That’s it from the UK blog team. Thanks for following our coverage..
People who have had the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine are seeking help at A&E in England despite having only mild side-effects such as headaches, in the wake of the controversy over whether the jab causes blood clots.
Brazil registered 3,693 Covid-19 deaths on Friday and 93,317 additional cases, Reuters reports, according to data released by the health ministry.
The South American country has now registered 348,718 total coronavirus deaths and 13,373,174 total confirmed cases.
Earlier this week, Brazil’s daily death toll exceeded 4,000 for the first time.
Ireland has added the United States, Canada, Belgium, France and Italy to its list of countries where arrivals will be subject to mandatory hotel quarantine, Reuters reports.
The move tightens some of Europe’s toughest travel restrictions to stop the spread of Covid-19.
Ireland will also require passengers from all countries to have booked a Covid-19 test for five days post-arrival in addition to one taken in the days before travelling when they land in the country, the health ministry said in a statement.
The government also added Armenia, Bangladesh, Bermuda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Curacao, Kenya, Luxembourg, Maldives, Pakistan, Turkey and Ukraine to the list.
The number of people in intensive care units with Covid-19 in France increased by 52 to 5,757 on Friday, a nearly five-month high, after dipping on Thursday, Reuters reports health ministry data as showing.
The ministry also reported 301 new deaths in hospital, compared to 343 on Thursday. Including deaths in retirement care homes, the seven-day moving average of Covid-19 deaths stood at 343 on Friday.
France also reported 41,243 new infections, down from 46,677 a week earlier.
Malta to pay visitors in bid to revive tourism
Malta plans to offer foreign visitors a handout of up to €200 euros if they stay at least three days on the Mediterranean island this summer, Reuters reports.
The tourism minister Clayton Bartolo announced the scheme on Friday, saying that with most Covid restrictions expected to be lifted by 1 June, tourists booking summer holidays directly through local hotels would receive the handout. Tourism accounts for more than 27% of Malta’s economy, but the sector has been hammered by the pandemic.
Bartolo said tourists booking accommodation at a five-star hotel will get €100 from Malta’s Tourism Authority, which will be matched by the hotel for a total of €200.
In a similar arrangement, those opting for a four-star hotel will receive a total of €150 and those booking a three-star hotel will receive €100 euros.
Malta has the highest virus vaccination rate in the European Union, having given at least one dose to 42% of adults. It has seen a sharp drop in new Covid-19 cases, with the positivity rate - the percentage of tests that show a positive result - down to 2.6%, and the government has been urging the EU to introduce vaccine passports to facilitate travel.
Bartolo said he was also having talks to encourage travel between Malta and Britain, whose inhabitants account for a third of tourists in the former British colony.
Brazil’s Sao Paulo state and the city of Rio de Janeiro are easing restrictions on hospitality businesses and other activities, Reuters reports. Authorities made the announcement on Friday, even as Latin America’s largest country continues to break its own grim records for daily Covid-19 deaths.
Sao Paulo will allow customers to pick up takeaway food from bars and restaurants starting on Monday, while professional sports games will be permitted without crowds, along with a series of other specific activities, vice-governor Rodrigo Garcia told journalists.
In the city of Rio de Janeiro, officials on Friday lifted a broad set of restrictions put in place in late March. Bars, restaurants and malls can resume in-person service, though beaches and parks remain closed and an 11 pm to 5am curfew remains in effect.
Daily deaths remain near historic highs in both Sao Paulo, Brazil’s most populous state, and Rio de Janeiro, the country’s second biggest city. Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes and Sao Paulo’s Garcia both pointed to decreased pressure on local hospital systems when discussing their decisions to ease restrictions.
Varying coronavirus health outcomes in the UK are the result of “intersecting forms of disadvantage”, including structural inequalities faced by certain communities, PA reports that experts have said.
A combination of political, economic and social factors can have “exponential impacts” on certain groups, according to a paper from the ethnicity subgroup of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage).
The paper was considered at a Sage meeting on 25 March and published today. It follows a government-commissioned report last week, which was accused of failing to recognise the impact of institutional racism in British society.
The sub-group, which advises the government on the Covid-19 risks and impacts for minority ethnic groups, noted that people from all minority ethnic groups had a higher risk of dying with coronavirus compared to white British people in the first wave.
During the second wave, the elevated risks among black African and black Caribbean groups had “attenuated somewhat” but remained considerably higher for Bangladeshi and Pakistani groups.
The paper said evidence suggests the continued high mortality rates in Bangladeshi and Pakistani groups are due to the amplifying interaction of four key factors. These are long-standing health inequities, occupation and housing factors, barriers to accessing care, including stigma and racism, and the potential influence of policy on behaviour.
It recommends measures such as increased self-isolation payments, workplace vaccination schemes and a focused public health campaign.
Summary
Here the latest key developments at a glance:
- The EU drugs regulator EMA said it is reviewing reports of a bleeding condition in people after receiving AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine and looking into Johnson & Johnson’s shot over reports of rare blood clots.
- Europe’s vaccine programme is set to gain pace as it has taken delivery of more than 100m doses of Covid-19 vaccines.
- There is a “shocking imbalance” in the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines worldwide and most countries do not have anywhere near enough shots to cover at-risk groups, World Health Organization director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday.
- Greece will limit use of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to people above age 30 following rare cases of blood clots, its national vaccinations committee said on Friday, falling into line with other European countries.
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German chancellor Angela Merkel will curb powers of federal states and centralise containment measures whenever there is a seven-day incidence rate of 100 per 100,000 people in a state.
- France reported a nearly 5-month high of intensive care patients with Covid, as well as 301 new deaths in hospital. The wave gripping France currently could peak on 20 April, but return to normality not realistic by autumn, a report said.
- There is no data available at the moment to recommend other countries follow France’s decision to “mix and match” different Covid-19 vaccines, the World Health Organization’s regulation director Rogerio Gaspar told a briefing on Friday.
- The regional government of Madrid has said that doubts and confusion over the safety of the AstraZeneca vaccine are discouraging people from getting their jabs.
- The US is facing a setback to the government’s vaccination campaign, as deliveries of the “one-shot” Johnson & Johnson vaccine are set to drop by 85% next week.
- China’s Covid-19 vaccines, made by Sinopharm and Sinovac, are in final stages of review for emergency use listing by the World Health Organization (WHO) which expects to decide on at least one at an 26 April meeting.
- An estimated 1 in 340 people in England had Covid-19 in the week ending 3 April, the latest figures from Britain’s Office for National Statistics show, a slightly higher prevalence compared to the 1 in 370 figure in the previous week.
- Italy reported 718 further deaths from Covid-19 on Friday, a sharp rise from the 487 deaths that were recorded on Thursday, and announced an easing of restrictions in the regions of Piedmont, Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy and Friuli.
- Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNtech SE on Friday said they have requested US regulatory agencies to expand the emergency use of their Covid-19 vaccine to adolescents aged 12 to 15.
- Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro on Friday blasted a pending Senate inquiry on his handling of a record-breaking Covid-19 outbreak as “a stitch-up”.
- Turkey reported 55,791 new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours, just below a daily record high recorded on Thursday.
- Cambodia recorded a record high of daily infections on Friday, as 576 new coronavirus caseswere logged.
- The UK has given 545,511 Covid vaccine doses on 8 April, the highest daily total since 1 April, while a further 60 people were reported to have died from the virus.
- Britain’s late Prince Philip will not have a state funeral,
and the government asked the public not to gather outside or lay flowers at royal residences due to pandemic restrictions. - Japan will impose tougher coronavirus measures in Tokyo, Okinawa and Kyoto from next week to curb a rise in infections through 11 May, weeks before the Olympics begin.
- Mexico will start offering Covid-19 vaccinations to adults over 50 at the end of April, president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday, as the country logged 5,045 new confirmed infections and 874 further deaths.
- The highly contagious UK Covid-19 variant is now predominant in Cyprus, its health ministry said on Friday, linking it to a recent surge in infections.
- Moldova will buy 400,000 doses of the Chinese Sinovac coronavirus vaccine, after it declared a state of emergency last week to give the government more powers to fight the pandemic.
- Tunisia’s president and a powerful labour union urged the government to review the 7pm curfew, which they say will hit shops, cafes and restaurants in the month of Ramadan that starts next week.
That’s it from me, thanks for following along.
Turkey reported 55,791 new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours, just below a daily record high from the previous day.
The country has experienced a sharp rise in both the number of daily cases and deaths in the past week.
Hurriyet Daily News reports:
Turkey aims to complete the vaccination of citizens over the age of 40 by the end of May or June at the latest, according to Fahrettin Koca, the country’s health minister.
“Our main goal is to complete the vaccination of those over the age of 40 by the end of May, by the end of June at the latest, and our second goal is to complete the vaccination of those over the age of 20 by July,” Koca said in an interview with daily Hürriyet.
“All of our efforts are to achieve these two main goals. We are striving for this,” Koca added.
Underlining that there are various difficulties in front of this target, Koca said that he believes that results will be obtained and that citizens over the age of 40 can be inoculated under all conditions by the end of June.
He also pointed out that the upcoming Islamic holy month of Ramadan should be turned into an opportunity.
Turkey, with a population of 83 million, has administered over 18.5 million vaccine jabs since it began a mass vaccination campaign on Jan. 14, according to official figures.
More than 10.8 million people have received their first doses, while second doses have been given to over 7.7 million people.
Certain additional measures to stem the spread of COVID-19 may be rolled out during Ramadan, according to an expert.
Mexico’s government reported 5,045 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 874 more fatalities, according to data from the health ministry published on Friday, bringing the country’s total to 2,272,064 infections and 207,020 deaths.
According to the government, the real case numbers are likely significantly higher, and separate data published recently by the health ministry suggests the actual coronavirus death toll may be at least 60% higher than the confirmed figure.
Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNtech SE on Friday said they have requested US regulatory agencies to expand the emergency use of their Covid-19 vaccine to adolescents aged 12 to 15.
In March, the drugmakers said the vaccine was found to be safe, effective and produced robust antibody responses in 12- to 15-year-olds in a clinical trial, Reuters reports.
The Pfizer/BioNTech two-shot vaccine is already authorised for use in people as young as 16.
Moldova will buy 400,000 doses of the Chinese Sinovac coronavirus vaccine, the health ministry said in a statement on Friday.
Moldova and neighbouring Ukraine, two of Europe’s poorest countries, have lagged behind the rest of the continent in the scramble for vaccines and welcomed donations from friendly governments, Reuters reports.
Covid-19 has killed 5,307 people in Moldova, a country of 3.5 million, which declared a state of emergency last week to give the government more powers to fight the pandemic.
Moldova launched its vaccination drive after receiving AstraZeneca doses from neighbouring Romania as humanitarian aid at the end of February.
The country then became the first in Europe to receive doses from the global COVAX scheme for poor nations last month.
Separately Russia has promised to send 182,000 doses of its Sputnik V vaccine as humanitarian aid, including 60,000 doses to the breakaway Transdniestria region.
Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro on Friday blasted a pending Senate inquiry on his handling of a record-breaking Covid-19 outbreak, which global health officials compared to a “raging inferno.”
Reuters reports:
Supreme Court Justice Luis Roberto Barroso ruled late on Thursday that enough senators had signed on to a proposed inquiry on the government’s pandemic response to launch the probe despite stalling by Senate leadership.
“It’s a stitch-up between Barroso and the leftists in the Senate to wear out the government,” Bolsonaro told supporters outside his residence, accusing the judge of “politicking.”
A Senate investigation represents the most severe political consequence to date for Bolsonaro’s approach to the coronavirus, which he compared to a “little flu” last year as he ignored health experts calling for mask wearing and social distance.
Bolsonaro has backed off his criticism of Covid-19 vaccines, but he continues to attack governors attempting lockdowns and even milder measures, accusing them without proof of killing more with those restrictions than the virus itself.
Covid-19 has taken more than 345,000 lives in Brazil, second only to the United States. One in four deaths from the pandemic this week were in Brazil, where a brutal wave is overwhelming hospitals and setting records of more than 4,000 deaths per day.
The World Health Organization (WHO) urged world leaders on Friday to share vaccine doses more fairly, stressing that this was “a time for partnership, not patronage”.
More than 700 million vaccine doses have been administered globally, but over 87% have gone to high income or upper middle-income countries, while low income countries have received just 0.2%, the WHO said.
Out of 220 countries and economies, 194 have now started vaccination, and 26 have not. Of those, 7 have received vaccines and could start, and a further 5 countries should receive their vaccines in the coming days.
On average in high-income countries, almost one in four people has received a vaccine, but in low-income countries, it’s one in more than 500, the WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed.
“COVAX had been expecting to distribute almost 100 million doses by the end of March, but due to a marked reduction in supply, we have only been able to distribute 38 million doses.
“We hope to be able to catch up during April and May,” he said.
Mexico will start offering Covid-19 vaccinations to adults over 50 at the end of April, president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday.
Reuters reports:
Mexico has given a first shot to just over 7.5 million people since beginning vaccinations late last year. The country has struggled to ensure a steady flow of vaccine shipments for its population of 126 million people.
This week, for the first time, authorities gave shots to more than half a million people in a single day.
Lopez Obrador said adults over 60 who have received a first dose will complete their vaccinations by April 20, and that officials would open vaccinations at the end of the month to the 13 million adults between the ages of 50 and 59.
He added that some people over 60 had declined to be vaccinated, without specifying how many.
Mexico in late April will also ramp up vaccination of the country’s more than 3 million education workers, using the one-shot CanSino vaccine from China, and aim to finish inoculating the sector by May 15, Lopez Obrador said.
France reports nearly 5-month high in ICU patients with Covid
The number of people in intensive care units (ICU) with Covid-19 in France increased by 52 to 5,757 on Friday, a nearly five-month high, after dipping on Thursday, health ministry data showed.
The ministry also reported 301 new deaths in hospital, compared to 343 on Thursday. Including deaths in retirement care homes, the seven-day moving average of Covid-19 deaths stood at 343 on Friday.
Peru will vote for a new president on Sunday in a wide-open election framed by a deadly surge in coronavirus cases, and under the long shadow of a constitutional crisis last year that saw the country go through three leaders in a week.
Reuters reports:
As candidates closed their campaigns, pollsters say half a dozen of them are still in the running for a top two spot, which would see them move into a second round run-off vote in June. Predicting which two will make it, they say, is impossible.
“These are the most fragmented elections in history, we have never reached the eve of the election with so many candidates in with a chance,” Alfredo Torres, head of local pollster Ipsos Peru told reporters on Thursday.
The uncertainty over the elections comes as Peru battles the peak of Covid-19 cases with hospitals overwhelmed and after the world’s number 2 copper producer suffered its worst economic drop in three decades last year.
[...] No candidate has more than 13% of the voting intention and ‘no vote’ still remains the most popular single choice.
Pollsters said that Peru’s 25 million registered voters were disenchanted with all candidates, and that more radical positions were gaining amid wider uncertainties.
“We are facing a voter who is very unhappy with all the options they have to choose from,” said Urpi Torrado, the executive president of pollster Datum International.
Italy reported 718 further deaths from Covid-19 on Friday, versus 487 deaths that were logged on Thursday.
The country reported 18,938 fresh coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours, according to data from the Ministry of Health, a rise from yesterday’s 17,221.
Patients hospitalised with Covid-19 - not including those in intensive care - stood at 28,146 on Friday, down from 28,851 a day earlier.
There were 192 new admissions to intensive care units, down from 259 on Thursday. The total number of intensive care patients fell to 3,603 a previous 3,663.
The national average R number fell slightly to 0.92, versus 0.96 last Friday, and the 7-day incidence per 100,000 people fell to 185, La Repubblica reports.
On Friday, the Higher Institute of Health and the Ministry of Health sanctioned the easing of restrictions in some of the largest regions in the country: Piedmont, Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy and Friuli.
A follow-up study of 33 people who received Moderna Inc’s Covid-19 vaccine in early trials show the antibodies it induced are still present six months after the second dose.
Reuters reports:
“Antibody activity remained high in all age groups,” researchers said. They confirmed the findings using three different tests, according to a report on Tuesday in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Earlier this month, Pfizer Inc and partner BioNTech SE said their vaccine using similar messenger RNA (mRNA) technology remained highly effective for at least six months.
The researchers conducting the Moderna vaccine study will continue to follow the same volunteers to see whether the antibodies last longer than six months.
They are also evaluating the potential for a booster dose to extend the duration of the antibodies and improve their potency against new more contagious variants of the coronavirus.
Here some more detail on the news that Johnson & Johnson will ship relatively few coronavirus shots around the US until it receives regulatory clearance for a large vaccine plant in Baltimore that has struggled to meet quality control standards, according to a top White House health official.
Reuters reports:
J&J is working closely with regulators to resolve the issues holding up authorization, said Jeff Zients, the White House’s Covid-19 response coordinator.
It expects to start shipping 8m doses per week towards the end of April and remains on track to deliver around 100m shots by the end of May, he added.
Updated
The UK said on Friday it had given 545,511 Covid vaccine doses on 8 April, the highest daily total since 1 April, while a further 60 people had died within 28 days of a positive test for the disease, raising this death toll to 127,040.
The number of people in Britain who have received two vaccine doses rose to 6.541 million and the number who have received at least one dose increased to 31.903 million, more than 60% of the adult population according to government daily figures.
Some 3,150 people were reported to have tested positive for Covid-19 in the daily data published on 9 April, taking the number of cases over the past 7 days to 19,804, 32% lower than the week before, Reuters reports.
Health officials also said they had revised down some cumulative data after positive cases detected by rapid lateral flow tests later turned out to be negative. In 8,010 cases the lateral flow tests were followed within 3 days by a gold-standard PCR test and found to be negative.
Cheaper and faster lateral flow tests are increasingly being used to reopen the economy and some scientists have raised questions about the volume of false positives they can produce.
Public Health England has said that anyone receiving a positive test on a lateral flow device should follow it with a PCR test to be sure.
I’m Jedidajah Otte and am taking back over now. Do get in touch if you have tips or updates, I’m on Twitter @JedySays.
Updated
That’s it for me — Rhi Storer — for today. I will be handing over back to my colleague Jedidajah Otte.
In Mexico, private-practice doctors, dentists and health care workers are protesting that they have been left out of a government-run coronavirus vaccine programme despite the fact they are exposed to possible infection.
The private health care workers staged protests this week, blocking many of Mexico City’s streets.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, attributed the protests to a “very perverse” campaign by private media outlets against him.
“Let them wait … until we all get it,” López Obrador said, in reference to the age-based vaccination scheme that is focusing on people over 60.
López Obrador, a supporter of big government, has consistently sidelined Mexico’s private health care system from any role in the vaccine programme. Mexico has a number of underfunded government health care schemes, but most Mexicans who can afford it turn to the extensive private care network.
Mexico has obtained more vaccines than many Latin American nations, with about 16m doses arriving so far and about 10.6m administered, behind only Brazil and Chile.
Updated
US vaccination campaign in doubt as J&J ‘one-shot’ vaccine deliveries plummet
In the US, deliveries of the “one-shot” Johnson and Johnson vaccine are set to drop by 85% next week, in a setback to the government’s vaccination campaign.
The Biden administration has allocated just 700,000 J&J doses to states for the week beginning April 12, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a huge drop from the nearly 5m shots allocated the week before.
The decline comes after J&J reported a batch of its Covid-19 vaccines developed in Baltimore had failed quality standards and can’t be used – as Anthony Fauci warned the US is at risk from a new coronavirus surge.
You can read more from my colleague Adam Gabbatt below:
Updated
Associated Press reports:
Slovakia’s deputy prime minister traveled to Hungary to ask for assistance in inspecting doses of the Russian-made Covid-19 vaccine, a day after Russia demanded Slovakia return the jabs.
Deputy prime minister Igor Matovič said he went to Budapest “to find a helping hand” and that he had requested for the doses of the Sputnik V vaccine received by Slovakia to be evaluated in Hungarian laboratories.
“I came here to ask for help, and Hungary will help because they have laboratories which can assess the vaccine. In Slovakia, we don’t have such a lab,” Matovič said at a news conference.The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which markets Sputnik V abroad, asked Slovakia on Thursday to return its supply of Sputnik V, arguing the Central European country had committed “multiple contract violations” and engaged in an “act of sabotage” against the vaccine.
Updated
Hello, this is Rhi Storer taking over from my colleague Jedidajah Otte for the next hour. Please send your contributions to rhi.storer@guardian.co.uk, or alternatively you can send me a message on Twitter.
The latest data from the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) on coronavirus infections in the country brings few surprises – the percentage of people testing positive has, broadly, levelled off in England in recent weeks, with a similar situation in Northern Ireland and declines in Wales and Scotland.
About one in 340 people in the community in England are thought to have had Covid in the most recent week.
The results are similar to those released this week by experts at Imperial College London in the latest round of their React-1 study, which found the rate of new coronavirus infections has levelled off, although they estimate that around one in 500 people had Covid in England from 11 to 30 March.
However both studies highlight that Covid is not evenly spread around the country. According to the ONS data the percentage of people testing positive is higher in regions such as the north-west and Yorkshire and the Humber than in the south-west.
What’s more there are some signs that cases may be rising in the north-west and south-east – although the latter has lower levels of Covid to start with. The React data also shows regional differences, with the north-west, north-east and Yorkshire and the Humber showing the highest prevalence of positive tests.
Regional disparities also arose after the first lockdown, leading to local restrictions and later a tiered-system, which were criticised both in terms of their fairness and how well they worked. Some parts of the country such as Leicestershire were placed under enhanced restrictions for many months.
Experts have warned a different approach must be taken this time, amid concerns that Covid could become a disease of the poor. Among recommendations, scientists say a greater effort must be made to engage and support communities where infections remain high, including building trust and offering practical help around issues from vaccination to isolation.
Updated
The UK government asked the public not to gather outside or lay flowers at royal residences following the death of Prince Philip due to pandemic restrictions.
“Although this is an extraordinarily difficult time for many, we are asking the public not to gather at royal residences, and continue to follow public health advice particularly on avoiding meeting in large groups and on minimising travel,” a Cabinet Office spokesman said.
“We are supporting the royal household in asking that floral tributes should not be laid at royal residences at this time.”
Prince Philip will not have a state funeral nor lie in state for the public to pay their respects ahead of the funeral, the College of Arms said, with arrangements revised to meet pandemic restrictions, Reuters reports.
The College of Arms said on Friday:
The funeral will not be a State Funeral and will not be preceded by a Lying-in-State. His Royal Highness’s body will lie at rest in Windsor Castle ahead of the funeral in St George’s Chapel. This is in line with custom and with His Royal Highness’s wishes.
The funeral arrangements have been revised in view of the prevailing circumstances arising from the Covid-19 pandemic and it is regretfully requested that members of the public do not attempt to attend or participate in any of the events that make up the funeral.
Updated
Europe’s vaccine programme is set to further gain pace as it has taken delivery of more than 100m doses of Covid-19 vaccines, according to a weekly monitoring report.
It comes amid news that the EU’s executive is seeking member states’ approval to launch talks with Pfizer and BioNTech to buy up to 1.8 billion doses of their Covid-19 vaccines to be delivered in 2022 and 2023, an EU official told Reuters.
The agency reports:
A total of 104 million doses have been sent to countries in the European Union and European Economic Area, working out at 27.7 doses per 100 inhabitants, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said.
That compared to 82m doses that have been administered to date, according to figures showing an increase in the number of doses available to inject into the arms of Europeans.
It’s a rare piece of good news for a vaccination campaign that has relied on a centralised EU procurement and approvals process that has been made to look slow by Israel, Britain and the US.
Europe also bet heavily on the vaccine from AstraZeneca, which has encountered production problems, while cases of rare blood clotting in some recipients have prompted governments to recommend its use only in people aged over 60.
The data tied in with a pick-up in the pace in big EU countries like Germany, which hit a record daily tally of more than 700,000 doses administered on Thursday - after drafting family doctors this week to support its existing network of vaccination centres.
“With increasing deliveries, the number of vaccinations we can do is rising,” German health minister Jens Spahn said on Friday, forecasting a further acceleration in doses to be sent to family doctors in May.
On average, 16% of adults in Europe have received a first shot while 6.7% have been fully vaccinated, typically by getting a second injection. By contrast, 62% of Israelis have received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine, 47% in Britain and 34% in the US.
Updated
China’s Covid-19 vaccines, made by Sinopharm and Sinovac, are in final stages of review for emergency use listing by the World Health Organization (WHO) which expects to decide on at least one at an 26 April meeting, its regulation director Rogerio Gaspar said on Friday.
Reuters reports:
A second meeting was planned for the week of May 3, which would allow for reviewing the second one as needed, he said.
WHO emergency use listing is a prequisite for being purchased by the Covax vaccine-sharing facility and is also a signal to countries with weaker regulatory agencies about a vaccine’s safety and efficacy.
Updated
Tunisia’s president and a powerful labour union on Friday urged the government to review the 7pm curfew it has brought in to slow Covid-19 infections, which they say will hit shops, cafes and restaurants in the month of Ramadan that starts next week.
Reuters reports:
The intervention of President Kais Saied and the UGTT union followed a gathering of hundreds of workers in the city of Sousse who said they would keep shops and cafes open, and after protests in el-Kef, Monastir and Mahdia.
Prime minister Hichem Mechichi’s government announced the tougher health restrictions on Wednesday to combat a surge in new cases, bringing the nightly curfew forward to 7pm from 10pm and barring public gatherings and markets.
Hospital intensive care units are nearly full, and Tunisia has only slowly rolled out a national vaccination campaign.
During Islam’s holy month of Ramadan, Muslims fast by day and traditionally gather with friends or family in the evenings, frequenting street markets and eating out.
A cafe owners’ syndicate linked to another union, UTICA, said the curfew would leave 400,000 workers without jobs during Ramadan.
The government has said it will give $70 each to thousands of workers in a bid to avoid social unrest of the kind that broke out across the country in January.
Tunisia faces an unprecedented financial crisis, with a budgeted fiscal deficit of 11% this year adding to its already large public debt as political infighting complicates work on a reform programme aimed at reassuring foreign lenders.
There is no data available at the moment to recommend other countries follow France’s decision to “mix and match” different Covid-19 vaccines, the World Health Organization’s regulation director Rogerio Gaspar told a briefing on Friday.
France’s top health advisory body in charge of Covid-19 vaccines recommended on Friday that recipients of a first dose of the AstraZeneca shot who are under 55 should receive a second dose with a so-called messenger RNA vaccine.
Marianne Roebl-Mathieu is one of two members of Germany’s vaccine advisory committee who said on Wednesday that the committee could see no disadvantages or risks from giving younger recipients of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine a second dose of an alternative shot.
Updated
Greece limits use of AstraZeneca jab to people over 30
Greece will limit use of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to people above age 30 following rare cases of blood clots, its national vaccinations committee said on Friday, falling into line with other European countries.
Reuters reports:
Europe’s medicines regulator said this week it found rare cases of blood clots among some adult recipients of the shot, although the vaccine’s advantages still outweighed its risks.
“The National Vaccination Committee, after evaluating all available data, recommends the continuation of the vaccination programme with all available vaccines, including the AstraZeneca vaccine, to people aged 30 and over,” the committee said in a statement.
The risk of a serious illness and death from Covid-19 “overwhelmingly” outweighed the risk of a possible blood clot following vaccination, especially for ages over 30, it said.
Greece has reported 288,230 cases of Covid-19 and a total of 8,680 deaths. It has administered 378,997 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine so far and ordered another 1.35 million doses.
It has also used the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines to inoculate more than 2 million people.
Updated
Japan will impose tougher coronavirus measures in Tokyo, Okinawa and Kyoto from next week to curb a rise in infections through 11 May, weeks before the Olympics begin.
The Japan Times reports:
Prime minister Yoshihide Suga on Friday approved stricter measures to stamp out soaring coronavirus cases for Tokyo, Okinawa and Kyoto – effective Monday – as variants pose a fresh threat to a public already frazzled by months-long restrictions.
The measures authorise prefectural governors to request and order establishments, primarily bars and restaurants, to close by 8pm in designated municipalities, as opposed to the prefecture-wide implementation seen in a state of emergency.
They will be in place in all of the capital’s 23 wards and six cities – Musashino, Hachioji, Machida, Chofu, Fuchu and Tachikawa – through 11 May, while they will be implemented in the city of Kyoto and nine cities in Okinawa Prefecture – Naha, Nago, Uruma, Okinawa, Ginowan, Urasoe, Tomigusuku, Itoman and Nanjo – until 5 May.
They were already implemented in several cities in Osaka, Hyogo and Miyagi prefectures on Monday.
Businesses that refuse to comply with an early closure order will be slapped with a nonpenal fine of up to ¥200,000 [ca £1,320] while those that comply will be granted compensation based on the scale of their business operations.
The measures, unlike a state of emergency, do not give governors the power to order a temporary business closure and are significantly weaker than lockdown measures practiced in Europe.
The request, issued less than three weeks after a state of emergency was lifted in Tokyo, is the latest evidence that the upturn in cases has outpaced the government’s expectations, with the public becoming desensitised to the impact of such warnings.
In ending the emergency declaration, the central government essentially conceded that a further spike was inevitable, and instead shifted its focus to minimising another wave of cases. However, both the government and public health experts have now been forced to reckon with the variants’ stronger transmissibility, which has driven up cases and threatens to overwhelm the healthcare system.
In the greater Tokyo metropolitan area, a highly infectious [mutated] strain of the coronavirus first identified in the United Kingdom – N501Y – now accounts for a third of new infections, said Yasutoshi Nishimura, the minister in charge of the government’s coronavirus response.
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'Shocking imbalance' in global vaccine distribution, WHO chief says
There is a “shocking imbalance” in the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines worldwide and most countries do not have anywhere near enough shots to cover at-risk groups, WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday.
“On average in high-income countries, almost one in four people has received a Covid-19 vaccine. In low-income countries, it’s one in more than 500,” he told a briefing.
Updated
The estimated Covid-19 reproduction “R” number in England is unchanged between 0.8 and 1, Britain’s health ministry said on Friday, with the epidemic estimated to be shrinking by 4% to 0% each day.
An R value between 0.8 and 1.0 means that, on average, every 10 people infected will infect between 8 and 10 other people. A previously sharp fall in infection numbers has levelled off in recent weeks.
EMA reviewing possible link between Johnson & Johnson vaccine and rare blood clots
Here some more detail on the news that Europe’s drugs regulator EMA is reviewing reports of a bleeding condition in people after receiving AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine and looking into Johnson & Johnson’s shot over reports of rare blood clots.
Reuters reports:
While Anglo-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca has been caught in a turmoil over possible links to rare blood clots in the brain and abdomen, and subsequent restriction on usage of its vaccine, this is a formal disclosure of the J&J probe.
Four serious cases of rare blood clots with low platelets, one of which was fatal, have been reported after inoculation with J&J’s vaccine from its Janssen unit, the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) said.
It said five cases of capillary leak syndrome linked to AstraZeneca’s vaccine were reported. The condition, in which blood leaks from the smallest of vessels into muscles and body cavities, is characterised by swelling and a drop in blood pressure.
However, the EMA has said that “at this stage, it is not yet clear whether there is a causal association” between the vaccines and the reported conditions.
AstraZeneca did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
J&J told Reuters it was aware that thromboembolic events including those with thrombocytopenia have been reported in all Covid-19 vaccines, but that, at present, no clear causal relationship has been established between these rare events and its vaccine.
The company added it was working closely with experts and regulators to assess data on blood clots occurring in people who had its vaccine.
Updated
Sweden registered 7,772 new coronavirus cases on Friday, health agency statistics showed, versus 7,822 cases reported on Thursday.
The country of 10 million inhabitants registered 26 new deaths, taking the total to 13,621. The deaths registered have occurred over several days and sometimes weeks.
At the end of March, Sweden announced that an entry ban would apply to travel from non-EU/EEA countries until at least 31 May, but travellers arriving from Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Rwanda, South Korea and Singapore are exempt.
The country’s Uppsala region, where infections are on the rise, has backtracked just a day after introducing new rules for Covid-19 vaccinations that would have seen people only receiving one dose of vaccine rather than two.
The Local reports:
Regional health authorities in Uppsala, home to the university town of the same name, on Thursday said that people who had already had Covid-19 would be given only a single dose of the vaccine, six months after infection, rather than two doses as in the rest of Sweden.
But on Friday they made a U-turn.
“We have discussed the issue with the Public Health Agency and have been told that they do not back a separate order of priority for those who have had Covid-19 at the moment, as the benefits are not sufficiently great. So we will wait before we roll this out, and will keep vaccinating as before,” said Uppsala healthcare director Mikael Köhler in a statement on Friday.
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As we reported earlier, Norway’s prime minister Erna Solberg was fined for breaking Covid-19 social-distancing rules when she organised a family gathering to celebrate her birthday.
Reacting to the fine of 20,000 Norwegian crowns ($2,352), Solberg said she would pay up and apologised, telling TV2 News:
I’d like to say again that I’m sorry for breaking the coronavirus rules. I will accept the fine, and pay it.
While police would not have issued a fine in most such cases, they said the prime minister has been at the forefront of the government’s work to impose restrictions.
Though the law is the same for all, all are not equal in front of the law,” said police chief Ole Saeverud, justifying the fine. “It is therefore correct to issue a fine in order to uphold the general public’s trust in the rules on social restrictions,” he said.
Serbia could introduce mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations for healthcare workers to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, health minister Zlatibor Lončar said on Friday.
“We cannot be in a situation where we have a healthcare worker infected and then ask if he or she had been vaccinated,” Lončar told Reuters, adding that the government could discuss the proposal within a few days.
Italy was the first country in Europe to introduce mandatory vaccination for health workers earlier this week.
About 2.7 million of Serbia’s 7 million population have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, the eighth highest proportion globally.
Prime minister Ana Brnabić said the Balkan country expects to have 40% of those aged over 18 vaccinated by the end of April.
Despite the relatively high vaccination rate, Serbia reported 3,625 new infections on Thursday and 41 deaths, and said hospitals are running near full capacity.
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Europe's drug regulator starts reviewing reports of a bleeding condition after AstraZeneca jab and blood clots after Johnson & Johnson jab
Europe’s drug regulator EMA said on Friday it had started reviewing reports of a bleeding condition in people who had received AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine and was also looking into Johnson & Johnson’s shot over blood clots, Reuters reports.
Four serious cases of rare blood clots with low platelets, one of which was fatal, have been reported after inoculation with J&J’s vaccine from its Janssen unit, the European Medicines Agency said, adding five cases of capillary leak syndrome linked to AstraZeneca’s vaccine were reported.
Updated
Germany should expand its infection protection law to allow a unified national approach to combatting Covid-19 across the country, finance minister and vice-chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday.
Scholz stressed that curfew rules vary between regional states in Germany, adding:
It makes good sense to regulate this uniformly for the whole of Germany, because then there will be clarity and transparency.
In this regard, it is a necessary, real step forward if we expand the infection [protection] law to include a regulation for exactly these cases.
Updated
The regional government of Madrid has said that doubts and confusion over the safety of the AstraZeneca vaccine are discouraging people from getting their jabs.
On Thursday, the Spanish government announced that the AstraZeneca vaccine would be resrticted to those aged 60 and over. The following day, it said those due for vaccination in the 60-69 age group would also receive the vaccine.
Speaking on Friday, Madrid’s regional health minister, Antonio Zapatero, said the “confusion” generated by the central government’s messaging was affecting take-up in and around the capital.
Zapatero said that only 10,800 of the 29,000 called to be vaccinated on Thursday had turned up.
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has insisted that the government will make good on its promise to have 70% of the country’s adult population vaccinated by the end of the summer.
To date, 8,743,694 people in Spain have received a single dose of the vaccine, while 2,852,806 have received both doses. The country’s population is about 47 million.
Speaking on Tuesday afternoon, Sánchez said the pace of vaccination would be accelerated over the coming weeks. “We’re going to manage to have 70% of Spain’s adult population – 33 million people – immunised thanks to the vaccine by the end of August,” he said.
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Virus prevalence in England rose last week, Office for National Statistics says
An estimated 1 in 340 people in England had Covid-19 in the week ending 3 April, the latest figures from Britain’s Office for National Statistics show, a slightly higher prevalence compared to the 1 in 370 figure in the previous week.
“In England, the percentage of people testing positive for the coronavirus (Covid-19) was likely level over the two weeks up to 3 April 2021; we estimate that 161,900 people within the community population in England had Covid-19,” the ONS said in its weekly infection survey.
In Wales, the infection rate decreased in the two weeks up to 3 April 2021.
“We estimate that 1 in 800 people not in care homes, hospitals or other institutional settings in Wales had Covid-19 in the week ending 3 April 2021, equal to 3,800 people,” the ONS said.
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French wave could peak 20 April, but return to normality not realistic by autumn, study says
The third wave of the Covid-19 virus rolling over France should reach its peak on about 20 April, according to forecasts established by the Paris hospitals group AP-HP seen on Friday by Reuters.
Those forecasts also estimated there would be just under 2,000 Covid-19 patients in hospital intensive care units in the Paris region around that peak, Reuters reports.
A study published this week by France’s Pasteur Institute concludes that since the British variant of Covid-19 is dominant in France, 90% of adults will need to be vaccinated before the country can get back to normal life without risking a fresh surge of the virus, France 24 reports:
According to new modelling released Tuesday on the Pasteur Institute’s website, the British variant’s proliferation in France has put a clear damper on the prospect of getting back to life as we knew it pre-pandemic this autumn, the horizon some scientists had put forward only months ago.
The study’s authors conclude that since the British variant, known as B.1.1.7, is now dominant over other coronavirus strains in France, 90% of the country’s adult population would need to be vaccinated by summer’s end before French residents can dispense with social distancing measures without causing a new spike in cases.
That high level of inoculation among adults is a very tall order in notoriously vaccine-sceptic France, where recurrent delivery delays have further plagued the country’s initially sluggish vaccination rollout. Specialists tell France 24 that the 90-percent goal would be virtually impossible to meet.
“The main message of our work is that vaccinations will allow us to come out of the crisis, but we have to expect to live with certain constraints in the autumn,” Pascal Crépey, co-author of the study and a researcher in epidemiology and biostatistics at France’s EHESP School of Public Health in Rennes, told France 24.
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Cambodia recorded a record high of daily infections on Friday, as 576 new coronavirus caseswere logged.
The Phnom Penh Post reports:
The Ministry of Health on April 9 reported 576 Covid-19 cases linked to the February 20 community outbreak, by far the largest number it has ever recorded in a single day since the pandemic began.
The 576 cases include four Chinese, one Thai and three Vietnamese nationals, with the rest being Cambodian. The Cambodian patients include three children aged 6 to 13.
Phnom Penh recorded the most cases at 544, followed by Svay Rieng province at 16, Preah Sihanouk at 12, Siem Reap at two, and one each in Kandal and Kampong Cham.
The ministry also reported 70 recoveries linked to the February 20 community outbreak.
Alarmed by a huge surge in community transmission cases, ministry spokeswoman Or Vandine urged strict adherence to preventive measures. She said the surge would have long-term impact on public health and potentially lead to a much larger-scale outbreak.
“I’ve lost sleep, wondering why some people can’t seem to take basic precautions to break the chain of transmission,” she said, reiterating a call for the public to refrain from non-essential travel, especially during the Khmer New Year holiday, and get vaccinated against the disease.
As of April 9, Cambodia had recorded a total of 3,604 Covid-19 cases with 1,591 receiving ongoing treatment and 24 confirmed deaths from the disease.
Updated
The highly contagious UK Covid-19 variant is now predominant in Cyprus, its health ministry said on Friday, linking it to a recent surge in infections.
Reuters reports:
The ministry said all 111 positive samples taken in March and sent to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control were found to be the variant known as B.1.1.7, which was first discovered in Britain late last year.
The results explain a recent spike in infections since the strain is about 50 percent more contagious than the more common Covid-19 strain, the health ministry said.
An earlier comparison with January and February samples, released in March, showed the British variant accounted for about a quarter of all cases.
After a relative lull, the number of coronavirus cases in Cyprus started climbing in late February and despite restrictions on movement still in force, infections remain stubbornly high.
As of Thursday, Cyprus had reported a total of 49,988 Covid-19 infections and 268 deaths since the start of the pandemic. The numbers cover the south of the island controlled by the international recognised government and do not include cases in the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north.
Cyprus first reported cases of the British variant in early January after tests on positive samples taken in December 2020.
Cyprus has had a widespread testing plan in place for months, offering free and compulsory rapid tests once a week for most of the population.
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A row over shipments of Sputnik V vaccine doses that erupted on Thursday between Russia and Slovakia will not undermine EU confidence in the shot, the Kremlin said on Friday in the week of an EU vaccines’ regulator visit to Moscow.
“If Slovakia doesn’t need the vaccine, other countries will be pleased […] there will be more for others,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Russia called on Slovakia on Thursday to return hundreds of thousands of doses of the Sputnik vaccine, citing contract violations, in an escalating row between the two countries after a Slovak watchdog raised doubts about the shot, Reuters reports.
Updated
Here some more detail on the German government’s plans to centralise containment measures, whenever there is a seven-day incidence rate of 100 per 100,000 people in a state, in the country’s battle against a third wave from Reuters:
The [seven-day incidence] figure reached a high near 200 in late December, soon after Germany went from a “lockdown lite” that started in early November, during which schools and stores were open, to a full shutdown.
It last stood at 110.4, according to data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases.
However, containment measures in Germany vary from region to region due to the country’s decentralised federal system. In some regions, consumers can go shopping as long as they have a negative Covid-19 test, while stores are closed in others.
Some, like Berlin, have introduced nighttime bans on gatherings, while others, like Saarland, have allowed restaurants and beer gardens to open outdoor seating.
Updated
The largest Covid-19 vaccination centre in the Czech Republic was put through its paces on Friday, but it will not be fully operational until May as the country badly hit by the pandemic waits for more vaccine shots.
Reuters reports:
The government has come under criticism for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, including its failure to order as many vaccines as it could under the EU’s programme.
Following a spat in Brussels over distribution of extra vaccines among member states, the Czechs are now projected to lag behind all other EU countries by mid-year.
The country of 10.7 million has the world’s highest per-capita death toll from Covid-19, according to Our World in Data, while infection rates have only just started easing.
Deaths from the disease have hit 27,617, more than doubling in 2021 alone. On Thursday, 5,245 new cases were reported, the lowest weekday tally since mid-December. In total, 1.57 million infections have been reported since March 2020.
The vaccination centre at Prague’s O2 Arena complex is to be a key component in ramping up inoculations. But it faces a three-week delay until May 3 before starting with a capacity of 7,000 people a day.
On Friday, 1,000 state emergency personnel were set to get shots.
“The centre will start in full at the beginning of May, because at the moment there are not enough vaccines for it to go at full capacity,” Prime Minister Andrej Babis said during an inspection on Friday.
The country has administered 1.97 million vaccine doses so far, including 663,006 people who have got both shots. On Thursday, 58,928 shots were given, the highest daily total.
Updated
In addition to German chancellor Angela Merkel’s “emergency brake” that will see her take control from federal states, Berlin is also considering a statutory authorisation to issue ordinances from the federal government, which could also apply if the incidence value is below 100 new infections, according to a journalist, Handelsblatt reports.
Government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer said the details could not be elaborated on today.
Despite an acceleration of the German vaccine programme, just over 12 million people in the country of 83 million have received at least their first jab.
Handelsblatt reports:
719,927 vaccine doses were administered in Germany on Thursday. This is a new record: the day before it was just under 660,000, previously the number of daily vaccinations never exceeded 370,000.
This is shown in the daily overview of the Federal Ministry of Health and the [Robert Koch Institute].
The upswing was made possible by the participation of the general practitioners, who have been supplementing inoculations in the vaccination centers for the past week.
By Wednesday they had already given half of all vaccinations. This means that 4,831,522 people are now fully vaccinated - that is 5.8% of the total population. A total of 12,204,176 people received at least one vaccine dose.
I’m Jedidajah Otte and will be taking over for the next few hours. Feel free to drop me a line if you have anything to flag you think we should be covering, I’m on Twitter @JedySays.
Updated
Today so far…
- Authorities in France have ruled that under-55s who received a first injection of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine can be given a jab from a different producer for their second dose.
- Hong Kong has confirmed this morning that it has requested AstraZeneca suspend delivery of its Covid-19 vaccine.
- States and territories in Australia have been left scrambling to respond to government advice recommending against vaccinating anyone under 50 with the AstraZeneca shot, leaving tens of thousands of people in the lurch.
- Chancellor Angela Merkel plans to take control from Germany’s federal states to impose restrictions on regions recording high numbers of new coronavirus infections, according to reports. Health minister Jens Spahn has said the country needs a national lockdown.
- Leading hospitals in India’s most coronavirus-hit state halted vaccinations today, citing shortages as infections across the country crossed 13 million and set a new daily record.
- Sweden’s climate campaigner Greta Thunberg has said she will not attend the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow this November, citing “inequitable vaccine distribution”.
- Police in Norway have fined prime minister Erna Solberg for breaking Covid-19 social distancing rules when organising a family gathering to celebrate her birthday.
- The manufacturer of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine has claimed that while it is less effective against the “South African” coronavirus variant, it is more effective against it than other vaccines.
- The UK’s transport secretary, Grant Shapps, has said that the public could “start to think” about foreign holidays this summer.
- Gibraltar has become one of the first places in the world to vaccinate the bulk of its adult population against Covid-19, allowing virus restrictions to be lifted and life to almost return to normal.
That’s it from me, Martin Belam, today. I will see you next week. Jedidajah Otte will be along in a moment to take you through the rest of the day’s global coronavirus news. And if you want our UK covid and politics live blog, then Yohannes Lowe has that over here.
Updated
Also in France, president Emmanuel Macron has been visiting the Delpharm vaccine production facility in Saint-Remy-sur-Avre, west of Paris.
The plant started bottling Pfizer vaccines this week as France tries to make its mark on global vaccine production, and speed up vaccinations of French people amid a new virus surge. While he was there, Reuters report that Macron said that French healthcare company Sanofi’s plans for a domestic Covid-19 shot is making some progress.
Updated
French police detain chef and businessman over secret restaurant scandal
French police have detained for questioning the leading chef Christophe Leroy and flamboyant businessman Pierre-Jean Chalencon after accusations they organised clandestine restaurant dinners for top figures in defiance of Covid-19 restrictions, prosecutors said.
The M6 television channel had broadcast footage recorded with a hidden camera purportedly from a clandestine restaurant in an affluent district of Paris where neither the staff nor the diners were wearing masks.
All restaurants and cafes have been closed in France for eating in for the last five months. The country this week began a new limited nationwide lockdown to deal with surging Covid-19 infections.
Chalencon, who owns the luxury Palais Vivienne venue in the centre of Paris that was allegedly used for such an event, had told the channel that several such dinners had taken place and even ministers had attended. He later backtracked from this remark and the government has vehemently denied that any ministers have been involved.
AFP note that Paris prosecutor Remy Heitz said Sunday that a criminal probe had been opened into putting the lives of others at risk. Police on Thursday searched the premises of the Palais Vivienne and a similar search had been carried on Wednesday at the home of Christophe Leroy.
Leroy’s lawyer Thierry Fradet said his client had submitted documents that showed that any dinners he had organised were in private homes – in line with the current rules – and not secret restaurants.
Updated
Merkel plan to pass new law to force Covid measures onto German states – reports
There’s just a little bit more here from Reuters on developments in Germany. They are reporting that Chancellor Angela Merkel plans to take control from federal states to impose restrictions on regions recording high numbers of new coronavirus infections.
“The federal government plans to introduce draft legislation next week, in close coordination with the states, that includes a binding and comprehensive emergency break for districts with an incidence of 100 and up,” a source told Reuters.
At an infection rate of less than 100 per 100,000 people over seven days, the states will retain control over measures to slow the spread of the virus.
Germany is struggling to tackle a third wave of the pandemic, and Merkel and several regional leaders have called for a short, sharp lockdown while the country tries to vaccinate more people.
A meeting of Chancellor Merkel and the leaders of Germany’s 16 states scheduled for Monday, at which they were to discuss an extension to Covid restrictions, has been cancelled, the government source told Reuters.
Health minister Jens Spahn earlier today warned that nationwide measures were necessary to break the current wave of coronavirus infections as quickly as possible. He told journalists that there were currently nearly 4,500 patients in intensive care in Germany, adding: “If this continues, it will be too much for our health system.”
Greta Thunberg to skip COP26 conference over 'inequitable vaccine distribution'
The Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg has said she will not attend the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow this November, saying the uneven rollout of Covid-19 vaccine campaigns would mean countries could not participate on even terms.
The 18-year-old activist said she deplored the fact that by November richer countries would be vaccinating young healthy people “very often at the expense of people in risk groups in other parts of the world”.
“With the extremely inequitable vaccine distribution I will not attend the Cop26 conference if the development continues as it is now,” Thunberg told AFP.
She said the conference should be postponed “if everyone could not attend in the same terms”.
The conference has already been postponed once as it was originally planned for November 2020. However, the campaigner said she did not rule out reversing her decision if vaccine access improved.
“Of course I would love to attend the Cop26. But not unless everyone can take part on the same terms,” Thunberg said.
Updated
Some Polish doctors and nurses are just taking naps between shifts as they fight a third wave of the coronavirus, the health minister said this morning, amid reports of medical staff using oxygen and intravenous drips to boost their energy.
However, he believes that the Poland may have passed the peak of infections. The country of 38 million, report 768 coronavirus-related deaths on Friday, after the number of deaths hit a new record of 954 on Thursday – albeit because that number incorporated some unrecorded deaths from the Easter weekend.
“This is indeed a war and the situation requires non-standard behaviours,” Adam Niedzielski told radio RMF 24. “These are the toughest, the most difficult pictures, which reflect the burden of this work,” he said when asked to comment on some doctors’ using drips and oxygen to regain strength to work.
“When I visited a temporary hospital in Katowice I saw doctors and nurses sleeping to rest in between their shifts. The intensity of work is significant, which results from the deficit of personnel,” Niedzielski said.
Agnieszka Barteczko and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk note for Reuters that Poland recorded high numbers of new cases last week at about 35,000 a day and on Wednesday the government extended restrictions until 18 April, keeping kindergartens, schools, shopping centres, hotels, cinemas and theatres closed.
“If we look at the course of the number of new infections, it seems that the apogee of infections is behind us,” Niedzielski told a press conference, warning against complacency.
“The pandemic is still a real threat and the fact that we see some slight falls is absolutely not a signal which would allow us to think that we have the worst behind … Now we will have to do with an apogee, so to say, in hospitals,” he said.
Updated
India's vaccination programme halted in some areas amid supply crisis
Leading hospitals in India’s most coronavirus-hit state halted vaccinations today, citing shortages as infections across the country crossed 13 million and set a new daily record.
The nation of 1.3 billion is confronting a ferocious second wave that has brought the fastest infection rate since the pandemic began, with nearly 132,000 cases recorded in the past 24 hours.
AFP reports city authorities in the financial hub of Mumbai saying that one out of three private hospitals administering jabs ran out of supplies yesterday.
The situation at government-run inoculation centres was not much better, with a giant 1,000-bed field hospital turning away people arriving for their first dose on Friday morning.
“There is a shortage of vaccines so the programme has been halted,” Heeba Patwe, a doctor at a facility inoculating 5,000 people daily, told AFP.
India’s vast vaccination programme – which has already administered 94m shots – is reportedly facing major supply snags in the quest to inoculate its huge population. The Times of India reported that states on average had just over five days of stock left, according to health ministry data, with some regions already grappling with severe shortages.
The health minister of Maharashtra state, the epicentre of the pandemic, warned on Wednesday that it would not be able to continue vaccinations beyond the weekend unless stocks were replenished. In the state’s badly hit city of Pune, two leading private hospitals told AFP they had run out of vaccines and would be unable to inoculate anyone until fresh supplies arrived.
“We halted vaccinations yesterday and we expect to remain shut for the next two or three days,” an official at Pune’s Noble Hospital said Friday.
Deepak Baid, president of the Association of Medical Consultants in Mumbai, told AFP the situation was becoming increasingly dire. “Vaccination is the need of the hour, it is the best weapon we have against Covid,” he said.
Production capacity at India’s Serum Institute, the world’s largest vaccine maker by volume, is “very stressed”, the firm’s CEO, Adar Poonawalla, said earlier this week, calling for financial help from the government.
Updated
France to give under-55s who received AstraZeneca jab a second dose of different vaccine
French health minister, Olivier Véran, has said authorities are set to rule that under 55s who received a first injection of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine can be given a jab from a different producer for their second dose.
France’s national health authority HAS last month said that the AstraZeneca vaccine should only be given to those aged 55 and over, due to the reports of potentially deadly blood clots in a very small number of those younger people vaccinated.
Officials in France initially said that those given the AstraZeneca jab in a first dose should go ahead with the second jab even if aged under 55, but Veran indicated that the HAS would now change that advice.
“This will be confirmed today, it is totally logical,” said Véran.
AFP reports that France has been injecting healthworkers as a priority group in the vaccination drive, meaning that many younger people have already received the AstraZeneca jab due to their work.
As Véran noted, they included the minister himself, a neurologist aged 41, who was given the AstraZeneca vaccine live on television on 8 February. “It is completely consistent to say that we do not recommend the AstraZeneca vaccine to people under 55 years of age while we learn more,” he said.
“Therefore, if you have received a first injection and are under 55 years old, you will be offered another vaccine 12 weeks after the first injection,” he added.
Europe’s medicines regulator said this week the AstraZeneca vaccine could cause very rare blood clots among some recipients, prompting several countries to to scale up restrictions on the jab.
There are several clinical trials under way looking at the efficacy of combining two types of coronavirus vaccine – testing the technique known as heterologous prime-boosting. Experts say the theory is sound and, as with some other diseases, it could help convey effective immunity.
“Based on previous studies which combine different vaccine types, a combination of the AZ and Pfizer vaccines is likely to be safe but it’s important that this is tested in the context of a clinical vaccine trial,” said Helen Fletcher, professor of Immunology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Updated
Norway prime minister fined by police over virus rules violation
Norwegian police said on Friday they had fined prime minister Erna Solberg for breaking Covid-19 social distancing rules when organising a family gathering to celebrate her birthday.
Reuters report the fine is for 20,000 Norwegian crowns (£1,715 GBP/$2,352 USD) police chief Ole Saeverud told a news conference.
The two-term prime minister apologised last month for organising an event to celebrate her 60th birthday with 13 family members at a mountain resort in late February, despite a government ban on events attended by more than 10 people.
While the police would not have issued a fine in most such cases, the prime minister has been at the forefront of the government’s work to impose restrictions, the police said.
“Though the law is the same for all, all are not equal in front of the law,” said Saeverud, justifying the fine.
Updated
German health minister says: 'We need a lockdown'
Germany needs to implement nationwide measures to break the current wave of coronavirus infections as quickly as possible, its health minister said this morning.
“We need a lockdown,” Jens Spahn told journalists in a news conference, adding that nighttime curfews may be necessary to further reduce social contacts.
Reuters report him saying that there were nearly 4,500 patients in intensive care in Germany, adding: “If this continues, it will be too much for our health system.”
Updated
My colleague Yohannes Lowe has launched our UK live blog for the day, so if you want to follow UK Covid and politics news, then that is the place to head …
I’ll still be here bringing you the coronavirus news from around the rest of the world.
Updated
Gibraltar has become one of the first places in the world to vaccinate the bulk of its adult population against Covid-19, allowing virus restrictions to be lifted and life to almost return to normal.
AFP report that since the end of March, masks are only required in enclosed public spaces, shops and on public transport. And a curfew between midnight and 5am was also lifted, boosting business at bars and restaurants, which only reopened on 1 March after months of restrictions.
Popular spots are once again buzzing with people enjoying a meal or a drink. Gino Jimenez, the chairman of the Gibraltar Catering Association who also runs a popular eatery, said it was “especially gratifying” to see vulnerable seniors finally “out of their homes and safe”.
Gibraltar chief minister Fabian Picardo announced Thursday that rules restricting gatherings to no more than 16 people will be eliminated as of 16 April. And as of Monday there will no longer be any limit on the numbers who can sit together at a bar or restaurant.
In Gibraltar, with a population of 34,000, the pandemic claimed 94 lives, most this January and February, and infected nearly 4,300 residents. But thanks to the vaccine drive, there have been no virus-related hospitalisations for more than two weeks
Since “Operation Freedom” began in January, Gibraltar has fully inoculated 85% of the population. “It is a huge relief,” health minister Samantha Sacramento told AFP at her office atop the only hospital. She credits the enclave’s small size and a steady supply of vaccines – Pfizer and AstraZeneca – for the swift rollout.
“During the first weeks, we were vaccinating seven days a week. It was literally a conveyer belt,” said Sacramento, the only woman in Gibraltar’s cabinet. Frontline hospital staff and elderly care home residents and workers were the first in line.
Those who receive both doses of the jab are issued with a vaccination card that can be used to attend mass events or to travel. Last week Gibraltar’s Victoria Stadium welcomed 600 fully vaccinated people for the territory’s World Cup football qualifier against the Netherlands.
And on 27 March, 500 spectators watched a top heavyweight boxing match at Gibraltar’s Europa Sports Complex. In both cases, fans also had to test negative on the day of the event.
Rafael Cordon, a 63-year-old chef who commutes daily to work in the British territory from the Spanish town of San Roque said he was grateful to Gibraltar for being able to get fully vaccinated so quickly. He said there was now a big contrast between both places.
Being in Spain, where mask-wearing in public is compulsory and night curfews are in place, is “like being inside a fishbowl where your movements are limited,” he said. “Then you cross over to this side and it is like going from one world to another. This is an oasis right now.”
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The US vaccination programme continues to gather pace. Madeline Holcombe reports for CNN:
As the US aims to ramp up inoculations to win the race against Covid-19 variants, more than one in four adults are now fully vaccinated. Officials and experts hope to get Americans vaccinated quickly as lockdown fatigue takes its toll and many people are letting down their guard just as more transmissible, and perhaps more deadly, variants of the virus become dominant. In that effort, all 50 states have committed to opening vaccinations to all Americans 16 and up by 19 April.
The US is still averaging above 60,000 new cases a day – a level Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease, said puts the US at risk for another surge. Experts are especially concerned about the spread of the B.1.1.7 variant, first identified in the UK and now the dominant strain in the US.
“I wish we had another three or four months before this B.1.1.7 variant surge started to occur,” Dr. Michael Osterholm, director for the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said this week.
As states including California and Vermont plan to fully reopen this summer, experts are warning that to truly declare victory against the variants, Americans need to get vaccinated and continue measures like social distancing and mask wearing.
Read more here: CNN – More than 1 in 4 US adults are fully vaccinated against Covid-19
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Maria Kiselyova for Reuters reports that Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus shot is less effective against the South African variant – but the manufacturer is claiming that it still does better than other vaccines
The lead scientist behind it, Alexander Gintsburg, has been cited by the Interfax news agency as saying: “With regards to the ‘South African’ strain, the effictiveness of the antibodies produced by Sputnik V, like all other vaccines, against it declines.”
The Sputnik V shot has become embroiled in a controversy in Slovakia, where the health agency has claimed that the vaccines delivered to it are not the same as the Sputnik V vaccines that were tested in clinical trials.
There is a lot of frustration in Australia about the distribution of vaccines not matching the efficiency with which the country initially tried to squash Covid. Christopher Knaus reports for us:
Australia could have been manufacturing vaccines like Pfizer already had it acted early on calls to develop onshore mRNA capability, experts say.
The AstraZeneca announcement on Thursday has left the vaccine rollout in a state of disarray, and heavily reliant on securing more imports of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which has already achieved provisional approval by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.
Unlike the AstraZeneca vaccine, which can be produced at CSL’s Melbourne facilities, there is no current capability to produce mRNA vaccines in Australia.
For months, the Australian Academy of Science and mRNA experts have urged the Australian government to help develop a domestic mRNA manufacturing capability. That capability has not been developed.
In February, the academy used a pre-budget submission to warn Australia and the region would be vulnerable to supply limitations without the ability to produce mRNA vaccines.
Associate professor Archa Fox, a leading mRNA expert with the University of Western Australia, said it was frustrating that the country was yet to develop mRNA manufacturing capability.
But she said it was not too late.
Fox said it was difficult to be too critical of government, given the uncertainty around the various vaccine candidates – particularly the relatively new RNA vaccine technologies – in the early stages of the pandemic.
“It is a little frustrating because even if lots of people jumped in now, it still would take at least probably a year, even with plenty of investment,” she told the Guardian. “But that’s not too late for boosters against variants and all that sort of stuff.”
Even with manufacturing capability, the government still would have needed to achieve a licensing agreement with pharmaceutical companies to produce local versions of their mRNA vaccines.
Read more of Christopher Knaus’ report here: Frustrated experts say Australia could already be producing mRNA Covid vaccines if it had acted earlier
Dispute grows over Serum Institute of India vaccine supplies to COVAX programme
The Serum Institute of India (SII) is legally compelled to ship coronavirus vaccine to global vaccine sharing facility Covax, its co-lead Gavi has told Reuters, a provision that could complicate the SII’s efforts to boost domestic supplies. Gavi is a public–private global health partnership which says it has the goal of increasing access to immunisation in poor countries.
India, where infections have surged to 13.06 million, suspended all major exports of vaccines last month to fill demand at home, forcing the world’s biggest vaccine maker to divert nearly all its production to the domestic market, and meaning reduced supplies for nations expecting vaccine shipments.
“The agreement is legally binding and served as a basis for the first-round allocation document, which has been communicated to all participating economies,” a Gavi spokeswoman said in an email to Reuters.
The pact specified Gavi would receive from SII 1.1bn doses of either the AstraZeneca vaccine or that of Novavax , with 200 million committed, and the rest on option. SII partner AstraZeneca has already issued it a legal notice over delays to other shipments, even as many Indian states have complained of a shortage facing priority recipients.
From an initial August target of vaccine coverage for 300 million of its highest-risk people, or just over a fifth of its population of 1.35 billion, India has upped the figure by about 100 million, adding pressure on SII to crank up supplies.
India could resume vaccine exports by June, the firm’s chief executive, Adar Poonawalla, told the media this week. However he also said that the Indian government needed to provide the SII with financial assistance, as the revenue lost from being unable to export was hampering efforts to ramp up production.
On Thursday, the foreign ministry said domestic demand would determine the extent of India’s exports. It has already shipped 64.5m doses and given out 92m at home.
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By the way, if you want a refresher on the developments with the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine this week, then my colleagues Nicola Davis and Jon Henley have put together this guide to what the medical regulators in the UK and Europe said about the risk of blood clots as a side effect, and how different countries have reacted.
It is a complex scenario balancing the risks of the rare blood clot type that may be linked to the vaccine, and the risk of blood clots and other potential outcomes of catching Covid-19. Read it in full here: What do I need to know about the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine?
Hong Kong suspends its order of AstraZeneca jabs
Hong Kong has confirmed this morning that it has requested AstraZeneca suspend delivery of its Covid-19 vaccine amid fears of side-effects and concerns over its efficacy against new variants of the coronavirus.
Hong Kong’s health chief, Sophia Chan, said the city has asked AstraZeneca not to deliver as planned later this year. “We think it is not necessary for AstraZeneca to deliver the vaccines to the city within this year,” she said, adding Hong Kong wanted “to avoid any waste as vaccines are in short supply globally”.
Hong Kong has already secured a decent supply of vaccines for its 7.5 million residents, with deals for 7.5m shots each with BioNTech/Pfizer and China’s Sinovac, both of which have begun deliveries.
Chan said Hong Kong was also keen to look at other vaccines that may have stronger results against newer strains of the coronavirus.
Earlier this week, David Hui, a leading public health expert and government adviser, called for Hong Kong to replace AstraZeneca with a new single dose vaccine made by Johnson and Johnson.
While it has a steady supply of vaccines, take-up has been slow amid swirling distrust of the government. So far just 529,000 people have had their first dose. There has also been public concern that China’s Sinovac vaccine received fast-track approval despite not publishing its clinical trial data in a peer reviewed journal.
Worries over the AstraZeneca shot have spread worldwide after Europe’s medicines regulator said this week it could cause very rare blood clots in some recipients, prompting some countries to stop giving it to people under a certain age.
Late in March, Hong Kong had previously suspended the use of Pfizer/BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine after discovering a packaging problem affecting one batch of vials.
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An extremely quick snap from Reuters here, that Finland plans to gradually ease the country’s Covid-19 restrictions towards the summer.
Prime minister Sanna Marin added a note of caution at a news conference this morning though, saying that the spread of the virus is still severe and that the restrictions should not be lifted prematurely.
UK transport secretary: public could now 'start to think' about foreign holidays
The UK’s transport secretary, Grant Shapps, has said that the public could now “start to think” about foreign holidays this summer.
Asked if people could start to book foreign holidays now, he told Sky News: “I’m not telling people that they shouldn’t book summer holidays now, it’s the first time that I’ve been able to say that for many months.
“But I think everybody doing it understands there are risks with coronavirus and of course actually, I think people would want to be clear about which countries are going to be in the different traffic light system.
“So there is only two or three weeks to wait before we publish that list itself. But yes, tentative progress, for the first time, people can start to think about visiting loved ones abroad, or perhaps a summer holiday.
“But we’re doing it very, very cautiously, because we don’t want to see any return of coronavirus in this country”, PA Media reports him saying.
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There’s a grim despatch from Agence France-Presse about the situation in the Philippines this morning. In a bid to slow the spread of the virus and decongest hospitals, authorities in the Philippines last month ordered more than 24 million people in the capital and four neighbouring provinces to stay home unless they are essential workers.
A week after lockdown was imposed, 70-80 percent of hospital beds for Covid-19 patients were full, while ICU beds were “almost 100 percent” occupied in most of the capital, Health Undersecretary Maria Vergeire said.
“It’s a dire situation – it is the worst nightmare of a hospital manager happening in reality,” said Jaime Almora, president of the Philippine Hospital Association.
Leland Ustare, an anaesthesiologist at St Luke’s Medical Center, said some patients were spending days in the emergency room waiting for an intensive care bed. “This time is even worse than last year,” Ustare said, referring to the first few months of the pandemic. The numbers are really worse.”
AFP report that the government is distributing modular tents to struggling hospitals and re-deploying health workers from regions where virus transmission rates are low. Isolation facilities were being expanded to include schools and hotel rooms for mild cases in an effort to ease the burden and stop the virus spreading in crowded households.
Almora said the problem in hospitals was a lack of health workers, not beds. “The hospitals have the capacity, they have the beds, but they cannot expand their capability because of the manpower problem,” he said.
Some nurses have resigned out of fear of catching the virus or gone abroad to work in hospitals where the risks were the same but the pay higher, he said. Government insurance restrictions on copayments was also deterring smaller facilities from accepting Covid-19 patients, Almora added.
The country’s caseload of more than 828,000 – the second highest in south-east Asia – is expected to top a million before the end of April. President Rodrigo Duterte, whose government has been under fire over its handling of the pandemic and vaccine rollout, warned last week of “bleak months” ahead.
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There’s been some more to-and-fro in the UK over government plans to allow foreign travel from England in the summer. Transport secretary Grant Shapps told Sky News the Government would give more information on when foreign holidays could be allowed before 17 May, which is the earliest possible date in the road map for international travel to resume.
“What we’ve got today is a framework for doing that, so there’s a traffic light system you have been talking about – red, amber, green,” he said. “And in the green category, we’ll try to make it as affordable as possible to travel.”
“But taking an abundance of caution as we go, because we don’t want to throw away all the good work of these lockdowns and people coming forward for vaccines by picking up variants of concern or anything else. So it’s a cautious move but at least it provides that framework for people.”
But on BBC Breakfast, the shadow home secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds, said the government has not given enough detail about its traffic light travel system for it to be properly scrutinised by MPs.
“The problem that I have is that the system hasn’t been outlined in detail. The government has spoken about factors like vaccination rates, infection rates, the position with variants and also about the level of genomic sequencing – but I have no idea what the levels of each of those are, for the government to place countries into the green category, amber or red.
“And instead what we’ve had this week, once again, is this system being drip-fed into the media day by day. We then have it announced on a day when parliament isn’t sitting, so we can’t go to the Commons and ask either the home secretary or the transport secretary to set out the details of this. That’s extremely frustrating.”
You can find more details of what has been said here: Covid plan for England – trips abroad could be permitted from May
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Australians left in lurch as AstraZeneca Covid vaccine advice changes
Here’s Melissa Davey with the latest on the vaccination rollout in Australia:
States and territories have been left scrambling to respond to government advice recommending against vaccinating anyone under 50 with the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, leaving tens of thousands of people in the lurch.
On Friday, New South Wales halted its AstraZeneca rollout entirely for several hours while patient consent forms with the latest information about the rare risk of severe clotting associated with the vaccine were added. The state’s rollout for people aged 50 and over has since resumed.
“As with all other vaccines, informed consent is required before administering Covid-19 vaccines, ensuring recipients make decisions based on an understanding of the risks and benefits,” a NSW health spokesman said. “AstraZeneca vaccinations for those aged 50 years and over will recommence later today.”
Meanwhile Western Australia has barred anyone under the age of 50 from getting the AstraZeneca vaccine. The chief health officer, Andrew Robertson, said effective from Friday: “People under 50 who are booked in to receive their AstraZeneca vaccine will have their appointments cancelled.”
People in the 1a and 1b vaccination program cohorts – including health workers – who are under 50 and have already received their first AstraZeneca vaccine, should “not be alarmed” and proceed to get their second jab, he said. “You should not cancel your second vaccination booking,” he said.
The Tasmanian government put an immediate hold on any first dose AstraZeneca vaccinations for people aged under 50, with the premier, Peter Gutwein, saying the state government was working through what the latest advice would mean for the ongoing rollout.
The advice to the federal government from the Australian Technical Advisory Group for Immunisation (Atagi) does not say all people under 50 should not receive the vaccine, but rather says the alternative Pfizer vaccine is “preferred”. The difficulty is Australia has low supply of the Pfizer vaccine, and GPs can not readily offer it to everyone as an alternative.
Read more of Melissa Davey’s report here: Tens of thousands of Australians left in the lurch as AstraZeneca Covid vaccine advice changes
Hungary delays school re-opening by 3 weeks
Yesterday Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s chief of staff Gergely Gulyás was bullish about Hungarian schools reopening in 19 April as planned.
Today, Orbán himself is not. Reuters report that he’s just announced on state radio that school reopenings will be pushed back three weeks to 10 May.
Orban also said he expects 3.5 million of Hungary’s 10 million people to be vaccinated with at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine by 19 April.
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Whether people can easily fly abroad for summer holidays is proving to be quite the battleground in the UK. This morning Heathrow airport chief executive John Holland-Kaye has welcomed the UK government’s proposed traffic light system approach to travel – where countries will be graded at different risk levels according to their infection and vaccination numbers. However, he’s not impressed with the proposed testing regime that goes with it.
PA Media quotes him telling BBC Breakfast “It’s good news that we now have flying opened up again from 17 May at the earliest, and I think the risk-based approach with this traffic light system is a good step forward.
“All of us will welcome the fact that if you are going to a country that is green, where there’s very low risk of variants of concern, very low levels of Covid, that you won’t need to quarantine when you’re back.”
But, he added: “If you are a British citizen, you’ve been fully vaccinated, and are going to somewhere low risk such as Israel or the United States, not only do you have to have a test before you get on the plane coming back to show that you don’t have Covid, you then have to take an expensive PCR test after you arrive to demonstrate again.
“Most people would say: ‘That makes no sense, that’s a bill I shouldn’t have to be paying when I’ve already demonstrated I don’t have Covid’.
“I think there are far better ways of delivering on the prime minister’s promise of quick and easy testing, which we already use, such as taking a lateral flow test to demonstrate you don’t have Covid, and only taking a PCR test if you’ve tested positive, which of course in that case is exceptionally unlikely.”
There may be some eyebrows raised at him including the US as a low risk destination, with experts on that side of the Atlantic concerned about rising case numbers caused by more infectious Covid variants. However, under Joe Biden’s administration the US vaccination programme is cracking along at pace, and by summer should have reached a significant proportion of the adult population.
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The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 25,464 to 2,956,316, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed today. The reported death toll rose by 296 to 78,003, the tally showed.
The country is facing two different crises about its handling of the pandemic – over the procurement of vaccines and over the central imposition of rules to try to contain it.
Yesterday, Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, said he wanted to hold talks with Moscow about obtaining supplies of the Russian vaccine Sputnik V. He said Germany would have no hesitation in acting independently of the EU, indicating his frustration over the bloc’s refusal to engage with the Russian jab’s manufacturers, but he stressed that the vaccine would only be used if it was approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
In the Bundestag, meantime, three parliamentarians are proposing tougher federal laws that would halt Germany’s piecemeal approach to regulations. Some states, such as Saarland, are in the process of reopening public life and the economy even though they have rising numbers. Others, like Hamburg, are introducing new restrictions.
Norbert Röttgen, Johann Wadephul and Yvonne Magwas say their move proposes “giving the federal government additional powers to ensure the enforcement of the national Infection Protection Act by means of a statutory order”. It is sure to meet opposition. It was the lack of willingness of state leaders to agree that caused Angela Merkel to make a rapid U-turn over proposals for a snap Easter lockdown.
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Good morning from London, it’s Martin Belam taking over from Kate Lyons here. PA Media has put together a handy guide to the state of play with Covid restrictions in the UK.
Wales: The Welsh government announced yesterday it had decided to lift restrictions on household mingling a week earlier than planned. Two households will be able to meet indoors from 3 May instead of 10 May.
The reopening of gyms and leisure centres has also been brought forward a week from 10 May to 3 May, including for one-to-one training, although group exercise classes remain banned. Organised outdoor activities for up to 30 people and wedding receptions for up to 30 people will be permitted outdoors from 26 April – again a week earlier than previously announced.
Scotland: As of Good Friday, the stay-at-home order has been lifted across Scotland, allowing people to travel locally for non-essential purposes.
Last Monday, hairdressers and barbers reopened for pre-booked appointments, while click and collect shopping was again permitted, and homeware shops and garden centres began welcoming back customers. In person teaching and outdoor sport also resumed for 12-to 17-year-olds. Scotland is on course to ease restrictions further from 26 April.
Northern Ireland: As of 1 April in Northern Ireland, up to six people from no more than two households have been permitted to meet outdoors in a private garden. Ten people, from no more than two households, are able to participate in outdoor sporting activities.
Golf courses have reopened, although clubhouses must remain closed, and click-and-collect purchases from garden centres and plant nurseries are now allowed.
England: As of 29 March, rules in England were eased to allow groups of up to six people, from any number of households, or a group of any size from up to two households, to gather in parks and gardens, The Government’s “stay at home” order was replaced with “stay local” and people are still asked to work from home where possible, and overseas travel remains banned.
Outdoor sports facilities such as tennis and basketball courts reopened, with organised adult and children’s sport - including grassroots football - able to return.
From 12 April at the earliest, shops, hairdressers, nail salons, libraries and outdoor hospitality venues such as beer gardens will be allowed to reopen. Most outdoor attractions, such as zoos and theme parks, can reopen, although wider social distancing rules will still apply to prevent indoor mixing between different households.
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Summary
- South Korea will reimpose a ban on nightclubs, karaoke bars and other nightly entertainment facilities, as cases grow. “Signs of a fourth wave of epidemics that we had so striven to head off are drawing nearer and becoming stronger,” said prime minister Chung Sye-kyun.
- In Japan, Tokyo has asked the central government for permission to implement emergency measures to curb a surge in a rapidly spreading and more contagious coronavirus variant, just over three months before the start of the Olympics.
- In Australia, the government’s announcement last night that people under 50 should not receive the AstraZeneca vaccine due to risk of blood clots, unless it is clear the benefits outweigh the risks, has been wreaking havoc with Australia’s already fraught vaccine rollout.
- France’s top health body is reportedly set to announce today that recipients of a first dose of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine who are under 55 should get a second shot with a new-style messenger-RNA vaccine.
- The bad news from Thailand continued on Friday, as the south-east Asian nation reported 559 new coronavirus cases and one new death. At least 12 hospitals in Thailand’s capital, Bangkok, said as of Friday they were suspending testing for Covid-19 due to high demand and shortage of supplies, amid a new spike in cases.
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Hopes are rising for foreign holidays to be permitted from 17 May, with the public given a “watchlist” of countries whose quarantine status is at risk of changing to help with planning and to avoid the chaos of last summer.
Under the proposals, countries will be placed in a traffic light system with green, amber and red lists that will set out whether, and where, travellers must isolate on returning to England, government officials confirmed.
A “watchlist” will be drawn up to identify countries that could switch from green to amber, to help passengers plan in advance, the Department for Transport (DfT) has said.
The bad news from Thailand continued on Friday, as the south-east Asian nation reported 559 new coronavirus cases and one new death.
The new cases took the total number of infections to 30,869, with 96 deaths.
At least 12 hospitals in Thailand’s capital, Bangkok, said as of Friday they were suspending testing for Covid-19 due to high demand and shortage of supplies, amid a new spike in cases.
Bangkok is at the centre of a new outbreak in Thailand that has seen new cases go from only a few dozen per day to several hundred per day, prompting the government to scramble to boost testing and trace new cases.
The government has been hosting its own mass testing in districts of Bangkok where clusters have been reported, mostly involving bars or entertainment venues that have been ordered closed for two weeks.
Thailand reported 405 new Covid-19 infections on Thursday, and nearly a third of cabinet ministers are self-isolating due to potential exposure to cases.
The spike in infections comes at a tricky time for Thailand, ahead of next week’s annual Songkran festival, known for big gatherings and notoriously crowded water fights that authorities have banned.
Back to Australia, where the vaccine rollout is facing a major shake-up after the federal government released advice last night to avoid giving the AstraZeneca vaccine to under-50s amid fears of a potential link to unusual blood clots.
The advice will have serious repercussions for Australia’s vaccine rollout strategy, given the only current alternative vaccine, Pfizer, is in low supply, and a third option, known as the Novavax vaccine, is still being considered by Australia’s drugs regulator. If approved, the federal government doesn’t see this vaccine becoming available until mid-year.
So, what triggered Thursday night’s change in position and what do we know about the risk of these blood clots? Guardian Australia’s medical editor Melissa Davey answers your questions here.
France’s top health body is set to announce today that recipients of a first dose of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine who are under 55 should get a second shot with a new-style messenger-RNA vaccine, according to two sources aware of the plans.
Two mRNA vaccines, one from Pfizer and BioNTech and one from Moderna, are approved for use in France.
Messenger RNA vaccines prompt the human body to make a protein that mimics part of the virus, triggering an immune response, while traditional vaccines such as AstraZeneca’s use an inactivated virus to carry a protein from the pathogen to do the same thing.
Vaccination programmes have stuttered in Europe and elsewhere in the last month, since a very few mostly young recipients of the AstraZeneca shot were found to have suffered extremely unusual blood clots, leading some countries to suspend its use as a precaution.
Most have resumed using the shot, although some have done so with age restrictions.
In France, the HAS advised on March 19 that only people aged 55 and over should receive the AstraZeneca vaccine, which had already been given to 500,000 people as a first dose.
While the numbers are small compared with the tens of millions being inoculated across the EU, a decision to give a different booster shot would be significant because the approach has not been tested in late-stage human trials.
In Australia, the government’s announcement last night that people under 50 should not receive the AstraZeneca vaccine due to risk of blood clots, unless it is clear the benefits outweigh the risks, has been wreaking havoc with Australia’s already fraught vaccine rollout.
On Friday, doctors’ clinics in Australia were inundated with calls from confused patients after Thursday’s vaccine announcement, with at least one GP warning has warned his clinic is considering withdrawing from the rollout due to delivery failures, “farcical” bureaucracy and a government funding model he says is inadequate.
Australia’s vaccine rollout, which has just reached the 1m mark, has so far administered 400,000 AstraZeneca doses, with just one instance of the blood clot issue, which has shown up in Britain and the European Union, where the rollout is further advanced.
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, told reporters in Canberra the Australian government had taken “necessary precautions” and acted on the “best medical advice” although the decision was one of the “setbacks and heartbreaks” in Australia’s Covid-19 journey, which was otherwise world-beating in its success.
Morrison was frank that it was “too early to say” what impact the development would have on the timetable of the rollout, which has already missed its target of 4m by April (by 3.4m doses) and the promise Australians would be fully vaccinated by October.
Speaking on Friday, Morrison said it was unclear what the new targets were for the country’s vaccine rollout, saying: “We’re not in a position at the moment to reconfirm a timetable.”
Hello and welcome to today’s coronavirus coverage. I’m Kate Lyons and I’ll be kicking things off.
Today we start with some concerning news from Asia, where various countries are looking at fears of a fourth wave of the virus.
South Korea will reimpose a ban on nightclubs, karaoke bars and other nightly entertainment facilities, authorities said on Friday, after the number of new coronavirus cases surged.
“Signs of a fourth wave of epidemics that we had so striven to head off are drawing nearer and becoming stronger,” Chung told a daily meeting on the pandemic.
Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun announced the curbs, which take effect on Monday for three weeks, after daily new case counts climbed to a three-month high in recent days.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) reported 671 new cases for Thursday, a day after the daily tally hit the highest level since early January, with clusters developing from churches, bars and gyms, mostly in the greater Seoul area.
Meanwhile in Japan, Tokyo has asked Japan’s central government for permission to implement emergency measures to curb a surge in a rapidly spreading and more contagious coronavirus variant, just over three months before the start of the Olympics.
Tokyo’s step follows Osaka in western Japan, which declared a medical emergency after its hospitals became overwhelmed with new cases.
Tokyo, which only came out of a state of emergency on 21 March, reported 545 cases on Thursday. Koike said she is alarmed by the rapid spread of the new variants, especially one initially detected in Britain.
“It would be a matter of time before Tokyo faces a situation similar to Osaka,” Koike said.
