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Cities must move to the frontline of efforts to fight gender inequality, which has grown worse in the coronavirus pandemic, said six mayors from three continents as they joined forces in a new network to advance women’s rights.
Around the world, women’s jobs, unpaid labour, health and safety have been upended by the impacts of Covid-19 and need critical attention, said the leaders of City Hub and Network for Gender Equity (Change).
The network aims to promote and share innovative projects focused on combating gender inequality with city mayors around the world.
“Local governments can and should lead,” said Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti, the network’s first chair, who joined the mayors of Barcelona, Freetown, Mexico City, London and Tokyo in an online webinar with the media.
Data from the World Economic Forum shows that at the current pace, the gender pay gap will not close for 257 years, he said. “We must act with urgency,” Garcetti said. “We can’t allow this pandemic to set us back further.”
Women’s jobs have been 1.8 times more vulnerable to being lost in the pandemic than men’s, said a study by consultants McKinsey & Co, while government data showed of the 1.1 million US workers who dropped out of the workforce in September, 80% were women.
In Los Angeles, every city department must have a gender action plan and show progress on tackling gender inequality, such as appointing women to boards and top positions, closing the gender pay gap and ensuring more girls use public spaces like sports fields, Garcetti said.
Ada Colau, the first female mayor of Barcelona who called her administration a “feminist government”, singled out unpaid care work of children and ageing relatives.
“We must fight against the inequality and injustice that women still suffer and end the invisibility of care work – a burden which is mostly borne by women,” Colau said.
London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, who called himself as a “proud feminist”, said a report found in England, mothers were 47% more likely than fathers to have lost or left their jobs in the pandemic.
With women accounting for eight out of 10 people in low-paid jobs, London’s government has invested £3m to “re-skill” and “up-skill” women for better-paying jobs, he said.
“I want gender equity hardwired into everything we do, not simply child care, though important it is, but from housing to a hiring policy to recruitment retention from policing to the environment,” Khan said.
Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said a key priority is combating domestic violence that has worsened during lockdown.
The city government has launched a network of 100 female lawyers who help women file reports of domestic abuse and provide free legal advice, she said.
Two-thirds of the city’s 50,000 small businesses loans provided since the pandemic started have gone to help women become economically independent, Sheinbaum said.
In Sierra Leone’s capital, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, the first female mayor of Freetown, said she was focused on stemming the world’s highest maternal mortality rates and supporting working mothers with child care.
Last month, Freetown’s government launched a digital mobile phone literacy programme aimed at women and opened the city’s first free day care for young children of market traders, most of whom are women, she said.
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Premier League clubs can welcome back spectators in highly limited numbers next month for the first time since March, following an announcement by the British government.
Up to 4,000 people can return to outdoor sports stadiums in parts of England classified as at low risk from coronavirus from 2 December, permitting the resumption of attendance at football, rugby and racecourses among other sports.
The crowd ceiling will be set at 4,000 or half the stadium capacity, whichever is lower, in the lowest-risk tier 1 parts of the country once a stricter lockdown due to the pandemic ends.
In tier 2 areas, the limit will be 2,000 outdoors, or half the capacity, it said.
In the highest tier 3 regions where Covid-19 remains acute, no spectators will be allowed.
A few pilot events have been held with spectators, such as a cricket match at The Oval, while Brighton hosted Chelsea before this season’s Premier League got underway.
However, England’s football and rugby leagues, and horse racing venues, have not allowed spectators since the first lockdown began in March.
Rugby and racing were among the sports to receive financial aid from the government last week. Sports facing financial losses as a result of the absence of fans from stadiums can access a £300m winter survival package of loans and grants.
The government said it would spell out which regions of England will sit in which tier on Thursday, based on the latest weekly Covid data. Before the current lockdown, most of the country including London was in tier 2.
But three of the biggest Premier League clubs – Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City – are located in what were previously the highest tier 3 areas, so it remains to be seen whether they will be allowed to admit fans after 2 December.
The government said that where spectators are allowed, only home fans will be permitted, to prevent unnecessary travel on public transport by opposing fans.
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Brazil reported a further 16,207 coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, and 302 deaths.
The South American country has now registered 6,087,608 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 169,485, according to government data, in the world’s third worst outbreak outside the US and India.
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The White House plans to hold indoor holiday receptions in the coming weeks despite the advice of public health professionals urging Americans to sacrifice their normal holiday gatherings to curb the spread of the virus.
US officials have warned against large gatherings on Thursday’s Thanksgiving holiday, instead urging Americans to stay at home and forgo travelling to see relatives as Covid cases topped 12 million over the weekend.
The White House said President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania,will remain in Washington this week, skipping their annual Thanksgiving at Trump’s private club in Florida, and the first lady plans to hold a holiday reception a few days later on 30 November, according to an invitation obtained by ABC News.
It follows a series of White House events in recent months that have been linked to outbreaks, including Trump’s own bout with the disease from late September into early October. A White House aide and four others have tested positive in recent days.
Stephanie Grisham, a spokeswoman for the first lady, said the White House would provide the “safest environment possible” for the Christmas and Hanukkah celebrations with smaller guest lists than years past, masks “required and available,” social distancing encouraged and hand sanitiser provided.
“Guests will enjoy food individually plated by chefs at plexiglass-protected food stations. All passed beverages will be covered,” she said in a statement. “Attending the parties will be a very personal choice. It is a longstanding tradition for people to visit and enjoy the cheer and iconic decor of the annual White House Christmas celebrations.”
Health professionals within the administration have advised against large indoor gatherings.
“We want everyone to understand that these holiday parties can be super spreader events,” US surgeon general Jerome Adams told ABC News, urging celebrations to be held outdoors with as few people as possible and pointing to recommendations by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“These apply to the White House, they apply to the American people, they apply to everyone,” Adams said.
While the number of US air travellers was still down about 60% compared to a year ago, federal transportation officials on Monday reported screening the highest number of passengers since March.
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Summary
Here’s a quick recap of the latest coronavirus developments across the globe:
- Daily Covid-19 cases in France at near two-month low. France reported 4,452 new Covid-19 infections on Monday, the lowest daily tally since 28 September, suggesting a second national lockdown is having an impact.
- UK aims to inoculate those most at risk from Covid by Easter. The British prime minister, Boris Johnson, said he hoped almost all Britons at high risk from Covid-19 would be vaccinated against the disease by Easter. He also said people will not be forced to have vaccinations against Covid-19.
- Spain’s king self-isolating after virus contact. Spain’s King Felipe VI has started 10 days of quarantine after coming into close contact with someone who later tested positive for Covid-19, the palace said.
- Pope says anti-maskers stuck in ‘their own little world of interests’. Pope Francis has taken aim at protests against coronavirus restrictions, contrasting them with the “healthy indignation” seen in demonstrations against racism after the death of George Floyd.
- New infections in Gaza spiralling out of control. The mounting number of coronavirus infections in densely populated Gaza is spinning out of control, Palestinian health officials warned. Bassem Naim, a senior Hamas official, said the health ministry “expects the worst if the epidemiological situation remains the same” citing “a health system at the end of its rope”, “severe drug shortages” and “extreme overcrowding”.
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India will be given first priority for the delivery of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine after its British developers claimed success following mass testing, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer by volume has said.
The chief executive of the Serum Institute of India, Adar Poonawalla, said the manufacturer has already produced 40m doses of the vaccine so far.
Poonawalla, whose father founded the vaccine manufacturer, told television broadcaster NDTV they should have 100m doses by January.
He said he expected some 90% of Serum Institute’s doses were to be sold to the Indian government at around 250 rupees ($3), while the rest would be sold to the private markets for the higher price of 1,000 rupees.
With an emergency use licence, they hoped to start rolling the vaccine out in December or January, Poonawalla added.
AstraZeneca and Oxford University said their drug has up to 90% efficacy and can be transported easily at normal refrigerator temperatures - unlike some of the other candidates, which require extremely cold storage.
AstraZeneca said it planned to produce up to 3 billion doses of the vaccine in 2021 if it passes the remaining regulatory hurdles.
Indian health minister Harsh Vardhan told India Today TV he expected 250-300 million Indians would be immunised by September next year.
First would be health workers, other frontline workers including the police, paramilitary and those working in sanitisation, as well as people aged above 65, Vardhan added.
Prime minister Narendra Modi is expected to meet state leaders on Tuesday for discussions about the distribution of the vaccine, local media reported.
India is the second worst-infected nation after the US, with more than 9.1 million virus cases.
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Pope Francis has taken aim at protests against coronavirus restrictions, contrasting them with the “healthy indignation” seen in demonstrations against racism after the death of George Floyd.
“Some groups protested, refusing to keep their distance, marching against travel restrictions – as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom,” he said in a new book.
He railed against those who claim “that being forced to wear a mask is an unwarranted imposition by the state”.
You’ll never find such people protesting the death of George Floyd, or joining a demonstration because there are shantytowns where children lack water or education, or because there are whole families who have lost their income.
On such matters they would never protest; they are incapable of moving outside of their own little world of interests.
UK aims to inoculate those most at risk from Covid by Easter - prime minister
The British prime minister Boris Johnson said he hoped almost all Britons at high risk from Covid-19 would be vaccinated against the disease by Easter.
“We should be able to inoculate, I believe on the evidence I’m seeing, the vast majority of the people who need the most protection by Easter,” Johnson told a news conference.
He also said people will not be forced to have vaccinations against Covid-19.
There will be no compulsory vaccination. That’s not the way we do things in this country.
We think it (vaccination) is a good idea, and you know I totally reject the propaganda of the anti-vaxxers, they are wrong.
Everybody should get a vaccine as soon as it is available.
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Mexican church and civic leaders have cancelled an annual gathering that attracts massive crowds of Catholic pilgrims, to protect people amid an intensifying coronavirus outbreak.
The feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe celebrated on 12 December typically features lavish pageantry at her namesake basilica in the north of Mexico City where throngs of pilgrims arrive on their knees in prayer.
But this year the festivities will move online, according to a statement issued by the bishops’ conference and city government.
“The health conditions the country is experiencing due to Covid-19 do not permit us at this time to celebrate the Virgin of Guadalupe together at her sanctuary,” the statement said.
The closure will run from 10 December through 13 December, and a security perimeter will be erected to ensure compliance.
The basilica is the most visited Catholic shrine of the Americas and was built next to a hill where legend holds that Jesus’s mother, Mary, appeared to an Aztec man.
The authorities said that while millions would like to attend the celebration “in search of comfort in the face of anguish, despair and helplessness... the common good motivates us to take containment measures to avoid further spread of the virus.”
Since the pandemic reached Mexico in the spring, most in-person religious gatherings, including Catholic Masses, have been pared back or cancelled and replaced with online services.
Spain’s King Felipe VI has started 10 days of quarantine after coming into close contact with someone who later tested positive for Covid-19, a Royal House source said.
The king, 52, has cancelled his public appearances during the quarantine period after the person tested positive on Monday, one day after they were in close contact, the source added.
Felipe VI had chaired a scientific meeting in Madrid earlier on Monday.
Queen Letizia and their two daughters will continue their royal activities, the source said.
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Hi everyone, this is Jessica Murray taking over the global liveblog for the next few hours.
As always, please do get in touch with any story tips or personal experiences you would like to share.
Email: jessica.murray@theguardian.com
Twitter: @journojess_
The coronavirus vaccine produced by Oxford University and AstraZeneca will be available on a non-profit basis “in perpetuity” to low- and middle-income countries in the developing world.
The details of arrangements to supply poorer countries came as AstraZeneca revealed the interim results of a phase 3 trial of the vaccine, which is being heralded as the first to meet the more challenging requirements of the developing world.
However, vaccine hopes for poorer nations were tempered by the head of the World Health Organization, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who said there was a risk the world’s poor could be trampled in a “stampede for vaccines”, adding that $4.3bn (£3.2bn) was still needed in order to share vaccines fairly.
Unlike the two vaccines produced by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, which require ultra-cold storage, the AstraZeneca vaccine can be kept in the kind of conventional fridge used to store vaccines around the world, with a shelf life of up to six months.
Also unlike the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, AstraZeneca’s experimental vaccine is already a part of Covax, the global initiative that is hoping to distribute about 2bn doses to 92 low- and middle-income countries at a maximum cost of $3 a dose.
Read the full story here:
That’s all from me, Caroline Davies. My colleague Jessica Murray is taking over this blog now. Once again, thank you for your time.
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Spain is unlikely to make vaccination against the coronavirus compulsory, at least initially, health ministry sources said on Monday.
Under Spanish law, vaccination is voluntary, although in some cases, such as an epidemic, the government could make it compulsory.
“There are instruments to make it so. But it is not the plan at the moment,” one source said, while another said all vaccination was likely to remain optional.
Prime minister Pedro Sanchez said on Sunday that Spain would begin a coronavirus vaccination programme in January, covering a substantial part of the population within six months.
The sources said, however, there was still not enough information about the phase 3 trials of the most promising vaccines to say which Spain would buy, how it would transport and store them or who would be vaccinated first.
They said that when all the data is available and vaccines authorised for use in the European Union, Spain can quickly vaccinate much of its population thanks to its “vast vaccination experience” via a network of public healthcare centres.
AstraZeneca said on Monday its vaccine could be as much as 90% effective. It is cheaper to make, easier to distribute and faster to scale-up than rivals from Pfizer or Moderna.
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The “bubble” pact between Canada’s four Atlantic provinces has disintegrated in the face of rising coronavirus cases across the country, as premiers in Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador announced quarantine requirements for all travellers from outside their provinces on Monday.
The two provinces joined in a so-called “bubble” with the other Atlantic provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in early July, agreeing to allow residents from within their borders to travel freely without quarantine. Anyone from other parts of Canada and outside the country had to quarantine for 14 days.
But as cases rose in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in recent days, Dennis King, the premier of PEI, and Andrew Furey, of Newfoundland and Labrador, pulled out, instituting 14-day quarantine requirements for everyone entering their provinces starting on Tuesday for at least two weeks, Reuters reports.
The bubble helped save the all-important summer tourism for region, worth around C$5bn ($3.8 bn) annually.
As of 22 November, Canada had reported 330,503 total Covid-19 cases, adding 4,792 in 24 hours, and 11,455 deaths, a one-day increase of 49, according to government data.
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Daily Covid-19 cases in France at near two-month low
France reported 4,452 new Covid-19 infections on Monday, the lowest daily tally since 28 September, suggesting a second national lockdown is having an impact.
The lockdown, in place from 30 October and less stringent than the first one that ran from 17 March to 11 May, has also helped lower hospitalisations, on a downward path again after peaking at 33,497 a week ago.
President Emmanuel Macron will give a speech to the nation on Tuesday when he may announce a relaxation of lockdown rules.
Last month, Macron said that daily new infections would have to fall to about 5,000 before the lockdown could be eased, but a top government scientific adviser said last week that was unlikely to happen before year-end.
The seven-day moving average of new infections, which averages out weekly data reporting irregularities, stands at 21,918, dipping below the 22,000 threshold for the first time since 17 October.
That figure peaked at 54,440 on 7 November.
The number of people in France who have died from Covid-19 rose by 500 to 49,232 on Monday, versus 214 on Sunday and a seven-day moving average of 597.
The cumulative number of cases now totals 2,144,660, the fourth highest in the world.
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Nigeria will bar air passengers who fail to follow the country’s Covid-19 protocol from flying for six months, an official said on Monday.
Passengers returning to Nigeria are currently required to test for coronavirus both before they board return flights and seven days after they arrive. They also must pay for the tests in advance.
Dr Sani Aliyu, the coordinator of Nigeria’s Covid-19 taskforce, said 60% of those who pre-paid for tests had failed to show up for them.
“These passengers will not be allowed to travel for a period of six months,” Aliyu said. “We hope that we do not need to do this and people will comply with our protocol.”
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With Covid-19 vaccines on the horizon, the planet’s poorest people must not be trampled as countries scramble to get their hands on them, the World Health Organization warned.
The WHO director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the latest batch of promising results from final-phase candidate vaccine trials showed there was light at the end of the “long dark tunnel” of the coronavirus pandemic.
But he said the world had to ensure they were distributed fairly across the globe.
“Every government rightly wants to do everything it can to protect its people,” Tedros told a virtual press conference.
“But there is now a real risk that the poorest and most vulnerable will be trampled in the stampede for vaccines,” AFP reported.
Anticipating the huge demand for any approved vaccine, the WHO has helped create the so-called Covax facility to ensure equitable distribution. Tedros said 187 countries were now onboard.
The international vaccine procurement pool aims to lay its hands on 2bn doses of safe and effective vaccines by the end of next year.
However, it is struggling to raise the funds needed to provide for the 92 low-income countries and other economies that quickly signed up.
Tedros said $4.3bn was needed immediately to support the mass procurement and delivery of Covid-19 vaccines, tests and treatments, while a further $23.8bn would be needed in 2021.
“The real question is not whether the world can afford to share Covid-19 vaccines and other tools; it’s whether it can afford not to,” said Tedros.
Leaders at the virtual G20 summit said on Sunday they would “spare no effort” to ensure fair distribution of vaccines. The summit pledged to support poor countries whose economies have been ravaged by the crisis, but offered little detail.
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New infections in Gaza spiralling out of control
The mounting number of coronavirus infections in densely-populated Gaza is spinning out of control, Palestinian health officials warned on Monday.
“The virus is spreading and the situation is getting out of control,” Dr Ahmad al-Jadba, an official at Shifa hospital in Gaza City, told AFP.
The health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory of two million people declared a record 24-hour high of 890 new cases between Friday and Saturday.
The number of confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic stood on Monday at 15,450, including 70 deaths.
“The number of intensive care beds is very limited, as are medicines,” said Mahmud Al-Khazindar, the director of a private hospital in Gaza.
“If the number of cases increases, a choice will have to be made between the care of the elderly, the young and patients with another disease,” he warned.
Bassem Naim, a senior Hamas official, said the health ministry “expects the worst if the epidemiological situation remains the same”.
Naim, a former health minister, cited “a health system at the end of its rope”, “severe drug shortages” and “extreme overcrowding”.
Even before the first two confirmed Gaza cases were announced on 22 March, UN agencies working in the Palestinian territories warned of the potentially devastating effects of an outbreak.
Much of Gaza’s population lives in overcrowded refugee camps, with large families common and the narrow coastal strip has been under an Israeli blockade for more than a decade.
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Summary
Here are some of the key developments from today.
- AstraZeneca and Oxford University reported that their vaccine was up to 90% effective in preventing the virus, with plans for 700m doses to be ready globally by the end of March next year. The vaccine’s supply chain and a “no-profit pledge” by the two partners means that if approved, the jab will be affordable and available globally, according to developers at the pharmaceutical company.
- The World Health Organization’s chief scientist said it was waiting to see the efficacy and safety of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine. Dr Soumya Swaminathan said the results were “encouraging and we look forward to seeing the data as we do with other promising results of recent weeks”.
- The “safest bet” for some families will be not to have family gatherings this Christmas in order to stop the spread of coronavirus, Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical lead for Covid-19.
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The global coronavirus infections total is currently 58,563,451, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker. With daily totals averaging at around 600,000, the global infections total is likely to pass 60 million this week – just under three weeks after it passed 50 million. The global death toll is nearing 1.4 million people. It currently stands at 1,386,465.
- The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, has set out new measures to replace England’s national lockdown on 2 December, confirming there will be a strengthening of the tiered regional approach to reflect differences in infection rates.
- Italy reports 630 Covid-linked deaths, bringing its overall toll to above 50,000. It becomes the sixth nation in the world to surpass 50,000 deaths, and the second in Europe after Britain.
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In the US, 1,448 people died on Friday, according to Johns Hopkins University – the equivalent of a person every minute. The first Americans could be vaccinated on 11 December, said Moncef Slaoui, the US Covid-19 vaccine programme head.
- The Spanish government is aiming to have a “very substantial part” of the population vaccinated by the end of March 2021, and will set up 13,000 vaccination points to make sure that those most in need of the vaccine can get it.
- Moscow has reported 25,173 new infections, the greatest figure the country has recorded in a single day since the pandemic began.
- Indonesia’s caseload has surpassed the half-million mark, with 4,442 new infections reported on Monday. Indonesia reported 118 more deaths, bringing its total fatalities to 16,002. South-east Asia’s biggest and most populous country has the region’s highest numbers of both cases and deaths.
- Chinese authorities are testing millions of people, imposing lockdowns and shutting down schools after multiple locally transmitted coronavirus cases were discovered in three cities across the country last week,
- South Korea reported another daily rise of more than 200 new coronavirus cases on Monday, a day before tighter social distancing rules aimed at blunting a third wave of infections take effect.
- The Hong Kong-Singapore travel bubble has been postponed, one day before the first flights were set to depart. The bubble was postponed after Hong Kong health authorities reported a rise in new cases, including 43 on Saturday, 13 of which were untraced local infections.
- Several female detainees being held in Bahrain because of visa violations have contracted the virus, the country’s government has said.
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Athens hospitals are monitoring a surge in virus cases in Greece’s second city, Thessaloniki, and preparing “for the worst” as they expect an overflow of cases, the director of a top Athens hospital has said. In Thessaloniki, only 4% of beds remain vacant in intensive care units and that figure is just over 20% in Athens, the Greek ministry of health said on Friday.
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The “safest bet” for some families will be not to have family gatherings this Christmas in order to stop the spread of coronavirus, Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical lead for Covid-19, said on Monday.
“In some situations, the difficult decision not to have a family gathering is the safest bet,” she told a virtual briefing in Geneva.
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The World Health Organization’s chief scientist said on Monday it was waiting to see the efficacy and safety of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine.
AstraZeneca said on Monday that its vaccine could be about 90% effective, giving the world’s fight against the pandemic a new weapon, which is cheaper to make, easier to distribute and faster to scale-up than rivals.
The WHO’s chief scientist, Dr Soumya Swaminathan, said the results were “encouraging and we look forward to seeing the data as we do with other promising results of recent weeks”.
“We have to also encourage other developers,” she later told a virtual briefing in Geneva. “We need a variety of vaccines that will target different groups better and different storage conditions and affordability is important to keep in mind.”
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Italy reports 630 Covid-linked deaths, bringing its overall toll to above 50,000
Italy reported 630 Covid 19-related deaths on Monday, rising from 562 the day before and taking the official toll since its outbreak began in February to 50,453, according to health ministry data.
Italy, the first Western country to be hit by the epidemic, becomes the sixth nation in the world to surpass 50,000 deaths, and the second in Europe after Britain.
The health ministry also reported 22,930 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours, down from 28,337 the day before, with the fall reflecting the usual drop in the number of swabs conducted on Sundays.
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The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, has set out new measures to replace England’s national lockdown on 2 December, confirming there will be a strengthening of the tiered regional approach to reflect differences in infection rates.
He told parliament:
We’re not going to replace national measures with a free for all … We’re going to go back instead to a regional, tiered approach, applying the toughest measures where Covid is most prevalent. The scientific advice is … that our tiers need to be made tougher.
You can follow all the details on our UK live blog. It’s here:
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Britain’s Princess Michael, the wife of Queen Elizabeth’s cousin, is recovering from severe fevers and fatigue after testing positive for Covid-19, her spokesman said on Monday.
The princess, the wife of Prince Michael of Kent, tested positive for the coronavirus three weeks ago, her spokesman Simon Astaire said. She was the latest of several British royals to contract the disease.
“Since then she and her husband Prince Michael have remained in isolation at Kensington Palace. Prince Michael did not test positive,” Astaire told Reuters.
He said the princess was better now but had endured a difficult time with the illness. “She suffered from fatigue and during the height of it, had severe fevers,” he said.
Princess Michael joins heir-to-the throne Prince Charles and his eldest son Prince William – who also lives at Kensington Palace – on the list of royals who have tested positive for the virus.
Charles said he suffered only mild symptoms after contracting the disease in March while William tested positive in April, and according to media reports was “hit pretty hard by the virus”.
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Reggaeton superstar Bad Bunny has tested positive for Covid-19, his representative said on Monday.
The announcement came a day after the musician won favourite male Latin artist and favourite Latin album for “YHLQMDLG” at the American Music Awards.
Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Martínez Ocasio, was scheduled to sing his hit, Dákiti,with Jhay Cortez at the event but cancelled without explanation, leaving many fans disappointed. The singer, however, presented the award for favourite Latin female artist remotely.
It’s unclear if he was showing any symptoms. His publicist did not immediately return a message for comment.
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Athens hospitals are monitoring a surge in virus cases in Greece’s second city, Thessaloniki, and preparing “for the worst” as they expect an overflow of cases, the director of a top Athens hospital has told AFP.
In Thessaloniki, only 4% of beds remain vacant in intensive care units and that figure is just over 20% in Athens, according to the Greek ministry of health on Friday.
Greece has 588 ICU beds for patients with Covid-19 in total and on Sunday severe cases requiring emergency intubation had reached 540 patients.
“We have not reached the peak of the pandemic in Greece yet, the situation can become worse and the pressure will be worse, too,” said Andreas Plemmenos, head of Voula hospital, one of the biggest in Athens.
The government on Friday requisitioned two private clinics in Thessaloniki, the city worst hit in Greece. The army is also setting up a mobile emergency medical unit in the parking area of the main military hospital in the northern city.
But the government has not excluded transferring patients from northern Greece to Athens. In such a case, “things will be much more difficult”, Plemmenos said.
An increase of the number of patients requiring intubation has already alarmed health authorities.
There is a geometric growth. Unfortunately between 30-40% of people in intensive care will die, that’s why we are concerned.
Greece weathered the first wave of the pandemic well in comparison to other European countries, but it is facing a resurgence of cases since late September.
One month ago, Greece had only 87 patients with coronavirus in its intensive care units but new cases have risen from 667 in late October to 2,500 and 3,000 daily.
The death toll was about eight daily but is now surpassing 100 on some days.
Since the beginning of the pandemic in February in Greece, around 1,630 people have died with more than 91,600 infected.
Plemmenos said for the numbers of cases to fall, “at least 20 days should pass” after the start of the second lockdown imposed in early November.
The second wave was expected but arrived earlier than expected. The success of the country during the first wave had reassured people who since then haven’t observed the measures they should like keeping distances and wearing masks.
Since the spring, Plemmenos’ hospital of 402 beds was reinforced with around a hundred more staff. A separate coronavirus unit of 24 beds was created in August.
Initially, we only had three or four cases. Now it’s full.
Last week, 10 more beds were added to the unit, he said.
We are preparing for the worst.
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Luxembourg is to close bars, cafés, restaurants, cinemas and gyms until 15 December to curb surging Covid-19 infections, AFP reports.
The prime minister, Xavier Bettel, announced the restrictions, which would bring Luxembourg into line with measures already imposed in neighbouring countries.
Parliament will vote on the restrictions on Wednesday, Bettel said. If adopted, the measures would take effect from Thursday.
Shops would remain open, with customers required to maintain social distancing and wear face masks.
Luxembourg has the highest per capita rate of Covid-19 infections in the European Union, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). A significant number of its cases are cross-border workers that sustain the wealthy nation’s economy.
Bettel said:
The situation isn’t catastrophic but we want to obtain a margin for manoeuvre, notably to ensure medium-term hospital care stays normal.
His government has already imposed an 11pm-to-6am curfew and a four-guest limit for households.
The health minister, Paulette Lenert, said the infection rate, which the ECDC put at 1,279 cases per 100,000 inhabitants cumulatively over 14 days, had stabilised but was “at a too-high level”.
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Portugal’s tourism sector is set to lose 60,000 jobs this year alone due to the impact of the pandemic and a recovery is still far off, tourism secretary Rita Marques said on Monday.
Some of the country’s regions must diversify their tourism-dependent economy after the pandemic, she told Reuters in an interview.
Last year, Portugal had more than 16.4 million foreign visitors.
Regions such as the southern Algarve, famous for its beaches and golf courses and particularly popular with British visitors, are among the most affected.
In Algarve, the tourism industry is not only suffering with the economic impact of the pandemic, but also from concerns about the implications of Brexit.
It is crucial not only to develop other sectors but to also attract more tourists from markets other than Britain to Algarve, Marques said.
“We need to diversify … but we will work to guarantee the Algarve continues to welcome all British people – no matter what happens with Brexit,” Marques said.
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Saudi Arabia’s health ministry said on Monday that Covid-19 vaccines will be free for all people living in the kingdom, state TV reported.
The ministry said it hopes to have enough vaccines to cover 70% of the country’s population by the end of 2021, state TV channel Ekhbariya said on Twitter.
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The news on AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine results is “encouraging and we look forward to seeing the data as we do with other promising results of recent weeks”, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist, Soumya Swaminathan, said on Monday.
In a statement to Reuters, she said: “We welcome the efforts of Oxford/AZ to make the vaccine affordable and easy to store, which will be good for countries and people everywhere.”
AstraZeneca said on Monday its Covid-19 vaccine could be around 90% effective, giving the world’s fight against the global pandemic a new weapon, cheaper to make, easier to distribute and faster to scale up than rivals.
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Hungary’s government announced today it is limiting retail store visits in an effort to separate elderly shoppers and contain the pandemic in the most vulnerable over-65 age group.
On weekdays, only people over the age of 65 may enter shops between 9am and 11am and 8-10am at weekends. The elderly may go shopping at any time.
“This government decree serves the protection of the elderly,” the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said in a Facebook video.
Hungary has tried for months to avoid a second lockdown and prevent further harm to the economy but was forced to close secondary schools and impose an 8pm-5am curfew.
Infection numbers and daily deaths from the coronavirus continued to set record highs, however, affecting the elderly in particular and prompting further restrictions, Orbàn said.
As of Monday, 3,891 Hungarians have died of Covid-19, and 177,952 people have been infected since the start of the pandemic in the country of 10 million people.
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Germans are being told to brace themselves for a ban on fireworks in their traditional new year celebrations, the only time of the year when private individuals are legally allowed to buy them.
Political leaders are expected to announce on Wednesday that the sale of fireworks, which are usually sold in the three days before New Year’s Eve – before millions are let off across the country during the festivities – is to be banned for the first time over fears of overwhelming hospitals battling the coronavirus pandemic.
About €200m (£178m) is usually spent on pyrotechnics, which are detonated everywhere from private balconies to public parks between 6pm on 31 December until 7am on 1 January, but the tradition also leads to a large number of injuries and a significant number of people needing surgery.
With hospitals already stretched due to the high number of coronavirus cases, including an increasing number of patients needing intensive care, lawmakers and doctors have said it would be irresponsible to allow the normal celebrations to go ahead.
Read more here:
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A coronavirus vaccine developed in the UK has been hailed as a “vaccine for the world” by one of the experts behind it.
AstraZeneca and Oxford University reported that their vaccine was up to 90% effective in preventing the virus, with plans for 700m doses to be ready globally by the end of March next year.
The vaccine’s supply chain and a “no-profit pledge” by the two partners means that if approved, the jab will be affordable and available globally, according to developers at the pharmaceutical company.
But while the data was welcomed worldwide, charities urged collaboration between vaccine developers to ensure international demand is met, PA Media reports.
Global charitable foundation Wellcome warned that at least 2bn doses wold be required to vaccinate high-risk populations around the world over the next year.
Responding to the results, Prof Andrew Pollard, the director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, said Monday was “a very exciting day”.
“We have a vaccine for the world, because we’ve got a vaccine which is highly effective – it prevents severe disease and hospitalisation,” he said.
Speaking to reporters during a Science Media Centre briefing, Prof Pollard said the vaccine could be stored at fridge temperature.
Compared with the -70C to -80C needed for the Pfizer and Moderna jabs, the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine can be transported and distributed more easily, and will be easier to store in lower-income countries.
Pascal Soriot, the chief executive of AstraZeneca, said it marked an “important milestone” in the fight against the pandemic.
“This vaccine’s efficacy and safety confirm that it will be highly effective against Covid-19 and will have an immediate impact on this public health emergency,” he told the briefing.
“Furthermore, the vaccine’s simple supply chain and our no-profit pledge and commitment to broad, equitable and timely access means it will be affordable and globally available, supplying hundreds of millions of doses on approval.”
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Lithuania’s parliament goes into a week-long hiatus from Tuesday to help contain the spread of Covid-19 among its members.
The Baltic country’s government is considering extending and tightening its Covid-19 lockdown by closing shopping centres as the current level of restrictions had done little to curb a second wave of the disease among the population, Reuters reports.
The number of new Covid-19 infections in Lithuania more than doubled over the the past two weeks despite the lockdown that took effect on 3 November, when 316 cases per 100,000 people were registered over the preceding two weeks.
Authorities reported 788 cases per 100,000 on Sunday, a rise attributable due in part to delays in confirming pre-lockdown infections, making Lithuania the eighth worst-hit country in the 27-nation European Union, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
“Due to the worsening situation, we decided that after Tuesday’s sitting, parliament will take a pause for a week,” speaker Viktorija Cmilyte-Nielsen told reporters by videoconference on Monday.
She is among three lawmakers diagnosed with Covid-19, with at least 14 more members self-isolating after contact with an infected person since the newly elected, 141-member parliament first convened on 13 November.
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Bustling waiters and the smell of coffee returned to Barcelona’s pavements on Monday as bars and restaurants in the Spanish region of Catalonia reopened in a phased easing of coronavirus restrictions.
Suppliers rolled in carts with groceries and masked attendants spaced out tables on bar terraces and inside establishments as the first customers ordered their morning coffee with croissants.
“The people of the neighbourhood are keen to see the bars reopen, they’ve been asking us every day and looking forward to this Monday,” restaurant owner Eduardo de Vincenzo, 68, told Reuters.
Catalonia was the first Spanish region to fully close bars and restaurants amid the second Covid-19 wave in mid-October, and is the first to put them back to work as the contagion ebbed.
A nighttime curfew remains in place, and tough restrictions continue in the rest of the country as well as most of Europe.
The region also reopened theatres, cinemas, musical halls and outdoor sports facilities with a 50% maximum occupancy.
Spain, which has more than 1.55 million Covid-19 cases – western Europe’s second highest tally after France – and 42,619 dead – imposed a six-month state of emergency in late October, giving regions legal backing to impose curfews and restrict travel.
New infections measured over the past 14 days have fallen to 419 per 100,000 people as of Friday from 530 in the first week of November. In Catalonia, that rate has dropped to about 390.
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The world’s top surgical glove maker has had to shut factories due to coronavirus.
The Malaysian company, Top Glove, will close over half of its factories after a surge in cases among workers, authorities said Monday.
Top Glove has seen a huge jump in demand since the start of the pandemic as countries scrambled to stock up on protective equipment, pushing up both its profits and share price.
But there has been a cluster of virus outbreaks among Top Glove employees – many of whom are low-paid migrant workers – at factories in an industrial area near the capital, Kuala Lumpur.
More than 1,000 cases were recorded Monday, prompting the government to order the plants to close.
“Based on advice from the ministry of health, it was agreed at a special meeting today to shut down 28 Top Glove factories … in stages to allow the workers to undergo tests and quarantine,” said the defence minister, Ismail Sabri Yaakob.
Top Glove said in a statement it would “cooperate fully with the relevant authorities to implement the temporary stoppage”, and plant closures had begun.
The company operates 47 factories – 41 in Malaysia. The company can produce more than 70bn gloves a year and is a major global supplier.
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On a lighter note, Oxford Dictionaries has expanded its usual Word of the Year due to an “unprecedented” 2020, with furlough, moonshot and Covid-19 among the terms on the list.
Superspreader and lockdown are other coronavirus-related words on the list, along with Black Lives Matter, cancel culture and bushfire relating to societal and environmental issues during the past 12 months, PA Media reports.
The report, titled Words of an Unprecedented Year, says usage of the word pandemic increased by 57,000% last year while lexicographers found use of the word “coronavirus” passed one of the most frequently used nouns in April.
Other terms to have experienced a surge in use this year include unmute, referring to people making themselves audible during online conferences, and Zoombombing, a variant on photobombing, which was first recorded as a word in 2008, and refers to disturbing online calls on Zoom.
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Back to the chaotic scenes reported at Shanghai airport during testing for Covid-19. Footage posted on social media can be seen here:
India plans to delay the winter session of parliament due to the rising number of coronavirus infections, a government official said on Monday, with New Delhi facing a shortage of hospital beds and doctors as the epidemic spreads.
While the daily rise in new cases nationally has slowed, there has been a surge of infections in the capital, which officials said was because of the sprawling city of 20 million had remained fully open, with crowds gathering for religious festivals during recent weeks.
On Sunday, Delhi recorded more than 6,700 new cases, the highest daily rise among major cities. India’s overall caseload stood at 9.14 million after the addition of 44,059 new cases over the previous 24 hours, the health ministry said on Monday.
The government has begun making moves to delay the winter session of parliament, which usually begins in late November, to avoid the risk of the virus spreading between the hundreds of lawmakers, their staff, visitors and security personnel.
“The government will hold consultations with all the political parties and club the winter session with next year’s budget session,” a government official aware of the plans told Reuters. Parliament’s budget session usually opens at the end of January.
The city government has asked private hospitals to reserve 80 percent of critical care beds for coronavirus patients, and it has also airlifted doctors from paramilitary forces to help deal with the crisis.
India’s Supreme Court also based in New Delhi weighed in on Monday asking the city authorities and three other states to submit a report on the situation.
“We are hearing of a huge spike in the current month. We want a latest status report from states. Worse things may happen in December if states aren’t well prepared,” the top court said.
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Several female detainees being held in Bahrain because of visa violations have contracted the virus, the country’s government has said. The interior ministry’s Twitter account carries a statement that reads:
NPRA: some female detainees held in pending cases related to residency rules violations tested positive of COVID-19. Medical and treatment procedures twere taken and precautionary measures were intensified at the location.
— Ministry of Interior (@moi_bahrain) November 23, 2020
The small Gulf state has for years come under pressure from rights organisations over prison conditions including overcrowding, poor sanitation and lack of medical care, Reuters reports.
Like other countries, it freed some prisoners considered at risk, such as pregnant women, in response to the pandemic.
The country of about 1.5 million people has recorded more than 85,700 COVID-19 cases with 338 deaths.
A further 2 million families in Italy risk being pushed into poverty by the coronavirus pandemic.
Among the hardest hit are young people who were working on precarious job contracts, women juggling work and family commitments, immigrants and those working off the books, especially in the south.
A report by the Confcooperative association and research institute Censis said the Covid-19 restrictions could leave a further 2 million families living below the poverty line.
The Bank of Italy said there had been a 12% increase in the number of families saying they struggled to make ends meet each month.
The figures come despite the Italian government allocating more than €100bn to assist people affected by the restrictions.
The government has adopted a tiered system, which imposes varying levels of restrictions across regions depending on the Covid-19 contagion rate and strength of hospitals, as it seeks to regain control of the pandemic while reducing the impact on the economy.
Italy registered 28,337 new infections on Sunday and 562 Covid-related deaths.
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Hi. Caroline Davies here, taking over the blog for the next few hours. You can get in touch on caroline.davies@theguardian.com
The number of infections has risen by 9,751 since Friday, data from Swiss health authorities show.
The total number of confirmed cases in Switzerland and neighbouring principality Liechtenstein increased to 300,352 and the death toll rose by 213 to 3,788, while 410 new hospitalisations kept pressure on the health care system.
The success of AstraZeneca’s vaccine is good news for poorer countries. The formulation can be stored, transported and handled at normal fridge temperatures for at least six months, enormously increasing its reach compared with candidates such as Pfizer’s which requires ultra-cold storage.
It is also cheaper than the Moderna vaccine, whose results were announced last week. Oxford and AstraZeneca have promised they will sell the vaccine at a non-for-profit price of approximately $3 throughout the pandemic, though it is unclear how they will define that period, with memorandum of understanding AstraZeneca signed with a Brazilian manufacturer suggesting the not-for-profit window may end as soon as the middle of 2021 – well before the pandemic will be over.
India, where the majority of the vaccine supply will be manufactured, has secured half a billion doses, while Indonesia and Brazil have 100m doses each. The collective Latin American region will receive at least 150m doses. Bangladesh has 30m doses, as does Egypt, and Australia has about 33m.
More importantly, the Covax facility that aims to distribute vaccines equitably around the world has signed an agreement for 300m doses, though it will need much more to reach its target of providing 2bn vaccinations by the end of 2021.
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The Spanish government is aiming to have a “very substantial part” of the population vaccinated by the end of March 2021, and will set up 13,000 vaccination points to make sure that those most in need of the vaccine can get it.
The prime minister Pedro Sánchez announced the plans on Sunday while participating in the G20 leaders’ summit.
The leaders of the G20 have emphasised their firm will to do everything necessary to guarantee universal access to treatments and vaccines for Covid-19. No one will be completely safe until everyone is safe.
Spain has so far logged 1,556,730 cases of the virus and 42,619 deaths. The country remains in a state of emergency and under an overnight curfew. Different measures are being taken by the country’s 17 regional governments. In Catalonia, bars and restaurants opened for the first time in over a month on Monday, but are operating at 30% capacity and must close by 9.30pm.
China has resorted to its heavy, top-down approach each time new cases of local transmission are found — shutting down schools and hospitals, locking down residential communities and entire neighbourhoods, and testing millions.
Tianjin authorities shut down a kindergarten and moved all the teachers, family and students to a centralised quarantine space. They also sealed the residential compound where the five cases were found.
A worker for UPS at Pudong airport said one of those who tested positive earlier in the month had visited her office. Since then, her company has asked employees to quarantine themselves in the office and were forbidden to leave for four days, unless they signed an agreement to quarantine themselves at home for two weeks, she said, declining to be named out of fear of retaliation.
She said she had been sleeping at the office since Friday, but was able to leave Monday. The company did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment.
China’s approach to controlling the pandemic has been criticised as draconian. It locked down the city of Wuhan, where cases were first reported, for more than two months to contain the virus, with the local government shutting down all traffic and confining residents to their homes. Domestically, however, China has called its strategy “clear to zero” and has boasted of its success.
In a webinar hosted by Chinese media in September, the chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention Zeng Guang said:
In the entire world, only China has the ability to get to zero. Other countries don’t have this ability. It’s not just getting to zero, even for them to control the first wave of the epidemic is hard.
‘Clearing to zero’ is actually the most economically effective way to do epidemic prevention. If you don’t do that, then this problem will get more troublesome. Use a heavier hand, and get to zero, then people will feel reassured.
We reported earlier that Chinese authorities are testing millions of people and imposing lockdowns after locally transmitted cases were discovered in three cities, with some of the effort focusing on Shanghai’s Pudong International airport.
Videos on social media purportedly from workers show what appear to be chaotic scenes at the airport, as people were given last-minute orders to get tested. In the videos, people are seen standing in large groups pushing back and forth against officials in hazmat suits.
Shanghai has been more selective with mass testing, targeting people associated with a particular place, such as the airport or the hospital where someone who has tested positive had worked, rather than an entire district.
In Tianjin, health workers have collected more than 2.2m samples for testing from residents in the Binhai new district, after five locally transmitted cases were discovered there last week, the Associated Press has reported.
In Manzhouli, a city of more than 200,000 people, local health authorities are testing all residents after two cases were reported on Saturday. They also shut down all schools and public venues and banned public gatherings such as banquets.
Russia suffers worst daily caseload increase
Moscow has reported 25,173 new infections; the greatest such figure the country has seen in a single day since the pandemic began.
The Kremlin has said it is up to regional authorities to decide what measures need to be imposed in their regions to curb the virus’ spread.
Russian authorities have said they will not impose nationwide lockdowns as they did earlier in the pandemic, stressing the importance of hygiene and targeted measures in certain regions instead.
Asked why only the Siberian region of Buryatia had imposed major restrictions, the Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was regional governors who decided what measures were required in their respective regions.
Everything depends on the number of hospital beds, on (material) reserves, on the number of medical staff, doctors, hospital occupancy rates and the rate at which patients are recovering. This is why each governor makes decisions based on the situation in their territory.
Last week, authorities in Buryatia, which borders Mongolia, closed restaurants, shopping malls, bars and public facilities for two weeks in a bid to stem the spread of virus, making it the first and only Russian region to impose harsh restrictions in response to the pandemic’s second wave.
The country’s coronavirus taskforce has reported 361 deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the official death toll to 36,540. With more than 2.1m infections, Russia has the world’s fifth largest number of cases after the US, India, Brazil and France.
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The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has tested negative, having received a positive result on 9 November and spending time in a government hospital, he has said.
I finally have a negative coronavirus test result. One way or another, I’m already at work today. The day will be busy, but I am very happy to dive into the work as usual.
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Hong Kong has reported 73 new cases as its government warns the epidemic in the densely populated city is rapidly worsening with silent transmission chains feared amid a rise in asymptomatic infections.
The Chinese-ruled city has so far managed to avoid the widespread outbreak of the disease seen in many major cities across the world, with numbers on a daily basis mostly in single digits or low double digits in recent weeks.
Many of the latest cases are linked to dance clubs and the government has appealed to residents in affected areas to take a test to help contain the outbreak. Mobile testing stations have been set up in several districts. The government has said:
The local epidemic situation is worsening rapidly. Some of the confirmed cases are asymptomatic and this has indicated the existence of many silent transmission chains in the community.
The jump in cases has caused a travel bubble between Hong Kong and Singapore, due to launch on Sunday, to be postponed for two weeks.
Hong Kong has recorded 5,702 cases and 108 deaths since the pandemic began. The government started to ease restrictions on dining, sports facilities and theme parks in September after a mass testing programme organised by the Chinese government.
AstraZeneca will have 200m doses of its candidate vaccine developed by the University of Oxford by the end of 2020, with 700m ready globally by the end of the first quarter of 2021, operations executive Pam Cheng has said.
Cheng told a briefing that there would be 20m doses in the UK by the end of the year, with 70m more for the UK by the end of March that year.
Pope Francis can relate to people in intensive care units who fear dying from coronavirus because of his own experience when part of his lung was removed 63 years ago, he has been quoted as saying.
The comments are included in excerpts of a new book, Let Us Dream: The Path to A Better Future, which are carried in Italian newspapers on Monday ahead of publication of the full work next month.
In the book, a conversation with one of his biographers, Austen Ivereigh, Francis talks in some of the most personal terms to date about the time he was hovering between life and death.
I know from experience the feeling of those who are sick with coronavirus, struggling to breathe as they are attached to a ventilator.
Francis was a 21-year-old seminarian in the second year of his studies for the priesthood in his native Buenos Aires when an illness that had been misdiagnosed as influenza worsened and he was hospitalised.
They took about a litre and a half of water out of one lung and I was hanging between life and death.
Several months later, doctors removed the upper lobe of his right lung. Today, the 83-year-old pope can be heard breathing heavily after climbing stairs.
[The experience] changed my bearings. For months, I didn’t know who I was, if I would live or die, even the doctors didn’t know. I remember hugging my mother one day and asking her if I was about to die.
Francis recounts how a nun who worked as nurse helped save his life by secretly doubling the doses of penicillin and streptomycin that a doctor had prescribed.
Thanks to her regular contact with sick people, she knew what patients needed better than the doctor and had the courage to put that experience to work.
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Indonesia exceeds 500,000 cases
Indonesia’s caseload has surpassed the half-million mark, with 4,442 new infections reported on Monday, data from the country’s health ministry have shown.
Indonesia reported 118 more deaths, bringing its total fatalities to 16,002. South-east Asia’s biggest and most populous country has the region’s highest numbers of both cases and deaths.
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Many of Germany’s 16 federal states are in favour of extending a partial shutdown and make family gatherings over Christmas possible, one of the state prime ministers has said.
“The (infection) numbers are subdued but they remain high,” Manuela Schwesig, the premier of the northern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, told Deutschlandfunk radio.
Germany imposed a month-long “lockdown-lite” from 2 November but infection numbers have not declined.
State premiers and the chancellor Angela Merkel are due to discuss new measures on Wednesday. They could extend the measures until 20 December, according to senior politicians and a draft proposal obtained by the Reuters news agency on Sunday.
Bars and restaurants are closed but schools and shops remain open. Private gatherings are limited to a maximum of 10 people from two households, and the draft proposal says that number would be reduced to five.
Immunisations could begin in December if the regulators give the new vaccine the go-ahead, AstraZeneca’s executive vice-president has said. Sir Mene Pangalos told Today:
We are extremely excited because what the data has shown us is that the vaccine is clearly effective in terms of reducing infections, it is clearly effective in terms of reducing people getting sick and going to hospital, it is potentially reducing transmission and, I think, has got every chance of being a very successful, very effective vaccine that can get us back to normal.
One of the real benefits of this vaccine is the fact that we can manufacture it at scale. It is a relatively easy vaccine to distribute around the world.
I hope that, if the regulators deem the vaccine to be safe and effective – which I hope they will – we should be able to start immunising people in December.
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Speculating about a timescale for the vaccine’s rollout in the UK, Hancock has said the “bulk” will be in the new year, with the hope that “things will be able to start to get back to normal” after Easter. He told BBC Breakfast:
It is subject to that regulatory approval and I really stress that because the medicines regulator, it’s called the MHRA, is independent, they’re rigorous, they’re one of the best regulators in the world.
They will be very, very careful to ensure that they look at all the data to make sure that this is safe.
Subject to that approval, we hope to be able to start vaccinating next month. The bulk of the vaccine rollout programme will be in January, February, March and we hope that sometime, after Easter, things will be able to start to get back to normal.
Incredibly exciting news the Oxford vaccine has proved so effective in trials. There are still further safety checks ahead, but these are fantastic results.
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) November 23, 2020
Well done to our brilliant scientists at @UniofOxford & @AstraZeneca, and all who volunteered in the trials. https://t.co/84o8TKhQga
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Strict measures to prevent transmission must still be taken for the foreseeable future because it could be five months before enough vaccine could be given to the population to achieve some sort of herd immunity, according to a UK government scientific adviser.
Dr Michael Tildesley, associate professor in infectious disease modelling at the University of Warwick and a member of Sage, has told Times Radio:
The vaccine is on the horizon. But we’re still probably four or five months away from getting to the stage that we can give enough doses out to the population to start thinking about achieving herd immunity as a nation.
What we really need to do in the meantime is get the message out there that, yes, there is good news – the cavalry is appearing on the horizon – but we need to keep incidence as low as possible. We need to keep observing our social distancing.
We are still in the winter months, we know there is more pressure on the NHS in the winter and Covid, potentially, could start to peak again if we start to lift restrictions.
[We need] very clear messaging that that vaccine is out there – hopefully by the new year we can start rolling that out but we need people to keep observing those measures.
Hancock referred to the dosage. Pollard has said that if people were given a half-dose first, followed by a full dose a month later, they had 90% protection. He told Today:
There is just a hint in the data at the moment that those who got that regime with higher protection, there is a suggestion that it was also able to reduce asymptomatic infection.
If that is right, we might be able to halt the virus in its tracks and stop transmitting between people.
The AstraZeneca-Oxford announcement provides “really encouraging news”, the UK’s health secretary has said, though he stressed that vaccines need to be approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). Matt Hancock has told Sky News:
This is really encouraging news on the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine that, obviously, we’ve been backing since the start.
And I’m really very pleased, really welcome these figures, this data, that show that the vaccine in the right dosage can be up to 90% effective.
Of course, it’s vital that the independent regulator, the MHRA, will need to look at the data, will need to check to make sure that it’s effective and safe, of course.
But we’ve got 100m doses on order and, should all that go well, the bulk of the rollout will be in the new year.
And, of course, this vaccine, this homegrown vaccine, is easier to administer as well than the Pfizer vaccine because it doesn’t need to be stored at -70C. So, having two vaccines that appear to have effectiveness, done right, in the 90% range is really, really good news.
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No one who received the Oxford vaccine in the trials required hospital treatment for Covid-19, Pollard has told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
We are really pleased with these results. What we have got is a vaccine that is able to protect against coronavirus disease and, importantly, there were no hospitalisations or severe cases in anyone who had the Oxford vaccine.
So, that means that – if we did have people vaccinated – then certainly so far the results imply that we would be able to stop people getting severe disease and going into hospital.
The Oxford vaccine shows 70% protection against Covid, but it was 90% effective when volunteers in the trial were given a half dose first followed by a full dose.
— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) November 23, 2020
Andrew Pollard, head of the Oxford Vaccine Group, explained the findings to @JustinOnWeb pic.twitter.com/oQJYeHt4vL
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Can this vaccine help the elderly?
There have been concerns that a vaccine will not work as well on elderly people, much like the annual flu jab.
However, data from the Oxford University and AstraZeneca vaccine trial suggests that there has been “similar” immune responses among younger and older adults, with Moderna reporting the same.
Earlier this year, Oxford University said its data marked a “key milestone”, with the vaccine inducing strong immune responses in all adult groups.
Can the Oxford vaccine be manufactured to scale?
Yes. The UK government has secured 100m doses of the Oxford University and AstraZeneca vaccine as part of its contract; enough for most of the population and the head of the UK vaccine taskforce, Kate Bingham, has said she is confident it can be produced at scale.
Experts hope the jab could be ready to go and rolled out shortly.
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What about antibodies and T-cells?
The Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccines have been shown to provoke both an antibody and T-cell response.
Antibodies are proteins that bind to the body’s foreign invaders and tell the immune system it needs to take action. T-cells are a type of white blood cell which hunt down infected cells in the body and destroy them.
Nearly all effective vaccines induce both an antibody and a T-cell response.
A study on the AstraZeneca vaccine found that levels of T-cells peaked 14 days after vaccination, while antibody levels peaked after 28 days.
Does it differ from Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccine?
Yes. The jabs from Pfizer and Moderna are messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines. Conventional vaccines are produced using weakened forms of the virus, but mRNAs use only the virus’s genetic code.
An mRNA vaccine is injected into the body where it enters cells and tells them to create antigens. These antigens are recognised by the immune system and prepare it to fight coronavirus.
No actual virus is needed to create an mRNA vaccine. This means the rate at which the vaccine can be produced is accelerated.
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PA Media has provided this helpful guide on how the Oxford jab works.
The vaccine – called ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 – uses a harmless, weakened version of a common virus that causes a cold in chimpanzees. Researchers have already used this technology to produce vaccines against pathogens including flu, Zika and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (Mers).
The virus is genetically modified so that it is impossible for it to grow in humans but scientists have transferred the genetic instructions for coronavirus’s specific “spike protein”, which it needs to invade cells, to the vaccine.
When the vaccine enters cells inside the body, it uses this genetic code to produce the surface spike protein of the coronavirus.
This induces an immune response, priming the immune system to attack coronavirus if it infects the body.
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AstraZeneca and Oxford University announced their jab has been shown to work in different age groups, including the elderly.
The UK has placed orders for 100m doses of it – enough to vaccinate most of the population – with rollout expected in the coming weeks if the jab is approved. AstraZeneca’s chief executive Pascal Soriot, has said:
Today marks an important milestone in our fight against the pandemic. This vaccine’s efficacy and safety confirm that it will be highly effective against Covid-19 and will have an immediate impact on this public health emergency.
Furthermore, the vaccine’s simple supply chain and our no-profit pledge and commitment to broad, equitable and timely access means it will be affordable and globally available, supplying hundreds of millions of doses on approval.
The UK also has orders for 40m doses of a jab from Pfizer and BioNTech, which has been shown to have 95% efficacy and to be safe.
Oxford University said interim analysis from its phase 3 vaccine trial shows the 70% effectiveness comes from combining two doses. One was 90% effective, the other 62%.
Prof Andrew Pollard, the director of the Oxford Vaccine Group and chief investigator of the Oxford Vaccine Trial, said:
These findings show that we have an effective vaccine that will save many lives. Excitingly, we’ve found that one of our dosing regimens may be around 90% effective and if this dosing regime is used, more people could be vaccinated with planned vaccine supply.
Today’s announcement is only possible thanks to the many volunteers in our trial, and the hard working and talented team of researchers based around the world.
His colleague, Prof Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology, said:
The announcement today takes us another step closer to the time when we can use vaccines to bring an end to the devastation caused by SARS-CoV-2. We will continue to work to provide the detailed information to regulators. It has been a privilege to be part of this multi-national effort which will reap benefits for the whole world.
Updated
Oxford vaccine up to 90% effective, tests show
A large-scale trial of the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University shows it has 70.4% efficacy.
The data suggest it is not as effective as vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna. But, according to the BBC, the Oxford jab is both cheaper and easier to store and transport, meaning it is likely to be important in stopping the spread of the virus if it is approved.
Oxford University said interim analysis from its phase 3 vaccine trial showed that the efficacy of their vaccine is 70%. But that came from combining the results of two different dosing regimes, one of which was 90% and the other was 62%. The 90% regime involved a half-dose first and then a full dose of the vaccine later.
Updated
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, on another day of bad and good pandemic news.
I’ll now be logging off, but here is an inspirational image for those just starting their morning (yes, smoking is bad – tell it to the cat):
logging on https://t.co/sc7Z38gqBu
— Helen Sullivan (@helenrsullivan) November 22, 2020
And here’s some of that good news I mentioned – for the US, UK, Germany and Spain at least:
China tests millions after coronavirus flare-ups in three cities
More now on the cases in China:
Chinese authorities are testing millions of people, imposing lockdowns and shutting down schools after multiple locally transmitted coronavirus cases were discovered in three cities across the country last week, AP reports.
As temperatures drop, large-scale measures are being enacted in the cities of Tianjin, Shanghai and Manzhouli, despite the low number of new cases compared with the US and other countries that are seeing new waves of infections.
Many experts and government officials have warned that the chance of the virus spreading will be greater during the cold weather. Recent flare-ups have shown that there is still a risk of the virus returning, despite being largely controlled within China.
On Monday, the national health commission reported two new locally transmitted cases in Shanghai over the last 24 hours, bringing the total to seven since Friday. China has recorded 86,442 total cases and 4,634 deaths since the virus was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.
The two latest cases confirmed in Shanghai were close contacts of another airport worker who was diagnosed with Covid-19 earlier in November. On Sunday night, the city’s Pudong International airport decided to test its workers, collecting 17,719 samples through the early hours of Monday morning. Plans call for testing others in surrounding communities if further cases are detected.
Updated
Summary
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
- Global cases approach 60m. The global coronavirus infections total is currently 58,563,451, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker – less than 2.5m cases from 60m.With daily totals averaging at around 600,000, the global infections total is likely to pass 60m this week – just under three weeks after it passed 50m.The global death toll is nearing 1.4m people. It currently stands at 1,386,465.
- Chaos at Shanghai airport after sudden decision to test thousands - reports. The Global Times reports that Shanghai Pudong airport has started testing thousands of staff and passengers after several cargo handlers tested positive for coronavirus. Hundreds of flights have also been cancelled, and videos posted online appear to show people panicking as they are told they will all be tested for the virus.
- South Korea reported another daily rise of over 200 new coronavirus cases on Monday, a day before tighter social distancing rules aimed at blunting a third wave of infections take effect. The daily tally of 271 new cases fell from 330 reported on Sunday after hovering above 300 for five straight days, a level not seen since August, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.
- Hong Kong-Singapore travel bubble pops. The much-hyped Hong Kong-Singapore travel bubble has postponed, one day before the first flights were set to depart. The bubble was postponed after Hong Kong health authorities reported a rise in new cases, including 43 on Saturday alone, 13 of which were untraced local infections.The bubble allows people to travel between Singapore and Hong Kong for leisure, and to take a Covid test in lieu of quarantine or home isolation.
- US suffers one Covid death every minute. In the US, 1,448 people died on Friday according to Johns Hopkins University – the equivalent of a person every minute, as Bloomberg’s Steven Dennis pointed out on Twitter on Sunday.
-
UK government to ease isolation requirements for Covid contacts. The UK government will announce on Monday that self-isolation will no longer be required for those who have come into contact with people who have tested positive for Covid-19, the Telegraph reported. Contacts of those who test positive will be asked to undergo daily tests for seven days, and will be allowed to go about their business in the meantime, the newspaper said.
- The first Americans could be vaccinated on 11 December. US Covid-19 vaccine programme head Moncef Slaoui said the first Americans to receive a coronavirus vaccine could get it as soon as 11 December, CNN reported on Sunday.“Our plan is to be able to ship vaccines to the immunisation sites within 24 hours from the approval, so I expect maybe on day two after approval on the 11 or the 12 of December,” he said in an interview to CNN.
- Germany may start Covid-19 vaccine programme in December. Germany could start administering shots of Covid-19 vaccines as soon as next month, health minister Jens Spahn was quoted as saying. “There is reason to be optimistic that there will be approval for a vaccine in Europe this year,” Spahn said in an interview with publishing group RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland. “And then we can start right away.”
- NHS told to be ready to administer vaccine by 1 December. Britain could give regulatory approval to Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine this week, even before the US authorises it, the Telegraph news site reported on Sunday.Citing government sources, it said British regulators were about to start a formal appraisal of the vaccine, made by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE, and that the National Health Service had been told to be ready to administer it by 1 December. The US Food and Drug Administration said on Friday that it would meet on 10 December to discuss whether to authorise the vaccine.
- Spain to begin vaccinations in January. Spain will begin a comprehensive coronavirus vaccination programme in January and expects to have covered a substantial part of the population within three months, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Sunday. He said Spain and Germany were the first European Union countries to have a complete vaccination plan in place.
- Experts have urged Americans against travelling for family gatherings at Thanksgiving this week even though millions were set to defy the advice, as the US crossed the threshold of more than 12m cases of coronavirus.Ominous warnings came as Donald Trump appeared to admit that coronavirus is “running wild” across the US, in contrast with his statements throughout the election campaign that the virus would simply “go away” or “disappear” and, more recently, that the country was “rounding the turn” on the pandemic.
Updated
UK factories could be making up to £4.8bn more goods for British retailers in the next 12 months as the coronavirus pandemic and Brexit prompt businesses to bring home production.
The additional orders, largely of food and fashion but potentially including DIY products and homewares, would be equivalent to the country’s entire current clothing manufacturing output, according to a report by advisory firm Alvarez & Marsal and research group Retail Economics.
Signs of the trend have already emerged with online fashion site Asos making its new lower-priced AsYou range at approved factories in Leicester, and Ted Baker announcing its Made in Britain range this month:
Christmas could be turned into a communal outdoor celebration – with hot drinks and mince pies consumed in the street – scientists have suggested, in alternative plans drawn up for safer festivities.
In a set of proposals compiled by Independent Sage – a group formed in response to concerns about a lack of transparency in scientific advice given to government – they say the rules over the festive period will depend upon the rate and level of infections at the time.
“Yet irrespective of the question of whether indoor household mixing is possible or not, we must develop ways of celebrating that keep ourselves, our families and our community safer,” the team write in the document titled Safer Winter Celebrations and Festivities.
With indoor transmission known to be a key factor in the spread of the coronavirus, the scientists offer two main approaches to keeping Christmas safe – meeting up online or outdoors, and reducing risks for home gatherings:
Chaos at Shanghai airport after sudden decision to test thousands - reports
The Global Times reports that Shanghai Pudong Airport has started testing thousands of staff and passengers after several cargo handlers tested positive for coronavirus.
Hundreds of flights have also been cancelled, and videos posted online appear to show people panicking as they are told they will all be tested for the virus.
Wild scenes at Shanghai Pudong airport - multiple vids going around of what appears to be a sudden decision by authorities to test all staff for #COVID19 after 2 positive cases detected. Reports say authorities ultimately relented as things were getting out of hand. pic.twitter.com/Xenus4dHPR
— Bill Birtles (@billbirtles) November 22, 2020
Australia’s New Daily reports:
On the video, authorities in hazmat suits can been seen herding the crowds and barring the paths of others as they try to flee. Elsewhere, workers form long, orderly queues for testing.
Hundreds of flights were cancelled after staff in the airport’s two main zones were told they had to be tested. Elsewhere, roads leading to the airport jammed up with traffic.
China has ramped up testing of frozen foods after saying it has repeatedly discovered the coronavirus on imported products and their packaging, triggering mass scale testing of food and related personnel, suspension of certain imports and disruptions to trade flows, Reuters reports.
China, which has suspended imports from 99 suppliers in 20 countries, argues these measures are needed to prevent more arrivals of the virus in a country that has largely contained the epidemic domestically.
But major food-producing countries are growing increasingly frustrated with China’s scrutiny of imported products.
A seafood market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan is widely believed to be the origin of the pandemic that emerged late last year, but the Global Times, a tabloid backed by the ruling Chinese Communist Party, suggested this week that the presence of the virus on imported food raised the possibility that it may have come from overseas.
India has recorded 44,059 new cases of the novel coronavirus, taking its total to 9.14 million, data from the health ministry showed on Monday.
India has the second-highest number of infections in the world, after the United States, but the rate of increase in India has dipped since it hit a peak in September.
New daily cases have come in at fewer than 50,000 for more than two weeks, according to a Reuters tally.
Deaths rose by 511, according to the latest health ministry data, taking the total to 133,738.
What have you achieved today without dropping your cigar?
saved the puppy from getting eaten by an alligator and never dropped his cigar, a true legend pic.twitter.com/ryRSfZqOsy
— juan vidal (@itsjuanlove) November 22, 2020
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 10,864 to 929,133, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed on Monday.
The reported death toll rose by 90 to 14,112, the tally showed.
South Korea reports 271 new coronvirus cases
South Korea reported another daily rise of over 200 new coronavirus cases on Monday, a day before tighter social distancing rules aimed at blunting a third wave of infections take effect, Reuters reports.
The daily tally of 271 new cases fell from 330 reported on Sunday after hovering above 300 for five straight days, a level not seen since August, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.
Officials have said the numbers tend to drop during the weekends due to less testing. The government further strengthened distancing rules for the capital Seoul and nearby regions on Sunday, three days after re-imposing curbs ahead of an annual national college entrance exam scheduled for 3 December.
The latest measure will close bars and nightclubs, limit religious gatherings and restrict on-site dining at restaurants and cafes from Tuesday.
“If we can’t sever the links of infections, our anti-virus efforts and medical responses might become unsustainable,” Vice Health Minister Kang Do-tae told a meeting on Monday.
Some experts have accused authorities of failing to take stronger action earlier even though spikes in daily numbers and other benchmarks met conditions set by the government for stricter curbs.
Updated
Hands up if your news bingo card had on it ‘man wearing a Donald Trump inflatable pool tube charged with assault for forcefully exhaling on two protestors outside Trump’s Virginia golf course’.
Yes, it actually happened. No, nothing surprises us anymore...
Nevada’s governor, diagnosed with Covid-19 himself earlier this month, said on Sunday he was tightening coronavirus restrictions on casinos, restaurants and bars, while imposing a broader statewide mandate for face-coverings over the next three weeks.
The new measures, effective on Tuesday, come as state and local government leaders around the United States have moved to reinstate a wide range of limits on social and economic life to tame an alarming surge of Covid-19 infections following a summertime lull in the pandemic.
“Whether you believe in the science of Covid or not, the reality is this - Covid is filling up our hospital beds, and that threatens all Nevadans,” Governor Steve Sisolak, a Democrat said in announcing what he called a new “statewide pause”.
The latest restrictions are likely to prove especially tough for a state whose economy, and the livelihood of its biggest city, Las Vegas, are largely dependent on tourism, gaming and the hospitality industry.
Under Sisolak’s latest public health orders, restaurants and bars must reduce operations from 50% to 25% of capacity, with additional social-distancing requirements, including prohibitions on service without advance reservations.
Casinos, which reopened in June after being ordered closed for more than two months following the Covid-19 outbreak, will likewise be capped at 25% capacity.
The same capacity limit will applied to museums, art galleries, libraries, arcades, racetracks and theme parks - all of which had been under a 50% capacity lid previously.
Sisolak’s latest mask mandate will require all individuals to wear face-coverings whenever in the presence of others from outside their immediate household, whether indoors or outdoors.
Private social gatherings are to be restricted to 10 people from no more than two households, whether inside or out, while public assemblies at such venues as movie theaters, theatrical performances, showrooms, weddings, funerals and places of worship will be capped at 50 individuals, or 25% of normal fire-code capacity, whichever is less.
All youth and adult sports tournaments will be suspended altogether.
Sisolak, 66, tested positive for Covid-19 on 13 November, though he said last week he was experiencing only minor symptoms.
South Korea reported another daily rise of more than 200 new coronavirus cases on Monday, a day after it tightened social distancing rules as it battles a third wave of infection.
The daily tally of 255 new cases fell from 330 reported on Sunday after hovering above 300 for five straight days, a level not seen since August, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).
Officials have said the numbers tend to drop during the weekends due to less testing.
The government strengthened distancing rules for the capital Seoul and nearby regions on Sunday, closing bars and nightclubs, limiting religious gatherings and restricting on-site dining at restaurants from Tuesday.
The decision came less than a week after the guidelines were tightened ahead of annual college entrance exams scheduled for 3 December.
South Korea has been a coronavirus success story after tackling the first major epidemic outside China without major disruption, thanks to an aggressive tracing, testing and quarantine campaign.
But it continues to grapple with persistent cluster infections from offices, nursing homes and small gatherings, prompting authorities last week to declare the country was fighting a third wave of infection.
Total infections are now at 31,004, with 509 deaths, KDCA data showed.
Updated
Hong Kong-Singapore travel bubble pops
The much hyped Hong Kong-Singapore travel bubble has popped, one day before the first flights were set to depart.
Originally scheduled to start yesterday, the bubble was postponed after Hong Kong health authorities reported a rise in new cases, including 43 on Saturday alone, 13 of which were untraced local infections.
The bubble allows people to travel between Singapore and Hong Kong for leisure, and to take a Covid test in lieu of quarantine or home isolation.
Tickets for the flights - once a day and with 200 passengers - from Singapore to Hong Kong sold out within a day of the bubble being announced earlier this month, the Straits Times reported.
But on Saturday Hong Kong’s Secretary for Commerce & Economic Development Edward Yau said the two governments had decided to delay the bubble’s launch by two weeks.
“Doing this is necessary to avoid any inconvenience caused by the abrupt changes of the scheme to passengers, particularly those who need to return to Hong Kong in a short time,” he said. It launched with a built in mechanism to increase, decrease, or suspend them depending on each locality’s Covid situation. This included an immediate two week suspension if the seven-day average number of cases reached more than five.
A Hong Kong government spokesperson said the local situation had “deteriorated rapidly”.
“The increasing trend of the number of unlinked local cases shows that there is an invisible and continuous transmission chain in the community. It is expected that the epidemic situation in Hong Kong will still remain severe in the near future.”
No better visual representation of the Hong Kong-Singapore travel bubble bursting (via Facebook) pic.twitter.com/1pmvgwmux1
— G-DLEE AVIATION 2020 (@JournoDannyAero) November 22, 2020
Updated
Global cases near 60m
The global coronavirus infections total is currently 58,563,451, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker – less than 2.5m cases from 60m.
With current daily totals averaging at around 600,000, the global infections total is likely to pass 60m this week – just under three weeks after it passed 50m.
The global death toll is nearing 1.4m people. It currently stands at 1,386,465.
US suffers one Covid death every minute
In the US, 1,448 people died on Friday according to Johns Hopkins University – the equivalent of a person every minute, as Bloomberg’s Steven Dennis pointed out on Twitter on Sunday.
The USA COVID death toll run-rate is now *1 per minute.*
— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) November 22, 2020
The Covid Tracking Project’s latest update shows that a record number of Americans were hospitalised with the virus:
Our daily update is published. States reported 1.7M tests, 150k cases, and 889 new deaths. A record 83,870 people are currently hospitalized with COVID-19. pic.twitter.com/rcKnxXmTyt
— The COVID Tracking Project (@COVID19Tracking) November 23, 2020
The proportion of homes in England and Wales that have been bought, renovated and sold again within a short period has hit a 12-year high, with Burnley in Lancashire topping the list of properties most commonly “flipped”.
So far this year, one in every 40 homes sold were bought and sold within 12 months, according to research from estate agent Hamptons International using Land Registry data, the most since 2008. In Burnley, it was about one in 12:
The number of unemployed people aged over 50 in the UK has increased by a third in the past year, according to analysis of official figures.
There are 91,000 more unemployed older people than there were 12 months ago, the biggest percentage increase of all age groups and significantly more than the national average increase of 24%.
While the unemployment rate is significantly higher for those aged under 24, analysis shows that it is among older workers that there has been the greatest percentage increase:
Mainland China reported 17 new Covid-19 cases on 21 November, up from 16 the previous day, with three cases of local transmission and 14 cases originating overseas, the National Health Commission said on Sunday.
The Commission said in its daily bulletin that two of the local transmissions took place in Inner Mongolia and one in Shanghai.
Inner Mongolia’s health authority said on Saturday it had confirmed two new coronavirus cases in Hulunbuir city on the Chinese border with Russia.
According to a report from the official Xinhua news agency, the positive case in Shanghai was found after mass testing following infections of a security inspector at Pudong International Airport and his wife.
Shanghai’s health authority later reported two new locally transmitted cases in the city on Sunday, both connected to the Pudong cases.
Mainland China reported another 11 asymptomatic cases on 21 November, down from 18 on the previous day.
It has so far reported an accumulated total of 86,431 COVID-19 cases, with the official death toll at 4,634.
Health experts worry that the surge in coronavirus cases in the US will only worsen, as millions of Americans prepared to travel and congregate in family groups for Thanksgiving celebrations, despite warnings that they stay home to avoid spreading the disease.
Many people were scrambling to get tested before Thursday’s holiday, leading to long lines at screening sites in New York City and elsewhere. Most pharmacies offering Covid-19 tests in suburban Chicago were fully booked, Reuters reports.
The United States surpassed 12 million cases on Saturday, as the nation’s death toll climbed to more than 255,000 since the pandemic began. Coronavirus hospitalizations have increased nearly 50% over the past two weeks.
Reuters data showed the pace of new infections quickening, with nearly 1 million more cases documented over the past six days, compared with the eight days it took to get from 10 million to 11 million cases.
The epicentre of the US pandemic has also shifted in recent weeks, with the Midwest and Rockies leading the nation in terms of rapidly escalating infections.
“It’s not just in big cities, but it’s in rural locations, small towns,” Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University, said on “Fox News Sunday.”
While the prospect of effective vaccines has brought new hope to a pandemic-weary nation, public distrust of inoculations runs high. In a recent Gallup poll, just 58% of Americans said they planned to get a Covid-19 vaccine, up from 50% in September.
Just checking in on how busy the US airways are ahead of Thanksgiving, a holiday for which people have been asked in the strongest terms by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention not to travel:
happy superspreader to those who celebrate pic.twitter.com/0RkYMJBQyO
— Helen Sullivan (@helenrsullivan) November 23, 2020
A reminder that coronavirus does not just affect your respiratory system:
.@andersoncooper: So, people think of COVID as a respiratory illness. But you're seeing damage all over the body.
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) November 23, 2020
Dr. Mary Fowkes, pathologist: There's damage in [the] lung, heart, brain, kidney, liver. https://t.co/bFX3iNkfzB pic.twitter.com/701vKe3HeH
The economic turmoil caused by the Covid-19 pandemic pushed third-quarter shareholder payouts to their lowest level since 2016, according to the latest snapshot, with the UK recording the biggest falls.
Janus Henderson is now warning that dividends for the whole of 2020 are likely to drop at least 15.7%, which would “eradicate” more than three years of dividend growth and cost investors $224bn (£170bn) in lost income this year.
The asset manager’s latest Global Dividend Index shows shareholder payouts slumped 14.3% or $55bn in the third quarter to $329.8bn. It comes after nearly a third of the 1,200 global firms tracked by the report either cut or cancelled their shareholder payouts for the quarter.
Wisconsin Representative Bryan Steil has tested positive for coronavirus, he announced on Twitter. The republican businessman said that he is now quarantining at home:
— Bryan Steil (@RepBryanSteil) November 23, 2020
NHS told to be ready to administer vaccine by 1 December
Britain could give regulatory approval to Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine this week, even before the United States authorises it, the Telegraph news site reported on Sunday.
Citing government sources, it said British regulators were about to start a formal appraisal of the vaccine, made by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE, and that the National Health Service had been told to be ready to administer it by 1 December.
The US Food and Drug Administration said on Friday that it would meet on 10 December to discuss whether to authorise the vaccine.
The UK Department of Health had no comment on Sunday on when the first vaccinations would be administered.
A spokesman said the authorisation process by the medical regulator Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is independent of the government and will take as long as they need to review the final data from Pfizer.
“An enormous amount of planning has taken place to ensure our health service stands ready to roll out a COVID-19 vaccine,” the spokesman added.
Britain formally asked its medical regulator, the MHRA, last week to assess the suitability of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Britain has ordered 40 million doses and expects to have 10 million doses, enough to protect 5 million people, available by the end of the year if regulators approve it.
Spain to begin vaccinations in January
Spain will begin a comprehensive coronavirus vaccination programme in January and expects to have covered a substantial part of the population within three months, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Sunday.
He said Spain and Germany were the first European Union countries to have a complete vaccination plan in place.
“The campaign will start in January and have 13,000 vaccination points,” Sanchez told a news conference after a two-day online summit of G20 leaders.
“A very substantial part of the population will be able to be vaccinated, with all guarantees, in the first quarter of the year.”
Spain will implement a single national strategy, starting with “priority groups”, Sanchez said, adding that he would present the plan to the cabinet on Tuesday. He also said more health professionals would be recruited.
“We have a tough few months ahead of us but the road map has been drawn up,” Sanchez said.
Spain has western Europe’s second highest tally of confirmed coronavirus infections after France, with some 1.5 million cases and 46,619 deaths from Covid-19.
Updated
UK government to ease isolation requirements for Covid contacts
The UK government will announce on Monday that self-isolation will no longer be required for those who have come into contact with people who have tested positive for Covid-19, the Telegraph reported.
Contacts of those who test positive will be asked to undergo daily tests for seven days, and will be allowed to go about their business in the meantime, the newspaper said.
Ministers will say that the current system of requiring people to stay at home for 14 days will be dismantled nationwide in January, if pilot schemes succeed, according to the newspaper.
US vaccine program head says first Americans could be vaccinated on 11 December
US Covid-19 vaccine program head Moncef Slaoui said the first Americans to receive a coronavirus vaccine could get it as soon as 11 December, CNN reported on Sunday.
“Our plan is to be able to ship vaccines to the immunisation sites within 24 hours from the approval, so I expect maybe on day two after approval on the 11th or the 12th of December,” he said in an interview to CNN.
Germany may start Covid-19 vaccine programme in December
Germany could start administering shots of Covid-19 vaccines as soon as next month, Health Minister Jens Spahn was quoted as saying.
“There is reason to be optimistic that there will be approval for a vaccine in Europe this year,” Spahn said in an interview with publishing group RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland. “And then we can start right away.”
Spahn said that he had asked Germany’s federal states to have their vaccination centres ready by mid-December and that this was going well. “I would rather have a vaccination centre ready a few days early than an approved vaccine that isn’t being used immediately.”
Germany has secured more than 300 million vaccine doses via the European Commission, bilateral contracts and options, Spahn said, adding that this was more than enough and even left room to share with other countries.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan.
I’ll be bringing you the latest coronavirus news from around the world for the next few hours.
As always, it would be great to hear from you on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
Britain could give regulatory approval to Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine this week, even before the United States authorises it, the Telegraph news site reported on Sunday.
Citing government sources, it said British regulators were about to start a formal appraisal of the vaccine, made by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE, and that the National Health Service had been told to be ready to administer it by 1 December.
The US, meanwhile, may administer it to the first Americans by 11 December, while Germany, too, could start administering shots of the vaccine as soon as next month, Health Minister Jens Spahn was quoted as saying.
More on this shortly - but in the meantime here are the other key developments from the last few hours.
- Experts have urged Americans against travelling for family gatherings at Thanksgiving this week even though millions were set to defy the advice, as the US crossed the threshold of more than 12m cases of coronavirus.Ominous warnings came as Donald Trump appeared to admit that coronavirus is “running wild” across the US, in contrast with his statements throughout the election campaign that the virus would simply “go away” or “disappear” and, more recently, that the country was “rounding the turn” on the pandemic.
- Lab-confirmed UK coronavirus cases pass 1.5m. The number of coronavirus cases in the UK confirmed in laboratories has passed 1.5m after a further 18,662 cases were announced by the government.It brings the total number of cases in the UK over the course of the pandemic to 1,512,045, though it is widely thought the true figure is far higher.
- Ministers from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have endorsed a shared UK objective of allowing “some limited additional household bubbling for a small number of days” over Christmas, the Cabinet Office said on Sunday. However, they “reiterated the importance of allowing families and friends to meet in a careful and limited way, while recognising that this will not be a normal festive period and the risks of transmission remain very real”. It was unclear how many households would be permitted to mix over Christmas and for how many days restrictions will be relaxed.
- The Covid-19 pandemic has created a potential “existential threat” to central London because many people may in future choose to work in the suburbs rather than in the heart of the capital, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said on Sunday.
- Rishi Sunak, the UK chancellor, has effectively confirmed that this week’s spending review is likely to feature a pay freeze for many public sector workers in England, saying it was “entirely reasonable” to consider pay policy in the context of the Covid-hit economy.
- A sharp rise in coronavirus infections in the Gaza Strip could overwhelm the Palestinian enclave’s meagre medical system by next week, public health advisers said on Sunday.
- Iran has recorded 13,053 new cases of coronavirus and 475 related deaths over the past 24 hours, after tougher coronavirus restrictions came into force in the country.
