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Under fire over his management of the coronavirus’s lethal path through New York’s nursing homes, Andrew Cuomo insisted on Monday the state didn’t cover up deaths – but he acknowledged that officials should have moved faster to release some information sought by lawmakers, the public and the press.
“All the deaths in the nursing homes and hospitals were always fully, publicly and accurately reported,” the US Democratic governor said, weeks after the state was forced to acknowledge that its count of nursing home deaths excluded thousands of residents who perished after being taken to hospitals.
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Authorities in Belgrade held an emergency meeting on Monday night after more than 1,500 people broke anti-Covid laws to go nightclubbing at the weekend.
The Serbian capital’s mayor announced new controls for cafes, clubs and other venues that can operate until 8pm after incidents of rule breaking.
Zoran Radojičić said: “We want to send a clear message that this is no moment to relax and that such behaviour could put everyone at risk of a rise in numbers of infections.”
Police said they had arrested five people at the weekend after breaking up two big gatherings in different parts of the city. A party in central Belgrade attracted about 1,000 people and 600 turned up to another, according to Associated Press. The city has been reporting an average of 2,000 new infections a day.
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Death toll in Brazil reaches nearly 240,000
Another 528 deaths have been recorded in Brazil by its health ministry, amid 32,197 new cases.
The country has recorded nearly 9.9m infections, and the death toll stands at 239,245, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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Summary
Here’s a round-up of this evening’s news
- Incoming World Trade Organization head Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has warned that “vaccine nationalism” will slow the progress of ending the global pandemic.
- The Czech Republic’s government is to reopen schools from 1 March despite high levels of Covid infection.
- An agreement between Greece, Cyprus and Israel will allow people with Covid vaccination certificates to travel unimpeded between the three countries.
- The Palestinian authority has accused Israel of blocking 2,000 vaccines set to be delivered to Gaza health workers in the blockaded coastal strip.
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The European Council’s president, Charles Michel, said he welcomes Boris Johnson’s support on cooperating on the pandemic treaty.
- Nigeria is evaluating four coronavirus vaccines for possible approval, including Russian, Indian and Chinese jabs, the health minister has said, according to AFP.
- Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert, said he had been nervous entering the White House when many there were coming down with Covid-19 late in Donald Trump’s presidency.
- Colombia’s first Covid-19 vaccines have arrived in the country, according to Reuters, with distribution due to begin in the next few days.
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Fauci 'nervous' about getting Covid in Trump's White House
Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert and chief medical and coronavirus adviser to Joe Biden, revealed on Monday that he had been nervous entering the White House when many there were coming down with Covid-19 late in Donald Trump’s presidency.
Fauci is 80 years old and said he was acutely aware that he was at high risk of suffering a “serious outcome” if he became infected by coronavirus, he told Axios in an interview clip posted online.
“I didn’t fixate on that, but it was in the back of my mind because I had to be out there,” he said, adding: “I mean, particularly when I was going to the White House every day, when the White House was sort of a super-spreader location. I mean, that made me a little bit nervous.”
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Nigeria is evaluating four coronavirus vaccines for possible approval, including Russian, Indian and Chinese jabs, the health minister has said, according to AFP.
Its national drug agency has dossiers for Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, the Covishield-branded AstraZeneca shot made by India’s Serum Institute, Covaxin by India’s Bharat Biotech and China’s Sinopharm.
Officials said they expect to receive 16 million doses of vaccines against the disease soon.
Nigeria managed to avoid the brunt of infections after the pandemic first emerged, but cases have surged in a second wave since November.
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The European Council’s president, Charles Michel, said he welcomes Boris Johnson’s support on cooperating on the pandemic treaty.
“I welcome the support of Boris Johnson to work together on a pandemic treaty in order to improve global preparedness, resilience and recovery,” Michel said in a tweet.
Johnson said earlier he would be keen to agree a global treaty on pandemics where countries agreed to share data, amid British and US concern over access given to a World Health Organization mission to China.
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The Palestinian authority has accused Israel of blocking 2,000 vaccines set to be delivered to Gaza health workers in the blockaded coastal strip.
According to AFP, the authority’s health ministry, based in the West Bank, had planned to send the Russian Sputnik V doses to Gaza, which is run by the Islamist group Hamas.
Health minister Mai al-Kaila said: “These doses were intended for medical staff working in intensive care rooms designated for Covid-19 patients, and for staff working in emergency department.”
Cogat, the Israeli authority that runs civilian affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories, said the Palestinian authority had requested to transfer 1,000 doses to Gaza, but that it was “waiting for a political decision”.
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AstraZeneca has asked Czech ministers whether it wants to order more vaccines for later this year, but said any supplies would have to comply with EU agreements.
A news website in the Czech Republic reported on Saturday that its health ministry was in talks with the firm about extra jabs in addition to the 3 million it had already bought. However, according to Reuters, it was not clear if these would be compliant with the country’s EU commitment not to negotiate separately.
The drugs company’s director for the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Jarmila Doleckova said it was enquiring about interest in supplies on top of the existing 300 million doses agreed with the European commission.
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New WTO chief warns of 'vaccine nationalism'
Incoming World Trade Organization head, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has warned that “vaccine nationalism” will slow the progress of ending the global pandemic.
Okonjo-Iweala told Reuters her top priority was to ensure the WTO does more to address the pandemic. She said members should speed up the process of lifting export restrictions which are holding up trade in medicines and supplies.
The former Nigerian finance minister and senior World Bank executive was appointed on Monday and starts on 1 March.
She said:
The WTO can contribute so much more to helping stop the pandemic. No one is safe until everyone is safe.
Vaccine nationalism at this time just will not pay, because the variants are coming. If other countries are not immunised, it will just be a blow back.
It’s unconscionable that people will be dying elsewhere, waiting in a queue, when we have the technology.
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Accords between Greece, Cyprus and Israel allowing citizens with Covid-19 vaccination certificates to travel unimpeded between the three countries have been hailed as a possible first step towards normalising tourism during the next phase of the pandemic.
The prospect of people being able to move freely in the age of coronavirus received a concrete boost last week when the deal was the centrepiece of a visit to Jerusalem by the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis. After signing the agreement with his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader suggested similar accords could soon be in the offing.
“I expect what we will be doing with Israel to be a trial run of what we can do with other countries,” said Mitsotakis, who first pressed the case for vaccine passports with other EU members last month.
The Czech Republic’s government is set to reopen schools from 1 March, despite high levels of Covid infections.
Regular testing will take place inside schools as pupils return, according to Reuters. They have been closed since October as cases rose to among Europe’s highest – despite shop closures, restrictions on public events and a curfew.
Opposition parties have been calling for a gradual reopening of schools, as only nurseries and the two youngest years of primary school children are still attending classes.
Interior minister Jan Hamáček said: “If we secure enough (tests), nothing prevents children from beginning to return to schools.”
The country, which has a population of 10.7 million, has recorded 18,250 deaths from coronavirus since the start of the pandemic. Daily cases were the second highest in Europe after Portugal during the last fortnight.
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Boris Johnson welcomed the “unprecedented national achievement” of vaccinating 15 million of the most vulnerable people in the UK ahead of the target deadline on Monday, but said now was “no moment to relax” in terms of unlocking.
During a press conference on Monday afternoon, he said he wanted an “irreversible” exit from lockdown, and called for people to be “optimistic but also patient” about the easing of restrictions.
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Colombia’s first Covid-19 vaccines have arrived in the country, according to Reuters.
President Iván Duque confirmed their delivery at Bogota’s El Dorado airport, with the country’s health ministry saying it expected the rollout to begin in the next few days.
The South American country is expected to receive 5.7 million doses in February and March from different providers. Ministers hope to vaccine 1 million people in the programme’s first 30 days.
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Good evening, Harry Taylor here, bringing you the latest coronavirus news from the UK and around the world for the rest of tonight.
If you have any comments, tips or suggestions – drop me an email to harry.taylor.casual@theguardian.com or via Twitter @HarryTaylr.
Dr Anthony Fauci has won the $1m Dan David Prize for “defending science” and advocating for vaccines now being administered worldwide to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
The Associated Press reports:
The Israel-based Dan David Foundation on Monday named US president Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser as the winner of one of three prizes.
It said he had earned the recognition over a lifetime of leadership on HIV research and AIDS relief, as well as his advocacy for the vaccines against Covid-19.
In its statement, the private foundation did not mention former president Donald Trump, who undermined Fauci’s follow-the-science approach to the pandemic.
But it credited Fauci with “courageously defending science in the face of uninformed opposition during the challenging Covid crisis.”
“As the Covid-19 pandemic unravelled, [Fauci] leveraged his considerable communication skills to address people gripped by fear and anxiety and worked relentlessly to inform individuals in the United States and elsewhere about the public health measures essential for containing the pandemic’s spread,” the foundation’s awards committee said, praising Fauci for “speaking truth to power in a highly charged political environment.”
Fauci, 80, has served seven presidents and has been the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984.
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Israel to ease restrictions on businesses and people who have been fully immunised
Israel plans to ease more restrictions on businesses on Sunday and reopen hotels and gyms to those fully vaccinated or deemed immune after recovering from Covid-19, the government said.
Reuters reports:
With nearly 43% of citizens having received at least one shot of Pfizer Inc’s vaccine, Israel has pushed ahead with a gradual relaxing of lockdown measures imposed on 27 December. Malls, open-air markets, libraries and museums will be allowed to reopen on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on Monday.
Also on Sunday, Israelis in possession of a “Green Pass” - a certificate of presumed Covid-19 immunity, displayed on an Israeli Health Ministry app - will be allowed entry to leisure facilities such as gyms and hotels, the statement said.
Officials had initially planned to launch the Green Pass leisure access on 23 February.
Israel is on course to fully inoculate 30% of its 9 million population with the two-dose Pfizer regimen this month, a benchmark for a preliminary easing of curbs. It hopes for 50% coverage and a wider reopening next month.
Israel’s swift vaccination rollout has made it the largest real-world study of Pfizer’s vaccine. The country’s largest healthcare provider has reported a 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases among 600,000 people who received both doses.
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The British government’s chief medical adviser said on Monday he hoped to see a fall in the rates of severe disease and mortality from Covid-19 that followed the order in which people were vaccinated.
Prof Chris Whitty told reporters:
What we will hope to see, in time, is we’ll actually see in order the rates going down of severe disease and mortality, exactly following the the order in which people were vaccinated.
If you look at the data for example from Israel, you actually can see the effect, in the UK we can calculate an effect but it’s much better when we can actually see it, when it’s big enough to actually be able to see.
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Mexico began vaccinating senior citizens in more than 300 municipalities across the country on Monday after receiving some 870,000 doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine.
The Associated Press reports:
Most of the effort was concentrated in remote rural communities, but in a few far-flung corners of the sprawling capital, hundreds of Mexicans over the age of 60 lined up before dawn for the chance to get vaccinated.
Officials encouraged to people to not come at once, but rather to spread themselves through the day, but with shots distributed first-come, first-served, the demand was immediate.
The government has designated 1,000 vaccination sites, including schools and health centers, mostly in the country’s poorest communities.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador conceded on Monday that bad weather and snow had kept the vaccine from arriving to some isolated areas in Mexico’s northwest. He said the armed forces, which are in charge of logistics for the vaccination campaign, were working to access those areas.
Mexico started vaccinating health workers in mid-December with some 726,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
In addition to the AstraZeneca shots, 2 million doses of the Chinese CanSino vaccine are being bottled in Mexico. Another shipment of Pfizer’s vaccine is also expected this week.
Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine and another from China that have received emergency approval from Mexican regulators are also expected eventually.
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The British prime minister, Boris Johnson, said on Monday that world powers should clinch a global treaty on pandemics to ensure proper transparency after the coronavirus outbreak that originated in China.
Asked by Reuters who he held responsible for what the UK says is a lack of transparency on the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, Johnson said:
I think its fairly obvious that most of the evidence seems to point to the disease having originated in Wuhan.
Therefore we all need to see as much as we possibly can about how that might have happened, the zoonotic questions that people are asking. I think we need as much data as possible.
I think what the world needs to see is a general agreement on how we track data surrounding zoonotic pandemics.
We want a general agreement on transparency. I think one of the attractive ideas we have seen in the last few months is a proposal for a global treaty on pandemics.
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France has reported 4,376 new coronavirus infections on Monday, compared to 4,317 last Monday and Sunday’s 16,546.
A further 412 people in the country have died from Covid-19, the health ministry said, taking the total official death toll to 82,226.
26,522 people are currently hospitalised with Covid, and 3,381 patients are being treated in intensive care wards, the ministry added.
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Brazil’s government hopes to roll out a new emergency coronavirus aid package within three weeks, a source with knowledge of the plan said on Monday.
Reuters reports:
Congress will need to make sure the package, which would be worth 250 reais ($46.56) a month and last up to four months, includes measures to “compensate” the government, such as fiscal and other reforms, the source said. It was unclear whether the amount would be per person or per family.
“It should be approved in three weeks,” said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It is necessary to fight the pandemic without breaking budgets, especially in an environment of inflation, unemployment ... snowballing debt.”
The Brazilian government’s lavish fiscal support package last year ensured the economy did not shrink nearly as much as many feared at the onset of the pandemic.
The measure, which ended at the start of this year, bolstered president Jair Bolsonaro’s support, and is seen as crucial to safeguarding poorer families with no sign that the pandemic is ending soon.
While it saved lives and limited the economic recession, the program came at a financial cost. Brazil reported a record primary budget deficit of 743.1 billion reais ($138 billion) last year, as the crisis-fighting expenditure saw total outgoings surge by a third and the economic slump hit revenues.
Congress is expected to be willing to expand the emergency measure.
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Another coronavirus variant with a potentially worrying set of mutations has been detected in the UK and should be targeted in surge testing, experts have said.
The variant, known as B1525, is the subject of a report by researchers at the University of Edinburgh, who say it has been detected through genome sequencing in 10 countries including Denmark, the US and Australia, with 32 cases found in the UK so far. The earliest sequences were dated to December and cropped up in the UK and Nigeria.
The team say the variant has similarities in its genome to the Kent variant, B117, and it contains a number of potentially worrying mutations of, including the E484K mutation to the spike protein – a protein found on the outside of the virus that plays an important role in helping the virus to enter cells.
This E484K mutation is present in variants that emerged in South African and Brazil and is thought make the virus better able to evade neutralising antibodies produced by the body.
My colleague Nicola Davies reports.
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The UK is aiming to vaccinate 17 million over 50s and clinically vulnerable people by 30 April, the chief of England’s National Health Service (NHS) Simon Stevens said on Monday.
NHS England's Simon Stevens confirmed that April 30 is the target for the UK's next 11 week "sprint" for vaccinating 17m over 50s and those clinically vulnerable.
— Sebastian Payne (@SebastianEPayne) February 15, 2021
Prime minister Boris Johnson said there were still more hospital patients with Covid-19 than at the peak of the first wave and admissions were running at 1,600 a day across the UK.
He told a Downing Street press conference: “We have to keep our foot to the floor.”
The next million invitation letters were offering appointments for a vaccine to the over-65s and those aged 16-64 with underlying conditions, as well as adult carers.
“If we can keep this pace up and if we can keep supply steady - and I hope and believe we can - then we hope to offer a vaccination to everyone in the first nine priority groups, including everyone over 50, by the end of April.”
Poor and middle-income countries yet to buy their own vaccines have received good news this evening, with the WHO’s announcement that it has given emergency-use approval to two versions of the AstraZeneca/Oxford Covid-19 vaccine.
Covax, a vaccine-sharing mechanism, has procured plans to deliver tens of millions of doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford formulation to mostly middle-income and poor countries over the next six months, with aspirations to supply 20% of their populations by the end of the year.
The people running Covax have secured the vaccines, but their delivery has been held up for weeks as the global health body waited for manufacturers in South Korea and India to send dossiers to Geneva for regulatory approval.
They both did so four weeks ago and the WHO has been working flat-out to get the vaccines approved and listed for emergency use. The only other vaccine to receive that listing so far has been the Pfizer-BioNTech formulation. But that one is expensive and must be stored as temperatures colder than the south pole, making it a bad choice for many countries.
In contrast the AstraZeneca vaccine is cheap, being produced on a larger scale and can be stored at more accessible temperatures. Now, it’s also approved for use.
I’ve asked Covax when they expect the first doses to be delivered to countries, now that this regulatory hurdle has been cleared, and will wait to hear back. But the expectation is that within the next fortnight, doses will start going out.
It will be a huge step forward in the fight to end a pandemic that experts have reminded us repeatedly over past weeks will not end until vaccines are widely distributed around the world.
Portugal's daily death toll lowest since beginning of year
The number of new daily Covid-19 deaths in Portugal fell to its lowest level in around six weeks on Monday, with infections also declining, adding to evidence that an alarming post-Christmas surge in the coronavirus pandemic is slowing.
Reuters reports:
The good news came hours after grim data showing the once-booming tourism sector suffered its worst results since the mid-1980s last year as the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns worldwide grounded flights and kept visitors away.
There were 90 more deaths from Covid-19 reported on Monday, the first daily toll below 100 since early January, while the tally of new infections was down to 1,303, the lowest level seen since late December.
Portugal has so far reported 15,411 deaths – early half of them in January alone – and 787,059 cases.
A devastating post-Christmas increase in the coronavirus pandemic began to slow earlier this month after a strict lockdown was imposed in mid-January.
But an understaffed and under-resourced health service is still struggling to cope with the thousands in need of hospital care.
Portugal ramped up its coronavirus testing on Monday, mandating tests for anyone coming into contact with a positive case as well as fortnightly tests in schools, prisons, factories and construction sites in areas with high contagion rates.
A total of 2.2% of the population has been fully vaccinated so far, health minister Marta Temido told a news conference after she received her first shot, along with prime minister Antonio Costa.
The country is due to receive 2.5 million vaccine doses by the end of March, Temido said, still far below the original aim of 4.4 million but up from the previous estimate of 1.9 million.
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WHO approves AstraZeneca vaccine for emergency use
The World Health Organization (WHO) has approved the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus jab for emergency use, meaning the vaccine can be rolled out globally and participate in the Covax programme that aims to bring vaccines to poorer countries.
A WHO statement said it had approved the vaccine as produced by AstraZeneca-SKBio (Republic of Korea) and the Serum Institute of India.
WHO boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the vaccine’s production needed to be scaled up further before it could be more widely distributed.
“We now have all the pieces in place for the rapid distribution of vaccines. But we still need to scale up production,” Tedros said.
Reuters reports:
The listing by the UN health agency comes days after a WHO panel provided interim recommendations on the vaccine, saying two doses with an interval of around 8 to 12 weeks must be given to all adults, and can be used in countries with the South African variant of the coronavirus as well.
The AstraZeneca/Oxford shot has been hailed because it is cheaper and easier to distribute than some rivals, including Pfizer/BioNTech’s, which was listed for emergency use by the WHO late in December.
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Italy recorded 7,351 new infections on Monday, the health ministry said, as well as 258 further deaths from the virus.
This compares with Sunday’s 11,068 and 11,640 a week ago, as well as 221 fatalities on Sunday and 270 deaths on 7 February.
The country now has an official death toll of 93,835, the sixth highest in the world.
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Rio de Janeiro to halt vaccinations due to lack of shots
The Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro will halt Covid-19 vaccinations from Wednesday due to a lack of shots, city officials said on Monday.
Reuters reports:
Vaccinations will only begin when a new lot of shots arrives, they said, with delivery not expected until next week.
The halt to vaccinations illustrates the patchy nature of Brazil’s vaccine rollout, which has been blighted with delays and a lack of supplies.
“I have received the news that new doses did not arrive,” Rio’s mayor, Eduardo Paes, wrote on Twitter. “Today we are vaccinating 84-year-olds and tomorrow 83-year-olds. We are ready and have already vaccinated 244,852 people. We just need the vaccine to arrive ... it should come next week.”
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The UK reported on Monday a further 9,765 infections and 230 deaths within 28 days of a positive test. A week ago, the country had reported 373 new deaths, and 258 on Sunday.
It is the first time since the beginning of October that daily infections are below the 10,000 mark.
The UK’s official death toll now stands at 117,396.
A further 231 people who tested positive for coronavirus have died in hospital in England, bringing the total number of confirmed deaths reported in hospitals to 79,120, NHS England said on Monday.
Patients were aged between 31 and 102. All except 12, aged between 53 and 92, had known underlying health conditions.
A total of 15,300,151 people in the UK have received the first dose of a Covid-19 jab, according to official data released on Monday, as the government begins to widen its vaccination programme to new groups of people.
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EU finance ministers are holding initial talks on Monday on how the expected pick up in economic activity, and the lifting of pandemic lockdowns, should affect the cash stimulus governments now pump into the economy to keep it going.
Reuters reports:
The preliminary talks are based on the European Commission’s forecasts showing the 19 countries sharing the euro will rebound less than earlier expected this year as a second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic put economies in new lockdowns.
“The issue is how best combine to the commitment to short- term support with a credible medium-term fiscal strategy,” one senior eurozone official said.
Eurozone governments have made available trillions of euros to economies since the start of the pandemic in February 2020 in various measures to support corporate liquidity, loan repayment moratoria, tax deferrals and salary subsides.
“Now the measures are non-discriminatory. With time, more and more sectors approach normality, it will be time to wean off the corporate sector from public support. Different sectors will have different recovery dynamics,” he said.
“There will have to be a much more customised, handpicked approach in the future – that is one of the key topics in the discussions: how to calibrate, how to move from the general measures to the more calibrated measures,” the official said.
The key challenge will be to avoid withdrawing support to companies that are viable but the loss of businesses caused by the pandemic has made them dependent on public support, while letting fail non-viable firms, that would have collapsed anyway.
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Austria could ease restrictions at Easter at the earliest
Austria’s government will decide on 1 March on a potential loosening of pandemic restrictions that could come into effect around Easter at earliest, chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Monday.
Kurz said it was currently not possible to make more concrete announcements before March, due to the threat of virus mutations, when another advisory meeting will take place.
Only then could further steps towards the reopening of society be announced, he added.
Austria registered 1,225 new infections and 10 deaths in connection with Covid-19 on Monday. The country’s total death toll is now 8,221.
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The UK’s drug regulator is auditing manufacturing processes at the Serum Institute of India (SII) which could pave the way for AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine to be shipped from there to the UK and other countries, according to two sources close to the matter.
Reuters reports:
SII, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, is currently mass producing the AstraZeneca vaccine, developed in conjunction with Oxford University, for dozens of poor and middle-income countries but not the UK, which has been getting its supply of the shot primarily from domestic facilities.
If the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) gives SII’s manufacturing process for the Oxford/AstraZeneca shot a greenlight it would allow the drug to be exported to the UK and to other countries which recognise MHRA’s clearances, one of the sources said.
Reuters could not determine what was the rationale for the audit. SII did not respond to a request for comment on it. The MHRA confirmed that an inspection was happening but declined further comment.
“Due to commercial confidentiality we do not comment on inspections that are still ongoing,” the regulator’s chief executive, Dr June Raine, said in a statement.
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A British man has pleaded guilty to flouting Singapore’s quarantine rules to visit his then fiancée.
Nigel Skea, 52, from Southampton, was supposed to spend 14 days in a room at the Ritz-Carlton Millenia Singapore hotel upon entering the country but left his room and used an emergency staircase to spend the night with Agatha Maghesh Eyamalai, 39, in September.
Eyamalai had booked a room at the same hotel.
According to court documents, Skea had left his room three times.
Eyamalai, who is now married to Skea, admitted aiding him.
The couple could potentially have faced six months in jail, but the prosecutor sought a shorter term and lesser fine, asking that Skea be jailed for four weeks and fined 1,000 Singapore dollars (£543).
Defence lawyer Dhillon Surinder Singh, who is also representing Eyamalai, asked for a fine or a one-week jail term “to give him a slap on the wrist”.
On Monday, Skea pleaded guilty to one charge of contravening a control order and one of failing to wear a face mask, while Eyamalai admitted a single charge of conspiring to contravene a control order.
The court heard that Skea walked up 13 flights of stairs to visit his fiancée, who opened an emergency exit door for him.
The couple spent nine hours together, the BBC reported, and are expected to be sentenced next week.
“This is a classic tale of two lovers wanting to be together and trying to be as close as possible to each other, but breaching the law,” said the couple’s lawyer, SS Dhillon.
Last June, a group of British men living in Singapore were banned from working there again after breaking lockdown to go on a “bar crawl”.
They were also fined around S$9,000 each (£4,893).
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The number of people in Ireland claiming temporary coronavirus-related jobless benefits fell for the first time since strict curbs were reintroduced in late December, dropping 0.8% week-on-week to just under 478,000, Reuters reports.
There are still 200,000 more Pandemic Unemployment Payment recipients than in December, when most building sites, shops and hospitality facilities shut. The government has said any reopening from next month will be very gradual.
The social protection minister, Heather Humphreys, said the levelling-off was encouraging, noting that the highest number of people returning to work were in the construction, manufacturing and wholesale and retail trade sectors.
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The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has ordered a review of Russia’s vaccines to be produced by 15 March, assessing their ability to protect people from new variants, the Tass news agency has cited the Kremlin as saying.
Russia has approved two vaccines, including Sputnik V, which has been deployed widely and also exported abroad.
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Police in Rio de Janeiro have raided a series of illegal carnival parties taking place despite a prohibition designed to halt the spread of coronavirus.
Brazil is experiencing one of the worst moments of its epidemic, with the weekly average of deaths hitting a record high of 1,097 on Sunday. Nearly 240,000 people have now died here, second only to the US.
Authorities across Brazil have banned carnival festivities this year with Rio’s official samba parades cancelled for the first time since they began in 1932. One of Brazil’s biggest samba stars, Neguinho da Beija-Flor, told one local newspaper that going ahead with carnival this year would have meant “parading on top of corpses”.
But some have insisted on partying; including at Rio’s sophisticated Jockey Club racetrack, which was raided on Saturday. Police caught 200 people attending an illicit carnival ball. Black curtains and a metal fence had been erected to conceal the celebration.
Illegal shindigs have also been held in Rio’s favelas. Hundreds of revellers reportedly turned out on Saturday night to see the pop star Belo perform on a stage in the Complexo da Maré, a sprawling community near Rio’s international airport.
Floating all-night festivities have also been held on boats on Rio’s Guanabara Bay at the foot of Sugarloaf Mountain.
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Canadian universities are facing a financial crunch amid the Covid-19 crisis, as a drop in foreign enrolment and shuttered campuses dent the bottom line and the country’s slow vaccine rollout weighs on the next school year.
Reuters reports:
Public universities have become increasingly dependent on foreign students, who pay far higher tuition than domestic students, to boost their profits. International enrolment jumped 45% over the last five years, advocacy group Universities Canada said, but it fell 2.1% this year amid coronavirus restrictions.
That decline, coupled with a sharp fall in revenues from campus services like conferences, dorms, food halls and parking, has hit the schools hard.
Canada’s slow vaccine campaign – it currently lags well behind global peers on inoculations – and the emergence of new variants, could extend the slump in enrolment and campus revenues into the next year school, experts warn.
[...]
It is still too soon to know the final impact of Covid-19 on the current year. The University of British Columbia, for example, is projecting a deficit of C$225 million ($177.2 million) this year compared with a C$60 million surplus budgeted pre-Covid-19. And the uncertainty will continue.
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Israel is considering a carrot and stick approach to persuade people to get vaccinated, including granting inoculated people access to restaurants, hotels and concerts, while forcing some vaccine refusers to get uncomfortable Covid tests every two days.
“Will you be eligible to enter gyms and cultural events, or will you be left behind?” tweeted the health minister, Yuli Edelstein. “Go get vaccinated!”
Meanwhile, the health ministry has expanded a digital taskforce to combat anti-vax misinformation online, hoping to block false claims before they spread. Trackers now monitor social media daily, and in several languages.
Israel’s vaccination campaign is being closely watched by other governments that see it as a test case for what lies ahead.
Although the country of 9 million has launched a world-leading vaccination drive, with more than 40% having received at least one dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab, a recent slowdown has concerned officials.
Full story here:
Spain plans to approve a new aid package to help companies hit by the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic by the end of March, the economy minister, Nadia Calviño, told reporters in Brussels on Monday.
The package will take the form of direct aid to viable companies that are struggling financially due to the pandemic, Calviño said.
The country’s vaccination campaign meanwhile is showing its first signs of success, as infections in care homes are falling.
El País reports:
Spain’s social service residences can breathe a little easier one year after being besieged by the coronavirus pandemic. The mass vaccination of care home [residents] – the first priority group of Spain’s vaccination drive – is beginning to have an effect, with contagions falling.
According to the health ministry, last week 103 coronavirus outbreaks were reported in such residences, which include care homes for people with disabilities and senior residences. This is half the number recorded the previous week.
Data collected by El País shows that eight Spanish regions have registered this fall, which has been largely attributed to the vaccination campaign. Indeed, the regions – which are responsible for the vaccination drive and containing the coronavirus pandemic in their territories – have almost finished administering the second dose of the Covid vaccine in care homes.
This has prompted some regional governments to consider easing restrictions to allow residents to receive visits and leave their centres. Experts, however, have called for caution.
Updated
India could approve Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19 within the next few weeks, the RIA news agency cited India’s ambassador to Moscow as saying on Monday.
Small human trials of the Russian vaccine have been ongoing in India, conducted by India’s Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd and supported by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Reuters reports.
According to Johns Hopkins University, India has recorded at least 155,732 Covid-19 deaths so far and over ten million infections.
The country of 1.36 billion people has administered about 8.2 million vaccines so far.
Despite India having the world’s second highest number of overall infections and the fourth highest death toll, “life is almost back to normal”, the Times of India reports.
“Shopping mall parking lots are full again. Stores are buzzing, and there are long lines for hair salons and restaurants.”
Updated
The US is facing a vaccine supply shortage as various states are gradually expanding eligibility for vaccinations, as the country is now administering up to an average of about 1.7m jabs a day.
The New York Times reports:
[S]tates are also steadily widening access beyond the most vulnerable groups, frontline health care workers and nursing home staff and residents. Now, some state officials say they are ready to administer thousands more shots every day — if they can get them.
Last week, California announced that it would soon become one of just a handful of states to expand vaccine access to people of any age with underlying health issues or severe disabilities. But it has already used 72 percent of its doses and has shortages in some areas.
The mass vaccination site at Dodger Stadium shut over the weekend because Los Angeles had exhausted its supply, Mayor Eric Garcetti said. He said the city received just 16,000 doses last week — roughly a day’s worth.
[...]
Officials in Georgia say constrained supply is getting in the way of opening up eligibility. When the Atlanta Board of Education called on Gov. Brian Kemp earlier this month to start allowing teachers to be vaccinated, the governor said the state was not getting enough doses for residents who were already eligible.
Updated
Coronavirus case rates have fallen across nearly 95% of local authorities in the UK, new figures show.
PA Media reports:
Of the 380 local authorities areas across the UK, only 23 (6%) have seen a week-on-week increase in case rates compared with 354 (93%) where the rates have fallen.
The highest case rate in the UK was in Corby, Northamptonshire, with 277 new cases recorded in the seven days to February 10 - the equivalent of 383.6 cases per 100,000 people.
This was down from 468.0 cases per 100,000 people in the seven days to February 3.
The Scottish government has met its target of offering the first dose of a coronavirus vaccine to everyone in the top four priority groups, Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said on Monday.
Scotland has recorded no deaths of Covid-19 in the past 24 hours for the first time since 18 January.
Speaking during the Scottish government’s daily briefing, Sturgeon said levels of uptake of the vaccine had so far been “significantly beyond” the target of 80% set out in the deployment plan.
Updated
Portugal’s once-booming tourism sector suffered its worst results since the mid-1980s last year as the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdowns worldwide grounded flights and kept visitors away, official data showed on Monday.
Reuters reports:
The National Statistics Institute (INE) said just under 4 million foreign tourists stayed in Portuguese hotels in 2020, a near 76% slump from a record 16.4 million in 2019, while the number of overnight stays by non-residents dropped 75% to 12.3 million, its lowest level since 1984.
Tourism played a crucial role in Portugal’s recovery from the 2010 economic and debt crisis.
Overnight stays by Britons, one of the country’s biggest foreign markets, fell by over 78% from a year ago. There was also a massive drop in the Chinese and American markets, decreasing 82% and 87% respectively.
Total hotel revenues dropped 66% last year, INE said, partly cushioned by local tourism.
The government has said it is preparing a support package for the sector, including delayed loan-repayment schedules, debt-to-equity instruments and grants after Portugal’s hotel association warned a further 100,000 jobs could be lost in 2021 if it did not receive targeted support..
A country of just over 10 million people, Portugal fared better than other nations in Europe in the first wave of the pandemic, but 2021 brought a devastating surge in infections and deaths, forcing the imposition of a strict lockdown last month.
Nearly 15,321 people have died of Covid-19 in Portugal, with cumulative infections at 785,756.
Portugal on Saturday extended a suspension of flights to and from Brazil and Britain to March 1, with only humanitarian and repatriation flights allowed.
Updated
Colombia’s health ministry has recommended that incoming travellers adopt stricter measures to prevent importing new and more infectious coronavirus strains.
Colombia Reports writes:
Health minister Fernando Ruiz initially resisted stricter conditions, but changed his mind amid growing concerns over new strains from the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil that could reduce the effectiveness of vaccines.
The health ministry’s chief epidemiologist, Julian Fernando Niño, said the minister issued a decree in which it, among other things “recommends, not obliges” the use of special N-95 facemasks for travelers older than 60 or suffering comorbidities.
Airlines must demand passengers wear facemasks before and during the flight, and after arriving in Colombia where they are mandatory in public spaces.
During flights, airlines are expected to request passengers to keep conversations to a minimum.
Colombia’s first Covid-19 vaccines - a batch of 50,000 doses from Pfizer - will arrive in the Andean country on Monday afternoon, president Ivan Duque said.
The government is expecting to receive more than 5.7m doses of vaccines from different providers in February and March. It plans to administer its first dose on Saturday, and hopes to vaccinate 1 million Colombians in the first 30 days of the inoculation programme, Reuters reports.
Updated
Cambodia reports first cases of UK virus variant
Cambodia reported on Monday its first cases of the highly contagious UK coronavirus variant, after three foreigners who arrived from overseas tested positive while in quarantine.
Reuters reports:
The south-east Asian nation of about 16 million people has reported among the lowest number of coronavirus cases, recording less than 500 infections and no deaths, although a rare cluster emerged in November. Most of its cases have been imported.
The health ministry said the cases with the UK variant were two people from India and one from China, all of whom had been isolated.
The B1.1.7 variant, first found in Britain, is highly transmissible and its discovery prompted a tightening of travel restrictions globally among countries keen to keep it at bay.
Cambodia’s health ministry also warned the public against complacency, saying people “seem to forget the enormous risk of transmission” at mass gatherings like ceremonies, parties, weddings and festivals, where health measures were not being followed.
“Cambodians must not underestimate the potential for rapid transmission and severity caused by Covid-19 on the human body,” it said.
“The high prevalence and severity of the disease can happen in our country at any time, any circumstance, anywhere if individuals do not protect themselves.”
Dr Takeshi Kasai, the WHO regional director for the Western Pacific, wrote in the Phnom Penh Post on Monday:
Although Cambodia has been relatively fortunate in so far preventing the large-scale community transmission seen elsewhere in our region, the impact here has still been devastating.
Many livelihoods have been lost, children have been unable to go to school, and life for many families continues to be difficult due to the ongoing uncertainty of the pandemic.
[...] the goal is to provide enough vaccine doses to cover at least 20 per cent of the population – including other priority groups, such as people with pre-existing illnesses which put them at higher risk of getting sick from Covid-19 – by the end of this year.
Updated
France has scrapped a law banning workers from eating lunch at their desks in a bid to curb the spread of Covid-19, according to a decree published Sunday.
CNN reports:
The new rule temporarily overturns a longstanding law that protected what was once considered a sacrosanct part of the day, “la pause déjeuner” – the lunch break.
Employers were previously forbidden to allow their workers “to have their meals in the workplace”, under the French labour code.
The temporary decree applies to offices with over 50 employees and where the layout of the canteen does not allow for social distancing.
People must be between one or two metres (around 6.6 feet) apart when not wearing a face mask.
Updated
House sales in Spain tumbled 18% in 2020, the National Statistics Institute said on Monday, with tourist hotspots like the Balearic and Canary Islands hardest-hit.
Reuters reports:
A months-long home confinement last spring as well as restrictions on regional and global travel delivered hard blows to Spain’s real estate market, which had only recently begun to recover from a crash in 2008.
Around 415,000 houses were sold in 2020, the lowest number in four years, while property transactions fell to lows not seen since 2011, though pent-up demand drove a modest recuperation in the second half.
[...]
Regions blessed with beaches, plentiful natural space or a low population density like La Rioja, Galicia and Cantabria saw house sales soar between 37% and 28% in December compared with the same month in 2019, as buyers fled the cities seeking the green outdoors – and a lower infection risk.The Balearics and Canary Islands, two archipelagos favoured by tourists and international investors, respectively lost 20% and 17% of their house sales volume in 2020 as local hospitality sectors suffered a coronavirus-induced paralysis.
The data also showed new-build, single-family properties equipped with terraces and gardens held up better against the downwards trend, as buyers sought to protect themselves from contagion and improve their quality of life in the face of remote working and future lockdowns.
Updated
Malta’s nurses union has warned that its hospitals face a staffing crisis as the UK has enticed away a growing number of the island nation’s foreign nurses with offers of better pay and conditions.
Reuters reports:
Some 600 third-country national nurses work in Malta, but roughly 150 have moved abroad or else handed in their resignation since December, union sources said.
“It is a crisis,” the MUMN union said in a statement.
Other southern European countries have complained about nurse shortages during the coronavirus pandemic with wealthier northern nations able to offer better packages.
Foreign staffers, including Indians, Pakistanis and Filipinos, make up around 15% of the total nursing staff in Malta, and the fact they speak English makes them especially attractive to the UK and Ireland.
Recruitment agencies in Britain and India have run Facebook adverts urging nurses in Malta to apply for jobs in the UK.
Sources in the nursing sector said nurses are being offered a basic starting salary of £32,000 or €36,000 ($44,500) compared with the current Malta salary of €18,722 for trainee nurses and €21,000 for qualified nurses.
But the nursing union said that better conditions rather than higher pay was proving especially attractive - particularly the offer of quicker routes to citizenship for them and their families.
Moreover, Britain is offering foreign nurses free accommodation for the first 12 months, MUMN said.
“The present nursing workforce is already working under a heavy workload with none of the wards ... having the agreed nursing complement,” nurses union leader Paul Pace said in a statement. “Losing 15% of the nursing workforce will literally bring the health service to a standstill.”
Updated
UK prime minister Boris Johnson has defended his administration’s refusal to commit to an end of lockdown restrictions by May, saying the government did not want to be forced into a “reverse ferret” over lockdown easing.
Johnson said on Monday that his plan to lift the lockdown would be cautious but irreversible and would include the earliest possible dates for reopening the economy.
“We’ve got to be very prudent and what we want to see is progress that is cautious, but irreversible,” Johnson told reporters.
Speaking to people waiting for a Covid-19 vaccine shot, Johnson said that the key question was working out to what extent a drop in infections was being caused by the vaccination programme.
“That’s the data we’re having to look at and really work out what is going on,” Johnson said.
Asked about lifting lockdown, Johnson said: “The crucial thing is to make sure we just do sensible steps that are in proportion to where we are.”
“What people don’t want to see is you know just being forced into reverse - we don’t want to do, you know, a reverse ferret - let’s take it at the right pace,” he said.
“Schools is the first priority obviously,” he added.
Updated
Intensified checks at Germany’s borders meant to slow the spread of the pandemic are only temporary and a last resort, a German government spokesman said on Monday.
“A return to normal is in the interest of everyone involved,” chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, told a regular news conference.
Since Sunday, stricter border regulations have been in place, stipulating that from the Czech Republic and the Austrian state of Tyrol only Germans and foreigners with a residence and residence permit in Germany are allowed to enter.
There are exceptions for health workers and truck drivers. All those entering the country have to present a negative Covid-19 test.
After the introduction of border controls, kilometre-long traffic jams formed at the crossings from the Czech Republic to Germany, public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk reports.
I’m Jedidajah Otte and will be taking over for the next few hours. As always, do feel free to get in touch with comments, updates or tips, you can reach me on Twitter @JedySays or via email.
Updated
Cyprus and Israel sign vaccine travel deal
An agreement between Cyprus and Israel allowing vaccinated citizens of both countries to travel freely between them, has been hailed as a ground-breaking “first step” towards normalising tourism once flights resume, writes Helena Smith in Athens.
The accord, signed during a visit of the Cypriot president Nicos Anastasiades to Jerusalem on Sunday, is expected to go into effect in the next few weeks.
“When the world is in upheaval because of corona, the warm relations between our two countries are more important than ever,” the Cypriot leader said.
Tourism is integral to the economy of both states with Israelis forming a large part of the market share in popular resorts such as Ayia Napa.
Under the agreement travellers in both directions will not be required to have undergone PCR tests nor will they have to endure periods of quarantine. “This is a first step in restoring the connectivity between the two countries,” the Mediterranean island’s transport minister, Yiannis Karousos, told the Cyprus news agency on Monday. “It is very important and will be combined with other support measures that will be announced soon.”
Karousos did not rule out similar arrangements being made with other nations although he emphasised that the health ministry will “reserve the right to carry out tests on passengers” if deemed necessary.
Cyprus’s deputy tourism minister, Savvas Perdios, described the accord as “a huge achievement”.
More than 300,000 Israelis flew into the island in 2019, he said, with a further 40,000 arriving on cruise ships. “Israel is effectively one of the most important markets for us in terms of tourism and this agreement will certainly boost our economy,” he said.
Last week Greece and Israel, also close allies, announced a similar agreement, with officials in Athens calling it vital for the revival of tourism already badly hit by the pandemic. With one in five Greeks working in the sector, it is regarded as the country’s heavy industry.
Updated
Russia has reported 14,207 new cases of coronavirus, including 1,818 in Moscow, taking the national infection tally to 4,086,090 since the pandemic began.
According to Reuters, the country’s coronavirus taskforce said 394 people had died in the last 24 hours, pushing the official national death toll to 80,520.
Vietnam is to put 2 million people under new coronavirus restrictions from Tuesday after a new outbreak in a northern province of the country.
Residents of Hai Duong province have been ordered to stay at home for 15 days, state media reported, according to the French news agency AFP, as a nation widely praised for its handling of the pandemic struggles to extinguish a troubling new outbreak.
According to AFP:
Since late January, Vietnam has recorded 637 locally transmitted coronavirus cases, including 461 in Hai Duong province alone.
“People (in Hai Duong) are asked to stay at home and only go out when necessary, such as to buy food or medicine, or to work at factories or production establishments that are not being asked to close,” said the official mouthpiece of Vietnam’s health ministry, Suc Khoe Doi Song.
Gatherings of more than two people will be banned, while schools, bars, restaurants and karaoke parlours that were shut early ahead of the lunar new year holiday will remain closed.
When they must go outside their homes, residents are instructed to stay 2 metres from others.
Traffic through the province of 2 million will also be limited, state media reported, with only vehicles travelling on essential business allowed to enter.
In addition to the social distancing directive, Hai Duong authorities have asked that people quarantining at three centres in the province be relocated after infections recently began spreading at those sites, according to the government.
Updated
Pakistan will allow private companies to import coronavirus vaccines and has exempted the vaccines from price caps in a divisive move that health experts fear will create vast inequalities in access, writes Shah Meer Baloch for the Guardian in Islamabad.
The country has been scrambling to secure vaccine supplies but so far only the Chinese-made Sinopharm treatment is being deployed. This month 500,000 doses were donated to Pakistan.
Like many other countries, Pakistan has been relying on the Gavi/World Health Organization Covax vaccine initiative, but has yet to receive any of the 17m doses it is expecting.
The cabinet granted permission for unlimited imports of coronavirus vaccines, which could be sold to customers. No price cap was set.
Fawad Chaudhry, a federal minister in the cabinet, said if the private sector was not included in the vaccination drive it would be impossible for Pakistan to vaccinate its population of more than 220 million.
Updated
A British man has pleaded guilty to violating his coronavirus quaratine order in Singapore by sneaking out of his hotel room to visit his fiancée several times in another hotel room.
Nigel Skea, 52, admitted leaving his room three times on 21 September last year, one of which was to meet his Singaporean partner Agatha Maghesh Eyamalai, who was not in quarantine but had booked a room in the same hotel.
The couple will appear in court for sentencing on 26 February. They face a possible sentence of up to six years in jail and a fine of 10,000 Singapore dollars ($7,500) on each charge.
According to court documents, seen by the Associated Press, Skea climbed an emergency stairwell and entered a room that his Singaporean fiancée had booked. The two spent nine hours together.
The prosecution asked that Skea be jailed for four weeks and fined 1,000 Singapore dollars ($750).
Defence lawyer Dhillon Surinder Singh, who is also representing Eyamalai, asked for a fine or a one-week jail term “to give him a slap on a wrist”.
Updated
Malaysia has reported 2,176 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of infections from the pandemic to 266,445.
The health ministry also reported 10 new deaths, raising total fatalities to 975.
First guests check into UK's quarantine hotels
The first guests have checked into quarantine hotels in the UK, as tougher rules for international arrivals from 33 “red list” countries came into force on Monday morning. (The rule applies to people returning to Scotland from any destination.)
Passengers arriving at London’s Heathrow airport were escorted by security personnel to coaches which took them to nearby hotels, the PA Media news agency reports.
A handful of people pulled up to the Radisson Blu Edwardian hotel shortly before 9am. One woman, who had flown in from Zambia, told PA: “I’m not happy, but you have to do it.”
People required to enter the quarantine hotel programme must enter England or Scotland through a designated port and have pre-booked a package to stay at one of the government’s managed facilities. No international flights are operating to Wales or Northern Ireland.
Updated
Peru’s foreign minister has resigned amid uproar over government officials being secretly vaccinated against coronavirus before the country recently received 1m doses for health workers facing a resurgence in the pandemic, according to the Associated Press.
The president, Francisco Sagasti, confirmed that Elizabeth Astete had stepped down and told a local television channel that Peruvians should feel “outraged and angry about this situation that jeopardises the enormous effort of many Peruvians working on the frontline against Covid”.
The scandal erupted on Thursday when the former president Martín Vizcarra, who was dismissed by Congress on 9 November over a corruption allegation, confirmed a newspaper report that he and his wife had secretly received shots of a vaccine from the Chinese state pharmaceutical company Sinopharm in October. Pilar Mazzetti resigned as health minister on Friday after legislators accused her of concealing information.
Updated
People aged 65 and over in South Korea will not receive the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, the Korea disease control and prevention agency has said.
The announcement reverses an earlier decision and came as the KDCA scaled back targets in its vaccination programme as a result of a delay to shipments from the Covax vaccine-sharing scheme, according to the Reuters news agency.
South Korea had said it would complete vaccinations on 1.3 million people by the first quarter of this year with AstraZeneca shots, but it slashed the target sharply to 750,000.
KDCA’s director, Jeong Eun-kyeong, insisted that South Korea’s plan to reach herd immunity by November remained intact, telling reporters:
We do not believe the adjustments in inoculations in February and March will impact our goal of herd immunity by November.
South Korea also said it would delay inoculation of elderly people using the AstraZeneca vaccine until more efficacy data becomes available.
Updated
World Health Organization Covid-19 special envoy expects 'some sort' of vaccine passports
The World Health Organization special envoy for the global Covid-19 response has said he expects “some sort” of vaccine passport will be introduced in future.
Speaking on Sky News on Monday morning, David Nabarro said:
I am absolutely certain in the next few months we will get a lot of movement and what are the conditions around which people are easily able to move from place to place, so some sort of vaccine certificate no doubt will be important.
Nabarro said countries would only be able to form “bubbles” for travel purposes if they both had the same standards of coronavirus restrictions and similar levels of vaccination uptake. Transparency over Covid-19 measures between countries was key to keeping an eye out for new variants of the virus, he said.
That’s going to be with us for the foreseeable future, because even when much higher proportions of the population are vaccinated, there are still going to be these worrying moments when perhaps a version of the virus appears that can break through the defences provided by the vaccine.
Vaccine passports are among the most controversial potential measures that have been mooted to contain the spread of coronavirus in the future, with apparent disagreements within the UK government over their implementation. Cabinet ministers have several times contradicted each other over whether there are plans to introduce the documents, and whether they will be in use only for international travel or also for civil society.
Updated
A plane has landed in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, carrying the southern African country’s first consignment of coronavirus vaccines, 200,000 doses donated by China.
A further 600,000 Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccines - this time paid for - are expected to arrive in early March.
Constantino Chiwenga, the vice-president of Zimbabwe, who was with a delegation who came to meet the vaccines at Robert Mugabe airport, said frontline health workers would be the first to be vaccinated.
This is a timely donation ... our people have suffered from this pandemic. The vaccine offers the possibility that our people who have borne the brunt of the economic ravages of the pandemic might finally turn a new page.
Zimbabwe has set aside $100m for vaccine procurement and is looking to buy 20 million doses in efforts to immunise about 60% of its population and achieve herd immunity, Reuters reports.
Updated
Matt Hancock, the UK health secretary, is doing the customary early morning ministerial parade of London’s broadcast studios today, answering questions on the latest lines that the government has managed to brief into the national papers.
The vaccination of 15 million people has been an achievement of which the government is particularly proud and, after so many missteps to date in handling the coronavirus crisis, will be wanting to tout for all its worth.
On BBC Breakfast, Hancock gave a breakdown of what percentage of people in each of the top four priority groups had been vaccinated, adding that he believed that everyone in those groups had at least been offered the vaccine. He said:
The take-up is incredibly important - it’s over 90% among the over 70s as a whole, so more than nine in 10 of everybody aged over 70 in the country has taken up that offer.
It is higher in some groups, so among the 75- to 79-year-olds, over 97% have taken up the offer and we obviously want to keep that proportion going up so anybody who hasn’t yet been able to be vaccinated for whatever reason ... then please do come forward.
Hancock said the figure among healthcare staff was “a little bit lower than 90%”, with “around two-thirds” of social care staff jabbed and “four-fifths” of NHS staff receiving their first dose. In care home residents, among those eligible to be vaccinated, the percentage who had been given a jab was “over 90%”.
The challenge there is that there are some care homes that have recently had an outbreak and you can’t vaccinate people within 28 days of a positive test, so there are some people who have recently tested positive who aren’t able to be vaccinated yet who we will make sure we go back to in the weeks to come to make sure they get their jab when they are clinically eligible for it.
There is still more work to do. Everyone eligible has been offered a [jab] and we’ve visited all of the elderly care homes in the country but clearly ... there is still more to do to increase take-up.
Updated
Not made it out to the shops this morning? Here is the front page of today’s print edition of the Guardian, which is leading with a story about how ministers are resisting demands from Tory backbenchers to end the coronavirus lockdown by May.
Tomorrow's @Guardian: No 10 resists Tory demands for end to lockdown by May
— Richard Preston (@richardpreston_) February 14, 2021
• Read our story, by @peterwalker99, @iansample and @RichardA, here: https://t.co/Hj2eHjvC5G#TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/pDWdUb7ZDN
Our reporters write:
Downing Street is pushing back against pressure from Conservative MPs to set a swift timetable to end the lockdown in England after meeting its first major vaccination target, saying any hastiness in reopening could risk undoing the progress made in combating the coronavirus pandemic.
In a sign of the likely battle ahead in the coming weeks, ministers and officials flatly ruled out a demand from Tory backbenchers for all Covid restrictions to be over by the start of May, saying any plan needed to be both more cautious and decided step by step.
But clamour for a more fixed schedule seems set to increase after Boris Johnson announced the government had reached its target of offering at least a first vaccination to the top four most vulnerable groups in England by Monday.
Most of our rivals are leading with more cheerful lines about a potential end to lockdown, or hailing the progress in the UK’s vaccination programme.
The front page of tomorrow's Daily Telegraph:
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) February 14, 2021
'Meet grandchildren outdoors in March'#TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/jxr3uTZrVY
The Telegraph suggests that its readers will be able to meet their grandchildren - outdoors, mind - again as early as next month. It reports:
In the wake of vaccine success - which yesterday allowed the Government to announce that everyone in England in the four most vulnerable categories has now been offered the jab - ministers are looking to begin lifting restrictions from March 8.
Schools will be the first to return, with people also allowed to meet friends and family from other households outdoors, on a one-to-one basis.
Monday's Times: Johnson eyes Easter escape #TomorrowsPapersToday #TheTimes #Times pic.twitter.com/9tY0KPD7pu
— Tomorrows Papers Today (@TmorrowsPapers) February 14, 2021
The Times reports that ministers are looking at plans to allow people to go away on self-catering breaks by the time the Easter holidays arrive. It says:
The Times has been told that under one ambitious timeline being considered by the government families who live in the same household could be allowed to go on breaks together from April.
Monday’s Daily MAIL: “Now It’s Ready, Steady Shop!” #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/0uytehMS6R
— Allie Hodgkins-Brown (@AllieHBNews) February 14, 2021
According to the Daily Mail, shops could reopen within weeks, adding that “plans to ease lockdown were boosted yesterday by figures showing the dramatic impact vaccines are already having.”
Monday's front page: The Road To Freedom. #tomorrowspaperstodayhttps://t.co/cafxRDqRi3 pic.twitter.com/hD9i5MErVZ
— Daily Mirror (@DailyMirror) February 14, 2021
The Mirror doesn’t mince its words. It claims we’re on the “road to freedom.”
Boris Johnson today begins plotting a route out, and if all over-50s have the jab by then hospitality may restart.
He reveals his plan next week. With 15 million now vaccinated, the PM said: “We’ll make clear our roadmap.”
All in all it looks like there some hard briefing by Downing Street yesterday around the subject of when coronavirus lockdowns will end. The government appears to be in an increasingly difficult position with maintaining the strict curbs that its scientific advisers insist are necessary, in the face of widespread opposition from the Tory backbenches and some sections of the public.
It is too early to say whether the UK’s mass vaccination programme has had an impact on Covid-related deaths, the health secretary has said.
Matt Hancock said data was not yet available to suggest what the impact of the vaccination programme had been. Speaking on Sky News on Monday morning, the health secretary said:
The signs are that, thankfully, the number of deaths is falling and has been coming down for a few weeks. It is too early to say whether that is directly due to the vaccination programme yet.
It is too early to be able to measure the direct impact but of course we are looking at that and we can see overall that the number of cases is coming down sharply, the number in hospitals is coming down but it is still too high - at the latest count there were 23,000 people in hospital with Covid.
Hancock said the Government was looking to the next priority groups after meeting its target of vaccinating the top four groups by 15 February.
There is no rest for the wicked and we are straight on to the next groups, so the letters have already been sent to over a million over 65-year-olds asking them to come forward, and also the next group after that is those who have underlying health conditions and are carers.
There is a huge programme under way rolling out to invite the next group of people to be vaccinated and, at the same time, from next month we have the second jabs of all the people who have come since January to make sure they happen on time, because they have to be within a specific 12-week time period.
So there is still a huge amount of work to do but we have managed to vaccinate those who are most vulnerable.
Good morning, this is Damien Gayle picking up the blog in London, with the latest coronavirus-related news and updates from this side of the world.
If you have any comments, tips or suggestions for coverage then feel free to drop me a line, either via email to damien.gayle@theguardian.com, or via Twitter direct message to @damiengayle.
Summary
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
-
All UK nationals or residents arriving back in England from high-risk countries will begin checking into government-designated accommodation on Monday as the hotel quarantine regime to prevent the spread of new coronavirus cases begins.People returning to England from 33 “red list” countries – comprised of hotspots with Covid-19 variants in circulation – will be required to quarantine in hotels for 10 days.
- UK variant hits New Zealand. Aucklanders awoke on Monday to a new lockdown, hoping the short and sharp three-day restrictions ordered by Jacinda Ardern arrest the spread of Covid-19. The prime minister said genomic testing had shown that the three community cases were the UK variant of Covid-19, the first to be detected in the country.
- In the US, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Sunday it is “absolutely” too soon to lift mask mandates, citing daily Covid case numbers that despite recent declines remain more than double the levels seen last summer.
- US daily Covid cases dropped below 100,000. Average daily new coronavirus cases in the US have dipped below 100,000 for the first time in months, but experts cautioned on Sunday that infections remain high and precautions to slow the pandemic must remain in place.
- First vaccine doses arrive in Australia. Australia’s coronavirus vaccine rollout will begin next week after the first doses of the Pfizer jab arrived in Sydney, AAP reports. More than 142,000 doses are being taken to a secure location and batches will be assessed for damage and quality in the coming days.
- First vaccine doses arrive in New Zealand. Jacinda Ardern said the first vaccine doses arrived in the country on Monday morning. After being checked for quality assurance, inoculations will begin on Saturday, starting with border workers.
- Japan to start vaccinations on Wednesday. Japanese prime minister Yoshide Suga announced on Monday that that coronavirus vaccinations will start on Wednesday this week.
- South Korea to exclude people over 65 from AstraZeneca vaccines. South Korea will initially exclude people aged 65 years and older from inoculation with AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine because of a lack of data proving its efficacy in the elderly, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said on Monday.
- Pfizer/BioNTech jab gives 94% protection, Israeli study suggests. An Israeli study of more than half a million fully vaccinated people indicated the Pfizer/BioNTech jab offered 94% protection against Covid-19, according to the country’s largest healthcare provider.
- Australia suspended quarantine-free travel with New Zealand after it locked down Auckland following the detection of three new community cases.
-
Around 1,000 people have been caught flouting restrictions in a Belgrade nightclub, Serbia’s interior ministry said on Sunday. The country’s coronavirus restrictions allow gatherings of up to five.
-
Lebanon has started vaccinating high-risk groups, including healthcare workers and elderly people.
-
Brazil has confirmed two cases of the UK variant in the state of Goiás after sequencing test samples taken on 31 December, Reuters reports, citing the state’s health department. It did not say if these are the first cases of the variant detected in Brazil.
-
Rwanda has started vaccinating healthcare workers and other high-risk groups, its health ministry has said, making it the first country in east Africa to start its rollout.
- There is growing controversy over a World Health Organization investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic after one of its members said China had refused to hand over key data, and the US national security adviser said he had “deep concerns” about the initial findings.
- China reported 9 new Covid-19 cases vs 7 a day earlier. China reported nine new coronavirus cases in the mainland for 14 February, compared to seven a day earlier, the health commission said on Monday. Of the cases, eight were imported infections originating overseas, while one case was recorded in Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, the National Health Commission said in a statement.
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, and over to my colleagues in London.
Speaking of living in a confined space for long periods of time – this is quite the yarn:
In England, Middlesbrough council withheld potentially embarrassing details of how – against the advice of its own public health expert – it ordered £24,000 worth of Covid tests that it could not use, emails reveal.
The independent mayor of Middlesbrough, Andy Preston, spent £24,000 on pinprick antibody tests, disregarding concerns voiced by the region’s director of public health, according to documents released under Freedom of Information laws:
The UK’s equality watchdog is facing demands to investigate claims that ministers have sidelined key gender laws in their response to the Covid pandemic.
In the wake of a damning report from MPs that said the UK risked turning back the clock on gender equality, a coalition of organisations including the Trades Union Congress (TUC), Amnesty International, Save the Children and the Fawcett Society have accused the government of taking decisions that are deepening inequalities.
Two dozen signatories, including leading gender equality experts, signed a letter to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) that argues that the government has failed in its duty to consider the impact of key policies on women and other groups protected under the Equality Act:
Japan to start vaccinations on Wednesday – reports
NHK reports that Japanese prime minister Yoshide Suga has announced that coronavirus vaccinations will start on Wednesday this week.
From NHK:
Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide says coronavirus vaccinations will begin on Wednesday, starting with medical workers.
Suga spoke at a Lower House budget committee meeting on Monday. He said the government will do its utmost to deliver safe and effective vaccines to people as quickly as possible.
The government gave the greenlight to the vaccine developed by the US pharmaceutical company Pfizer on Sunday.
Here is the full story on Australia’s vaccine rollout:
Australia will begin its Covid-19 vaccine rollout on Monday 22 February after 142,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine arrived on Monday the 15th.
“The eagle has landed,” declared the health minister, Greg Hunt, ending weeks of doubt as to whether supply delays could blow out the government’s timeline to begin vaccinations in late February.
Of the first Pfizer shipment, 62,000 doses will be set aside as second doses in case of supply interruptions.
Of the first 80,000 doses available, 30,000 will be administered by the federal government in aged care, with the remaining 50,000 to be administered by state and territory governments to hotel quarantine and other frontline workers.
The first 1.4 million vaccine recipients will be quarantine and border workers, frontline healthcare workers, aged care and disability staff and residents – who will be given either the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines.
Updated
South Korea to exclude people over 65 from AstraZeneca vaccines
Reuters: South Korea will initially exclude people aged 65 years and older from inoculation with AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine because of a lack of data proving its efficacy in the elderly, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said on Monday.
The decision threatens to derail the country’s vaccination plans, which had called for healthcare workers and the elderly to be among the first to receive vaccinations starting on 26 February.
African countries may suffer in the global rush for vaccines because they are unable to gather statistics that reveal the true extent of the spread of Covid among their populations, epidemiologists and other experts fear.
According to data from Johns Hopkins university, there have been 3.7m confirmed cases in Africa, and the landmark figure of 100,000 confirmed deaths is likely to be reached within days.
A series of studies has raised fears that the official figures are a significant underestimate, raising the possibility that Africa may not be seen as a priority for scarce global vaccine supplies despite the urgent need.
Many African countries are unable to afford mass testing and lack capacity to collect reliable data on cases and deaths, especially in remote areas. Stigma attached to the disease, a lack of information and victims’ inability to either reach or pay for health facilities may also reduce reporting.
The World Health Organization has said the “unique socio-ecological make-up in a number of African countries means a slower rate of transmission, and fewer severe cases as compared to the hardest hit countries”:
Here is the full story on hotel quarantine starting in England:
All UK nationals or residents arriving back in England from high-risk countries will begin checking into government-designated accommodation on Monday as the hotel quarantine regime to prevent the spread of new coronavirus cases begins.
People returning to England from 33 “red list” countries – comprised of hotspots with Covid-19 variants in circulation – will be required to quarantine in hotels for 10 days.
Anyone who has been in one of the high-risk destinations will have to enter England through a designated port and have pre-booked a quarantine package to stay at one of the government’s managed quarantine facilities.
Hotel quarantine – too little too late? Politics Weekly podcastRead more
The government has struck deals with 16 hotels so far, providing 4,963 rooms, and a further 58,000 rooms are on standby, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said on Sunday.
Travellers arriving from Monday onwards that have not visited a red list country must still quarantine for 10 days at home and complete two mandatory Covid-19 tests on the second and eighth day after arriving:
First vaccine doses arrive in New Zealand
An update from New Zealand, where Jacinda Ardern is speaking at a press conference alongside Dr Ashley Bloomfield, the director general of health, after a cabinet meeting.
The Guardian’s Helen Livingstone reports: The prime minister says the first vaccine doses arrived in the country this morning. After being checked for quality assurance, inoculations will begin on Saturday, starting with border workers.
“This will be the largest full-scale vaccination campaign in this country’s history,” she says.
Bloomfield says it is encouraging that there were no further cases of Covid-19 in the community today, after the three which were reported on Sunday, all members of the same family, triggering the current lockdown in Auckland.
Investigations into the source of the family’s infection are focusing on the mother and daughter as serology testing has indicated the father was more recently infected, Bloomfield says.
More on Australia’s vaccine rollout:
Prime Minister Scott Morrison will receive the Pfizer vaccine early in the rollout in a bid to boost public confidence in the jab.
Two doses of the vaccine are needed, with a 21 day gap in between.
Mr Hunt said the first vials of locally made doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine were also being manufactured.
The vaccine is awaiting final regulatory approval from the Therapeutic Goods Administration.
Local manufacturing of the University of Oxford developed vaccine has been under way since late last year at biotechnology company CSL’s manufacturing facility in Victoria.
First vaccine doses arrive in Australia
Australia’s coronavirus vaccine rollout will begin next week after the first doses of the Pfizer jab arrived in Sydney, AAP reports.
“The eagle has landed,” Health Minister Greg Hunt told reporters in Canberra on Monday.
More than 142,000 doses are being taken to a secure location and batches will be assessed for damage and quality in the coming days.
Mr Hunt said 60% of the shipment - 50,000 doses - would be given to the states to begin the process of vaccinating hotel quarantine staff, frontline health workers, and aged care workers and residents.
Hotel quarantine workers are considered the highest priority because they pose the greatest risk of spreading the virus to the community.
The federal government will have about 30,000 doses available for aged care facilities.
The government expects about 60,000 doses to have been administered by the end of February.
More on the UK hotel quarantine measures, from AFP:
“The rules coming into force today will bolster the quarantine system and provide another layer of security against new variants at the border,” said Health Secretary Matt Hancock, adding that they would also protect the national vaccination programme as the country worked “towards restoring normal life”.
The 11-night quarantine will cost people £1,750 ($2,420 or €2,000) and includes transport, food, accommodation and security costs, as well as other essential services and testing.
Passengers must have a negative Covid-19 test result from within three days of travel, and book and pay for the package before setting off for Britain.
They will then take further tests on day two and eight of their stays.
The hotel occupants will only be able to leave their rooms in “very limited circumstances”, with exercise among them but requiring “special permission” from staff or security.
Anyone refusing to take tests risks a fine of between £1,000 and £2,000, while those who do not self-isolate could have to pay between £5,000 and £10,000.
A limited list of exemptions from the measures include hauliers travelling from Portugal, defence personnel, visiting forces, government contractors and diplomatic missions.
UK rolls out hotel quarantine for ‘high risk’ country returnees
The UK government will on Monday introduce mandatory hotel quarantine rules for arrivals from dozens of countries deemed “high risk” for coronavirus variants, as it tries to stop new strains spreading, AFP reports.
The new policy requires all UK citizens and permanent residents entering England from 33 countries on a wider travel ban list to self-isolate in approved hotels for 10 days and take several Covid-19 tests.
Other visitors from the countries currently on the so-called “red list”, which includes all South American nations, South Africa and Portugal, are currently barred from visiting under lockdown rules.
Arrivals found to have given false information about being in one of the countries 10 days before travel could receive up to 10 years in prison - which has drawn criticism for being excessive.
The government says it has signed contracts with 16 hotels so far, securing nearly 5,000 rooms near English airports, with a further 58,000 rooms on standby.
Mexico’s health ministry on Sunday reported 4,099 new confirmed coronavirus cases in the country and 436 more deaths, bringing its total to 1,992,794 infections and 174,207 deaths.
The real number of infected people and deaths is likely significantly higher than the official count, the health ministry has said.
In case you missed this earlier: Brazil has confirmed cases of the UK variant of the novel coronavirus in two states and in the federal district of Brasília, according to a statement from the health ministry on Sunday, Reuters reports.
The government said it has not yet confirmed cases of the South African variant.
Two of the confirmed cases of the UK variant were reported in the state of Goiás after sequencing test samples taken on 31 December, according to the state’s health department on Friday.
In that statement, Goiás authorities said the two people who have caught the UK variant live on the outskirts of the federal capital Brasília.
The World Health Organization has said the UK variant has now been found in more than 70 countries.
Brazil has the world’s highest number of coronavirus deaths after the United States and more than 9.8 million confirmed cases. A Brazilian variant of the virus is circulating in 10 states, the health ministry said.
The two people in Goiás who caught the UK variant had contact with a relative who lives in England, traveled to Brazil for the holidays and had been diagnosed with Covid-19, the Goiás health department said.
A genomic sequencing of the virus confirmed infection by the UK variant in Goiás.
Updated
More on the upcoming G7, via Reuters.
“President Biden will also discuss the need to make investments to strengthen our collective competitiveness and the importance of updating global rules to tackle economic challenges such as those posed by China,” the White House said.
Trump challenged China over its trade policies by imposing punishing tariffs, an instrument he also used on traditional allies, drawing criticism for not taking a more unified approach with US friends to stand up to Beijing on issues such as intellectual property theft and other economic practices.
Domestically, Biden is pressing Congress to pass a $1.9tn stimulus package to boost the US economy and provide relief for those suffering from the pandemic.
The White House said he would discuss his economic agenda with G7 counterparts and encourage them and all industrialized countries to maintain “economic support for the recovery” and other collective measures.
Climate change would also be on the agenda.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen spoke to her G7 counterparts last week and called for continued fiscal support to secure the economic recovery.
US President Joe Biden will hold his first event with other leaders from the Group of Seven nations in a virtual meeting on Friday to discuss the coronavirus pandemic, the world economy and dealing with China, the White House said on Sunday, Reuters reports.
The meeting is the first by top leaders from the G7 group of rich democracies since April, it said.
“This virtual engagement with leaders of the world*s leading democratic market economies will provide an opportunity for President Biden to discuss plans to defeat the Covid-19 pandemic, and rebuild the global economy,” the White House said in a statement.
The White House said Biden would focus his remarks on a global response to Covid-19 vaccine production and distribution as well as “continued efforts to mobilise and cooperate against the threat of emerging infectious diseases by building country capacity and establishing health security financing.”
Biden, a Democrat who took over from Republican former President Donald Trump on Jan. 20, has sought to project a message of re-engagement with the world and with global institutions after four years of his predecessor’s “America First” mantra.
Trump withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accord and largely scoffed at multilateral organisations and groups.
Biden brought the United States back into the WHO and rejoined the Paris accord and has signalled a desire to work with allies in confronting China on a host of thorny issues.
China reports 9 new Covid-19 cases vs 7 a day earlier
China reported nine new coronavirus cases in the mainland for 14 February, compared to seven a day earlier, the health commission said on Monday.
Reuters: Of the cases, eight were imported infections originating overseas, while one case was recorded in Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, the National Health Commission said in a statement.
New asymptomatic infections, which China does not classify as confirmed Covid-19 cases, fell to 10 from 17 a day earlier.
China saw a resurgence of the disease in January, when a new cluster emerged in Hebei and later took hold in northeastern Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces, in the country’s worst outbreak since March.
Authorities in these provinces introduced lockdowns, travel curbs and mass testing in a bid to contain the disease.
Data from recent days suggests that China has been able to avoid another full-blown Covid-19 crisis over the Lunar New Year Holiday.
As of Sunday, mainland China had 89,772 confirmed coronavirus cases, the health authority said. The COVID-19 death toll remained at 4,636.
An influential group of British MPs has urged the government to spell out the impact its lockdown-easing measures would have on economic growth and the number of coronavirus infections.
Calling for evidence to be published alongside the government’s reopening road map to be announced on 22 February, the Treasury select committee said it would help the public to better understand the implications of restrictions and the costs and benefits of making changes.
The UK has given more than 15m people their first doses of Covid-19 vaccines, raising hopes that movement restrictions will be eased within weeks as the number of new infections and hospital admissions gradually fall.
Ministers have so far declined, however, to give details about the criteria for reopening the economy, to the alarm of business leaders. Some company bosses have said more transparency would help them to plan ahead, as firms run short of cash after months of restrictions on trade.
In an intervention as Boris Johnson prepares to announce which restrictions will be relaxed first, the committee said the lack of any official government economic analysis on the controls had been disappointing, especially as parliament needed to scrutinise the decision.
Jasper Jolly and Richard Partington report:
Here is a joyful break from pandemic news:
Pfizer/BioNTech jab gives 94% protection, Israeli study suggests
An Israeli study of more than half a million fully vaccinated people indicated the Pfizer/BioNTech jab offered 94% protection against Covid-19, according to the country’s largest healthcare provider.
Clalit Health Services said that its researchers tested 600,000 patients who had received the recommended two doses of the US-German Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and the same number of people who had not been inoculated.
“There was a 94% reduction in the rate of symptomatic infection and a 92 percent decrease in the rate of serious illness compared to 600,000 similar (subjects) who were not vaccinated,” Clalit said in a Hebrew-language statement reported by Reuters.
“Vaccine efficacy is maintained in all age groups, including those aged 70+,” it added.
Israel’s vaccine drive has seen 3.8 million people receive a first dose, while 2.4 million have also received a second shot.
US daily Covid cases drop below 100,000
Average daily new coronavirus cases in the US have dipped below 100,000 for the first time in months, but experts cautioned on Sunday that infections remain high and precautions to slow the pandemic must remain in place, the Associated press reports.
The seven-day rolling average of new infections was well above 200,000 for much of December and went to roughly 250,000 in January, according to Johns Hopkins University. That average dropped below 100,000 on Friday for the first time since 4 November. It stayed below 100,000 on Saturday.
“We are still at about 100,000 cases a day,” Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told NBC’s Meet the Press. “We are still at around 1,500 to 3,500 deaths per day. The cases are more than two-and-a-half-fold times what we saw over the summer.
“It’s encouraging to see these trends coming down, but they’re coming down from an extraordinarily high place.”
She added that new variants, including one first detected in the UK that appears to be more transmissible and has already been recorded in more than 30 states, will likely lead to more cases and more deaths:
Australia suspends quarantine-free travel with New Zealand
Australia has suspended quarantine-free travel with New Zealand after it locked down Auckland following the detection of three new community cases.
Australia’s chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, convened an urgent meeting late on Sunday and it was decided that all flights originating in New Zealand would be classified as “Red Zone” flights for an initial period of 72 hours from Monday, Reuters reports.
“As a result of this, all people arriving on such flights originating within this three-day period will need to go into 14 days of supervised hotel quarantine,” Australia’s Department of Health said on its website.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday that genomic sequencing showed the new cases were the highly transmissible UK variant.
“We were absolutely right to make the decision to be extra cautious because we assumed it was going to be one of the more transmissible variants,” Ardern said in a Facebook Live post.
UK variant hits New Zealand
Aucklanders are waking up on Monday to a new lockdown, hoping the short and sharp three-day restrictions ordered by Jacinda Ardern arrest the spread of Covid-19, AAP reports.
The prime minister said genomic testing had shown that the three community cases were the UK variant of Covid-19, the first to be detected in the country, according to Yahoo News.
Those cases – from one Auckland family – mean 1.6 million Kiwis face bans on non-essential movement until midnight on Wednesday as part of alert level three restrictions.
The lockdown is the second time Auckland has undergone the emergency measures since last year’s more stringent 51-day nationwide lockdown which helped New Zealand eliminate the virus.
The rest of New Zealand has been placed at alert level two, which mandates social distancing, caps on gathering and increases mask wearing.
It is not yet clear whether the lockdown will extend beyond midnight on Wednesday.
That’s because health authorities are yet to gain a full picture of the virus’s spread.
On Monday morning, Ardern said genomic sequencing showed the virus was one of the slightly more infectious strains.
“We were right to take a cautious approach and focus on safety because we’ve confirmed it is the UK variant,” she told Radio NZ.
“Based on that sequencing we haven’t been able to link it to any of our managed isolation facilities ... it wasn’t someone who went from an airline into our managed isolation.”
She said health officials were still trying to identify the source of infection, working on two main leads.
As one of the new community cases worked at a business servicing airlines at Auckland airport, officials are looking at whether the virus may have slipped out through a transit passenger, or via laundry of air crew:
CDC says 'absolutely' too soon to lift US mask mandate
The head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Sunday it is “absolutely” too soon to lift mask mandates, citing daily coronavirus case numbers that despite recent declines remain more than double the levels seen last summer, Reuters reports.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky’s warning that face-covering requirements are still critical came just days after governors in Iowa and Montana lifted long-standing mask mandates in their states.
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Walensky said preventing further surges of infection is key to safely reopening schools and regaining some level of social normalcy until collective immunity can be achieved through mass vaccinations.
Whether Americans can look forward to walking down the street without wearing a mask by the end of the year “very much depends on how we behave right now,” she said.
Asked if it was still too early for states to eliminate rules requiring the use of face masks in public, Walensky replied, “Absolutely.”
While Covid-19 infection rates and hospitalisations appear to be waning, the United States has a long way to go before it can safely return to a mask-less normal, she said.
“The cases are more than two-and-a-half-fold times what we saw over the summer,”
said Walensky, who was sworn in as CDC director last month after President Joe Biden took office. “It’s encouraging to see these trends coming down but they’re coming down from an extraordinarily high place.”
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan.
I’ll be bringing you the latest developments for the next few hours – you can get in touch with questions and comments on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
In New Zealand, Aucklanders awoke on Monday to a new lockdown, hoping the short and sharp three-day restrictions ordered by Jacinda Ardern arrest the spread of Covid-19.
The prime minister said genomic testing had shown that the three community cases were the UK variant of Covid-19, the first to be detected in the country, according to Yahoo.
Meanwhile in the US, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Sunday it is “absolutely” too soon to lift mask mandates, citing daily Covid case numbers that despite recent declines remain more than double the levels seen last summer.
Here are the other key recent developments:
- Australia has suspended quarantine-free travel with New Zealand after it locked down Auckland following the detection of three new community cases.
-
Around 1,000 people have been caught flouting restrictions in a Belgrade nightclub, Serbia’s interior ministry said on Sunday. The country’s coronavirus restrictions allow gatherings of up to five.
-
Lebanon has started vaccinating high-risk groups, including healthcare workers and elderly people.
-
Brazil has confirmed two cases of the UK variant in the state of Goiás after sequencing test samples taken on 31 December, Reuters reports, citing the state’s health department. It did not say if these are the first cases of the variant detected in Brazil.
-
Rwanda has started vaccinating healthcare workers and other high-risk groups, its health ministry has said, making it the first country in east Africa to start its rollout.
-
The UK has reported a further 10,972 lab-confirmed coronavirus cases, according to government data – a fall from last Sunday’s figure at 15,845. A total of 4,038,078 people have tested positive.
- A total of 15,062,189 people in the UK have now had a first dose of Covid-19 vaccine, according to the latest government figures.
-
An Israeli study of more than half a million fully vaccinated people indicated the Pfizer/BioNTech jab offered 94% protection against Covid-19, according to the country’s largest healthcare provider.
- There is growing controversy over a World Health Organization investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic after one of its members said China had refused to hand over key data, and the US national security adviser said he had “deep concerns” about the initial findings.
Updated
