You’ve got the vaccines now coming through, getting the approvals - it’s all happening pretty quickly.
The buoyant mood lifted MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan up 1%, touching a record high.
Seoul’s Kospi led the way, charging 2.8% higher, also to a record high.
In Tokyo, the Nikkei added 1.73%, hitting its highest level since August 1990.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.2% despite reports the Trump administration was considering banning U.S. entities from investing in an expanded list of Chinese companies in the waning days of the presidency, and despite the delisting of major Chinese telecoms firms from FTSE Russell and MSCI indexes.
Staying in the United States, the worst hit area is currently Los Angeles. The Los Angeles county has recorded 852,165 confirmed cases and 11,328 deaths, according to the latest John Hopkins University data.
Now, the New York Times reports that the inundation of hospitals has prompted a memo to Los Angeles ambulance crews, instructing them not to transport most adult patients whose hearts had stopped beating to a hospital if resuscitation in the field was unsuccessful.
The memo was reportedly needed because of the “severe impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on E.M.S and 9-1-1 receiving hospitals”.
Updated
US faces deadly post-holiday phase of pandemic: Fauci
Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious diseases expert, has warned the country faces the prospect of continued mass deaths from the Covid-19 crisis, predicting the situation there will worsen before it gets better.
The US faced its deadliest month of the pandemic in December, and continues to post record death figures, including a record 3,854 deaths on 6 January alone.
Fauci has told NPR that he believes the situation will deteriorate over the next couple of weeks, due to holiday travel and increased congregation.
We believe things will get worse as we get into January.
Hopefully, if we really accelerate our public health measures during that period of time, we’ll be able to blunt that acceleration. But that’s going to really require people concentrating very, very intensively on doing the kinds of public health measures that we talk about all the time. Now’s not the time to pull back on this.
Fauci, who said the US has little enthusiasm for a UK-style lockdown, said the US had fallen behind on its vaccine rollout during the holiday period.
I think it would be fair to just observe what happens in the next couple of weeks. If we don’t catch up on what the original goal was, then we really need to make some changes about what we’re doing.
The latest figures from John Hopkins University show the US has recorded 21,299,340 confirmed cases and 361,123 deaths, the highest of any country.
Updated
A study by the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc appears to show its vaccine is likely to be effective against a key mutation of the highly transmissible new variants discovered in the UK and South Africa, Reuters reports.
The study, conducted by Pfizer and the University of Texas, is not yet peer reviewed and its findings are limited, because it does not look at the full set of mutations found in either of the new variants of the rapidly spreading virus.
But Phil Dormitzer, one of Pfizer’s top viral vaccine scientists, said it was encouraging that the vaccine appeared to remain effective against the mutation, and a further 15 the company has previously tested against.
“So we’ve now tested 16 different mutations, and none of them have really had any significant impact. That’s the good news,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that the 17th won’t.”
Speaking of vaccine hesitancy, Reuters is reporting that misinformation is contributing to lower turnouts for the Covid-19 vaccine among Israeli Arabs and Jerusalem Palestinians.
Israel launched a vaccine drive on December 19 and says about 17.5% of the population had already received the first jab.
But officials believe misinformation about side effects, largely drawn from social media, is playing a role in suppressing turnout.
In what officials see as a result of misinformation about possible side effects or supposed malicious properties, turnout for COVID-19 vaccines has been low among Israeli Arabs and Jerusalem Palestinians https://t.co/5KPiUXQ42z pic.twitter.com/bB0L2g1PZZ
— Reuters (@Reuters) January 8, 2021
Experts are warning that a history of vaccine controversy in Japan may complicate the roll-out of the jab, AFP reports.
Japan is currently battling a severe third wave of infections, but Japan is yet to approve a single jab. Vaccinations are not scheduled to start before late February, at the earliest.
Prime minister Yoshihide Suga this week said he would be among the first to be vaccinated to boost confidence.
But AFP reports that only 60% of Japanese respondents to an Ipsos-World Economic Forum survey said they wanted the vaccine. That compares to 80% in China, 77% in the UK, and 75% in South Korea.
Another poll, by Japanese broadcaster NHK, showed just half of respondents want the vaccine, with 36 percent opposed.
“The reason why Japanese are hesitant, I think, is because there is a lack of trust in government information,” Harumi Gomi, professor at the Center for Infectious Diseases at the International University of Health and Welfare, told AFP.
Mistrust in Japan dates back decades, with experts pointing to a vicious cycle of lawsuits over alleged adverse events, media misinformation and government overreaction.
Hello everyone. It’s Christopher Knaus here, taking over from the indefatigable Helen Sullivan to take you through the latest global developments on Covid-19.
About an hour ago, Australia announced some major changes to its Covid-19 response. Australia’s federal and state governments met this morning to consider the threat posed by the highly transmissible UK strain.
They emerged with a new model for dealing with international and domestic air travel. All inbound international travellers to Australia must now record a negative test to Covid-19 prior to departure, with some exceptions.
Masks will also be mandatory on all international and domestic flights and in domestic airports. Masks will be recommended in international airports.
International air crew will also be required to undergo a Covid-19 test in Australia every seven days or on arrival. Crews must also quarantine in dedicated facilities between international flights or for 14 days; and
The Australian government is also halving the cap on international arrivals into some states until mid-February.
An update now from Taiwan, which has managed to maintain its early successful response, and daily life is largely normal.
Through a combination of early border restrictions, a well-established health and disease control infrastructure, quarantine and mandatory masks, being an island, and some sheer luck, it has recorded just seven Covid-19 deaths since the virus emerged. Of its total 822 cases, the vast majority have been found in returning travellers in hotel quarantine.
Until a pilot passed the virus on to his friend in Taipei - and only his friend - last month, Taiwan hadn’t seen a local case since April last year. Authorities fined the pilot the maximum penalty for failing to provide detailed and accurate information, after he was found to have traveled while infectious without disclosing his symptoms or movements.
Mandatory mask wearing had been expanded to most public places, ahead of the flu season, and in the new year border restrictions were tightened again in response to the emergence of the UK strain.
In the UK, problems with the coronavirus vaccine rollout to GPs were laid bare after it emerged that a surgery visited by health secretary Matt Hancock to promote the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab had not yet received any supplies when the health secretary was there.
On Thursday morning Hancock said doses of the vaccine were being supplied to GP practices across the country as he visited the Bloomsbury surgery in central London. However, he conceded the “rate-limiting” factor in efforts to get people vaccinated was supply from the manufacturers.
China reports 53 cases, down from day before
The number of new Covid-19 cases reported in China’s Hebei province surrounding Beijing fell slightly from a day earlier, as authorities barred people in the provincial capital from leaving in order to curb the spread of the disease.
Hebei accounted for 33 of the 37 new locally transmitted Covid-19 cases reported on Jan. 7, according to a statement by the National Health Commision, down from 51 a day earlier. The total number of cases in all of mainland China fell to 53 from 63 a day earlier.
The province’s capital, Shijiazhuang, which accounted for all but two of the new Hebei cases, banned people from leaving the city on Thursday in an escalation of travel curbs. The city of 11 million has also banned gatherings and ordered vehicles and people in high-risk Covid-19 areas to remain in their districts.
Though the number of new cases remains a small fraction of what China saw early last year at the height of the outbreak, which first emerged from the central city of Wuhan in late 2019, authorities have taken aggressive measures whenever new clusters emerge.
Shijiazhuang also accounted for 35 of the 57 new asymptomatic cases reported in the mainland. China does not classify these patients, who have been infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes the disease but are not yet showing any Covid-19 symptoms, as confirmed cases.
Total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases to date in mainland China now stands at 87,331, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
Mexico’s health ministry on Thursday reported 13,734 new coronavirus cases and 1,044 more fatalities, bringing the country’s totals to 1,493,569 infections and 131,031 deaths.
It was one of the highest numbers for daily new cases.
The real number of infected people and deaths is likely significantly higher than the official count, the health ministry has said.
Updated
And in more UK news:
MPs have called for greater transparency over Britain’s decision making in the coronavirus crisis amid concerns that policies are being drawn up without proper scrutiny.
The government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) routinely publishes the minutes of its meetings, modelling studies, and other relevant documents, but non-scientific evidence that ministers consider is hardly ever made public, the Commons science and technology committee found:
In the UK, twice as many mothers as fathers say they will have to take time off with no pay due to school closures or a sick child, according to a survey, raising further fears that the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic is falling disproportionately on women’s shoulders.
According to the survey, carried out by a group of women’s organisations across the UK including Women’s Budget Group and the Fawcett Society, 15% of mothers said they had to take unpaid time off work, compared with 8% of fathers, while 57% of fathers said they would be able to work from home during school closures, compared with 49% of mothers:
Arrivals to UK will need to show a negative Covid test before entry
International travellers will need to show a negative Covid-19 test before being allowed into the UK, the government has announced, in a significant toughening of border controls to try to stem the spread of new coronavirus variants.
The new rules will take effect next week and apply to returning UK nationals as well as foreign citizens. Passengers will need to produce a test result taken less than 72 hours before boarding planes, boats or trains to the UK, and could be fined £500 in border spot checks without a negative result.
Arrivals will still need to quarantine for 10 days, even with a negative test, unless they are coming from one of the limited number of countries deemed low risk on the government’s travel corridor list:
Updated
More on the vaccine trials, from AFP: Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech released detailed results of late-stage trials last year, before receiving emergency use authorizations in the United States and elsewhere.
Butantan Director Dimas Covas told a news conference that full CoronaVac data would be released in an unspecified scientific publication but did not provide a timeline.
Pressed by journalists, Covas said there had been 218 Covid-19 cases in the trial of 13,000 volunteers. Just over 160 of those cases occurred among participants who received a placebo and the rest were in vaccinated volunteers, he said.
Unlike other studies of the vaccine, Brazil’s CoronaVac trial included elderly volunteers, a particularly vulnerable population.
Covas said CoronaVac had entirely prevented severe Covid-19 cases among the vaccinated group, including the elderly. None of those who received the vaccine become ill enough to require hospitalization, he added.
Sinovac vaccine 78% effective in Brazil trial, experts call for more details
A coronavirus vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech was 78% effective in a late-stage Brazilian trial with no severe Covid-19 cases, researchers said on Thursday, although a lack of data details stirred calls for more transparency, Reuters reports.
The trial results, closely watched by developing countries counting on the vaccine to begin mass inoculations to help end a raging pandemic, was below preliminary findings from Turkish researchers and lacked detailed data provided on US and European vaccines.
The director of Brazilian biomedical center Butantan, Sinovac’s research and production partner, said detailed results were being submitted to health regulator Anvisa as part of a request for emergency use of the vaccine.
“One thing is a presentation at a news conference. It’s something else to get the data and analyze it, which is what Anvisa will do,” said Cristina Bonorino, who sits on the scientific committee of the Brazilian Immunology Society. “If it’s what they say, that’s an excellent result,” she added.
Brazil and Indonesia, which have the most Covid-19 cases in Latin America and Southeast Asia, respectively, are preparing to roll out the vaccine, called CoronaVac, this month. Turkey, Chile, Singapore, Ukraine and Thailand have also struck supply deals with Sinovac.
Although CoronaVac’s efficacy falls short of the 95% success rate of vaccines from Moderna Inc or Pfizer Inc with partner BioNTech SE, it is easier to transport and can be stored at normal refrigerator temperatures.
The 78% efficacy rate is also well above the 50% to 60% benchmark set by global health authorities for vaccines in development early in the pandemic, given the urgent need.
The WHO granted emergency validation to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on December 31, paving the way for countries worldwide to give swift approval to its import and distribution, AFP reports.
According to the WHO’s overview of candidate vaccines, 63 have been tested on humans, 21 of which reached final-stage mass testing.
A further 172 candidate vaccines are being developed in laboratories with a view to eventual human trials.
“There is a really big pipeline of vaccines that are coming through,” said O’Brien.
“We are in active review of the data on other vaccines and we do expect to be emergency-use listing additional vaccines in the coming weeks and the next months.
“We have 15 manufacturers that have contacted us believing that they have the data that are required to meet these highest standards.”
As for the new mutations of the virus detected in Britain and South Africa, WHO experts have said that while they seem more transmissible, there is no indication that the current vaccines would not work against those variants - and the vaccines are easily adaptable in any case.
“The evaluation about whether the existing vaccines will be impacted at all is under way,” said O’Brien.
However, “the kinds of changes being seen in these variants are not felt to be likely to change the impact”, she added.
O’Brien said it was too early to tell how long protection would last for following vaccination, and the WHO had no data yet to make any recommendations on receiving doses of different vaccines, having fully reviewed only the Pfizer-BioNTech jab.
Poorest countries can expect vaccines within weeks: WHO
The world’s poorest countries can expect to start receiving their first Covid-19 vaccine doses between the end of January and mid-February, the World Health Organization said Thursday.
AFP: Vaccination is already under way in some of the world’s wealthiest nations, including the United States, Britain, European Union countries and Canada.
Covax, the globally-pooled vaccine procurement and distribution effort, has struck agreements to secure two billion doses - and the first of those will start rolling out within weeks, said the WHO’s head of vaccines, Kate O’Brien.
Covax aims to secure vaccines for 20 percent of the population in each participating country by the end of the year, with funding covered for the 92 lower- and lower-middle income economies involved in the scheme.
It is co-led by the WHO, the Gavi vaccine alliance and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).
Asked how quickly lower-income African nations would get vaccines, O’Brien told a WHO live social media event: “The facility has access to over two billion doses of vaccine.
“We will start to deliver those vaccines probably by the end of January, and, if not, certainly by early February and mid-February.
“That’s how countries in Africa and South Asia, and other countries around the world of these 92 that are less able to afford vaccines, are actually going to get vaccines.”
Australian city enters lockdown after UK strain detected
Australia’s Queensland state enforced a three-day lockdown in the city of Brisbane from Friday evening, after a hotel quarantine worker tested positive for the more contagious variant of Covid-19 that emerged in Britain last month.
State premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told reporters:
We know that this UK strain is highly infectious. It is 70% more infectious, and we are going to go hard and we are going to go early to do everything we can to stop the spread of this virus.”
Updated
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest global developments for the next few hours.
You can cause me to experience a small surge in dopamine by getting in touch with me on Twitter here.
The world’s poorest countries can expect to start receiving their first Covid-19 vaccine doses between the end of January and mid-February, the World Health Organization said Thursday.
Vaccination is already under way in some of the world’s wealthiest nations, including the United States, Britain, European Union countries and Canada.
Meanwhile Brazil passed 200,000 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic Thursday. That is the second highest total in the world.
The health ministry said the country had 1,524 deaths in the previous 24 hours, rising to a total of 200,498 for the pandemic.
- The UK said it will extend a ban on travellers entering England to southern African countries in a measure to prevent the spread of a new Covid-19 variant identified in South Africa. The restriction will go into effect on Saturday and remain in place for two weeks, the government said.
- France reported 21,703 new confirmed Covid-19 cases on Thursday, down from 25,379 on Wednesday. The health ministry also reported 277 new virus deaths in hospitals compared to 283 on Wednesday.
- Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said supply agreements with Pfizer meant that all Israelis over the age of 16 would be able to be vaccinated by the end of March, or perhaps even earlier.
- Germany reported over 1,000 Covid-linked deaths. Health authorities registered 26,391 new coronavirus infections on Thursday, and 1070 deaths. But the government’s disease control agency, the Robert Koch Institute, said the numbers remain skewed following underreporting over the Christmas break, and a true picture of where the virus is at in Germany won’t be clear until 17 January at the earliest.
- Europe has surpassed over 25m cases of Covid, according to Reuters analysis. Several countries are reinstating or extending lockdowns as a resurgence in the pandemic threatens to overwhelm health services.
- The UK recorded highest number of daily deaths since 21 April. The UK government said a further 1,162 people have died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Thursday. This is the highest daily reported total since 21 April when 1,224 were recorded. It brings the UK’s total number of deaths to 78,508. Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies for deaths where Covid-19 has been mentioned on the death certificate, together with additional data on deaths that have occurred in recent days, show there have now been 94,000 deaths involving Covid-19 in the UK.
- Japan declared a state of emergency for Tokyo area as Covid-19 cases surge. Japan has declared a one-month state of emergency in the capital, Tokyo, and in three neighbouring prefectures to stem the spread of coronavirus infections, as new daily cases surged to a record of more than 7,000, media reported.
- The WHO called for intensified measures over “alarming” virus variant. The World Health Organization’s European branch said more needs to be done to deal with the alarming situation brought on by a recently discovered variant of the coronavirus. WHO’s regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, also urged safe flexibility on the time between the first and second doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.
- Russia’s official number of coronavirus deaths passed 60,000. Russia reported 23,541 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, which brought the total number of cases to 3,332,142.
- In the UK, Covid killed half of a Sussex care home’s residents over Christmas. A care home in East Sussex has been devastated by Covid,6losing half of all its residents to the disease over Christmas, fuelling fears the new, more transmissible virus variant sweeping the south-east of England is beginning to breach homes’ defences.
- France’s border with UK to remain closed ‘for foreseeable future’, said the prime minister, Jean Castex. So far 19 cases of the new fast-moving variant of the coronavirus, identified by scientists in the UK and called the “English variant” in France, have been identified. Castex said bars, restaurants and ski resorts would not be opening at the end of the month and it was too early to say if they would be able to reopen by mid-February.
