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Brazil on Saturday said that 1,202 more people had died from Covid-19, bringing total fatalities in the country to 216,445. There have been more than 8.8 million confirmed cases, Reuters reports.
Another Datafolha poll found that 53% of respondents are against Congress opening impeachment proceedings against the president for his handling of the pandemic, compared with 50% in a previous survey. Those favouring impeachment fell to 43% from 46% previously.
Both polls were conducted on 20 and 21 January, interviewing 2,030 Brazilians, with a 2 percentage point margin of error.
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The UK will force travellers from high-risk countries to quarantine for 10 days, the British prime minister Boris Johnson said on Saturday, in a decision to be taken on Monday, the Daily Mail reports.
The Telegraph newspaper echoed this report, writing that arrivals in the UK will have to pay for an extra 10 days in an airport hotel under heavy guard, in plans backed by the Home Office.
The Telegraph wrote:
Senior Cabinet ministers are likely to approve a plan to force people returning from overseas to quarantine in a hotel to ensure that they cannot bring variants of Covid-19 back into the UK.
The chief dispute at Cabinet level is whether the hotel quarantine rules apply to all visitors or just to those returning from coronavirus hotspots.
Downing Street sources confirmed that hotel quarantining was likely to form part of the “next steps”, after Boris Johnson made clear at his press conference on Friday that more would have to be done on securing the borders.
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In Australia, Victorian authorities have reported one new case of Covid-19 in hotel quarantine overnight.
It is 18 days since the virus was last contracted in the community in Victoria.
About a third of all the confirmed cases of coronavirus among people in hotel quarantine in Melbourne are in tennis players and support staff in town for the Australian Open.
As of Saturday there were 10 active cases linked to the Open and 970 people associated with the tournament in quarantine.
Yesterday there were 0 locally acquired cases reported, and 1 in hotel quarantine. It has been 18 days since the last locally acquired case. 11,901 test results were received - thank you for getting tested.
— VicGovDHHS (@VicGovDHHS) January 23, 2021
More later: https://t.co/lIUrl0ZEco #COVID19Vic #COVID19VicData pic.twitter.com/E9nK8OMpRe
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New York state will distribute Covid-19 vaccination kits to four additional New York City public housing sites and eight more churches to try to “strengthen fairness and equity in the vaccine distribution process,” governor Andrew Cuomo said on Saturday, CNN reports.
Today we continue to expand our network of vaccination sites and we will work to deploy community vaccination kits to all 33 NYCHA senior housing complexes and more than 300 churches statewide.
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) January 23, 2021
The vaccination process in New York will be fair and equitable.#VaccinateNY pic.twitter.com/zcxbmAE6Qg
5.26% of all coronavirus tests in New York state have been positive on Saturday, down from 5.65% on Friday, Cuomo said during a press conference.
Overall, hospitalisations are down statewide and New York City has a 5.71% positivity rate.
A further 144 people in the state died due to Covid-19, Cuomo said.
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Poland will likely ease some coronavirus-related restrictions on 1 February since the number of new daily cases in the country has stabilised, First News reports.
“The situation with regard to the number of new daily Covid-19 cases is stable so I think that some restrictions will be eased as of February,” deputy health minister Waldemar Kraska told a private radio broadcaster on Saturday, adding that it was “possible that shopping centres will open in February”.
At the same time, Kraska said that three of Poland’s neighbouring countries, Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, had been hit by a third wave of the virus.
“We have a very cautious approach,” Kraska stated, adding that “all the decisions, which are being taken, as well as the ones which will be taken at the beginning of next week, are and will be duly considered”.
The official expressed his conviction that the retail trade sector will be the first to open, and said that shopping centres may also possibly open in February.
In mid-January, the government decided to extend all coronavirus-related restrictions to the end of January.
Hotels and ski slopes as well as all shopping centres have been closed, as have been gyms, fitness clubs and aquaparks.
Grocery stores, book stores, newsagents and pharmacies are exempt from mandatory closures, as are large free-standing furniture stores.
Restaurants are only allowed to open for takeaway or home delivery sales.
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Infections linked to Australian Open continue to emerge
Coronavirus infections linked to the Australian Open are continuing to emerge as the states and territories continue their run of no new locally acquired cases, the Australian Associated Press reports.
Victorian authorities on Saturday reported one new case linked to the Open, a man in his 20s who is not a player.
A further three non-players – two men in their 30s and one in his 50s – have meanwhile been confirmed to have the highly contagious UK strain of the virus.
Covid-19 Quarantine Victoria said all three had been in hard lockdown since they landed in Melbourne.
“The residents arrived in Melbourne on a dedicated Australian Open charter flight on 15 January and returned their first positive tests on 15, 17 and 18 January,” a spokesperson said.
There are 10 active cases linked to the Open and 970 people associated with the tournament in quarantine.
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Calls of UK doctors to cut the gap between the first and second doses of the coronavirus vaccine are being resisted by officials at Public Health England.
The British Medical Association (BMA) has warned that delaying the second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab to 12 weeks after the first is not justified by the science.
However, PHE medical director Dr Yvonne Doyle said it is essential to protect as many people as possible to prevent the virus getting “the upper hand”, the PA reports.
In a letter to the chief medical officer for England, Prof Chris Whitty, the BMA said the gap between the first and second doses of the Pfizer vaccine should be no more than six weeks, in line with the advice of the manufacturers and the World Health Organization (WHO).
However, Doyle insisted the decision to extend the gap had been taken on “public health and scientific advice” based on the need to get at least some protection to as many people as possible.
“The more people that are protected against this virus, the less opportunity it has to get the upper hand. Protecting more people is the right thing to do,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
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The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had administered 20,537,990 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country as of Saturday morning and distributed 41,411,550 doses.
The tally of vaccine doses are for both Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines as of 6am ET on Saturday, the agency said.
17,390,345 people have received one or more doses, while 3,027,865 people got the second dose as of Saturday.
A total of 2,437,670 vaccine doses have been administered in long-term care facilities, the agency said.
According to the tally posted on 22 January, the agency has in total administered 19,107,959 vaccine doses, and distributed 39,892,400.
Sweden plans to introduce a temporary ban on entry from Norway, it said on Saturday, due to the spread of a new mutated form of the coronavirus in the neighbouring country.
Norway’s capital Oslo and nine nearby municipalities imposed some of their toughest lockdown measures yet after an outbreak of the more contagious UK coronavirus variant.
Sweden’s health authority recommended that travellers from Norway self-isolate for at least a week and test for Covid-19 upon entry to Sweden.
Concern over the new variant means travellers from Britain have been banned from entering Sweden since December.
“The government is also working on introducing an entry ban for Norway to reduce the risk of contagion. The decision will be taken shortly,” a spokesman for Swedish interior minister Mikael Damberg said in a text message.
“The government is taking these actions due to the spread of the British mutation of the Covid-19 virus in Norway,” he said.
Norway has 55 confirmed cases of the virus variant that has already spread widely in the UK, according to Norwegian health authority data.
Damberg’s spokesman said Sweden has the same number of confirmed cases of the variant.
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France reported 23,924 new confirmed Covid-19 cases over the past 24 hours, compared with 23,292 on Friday and 21,406 last Saturday.
The number of people in intensive care units with coronavirus infection fell by 16 to 2,896, the first fall in two weeks after having risen by about 20 per day since mid-January.
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Italy’s Lombardy region and the central government exchanged blame on Saturday over the release of Covid-19 data that wrongly condemned the region to stricter restrictions.
Lombardy, the country’s wealthiest and most productive area which includes the fashion capital Milan, was forced to close most shops a week ago after being classed “red”, the worst of Italy’s tiered coronavirus restriction zones.
Reuters reports:
Health minister Roberto Speranza said on Saturday Lombardy had initially submitted wrong data, messing up calculations by Italy’s higher health council.
He then designated Lombardy as “orange”, allowing shops to reopen and older students to attend classes after they were forced to switch to distance learning.
Lombardy’s administration, led by the right-wing League party which has come under fire for its handling of the pandemic, hit back at Rome.“They wanted us to say it was our mistake, but it wasn’t. I’ll never agree to saying there has been a mistake in the data we sent,” governor Attilio Fontana told a press conference.
He said the region would press ahead with a lawsuit filed with an administrative court and seek money from the government to compensate shopkeepers who have been forced to close down just as the sales season was starting.
Retail association Confcommercio Milano estimated shops in Milan had lost around 100m euros in revenue.
Lombardy, the country’s industrial heartland, accounts for more than a fifth of Italy’s 2.46 million Covid-19 cases to date.With 26,622 deaths out of the national total of 85,162, it is by far the worst-hit region and was the epicentre of the pandemic during the first wave in the spring.
Italy calculates its tiers using a rage of data including the number of cases and intensive care occupancy rates.
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Egypt will begin coronavirus vaccinations on Sunday, beginning with medical staff, president Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi said in recorded comments on Saturday.
On Friday, Egypt recorded 748 new cases and 52 deaths, Reuters reports. However, health officials say the real number is likely far higher because of the relatively low rate of coronavirus testing and the exclusion of private test results.
Egypt received its first shipment of vaccines developed by China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) in December.
The country will get 40 million vials via the GAVI vaccine alliance for 20 million people, or 20% of the 100 million population, its health minister said last week.
Iranian president Hassan Rouhani announced on Saturday that Covid-19 vaccinations will be rolled out in Iran in coming weeks.
Foreign vaccines are a necessity until local vaccines are available, Rouhani said in televised remarks, without giving details of what foreign vaccines would be used, Reuters reports.
The news comes as Covid-19 deaths fell to a low of more than seven months and officials announced that there were no more high-risk “red cities” in the country.
Earlier this month Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s highest authority, banned the government from importing vaccines from the US and the UK, which he said were possibly seeking to spread the infection to other countries.
Rouhani himself, in compliance with Khamenei’s ban, said at the time that his government would purchase “safe foreign vaccines”.
Iran launched human trials of its first domestic vaccine candidate late last month, saying this could help it defeat the pandemic despite US sanctions that affect its ability to import vaccines.
“There have been good movements in the field of local and foreign vaccines,” Rouhani said, adding that three domestic vaccines – Barekat, Pasteur and Razi, some of which have been developed with foreign collaboration – could begin in the spring and summer.
Cuba said earlier this month that it had signed an accord with Tehran to transfer the technology for its most advanced coronavirus vaccine candidate and carry out last-stage clinical trials of the shot in Iran.
Tehran and Havana are under tough US sanctions which, while they exempt medicine, often deter foreign pharmaceutical companies from trading with them.
Iran is also participating in the COVAX scheme that aims to secure fair access to Covid-19 vaccines for poorer countries.
The country has recorded nearly 1.37 million cases and about 57,300 deaths, but there has been a decline in new infections in recent weeks.
Deaths fell to 69 in the 24 hours to Saturday, the health ministry said, the lowest since 5 June.
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The UK will have to administer an average of 397,333 first doses of coronavirus vaccine each day in order to meet the government’s target of 15 million first doses by 15 February.
Government data up to 22 January shows of the 6,329,968 jabs given across the country so far, 5,861,351 were first doses - a rise of 478,248 on the previous day’s figures.
Some 468,617 were second doses, an increase of 1,821 on figures released the previous day.
The seven-day rolling average of first doses given in the UK is now 328,882.
All adults in the UK should have been offered the Covid vaccination by September, foreign secretary Dominic Raab said last week, setting a clear timescale for the first time.
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Brazil’s federally funded Fiocruz Institute said on Saturday it had begun distributing 2 million ready-to-use AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines after they arrived in the country from India on Friday.
Reuters reports:
Brazil’s government has a deal with AstraZeneca to produce up to 100 million doses of its vaccine locally at Rio de Janeiro’s Fiocruz Institute, but delivery of the active ingredient needed to manufacture them has been plagued by delays from China.
As a result, AstraZeneca agreed to supply the government with 2 million ready-to-use doses made in India. After a major diplomatic effort, that included a letter from Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro to the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, those shots arrived on Friday.
Until now, Brazil’s widely criticised vaccine rollout has depended on a shot developed by Sinovac Biotech vaccine in partnership with Sao Paulo’s Butantan Institute.
Bolsonaro had previously branded the Chinese shot as useless, but his government is becoming increasingly reliant on it to tame the world’s second most deadly coronavirus outbreak after the United States.
The far-right former army captain is under growing pressure for his handling of the rollout, which has been plagued by delays and a lack of vaccines, just as a brutal second wave gathers steam.
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Portugal sees record rise in cases and deaths
Portugal reported record daily numbers of coronavirus deaths and new infections on Saturday, the day before the country holds a presidential election.
Total coronavirus-related deaths exceeded the 10,000 mark after a further 274 fatalities were reported in the 24 hours to Saturday, the national health authority said.
15,333 new cases were identified in the country of 10 million people, the highest daily increase since the beginning of the pandemic.
Together with Saturday’s cases, over 95,000 new infections have been recorded in the past week, making Portugal the country with the fastest-growing outbreak in proportion to its population, according to a global AFP tally from official figures.
Sunday’s presidential vote comes 10 days after Portugal entered a second national lockdown.
Incumbent, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa is predicted to win re-election in the first round, but observers fear abstentions could be as high as 70% given voters’ health concerns.
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Spain’s defence chief resigned on Saturday, the armed forces said, after getting vaccinated despite not being on a priority list caused a row.
General Miguel Angel Villarroya’s resignation came as a scandal brews over Spanish military and political officials getting early vaccinations supposedly reserved for health workers and people in retirement homes.
“In order to preserve the image of the armed forces, General Villarroya today presented his resignation request to the defence minister,” the armed forces said in a statement.
The 63-year-old general was quoted as saying he had “never intended to take advantage of unjustifiable privileges”.
His resignation was accepted by defence minister Margarita Robles, a source told AFP.
Villarroya’s departure came just a day after the interior ministry sacked a lieutenant-colonel who served as a staff liaison to the civil guard, because an internal report found he had received the shot without being on a priority list.
The report accuses several other defence staff members of improperly receiving the vaccine, and Robles has warned more resignations could follow.
Politicians have also resigned over receiving the vaccine out of turn, including Manuel Villegas, health advisor for the southeast Murcia region.
But Javier Guerreron, health adviser to the Spanish north African enclave of Ceuta, refused to resign, saying he had not violated any protocol.
“I didn’t want to be vaccinated,” he said, adding that he “doesn’t like vaccines”.
Spain has recorded 55,441 deaths from nearly 2.5 million identified cases so far, the fourth highest death toll in Europe.
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German health authorities put a Berlin hospital under quarantine and stopped taking in new admissions after 20 patients and staff members tested positive for a more infectious variant of the virus first discovered in the UK, officials said on Saturday.
The number of people at the Humboldt hospital infected with the more infectious B117 variant was likely to rise further in the coming days, a spokeswoman of public hospital operator Vivantes told Reuters.
The hospital will not admit any new patients as part of the quarantine measures.
“New patients and emergencies will be redirected to other hospitals,” the spokeswoman said.
The more infectious UK variant was also reported to have been found in another Berlin hospital, the Virchow-branch of the Charité hospital in Wedding, according to the Berliner Zeitung.
As of Saturday afternoon, none of the infected patients are believed to have visited the UK prior to testing positive.
Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Germans on Thursday to stop complaining about the slow rollout of a vaccine against Covid-19, and defended a decision to extend a lockdown as necessary to stem the more aggressive variant.
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Guernsey has gone into lockdown following the discovery of four new cases of coronavirus, the island’s government has said.
The States of Guernsey said in a statement that it was unclear how the individuals concerned had contracted the disease, as none was from travel or from contacts with known cases.
“Contact tracing is continuing to determine whether there is a link between the cases and whether these cases are linked or if this is a result of wider community seeding,” the statement said.
The island had been free of coronavirus restrictions since early June, PA reports.
Under the latest measures, islanders have been told to stay home from midday Saturday except for essential shopping, medical care or up to two hours exercise outdoors.
Non-essential shops and restaurants have been ordered to close, including for deliveries and takeaways.
Schools will also shut, except for children of key workers, or those from vulnerable families.
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The Italian government announced on Saturday it would take countermeasures in light of “unacceptable” vaccine supply delays.
Prime minister Giuseppe Conte said delayed deliveries of the Pfizer and, possibly, AstraZeneca vaccine amount to serious violations of contractual agreements and said Rome would take active steps to react.
In a post on Facebook Conte said the delays were causing “enormous damage” to Italy and other countries.
“This is unacceptable,” Conte wrote, according to a Reuters report.
The news comes as Italy reported 488 further deaths from the virus on Saturday, up from 472 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections fell further to 13,331 from 13,633.
Some 286,331 tests for Covid-19 were carried out in the past day, against a previous 264,728, the health ministry said.
Italy has now registered 85,162 deaths linked to Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, the second-highest toll in Europe after the UK and the sixth-highest in the world.
There were 174 new admissions to intensive care units, against 144 the day before. The total number of intensive care patients was little changed at 2,386, against 2,390.
When Italy’s second wave of the epidemic was accelerating quickly in the first half of November, hospital admissions were rising by about 1,000 per day, while intensive care occupancy was increasing by about 100 per day.
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Thailand reported 198 new infections on Saturday, 180 of which were reported as having been locally transmitted.
The country distinguishes between infections transmitted in local communities and cases imported from abroad.
Of the 180 local infections reported on Saturday, 163 were found in Samut Sakhon, around 50km south of Bangkok.
The new cases bring the total number of infections to 13,302 since the pandemic began last year.
10,448 people have recovered and 2,782 patients are currently being treated for the virus. One further death was reported, taking the overall death toll to 72 people.
Since the second wave of infections, there have been 9,065 cases confirmed between 15 December and 23 January, which have brought on travel restrictions in 28 provinces, the Thaiger news outlet reports.
These provinces are labelled “highly controlled”, with those entering and leaving required to pass through checkpoints.
On Friday, Bangkok, including four north-western districts listed as “highly controlled”, allowed 13 types of businesses to reopen, including banquet venues, beauty salons and spas, fitness centres, game arcades, internet cafes, nursing homes and bowling alleys.
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The UK reported a further 1,348 deaths from coronavirus on Saturday, down from Friday’s 1,401 reported deaths.
A further 33,552 people in the country tested positive in the 24 hours to Saturday, according to government data.
This compares with Friday’s 40,261 new daily infections.
The UK vaccinated 478,248 people in the 24 hours to Saturday with a first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, a daily record according to government figures.
The total death toll from the virus now stands at 97,329, the highest in Europe and the fifth highest globally.
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Scotland on Saturday reported a further 76 deaths from Covid-19 and 1,307 more positive cases in the past 24 hours.
The total number of people who first tested positive for the virus within the 28 days prior to their deaths now stands at 5,704.
The Scottish government said 380,667 people have received their first dose of the coronavirus vaccine, up by 22,213 from the previous day.
A total of 5,188 people have received their second dose of the vaccine, PA reports.
There were 2,085 people in hospital with recently confirmed Covid-19 and 159 in intensive care.
Just under 40% of those aged over 80 in Wales have received their first dose of Covid-19 vaccine, Public Health Wales said on Saturday.
In total, 38.7% of those aged over 80 have received their first dose of the vaccine, figures published on Saturday showed.
The PA reports:
It is still some way off the target, with health minister Vaughan Gething saying previously he expected 70% of this group to have been offered the jab by the end of Monday. Under the Welsh Government’s target, 70% of care home residents and care home staff should also have been vaccinated by January 25.
Greater progress has been made with care home residents, with 63.2% receiving the jab, while 72.3% of care home staff have already being offered their first dose.
There were a further 1,079 cases of coronavirus recorded in Wales by 9am on Friday, taking the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 186,915.
Public Health Wales (PHW) also reported a further 27 deaths as of Friday morning, bringing the death toll during the pandemic to 4,486.By Friday, 469 people had been given the second jab - up from 54 on the previous day’s figures.
I’m Jedidajah Otte and I’ll be taking over for the next few hours. Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any relevant updates or comments to flag, you can reach me on Twitter @JedySays or via email.
Germany expects British drugmaker AstraZeneca to deliver 3m doses of its Covid-19 vaccine in February despite the company’s latest production problems, the health minister, Jens Spahn, told Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
AstraZeneca informed European Union officials on Friday it would cut deliveries of its vaccine to the bloc by 60% to 31m doses in the first quarter of the year due to production problems, a senior official told Reuters.
The decrease deals another blow to Europe’s Covid vaccination drive after Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech slowed supplies of their vaccine to the bloc this week, saying the move was needed because of work to ramp up production.
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Italy will have to rethink its Covid-19 vaccination plans if supply problems persist, a senior health official said.
The country had already had to cut its daily inoculations by more than two-thirds because of delays in deliveries of shots from the US drugmaker Pfizer, Franco Locatelli, the head of Italy’s higher health council, told a press conference.
Now that AstraZeneca has also warned of cuts in deliveries to its doses – even as they await clearance for use in the bloc – Italy might have to redraw its national rollout at the end of the month, he said.
Vaccinations in Italy have slowed to 20,000-25,000 a day from peaks of more than 90,000 around two weeks ago, Locatelli said.
Rome has threatened to sue Pfizer, which said last week it was temporarily slowing supplies to Europe to make manufacturing changes that would boost output.
Pfizer’s vaccination deliveries to Italy were 29% lower this week and would be down 20% next week, though they should return to agreed levels from 1 February, Locatelli said.
On Friday, a senior official told Reuters that AstraZeneca had also informed the European Union it would cut deliveries of its Covid-19 vaccine to the bloc by 60% because of production problems.
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Tunisia is extending its virus curfew and banning protests as it tries to stem a rapid rise in infections and calm tensions after a week of demonstrations and rioting over economic troubles.
Starting Monday, the government is also forbidding travel between regions and ordering all people over 65 to stay at home as part of stricter virus measures announced on Saturday by the health ministry spokesperson, Nissaf Ben Alaya.
Tunisia reported 103 virus-related deaths on Thursday, the highest figure to date in the country of 11 million people. It also has among the highest rates in Africa. Local media reports cite doctors describing hospitals that are already too full to accept more virus patients.
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Pubs and restaurants across the Czech Republic opened on Saturday in protest against the government’s Covid-19 restrictions that have kept them closed since October.
Hundreds of venues have signed up to join the protest organised by the Chcípl pes (Dog is dead) movement, whose name refers to the government’s anti-epidemic PES (DOG) system steering the restrictions.
“We have been disappointed with the government for a long time and we want to show that it had chosen the wrong way,” Jiří Janeček, the manager of the Malý Janek brewery and restaurant in Jince, south-west of Prague, told AFP.
“We’ve had enough and we think the ministers should consider quitting their posts,” added Janeček, co-founder of the movement.
At lunchtime on Saturday, Malý Janek was half-full with regulars sipping beer, families munching on pork ribs or schnitzel and waiting staff in full swing.
Prague’s city hall spokesman, Vít Hofman, told AFP the open restaurants faced a maximum fine of 20,000 crowns ($932) for breaking the rules.
Restaurants, pubs and bars, but also cinemas, theatres, zoos, gyms and most shops have been closed in the EU nation of 10.7 million people since October last year, except for a shortlived easing before Christmas.
The Czech Republic has been struggling to tame the spread of coronavirus since the summer, having been Europe’s worst-off country in terms of new infections and new deaths on two occasions.
It has registered more than 930,000 Covid-19 cases and 15,270 deaths up to now, with daily growths hovering around 8,000 cases.
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A warning from AstraZeneca that initial supplies of its Covid vaccinations to Europe will be lower than expected has sparked new concern over the rollout of inoculations, with some countries planning for a sharp drop in deliveries, AFP reports.
Friday’s announcement by the British pharmaceutical firm followed another last week by Pfizer, which said it would delay shipments of its vaccine for up to a month due to works at its key plant in Belgium. The companies’ warnings come with worry deepening over new Covid-19 variants, particularly one that emerged in Britain and which is more infectious than the original strain.
Overall, Europe has now recorded more than 692,000 deaths and nearly 32m infections. The European Union has so far approved vaccines from Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech as well as from US company Moderna. It has not yet approved the vaccine from AstraZeneca and its partner the University of Oxford, but is expected to make a decision by 29 January.
AstraZeneca said in its statement that if EU approval is granted, the “initial volumes will be lower than anticipated”, although the start would not be delayed. The company blamed “reduced yields at a manufacturing site within our European supply chain”.
The announcement led to “deep dissatisfaction” from EU member states, which “insisted on a precise delivery schedule,” said the European health commissioner, Stella Kyriakides.
The Austrian health minister, Rudolf Anschober, called it “very, very bad news” and said his country would in February receive only slightly more than half of the 650,000 AstraZeneca doses it had anticipated.
Some government officials however sought to reassure their countries - weary and battered by months of the pandemic and already on edge over slow vaccination rollouts. “We have new vaccines on the way. We have Pfizer, which is increasing its production capacities,” the French industry minister, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, told French radio. “We had indicated a million people vaccinated by the end of January. We are at 950,000 today, so that objective will be surpassed.”
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Scientists have warned against alarmism over the new variant of coronavirus, after the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, announced there was evidence it was more deadly. Speaking at the daily coronavirus news briefing on Friday, Johnson said scientists had found the new variant may be associated with “a higher degree of mortality”.
Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK government’s chief scientific adviser, said that for every thousand people in their 60s infected with the original strain of coronavirus, 10 would be expected to die. With the new variant, this figure is thought to rise to 13 or 14 deaths per thousand – an increase in mortality of about 30%. However, he added there was “a lot of uncertainty around these numbers”.
Experts said the new data should be taken “very seriously” but that it was too early to draw any strong conclusions.
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Vitamin D levels under scrutiny as dates of Covid surge in Europe correlate to latitudes – research
New research published in the journal Scientific Reports shows an “impressive linear correlation with latitude” and the surge in new Covid cases in most European countries during autumn – pointing to vitamin D as a contributing factor.
The country surge date corresponds to the time when its sun UV daily dose drops below ≈ 34% of that of 0° latitude. Introducing reported seasonal blood 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) [vitamin D] concentration variation into the reported link between acute respiratory tract infection risk and 25(OH)D concentration quantitatively explains the surge dynamics.
Several studies have already substantiated a 25(OH)D concentration impact on Covid-19 severity. However, by comparing different patient populations, discriminating whether a low 25(OH)D concentration is a real factor underlying Covid-19 severity or only a marker of another weakness that is the primary severity factor can be challenging.
The results indicate that a low 25(OH)D concentration is a contributing factor to Covid-19 severity, which, combined with previous studies, provides a convincing set of evidence.
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Bulgaria will ease some coronavirus restrictions from 4 February although restaurants will remain closed due to concerns over mutation, officials have said, according to Reuters.
Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said secondary school students will be allowed to attend classes under a special regime as of next month and will also be able to attend extracurricular sport and dance activities.
“If there are some things you can put on a balance with health, they are education, culture and training. Only they are worth the risk,” Borissov said during a trip to the western town of Slivnitsa.
Bulgaria reopened primary schools and kindergartens in early January – a move that has not led to a spike in infections. The centre-right government decided against plans to allow restaurants, cafes and bars to reopen for now on concerns about the new, more contagious variant of coronavirus.
Bulgaria has detected the new variant, first identified in Britain, in eight samples from coronavirus tests, the health minister, Kostadin Angelov, told reporters.
Restaurant and bar owners, whose businesses have been put on hold since late November, are planning massive protests against the ban next week and have threatened to open in February despite the rules.
On Saturday, Bulgaria reported 566 new daily coronavirus infections, significantly less than the approximately 4,000 cases per day seen in November. The country of 7 million people has registered 214,430 cases including 8,799 deaths.
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Larry King, the American broadcaster and cable news interviewer of celebrities and public figures, has died at the age of 87. He had been hospitalised at Cedars-Sinai medical centre in Los Angeles with symptoms of the coronavirus.
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A further 710 people who tested positive for Covid have died in England, bringing the total number of confirmed reported deaths in hospitals to 65,814, the NHS has said.
Patients were aged between 25 and 101 years old. All except 33 (aged 28 to 93 years old) had known underlying health conditions. Date of death ranges from 27 May 2020 to 22 January 2021 with the majority being on or after 18 January. Their families have been informed.
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Dr Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus taskforce coordinator under Donald Trump, has said she “always” considered quitting as the US lurched into disaster under the 45th president – but didn’t.
Speaking to CBS in an interview to be broadcast in full on Sunday, Birx said: “I had to ask myself every morning: is there something that I think I can do that would be helpful in responding to this pandemic? And it’s something I asked myself every night.
“And when it became a point where … I wasn’t getting anywhere and that was like right before the election, I wrote a very detailed communication plan of what needed to happen the day after the election and how that needed to be executed. And there was a lot of promise that that would happen.”
Updated
Israel began administering Covid-19 vaccines to teenagers on Saturday as it pushed ahead with its inoculation drive, with a quarter of the population now vaccinated, health officials said.
Since the rollout of vaccinations one month ago, more than 2.5 million of Israel’s 9 million-strong population had been vaccinated, the health ministry said on Friday.
On Tuesday, Israel extended its third national lockdown until the end of the month, due to a surge in coronavirus infection.
On Thursday, the health ministry had announced it was allowing the inoculation of high school students aged 16 to 18, subject to parental approval.
The country’s largest health fund, Clalit, was already giving teenagers the vaccine as of Saturday morning, its website said, while the three smaller funds were due to begin their campaign later.
Updated
In the UK, concern has been raised about rising screen time among children, with experts saying parents must make sure young people stay active and engage meaningfully online.
Time spent online has increased dramatically in the past year. Millions of pupils have been forced to switch to remote learning, while social media use has skyrocketed, according to Qustodio, which tracks usage of tens of thousands of devices by children aged four to 15 in the UK, US and Spain.
Dr Max Davie, a consultant at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said he hoped the pandemic meant we would stop talking about counting screen time and rather “start talking about the quality of interaction and whether a child is getting enough exercise, sleep and positive interactions [online]”.
He added: “We have not seen the [childhood obesity] statistics yet but people are more sedentary because they are going out less.”
Summary of the latest developments
A year since Wuhan lockdown
The Chinese city of Wuhan marks one year since the start of its traumatic 76-day coronavirus lockdown. On 23 January 2020, Wuhan shocked the globe by confining its 11 million anxious citizens to their homes, starting a cycle that would spread across the world.
But China largely brought its outbreak under control and Wuhan is nothing like the ghost town of a year ago, with traffic humming, sidewalks bustling, and citizens packing public transport and parks.
Hong Kong and Oslo tighten measures
Thousands of people in one of Hong Kong’s poorest and most densely packed districts have been ordered to stay in their homes.
Norway’s government, meanwhile, has imposed the strictest restrictions seen in the region of the capital, Oslo, since March after the discovery of the British variant in a retirement home.
French lockdown ‘likely’
A French government source has told AFP that “the hypothesis of confinement is more and more likely,” citing projections of a surge in cases due to the more transmissible British strain.
Fabric masks still work, says WHO
The World Health Organization says it has no plans to change its guidance recommending fabric facemasks as new coronavirus variants spread because the mutated strains are transmitted in the same way.
The statement comes after Germany and Austria made medical masks mandatory on public transport and in shops, allowing only surgical or FFP2 masks rather than fabric.
Oxygen race in Mexico
With Mexico City’s hospitals overwhelmed, relatives are queueing for hours to buy oxygen for the growing number of people fighting the virus at home. The country has recorded 146,174 Covid-19 deaths so far.
Brazil vaccine shortages
Brazil has just started its vaccination campaign but scientists are already warning the hard-hit country will quickly run out of doses and even syringes, some blaming the government for the shortages.
Deaths top 2.1 million
More than 2.1 million people have died of the virus since it first emerged in China in late 2019, according to a tally compiled by AFP based on official figures.
The US has suffered the highest death toll, with 414,107 fatalities, followed by Brazil with 215,243 and India with 153,184.
More than 60m vaccination doses have been administered in about 64 countries or territories, with 90% of those jabs taking place in 13 nations.
The number of deaths globally is broadly under-estimated. The toll is calculated from daily figures published by national health authorities and does not include later revisions by statistics agencies.
Updated
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Public Health Wales said a total of 240,547 first doses of the Covid-19 vaccine had now been given, an increase of 28,230 on the previous day’s figure. The agency said 469 second doses were also given, an increase of 54.
In total, 38.7% of people aged over 80 have received their first dose of the vaccine, and 63.2% of care home residents and 72.3% of care home staff.
The health minister, Vaughan Gething, previously said he expected 70% of the over-80s, care home residents and care home staff to have received their first jab by 25 January.
Updated
There have been a further 1,079 cases of coronavirus in Wales, taking the total number of confirmed cases to 186,915.
Public Health Wales reported another 27 deaths, taking the total in Wales since the start of the pandemic to 4,486.
A top scientific adviser has defended the government’s decision to reveal evidence suggesting the UK coronavirus variant is more deadly but said the news needed to be “put into perspective”.
Prof Peter Horby, who chairs the government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), said that if the information had not been released, authorities may have been accused of “covering it up”.
It comes following a Downing Street press conference in which Boris Johnson said the new variant may be associated with a higher degree of mortality.
Updated
The novel coronavirus has killed at least 2,107,903 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to an AFP tally from official sources at 1100 GMT on Saturday.
More than 98,127,150 cases of coronavirus have been registered. Of these, at least 59,613,300 are now considered recovered.
These figures are based on daily tolls provided by health authorities in each country and exclude later re-evaluations by statistical organisations, such as in Russia, Spain and Britain.
On Friday, 16,380 new deaths and 661,495 new cases were recorded worldwide. The US is the worst-affected country with 414,107 deaths from 24,821,814 cases.
After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 215,243 deaths from 8,753,920 cases, India with 153,184 deaths from 10,639,684 cases, Mexico with 147,614 deaths from 1,732,290 cases, and the UK with 95,981 deaths from 3,583,907 cases.
The country with the highest number of deaths compared with population is Belgium with 178 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Czech Republic on 143, the UK with 141 and Italy with 140.
Updated
France’s top health advisory body on Saturday recommended doubling the time between people being given the first and second Covid-19 vaccinations to six weeks from three in order to increase the number getting inoculated.
The gap between the first and second injection in France is currently three weeks for people in retirement homes, who take priority, and four weeks for others such as health workers.
The Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS) said spacing out the two required vaccinations of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines would allow the treatment of at least 700,000 more people in the first month.
“The growing number of infections and the worrying arrival of new variants call for an acceleration of the vaccination campaign in order to prevent the epidemic from spiking in coming weeks,” HAS said in a statement, Reuters reported.
HAS said that while there was no agreement between different countries about the optimal time-lag between the two shots, it seemed reasonable to delay the second injection to six weeks as the first shot would already provide protection against the coronavirus from the 12th or 14th day after the injection.
Updated
Portuguese voters – largely confined to their homes due to a strict Covid-19 lockdown – will pick a new president on Sunday, but many fear going to the polls could worsen a surge in coronavirus cases and low turnout is expected, Reuters reports.
The country of 10 million people, which fared better than others in the first wave of the pandemic, has the world’s highest seven-day rolling average of new cases and deaths per million people.
“It wouldn’t have been a problem to wait another month. Exceptional times call for exceptional measures,” said one Lisbon resident, Miguel Goncalves, 55. Almost two-thirds of voters think the election should be postponed, a poll by research institute ISC/ISCTE showed last week.
Delaying the ballot would have required changing the country’s constitution – something officials said was not possible at such short notice, but there has been widespread criticism of the decision to press ahead with the vote for the largely ceremonial president.
Updated
Malaysia health authorities reported 4,275 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, the highest daily infections so far, raising the total number of confirmed cases to 180,455.
The south-east Asian country also reported seven new fatalities, bringing the total number of deaths to 667
Updated
A new crowdfunding campaign in Malawi has raised $100,000 (£73,000) in a week and helped provide basic equipment and medicines in state hospitals to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.
An appeal launched on Facebook last week has already helped secure oxygen cylinders and essential medicines at the four main public hospitals in the poor aid-dependant southern African nation, the man spearheading the campaign told AFP.
Malawi has recorded 17,365 coronavirus cases and 445 deaths in a population of 18.6 million.
“A friend was hospitalised for Covid-19. Then he posted an SOS call on social media asking for help as the hospital had no oxygen pressure regulators,” said France-based Malawian Stanley Kenani, who oversees the project.
“Although friends put the money together and bought him one, he still lost his life.
“I wondered whether friends on social media could come together and contribute a little money for medical supplies and equipment that could save lives,” said Kenani.
Malawians responded enthusiastically, from students donating their pocket money to poor Malawians in the countryside pitching in.
Updated
The Russian sovereign wealth fund RDIF said on Saturday it had signed an agreement with Turkey on the production of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19, the Interfax news agency reported.
RDIF added that it had begun transferring the production technology to Turkey. RDIF has also signed deals to produce Sputnik V with manufacturers in South Korea, China, India, Brazil, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
Updated
Schools throughout Jordan have been closed for nearly a year now, and the economic fallout from the novel coronavirus pandemic has eaten into breadwinners’ ability to feed their families.
“As school is shut, I help my family financially,” said 14-year-old Omar, who is one of many minors experts say have been forced prematurely into the labour market. He works repairing and cleaning kerosene heaters and collapses into bed after working 12-hour days.
Overall, the work “doesn’t bother me”, he said.
“What is unbearable is the smell of kerosene ... [it] doesn’t go away.”
He earns three dinars [about $4.25] a day, which helps pay the family’s monthly rent of 130 dinars.
His contribution is vital because his father, a day labourer, has struggled to find work due to the coronavirus downturn.
But Omar has not given up hope and said he was determined to return to school as soon as possible.
“I would love to continue my studies” and eventually become a pilot, he said.
“I don’t want the coronavirus to destroy my dream.”
Updated
Thousands of people from Hong Kong were ordered to stay in their homes for the city’s first coronavirus lockdown as authorities battle an outbreak in one of its poorest and most densely packed districts.
The order bans about 10,000 people living inside multiple housing blocks within the neighbourhood of Jordan from leaving their apartments until all those in the area had been tested.
Officials said they planned to screen everyone inside the designated zone within 48 hours “in order to achieve the goal of zero cases in the district”.
“Residents will have to stay at their premises to avoid cross-infection until they get their test results,” the health minister, Sophia Chan, told reporters on Saturday.
The government had deployed more than 3,000 staff to enforce the lockdown, which covers about 150 housing blocks.
Residents were seen lining up for testing at more than 50 mobile specimen collection vehicles parked in the area and for basic daily supplies provided by the government.
By lunchtime on Saturday, about 3,000 people in the area had been tested. Hong Kong was one of the first places to be struck by the coronavirus after it spilt out of central China.
Updated
China has reported more new cases of Covid-19 and the financial hub of Shanghai imposed new restrictions as the country marked the anniversary of the world’s first coronavirus lockdown in Wuhan city, where the disease emerged in late 2019.
The national health commission said 107 new cases had been identified in the mainland on Saturday, up from 103 cases the day before. The commission said in a statement that 90 of the cases were local infections.
The north-eastern province of Heilongjiang recorded 56 new cases and neighbouring Jilin province had 13. Beijing and Shanghai recorded three new cases each, and the province of Hebei, which surrounds Beijing, recorded 15 cases.
Shanghai’s health commission designated a new medium-risk area in the city’s northern Baoshan district, locking down a neighbourhood in response to two new cases. The city had earlier named a hotel and a neighbourhood near its historic Bund riverfront as medium-risk areas.
The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, fell to 99 from 119 cases a day earlier.
Updated
An adviser on the UK government’s scientific pandemic insights group on behaviours (Spi-B) said the current lockdown rules were not enough to tackle the more infectious variant of coronavirus and called for tighter restrictions.
Prof Susan Michie, director of the Centre for Behaviour Change at University College London, said a new government advert urging people to stay at home, as well as talks about higher fines for rule-breakers, were made on the basis that people were not adhering to the rules.
“But actually, all the data show that the overwhelming number of people are sticking to the rules with one exception which is self-isolation,” she told Times Radio.
“In fact I would say that it’s not so much people not sticking to the rules, but it’s the rules themselves that are the problem.”
She said there were twice as many people going to work and using public transport compared with the first lockdown, and more children in classrooms because the government “has widened the definition of who’s a key worker”.
Updated
In the UK, Dr Chaand Nagpaul from the British Medical Association said he understood the rationale behind the decision to delay the second dose of the coronavirus vaccine to 12 weeks, but said the UK should follow “best practice”.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Nagpaul highlighted the World Health Organization (WHO) analysis that recommended second doses of the Pfizer vaccine only be delayed “in exceptional circumstances”.
“What we’re saying is that the UK should adopt this best practice based on international professional opinion,” he said.
“Most nations in the world are facing challenges similar to the UK in having limited vaccine supply and also wanting to protect their population maximally.
“No other nation has adopted the UK’s approach. We think the flexibility that the WHO offers of extending to 42 days is being stretched far too much to go from six weeks right through to 12 weeks.”
Updated
Norway’s capital Oslo and nine neighbouring municipalities will impose some of their toughest lockdown measures yet after an outbreak of a more contagious coronavirus variant, first identified in Britain, the Norwegian government said on Saturday.
Shopping centres and other non-essential stores will be closed from noon local time on Saturday, organised sports activities will be halted and schools must rely more on remote learning, the health ministry said in a statement.
Updated
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What has happened so far today, Saturday 23 January
It’s evening here in Australia so I am handing the blog over to my UK colleague Sarah Marsh.
Here is a recap of events so far today:
- The BBC is reporting that the British Medical Association has written to the UK government’s chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, calling for the gap between jabs of the Pfizer vaccine to be shortened.
- The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, has warned the new variant of Covid-19 may be 30% more deadly.
- Thousands of people in the Hong Kong neighbourhood of Jordan have have been ordered to stay in their homes in the city’s first coronavirus lockdown, as authorities battle an outbreak in one of its poorest and most densely packed districts.
- China reported 107 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday as it marked the anniversary of the world’s first coronavirus lockdown in the city of Wuhan.
- Belgium has banned non-essential travel in and out of the country from Wednesday until 1 March in a bid to curb the spread of highly contagious coronavirus variants.
- Australia recorded another day of no community transmission of Covid-19. Eight of the past nine days in the country have seen no new local cases recorded.
- Pfizer says it will provide up to 40m does of its Covid-19 vaccine to poorer countries on a non-profit basis.
Updated
British Medical Association wants gap between vaccine jabs shortened
The BBC is reporting that the British Medical Association has written to the UK government’s chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, calling for the gap between jabs of the Pfizer vaccine to be shortened.
The private letter, seen by the BBC, says the current plans of people waiting up to 12 weeks for a second dose – which the health secretary, Matt Hancock, says is supported by data from an Israeli study – are “difficult to justify”.
The BMA letter says: “The absence of any international support for the UK’s approach is a cause of deep concern and risks undermining public and the profession’s trust in the vaccination programme.”
The government says the gap between doses was extended from three to 12 weeks to increase the number of people getting the vaccine. Prof Whitty described it on Friday as a “public health decision” that would allow “many more people to be vaccinated much more quickly”.
In early January we reported that experts from the World Health Organization said there was no scientific evidence for a delay of more than six weeks in administering the second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
You can read our full story on that here.
Updated
In the UK, the prime minister, Boris Johnson, has warned the new variant of Covid-19 may be 30% more deadly.
In findings that dampened hopes of the increasingly prevalent B117 variant becoming less lethal over time, researchers on the government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag) concluded that it may increase the death rate by 30%-40%.
Scientists urged tighter controls, and one said the news could take the country “back to square one”. It is also likely to increase the concerns of EU leaders, who were already considering strengthening border measures against the “British mutation”.
You can read more here:
Updated
For more on the Hong Kong lockdown order, you can read this piece by AFP.
The order bans about 10,000 people living inside multiple housing blocks within the neighbourhood of Jordan, on the Kowloon Peninsula, from leaving their apartments unless they can show a negative test.
Updated
Authorities in Australia’s state of Victoria have issued their daily update on cases.
Of the three positive hotel quarantine cases confirmed today, one is associated with the Australian Open, Covid-19 Quarantine Victoria (CQV) says. The case is a man in his 20s who is not a tennis player.
Separately, the government says three previously confirmed hotel quarantine cases associated with the Australian Open have been found to have the UK variant of the virus.
“CQV can confirm that three quarantine residents associated with the Australian Open who tested positive for coronavirus have been found to have the UK variant of the virus B117,” a spokesperson said.
“All three cases have been in hard lockdown since they landed in Melbourne.
“The residents arrived in Melbourne on a dedicated Australian Open charter flight on 15 January and returned their first positive tests on 15, 17 and 18 January.
“The three residents include two men in their 30s and a man in his 50s and all are non-players.”
Updated
Sri Lanka’s health minister, who publicly endorsed sorcery and magic potions to stop surging coronavirus infections in the island, has tested positive and will self-isolate, Reuters reports.
Pavithra Wanniarachchi had publicly consumed and endorsed a magic potion, later revealed to contain honey and nutmeg, manufactured by a sorcerer who claimed it worked as a life-long inoculation against the virus.
She also poured a pot of “blessed” water into a river in November after a self-styled god-man told her that it would end the pandemic.
The island nation of 21 million on Friday approved the emergency use of the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University only hours after Wanniarachchi tested positive, officials said.
“Her antigen test returned positive on Friday and she has been asked to isolate herself,” a health ministry official said.
“All her immediate contacts have been quarantined.”
Updated
Western Australia has recorded two new Covid-19 cases, both in hotel quarantine.
One case was a woman in her 20s, the other a man in his 50s. It brings the state’s total number of cases since the pandemic began to 892.
WA Health is monitoring 11 active cases and 872 people have recovered from the virus in WA.
Updated
China reports 107 new cases as it marks anniversary of first lockdown
China on Saturday reported a slight increase in new cases of Covid-19 as it marks the anniversary of the world’s first coronavirus lockdown, in the city of Wuhan where the disease emerged in late 2019.
The National Health Commission said 107 new cases had been identified on Saturday, up from 103 the day before.
The commission said in a statement that 90 of the new cases were local infections, Reuters reports.
The north-eastern province of Heilongjiang recorded 56 new cases and neighbouring Jilin province had 13. Both Beijing and Shanghai recorded three new cases each, and the province of Hebei, which surrounds Beijing, recorded 15 new cases.
The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, fell to 99 from 119 cases a day earlier.
Updated
Thailand has reported 198 new coronavirus cases, bringing its total number of infections to 13,302 since the outbreak began last year, Reuters reports.
The new cases included 18 imported cases and one additional death, taking the total number of coronavirus-related fatalities to 72, a Covid-19 taskforce said.
Updated
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 16,417 to 2,122,679, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Saturday.
The reported death toll rose by 879 to 51,521, the tally showed.
Updated
A year ago, a notice sent to smartphones in Wuhan at 2am announced the world’s first coronavirus lockdown that would last 76 days, AP reports:
Early Saturday morning, residents in the central Chinese city where the virus was first detected were jogging and practicing tai chi in a fog-shrouded park beside the mighty Yangtze River.
Life has largely returned to normal in the city of 11 million, even as the rest of the world grapples with the spread of the virus’ more contagious variants.
Efforts to vaccinate people for Covid-19 have been frustrated by disarray and limited supplies in some places. The scourge has killed over two million people worldwide.
Traffic was light in Wuhan but there was no sign of the barriers that a year ago isolated neighbourhoods, prevented movement around the city and confined people to their housing compounds and even apartments.
Wuhan accounted for the bulk of China’s 4,635 deaths from Covid-19, a number that has largely stayed static for months.
The city has been largely free of further outbreaks since the lockdown was lifted on 8 April, but questions persist as to where the virus originated and whether Wuhan and Chinese authorities acted fast enough and with sufficient transparency to allow the world to prepare for a pandemic that has sickened more than 98 million.
China on Saturday announced another 107 cases, bringing its total to 88,911. Of those, the northern province of Heilongjiang accounted for the largest number at 56.
Beijing and the eastern financial hub of Shanghai both reported three new cases amid mass testing and lockdowns of hospitals and housing units linked to recent outbreaks.
Authorities are wary of a new surge surrounding next month’s Lunar New Year holiday and are telling people not to travel and to avoid gatherings as much as possible.
Schools are being let out a week early and many have already shifted to online classes. Mask wearing remains virtually universal indoors and on public transport.
Mobile phone apps are used to trace people’s movements and prove they are both virus-free and have not been to areas where suspected cases have been found.
Updated
Mexico’s president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, says he and Joe Biden discussed migration, Covid and bilateral cooperation in a “pleasant and respectful” first phone call, Reuters reports:
The Mexican president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, said he and his US counterpart, Joe Biden, discussed migration, the Covid-19 pandemic and bilateral cooperation on Friday during their first phone call since the American assumed the presidency this week.
The afternoon call was “pleasant and respectful”, Lopez Obrador said in a brief Twitter post, in which he appeared in a photo smiling, seated at a table with the foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, and the former presidential chief of staff Alfonso Romo.
“Everything indicates relations will be good and for the benefit of our people and nations,” Lopez Obrador said.
Mexico has a major role to play in Biden’s plans for immigration reform. Earlier this month, Mexico helped coordinate efforts in Central America to contain a large caravan of migrants heading for the United States.
Nevertheless, Biden’s inauguration comes at a time of simmering tension over a now-dropped US investigation into the former Mexican defence minister Salvador Cienfuegos.
During the call, Lopez Obrador celebrated the legacy of Mexican migrants in the United States and reiterated that the best way to manage migration was to promote development in the places that fuel the phenomenon, Mexico’s foreign ministry said.
Lopez Obrador said Mexico wanted to work with Washington on their “broad bilateral agenda”, the ministry said.
The two leaders agreed that teams from both countries would work together to craft a common approach to development, and underlined the need for joint cooperation to combat the pandemic, the ministry said in a statement.
Mexico’s government also said it had begun talks with Washington about a coronavirus-related order signed by Biden to impose sanitary requirements on people entering US territory.
Updated
Some additional information on the permit system required for people to travel into Victoria from other states in Australia, via the state’s health department:
Since the portal went live on 11 January, 294,317 permits have been issued. In the past 24 hours, 24,945 applications have been processed – an average of 17.3 permits issued each minute.
Updated
Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, and the US president, Joe Biden, plan to meet next month, the PM’s office said, following a call between the two leaders in which they agreed to join forces to combat Covid in North America, Reuters reports.
Trudeau, who has been keen to embrace the new president and turn the page on the often tumultuous Donald Trump years, was the first foreign leader to speak with Biden since Wednesday’s inauguration.
“They discussed collaboration on vaccines and acknowledged that the two countries’ efforts are strengthened by existing exchanges of medical personnel and the flow of critical medical supplies,” according to a readout of the call.
Updated
Portugal has reported its first case of the South African variant as it struggles with a crippling Covid surge, Reuters reports:
The first case of the South African coronavirus variant was identified in Portugal on Friday, the National Health Institute Ricardo Jorge told Lusa news agency, as the country struggles to contain a crippling surge in cases partially blamed on the rapid spread of the British variant.
“We are undergoing due process to rapidly test and interrupt this potential chain of transmission,” the Ricardo Jorge Institute told Lusa. It did not say where in Portugal the variant was detected.
The country of 10 million people registered a record 234 coronavirus deaths and 13,987 cases on Friday, and is currently reporting the highest seven-day rolling average of new cases and deaths per million worldwide according to ourworldindata.org.
Updated
Some more detail on the Hong Kong lockdown via the South China Morning Post, which is reporting that tens of thousands of residents of the Yau Tsim Mong district of Kowloon woke to police cordons and patrols on Saturday.
The news outlet wrote residents who were outside of the area before the lockdown had been separated from their families, while others had had their travel routes to work blocked.
Some 200 buildings in an area comprising ageing and subdivided flats are subject to the lockdown.
The government is aiming to test every resident and provide results within 48 hours to allow people to return to work on Monday.
The South China Morning Post reported some 1,700 police were expected to be deployed for the operation, which is Hong Kong’s first such lockdown since the start of the pandemic.
The government said the measure was necessary after 162 confirmed cases were found in 56 housing blocks in the Jordan area between 1 and 20 January.
“Many residents were worried and had some misunderstanding over the outbreak,” officials said in a statement.
“Despite the short-term inconvenience, we hope the lockdown will cut off the transmission chain and restore business and livelihood in the neighbourhood affected by the pandemic.”
Updated
More than 19m doses of Covid vaccines have been administered in the United States and almost 40m doses distributed, Reuters reports:
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had administered 19,107,959 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country as of Friday morning and distributed 39,892,400 doses.
The tally of vaccine doses are for both Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, vaccines as of 9am ET on Friday, the agency said.
According to the tally posted on 21 January, the agency had administered 17,546,374 doses of the vaccines, and distributed 37,960,000 doses.
The agency said 16,243,093 people had received one or more doses, while 2,756,953 people got the second dose as of Friday.
A total of 2,289,284 vaccine doses have been administered in long-term care facilities, the agency said.
Updated
Hong Kong locks down part of Kowloon district
Hong Kong has ordered its first Covid lockdown in an area in the Kowloon district, where all residents will be tested, Reuters and AP report:
Thousands of Hong Kong residents have entered a government-enforced lockdown to contain a worsening outbreak of coronavirus.
It is the first such measure Hong Kong has taken since the pandemic began.
Hong Kong has been grappling to contain a fresh wave of the coronavirus since November. Over 4,300 cases have been recorded in the last two months, making up nearly 40% of the city’s total.
The government locked down an area in the Kowloon district on Saturday, saying people there must stay home until all residents have been tested and the results of those tests largely determined.
The government said in a statement there are 70 buildings in the “restricted area” of Jordan and that it aims to finish the process within about 48 hours.
Updated
United Arab Emirates officials say they are in talks with Denmark after it halted all flights from Dubai over potentially unreliable Covid tests, Reuters reports:
The United Arab Emirates said on Friday it was in talks with Denmark after the Nordic country temporarily halted all flights arriving from the Gulf Arab state, a major travel hub, due to potentially unreliable coronavirus tests in Dubai.
Denmark’s transport ministry said it was imposing the five-day travel ban after concerns were raised about the coronavirus tests administered in Dubai before departure. It added it had taken the decision after a detailed tip-off, without elaborating.
“All accredited UAE testing centres are regularly subject to strict quality checks,” the UAE foreign ministry said, adding there are severe penalties for non-compliance with international standards to ensure the highest level of quality in testing.
The statement said the UAE was communicating with Danish authorities “to clarify the details and cases” behind the decision in order to guarantee the safety of all travellers.
Denmark earlier this month made it mandatory for travellers to show a negative test from the previous 24 hours before departure towards Denmark from all countries.
Late on Friday, the Danish health minister, Magnus Heunicke, said on Twitter 50 people with Covid-19 had flown in from Dubai in January alone. Thirty-three of those arrived after Denmark made it mandatory to test negative for Covid-19 before departure.
Updated
Teachers in Mexico’s state of Campeche will begin receiving Covid jabs this weekend in the hope of resuming in-person classes there as early as next month, AP reports:
Mexico will start vaccinating teachers and other school personnel in one of the country’s 32 states this weekend with an eye toward resuming in-person classes there as early as late next month, the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said Friday.
Mexico would become the first country in Latin America to begin vaccinating teachers as a group. The announcement came one day after Mexico set new daily records for coronavirus infections and Covid-19 deaths.
But in the south-eastern state of Campeche, the virus’s spread has remained under control and relatively stable for weeks. It was the first state to rate green on the government’s pandemic alert scale and would have to remain green to send students back to the classroom.
The federal government is working closely with authorities in the Gulf state and plans to vaccinate as many as 20,000 school staff between Saturday and Tuesday. López Obrador had said earlier there are about 1,500 schools in Campeche.
Updated
Belgium bans travel in and out of the country
Belgium is banning non-essential trips in and out of the country from Wednesday until 1 March over concerns about the spread of Covid variants, AFP reports:
Belgium will ban non-essential trips in and out of the country from Wednesday in a bid to curb the spread of highly contagious coronavirus variants, prime minister Alexander De Croo said.
The prohibition will run to 1 March and apply to land, sea and air travel but will not affect cross-border workers or those with overriding health or family reasons.
“We are not going to build a wall around Belgium. We can go to other countries but only for essential reasons,” De Croo told a media conference on Friday.
The announcement comes a day after a European Union summit by videoconference during which leaders decided against barring travel across the EU’s internal borders.
They instead “strongly discouraged” non-essential intra-EU trips, and warned they might toughen that line in days ahead if the worrying virus variants took hold.
The EU wants to avoid a repeat of the height of the pandemic’s first wave in March last year when several member states panicked and closed off national borders unilaterally, triggering travel and economic chaos.
Travel into the EU is already severely restricted.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has warned there is a “very high” probability of the more contagious variants spreading in the bloc.
These mutations – which emerged in Britain, South Africa and Brazil – have already prompted bans or restrictions on travellers from those countries.
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Pfizer to provide 40m vaccine shots to poorer countries
Pfizer says it will provide up to 40m doses of its Covid vaccine to poorer countries on a non-profit basis.
The announcement comes as vaccination is already under way in many of the world’s richer countries, while coronavirus jabs remain few and far between in poorer nations, AFP reports:
Pfizer announced Friday that it will provide up to 40m of its Covid-19 vaccine doses to poorer countries on a non-profit basis, through the globally-pooled Covax facility.
While dozens of the world’s richer countries have begun their vaccination campaigns in a bid to curb the pandemic, coronavirus jabs have been few and far between in the world’s poorer nations.
Covax – the globally-pooled coronavirus vaccine procurement and equitable distribution effort, aimed at ensuring that lower-income countries get hold of doses too – is hoping to ship its first deliveries in February.
Covax is co-led by the World Health Organization and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is the only one so far to have received emergency use approval from the WHO.
Developing countries should have “the same access to vaccines as the rest of the world”, Pfizer chairman Albert Bourla told a virtual press conference.
“We will provide the vaccine to Covax for these countries at a not-for-profit basis.
“We are proud to have this opportunity to provide doses that will support Covax’s efforts towards vaccinating healthcare workers at high risk of exposure in developing countries, and other vulnerable populations.”
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Virus fragments detected in Sydney sewage
A bit more on the New South Wales Covid situation.
NSW Health’s sewage surveillance program has recently detected fragments of the virus that causes Covid-19 at two more sewage treatment plants – Liverpool and Glenfield.
The Liverpool waste treatment plant takes in a catchment of close to 180,000 people from the suburbs of Bardia, Hinchinbrook, Hoxton Park, Abbotsbury, Ingleburn, Prestons, Holsworthy, Edmondson Park, Austral, Cecil Park, Cecil Hills, Elizabeth Hills, Bonnyrigg Heights, Edensor Park, Green Valley, Pleasure Point, Casula, Hammondville, Liverpool, Moorebank, Wattle Grove, Miller, Cartwright, Lurnea, Warwick Farm, Chipping Norton, Voyager Point, Macquarie Links, Glenfield, Catherine Field, Gledswood Hills, Varroville, Leppington, West Hoxton, Horningsea Park, Middleton Grange, Len Waters Estate, Carnes Hill, and Denham Court.
People in those areas are being urged to monitor for symptoms.
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New South Wales records no new cases
The state of New South Wales in Australia has recorded no new locally-acquired cases of Covid-19 for the sixth day in a row, and one case in a returned traveller currently in hotel quarantine.
NSW recorded no new locally acquired cases of COVID-19 in the 24 hours to 8pm last night.
— NSW Health (@NSWHealth) January 23, 2021
There was one overseas acquired case, bringing the total number of COVID-19 cases in NSW since the beginning of the pandemic to 4,895. pic.twitter.com/h5Opkcc3L4
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Australia’s shadow health minister, Chris Bowen, has said the prime minister yesterday was “preparing the ground” for the shortage in the Pfizer vaccine, causing delays in the vaccine being delivered into Australia.
He says Australia is at the “back of the queue” when it comes to getting the vaccine, and the prime minister is “walking away” from delivering the vaccine at the end of February.
Bowen has called on the government to secure more vaccines, and ensure the 10m doses of the Pfizer vaccine ordered by the government are delivered.
He has also called on the federal government to take ownership of quarantine.
“It is Scott Morrison’s job. It is one of his key performance indicators, and he is failing on it.”
Bowen said given the more deadly UK variant of Covid-19, and the tens of thousands of Australians stuck overseas, the government should be picking up the slack from the state governments and bring Australians stranded overseas back home.
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Not that this will dissuade conspiracy theorists but Bill Gates has posted a shot of him receiving the vaccine.
One of the benefits of being 65 is that I’m eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine. I got my first dose this week, and I feel great. Thank you to all of the scientists, trial participants, regulators, and frontline healthcare workers who got us to this point. pic.twitter.com/67SIfrG1Yd
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) January 22, 2021
Brazil’s government on Friday received 2 million doses of coronavirus vaccine from India, but experts warned the shipment will do little to shore up an insufficient supply in South America’s biggest nation, AP reports.
Brazil’s Health Ministry announced that the vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, landed in Sao Paulo before being flown to Rio de Janeiro, where Brazil’s state-run Fiocruz Institute is based. Fiocruz has an agreement to produce and distribute the vaccine.
The 2 million doses from India only scratch the surface of the shortfall, Brazilian public health experts told AP, as far more doses will be needed to cover priority groups in the nation of 210 million people, and shipments of raw materials from Asia have been delayed.
“Counting doses from Butantan (a Sao Paulo state research institute) and those from India, there isn’t enough vaccine and there is no certainty about when Brazil will have more, or how much,” said Mario Scheffer, professor of preventive medicine at the University of Sao Paulo. That shortage “will interfere with our capacity in the near-term to reach collective immunity.”
A flight from India planned for last week was postponed, derailing the federal government’s plan to begin immunisation with the AstraZeneca shot. Instead, vaccination began using the CoronaVac shot in Sao Paulo, where Butantan has a deal with its producer, Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac.
Too early to draw conclusions on Covid origins: WHO
The World Health Organization said Friday it was too early to draw any conclusions from its mission to Wuhan as to whether the Covid-19 pandemic started in China, AFP reports.
A team of WHO experts arrived in Wuhan on 14 January to start probing the origins of the deadly coronavirus, more than a year after the first cases were detected in the central Chinese city.
They were whisked to a hotel to complete a two-week quarantine.
China is braced for the scrutiny the expert team of WHO scientists will bring to its virus narrative. Beijing has drip-fed the idea that the pandemic started outside of its borders.
“All hypotheses are on the table. And it is definitely too early to come to a conclusion of exactly where this virus started, either within or without China,” WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan told a press conference in Geneva.
“There are different ... scientific observations in different parts of the world... all of that is very important, because it builds up a picture.”
However, he added: “This is a big jigsaw puzzle and you cannot tell what the image says by looking at one piece in a 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzle.”
The virus has killed more than 2 million people so far, infected tens of millions of others and hammered the global economy.
The WHO says establishing the pathway of the virus from animals to humans is essential to preventing future outbreaks.
It says the probe should rightly start where the first cases were discovered, and follow the trail of clues from there.
“Let’s step back, let’s follow the evidence, let’s follow the science. Our team are on the ground, they are having a good experience working with our Chinese colleagues. We are working through the data,” Ryan said.
“The data will lead us to the next phase of where we have to go next to look at the origins of this virus.
“It is too early to come to any conclusion, but we believe we are making some progress and we hope to continue to do so in the interest of public health in the future.”
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Overnight, Andy Murray withdrew plans to compete in the Australian Open after being unable to find a “workable” quarantine solution to allow him to come to Melbourne before the 8 February start of the tournament.
Murray tested positive for Covid-19 just before he was due to fly, and is currently asymptomatic. Under newly-enforced Australian rules, people must receive a negative test result within 72 hours before they are due to fly.
Reuters reports between 150 and 200 national guard deployed to Washington DC to provide security for president Joe Biden’s inauguration have tested positive for the coronavirus.
A senior US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the number of national guard troops who tested positive could rise but was still a small fraction of the more than 25,000 troops deployed in city over the past few days.
The United States reported more than 4,000 daily deaths from Covid-19 for a second consecutive day on Thursday, according to a Reuters analysis of public health data, bringing the cumulative number of US lives lost to almost 410,000.
The national guard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The military has said arrangements are being made for thousands of troops to return home, and that about 15,000 are expected to leave Washington within the next five to 10 days.
Some 7,000 national guard personnel are expected to stay at least through the end of the month, officials have said. A smaller number of troops could stay longer.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) is not changing its advice on fabric face masks, in light of new variants of Covid-19, AFP reports, because the mutated strains are transmitted in the same way.
Germany and Austria have made medical masks mandatory on public transport and in shops - allowing only surgical or FFP2 masks, rather than fabric - amid concerns over the threat posed by the rapidly-spreading new virus mutations.
Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead, said some of the new variants “may have increased transmissibility”, but that from studies in Britain and South Africa of the mutations detected there, “we have no indication that the modes of transmission has changed. It spreads the same way”.
The WHO advises that “non-medical, fabric masks can be used by the general public under the age of 60 and who do not have underlying health conditions”.
Meanwhile it recommends medical masks for health workers in clinical settings; anyone feeling unwell, awaiting Covid-19 test results or having positive; and people caring for a suspected or confirmed case.
They are also recommended for people aged 60 or over, or with underlying conditions, due to their higher risk of serious illness.
Van Kerkhove told a press conference in Geneva that the UN health agency does not plan to shift its position.
“Countries are free to make decisions as they see fit,” she said.
“We will continue to look at the evidence that we have seen, but from the data that we have seen from the countries that have these virus variants, there is no change in the modes of transmission.
“If anything changes, we will modify and we will update (guidance) accordingly.”
She said fabric face masks should be made of three layers to provide adequate protection.
An independent panel of vaccine experts has reviewed data from Moderna Inc’s Covid-19 vaccine and will make public its recommendations on the vaccine’s use next Tuesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.
Reuters reports that in an advisory to media about next week, the WHO said on Friday night: “The Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization will make public its interim recommendations to WHO on the use of Moderna COVID-19 (mRNA-1273) vaccine. The recommendations have been agreed at the SAGE extraordinary meeting held on 21 January (Thursday).”
Mariangela Simao, WHO assistant director-general for access to medicines, vaccines and pharmaceuticals, speaking to a WHO social media event on Wednesday, noted that the SAGE experts had issued recommendations for the use of the Pfizer vaccine in early January. “It is already meeting for another vaccine quite soon,” Simao said.
Western Australia is set to take down its border to Queensland and New South Wales on Monday, AAP reports.
Entry to WA will be permitted but two weeks of self-quarantine and a test will still be needed.
Further easing of restrictions is expected in coming weeks.
Good morning
Hello, and welcome to the Guardian’s global Covid-19 live blog for today. I’m Josh Taylor and I will be with you through the next few hours.
Here’s some of what has happened in the past 24 hours:
- UK prime minister Boris Johnson has warned the UK variant of Covid-19 could be 30% more deadly, making it much less likely restrictions will be eased any time soon.
- France registered a further 23,292 new confirmed Covid-19 cases and 649 more deaths from the virus in the last 24 hours, according to data from the country’s health ministry on Friday. France’s overall Covid-19 death toll stands at 72,647 – the seventh-highest in the world.
- After AstraZeneca confirmed initial deliveries to the EU of the Covid-19 vaccine it is developing with Oxford University would fall short of the targeted volumes because of a glitch in production, Austria has warned that any delay would be unacceptable.
- Germany has detected its first case of a newly discovered Brazilian coronavirus variant, feared to be particularly infectious, regional health officials in the state of Hesse have said, AFP reports.
- BioNTech is to supply 50 million specialty needles at no profit to countries struggling to extract a sixth dose from vials of its Covid-19 vaccine as Europe’s immunisation drive is held back by a temporary supply shortfall.
- Thousands of Hong Kongers will be ordered to stay in their homes for the city’s first coronavirus lockdown, local media have reported, as authorities battle an outbreak in one of its poorest and most densely packed districts.
- Epidemiologists in Greece are poised to recommend that junior and high schools reopen as the country’s coronavirus case load continues to drop.
- Portugal has reported 234 Covid-19 deaths, a record for the fifth day in a row. The country of 10 million people has reported 9,920 fatalities since the start of the pandemic.
- The International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, has said the Olympic Games will go ahead in July despite a state of emergency being declared in Tokyo because of increasing Covid-19 cases.
- Dubai is keeping restrictions loose to preserve its reputation as a centre for trade, transport and tourism despite rising case numbers.
- Australia is eyeing its eighth straight day of no community transmission, with Victoria reporting no new locally acquired cases early on Saturday morning.
Let’s get started.
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