This blog is now closed. A summary of key recent developments can be found here. For up to date coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, head to the link below:
The leader of a World Health Organization mission to China to find the origins of the coronavirus has said the team felt political pressure, including from outside China, and difficulties in accessing raw data.
“We got access to quite a lot of data, in many different areas, but of course, there are areas where we had difficulties getting down to the raw data. And there are many good reasons for that,’ said Peter Ben Embarek, the WHO official who led the four-week mission of international experts to China in January and February.
“In China, like in many other countries, there are restrictions and privacy laws that forbid the sharing of data, including private details to outsiders, in particular if the data are moving out of the country. There would be exactly the same in most countries in the world.”
The US and the UK have sharply criticised the WHO report into the beginnings of the coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan, in a statement signed by 12 other countries, implicitly accusing China of ‘withholding access to complete, original data and samples’:
A “phenomenal” summer of culture in the UK without crowds, queues or inbound tourists beckons, tourism chiefs have promised, as new figures were published laying bare just how bad 2020 was.
Bernard Donoghue, the director of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA), said there would probably not be another chance for people to experience the nation’s museums, galleries, zoos, castles, country houses and theme parks as they will be able to this year.
“The visitor experience this year will be phenomenal,” he said. “It will be culture without crowds. You will be up close and personal with animals or art in a way you would never have experienced before and possibly won’t in the future. If you were ever going to have a holiday in Britain, this is the time to do it.”
Outdoor attractions in England will begin reopening in April and indoor ones a month later in May.
Donoghue said ALVA questioned the government decision to open non-essential retail from 12 April but not indoor attractions, which will also be closed for the May bank holiday:
Queensland authorities added dozens of venues to more than 80 potential coronavirus exposure sites across the state as residents of the capital, Brisbane, awaited a decision on whether a three-day lockdown would be extended into the Easter holidays.
Reuters reports that more than two million residents in Australia’s third largest city have been asked to stay home until Thursday evening as authorities rushed to contain two distinct virus clusters, which had grown to 15 cases as of Tuesday.
Residents are allowed to leave their homes only for essential work, healthcare, grocery shopping or exercise, and must wear masks when they step outside.
Eight new locally acquired cases, all linked to the more contagious UK variant, were reported on Tuesday in Queensland and authorities warned more cases could be detected in the coming days.
Several states have closed their borders with the state, throwing Easter travel plans into disarray, with Brisbane airport expecting a 85% fall in the number of domestic travellers by this weekend compared with its pre-lockdown target.
The Easter long weekend and two-week school term break is a busy time for Australian travel.
Snap lockdowns, border closures and speedy tracking systems have helped Australia to keep its coronavirus numbers relatively low. It has reported just under 29,300 Covid-19 cases and 909 deaths since the pandemic began.
Reuters reports that Ecuador’s health system is under severe strain from a surge in coronavirus infections, according to doctors in the country’s capital who added that some Quito hospitals are working above capacity to treat patients with Covid-19.
Ecuador suffered a brutal outbreak of coronavirus in early 2020, primarily in the largest city of Guayaquil. Authorities controlled the situation after several months, but in recent weeks have seen an uptick in cases in cities around the country.
“The saturation of the health system is not only in Quito but at the national level,” Dr Victor Alvarez, the president of the doctors association of the state of Pichincha, where Quito is located, told reporters. “Seeing images of patients lying on the ground, or perhaps on a military mattress, receiving oxygen in emergency units, that’s sad.”
In some Quito hospitals, entire families wait in emergency areas in hopes of being given a open bed, Dr Edison Ramos, a coordinator at Carlos Andrade Marin hospital, said in an interview with a local television station.
Ecuador registered 2,201 new infections in the last 24 hours, raising the total number of cases to 327,325, according to official data. A total of 16,780 people either died from the disease or were suspected of having it but passed away before being diagnosed.
The government on Monday enacted new measures including a restriction on highway travel, the ban on the sale of alcoholic beverages and the closure of beaches for the Easter holiday.
The national vaccination campaign has moved slowly and has been clouded by accusations of influence peddling.
The municipality of Guayaquil is asking the president Lenin Moreno to allow it to impose a curfew to control infections.
“Believing that this is already over ... is causing us to experience a situation almost at the risk of becoming that of last year,” the mayor Cynthia Viteri told local media.
About half of people in the UK now have antibodies against coronavirus, either through infection or vaccination, tests conducted by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show.
The study was conducted based on blood test results taken from a randomly selected subsample of individuals aged 16 years and over, which are used to test for antibodies against coronavirus. It points to a success in the UK’s vaccination programme, with 30 million people having received at least one dose.
Spain confirmed it would use AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine for people aged 55-65 and could give Johnson & Johnson’s jab to older people when that becomes available in the country, Reuters reports.
Cadena Ser radio reported that a public health commission decided to remove the upper age limit of 65 on the AstraZeneca vaccine. A week ago Spain decided to reintroduce the jab for people aged 18-65 following concerns over cases of blood clots.
The commission approved a document including the use of AstraZeneca’s shot for 55- to 65-year-olds, the health ministry said in a statement. A spokeswoman did not confirm or deny the report that the limit had been removed.
Cadena Ser said the AstraZeneca shots would essentially be given to under-65s because they had been set aside for essential workers and other segments of the population under that age. The statement said the document also referred to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
“When there are available doses of this vaccine, it can be used in parallel with mRNA vaccines to increase the pace of vaccinations among older age groups,” the statement said.
Cadena Ser said the document showed the Johnson & Johnson vaccine would be given to people over 66, alongside those produced by Pfizer and Moderna.
The German chancellor Angela Merkel has said she is open to being vaccinated with the Oxford/Astrazeneca Covid-19 jab.
“I have said when it is my turn, I will get vaccinated, also with AstraZeneca,” Merkel, 66, told a news conference on Germany’s decision to limit the use of the British-Swedish firm’s vaccine over health concerns. “The possibility of me being vaccinated is nearing.”
Merkel’s intervention comes after Germany’s standing vaccination commission (Stiko) recommended that no-one aged under 60 should be given Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines, according to a report in Augsburger Allgemeine.
Augsburger Allgemeine quoted the Stiko report as saying:
On the basis of the currently available, but still limited, evidence and taking into account the current pandemic situation, the Stiko recommends using the Covid-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca for people over the age of 60.
Their use below this age limit, however, remains possible at the medical discretion and with individual risk acceptance after careful explanation.
With regard to the second vaccine dose for younger people who have already received a first dose of the Covid-19 AstraZeneca vaccine, the Stiko will comment by the end of April.
Earlier it emerged that health services in other parts of the country, including Berlin and Brandenburg, had paused the distribution of the jab to under-60s over possible side effects.
Updated
South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa announced a four-day ban on take-away alcohol consumption over the Easter weekend, over fears of a possible third wave of coronavirus infections, AFP reports.
The country, which has recorded over 1.5 million cases, has seen infection rates stabilising in recent weeks at an average of 1,200 per day, according to the president.
But Ramaphosa warned against complacency, saying that the role of alcohol in encouraging negligent behaviour could not be understated particularly during the busy four-day weekend.
The period typically sees annual religious pilgrimages and long journeys undertaken by many inland families to holiday destinations on the coast over the Holy Week break.
Speaking in a televised address, Ramaphosa said “given the role of alcohol in fuelling reckless behaviour... the sale of alcohol for off-site consumption will be prohibited this coming Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday.”
On-site sales of alcohol at restaurants and bars will be permitted during the four-day weekend.
“This pandemic is still very much with us. We must act with caution, not just this coming weekend but in the days, weeks and months ahead,” he said.
A string of booze bans have previously been imposed in the country to ease the number of trauma cases in hospitals already burdened by coronavirus patients.
Recording over 1.5 million cases, of which 52,700 were fatalities, South Africa has been the worst hit African nation during the coronavirus pandemic.
Ireland to start easing restrictions next month
Ireland will begin lifting its three-month long lockdown next month, the prime minister Micheal Martin said on Tuesday, even if many of the restrictions will remain in place until May. AFP has this report:
“We are on the final stretch of this terrible journey,” Martin said in a national address announcing a minor easing of one of Europe’s toughest and longest-running national lockdowns. “By being safe now, while significantly ramping up the vaccination programme, we will enjoy a much greater freedom later in the summer.”
Ireland entered into its third coronavirus lockdown in late December, closing restaurants, pubs, and non-essential shops and asking people to stay at home or limit non-essential travel to within a radius of five kilometres.
But that will start to ease from 12 April, when people will be allowed to travel freely within their county. Two households will be permitted to meet outdoors and some paused construction work will restart in a phased manner.
Pupils already began returning to the classroom on a phased basis in March, but schools should be fully opened by 12 April.
Later next month, some sports activities will be allowed to restart and outdoor visitor attractions will reopen, Martin said.
The government would then consider the phased reopening of non-essential stores, personal services such as hairdressers, as well as museums, libraries and galleries in May.
“A widespread lifting of restrictions at this point - in advance of further substantial vaccination - would lead to unacceptable increases in infections, hospitalisations and deaths,” the government said.
Martin said more than 800,000 vaccine doses have now been delivered in Ireland where the rollout has been tied to an EU-wide programme hobbled by supply issues.
So far, 4,681 people have died from coronavirus in the country of five million, according to the latest official figures.
Despite weathering the first two waves of the pandemic relatively well, Ireland has been hit hard by the third wave, with more than half of total deaths recorded since the start of 2021.
The government has blamed the rise on the arrival of new, more infectious virus variants, but Dublin’s decision to ease restrictions ahead of Christmas is also seen as having played a significant role.
Spain is to tighten face masks rules, making them mandatory outdoors and in all public places, AFP reports.
Face masks have been obligatory since May last year but only in places where it was not possible to maintain at least two metres (6.5 feet) to observe social distancing.
The new law will come into effect on Wednesday once it is published in the official government gazette.
Spain has been hard-hit by the pandemic, having so far recorded over 75,000 deaths from nearly 3.3 million cases.
“It is important that citizens know that we have not reached a relaxation phase, and we cannot in any way afford to be reckless,” government spokeswoman Maria Jesus Montero told a news conference.
Exceptions will continue to be made for people with medical conditions or respiratory problems or for those exercising outdoors.
The government has vowed to vaccinate 70% of Spain’s population by the end of summer. So far some 2.6 million people in the nation of around 47 million people have been fully vaccinated, mainly residents and workers in nursing homes who were given priority.
Spain’s central government said on Tuesday it would file a legal challenge against a law passed by the northwestern region of Galicia making it mandatory to be vaccinated against Covid-19 and other diseases.
The law, which was approved in February, calls for fines of up to 3,000 euros ($3,500) for anyone who refuses to get a vaccine. But Montero said it “limited fundamental rights” and was a matter for national, not regional, legislation.
Turkey logs record number of daily Covid cases
Turkey has recorded 37,303 new coronavirus cases in the space of 24 hours, the highest level since the beginning of the pandemic, health ministry data showed on Tuesday, a day after Ankara said it would tighten restrictions amid surging infections.
The government eased measures to curb the pandemic this month, prompting a surge in new cases. On Monday, the president Tayyip Erdogan announced the tightening, including the return of full nationwide weekend lockdowns for the holy Islamic month of Ramadan.
A further 155 deaths were recorded, bringing the death toll to 31,385, according to the health ministry.
Reuters reports that Italy will impose a mandatory five-day coronavirus quarantine for people arriving or returning from trips to European Union countries until 6 April.
Travellers must also take a Covid-19 test at the end of the quarantine period. Similar measures were already in place for trips to countries outside the European Union.
The decree will be effective the day after its publication either Tuesday night or Wednesday, a health ministry spokesman said.
It comes after the hotel industry complained that while travel between Italy’s 20 regions was virtually barred, travel within the EU was allowed with some restrictions.
All over the country restaurants and bars can only serve takeaways as infections and deaths have risen. In many regions, all but essential shops have been forced to close and people may leave their homes only for work, health reasons or emergencies.
Italian hotel owners blame the government for not offering enough compensation for their forced closures.
“We absolutely did not want to make war against Italians going abroad. ... If the test is valid to go abroad, it must be valid for Italy too,” Bernabo Bocca, president of Italy’s hotel lobby Federalberghi, told Ansa news agency.
“We thought it was fine that an Italian taking a test could go abroad, but an Italian taking a test should also be allowed to go to a hotel in Venice,” he added.
Italy reported 529 coronavirus-related deaths on Tuesday against 417 the day before, the health ministry said, as a new study showed the more contagious UK variant discovered now accounts for nine out of 10 new Italian cases. It takes the country’s death toll to 108,879, the second-highest in Europe after the UK and the seventh-highest in the world.
Updated
Early evening summary
Here is a quick recap of the main recent Covid updates from around the world:
- Greece reported 4,340 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, its highest daily tally.
- A World Health Organization team probing the new coronavirus’s origins cited problems accessing raw data, the health agency’s chief said.
- Germany’s standing vaccination commission (Stiko) has recommended that no-one aged under 60 should be given Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines, according to a report in Augsburger Allgemeine. (See post at 16:06)
- Residents in Canada’s nursing homes didn’t receive enough medical care during the first wave of the pandemic, according to a new study.
- In the Netherlands, despite the lockdown, new Covid cases increased for a seventh consecutive week, health authorities said earlier.
- The number of people in Sweden needing intensive care as a result of Covid-19 infection increased 9% compared to last week, health officials said.
- Berlin’s state hospital groups Charite and Vivantes stopped giving female staff under the age of 55 shots of AstraZeneca vaccine following further reports of a rare brain blood disorder. They also stopped giving women under 55 shots of the vaccine.
Reuters reports:
Italy will impose a mandatory five-day coronavirus quarantine for people arriving or returning from trips to European Union countries until 6 April, the health ministry said on Tuesday.
Travellers must also take a Covid-19 test at the end of the quarantine period. Similar measures were already in place for trips to countries outside the European Union.
The decree will be effective the day after its publication either Tuesday night or Wednesday, a ministry spokesman said.
The decree came after the hotel industry complained that while travel between Italy’s 20 regions was virtually barred, travel within the EU was allowed with some restrictions.
Estonia has extended all Covid restrictions by two weeks until 25 April, and said travellers arriving from Latvia, Lithuania and Finland would now need to isolate for 10 days, Reuters reports.
The government said the extension applied to measures that had been due to expire on 11 April restricting education, sports, public events and youth work, including the closure of spas, water parks, and swimming pools.
Restaurants may sell only takeaway food, and all shops except those selling essential goods must close, it said, with schools having to continue teaching online.
Estonia, a nation of 1.3 million, has so far recorded 105,416 infections and 896 Covid-related deaths.
Greece registers 4,340 new Covid cases, new high
Greece reported 4,340 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, its highest daily tally, after increasing the number of tests performed while its hospitals remain under severe pressure from a wave of new infections, Reuters writes.
A surge in infections has forced the government to tighten restrictions as intensive care units have come close to being overwhelmed.
“The number is high, but this is mainly due to the large, almost double, number of tests compared with previous days,” a health official told Reuters.
Authorities reported 1,724 new cases on Monday. The latest jump in infections brings the total number of cases in the country to 260,077. Authorities also registered 72 deaths, raising the total to 8,017.
The latest spike in infections adds to growing worries over the upcoming tourist season, due to open on 14 May.
The government is hoping a campaign of mass testing, including using home testing kits, will enable health services to bring the spread of infections under control in the coming weeks.
Italy reported 529 Covid-related deaths on Tuesday against 417 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 16,017 from 12,916.
Some 301,451 tests for Covid-19 were carried out in the past day, compared with a previous 156,692, according to the health ministry.
Here are the latest vaccination figures from the DHSC in the UK:
#COVID19 VACCINE UPDATE: Daily figures on the number of people who have received a COVID-19 vaccine in the UK.
— Department of Health and Social Care (@DHSCgovuk) March 30, 2021
As of 30 March, 30,680,948 people have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccination.
Visit the @PHE_uk dashboard for more info:
▶️️ https://t.co/cQkuLQglz1 pic.twitter.com/cgpzXS4DVX
WHO chief says access to raw data was difficult in Covid origin probe
A World Health Organization team probing the new coronavirus’s origins cited problems accessing raw data, the health agency’s chief said, as he called for further studies because the assessment, so far, has not been extensive enough.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the comments to the agency’s member states as a WHO-led team that spent four weeks in and around Wuhan, China, in January and February released its final report to the public, Reuters reports.
“In my discussions with the team, they expressed the difficulties they encountered in accessing raw data,” Tedros said, adding: “I expect future collaborative studies to include more timely and comprehensive data sharing.”
Updated
A fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic has taken hold in western and central areas of Iran, the country’s health ministry has said, blaming the latest rise in cases on travel and celebrations during Iranian new year holidays.
Speaking on state television on Tuesday, Sima Sadat Lari, the health ministry spokesperson, said:
A fourth coronavirus wave has definitely begun in many parts of the west and centre of the country and is advancing towards the east.
New cases jumped by more than 900 to 10,255 in the past 24 hours, a more-than-three-month high, Lari was quoted as saying by Reuters. The news agency said she blamed the surge on Iranians travelling or holding family gatherings during Nowruz.
Iran has reported a total of almost 1.9 million cases and 62,569 deaths.
Updated
German vaccine regulator advises against use of AstraZeneca vaccine in under 60s
Germany’s standing vaccination commission (Stiko) has recommended that no-one aged under 60 should be given Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines, according to a report in Augsburger Allgemeine.
According to draft recommendations seen by the regional paper, the British-developed vaccine may still be given to younger patients on the discretion of a doctor.
Augsburger Allgemeine quoted the Stiko report as saying:
On the basis of the currently available, but still limited, evidence and taking into account the current pandemic situation, the Stiko recommends using the Covid-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca for people over the age of 60.
Their use below this age limit, however, remains possible at the medical discretion and with individual risk acceptance after careful explanation.
With regard to the second vaccine dose for younger people who have already received a first dose of the Covid-19 AstraZeneca vaccine, the Stiko will comment by the end of April.
Earlier it emerged that health services in Berlin and Brandenburg have paused the distribution of AstraZeneca vaccines to under-60s. (See post at 13.44)
Updated
Canada's nursing home residents did not receive enough medical care during pandemic first wave - report
Residents in Canada’s nursing homes didn’t receive enough medical care during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, faring far worse than those in other wealthy nations, a new study has found, writes Leyland Cecco in Toronto.
The report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information found that long term care home deaths account for 69% of fatalities in Canada from Covid-19 — far higher than the international average of 41 per cent.
“Covid-19 has exacted a heavy price on Canada’s long-term care and retirement homes, resulting in a disproportionate number of outbreaks and deaths,” said the report.
Over 14,700 residents died in long-term care and retirement homes across Canada between 1 March, 2020, and 15 February, the report says. Thirty staff members also died during this period.
The report, which focused largely on the first wave of the virus, found that in a bid to prevent overcrowding of hospitals early on in the pandemic — a fear prompted by images of hospitals in New York and Italy — nursing home residents received less medical care. They also had fewer visits from doctors compared to previous years, and fewer residents were transferred to hospitals.
Most of the 6,080 long-term care residents who died of Covid-19 during the first wave passed away in cities where hospital beds remained empty.
The report found that it wasn’t just Covid-19 that proved fatal for residents; unable to receive medical care meant that residents also succumbed to pre-existing health conditions.
“Resident deaths — for all causes, not just from COVID-19 infection — increased by 19 per cent in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador,” the report said. “There were 2,273 more deaths than the average in the five years prior to COVID-19, with the largest increase occurring in April 2020.”
The prime minister of Slovakia and his government have resigned after a secret deal to buy Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccines triggered a political crisis.
Igor Matovic’s administration is the first European government to collapse over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. But, according to the Associated Press, the move will keep the country’s current four-party coalition, which holds a comfortable parliamentary majority, in power.
The crisis erupted when a secret deal was exposed at the beginning of March in which Slovakia agreed to acquire 2 million doses of Sputnik V. Matovic orchestrated the deal despite disagreement among his coalition partners, according to AP.
Slovakia’s president, Zuzana Caputova, accepted Matovic’s resignation and asked Eduard Heger, from Matovic’s Ordinary People party, who was already serving as finance minister and deputy prime minister,
Matovic is expected to assume Heger’s former post in the new government.
With few changes, Heger’s Cabinet is expected to be the same as Matovic’s. The president might swear it in as soon as this week.
Singapore has no new locally transmitted cases of coronavirus today.
As of 30 Mar 2021, 12pm, we have confirmed and verified that there are no new cases of locally transmitted COVID-19 infection. There are 26 imported cases. https://t.co/vhT0bSMH5g
— Ministry of Health (@sporeMOH) March 30, 2021
7 more cases of COVID-19 infection have been discharged from hospitals or community isolation facilities. In all, 60,138 have fully recovered from the infection and have been discharged. https://t.co/vhT0bSMH5g
— Ministry of Health (@sporeMOH) March 30, 2021
There are currently 37 confirmed cases who are still in hospital. Of these, most are stable or improving, and 1 is in critical condition in the intensive care unit. https://t.co/vhT0bSMH5g
— Ministry of Health (@sporeMOH) March 30, 2021
Dutch coronavirus cases rise for seventh week, officials say
New Covid cases in the Netherlands rose for a seventh consecutive week, health authorities said on Tuesday, despite the country’s lockdown.
New cases climbed by 13% to 51,866, the National Institute for Health (RIVM) said in its weekly review, the highest level since early January, Reuters reports.
More cases were seen in every age category, but there was only a 5% increase in cases in people above the age of 80, which the RIVM attributed to the country’s vaccine rollout.
According to RIVM data, 2.4 million first and second vaccine doses combined have been administered among a population of 17.3 million, with the oldest being given shots first by Dutch policy.
The agency expects cases to peak in late April before declining as vaccination levels increase.
Bans on public gatherings of more than 2 people and an evening curfew have been in place since 23 January.
Poland will widen access to Covid vaccines in April to those in their 40s and 50s, as it aims to inoculate all citizens who want to become vaccinated by the end of August, the government has announced.
Poland, with a population of 38 million, wants to administer 10 million Covid vaccine doses per month, the government said.
The country has reported a surge in new coronavirus cases in the past weeks, with many hospitals running out of beds and ventilators, Reuters reports.
Switzerland is warning people not to storm pharmacies next Wednesday when free Covid-19 self-tests become available, according to Reuters.
Infections are rising anew in all 26 Swiss cantons with health officials expecting daily new cases could double within the next three weeks.
While neighboring Germany has been offering self-testing kits for several weeks, in Switzerland they will be available only from next week, after the Easter holiday.
Swiss residents will be able to get five free home test kits monthly, saving them from having to go to a doctor for the procedure. But Martine Ruggli, head of the pharmacy industry group PharmaSuisse, warned people not to come all at once.
Ruggli told a news conference:
It’s very important that not everybody storms into the pharmacies on the first day because then we couldn’t manage the crush. Daily, 320,000 people visit Swiss pharmacies. If suddenly one or two million people come on one day to get these tests, it won’t be possible to serve all customers...Please, have a little patience.
EU says AstraZeneca under no UK obligation that would prevent EU vaccine supply
Reuters reports:
AstraZeneca has told the European Union that it has no legal obligations to Britain or other buyers that would prevent the full supply of Covid-19 doses under its contract with the EU, a European Commission spokeswoman said on Tuesday.
Her comments at a news conference contradict statements made by British health minister Matt Hancock, who has repeatedly said the Anglo-Swedish firm has an exclusive deal with Britain that would justify prioritisation of supplies to the United Kingdom.
“AstraZeneca confirmed to us not being under any obligation to other parties that would impede to complete the fulfilment of its obligations” to the EU, the Commission spokeswoman said when asked about Hancock’s statements.
Her statement repeated the main points of article 13.1 of the EU contract with AstraZeneca under which the company agreed not to have any contractual obligations that would limit its ability to meet EU commitments. AstraZeneca did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The EU has launched talks with AstraZeneca under a dispute resolution mechanism included in its contract after the company said it would aim to deliver only 100 million doses by the end of June, instead of 300 million committed to in the EU contract.
This appreciation message is from Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization (see earlier post for more on the pandemic treaty):
I am very grateful to Prime Ministers:
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) March 30, 2021
🇫🇯@FijiPM
🇵🇹@antoniocostapm
🇬🇧@BorisJohnson
🇩🇪Angela Merkel
🇬🇷@kmitsotakis
🇦🇱@ediramaal
🇹🇹@DrKeithRowley
🇪🇸@sanchezcastejon
🇳🇴@erna_solberg
🇳🇱@MinPres
🇹🇭@prayutofficial
🇮🇹Mario Draghi
for their commitment to #PandemicTreaty.
Number of people in Sweden in intensive care due to Covid infection rises
The number of people in Sweden needing intensive care as a result of coronavirus infection increased 9% compared to last week, as the country grapples with a third wave of the virus, health officials said on Tuesday (see earlier post for case statistics).
A total of 1,552 Covid patients were being treated in hospitals, with just over 300 were being admitted to intensive care units during the period, an increase of 9% compared to last week, Reuters reports.
“The pressure on the healthcare has been high for a long time now,” Taha Alexandersson, an official at the National Board of Health and Welfare, told a news conference. “The increased spread indicates it will increase even more.”
Parts of Germany suspend AstraZeneca vaccine for under-60s
Berlin has paused giving AstraZeneca shots to patients under 60. Local health minister Dilek Kalayci announced the decision on Tuesday afternoon, saying it was based on new data about possible side effects.
She added that there would be a further statement from all the regional health ministers about the use of AstraZeneca on Tuesday evening.
Berlin’s neighbouring state of Brandenburg also paused giving the AstraZeneca vaccine to anyone under 60, the local public broadcaster reported.
Munich, according to the German newspaper Bild, has also halted the jab for anyone over 60.
Berlin’s state hospital groups Charite and Vivantes on Tuesday stopped giving female staff under the age of 55 shots of AstraZeneca vaccine following further reports of a rare brain blood disorder (see earlier post).
A spokeswoman for Charite said the step was necessary following reports of blood clots known as cerebral sinus vein thrombosis (CSVT) in women in Germany.
“Although no complications have occurred at the Charite after vaccinations with AstraZeneca, the Charite wants to take precautionary action here and wait for final assessments,” the spokeswoman said.
Updated
Third Covid wave emerging in Russia - health official warns
A Russian health official has said a third Covid wave was emerging in the country, which has recorded more than 4.5 million cases since the start of the pandemic.
President Vladimir Putin said last week he expected Russia to reach herd immunity and lift curbs by the end of the summer, Reuters reports. Some regions have already begun easing some restrictions.
“Unfortunately, the incidence rate and the progression of the disease allow us to speak of a third wave of coronavirus infections,” TASS news agency quoted deputy health minister Tatiana Semyonova as saying.
Putin said last week that 4.3 million people in the country of around 145 million had so far received two shots of a vaccine.
On Tuesday, Russia reported 8,277 new coronavirus cases in the previous 24 hours, including 1,291 in Moscow. The country also reported 409 deaths, raising the official toll to 98,442.
Sweden, which has shunned lockdowns throughout the pandemic, has registered 16,427 new Covid cases since Friday, health agency statistics showed on Tuesday.
The figure compared with 14,063 cases during the corresponding period last week, Reuters reports.
The country of 10 million inhabitants registered 28 new deaths, bringing the total to 13,430 .
Spain to require people to wear face masks at all times outdoors
A new law announced today makes mask wearing outdoors, including on beaches and at swimming pools, obligatory throughout Spain, even in situations where social distancing is not an issue.
The regulation, which has been in force in Catalonia since last July, is now being extended to the entire country.
The announcement has provoked a rash of comments on social media, with many complaining that the decision has less to do with science – which suggests there is little risk of the virus spreading in open spaces – than with the government wishing to show it is taking action to control the pandemic.
“They’re doing this to make it look like they’re doing something even though it makes no sense,” one woman Tweeted. “Fighting with penitence instead of science,” commented another.
Masks may only be removed for eating, drinking and smoking, creating the absurd situation of people queuing for an outside table at a bar with their masks on, then removing them as soon as they are seated.
As Easter approaches, health authorities are warning that infection levels are dangerously close to tipping Spain into a fourth wave. The country has already recorded around 3.2 million cases and over 75,000 deaths. Over the past 14 days Spain has recorded 138,68 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
The vaccination program continues to run at a snail’s pace. In Catalonia, barely a third of the over-80s have been vaccinated.
A total of 7.7 million doses have been administered, covering around 16 per cent of the population, but only around 5 per cent have received a second dose.
Updated
India’s Covid-19 situation is turning from “bad to worse”, a senior government official has said, as infections surge across several states, Reuters reports.
“Remember if the cases are more, they will eventually overwhelm the system,” senior health official Vinod Kumar Paul told a news conference.
India’s current caseload of 12.1 million ranks third behind only the U.S and Brazil, with testing unable to keep up with demand. The daily rise in cases has quadrupled in the space of a month.
“The current rise in cases... has the potential of overwhelming healthcare systems unless checked right now,” health secretary Rajesh Bhushan said in a letter to 28 federal states.
He added:
Many districts in the country are seeing clusters of cases emerging because of specific events and/or places where crowding happens, or where a large number of people are in close contact coupled with a lack of a Covid-appropriate behaviour.
Updated
Britain could approve Novavax’s Covid vaccine next month, the chief investigator for the shot’s trial told the Evening Standard.
Prof Paul Heath, chief investigator for the Novavax jab trial in the UK, said: “The regulator will do a very detailed and thorough review and will decide in good time,” adding: “I would hope it would be in the spring, possibly end of April.”
Austria is in talks with Russia to buy a million doses of its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, which has yet to be approved by the European Medicines Agency, chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s office said on Tuesday.
Kurz is under fire from opposition parties because his government did not buy as many Covid vaccines as it could have under the EU’s collective purchasing scheme, Reuters reports.
“There must be no geopolitical blinkers regarding vaccines,” Kurz said in a statement issued by his office, adding that Austria is in talks with Russia and Moscow has offered to sell it a million doses as of April.
“The only thing that must count is whether the vaccine is effective and safe.”
Sicily’s health chief is under investigation and several other people have been put under house arrest over allegations that the region fudged Covid-19 data in order to avoid being categorised in the high-risk ‘red zone’.
Those under house arrest work for a unit of the Sicilian health department, sources told Ansa news agency.
The region’s health councillor, Ruggero Razza, is suspected of being “partially involved” in allegedly altering the number of Covid-19 infections and tests carried out sent to the Higher Health Institute between November and March.
The investigation is also looking into whether figures on coronavirus deaths and intensive care admissions were manipulated.
Sicily is currently in the less restrictive ‘orange zone’. The region’s president, Nello Musumeci, said he was surprised by the investigation as the region had asked to be classified in the red zone.
“I personally asked the national government for two weeks of red zone, along with Razza, when the whole of Italy was doing everything possible to stay an orange zone,” Musumeci told La7 television. “This is why I’m relaxed.”
German vaccine regulator records 31 cases of rare brain blood clot after people had AstraZeneca jab
Germany’s vaccine regulator has said it has recorded 31 cases of a rare blood clot in the brain, nine of which resulted in deaths, after people received a Covid vaccine from AstraZeneca.
The Paul Ehrlich Institute said it has now registered 31 cases of clots in the cerebral veins - known as sinus vein thrombosis, or CSVT - and that in 19 of these there was a deficiency of blood platelets or thrombocytepenia, Reuters reports.
In nine cases, the affected people died. With the exception of two cases, all reports concerned women between the ages of 20 and 63. The two men were 36 and 57 years old.
Updated
The prime minister of Papua New Guinea, James Marape, received the first Covid shot in the Pacific Island country on Tuesday under a small vaccination programme aimed at curbing soaring infections, Reuters reports.
Australia sent the nation of some 10 million people 8,000 doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine last week after warning of a worsening humanitarian crisis.
Marape became the first to be given the jab to try to boost confidence in the vaccine in Papua New Guinea, which has recorded more than 5,600 cases, but priority will otherwise be given to frontline health workers.
But Australia says that tally vastly underestimates the extent of the crisis as the Pacific country does not do mass testing. The island’s biggest hospitals have reported that as many as 80% are coming back positive.
Updated
Pakistan will import Chinese Cansino Biologics coronavirus vaccines in bulk to package 3 million doses locally, the minister in charge for Covid operations has announced.
We will be getting bulk vaccine by mid april from cansino from which 3 million vaccine doses can be made. The bulk vaccine recieved will be formulated, sterilized and packed in Pakistan. For this purpose special equipment has been procured and manpower is being trained
— Asad Umar (@Asad_Umar) March 30, 2021
Germany’s health minister has appealed to the country’s municipalities to keep administering jabs over the Easter break, after some states said their vaccination centres would stay closed over the long weekend.
Authorities in the eastern states of Brandenburg and Thuringia told German press they were not planning to administer jabs over the bank holiday, while vaccination centres in the western state of Saarland generally stay closed on Sundays. They cited a shortage of vaccine doses as one of the reasons for the closures.
According to the German health ministry, the country has so far received 15.8 million doses of vaccines, of which 13.1 doses have been administered. More than three million doses are expected to arrive in Germany over the next seven to eight days.
The slow roll-out of the vaccination programme continues to be a source of frustration. As of Tuesday morning Germany has vaccinated 11% of its population against Covid-19.
Updated
A World Health Organization’s advisory panel will present its latest findings on vaccines against Covid-19, Ebola, polio and other infectious diseases on Wednesday, a spokesman has confirmed.
You can read the WHO Director-General’s remarks about the proposal for an international pandemic treaty here.
Reuters reports:
India’s drug regulator has allowed the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to be used for up to nine months from its manufacture date, as opposed to the prescribed six months, according to a document reviewed by Reuters and a source.
The approval, given to a licensed version of the drug made by the Serum Institute of India (SII) and exported to dozens of countries, could help health authorities minimise vaccine wastage and better plan their inoculation programmes.
Some African countries have only until the middle of next month to use up more than a million doses of the vaccine - branded Covishield by SII - if the shelf life is not extended.
“You are permitted to apply the shelf-life of 9 month to unlabelled vials available on hand,” India’s drugs controller-general, V.G. Somani, wrote late last month in reply to a request from the SII...
The source, with direct knowledge of the matter but not authorised to discuss it publicly, said the approval was given based on data submitted by the SII. The source did not specify what kind of data was shared by the company, the world’s biggest vaccine maker.
This just in from AFP. The head of the RKI public health institute recently warned that Germany could see 100,000 infections a day if the third Covid wave spreads unchecked.
#UPDATE Germany will step up random controls along its land borders to check that travellers arriving in the country are carrying a negative Covid test, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer says pic.twitter.com/kLDiVzIqZY
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) March 30, 2021
Berlin state hospitals halt AstraZeneca vaccinations of women under 55
Berlin’s state hospital groups Charite and Vivantes have stopped giving women under 55 shots of AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine, a spokeswomen for the hospitals confirmed.
The moves follow reports of rare but serious blood clots, bleeding and in some cases death after vaccination, mainly in young women.
“From the Charité’s point of view, this step is necessary because in the meantime further cerebral venous thromboses have become known in women in Germany,” a spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.
Charite said the action was precautionary while they waited for final assessments. No complications have occurred in its hospitals following vaccinations with AstraZeneca.
A spokeswoman for Vivantes clinics added that the move to pause the shot for younger women was a precautionary measure.
Some 19,000 people work at the Charite hospitals and 17,000 at Vivantes, which operates clinics as well as care homes, Reuters reports.
Updated
Hello everyone, this is Yohannes Lowe. I’ll be running the blog until the early evening (UK time). As always, feel free to get in touch on Twitter if you have any story tips.
Today so far…
- A joint press conference between World Health Organisation director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and President of the European Council Charles Michel has promoted the idea of a new international health treaty to help pandemic preparedness in the future.
- Tedros said: “The pandemic has thrived amid the inequalities in our societies, the geopolitical fault lines in our world, and the frayed trust in our public institutions.”
- More than 20 world leaders including Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, and Angela Merkel have signed an open op-ed in support of the idea, although China, Russia and the US are notable absentees.
- Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad has resumed work after recovering from Covid-19, according to the state press agency SANA.
- Turkey has announced that preclinical trials for an intranasal Covid-19 vaccine have been completed successfully, paving the way for a domestically-produced vaccine. The news comes even as the country re-imposes some restrictions amid rising numbers.
- A British minister has said the country is focused on vaccinating the whole of its adult population before it would be able to provide surplus shots to other countries.
- South Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines are among countries to be hit by shipment delays to vaccines they have been promised under the COVAX programme, after India restricted some exports.
- Honduras’ government has said it will temporarily restrict arrivals from South America, citing fears about the so-called “Brazilian variant” of the coronavirus entering its territory.
- Sweden’s health agency has asked the government to postpone a planned easing of some restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of Covid-19 by nearly a month as the country grapples with a third wave.
- Visitor numbers at the world’s top 100 museums and art galleries plunged by 77% last year in the wake of lockdowns and closures imposed due to the pandemic.
- Scientists have determined the “recipes” for two Covid-19 vaccines using leftovers in vials bound for the trash and published the mRNA sequences on Github.
That’s it from me, Martin Belam. I’m handing over to my colleague Yohannes Lowe, and I’ll see you again tomorrow.
The World Health Organisation have published the remarks from Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in full, and it’s worth pulling out these couple of paragraphs:
This powerful idea, of a treaty rooted in WHO, has resulted in the joint statement issued today and published in major newspapers around the world and in multiple languages, which has been signed, so far, by twenty-five heads of state and heads of government. They represent a diversity of countries, from north and south, east and west.
The pandemic has thrived amid the inequalities in our societies, the geopolitical fault lines in our world, and the frayed trust in our public institutions. It has exposed the gaps in national, regional and global preparedness and response systems, but also allowed us to identify opportunities to strengthen the international health architecture.
The time to act is now. The world cannot afford to wait until the pandemic is over to start planning for the next one. We must not allow the memories of this crisis to fade and go back to business as usual. The impacts on our societies, economies and health, especially for the poor and the most vulnerable, are too significant. We cannot do things the way we have done them before and expect a different result. We must act boldy.
Without an internationally coordinated, all-of-government, all-of-society, One Health approach to pandemic preparedness and response, we remain vulnerable. It has shown how much we need a universal commitment to basic public health principles as the foundation for our work to prevent, detect and respond to epidemic and pandemic threats.
You can read it in full here: WHO Director-General’s remarks
Definitely the most awkward part of the World Health Organization press conference this morning was the questioning over the omission of public support from Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping for a new international treaty about health emergencies.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus put a brave face on it, saying that the discussions to date had been more on an “opt-in” basis, although regional representatives had been invited.
“When the discussion on the pandemic starts, all member states will be represented,” he said, according to Reuters’ report of the event.
“From the discussions we had, during member states’ sessions, the comment from member states, including the US and China, was actually positive and we hope future engagement will bring all countries.”
David Shearer, who has headed the United Nations peacekeeping mission in South Sudan since 2016, has expressed concern over the Covid vaccination programme in the country.
Though South Sudan has secured more than 2 million Covid-19 vaccines it will struggle to get shots into arms as the rainy season approaches, rendering many roads in one of the world’s poorest nations impassable, the outgoing head of the UN mission in the country said.
South Sudan is expected to receive the shots in the coming months through the global vaccine-sharing programme COVAX. But their arrival will coincide with rains that flood many of the only 400 kilometres (250 miles) of paved road in the country. Shearer said vaccines would need to be delivered by river barge.
Nazanine Moshiri and Maggie Fick report for Reuters that the world’s newest nation has recorded only 10,119 infections and 108 deaths from Covid, according to data from Africa’s disease control body, but inadequate testing prevents a clear picture of the pandemic.
Nearly a decade after South Sudan gained independence following a bitter war, the country is grappling with the triple threat of conflict, climate change and the coronavirus pandemic, Shearer said. Nearly all the population depends on international food aid, he said, and most basic services such as health and education are provided by the UN and aid groups.
“I don’t see a government looking and taking care of its people,” he said, adding that some of the conflict between ethnic communities could be prevented by “leaders who are looking at serving their people above all rather than necessarily serving themselves”.
Turkey has announced that preclinical trials for an intranasal Covid-19 vaccine have been completed successfully, paving the way for the domestically-produced vaccine to be used in the fight against coronavirus before the end of this year.
The first phase of human trials will begin shortly after remodelling allowing for mutations of the virus, industry and technology minister Mustafa Varank said on Tuesday.
Globally, the vaccine situation has taken a “dire turn” with 100 countries still yet to begin a vaccination programme, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in comments carried by the state news agency. Turkey will share its vaccine “with all humanity”, the president added.
The vaccine news comes just hours after Erdoğan said that the country will have to reverse a normalisation drive that began earlier this month, reinstating weekend lockdowns and closing restaurants, cafes and bars during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, which starts 13 April, in order to tackle a worrying surge in cases.
As was the case last year, mass gatherings in tents and communal meals for the pre-dawn and after-dusk meals during the month of fasting will be prohibited. Eateries will be open for take-away and delivery services and the current nationwide curfew between 9pm - 5am will continue, the president said after a cabinet meeting on Monday evening.
Turkey’s caseload has more than doubled since restaurants and other communal spaces were allowed to reopen with reduced capacity at the beginning of March: on Monday the health ministry reported over 32,400 new coronavirus cases, pushing its overall tally above 3.24 million.
Fifty-eight of the country’s 81 provinces are now classified as “very high risk”, including Turkey’s cultural and economic capital, Istanbul, which is home to approximately 17 million people.
While Turkey’s total numbers of cases and deaths are still lower than those of many European countries, opposition politicians and healthcare unions have repeatedly accused the government of covering up the virus’ true impact in an effort to bolster the country’s struggling economy.
A mass vaccination drive using China’s SinoVac began in early January. According to official figures, 15.1 million jabs have been administered to date, and 6.6 million people have completed a two-dose course.
Updated
Proposed international treaty on pandemics could be taken forward at WHO assembly in May
A proposed international treaty on pandemics could be advanced at the World Health Organization’s annual ministerial assembly in May, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press conference this morning.
The WHO chief said the treaty would help to tackle gaps exposed by Covid-19, strengthen implementation of international health regulations and also provide a framework cooperation in areas such as pandemic prevention and response.
“The treaty, which could be taken forward by the World Health Assembly, would be based on the WHO constitution including the principles of health for all and no discrimination,” Tedros, adding that it was for WHO member states to determine the content and whether it was ratified, report Reuters
Updated
I’ll bring you a sum-up of what Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Charles Michel have discussed at the end of this WHO press conference – but just to note that in the questions from world media there has been some focus on the absence of signatures from the leaders of China, Russia and the United States in the op-ed published supporting a new international treaty on pandemic preparedness and co-operation.
The treaty proposal got the formal backing of the leaders of Fiji, Portugal, Romania, the UK, Rwanda, Kenya, France, Germany, Greece, Korea, Chile, Costa Rica, Albania, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, the Netherlands, Tunisia, Senegal, Spain, Norway, Serbia, Indonesia, and Ukraine.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and President of the European Council Charles Michel are giving a press conference today which will expand on the idea of a new international deal over pandemic co-operation.
You can watch the video here on the blog right now – you may need to refresh the page for the play button to appear.
Melissa Davey has more on the Queensland Covid outbreak, reporting that experts say the hospitals there are already ‘stressed’ and health workers exposed:
The Queensland hospital system was already “stressed” before the latest Covid outbreak partly because everyone with the virus is moved from hotel quarantine into hospital, but not all hospital workers have been vaccinated yet, experts say.
There are now two separate clusters of the infectious UK variant of coronavirus in Brisbane that spread when unvaccinated health workers contracted the virus. The cases have forced Brisbane into a snap three-day lockdown.
The director of infectious diseases at Mater Health Services, Associate Prof Paul Griffin, says the vaccine has been given to people who could have waited – leaving high-risk health workers exposed.
“Obviously these [Covid] patients take a lot of effort in terms of managing them in a safe way so I think it has certainly put strain on the healthcare system,” he said. “It’s a very significant event we have found ourselves in, and it has got us all working flat out again, that’s for sure.”
Griffin said he supported the three-day lockdown so that contact tracers could catch up and health authorities could better prepare for what’s to come. He also welcomed increased efforts to vaccinate high-risk healthcare workers.
But he questioned why those workers had not been vaccinated sooner. Griffin received his vaccine two weeks ago, however, many of his hospital colleagues were still waiting for their jabs while treating infectious patients.
“Obviously there are reactive measures like lockdown to reduce transmission that are a priority at the moment, but we need to not lose sight of the goal of getting that vaccine rolled out as quickly as possible,” he said.
Read more of Melissa Davey’s report here: Queensland Covid outbreak – experts say hospitals already ‘stressed’ and health workers exposed
New York state residents over 30 will be eligible for Covid-19 vaccinations starting today, and everyone over 16 will be eligible starting 6 April , embattled state Governor Andrew Cuomo announced yesterday.
A judge’s ruling later in the day widened the eligible pool even further, with a decision saying the state immediately had to offer vaccinations to its entire population of incarcerated people.
Associated Press report that vaccine eligibility had previously been restricted to people over 50, people in certain job categories and those with health conditions that put them at risk for serious illness if they were to become infected with the coronavirus.
Previously, 12.2 million out of over 15 million New Yorkers over the age of 16 were eligible for Covid-19 vaccination as of last week. People over the age of 30 can begin booking appointments at 8am local time this morning.
“Today we take a monumental step forward in the fight to beat Covid” the Democratic party governor said in a news release, adding that the new timetable was “well ahead of the May 1 deadline set by the White House.”
Cuomo has faced calls to resign over allegations of sexual harassment and a scandal about Covid deaths in nursing homes earlier in the padnemic.
In the legal ruling, State Supreme Court Justice Alison Tuitt in the Bronx addressed how all incarcerated New Yorkers were not included in the earlier categories of those eligible, even as those in other group settings were. Tuitt said the state’s decision to exclude incarcerated people from being eligible to get the vaccine “was unquestionably arbitrary and capricious.”
She called it “an unfair and unjust decision” that “was not based in law or fact and was an abuse of discretion.”
University scientists deconstruct Covid-19 vaccines and publish 'recipe' on open web
Scientists have determined the “recipes” for two Covid-19 vaccines using leftovers in vials bound for the trash and published the mRNA sequences on Github, the online repository for software code.
The group of scientists from Stanford University were able to determine the sequences of both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and included the mRNA sequences in a post they published on Github last week.
Experts say the publication will help researchers around the world better identify when testing samples whether they are looking at sequences from the Covid-19 virus or vaccines to treat the virus, because they can give false positives.
The Pfizer sequence is already publicly available, meaning the scientists were able to check their work, but the Moderna mRNA sequence had not previously been published. The scientists stated they checked with Moderna before publishing but did not receive a response.
Scientists Andrew Fire and Massa Shoura told tech news site Motherboard it wasn’t simply “reverse engineering” a vaccine: “We didn’t reverse engineer the vaccine. We posted the putative sequence of two synthetic RNA molecules that have become sufficiently prevalent in the general environment of medicine and human biology in 2021.”
The scientists said in their Github post the sequences would be useful for allowing researchers to quickly identify whether sequences they are looking at are therapeutic in origin or infectious.
An associate professor in immunology and pathology at the University of New South Wales’s Kirby Institute, Stuart Turville, told Guardian Australia it was “clever in a way” to publish on Github, and would be important for people to be able to differentiate between RNA made by the vaccine and RNA from the virus.
“I’m not sure how that would turn up in a diagnostic setting as one is injected [the vaccine] and the other is clearly up your nose [the virus acquired during diagnostic tests],” he said. “That said, molecular diagnostics are great, but can give false positives if RNA like this is around in large quantities.
“So it would be good to know the sequence, so if any false positives turned up, you could troubleshoot if the vaccine RNA was the source of your contamination.”
Read more of Josh Taylor’s report here: University scientists deconstruct Covid-19 vaccines and publish ‘recipe’ on open web
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and President of the European Council Charles Michel are due to give a press conference today which will expand on the idea of a new international deal over pandemic co-operation.
Leaders of 23 countries and the World Health Organization have backed an idea to create an international treaty that would help the world deal with future health emergencies.
Reuters note that Tedros endorsed the idea at the WHO governing body in January, but, diplomats say, formal negotiations have not begun.
The treaty proposal got the formal backing of the leaders of Fiji, Portugal, Romania, the UK, Rwanda, Kenya, France, Germany, Greece, Korea, Chile, Costa Rica, Albania, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, the Netherlands, Tunisia, Senegal, Spain, Norway, Serbia, Indonesia, Ukraine and the WHO.
“There will be other pandemics and other major health emergencies. No single government or multilateral agency can address this threat alone,” the leaders wrote in a joint opinion article. “We believe that nations should work together towards a new international treaty for pandemic preparedness and response,” they said.
The main goal of such a treaty would be to strengthen the world’s resilience to future pandemics through better alert systems, data sharing, research and the production and distribution of vaccines, medicines, diagnostics and personal protective equipment, they said.
The treaty would also state that the health of humans, animals and the planet are all connected and should lead to shared responsibility, transparency and cooperation globally.
“We are convinced that it is our responsibility, as leaders of nations and international institutions, to ensure that the world learns the lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic,” the leaders wrote.
Sweden’s health agency has asked the government to postpone a planned easing of some restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of Covid-19 by nearly a month as the country grapples with a third wave of the virus.
The agency had previously proposed that some restrictions, such as a limit on the number of visitors to amusement parks, concerts and football matches of only eight people, be lifted from 11 April.
“The spread of COVID-19 is accelerating with an increased burden on healthcare as a result,” it said in a statement, reports Anna Ringstrom for Reuters.
“The Swedish Public Health Agency therefore proposes that the date for when certain activities should be able to open up be postponed until 3 May, provided that the infection situation improves.”
Sweden has mostly relied on voluntary measures to slow the pandemic but gradually increased restrictions after the infections picked up pace toward the end of last year.
Australia's health department 'actively monitoring' if doctors are charging for Covid jabs
The Australian federal health department says it is “actively monitoring” whether doctors are charging patients for Covid vaccinations following reports some pensioners had been asked to pay $70 for a pre-jab consultation.
The Centre Alliance MP Rebekha Sharkie told the Austraian parliament last week she had been told by elderly constituents that they had been charged out-of-pocket expenses for a pre-vaccination consultation by a small number of GPs.
The government vaccination program is supposed to be entirely free. But due to the program’s design, general practitioners have found themselves facing a sudden influx of new patients with unknown medical histories. Sharkie last week described several cases in which pensioners had been charged between $70 and $90.
“It’s outrageous to charge them and according to the advice of the health department, it’s also against the rules of those clinics participating in the program,” she said. “We need to make sure the message gets out because we cannot risk our elderly forsaking their access to the vaccine because they think they cannot afford to visit a clinic.”
Sharkie’s office referred evidence of the practice to the health minister. The department told the Guardian it could not discuss individual case details. But it did say that it was actively monitoring for such activity and would take action against doctors if non-compliance was detected.
“The department is actively monitoring the claiming of the Covid-19 vaccine administration items and practices or practitioners who bill patients inappropriately may be subject to compliance action,” the department said in a statement.
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners told the Guardian that no GP should be charging for pre-vaccination consults for individuals who are ready to have the jab.
Read more of Christopher Knaus’ report here: Australia’s health department ‘actively monitoring’ if doctors are charging for Covid jabs
India vaccine export restrictions causing delays to COVAX programme
South Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines are among countries to be hit by shipment delays to vaccines they have been promised under the COVAX programme.
Sangmi Cha and Neil Jerome Morales report for Reuters that several Asian countries have been left scrambling to find alternative sources for Covid-19 inoculations after export restrictions by manufacturers in India left the World Health Organization-backed global vaccine sharing programme short of supplies.
India, the world’s biggest vaccine maker, put a temporary hold on exports of AstraZeneca’s vaccine being manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII), as officials focus on meeting rising domestic demand.
The Serum Insitute was due to deliver 90 million vaccine doses to COVAX over March and April and, while it was not immediately clear how many would be diverted for domestic use, programme facilitators warned that shipment delays were inevitable.
South Korea confirmed it would only receive 432,000 doses of the 690,000 it had been promised and delivery of those would be delayed until around the third week of April.
“There’s uncertainty over global vaccine supplies but we’re working on a plan to ensure no disruptions in the second quarter and making efforts to secure more vaccines,” Kim Ki-nam, head of South Korea’s Covid-19 vaccination task force team. Officials said they were in talks with AstraZeneca to accelerate shipments procured through a separate deal.
“Our planned increase in daily vaccinations will be affected,” Carlito Galvez, Philippines’ vaccination chief, told reporters.
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte loosened government restrictions on private sector imports of vaccines, pleading with companies to obtain supplies no matter the cost, as his country battles a resurgence of the pandemic.
India has not provided details on the length of its export curb but UNICEF, a distributing partner of COVAX, said at the weekend that deliveries are expected to resume by May. India’s decision is the latest in a series of setbacks for the COVAX facility, relied on by 64 poorer countries, after production glitches and a lack of funding contribution from wealthy nations.
China and Russia are primed to step into the breach.
“We have good diplomatic relations with China and Russia and we are asking if we can have access to their vaccines in April,” the Philippines’ Galvez said.
Both the Philippines and Indonesia are currently relying heavily on vaccines from China’s Sinovac Biotech to run their inoculation drives. The Philippines and Vietnam have both approved Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, along with more than 50 other countries, mainly developing nations.
The Philippines expects to receive its first batch of Sputnik V in April. Chinese vaccine maker Sinopharm, meanwhile, plans to produce its Covid-19 vaccine at a new plant in the United Arab Emirates.
Sir Lenny Henry is among leading Black Britons who have signed an open letter urging the Black community in the UK to get vaccinated.
The letter has been signed by the 12 Years a Slave actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, the author Malorie Blackman, the actor Thandie Newton, the Bridgerton star Adjoa Andoh, the performer George the Poet, the musician KSI and the radio personality Trevor Nelson.
“Because we love you – we want you to be safe and we don’t want you to be left out or left behind. While other communities are rushing to get the vaccine and millions have already been vaccinated, some Black people in our community are being more cautious,” the letter notes.
The letter urges Black adults in the UK to make informed decisions about the vaccine and to protect themselves and the people they care for by getting vaccinated.
It comes after analysis by the Office for National Statistics found stark differences in vaccine uptake between different groups. Over-70s of black African heritage in England are 7.4 times more likely not to have received a first dose of the coronavirus vaccine than people of white British ethnicity.
Henry said: “I felt it was important to do my bit and so I wrote this letter to Black Britain asking people not to get left behind, to not continue to be disproportionately impacted and to trust the facts from our doctors, professors and scientists, not just in the UK but across the world, including the Caribbean and Africa.
“I hear and understand the concerns which people of all backgrounds are wrestling with, but which are particularly concerning in Black communities. I want people to be safe, I don’t want people to die or end up in hospital because of Covid-19. So I’m saying, when your turn comes, take the jab.”
Read more of Aamna Mohdin’s report here: Lenny Henry tells black Britons – get Covid jab to avoid being left behind
The Queensland doctors’ union has called for a full investigation into how a doctor and nurse at the same Brisbane hospital contracted coronavirus, leading to two separate clusters of community transmission and a city-wide lockdown.
The latest information state authorities have released suggests the spread of at least 15 cases of coronavirus began with separate infections acquired within the Princess Alexandra hospital at Woolloongabba. It is understood that neither of the healthcare workers was vaccinated.
The vice-president of the Australian Salaried Medical Officers’ Federation Queensland, Dr Hau Tan, told Guardian Australia health authorities needed to properly scrutinise the circumstances of the case, including whether the doctor and nurse had appropriate protective equipment and why they had not been vaccinated.
“Having a doctor and a nurse contract Covid in the one hospital obviously raises concerns and requires a very close look at what’s going on there, collecting all the facts and determining what really happened,” Tan said.
Earlier on Tuesday, the federation and the Australian Medical Association released survey results that showed 70% of healthcare workers who might come into contact with Covid-affected patients had not been properly fit-tested for their P2/N95 face masks.
Of those who responded to the survey by 23 March, only 43% said they had received their first dose of a Covid vaccine. The Queensland health minister, Yvette D’ath, told said on Tuesday that 89% of frontline health workers were vaccinated.
Tan said the union was being careful not to jump to conclusions or lay blame for the cases. He said frontline health workers had a right to a safe workplace and that any Covid case among those workers should be treated seriously.
Read more of Ben Smee’s report here: Queensland Covid – doctors demand probe into how medical workers at centre of outbreak became infected
A quick snap from Reuters that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma have – according to the state news agency SANA – recovered from Covid-19 and tested negative for the disease.
“After the end of the quarantine period, symptoms of Covid-19 and negative PCR results, President Bashar al-Assad and Mrs Asma al-Assad have resumed their work normally,” SANA said.
Business minister Kwasi Kwarteng has reiterated that earlier line from the UK government that Britain was focused on vaccinating the whole of its adult population before it would be able to provide surplus shots to other countries, report Reuters.
“I think our focus has to be to try and keep Britain safe, we want to work cooperatively as well with other countries but the main priority is to get the vaccine rollout,” Kwarteng told Sky News.
“If there are surplus vaccine doses then we can share them but there are no surpluses at the moment, we have still got a huge number to vaccinate.”
The message is slightly at odds with the more global focus overnight with the letter that British prime minister Boris Johnson signed along with other international leaders, calling for united action and a new international treaty over pandemics. Johnson has also led calls for richer nations to give surplus vaccine supplies to the UN-led Covax system for distributing vaccines to poorer countries.
Visits to world's top 100 museums and galleries fall 77% due to Covid
Visitor numbers at the world’s top 100 museums and art galleries plunged by 77% last year, down from 230 million in 2019 to just 54 million as the pandemic forced closure on an unprecedented scale.
The survey carried out annually by the Art Newspaper for more than 20 years is normally an upbeat one, highlighting which museums had good years and what the most popular exhibitions were, whether in London, New York or São Paulo.
The 2020 figures, published on Tuesday, were sobering, with museums and galleries ravaged by enforced closure, plummeting visitor numbers and enormous falls in revenue.
The Louvre in Paris maintained its position as the world’s most visited museum thanks largely to the tail end of its Leonardo exhibition, which drew more than 10,000 visitors a day before closing in February 2020. Over the year, the museum had 2.7m visits, down 72% from 2019 with an estimated income loss of €90m.
Alison Cole, the editor of the Art Newspaper, said it was worth remembering that “in a normal year more than 9 million people would jostle to see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre”.
Tate Modern in London, which staged exhibitions including Andy Warhol and Bruce Nauman, was second in the popularity table with 1.4m visits, down 77%. It was closed for 173 days and said it lost £56m in revenue.
Cole said the impact of the pandemic on museums had been disastrous and the general mood remained bleak. “Reduced capacity due to Covid measures and a dearth of tourists mean that most large museums are looking at four years until they get back to pre-pandemic health.”
The Art Newspaper said there was a combined total of 41,000 days of enforced closure for the world’s top museums equating to “112 years of missed visits and hundreds of millions of pounds in lost revenue”.
Read more of Mark Brown’s report here: Visits to world’s top 100 museums and galleries fall 77% due to Covid
Honduras to restrict arrivals from South America over fears of 'Brazilian variant'
Honduras’ government has said it will temporarily restrict arrivals from South America, citing fears about the so-called “Brazilian variant” of the coronavirus entering its territory.
Honduras’ national risk management system SINAGER said in a statement that it would curb the entry into Honduras of citizens who had stayed in South America in the last 15 days.
Reuters report that the measure was announced after authorities from neighboring Panama reported a case of the Brazilian variant, which is considered more infectious.
The government statement says that the measure “continues to restrict entry to the country, by any means of transport, to non-resident citizens or tourists from the United Kingdom and South Africa, extending this measure to citizens who have remained in South America in the last 15 days. Control actions and epidemiological surveillance measures continue to be reinforced at land, sea and air entry points, especially with travellers from countries where the circulation of new variants has been detected,”
Honduras has had 187,975 Covid cases with 4,585 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University figures. The population of the central American country is estimated at 9.5m. Health agency figures show that just over 1,000 people are currently in hospital with Covid there, with 63 in intensive care.
Updated
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. Thanks for following along – my colleague Martin Belam will take over the blog shortly. In the meantime, I learned a new German word today that you might find useful.
The world needs a global treaty for pandemics to protect states in the wake of Covid-19, akin to the settlement forged after the second world war, Boris Johnson and other world leaders have urged.
In a joint article published in newspapers across the world, leaders including the UK prime minister, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, warn that a future global pandemic is an inevitability and that Covid has served as “a stark and painful reminder that nobody is safe until everyone is safe”.
Escalating international tensions over vaccine supplies have led to calls for countries to abandon isolationism and nationalism, and come together to make way for a new era founded on principles like solidarity and cooperation:
Meanwhile in Australia, a devoted and joyous community has finally return to a favourite weekly ritual – singing “all the shanty bangers” at a Sydney bar:
Biden says up to 90% of adults will be eligible for Covid vaccine by 19 April
Up to 90% of US adults will be eligible for a Covid-19 shot by 19 April, Joe Biden said on Monday as he announced a major expansion of the nation’s vaccination program.
Hours after Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned of “impending doom” in the race against the resurgence of infections, the US president delivered the counter measure.
Talking from the White House after a briefing from his coronavirus team, Biden promised that 90% of US residents would be living within five miles of a vaccination site within three weeks.
“We’re going to send more aid to states to expand the opening of more community vaccination sites, more vaccines, more sites, more vaccinators, all designed to speed our critical work,” he said.
But, chiming with Walensky, he also warned: “We still are in a war with this deadly virus, and we’re bolstering our defense, but this war is far from won.”
Biden said the vaccination figures – 75% of Americans over 65 inoculated in his first 10 weeks in office, and the new target of 200m shots in his first 100 days – gave him optimism.
But he said the country was in danger of giving back “hard fought gains” if it let up on preventative measures such as mask wearing and social distancing.
India cases fall slightly
India recorded 56,211 new cases of coronavirus, a slight dip from the country’s record-breaking tallies over the last three days, data from the health ministry showed on Tuesday.
Reuters: The country’s tally dipped below the 60,000 mark after three days, a Reuters tally showed, with its richest state, Maharashtra, accounting for more than 31,000 of the 56,211 cases reported in the last 24 hours. Deaths in the last 24 hours stood at 271, and 162,114 have died so far in the pandemic, the health ministry said.
Authorities in Maharashtra were considering whether to impose stricter curbs starting Thursday to contain the rapid spread of the virus, but opposition parties and industrialists have opposed a lockdown.
“The people a lockdown hurts most are the poor, migrant workers & small businesses. The original lockdowns were essentially to buy time to build up hospital/health infrastructure. Let’s focus on resurrecting that & on avoiding mortality,” industrialist Anand Mahindra, who heads Mahindra, India’s autos-to-technology conglomerate, said on Twitter on Monday.
The problem, @OfficeofUT ji, is that the people a lockdown hurts most are the poor, migrant workers & small businesses. The original lockdowns were essentially to buy time to build up hospital/health infrastructure. Let’s focus on resurrecting that & on avoiding mortality. https://t.co/sRoWonrJEp
— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) March 29, 2021
New Covid vaccines needed globally within a year, say scientists
The planet could have a year or less before first-generation Covid-19 vaccines are ineffective and modified formulations are needed, according to a survey of epidemiologists, virologists and infectious disease specialists.
Scientists have long stressed that a global vaccination effort is needed to satisfactorily neutralise the threat of Covid-19. This is due to the threat of variations of the virus – some more transmissible, deadly and less susceptible to vaccines – that are emerging and percolating.
The grim forecast of a year or less comes from two-thirds of respondents, according to the People’s Vaccine Alliance, a coalition of organisations including Amnesty International, Oxfam, and UNAIDS, who carried out the survey of 77 scientists from 28 countries. Nearly one-third of the respondents indicated that the time-frame was likely nine months or less.
Persistent low vaccine coverage in many countries would make it more likely for vaccine-resistant mutations to appear, said 88% of the respondents, who work across illustrious institutions such as Johns Hopkins, Yale, Imperial College, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the University of Edinburgh:
Canada pauses AstraZeneca vaccine for under 55s
Canada on Monday suspended the use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid vaccine for people under 55 following concerns it might be linked to rare blood clots.
The pause was recommended by the National Advisory Committee on Immunization for safety reasons. The Canadian provinces, which administer health in the country, announced the suspension on Monday.
“There is substantial uncertainty about the benefit of providing AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines to adults under 55 given the potential risks,” said Dr Shelley Deeks, vice-chair of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization.
Deeks said the updated recommendations came amid new data from Europe that suggests the risk of blood clots is now potentially as high as one in 100,000, much higher than the one in one million risk believed before:
WHO experts to say Covid probably came to humans from animals
A team of international experts will present details Tuesday of their findings from a mission to China, which concluded Covid-19 probably passed to humans from a bat via an intermediary animal, all but ruling out a laboratory leak, AFP reports.
But the report, drafted by World Health Organization-appointed international experts and their Chinese counterparts, offers no definitive answers on how the new coronavirus jumped to humans.
AFP obtained a copy of the final report ahead of its official publication on Tuesday.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the international experts would hold a press conference Tuesday at 1400 GMT to discuss their findings, adding that all hypotheses on the pandemic’s origins remained open and needed further study.
Covid-19 has killed more than 2.7 million people worldwide in the 15 months since it emerged, forcing governments around the world to introduce restrictions that have battered the global economy.
Ahead of a meeting with world leaders, UN chief Antonio Guterres called Monday for more debt relief for the poorest countries struggling with economic fallout from the pandemic.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be with you for a few hours.
You can find me on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
A team of international experts will present details on Tuesday of their findings from a mission to China, which concluded Covid-19 probably passed to humans from a bat via an intermediary animal, all but ruling out a laboratory leak.
And Canada on Monday suspended the use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine for people under 55 following concerns it might be linked to rare blood clots.
- Spain’s coronavirus infection rate rose by more than 10 since Friday, with 15,500 cases added to the tally, health ministry data showed on Monday, as a gradual uptick in contagion from mid-March lows gathered pace.
- Turkey imposed tighter measures against coronavirus during Ramadan, citing the rising number of high-risk cities across the country. The Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said a full weekend lockdown was to be in place during the month of Ramadan, restaurants would only serve as delivery and take-out, and a nationwide curfew from 9pm-5pm would continue.
- France recorded the highest number of people in intensive care units with Covid-19 since the second lockdown in November and the number of people in hospital with the disease rose by over 600 in a day, the biggest jump in more than four months.
- Canada is to pause the use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine for people under the age of 55 pending new analysis of the shot’s benefits and risks based on age and gender, health officials said.
- Angela Merkel threatened to centralise Germany’s pandemic response as several of the country’s federal states refuse to implement an emergency brake mechanism on easing restrictions in spite of rapidly rising infection rates. “We need action in the federal states,” the German leader said. “We need to take the appropriate measures very seriously. Some states are doing it; others are not yet doing it.”
- Pakistan’s president, Arif Alvi, tested positive for Covid-19, he said on Twitter on Monday, after receiving his first dose of a vaccine. It came as Pakistan imposed a partial lockdown in several more high-risk areas in the capital, Islamabad, and elsewhere in the country after the positivity rate from coronavirus infections jumped to over 11%.
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Ethiopia on Monday said it would receive 300,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses from China’s state-backed China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) on Tuesday. Ethiopia is struggling to administer shots and tame infections, which have risen to the highest number of new cases in the last week of any country on the continent.
- The UK does not have a surplus of Covid-19 vaccines to share with other countries, but will consider how to share any future surplus if there is one, the prime minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman said.
- The World Health Organization said that a long-awaited report into the origins of Covid-19 following a mission to China where the virus first emerged will be released publicly on Tuesday, but that further study is required. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “As I have said, all hypotheses are on the table and warrant complete and further studies.”
- Saudi Arabia said it would allow people who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 to attend sporting events at stadiums at a capacity of 40%, starting on 17 May. Face masks and social distancing would be required, the sports ministry said.
Updated
