We are closing this blog now, but you can stay up to date on all our coverage across on our new blog below:
The US has finalised an order for 200m more vaccine doses – 100m doses each from Pfizer and Moderna – to be delivered by the end of July, Joe Biden confirmed on Monday.
Speaking at the National Institutes of Health on Thursday, the president touted his team’s early efforts to expand access to coronavirus vaccines, and criticised Donald Trump’s strategy for distributing vaccines, saying the last administration did not order enough doses or mobilise enough people to administer shots.
“My predecessor, to be very blunt about it, did not do his job,” Biden said.
Biden also celebrated that the US is on track to exceed his goal of 100m vaccine doses distributed over his first 100 days in office, but he emphasised Americans still had to take precautions to limit the spread of the virus.
“Mask up, America. Mask up,” Biden said.
We reported earlier on Brazil reporting 54,742 additional confirmed Covid cases in the past 24 hours, along with 1,351 deaths. That brings the total number of cases in the country to 9.7 million, and the death toll to 236,000.
In further news, Reuters reports:
A coronavirus variant identified in the Brazilian Amazon may be three times more contagious but early analysis suggests vaccines are still effective against it, the country’s health minister said on Thursday, without providing evidence for the claims.
Under pressure as the variant hammers the jungle city of Manaus with a devastating second wave of infections, health minister Eduardo Pazuello sought to reassure lawmakers that the surge of recent months was unexpected but coming under control.
He also told a Senate hearing that Brazil would vaccinate half its eligible population by June and the rest by the end of the year, an ambitious target as the country has barely guaranteed doses for half the population.
Brazil began immunizations with vaccines made by China’s Sinovac Biotech and Britain’s AstraZeneca about three weeks ago. Pazuello did not explain how their effectiveness against the Manaus variant was analyzed.
“Thank God, we had clear news from the analysis that the vaccines still have an effect against this variant,” Pazuello said. “But it is more contagious. By our analysis, it is three time more contagious.”
The Health Ministry, which has not provided information about any such analysis, did not immediately respond to a request for more information.
The Butantan institute in Sao Paulo, which has partnered with Sinovac to test and produce the Chinese vaccine, said in a statement that it had begun studies regarding the Manaus variant but would not have a conclusion for two weeks.
The Fiocruz biomedical center in Rio de Janeiro, which has partnered with AstraZeneca to fill and finish doses of its vaccine developed with Oxford University, said it is studying its efficacy against the Amazon variant, sent samples to Oxford and is awaiting results.
Good morning/afternoon/evening, wherever these words find you. Ben Doherty here in Sydney taking over our continuing coverage of the global coronavirus pandemic. My many thanks to my colleagues, all around the world, who’ve been helming this coverage so far.
To further troubling news of a different, potential epidemic. The Democratic Republic of Congo is trying to contain an Ebola outbreak.
AFP reports:
A second person has died of Ebola in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo following a resurgence of the disease, three months after authorities declared the end of the country’s latest outbreak, the WHO said on Thursday.
The second victim was a female 60-year-old farm worker who died on Wednesday, the World Health Organisation’s country office said.
The woman was linked to the first fatality in the Biena health zone of North Kivu province, it added.
That first case involved a woman, the wife of an Ebola survivor, who died on February 3.
The WHO’s Africa office said at the time that the first victim had died in an area that had previously been one of the epicentres of the latest outbreak, near the town of Butembo.
Since the West African Ebola crisis of 2013-16 - which left 11,300 dead across the region - the WHO has eyed each new outbreak with great concern, treating the most recent Congolese epidemic as an international health emergency.
DR Congo had on November 18 declared that the epidemic, which lasted nearly six months in the northwestern province of Equateur, was over. It was the country’s eleventh Ebola outbreak, claiming 55 lives out of 130 cases.
The last person declared recovered from Ebola in Equateur was on October 16.
The widespread use of vaccinations, which were administered to more than 40,000 people, helped curb the disease.
The return of the virus in the country’s northeast - a region plagued by violence between armed groups - comes as the vast African country is also fighting its own Covid-19 outbreak, with 681 deaths to date.
That is it from me tonight. I will now be handing the blog over to my colleague Ben Doherty in Sydney who will bring you all the latest news from Australia.
Summary
Here is a quick re-cap of recent Covid-related events in the UK and around the world:
- Portugal has extended a lockdown until 1 March or perhaps later to tackle its worst surge of Covid-19 infections since the pandemic began.
- People in the US who have received a full course of Covid vaccine can skip the standard two week quarantine following exposure to someone whose infected as long as they remain asymptomatic, health officials have suggested.
- Ireland, which, according to the latest official figures, has recorded 3,794 Covid related deaths, is set to extend its lockdown until April, prime minister Micheal Martin has said.
- Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has defended her government’s decision to extend Germany’s lockdown into March by highlighting the “very real danger” of a third wave driven by Covid mutations.
- The Philippines is poised to receive 600,000 doses this month of Sinovac Biotech’s vaccine donated by China, a portion of which will be used to inoculate military personnel.
Updated
Frustrated medics in London say they are beginning to run out of patients in the government’s top four priority cohorts to vaccinate and fear that lives will be lost unless they are allowed to immunise more people immediately. Read the full story here first:
Updated
Reuters reports:
The Canadian province of Manitoba said on Thursday it will buy 2 million doses of a Covid-19 vaccine candidate now in early trials, bypassing the national government.
The province’s government has agreed to buy the doses from Alberta-based Providence Therapeutics, premier Brian Pallister said.
The company is developing a candidate similar to those produced by Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc.
Several European countries have offered to help Portugal (see earlier post), with Germany last week sending more than 20 military health workers and medical equipment.
Luxembourg and France also plan to send doctors and nurses to help at Portuguese hospitals, Reuters reports.
Updated
New Zealand will receive its first batch of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine next week, ahead of previous expectations of receipt by the end of the first quarter, prime minister Jacinda Ardern has confirmed.
Ardern said in a news conference in Auckland on Friday that the government expects to start offering the vaccine to border and managed isolation facility workers on 20 February, according to Reuters.
Updated
Brazil recorded 54,742 additional confirmed Covid cases in the past 24 hours, along with 1,351 deaths, the health ministry said on Thursday.
The country has registered more than 9.7 million cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to over 236,000, according to ministry data.
Updated
France’s average count of new Covid cases continued to fall on Thursday and the number of people hospitalised with the disease decreased for a third day running, but the country’s health minister warned about the threat posed by variants.
Reuters reports:
In contrast with some of its neighbours, which are struggling to control more contagious variants, France has resisted resorting to a new lockdown, hoping a national curfew in place since 15 December, first at 8pm then at 6pm, will be enough to contain the pandemic.
But during a press conference, health minister Olivier Véran said the variant first detected in Britain now accounted for 25% of confirmed new cases in France.
“Scientists fear a new epidemic if this variant were to become dominant,” Véran said, adding that the government would decide in coming weeks whether more restrictive measures were necessary.
Updated
Stafford borough council in England has said a resident with no links to international travel has tested positive for the South Africa Covid variant, PA Media reports.
The local authority said there was no evidence of the strain circulating in the community, after confirming the case was picked up by routine laboratory screening following a positive test for coronavirus in January.
The resident has since recovered and contact tracing has established they had no known contact with people in their local area while infectious, and no links to other areas with known cases of the South Africa variant.
There has been one case of the South African Variant identified in the Stafford borough.
— Staffordshire County Council (@StaffordshireCC) February 11, 2021
Please get tested if you live or work in the Stafford borough.
Book a test at our community sites if you have no symptoms here: https://t.co/mVs7ut5UC2 pic.twitter.com/9eBGe0OhAe
Updated
The French health ministry said on Thursday that 2.135m people had received a first injection of a Covid-19 vaccine since the start of the country’s vaccination campaign, and 535,775 second injections had been administered.
The 2.135m figure amounts to 3.2% of the French population, the ministry added in a news release, according to Reuters.
Updated
Reuters reports:
The European commission has so far approved all requests for the export of Covid-19 vaccines, including to Britain, the US, China and Japan since it set up a mechanism on 30 January to monitor vaccine flows, a spokeswoman said on Thursday.
The accommodating stance is expected to alleviate concerns from global partners about the EU’s willingness to allow vaccines to leave its territory, despite the 27-nation bloc having faced supply disruptions and a cut in vaccine deliveries.
The EU granted in total 37 authorisations for vaccine exports to 21 countries between 30 January and 10 February, the spokeswoman said, without giving precise figures on the number of shots being exported from factories in the EU, citing confidentiality reasons.
The EU had exported millions of vaccines to several countries including Britain, Israel, China and Canada before the monitoring scheme was set up, according to customs data cited in an EU internal document seen by Reuters.
Updated
Brazil’s health minister, Eduardo Pazuello, said on Thursday that the country would vaccinate its entire population against Covid-19 in 2021. He predicted that half would be immunised by the end of June.
Speaking at a Senate hearing, Pazuello said Brazil was negotiating with so many biomedical companies to buy vaccine supplies that at some point there would be many different ones in the country, making coordination difficult, according to Reuters.
Updated
Hi everyone, this is Yohannes Lowe. I’ll be running the blog for the rest of the evening. As always, feel free to get in touch on Twitter if you have any story tips.
Castilla La Mancha is the latest Spanish region to announce an easing of its coronavirus restrictions as the national infection rate fell to its lowest level in nearly a month, Reuters reports.
Bars and restaurants in the central region will be able to reopen from Friday, authorities said, but customers must download a QR code before going inside, allowing them to be traced if an outbreak occurs. The decision comes after a similar announcement by the western region of Extremadura on Wednesday.
Spain’s 14-day infection rate fell to 540 cases per 100,000 people, health ministry data showed on Thursday, marking the lowest level since 14 January and well below the peak of 900 cases reached two weeks ago. The overall number of cases rose by 17,853 to 3.04 million, and the death toll climbed by 513 to 64,217.
“We have yet to see a clear drop in fatalities, which we expect to start seeing from the beginning of next week,” the country’s health emergency chief, Fernando Simon, told a news conference.
Madrid and Catalonia loosened some measures last week, while a court in the Basque Country on Tuesday suspended a regional order shutting bars and restaurants in hard-hit areas, following an appeal by business associations.
More than 20 similar appeals have been lodged by hospitality sector organisations.
Updated
The UK government has said a further 678 people have died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Thursday, bringing the total number of deaths to 115,529.
Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies for deaths where Covid-19 has been mentioned on the death certificate, together with additional data on deaths that have occurred in recent days, show there have now been 134,000 deaths involving Covid-19 in the UK, PA Media reports.
The most recent Public Health England data shows that the number of excess deaths, those above the number expected based on the average in the previous five years, rose to 4,789 in the week ending 29 January. The excess death rate for January to November 2020 was the highest since 2008, latest data shows.
The government also said that, as of 9am, there had been a further 13,494 lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK, bringing the total to 3,998,655.
PHE said because of technical difficulties, today’s update to the Covid-19 dashboard had been delayed, but that 13,509,108 people had now received their first dose of a vaccine. Those having received a second dose number 524,447.
Updated
'All hypotheses remain open', says WHO after experts all but dismiss lab leak
The director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, appears to have rejected comments made on Tuesday by the team of experts studying the origins of the Covid-19 virus after they said it was “extremely unlikely” that it leaked from a Wuhan virology laboratory and “isn’t a hypothesis we suggest implies further study”.
Tedros said the team was still working on its final report and wished to clarify that all hypotheses remained open and required further study.
He told WHO member states in a briefing on Thursday:
As you know, the independent expert team to study the origins of the Covid-19 virus has completed its trip to China. This was an international team comprising experts from Australia, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Qatar, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Viet Nam.
The team also includes experts from WHO, FAO and OIE. I want to start by thanking all members of the international team for their work. This has been a very important scientific exercise in very difficult circumstances.
The expert team is still working on its final report and we look forward to receiving both the report and a full briefing. Some questions have been raised as to whether some hypotheses have been discarded. I want to clarify that all hypotheses remain open and require further study.
Peter Ben Embarek, the WHO’s food safety and animal disease specialist and chair of the investigation team said on Tuesday that while “accidents do happen … there had been no publication or research of this virus or one close to this virus, anywhere in the world”.
He said his team interviewed employees and examined the health audit processes when they visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology, “and it’s very unlikely that anything could escape from that place”.
The hypothesis of direct zoonotic transmission from an animal to a human was worthy of further investigative studies, Embarek said, but the most likely pathway was via an intermediary species that was “potentially closer to humans, where the virus can adapt and circulate and then jump to humans”. It was not possible, however, to identify a species as that natural reservoir despite many thousands of tests on various animals.
Updated
Portugal has extended its nationwide lockdown until 1 March to tackle its worst surge of Covid infections since the pandemic began, Reuters reports.
The country’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, wrote on his official website before parliament approved his proposal to extend the lockdown by another two weeks:
The truth is that the country’s hospital capacity continues to be put to the test ... so there is no alternative but to reduce cases.
Portugal imposed its second lockdown on 15 January, shutting non-essential services and schools and making remote work compulsory where possible.
Most measures are likely to remain the same, but under a presidential decree issued on Wedndesday the government could decide to allow businesses to sell books and school supplies. It could also implement a noise control regulation to allow people to work from home without being disturbed.
Updated
Slovenia has announced a partial lifting of Covid restrictions from next week, including the reopening of elementary schools, following a significant improvement in the health situation, AFP reports.
The EU member state of two million inhabitants has been in partial lockdown since October, with schools and non-essential shops closed and travel out of people’s home municipalities banned. However, the number of new coronavirus cases and patients admitted to hospital has decreased in recent weeks, meaning the country can move back to its so-called “orange phase”, the third-highest of five virus alert levels.
“There is no more travel ban in place, we can travel all over the country,” interior minister Ales Hojs told journalists after a cabinet meeting, announcing that restrictions on travel between regions would be lifted from Monday.
He added public gatherings will also once again be allowed for up to 10 people. Also from Monday, all elementary school pupils will return to classrooms along with final-year high school students, after having attended online classes for over four months.
At the same time, all shops and services will be allowed to reopen from Monday provided they adhere to safety measures such as weekly tests for employees. The curfew between 9pm and 6am local time, in force for almost four months, will remain until the situation improves further.
Sewage samples from a new nationwide Covid-19 monitoring system show that in some French cities traces of coronavirus are surpassing levels seen during the second wave of the epidemic in the autumn, according to Reuters.
France’s new ‘Obepine’ network continuously samples city sewage in nearly 50 waste water stations and publishes charts that indicate the quantity of genetic material from the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes Covid-19.
For cities where data are available from spring 2020, the indicator charts show a strong correlation with charts of the number of positive cases and can give early warning signals.
‘In Lille, Marseille and Strasbourg we see a strong uptick, while in the Paris region the situation seems more under control,’ said Vincent Marechal, a Sorbonne university virology professor and co-founder of the Obepine network.
Updated
Croatia is to begin to ease its coronavirus restrictions next week after a steady fall in the number of infections in recent weeks, Reuters reports the government as saying.
Croatia reported 376 new cases of Covid-19 on Friday, a significant fall from the peak of around 4,500 daily cases in December.
The prime minister, Andrej Plenkovic, told a cabinet session:
We’re following closely the developments and after an analysis with experts we think we can take some decisions which are the signal of easing restrictive measures, but still with a high level of caution as it is still winter and cold weather.
Croatia will allow restaurants and bars to open from next week, but only to serve takeaway coffee. They have been closed since late November, along with fitness and sports centres.
These will be allowed to restart business along with betting shops and casinos. Foreign language schools will be allowed to open for children.
Shops are currently open in Croatia, with a limited number of buyers allowed inside. Face masks are obligatory in all indoor spaces and on public transport, while companies are invited to organise work from home wherever possible. Public gatherings are limited to 25 people.
Updated
Germany will ban travel from Czech border regions as well as Austria’s Tyrol over a troubling surge in infections of more contagious coronavirus variants, the interior minister, Horst Seehofer, has said, AFP reports.
Seehofer told the Sueddeutsche daily the new curbs would begin on Sunday.
The states of Bavaria and Saxony today asked the government to class Tyrol and the border regions of the Czech Republic as virus mutation areas, and to implement border controls ... That has been agreed with the [German] chancellor and the vice-chancellor.
Germany in late January banned most travellers from countries classed as “mutation areas” or places hardest hit by new, more contagious coronavirus variants. Only a handful of exceptions are allowed to enter Germany from these countries, including returning Germans and essential workers such as doctors.
Austria has already ordered restrictions to stop people leaving the mountainous Tyrol region. Anyone leaving the region must now show a negative coronavirus test, with fines of up to €1,450 (£1,271) for anyone who fails to comply.
Updated
Roche’s arthritis drug tocilizumab cuts the risk of death among patients hospitalised with severe Covid-19, also shortening the time to recovery and reducing the need for mechanical ventilation, results of a large trial have showed.
Reuters reports that the findings – from the “Recovery” trial, which has been testing a range of potential treatments for Covid-19 since March 2020 – should help clear up confusion about whether tocilizumab has any benefit for Covid-19 patients after a slew of recent mixed trial results.
In June last year, the Recovery trial found that the cheap and widely available steroid dexamethasone reduced death rates by about a third among the most severely ill Covid-19 patients. That drug has since rapidly became part of standard-of-care recommended for severe patients.
Tocilizumab, sold under the brand name Actemra, is an intravenous anti-inflammatory monoclonal antibody drug used to treat rheumatoid arthritis. It was added to the trial in April 2020 for patients with coronavirus who required oxygen and had evidence of inflammation.
The study data were from 2,022 Covid-19 patients who were randomly allocated to receive tocilizumab by intravenous infusion and who were compared with 2,094 patients randomly allocated to usual care alone. Researchers said 82% of all patients were taking a systemic steroid such as dexamethasone.
Updated
A local health authority in the northern Italian region of Liguria has come under fire after listing gay people among those “at risk” and therefore needing access to the Covid-19 vaccine.
In a reservation form for the vaccine, the health authority for the city of La Spezia named homosexuals in the 10th category called “people with risky behaviours” and which included drug addicts and those “dedicated to prostitution”.
A screenshot of the form was posted on the Facebook page of Ferruccio Sansa, a regional councillor for the centre-left Democratic party, sparking fury. He wrote:
We were hoping it was fake. For this reason we tried to get information from ASL 5 [the local health authority].
After 13 phone calls without a response, including to the public relations office and Covid-19 service, finally the public health and vaccination office told us: ‘Yes, we’re aware of that form, but another office did it.’
We ask the authorities, how was this possible?
Two other Democratic party councillors, Luca Garibaldi and Davide Natale, wrote: “Discrimination and ignorance have no place in public companies, especially when it comes to health.”
The local health agency, ASL 5, issued a statement with an apology. “We express our regret for what happened and promptly modified the document … We apologise to all citizens who have been offended.”
Giovanni Toti, the president of Liguria from the far-right League party, also condemned the form, saying it was “unacceptable discrimination” while ordering an investigation to find out who was responsible.
Updated
Zimbabwe will receive 800,000 vaccine doses developed by China’s Sinopharm by the start of March, AFP reports.
China is donating 200,000 of the doses while the government of the southern African country will pay for the rest.
Zimbabwe will be among the first on the continent to start its inoculation programme with the Chinese-made vaccine.
The information minister, Monica Mutsvangwa, told a press briefing that a plane would be sent to collect the shots this week.
“This donation of 200,000 doses, and an initial batch of 600,000 doses which Zimbabwe has purchased, are expected in the country by 15 February 2021 and the first week of March 2021 respectively,” she said.
Zimbabwe’s cash-strapped government has set aside $100m for coronavirus vaccine procurement and vowed to fully subsidise the immunisation process, providing all shots for free.
The country’s crippled health facilities have been struggling to cope with Covid patients, already bogged down by decades of underfunding and mismanagement.
A more infectious virus variant that emerged in neighbouring South Africa last year has stoked concern, piling pressure on authorities amid growing anti-government sentiment.
Mutsvangwa said Zimbabwe was also expecting doses from India, the African Union and the World Health Organization-backed vaccine pooling scheme Covax.
Updated
Sweden has recorded its lowest daily number of Covid deaths in more than two months as vaccinations among older people begin alleviating the impact of the virus at hard-hit nursing homes, the country’s health agency said.
Reuters reports:
Sweden registered 44 new deaths, taking the total to 12,370, the lowest daily increase recorded since 3 December.
The decreasing daily toll was in line with a slowdown over the past month, during which Covid-19 vaccines have been gradually rolled out in the face of delivery delays.
“We can in good conscience say that this type of decrease should be due to the vaccines,” Chief Epidemiologist Anders Tegnell told a news conference. “It also follows what we have seen in Israel and other countries.”
JUST NU: Anders Tegnell ger en uppdatering av coronaläget. Ekot sänder direkt.https://t.co/Hk7N9MbKql pic.twitter.com/Lj3sBb4Trt
— SR Ekot (@sr_ekot) February 11, 2021
Sweden has vaccinated more than 80% of people living at nursing homes with one inoculation and around a third with the two shots needed for maximum protection. Roughly half of Sweden’s deaths have occurred among nursing home residents.
However, a steady decline in new cases appeared to have halted.
Sweden registered 4,333 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, Health Agency statistics showed, and the number of cases has been fairly constant over the past three weeks.
Sweden has also seen an increase of cases of the virus mutation first detected in Britain, which is thought to be more infectious. A sample of positive tests in the region home to Gothenburg showed 20% were now of the British strain, the health agency said.
Sweden’s death rate per capita is several times higher than that of its Nordic neighbours, but lower than several European countries that opted for lockdowns.
Updated
All police leave has reportedly been cancelled in Rio de Janeiro as authorities prepare to snuff out any hint of carnival festivities this weekend.
Rio’s world-famous annual carnival should have kicked off on Friday, but the coronavirus outbreak, which has now killed 234,000 Brazilians, has scuppered the week-long event for the first time in decades. There will be no official samba parades for the first time since they began 90 years ago.
“For the love of God ... let’s be sensible,” Rio’s mayor Eduardo Paes said this week, urging revellers not to take to the streets or attend illegal carnival parties.
“In 2022, I promise we’ll put on the best carnival in the city’s history ... a super carnival, something unforgettable.”
A report in the Estado de São Paulo newspaper today said more than 13,000 military police officers would be on standby this weekend to shut down any illegal street parties.
Rio has suffered more Covid deaths than any other city in Brazil, which has the world’s second highest death toll after the US. Rio has lost even more lives than São Paulo, whose population is twice as big, something experts blame on poor governance and a failure to implement effective containment measures such as social distancing.
Updated
Germany’s Carnival celebrations got under way on Thursday but without any of their usual raucous revelry, AP reports.
Parades, street festivals and other large gatherings were all cancelled and booze banned due to lockdown restrictions designed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
In Cologne, the western city whose Carnival festivities are perhaps the best known, Mayor Henriette Reker appealed for residents to stay home and bide their time until next year’s celebrations.
“As a Carnival fanatic, my heart is bleeding today,” she said on Twitter. One of Germany’s first superspreader events stemmed from a Carnival celebration in a town west of Cologne last February where many people came in contact with an infected man.
This year authorities were taking no chances. In addition to shutting down the large events, the public consumption of alcohol and its distribution in many areas was being banned through to the end of the festival on 17 February.
Still, the city was doing its best eke out some celebration. A show was being live-streamed to try and raise money for the artists, stage hands, drivers and dance groups who are without work this year. Instead of its traditional Rose Monday parade, which typically features floats depicting biting, and often bawdy, scenes of political commentary, a puppet theatre was holding a miniature version that can be viewed on television.
Updated
Morocco has received a second batch of 4m doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, having begun Africa’s first national vaccination campaign two weeks ago, health ministry sources told Reuters.
The shipment, manufactured by India’s Serum Institute, arrived on a Royal Air Maroc flight in Casablanca. “This new batch will enable a steady continuation of Morocco’s national vaccination campaign,” said Said Afif, a member of the health ministry’s scientific committee.
The latest batch follows one of 2m doses received in January and 500,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine.
Morocco had vaccinated 746,116 people as of Wednesday, and reported 476,689 coronavirus infections and 8,436 deaths. The country has ordered enough vaccine for 33 million people and aims to inoculate 80% of the population.
Updated
The EU could sign a coronavirus vaccine supply deal with the US manufacturer Novavax this week or next, two officials involved in the talks with the firm have told Reuters.
The EU concluded preliminary negotiations with Novavax in December for the supply of 100 million doses and an option for another 100 million. “Talks with Novavax have intensified and we aim to agree the contract this week or next,” one EU official said.
A second EU official involved in the talks confirmed that possible timetable for a deal, but added that discussions with the company’s lawyers were still under way, declining to elaborate on outstanding issues.
Novavax said negotiations were ongoing. A spokesman for the EU Commission declined to comment on the talks, but added that the EU was willing to expand its portfolio of Covid-19 vaccines.
Updated
German leaders have said they cannot rule out shutting the country’s borders with its neighbours because of high coronavirus infections fuelled by more contagious variants in countries such as Austria and the Czech Republic, AP reports.
“We believe it would be sensible to declare both [Austria and Czech Republic] as mutation areas. This will likely happen,” said Bavarian state premier Markus Soeder. He had warned that if the Czech Republic was unable to take appropriate measures to curb contagion, then a “border closure must also be an issue”.
Germany in late January banned most travellers from countries classed as so-called mutation areas or places hardest hit by new, more contagious coronavirus variants.
Only a handful of exceptions are allowed to enter Germany from these countries, including returning Germans and essential workers. With neighbouring EU countries continuing to report high infection numbers in part fuelled by variants, German leaders fear that keeping the borders open could compromise the country’s efforts to curb contagion.
Updated
Turkey has started to administer the second dose of China’s Sinovac vaccine to health care workers across the country, AP reports.
People over 70 also qualified to receive their first dose of the vaccine on Thursday as Turkey further expanded its inoculation campaign. People over 65 will qualify on Friday, according to the health minister Fahrettin Koca.
Turkey first began vaccinating doctors, nurses and other health professionals on 14 January. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who was among the first to receive the vaccine in a bid to set an example, also got his second shot on Thursday. He said in a statement:
God willing, we aim to vaccinate all our citizens in a short period of time.
After a promising start in which 1.2 million people receive their first doses in a week, Turkey’s pace of vaccination has slowed. In all, around 2.8 million people have received their first shots in the country of 83.6 million.
Turkey aims to vaccinate at least 60% of the population, Koca said, without providing a timeframe.
Updated
Most African countries should still roll out the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid vaccine despite questions over its use against a variant that emerged in South Africa, the continent’s health watchdog has said.
John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), told a press conference:
We will not be walking away from AstraZeneca vaccines at all ... This is a good vaccine without the variant, and the variant will only impact if the variant is overwhelming in the country.
The variant detected in South Africa has now been found in six other countries across the continent, Nkengasong said - Botswana, Comoros, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique and Zambia.
In the vast majority of African countries where the variant has not been detected, “we recommend that they proceed with the rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine,” Nkengasong said. “For countries that have not identified this variant, there is absolutely no reason why it should not be used there.”
South African authorities said on Sunday they were delaying the start of their vaccination campaign with the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine after a study showed it failed to prevent mild and moderate infection from the South African variant, AFP reports.
Updated
Berlin’s international film festival next month will feature 15 movies made under the pandemic in competition for its Golden Bear top prize, organisers have said.
Directors including the Emmy winner Maria Schrader with Unorthodox, the German-Spanish actor Daniel Bruehl with Rush and France’s Celine Sciamma with Portrait of a Lady on Fire will premiere new work at the event, which will take place online because of Germany’s coronavirus restrictions, AFP reports.
The Berlinale’s artistic director, Carlo Chatrian, said all contenders for the top prizes at the 1-5 March event were “films that either in their production or their post-production process have endured the pandemic”.
If only a few of them show directly the new world we are living in, all of them carry beneath their surfaces the uncertain times we are experiencing ... A sense of apprehension is everywhere.
Updated
Reuters reports the French government as saying it is to send more police to its overseas territory of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean, where there has been a spate of violent crime and a worsening of the pandemic.
Updated
No need to quarantine after Covid contact if fully vaccinated, says CDC
People in the US who have received a full course of Covid vaccine can skip the standard 14-day quarantine after exposure to someone with the infection as long as they remain asymptomatic, public health officials have advised.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the vaccines had been shown to prevent symptomatic Covid-19, thought to play a greater role in the transmission of the virus than asymptomatic disease, Reuters reports.
Individual and societal benefits of avoiding unnecessary quarantine may outweigh the potential but unknown risk of transmission (among vaccinated individuals).
People who choose not to quarantine should do so only if they have received their last vaccine dose within three months, and fully vaccinated people who do not quarantine should still watch for symptoms for 14 days following an exposure, the CDC said.
Updated
An opposition-ruled Indian state has asked the federal government to halt the supply of a homegrown vaccine until its efficacy could be proven in an ongoing late-stage trial, Reuters reports.
India has vaccinated more than 7 million front-line workers since Jan. 16 using COVAXIN developed by Bharat Biotech as well as a vaccine licenced from AstraZeneca and Oxford University. So far the federal government has ordered 10 million Covaxin doses and 21 million AstraZeneca shots, locally made by the Serum Institute of India for low- and middle-income countries.
Bharat Biotech, which created Covaxin with the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research, has said efficacy data from the late-stage clinical trial on nearly 26,000 volunteers will be out by next month, leading to criticism from epidemiologists that it was approved too hastily for emergency use.
The developers and India’s drug regulator, however, say the vaccine is safe and effective based on early and intermediate studies.
Chhattisgarh, a central-eastern state of about 32 million people, said it was likely to be soon sent Covaxin shots after starting its campaign with 588,000 doses of the AstraZeneca product.
“There’s an inhibition/concern among the community in general regarding the use of Covaxin,” state health minister T.S. Singh Deo wrote in a letter to his federal counterpart, Harsh Vardhan, and shared on Twitter. “This concern arises from the fact that the clinical trials of phase 3 are yet to be completed.”
Europe’s oldest person, the French nun Sister Andre, is celebrating her 117th birthday after surviving Covid-19 last month and living through two world wars, AFP reports.
Born Lucile Randon on 11 February 1904, Sister Andre said she didn’t realise she had caught the coronavirus, which infected 81 residents of her retirement home in the southeast city of Toulon, killing 10 of them.
“I’m told that I got it,” the nun said at the home, where she sat basking in the winter sun, her eyes closed and hands clasped in prayer. “I was very tired, it’s true, but I didn’t realise it,” she added in a steady, strong voice that belies her years.
But David Tavella, spokesman for the Sainte Catherine Laboure nursing home, said she had “experienced a triple confinement: in her wheelchair, in her room and without a visit”. “So her birthday, it reinvigorates us,” he added, following the deadly outbreak.
The facility, home to a dozen nuns, plans a special mass, and the chef is preparing a birthday feast with foie gras, capon fillet with porcini mushrooms and Sister Andre’s favourite dessert: baked Alaska. She says her favourite food is lobster and she enjoys “a small glass of wine every day”.
Updated
Ireland to extend lockdown until April
Ireland’s lockdown is set to be extended until April, prime minister Micheal Martin has said. “Certainly we are looking at a continuation of high levels of restrictions until the Easter period,” Martin told state broadcaster RTE.
Restaurants and pubs across Ireland have been shut since Christmas Eve and the non-essential retail sector has been closed since New Year’s Eve.
Children did not return to school in January after the festive break, and residents have been told to stay at home as Dublin dramatically stepped up domestic and international travel curbs.
Martin told RTE the exact plan for prolonging lockdown was still to be determined, but that reopening schools and construction projects was a priority.
According to latest official figures, 3,794 people have died from Covid-19 in Ireland, which navigated two previous waves of coronavirus with relatively low case and death figures, AFP reports.
For a time in early January, however, Ireland had the highest per capita infection rate in the world, according to Oxford University data. More than 40% of the country’s virus deaths have occurred in the first six weeks of 2021.
It registered a record 101 coronavirus deaths in its daily toll last week. “We have to get those numbers down, we have to relieve those pressures,” Martin said. “Not just in the short term but for a sustained period.”
Updated
AstraZeneca, the British-Swedish maker of a Covid vaccine with Oxford University, has said its net profit more than doubled last year to $3.2 billion on strong sales of new cancer drugs, AFP reports.
Profit after tax, equivalent to 2.64 billion euros, soared 139 percent compared with 2019, the pharmaceutical giant said in a statement. Group revenue jumped 9.0 percent - or 10 percent at constant exchange rates - to $26.6 billion.
The update did not include any current or projected earnings from AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine which is being rolled out worldwide.
“Despite the significant impact from the pandemic, we delivered double-digit revenue growth” in 2020, chief executive Pascal Soriot said in the earnings statement. “The consistent achievements in the pipeline, the accelerating performance of our business and the progress of the Covid-19 vaccine demonstrated what we can achieve,” he added.
Pakistan is to allow private companies to import coronavirus vaccines and has agreed to exempt such imports from price caps, Reuters reports.
Documents show the National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination division had sought a special cabinet exemption to allow for such imports, while excluding the imported vaccines from the strict price cap regime that is typically applied to all drug sales within the country.
The documents show the cabinet of prime minister Imran Khan has approved the proposal. The decision is significant as Pakistan has yet to secure substantive volumes of vaccines from any companies and it only this month launched a vaccination drive with 500,000 doses of Sinopharm’s vaccine donated by long-time ally China. Those shots are first being given out to frontline health workers on a priority basis.
Health minister Faisal Sultan said that Pakistan still planned to inoculate its population for free and only a “small minority” who wish to pay for the shots will have that option in the open market. “Only those who wish to get it via private sector will pay anything,” he said. “Personally, my assessment is that when the vaccines are available and we have market competition, that will automatically set the prices.”
Pakistan has yet to receive any of the 17 million doses it is expected to get through the Covax initiative.
AstraZeneca has said it could take between six and nine months to produce Covid-19 vaccines that are effective against new variants of the coronavirus.
The company’s vaccine, developed jointly with scientists at the University of Oxford, remains effective against at least one variant of the virus, first discovered in Kent, England, but preliminary findings in a small-scale trial prompted South Africa to limit its use while it ascertains its efficacy.
However, a six-month turnaround for an updated vaccine would represent a vast improvement over traditional vaccine development timelines.
The vaccine is particularly important for poorer countries, because the company – unlike some of its rivals such as Pfizer – has pledged to sell it at cost price. The vaccine also does not require very low temperatures during transport, making it cheaper to deliver.
The number of trips made on the first day of China’s lunar new year travel period has plunged by 74% compared with last year, amid concern over the coronavirus pandemic, stringent rules and government enticements not to go home for the holidays, my colleague Helen Davidson reports.
Hundreds of millions of people usually make the annual trip home to see family over the new year break in China, in what is often referred to as the world’s largest annual mass migration. For many of the 280 million migrant workers it is the only chance all year to see their families, including children left in home villages while they earn a living in the cities.
But on 28 January, the first of the 40 days when people usually travel, there were 74% fewer trips taken than in 2019, according to newly released figures. The state broadcaster CCTV said air and rail travel was down by about 80% and road trips by about one-third.
Earlier, we reported that China’s “zero corona” policy was frustrating Japanese people in Beijing, according to the South China Morning Post which reported that sudden new more stringent rules had wrecked travel plans (see 7.31am).
China has sent 100,000 vaccine doses to Equatorial Guinea, the Central African country’s government has said, Reuters reports.
The doses developed by China’s Sinopharm arrived on Wednesday in the capital Malabo, the government said in a statement. They will be enough to vaccinate 50,000 people, or 4% of Equatorial Guinea’s population.
China is aiming to cultivate goodwill through so-called vaccine diplomacy with lower-income countries. It said this month it was providing vaccine aid to 13 countries globally and planned to help a further 38.
Equatorial Guinea’s vice president Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mangue, the son of president Teodoro Obiang, will be vaccinated first to reassure the population, the government said. Health workers and individuals at high risk of infection will follow.
This is Mattha Busby here, taking over from my colleague Amelia Hill. Hello to everyone reading the blog, I’ll be taking you through into the afternoon in London. Drop me a line on Twitter or via email mattha.busby.freelance@guardian.co.uk with any tips or thoughts. Thanks!
Pfizer plans to file the registration application for use of its Covid-19 vaccine in Ukrainey, Ukrainian television quoted a health ministry official as saying.
Ukraine’s authorities have said the country expects to receive its first batch of 117,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in February within the framework of the COVAX programme.
AstraZeneca expects to produce more than 100 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine - developed with Oxford University - this month, ramping up to more than 200 million a month by April, Chief Executive Pascal Soriot has said.
Mene Pangalos, head of BioPharmaceuticals R&D at the British drugmaker earlier said the company expects much-anticipated data for the late-stage US trial of its vaccine before the end of March.
A read-out on data is “only weeks away”, he said on a media call after release of the company’s 2020 results.
Hungary expects to receive 500,000 doses of Chinese Sinopharm’s vaccine next week and plans to start vaccinations with them soon, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff has said.
Gergely Gulyas also told a government briefing that Hungary had decided to launch a document proving coronavirus immunity for those who had been inoculated, those who have recovered from the infection and those who take a blood test proving the presence of antibodies.
The European Union could sign a supply deal with Novavax this week or next for the US company’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate, two EU officials involved in the talks with the firm said.
The EU concluded in December preliminary negotiations with Novavax for the supply of 100 million doses and an option for another 100 million, Reuters is reporting.
“Talks with Novavax have intensified and we aim to agree the contract this week or next,” one EU official said.
A second EU official, involved in talks, confirmed that possible timetable for a deal, but added that discussions with the company’s lawyers were still underway, declining to elaborate on what were the outstanding issues.
Last week Europe’s drug regulator said it had launched a real-time review of Novavax’s vaccine to speed up potential approvals.
The vaccine is still being trialled, but preliminary data showed the vaccine was 89.3% effective in preventing Covid-19 in a trial conducted in the United Kingdom, and was nearly as effective in protecting against the more highly contagious variant first discovered in the UK.
The possible deal with Novavax would be the seventh sealed by the EU with vaccine makers for the supply of COVID-19 shots. It already has agreements with AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer-BioNTech, CureVac, Moderna and Sanofi-GSK for a total of about 2.3 billion doses.
The EC have released their Winter 2021 Economic Forecast projecting that the euro area and EU economies are expected to reach their pre-crisis levels of output earlier than anticipated in the Autumn 2020 Economic Forecast, largely because of the stronger than expected growth momentum projected in the second half of 2021 and in 2022.
The report anticipates the euro area economy will grow by 3.8% in both 2021 and 2022. The EU economy, it states, will grow by 3.7% in 2021 and 3.9% in 2022
The report adds that Europe remains in the grip of the coronavirus pandemic. The resurgence in the number of cases, together with the appearance of new, more contagious strains of the coronavirus, have forced many Member States to reintroduce or tighten containment measures. At the same time, the start of vaccination programmes throughout the EU provides grounds for cautious optimism.
But, it goes on, economic growth is poised to recover as containment measures ease.
After strong growth in the third quarter of 2020, economic activity contracted again in the fourth quarter as a second wave of the pandemic triggered renewed containment measures. With those measures still in place, the EU and euro area economies are expected to contract in the first quarter of 2021. Economic growth is set to resume in the spring and gather momentum in the summer as vaccination programmes progress and containment measures gradually ease. An improved outlook for the global economy is also set to support the recovery.
Merkel defends extending German lockdown amid 'very real danger' of third wave
Angela Merkel has defended her government’s decision to extend Germany’s lockdown into March by pointing to the “very real danger” of a third wave driven by Covid-19 mutations.
“We are well advised not to doubt the assumptions of national and internal experts who tell us that the three mutations are significantly more aggressive, and also more infectious”, the German chancellor said in the Bundestag on Thursday morning.
Merkel reflected critically on her own government’s pandemic management in recent months, saying that advice on the importance of wearing medical masks had at times been inconsistent and Germany had been slow to react to rising infection rates at the start of the winter. “We didn’t wind down public life emphatically enough following warnings of a second wave”, the chancellor said.
Merkel and the heads of Germany’s 16 federal states on Wednesday agreed to extend restrictions until at least 7 March, though states will be allowed to decide individually whether to reopen schools and nurseries beforehand. Hairdressing salons across the country can reopen from 1 March.
Germany teachers and nursery workers are to move up the queue for vaccines and will be included in priority group 2 that is expected to be vaccinated from April. A new mechanism will allow further relaxations, such as reopen shops, museums or restaurants, to be discussed when the seven-day case index drops below 35 cases per 100,000 people.
Updated
Travellers arriving to Ireland from Austria, the United Arab Emirates and sub-Saharan African countries are to be subject to a 14-day mandatory quarantine, the taoiseach Micheal Martin said.
A total of 20 countries will join Brazil and South Africa on a list subject to travel restrictions due to the presence of variants of the coronavirus, Martin told Newstalk Radio.
Arrivals from the countries will be allowed to quarantine at any address until a system of mandatory hotel quarantines is introduced in the coming weeks, the government has said.
Kenya is going ahead with its plan to inoculate its citizens against Covid-19 using the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, a senior health ministry official said on Thursday, dismissing concerns over its efficacy.
South Africa paused the rollout of the vaccine following a small clinical trial that showed it offered minimal protection against mild to moderate illness from the 501Y.V2 variant dominant in the country.
That move will not deter Kenya, which says it expects to receive 24 million doses of the vaccine beginning this month, said Mercy Mwangangi, the chief administrative secretary at the ministry.
“We are going to continue with AstraZeneca because we are doing our own sequencing and we are comfortable to move forward with it,” she told Reuters.
The World Heath Organisation had also issued an advisory on Wednesday telling countries to continue using the vaccine, Mwangangi said, which further supports the Kenyan government’s position.
The Czech Republic on Thursday announced a stricter lockdown in three districts from east to west where coronavirus infections have soared and hospitals are struggling to cope.
The order means a ban on movement from and into the eastern district of Trutnov on the border with Poland and the western districts of Cheb and Sokolov on the border with Germany, the health minister Jan Blatny said.
The restrictions will take effect on Friday, Blatny said, but they depend on an extension of a national state of emergency beyond Sunday, which the minority government may be unable to secure in a parliamentary vote expected later in the day.
The three districts are home to around 300,000 people, and infection rates there were at 1,091-1,183 per 100,000 in the past week, according to ministry data.
“These are areas where the number of infections is three to four times higher than elsewhere,” Blatny told reporters. “We have decided to limit free movement in these regions beyond the national measures, and, apart from exceptions, to ban people who live here to leave and people who do not live here to enter.”
There will be exceptions for people who can prove they are on the way to work and children who attend school elsewhere, he said.
The country of 10.7 million has suffered one of Europe’s worst coronavirus flare-ups with daily cases around 9,000 in recent days. It has reported 17,772 deaths overall.
Hospitals in the affected regions have been forced to transfer patients to less stretched areas of the country.
Police will be enforcing the ban, which includes mountain areas where many Czech have second homes, Blatny said.
CNA is reporting three community cases among 12 new Covid-19 infections in Singapore.
The Ministry of Health (MOH) said the remaining nine infections were imported and had been placed on stay-home notice upon arrival in Singapore. No new infections were reported in foreign worker dormitories.
“With increased interactions over the Chinese New Year period, there will be higher transmission risks in the community. It is important that everyone remain vigilant and adhere to the safe management measures,” said MOH.
The number of visitors per household per day is limited to eight people, with the authorities encouraging everyone to connect digitally instead of going on physical visits.
Ukraine has banned the use of Russia’s Sputnik V on its territory, saying no vaccine could be distributed that was produced by an “aggressor state”.
The move comes as the EU considers approving the Russian drug, after a peer reviewed study in the Lancet found it was 91.6 percent effective. Member state Hungary has already broken with the bloc to greenlight the vaccine.
Kiev, which remains at loggerheads with Moscow over the 2014 annexation of Crimea and Russian support for rebels in separatist territories, has repeatedly said it would block Sputnik V. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has insisted Ukraine would deal “only with the leading manufacturers of vaccines”.
But reports have already emerged of Russia supplying Sputnik V to rebel-held areas in eastern Ukraine as Kiev struggled to secure vaccines from other sources.
Heathrow Airport, Britain’s busiest, saw passenger numbers plunge by 89% in January compared to the same month last year - with cargo volume falling by 21% - as the aviation industry suffers in Britain’s latest lockdown and from tighter border controls.
“We need to see the flight plan for the safe restart of international travel as part of the prime minister’s roadmap on 22 February,” Heathrow’s chief executive John Holland-Kaye said on Thursday, Reuters is reporting.
Some local authorities across Britain are sending out roving teams of doctors are bringing Covid-19 vaccine shots to the homeless, Reuters is reporting.
In a pandemic, homeless people face being more forgotten than they already are. But not by doctors like Dr. Anil Mehta, who is on a mission to bring the coronavirus vaccine to those hardest to reach and often most at risk of getting sick in east London.
Mehta, a general practitioner, and his small team of doctors and nurses have been showing up at homeless centres in his local area, a Covid-19 hotspot, offering a free jab to dozens who might otherwise get left behind in Britain’s mass vaccination drive, reports Reuters.
“They will get missed if we don’t find them proactively,” Mehta said. “They really don’t have anything going for them, in terms of medical care. Finding them is absolutely essential to what we need to achieve in our boroughs.”
The homeless are not listed among the British government’s highest priority groups for the vaccine rollout — which currently include people over 70, nursing home residents, front-line medical staff and social care workers, as well as the clinically vulnerable.
In the outer reaches of northeast London, which has seen some of England’s worst infection rates, Mehta and his mobile vaccination team have been busy working outside of their clinic. They gave a vaccine jab to over 200 homeless people and social care workers at two community centres last week, and plan to reach another 70 next week.
Mehta is happy with the progress so far. “These are very hard-to-reach groups — they could be in different places, here today and going to central London the next day,” he said. “We are effectively chasing them.”
The British government is doing “everything we can” to ensure the public can get a summer holiday this year but could not provide certainty on whether or not to book breaks now, health minister Matt Hancock said.
“I do understand the yearning for certainty, but certainty is hard in a pandemic. We are doing everything we can to make sure people can have that holiday in the summer,” Hancock, who said he had booked a vacation in southwest England, told Sky News.
“The question people are asking understandably, is they are asking for certainty over what the situation will be like in terms of international travel and in terms of going on holiday at home this summer and ... what we’ve all been saying is we’ll do everything we can to make sure people can have a holiday.”
While many hope the Year of the Ox starting on February 12 will herald times of plenty, a herd of wild cows in Hong Kong is on the verge of starvation after their pasture was destroyed by a stampede of campers escaping Covid-19 restrictions.
- Volunteers have resorted to cutting fresh grass and shipping it to the island, also called Tap Mun, to stop the herd from starving to death
- A surge in visitors has trampled herd’s food source, creating an ecological disaster and leaving cows to eat rubbish they leave behind
Once grassy pastures that nurtured the feral cows have been reduced to barren dirt by the feet of hordes of hikers and campers. Volunteers have resorted to cutting fresh grass and shipping it to Tap Mun to stop the herd from starving.
The animals have made their home for generations alongside a few dozen fishing families on the island in northeast Hong Kong off Sai Kung.
Until the coronavirus struck last year, a largely manageable number of hikers and campers made their way to the island.But with overseas travel no longer possible for most Hongkongers, a huge influx of visitors has arrived as residents look for ways to escape the confines of Social distancing in one of the world’s most densely populated cities.
Covid-19: China’s ‘zero corona’ policy frustrates Japanese in Beijing during Lunar New Year celebrations, reports the South China Morning Post.
With the Lunar New Year holiday coming, China’s drastic “zero corona” policy has baffled Japanese workers in Beijing, most of whom have been forced to stay in the capital for more than a year.
One day before the 40-day Spring Festival travel season – dubbed the world’s biggest human migration period – began on January 28, the Beijing government abruptly announced more stringent steps to restrict the movement of people to prevent the intrusion of the novel coronavirus.
“I had planned to make a temporary return to Japan during the Lunar New Year holiday to meet my family and had booked a flight, but I eventually postponed,” said a Japanese male worker at the Beijing office of Sony Corp.
“I have not met my baby who was born last year in Japan. I hope that the situation will get better as soon as possible,” he said ahead of the seven-day holiday that kicks off on today.
Many Japanese workers in Beijing live alone because their family members, who evacuated from China amid the outbreak in early 2020, have been stranded at home in Japan since the Chinese government limited the entry of foreigners last year.
Good morning, Amelia Hill here bringing you the thought-provoking news that the director of the Covid-19 Genomics UK consortium, Sharon Peacock, has just told the BBC that the coronavirus variant first found in the British region of Kent is likely to sweep around the world and the battle with the virus is going to go on for at least a decade.
The Kent variant has “swept the country” and “it’s going to sweep the world, in all probability,” the head of the UK’s genetic surveillance programme said, told the BBC.
“Once we get on top of [the virus] or it mutates itself out of being virulent - causing disease - then we can stop worrying about it. But I think, looking in the future, we’re going to be doing this for years. We’re still going to be doing this 10 years down the line, in my view.”
Philippines to get 600,000 Sinovac jabs donated by China
The Philippines is set to receive 600,000 doses this month of Sinovac Biotech’s vaccine donated by China, a portion of which will be used to inoculate military personnel, a senior government official said on Thursday.
Reuters reports that presidential spokesman Harry Roque told a regular news conference the 23 February arrival of the vaccines is certain, but they would not be administered without the approval of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
So far, only shots developed by AstraZeneca and the vaccine of Pfizer and BioNTech have been approved for emergency use in the country.
Roque said regulators have allowed “compassionate use” of 10,000 doses of a vaccine developed by China’s Sinopharm for President Rodrigo Duterte’s security detail.
Roque said 100,000 of the 600,000 Sinovac doses will be given to soldiers and the rest for medical workers.
The Philippines aims to start its mass vaccination programme using 117,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine secured through the COVAX international vaccine-sharing facility, which are also due to be delivered this month.
The country has also negotiated supply agreements with Moderna, Gamaleya, Janssen, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Sinovac, Novavax for 148m doses of coronavirus vaccines, the bulk of which are is expected to arrive in the second and third quarters of this year.
Summary
I’ll be handing to my colleagues in the UK shortly, but in the mean time, here’s a summary of the main news so far.
- The US could have averted 40% of deaths from Covid-19, had the country’s death rates corresponded with the rates in other high-income G7 countries, according to a Lancet commission tasked with assessing Donald Trump’s health policy record. The commission condemned Trump’s response to Covid, but emphasised that the country entered the pandemic with a degraded public health infrastructure.
- China has recorded its lowest number of new cases in five months, with just two new infections on 10 February. It follows a series of robust counter-measures that helped stamp out a new wave of the disease that emerged in the northeast last month.
- A study by the US CDC has shown wearing two masks can “substantially reduce” exposure to Covid-19. The report found that in the lab tests with dummies, “exposure to infectious aerosols decreased by about 95% when they both wore tightly fitted masks”.
-
A cheap and widely available asthma drug called budesonide appears to significantly reduce the risk of people getting seriously ill with Covid-19, if it is taken within the first week of developing symptoms.
- Italy is reopening its ski resorts in Lombardy, the region worst hit by the coronavirus. Lifts will resume operating from 15 February, which will mark the return of skiing for the first time this year.
- The WHO says that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine can be given to adults of all ages, after some countries decided not to give the dose to those aged over 65 over doubts about its effectiveness.
- Malaysia will extend its free vaccination programme to all foreigners residing in the country, including students, refugees and undocumented migrants, the government said on Thursday.
- Germany will remain in a partial lockdown until at least 7 March. Following crunch talks with the leaders of Germany’s 16 states, Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the number of new Covid-19 infections in Europe’s top economy was dropping after more than two months of shuttered schools and shops.
- Mexico has signed an emergency use authorisation for China’s Sinovac vaccine, according to the country’s deputy health minister.
Vaccines remain firmly on the front pages of some of the UK papers.
“All over-70s must have their jabs, says Johnson’s” is the Times headline, accompanied by a rather unflattering picture of the PM.
TIMES: All over 70’s must have their jabs, says @BorisJohnson #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/vpgEZdTqM1
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) February 10, 2021
The i says the UK is leading the way for the rest of the world with “One in five vaccinated”.
I: One in five vaccinated #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/rKDTQ4N3Rr
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) February 10, 2021
Not strictly Covid, but health–related, the Express has: “NHS red tape slashed to boost patient care”.
EXPRESS: NHS red tape slashed #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/6tMwYMShCZ
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) February 10, 2021
The Mirror expresses its displeasure that even UK holiday homes could be out of bounds this summer. “Give us a break” it says.
MIRROR: Give us a break #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/xsmtScDvue
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) February 10, 2021
And the Guardian’s front-page Covid story is on the same subject: “Don’t bank on summer getaways – Johnson”.
GUARDIAN: PM accused of ‘betrayal’ over fund to fix cladding #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/tgfsPYOodo
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) February 10, 2021
The Telegraph says “Mixed messages cast doubt on staycations”.
TELEGRAPH: Bank Chief: EU trying to shut out the City #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/723GKE2q3a
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) February 10, 2021
Updated
Malaysia will vaccinate all foreigners in country
Malaysia will extend its free vaccination programme to all foreigners residing in the country, including students, refugees and undocumented migrants, the government said on Thursday.
The country is expected to begin its vaccine rollout at the end of this month, aiming to cover at least 80% of its 32 million population within a year.
“A safe environment free from Covid-19 can only be achieved when as many Malaysian residents as possible are immunised,” the government committee on vaccine supply said in a statement.
“During a pandemic, providing vaccinations is a humanitarian step.”
The committee, however, said priority will be given to Malaysians, with the vaccination schedule for foreigners to be announced at a later date.
Separately, science minister Khairy Jamaluddin said foreigners eligible for free vaccinations will include asylum-seekers registered with the UN refugee agency UNHCR and undocumented migrants
Malaysia has seen a sharp spike in coronavirus infections in recent weeks, after having largely reined in the epidemic for most of last year.
That has pushed total cases past 250,000, including 923 deaths, as of Wednesday.
Thailand reports 201 new cases
Thailand on Thursday reported 201 new coronavirus cases, taking its total infections to 24,104. No new deaths were reported, with fatalities remaining at 80, the Covid-19 taskforce said. Thailand’s overall cases have increased five-fold since mid-December, but the number of new infections reported in recent days have fallen sharply from a week ago.
US could have prevented 40% of deaths
The US could have averted 40% of the deaths from Covid-19, had the country’s death rates corresponded with the rates in other high-income G7 countries, according to a Lancet commission tasked with assessing Donald Trump’s health policy record.
The commission condemned Trump’s response to Covid, but emphasised that the country entered the pandemic with a degraded public health infrastructure. Between 2002 and 2019, US public health spending fell from 3.21% to 2.45% – approximately half the share of spending in Canada and the UK.
To determine how many deaths from Covid the US could have avoided, the commission weighted the average death rate in the other G7 countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK – and compared it to the US death rate.
Dr Mary T Bassett, a commission member and director of Harvard University’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, told the Guardian: “The US has fared so badly with this pandemic, but the bungling can’t be attributed only to Mr Trump, it also has to do with these societal failures … That’s not going to be solved by a vaccine.”
You can read our full story below and there’s a link to the commission here.
Updated
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 10,237 to 2,310,233, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Thursday. The reported death toll rose by 666 to 63,635, the tally showed.
Just while I’m writing about the US, there’s also some interesting data from the peak infectious diseases body, the CDC, on which age groups are being infected with and dying from Covid (see graphs tweeted below):
According to the CDC, the most infected age group is 18-29, representing 22.5% of cases, followed by 50-64 (20.6% of cases).
But 18-29s only represent 0.5% of deaths and 50-64s are 14.4% of deaths.
Those in the 85+ age group only represent 2.5% of cases, but 32.4% of deaths.
I realise these figures aren’t a revelation, one year into this crisis, but it’s a reminder that the older population is much more vulnerable and why they are being prioritised in terms of vaccines.
US CDC figures on which age groups are catching Covid the most in the US, and which age groups are recording the most deaths from it. pic.twitter.com/hop6SXhot8
— Alison Rourke (@AlisonRourke) February 11, 2021
Updated
Here’s an interesting graph from the University of Washington’s School of Medicine Covid tracking project. It says daily deaths are the best indicator of the progression of the pandemic, with a lag of 7-21 days. Look at the big peaks in mid December, following Thanksgiving, and in early January, following Christmas. I’m hoping there will not be a repeat following last weekend’s Super Bowl, which is traditionally a time for families to get together.
Interesting graph from Uni of Washington's Covid tracking project...says daily deaths are best indicator of pandemic's progression, with 7-21 day lag. Look at peaks after Thanksgiving and Xmas. Hopefully no Super Bowl peak to come. pic.twitter.com/rW6Up0As5Z
— Alison Rourke (@AlisonRourke) February 11, 2021
If you like visual representations of what’s going on in the US, it’s a really useful site ... including for projections. In terms of the cumulative death toll, it has four scenarios under its projections. For example, by 1 April:
- 547,462 (if things worsen)
- 566,180 (rapid variant spread)
- 560,226 (current projection)
- 548,995 (universal masks)
As of 10 February, there have been 471,422 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins university.
Updated
As I mentioned in the summary at the start of today, Germany will remain in a partial lockdown until at least 7 March.
Following crunch talks with the leaders of Germany’s 16 states, Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the number of new Covid-19 infections in Europe’s top economy was dropping after more than two months of shuttered schools and shops.
“When we look at this development we can be quite satisfied,” she told reporters.
But she called on Germans to be patient as fears grow over more contagious virus variants first detected in Britain and South Africa.
“We want to do everything in our power so that we don’t end up riding an up-and-down wave of openings and closures,” Merkel said, calling the period until mid-March “existential” for Germany’s management of the pandemic.
The new strains “are spreading especially quickly and require significant additional efforts”, the government said in conclusions agreed at the meeting.
Under Germany’s federal system, regional states have significant decision-making powers and some have strayed from the government line in the past to loosen some restrictions.
The text stresses that schools and daycare centres should be “the first to gradually reopen”, but that it is for individual states to decide how and when.
After the announcement, Berlin Mayor Michael Mueller said the capital would begin partially reopening schools from February 22, with other regions expected to follow suit.
The conclusions call on Health Minister Jens Spahn to review whether nursery workers and teachers can be given higher priority in vaccinations.
Hairdressers may reopen on March 1 if they take the necessary hygiene precautions.
The Associated Press has published a very useful explainer on what the WHO team in China said of their four weeks in the country to look at the origins of the coronavirus. The top line is that the team was not able to definitively pinpoint the origin of the pandemic.
Here’s a look at the theories the team explored during their visit:
Bats
The mission to Wuhan did not change a major theory about where the virus came from. Scientists think bats are the most likely carriers, and that they passed it on to another animal, which passed it on to humans. While there are other possibilities – a bat could have infected a human directly, for instance – the path through a second animal remains the most likely scenario, according to the WHO team and its Chinese counterparts. The question is what animal and where.
Wuhan’s seafood market
The Huanan Seafood Market had a cluster of cases at the start of the outbreak and was initially suspected as the place where people first became infected. The discovery of earlier cases has all but ruled out that theory, but researchers still want to know how this early cluster happened.
The market dealt mainly in frozen seafood but also sold domesticated wildlife. That included rabbits, which are known to be susceptible to the virus, and bamboo rats and ferret badgers, which are suspected of being susceptible. At the WHO mission’s closing news conference Tuesday, one team member said some of these animals have been traced to farms or traders in regions that are home to bats that carry the virus that is the closest known relative of the one that causes Covid-19.
The virus could also have been introduced to the market by an infected person. Chinese health officials note that only surfaces at the market tested positive for the virus, not any of the animal products. A Chinese official said Tuesday there appeared to be cases elsewhere in Wuhan around the same time as the market cluster, so the transfer of the virus from animals to humans could have happened elsewhere.
The lab
The Chinese and the international experts concluded it is extremely unlikely the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a lab with an extensive collection of virus samples. Former President Donald Trump and officials in his administration were among those who floated that possibility – prompting angry denials from China. And most experts have long been skeptical of it.
In making its determination, the team said that such leaks are extremely rare and there’s no evidence the virus existed in that lab or any lab anywhere in the world when the pandemic began. It also reviewed safety protocols at the institute, leading the team to conclude “it was very unlikely that anything could escape from such a place,” WHO team leader Peter Ben Embarek said.
The cold chain
The joint investigation left open the possibility that the virus could have been spread to humans through frozen food products, a bit of a surprise as foreign experts have generally played down the risk.
It’s a theory that has been widely promoted by Chinese officials, who have detected the virus on imported frozen food packaging and seized on that to suggest the virus could have come to China from abroad.
WHO team member Marion Koopmans noted that it still wouldn’t answer the question of where the virus came from originally. “Its not the cold chain by itself, that cannot be,” she said at the airport. “The virus has to come from somewhere.”
The data
The mission has been dogged by questions about how much freedom China would give the researchers to visit the places and talk to the people they wanted to. In the end, they appeared satisfied with the arrangements, at least in their public comments. Team member Thea Koelsen Fischer said she did not get to see raw data and had to rely on an analysis of the data that was presented to her. But she said that would be true in most countries.
Updated
Mexico authorises Sinovac vaccine
More on Mexico and Reuters is reporting that the country has signed an emergency use authorisation for China’s Sinovac vaccine, citing the Mexican deputy health minister. The country is one of the worst affected in Latin America, with nearly 2m cases. Only Brazil (9.7m), Colombia (2.2m) and Argentina (2m) have more cases.
China has reported the fewest number of new Covid cases in more than five months, official data showed on Thursday, after a combination of robust countermeasures helped stamp out a new wave of the disease in the northeast that emerged last month.
A total of two new cases were reported on 10 February, the National Health Commission said in a statement, down from 14 a day earlier and matching the total reported on 8 September.
Both of the new infections were imported cases from overseas.
China saw a resurgence of the disease in January, when a new cluster emerged in Hebei province that surrounds Beijing and later took hold in northeastern Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces. Authorities in these provinces introduced lockdowns, travel curbs and mass testing in a bid to contain the disease.
Though the latest wave appears to have subsided, travel volumes during the Lunar New Year break that began on Thursday are expected to be down significantly as authorities encouraged people to stay put amid heightened caution about the disease.
The total number of confirmed cases in China to date now stands at 89,736, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,636.
More vaccine news now, and Merck & Co said on Wednesday it was in talks with governments and companies to potentially help with manufacturing of vaccine doses that have been already authorised.
“Beyond our own candidates, we are actively involved in discussions with governments, public health agencies, and other industry colleagues to identify the areas of pandemic response where we can play a role, including potential support for production of authorised vaccines,” a company spokesman told Reuters.
The drugmaker said it also planned to focus on the accelerated scale-up of production of its investigational therapeutic candidates, MK-4482 and MK-7110, which it now calls molnupiravir.
Merck had halted the development of its two Covid vaccines in January after early trials showed both vaccines generated immune responses that were inferior to those seen in people who had recovered from coronavirus as well as those reported for other vaccines.
Mexico death toll approaches 170,000
Mexico’s health ministry on Wednesday reported 1,328 new confirmed deaths from Covid-19, bringing the total to 169,760.
The government says the real number of infected people and the death toll in Mexico are both likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
Updated
In Australia, health authorities in the state of Victoria have ramped up contact tracing and prepared for more mass testing of residents in Melbourne, after a new Covid-19 cluster linked to a quarantine hotel grew to eight cases on Thursday.
Residents are being urged to get tested amid fears of community transmission from a worker at the Holiday Inn in the city.
Melbourne was home to the world’s longest lockdown in 2020 (more than 100 days), when thousands of cases and more than 800 deaths followed an escape from the virus from hotel quarantine.
It’s believed the latest outbreak in the city, which is currently hosting the Australian Open tennis tournament, was likely sparked by a medical device known as a nebuliser being used by a Covid-positive guest at the hotel.
The remaining guests were transferred to another hotel to serve out their quarantine and more than 100 hotel workers were placed in isolation.
You can read our full story below and keep up to date with all the news from Australia on our live blog there:
Updated
WHO recommends AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine for all adults
The efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine has come under the spotlight in recent days – both for how it works against the South African variant and for its effectiveness in over 65s.
Now the WHO has recommended for use in all adults. The Guardian’s health editor, Sarah Boseley, reports:
The WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (Sage) said the vaccine should be given in two doses, eight to 12 weeks apart, bolstering the stand the UK government has taken in its mass vaccination programme.
“The efficacy of the vaccine is higher when the second dose is administered later,” said Dr Joachim Hombach, executive secretary of WHO’s Sage.
“You can expect to see a higher efficacy if you administer the vaccine in our recommended schedule which is 8-12 weeks between doses.”
The WHO decision means the UN-backed Covax scheme can start shipping doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine around the world to lower income countries. It only needs to be stored at 2 to 8C, so represents the best hope for many countries of vaccinating their health workers and most vulnerable citizens.
You can read Sarah’s full story below:
Updated
Asthma drug could prevent serious illness
Some good news for asthma sufferers, and indeed in general, that a cheap and widely available asthma drug appears to significantly reduce the risk of people getting seriously ill with Covid-19, if it is taken within the first week of developing symptoms.
At the beginning of the pandemic there was considerable angst amongst asthma sufferers that their condition may make them more vulnerable to Covid. However, if the results of this research are confirmed by other ongoing studies, it could be that inhaled budesonide – which both stops people from getting worse and shortens the length of their illness – becomes the first treatment in the early stages of coronavirus infection.
As the Guardian’s Linda Geddes reports:
The Stoic study was launched following observations that people with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) were surprisingly underrepresented among hospital patients admitted with Covid-19, when other respiratory illnesses such as flu, tend to make their symptoms worse. One possibility was that the steroid inhalers they use to manage their asthma and COPD symptoms were protecting some of them from severe Covid-19.
You can read Linda’s full report below:
Updated
Italy is reopening its ski resorts in Lombardy, the region worst hit by the coronavirus. Lifts will resume operating from 15 February, which will mark the return of skiing for the first time this year.
Lift tickets will be limited and no more than 30% of hourly capacity of cable cars and ski-lifts will be allowed.
Skiing could resume next week in other regions, as long as they remain in the lower virus-risk “yellow” areas. The health ministry can change regions’ risk colours based on data from a weekly monitoring report issued on Fridays.
All of the country is currently “yellow,” except for South Tyrol in the north, Umbria in the centre, and Puglia and Sicily in the south.
Several experts cautioning against re-opening, however.
Over the last 24 hours, nearly 13,000 people have tested positive for the coronavirus, and 336 people died from Covid-19. The latest figures brought total infection numbers to almost 2.67 million, and the overall death toll to 92,338.
Updated
Double masking 'substantially reduces' exposure
A study by the US CDC has shown wearing two masks can “substantially reduce” exposure to Covid-19.
The report summary said:
CDC conducted experiments to assess two ways of improving the fit of medical procedure masks: fitting a cloth mask over a medical procedure mask, and knotting the ear loops of a medical procedure mask and then tucking in and flattening the extra material close to the face. Each modification substantially improved source control and reduced wearer exposure.
The main thrust of the report seems to be that the better fitting the mask, the better the protection. The CDC – the peak US body for disease control – said the experiments “highlight the importance of good fit to maximise mask performance”.
The report found that in the lab tests with dummies, “exposure to infectious aerosols decreased by about 95% when they both wore tightly fitted masks”.
A study by the US CDC has shown wearing two masks can “substantially reduce” exposure to Covid-19. pic.twitter.com/Z4VHOloZ7l
— Alison Rourke (@AlisonRourke) February 11, 2021
You may recall Joe Biden often wore a cloth mask over a surgical mask when he was on the election campaign trail.
You can read about the study here from the CDC and our story on it is below.
Updated
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, with me, Alison Rourke.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found close-fitting surgical masks worn underneath cloth masks – known as double masking – can significantly enhance protection against Covid-19.
It’s the first CDC-backed research to recommend “double-masking”, although top US infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, has recommended the public consider the measure in past briefings.
In other news:
- Italy will open its ski resorts in Lombardy from mid February – the first time skiing will be allowed this winter.
- A new study has found that a cheap asthma drug has appeared to significantly reduce the risk of people getting severely ill with Covid-19, if taken within the first week of developing symptoms.
- The WHO says that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine can be given to adults of all ages, after some countries decided not to give the dose to those aged over 65 over doubts about its effectiveness.
- The UK will be “more or less” free of Covid by the end of the year, according to Prof John Edmunds, a member of the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies.
- Germany is now expected to extend its lockdown until 7 March, but hairdressers may be allowed to open before the date.
- Brazil registered 59,602 new cases of coronavirus and 1,330 new deaths in the past 24 hours on Wednesday.
Updated
