Thank you all for following tonight’s latest developments. You can keep up with the Guardian’s coverage of Covid-19 through our coronavirus keyword tag and our team in Australia but that’s it from me Nadeem Badshah.
A summary of today's developments
- Brazil recorded 55,649 further cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, along with 1,194 deaths from COVID-19, the Health Ministry said on Wednesday. Brazil has registered more than 7.6 million cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 193,875, according to ministry data.
- There were 231 people named in the New Year honours in the UK - 18.6% of the total - for their services to the coronavirus crisis. On the list were 123 health and social care workers, 10% of the whole list, chosen from a pool of many hundreds of nominations to the health committee.
- Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador said a doctor used his influence to have his family members cut in line for early coronavirus vaccines, despite the first doses being reserved for front-line health-care workers.
- The highly infectious coronavirus variant originally discovered in Britain has been detected in California, Governor Gavin Newsom said on Wednesday, a day after the first known US case was recorded in Colorado.
- France reported 26,457 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours on Wednesday, up sharply from 11,395 on Tuesday, and a level unseen since 18 November. France, which launched its gradual vaccination campaign on Sunday, saw the number of persons hospitalised for the disease decline by 183 over 24 hours.
- The UK health minister, Matt Hancock, announced that three-quarters of England would be in tier 4 from Thursday, adding that this was “absolutely necessary” (see 3.08pm).
- Ireland has extended a ban on travel to the country from the United Kingdom and South Africa until 6 January due to the presence of a new more infectious variant of Covid-19, the government said. The new Covid strain that reached Ireland from the UK is spreading faster than the country’s worst-case forecasts, the country’s prime minister Micheal Martin said as he announced a tightening of public health restrictions and ordered the closure of non-essential retail for the next four weeks.
- The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine will likely be authorised for emergency use in the US in April, the chief adviser for the country’s vaccine program said, with recruitment for the British drugmaker’s late-stage US trial almost complete with over 29,000 participants already enrolled after it was approved by the UK medicines regulator this morning (see 6.13pm).
- Secondary schools across England will be closed to most pupils for the first two weeks of term and both primaries and secondaries in London and other areas worst hit by Covid are likely to remain closed for longer, the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, announced, as the UK recorded the highest daily deaths figure reported since 24 April (see 4.09pm)
- France will deploy 100,000 police and gendarmes across the country to clamp down on parties, gatherings and the traditional torching of vehicles on 31 December (see 6.09pm).
- In Scotland, the first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, also warned the new highly infectious variant of Covid-19, known as B117, is quickly becoming the dominant strain after the country reported a record number of positive cases today.
- Health officials in China are encouraging tens of millions of migrant workers not to travel home during next February’s Lunar New Year holiday, the most important time for family gatherings, to limit coronavirus transmissions even though it has all but eradicated local transmission already.
- Greece’s government has announced senior officials will no longer be given priority for the vaccine after posts on social media by Cabinet ministers receiving the shot before most healthcare workers led to a backlash from unions and opposition parties (see 4.10pm).
Updated
A Baltimore police detective is facing criminal charges after prosecutors say he slammed to the ground a man who refused to wear a face mask inside a grocery store.
Prosecutors said Detective Andre Pringle was stationed at a grocery store in West Baltimore in spring when 25-year-old Brandon Walker entered the store with a mask on top of his head but not covering his face, the Baltimore Sun reports.
Prosecutors say Walker yelled and cursed Pringle as he escorted him outside of the store. Once outside, Pringle slammed Walker to the ground face first, prosecutors said.
Pringle has been charged with a misdemeanor assault charge. Pringle’s attorney, Chaz Ball, declined to comment to the newspaper.
Walker was charged with multiple crimes, including resisting arrest and assault. Those charges were dropped in November.
He pleaded guilty to violating orders under a state of emergency and was put on probation.
Updated
Angela Merkel said in her last new year’s address to the nation as German chancellor that 2020 was by far the most difficult of her 15-year leadership, yet the start of vaccinations against Covid-19 made 2021 a year of hope.
In a rare show of emotion, Merkel, who steered Germany and the European Union through the 2008 financial crisis, the Greek debt crisis a year later and the migrant crisis five years ago, condemned a protest movement opposed to lockdowns and said she would get vaccinated when the shot is widely available.
Let me tell you something personal in conclusion: in nine months a parliamentary election will take place and I won’t be running again.
Today is therefore in all likelihood the last time I am able to deliver a new year’s address to you.”
She added: “I think I am not exaggerating when I say: never in the last 15 years have we found the old year so heavy and never have we, despite all the worries and some scepticism, looked forward to the new one with so much hope.”
Updated
The coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, which was approved on Wednesday in Britain, is unlikely to get a green light in the European Union in the next month, according to the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
The regulator, charged with overseeing vaccines’ authorisation in the EU before they can be marketed, approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on 21 December. It is expected to rule on Moderna’s vaccine on 6 January.
But an EU ruling on the AstraZeneca-Oxford jab will take some time.
“Additional scientific information on issues related to quality, safety and efficacy of the vaccine is deemed necessary to support the rigour required for a conditional marketing authorisation (CMA) and this has been requested from the company,” the EMA said in a statement.
“Further information from the ongoing clinical trials is also expected from January.”
The Amsterdam-based agency earlier told AFP that it had not yet received any formal marketing authorisation and that it had set no timetable for approving the vaccine.
The regulator’s deputy executive director, Noel Walthion, told Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad on Tuesday that a possible approval in January is “unlikely”.
The AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine is currently undergoing a “rolling review” which allows the EMA to examine safety and efficacy data as they are released, even before a formal application for authorisation is filed by the manufacturer.
This procedure speeds up the evaluation of a marketing authorisation application once it is made, the EMA said.
The agency said it is “aware that the UK MHRA has granted a temporary authorisation of supply of the vaccine in the emergency use setting, which is distinct from a marketing authorisation.”
An AstraZeneca spokesperson told AFP it “has submitted a full data package to support an application for conditional marketing authorisation for the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to the European Medicines Agency.”
The spokesperson added: “AstraZeneca has been submitting data on a rolling basis and will continue to work closely with the EMA to support the start of a formal CMA application process.”
Updated
A Royal Navy nurse who has fought on the front line against coronavirus has been recognised in the New Year Honours List in the UK.
Chief Petty Officer Naval Nurse Andrew Cooper has been praised for his efforts testing hundreds of sailors on aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, as well as for his work in an NHS hospital’s emergency department.
He is among nearly two dozen personnel who have been honoured for their efforts, marking their hard work and commitment while on operations both at home in the UK and abroad.
Cooper, 36, said: “I couldn’t believe it at first. It will be exciting when I can let people know, having to hold off since finding out has been tough.
I cannot wait to tell them.”
Honours for people tackling the Covid-19 pandemic will be a recurring theme in the New Year and Birthday Honours list for many years as the pandemic “evolves”, the Cabinet Office in the UK said.
There were 231 people named in the New Year honours - 18.6% of the total - for their services to the coronavirus crisis.
Dame Barbara Monroe said that the true figure was likely to be much higher, as many of the nominations has been submitted before the start of the pandemic.
On the list were 123 health and social care workers, 10% of the whole list, chosen from a pool of many hundreds of nominations to the health committee.
It builds on a trend set by the Birthday Honours, where 14% of the total were health and social care workers.
Two experts who predicted the toll of the pandemic on the health and wellbeing of frontline staff have been recognised in the New Year’s Honours List.
Professor Greta Westwood, chief executive of the Florence Nightingale Foundation (FNF), returned to frontline care at the start of the pandemic.
Jackie Shears, programme director of NHS Digital, was awarded an OBE for services to patient care.
As well as her work within the health services IT division, she also used a little music therapy to help intensive care unit (ICU) staff across the country through the pandemic, bagging them a hit single in the process.
John Romain and his wife Amanda decorated an aircraft with the names of community heroes in exchange for donations for NHS Charities Together, raising over £130,000.
The couple were both named MBEs for services to charity and to aircraft restoration.
London council leaders have criticised the UK government’s list of areas where primary schools will not open to pupils next week as having “no logic”.
Around a million primary school pupils in some of the areas hardest hit by Covid-19 will not return to lessons as planned next week, while the expected staggered reopening of secondary schools in England will also be delayed.
But the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said he was “urgently seeking clarification as to why schools in some London boroughs have been chosen to stay open” while others “just down the road won’t”.
Other critics included Danny Thorpe, leader of the Royal Borough of Greenwich, which was threatened with legal action by the Government earlier this month after issuing advice to schools to move to online learning for the last few days of term.
He said in a statement: “In a case-by-case comparison, there appears to be no logic to how this list was brought together.
“Kensington and Chelsea has one of the lowest infection rates for the whole of the capital, yet their children and young people are being afforded the extra protection that apparently Royal Greenwich students don’t need.
“While we are very glad that they will benefit from these extra precautions, we can only speculate why this borough was included, yet with an infection rate more than 200 cases higher per 100,000, Royal Greenwich was not.”
He said London had been treated as “one area” throughout the pandemic, adding: “To now fragment the capital and ignore that residents are not bound by invisible borders is a massive step backwards in the boroughs’ combined efforts to fight the virus.”
Richard Watts, leader of Islington council in north London, said: “We are now seeking urgent clarification from the government about why Islington’s primary schools are to reopen in the week of 4 January, while those in many other London boroughs will not reopen.
“It is deeply frustrating that the government has made this announcement at the last minute, just days before the start of term, weeks after it was clear coronavirus cases were surging in London.
“It also comes just two weeks after the government threatened schools with legal action after some councils, including Islington, advised schools to delay reopening after January, following public health advice over surging coronavirus cases.”
Philip Glanville, the mayor of Hackney in north-east London, said the area should be included on the list where primary schools do not have to reopen.
Updated
More than 500,000 people who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 will have their second dose delayed for up to 12 weeks as the NHS rethinks the rollout that is aimed at halting the surging death toll in the UK.
In a change of policy, applying across the UK, the NHS will now prioritise administering to as many people on the priority list as possible the first dose of either the newly approved Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine or the Pfizer/BioNTech jab, so as to maximise the number of people protected against the disease.
Recipients will still get the two doses required to confer full immunity, but now the second will be delayed, in most cases coming 11 to 12 weeks after the first.
Previously, those receiving the Pfizer jab had a second dose-date set three weeks later on from their first dose. That gap was originally expected to be four weeks for the Oxford vaccination.
Russian sovereign fund RDIF agreed to supply Bolivia with 2.6 million doses of the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine but an apparent discrepancy in numbers overshadowed the announcement of the South American nation’s first major vaccine deal.
RDIF said the agreement would make it possible for more than 20% of Bolivia’s population to access the vaccine and supply would be facilitated by the Russian fund’s international partners in India, China, South Korea and other countries. Bolivia’s population is 11.35 million and 20% would be 2.27 million people.
Bolivian President Luis Arce, who took office last month, said the deal was for 5.2 million doses for 2.6 million people, or double the quantity RDIF described.
With this contract we are guaranteeing 5,200,000 doses for the Bolivian people,” said Arce in a signing ceremony.
Arce said Russia would send 6,000 doses, for 3,000 “treatments”, in January to vaccinate its most vulnerable populations, 1.7 million doses by the end of March and the rest “between April and May.”
Asked for confirmation of the number of doses, the Bolivian health ministry said the contract stipulated 5.2 million doses for 2.6 million people.
The Bolivia deal is latest sign the Russian vaccine is making inroads in Latin American nations eager for more immunization capacity, including neighbouring Argentina and Venezuela.
California has announced its first confirmed case of the new more contagious variant of coronavirus which was discovered in the UK earlier this month.
Governor Gavin Newsom announced the infection found in Southern California during an online conversation with Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
I don’t think Californians should think that this is odd. It’s to be expected,” Fauci said.
Newsom did not provide any other details about the person who was infected.
The first person in the U.S. known to be infected with the variant was identified
Wednesday as a Colorado National Guardsman who had been sent to help out at a nursing home struggling with an outbreak. Health officials said a second Guard member may also have contracted the new variant.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had administered 2,589,125 first doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Wednesday morning and distributed 12,409,050 doses.
The tally of vaccine doses distributed and the number of people who received the first dose are for both Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, vaccines as of 9:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday, the agency said.
According to the tally posted on Dec. 28, the agency had administered 2,127,143 first doses of the vaccines and distributed 11,445,175 doses.
The agency also reported 19,432,125 cases of new coronavirus, an increase of 199,282 from its previous count, and said the number of deaths had risen by 3,390 to 337,419.
The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus, as of 4 p.m. ET on Dec. 29 versus its previous report a day earlier.
The figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.
The Netherlands will retain its plan to start COVID-19 vaccinations by January 8 even though other European Union countries began inoculations this week, Health minister Hugo de Jonge said.
“Most countries have opted for symbolic first injections, I made a clear choice not do so”, De Jonge told reporters.
“Of course I would have wanted to be among the first, but we have made responsible choices.”
De Jonge has drawn criticism for his stance that it was impossible to start vaccinations earlier than next month, but he said local health authorities were not ready for an earlier start as the necessary IT systems were not yet in place.
Coronavirus infections in the Netherlands have remained high in recent weeks, despite a tough lockdown in which all schools and many stores were closed earlier this month.
Bars and restaurants in the Netherlands have remained shut since mid-October.
Dozens of hospitals cautioned on Wednesday that they would have to postpone critical operations and treatments to deal with a rising number of COVID-19 patients.
The Dutch national association for intensive care units said this could lead to choices between life and death by next month.
The number of hospitalised coronavirus patients has increased by more than 60% this month, and reached 2,714 on Wednesday.
Over 9,500 new coronavirus cases were reported on Wednesday, taking the total since the start of the pandemic to 787,300, and 11,323 people in the Netherlands are known to have died of the disease.
Brazil surpasses 193,000 deaths
Brazil recorded 55,649 further cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, along with 1,194 deaths from COVID-19, the Health Ministry said on Wednesday.
Brazil has registered more than 7.6 million cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 193,875, according to ministry data.
Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador said a doctor used his influence to have his family members cut in line for early coronavirus vaccines, despite the first doses being reserved for front-line health-care workers.
López Obrador said the doctor used “influences to get the scarce vaccines, and called it “immoral.”
He did not specify what action might be taken against those involved, who were not identified, but said the case was under investigation and would be punished. Experts have expressed concern that theft, corruption or falsification could affect vaccination efforts in Mexico.
While the army was in charge of the site, it appears there may have been an error in the outside system used to set up appointments for the shot, creating confusion, in part because the vaccine has to be applied quickly after it is opened and unfrozen.
Mexico has received only about 50,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, not nearly enough to cover 1.4 million health care workers, though hundreds of thousands more doses are expected to arrive in coming weeks.
A family that was not on the list to be vaccinated arrived and using influence, got vaccinated,” López Obrador said, noting they included “a doctor, his wife and I think one or two of his daughters.”
A summary of today's developments
- France reported 26,457 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours on Wednesday, up sharply from 11,395 on Tuesday, and a level unseen since November 18. France, which launched its gradual vaccination campaign on Sunday, saw the number of persons hospitalised for the disease decline by 183 over 24 hours.
- The UK health minister, Matt Hancock, announced that three-quarters of England would be in tier 4 from Thursday, adding that this was “absolutely necessary” (see 3.08pm).
- Ireland has extended a ban on travel to the country from the United Kingdom and South Africa until January 6 due to the presence of a new more infectious variant of COVID-19, the government said. The new Covid strain that reached Ireland from the UK is spreading faster than the country’s worst-case forecasts, the country’s prime minister Micheal Martin said as he announced a tightening of public-health restrictions and ordered the closure of non-essential retail for the next four weeks.
- The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine will likely be authorised for emergency use in the US in April, the chief adviser for the country’s vaccine program said, with recruitment for the British drugmaker’s late-stage US trial almost complete with over 29,000 participants already enrolled after it was approved by the UK medicines regulator this morning (see 6.13pm).
- Secondary schools across England will be closed to most pupils for the first two weeks of term and both primaries and secondaries in London and other areas worst hit by Covid are likely to remain closed for longer, the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, announced, as the UK recorded the highest daily deaths figure reported since April 24 (see 4.09pm)
- France will deploy 100,000 police and gendarmes across the country to clamp down on parties, gatherings and the traditional torching of vehicles on 31 December (see 6.09pm).
- In Scotland, the first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, also warned the new highly infectious variant of Covid-19, known as B117, is quickly becoming the dominant strain after the country reported a record number of positive cases today.
- Health officials in China are encouraging tens of millions of migrant workers not to travel home during next February’s Lunar New Year holiday, the most important time for family gatherings, to limit coronavirus transmissions even though it has all but eradicated local transmission already.
- Greece’s government has announced senior officials will no longer be given priority for the vaccine after posts on social media by Cabinet ministers receiving the shot before most healthcare workers led to a backlash from unions and opposition parties (see 4.10pm).
Argentina’s regulator has approved the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University for emergency use, AstraZeneca said in a statement.
AstraZeneca said the approval by the National Administrator for Food and Medical Technology (ANMAT) made Argentina “one of the first countries in the world to authorize” the drug, after the UK regulator gave the green light for its widespread roll-out earlier on Wednesday.
The company said the approval was for the vaccine to be administered to people over the age of 18 in two doses between four and 12 weeks apart, as per the UK approval.
Argentina has a contract to buy 22.4 million doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine, which the company said would all be delivered in 2021. Argentina’s President Alberto Fernandez said in August that Argentina and Mexico would also work together to produce the AstraZeneca vaccine for most of Latin America.
Agustín Lamas, president of AstraZeneca in Latin America’s Southern Cone, said: “A new stage in this process begins, we feel hopeful and confident in achieving what we set out to do from the beginning: broad and equitable access, without profit for the duration of the pandemic.”
The Argentine regulator said in a statement that it had judged the vaccine’s emergency roll-out to present “an acceptable benefit-risk balance.”
Argentina on Christmas Eve began vaccinating health workers using 300,000 doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine.
The country is preparing for a potential second wave facing other countries in the region including Chile, Mexico and Brazil. It has so far registered 1,602,163 cases of COVID-19 and 43,018 deaths.
Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann in 1960s sitcom “Gilligan’s Island,” has died aged 82 of causes related to COVID-19, her publicist said.
Wells died peacefully at a living facility in Los Angeles, publicist Harlan Boll said.
“There is so much more to Dawn Wells” than the “Gilligan’s Island” character that brought her fame, Boll said in a statement.
Besides TV, film and stage acting credits, her other real-life roles included teacher and motivational speaker, Boll said.
Born in Reno, Nevada, Wells represented her state in the 1959 Miss America pageant and quickly pivoted to an acting career.
Her early TV roles came on shows including “77 Sunset Strip,” “Maverick” and “Bonanza.”
The Irish government said it would retain its Pandemic Unemployment Payment at the current rate at least until the end of March after it announced the closure of non-essential retail to help curb a surge in COVID-19 infections.
In the coming weeks around 350,000 people are likely to be claiming the payment, which had been due to be reduced from the start of February, deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said.
Around 50,000 people lost their jobs on Christmas Eve when bars and restaurants were ordered to close and another 400,000 are likely be laid off in the next few days due to the closure of retail outlets, Varadkar said.
The country’s wage subsidy scheme will remain in place to help employers retain staff and commercial rates will be waived until the end of March, Varadkar said.
The Muslim Council of Britain is launching a legal challenge to the policy of the Sri Lankan government that all people who die of Covid must be cremated, even in violation of their religious beliefs.
The insistence on cremation has caused great distress among the country’s Muslim minority. Islam stipulates that the dead must be buried.
World Health Organization guidelines permit the burial or cremation of people who die of Covid, but the Sri Lankan government adopted a policy of mandatory cremations in March.
Ireland extends travel ban
Ireland has extended a ban on travel to the country from the United Kingdom and South Africa until January 6 due to the presence of a new more infectious variant of COVID-19, the government said.
Irish officials last week confirmed that the variant was also present in Ireland but that it was unclear how widespread it was.
The Canadian government said passengers must have a negative COVID-19 test taken within three days before they arrive in the country.
Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc said the measure will be implemented in the next few days.
Canada already requires those entering the country to self-isolate for 14 days and it has already banned all flights from the United Kingdom because of the new variant of COVID-19 spreading there.
The decision came a day after the premier of Canada’s largest province said he had ordered his finance minister to end a Caribbean vacation, saying he is “extremely disappointed” the official went abroad at a time the government is urging people to avoid nonessential travel because of the pandemic.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford said it was “completely unacceptable” that Finance Minister Rod Phillips went to the French island of St. Barts for the holidays.
A source told the Associated Press that Phillips flew commercial on Dec. 13 from Toronto to Antigua and then on to St. Barts, a popular vacation spot for the rich and famous over the Christmas holidays. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly about his travel.
The finance minister’s Twitter account had suggested that he was in Ontario while he has been in St. Barts. Phillips also travelled to Switzerland in August.
“Some Canadians are still travelling for nonessential reasons. This is deeply concerning. We must reiterate that now is not the time to travel,” Howard Njoo, Canada’s deputy chief public health officer, said Wednesday.
Evening summary
That’s all from me, I’ll pass you over to my colleague Nadeem Badshah after this wrap of events from the past few hours.
- The UK health minister, Matt Hancock, announced that three-quarters of England would be in tier 4 from Thursday, adding that this was “absolutely necessary” (see 3.08pm).
- The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine will likely be authorised for emergency use in the US in April, the chief adviser for the country’s vaccine program said, with recruitment for the British drugmaker’s late-stage US trial almost complete with over 29,000 participants already enrolled after it was approved by the UK medicines regulator this morning (see 6.13pm).
- Secondary schools across England will be closed to most pupils for the first two weeks of term and both primaries and secondaries in London and other areas worst hit by Covid are likely to remain closed for longer, the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, announced, as the UK recorded the highest daily deaths figure reported since April 24 (see 4.09pm)
- France will deploy 100,000 police and gendarmes across the country to clamp down on parties, gatherings and the traditional torching of vehicles on 31 December (see 6.09pm).
- The new Covid strain that reached Ireland from the UK is spreading faster than the country’s worst-case forecasts, the country’s prime minister Micheal Martin said as he announced a tightening of public-health restrictions and ordered the closure of non-essential retail for the next four weeks.
- In Scotland, the first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, also warned the new highly infectious variant of Covid-19, known as B117, is quickly becoming the dominant strain after the country reported a record number of positive cases today.
- Health officials in China are encouraging tens of millions of migrant workers not to travel home during next February’s Lunar New Year holiday, the most important time for family gatherings, to limit coronavirus transmissions even though it has all but eradicated local transmission already.
- Greece’s government has announced senior officials will no longer be given priority for the vaccine after posts on social media by Cabinet ministers receiving the shot before most healthcare workers led to a backlash from unions and opposition parties (see 4.10pm).
Updated
France records highest rise in cases since mid-November
France reported 26,457 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours on Wednesday, up sharply from 11,395 on Tuesday, and a level unseen since November 18.
France, which launched its gradual vaccination campaign on Sunday, saw the number of persons hospitalised for the disease decline by 183 over 24 hours.
The cumulative total of cases now stands at 2,600,498, the fifth-highest in the world.
The COVID-19 death toll was up by 303, at 64,381, versus a rise of 969 on Tuesday.
The new Covid strain that reached Ireland from the United Kingdom is spreading faster than the country’s worst-case forecasts, the country’s prime minister Micheal Martin has said.
“While international research for this new variant is ongoing, it is already very clear that we are dealing with a strain of the disease that spreads much, much more quickly,” Martin said in a televised address announcing a tightening of public-health restrictions and ordered the closure of non-essential retail for the next four weeks.
“It is spreading at a rate that has surpassed the most pessimistic models available to us.”
Brazil’s health regulator Anvisa met with AstraZeneca representatives this morning and has said the company’s local partners, federally-funded biomedical institute Fiocruz, will file for emergency use authorisation, without saying when.
President Jair Bolsonaro, a prominent coronavirus skeptic who has said he will not take any Covid vaccine, is under pressure to speed up Brazil’s rollout, as regional neighbours Mexico, Chile and Argentina have already begun immunisations.
In theory, Brazil’s emergency use authorisation allows for fast-track usage of a COVID-19 vaccine among certain high-risk patients. It is a slimmed down version of a full regulatory approval for nationwide rollout, Reuters reported.
However, Pfizer Inc has complained that Brazil’s emergency use application is especially onerous. The government defended itself against criticism of its vaccine plan on Tuesday, saying it was hamstrung by local laws that only allow it to sign purchase agreements once producers have emergency use authorisations or full authorisations.
Rio de Janeiro-based Fiocruz, which has agreed to import and bottle some 100 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine by June and eventually produce the vaccine locally, had previously said it would seek full regulatory approval for the shot on 15 January.
On that basis, health ministry officials have said nationwide vaccinations would begin on 20 January in a best-case scenario.
The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine will likely be authorised for emergency use in the US in April, the chief adviser for the country’s vaccine program has said on Wednesday.
Operation Warp Speed chief adviser Dr Moncef Slaoui said recruitment for the British drugmaker’s late-stage US trial is almost complete with over 29,000 participants already enrolled, Reuters reported.
“We project, if everything goes well with readout and emergency use authorisation may be granted somewhere in April,” he said.
It comes after the was approved by the UK medicines regulator this morning, raising hopes that immunisation against Covid-19 could be increased within days.
France to deploy 100,000 police and gendarmes to stop New Year's Eve parties
France will deploy 100,000 police and gendarmes across the country to clamp down on parties, gatherings and the traditional torching of vehicles on 31 December.
The interior minister Gérald Darmanin said the officers would also be strictly enforcing the national 8pm to 6am curfew as part of what he described as a “fight against unauthorised public gatherings and the phenomenon of urban violence”.
Police operations are to be concentrated in city centres and “sensitive” neighbourhoods. The number of police and gendarmes is the same as last year. Darmanin has also asked local chiefs of police to impose bans on the sale of fuel or alcohol in containers.
On New Year’s Eve last year a record 1,457 cars were burned across France, a 13% increase on the previous year.
Earlier today, French government spokesperson Gabriel Attal said the country was not planning local lockdown measures to contain the spread of Covid, although he dampened hopes for a quick reopening of cultural attractions and said curfews could be tightened.
“The rate at which the virus is circulating does not justify bringing in local lockdown measures,” he told BFM TV.
Attal said, however, that the government was keeping a close eye on some 20 French departments where cases were rising at a quicker pace, and confirmed that curfews could be brought forward to 6pm instead of 8pm in some areas if needed.
Updated
In Scotland, the first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has warned the new highly infectious variant of Covid-19, known as B117, is quickly becoming the dominant strain after the country reported a record number of positive cases today, at 2,045.
She warned the Scottish government could impose even stricter Covid controls over the next few days if case numbers continued accelerating. The whole of Scotland’s mainland is already under the highest tier, Level 4.
In a statement at Holyrood, recalled from Christmas recess for an emergency vote on the Brexit deal, Sturgeon urged Scots to avoid many traditional celebrations for Hogmanay on Thursday, including “first footing” neighbours and relatives on new year’s day and holding house parties to welcome the new year.
“We should bring in the 2021 in our own homes, with our own households,” she told MSPs. “This new strain is very serious. I can’t stress that enough.”
Sturgeon said that as yet Scotland’s hospitals were not overwhelmed; many English NHS trusts have reported serious problems coping with the spike in cases.
Although the number of intensive care patients, at 69, was well below the peak in the first wave of Covid, beds were under pressure in hospitals, she said. Overall, 1,133 people were in hospital with Covid-19.
Updated
Elsewhere, in China, health officials are encouraging tens of millions of migrant workers not to travel home during next February’s Lunar New Year holiday, the most important time for family gatherings, to limit coronavirus transmissions.
The measure from the country’s National Health Commission is not a direct travel ban but remains extraordinary because the traditional holiday – know as the world’s greatest annual human migration – is the only time of the year when many workers have the opportunity to travel home to see their families.
The commission said it is encouraging provincial governments to persuade workers to follow the suggestion while taking into account their personal wishes, the Associated Press reported.
It also said workers who stay behind should receive overtime pay for the work they do and be offered other opportunities to take vacation.
China has all but eradicated local transmission of the coronavirus, but authorities remain on high alert over a possible resurgence. Already, schools are scheduled to begin the vacation a week early and tourists have been told not to visit Beijing, the capital, during the holiday.
“Local governments should step up publicity efforts to encourage enterprises and institutions to ... guide workers to vacation at their place of work to the extent possible,” the commission said in a notice on its website.
The Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival as it is called in China, is traditionally a time when families gather for meals and to visit temple fairs and watch firework displays. For tens of millions of migrant workers, it means traveling long distances by train, plane and bus to their rural hometowns.
Along with discouraging travel, Chinese authorities are also carrying out a campaign to vaccinate 50 million people before the holiday.
And Johnson ends the presser again imploring people to celebrate sensibly tomorrow night “so as not to spread the disease”.
Asked whether further financial support would be available given the widespread severe restrictions, Johnson mentions the extension of the furlough scheme and says loans made available earlier in the pandemic will remain open for application. He then goes on to discuss the difference between the “old variant” and the “new variant”, and says the government is working quickly to roll out the vaccine. So no new financial support then, with many self-employed and unemployed people relying solely on benefits.
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Pressed for more detail on what he meant by the possibility of things being “much better” by April, Johnson suggests success would be defined by whether the government deems hospitality venues can reopen, “if the vaccination does have the positive effects we think it can have”.
Van-Tam adds that he does not know if vaccines will reduce transmission, yet, but expresses his hope people will be able to safely “go back to bingo halls and all the rest of it” following mass immunisation. He says he cannot give an assurance that people would not still “pose a hazard” in still being able to pass on the virus.
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Johnson says there will be tens of millions of vaccine doses by the end of March and that he doesn’t wish to give specific numbers at the moment. “We are shifting heaven and earth to roll them out as fast as we can,” he says.
Van-Tam warns against “kitchen table mathematics” scaling up the vaccine rollout thus far, as it is likely to rise exponentially.
“Our aim is to get the jab into people’s arms as quickly as the manufacturers can get that vaccine to us,” Powis adds.
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Johnson says the government would be making sure Nightingale hospitals are available, but they are not to be used widely immediately.
Powis adds that they are an insurance policy, “our last resort”, and are operational in a few places for various backroom purposes. He says the best way to use NHS staff is through expanding capacity within existing hospitals.
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Boris Johnson has been asked by a member of the public what assurance he can provide to businesses on when they can reopen. He cites April as when he is confident “things will be much better” and says he is keen to bring that prospective date forward.
Van-Tam says the vaccine’s protective effect would kick in within 14 to 21 days following the jab and that both vaccines are adjudged to provide high levels of protection after the first dose. He says the second dose is integral; important for longer term protection but the priority is the first dose.
Stephen Powis, national medical director of NHS England, pays tribute to NHS staff and warns that the new variant is fuelling the spiralling cases.
“Its absolutely vital that this year everybody continues to follow the guidance by staying at home and not mixing,” he says, referring to New Years Eve. “Covid loves a crowd so please leave the parties for later in the year.”
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The NHS hasn’t seen the impact of transmissions which will have occurred recently during households mixing over the festive period, Van-Tam says, and he implores people to play their part to mitigate “this very dangerous situation”.
And he pleads, see in the new year tomorrow within your own households: “Let’s follow the rules, protect the NHS and together, make 2021 the year we leave this tunnel behind us.”
And he passes over the deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam who goes through slides showing case rates doubled from the fortnight after 10 December.
Johnson leaves the door open for further action on schools in the most affected areas and says all secondary school students will be tested upon their return and regularly thereafter.
He says medical courses and others requiring face to face teaching at universities should be prioritised, suggesting others should not return to campuses.
At this critical moment, with the prospect of freedom within reach, we’ve got to redouble our efforts to contain the virus, Johnson says.
No-one regrets these measures more bitterly than I do, but we must take firm action now, and that’s why we must think very hard about schools ... Keeping children in education is a national priority and schools are safe, but we must face reality about the pace of the spread of the new variant.
He reiterates Williamson’s announcements earlier, which you can read below.
Johnson heralds the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine following its approval, saying that a first dose will be given to as many vulnerable people as possible with a second dose to follow 12 weeks later. He says the government is working as fast as it can to make the vaccine available.
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Boris Johnson holds Covid briefing in the UK
UK prime minister Boris Johnson is leading a press conference, as millions more people are to have strict tier 4 coronavirus restrictions imposed on their local areas.
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Meanwhile, university students in England who do not need to be on campus for practical learning are also being encouraged to stay at home by the government, though the precise details of the plans remain unclear.
Gavin Williamson told MPs:
We’re also asking universities to reduce the number of students who return to campus at the start of January, prioritising students who require practical learning to gain their professional qualifications. All university students should be offered two rapid tests on return in order to reduce the chance of spread of Covid.
Alistair Jarvis, chief executive of vice-chancellors’ group Universities UK, said:
We fully appreciate the public health situation has changed quite dramatically in a very short period of time, and it is therefore right that government and universities should look again at plans for the start of the spring term. For universities, the safety and wellbeing of students and staff is the priority and the sector will implement the new restrictions for England announced by the UK government with fewer students returning for face-to-face teaching, practicals and placements in early January.
Our immediate focus will be communicating with students with as much information as we can, as soon as we can, and reassuring them that universities will be there to support them and provide high-quality online teaching and learning until they can return to campus. Today’s announcement will understandably raise further issues and uncertainty - for students, universities and staff - which will need to be addressed by government over the coming weeks, including the need for financial support, regulatory flexibility and assessment changes.
Williamson is facing criticism already over a failure to publish his plans in step with his announcement, after the main aspects were reported in some detail this morning ahead of the announcement.
In the Commons, shadow education secretary Kate Green said: “This delay and disruption to children’s education is a direct result of the Government’s failure. They’ve lost control of the virus, now they’re losing control of children’s education.”
She said there was a consensus among MPs that the best place for children is in school but the government had “failed to give schools the support they need to make that happen”.
Shadow minister for schools Wes Streeting has tweeted: “The first thing that parents will be doing following this statement is looking online to see if their schools are open. The list isn’t yet online. For crying out loud.”
Shadow further education and universities minister Emma Hardy tweeted: “Why announce in parliament that some schools will not open as ‘normal’ and fail to provide a list on which schools are impacted! What a total shambles.”
School reopenings and closures will vary according to regional tiers and year groups, posing a confusing web of return dates for parents and school leaders.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) said:
This is another last-minute mess which could so easily have been avoided if the government had listened to school leaders before the holidays. Instead, back then, schools which wanted to shift to remote learning were threatened with legal action. Now we have a situation where the government is instructing schools to reduce the amount of teaching time available.
If we’d had the freedom to take action before the holidays, we might have been in a position to have more schools open for more pupils. School leaders will be baffled, frustrated and justifiably angry tonight.
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England's schools return delayed to mid-January in staggered opening
In the House of Commons, education secretary Gavin Williamson has announced that “in a small number of areas where the infection rates are highest”, only vulnerable children would continue to attend primary schools in person following the New Year.
The majority of primary schools will open as planned after the Christmas break, he said, adding that he is working to keep children in school due to the risk to their development and that the overwhelming majority of primary schools would reopen as planned, he added.
All pupils in exam years are to return to secondary schools in England on 11 January while the rest of secondary and college students would go back on 18 January, Williamson announced in a u-turn on the planned reopening.
We’ll be opening the majority of primary schools as planned on Monday, January 4. We know how vitally important it is for younger children to be in school for their education, wellbeing and wider development.
In a small number of areas where the infection rates are highest we will implement our existing contingency framework such as only vulnerable children and children of critical workers will attend face to face.
We will publish this list of areas today on the GOV.UK website. I’d like to emphasise that this is being used only as a last resort. This is not all Tier 4 areas and that the overwhelming majority of primary schools will open as planned on Monday.
He also shed light on new plans for mass testing at schools and colleges, saying that testing would begin “in earnest” in January, with those in exam years at the head of the queue.
During the first week of term on or after January 4, secondary schools and colleges will prepare to test as many staff and students as possible and will only be open to vulnerable children and children of key workers.
The 1,500 military personnel committed to supporting schools and colleges will remain on task providing virtual training and advice on establishing the testing process with teams on standby to provide in-person support if required by schools.
Testing will then begin the following week in earnest with those who are in exam years at the head of the queue. This is in preparation for the full return of all pupils in all year groups on January 18 in most areas.
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Greece’s government has announced senior officials will no longer be given priority for the vaccine after posts on social media by Cabinet ministers receiving the shot before most healthcare workers led to a backlash from unions and opposition parties.
Aristotelia Peloni, a deputy spokeswoman for the rightwing government, said the vaccination selfies were “wrong” and the plan to vaccinate 126 officials from the government and state-run organisations was being cut short after around half had received the shot.
It had been expected that a small number of senior officials would receive the vaccine publicly, as part of a plan to persuade everyone that it was safe and necessary, but the number of people on the list took many by surprise.
“These [vaccination] selfies were wrong. The symbolism around this issue has been exhausted at the highest level and nothing more was required.” Peloni told Greek radio station Parapolitika.
She said 66 officials had been vaccinated by midday on Wednesday out of a total of 1,128 people who had received the vaccine – meaning politicians received the vaccine before most doctors and healthcare workers.
Greece’s prime minister, president, and the head of the armed forces were all vaccinated at the weekend at the start of a national rollout expected to last months in an effort to ease public concerns over the safety of the programme.
They were followed by opposition party leaders as well as cabinet ministers and other senior government officials – drawing criticism from medical workers’ unions, the Associated Press reported.
“Cabinet ministers and their general secretaries have been lining up for a selfie with the vaccine, while doctors, nurses and other front line workers may have to wait their turn until the end of summer to get vaccinated,” Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the leftwing opposition, said on Tuesday after getting his own vaccine shot.
“That’s not symbolism, it’s favouritism.”
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UK reports 981 daily Covid-linked deaths
The UK has recorded 981 Covid-related deaths since yesterday, one of the highest daily tolls since April. It also registered 50,023 new cases in the last 24 hours, while 2,430 people were admitted to hospital.
The daily figure, which accounts for those who have died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19, brings the UK total compiled by Public Health England and NHSX to 72,548.
This is the highest daily figure reported since April 24, when 1,010 deaths were reported, but there is likely to be a lag in reporting deaths over the Christmas period.
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 88,000 deaths involving Covid-19 in the UK.
The number of excess deaths in the UK this winter – following the first wave of the virus – have remained at levels not incomparable with recent years. There were 890 more deaths than expected in the last week for which there is official data, ending 11 December, with the total excess figure consistently less than the number of deaths with a mention of Covid, indicating fewer deaths from other causes than expected.
However, this could well change once the excess death data catches up with the increasing deaths from the past two weeks. There have been 66,110 excess deaths since March, of 413,572 deaths from all causes, according to Public Health England. This means there has been 1.19 times the expected deaths between 20 March and 11 December.
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Giuseppe Conte, prime minister of Italy, has said that one of the greatest concerns related to the pandemic facing his government is the plight of workers once a moratorium on firings lifts in March.
Charities have reported a rise in the number of requests from people seeking aid for the first time due to the lockdown in the spring and less severe closures in recent months amid rising coronavirus cases.
Conte defended his government’s actions to protect workers, citing an earmarked €5bn in social funding that the Bank of Italy said had helped to prevent 600,000 people from losing their jobs during the pandemic.
He said the government was working with unions and social services “to confront the very worrying scenarios that we will see after March, because it is clear that the security belt that we have built is more or less working”.
Charities have also noted that some categories of workers remain uncovered by social programmes while government aid last spring arrived late and proved in many cases insufficient to cover basic expenses, the Associated Press reported.
During a wide-ranging end-of-year press conference, Conte maintained his stance that the vaccine against the virus would remain voluntary in Italy. But he urged people to get it. Surveys show one-quarter to one-third of Italians are sceptical of the vaccine.
“I ask everyone to make an effort, put aside ideology, put aside emotional reactions, and let’s perform an act of solidarity, if we don’t want to call it love, toward the entire national community. Let’s take the vaccine,’’ Conte said.
He said the first phase of the vaccination program reaching at least 10 million people should be complete by the end of April, but that there would still be a long way to go in the country of 60 million.
Updated
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to all, and thanks to Jedidajah. I’ll be bringing you updates for the next couple of hours and you can contact me on Twitter or via email on mattha.busby.freelance@guardian.co.uk if you’d like to get in touch with any news we haven’t yet covered.
Thanks for following along with me today, I’m now going to hand over to my colleague Mattha Busby.
The British shadow health secretary, Jon Ashworth, said Labour would support the tougher regulations when put to a vote in the Commons on Wednesday.
He told the Commons:
Almost the whole of England is now in a form of lockdown and for my constituents in Leicester, and I’m sure the constituents of MPs from Greater Manchester, will be deeply worried that our areas have now been in a form of restriction for months and months and months. It’s having a huge impact on families and small businesses.
Ashworth questioned if mass lateral flow testing is not enough to contain the spread of coronavirus given Liverpool will move up a tier, also noting: “We will vote for the regulations tonight because the situation we’re in is truly horrific.”
He added the virus is “out of control”, asked for assurances over oxygen supplies for hospitals, and said frontline NHS staff need the “protection of the vaccine ASAP”.
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Steve Rotheram, the metro mayor for the Liverpool City Region, which will be in tier 3 from Thursday, said about the announcement of tougher restrictions for large parts of England:
Despite our area leading on many of the medical developments in the fight against Covid, we have seen transmission rates rise recently in every part of our city region, leading to a worrying uptick in positive cases.
At the same time cases have risen at alarming rates across the rest of the country, threatening to push our NHS to its limits.
Being placed into tier 3 today is something that none of us wanted but I hope that these new measures help to slow down and contain the spread of the virus quickly.”
He promised to support local businesses and called for more government assistance.
We have seen throughout the past 10 months that restrictions can only suppress the virus for a limited period of time.
That’s why I have called on ministers to bring forward plans to rapidly increase the speed of the vaccine rollout, so that we can return to some sort of normality for good at the earliest opportunity.
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Three-quarters of England to under tier 4 restrictions from Thursday
The UK health minister, Matt Hancock, told MP’s on Wednesday that three-quarters of England would be in tier 4 from Thursday, adding that this was “absolutely necessary”.
An additional 20 million people will be in tier 4 of the government’s Covid-19 restrictions from 31 December, meaning a total of 44 million people will be in tier 4, or 78% of the population of England.
Hancock added that 530,000 vaccine doses would be available to the UK from Monday.
He said the Oxford vaccine means the day on which restrictions are lifted can be brought forward.
“It brings forward the day on which we can lift the restrictions that no one in this house wants to see any longer than are absolutely necessary,” he said.
“But we must act to suppress the virus now, not least because the new variant makes the time between now and then even more difficult. And so whilst we have the good news of the vaccine today, we also have to take some difficult decisions.”
The prime minister, Boris Johnson, said on Wednesday that the virus was surging in parts of the country, increasing virtually everywhere. He emphasised that the new variant of coronavirus was making keepings kids in school even more difficult.
“We have to look very hard at what we do with schools,” he said. “We have tough weeks ahead,” Johnson added, after saying the Brexit trade deal with the EU was “cakeist”.
“We have the best of both worlds,” he said.
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This from my colleague Josh Halliday on areas in England that will move to new, higher tiers from Thursday morning.
🚨Excl: Areas being placed into Tier 4 include all of north-east England, Cumbria, Cheshire, Warrington, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen, most of West Midlands, all East Midlands except Rutland, large parts of South West.
— Josh Halliday (@JoshHalliday) December 30, 2020
Excl Tier 3: Liverpool, Rutland, all Yorkshire and Humber, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, large parts of South West including Cornwall.
— Josh Halliday (@JoshHalliday) December 30, 2020
Nowhere will be in Tier 2. Only Isles of Scilly in Tier 1.
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People in the UK should welcome the new year in their own home and avoid meeting up with family and friends, scientists and police have said, as coronavirus cases in the UK soar and hospitals report growing pressure.
My colleagues Nicola Davis and Vikram Dodd report.
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Latvian police and border guards will patrol the streets to enforce a new year’s night curfew aimed at preventing large crowds gathering as coronavirus infections rise.
The curfew will last through the weekend and also cover the Orthodox Christmas holidays a week later, widely celebrated in the nation of 1.9 million.
More than 2,000 police, reinforced by border guards and the national guard, will patrol streets during the curfew hours, when leaving home will only be permitted for medical emergencies or for work, Reuters reports.
“The curfew will help prevent a total disaster,” president Egils Levits told public radio. He said contacts between people over the Christmas were the reason why Latvia and its Baltic neighbours Estonia and Lithuania reported record numbers of Covid-19 infections on Thursday.
Latvia and Estonia were the 12th and 11th worst-hit countries in the European Union, with around 580 new cases per 100,000 people, over the two weeks ending on Sunday.
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Millions of university, college and school students in England will face delays in returning to in-person classes in the new year, with some undergraduates not returning until February, the government is to announce.
Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, is due to give a statement to parliament on Wednesday afternoon confirming plans including a sharp reduction in the numbers of university students eligible to return to campus in the first weeks of January, and more rigorous testing requirements.
Secondary school pupils will not return to their classrooms in the week beginning 4 January, with most expected to have an extended holiday.
Those taking exams such as A-levels, BTecs and GCSEs will initially have online or remote lessons while schools and colleges carry out mass testing of their students, and return to school from 18 January.
My colleague Richard Adams has more.
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AstraZeneca said on Wednesday it is working efficiently and transparently to bring its vaccine to Brazil as fast as possible, adding that it remains committed to seeking full regulatory approval in Brazil after authorisation in the UK on Wednesday.
In a statement, AstraZeneca said it would keep up the ongoing submission of its late-stage trial results, but made no mention of seeking emergency use approval – a process that Pfizer, who also developed a coronavirus vaccine – has described as cumbersome in Brazil.
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Scotland records highest daily rise in cases
Scotland has recorded 43 deaths from coronavirus and 2,045 positive tests in the past 24 hours, the highest daily case figure on record, Scottish government figures show.
It brings the death toll under this measure – of people who first tested positive for the virus within the previous 28 days – to 4,510, PA Media reports.
The latest statistics show 124,831 people have now tested positive in Scotland, up from 122,786 the previous day. The daily test positivity rate is 11.3%, down from 14.4% on the previous day.
Of the new cases, 618 are in Greater Glasgow and Clyde, 295 in Lanarkshire, and 257 in Lothian. There are 1,133 people in hospital confirmed to have the virus, up 41 in 24 hours. Of these patients, 69 are in intensive care, an increase of four.
Updated
A further 494 people in England who tested positive for Covid-19 have died, bringing the total number of confirmed reported deaths in hospitals to 49,719.
Patients were aged between 30 and 100 years old. All except 20 (aged 36 to 92 years old) had known underlying health conditions, NHS England said, with dates of death ranging from 9 November to 29 December 2020.
The number of deaths of patients with Covid-19 by region are as follows:
East of England – 40
London - 83
Midlands - 94
North East & Yorkshire - 71
North West - 109
South East – 65
South West - 32
Since Tuesday 28 April, NHS England and NHS Improvement also reports the number of patient deaths where there has been no Covid-19 positive test result, but where the disease is documented as a direct or underlying cause of death.
This means the NHS England and NHS Improvement data collection provides information on all Covid related (suspected and confirmed) deaths in England hospitals.
Today, 23 deaths have been reported with no positive Covid-19 test result.
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People travelling from the UK to Sweden will need to show a negative test result for coronavirus before enterting the country, the Swedish government said on Wednesday.
The requirement will come into force on 1 January and will not apply to Swedish citizens, home affairs minister Mikael Damberg told a news conference.
Last week, Sweden shut its borders to travellers from Britain and Denmark with some exceptions.
Kate Connolly, Berlin
Germany’s Robert Koch Institute, (RKI) the government’s disease control agency, medics and epidemiologists warned on Wednesday that the coronavirus disease was in danger of spiralling out of control.
Jens Spahn, the health minister, urged Germans to show patience, while Lothar Wieler, head of the RKI, said that the high death toll was most likely due to delayed reporting of statistics over the Christmas holidays.
But he said the rate – 167 more than a week ago, which brings the overall death toll to over 32,000 – was still extremely high. The vast majority of deaths are not taking place in hospitals, but care homes, he said.
More than a quarter or 5642 ICU beds in Germany are occupied by coronavirus patients, 3,078 of whom are on ventilators. There are just over 4,700 unoccupied ICU beds, and almost 11,000 in reserve. However, medical staff are already said to be working to capacity.
Around 78,000 Germans had received a vaccination by Wednesday lunchtime and Spahn said the country was on track to have 1.3m doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine by the end of the year as well as 1.5-2m doses of the Moderna vaccine, which is expected to be approved in the EU next week, in the first quarter of 2021. The Astra/Zeneca vaccine is still awaiting approval.
Under pressure to explain bottlenecks and delays in Germany’s vaccine programme, Spahn warned that coronavirus vaccines were inevitably scarce throughout the world at the start of their roll out, but he expected a rapid increase as vaccine producers, such as BioNTech – which is due to open a new factory in February – upped production over the coming weeks.
Spahn said that Matt Hancock, the UK’s health minister, had told him in a phone call on Wednesday morning he expected Britain to have achieved herd immunity through its vaccination programme by the spring.
Spahn said he had been bombarded with complaints from Germans via letter and email over Germany’s decision to “take a European approach” to allow the European Union’s 27 members equal access to the vaccine. “People have said ‘this is a German vaccine, why can’t we have it first?’,” he said referring to the Mainz-based biotechnology company BioNTech which developed the first approved vaccine.
He defended his decision in June, along with his counterparts in the Netherlands, France and Italy, “to say it was not about each to his own, but all of us together”. As a result, he said: “Last Sunday, when vaccination began in Germany, it also started in Croatia, Bulgaria, Lithuania, and Portugal … in contrast to when a new medicine usually comes on the market and it is available in Germany immediately but can take years for it to be available in other countries. We said we didn’t want this (with the vaccine).”
Germany’s current lockdown, in which the closure of all but non-essential shops along with schools and nurseries has been ordered until 10 January, is expected to be extended. A meeting of chancellor Angela Merkel and the leaders of Germany’s 16 states on 5 January is expected to decide on the terms of an extension.
Whilst the majority of Germans appear to have stuck to advice to hold a low-key Christmas, reducing their contacts and travel to a minimum, politicians have voiced concern over the new year celebrations, which are usually very public and rowdy, involving private firework displays on streets and squares. Although firework sales have been banned and many public areas declared out of bounds, police chiefs have said they expect large crowds to gather. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence of pyrotechnics being purchased in neighbouring Poland by Germans.
“I’m really very concerned about celebrations due to take place at the new year. This must be urgently prevented,” Tobias Hans, the leader of the state of Saarland, told the broadcaster RTL.
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Sweden registered 8,846 new infections on Wednesday, as well as 243 new Covid-19 deaths, health agency statistics showed.
The country’s total death toll from the pandemic now stands at 8,727. The deaths registered have typically occurred over several days and sometimes weeks.
The health agency has said statistics over the Christmas period are less reliable than usual due to less testing and delays in reporting of deaths.
Sweden’s death rate per capita is several times higher than that of its Nordic neighbours’ but lower than in several European countries that opted for lockdowns, which Sweden has not.
The approval of the vaccine shouldn’t be seen as an immediate solution to the problems we are facing, Deenan Pillay, a professor of virology at University College London and a member of the UK’s Independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) stressed on Wednesday.
He said:
The fact that the vaccine is coming makes it even more important that we limit as many infections as we can. Covid-19 has proved far more prone to mutations and variation than I think many of us thought a year ago, evidenced by the continual emergence of new variants around the world.
One of the big concerns is that we will see continued evolution of this virus, with more and more variants - particularly variants that build on the current variants that are highly transmissible. We should expect that, and of course that will happen with ongoing transmission and replication.
Without replication of the virus, without transmission, there is no evolution of the virus. Therefore, in order to maximise the effectiveness of the vaccines coming through, we need to lockdown and reduce all transmissions within the UK as much as possible.
Anthony Costello, as professor of global health and sustainable development at UCL and member of Sage, said:
It’s great news about the vaccine, but at the moment we are doing 50 thousand vaccines a day, and Matt Hancock [the British health secretary] says we’ll get up to 2 million a week very quickly. If we’re to give 2 doses to 22 million people - that’s the number of people who are over 65, frontline workers, or with underlying conditions - that will take until June. If we’re going to reach herd immunity, it will take until the end of the year. So let’s get this into perspective.
We need to know about the details: what about volunteers, what about retired doctors and nurses, the logistics, how are we going to reach minority groups?
I’m rather worried that the ambition may be in advance of what we’re actually capable of. Politicians, the media, financial markets all seem to think that the arrival of the vaccine means that this pandemic is over, and it very much isn’t.
Test, trace and isolate is even more important now. We are a one club golfer at the moment: We’ve only got lockdowns. But of all the mitigating mechanisms we have, trace and isolation is the most specific and therefore the least economically damaging. We have to invest in that because we are going to face the real prospect of continuing outbreaks throughout the year.”
David King, chair of Independent Sage, said:
This is not a magic bullet. Very welcome as the Oxford vaccine is, we now need an clear statement on the rate of rollout, the availability through manufacture of the vaccines, and how the procedure will be conducted. We need to know for example, whether the army is going to be brought in to support this.”
Critical care in Wales is operating at nearly 40% over its normal capacity, the Welsh health minister, Vaughan Gething, has revealed.
There are 210 patients in critical care beds in Wales – while the normal capacity is 152. Of the 210, 126 patients have Covid – a 24% increase since 21 December.
Gething said there was a “levelling off” in the all-Wales Covid figures but cases were continuing to grow in the north of the country. He said the R number for Wales was believed to be between 1 and 1.3.
The minister said the health service and social care in Wales faced an “extraordinary challenge” in the coming weeks. It is likely things will worsen before they improve.
He said more than 30,000 people had already been vaccinated in Wales and the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab would start arriving in Wales on Monday, though in “small quantities” initially.
The impacts may not be seen for months, but he added: “There really is light at the end of this long, dark tunnel.”
Updated
Portugal’s prime minister, Antönio Costa, has tested negative for Covid-19 and will resume in-person public appearances from Wednesday, his cabinet said in a statement.
Costa had spent two weeks in self-isolation following a meeting with French president, Emmanuel Macron, who had contracted the disease.
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Apple has pulled an iOS app that encouraged users to meet up at secret underground gatherings and parties during the pandemic.
The app, called Vybe Together, promoted private parties during the Covid-19 pandemic and has been removed from the Apple App Store, had its account on TikTok banned, and scrubbed most of its online presence, with the app’s creators telling the Verge that Apple banned the application from its store.
Vybe Together billed itself on TikTok and its website as a place to organise and attend mostly illegal parties in contravention of social dsitancing laws, using the tagline “Get your rebel on. Get your party on.”
The app required users to submit a profile for approval before they were allowed to sign up.
Updated
Ukraine’s health minister has signed a contract to buy 1.8m doses of China’s Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine, Ukraine’s presidential office said on Wednesday.
The office said in a statement the vaccine was expected to arrive in Ukraine in “the shortest possible time”.
Germany expects the EU to give quick approval to the coronavirus vaccine developed by Oxford University and Astrazeneca that was cleared for use in the UK on Wednesday, its top vaccines official said.
Klaus Cichutek, head of the Paul Ehrlich Institute, said that, thanks to the rolling EU review of the Astrazeneca vaccine’s effectiveness, it would be possible to take a quick decision once a formal application was submitted, Reuters reports.
No such application had been received by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) by Wednesday morning, Cichutek told a news conference, but a debate in its councils would follow as soon as it arrived.
“Once the application is submitted a decision can be taken quickly,” Cichutek said.
German health minister Jens Spahn urged “a quick and thorough examination” of the Astrazeneca vaccine by EMA, in addition to the expected EU clearance of a shot from Moderna in early January.
A vaccine jointly developed by Pfizer and BioNTech is already being administered under an EU-wide vaccination campaign that began after Christmas.
It is time for a third national lockdown, the leader of Cumbria county council has told the Guardian, as the Lake District brimmed with “tier tourists” over the festive period.
There has been some speculation that Cumbria - or at least part of it - will be moved up a tier this afternoon. For most of December the county has been in tier 2, with pubs, holiday cottages, hotels and guest houses open for business.
Latest government data shows Eden, a district in the far east of the county, has the highest rates in the north of England, with 510 cases per 100,000 people. It is a mixed picture across Cumbria: Copeland, on the west coast, has just 79 cases per 100,000.
The Lake District has been very busy over the festive period, with visitors arriving from tier 3 and tier 4 areas, contrary to government guidance, said Stewart Young, the Labour leader of Cumbria county council.
“The holiday homes and places to stay are full of people from either tier 3 areas or tier 4 areas. People are advised not to come, but it’s only advisory. Because we are tier 2 you can still come out and have a meal in a bar with people from your household here,” he said.
Young said he would prefer a third national lockdown rather than for the county to be separated into different tiers. “It’s not like it’s clear where the districts start and end,” he said.
“In my opinion we should be in a national lockdown. We came out on the 2nd December with the new tier system because of elements within the Conservative didn’t support a national lockdown. I’m talking to you from Carlisle, eight or nine miles from the Scottish border, where there is a national lockdown. We are surrounded by tier 3 areas in England... It’s very difficult to treat different parts of the county differently, if only because it’s difficult to tell when you have crossed from one district to another.”
The Swiss government on Wednesday decided against imposing further restrictions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus amid faster-spreading variants which recently entered the country.
“The Federal Council has conducted a detailed analysis of the current epidemiological situation. This remains worrying due to the high level of infection and the appearance of two new virus variants in Switzerland,” the government said in a statement.
“However, the Federal Council has come to the conclusion that the measures taken on 18 December [...] are appropriate and do not need to be tightened.”
Switzerland closed restaurants and bars, museums, zoos and sports and leisure facilities from 22 December until 22 January.
The government issued a “strong recommendation” for people to stay at home, and tightened social distancing rules in shops.
As had been the rule previously, private meetings are capped at 10 people and public gatherings to a maximum of 15 people.
Ski areas can remain open.
A new variant of the coronavirus that may be more contagious has been found in a Colorado man who had not been travelling, triggering a host of questions about how the first US case of the new version showed up in the Rocky Mountain state, the Associated Press reports.
The new variant was first identified in England, and has also been found in several other countries.
Colorado officials were expected to provide more details at a news conference Wednesday about how the man in his 20s from a mostly rural area of rolling plains at the edge of the Denver metro area came down with the variant.
The man is in isolation southeast of Denver in Elbert County, state health officials said.
Governor Jared Polis announced the case Tuesday, adding urgency to efforts to vaccinate Americans.
For the moment, the variant is likely still rare in the US, but the lack of travel history in the first case means it is spreading, probably seeded by travelers from Britain in November or December, said scientist Trevor Bedford, who studies the spread of Covid-19 at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
“Now I’m worried there will be another spring wave due to the variant,” Bedford said. “It’s a race with the vaccine, but now the virus has just gotten a little bit faster.”
Colorado Politics reported there is a second suspected case of the variant in the state. Both of the people were working in the Elbert County community of Simla. Neither is a resident of that county — expanding the possibility that the variant has spread in the state.
Despite pleas from health authorities for tougher restrictions over new year, only three of the six Spanish regions with the highest rate of infections – the Balearic Isles, Valencia and Extremadura – have introduced new measures.
The other three, Madrid, Catalonia and Castilla-La Mancha, have decided simply to maintain the restrictions introduced over Christmas.
There is little or no enforcement of the regulations, leaving it to citizens to behave responsibly and in some areas people are not clear about what they can and cannot do.
In Madrid, people living in the several “restricted movement
zones” often don’t know where the zone’s limits lie. The city has, however, decided to close the central Puerta del Sol, a popular square for New Year’s Eve celebrations, at 10pm on the 31 December.
In the space of a few weeks the Balearic Isles have gone from being a region with one of the lowest rates to one of the highest. It is now registering more than 300 cases a day with rates of 621 per 100,000 people in Mallorca and 586 on the tiny island of Formentera.
On Ibiza and Menorca, the rate is only about 20. The number of patients in intensive care on the islands has risen by 50
% in a week.
So far, 13 cases of the new Covid strain detected in the UK have been identified in Spain: five in Andalucía, six in Madrid and two in Alicante. Other suspected cases are being investigated in Valencia and Galicia.
Updated
The still high Covid-19 infection numbers do not allow a return to normality for now, German health minister Jens Spahn said on Wednesday.
“The infection and death figures show that we are still very far from normality,” Spahn told reporters in Berlin.
“I don’t see how, in this situation, we can return to how things were before the lockdown,” he added.
Germany is under a partial lockdown until 10 January, with most shops closed along with schools, restaurants, cultural and leisure facilities.
New Year’s Eve festivities will be muted, with a ban on the sale of fireworks and tight restrictions on the number of people who can gather in public.
“It will probably be the quietest New Year’s Eve that Germany can remember,” Spahn said.
Following Wednesday’s approval of a coronavirus vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca in the UK, Spahn said he expects a “thorough and rapid processing of a corresponding European Union application by the European authorities”.
Updated
The UK needs a “step-change” in its distribution of coronavirus vaccines, Dr Chaand Nagpaul, the chairman of the British Medical Association council, said on Wednesday.
He said:
With infections spreading rapidly across the country, and with record numbers of Covid-19 patients now in hospital, piling pressure on the health service like never before, the approval of another safe, effective vaccine is welcome news for doctors and the public alike.
It is now crucial that supplies of this vaccine are given to as many GP practice sites and hospital hubs as possible and that this happens as quickly as possible so that we can begin vaccination en masse.
With 100m doses of this vaccine already ordered we need to see a step-change in distribution so that doctors can protect their patients and communities, beginning with those most at risk, and crucially this must include health and social care workers as they confront the virus on the front line.
While this vaccine may not have the same logistical hurdles as those associated with the Pfizer jab, the task of vaccinating such large numbers of patients in a short space of time is a huge challenge.
Doctors taking part in the campaign, whether that’s in hospitals, GP-led sites or mass vaccination centres, want to get on with the rollout and this needs support and investment while GPs will need to have the flexibility to deprioritise other services to focus on this vital work.
Updated
UK deaths rise to above 88,000, new figures show
More than 88,000 deaths involving Covid-19 have now occurred in the UK, latest figures show.
A total of 2,986 deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending 18 December mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This is up from 2,756 deaths in the week to 11 December – a rise of 8%.
The increase follows two weeks in which the number of deaths had dropped slightly.
Nearly a quarter (22.9%) of all deaths registered in England and Wales in the week to 18 December mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate.
A total of 84,641 deaths have so far been registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate, according to the latest reports from the UK’s statistics agencies. This includes 76,669 deaths in England and Wales up to 18 December, which were confirmed by the ONS on Wednesday.
Since these statistics were compiled, a further 3,088 deaths are known to have occurred in England, plus 66 in Scotland, 239 in Wales and 117 in Northern Ireland, according to additional data published on the government’s coronavirus dashboard.
Together, these totals mean that so far 88,151 deaths involving Covid-19 have taken place in the UK, which make the UK’s the highest death toll in Europe so far, ahead of Italy’s overall death toll of 73,029.
Updated
Germany reports record daily death toll
Germany recorded more than 1,000 coronavirus-related deaths in one day for the first time on Wednesday, days after it started vaccinating people and as an extension of a lockdown looms.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the country rose by 22,459 to 1,687,185, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed.
The reported death toll increased by 1,129 to 32,107.
The RKI said the data was not fully comparable as some health authorities reported fewer results during the holidays and some reports included late claims.
Daily infection numbers have not come down significantly since the 16 federal states in early December agreed that schools, most shops, bars and restaurants would remain closed until 10 January.
Several politicians, including chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff, Helge Braun, have said that an extension of the restrictions was likely.
Around 42,000 people, mostly in care homes have been vaccinated so far, the RKI said.
Germany officially kicked off its Covid-19 vaccination campaign on Sunday. The federal government is planning to distribute more than 1.3m vaccine doses to local health authorities by the end of this year and about 700,000 a week from January.
Updated
Luke Letlow, Louisiana’s incoming Republican congressman, has died from complications related to Covid-19 at the age of 41, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday.
“The family appreciates the numerous prayers and support over the past days but asks for privacy during this difficult and unexpected time,” Letlow’s spokesman, Andrew Bautsch, said in a statement.
Louisiana’s eight-member congressional delegation called Letlow’s death devastating. “Luke had such a positive spirit, and a tremendously bright future ahead of him,” they said in a statement.
“He was looking forward to serving the people of Louisiana in Congress, and we were excited to welcome him to our delegation where he was ready to make an even greater impact on our state and our nation.”
The state’s newest congressman, who was due to take office in January, was admitted to a hospital in Monroe on 19 December after testing positive for Covid-19. He was later transferred to a hospital in Shreveport and placed in intensive care.
Dr GE Ghali of LSU Health Shreveport told the Advocate that Letlow had no underlying health conditions that would have put him at greater risk of Covid complications.
Indian authorities were trying Wednesday to track down tens of thousands of people who entered the country coming from the UK in recent weeks as cases of a new and fast-spreading coronavirus strain more than doubled in 24 hours, Agence France-Presse reports.
They have launched efforts to locate around 33,000 people who flew to India in the last month from the UK after 20 people tested positive for the new, more virulent strain - up by 14 cases since Tuesday.
India also extended on Wednesday the ban on flights to and from Britain by a week to 7 January in a bid to combat the new strain that British authorities say is no more deadly, but which spreads more easily.
“Comprehensive contact tracing has been initiated for co-travellers, family contacts and others,” the Indian health ministry said Tuesday, referring to those who flew between 25 November and 23 December, when Delhi suspended air links with Britain.
It remains unclear how many arrivals from Britain it has traced so far.
Delhi wants to learn about their movements in order to prevent a wider outbreak in a country combatting the world’s second highest Covid-19 tally.
Britain is home to a huge Indian community and several flights per day take hundreds of people from London to New Delhi and Mumbai.
More than 30 countries have suspended air links with Britain over the new strain, which British medical officials have said is “out of control”.
Indian civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri said any resumption of flights to and from Britain would be “strictly regulated”.
Of the 33,000 passengers to enter the country in the last month, more than 130 people have tested positive for coronavirus.
The cases have been reported across India, but most are in Delhi and Bangalore.
India has the world’s second highest coronavirus caseload behind the US, with more than 10 million infections and 145,000 deaths.
The Indian government has yet to approve any vaccines but hopes to start immunisations early next year.
Northern Ireland health minister Robin Swann has also welcomed the approval of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine.
He tweeted that he expects deployment to start by next week.
Swann said that, so far in Northern Ireland, 33,683 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine have been administered to care home residents and frontline health workers.
The Philippines’ defence minister said on Wednesday that unapproved Covid-19 vaccines given to president Rodrigo Duterte’s military security detail had been smuggled into the country, but called the move “justified”, Reuters reports.
News of the special troop unit being inoculated as early as September has caused a stir among activists, with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yet to approve any Covid-19 vaccines and no set timeline for when health workers would receive one.
Defence secretary Delfin Lorenzana said members of the Presidential Security Group (PSG) obtained the vaccine without government authorisation and had administered them without his knowledge.
“Yes smuggled, because they were not authorised, only the government can authorise,” he told reporters when asked if the vaccine was smuggled into the country.
“They need to explain because they violated FDA rules,” adding: “It is justified ... it will protect them so they will not be infected and at the same time they can protect the president.”
On Tuesday, PSG head brigadier general Jesus Durante told news channel ANC that a handful of unit members had given themselves a coronavirus vaccine “in good faith” and the president was only informed afterwards.
Durante said the unit could not afford to wait for approval. He did not say how the vaccine was obtained, or which one was used.
The FDA and health ministry both warned on Monday against use of unapproved vaccines and said importing, distributing or selling them was illegal.
Akbayan Partylist, a leftwing group of lawmakers, cried foul on Wednesday over what it called “VIP treatment” when local governments were struggling to get budgets to fight the coronavirus.
Mark Drakeford, the first minister of Wales, said on Wednesday that the newly approved Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine would be rolled out across Wales in January.
“Very pleased that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine has been given the go-ahead. Over 25,000 vaccines have already been administered in Wales and this second vaccine will start to be rolled out here in the New Year,” Drakeford wrote on Twitter.
Israel, meanwhile, is aiming to become one of the first countries in the world to vaccinate most of its population against coronavirus, the Haaretz newspaper reports.
The current rate of vaccinations, which began last week, will see the immunisation of most of the high-risk population by the end of January. If the doses are received on time from Pfizer, most of the population, except for children under 16, may be vaccinated during March 2021.
On Sunday, 99,000 Israelis received their first dose, and by Monday night 495,000 people had been vaccinated.
According to Haaretz, Israel aims to reach 150,000 vaccinations or more per day.
Updated
European stocks edged higher on Wednesday as the UK approved the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, while bets of more US fiscal aid and massive vaccination efforts spurred hopes of a strong global economic recovery next year.
The pan-European STOXX 600 rose 0.1% by 0810 GMT, hovering near a 10-month high hit in the previous session.
The approval of the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca on Wednesday was a “triumph for British science”, UK prime minister Boris Johnson said.
It is truly fantastic news - and a triumph for British science - that the @UniofOxford /@AstraZeneca vaccine has been approved for use.
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) December 30, 2020
We will now move to vaccinate as many people as quickly as possible. pic.twitter.com/cR4pRdZJlT
Oxford/AstraZeneca had 62% efficacy in their largest trial, of 11,636 people, but 90% efficacy in a small additional sub-group in the UK numbering 2,741 who were given a half dose of the vaccine, followed by a whole dose four weeks later.
Authorities restricted movement and tightened curbs on gatherings in Sydney, Australia on Wednesday, hoping to avoid a coronavirus “super spreader” event during New Year’s Eve celebrations after finding a new cluster of infections.
Household gatherings were limited to five people while the maximum number of people allowed to gather in public in Sydney was capped at 30.
Residential care facilities were closed to visitors.
“We don’t want New Year’s Eve to be the cause of a super-spreader,” New South Wales state premier Gladys Berejiklian said as she announced the restrictions would take effect from midnight on Wednesday until further notice.
Berejiklian reported 18 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, the biggest daily increase in a week, with nine of them part of an outbreak in the city’s northern beaches that has grown to more than 100 people over the past week.
NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said a new cluster in the city’s inner west, which includes six members of an extended family living in three different households, is expected to grow as members had joined Christmas gatherings.
The outbreaks in Sydney have dampened plans for the city’s New Year’s Eve harbour fireworks display, an event televised around the world.
Turkey received its first shipment of Covid-19 vaccines from China’s Sinovac early on Wednesday, Reuters reports, almost a week after Ankara said the vaccine was safe and effective, based on interim Phase III trial results.
The shipment of 3 million doses, part of a deal for a total of 50 million, was initially set to arrive on 11 December but faced setbacks.
On Twitter, health minister Fahrettin Koca said authorities would begin inoculations after testing the vaccines, a process that will take 14 days.
Turkey has reported more than 2.1 million Covid-19 cases since March, while more than 20,000 people have died.
A recent surge in new cases, which placed the country among those with the highest number of daily cases for several weeks, led the government to impose weekend lockdowns and weekday curfews.
Daily cases have since come down to around 15,000.
Ankara plans first doses for health workers and those older than 65, the ministry has said, followed by those older than 50 and suffering at least one chronic illness, in addition to those in specific sectors or high-risk environments.
The third group will include young adults and sectors not included in prior groups. A fourth group covers all the rest not listed.
Last week, Turkish researchers said interim analysis showed the vaccine was 91.25% effective, although, at the time, Koca said authorities were certain the vaccine was effective and safe, the trial data, based on 29 infections, was seen as too limited for final approvals.
Sinovac is seeking to consolidate data from global trials in countries such as Brazil, Chile, Indonesia and Turkey.
Lockdown measures to be widened in England
Lockdown measures in England will be extended to counter the rapidly growing number of cases of a new variant of Covid-19, the UK health secretary Matt Hancock told BBC television on Wednesday.
Asked if the current tiered measures would be broadened, Hancock said: “Yes, I’m going to set out the details of that to the House of Commons this afternoon.”
Hundreds of thousands of doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford Covid-19 vaccine are ready to be rolled out in the UK from Monday, Hancock said after the shot was approved by regulators.
“We’ll get going on this from Monday,” he told the BBC. “The number [of doses] that will be ready for next week is in the hundreds of thousands, and then the numbers increase.”
Updated
A 45-year-old nurse in California has tested positive for Covid-19 more than a week after receiving Pfizer Inc’s coronavirus vaccine, an ABC News affiliate reported on Tuesday.
Matthew W., a nurse at two different local hospitals, said in a Facebook post on 18 December that he had received the Pfizer vaccine, telling the ABC News affiliate that his arm was sore for a day but that he had suffered no other side-effects.
Six days later on Christmas Eve, he became sick after working a shift in the Covid-19 unit, the report added. He got the chills and later came down with muscle aches and fatigue.
He went to a drive-up hospital testing site and tested positive for Covid-19 the day after Christmas, the report said.
Christian Ramers, an infectious disease specialist with Family Health Centers of San Diego, told the ABC News affiliate that this scenario was not unexpected.
“We know from the vaccine clinical trials that it’s going to take about 10 to 14 days for you to start to develop protection from the vaccine,” Ramers said.
“That first dose we think gives you somewhere around 50%, and you need that second dose to get up to 95%,” Ramers added.
Russia on Wednesday reported 26,513 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, including 5,105 in Moscow, pushing the national tally to 3,131,550.
Authorities said 599 people had died overnight, taking the official death toll to 56,426.
The country’s overall excess death rate from Covid was corrected sharply upwards to over 186,000, after Russia said on Monday that its coronavirus death toll was more than three times higher than it had previously reported, making it the country with the third-largest number of fatalities.
For months, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, had boasted about Russia’s low fatality rate from the virus, saying earlier this month that it had done a better job at managing the pandemic than western countries.
Singapore began vaccinating healthcare workers with Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine on Wednesday, kicking off one of Asia’s first inoculation programmes against a pandemic that has killed more than 1.7 million people globally.
Sarah Lim, a 46-year-old nurse, and 43-year-old infectious diseases doctor Kalisvar Marimuthu were among the more than 30 staff at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases who were vaccinated on Wednesday, the health ministry said.
They will return for the second dose of the vaccine on 20 January.
“Vaccines have managed to bring pandemics down to their knees before. So I am hopeful that this vaccine will do the same,” Marimuthu said.
Singapore is the first country in Asia to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.
It has also signed advance purchase agreements and made early down payments on several other vaccine candidates, including those being developed by Moderna and Sinovac.
It expects to have enough vaccine doses for all 5.7 million people by the third quarter of 2021.
Singapore has reported just a handful of new local cases in recent months and has one of the world’s lowest Covid-19 fatality rates, with so far only 29 people having died of the virus.
India has extended its suspension of flights with Britain until 7 January, the civil aviation minister said, as the South Asian nation reported 20 cases of a new infectious strain of coronavirus first detected in the UK.
“Thereafter, strictly regulated resumption will take place for which details will be announced shortly,” Hardeep Singh Puri said on Twitter, declaring the week-long extension.
Phase 3 trials of the Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine found it to be 79% effective, the Chinese pharmaceutical giant said on Wednesday.
While the efficacy rate is lower than rival vaccines produced by PFizer-BioNTech and Moderna, it is potentially a significant breakthrough for the Asian region.
Sinopharm Group is a state-owned pharmaceutical company with two vaccine candidates among China’s five experimental treatments in international final stage trials. Public statements about Sinopharm vaccines do not appear to clarify which of the two candidates are being discussed.
According to a statement from the company, one of Sinopharm’s vaccine showed a 79.34% efficacy and a 99.52% antibody positive conversion rate, which met the standards of WHO and Chinese authorities, and the company has applied to market the vaccine for use on the general public.
It comes off the back of trials in the Middle East reporting 86% effectiveness. The minimum standard efficacy set by US regulators for emergency use of a vaccine is 50%.
“Sinopharm China’s Beijing Biologial Products has formally submitted an application for conditional listing on the State Food and Drug Administration,” it said.
The vaccines are not being trialled in China because the domestic prevalence of the virus is so low.
It had been approved for emergency use in a few countries and the company has been conducting late-stage clinical trials in 10 nations including Argentina, the UAE and Morocco.
Taiwan has reintroduced higher level entry restrictions, closing its borders to everyone but citizens, residents, and a small number of excepted categories from 1 January, after it detected the first case of the UK variant of Covid-19.
Health authorities said today that a Taiwanese teenager returned from the UK on Sunday, and had a fever when he landed. He was sent to hospital, and was diagnosed with the new strain of Covid-19 on Monday. Health and welfare minister Chen Shih-chung said the boy was receiving treatment and was stable.
The UK variant is believed to be about 70% more infectious, and has prompted numerous countries to increase quarantine or entirely ban entry for people from the UK.
In response to the case Taiwan authorities said quarantine and border restrictions will be tightened from 1 January. The only groups allowed to enter will be citizens and residents, diplomats, spouses/children of citizens, and business visitors fulfilling contractual obligations. Until now, there have been a limited number of allowable reasons to travel to Taiwan, including working holiday visas and business trips. All non-air crew arrivals must do 15 nights quarantine in a government-designated hotel or an approved place of residence, except for business travelers who were only required to do five.
Last week Taiwan recorded its first community transmission since April, in a Taiwanese woman who was friends with a pilot who authorities said traveled to and from the US and moved around Taipei while infectious. Health authorities tested dozens of contacts, and said no further cases had been found. In response authorities increased the quarantine requirements for air crews.
Updated
The ban on flights from the UK to Norway will be extended until 1600 GMT on 2 January because of ongoing concerns over the mutated strain of coronavirus, the Norwegian health ministry said late on Tuesday.
“It is still possible that the ban is extended further,” the ministry said in a statement.
Following the lead of other European nations, Norway on 21 November halted travel from the UK after news that the new virus strain was rapidly spreading, Reuters reports.
Taiwan reports first case of new variant
Taiwan on Wednesday reported its first case of a new coronavirus variant discovered in Britain, in a person who returned to the island on Sunday and whose infection had previously been confirmed.
On Wednesday, Taiwan’s health minister and central epidemic command center (CECC) head Chen Shih-chung said that a male passenger in his teens had tested positive for the new variant of the virus, TaiwanNews reports.
The passenger arrived on a flight from London on Saturday, and had submitted negative results of tests taken within three days of his flight.
However, when the passenger arrived at the airport on Sunday, he was found to have a fever.
Taiwan has agreed to buy almost 20 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine, including 10 million from AstraZeneca Plc, the government said on Wednesday.
The vaccines will arrive by March at the earliest, the CECC said in a statement.
Updated
UK becomes first country to approve Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine
The UK on Wednesday became the first country in the world to approve a coronavirus vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca.
The UK has ordered 100 million doses of the vaccine as it battles a major winter surge driven by a new, highly contagious variant of the virus.
“The government has today accepted the recommendation from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to authorise Oxford University/AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine for use,” the health ministry said.
AstraZeneca said the authorisation was for a two dose regime, and that the vaccine had been approved for use for emergency supply.
Updated
Czech Republic reports record rise in infections
The Czech Republic reported a record high 16,329 daily cases of Covid-19 on Tuesday, the health ministry said on Wednesday.
The country of 10.7 million has been one of the worst hit, with its total number of detected cases reaching 701,622 with 11,429 deaths.
