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Japan’s government has privately concluded the Tokyo Olympics will have to be cancelled because of the coronavirus, The Times has reported, citing an unnamed senior member of the ruling coalition.
The government’s focus is now on securing the games for Tokyo in the next available year, 2032, the newspaper said.
French president Emmanuel Macron said France will make PCR tests compulsory for all travellers into France from Sunday, including from fellow EU countries, Reuters reports.
Cross-border workers and land transportation will be exempt from that obligation, the French presidency added. The test will have to be carried out no later than 72 hours before departure.
Summary
Here is a quick recap of the latest coronavirus developments across the globe:
- Biden warns Covid will ‘get worse before it gets better’ as he unveils strategy. Joe Biden began his first full day as president confronting a host of major crises facing his fledgling administration, starting with a flurry of actions to address his most pressing challenge: the raging Covid-19 pandemic. At a White House event on Thursday afternoon, Biden unveiled a new “wartime” strategy to combat the coronavirus, vowing “help is on the way.”
- PM Johnson raises fears of lockdown in England continuing into summertime. Boris Johnson raised fears that tough Covid restrictions could continue well into the spring and beyond as ministers refused to be drawn on plans for any potential easing of lockdown.
- France to recommend wearing of surgical masks in public. The French government will recommend that people wear surgical masks in public because fabric masks do not provide enough protection from Covid-19 transmission, health minister Olivier Véran said.
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No way to hold Rio carnival in July, the city’s mayor says. It will not be possible to host carnival celebrations in July, Rio de Janeiro’s new mayor has said, as Brazil’s second wave of coronavirus infections spreads, and with vaccine supplies still scarce.
- Hungary breaks ranks with EU to license Russian vaccine. Hungary has licensed Russia’s coronavirus vaccine, breaking ranks with other EU countries and ignoring calls to stick to a common European vaccine policy.
- Portugal bans all UK flights to tackle rapid spread of new Covid-19 variant. Portuguese prime minister António Costa said all flights to and from Britain will be suspended from Saturday onwards as Portugal scrambles to tackle the rapid spread of the new variant of the coronavirus.
- Austrian mayors who got leftover Covid vaccines accused of ‘queue-jumping’. Local government officials in Austria have been accused of jumping the queue for Covid-19 vaccinations at care homes for elderly people, prompting a clarification of guidelines for handling leftover doses.
- Pfizer cuts vaccine deliveries to some EU countries in half. Pfizer has slashed in half the volume of Covid vaccines it will deliver to some EU countries this week, government officials said, as frustration over the US drugmaker’s unexpected cut in supplies grows.
- Spanish tennis player Paula Badosa tests positive to Covid-19 at Australian Open. Spanish tennis player Paula Badosa has become the first player to test positive to Covid-19 while in hard quarantine ahead of the Australian Open.
Hotspots of Covid-19 infections in the European Union will be labelled “dark red” zones, and travellers from those areas will be required to take a test before departure and undergo quarantine, the chief of the bloc’s executive said.
“A dark red zone would show that in this zone, the virus is circulating at a very high level,” European commission president Ursula von der Leyen said after a meeting of EU leaders, Reuters reports.
“Persons travelling from dark red areas could be required to do a test before departure, as well as to undergo quarantine after arrival.” This system would apply to travel within the EU, she said.
Von der Leyen said that with infections rising and contagious variants of the virus spreading fast, non-essential travel should be “strongly discouraged” within the EU but essential workers and goods must be able to cross borders smoothly.
Spanish tennis player Paula Badosa has become the first player to test positive to Covid-19 while in hard quarantine ahead of the Australian Open.
The world No 67 was one of 72 players forced to isolate in their hotel rooms after passengers on three separate charter flights to Melbourne tested positive.
The 23-year-old took to Twitter late on Thursday night, stating that she had tested positive on the seventh day of her isolation. Authorities have not confirmed where she contracted the virus.
“I have some bad news. Today I received a positive COVID-19 test result. I’m feeling unwell and have some symptoms, but I’ll try to recover as soon as possible listening to the doctors,” she said.
“I’ve been taken to a health hotel [medi-hotel] to self-isolate and be monitored.”
— Paula Badosa (@paulabadosa) January 21, 2021
Originally all players travelling to participate in the Australia Open were meant to enter a bubble where, after testing negative upon arrival, they would be allowed to leave their room for five hours a day to train at specially designated tennis courts.
But this plan was complicated when three international charter flights had passengers test negative to Covid-19 prior to taking off, but positive upon arrival in Melbourne, suggesting they may have been contagious while flying.
Portugal bans all UK flights to tackle rapid spread of new Covid-19 variant
Portuguese prime minister António Costa has said all flights to and from Britain will be suspended from Saturday onwards as Portugal scrambles to tackle the rapid spread of the new variant of the coronavirus.
Only repatriation flights will be allowed between both countries, Costa told a news conference.
He described the measure as a move to reduce the “risk of contagion” due to the new, more contagious variant of the coronavirus discovered in Britain, which is spreading across Portugal.
Anthony Fauci, the top infectious diseases expert in the US, has spoken of a “liberating feeling” of being able to speak scientific truth about the coronavirus without fear of “repercussions” from Donald Trump.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, endured a tortuous relationship with the former president and was increasingly sidelined from public briefings.
But the 80-year-old returned to the White House podium on Thursday after Joe Biden released a national Covid-19 strategy and signed 10 executive orders to combat a pandemic that has now claimed more than 400,000 lives in the US.
“One of the things that we’re going to do is to be completely transparent, open and honest,” Fauci told reporters. “If things go wrong, not point fingers, but to correct them. And to make everything we do be based on science and evidence.
“That was literally a conversation I had 15 minutes ago with the president and he has said that multiple times.”
Asked if he would like to amend or clarify anything he said during the Trump presidency, Fauci insisted he had always been candid, noting wryly. “That’s why I got in trouble sometimes.”
Fauci and other public health advisers were forced to walk a delicate line as the president used coronavirus taskforce briefings to downplay the virus, push miracle cures and score political points.
Fauci also said that, based on seven-day averages, the coronavirus may be plateauing in this US but warned there can always be lags in data reporting. “One of the new things about this new administration: if you don’t know the answer, don’t guess,” he said.
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The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, has raised fears that tough Covid restrictions could continue well into the spring and beyond, as ministers refused to be drawn on plans for any potential easing of lockdown.
While the vast majority of Tory MPs have toed the line since the new variant of the virus sent cases soaring, Downing Street’s reticence is already causing anxiety among a few backbenchers, who are urging an easing of the restrictions if vaccination rates stay on target.
Downing Street is committed to reviewing the current England-wide lockdown in mid-February, by which point all people in the four top target groups for vaccinations should have been offered at least their first injection.
But with 1,290 more UK coronavirus deaths recorded on Thursday, fears that infection rates in England might not even be falling, and the continued spread of the new, more infectious variant of Covid-19, Johnson was notably more cautious about lifting lockdown than he previously has been.
“I think it’s too early to say when we’ll be able to lift some of the restrictions,” he told reporters during a visit to flood-hit Didsbury in Greater Manchester, when asked about the mid-February target.
After Johnson’s spokesman declined to rule out lockdown remaining in place until the summer, Priti Patel, the home secretary, was similarly cautious at the No 10 Covid press conference on Thursday afternoon.
“It’s far too early to even contemplate where we go with restrictions,” she said, when asked about timings. Patel instead announced beefed-up fines to better enforce social distancing rules, with guests found at house parties of more than 15 people liable to incur fines of at least £800.
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Biden says US coronavirus death toll will probably top 500,000 next month
Joe Biden has said the US death toll from the coronavirus will probably top 500,000 next month, painting a grim picture of what he said would be a difficult battle.
In a White House event, the new US president said the rollout of the vaccine had been a “dismal failure so far”.
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No way to hold Rio carnival in July, the city's mayor says
It will not be possible to host carnival celebrations in July, Rio de Janeiro’s new mayor has said, as Brazil’s second wave of coronavirus infections spreads, and with vaccine supplies still scarce.
On Twitter, Eduardo Paes said he was aware of the economic and cultural benefits the world-famous party, originally scheduled for next month, brings to the city. But he said there was no way it could be held even in the middle of the year.
I have never hidden my passion for carnival and the clear vision I have of the economic importance of this cultural event for our city. However, it seems pointless to imagine at this point that we will be able to hold the carnival in July.
This celebration requires a great deal of preparation on the part of public bodies and of samba associations and institutions, something impossible to do at that moment. Thus, I would like to inform you that we will not have carnival in the middle of the year in 2021.
Nunca escondi minha paixão pelo carnaval e a visão clara que tenho da importância econômica dessa manifestação cultural para nossa cidade. No entanto, me parece sem qq sentido imaginar a essa altura que teremos condições de realizar o carnaval em julho. pic.twitter.com/B932v233En
— Eduardo Paes (@eduardopaes_) January 21, 2021
The latest delay to this year’s celebrations is not a surprise. Brazil is reeling from a brutal second wave in a pandemic that has claimed more than 200,000 lives, the second highest total in the world after the US. Meanwhile, the government is under growing pressure over the slow pace of its vaccine rollout.
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France to recommend wearing of surgical masks in public
The French government will recommend that people wear surgical masks in public because fabric masks do not provide enough protection from Covid-19 transmission, health minister Olivier Véran has said.
France already requires masks to be worn in public places, but until now has not made recommendations about the type of masks that should be worn in that setting.
Véran, speaking to French broadcaster TF1, also said it was unlikely restrictions on ski resorts would be lifted next month, effectively ruling out a return to skiing in time for the February school holidays.
He said the government could not rule out a tightening of coronavirus restrictions if virus transmission accelerates, Reuters reports.
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Spanish health minister Salvador Illa will resign next week to campaign in regional elections in Catalonia, an official from his party said, while national authorities reported a record 44,357 new daily coronavirus cases.
From Reuters:
“By Thursday of next week at 12 midnight, he will have given up his portfolio,” said Miquel Iceta, the secretary of the Catalan Socialist Party.
Illa, who has overseen Spain’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, had said he would step down when campaigning got underway for the election, which is set to take place on 14 February.
Spain has been routinely reporting record daily coronavirus infections since the end of December, but a top health official said the recent surge appeared to be stabilising.
“The increases we are seeing are getting smaller every day, which implies that we have reached an inflection point,” Fernando Simón, the country’s health emergency chief, said.
Despite that optimism, the nationwide incidence of the virus as measured over the past 14 days climbed to a new high of 796 cases per 100,000 people on Thursday from 736 cases the previous day.
Simon warned that pressure on hospitals would likely continue into at least the next week.
The latest figures brought the cumulative total of coronavirus cases in Spain to 2,456,675, while the death toll increased by 404 to 55,041.
The Czech parliament has extended the country’s state of emergency until 14 February, a week less than the government had wanted as it seeks to keep in place measures to tamp down coronavirus infections.
Reuters reports:
The extension, pushed through with support of the Communist party, provides the government with a legal basis for some measures such as limits on assembly and movement, or temporarily shuttering businesses.
The country of 10.7 million has been one of the worst-hit globally with 14,973 deaths so far and over 150 deaths most days this month as many hospitals are filled to capacity.
Health minister Jan Blatný has called on the public to observe limits on social interactions to help break the trend, with the aid of stricter social distancing rules and the closure of most shops that came into force on 27 December.
Officials have also said the number of those hospitalised with Covid-19 needs to fall by more than half to below 3,000 patients for the government to consider lifting some restrictions.
The European Union has promised to help Ukraine obtain coronavirus vaccines as soon as possible, the county’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office has said, Reuters reports.
Zelenskiy received assurances of support in a letter from European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and European Council president Charles Michel, Zelenskiy’s office said in a statement.
“It is emphasised that Ukraine can count on the solidarity of the European Union in obtaining a vaccine against coronavirus. The EU is taking steps to ensure Ukraine’s access to vaccines as soon as possible,” the statement said.
The first batches of Covid vaccine under the Covax scheme could arrive in Ukraine in the first half of February, television channel Ukraine-24 quoted a senior Ukrainian lawmaker as saying earlier on Thursday.
Ukraine, which has a population of 44 million and has registered around 1.2 million coronavirus cases along with 21,499 deaths, has already agreed to buy some vaccines from China.
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Ireland’s Covid death rate is at its highest level since the start of the pandemic with an average of 44 deaths per day in the past week, a senior health official has said, Reuters reports.
“The number of deaths confirmed per day over the last seven days, 44, is the highest we have seen at any point during the pandemic,” Philip Nolan, head of the government’s Covid modelling unit, told a news conference.
The infection rate, however, has fallen sharply from a pandemic high registered earlier in January. There were an average of 2,430 new cases over the past five days, down from a five-day average of 4,473 reported a week ago.
The January spike followed an easing of public health restrictions in December. The growth was also fuelled by a new more transmissible variant of the virus that first emerged in Britain. The variant now accounts for around 60% of transmission in Ireland, chief medical officer Tony Holohan told journalists.
Ireland on Thursday reported 2,608 new cases of Covid-19 and 51 deaths. A total of 2,818 have died from the disease in Ireland, which has a population of 5 million. Ireland on Tuesday reported a record 93 deaths.
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Hungary has licensed Russia’s coronavirus vaccine, breaking ranks with other EU countries and ignoring calls to stick to a common European vaccine policy.
Its foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, was on his way to Moscow on Thursday to discuss the purchase, after Hungary’s medical body gave the Sputnik V vaccine emergency approval.
Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s rightwing prime minister, has been strongly critical of the slow speed of the EU vaccine distribution programme. His chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás, said on Thursday: “If vaccine shipments arrive at this rate from Brussels, we can only get vaccines from other, alternative sources.”
So far abut 140,000 people in Hungary have been vaccinated, with the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. Officials are also in Beijing for talks over the approval of China’s Sinopharm vaccine.
Surveys show Hungarians are among the biggest vaccine sceptics in Europe, with fewer than half prepared to be vaccinated.
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The UN’s cultural agency has called on France to do more to stop the Musee de l’Eventail in Paris becoming the cultural world’s latest coronavirus victim, AP reports.
The museum classed as a historical monument has until Saturday to pay up over 117,000 euros in rent arrears — stemming mainly from losses during lockdowns, otherwise it will close. And with it will go the savoir-faire of its workshop. The studio that teaches design and restoration to a new generation of fan-makers was placed on France’s intangible heritage list last year.
In a rare intervention, Unesco called on France to honour the implementing of “safeguarding measures identified for this particular living heritage,” noting in response to AP’s reporting that Paris’ decision to place this knowhow on the list was taken already “while the pandemic was starting to expand at a fast pace.”
“It is a tragedy. I can’t believe Parisians will let a part of their heritage die. I have a problem, because I always believed there would be a miracle,” the museum’s 74-year-old director, Anne Hoguet, said.
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The US House of Representatives is planning to bring a coronavirus relief bill to a vote in the first week of February, the speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has said. “We will be doing our committee work all next week so that we will be completely ready to go to the floor when we come back,” she said, according to Reuters.
Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 bill that would provide enhanced jobless benefits and direct cash payments to households struggling amid the economic fallout from the virus.
Though Biden’s Democratic party holds narrow majorities in the House and Senate, the legislation will likely need bipartisan support to clear procedural hurdles and emerge out of the Senate.
Some Republicans have raised questions about shovelling out more direct payments on the heels of last month’s enactment of a coronavirus aid bill. Many of them also oppose aid to state and local governments, a top priority of Democrats.
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Pfizer cuts vaccine deliveries to some EU countries in half
Pfizer has slashed in half the volume of Covid vaccines it will deliver to some EU countries this week, government officials said, as frustration over the US drugmaker’s unexpected cut in supplies grows, Reuters reports.
Romania got only 50% of its planned volume for this week, the other half being allocated gradually by the end of March, with deliveries returning to normal starting next week, deputy health minister Andrei Baciu said. It was a similar situation in Poland, which on Monday received 176,000 doses, a drop of around 50% from what was expected, authorities said.
The Czech government was bracing for the disruption to last for weeks, slowing its vaccination campaign just as the second dose of vaccinations get under way. “We have to expect that there will be a reduction in the number of open vaccination appointments in the following three weeks,” health minister Jan Blatny told reporters on Thursday, with Pfizer deliveries falling by about 15% this week and as much as 30% for the following two weeks.
Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech have declined to comment on the cuts beyond their statement last week, which announced cuts to deliveries as they ramp up manufacturing in Europe. Yesterday, Italy threatened legal action against Pfizer.
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Argentine president Alberto Fernandez has been vaccinated against the coronavirus using the Sputnik V vaccine. Fernandez, 61, was vaccinated a day after Argentina’s health regulator approved the Russian-made vaccine for use among over-60s.
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Spain investigates 200 cases of potential criminal mishandling over Covid care home deaths
Spain’s public prosecutor is investigating more than 200 cases of potential criminal mishandling of the pandemic at nursing homes, where the virus spread almost unchecked during the devastating first wave, Reuters reports.
Angel Juarez, whose 95-year-old mother Leonor died from the virus at a Barcelona care home, sued the regional health department over alleged mismanagement of such facilities for the elderly and infirm. “It’s not about political beliefs, everything failed. It is a matter of justice: they died an undignified death,” he told Reuters by phone. “We want to shine a light on the negligence and clarify who was responsible.”
Nearly 43,000 care home residents died of confirmed or suspected Covid infections during the March-May first wave of contagion, according to official data. At the time, staff reported shortages of basic protective equipment, and army units deployed on disinfection missions discovered unattended bodies at several facilities.
In a statement, the public prosecutor’s office said nearly half of its investigations related to homicide through a neglect of duty of care, while it was looking into 21 cases of deficiencies in medical treatment. With Spain reporting record infection numbers on an almost daily basis, it warned that risks still remained across the care home network, even though health authorities expect to have most residents vaccinated in the coming weeks.
Pre-existing weaknesses, including governance, funding, working conditions, a lack of coordination with primary health care, and a lack of isolation spaces, are still widespread, the prosecutors’ report said.
Amazon has offered to help distribute Covid vaccines in the US, in a letter to new president Joe Biden, the BBC reports.
“We are prepared to move quickly once vaccines are available,” chief executive Dave Clark said. “Our scale allows us to make a meaningful impact immediately in the fight against Covid-19 and we stand ready to assist you in this effort.”
The e-commerce giant has been criticised during the pandemic over safety at its warehouses, with some staff claiming conditions were not safe as almost 20,000 workers caught the virus between March and October last year.
The multinational firm is pressing for its workers to be among the first to receive the vaccine because they are unable to work from home.
Wealthy flyers in the UK are opting for private jets and charter flights to evade Covid-19 and beat sudden lockdowns, data shows.
While the number of commercial flights from the UK has dropped by three-quarters since the start of the pandemic, private flights are down only 42% compared with 2019, according to the aviation consultancy WingX.
In August, demand for private jets was back to 93% of normal levels, while scheduled flights were down 65%. Another rebound was seen around Christmas, with private flights operating at around 70% of pre-pandemic levels in December.
The relative resilience of the private jet sector – also referred to as “business aviation” – is all the more surprising given that business conferences around the world have been cancelled because of the pandemic.
Kenya’s health ministry has said two men have tested positive for a coronavirus variant first detected in South Africa, the first such cases detected in the east African country, AFP reports.
Both cases, which were asymptomatic, were detected in Kenya’s coastal county of Kilifi, and involved foreigners who had since returned home, the ministry’s director-general announced.
“We all know that this variant is 50 percent more transmissible, therefore posing a significant risk, in that more people will be infected and therefore could be able to stretch the healthcare system more,” said Dr Patrick Amoth.
No information was provided about the nationalities of the men who tested positive for the variant. According to official figures released today, Kenya, which has a population of 53 million, has recorded 99,630 cases of coronavirus, of which 1,739 have been fatal, since the outset of the pandemic.
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Italy has reported another 521 coronavirus-related deaths, against 524 yesterday, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 14,078 from 13,571, Reuters reports.
Some 267,567 tests were carried out in the past day, against a previous 279,762. Italy, which has a population of 60 million, has registered 84,202 Covid-related deaths since its outbreak came to light last February, the second-highest toll in Europe and the sixth highest in the world. The country has also reported 2.428 million cases to date.
Patients in hospital with Covid – not including those in intensive care – stood at 22,045 on Thursday, down by 424 from a day earlier. There were 155 new admissions to intensive care units, against 152 the day before. The total number of intensive care patients fell by 43 to 2,418.
When Italy’s second wave of the epidemic was accelerating quickly in the first half of November, hospital admissions were rising by about 1,000 per day, while intensive care occupancy was increasing by about 100 per day.
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India’s government has cleared commercial exports of Covid-19 vaccines, with the first consignments to be shipped to Brazil and Morocco on Friday, the Indian foreign secretary told Reuters.
The shots developed by UK-based drugmaker AstraZeneca and Oxford University are being manufactured at the Serum Institute of India, the world’s biggest producer of vaccines, which has received orders from countries across the world.
The Indian government had held off exporting doses until it began its own domestic immunisation programme last weekend. Earlier this week, it sent free supplies to neighbouring countries including Bhutan, Maldives, Bangladesh and Nepal.
Foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said commercial supplies of the vaccine would begin from Friday in line with prime minister Narendra Modi’s commitment that India’s production capacities would be used for all of humanity to fight the pandemic.
“In keeping with this vision, we have responded positively to requests for supply of Indian manufactured vaccines from countries across the globe, starting with our neighbours,” he said, referring to the free supplies. “Supply of commercially contracted quantities will also commence from tomorrow, starting with Brazil and Morocco, followed by South Africa and Saudi Arabia,” he added.
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EU countries are rushing to secure special syringes needed to extract six doses from each vial of Pfizer’s Covid vaccine in an attempt to inoculate more people and avoid paying extra, Reuters reports.
The vaccine developed by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech was the first to get EU approval in December. It was initially sold in the EU in vials meant to deliver five doses, but a global shortage of shots and a viability assessment on dosage convinced the EU drugs regulator to approve on Jan. 8 the extraction of six doses from the same vials .
The decision increased availability, prompting Pfizer to raise its output targets for this year to 2 billion vaccines from 1.3 billion initially envisaged. For buyers of the vaccine, however, there was a drawback because EU states face the prospect of paying the price of six doses for each vial, regardless of their ability to extract a sixth shot.
“We will fulfil our supply commitments in line with our existing agreements which are based on delivery of doses, not vials and in accordance with locally approved labelling,” Pfizer said after the EU drugs regulator’s decision to shift to a six-dose label.
Officials and healthcare professionals in Germany and France, the bloc’s largest states, have pointed to yields short of six doses because of technical difficulties and warned of a lack of the special syringes, known as ‘low dead space syringes’, needed to extract the sixth dose.
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China will donate 500,000 doses of its Covid-19 vaccine to Pakistan, the country’s foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said, AFP reports.
“Pakistan greatly appreciates the 500,000 doses of the vaccine gifted by China,” Qureshi tweeted. The news follows similar announcements from other nations in the region - the Philippines, Cambodia and Myanmar have all announced they were set to receive vaccine donations from Beijing.
Qureshi had earlier told reporters: “China has assured us that the first shipment of half a million doses will be free of cost and will arrive by end of January”. Beijing also promised to send another one million doses by end of February, he said, adding that emergency use and authorisation of the SinoPharm vaccine had been approved in Pakistan. The South Asian country, which has a population of 217 million, has seen over 11,000 Covid-related deaths since the virus was first detected in February last year.
South African president Cyril Ramaphosa has paid tribute to Jackson Mthembu, a minister and presidential advisor who was the public face of South Africa’s fight against Covid, after he died from the virus (see 2.59pm), AFP reports.
“It is with deep sorrow and shock that we announce that minister in the presidency Jackson Mthembu passed away earlier today from Covid-related complications,” the president said in a statement. “Mthembu was an exemplary leader, an activist and life-long champion of freedom and democracy.”
Mthembu, 62, was the senior-most of six South African cabinet members who have contracted Covid-19, and the first to die from the disease. His death follows that on Wednesday of Zimbabwe’s foreign minister, Sibusiso Moyo - the third minister in South Africa’s neighbour to succumb to the microbe.
Mthembu last week announced he had tested positive during a check-up for “abdominal pain” and said plans were underway to test his family members and close associates. The veteran politician was among a group of parliamentarians who drafted South Africa’s liberal constitution at the end of apartheid.
The country, population 59 million, has registered over 1.3 million cases since the start of the pandemic, of which 38,854 have been fatal.
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Dubai has suspended elective surgeries for a month and live music at restaurants and hotels indefinitely as coronavirus infections surge in the Middle East trade hub. Non-essential surgeries have been halted to ensure that health facilities are prepared to manage Covid cases, Dubai’s health regulator said, Reuters reports.
Elective therapeutic surgeries” that require deep sedation or general anesthesia would only be permitted in stances of medical emergencies or necessity, it said. Live entertainment, including DJs, live bands and performers, at hotels, restaurants and beach clubs are also suspended until further notice.
Violations of coronavirus precautions at hotels and restaurants had increased during “entertainment activities”, one circular said. New daily infections of the novel coronavirus in the UAE reached a record 3,529 today, the health ministry said, the highest in the Gulf Arab region, where daily tallies in each of the other five states have fallen below 500. The UAE, population almost 10 million, does not give a breakdown of infections in each emirate. There have been 762 Covid-related deaths.
Visitors have continued to flock to Dubai, an international travel hub that is gearing up to host an expected 25 million visitors for an Expo 2020 world fair from October, even as other countries imposed new lockdowns. The UAE has lifted most coronavirus restrictions but mask-wearing in public and social distancing are still required.
Declan O’Sullivan, an Irish musician living in Dubai, resumed live performances in August. Events and revenues have been 3040% of what they were before the pandemic, he told Reuters after the new live music ban was announced, but he was thankful for the opportunity to work. “That’s my perspective on this shutdown again. As long as the bars can stay open and people can go out – if the entertainers have to take a bit of pain for a while and not be able to perform – better that than prolong it for a longer period ... I still count myself very, very lucky.”
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Bosnia plans to order Russian and Chinese-made coronavirus vaccines, fearing that deliveries ordered under the Covax scheme for poor countries and from the EU will be too little too late, officials have said, Reuters reports.
Inoculations in the western Balkans have begun in Serbia, which has directly ordered Pfizer/BioNTech, Russian Sputnik V and Chinese Sinopharm vaccines. But Bosnia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Kosovo have not received any vaccines as yet. Albania has received some.
Bosnia has ordered 1.2m vaccines under the Covax scheme and nearly 900,000 vaccines from the EU for its two autonomous regions, the Bosniak-Croat Federation and the Serb Republic, and expects the first batch to arrive soon, Prime Minister Zoran Tegeltija said. Bosnia applied for EU membership in 2016.
The Covax scheme, led by the World Health Organization and the Gavi vaccine alliance, is due to start rolling out vaccines to poor and middle-income countries in February, with 2bn of 3bn doses expected to be delivered this year. But it has so far struggled to secure enough shots due to a shortage of funds, while wealthy nations have booked large volumes of vaccines for themselves. Europe has also suffered delays in deliveries from Pfizer.
Bosnia’s central government, over which Tegeltija presides, does not have the authority to order vaccines directly from producers. The two regions also can only make orders through authorised agencies. Under strong public pressure, the two regions and the central government agreed today to work together to order directly from Pfizer and the Russian and Chinese producers, Tegeltija told a news conference. “Bearing in mind the delays in deliveries, we have decided to start this very complicated procurement system,” Tegeltija said.
Bosnia, with a population of about 3.5 million, has recorded a total of 119,206 coronavirus infections, with 18,123 active cases and 4,536 deaths.
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Portugal closes schools after surge in Covid infections
Portugal’s government has indeed ordered the closure of schools for two weeks amid a surge in Covid-19 infections that the prime minister blamed on the rise of a more contagious variant, after suggestions they were primed to do so earlier.
Earlier today, the country’s health authority reported the fourth consecutive day of record Covid-linked deaths – with 221 recorded over the past 24 hours (see 2.29pm).
AP reports:
The risk of this virus spreading through society has increased,” prime minister António Costa told a news conference. “We have seen that, in the space of a week, the variant has spread significantly.”
The proportion of Covid-19 cases attributed to the variant, which was first identified in south-east England, has jumped from 8% last week to 20% this week and may reach 60% in coming weeks, Costa said. “Faced with this new reality, a new set of measures is required.” Schools will be closed starting from Friday.
Catholic church authorities in Portugal also announced that services would not be held from Saturday and until further notice due to the “extreme seriousness” of the pandemic. Portugal has the highest seven-day average rate in the world of new cases per 100,000 population and the second-highest rate of new deaths after the UK, according to data collated through Wednesday by Johns Hopkins University.
The country of 10.3 million has been in lockdown since last week but cases continue to climb sharply, setting almost daily records and threatening to overwhelm hospitals.
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The Dutch government’s plans to introduce a curfew between 8.30pm and 4.30am have been blocked by opposition lawmakers who consider it a restriction too far, Associated Press reports.
The comments during the lengthy parliamentary debate underscored growing frustration at months of restrictions intended to tackle the pandemic that has killed more than 13,000 people in the Netherlands.
With the government in caretaker mode since resigning on Friday, it needs approval from lawmakers to impose the curfew. After hours of debate in parliament, it remained unclear if a majority would support the measure.
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The presidency minister, Jackson Mthembu, has become the latest South African politician to die after testing positive for Covid-19, Reuters reports.
Born in 1958, Mthembu fought against apartheid from his student days in the 1970s and helped set up two metal workers unions when he worked in the steel industry which campaigned for better conditions for black workers.
In the 1980s, he became the African National Congress leader in his hometown of Witbank, north-east South Africa. When South Africa became democratic in 1994, he served in parliament, becoming national ANC spokesman the following year, a position he held from 2009 to 2014 as well, before becoming minister in the presidency in 2019.
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Summary
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
- The Portuguese government is preparing to shut all schools, kindergartens and universities from Friday as the country reports its fourth consecutive day of record coronavirus cases.
- At least five people were killed in a fire at a building under construction in Pune at the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer.
- Mexico is recording some of its highest daily death tolls since the pandemic began, with 1,539 deaths reported on Wednesday and 1,584 the previous day.
- Africa’s coronavirus case fatality rate stands at 2.5%, higher than the global level of 2.2%, a trend that is alarming experts.
- Mongolia’s prime minister has resigned following protests over the treatment of a coronavirus patient and her newborn baby.
- European Union leaders will debate banning travellers from the UK and restricting movement at the bloc’s internal borders.
- Moscow will relax some Covid-19 restrictions from Friday, including fully reopening colleges and specialist education institutions. Russia welcomed approvals for its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine from Hungary and the United Arab Emirates.
- Spain is pushing the EU and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development to create a Covid-19 vaccine certification that would ease travel.
- The Covax vaccine-sharing platform designed to ensure equitable access to Covid-19 shots has said it aims to deliver 1.8bn doses to poorer countries in 2021. The United States under Joe Biden intends to join the programme.
- Uefa is weighing up whether to stage the European Championship in one country this summer rather than across the continent as planned.
- The International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, has declared that the Tokyo Olympic Games will go ahead this year.
- South Africa will pay $5.25 (£3.80) per dose for Covid vaccines from the Serum Institute of India (SII) – well above what others, including developed nations, are paying.
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The Portuguese government is preparing to shut all schools, kindergartens and universities from Friday as coronavirus cases rage out of control, Reuters reports.
Overwhelmed by record numbers of Covid-19 patients, doctors in Portuguese hospitals say they are exhausted and in despair.
Western Europe’s poorest country coped well in the first wave of the pandemic last year but has been swamped in recent weeks by a faster-spreading variant of the virus, registering the world’s highest infection and death rates.
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France is offering all university students cheap meals and counselling to help them cope with the pandemic, AFP reports.
President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday promised all students in France two square meals a day for just €1 (89p) each to help them cope with Covid-19 restrictions.
He said students would also be given subsidies to pay for professional counselling if they felt overwhelmed by the restrictions, which include closed universities, a 6pm nationwide curfew and diminishing opportunities for student jobs.
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India plans to give millions of doses of Covid-19 vaccine to south Asian countries in the next few weeks to push back against China’s dominating presence in the region, Reuters reports.
Free shipments of AstraZeneca’s vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, the world’s biggest producer of vaccines, have begun arriving in the Maldives, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Nepal.
Myanmar and the Seychelles are next in line to get free consignments as India uses its strength as one of the world’s biggest makers of generic drugs to build friendships.
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Portugal reports record daily deaths for fourth day in a row
Portugal’s health authority has reported a record 221 daily Covid-19 deaths, Reuters reports.
Portugal daily death toll from the coronavirus reached a record high of 221 on Thursday, up from 219 reported a day before, bringing the total to 9,686 fatalities since the start of the pandemic, the health authority DGS said.
The country of 10 million people, where hospitals are struggling to cope with a surge in infections and authorities are mulling tougher lockdown measures, also reported 13,544 infections over the last 24 hours, below Wednesday’s record of 14,647.
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Russia has welcomed approvals for its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine from Hungary and the United Arab Emirates, Reuters reports.
Russia is seeking international endorsement for Sputnik V, named after the satellite that triggered the cold war space race, and is steadily building up its global customer base. It has signed numerous supply deals and regulators in 11 countries have now granted approval for the shot’s domestic use.
Budapest’s approval is independent of the European Union and could cause tensions with Brussels as the vaccine has not been approved by the European Medical Agency (EMA). Russia on Wednesday filed for registration of its vaccine in the bloc.
Some countries such as Argentina have based the decision to use Sputnik V on data provided by Russia from its large-scale phase 3 trial. Others, such as the UAE, granted approval following their own domestic trials.
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French ski resorts have been warned they are unlikely to be allowed to fully reopen in time for the half-term school holidays, normally one of the busiest times of the year, reports Kim Willsher.
The government has announced that lifts and cable cars must remain closed due to the continuing Covid-19 spread. Ski resorts had been hoping to restart the lifts on 1 February in time for what are known as the winter sports holidays, when they are usually packed.
The government decision means the season is likely to be a write-off for the winter sports sector in France that employs up to 400,000 people directly and indirectly and is worth around €11bn (£9.7bn) a year.
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The Jersey government has set a cautious date for reopening shops on 27 January if case numbers remain low, the BBC reports.
Ministers identified 27 January as the probable date for non-essential retail to resume, while close contact services could reopen on 3 February.
The decision was taken as part of a “cautious approach” to lifting Covid-19 restrictions, the government said.
However, it confirmed these dates “remain subject to continued review of positive case numbers”.
The dates were reached after scientific and medical experts met on Monday to examine the island’s data, with a specific focus on the impact of the Christmas period and the reopening of schools, and presented their findings to ministers.
Active coronavirus cases have fallen to 192 on Wednesday, from a peak of more than 1,000 in late December.
The two-week average of cases has fallen to 177 per 100,000.
It’s Rachel Hall now blogging here, taking over from my colleague Mattha Busby. Do drop me a line on Twitter or via email on rachel.hall@guardian.co.uk if you’d like to share any tips.
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Five die in fire at under construction vaccine manufacturer in India
At least five people were killed in a fire that broke out on Thursday at a building under construction in Pune at Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer that is manufacturing the AstraZeneca/Oxford University Covid vaccine, officials have said.
Murlidhar Mohol, mayor of Pune city in southern Maharashtra state, said five bodies were found in the rubble after the flames were extinguished by firefighters. Mahol said the victims were probably construction workers. He said the cause of the fire had not been determined and the extent of damage was not immediately clear.
Serum Institue of India’s CEO, Adar Poonwala, said he was “deeply saddened” by the loss of life. He said there would be no reduction in vaccine manufacturing because the company has other available facilities. The company said the fire was restricted to a new facility it is constructing to increase the production of Covid vaccines and ensure it is better prepared for future pandemics. It said the fire did not affect existing facilities making Covid vaccines or a stockpile of around 50 million doses.
Images showed huge plumes of smoke billowing from the building and dozens of company workers in lab suits leaving the compound as firefighters worked to extinguish the blaze.
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Local government officials in Austria have been accused of jumping the queue for Covid-19 vaccinations at care homes for elderly people, prompting a clarification of guidelines for handling leftover doses.
In the western federal state of Vorarlberg, the 65-year-old mayor of the town of Feldkirch received a first jab of the BioNTech vaccine at a care home, even though Austria’s national vaccination strategy calls for a prioritisation of residents, employees and medical staff at such homes.
Wolfgang Matt said he had merely waited in line in case there was a leftover dose once all priority candidates had been injected. “I wouldn’t throw out stale bread either but use it to make toast,” he told the public broadcaster ORF.
The care facility’s regular doctor, Susanne Furlan, disputed this version of events, saying there had been several candidates in the high-risk category who should have been prioritised for the leftover 14 doses. “There were so many people waiting outside who would have needed a vaccine more urgently”, said Furlan, who said she had refused to personally administer the vaccine to the mayor.
Germany has offered Russia support in Moscow’s development of its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, chancellor Angela Merkel said in the press conference which we covered part of earlier (see 12.55pm).
AFP reports:
Russian authorities said Wednesday they have applied for registration of the Sputnik V in the European Union. “Beyond all the political differences that are currently large, we can nevertheless work together in a pandemic, in a humanitarian area,” Merkel told journalists.
On Moscow’s application to the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the German leader said she has “offered that our Paul Ehrlich Institute ... support Russia on it”. The Paul Ehrlich Institute is Germany’s medicine regulatory body. “And if this vaccine is approved by the EMA, then we can talk about joint production or also about usage,” Merkel said.
Russia in August registered Sputnik V - named after the Soviet-era satellite - months ahead of Western competitors but before the start of large-scale clinical trials, which left some experts wary. Its developers have since said that the jab is more than 90 percent effective and Russia launched its mass vaccination campaign using the shot this week.
The Russian Direct Investment Fund which helped develop the vaccine, says Sputnik has already been registered in a number of countries including Belarus, Venezuela, Bolivia and Algeria. Argentina began administering second doses of Sputnik V this week, having begun its immunisation campaign in late December. Meanwhile, Hungary today became the first country in the EU to give it preliminary approval.
Authorities in Lebanon have extended a nationwide lockdown by a week until 8 February amid a steep rise in coronavirus deaths and infections that has overwhelmed the health care system.
AP reports:
Despite increasing the number of hospital beds in the country of nearly 6 million, doctors and nurses have struggled to keep pace with patients flooding their facilities. Intensive care unit bed occupancy has been rising, hitting 91% late Wednesday, according to the World Health Organization.
Registered daily infections have hovered around 5,000 since the holiday season, up from nearly 1,000 in November. The death toll has surpassed 2,000 with new deaths of between 40 and 60 a day in the past week.
Lebanon has yet to carry out any vaccinations. The government finalized a deal with Pfizer last week for vaccines that will arrive in early February. The World Bank said Thursday it approved $34 million to help pay for vaccines for Lebanon that will inoculate over 2 million people.
The steep rise in infections and deaths comes despite the strict lockdown in place since 14 January. “Lifting or easing the lockdown at this time will surely lead to a collapse of the health system and result in more deaths. This is unacceptable and unconscionable,” tweeted Dr. Firass Abiad, head of the public hospital leading the fight against the pandemic.
The Zimbabwean first lady has invited her female compatriots to join her for three days of prayer and fasting to help spare the country “from further calamity”, the BBC reports.
Auxillia Mnangagwa said she would fast and pray from Thursday until Saturday for Zimbabwe to be “spared from further calamity”. She urged women to ensure their families observe Covid-19 safety guidelines to prevent the virus from spreading further.
“We need a plan at the household level for regularly using any means at our disposal to clean and sanitise our homes, to ensure that everyone in the home knows the importance of having a mask and masking up properly, more importantly to organise sharp safe errands for our requirements to get going whilst enforcing the family to stay at home,” she said in a statement.
Zimbabwe has lost 879 people to coronavirus, including top government officials with the most recent death being that of foreign minister Sibusiso Moyo, which was reported this week.
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The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has urged her compatriots to stop complaining about the slow rollout of a Covid vaccine and defended a decision to extend a lockdown as necessary to stem a more aggressive variant of the coronavirus.
Reuters reports:
Speaking at a news conference, Merkel said it would be a mistake to ease curbs now given the mutation first identified in England had been found in Germany, Europe’s most populous country and largest economy. “Our efforts face a threat and this threat is clearer now than at the start of the year and this is the mutation of the virus,” said Merkel, adding that the new variant was not yet dominant in Germany.
Merkel defended a decision to secure vaccines against the virus through the European commission, dismissing advocates of a go-it-alone approach who say Germany could have secured more vaccines faster on its own. Germany has had to delay opening some of its vaccination centres as it received fewer shots than expected due to a temporary slowdown of deliveries of vaccines from US drugmaker Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.
“I understand the impatience,” said Merkel, when asked if she owed Germans an apology. “There is no reason whatsoever to criticise BioNTech. Those are people who work day and night ... and we are benefiting from this. How can we even complain?”
Germany, which has been in lockdown since early November, reported more than 1,000 deaths and more than 20,000 new infections on Thursday. Merkel and state leaders agreed on Tuesday to extend a hard lockdown that keeps schools, restaurants and all non-essential businesses shut until 14 February. She added that Germany was not planning border controls to try to stem the spread of the virus as it was vital not to disrupt the free flow of goods within the EU.
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A popular politician who has already been ousted and had his party banned and is now charged with defaming Thailand’s monarchy for questioning the government over its Covid vaccine procurement policy has stood by his comments and said the nation deserves more transparency.
AP reports:
The government filed charges on Wednesday accusing Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit of lèse-majesté, insulting the monarchy, for alleging that the procurement was late and inadequate. Thanathorn also said there was possible favouritism in the awarding of the main contract.
The criticisms relate to the monarchy because most of the vaccines that Thailand has ordered are to be produced by Siam Bioscience, a private Thai company owned by King Maha Vajiralongkorn.
The offence is punishable by three to 15 years’ imprisonment for each instance. Thanathorn was also charged with violating the Computer Crime Act. He called the charges politically motivated at a news conference Thursday.
“When we are questioning the fact that the Thai public would receive low vaccination coverage and receive it late, or whether or not the government has given preferential treatment to a certain private company, this is what I got back. This is what I got,” he said.
Thanathorn said Thailand had secured vaccines for only about one-fifth of its population. “The government has given huge financial support worth 1.4bn baht ($46m) to the company, should we not investigate if this deal is normal and transparent or not?” he said.
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The new US administration has thanked the World Health Organization for leading the global pandemic response and vowed to remain a member state, in a departure from the antagonist approach taken by former president Donald Trump.
AFP reports:
Under trying circumstances, this organisation has rallied the scientific and research and development community to accelerate vaccines, therapies and diagnostics,” the top US scientist Anthony Fauci, who has been named president Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, told a meeting of the WHO’s executive board. The WHO, he said, had “relentlessly worked with nations in their fight against Covid-19”.
His comments marked a clear departure from the harsh criticism dealt to the WHO by the former US president Donald Trump, who had begun withdrawing his country from the organisation. But on his first day in office on Wednesday, Biden reversed that decision.
In a letter sent to the UN chief António Guterres, Biden announced he was retracting Trump’s 6 July notification that the US intended to withdraw from the UN health agency in 12 months’ time. “The United States intends to remain a member of the World Health Organization,” Biden wrote.
The WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, hailed the about-face. “WHO is a family of nations and we are all glad that the United States is staying in the family,” he told the executive board meeting. In his address to the WHO, Fauci stressed that Washington – long the agency’s top donor – was committed to resuming the funding.
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The International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, has declared that the Tokyo Olympic Games will go ahead as scheduled in Japan this year, reiterating that there is “no plan B”.
“We have, at this moment, no reason whatsoever to believe that the Olympic Games in Tokyo will not open on 23 July in the Olympic stadium in Tokyo,” Bach told Kyodo News in an interview just days ahead of the six-month countdown towards the Games.
“This is why there is no plan B and this is why we are fully committed to make these Games safe and successful,” he added.
After the Games were postponed last year because of the coronavirus pandemic, Saturday marks six months until the rearranged Olympics are due to start. Despite a surge in coronavirus cases leading to much of Japan currently being under severe restrictions, organisers have remained adamant that the Olympics can go ahead.
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South Africa will pay $5.25 (£3.80) per dose for Covid vaccines from the Serum Institute of India (SII) – well above what others, including developed nations, are paying for the same shots, local newspaper Business Day reported.
Reuters has more:
The report cited health department deputy director-general Anban Pillay as saying the price was based on South Africa’s level of development and its past investment in research and development.
We were advised that SII has applied a tiered pricing system, and given that (South Africa) is an upper-middle-income country, their price is $5.25. The explanation we were given for why other high-income countries have a lower price is that they have invested in the (research and development), hence the discount on the price,” it quoted him as saying.
The SII, which Business Day said did not respond to requests for comment, is one of several manufacturers licensed by AstraZeneca to make its Covid vaccine. South Africa is due to procure 1.5m of the shots from the institute.
Other nations or blocs are paying much less. In June, for instance, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and France negotiated a price of around €2.50 (£2.20) per shot for 300m doses from AstraZeneca as part of a European deal to secure supplies of the drug. The SII is also set to supply 100m doses of the vaccine to the African Union for $3 each.
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Shanghai authorities began evacuating a residential neighbourhood near the historic Bund riverfront after Chinese officials discovered at least three new coronavirus cases earlier today.
AFP reports:
Officials did not say how many people were being moved out of the area in central Shanghai as they ramped up testing to stamp out the small outbreak, the latest example of China’s tough response to small clusters.
Two of the people found with the virus work at hospitals and are neighbours, local health officials told a press conference. The third case was detected in one of their contacts. An AFP reporter at the scene said that buses were on standby and being disinfected before whisking away people living in the neighbourhood to a hotel. Some roads were sealed off.
There has recently been a small uptick however in locally transmitted infections across the country. About 1.6 million residents were banned from leaving Beijing on Wednesday after two cases linked to a new virus variant in Britain were found in the Chinese capital. The virus has officially killed fewer than 5,000 people in China, a country of 1.4 billion people.
Mongolian PM resigns after Covid handling protests
Mongolia’s prime minister has resigned following protests and public outrage over the treatment of a coronavirus patient and her newborn baby.
AFP reports:
Landlocked Mongolia reported just a handful of Covid-19 cases last year after imposing strict border controls, but in November its first domestic transmissions caused a new wave of lockdowns and restrictions.
Anger mounted this week after TV footage showed a woman who appeared to have recently given birth being moved to an infectious disease centre wearing only hospital pyjamas and plastic slippers, despite temperatures dipping to -25C.
After protests outside government buildings on Wednesday, the Mongolian prime minister apologised on behalf of the government and said he would stand down immediately.
“Unfortunately, we made mistake during relocating that mother,” admitted Khürelsükh Ukhnaa. “It was heartbreaking to see how she was treated. As a prime minister, I must take the responsibility.”
The video of the woman in an ambulance clutching her baby prompted fierce criticism, particularly as Mongolian tradition dictates new mothers should avoid the cold weather and cold food for the first month after birth.
On Wednesday around 5,000 mostly young protesters gathered in a square opposite government buildings in the capital Ulan Bator, some carrying wrapped up bundles to represent babies.
The vice-prime minister – also head of the national emergency commission handling the pandemic – had already resigned on Wednesday evening, followed by the minister of health. The head of the hospital and disease centre in the middle of the row also resigned.
This week’s row is the latest clash over the government’s handling of the Covid-19 outbreak as anger simmers over Mongolian nationals stuck overseas after the country closed its borders. Restrictions on movement between provinces have also been imposed since November, leaving about 80,000 people stranded in the capital.
Since March, Mongolia has only allowed citizens to enter the country on chartered flights and required 21 days of quarantine in centralised facilities, followed by two weeks of further isolation at home. There have been 1,584 coronavirus cases and just two reported deaths in the country with a population of 3.3 million so far.
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Mexico is recording some of its highest daily death tolls since the coronavirus pandemic began, with 1,539 deaths reported on Wednesday and 1,584 the previous day.
The Associated Press reports:
There was also a near record one-day rise in new virus cases of 20,548 Wednesday. Mexico, which has a population of 128 million, has seen almost 1.69m confirmed coronavirus infections and over 144,000 test-confirmed deaths related to Covid. The country’s testing rate is extremely low, however, and official estimates suggest the real death toll is closer to 195,000.
Hospitals in Mexico City, the current centre of the pandemic in Mexico, were at 89% capacity on Wednesday, while 61% of hospital beds nationwide were filled. The difficulty in finding open hospital beds has led many families to try to treat their relatives at home, which has created spot shortages of oxygen and tanks, and sparked an uptick in thefts targeting oxygen tanks.
Mexico has received only about 750,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, with about 500,000 administered so far. The country has 750,000 frontline medical personnel, all of whom will need two doses.
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India has today sent 1m doses of a coronavirus vaccine to Nepal, a gift that is likely to help repair strained ties between the two neighbours.
The Associated Press reports:
Nepali health minister Hridayesh Tripathi said the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine, manufactured under license by Serum Institute of India, will be given to health workers and other frontline personnel within a week to 10 days.
Tripathi said Nepal would like to purchase 4m more doses, and asked for the Indian government’s help. There was no immediate response from Indian officials who were at the airport when the vaccine arrived.
Nepal’s foreign minister, Pradeep Gyawali, flew to India last week to formally request the vaccine. India, the world’s largest vaccine producer, began supplying coronavirus vaccine to its neighbours this week as it attempts to strike a balance between maintaining enough doses to inoculate its own people and helping developing countries without the capacity to produce their own vaccine.
Nepal has a population of 29 million and has had 268,000 confirmed cases of Covid, with almost 2,000 deaths.
Relations between India and Nepal have been strained by a territorial dispute which led to an exchange of strong-worded statements by the two sides. India has also accused Nepal’s communist government of becoming closer to its other giant neighbour, China.
In other news, it’s Mattha Busby here, taking over the blog from my colleague Amelia Hill. Drop me a line on Twitter or via email on mattha.busby.freelance@guardian.co.uk if you’d like to share any tips or thoughts.
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Two Belgian men left unemployed by the coronavirus pandemic have reinvented themselves as the “Covid boys”, disinfecting public surfaces and patrolling Brussels to encourage social distancing and mask wearing.
Edouard de Vos, 27, and Oscar Briou, 26, have stationed themselves in the centre of the Belgian capital dressed in chemical protection suits and gloves and armed with disinfectant, tape measures, sponges and a touch of humour.
Both lost their jobs in Belgium’s initial lockdown from March. “We spent the first lockdown drinking and doing random things. At one point something happened to us and things became clear,” De Vos, who had been working in a soap factory, told Reuters television. “And at this point, we started organising ourselves.”
The pair were shown advising a couple with food that they should sit or stand to the side rather than walk while eating, and remind passersby that their masks, which are mandatory throughout Brussels, need to cover their noses. “Yes, you’re right. It’s true. Sometimes we do forget,” one woman replies.
De Vos and Briou are also seen on TV wiping down the screens of parking meters and spraying disinfectant on the hands of a pedestrian after he adjusts his mask. They are also training two new recruits.
Brussels police, asked to comment on the duo’s activities, said: “Offering advice is fine, but it is better coming from official channels.”
Belgium is among the European countries hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, with more than 20,000 fatalities and nearly 700,000 confirmed cases.
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Indonesia has just reported 346 deaths from Covid-19, hitting a new record for the second time this week, as hospitals in the south-east Asian nation come under increasing strain from the pandemic.
Data from Indonesia’s Covid-19 taskforce showed deaths now total 27,203, while confirmed cases reached 951,651, among the highest in Asia.
The record fatalities and sharp rise in daily cases in recent weeks comes amid warnings that the situation could imminently worsen in Indonesia’s hospitals.
“Hospitals could collapse in the coming days if they’re not managed,” said Irma Hidayana, a co-founder of the data initiative group Lapor Covid-19.
Capacity of isolation beds at Covid-19 referral hospitals in Jakarta had reached 87% and intensive care unit beds were 82% occupied, data from the city government showed as of 17 January.
The high occupancy has led to some patients dying after being turned away from hospitals with no space for them.
Indonesia recorded 3,849 deaths from 1-17 January.
Indonesia started its mass vaccination campaign last week and aims to inoculate 181.5 million people, or roughly 67% of the population.
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Hungary’s drug regulator has given preliminary approval for the use of the coronavirus vaccine made by AstraZeneca and also Russia’s Sputnik V Covid vaccine, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s chief of staff said on Thursday, confirming media reports.
The foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, was travelling to Moscow for talks about the coronavirus vaccine later on Thursday, Gergely Gulyás said.
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Africa’s coronavirus case fatality rate stands at 2.5%, higher than the global level of 2.2%, a trend that is alarming experts, the head of the continent’s disease control body has said.
Earlier in the pandemic, Africa’s death rate had been below the global average, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) head, John Nkengasong, told reporters.
“The case fatality rate is beginning to be very worrying and concerning for all of us,” he said. The number of African nations with a death rate higher than the current global average is growing, he added.
There are 21 countries on the continent with a death rate of above 3%, including Egypt, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan.
Over the past week, cases decreased by nearly 7% compared with the previous week while deaths increased 10%, according to Africa CDC data. Africa has recorded 3.3m coronavirus infections and 81,000 deaths as of Thursday, it says.
The continent reported 207,000 new cases in the past week, with South Africa alone reporting 100,000 of those new cases, Nkengasong said.
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The new American president Joe Biden will launch an array of initiatives on Thursday to rein in the raging coronavirus pandemic, tackling his top priority on his first full day in the White House as he tries to turn the page on Donald Trump’s tumultuous leadership.
Biden will sign 10 executive orders to fight the pandemic, including ordering the use of disaster funds to help reopen schools and mandating the wearing of protective masks on planes and buses, officials said.
The new Democratic president has put the pandemic at the top of a daunting list of challenges he faces in his administration’s early days, including rebuilding a ravaged economy and addressing racial injustice.
Opening a blitz of policy rollouts and executive actions designed to meet some of those challenges, Biden signed 15 executive actions on Wednesday that are designed to turn the page and sweep away some of Trump’s policies.
Those included mandating masks on federal property and halting the withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as issues such as rejoining the Paris climate accord and ending a travel ban on some Muslim-majority countries.
On Thursday, he will sign another round of executive orders related to the pandemic, including requiring mask-wearing in airports and on certain public transportation, including many trains, airplanes, and intercity buses, officials said.
He also plans to sign orders to establish a Covid-19 testing board to ramp up testing, address supply shortfalls, establish protocols for international travellers and direct resources to hard-hit minority communities. Coronavirus has killed more than 400,000 people in the United States.
Biden has pledged to provide 100m doses of the coronavirus vaccine during the first 100 days of his administration. His plan aims to increase vaccinations by opening up eligibility for more people such as teachers and grocery clerks.
Additionally, Biden will issue a directive on Thursday including the intent to join the Covax vaccine facility that aims to deliver vaccines to poor countries, his chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, told the WHO.
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The Covax vaccine-sharing platform designed to ensure equitable access to Covid-19 shots has said it aims to deliver 1.8bn doses to poorer countries in 2021 and hopes to fulfil supply deals for wealthier ones in the second half of the year.
But Covax, which is co-led by the Gavi vaccine alliance, the World Health Organization (WHO) and others, said there were many uncertainties affecting the procurement and supply of Covid-19 vaccines, and terms of the deals were “subject to change”, according to Reuters.
The 1.8bn doses would be supplied via an advance market commitment (AMC) to 92 eligible countries and would correspond to approximately 27% coverage of populations in those countries, Gavi said in an updated forecast for Covax.
“Our forecasting indicates that we should fulfil the requests for vaccine placed by self-financing participants in the second half of 2021,” it said.
Some supply deals were still in negotiation and some of the candidate vaccines have yet to be approved for use by medicines regulators or the WHO. In many cases, manufacturing of the vaccines had yet to reach full scale, the forecast added.
“There are many uncertainties affecting the supply of Covid-19 vaccines in 2021, not least around manufacturing capacity, regulation, funding availability, final contract terms and the readiness of countries themselves to begin their national Covid-19 vaccination programmes,” the Covax forecast statement said. “Manufacturing productivity will be influenced by multiple factors, which will in turn influence volume and timing of supply.”
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Reports are coming in of a fire breaking out at a plant being built for the Serum Institute of India, Reuters is reporting.
But a source close to the world’s biggest vaccine maker has said it will not affect production of the coronavirus vaccine.
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Norway is expecting a reduced supply of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine until the second week of February but has an emergency stockpile and will continue administering doses as planned, the government’s public health body has said.
Pfizer has said vaccine deliveries to Europe would be reduced by up to 15% until early February while it upgraded production capacity.
Camilla Stoltenberg, head of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, said the company had given varying guidance but normal supplies were expected to resume by mid-February.
The country of 5.4 million has given first vaccine doses to nearly 55,000 people, mainly residents of care homes. It has primarily used the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
The non-EU country is part of the bloc’s vaccination purchase programme via Sweden, which is buying more than it needs and passing on doses.
Oslo decided to establish an emergency stockpile of 60,000 doses last year – a move it received criticism at home for.
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Uefa’s president, Aleksander Čeferin, is weighing up whether to stage the European Championship in one country this summer rather than across the continent as planned, according to the Bayern Munich CEO, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge.
The host cities are due to be London, Glasgow, Dublin, Bilbao, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Munich, Rome, St Petersburg, Bucharest, Budapest and Baku, with the semi-finals and final set for Wembley. Uefa is expected to make a decision on the fate of the tournament in March.
Čeferin said last week he was hopeful vaccination programmes, moving at different speeds across the various host countries, would be the key to sticking to the plan.
More here:
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The European Union could ban travellers from the UK and restrict movement at the bloc’s own internal borders under proposals to be debated by leaders at a videoconference summit, Daniel Boffey reports.
The need to clamp down on the spread of the new variants of coronavirus will dominate discussions between the 27 heads of state and government on Thursday evening.
The prevalence of the variants in any area, whether the country is in the EU or outside the bloc, would be sufficient to ban travel under one proposal paper drafted by the German government.
For those outside the EU, such as the UK, the prohibition on movement would be countrywide, according to Berlin. “Where member states consider this necessary to protect public health, they are free to impose further-reaching temporary bans on entry and on transporting passengers entering from third countries with virus variant areas,” German officials wrote.
Full story here:
Updated
Biden's US intends to join Covax, Fauci tells WHO
The United States under Joe Biden intends to join the Covax vaccine facility that aims to deliver vaccines to poor countries, his chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, told the World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday.
“President Biden will issue a directive later today which will include the intent of the United States to join Covax and support the ACT-Accelerator to advance multilateral efforts for Covid-19 vaccine, therapeutic, and diagnostic distribution, equitable access, and research and development,” Fauci told the WHO executive board.
The United States will remain a member of the WHO, he said. (see 4.28am.)
Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump halted funding to the WHO, where the US is the largest donor, and announced a process to withdraw from the agency in July 2021.
Updated
Hong Kong is considering ordering flight crew entering the Asian financial hub to quarantine for two weeks, the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday, citing sources.
All pilots and cabin crew, including local staff, will have to quarantine in a hotel if they stay in Hong Kong for more than two hours, three sources told the newspaper.
Hong Kong’s flag carrier Cathay Pacific Airways and the government did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment on the potential mandate.
Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, said earlier this week that social distancing measures set to expire this week would be extended to contain infections.
Updated
Moscow will relax some Covid-19 restrictions from Friday, including fully reopening colleges and specialist education institutions, the mayor said on Thursday.
The number of daily new cases has started to fall in Russia, which launched a voluntary vaccination programme with the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine last month. It has resisted imposing a strict new lockdown, relying instead on targeted measures.
Moscow’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin said new daily cases were considerably lower than at the end of December and that a tangible drop in daily hospital admissions to 1,200-1,300 people from 1,500-1,800 had made him cautiously optimistic.
“Vaccination rates have significantly increased. Over 220,000 Muscovites have already received reliable protection from the virus,” Sobyanin wrote on his website.
In this situation, we can allow ourselves to considerably soften existing restrictions.
State-run universities will continue to operate with distanced learning, but colleges and specialist institutions can reopen fully from Friday, Sobyanin said.
Theatres, cinemas and concert halls will be allowed to increase capacity to 50%, as will museums, libraries and stadiums for sports events.
Restrictions that will remain include bars and restaurants having to close early, the wearing of medical masks in shops and on public transport, and businesses having to limit the number of staff in offices to 30%.
Russia has registered two Covid-19 vaccines and plans to register a third on 16 February.
Russia reported 21,887 new Covid-19 cases on Thursday, including 3,458 in Moscow, taking the total to 3,655,839 since the pandemic began, the world’s fourth-highest tally. The official nationwide death toll stands at 67,832.
Spain is pushing the European Union and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development for the creation of a Covid-19 vaccine certification that would ease travel, the foreign minister Arancha Gonzalez said on Thursday.
“Vaccine certification is something we are going towards inevitably,” Gonzalez told RNE radio station. “It will be a very important element to guarantee a safe return to mobility.”
The issuance of such a document though should be coordinated at the European or even global level, she said, adding that a vaccine certificate would allow people to travel, like PCR tests do now.
Spain, which depends heavily on the tourism industry, is one of the countries that suffered the most from the restrictions to travel related to the pandemic.
Mass testing of thousands of people in the Swiss resort of St Moritz, where luxury hotels were placed under quarantine, found 53 coronavirus infections, including 31 cases of a fast-spreading variant, local officials said on Thursday.
Authorities said about 3,200 people were tested this week, and that the 31 infections caused by viral variants were discovered among hotel employees, not guests at the two hotels placed under quarantine, Badrutt’s Palace Hotel and the Grand Hotel des Bains Kempinski.
St Moritz said it was lifting emergency measures that had been put in place to protect the community. The town of 5,200 people had closed local schools, shuttered ski schools and required masks be worn in all public areas, for fear mutant virus was spreading quickly.
“The mutated virus was found particularly in hotel employees and was not transmitted to hotel guests,” officials with the canton of Grisons said in a statement.
“This shows that the hotels’ protection concepts work and that employee testing is a sensible, effective measure.”
South African pharmaceutical company Biovac Institute has been contracted by the government to import, store and distribute coronavirus vaccines for frontline healthcare workers, a letter from the National Treasury shows.
South Africa has said it will receive 1.5 million doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 shot from the Serum Institute of India (SII), spread over January and February. Healthcare experts have urged the government to share a detailed plan on vaccine rollout across the country.
In the letter written by Director-General Dondo Mogajane to non-profit organisation Corruption Watch (CW) and seen by Reuters, Treasury has given the Department of Health approval to deviate from normal procurement processes for the transportation, storage and distribution of the vaccines in the short term.
Cape Town-based Biovac, part owned by the government, has been appointed for three months to provide storage and distribution services for vaccines to immunise frontline healthcare workers, the letter showed.
“Biovac will be involved in the importation, cold chain storage and distribution of the 1.5 million doses,” Biovac CEO Morena Makhoana told Reuters.
The National Treasury and spokespeople for the Department of Health did not respond to requests for comment.
Germany may need to close borders, warns Merkel's chief of staff
Germany may need to close its borders to neighbouring countries if they do not act to curb coronavirus infections, Merkel’s chief of staff said on Thursday.
Helge Braun told ARD television it was important to get infection levels under control so that countries could protect themselves from new, more transmissible strains of the virus.
“The danger is that when the infections in a country go up, this mutation becomes a quasi majority variant and then the infection can no longer be controlled,” he said.
“And therefore even stricter entry rules at our internal borders are unavoidable, and since everyone does not want that, it is important that we act together now.”
Updated
A banned Thai opposition politician, who is facing a criminal complaint of defaming the monarchy, has defended his criticism of the government’s coronavirus vaccine strategy.
Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit this week accused the government of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha of mishandling the vaccine campaign. He said the monarchy was too reliant on Siam Bioscience - a company owned by King Maha Vajiralongkorn - and would be slow to protect the public.
Siam Bioscience - owned by the Crown Property Bureau, the organisation that manages tens of billions of dollars in investment under the king’s personal control - agreed in October to manufacture AstraZeneca Plc’s Covid-19 vaccine and supply it domestically and across Southeast Asia.
The government has ordered 61 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine for its population, as well as 2 million doses of a vaccine made by China’s Sinovac Biotech.
Thanathorn had alleged the AstraZeneca deal lacked transparency and Siam Bioscience was given an unfair advantage over other companies.
He said the government, by relying mostly on AstraZeneca instead of negotiating multiple deals, has slowed the rollout of vaccines for Thais to June, while other countries have already begun to vaccinate their populations.
Both AstraZeneca and Siam Bioscience declined to comment on Thanathorn’s allegations. The government has defended its policy and on Wednesday filed a criminal complaint against Thanathorn for his criticism, accusing him of royal insult under article 112 of the criminal code that is punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
A government spokeswoman, Ratchada Dhanadirek, has denied the prosecution was politically motivated.
Norway’s government will help refinance Norwegian Air, Industry Minister Iselin Nyboe said in a statement on Thursday.
The budget carrier, which has been forced to ground all but six of its 138 aircraft due to the coronavirus crisis, asked the government last week for help to survive the pandemic.
David Halls isn’t a doctor, nurse or ambulance driver, but he wanted to contribute in the fight against Covid-19. So he did what he does best, reports AP: He sat down on the bench beside at Salisbury Cathedral’s historic organ and began to play.
Halls is one of the many people who have turned the 800-year-old cathedral in southwestern England into a mass vaccination centre as the UK races to inoculate 50 million people.
His contribution to the effort is offering a bit of Bach, Handel and even a little Rodgers & Hammerstein to hundreds of elderly residents who have rolled up their sleeves and got their shots in the great nave, which is big enough to gather people together while also keeping them safely apart.
“At times of crisis, people come together and want to listen to music. At moments of joy, people want to listen to music,’’ Halls, the cathedral’s music director, told The Associated Press. “And so I don’t think it’s any surprise the effect of soothing music on people who probably are feeling quite stressed for various reasons.”
Salisbury Cathedral, home to one of the best preserved copies of the Magna Carta and England’s tallest church spire, has been enlisted as a vaccination centre as the government expands its shot programme to football stadiums, convention centres and hundreds of local doctors offices to speed delivery.
The UK plans to offer a first dose of vaccine to more than 15 million people by mid-February as it targets the country’s oldest and most vulnerable residents in the programme’s first phase. Progressively younger groups of people will follow suit, with the government planning to reach everyone over 18 by September.
The need is urgent. Britain’s healthcare system is staggering as doctors and nurses battle a more contagious variant of Covid-19.
While new infections appear to have peaked, the number of people hospitalised is still rising. More than 39,000 patients are being treated in UK hospitals, 80% more than during the first peak of the pandemic last April. Britain has reported 93,463 coronavirus-related deaths, more than any other country in Europe and the fifth-highest toll worldwide.
Latest on worldwide spread of the coronavirus
US President Joe Biden is planning to revamp the nation’s fight against its worst public health crisis in more than a century, while Pfizer is facing potential legal action over its move to temporarily delay Covid-19 vaccine shipments to European countries.
DEATHS AND INFECTIONS
* Eikon users, see Covid-19: MacroVitals for a case tracker and summary of news.
EUROPE
* A third pandemic lockdown appears to be having little impact on rates of Covid-19 in England, researchers warned, with prevalence of the disease ‘very high’ and ‘no evidence of decline’ in the first 10 days of renewed restrictions.
* The more contagious variant of the coronavirus discovered in Britain is spreading rapidly across Portugal, pressuring the health service at a time when authorities are scrambling to tackle the country’s worst outbreak since the pandemic’s start.
* Turkey has slowed the pace of Covid-19 vaccinations after an explosive start last week but can quicken it again after the country delivers inoculations to the elderly in care homes and at their houses, the programme’s coordinator said.
* The Index.hu website reported that Hungary’s drug regulator gave the green light to Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, while Argentina approved the shot for use in people over 60.
* The Netherlands proposed the first nationwide curfew since World War Two and a ban on flights from South Africa and Britain.
ASIA-PACIFIC
* China plans to impose strict Covid testing requirements during the Lunar New Year holiday season, when tens of millions of people are expected to travel, as it battles the worst wave of new infections since March 2020.
* India’s Bharat Biotech has applied to conduct trials in Bangladesh for its coronavirus vaccine recently approved for emergency use at home, a senior official at Bangladesh’s main medical research body told Reuters.
* Beijing is touting a state programme that gives Taiwanese in China priority for COVID-19 vaccines, prompting concern within Taiwan’s government which sees it as the latest Chinese tool to win over the island’s population.
* Australia recorded a fourth day of zero coronavirus cases, prompting the chief of the country’s most populous state to call for a special travel “bubble” with Pacific island nations.
* Indonesia plans to start giving the general public Covid-19 vaccinations sometime between late April to May, health minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said.
AMERICAS
* President Joe Biden signed an order requiring masks and physical distancing in all federal buildings and the development of a testing program for federal employees for Covid-19, in a first step to combat a pandemic that has claimed the lives of more than 400,000 Americans.
* Ecuador said the first batch of 18 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines it contracted for with three pharmaceutical companies and the COVAX initiative arrived on Wednesday for a pilot plan with medical staff from public hospitals and nursing homes.
* Chile’s health regulator approved the emergency roll-out of the CoronaVac vaccine manufactured by China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd.
MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA
* The World Bank said it had approved a re-allocation of $34 million in funds to support Lebanon’s vaccination efforts as it races to contain the coronavirus pandemic, marking the first such outlay of funds by the Bank.
* Dubai has suspended non-essential surgery for a month and live entertainment in hotels and restaurants until further notice as coronavirus infections surge.
MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS
* Oxford scientists are preparing to rapidly produce new versions of their vaccine to combat emerging more contagious Covid-19 variants discovered in the UK, South Africa and Brazil.
* The World Health Organisation plans to approve several vaccines from Western and Chinese manufacturers in the coming weeks and months, according to Reuters.
* The new Covid-19 variant identified in South Africa defeats plasma treatment and may reduce vaccine efficacy, scientists said.
ECONOMIC IMPACT
* Asian stocks rose to new record highs on Thursday, tracking US markets as investors hoped for more economic stimulus from newly inaugurated US President Joe Biden to offset damage wreaked by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Updated
In the UK, Labour has called for a plan to support the vaccination of black, Asian and ethnic minority communities.
The party is urging the government to publish daily data showing the progress of the vaccine roll out across people from different ethnic backgrounds; an analysis of the impact pre-existing health inequalities are having on lower uptake amongst some communities; and a vaccine communications strategy which reaches all communities and tackles disinformation.
Labour’s call comes amidst fresh concerns raised by advisers from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) over Covid vaccine uptake among BAME communities as research showed up to 72% of black people said they were unlikely to have the jab.
Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, speaking ahead of the meeting with black faith and community leaders, said: “This crisis has had a disproportionate impact on black, Asian and ethnic minority communities, and it is so important that the vaccine roll out doesn’t leave any community behind.”
Marsha de Cordova, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, said: “Black, Asian and ethnic minority people are being hit hardest by this virus. The government must ensure they are not left behind by the vaccine roll out.”
Good morning to you all. Amelia Hill here signing in for whatever action the next few hours chooses to send us.
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. My colleague Amelia Hill will be bringing you the latest for the next few hours.
Another important guide:
An important guide:
Hello, Warren Murray here, pleased to be bringing you this Thursday briefing.
Joe Biden has spent the first hours of his presidency addressing America’s crisis at home and rebuilding its leadership in the world with a series of executive actions, including rejoining the Paris climate accord, calling a halt to Donald Trump’s border wall, initiating urgent action on Covid-19 and renewing US membership of the World Health Organization. If you didn’t catch the inauguration proceedings yesterday afternoon here is a faithful account from Lauren Gambino in Washington. Don’t miss inaugural poet Amanda Gorman’s recitation of her poem The Hill We Climb. “This is America’s day,” Biden said, gazing across the sprawl of the capital city’s national monuments, guarded by a military garrison unprecedented in modern times and devoid of spectators because of the pandemic. “This is democracy’s day”:
Summary
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
- US President Joe Biden has signed a letter retracting Donald Trump’s decision to leave the World Health Organization, which would have been effective in July this year. On 6 July 2020, the Trump formally notified the WHO of the country’s withdrawal, despite widespread criticism and an almost complete lack of international support for the move in the midst of a pandemic.
- Don’t panic, you’ll get vaccine, says WHO. The WHO’s assistant director-general Mariangela Simao said the UN health agency was working towards ensuring access to coronavirus jabs all around the world.“No one needs to panic, because you’re going to get a vaccine,” said Simao, the assistant DG for access to medicines, vaccines and pharmaceuticals.
- A new US CDC chief was sworn in. Dr Rochelle Walensky, 51, an infectious-diseases specialist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, was sworn in Wednesday as the new head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She takes the helm at a time when the country’s death toll has eclipsed 400,000 and continues to accelerate.
- London buses are being turned into ambulances to ease Covid strain. NHS staff are preparing to transport patients using two London buses that have been converted into makeshift ambulances, in another sign of the strain Covid is putting on the capital’s health services.
- Covid cases may have stopped falling, major English survey shows. Cases of coronavirus may no longer be falling across England, according to a major survey that raises concerns over whether lockdown measures can contain the new variant, as the UK reported a record daily number of deaths.Boris Johnson described the 1,820 deaths reported on Wednesday as “appalling”, as he warned: “There will be more to come.”
- Joe Biden signed executive orders on the pandemic. Biden moved quickly to address Covid-19, signing orders to mandate mask wearing and social distancing in federal buildings and lands and to create a position of a Covid-19 response coordinator.
- Australia recorded a fourth day of zero coronavirus cases on Thursday, prompting the chief of the country’s most populous state to call for a special travel “bubble” with Pacific island nations.
-
Coronavirus vaccines may need to be redesigned this year to boost protection against a new variant that emerged rapidly in South Africa, research suggests, while past Covid sufferers may not be protected against reinfection.
- Indonesia plans to start giving the general public Covid-19 vaccinations sometime between late April to May, health minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said on Thursday.
London buses turned into ambulances to ease Covid strain
NHS staff are preparing to transport patients using two London buses that have been converted into makeshift ambulances, in another sign of the strain Covid is putting on the capital’s health services.
Most of the seats on the single-decker buses have been removed so that each can carry four patients, in an attempt to relieve the intense pressure on hospitals and the London ambulance service.
Go-Ahead, the bus company which owns the vehicles, has loaned them to the NHS in the capital to help transfer patients, including to the reopened London Nightingale field hospital:
Indonesia plans to start vaccinating general public from late April
Indonesia plans to start giving the general public Covid-19 vaccinations sometime between late April to May, health minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said on Thursday.
“(Vaccinations) will happen for 1.4 million health between January to February, after that 17 million public workers will be vaccinated, then we will provide vaccines for 25 million seniors,” he told a forum, adding he hoped by May or the end of April Indonesia could start vaccinating the general public.
Updated
Turkey has slowed the pace of Covid-19 vaccinations after an explosive start last week, but can quicken it again after the country delivers inoculations to the elderly in care homes and at their houses, the programme’s coordinator said.
Reuters: The nationwide rollout of the CoronaVac vaccine, produced by China’s Sinovac, reached 1 million people in its first week.
After 600,000 health workers were vaccinated in the first two days, the pace slowed to about 100,000 people per day as the campaign moved to care homes across the country.
“Logistically, our capacity is very high. The current dose numbers are considerably low for us,” programme coordinator Tarkan Mustafa Yamanoglu told Reuters on Wednesday.
The need to “properly administer” vaccines and limit contact to avoid spreading infections were other factors constraining the pace of the rollout, he said, as were the demographics of the people being vaccinated.
“We expect fluctuations in vaccination speeds depending on age groups and mobility; this will happen in the coming period,” Yamanoglu said in an interview.
Ankara has agreed to buy 50 million doses of CoronaVac and is in talks with other developers for supplies, but has only received 3 million doses so far. Authorities have not set a date for the next shipment.
Turkey has reported some 24,000 deaths from Covid and more than 2.4 million infections since March, some of the highest figures in the Middle East. A night-time curfew and weekend lockdowns are in place to try to contain the pandemic.
Thailand confirmed 142 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, taking its total infections to 12,795.
There were no additional deaths reported, with total fatalities remaining at 71. Seventeen of the new infections were imported, the Covid taskforce said at a daily briefing.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 20,398 to 2,088,400, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed on Thursday. The reported death toll rose by 1,013 to 49,783, the tally showed.
As always, you can get in touch with me on Twitter @helenrsullivan. There, you will also find a link that will enable you to place Bernie Sanders on any Google maps street view address.
US retracts World Health Organization withdrawal
US President Joe Biden has signed a letter retracting Donald Trump’s decision to leave the World Health Organization, which would have been effective in July this year.
On 6 July 2020, the US formally notified the WHO of its withdrawal, despite widespread criticism and an almost complete lack of international support for the move in the midst of a pandemic.
Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw in May last year, accusing the WHO, without evidence, of withholding information, and of being too close to China.
“The WHO plays a crucial role in the world’s fight against the deadly Covid-19 pandemic,” Biden wrote, “as well as countless other threats to global health and health security.”
Biden letter rejoining the WHO pic.twitter.com/wWD7Kz42u1
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) January 21, 2021
Covid vaccines may need updating to protect against new variant
In case you missed this earlier, from the Guardian’s Ian Sample and Linda Geddes: Coronavirus vaccines may need to be redesigned this year to boost protection against a new variant that emerged rapidly in South Africa, research suggests, while past Covid sufferers may not be protected against reinfection.
Research by South African government scientists reveals that mutations of the new variant, known as 501Y.v2 or B1351, make the variant substantially resistant to antibodies in blood plasma donated by Covid patients.
The findings suggest it may be more likely to reinfect people who have already had Covid, and that vaccines being rolled out across the globe may be less effective. Since the variant emerged late last year, it has prompted travel bans around the world:
China’s regional authorities are under pressure to improve their response to the outbreak. Yesterday 16 officials were formally disciplined.
Today, the Global Times reports public security officers are investigating a Hebei village official after he reportedly had a villager tied to a tree. The man had insisted on entering a locked-down area to buy cigarettes, the report said.
“The Party chief of the village, surnamed Yan, instructed anti-epidemic workers on duty at the scene to tie Cao to a tree and verbally abused him, according to a notice released by the local government on Wednesday morning.”
A video circulating on social media showed three anti-epidemic workers wearing red jackets tying an elderly man to a tree while another worker scolded him, saying, “You dare to walk around… son of a bitch… how can you still hang around at this critical time!”
Yan is under investigation for allegedly imposing illegal restrictions on another person’s freedom, and has been suspended, the notice said.
More on China now:
Beijing is under partial lockdown after China reported 144 new cases on Wednesday, including 126 locally transmitted infections.
Among the local cases, 68 were in Heilongjiang province, 33 in Jilin, 20 in Hebei, and two in Beijing. There were also 113 asymptomatic cases, which are counted separately.
The two cases in Beijing’s Daxing district were found to be of the UK variant of the virus, the head of the city’s health authority said. As a result, all 1.6 million residents of Daxing are banned from leaving the city without special permission and a negative Covid-19 test.
Residents in five Daxing neighbourhoods have been ordered to stay inside their homes. School students have been told to study at home, gatherings of more than 50 are banned, and people have been told to postpone weddings and simplify funerals.
Millions of people in other provinces are already under varying lockdown conditions as authorities grapple with the latest outbreak, the worst since early 2020, albeit still in far small numbers.
The national health commission has also announced strict new rules for migrant workers returning to their home villages for the Spring festival, which starts next month. The commission is also encouraging colleges, universities and businesses to stagger the start of holidays and classes.
Beijing News reported: “After returning home, 14 days of home health monitoring will be carried out. During the period, there will be no social gathering, and nucleic acid testing will be carried out every seven days.”
Each street and neighbourhood committee is responsible for implementing the new system and managing the returning residents, including registration and health monitoring.
Once a dashing young senator, now a lion in winter, Joe Biden walked up the presidential lectern he could finally call his own after half a century of striving.
The message that the 46th US president wanted to send a pained nation was the one that has defined his own life in the face of incalculable personal and political loss: resilience.
“We will press forward with speed and urgency, for we have much to do in this winter of peril and possibility,” Biden told the audience at the US Capitol in Washington on Wednesday, as the sun finally broke through clouds that had brought fleeting snow. “Much to repair. Much to restore. Much to heal. Much to build. And much to gain.”
That winter of peril includes a raging pandemic that has killed more than 400,000 Americans and a fraying body politic: two weeks after a mob encouraged by Donald Trump sacked the Capitol, this could no longer be described as a peaceful transfer of power.
Now it is Biden’s great misfortune to have realised, at 78 years old, a lifetime ambition at a moment of what he called “the cascading crises of our era”. It is also his good fortune to have no alternative but to think big and aim high. The quintessentially moderate, middle-of-the-road candidate might go down as radical and transformational because that is what the moment demands:
Hollywood star and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger shared a video of himself receiving his first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. The 73-year-old visited a vaccination clinic at Dodger stadium in Los Angeles after residents aged 65 and over were able to receive dosages. The star of the Terminator franchise encouraged others to to receive the vaccine, using one of the series’ famous catchphrases: “Come with me if you want to live”:
More now on the World Health Organization and vaccines:
According to the WHO’s overview of candidate vaccines, 64 have been tested on humans, 22 of which have reached final-stage mass testing.
A further 173 candidate vaccines are being developed in laboratories with a view to eventual human trials, AFP reports.
WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan welcomed the “really incredible” range, saying it was important to have a variety of vaccines with different properties.
So far, the WHO has only approved emergency use validation for the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which requires ultra-cold storage.
“That’s a problem in many countries,” said Swaminathan.
She said there were vaccines in development that only require a single injection; a nasally-inhaled vaccine; and versions which will be much more affordable than those already in use.
“There may be many vaccines that have advantages over the first generation,” Swaminathan said.
“What we want to see is prevention of disease. Prevention of infection is another question. But that is secondary,” she added..
“We will learn about how effective this vaccine is in actually preventing the spread of infection from person to person. Some vaccines produce sterilising immunity: they stop infection, they prevent disease.
“Some vaccines do not stop infection but prevent disease. At this point of time we’re still waiting to see the results of the studies to know which of the Covid vaccines are actually going to prevent infection successfully. Hopefully they should.”
President Joe Biden’s proposal for a $1.9tn Covid relief package was based on an assessment of specific needs, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Wednesday, when asked about Republican objections about the total cost.
“The package wasn’t designed with the $1.9tn as a starting point. It was designed with the components that were necessary to give people the relief that they needed,” she told reporters during her first briefing after Biden’s inauguration.
Psaki said it was challenging to think about which components of the proposal could be eliminated since all were based on recommendations from economists and health professionals, but acknowledged that the final version of any legislation rarely looked exactly like the initial proposal.
Biden, a longtime US lawmaker was no stranger to congressional negotiations, and would be closely involved in the process, Psaki said, adding: “It’s a conversation, and he is no stranger to the process of deal-making.”
She said the president’s clear preference was to move ahead with a bipartisan bill, but the White House was “not going to take any tools off the table” for the House and Senate - which will both be controlled by the Democrats - to get it done.
She also cited an outpouring of support from US business groups to Senator Bernie Sanders for the proposal.
Biden was committed to invoking the Defense Production Act to ensure the supplies and materials needed to achieve his goal of having 100 million people vaccinated in the first 100 days of his presidency.
Further details would be released on Thursday, Psaki said.
Australia marks four days with no new cases
Australia recorded a fourth day of zero coronavirus cases on Thursday, prompting the chief of the country’s most populous state to call for a special travel “bubble” with Pacific island nations.
Reuters: New South Wales has reined in an outbreak in mid-December that prompted a strict lockdown in Sydney’s Northern Beaches, while broader social distancing rules and mandatory mask wearing were imposed for the rest of the city.
Signalling those restrictions were set to be eased next week, Premier Gladys Berejiklien told the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper the federal government should consider establishing a travel arrangement with the Pacific.
“There is no reason why we shouldns’t aim to travel to New Zealand or some of the Pacific Islands well within the next 12 months,” Berejiklian said.
The comments come after Australia’s chief medical officer Paul Kelly cautioned about restarting international travel, given the country was in an “envious position” compared to most of the world.
Unlike other countries, Australia has closed its international borders, only allowing its stranded citizens back home.
However, the country is still hosting the Australian Open tennis grand slam, with hundreds of players and their entourages arriving each day.
Victoria, home to the Open, recorded its 15th straight day without any local coronavirus cases on Thursday, although as many as 72 players are in hard quarantine after some passengers on three charter flights carrying them to Melbourne tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
Tennis coach Daniel Vallverdu told Reuters that players in hard quarantine and unable leave their hotels to practice, should later get preferential treatment from organisers such as prime practice times and matches scheduled in the cooler hours of the day.
Australia has reported more than 22,000 local COVID-19 cases and 909 deaths since the pandemic began.
A decision on approving the Pfizer vaccine for use against Covid in Australia is imminent with the recommendations of the independent Advisory Committee on Vaccines now in the hands of the drugs regulator.
The chair of the committee, Prof Allen Cheng, said it had finished reviewing the vaccine data for the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) after holding a meeting about the vaccine on Friday.
“We just give the TGA the advice, it’s really up to them now,” he said. “But I’m sure it’s going to be pretty soon.”
Guardian Australia spoke to Cheng about what the committee does, how it assessed the Pfizer vaccine and other vaccine candidates, and what the committee has learned so far from countries already rolling out vaccines:
China reports 144 new cases
Mainland China continues to report cases over 100, with 144 new infections confirmed on 20 January, up from 103 cases a day earlier, the country’s national health authority said on Thursday.
The National Health Commission, in a statement, said 126 of the new cases were local infections. The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, rose to 113 from 58 cases a day earlier.
The total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in mainland
China now stands at 88,701, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,635.
In the Pacific, Papua New Guinea is battling continued outbreaks of Covid-19 across its archipelago.
The country has currently recorded 843 cases, with eight new case overnight in West New Britain and the capital Port Moresby. The actual rate of infection is like far higher, with limited testing outside of the capital.
At the same time, Fiji, which has kept Covid-19 infections low throughout the pandemic - just 55 confirmed cases - is battling typhoid outbreaks following Category 5 cyclone Yasa tearing through the north of the country last month.
The country now has 13 cases of typhoid, and the health ministry’s efforts to combat is leptospirosis, typhoid, dengue and diarrhoea are being hampered by damage to water supplies and to sewage systems.
Treating severely ill Covid-19 patients with the arthritis drug tocilizumab has no clinical benefit, according to the results of a trial stopped early due to an increase in deaths among those receiving it, AFP reports:
The trial, published Thursday in the BMJ medical journal, appeared to contradict earlier studies in which tocilizumab seemed to show promise in reducing the length of hospital stays for some patients.
The drug, a common treatment for arthritis, blocks a specific part of the body’s immune system that can go into overdrive in serious and critical Covid-19 cases.
It had been hoped that the treatment could help to tamp down some of the more extreme inflammatory responses that can lead to death.
Researchers in Brazil conducted a randomised control trial among 129 patients with confirmed Covid-19 at nine hospitals.
Joe Biden signs executive orders on pandemic
Joe Biden has marked the start of his presidency by signing a flurry of executive orders on a suite of issues, including Covid-19, the environment, immigration and ethics.
Some of the executive actions undo significant actions from Donald Trump’s administration, including halting the travel ban from Muslim-majority countries, and ending the declaration of a national emergency used to justify funding construction of a wall on the US-Mexico border.
He also signed an order allowing the United States to rejoin the Paris climate agreement and end the Trump administration’s efforts to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census data used to determine how many seats in Congress each state gets.
The president also moved quickly to address Covid-19, signing orders to mandate mask wearing and social distancing in federal buildings and lands and to create a position of a Covid-19 response coordinator:
Covid cases may have stopped falling, major English survey shows
Cases of coronavirus may no longer be falling across England, according to a major survey that raises concerns over whether lockdown measures can contain the new variant, as the UK reported a record daily number of deaths.
Boris Johnson described the 1,820 deaths reported on Wednesday as “appalling”, as he warned: “There will be more to come.”
Scientists at Imperial College London analysed swab tests from more than 142,000 people across England between 6 and 15 January which suggested that new infections may have fallen recently but were now stable, and perhaps even growing slightly, with only south-west England showing clear evidence of a decline:
New US CDC director sworn in
In the US, a new CDC director is arriving to a mammoth task: reasserting the agency while the pandemic is in its deadliest phase yet and the nation’s largest-ever vaccination campaign is wracked by confusion and delays, AP reports.
Dr Rochelle Walensky, 51, an infectious-diseases specialist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, was sworn in Wednesday as the head of the CDC.
While the agency has retained some of its top scientific talent, public health experts say, it has a long list of needs, including new protection from political influence, a comprehensive review of its missteps during the pandemic and more money to beef up basic functions like disease tracking and genetic analysis.
Walensky has said one of her top priorities will be to improve the CDC’s communications with the public to rebuild trust. Inside the agency, she wants to raise morale, in large part by restoring the primacy of science and setting politics to the side.
The speed at which she is assuming the job is unusual. In the past, the position has generally been unfilled until a new secretary of health and human services is confirmed, and that official names a CDC director. But this time, the Biden transition team named Walensky in advance, so she could take the agency’s reins even before her boss is in place.
Walensky, an HIV researcher, has not worked at the CDC or at a state or local health department. But she has emerged as a prominent voice on the pandemic, sometimes criticising certain aspects of the state and national response. Her targets have included the uneven transmission-prevention measures that were in place last summer and a prominent Trump adviser’s endorsement of a “herd immunity” approach that would let the virus run free.
Don’t panic, you’ll get vaccine, says WHO
Nobody should panic about getting access to a Covid-19 vaccine because everyone who wants one will get one, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
AFP: The WHO’s assistant director-general Mariangela Simao said the UN health agency was working towards ensuring access to coronavirus jabs all around the world.
“No one needs to panic, because you’re going to get a vaccine,” said Simao, the assistant DG for access to medicines, vaccines and pharmaceuticals.
“We’ve been working very hard to ensure that all countries, all populations, do have the opportunity to access these vaccines,” she told a WHO social media live event.
Simao said that around 50 countries have started vaccination campaigns, with more than 40 of them being high-income states.
The WHO co-led Covax facility, a globally-pooled vaccine procurement and distribution effort, has struck agreements with five manufacturers for two billion vaccine doses.
It aims to secure vaccines for 20 percent of the population in each participating country by the end of the year, with funding covered for the 92 lower- and lower-middle income economies involved.
“We are expecting to have the first doses reaching countries end of February,” Simao said.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan.
I’ll be bringing you the latest from around the world for the next while.
As always, you can find me on Twitter here.
Nobody should panic about getting access to a Covid-19 vaccine because everyone who wants one will get one, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
The WHO’s assistant director-general Mariangela Simao said the UN health agency was working towards ensuring access to coronavirus jabs all around the world.
“No one needs to panic, because you’re going to get a vaccine,” said Simao, the assistant DG for access to medicines, vaccines and pharmaceuticals.
Meanwhile in the US, Dr Rochelle Walensky, 51, an infectious-diseases specialist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, was sworn in Wednesday as the new head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She takes the helm at a time when the country’s death toll has eclipsed 400,000 and continues to accelerate.
Here are the other key recent developments in the pandemic:
- Joe Biden marks start of presidency with executive orders to tackle Covid-19. The president signed orders to mandate mask wearing and social distancing in federal buildings and lands, and to create a position of a Covid-19 response coordinator.
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UK reports 1,820 more Covid deaths, the most recorded in one day. The number of new cases also rose sharply to 38,905, after a fall earlier in the week which inspired optimism that lockdown restrictions were working.
- France may follow Germany in making clinical masks mandatory. Medical-grade face masks rather than cloth coverings could become mandatory in a number of European countries to help contain the rapid spread of highly contagious Covid variants first identified in the UK and South Africa.
- Dubai cancels non-essential surgery as Covid-19 cases surge. Dubai has ordered hospitals to cancel non-essential surgery for the next month after a surge in coronavirus cases in the Middle East’s tourism and business hub.
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Indian hesitancy sets back world’s biggest Covid vaccination drive. India’s Covid-19 vaccine drive has been hampered by turnout as low as 22% in some states, as fears over the safety of the vaccine and the spread of misinformation has fuelled widespread hesitancy.
- Spain logs record number of new Covid infections. Spain recorded 41,576 new cases in the preceding 24 hours, bringing the country’s total caseload to 2,412,318. It also recorded 464 deaths.
- Italy considers legal action over Pfizer vaccine delivery delays. Italy is preparing to take legal action against Pfizer over delays in delivery of pre-ordered Covid-19 vaccines. Italy received 48,000 vaccines for this week, out of an allocated 397,000, and was also left short by 165,000 last week.
- Record 343,00 people in UK receive first dose of Covid vaccine in one day. The NHS is scaling up its11push to vaccinate 15 million people by mid-February, although with 25 days to go it will require about 400,000 immunisations a day to remain on track.
- Syria’s White Helmets awarded £920,000 to make PPE. Syria’s White Helmets, who rescue victims from the rubble of airstrikes,13have added making personal protective equipment to their efforts saving lives in areas of the country outside Bashar al-Assad’s control.
