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Brazil registers single-day record of 1,641 Covid deaths
Brazil registered an all-time record on Tuesday for the number of Covid-19 deaths in a single day with 1,641 people dying from the disease, according to Health Ministry data.
That surpasses the previous single-day high of 1,595 fatalities recorded in late July 2020, as Brazil faces a new peak in coronavirus cases and the hospital system is pushed to the brink of collapse.
More than 257,000 people have died of Covid-19 in Brazil, according to the official count, making it the deadliest outbreak after that of the United States.
Roughly 10.6 million people have been infected since the pandemic began, according to the Health Ministry, with 59,925 new cases reported on Tuesday.
Brazilian state governors said on Tuesday they would join together to buy Covid-19 vaccines and bypass the federal government, which has been slow to roll out its vaccine program.
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Of the many coronavirus variants identified so far, there is particular concern about P1, first identified in Brazil, with fears about the extent it can evade the immune system and possibly vaccines. The UK has recorded six cases so far, with the hunt now on for the one positive result who did not leave their contact details.
The Guardian’s health editor, Sarah Boseley, has this handy Q&A tackling the problems posed by new variants and how worried we should be.
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Texas became the biggest US state to lift its mask rule on Tuesday, joining a rapidly growing movement by governors and other leaders across the country to loosen Covid-19 restrictions despite pleas from health officials.
The state will also do away with limits on the number of diners who can be served indoors, said the Republican governor Greg Abbott.
The governors of Michigan and Louisiana also eased up on bars, restaurants and other businesses on Tuesday, as did the mayor of San Francisco.
“Removing statewide mandates does not end personal responsibility,” said Abbott, speaking from a crowded dining room where many of those surrounding him were not wearing masks. “It’s just that now state mandates are no longer needed.”
A year into the outbreak, politicians and ordinary Americans alike have grown tired of rules meant to stem the spread of the coronavirus, which has killed over a half-million Americans. Some places are lifting infection control measures; in other places, people are ignoring them.
Top health officials, including the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have responded by begging people repeatedly not to risk another deadly wave of contagion just when the nation is making progress in vaccinating people and victory over the pandemic is in sight.
US cases have plunged more than 70% over the past two months from an average of nearly 250,000 new infections a day, while average deaths per day have fallen by about 40% since mid-January.
But the two curves have levelled off abruptly in the past several days and have even risen slightly, and the numbers are still running at alarmingly high levels, with an average of about 2,000 deaths and 68,000 cases per day. Health officials are increasingly worried about virus mutations.
“We stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained,” CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky warned on Monday.
Even so, many states are allowing restaurants to resume indoor dining, reopening cinemas and expanding mass gatherings, while Americans are eager to socialise again.
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Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister, Michelle O’Neill, has unveiled a cautious five-step plan to ease the region’s Covid-19 lockdown. The plan has no hard dates and will be led by data, notably the reproductive rate of the virus, O’Neill told the Stormont assembly on Tuesday.
The 28-page plan envisages a five-stage process moving from lockdown to relaxation of restrictions for nine different sectors.
There will be reviews on 16 March, 15 April, 13 May and 10 June but these do not represent dates when restrictions will ease. “Rather, they are appropriate dates … to examine all relevant indicators,” said O’Neill. “We do not want to set potentially unachievable dates which will only disappoint.”
The Guardian’s Ireland correspondent, Rory Carroll, has the five steps laid out here:
Millions of coronavirus shots from the global Covax scheme arrived in Nigeria, Angola and DR Congo on Tuesday, as African countries ramped up their vaccine rollouts.
While the continent’s most populous country Nigeria received almost four million jabs, sub-Saharan Africa’s largest nation by area DR Congo got 1.7 million, Angola welcomed more than 600,000 doses and Gambia was expected to take roughly 30,000.
Last week, Ghana and Ivory Coast were the first African countries to receive vaccines from Covax, which is aiming to supply two billion doses by the end of the year.
Richer countries have surged ahead with vaccinations while many poorer nations still wait for deliveries, prompting the World Health Organization to warn that the crisis cannot end unless everyone can inoculate their populations.
However, there are still critical hurdles for African countries like Nigeria and DR Congo, with an array of challenges surrounding infrastructure and security - a point addressed by Faisal Shuaib, director of Nigeria’s primary healthcare agency.
“States without a functional airport will have their vaccines transported by road using vans with fitted cold cabins, from the nearest airport,” he said.
He called the delivery - which arrived around noon in the capital Abuja - a “good day for Nigeria” and promised the rollout would begin in earnest on Friday with frontline health workers the first to be inoculated.
Nigerian official Boss Mustapha urged traditional rulers, religious leaders, civil society groups and the media to spread the message that vaccinations were needed. “This is a fight for everyone,” he said.
In Angola, where some healthcare workers were vaccinated shortly after the doses were offloaded, the WHO’s Djamila Cabral said the arrival of vaccines brought a “stronger hope to save lives”, but warned that everyone needed to continue respecting Covid restrictions to beat the pandemic.
The DR Congo health minister Eteni Longondo told reporters on the tarmac in Kinshasa that the first shipment to the country totalled 1.7 million doses.
The almost four million AstraZeneca/Oxford doses received by Nigeria, made by the Serum Institute of India, are the first of 16 million shots that Covax plans to deliver over the coming months to the country.
The government said it hoped to vaccinate at least 70% of its adult population over the next two years and health officials said more than two million people had already registered for the jab online.
“As the vaccines arrive in batches due to limited supply we will inform Nigerians about who and where to receive the vaccine,” Shuaib told reporters.
A consignment of some 30,000 coronavirus jabs is set to arrive in Gambia on Tuesday evening, the health ministry said, as part of the global vaccine distribution scheme Covax.
Sanjally Trawalleh, a spokesman for the Gambian health ministry, told AFP that the West African state will launch its vaccination campaign shortly after receiving the 30,000 doses.
“Priority will be given to health workers because they are at risk and are more exposed to the disease because of their work,” he said.
Gambia, a poor nation of about 2 million people, has recorded 4,712 coronavirus cases since March, with 150 deaths.
Some 238.2 million doses will be distributed around the world by the end of May through the Covax programme aimed at boosting access to coronavirus jabs in poorer nations.
Neighbouring Senegal also pledged last week to donate 10,000 doses of vaccine from China’s Sinopharm to Gambia.
Other African nations including Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Angola have also already received Covax vaccines.
The Palestinian Authority on Tuesday confirmed that it diverted some Covid-19 vaccination doses meant for medical workers to VIPs as critics charged but said this involved a small fraction of inoculations.
A health ministry statement said 10% of the 12,000 doses it received were given to the Palestinian national football team, government ministers, presidential guards and members of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s topmost Executive Committee. Another 200 doses went to the Jordanian royal court, after a request from Amman.
But it said the other 90% went to health workers treating Covid-19 cases in intensive care units and emergency departments, and health ministry workers.
The ministry statement followed criticism from several Palestinian human rights and civil society groups, who urged an investigation into the vaccination programme, saying it was not transparent.
“The incoming information and testimonies point to ongoing cases where vaccines are obtained by several parties, in disregard of the principle of priority in distribution,” the groups said in a joint statement on Monday.
The Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas - who last month announced the first elections in 15 years - has long faced accusations of nepotism and cronyism. In a December poll, 86% of Palestinians questioned said they viewed PA institutions as corrupt.
But, defending its vaccination program, the health ministry said the ministers and security officials who received vaccines were “in direct contact with the president and the prime minister.” Others were election officials and the football team needed vaccination certificates because they were travelling abroad, “to represent Palestine in a match”.
The West Bank and Gaza, home to a combined 5.2 million Palestinians, have received around 34,700 vaccine doses to date. These came from small donations by Israel and Russia as well as 20,000 sent by the United Arab Emirates to Gaza.
The numbers lag far behind Israel, which has vaccinated more than one-third of its nine million people in one of the world’s fastest roll-outs.
Palestinians have accused Israel of ignoring its duties as an occupying power by not including them in its inoculation programme. But Israeli officials have said that under the Oslo peace accords, the PA health ministry is responsible.
Saudi Arabia’s health ministry has ruled that only people who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 will be allowed to attend the Hajj this year, the Saudi newspaper Okaz reported on Monday.
“The Covid-19 vaccine is mandatory for those willing to come to the Hajj and will be one of the main conditions [for receiving a permit to come],” the report said, citing a circular signed by the health minister.
In 2020, the kingdom dramatically reduced the number of pilgrims to around 1,000 to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, after barring Muslims abroad from the rite for the first time in modern times.
Hajj, a once-in-a-lifetime duty for every able-bodied Muslim who can afford it, is a major source of income for the Saudi government. Crowds of millions of pilgrims from around the world would likely be a hotbed for virus transmission. In the past some worshippers have returned to their countries with respiratory and other diseases.
Brazilian governors scrambling to secure Covid-19 vaccines said on Tuesday they are getting together to bypass Jair Bolsonaro’s government and buy shots directly because of delays in the federal inoculation program, Reuters reports.
Half of the country’s 26 governors visited pharmaceutical company União Quimica in Brasília that will produce Russia’s Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine. São Paulo’s government said it will buy 20 million doses.
Sputnik V would have to be authorised for emergency use by Brazil’s health regulator Anvisa before they can be used. Piauí’s governor Wellington Dias said they hope Anvisa can authorise emergency use by next week.
Brazilian states, facing a resurgence of Covid-19 cases that are overburdening their hospital wards, are frustrated with the Bolsonaro administration failure to secure timely supplies of vaccines.
With more than a quarter of a million Brazilians lost to Covid-19 - the world’s second-deadliest outbreak - Brazil is seeing its highest weekly death tolls since the pandemic began a year ago. Yet little more than 3% of its 210 million people have been vaccinated.
União Quimica, a private company that produces human and animal medicines, plans to start producing the Russian vaccine in April in a transfer of technology from Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute that includes local production of the shot’s active ingredients.
So far, Brazil has relied on limited supplies the Chinese vaccine Coronavac, made by Sinovac, and the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.
João Doria, the governor of São Paulo - the country’s most populous state - said this week his government would bypass the federal Health Ministry if it failed to supply the needed vaccines. On Tuesday, he told reporters his state will go ahead and buy 20 million doses of the Russian vaccine.
Italy closes schools in worst-hit areas
Italy’s government on Tuesday ordered the closure of all schools in areas hardest hit by Covid-19 and extended curbs already in place on businesses and movement until after Easter amid worries over the highly contagious UK variant.
The country is seeing around 15,000 new coronavirus cases per day, with the trend steadily rising and government advisors warning the health system is coming under growing strain.
A tiered colour-coded system which allows for measures to be calibrated according to infection levels in Italy’s 20 regions will remain in force, with assessments revised every week.
Under the decree signed by the prime minister Mario Draghi and effective from 6 March, primary school classes in red zones - those with the toughest restrictions - will from now on be held online. Distance learning was already mandatory for high school students in these areas.
“The English variant which is prevalent is particularly able to penetrate among the youngest age groups,” the health minister Roberto Speranza told reporters at a news conference to outline the measures. The new rules will be valid until 6 April.
Two southern regions, Basilicata and Molise, are currently red zones, meaning restaurants, bars and most shops are closed and people are allowed to leave their homes only for work, health or emergency reasons.
Nine regions are classified as orange, eight as yellow and one, the island of Sardinia, as white, with only minimal restrictions.
Along with regional rules, opening hours for bars and restaurants remain limited nationwide and a nightly curfew is still in place from 10 pm everywhere except in Sardinia.
A ban on ski resorts - imposed before Christmas - has been extended until April, dashing the last hopes of operators to re-open their lifts. And a ban on non-essential travel between the regions had already been extended until 27 March.
Italy’s official death toll stands at 98,288 - the second highest in Europe after the UK and seventh highest worldwide, with several hundreds of fatalities still recorded every day.
The government offered some hope for lockdown-weary Italians, decreeing that cinemas and theatres will be able to reopen from the end of March in low-risk yellow zones.
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Thousands of hospital workers in Hungary have quit over the terms of new state contracts as the country battles surging numbers of cases and deaths.
The National Healthcare Service Center (OFKO), the group that manages state-owned hospitals, said that “95% of the 110,000 public health workers signed the contract” before the 1 March deadline, AFP reports.
This leaves some 5,500 workers who refused to sign the new contract, at a time when Hungary faces rapidly rising infection numbers and deaths.
OFKO head Zoltan Jenei tried to assuage fears about standards of care in the country’s hospitals, telling journalists that “there is every guarantee that the standard of care in any part of the country will remain the same as before and may even improve”.
Many workers took issue with the law restricting extra pay on top of basic salaries, for example for on-call shifts, which could see some take home less pay despite a wage increase. The new legislation also bans hospital personnel from taking second jobs at specialist clinics.
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Sex workers from across the Netherlands have joined a demonstration in The Hague against restrictions banning them from working.
Other close contact professions, such as hairdressers, beauty salons and masseurs, will be allowed to reopen from Wednesday.
“Sex workers have to deal with the special nature of that profession; namely that you are very close to each other, with all the risks of transmission of the virus,” prime minister Mark Rutte said last week.
Summary of recent developments
- Turkey added a further 11,837 new coronavirus cases to its tally on Tuesday, health ministry data showed – the country’s highest daily figure since 7 January.
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Tunisia has detected its first cases of the more transmissible variant of the coronavirus first discovered in the UK, the country’s health ministry said on Tuesday in a statement reported by Reuters.
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German chancellor Angela Merkel wants to begin relaxing coronavirus restrictions from next week, a draft document seen by AFP shows, hoping that reinforced numbers of rapid antigen tests and vaccines will allow the country to unlock.
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Venezuela has received 500,000 doses of China’s Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine President Nicolas Maduro said, as well as protective material for healthcare workers.
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Nigeria’s first Covid-19 vaccines, Oxford/AstraZeneca shots from the international Covax scheme, landed in the capital city Abuja today, Reuters reports.
- The uptake of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine in France stood at 24% as of 28 February, a health ministry official said on Tuesday, well below the country’s target of between 80 and 85%.
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Spain will buy 17m more doses of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine as part of a new deal negotiated by the European Union, government spokeswoman Maria Jesus Montero said on Tuesday.
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American pharmaceutical Merck & Co Inc will help manufacture Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot Covid-19 vaccine in an agreement due to be announced on Tuesday by President Joe Biden, a White House official said on Tuesday.
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Greek officials have announced plans to expand the public health system’s capacity to admit Covid-19 patients following an emergency meeting chaired by prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
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Turkey added a further 11,837 new coronavirus cases to its tally on Tuesday, health ministry data showed, taking the total number of cases to 2,723,316.
It is the highest daily figure recorded since 7 January.
Data also showed 68 people died of Covid-19 during in the same period, bringing the toll to 28,706.
President Tayyip Erdogan relaxed some restrictions on Monday evening, ending weekend lockdowns in low- and medium-risk cities, Reuters reports. In areas considered higher risk, lockdowns were limited to Sundays only.
German chancellor Angela Merkel wants to begin relaxing coronavirus restrictions from next week, a draft document seen by AFP shows, hoping that reinforced numbers of rapid antigen tests and vaccines will allow the country to unlock.
The chancellor aims to ease limits on socialising to allow up to five adults from two households to meet from 8 March. Currently, one household can meet up with only one other person.
Most shops, restaurants, and entertainment venues should remain shut until 28 March, according to the draft.
Merkel faces growing pressure to loosen the rules, with surveys suggesting Germans are losing patience and businesses are struggling after months of lockdowns, AFP reports. She is due to meet with the country’s regional leaders on Wednesday.
The document says that a phased relaxation of restrictions can be justified by an upcoming boost in vaccine deliveries and the rollout of mass rapid antigen tests, which “will clearly change the pandemic situation”.
Venezuela has received 500,000 doses of China’s Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine President Nicolas Maduro said, as well as protective material for healthcare workers.
“The Chinese vaccine will reinforce the immunisation process,” Maduro said on Twitter. Venezuela received the shipment on Monday night, state media reported.
The doses will be used to vaccinate doctors, nurses, teachers and security personnel.
The country of around 25 million people received its first 100,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine on 13 February. It has invested $200 million to buy 10 million doses of the Russian vaccine.
Austria’s chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, described the EU’s vaccination deployment as “too slow” as he announced that his country and Denmark would work with Israel on protecting their citizens against new coronavirus variants.
The move by the two member states to form a vaccine manufacturing partnership comes as the latest figures show that 7.5% of the EU population have received a vaccine dose compared with 94.8% in Israel and 31% in the UK.
“We must prepare for further mutations and should no longer be dependent solely on the EU in the production of second-generation vaccines,” Kurz said.
He added that Austria and Denmark “will no longer rely on the EU in the future and will in the coming years produce doses of second-generation vaccine for further mutations of the coronavirus together with Israel as well as researching jointly treatment possibilities”.
Italy has registered a further 17,083 Covid-19 infections and 343 related deaths, the health ministry said. In comparison, last Tuesday, 13,299 new cases and 356 fatalities were reported.
The country has registered 98,288 deaths linked to Covid-19 since the pandemic began, the second-highest toll in Europe after the UK, and the seventh-highest in the world, Reuters reports.
The country has also reported a cumulative total of 2.95 million infections.
A total of 19,570 patients were hospital with Covid-19 (not including those in intensive care) on Tuesday, an increase of 458 since Monday. There were 222 new admissions to intensive care, taking the total number of patients in ICU to 2,327.
During Italy’s second wave in early November, hospital admissions were increasing by about 1,000 per day, while intensive care occupancy was rising by about 100 per day.
Tunisia records first cases of UK variant
Tunisia has detected its first cases of the more transmissible variant of the coronavirus first discovered in the UK, the country’s health ministry said on Tuesday in a statement reported by Reuters.
The ministry did not give further details.
The north African country has recorded 233,669 cases and 8,022 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus tracker.
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Greek officials have announced plans to expand the public health system’s capacity to admit Covid-19 patients following an emergency meeting chaired by prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
With almost no bed space left in intensive care units in state-run hospitals in Athens, the government will commandeer private sector clinics to boost capacity.
The move, expected to be detailed by the country’s health minister tomorrow, comes amid mounting criticism of the way the pandemic has been handled. Greece has been under one of the longest and toughest lockdowns in Europe but progress in reining in a coronavirus count load that has shown periodic spikes has been elusive.
“The latest lockdown has definitely not been as effective,” infectious disease expert Gkikas Magiorkinis told the Guardian. “It might be a combination of factors, including faster transmissibility of the virus because of the new variants and of course fatigue, but we’ve been surprised.”
Athens, has been under ‘hard’ lockdown with all shops and non-essential businesses closed, since 11 February. Restrictions which were due to be eased at the end of the month have now been extended until 8 March in what is fast becoming a pattern of prolonging curbs week by week.
On Tuesday, the Panhellenic Federation of State Hospital Employees, known as POEDIN, slammed the centre right government for failing to use private hospitals earlier noting that there were only 15 beds in intensive care wards available for critically ill patients in the greater Athens region.
“We are at a loss to understand the delay with which they are doing the self-evident,” said POEDIN’s president, Michalis Giannakos.
“The situation is reminiscent of war,” he added describing exhausted and sweat-drenched doctors on the Covid-19 wards of a hospital he had visited earlier in the day.
Greece has fared better than other EU countries but infection rates have risen steadily in recent weeks, hitting 2,353 new infections this evening.
By Monday 192,270 coronavirus cases had been reported in the country that has also registered 6,534 deaths to date.
On account of the latest surge the government is considering tightening restrictions allowing citizens to exercise outside their homes.
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A remote island, 300km (186 miles) from the capital Colombo, has been chosen by Sri Lanka’s government for the burial of Covid-19 victims from the minority Muslim and Christian communities, the BBC reports.
The government previously forced religious minorities to cremate their dead in line with the practice of the majority Buddhists. But the government backed down last week in the face of vehement criticism from rights groups with Islam prohibiting cremation.
In Sri Lanka, Muslims make up nearly 10% of the population.
The World Health Organization has provided extensive guidance on how the bodies of those who have died from Covid should be handled safely, while acknowledging that there is no scientific evidence to suggest cremation should be used to prevent infection.
“There is a common assumption that people who died of a communicable disease should be cremated to prevent spread of that disease; however, there is a lack of evidence to support this. Cremation is a matter of cultural choice and available resources.”
Authorities in Germany and France are under pressure to come up with creative solutions to shift the AstraZeneca vaccine at higher speed in order to avoid a pile-up of unused doses over the coming weeks, writes Philip Oltermann and Jon Henley.
On Monday, France’s medical regulator reversed its advice not to use the AstraZeneca jab on over-65s, and Germany’s vaccination committee is coming under increasing pressure to follow suit or even scrap prioritisation altogether.
Both countries have been slow to administer the Oxford-developed vaccine, subject to an acrimonious tug-of-war over delayed deliveries between its Swedish-British producer and the European commission in January.
The utilisation rate of the AstraZeneca jab in France stands at 24%, an official with the health ministry said on Tuesday, well below a target set at 80-85%. In Germany two-thirds of 1.4m delivered doses remained in storage on Monday.
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American pharmaceutical Merck & Co Inc will help manufacture Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot Covid-19 vaccine in an agreement due to be announced on Tuesday by President Joe Biden, a White House official said on Tuesday.
The deal comes just days after the US government approved Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine and as the company looks to increase its production, Reuters reports. Merck abandoned its plans for developing its own candidates in January and said it was instead looking manufacturing doses developed by other firms.
Johnson & Johnson is distributing 4m doses of its vaccine in the US this week. The drugmaker’s next shipments depend on when its new, larger manufacturing plant is granted regulatory approval, with plans to deliver another 16m doses by the end of March.
The American multinational’s vaccine is expected to be easier to roll out, as it only requires one shot and refrigeration, rather than freezing (Pfizer and Moderna’s need to be frozen).
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The coronavirus variant originally found in Manaus in Brazil and now detected in six cases in the UK was able to evade 25% to 61% of the protection people in the Amazonian city had after a first bout of Covid, researchers say.
An international team of scientists is calling for more genetic sequencing of emerging variants around the world, saying that only with knowledge of how Sars-Cov2 is mutating can the pandemic be brought under control.
The variant, called P1, is causing concern in the UK because it not only has potential to evade the immune protection of previous illness or vaccines, but is more transmissible than the original coronavirus. The study in Manaus, which has not yet been published in peer-reviewed form, found it was about 1.4 to 2.2 times more transmissible than the original virus.
Mexico and the US have not yet reached a deal on sharing Covid-19 vaccines, President Andres Manuel López Obrador has said, adding that he and Joe Biden will continue to discuss possible solutions.
The two sides have agreed to keep talking, López Obrador told a news conference on Tuesday following a virtual meeting between the two leaders. He added that his US counterpart showed great understanding for Mexico’s position.
Conversamos con el presidente Joe Biden y su equipo. Fue un encuentro amistoso y por el bien de nuestros pueblos. Les comparto el inicio de la reunión bilateral:https://t.co/fARIDY8akz pic.twitter.com/QHQLLx7exn
— Andrés Manuel (@lopezobrador_) March 2, 2021
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Spain will buy 17m more doses of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine as part of a new deal negotiated by the European Union, government spokeswoman Maria Jesus Montero said on Tuesday.
The government aims to have vaccinated 70% of Spain’s 47 million population by the summer, she reiterated in remarks reported by Reuters. A total of 1.3 million people have been fully vaccinated so far.
Spain suffered its second-worst month for coronavirus deaths in February, recording 10,528 fatalities – the worst figure since April last year, government figures showed on Monday. A total of 16,354 people died last April.
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Sweden has registered 11,804 new coronavirus cases since Friday, the country’s health agency statistics showed on Tuesday, compared with 10,933 cases during the same period last week.
A further 56 deaths were also registered in the country of 10 million, a fall from 64 during the corresponding period last week. The deaths registered have occurred over several days and sometimes weeks, according to Reuters.
The country’s death toll since the beginning of the pandemic stands at 12,882. Sweden, which has eschewed lockdowns, has a much higher death rate per capita than other Nordic countries, but lower than that observed in several European countries that have enforced lockdowns over the last year.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy was vaccinated during a visit to the frontline in the eastern Donbass region on Tuesday, hoping to reassure sceptics that the vaccine is safe and effective in a country with a high degree of hesitancy.
Ukraine has only just begun inoculating its 41 million people after its first batch of 500,000 Indian-made AstraZeneca shots landed in the country last month. Frontline health workers and the military are being prioritised in the rollout, Reuters reports.
“Got vaccinated against Covid. Did this on the frontline with our soldiers as Supreme C-in-C [Commander in Chief],” Zelenskiy tweeted.
“The same Oxford/AstraZeneca (Covishield) from India, which was delivered 1st to UA (Ukraine) & received by millions of people in the world. Vaccine will let us live without restrictions again.”
The government is fighting an uphill battle against scepticism in Ukraine, saying data shows that 47% of the population do not want to take it.
Zelenskiy’s government has blocked the use of Russia’s Sputnik jab.
Got vaccinated against #COVID19. Did this on the frontline with our soldiers as Supreme C-in-C. The same Oxford/AstraZeneca (Covishield) from India, which was delivered 1st to 🇺🇦 & received by millions of people in the world. Vaccine 💉 will let us live without restrictions again pic.twitter.com/1diLtuRmqK
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) March 2, 2021
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Q: Yesterday was the first day of vaccinations in Africa. There are only 39 days left in Covax target of delivering vaccines in first 100 days of 2021. Will the target be met in Africa, where only five countries have received doses?
Ghana’s health minister, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, says “it looks like hesitancy can be managed” with a demonstration of leadership. Says there have been no side effects so far, and that he doubts there will be any.
WHO says it is “completely possible” that the countries that have not started vaccinating will begin in March, adding that the challenge is whether manufacturers can keep up with Covax orders. Nearly 30 countries in sub-Saharan Africa will receive doses in next couple weeks and the rollout will begin to move more quickly.
Q: Why are Venezuela and Cuba not on the list? Why does Mexico only have five million doses allocated given their large population?
Dr Berkley says we’re in “very early days” of rollout and we’ll see more doses going out soon. He says Cuba did not choose to be part of the facility which is why there are no doses there. Venezuela will receive doses but the exact date is not yet clear.
In terms of Mexico’s numbers, he says “this is just the first allocation of vaccines – there will be more doses”. Each self-financing participant has made a choice on what amount of doses they want to receive (some have chosen the maximum, some have chosen less due to their existing deals).
Dr Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, says emerging variants show our “best chance out of the pandemic is to continue use of non-pharmaceutical interventions” but also roll out vaccines as soon as possible.
Says it will continue to add vaccines from any manufacturer that meets “stringent” approval standards.
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Dr Richard Hatchett, CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi) compares the progress made to the distribution of vaccines in the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.
He says then, developing countries only received vaccines four months after richer countries, and only 100,000 doses were shared in the first six weeks of the programme. In the first three months, fewer than 10m doses were distributed in 17 countries.
“In the first 10 days we will have exceeded the achievements of the first three months of the 2010 programme,” Hatchett says, adding that this is “only the beginning.”
More than 1.1m doses have been delivered, with more than 20 more countries expecting to receives hundreds of thousands more doses this week, Unicef chief Henrietta Fore says.
The Covax scheme aims to deliver 2bn doses by the end of the year to around 190 countries.
Africa’s CDC director, Dr John Nkengasong, says a meeting is planned for 12 April to work towards manufacturing vaccines on the continent.
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WHO and the vaccine alliance Gavi, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and UNICEF are holding a briefing on the progress made on the Covax programme.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said vaccine supplies are set to be delivered in Angola, Cambodia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria today.
He said 237 million doses of AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine will be delivered to 142 countries between now and the end of May.
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Uptake of AstraZeneca vaccine at 24% in France
The uptake of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine in France stood at 24% as of 28 February, a health ministry official said on Tuesday, well below the country’s target of between 80 and 85%. Authorities are fighting convince more people that a jab from the British-Swedish giant is just as effective as others.
In comparison, 82% accepted the vaccine manufactured by Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and 37% that made by Moderna, Reuters reports.
Uptake is also low among health workers employed in French care homes, with around half of staff saying they do not want to be vaccinated, according to the group of experts guiding the state’s vaccine rollout.
There are concerns that health workers could transmit the disease to unvaccinated residents, about 20% of whom have not received the jab.
Malika Belarbi, a care worker and trade union official, told the news agency that a factor behind workers’ vaccine scepticism is a lack of trust in the French state, whom care home workers blame for their low pay and tough working conditions.
Vaccine hesitancy also appears to be high among care home workers in Germany, where one care home operator, BeneVit Group, found that only 30% of staff wanted to get vaccinated in a survey in November.
In England, only 77% of all NHS healthcare workers had received their first dose of Covid vaccine by 20 February, although the figure is likely to have increased further over the past 10 days. The government has claimed that all healthcare workers have been offered a jab.
Care UK, one of the UK’s largest care home operators has instituted a no jab, no job policy for new staff. The operator runs 120 homes and has seen more than two-thirds of its staff vaccinated.
Updated
Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom have administered the highest number of vaccine doses per capita globally.
In Israel, 93.5 doses have been given per 100 people, while in the UAE the figure is 60.87. In the UK, 30.77 shots have been administered for every 100 residents.
Graph courtesy of ourworldindata.org.
Updated
Italians have been clamouring to receive the Sputnik vaccine in San Marino after the microstate started administering the Russian jab last week.
San Marino, landlocked within central Italy, signed a deal with Russia after the doses it was expecting to receive from Italy via the EU’s procurement programme failed to arrive. The enclave received the first 7,500 batch of Sputnik doses on Friday, when it began its campaign to vaccinate its 35,000 residents.
Authorities have been clear that Sputnik is not available to Italian residents, apart from key workers who cross the border, but that has not stopped many people trying.
For days, San Marino has received a “boom” in calls from Italians living in the neighbouring Emilia-Romagna region, as well as those in the Italian-speaking Swiss canton of Ticino, seeking the vaccine, according to Il Messaggero newspaper.
Meanwhile, Matteo Salvini, the leader of the far-right League, and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who leads Forza Italia, have called for Sputnik to be approved in Italy.
As with other EU states, Italy’s vaccination strategy has been slowed by hampered delays in vaccines. The new prime minister, Mario Draghi, on Monday fired the Covid vaccine tsar, Domenico Arcuri, and replaced with army logistics expert, Francesco Paolo Figluolo, in his first decisive move to accelerate the programme.
Updated
Hello, I’m taking over the blog now from Haroon Siddique. Please feel free to message me on Twitter with any coronavirus developments you think I might have missed. Thanks in advance.
Nigeria receives first delivery of vaccines
Nigeria’s first Covid-19 vaccines, Oxford/AstraZeneca shots from the international Covax scheme, landed in the capital city Abuja today, Reuters reports.
The 3.92m doses will kick off the arduous task of inoculating Africa’s most populous nation.
Nigeria, with 200 million residents, is the third west African country to take delivery of Covax shots, after Ghana and Ivory Coast, both of which have already begun vaccination campaigns.
Updated
Austria and Denmark, chafing at the slow rollout of Covid-19 vaccines in the European Union, have broken ranks with Brussels to form an alliance with Israel to produce second-generation vaccines against mutations of the coronavirus, Reuters reports.
The move by the two EU member states comes amid rising anger over delays in ordering, approving and distributing vaccines that have left the 27-member bloc trailing far behind Israel’s world-beating vaccination campaign.
Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz said while the principle that the EU procures vaccines for member states was correct, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) had been too slow to approve them and lambasted pharmaceutical companies’ supply bottlenecks.
“We must therefore prepare for further mutations and should no longer be dependent only on the EU for the production of second-generation vaccines,” the conservative chancellor said in a statement today.
Danish prime minister Danish Mette Frederiksen was also critical of the EU’s vaccine programme.
“I don’t think it can stand alone, because we need to increase capacity. That is why we are now fortunate to start a partnership with Israel,” she told reporters yesterday.
When asked if Denmark and Austria wanted to take unilateral action in obtaining vaccines, Frederiksen said: “You can call it that.” Kurz and Frederiksen are due to travel to Israel this week to see Israel’s rapid vaccine roll-out up close.
Updated
Here are some more details from Reuters on Germany’s plans to extend its coronavirus lockdown until 28 March, while easing some restrictions from next week:
Merkel is due to discuss lockdown and easing options, set out in a draft document, with the 16 state heads tomorrow, as coronavirus cases in Germany hit more than 2.4 million and public frustration mounts over restrictive measures and a sluggish vaccine rollout.
The draft document states that starting from 8 March a maximum of five people from two households, excluding children younger than 14, will be allowed to meet, up from a maximum of two people under current rules.
Flower and book stores, garden centres, tattoo and nail parlours as well as massage salons will also be allowed to reopen.
Merkel and state leaders will have to decide at which seven-day incidence rate per 100,000 residents measures could be either toughened or eased. The document cited 35 and 50 as two likely possibilities.
With Easter approaching, the draft agreement also appeals to Germans to avoid domestic and foreign travel, adding however that limited visits to relatives will be allowed over the festive days.
Updated
Germany to extend lockdown - report
Germany plans to extend its coronavirus lockdown until 28 March but some restrictions will be eased starting from 8 March, Focus Online reported, citing a draft agreement for talks between Chancellor Angela Merkel and leaders of the 16 federal states.
Merkel is due to discuss lockdown options with the states’ heads tomorrow, as coronavirus cases in Germany reached more than 2.4 million.
Ahead of the summit, some state leaders are urging for a greater reopening of the economy, with one state premier saying people were “corona-fatigued” while another stressed “we cannot wait until Easter”.
Meanwhile, doctors are warning of an impending third wave. And Hamburg’s mayor told one newspaper: “We would risk extending the crisis if we now lift too many restrictions at the same time.”
Updated
Turkey reopens restaurants and schools
Restaurants in Turkey reopened and many children returned to school today after the government announced steps to ease Covid-19 curbs even as cases edged higher, raising concerns in the top medical association, Reuters reports:
On Monday evening, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan lifted weekend lockdowns in low- and medium-risk cities and limited lockdowns to Sundays in those deemed higher risk under what he called a “controlled normalisation”.
Cafe and restaurant owners, limited to takeaway service for much of last year, have long urged a reopening of in-house dining after sector revenues dropped 65%. They also want relief from growing debt, and from social security and tax payments.
“We were serving 4,000-5,000 people a week. Now with takeaway services we are serving only 500 people,” Istanbul-based Pideban restaurant owner Yusuf Kaptanoglu said before the easing measures were announced. “I did not benefit from any support including loan support,” he said.
Across Turkey, pre- and primary schools as well as grades eight to 12 resumed partial in-person education. Yet the moves come as new daily coronavirus cases rose to 9,891 on Monday, the highest since 11 January and up from 8,424 a day earlier, according to official data. Cases were around 6,000 in late January.
“The number of mutant virus cases is increasingly rising. We do not see conditions to return to an old ‘normal’,” the Turkish Medics’ Association said on Twitter, calling for higher rates of testing and inoculation.
“Political and economic interests must not take precedence over human life and science,” it added.
Turkey, with a population of 83 million, has administered 8.96 million vaccines in a campaign that began in mid-January. More than 7 million people have received a first shot and 1.89 million have received a second.
Updated
Indonesia has detected two cases of the more infectious Covid-19 variant first discovered in Britain, officials said today, Reuters reports.
Dante Saksono Harbuwono, the deputy health minister, said the discovery of the variant represented a new challenge.
“We’ll be facing this pandemic with a higher degree of difficulty,” he told a streamed conference.
Indonesia’s Covid-19 taskforce also confirmed cases of the variant, known as B117, had been found but declined further comment.
Since Indonesia announced its first cases of Covid-19 a year ago it has reported more than 1.3 million infections and 36,000 deaths, though daily infections have been falling recently after peaking in January and early February.
The British variant has also been found in other countries in south-east Asia including Vietnam and the Philippines.
Riza Putranto, a genomics researcher in Jakarta, called for increased genomic surveillance in Indonesia and adherence of health protocols in order to combat the variant.
“We would need a comprehensive collaboration from many stakeholders to minimise the impact of this new variant in Indonesia,” he said.
While daily cases have been falling, the positivity rate - or the percentage of people tested who are found to have the virus - in the past week has still been hovering around 20%. The World Health Organization has said a positivity rate of less than 5% is required to indicate that an epidemic is under control.
The world’s fourth most populous country aims to vaccinate more than 181 million people in a bid to reach herd immunity. It launched a mass inoculation programme in January starting with medical workers, civil servants and the elderly.
Updated
France has eased restrictions on giving the AstraZeneca vaccine to people aged over 65 after new trial data proved the shot was effective, health minister Olivier Véran has said.
While the EMA, the bloc’s drug regulator, approved the AstraZeneca jab for use by all adults, health agencies in many EU countries, including France and Germany, advised against its use for the over-65s pending more trial data from older age groups.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, sparked consternation by telling journalists it was “quasi-ineffective” for the over-65s, but last week said more data had since become available and he would take the jab if offered.
Véran told French TV that “anybody aged 50 or over who is affected by co-morbidities can get the AstraZeneca vaccine, including those between 65 and 74.” Those over 75 would continue to be given only the Pfizer and Moderna shots only, he said.
The decision means another 1.5 million people are eligible from today for AstraZeneca vaccines from family doctors, with France’s slow rollout soon also to be extended to pharmacies. Véran said France should deliver a further 6m first jabs this month.
Meanwhile, the French government spokesman, Gabriel Attal, said today all options remained open to rein in rising infection numbers in some areas, including a new national lockdown and regional weekend lockdowns. Le Monde reported that the Paris area could be placed in weekend lockdown from next weekend.
Updated
Iraq receives first vaccines
Iraq today received 50,000 Sinopharm vaccines donated by China, the health ministry announced, launching a long-awaited vaccination campaign, AFP reports:
Health ministry spokesman Seif al-Badr told reporters that the first delivery in the early hours meant inoculations could begin.
“The doses will be delivered to Baghdad’s three main hospitals, and maybe to some provinces,” said Badr, who confirmed the jabs were donations.
“We will start vaccinations today, Tuesday,” he said.
The health ministry simultaneously announced it had agreed with the Chinese ambassador in Baghdad to purchase a further 2m doses, with no details on payment or timing.
Sinopharm affiliate Wuhan Institute Of Biological Products says its vaccine has an efficacy rate of 72.51%, behind rival jabs by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which have 95% and 94.5% rates respectively.
Hours earlier, on Monday afternoon, the health ministry launched an online platform for citizens to register for vaccinations, but the page was not functional on Tuesday.
It has said health workers, security forces and the elderly would be prioritised and that the vaccine would be administered free of charge, but has given few other details.
The first jabs arrived as the Iraqi government faces growing criticism of its handling of the pandemic.
The country has been hit by a second wave of Covid-19 infections, with more than 3,000 new cases reported daily, a few months after they had dropped to around 700 a day, and deaths also tripling to around 25 a day in recent weeks.
To stop the spread, Iraq has imposed overnight curfews during weekdays and full lockdowns on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, with obligatory mask-wearing in public.
But there is little commitment by either the public or security forces deployed to enforce the measures, in a country whose health sector has been ravaged by decades of war, corruption and slim investment.
Some Iraqi officials have already been vaccinated. Two current and one former Iraqi official told AFP in January they had already received doses of “the Chinese vaccine”.
They said 1,000 vaccine doses had been gifted to a senior Iraqi politician through contacts in China and had been distributed to top politicians and government officials.
Updated
New York governor Andrew Cuomo has retained a prominent white-collar criminal defence lawyer to represent his office in a federal investigation into the state’s misreporting of Covid-19 deaths among nursing home residents, Reuters reports, citing a spokesman:
Cuomo has come under fire in recent weeks over his office’s role in reporting the official count of coronavirus fatalities among patients of nursing and extended-care facilities, as well as for allegations of sexual harassment levelled against him.
Elkan Abramowitz, a former federal prosecutor working in private practice in New York City, was hired to represent Cuomo’s “executive chamber” – consisting of the governor and his immediate staff – in the US Justice Department inquiry into the Covid-19 nursing home deaths, senior adviser Rich Azzopardi told Reuters in a text message.
Cuomo rose to national prominence for his daily televised briefings last spring, when New York was at the heart of the Covid-19 epidemic in the US.
In January, the attorney general’s office issued a report that cast doubt on the Cuomo administration’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, saying the state health department significantly undercounted the death toll in nursing homes and implemented policies that may have contributed to it.
Updated
Hello, it’s Haroon Siddique here, taking over the blog.
You can contact me via the following channels:
Twitter: @Haroon_Siddique
Email: haroon.siddique@theguardian.com
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, and Nicholas Cage, who also encapsulates my feelings about liveblogging the pandemic for almost a year straight:
when it's March 2021 but it never stopped being March 2020 pic.twitter.com/FPv03bmJDP
— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) March 1, 2021
Summary
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
- China said it aims to vaccinate 40% of population by June. Health experts in China say their country is lagging in its coronavirus vaccination rollout because it has the disease largely under control, but plans to inoculate 40% of its population by June.
- France, Germany are struggling to sell AstraZeneca vaccine safety. Already facing a daunting Covid vaccination challenge, French and German authorities are fighting to convince more people that a jab from the pharma giant AstraZeneca is just as effective as others.
- World won’t be done with Covid-19 this year, the WHO warned. It is unrealistic to think the world will be done with the Covid-19 pandemic by the end of the year, the World Health Organization warned on Monday.
- Donald and Melania Trump received the coronavirus vaccine before leaving the White House, according to multiple news reports on Monday. Citing unnamed advisers, the New York Times, CNN and other outlets reported that while other officials, including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the former vice-president Mike Pence, chose to get their shots publicly to encourage confidence in the vaccines, the Trumps opted to quietly get vaccinated in January. There was no detail on which shot they received or how many doses they had been given.
- Fauci said the US must stick with two-dose strategy for Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. The United States must stick to a two-dose strategy for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Covid vaccines, top US infectious disease official Anthony Fauci told the Washington Post newspaper. Fauci said that delaying a second dose to inoculate more Americans creates risks.
- Mexico’s coronavirus chief came home from hospital. Mexico’s coronavirus czar is back home after being hospitalized for Covid last Wednesday, but will still be monitored and receive treatment, a health official said on Monday, as the country’s coronavirus death toll passed 186,000.
- New infections rose last week for first time in seven weeks. More from the World Health Organization: The WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said new case numbers rose last week in Europe, the Americas, southeast Asia and the eastern Mediterranean. The number of new coronavirus infections globally rose last week for the first time in seven weeks.
-
Philippines confirmed its first cases of South African variant. The Philippines has documented six cases of the South African coronavirus variant, its health ministry said on Tuesday, raising concern among its experts that the current vaccines might be less effective.
- The US downplayed the possibility of sharing Covid vaccines with Mexico. The Biden administration on Monday downplayed the prospect of sharing coronavirus vaccines with Mexico, saying it is focused first on getting its own population protected against a pandemic that has killed more than 500,000 Americans.
- Stop doing anal Covid tests on our citizens, Japan told China. Tokyo has requested Beijing to stop taking anal swab tests for Covid-19 on Japanese citizens because the procedure causes psychological pain, a government spokesperson has said.
- Data on long Covid in UK children is cause for concern. Scientists have warned that emerging data on long Covid in children should not be ignored given the lack of a vaccine for this age group, but cautioned that the evidence describing these enduring symptoms in the young is so far uncertain.
- Fossil fuel emissions in danger of surpassing pre-Covid levels. The world has only a few months to prevent the energy industry’s carbon emissions from surpassing pre-pandemic levels this year as economies begin to rebound from Covid-19 restrictions, according to the International Energy Agency.
Tokyo governor says fall in cases may not be enough to lift emergency state – report
Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike said on Tuesday that the pace of the fall in coronavirus cases had eased, expressing concern that it may not be enough to lift a state of emergency remaining in the greater metropolitan area, Kyodo News reported.
“We may not make it in time,” she said, referring to the scheduled end to the emergency state on 7 March for the Japanese capital and three neighbouring prefectures, according to Kyodo.
Updated
Fossil fuel emissions in danger of surpassing pre-Covid levels
The world has only a few months to prevent the energy industry’s carbon emissions from surpassing pre-pandemic levels this year as economies begin to rebound from Covid-19 restrictions, according to the International Energy Agency.
New figures from the global energy watchdog found that fossil fuel emissions climbed steadily over the second half of the year as major economies began to recover. By December 2020, carbon emissions were 2% higher than in the same month the year before:
Data on long Covid in UK children is cause for concern, scientists say
Scientists have warned that emerging data on long Covid in children should not be ignored given the lack of a vaccine for this age group, but cautioned that the evidence describing these enduring symptoms in the young is so far uncertain.
Recently published data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has caused worry. The data suggest that 13% of under 11s and about 15% of 12- to 16-year-olds reported at least one symptom five weeks after a confirmed Covid-19 infection. ONS samples households randomly, therefore positive cases do not depend on having had symptoms and being tested:
Two Nigerian nurses were attacked by the family of a deceased Covid patient, the Associated Press reports. One nurse had her hair ripped out and suffered a fracture. The second was beaten into a coma.
Following the assaults, nurses at Federal Medical Centre in the Southwestern city of Owo stopped treating patients, demanding the hospital improve security. Almost two weeks passed before they returned to work with armed guards posted around the clock.
“We don’t give life. It is God that gives life. We only care or we manage,” said Francis Ajibola, a local leader with the National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives.
The attack in Nigeria early last month was just one of many on health workers globally during the Covid pandemic. A new report by the Geneva-based Insecurity Insight and the University of California, Berkeley’s Human Rights Center identified more than 1,100 threats or acts of violence against health care workers and facilities last year.
Researchers found that about 400 of those attacks were related to Covid, many motivated by fear or frustration, underscoring the dangers surrounding health care workers at a time when they are needed most.
Insecurity Insight defines a health care attack as any physical violence against or intimidation of health care workers or settings, and uses online news agencies, humanitarian groups and social media posts to track incidents around the world.
Podcast: why are we feeling burnt out?
It’s getting towards a year since the UK first went into lockdown. That’s almost 12 months of home-schooling, staying in at the weekends, and not being able to see groups of friends and family in person. For many, the pandemic has also brought grief, loss of financial stability and isolation. So it should come as no surprise that lots of us are feeling emotionally exhausted, stressed and generally worn down.
But why are we hitting the wall now? And what can we do about it? Ian Sample is joined again by Prof Carmine Pariante to discuss pandemic burnout and how to look after our mental health over the coming months:
Mexico's coronavirus chief home from hospital
Mexico’s coronavirus czar is back home after being hospitalized for Covid last Wednesday, but will still be monitored and receive treatment, a health official said on Monday, as the country’s coronavirus death toll passed 186,000.
Reuters: Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell, the face of Mexico’s response to the pandemic, has drawn criticism for downplaying the need for face masks and spearheading a strategy of limited testing.
Lopez-Gatell “is practically asymptomatic ... he will remain at home over the coming days under medical supervision,” said Jose Luis Alomia, head of epidemiology for the national Health Ministry.
Lopez-Gatell, 52, was admitted to a hospital after his medical team determined he required supplemental oxygen and following his 20 February announcement that he tested positive for the disease.
Mexico registered 437 coronavirus fatalities on Monday, bringing its overall death toll to 186,152, according to Health Ministry data.
The data also showed an additional 2,343 confirmed cases, for a total of 2,089,281 cases. The government says the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
A March limerick:
A feeling continues to trend
— Limericking (@Limericking) March 2, 2021
Of Marches converging to blend—
The March that is here
Plus March of last year,
Which sadly neglected to end.
Fauci says US must stick with two-dose strategy for Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines
The United States must stick to a two-dose strategy for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Covid vaccines, top US infectious disease official Anthony Fauci told the Washington Post newspaper.
Fauci said that delaying a second dose to inoculate more Americans creates risks.
He warned that shifting to a single-dose strategy for the vaccines could leave people less protected, enable variants to spread and possibly boost skepticism among Americans already hesitant to get the shots.
“There’s risks on either side,” Fauci was quoted as saying by the Washington Post in a report published late on Monday.
“We’re telling people (two shots) is what you should do and then we say, ‘Oops, we changed our mind’?” Fauci said. “I think that would be a messaging challenge, to say the least.”
He added that he spoke with UK health officials on Monday who have opted to delay second doses to maximise giving more people shots more quickly. Fauci said that strategy would not make sense in the United States.
He said the science does not support delaying a second dose for those vaccines, citing research that a two-shot regimen creates enough protection to help fend off variants of the coronavirus that are more transmissible, whereas a single shot could leave Americans at risk from variants such as the one first detected in South Africa.
“You don’t know how durable that protection is,” he said.
Fauci said on Sunday he was encouraging Americans to accept any of the three available Covid vaccines, including the newly approved Johnson & Johnson shot.
The US government authorized Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose Covid vaccine on Saturday, making it the third to be available in the country following the ones from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna that require two doses.
Covid has claimed more than half a million lives in the United States, and states are clamouring for more doses to stem cases, hospitalisations and deaths.
Updated
March 2020 March 2021 pic.twitter.com/tptCWHxpNO
— Dani Fernandez (@msdanifernandez) March 2, 2021
In case you missed this earlier:
Japan said Tuesday an investigation would be launched after more than 1,000 coronavirus vaccine doses had to be thrown out when a freezer storing them malfunctioned, AFP reports.
A medical institution reported that 172 vials of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which must be kept between -80 and -60 degrees centigrade, were rendered useless after the freezer breakdown over the weekend, Japan’s health ministry said, wasting up to 1,032 doses.
Japan began its inoculation programme on February 17 - just over five months before the Tokyo Olympics - and has so far only approved the Pfizer/BioNTech drug.
Japanese government spokesman Katsunobu Kato said Tuesday that the cause of the malfunction was not yet clear, but the firm that installed the freezer would investigate and report back.
Kato said Japan had installed around 100 vaccine freezers nationwide by the end of February.
“We would like to respond quickly to whatever is necessary, based on what the results of the investigation carried out by the company that installed it,” Kato said.
Updated
The majority of California’s 6.1 million public school students could be back in the classroom by April under new legislation announced Monday by Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders. Critics panned the plan as inadequate, AP reports.
Most students in the nation’s most populous state have been learning from home for the past year during the pandemic. But with new coronavirus cases falling rapidly throughout the state, Newsom and lawmakers have been under increasing pressure to come up with a statewide plan aimed at returning students to schools in-person.
If approved by the Legislature, the plan announced Monday would not order districts to return students to the classroom and no parents would be compelled to send their kids back to school in-person. Instead, the state would set aside $2bn to pay districts that get select groups of students into classrooms by the end of the month.
Crucially, the legislation does not require districts to have an agreement with teachers’ unions on a plan for in-person instruction. That’s a barrier that many districts, including the nation’s second-largest district in Los Angeles, have not been able to overcome.
Philippines confirms first cases of South African variant
The Philippines has documented six cases of the South African coronavirus variant, its health ministry said on Tuesday, raising concern among its experts that the current vaccines might be less effective.
Of the six South African variant cases, three were detected locally and two from Filipinos returning from overseas. The origin of the other case was still being verified, it said. The Philippines kicked off its Covid vaccination campaign on Monday.
Stop doing anal Covid tests on our citizens, Japan tells China
Tokyo has requested Beijing to stop taking anal swab tests for Covid-19 on Japanese citizens because the procedure causes psychological pain, a government spokesperson has said.
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Katsunobu Kato, said the government had not received a response that Beijing would change the testing procedure, so Japan would continue to ask China to alter the way of testing:
WELCOME BACK TO MARCH, BABY pic.twitter.com/JLVyz47h2I
— Anne T. Donahue (@annetdonahue) March 1, 2021
Here is the full story on Trump and Melania getting the vaccine in January:
Donald and Melania Trump received the coronavirus vaccine before leaving the White House, according to multiple news reports on Monday.
Citing unnamed advisers, the New York Times, CNN and other outlets reported that while other officials, including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the former vice-president Mike Pence, chose to get their shots publicly to encourage confidence in the vaccines, the Trumps opted to quietly get vaccinated in January. There was no detail on which shot they received or how many doses they had been given.
Both Donald and Melania contracted and recovered from Covid-19 during the 2020 presidential campaign.
This is an interesting read on New Zealand’s baby boom:
A reminder from US President Joe Biden – and a reminder that if you woke up today after a year and checked the US presidential Twitter account, you might be rather confused:
Wash your hands.
— President Biden (@POTUS) March 2, 2021
Stay socially distanced.
Wear a mask.
Get vaccinated when it’s your turn.
Despite our progress, we can’t let our guard down.
New Zealand urged ‘don’t let virus divide you’ as Covid frustration builds
Ashley Bloomfield, New Zealand’s director general of health, has called on the nation to “not let the virus divide you” amidst frustration with rule-breakers linked to recent coronavirus cases, as well as with the government’s response.
Auckland has been in lockdown since Sunday morning as a result of two cases of community transmission, which were found to have happened while level-three restrictions were in place – threatening the fracture the unity of the “team of five million”.
Case N was yesterday revealed to have gone on a walk with a member of a family confirmed as part of a cluster of coronavirus cases in South Auckland. Their meeting took place during the three-day lockdown last month and was not disclosed to contact tracers:
How is everyone feeling?
March again pic.twitter.com/rKWrCN4fGG
— Jessica Smetana (@jessica_smetana) March 1, 2021
China’s annual session of parliament will chart a course for economic recovery and unveil a five-year plan to fend off stagnation, as strategic rivalry with the United States spurs a shift to reliance on consumption and home-grown technology, Reuters reports.
The National People’s Congress (NPC) opens Friday, when Premier Li Keqiang will deliver the 2021 work report, which for a second consecutive year is not expected to include an explicit economic growth target, sources have said, due to the disruptions caused by the Covid pandemic.
On the same day, China will also release its 14th five-year plan, a blueprint for 2021-2025 that calls for quickening reforms to unleash fresh growth drivers and make the economy more innovative. Sources have said a goal of the plan will be to achieve economic growth averaging around 5%.
China may also set electoral reforms in Hong Kong, where Beijing has been tightening its grip since imposing national security legislation last year after months of unrest in 2019. The reforms will reinforce Beijing’s ambition to have the Chinese territory run by “patriots”, and would further marginalise pro-democracy candidates.
This year’s NPC, which takes place in the massive Great Hall of the People facing Tiananmen Square in central Beijing, returns to its traditional March 5 start after last year’s pandemic-induced delay.
By contrast (and this is still good news from the States): the US recorded fewer than 50,000 new cases on March 1, the first time under that threshold since October last year. The trend is good.
For the first time since Oct 18, the number of new COVID-19 cases is below 50k. pic.twitter.com/FCkKyYIPfM
— The COVID Tracking Project (@COVID19Tracking) March 2, 2021
An update from New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state. 44 days without a local case.
NSW recorded no new locally acquired cases of #COVID19 in the 24 hours to 8pm last night, the 44th consecutive day without a locally acquired case. Three new cases were acquired overseas, bringing the total number of cases in NSW since the beginning of the pandemic to 4,994. pic.twitter.com/GEQtWH7Lwm
— NSW Health (@NSWHealth) March 2, 2021
US downplays possibility of sharing Covid vaccines with Mexico
The Biden administration on Monday downplayed the prospect of sharing coronavirus vaccines with Mexico, saying it is focused first on getting its own population protected against a pandemic that has killed more than 500,000 Americans, Reuters reports.
The remarks by White House press secretary Jen Psaki came before a video conference between Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and U.S. President Joe Biden, in which the Mexican leader was expected to ask the United States to consider sharing some of its Covid vaccine supply.
“The administration’s focus is on ensuring that every American is vaccinated. And once we accomplish that objective, we’re happy to discuss further steps,” Psaki said at a White House news conference.
Biden told reporters that the two leaders would discuss the issue at the meeting’s outset. But an official statement released after the meeting ended made no mention of vaccine distribution.
Biden has predicted the United States will have enough supply by late July to inoculate all Americans. US authorities have administered 76.9 million doses to date, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, enough for 23% of the population to get the two doses recommended for full protection under the vaccines that have been deployed so far.
Mexico has vaccinated roughly 2.5 million doses so far, enough for about 1% of the population, according to data compiled by Reuters. Officials have been frustrated by bottlenecks in supply and raised concerns that wealthy countries are hoarding vaccines.
China says it aims to vaccinate 40% of population by June
Health experts in China say their country is lagging in its coronavirus vaccination rollout because it has the disease largely under control, but plans to inoculate 40% of its population by June, the Associated Press reports.
Zhong Nanshan, the leader of a group of experts attached to the National Health Commission, said the country has delivered more than 52m doses of Covid vaccines as of Feb. 28. He was speaking Monday at an online forum between US and Chinese medical experts hosted by the Brookings Institution and Tsinghua University.
The target is the first China has offered publicly since it began its mass immunisation campaign for key groups in mid-December.
China has been slow to vaccinate its people relative to other countries, inoculating only 3.56% of its population of 1.4 billion so far, according to Zhong. Ranked first in the world in terms of percentage of population is Israel, which has vaccinated over 90% of its people. The US has vaccinated about 22% of its population.
Donald and Melania Trump received Covid vaccine in January
Former US president Donald Trump and former first lady Melania Trump were quietly given a coronavirus vaccine in January, CNN reports. It is unknown which vaccine they received or how many doses they have had.
CNN:
The revelation comes after the former President urged his followers to get vaccinated for the virus during his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, on Sunday, telling the audience, “How unpainful that vaccine shot is, so everybody go get your shot.” That encouragement marked a notable shift as Trump, during his time in office, had long dismissed the gravity of the virus and eschewed practices like social distancing and mask wearing/
CNN previously reported that a White House official had said in mid-December that Trump wouldn’t be administered a coronavirus vaccine until it was recommended by the White House medical team. The official said at the time that Trump was still receiving the benefits of the monoclonal antibody cocktail he was given during his recovery from Covid-19 earlier in the fall, when both he and the first lady had tested positive for the virus.
Green apprenticeships would prepare young people for jobs in renewable energy and the restoration of the UK’s natural landscape, and stop young people having their careers blighted for life by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, a report says:
New infections rose last week for first time in seven weeks
More from the World Health Organization:
The WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said new case numbers rose last week in Europe, the Americas, southeast Asia and the eastern Mediterranean.
The number of new coronavirus infections globally rose last week for the first time in seven weeks.
“This is disappointing, but not surprising,” Tedros said. “Some of it appears to be due to relaxing of public health measures, continued circulation of variants, and people letting down their guard.”
He added: “Vaccines will help to save lives, but if countries rely solely on vaccines, they’re making a mistake. Basic public health measures remain the foundation of the response.”
Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead, said: “If the last week tells us anything, it’s that this virus will rebound if we let it - and we cannot let it.”
Tedros wants Covid-19 vaccination under way in every country within the first 100 days of 2021 - meaning there are 40 days left to go.
World won’t be done with Covid-19 this year, warns WHO
It is unrealistic to think the world will be done with the Covid-19 pandemic by the end of the year, the World Health Organization warned on Monday.
WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said it might however be possible to take the tragedy out of the coronavirus crisis by reducing hospitalisations and deaths.
But the virus remains in control, he added, especially given that global new case numbers increased last week after six consecutive weeks of decline.
“It will be very premature, and I think unrealistic, to think that we’re going to finish with this virus by the end of the year,” Ryan told journalists. “But I think what we can finish with, if we’re smart, is the hospitalisations, the deaths and the tragedy associated with this pandemic.”
Ryan said that vaccinating front-line health care workers and those most vulnerable to severe disease would “take the fear... out of the pandemic”.
But he added that recent progress could not be taken for granted and “right now the virus is very much in control”.
France, Germany struggle to sell AstraZeneca vaccine safety
Already facing a daunting Covid vaccination challenge, French and German authorities are fighting to convince more people that a jab from the pharma giant AstraZeneca is just as effective as others, AFP reports.
Stocks of the vaccines from the British-Swedish firm are going unused in both countries despite the desire to end a pandemic that has sparked a social and economic calamity on a scale not seen since World War II.
Only 273,000 doses of the jab developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University have been administered in France out of 1.7 million received as of end-February, according to health ministry figures.
The poor take-up comes even as the target group for the jabs, health workers over 50 and people with other serious health risks, can get the vaccine directly from their doctor instead of waiting for appointments at vaccination centres.
Experts say it is also cheaper to produce than the two other vaccines approved for Europe, from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, and does not require ultracold storage, making it easier to deploy.
But both France and Germany had refused to authorise AstraZeneca’s vaccine for people over 65, fanning fears over its effectiveness.
However French Health Minister Olivier Veron said Monday that the country would now be made available to those between 65-75 with serious health risks.
Those over 75 will continue to receive the Moderna vaccine, he added.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan.
I’ll be bringing you the latest developments from the next few hours – as always, you can find me to marvel at how it is March once again and we are very much still in the thick of a pandemic on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
It is unrealistic to think the world will be done with the Covid-19 pandemic by the end of the year, the World Health Organization warned on Monday.
And, already facing a daunting Covid vaccination challenge, French and German authorities are fighting to convince more people that a jab from the pharma giant AstraZeneca is just as effective as others.
- Ghana president Nana Akufo-Addo receives forst Covax vaccine worldwide. The Covax scheme, designed to ensure poorer countries do not miss out on vaccinations as worries grow that rich nations are hogging the doses, is aiming to deliver at least two billion jabs by the end of the year.
- Brazilian states blast Bolsonaro over pandemic during worst phase yet. Angry with President Jair Bolsonaro’s handling of the pandemic in its most severe phase, 16 Brazilian governors accused the far-right leader of misleading the country and state authorities urged a nationwide curfew and closure of airports.
- France eased a ban on AstraZeneca vaccine for over-65s. People in France aged over 65 with existing health problems can be given the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, the health minister said on Monday, departing from Paris’s earlier stance that the vaccine should be for under-65s only.
- The number of new coronavirus infections globally rose last week for the first time in seven weeks, the World Health Organization said on Monday.
- France reported that the number of people being treated in intensive care units for Covid-19 was up by 52, at 3,544, going above the 3,500 threshold for the first time since 1 December last year.
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Both the Pfizer/BioNTech and Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines are effective in reducing Covid-19 infections among older people aged 70 years and over, a new study shows.
- The Czech Republic tightened lockdown measures on Monday, beefing up police presence to restrict movement throughout the country as the government battles the world’s worst surge in Covid-19 infections.
- The UK recorded the lowest daily death toll and the lowest number of new cases since October.
- The European Commission will present a proposal in March on creating an EU-wide digital Covid-19 vaccination passport that may allow Europeans to travel more freely over the peak summer holiday period.
- The UK variant of Covid-19 is the main cause of the third wave of the coronavirus epidemic in Poland, the health minister said on Monday.
- Austria plans to let cafe and restaurant terraces reopen this month in a further loosening of its coronavirus lockdown.
- Nearly two thirds of Russians are not willing to receive the country’s Sputnik V vaccine, and about the same number believe Covid-19 was created artificially as a biological weapon, an independent pollster said on Monday.
- The Israeli government is looking to buy an additional 36 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine in case booster shots are needed later in the year.
- China is lagging in its coronavirus vaccination rollout, but plans to inoculate 40% of its population by June.
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The Finnish government has declared a state of emergency over rising coronavirus infections, mainly in order to be legally able to close restaurants.
- Zimbabwe on Monday eased a coronavirus lockdown and overnight curfew imposed in January by allowing businesses to fully reopen after the rate of new infections slowed in the last two weeks.
- Vaccine doses in Ukraine and Japan have been wasted due to vaccine scepticism among doctors and fridge failures respectively, it emerged on Monday.
