A summary of today's developments
- The UK has reported 37,578 new cases of Covid-19, government data showed on Saturday. A further 120 people were reported as having died within 28 days of a positive test for coronavirus, bringing the total to 133,161.
- People in Germany have been urged by the country’s health minister to take the Covid-19 vaccine, with the warning that if vaccination numbers do not increase the country’s hospitals may be overwhelmed by patients later in the year. So far just 61% of Germany’s population have had a complete course of two Covid vaccines, a lower proportion than in comparable European countries, and the daily vaccination rate has been falling for weeks.
- Brazilian federal health regulator Anvisa has suspended the use of over 12m doses of a Covid-19 vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech that were produced in an unauthorised plant, Reuters reports.
- Australians who participated in clinical trials of the Novavax Covid vaccine are being told their vaccinations cannot currently be recognised on Australia’s immunisation register. Hundreds of Australians took part in clinical trials for the Novavax jab last year, hoping to help the world chart a way out of the pandemic.
- A state of emergency in and around Tokyo is to be extended until the last week of September, even as curbs in the rest of Japan are eased, according to a report in the Mainichi newspaper. Emergency measures imposed by the government last month covering about 80% of Japan’s population were due to end on 12 September. But they will remain for a further two weeks in Tokyo and neighbouring Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba prefectures due to high numbers of severe cases and the strain on hospitals, according to Reuters, citing the Japanese paper.
- Slovakia has reversed its policy of allowing only people vaccinated against Covid-19 to attend public events during a visit by Pope Francis this month following low registration numbers.
- Bahrain has authorised the use of a booster dose of the Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine, the first time the Russian shot has been approved for a third dose, the state-run Bahrain News Agency said on Saturday.
- There are fears in Indonesia about the security of personal medical data after the president’s coronavirus vaccine certificate was leaked and a large test app also seemed to be compromised. Joko Widodo’s vaccine certificate, showing his redacted ID number and vaccination times, was leaked and circulated online by users who found his data on the official vaccine-monitoring app, PeduliLindungi, the government said.
Updated
Mexico has reported 15,586 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 647 more deaths, Reuters reports.
It brings the total number of infections in the country to 3,420,880 and the death toll to 262,868, health ministry data showed on Saturday.
Brazil on Saturday reported 21,804 new coronavirus cases and a further 692 deaths, Reuters reports.
The country has had more than 20.8 million cases overall and over 583,000 deaths.
Brazilian federal health regulator Anvisa has suspended the use of over 12m doses of a Covid-19 vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech that were produced in an unauthorised plant, Reuters reports.
Anvisa said it was alerted on Friday by São Paulo’s Butantan institute, a biomedical centre that has partnered with Sinovac to locally fill and finish the vaccines, that 25 batches, or 12.1m doses, sent to Brazil had been made in the plant. “The manufacturing unit ... was not inspected and was not approved by Anvisa in the authorisation of emergency use of the mentioned vaccine,” the regulator said. The ban was “a precautionary measure to avoid exposing the population to possible imminent risk,” it added. Butantan also told Anvisa that another 17 batches, totalling 9m doses, had been produced in the same plant, and were on their way to Brazil, the regulator said. During the 90-day ban, Anvisa will seek to inspect the plant, and find out more about the security of the manufacturing process, it said.
Updated
Australians who participated in clinical trials of the Novavax Covid vaccine are being told their vaccinations cannot currently be recognised on Australia’s immunisation register.
Hundreds of Australians took part in clinical trials for the Novavax jab last year, hoping to help the world chart a way out of the pandemic.
But the participants have since faced significant uncertainty over their vaccination status, unsure whether their doses would be recognised by Australia.
Updated
A summary of today's developments
- The UK has reported 37,578 new cases of Covid-19, government data showed on Saturday. A further 120 people were reported as having died within 28 days of a positive test for coronavirus, bringing the total to 133,161.
- People in Germany have been urged by the country’s health minister to take the Covid-19 vaccine, with the warning that if vaccination numbers do not increase the country’s hospitals may be overwhelmed by patients later in the year. So far just 61% of Germany’s population have had a complete course of two Covid vaccines, a lower proportion than in comparable European countries, and the daily vaccination rate has been falling for weeks.
- A state of emergency in and around Tokyo is to be extended until the last week of September, even as curbs in the rest of Japan are eased, according to a report in the Mainichi newspaper. Emergency measures imposed by the government last month covering about 80% of Japan’s population were due to end on 12 September. But they will remain for a further two weeks in Tokyo and neighbouring Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba prefectures due to high numbers of severe cases and the strain on hospitals, according to Reuters, citing the Japanese paper.
- Slovakia has reversed its policy of allowing only people vaccinated against Covid-19 to attend public events during a visit by Pope Francis this month following low registration numbers.
- Bahrain has authorised the use of a booster dose of the Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine, the first time the Russian shot has been approved for a third dose, the state-run Bahrain News Agency said on Saturday.
- There are fears in Indonesia about the security of personal medical data after the president’s coronavirus vaccine certificate was leaked and a large test app also seemed to be compromised. Joko Widodo’s vaccine certificate, showing his redacted ID number and vaccination times, was leaked and circulated online by users who found his data on the official vaccine-monitoring app, PeduliLindungi, the government said.
Former British prime minister Gordon Brown accused rich countries of committing a “moral outrage” by stockpiling Covid-19 doses while poor countries are struggling to get supplies.
Brown, who is a United Nations special envoy, called on the US president, Joe Biden, and other Group of Seven leaders to urgently ship vaccines from warehouses in America and Europe to Africa. Western countries are hoarding nearly 300m shots while only 70 million people in Africa have so far been vaccinated, Brown said in an opinion piece published in the Sunday Mirror newspaper, citing research by data firm Airfinity. By Christmas, the west is set to have 1bn surplus doses even if every European and American adult has received a booster shot and all children over 12 are injected, he said.
Updated
The US has administered 374,488,924 doses of Covid-19 vaccines as of Saturday morning and distributed 450,175,825 doses, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Those figures are up from the 373,516,809 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by Friday, out of 447,619,715 doses delivered.
The agency said 206,908,710 people had received at least one dose while 175,968,266 people were fully vaccinated as of 6am ET on Saturday, Reuters reports.
Updated
Parents in the UK should choose whether they allow their children to be vaccinated against Covid-19 if ministers overrule scientific advice against mass vaccination of healthy 12 to 15-year-olds, the government’s independent vaccine advisers said.
The government intends to push ahead with vaccinations for teenagers but Prof Anthony Harnden, the deputy chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, said on Saturday that it was “entirely up to parents” to decide.
“The health benefits from vaccinating well 12 to 15-year-olds are marginally greater than the risks,” he told the Observer.
Updated
Slovakia has reversed its policy of allowing only people vaccinated against Covid-19 to attend public events during a visit by Pope Francis this month following low registration numbers.
“A negative test or proof of overcoming Covid-19 in the last 180 days will be sufficient to get a ticket,” the Slovak Catholic Church’s bishops’ conference (SBC) said.
The ban on unvaccinated people had been controversial in the EU member state, where only 49.5% of adults are fully vaccinated – compared over 70% in the EU as a whole.
Until now, only Slovaks with full vaccination against Covid-19 had been able to register for the 12-15 September papal visit, and the number of those registered has been much lower than expected.
“A lot of people have been asking to lift the vaccination requirement. So, as it is possible, we accommodated this request,” SBC spokesman Martin Kramara told AFP.
Updated
I know some folks are hesitant to get vaccinated, but the vaccine is safe, effective, and the best way to protect yourself and those you love. I sat down with Stephanie, who got the Pfizer vaccine after it received its full FDA authorization, to talk about her experience. pic.twitter.com/osdgY6Jggi
— President Biden (@POTUS) September 4, 2021
France has reported 88,159 coronavirus deaths in hospital, an increase of 83, Reuters reports.
The country has had more than 112,000 deaths overall.
France also recorded 13,336 new cases on Saturday. It has had over 6,81 million cases in total.
Updated
The Home Office has admitted that long queues at Heathrow immigration checks have been “unacceptable” and blamed a shortage of Border Force officers.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Throughout the pandemic we have been clear that queue times may be longer as we ensure all passengers are compliant with the health measures put in place to keep the UK public safe.
“However, the very long wait times we saw at Heathrow last night are unacceptable.
“This is the busiest weekend of the year for returning passengers, with particularly high numbers of families with children under the age of 12 who cannot use e-gates.
“Border Force is rapidly reviewing its rosters and capacity and flexibly deploying our staff across the airport to improve waiting times.”
Updated
#COVID19 VACCINE UPDATE: Daily figures on the total number of COVID-19 vaccine doses that have been given in the UK.
— Department of Health and Social Care (@DHSCgovuk) September 4, 2021
As of 4 September, 91,456,622 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been given in the UK.
Visit the @PHE_uk dashboard for more info:
▶️ https://t.co/cQkuLQglz1 pic.twitter.com/GIo9xYXA4U
As companies around the UK call their employees back to workplaces this month – some for the first time since March 2020 – family charities warn that increasing numbers, especially mothers and pregnant women, are being made to do so against their will.
Jane van Zyl, chief executive of the charity Working Families, reports growing numbers of calls to its advice line, mostly from women “who don’t want or aren’t able to return to the office as much as their employer is demanding”.
Since April, the charity has seen a sharp rise in calls about flexible working, while a third are about childcare issues.
Updated
More data from Italy. Patients in hospital with Covid-19 – not including those in intensive care – stood at 4,204 on Saturday, down from 4,164 a day earlier.
There were 53 new admissions to intensive care units, increasing from 42 on Friday.
The total number of intensive care patients was 569 from a previous 556, Reuters reports.
Some 331,350 tests for Covid-19 were carried out in the past day, compared with a previous 296,394, the health ministry said.
Updated
Italy reported 56 coronavirus-related deaths on Saturday, down from 58 the previous day, Reuters reports.
The daily tally of new infections decreased to 6,157 from 6,735, the health ministry said.
A total of 129,466 deaths linked to Covid-19 have been registered in Italy since its outbreak emerged in February last year.
Italy has reported more than 4.5 million cases to date.
UK death toll rises by 120
The UK has reported 37,578 new cases of Covid-19, government data showed on Saturday.
It means cases reported between 29 August and 4 September were up 2.4% compared with the previous seven days.
A further 120 people were reported as having died within 28 days of a positive test for coronavirus, bringing the total to 133,161.
Updated
Germans urged to take vaccine amid low take-up
People in Germany have been urged by the country’s health minister to take the Covid-19 vaccine, with the warning that if vaccination numbers do not increase the country’s hospitals may be overwhelmed by patients later in the year.
So far just 61% of Germany’s population have had a complete course of two Covid vaccines, a lower proportion than in comparable European countries, and the daily vaccination rate has been falling for weeks.
New infections are on the rise, meanwhile. On Saturday, the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s disease control agency, reported 10,835 new Covid-19 cases, up from 10,303 a week ago.
The slowing uptake prompted the health minister, Jens Spahn, to tweet: “We need at least 5 million vaccinations for a safe autumn and winter.”
“The number of people who have been vaccinated is too low to prevent an overburdening of the health system,” the health minister told daily Hannoversche Zeitung, according to the Associated Press. He said 90% of Covid-19 patients in intensive care are unvaccinated, the German news agency dpa reported.
Christian Drosten, who is regarded as Germany’s foremost coronavirus expert, said the idea of “a relaxed autumn is a risky assumption” and warned that contact restrictions may have to be implemented again if new infections keep going up, dpa reported.
Drosten suggested some Germans don’t appreciate vaccines enough because the earlier phases of the pandemic were less devastating in Germany than in other European countries. “They have had a horrible experience as an entire society,” Drosten said of other European countries. “Many deaths, a real lockdown, where one was only allowed to go out for shopping for a reason, and where the streets were patrolled by the military.”
In Germany, 92,325 people have died of Covid-19, according to the Robert Koch Institute. Other European countries have seen many more deaths even though their populations are lower: Britain has had over 133,000; Italy had 129,000 and France has seen over 115,000 dead.
Updated
An Oklahoma doctor has said overdoses of the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin, which many believe without evidence can prevent or cure Covid-19, are helping cause delays and problems for rural hospitals and ambulance services struggling to cope with the resurgent pandemic, writes Martin Pengelly for the Guardian US.
Ivermectin is used to kill internal and external parasites in livestock animals and, in smaller doses, in humans.
“There’s a reason you have to have a doctor to get a prescription for this stuff, because it can be dangerous,” Dr Jason McElyea told KFOR, an Oklahoma TV station.
“The [emergency rooms] are so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting to facilities where they can get definitive care and be treated.
“Ambulances are stuck at the hospital waiting for a bed to open so they can take the patient in and they don’t have any, that’s it. If there’s no ambulance to take the call, there’s no ambulance to come to the call.”
Japan extends Covid emergency in Tokyo and neighbouring areas
A state of emergency in and around Tokyo is to be extended until the last week of September, even as curbs in the rest of Japan are eased, according to a report in the Mainichi newspaper.
Emergency measures imposed by the government last month covering about 80% of Japan’s population were due to end on 12 September. But they will remain for a further two weeks in Tokyo and neighbouring Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba prefectures due to high numbers of severe cases and the strain on hospitals, according to Reuters, citing the Japanese paper.
Under the state of emergency, the government has tried to reduce foot traffic by asking restaurants to shorten opening hours and stop serving alcohol, and by asking companies to let staff work from home more frequently.
The government is also to consider an extension in parts of central and western Japan, including Aichi – home of Toyota motors – and Osaka, the Mainichi said, adding a decision would likely be made in the middle of next week.
Japan is battling its fifth and biggest wave of Covid-19 cases, driven by the highly infectious Delta variant. On Friday, new daily nationwide cases hit 16,729, with 63 deaths.
Updated
Germany’s seven-day incidence of new Covid infections has risen again, and has now reached 80.7 as of Saturday, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). The value was 80.2 the previous day, a week ago it was 72.1.
The number of patients admitted to clinics with Covid-19 per 100,000 inhabitants within seven days now stands at 1.83. The previous high was around 15.5 around Christmas.
German health authorities reported 10,835 new infections to the RKI within one day. A week ago 10,303 new infections were recorded.
The country has recorded 92,325 deaths from the virus, of which 24 were reported on Saturday.
Bahrain has authorised the use of a booster dose of the Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine, the first time the Russian shot has been approved for a third dose, the state-run Bahrain News Agency said on Saturday.
Bahraini authorities approved the booster for use among all over-18s at least six months after receiving their second dose of the Sputnik V vaccine, the news agency reported.
Bahrain and the UAE have already approved third booster shots using the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
The small island nation, home to roughly 1.7 million according to the World Bank, has seen its Covid-19 infections decrease, which are currently at 3% of their peak with 95 new infections reported on average each day, according to the Reuters Covid-19 Tracker.
There have been 272,709 infections and 1,388 coronavirus-related deaths reported in Bahrain.
So far nearly 2.5m doses of Covid vaccines have been administered, enough to inoculate about 76% of the population, assuming each person needs two doses.
Updated
Poland will donate 400,000 doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to Taiwan, the Polish foreign ministry said on Saturday, to help boost vaccination rates in the country.
Only around 5% of its 23.5 million population are fully vaccinated, though the government has millions of vaccines on order, Reuters reports.
A relatively small domestic coronavirus outbreak is well under control in Taiwan, and the country has already received some 6m vaccine doses gifted by Japan and the US, enabling it to speed up an inoculation programme that it said had been hampered initially by China, though Beijing denies this.
Poland says its vaccine donation is a reciprocal move after Taiwan donated medical equipment during the first wave of the pandemic.
“Keeping in mind this important gesture, Warsaw will offer Taipei 400,000 doses of the coronavirus vaccine to speed up the vaccination process. Increasing the number of vaccinated people globally is in everyone’s interest,” the statement said.
Taiwan’s foreign ministry has thanked Poland for the donation. Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Lithuania recently donated or said they would donate vaccines to Taiwan, which has repeatedly rejected offers of doses from China, citing doubts about the safety of Chinese-made shots.
Updated
The father of an Arizona elementary school student was arrested after he and two other men showed up to the campus with zip-tie handcuffs, threatening a “citizen’s arrest” of the school principal over a Covid-19 quarantine, officials said on Friday.
Diane Vargo, principal of Mesquite Elementary School in Tucson, said the parent came to her office on Thursday with his son in tow. The father was upset the child would have to isolate and miss a school field trip because of possible exposure to Covid-19.
She said two other men also “barged in”. One, she said, was carrying “military, large, black zip ties and standing in my doorway”. Vargo said she tried to explain the school had to follow county health protocols.
“I felt violated that they were in my office claiming I was breaking the law and they were going to arrest me,” a shaken Vargo said in a video statement released by the Vail Unified School District. “Two of the men weren’t parents at our school, so I felt threatened.”
There are fears in Indonesia about the security of personal medical data after the president’s coronavirus vaccine certificate was leaked and a large test app also seemed to be compromised.
Joko Widodo’s vaccine certificate, showing his redacted ID number and vaccination times, was leaked and circulated online by users who found his data on the official vaccine-monitoring app, PeduliLindungi, the government said.
“Certain people have accessed the vaccine certificate of Mr Joko Widodo by using a vaccine check feature available in PeduliLindungi,” an official statement said on Friday, according to the AFP news agency.
However, officials from the communication and information ministry deflected blame and said Widodo’s data was accessed via the general commission of elections website.
Budi Gunadi Sadikin, the health minister, said authorities have blocked access to public officials’ data following the breach.
The leak comes only days after researchers of encryption provider vpnMentor revealed the data of 1.3 million users of a government test-and-trace app had been compromised.
The researchers said among the information leaked were passengers’ data and Covid-19 test results.
Updated
Seven out of 10 employers in the Netherlands want the right to ask workers if they have been vaccinated against Covid-19, a poll has shown.
Bosses in the country currently have no legal power to ask employees their vaccination status, because it counts as a conflict with the Dutch privacy law and right to physical sanctity, the NL Times reported.
But a study by the employers union AWVN found about 70% of 600 employers taking part feared for the safety of the workplace as more and more employees return to working on-site.
While workers cannot be required to prove vaccination status, customers can in some cases. One employer was quoted as saying: “How can we protect our customers if are not allowed to know anything about our employees?”
Authorities in Russia have reported 18,780 new confirmed cases of coronavirus, according to the state news agency Tass.
Of those, 1,494 cases were detected in St Petersburg, 756 in the Moscow region, 512 in the Sverdlovsk region, 479 in the Rostov region, and 462 in the Perm and Voronezh regions.
Health authorities also reported 796 deaths linked to the virus. So far, Russia has recorded 186,407 deaths linked to the coronavirus.
Updated
Vaccine passport restrictions in France could be eased if rates of Covid-19 infections in the country begin to slow, the labour minister, Élisabeth Borne, said on Saturday.
“The health situation is improving. If this is confirmed, we will be able to ease the rules,” Reuters quoted Borne telling France Inter radio, adding that this could be decided “in the coming days”.
It comes after one French retail group, Auchan, said the introduction of the vaccine pass, the “pass sanitaire”, had hit its business at the start of the third quarter. Customers in shopping centres with a surface area of more than 20,000 square metres must have a valid pass.
Meanwhile, protests continue against the pass, which is also needed to visit cafes and restaurants. Social media videos on Saturday showed protesters laying picnic blankets in the streets and eating outside businesses to which entry is limited to pass holders.
Updated
In another sporting cancellation, the boxer Oscar De La Hoya has said his comeback fight due for next weekend has been cancelled after he caught Covid.
Wanted you to hear directly from me that despite being fully vaccinated, I have contracted Covid and am not going to be able to fight next weekend. Preparing for this comeback has been everything to me over the last months, & I want to thank everyone for their tremendous support. pic.twitter.com/0wKEnr5Jzv
— Oscar De La Hoya (@OscarDeLaHoya) September 3, 2021
I am currently in the hospital getting treatment and am confident I will be back in the ring before the year is up. God bless everyone and stay safe.
— Oscar De La Hoya (@OscarDeLaHoya) September 3, 2021
The Formula 1 racing car driver Kimi Raikkonen will miss this weekend’s Dutch grand prix after testing positive for Covid-19, the race organisers and his Alfa Romeo team have announced.
Following the latest round of testing conducted in advance of the #DutchGP, driver Kimi Räikkönen has tested positive for COVID-19.
— Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN (@alfaromeoracing) September 4, 2021
Kimi is displaying no symptoms and is in good spirits. He has immediately entered isolation in his hotel.
The team wishes Kimi a speedy recovery. pic.twitter.com/uqfsb1qz87
With Raikkonen, 41, needing a negative test before being allowed to return to the paddock, his participation in next weekend’s Italian grand prix at Monza is also in doubt. He is due to retire from F1 at the end of the season, reports French state-backed news agency AFP.
Ministers are considering extending plans to impose “vaccine passports” in England on football matches, music concerts and business conferences, despite mounting opposition in the Conservative party, a report claims.
The government already outlined plans in July for such passports as a condition of entry to nightclubs. But, according to a report in the Daily Mail, the requirement is now to be extended to a range of other mass events.
Under the plans, Covid certification would be mandatory for most large sporting events, music concerts, festivals and some exhibitions; but it would not include the wider hospitality sector, such as pubs and restaurants, for now.
More than 40 Conservative MPs have pledged to vote against any plan for vaccine passports. The Mail quoted a Whitehall source as saying:
Everyone understands the concerns around freedoms but we may be in a situation this winter where the alternative is more closures and economic damage to sectors that have suffered hugely already
Updated
China had administered a total of around 7.5m Covid-19 vaccines on Friday, bringing the accumulated total to 2.092bn doses, data from the National Health Commission showed on Saturday.
Updated
A former chief scientific adviser to the UK government has said it is up to ministers to look at the broader harms of not vaccinating children, after the government’s vaccine panel decided the benefits of Covid vaccines were too marginal.
Discussing the chief medical officers being tasked with giving further advice on vaccinating 12- to 15-year-olds, Prof Sir Mark Walport told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
It’s uncomfortable but it’s not necessarily a particularly rare situation.
The JCVI looks through a very particular lens, which is the clinical safety of the vaccine for a given population group against the effects of the disease itself.
But what they don’t look at is the wider issues such as education and the harms to that, so the broader harms potentially to children and the knock-on effects to their families – that’s where policymakers come in.
Walport suggested the possible side-effects of coronavirus vaccines for children could be outweighed by the benefits.
My child and my grandchild’s health is also affected by their social environment, by their ability to go to school, by what happens in the family, and so there are broader factors as well.
All the evidence is the rate of myocarditis, the inflammation of the heart muscle, and of pericarditis is at least the same and probably significantly higher in that same population group if they get coronavirus.
Updated
Australia has reported its highest daily number of new cases of coronavirus so far, with 1,756 infections on Saturday, as officials in the country urged people to take vaccines.
Most of the cases were in New South Wales, where there were 1,533 new cases and four further deaths, Reuters reported. The state has had an outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant since mid-June.
Victoria reported 190 cases, the Australian Capital Territory 32 and Queensland one. Recent daily infections are running about double the levels of Australia’s previous worst wave of the pandemic a year ago.
“The overall trend is a slow and steady increase. That’s why vaccination is so critical, as is following the rules,” Brett Sutton, Victoria’s chief health officer, told a press conference.
Victoria, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, together home to nearly 60% of Australia’s 25 million people, have been under a strict lockdown for weeks.
A member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies has suggested the government should take a wider perspective than the risk-benefit calculation adopted by the Joint Committee for Vaccines and Immunisation in giving vaccines to 12- to 15-year-olds.
Prof John Edmunds told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
I think we have to take into consideration the wider effect Covid might have on children and their education and developmental achievements.
In the UK now it’s difficult to say how many children haven’t been infected but it’s probably about half of them, that’s about six million children, so that’s a long way to go if we allow infection just to run through the population, that’s a lot of children who will be infected and that will be a lot of disruption to schools in the coming months.
Sajid Javid, the health secretary, said on Friday that he had written to the four chief medical officers of the UK to ask for further advice on giving vaccines to over-12s.
Updated
Good morning, this is Damien Gayle at the controls of the coronavirus live blog today from London, bringing you the latest Covid-related headlines and updates from the UK and around the world.
In the UK this morning we will be expecting to see the first fallout from the surprise decision by the government’s vaccine advisory panel not to recommend Covid vaccinations for children aged 12- to 15 years old.
In making their decision on Friday not to recommend vaccines, members of the Joint Committee on Vaccines and Immunisation defied what had seemed to be significant pressure from ministers. In a statement, they said the benefits of vaccinations, weighed against the risks, was too marginal.
But they left the door open to the government to overrule them by saying it is not in their remit to consider the “wider societal impact” of vaccination, particularly in education, and suggesting that the government take further advice from chief medical officers.
Updated
