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Stormont ministers were locked in late night negotiations on Tuesday amid efforts to agree new coronavirus restrictions for Northern Ireland. But the executive meeting has been adjourned once again with no indications of an imminent breakthrough, PA reports.
There were angry exchanges at the outset of the meeting when the DUP moved to block a proposal from health minister Robin Swann to extend the region’s current circuit-break lockdown for two more weeks.
The DUP used a contentious Stormont mechanism - a cross-community vote - to effectively veto the proposal, despite support for the move by a majority of executive parties.
Alliance Party justice minister Naomi Long was particularly critical of the deployment of the mechanism, which was triggered by DUP agriculture minister Edwin Poots.
Swann and senior health officials had warned that Covid-19 cases were likely to surge again in mid-December if the fortnight extension was not approved.
The DUP has been strongly opposed to extending the full complement of restrictions beyond the original four-week period.
After Swann’s paper was voted down, ministers turned to debating alternative proposals tabled by DUP economy minister Diane Dodds, who recommended a partial reopening of the hospitality sector.
The circuit-break has forced the closure of much of the hospitality sector in Northern Ireland and halted the work of close contact services such as hairdressing.
The PA news agency understands that measures in Dodds’ alternative paper include:
- Close contact services, including driving lessons, can resume on 13 November by appointment only.
- Unlicensed premises, including cafes and coffee shops, can reopen on 13 November.
- Hotels able to serve food and alcohol to residents.
- Licensed premises remain closed until 27 November. “Safely open” group, involving hospitality sector and executive, to be established to oversee this move.
- Pubs and bars able to offer sealed off-sales from 13 November.
A further 11 Covid-19 linked deaths were announced in Northern Ireland on Tuesday, along with 514 new confirmed cases.
On Tuesday morning, the first minister Arlene Foster expressed confidence the executive could find a consensus position. She told the Assembly there was a need to develop a “clear exit strategy” from lockdown measures.
I do not believe that we can continually go into circuit-breakers, lockdowns, call them what you will. You cannot keep turning on and off the economy. When you go back on one occasion there’ll be nothing left and people will not have jobs, they will not be able to support their families, they will fall into destitution and poverty.
Senior Tories join rebel group to oppose further national lockdown for England
Boris Johnson will face sustained pressure from within his own party not to extend England’s national lockdown next month after senior Tory backbenchers formed a group to resist any such move, PA reports.
Some 32 Conservatives rebelled against the government when the Commons approved the second lockdown for England which lasts until 2 December. The prime minister said he expects the nation to return to a tiered local system by then and promised MPs a vote for the replacement to the four-week lockdown.
Former chief whip Mark Harper and ex-Brexit minister Steve Baker will lead the “Covid recovery group” to resist any extension of the measure in the Commons vote. Harper said:
The cure we’re prescribing runs the risk of being worse than the disease.
The group outlined three guiding principles calling on ministers to undertake a cost-benefit analysis of restrictions, to end the “monopoly” of advice from UK government scientists and to improve measures to tackle Covid-19 such as test and trace.
Baker said:
We must find a more sustainable way of leading our lives until a vaccine is rolled out, rather than throwing our prosperity away by shutting down and destroying our economy, and overlooking the untold health consequences caused by lockdowns and restrictions.
Sir Graham Brady, the influential chair of the 1922 committee of Conservative MPs, is among those said to have joined the group, along with the likes of William Wragg and Sir Robert Syms.
Hopes that the end of the pandemic has become nearer have soared after the news that a coronavirus vaccine was found to be 90% effective in global trials. Although there is definite reason to be optimistic, experts have cautioned that the data from the trials conducted by Pfizer and BioNTech are not final, and there remain plenty of unknowns.
Here the Guardian’s science correspondent Natalie Grover answers six key questions about the vaccine:
Summary
Here is a recap of the main developments from the last few hours:
-
Brazil passed 5.7 million Covid-19 cases, as the country reported another 25,012 confirmed infections in the past 24 hours. The country has registered 5,700,044 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll rose by 201 to 162,829, according to health ministry data.
- GP services in England will be scaled back well into 2021 so family doctors can deliver Covid-19 vaccines to millions of people at new seven-day-a-week clinics, NHS England said. Health leaders warned that surgeries will not be able to offer their full range of care for patients from next month as doctors and nurses will be redeployed to administering jabs at more than 1,200 mass vaccination centres across the country.
- Three Californian counties that are home to about 5.5 million people - San Diego, Sacramento and Stanislaus - must reverse their reopening plans and go back to the most restrictive tier of public health regulations aimed at slowing the spread of the virus, the US state’s health and human services secretary, Dr Mark Ghaly, said. More counties will likely be required to roll back reopening in coming weeks, he added.
- More than 300,000 people have died of Covid-19 across Europe, according to a Reuters tally, and authorities fear that fatalities and infections will continue to rise as the region heads into winter despite hopes for a new vaccine. With just 10% of the world’s population, the continent accounts for almost a quarter of the 1.2 million deaths globally, and even its well-equipped hospitals are feeling the strain.
- The UK reported its highest daily death toll since May, as a further 532 deaths of people who died within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test were recorded on Tuesday. The figure is the highest since 614 deaths were reported on 12 May.
- France reported the highest number of daily coronavirus deaths of the second wave, as another 551 fatalities were recorded on Monday evening, according to French public health director Jérôme Salomon.
- The Italian government imposed tighter restrictions on another five regions as it tries to stem escalating new cases of coronavirus, while still resisting a nationwide lockdown. A total of seven out of Italy’s 20 regions are now so-called “orange” zones, signifying medium-high risk, after a new decree signed by the health minister, Roberto Speranza, overnight.
- The European commission will on Wednesday formally authorise for the EU member states the purchase of 300m doses of the potential coronavirus vaccine produced by the German drugs company BioNTech and the US firm Pfizer. Ursula von der Leyen, the commission president, said the drug appeared to be the “most promising so far”.
Brazil passes 5.7m coronavirus cases
Brazil reported another 25,012 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, and 201 deaths from Covid-19, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday. The country has registered 5,700,044 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 162,829, according to ministry data. It is the world’s second most fatal outbreak after the United States.
A host of professional Santas have received video-call training to prepare them for a socially-distanced Christmas.
The training comes ahead of the launch of a new app, Santa HQ, which will allow children to speak with Father Christmas without needing to visit a traditional grotto.
Student Santas met in London on Tuesday for technical training for the service, which is a collaborative project between the Ministry of Fun Santa School and the digital agency Prism.
“A lot of work has gone into this launch today, because what we’re having to do is create an alternative to the Christmas grotto,” James Lovell, the director of the Ministry of Fun Santa School, told the PA news agency.
Last year we had over 1,000 booking for Santa’s grottos all over the country, this year we’ve got about a tenth of that.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales helped launch the Santa HQ app and attended the Santa training session.
Lovell said aside from the one-on-one calls with St Nick, the service will also provide a 32-day “Christmas adventure” with Santa’s elves from 25 November. Each day children will be able to take part in an activity with the elves, including joke-telling, arts and crafts, and making a recipe.
“There’s some background story to that where one elf is learning how to be an elf,” added Lovell. “He’s new and he wants to maybe accompany Father Christmas on his sleigh on Christmas Eve, so we may find out at the end whether he manages it or not.”
One of the Santas told PA:
Every year is a busy year... but you know what, we self-isolate anywhere. Father Christmas self-isolates for 11 months because we’re up in the snow near the North Pole, so it’s not made any difference to us really. And all the reindeer when they’re on the sleigh they’re at least two metres apart. But you know, this year especially all the boys and girls around the world... they deserve something very special and that is what Santa HQ is all about.
Prices for the Santa HQ service will vary between £10 and £30 depending on features.
GP services in England will be scaled back well into 2021 so family doctors can immunise millions of people against coronavirus at new seven-day-a-week clinics, NHS England has said.
Health leaders warned that surgeries will not be able to offer their full range of care for patients from next month as doctors and nurses will be redeployed to administering jabs at more than 1,200 mass vaccination centres across the country, potentially including sports halls, conference centres and open air venues.
The Guardian’s Denis Campbell has the story:
Updated
Boris Johnson said it will take a “truly global endeavour” to prevent future pandemics as he met Bill Gates to discuss how governments can prepare, PA reports.
The UK prime minister said the Microsoft co-founder “sounded the alarm” about how unprepared the world was for a global health crisis, long before coronavirus. He added that leaders must now “heed his call” to stop “something like this ever happening again”.
Johnson hosted a virtual meeting with Gates and the heads of 10 life science and pharmaceutical firms on Tuesday, to discuss how governments can work with the industry to prevent future pandemics. He praised the “herculean” joint effort that such companies were undertaking to tackle the disease at “record speed”. He said:
Defeating coronavirus and preventing future pandemics is a truly global endeavour, requiring ingenuity, tenacity and a spirit of openness to succeed.
Bill Gates sounded the alarm on the world’s lack of preparation for a major health crisis long before most of us had heard the word coronavirus - and now we must heed his call to stop something like this ever happening again.
The 10 chief executives “re-committed” to help ensure fair global access to any successful coronavirus vaccine, Downing Street said.
Gates, who is co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said the world needed a “comprehensive strategy” to avoid future pandemics. He said:
Every head of state is thinking about two questions right now - how can we end the current pandemic? And how can we prevent the next one?
To answer those questions, the world needs a comprehensive strategy; a coherent approach to financing and manufacturing billions of doses of vaccines, tests and drugs; and a network to monitor for new threats.
We’re fortunate that prime minister Johnson has come up with a smart plan to do just that in the UK, and our foundation will continue to work with his government and others to make it a reality.
Johnson has already pledged to use the UK’s G7 presidency next year to build a new “global approach” to health security, with a five-point plan to protect humanity against another pandemic.
He committed £500m in aid funding for the Covax vaccines procurement pool to help poor countries access a coronavirus jab, and announced a plan, developed with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and The Wellcome Trust, to help stop future pandemics.
The proposals include developing a global network of “zoonotic hubs” to identify dangerous pathogens before they jump from animals to humans, as well as improving manufacturing capacity for treatments and vaccines.
The head of the US drug firm Johnson & Johnson, Alex Gorsky, and Albert Bourla from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, were among the chief executives who attended the virtual meeting.
France registered a total of 1,829,659 confirmed cases of coronavirus on Tuesday, up by 22,180 over the last 24 hours, the health ministry said. The ministry also reported 472 new deaths in hospitals from Covid-19 over the last day, adding that the numbers had increased sharply over the past week because some institutions were catching up on reporting data that had not been previously given.
The number of patients hospitalised with Covid-19 in California has risen by 32% over the past two weeks, and intensive care admissions have spiked by 30% as the pandemic surges across the United States, the state’s health and human services secretary, Dr Mark Ghaly, said on Tuesday.
Ghaly said three counties that are home to about 5.5 million people - San Diego, Sacramento and Stanislaus - must reverse their reopening plans and go back to the most restrictive tier of public health regulations aimed at slowing the spread of the virus. More counties will likely be required to roll back reopening in coming weeks, he said.
In the most restrictive tier of regulation, indoor dining in restaurants is not allowed. Gyms and religious institutions are also not allowed to hold indoor activities.
Ghaly said:
We anticipate if things stay the way they are... over half of California counties will have moved into a more restrictive tier by next week..
More than 15,000 mink in the United States have died of the coronavirus since August, and authorities are keeping about a dozen farms under quarantine while they investigate the cases, state agriculture officials said.
Global health officials are eying the animals as a potential risk for people after Denmark embarked on a plan to cull all of its 17 million mink. Amid growing political opposition, the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, admitted the cull she authorised last week was illegal.
The US states of Utah, Wisconsin and Michigan - where the coronavirus has killed mink - said they do not plan to cull animals and are monitoring the situation in Denmark.
“We believe that quarantining affected mink farms in addition to implementing stringent biosecurity measures will succeed in controlling SARS-CoV-2 at these locations,” the US Department of Agriculture told Reuters on Tuesday.
The USDA said it is working with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, state officials and the mink industry to test and monitor infected farms.
The United States has 359,850 mink bred to produce babies, known as kits, and produced 2.7 million pelts last year. Wisconsin is the largest mink-producing state, followed by Utah.
Sick mink in Wisconsin and Utah were exposed to people with probable or confirmed Covid-19 cases, the USDA said. In Michigan it is still unknown if the mink were infected by humans, according to the agency.
In Utah, the first US state to confirm mink infections in August, about 10,700 mink have died on nine farms, said Dean Taylor, state veterinarian. “On all nine, everything is still suggesting a one-way travel from people to the minks,” he said. Coronavirus testing has been done on mink that die and randomly on the affected farms, Taylor said. Like people, some mink are asymptomatic or mildly affected, he said.
The CDC said it was supporting states’ investigations into sick mink, including testing of animals and people.
These investigations will help us to learn more about the transmission dynamics between mink, other animals around the farms and people. Currently, there is no evidence that animals play a significant role in the spread of SARS-CoV-2 to people.
In Wisconsin, about 5,000 mink have died on two farms, State Veterinarian Darlene Konkle said. One farm is composting the dead mink to dispose of the carcasses without spreading the virus, Konkle said. Authorities are working with the second farm to determine how to dispose of the mink, and dead animals are being kept in a metal container in the meantime, she said.
Michigan declined to disclose how many mink have died, citing privacy rules.
US authorities are urging farmers to wear protective gear like masks and gloves when handling mink to avoid infecting the animals.
State officials said they are working with the USDA to determine whether farmers can sell the pelts of infected mink. The pelts are used to make fur coats and other items.
“It’s our desire and certainly the owners’ desire to be able to use those pelts,” Konkle said.
The coronavirus has also infected cats, dogs, a lion and a tiger, according to the USDA. Experts say mink appear to be the most susceptible animal so far. Taylor said:
Whatever we learn about mink is going to help understand the virus across species. It’s going to give us a better response to people to stop this pandemic.
A Greek football club has slammed three players for attending a rooftop “coronavirus party” in Athens that local media say involved a DJ and 40 guests, some of whom locked themselves in the toilets to avoid being found.
Olympiakos named Portuguese defender Ruben Semedo, Serbian midfielder Lazar Randelovic and Brazilian midfielder Bruno Felipe as those who were among the 30 people at the party in the early hours of Monday.
Greece has been under a strict lockdown since Saturday to curb the spread of Covid-19 and amid rising hospitalisations. A neighbour of the hotel on Syngrou Avenue called police at 2:30am to report the illegal gathering.
Olympiakos said they have called on the players to apologise and that they will be punished “with the maximum fine.”
All three players as well as those at the party were fined 300 euros ($355) each by police for not wearing protective masks while the 24-year-old owner of the hotel was arrested and fined 3,000 euros.
In a statement the club said:
Olympiakos unequivocally condemns the presence of three of its players at the coronavirus party that took place in the early hours of Monday morning as reported by police. Disregarding the prohibitions and regulations of our team for this season is unacceptable.
The players had just returned from a 2-0 away win at OFI in Crete, which put Olympiakos at the top of the Greek Super League.
Greek health authorities announced 1,914 new cases of Covid-19 and a record 35 deaths on Sunday. Authorities said that of the country’s 1,063 intensive care units, 734 are occupied, 259 with patients with the coronavirus.
The Norwegian government has granted an exemption from its two-week quarantine requirement for arriving visitors so representatives from the winner of the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize - the World Food Program - can attend the 10 December award ceremony in Oslo, the Associated Press reports.
“The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize is an important event of great national and international interest,” the health minister Bent Hoeie said.
We want to make it easy for the prize winner to be physically present this year as well. It is important that the event is carried out in a good infection-control manner.
The government’s decision came at the recommendation of Norway’s Directorate of Health and National Institute of Public Health, which “consider that the risk of infection is very small” from granting the quarantine waiver, Hoeie said.
The World Food Program, which won the 2020 peace prize for efforts to combat hunger, will send a delegation that is “as small as possible, an estimated 15-20 people,” to accept the award, he said.
Hoeie said visitors also are eligible for quarantine exemptions “when they have taken one negative test in Norway. This means that the persons have full entry quarantine until they have received one negative test result. When the negative test result is available, the person in question is exempt from the entry quarantine.”
The ceremony usually is held at Oslo City Hall. Next month’s event will be a scaled-down affair held at the city’s university because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Along with enormous prestige, the prize comes with a 10-million krona ($1.1 million) cash award and a gold medal to be handed out. It is held on the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel’s death.
The traditional banquet and concert held after the award ceremony, and the ceremonies the same week in Stockholm where the other Nobel Prizes will be awarded, have been canceled.
Updated
Europe's death toll tops 300,000 as winter looms and infections surge
More than 300,000 people have died of Covid-19 across Europe, according to a Reuters tally on Tuesday, and authorities fear that fatalities and infections will continue to rise as the region heads into winter despite hopes for a new vaccine.
With just 10% of the world’s population, the continent accounts for almost a quarter of the 1.2 million deaths globally, and even its well-equipped hospitals are feeling the strain.
After achieving a measure of control over the pandemic with broad lockdowns earlier this year, case numbers have surged since the summer and governments have ordered a second series of restrictions to limit social contacts.
In all, Europe has reported some 12.8 million cases and about 300,114 deaths. Over the past week, it has seen 280,000 cases a day, up 10% from the week earlier, representing just over half of all new infections reported globally.
Hopes have been raised by Pfizer Inc’s announcement of a potentially effective new vaccine, but it is not expected to be generally available before 2021 and health systems will have to cope with the winter months unaided.
The UK, which has imposed a fresh lockdown in England, has the highest death toll in Europe at around 49,000, and health experts have warned that with a current average of more than 20,000 cases daily, the country will exceed its “reasonable worst case” scenario of 80,000 deaths.
France, Spain, Italy and Russia have also reported hundreds of deaths a day and together, the five countries account for almost three quarters of the total fatalities.
Already facing the prospect of a wave of job losses and business failures, governments across the region have been forced to order control measures including local curfews, closing non-essential shops and restricting movement.
France, the worst-affected country in the EU, has registered more than 48,700 infections per day over the past week and the Paris region’s health authority said last week that 92% of its ICU capacity was occupied.
Facing similar pressures, Belgian and Dutch hospitals have been forced to send some severely ill patients to Germany.
In Italy, which became a global symbol of the crisis when army trucks were used to transport the dead during the early months of the pandemic, daily average new cases are at a peak at more than 32,500. Deaths have been rising by more than 320 per day over the past three weeks.
Updated
Good evening from London. I’m Lucy Campbell, I’ll be bringing you all the latest global developments on the coronavirus pandemic for the next few hours. As always, please feel free to get in touch with me as I work if you have a story or tips to share. Your thoughts are always welcome!
Email: lucy.campbell@theguardian.com
Twitter: @lucy_campbell_
Summary
- UK’s health service asked to be ready to deploy vaccine in December as the country reported it’s highest death toll since May. Health secretary, Matt Hancock, says he has asked the NHS to be ready to start deploying the vaccine from the start of December. But he notes that there are “many hurdles that still need to be gone over” and that the full safety data needs to be analysed first. Britain reported 532 new deaths of people within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test on Tuesday, the highest daily figure since May.
- Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat dies after contracting Covid-19. Erekat, who had a lung transplant in 2017, had led the Palestinian negotiating team in peace talks with Israel since 1994. He was also secretary general of the PLO’s Eexecutive Ccommittee.
- Highest number of deaths during second wave in France. France reported 551 new Covid-19 deaths on Monday evening, the highest number of the second wave, according to French public health director Jérôme Salomon.
- Italy increases virus restrictions in five regions. The Italian government has imposed tighter restrictions on another five regions as it tries to stem escalating new cases of coronavirus, while still resisting a nationwide lockdown.A total of seven out of Italy’s 20 regions are now so-called “orange” zones, signifying medium-high risk, after a new decree signed by the health minister, Roberto Speranza, overnight.
- European commission to formally authorise vaccine purchase. The European commission will on Wednesday formally authorise for the EU member states the purchase of 300m doses of the potential coronavirus vaccine produced by the German drugs company BioNTech and the US firm Pfizer. Ursula von der Leyen, the commission president, said the drug appeared to be the “most promising so far.”
Nearly 400 inmates at a Panamanian prison have been infected with the new coronavirus in the country’s largest prison outbreak of the pandemic, authorities said.
Those infected represent about 75% of those held at the Penonome prison in the central province of Cocle.
The outbreak came amid a rise in infections in Panama that has raised concern that a new wave of cases could be coming nearly a month after many social distancing restrictions were lifted.
The prison system issued a statement saying that so far there were no deaths among the 390 infected inmates at Penonome. Those who tested positive were given a kit including masks, oxygen meters and pain killers among other treatments.
No guards had reportedly tested positive.
There have been Covid-19 infections in other Panamanian prisons and six inmates who died, but this would be the largest.
UK reports more than 500 daily deaths
Britain reported 532 new deaths of people within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test on Tuesday, the highest daily figure since May, government figures showed.
The daily death toll is the highest since 614 deaths were reported on 12 May. The 532 new deaths are a sharp rise from 194 reported on Monday, and may reflect a lagged reporting of deaths from the weekend.
There were 20,412 people who tested positive for Covid-19 in the latest daily figures, down slightly from 21,350 on Monday.
Updated
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged premiers of the country’s 10 provinces to take stricter measures against a rapidly spreading second wave of the coronavirus.
“We are seeing record spikes this morning across the country, so I urge the premiers and the mayors to please do the right thing: act now to protect public health,” he told a news conference.
Over the past week Canada has posted a daily average of more than 3,800 cases.
As Trudeau spoke, the central province of Manitoba announced a major shutdown beginning on Thursday. Social gatherings will be forbidden, restaurants can only serve takeout meals and all recreational facilities must close.
Other provinces have so far resisted such sweeping measures, citing the potential economic damage.
Trudeau’s comments were the second time in the last two weeks he has expressed frustration about how the pandemic.
Under Canada’s system of governing, the provinces are in charge of imposing restrictions to fight the virus. Ottawa can in emergencies step in to take over, but Trudeau said he saw no need now for such action.
“I would hope that no leader in our country is easing public health vigilance because they feel pressure not to shut down businesses or slow down our economy,” said Trudeau, noting that Ottawa has provided more than C$200 billion ($153.8 billion) in aid packages to help businesses and people.
“I understand that worry, but let me tell you: that’s how we end up with businesses going out of business and the economy damaged even more.”
Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh has tested positive for Covid-19 only days after being released from prison, her husband said on Tuesday.
“Nasrin tested positive today,” Reza Khandan wrote in a brief post on his Facebook account.
“Last Wednesday, during (a) meeting I had with Nasrin at Qarchak prison, she said that the coronavirus had spread in her ward and many (inmates) had become sick.
“That’s why she was in a rush to follow up on her furlough process,” he added.
Sotoudeh, 57, was released from jail on Saturday after being granted a temporary leave of absence.
The lawyer and activist was jailed in 2018 after defending a woman arrested for protesting against the requirement for Iranian women to wear the hijab.
She was told at the time that she had been sentenced to five years in prison in absentia for spying, according to her lawyers.
In 2019, she was sentenced again to 12 years in prison “for encouraging corruption and debauchery”.
According to her husband, Sotoudeh’s health deteriorated badly behind bars, where she had to end in September a 45-day hunger strike that she had launched to seek the release of prisoners during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Iran is the Middle East country hardest hit by the pandemic. Since March, more than 100,000 inmates have been granted temporary release to limit the spread of the disease in prisons.
The pharma companies behind the most promising Covid-19 vaccine to date, are planning to price the two-shot regimen below “typical market rates” and would differentiate pricing between countries or regions.
Pfizer and BioNTech have said the price tag of the vaccine, which has yet to win regulatory approval, would reflect the financial risks that its private-sector investors have incurred.
Speaking at a Financial Times online event, the German BioNTech’s strategy head Ryan Richardson, said:
“We’ve tried to pursue a balanced approach that recognises that innovation requires capital and investment so we plan to price our vaccine well below typical market rates reflecting the situation that we’re in and with the goal to insure broad-based access around the world.
“I expect there to be differential pricing in certain regions of the world,” he added, declining to elaborate on the different price tags.”
In July Pfizer had agreed with the U.S. government the supply of 100 million doses of its potential vaccine at a price of $39 for a two-dose immunisation, or $19.5 per dose, with the option to sell another 500 million doses under conditions to be negotiated separately.
Later on Tuesday, Richardson signalled that order size would impact the per-dose price in the developed world.
The European Commission will discuss on Wednesday the adoption of a supply contract with Pfizer and BioNTech. The bloc earlier this week said a contract for up to 300 million doses was close to being signed, without providing financial terms.
A Covid-19 vaccine like Pfizer and BioNTech’s candidate is likely to need centralised vaccination locations, Swiss health experts said, as it must be stored at temperatures matching an Antarctic winter.
US-based Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech said on Monday their mRNA vaccine candidate was more than 90% effective based on initial results, giving global markets an unexpected boost.
However, health experts have cautioned such a vaccine comes with special challenges because the genetic material it consists of must be stored at -70C (-94 F) or below.
This could complicate any inoculation programme, particularly in regions such as parts of Asia or Africa where the climate is warm, distances vast and the required infrastructure may be lacking.
The World Health Organization called the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine data “exciting”, but said it “presages significant cold chain challenges for African countries”.
Thomas Steffen, Basel’s cantonal doctor and a board member of the Swiss Doctors Association, said groups considering distribution of a Covid-19 vaccine are working with different scenarios, including for one like Pfizer’s.
“We have to have a solution if we need to chill the vaccine to minus 70 degrees, and in that case organise the distribution ... differently than if it were stored at a temperature of a refrigerator,” Steffen told a Bern briefing, adding that this was likely to mean using centres.”
Updated
Norway recalled Home Guard forces to patrol its land border as neighbouring Sweden reported another surge in Covid-19 cases that is straining hospitals and stretching testing to the limit.
Norway tightened coronavirus rules last week and extended border controls for another six months. As a result the Home Guard said it would assist police controlling the vast border, as it did during the spring and summer.
“Civilian authorities do not have sufficient resources to enforce the new measures and have asked the Armed Forces for assistance,” the Home Guard - a rapid mobilisation force in the military focused on local defence and civil support - said in a statement on Tuesday.
The Swedish-Norwegian border is Europe’s longest and around 80,000 Swedes live and work in Norway. Sweden’s Covid-19 deaths per capita are more than 10 times higher than in Norway, which opted for a lockdown in the spring.
On Tuesday Sweden recorded 15,779 new Covid-19 cases since its latest update on Friday as a resurgent pandemic stretched testing to the limit in many hard-hit, densely populated regions.
Italy registers 580 further Covid-linked deaths, highest since mid-April
There were 35,098 new coronavirus infections registered in Italy on Tuesday and 580 more Covid-related deaths, the highest since 15 April.
Four more regions – Campania, Emilia Romagna, Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia – are expected to be upgraded to either orange or red zones. Tuscany, Umbria, Basilicata, Liguria and Abruzzo will be in orange zones, meaning bars and restaurants will close completely and people won’t be able to travel beyond their town or city, from Wednesday.
However, the government is under pressure to impose a national lockdown, and a decision on that could possibly be made on 15 November.
Silvio Brusaferro, the president of Italy’s higher health institute, said on Tuesday that all of Italy’s 20 regions were either in a “moderate or high risk” situation and that the threshold for hospital admissions has already been exceeded in some regions.
Updated
Row erupts over Brazil suspension of Chinese vaccine trials
Brazil’s decision to halt trials of a Chinese-developed Covid-19 vaccine triggered a politically charged row as health officials expressed “indignation” over the move and far-right President Jair Bolsonaro claimed it as a victory.
Read more here from Peter Beaumont and Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro:
European commission to formally authorise vaccine purchase
The European commission will on Wednesday formally authorise for the EU member states the purchase of 300m doses of the potential coronavirus vaccine produced by the German drugs company BioNTech and the US firm Pfizer.
Ursula von der Leyen, the commission president, said the drug appeared to be the “most promising so far”.
She added that it was part of a wider joint procurement of some 1.3m vaccine doses from producers for distribution among the 27 EU member states.
“Once this vaccine becomes available, our plan is to deploy it quickly, everywhere in Europe”, Von der Leyen said of the BioNTech-Pfizer product.
“This will be the fourth contract with a pharmaceutical company to buy vaccines. And more will come. Because we need to have a broad portfolio of vaccines based on different technologies. We have already started working with member states to prepare national vaccination campaigns. We are almost there. In the meantime, let us be prudent, and stay safe.”
The vaccines, once approved, will be distributed among the 27 member states in ratio to their populations.
The EU commissioner for health, Stella Kyriakides, told the Guardian: “The aim of the vaccine strategy is to have a portfolio of as many promising candidates as possible because this will increase our chances of being effective.
“In terms of BioNTech- Pfizer, we have concluded the negotiations and I will be signing the agreement with them in the coming days.”
Updated
Norway will exempt United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) delegates from coronavirus quarantine when they arrive next month to receive this year’s Nobel peace prize, ensuring that the live ceremony can go ahead, the government has said.
The WFP, which has coordinated medical logistics during the pandemic, was named winner of the prestigious award last month in what its boss said was a call to action that no one should go hungry in the world today.
Norway imposes a 10-day quarantine on almost all arrivals from abroad, but the 15-20 members of the WFP will be allowed to skip the strictly enforced measure if they test negative for Covid-19 upon arrival.
The exemption was granted following an application from the Norwegian Nobel Institute, home to the independent committee that awards the 10m Swedish crowns ($1.16m) prize, which also brings significant global attention for the winners.
“The award attracts significant national and international attention. We want to facilitate it so that the winners can be physically present,” Norway’s health minister, Bent Høie said in a statement.
The Rome-based WFP says it helps some 97 million people in about 88 countries each year, and that one in nine people worldwide still do not have enough to eat.
The remaining Nobel awards – for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and economics – which are traditionally handed out in Stockholm, have been moved online this year due to the pandemic.
Updated
Dutch authorities have said social distancing measures must remain in place despite a sharp fall in coronavirus cases, as hospitals remain under pressure due to heavy numbers of Covid-19 patients.
The National Institute for Health reported 43,621 cases in the week through 10 November, a decline of more than 30% from the previous week. Deaths increased to 565 from 435.
The justice minister, Ferd Grapperhaus, said it was too soon to discuss relaxing rules from the country’s second partial lockdown, which began on 13 October.
I think we have to realise that we as a society still have to make sure that we get much further into the green zone,” Grapperhaus said after a meeting with regional health and safety officials.
New daily cases in the Netherlands peaked at 11,119 on 30 October. The prime minister, Mark Rutte, is to address the public later on Tuesday about whether further lockdown measures are needed beyond a current ban on public gatherings of more than three people.
Space in hospitals remains scarce but stable after the October surge in infections, with nearly half of intensive care beds now being used for Covid-19 patients. Hospitals in the Netherlands have scaled back on regular care since mid-October.
Updated
More on the race to secure the vaccine in Germany from our Berlin bureau chief, Philip Oltermann
Germany, home to the company that pioneered the mRNA vaccine, had not yet purchased any doses by the time Pfizer/BioNTech announced their breakthrough.
While the UK has bought 40m doses and the US have signed a contract guaranteeing delivery of 100m vaccine doses beginning this year, the European Union has only made a reservation for 200m doses of the Pfizer/Biontech vaccine.
On Monday, German health minister urged Brussels to sign on the dotted line:
As German health minister I am going to struggle to explain why a vaccine produced in Germany is going to be available in other regions in the world before it is available in Germany,” the conservative politician said.
On Tuesday, a European commission spokesman said the EU had concluded negotiations with Pfizer and BioNTech to secure millions of doses of their coronavirus vaccine.
Updated
The Paris prosecutors office has opened four investigations based on hundreds of complaints against decision-makers and French institutions for their management of the Covid-19 epidemic during the first wave earlier this year.
The office said that the investigations “against X” — a formula that designates no single person or entity — were opened for allegedly failing to combat the virus, endangering lives and involuntarily killing and injuring.
A statement said the investigations group 253 of 328 complaints received by the prosecutors since 24 March. The complaints were divided into four categories, most of them — 240 — concerning acts allegedly committed to the detriment of the general population. Other categories concern health workers, civil servants and those who fell ill or died.
Investigating magistrates will now carry out “complex investigations aimed at revealing eventual penal infractions” that may have been committed, the statement said.
A parallel investigation from the fallout of the management of the pandemic is also underway. In July, a special French court ordered probes of three current or former government ministers over their handling of the crisis following dozens of complaints.
The cases under investigation target former prime minister Edouard Philippe, the health minister, Olivier Veran, and his predecessor Agnes Buzyn. If the cases go to trial on charges of “failing to fight a disaster”, they would risk up to two-year prison terms and fines if convicted.
President Emmanuel Macron and his government have in the past acknowledged a shortage of masks and other missteps in the early phase of the virus, which is now surging again.
Updated
Developments on plans to distribute the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine are coming in thick and fast.
On Wednesday the European commission will approve a contract for the supply of the vaccine, its President Ursula von der Leyen said.
“Tomorrow we will authorise a contract for up to 300m doses of the vaccine developed by German company BioNTech and Pfizer,” Von der Leyen said in a statement.
A spokesman for the commission said earlier on Tuesday that the EU executive would discuss adopting the agreement with the two companies, adding that the decision was not linked to Pzifer’s announcement on Monday that clinical tests of its experimental vaccine against Covid-19 had proved more than 90% effective.
Updated
The Catalonian government has taken a novel approach to curb rising coronavirus infections asking public transports users to remain silent
The regional government has asked all public transport users in the region to refrain from speaking, eating and drinking to prevent further Covid-19 infections.
Since 9 November, people using the underground, train, tram or bus in Catalonia will be encouraged to adopt this safety measure.
Trains belonging to the Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat network will also include a “silent carriage”, in which not speaking will be required rather than encouraged.
Alex Azar, the health secretary, said that if pharmaceutical company Pfizer submits its interim Covid-19 vaccine to regulators as quickly as expected, the government now expects to begin vaccinating Americans in December.
Pfizer said on Monday the vaccine it has been developing with German partner BioNTech was 90% effective against coronavirus. It said it expects safety data next week that it needs in order to submit an application for emergency use authorisation to the US Food and Drug Administration.
Azar gave several network interviews, including to CNBC on Tuesday morning in which he said that the government would receive 20m doses per month of the Pfizer vaccine starting at the end of this month. The US has a $2bn contract for 100m doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
Azar said final decisions are subject to a close look at the vaccine efficacy data, but based on recommendations to the government, it will likely start with inoculations of the elderly in nursing homes and assisted living, healthcare workers and first responders, with a goal to complete those shots by the end of January.
Azar said he anticipates more vaccines from other rivals soon, including Moderna, which is expected to announce its interim results at the end of the month.
“By the end of March, early April, we expect to have enough for every American who would like to be vaccinated,” Azar said.
Updated
The experimental vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac has shown no serious adverse effects during late-stage trials in Brazil, the head of the medical research institute that is organising the trials has said.
Dimas Covas, the head of the Butantan Institute, told reporters the suspension of the trials by Brazil’s health regulator had caused “indignation” and had been done without discussion with the organisers.
Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen unit has received the green light to carry out late stage trials for its vaccine in Mexico, the country’s foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard has said.
He said the US vaccine developer Novavax Inc earlier this month also presented health authorities with a request to conduct phase 3 testing in Mexico.
Four judicial investigations have been opened in France into the authorities’ response to the Covid epidemic, the Paris prosecutor’s department has said. The prosecutor opened a preliminary inquiry in June to determine whether any criminal offences might have been committed.
Updated
Sweden, whose alternative approach to the pandemic has sparked worldwide attention, has registered 15,779 coronavirus cases since its previous update on Friday, Health Agency statistics show.
The number compares with 10,177 cases for the corresponding period last week. Cases in the Nordic country have risen sharply, repeatedly hitting daily records over the past two weeks.
Sweden registered 35 new deaths. Its death rate per capita is several times higher than Nordic neighbours but lower than some larger European countries, such as Spain and Britain.
When politicians across the world were confronted with the reality of a spreading pandemic, hospitals nearing capacity and deaths rising, almost all of them reached for emergency legislation to enforce lockdowns, curfews and other bans on social gatherings. But Sweden chose a markedly different approach.
The Guardian’s Europe correspondent Jon Henley tells Anushka Asthana how in Sweden, the government vested its pandemic response in its unelected public health expert Anders Tegnell, who issued advice and guidance rather than strict lockdowns.
Updated
Tributes poured in from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and from around the world after the death of Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator who died in Jerusalem on Tuesday after contracting coronavirus.
The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, said Erekat’s death represented a “big loss for Palestine and for our people.”
“We feel deep sorrow for losing him, especially at such difficult times the Palestinian cause is living through,” he added.
The former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni tweeted her condolences.
“I’m saddened by the death of @ErakatSaeb. Saeb dedicated his life to his people. Reaching Peace is my destiny he used to say. Being sick, he texted me: ‘I’m not finished with what I was born to do.’ My deepest condolences to the Palestinians and his family. He will be missed,” he wrote.
Tony Blair, former British prime minister and ex-envoy for the Middle East Quartet, described Erekat as a legendary negotiator.
“Saeb Erekat and I had many differences over the peace process and how to bring it to a successful conclusion. But I never doubted for one moment his sincerity, his knowledge or his deep and abiding commitment to the Palestinian people and to peace.
“He was a legendary negotiator, aware of every intricacy and detail of the two-state solution and a tireless advocate of it.
“He dedicated his life to the cause of an independent sovereign State of Palestine and it is tragic that he never lived to see it come into being. But when it does, he will be remembered as one of its core architects. My thoughts and condolences are with his family. May he rest in peace.”
Full report from the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent, Oliver Holmes.
Updated
Ryanair is more confident about a partial recovery in passenger traffic next summer following reported progress on a coronavirus vaccine, the budget airline’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said.
Describing the progress as the “first bit of sunshine we’ve had for the past 12 months”, O’Leary forecast a return to 75-80% of pre-crisis traffic by next summer - an improvement on the 50-80% range he had given eight days earlier.
“There’s reasonable optimism now that summer 2021 will get back to some degree of normality,” O’Leary told the WTM Virtual travel conference, a day after Pfizer said its experimental Covid-19 vaccine was 90% effective in trials.
Stocks surged on Monday’s breakthrough news, even as experts cautioned that global deployment of an approved vaccine would take many months and face major logistical and other hurdles.
The Ryanair boss, who has predicted a post-crisis price war in which the budget carrier is well placed to gain ground, said Europe would see “an enormous snap-back” in intra-European beach holiday travel as soon as confidence returns.
“Mrs O’Leary is very keen to get back to the Algarve, and I suspect she’ll be there about 2.5 nanoseconds after the restrictions are lifted,” he said.
“Frankly I think she’s reflective of the overwhelming majority of Europe’s population.”
Updated
The novel coronavirus has killed more than 1.26 million people since the outbreak emerged in China last December.
Almost 51 million cases of the disease have been registered. Of these, more than 33 million are now considered recovered.
On Monday, 6,867 new deaths and 465,514 new cases were recorded worldwide. Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were France with 548, followed by Spain with 512 and the US with 489.
The US is the worst-affected country with 238,251 deaths from just over 10 million cases. More than 3.9 million people have recovered.
After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil, India, Mexico and the UK.
The country with the highest number of deaths in relation to its population is Belgium with 114 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Peru with 106, Spain 84 and Brazil 77.
China – excluding Hong Kong and Macau – has to date declared 86,267 cases, including 4,634 deaths and 81,187 recoveries.
Latin America and the Caribbean have had 413,838 deaths from around 11.6 million cases, Europe 311,035 deaths with just over 13 million infections, and the US and Canada 248,791 deaths from more than 10.3 million cases.
Asia has reported 178,001 deaths, the Middle East 65,666, Africa 45,618, and Oceania 941 deaths.
Updated
Italy increases virus restrictions in five regions
The Italian government has imposed tighter restrictions on another five regions as it tries to stem escalating new cases of coronavirus, while still resisting a nationwide lockdown.
Seven out of Italy’s 20 regions are now so-called “orange” zones, signifying medium-high risk, after a new decree signed by the health minister, Roberto Speranza, overnight.
Abruzzo, Basilicata, Liguria, Tuscany and Umbria join Sicily and Puglia in closing bars and restaurants, while their residents are now forbidden from travelling to other regions.
Another four regions – among them three in the populous north, which includes the financial capital of Milan – are subject to even tighter “red” restrictions, with most shops, bars and restaurants shut and residents’ movements restricted.
Prime minister Giuseppe Conte’s government is trying to avoid a repeat of the economically punishing national lockdown imposed earlier this year, when Italy became the first European country to be hit by Covid-19.
Nearly 42,000 people have died so far in Italy, with more than 960,000 cases.
The regional approach was introduced last Friday, alongside a nationwide curfew requiring Italy’s 60 million residents to stay indoors from 10pm to 5am.
But health experts, including the national federation of medical associations, have called for tougher restrictions across the country.
Gianni Rezzi, the director of prevention within the health ministry, said the worsening situation in Italy “justifies restrictive measures.”
“We have more than 500 cases per 100,000 inhabitants and almost all Italian regions are heavily affected,” he said.
Updated
The Covid-19 death toll in Europe is set to pass 300,000, according to a Reuters tally, and authorities fear that despite hopes for a new vaccine, fatalities and infections will continue to rise as the region heads into winter.
With just 10% of the world’s population, Europe accounts for almost a quarter of both the 50.7 million cases and 1.2 million deaths globally and even its well-equipped hospitals are feeling the strain.
After achieving a measure of control over the pandemic with broad lockdowns earlier this year, case numbers have surged since the summer and governments have ordered a second series of restrictions to limit social contacts.
In all, Europe has reported some 12.3 million cases and 295,000 deaths and over the past week, it has seen 280,000 cases a day, up 10% from the week earlier, representing just over half of all new infections reported globally.
Hopes have been raised by Pfizer’s announcement of a potentially effective new vaccine, but it is not expected to be generally available before 2021 and health systems will have to cope with the winter months unaided.
Britain has the highest death toll in Europe at around 49,000 and health experts have warned that with a current average of more than 20,000 cases daily, the country will exceed its “worst case” scenario of 80,000 deaths.
France, Spain, Italy and Russia have also reported hundreds of deaths a day, and together with the UK account for almost three quarters of the total fatalities.
Updated
The latest figures for Switzerland have just been published. The Alpine state has reported 5,980 new coronavirus infections with 107 more deaths.
Total confirmed cases in Switzerland and neighbouring principality Liechtenstein increased to 235,202, and the death toll rose to 2,683.
Hospitalisations swelled by 243 to 9,448 as the government deployed army personnel to help the hard-pressed health care system cope with the surge in admissions.
Morning, I will be leading you through today’s global coronavirus updates. As ever, please do send any tips and stories to nazia.parveen@theguardian.com or follow me on Twitter to send me a DM.
Updated
Russian vaccines effective, claims Putin
Vladimir Putin on Tuesday said all Russian vaccines against Covid-19 were effective, adding that the country would soon register a third shot against the virus, the RIA news agency reported.
The Russian president said Moscow was ready to cooperate with all other countries on coronavirus vaccines, but urged against politicising the process, the day after vaccine developers Pfizer Inc and BioNTech said their experimental Covid-19 vaccine was more than 90% effective.
It’s worth noting that previous Russian vaccine announcements have prompted expressions of unease from scientists around the world because the work behind them has been opaque and difficult to verify. In August, Danny Altmann, a professor of immunology at Imperial College, told the Guardian: “I don’t think the Russian researchers have done anything wrong, but I think they’ve jumped the gun.”
That’s it from me. My esteemed colleague Nazia Parveen is picking up the reins now.
Updated
Here’s my colleague Oliver Holmes’ full report on the death of Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat (see earlier post).
Updated
Highest number of deaths during second wave in France
France reported 551 new Covid-19 deaths on Monday evening, the highest number of the second wave, according to French public health director Jérôme Salomon. And the head of Santé Publique France warned that the worst of the spike was to come.
Salomon said France had the 4th highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in the world – an extra 20,155 were reported on Monday – but attributed this to what he called “particularly high” testing in the country. France is now carrying out around 2.3m tests a week.
Officials reported that 4,690 intensive care beds were now being occupied by Covid-19 patients. Before the first wave in March-April this year, France had around 5,000 intensive care beds; this figure has now been increased with an eventual target of around 7,500.
With news of a possible vaccine on the horizon, an Ipsos poll found that only 59% of French people questioned said they would get vaccinated against the coronavirus. Twenty per cent said they were vehemently opposed to having the vaccine.
A number of schools were closed across France on Tuesday after several teaching unions called for members to hold a “health strike” in protest at what they see as insufficient Covid-19 precautions in some schools and lycées. It was not immediately clear how many teachers had responded to the strike call.
Updated
Malaysia’s health ministry reported 869 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, raising the total to 42,050 infections.
The Southeast Asian country also recorded six new deaths, taking total fatalities from the pandemic to 300.
As Pfizer reports a 90% efficacy rate in clinical trials for its mRNA vaccine, here’s the latest edition of the Guardian’s vaccine tracker.
Weekly death toll in England and Wales jumps 41%
In England and Wales, a total of 1,379 deaths registered in the week ending October 30 mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
It is first time the weekly figure has been above 1,000 since the week ending 12 June.
It is also the highest number of deaths involving Covid-19 since the week ending 5 June. The total is up from 978 deaths in the week to 23 October – a jump of 41%.
For more on these figures, head to Andrew Sparrow’s UK live blog:
Updated
German health minister Jens Spahn expects the EU to sign a final purchase agreement with BioNTech and its partner Pfizer “in the coming days” for its potential vaccine against Covid-19.
“We will now bring this to a speedy conclusion,” Spahn told a news conference in Berlin.
Spahn said he expects Germany will get up to 100m doses of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine. But earlier this morning, German economy minister Peter Altmaier said: “Nobody knows when and for how many people this (vaccine) will be available.”
Updated
Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat dies after contracting Covid-19
The Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat has died at 65 after contracting Covid-19, news agencies have reported. He was reported to be in a medically induced coma and in critical condition in mid-October.
Erekat, who had a lung transplant in 2017, had led the Palestinian negotiating team in peace talks with Israel since 1994. He was also secretary general of the PLO’s executive committee.
He continued to lead the Palestinian delegation in talks during the Trump administration, and in September said in response to the diplomatic breakthrough between Israel and Gulf monarchies: “We definitely feel betrayed … [the deals are] tremendous encouragement for the Israeli government to continue their occupation.”
“I am the most disadvantaged negotiator in the history of man,” he told a reporter in 2007, the year that the Islamic militant group Hamas seized control of Gaza from Abbas’ forces. “I have no army, no navy, no economy, my society is fragmented.”
AP writes:
The American-educated Erekat was involved in nearly every round of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians going back to the landmark Madrid conference in 1991, when he famously showed up draped in a black-and-white checkered keffiyeh, a symbol of Palestinian nationalism.
Over the next few decades Erekat was a constant presence in Western media, where he tirelessly advocated for a negotiated two-state solution to the decades-old conflict, defended the Palestinian leadership and blamed Israel for the failure to reach an agreement.
Updated
Indonesia reported 3,779 new coronavirus infections on Tuesday, bringing the total number to 444,348, data from the country’s Covid-19 taskforce showed.
The data added 72 new Covid-19 deaths, taking the total number to 14,761. Indonesia has confirmed the highest tally of coronavirus cases and deaths.
Updated
In Hungary, the government has reported 103 deaths from coronavirus in the last 24 hours, Reuters reports. That figure is close to the national peak set on Saturday of 107.
The number of new cases rose by 4,140, the government said in a statement. It said the number of people hospitalised with Covid-19 rose to 6,153, with a record number of 461 patients on ventilators.
Updated
Matt Hancock has been speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. He reiterates some of the points he made earlier, noting that the vaccine can only be taken out of -70C temperatures four times between the manufacturer’s facility and a GP’s surgery.
He says that he wrote to GPs last night to set out the agreement about “the incredibly important role they’ll play” and says £150m extra will be allocated to GPs this winter to help with the process. “It is a mammoth logistical operation,” he adds.
He also notes that while the most vulnerable will be vaccinated first, the rest of the programme may begin before every person over 80 has received their doses:
We’ll vaccinate category 1 first, and then category 1 and 2, and then category 1 and 2 and 3... it’s a bit like boarding an aeroplane... when you’re called to board, they call the passengers they want on first, after that they call the passengers they want on next, but they don’t say the first group can’t any longer get on. So you keep rolling it out.”
He reiterates that suppression tactics must continue because “we will not know how effective the vaccine is at stopping the transmission [for some time].” “The protection of an individual only comes after both doses and then one to two weeks after that, so that itself is a four to five week process.” He says the government is “cautious to be really clear that we’ve got to stick with the programme we’ve got at the moment.”
Updated
Russia reported 20,977 new coronavirus infections on Tuesday, including 5,902 in the capital Moscow, bringing the national tally to 1,817,109, Reuters reports. There were 21,798 cases the previous day.
Authorities also reported 368 coronavirus-related deaths in the last 24 hours, against 256 the day before, taking the official death toll to 31,161.
The UK’s unemployment rate has jumped to 4.8 percent as the coronavirus pandemic destroys a record number of UK jobs, official data showed Tuesday.
The reading for the third quarter compared with an unemployment rate of 4.5 percent for June-August, the Office for National Statistics said.
“The employment rate has been decreasing since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, while the unemployment rate is now rising sharply,” the ONS said.
“Redundancies have reached a record high,” it added.
You can read more about this at the UK business live blog:
Updated
Spain’s health minister Salvador Illa has said the first doses of the promising Pfizer vaccine could reach the country in early 2021.
The government expects to get 20m doses initially, enough to vaccinate 10m people, he says.
In India, Amrit Dhillon has reported on the children forced into work by the coronavirus pandemic. Her excellent piece begins with Subhan Shaikh, who was at school in Mumbai until the pandemic hit but now has to work because the lockdown brought his mother’s work as a school bus attendant to an end:
Today, life for Subhan revolves around tea, which has become a lifeline for his family. After seeing his mother struggle, Subhan decided to do something and became a tea seller on the streets of Mumbai.
From 2pm Subhan is allowed to borrow the stove in the corner of a food stall in Bhendi Bazaar to make a big pan of milky tea. He strains the tea into a large thermos flask, hangs it precariously on his bicycle handlebars and sets off to sell it in tiny paper cups for five rupees each.
There is no shortage of customers as Indians drink tea endlessly throughout the day. “I go around all day until about 10pm. I make about 250 rupees (£2.50) every day which I give to mum to buy vegetables,” says Subhan, speaking on the phone from Mumbai.
Subhan’s experience is typical for millions of India’s urban poor, Dhillon writes, “who have been pushed further into poverty by the impact of Covid-19 on jobs and incomes. All dreams of educating children to give them a better life have been put aside for now.”
You can read the piece here:
Updated
When people aren’t feeling optimistic about a vaccine by spring, they’re probably worrying about celebrations at Christmas. And in France, a Paris hospital director has argued that the traditional festivities should be cancelled this year over fears of sparking another resurgence in infections.
According to Reuters, Julien Lenglet told RMC Radio that there was a risk that Christmas and New Year’s Eve parties – known in France as “Saint-Sylvestre” – could end up as a “giant, intergenerational cluster that could be at the origins of a potential new third wave” of Covid-19.
“I would say, without any hesitation, that we ought to cancel Christmas and Saint-Sylvestre,” said Lenglet, who works at the Antony hospital in the Paris region.
France entered a second, national lockdown to curb the spread of the Covid-19 virus at the end of October, but some politicians and health experts are hoping that by doing so, the Covid-19 numbers might start to come down, allowing allow the country to reopen in time for the Christmas season.
Updated
Ukraine registered 10,179 Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours, its health ministry said on Tuesday, not the record figure of 10,842 that it had earlier reported.
The minister Maksym Stepanov said a total of 479,197 cases had been registered in Ukraine as of 10 November, with 8,756 deaths.
Updated
UK's health service asked to be ready to deploy vaccine in December
Meanwhile, the UK health secretary, Matt Hancock, has also been speaking about the vaccine.
Hancock says he has asked the NHS to be ready to start deploying the vaccine from the start of December. But he notes that there are “many hurdles that still need to be gone over” and that the full safety data needs to be analysed first.
Hancock says that priority for vaccination when available is a “clinical process” and that it will start with the most vulnerable people in care homes and those that look after them, then be rolled out to NHS and social care staff, and then “coming down through the age ranges”. He adds: “That prioritisation is set by the clinical body and we will take their advice on the best way to roll this out to keep people safe.”
He declines to explicitly back the suggestion from Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, that life could be back to normal by spring 2021. “Yes, this is promising news, but there is a long way further to go,” he says. A little later in the interview he says: “We’ve always been clear that our central expectation for the roll-out of a vaccine … is in the first part of 2021 … that remains my central expectation.”
Updated
Everyone wants as many expert views on the vaccine news as possible, so here’s another voice: in the UK, BBC Radio 4’s Today programme is interviewing Adam Finn, a professor of paediatrics and vaccine specialist at the university of Bristol. He’s pretty optimistic.
“This is extremely good news,” he says. “It gives us the first step but a very important step forward in defeating the pandemic.”
He says that a 90% efficacy rate “is up there with the very best vaccines that we’ve got … it really really works … it is extraordinarily good.”
He does note that the study was probably mostly on “relatively mild cases.” And, he adds, “in order to extrapolate from being able to prevent relatively mild Covid to stop elderly people from getting seriously ill or dying is to some extent at this point a leap of faith – but we have to take that leap of faith, that’s the evidence we’ve got at this point, and 90% is pretty good, so it’s pretty likely that even if it’s less effective in elderly people than younger people it’ll still work to some extent.”
He concludes: “We’re going to see it being used, almost certainly, within a few weeks from now.”
Updated
Hi, this is Archie Bland taking over from Helen Sullivan, and beginning today with the Czech Republic’s latest case count: health ministry figures published today show a drop of more than 3,000 positive tests against a week earlier, with the number of new cases in the last 24 hours now 6,048.
In total, the country of 10.7 million has recorded 420,875 cases after showing one of Europe’s highest infection rates for several weeks.
The ministry also reported 216 new deaths, including 95 on Monday as well as revisions to previous days. Overall, 5,074 people have died in relation to Covid-19.
Updated
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today – except that you may wish to know, in non-Covid development, Fox News (!) cut away from a briefing held by the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany on Monday.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa – I just think we have to be very clear. She’s charging the other side as welcoming fraud and welcoming illegal voting. Unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue to show you this,” said host Neil Cavuto from the studio:
'Whoa' – Fox News cuts off Kayleigh McEnany for 'illegal votes' spielhttps://t.co/nY2IZzpEGF
— Helen Sullivan (@helenrsullivan) November 10, 2020
Global renewable electricity installation will hit a record level in 2020, according to the International Energy Agency, in sharp contrast with the declines caused by the coronavirus pandemic in the fossil fuel sectors.
The IEA report published on Tuesday says almost 90% of new electricity generation in 2020 will be renewable, with just 10% powered by gas and coal. The trend puts green electricity on track to become the largest power source in 2025, displacing coal, which has dominated for the past 50 years.
Growing acceptance of the need to tackle the climate crisis by cutting carbon emissions has made renewable energy increasingly attractive to investors. The IEA reports that shares in renewable equipment makers and project developers have outperformed most major stock market indices and that the value of shares in solar companies has more than doubled since December 2019:
Summary
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
- China inflation dips to 11-year low as pork stocks rise. Falling food prices dragged China’s consumer inflation to an 11-year low last month, spurred by improving supplies of pork, official data showed Tuesday.
- Blocking Taiwan at WHO will increase hostility to China, premier says. China’s efforts to block Taiwan’s participation at the World Health Organization during the coronavirus pandemic will only increase the world’s hostility towards the country, the island’s premier said on Tuesday.
- Australia records third day with no local cases. Australia has gone three days without any locally acquired cases of Covid-19. All cases have been detected in quarantined locals who have recently returned from overseas.Now the country is considering opening its borders to Asian countries, including parts of China, prime minister Scott Morrison said on Tuesday, as Canberra seeks to revive an economy ravaged by Covid-19.
- Monday saw record Covid patients in US hospitals. There were almost 59,000 Covid-19 patients in hospitals across the US on Monday, the country’s highest number ever of in-patients being treated for the disease. The number of people with the virus being hospitalised has increasedabout 73% over the past 30 days to at least 58,982 – a record level that surpasses the previous high of 58,370 on July 22.
- US FDA authorises emergency use of Eli Lilly’s experimental treatment for Covid. The US Food and Drug Administration on Monday authorised emergency use of Eli Lilly and Co’s experimental Covid-19 antibody treatment for non-hospitalised patients older than 65 or who have certain chronic medical conditions. The FDA said its emergency use authorisation (EUA) was based on clinical trials showing that the treatment, bamlanivimab, reduced the need for hospitalisation or emergency room visits in Covid-19 patients at high risk of disease progression.
- Brazil halts trials of Chinese Covid-19 vaccine. Brazil’s health regulator said on Monday it had suspended clinical trials of a Chinese-developed Covid-19 vaccine after an “adverse incident” involving a volunteer recipient, a blow for one of the most advanced vaccine candidates, AFP reports.The setback for CoronaVac, developed by Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinovac Biotech, came on the same day US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer said its own vaccine candidate had shown 90% effectiveness, sending global markets soaring and raising hopes of an end to the pandemic.
- World may be tired, but virus ‘not tired of us’: WHO chief. The World Health Organization’s chief called on Monday for everyone to keep fighting Covid-19, warning that while we may be sick of battling the pandemic, the virus is “not tired of us”, AFP reports. Speaking to WHO’s main annual assembly, which resumed on Monday after being cut short in May, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also hailed the election of Joe Biden as the next US president, voicing hope it could signal tighter global cooperation to end the pandemic.
- Italy will ramp up coronavirus restrictions in Tuscany and four other regions from Wednesday to rein in the second wave of the pandemic, a health ministry source said on Monday. Last week, the government imposed nationwide curbs including a nightly curfew, and divided the country into three zones based on the intensity of their Covid-19 outbreaks, calibrating additional limitations accordingly.
- The US president-elect Joe Biden led the tone for much of the reaction from world leaders. He said it could be “many months” before the vaccine is widely available – providing it passes several more hurdles in the approval and distribution process – and warned Americans: “We’re still facing a very dark winter.”
- Sir John Bell, one of the UK’s most eminent vaccines experts, said he believed “with some confidence” that life should return to normal by spring next year following the Pfizer/BioNTech announcement. Bell went further than many of peers in the scientific community but his prediction carries significant weight given his role on the UK’s vaccines taskforce.
- A senior World Health Organization official said a Covid-19 vaccine may be rolled out by March 2021 to the most vulnerable. Bruce Aylward told the WHO’s annual ministerial assembly that interim results from Pfizer’s late-stage vaccine trial were “very positive”.
Updated
A study from researchers at the University of Oxford and NIHR Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre found that nearly one in five people who have had Covid-19 were diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder – such as anxiety, depression or insomnia – within three months of testing positive for the virus. In the story below, we speak to survivors about their experiences:
People are planning to drive and fly more in future than they did before the coronavirus pandemic, a survey suggests, even though the overwhelming majority accept human responsibility for the climate crisis.
The apparent disconnect between beliefs and actions raises fears that without strong political intervention, these actions could undermine efforts to meet the targets set in the Paris agreement and hopes of a green recovery from the coronavirus crisis.
Approximately 26,000 people in 25 countries were polled in July and August by the YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project, in a survey designed with the Guardian.
By a ratio of more than three to one, the respondents agreed humankind was mainly or partly to blame for the climate emergency:
The Philippine economy shrank for the third straight quarter in July-September, official data showed Tuesday, but there were signs activity was slowly picking up as coronavirus restrictions eased and more businesses reopened.
AFP: President Rodrigo Duterte’s government has been gradually loosening measures introduced in March to contain the virus after they sent the country plunging into its first recession in three decades and pushed many families deeper into poverty.
Gross domestic product fell 11.5 percent on-year in the latest quarter, the Philippine Statistics Authority said.
That was worse than the 9.6 percent contraction forecast by economists in a Bloomberg survey. But it was smaller than the downwardly revised 16.9 percent fall in the April-June and 0.7 drop in the first three months of the year.
Consumer spending fell 9.3 percent as many people fearful of catching the virus that has infected around 400,000 in the country avoided shopping malls and restaurants. But it was better than the 15.5 percent plunge seen in the second quarter as the government extended operating hours and allowed more types of businesses to reopen.
Acting Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua said the recovery in Metro Manila, which accounts for a third of the country’s output, was constricted by limited public transport. Trains, buses and the popular jeepneys have been operating at reduced capacity because of social distancing rules.
The country’s economic woes have been exacerbated by a drop in the amount of money sent home by the legion of Filipinos working abroad that sustains many families.
Remittances fell 2.6 percent in the first eight months as thousands of workers lost their jobs and came home.
China inflation dips to 11-year low as pork stocks rise
Falling food prices dragged China’s consumer inflation to an 11-year low last month, spurred by improving supplies of pork, official data showed Tuesday.
AFP reports that the cost of pork - a staple meat in the world’s second-largest economy - has been edging down after rocketing last year when an African swine fever outbreak ravaged pig stocks. Authorities have been struggling to recover supplies since.
The country’s consumer price index (CPI), a key gauge of retail inflation, rose 0.5 percent from a year ago, a slower pace than expected, according to National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data.
This marked the third straight month of slower growth, and the lowest headline inflation since October 2009.
Prices of pork fell for the first time after 19 consecutive months of increases, dropping 2.8 percent, Dong Lijuan, a senior statistician at the NBS, said Tuesday.
China saw a historic contraction in economic growth in the first quarter this year, following harsh measures to curb the coronavirus outbreak, and has since grappled with uncertainty in global demand while trying to spur domestic spending.
Blocking Taiwan at WHO will increase hostility to China, premier says
China’s efforts to block Taiwan’s participation at the World Health Organisation during the coronavirus pandemic will only increase the world’s hostility towards the country, the island’s premier said on Tuesday.
AP: Chinese-claimed but democratically run Taiwan says its inability to fully access the WHO, because of China’s objections, has created a gap in global pandemic prevention.
China and the WHO say that is untrue. On Monday, WHO member countries rejected a US-backed appeal on for Taiwan to be permitted at a meeting of its decision-making body, the World Health Assembly. China had labelled the proposal illegal and invalid.
Speaking to reporters, Taiwan Premier Su Tseng-chang said many countries supported the island’s participation in the WHA.
“But China, because of political factors, has obstructed Taiwan, which has prevented the pandemic the best,” Su said.
“This is not only suppressing Taiwan, it is in fact also damaging to the whole world, creating a rupture in pandemic prevention,” Su added. “What China has done will only cause more and more countries and people to stand up and condemn them.”
The WHO says it cooperates with Taiwan on health matters, including on aspects of the pandemic, and that the island has been provided with the help it needs, but that it is up to member states to decide whether to invite it to the meeting.
Covid-19 Podcast: what’s up with the coronavirus cough?
Linda Geddes speaks to Prof Jacky Smith about one of Covid-19’s most consistent symptoms: the persistent dry cough. As winter arrives in the northern hemisphere, how do we tell the difference between the possible onset of the virus and the kind of routine coughs normally experienced at this time of year?
Microsoft Corp on Tuesday launched two models of its Xbox gaming console, seven years after the debut of the previous version, to capture a pandemic-driven boom in consumer spending on games.
The Xbox Series X - which the company has described as the “world’s most powerful console” - will retail for $499.99 and a lower-priced Xbox Series S will sell for $299.99.
The strategy offers consumers greater choice but the compact Series S faces criticism for being less powerful than the Series X, with less storage capacity and lacking advanced “ray tracing” graphics for titles like Capcom’s “Devil May Cry 5.”
Xbox will compete with Sony Corp’s PlayStation 5, scheduled to launch on Thursday. PS5 is widely viewed as leading the console race due to its bigger fan base and a broader range of exclusive gaming titles available at launch.
This was the first time Microsoft launched its gaming console globally on the same day and the company said it has seen the highest preorders for Xbox consoles across various markets.
Australia records third day with no local cases
Australia has gone three days without any locally acquired cases of Covid-19. All cases have been detected in quarantined locals who have recently returned from overseas.
Now the country is considering opening its borders to Asian countries, including parts of China, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Tuesday, as Canberra seeks to revive an economy ravaged by Covid-19.
Australia in March shut its borders to all non-citizens and permanent residents, though in October Canberra allowed New Zealand residents to enter. Internal travel is limited, although those restrictions are scheduled to be removed by the end of the year.
Morrison ruled out entry from the United States or Europe, but said Australia may allow people from low-risk countries such as Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and even provinces in China.
“We ... are looking at what alternative arrangements could be hard to channel visitors through appropriate quarantine arrangements for low-risk countries,” Morrison told reporters in Canberra.
China was one of the first countries from which Australia restricted entry.
Reviving tourism would be a much-needed boost to Australia’s economy, which shrank 7% in the three months that ended in June, the most since records began in 1959.
Tourism in 2019 accounted for 3.1% of the country’s gross domestic product, contributing almost A$61 billion ($44.4 billion) to the economy, government data shows.
Although many Australians are taking holidays locally, many tourism operators are struggling and have been forced to shed staff.
Unemployment ticked up to 6.9% in September, official data showed.
Morrison said Australia would extend higher unemployment benefits until the end of March, though at a reduced rate.
Currently those unemployed receive A$815 every two weeks, but this will fall to A$715 at the end of December.
Updated
The US has reported more than a million new cases in the past 10 days, according to a Reuters tally, the speediest surge in infections since the country reported its first Covid-19 cases, in Washington state, 294 days ago.
More than 770,000 new cases were diagnosed in the week ended 10 November, up 34% over the previous seven days, according to the tally. The country has reported a total of around 10.13 million cases.
Deaths over the week to Nov. 10 increased 15%, or more than 6,600 people, over the previous week. That was the highest one-week total since mid-August, taking the overall death toll for the pandemic to more than 238,000.
Worryingly for officials, health experts say the death toll tends to spike four to six weeks after a surge in infections.
In Texas, which became the first US state to surpass one million cumulative coronavirus cases on Saturday, authorities in the El Paso county on Monday said they were bringing in 10 temporary refrigerated morgue trailers in anticipation of further fatalities.
Asian share markets mostly shot higher on Tuesday, Reuters reports, as global investors applauded progress in the development of a coronavirus vaccine, which lifted confidence in a world economic recovery.
But China’s factory-gate prices fell at a sharper-than-expected pace in October, weighed by soft demand for fuel even as the country’s trade and manufacturing sectors staged impressive recoveries from their Covid-19 slump.
Monday saw record Covid patients in US hospitals
There were almost 59,000 Covid-19 patients in hospitals across the United States on Monday, the country’s highest number ever of in-patients being treated for the disease, Reuters reports.
The number of people with the virus being hospitalized has surged around 73% over the past 30 days to at least 58,982 - a record level that surpasses the previous high of 58,370 on July 22.
The United States also recorded more than 100,000 cases for the sixth consecutive day on Monday, cementing its position as the nation worst affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
US biotech firm Arcturus Therapeutics said it expects to start distributing its Covid-19 vaccine candidate in the first quarter of next year after early stage trials showed promising results, Reuters reports.
The firm said in a statement late on Monday it had already struck multi-million dollar supply deals with Israel and Southeast Asian city-state Singapore, where it is working on the vaccine with a local university and has been conducting trials.
Arcturus said its ARCT-021 vaccine candidate has been generally well tolerated in trials so far, with the majority of adverse events being mild. It added it was urgently working to start later stage studies and expects to begin shipments early next year.
The news came as Pfizer Inc said its Covid-19 vaccine is more than 90% effective based on initial trial results, a major victory in the war against a virus that has killed over a million people and battered the world’s economy.
Brazil halts trials of Chinese Covid-19 vaccine
Brazil’s health regulator said Monday it had suspended clinical trials of a Chinese-developed Covid-19 vaccine after an “adverse incident” involving a volunteer recipient, a blow for one of the most advanced vaccine candidates, AFP reports.
The setback for CoronaVac, developed by Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinovac Biotech, came on the same day US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer said its own vaccine candidate had shown 90 percent effectiveness, sending global markets soaring and raising hopes of an end to the pandemic.
The Brazilian regulator, Anvisa, said in a statement it had “ruled to interrupt the clinical study of the CoronaVac vaccine after a serious adverse incident” on 29 October.
It said it could not give details on what happened because of privacy regulations, but that such incidents included death, potentially fatal side effects, serious disability, hospitalisation, birth defects and other “clinically significant events.”
However, the public health centre coordinating the trials of the vaccine in Brazil, the Butantan Institute, said it was “surprised” by the decision.
The institute “is investigating in detail what happened,” and “is at the Brazilian regulatory agency’s disposal to provide any clarification necessary on any adverse incident the clinical trials may have presented,” it said.
It said it would hold a press conference on Tuesday at 11:00 am (1400 GMT).
CoronaVac has been caught up in a messy political battle in Brazil, where its most visible backer has been Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria, a top opponent of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
The Sao Paulo state government said in a statement it “regrets that it learned of the decision from the press, instead of directly from Anvisa,” and was waiting along with the Butantan Institute for more information on “the real reasons for the suspension.”
The Solomon Islands prime minister has excoriated some of his returning citizens who have lied about their exposure to Covid-19 and imported the virus in the country.
“It is sad that most of the positive cases resulted from dishonesty by our own citizens: they lied in their pre-departure assessment forms,” Manasseh Sogavare said in an address to the nation.
The Solomons, like many Pacific countries, has had few Covid-19 cases, just 16 since the start of the pandemic. But the country had successfully remained Covid-free until October, when the virus was repatriated with citizens returning from overseas.
While the outbreak remains contained in quarantine, there are fears that if it does break out, the Solomons fragile public health system could be quickly overwhelmed.
“As a result of the behaviour of few of our citizens that opened our country to this unprecedented increase in numbers of Covid-19 cases, my government will hold these people responsible for endangering our people and our country,” Sogavare said.
Sogavare said people who had been found to have lied on their entry forms would be prosecuted for endangering public health.
“By their dishonest actions, they knowingly endangered our citizens and our country. Their selfish actions had increased the cost of our fight against Covid-19 substantially.”
Also in the Pacific, three sailors on board a container ship that travelled from Apia in Samoa to Pago Pago in neighbouring American Samoa have tested positive for Covid-19. No-one from the ship disembarked in Samoa (which remains Covid-free), nor in Pago Pago.
The vessel, the Fesco Askold, has been sent out to open waters while authorities consider off-loading options.
The Pacific is the least Covid-infected region on earth. The small and remote island nations and territories of Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Cook Islands, Niue, Tokelau, Norfolk island and Pitcairn island are believed to be still free of the virus.
Unemployed Australians will receive AU$100 (US$73) less a fortnight after the prime minister, Scott Morrison, announced a three-month extension to the jobseeker coronavirus supplement but at a reduced rate.
Morrison told reporters in Canberra the supplement, which was due to expire in December, will be cut from $250 to $150 a fortnight and extended to March at a cost of $3.2bn.
He gave no commitment that “elevated and temporary” economic support would continue, arguing that jobs are returning to the Australian economy and the government can’t allow the “lifeline [to] hold Australia back as we move into the next phases of recovery”:
California’s coronavirus cases are at their highest levels in months, a disquieting reality Governor Gavin Newsom said Monday was “obviously sobering” and that led San Francisco Bay Area health officials to urge people who travel outside the region to quarantine for two weeks upon return, AP reports.
Newsom said some of the increase could be tied to Halloween celebrations while Barbara Ferrer, the health director for Los Angeles County, urged people who gathered during the weekend to celebrate Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential race to quarantine to avoid fuelling the spread.
LA County is home to 10 million people, roughly one-quarter of California’s population, and was seeing 750 cases per day in September. Last week, four days saw case counts above 2,000.
“Recovery just doesn’t continue when you have thousands of new cases each day,” Ferrer said. “And many of these cases stem from people taking risks that are frankly not appropriate. It isn’t that hard to play by the rules, especially since these rules are what keep some people alive and allow our economy to improve.”
California hasn’t seen the even more dramatic surges other states are experiencing but new figures are troubling. The number of confirmed cases, the infection rate, hospitalisations and intensive care patients all have reached their highest level in months, Newsom warned.
The positivity rate the number of people who test positive climbed from 2.5% to 3.7% in about three weeks, hospitalisations are 29% over 14 days and “that trend-line continues up,” he said. Meantime, California is nearing two grim milestones: 1 million cases and 18,000 deaths.
Lockdown, the noun that has come to define so many lives across the world in 2020, has been named word of the year by Collins Dictionary.
Lockdown is defined by Collins as “the imposition of stringent restrictions on travel, social interaction, and access to public spaces”, and its usage has boomed over the last year. The 4.5bn-word Collins Corpus, which contains written material from websites, books and newspapers, as well as spoken material from radio, television and conversations, registered a 6,000% increase in its usage. In 2019, there were 4,000 recorded instances of lockdown being used. In 2020, this had soared to more than a quarter of a million:
The FTSE 100 posted its biggest one-day gain since March on Monday after the drug companies Pfizer and BioNTech said their prospective coronavirus vaccine was 90% effective.
The news jolted global stock market indices to record levels but it also highlighted the stark divergences in fortunes across sectors during the pandemic. Those companies who gained from people spending their work and leisure time at home were among the biggest losers on Monday, while the vaccine news offered some welcome relief to previously hard-hit sectors such as travel and events:
Joe Biden vowed on Monday to spare no effort in tackling the coronavirus pandemic as soon as he enters the White House and warned the US is “facing a very dark winter”.
Speaking in a televised address to the nation – little more than 48 hours after he was announced the winner of the presidential election – the Democrat said he was ready to get to work, laying out plans as the pandemic on Monday was approaching 10m cases.
The US has experienced record new infections in recent days, a figure expected to significantly worsen before the former vice-president’s inauguration on 20 January. According to Johns Hopkins university, as of Sunday the coronavirus had killed 237,570 people in the US and had infected more than 9.9 million.
While he welcomed Pfizer’s announcement earlier in the day that it has found a vaccine that it believes is 90% effective, he warned America could lose 200,000 more lives in the next few months before a vaccine becomes available:
On that note – Slate writer Dan Kois points out that bamlanivimab is almost a palindrome.
US FDA authorises emergency use of Eli Lilly's experimental treatment for Covid
The US Food and Drug Administration on Monday authorised emergency use of Eli Lilly and Co’s experimental Covid-19 antibody treatment for non-hospitalised patients older than 65 or who have certain chronic medical conditions.
The FDA said its emergency use authorisation (EUA) was based on clinical trials showing that the treatment, bamlanivimab, reduced the need for hospitalisation or emergency room visits in Covid-19 patients at high risk of disease progression.
It can now be used for treating mild-to-moderate Covid-19 in adults and pediatric patients over the age of 12, the FDA said.
The antibody is not authorised for patients who are hospitalised due to Covid-19 or require oxygen therapy due to Covid-19. The FDA said the drug, which U.S. President Donald Trump has praised, had not been shown to benefit such patients and could worsen their clinical status.
A US government-sponsored study of the treatment in hospitalised Covid-19 patients was recently abandoned because the treatment was not shown to be helping.
Updated
Was Donald Trump's White House watch party a super-spreader event?
It was supposed to be a scene of celebration.
Instead, the Trump campaign’s election night watch party held in the White House East Room – with few masks and no social distancing – is being eyed as a potential coronavirus super-spreading event and yet another symbol of Donald Trump’s cavalier attitude toward a virus that is infecting more than 100,000 Americans a day.
Ben Carson, the secretary for housing and urban development, is the latest attendee to test positive, a department spokesman confirmed. The event has been under scrutiny since another attendee, the president’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, contracted the virus, which has now killed more than 237,000 people in the US alone.
Carson’s deputy chief of staff, Coalter Baker, said the secretary “is in good spirits” and “feels fortunate to have access to effective therapeutics which aid and markedly speed his recovery”.
The latest White House cluster comes just a month after Trump’s own diagnosis and hospitalization, and two weeks after several aides to the vice-president, Mike Pence, including his chief of staff, tested positive for the virus.
And it is not the first potential super-spreader event to take place at the White House – a crowded Rose Garden ceremony, at which Trump announced the supreme court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, also came under scrutiny in October after at least seven attendees tested positive:
Noticeably absent from this week’s resumed World Health Assembly (WHA) was Taiwan, which said Chinese “obstruction” had prevented it from attending and accused the WHO of prioritising politics over health, AFP reports.
The self-ruled island of 23 million has seen remarkable success in combating the pandemic - with only seven deaths and fewer than 600 confirmed cases.
But it is frozen out of the WHO by Beijing, which regards Taiwan as its own territory - not even allowed to participate as an observer as was the case between 2009 and 2016.
“As the world is still under serious threat of the Covid-19 pandemic... it is an irony to the ‘health for all’ goal under the WHO charter” to exclude Taiwan, Taipei’s foreign ministry said Monday.
The WHA will also focus on the more than 60 other health emergencies the WHO has responded to this year, including measles, Ebola and yellow fever outbreaks.
It will be an occasion for countries to discuss reforming the WHO so it can respond to challenges like pandemics faster and more effectively.
Tedros called again for “a system in which countries agree to a regular and transparent process of peer review” of their health policies.
He said the Universal Periodic Review at the UN Human Rights Council, where each country’s rights situation is evaluated every few years, could serve as inspiration.
The idea was put forward last year by the Central African Republic and Benin, and France, Germany and Cameroon have already accepted to work on this project, he added.
The issue of transparency in health policies is at the heart of the Covid-19 pandemic, with China accused by some countries including the United States of having covered up at least the first cases of coronavirus.
World may be tired, but virus ‘not tired of us’: WHO chief
The World Health Organization’s chief called Monday on everyone to keep fighting Covid-19, warning that while we may be sick of battling the pandemic, the virus is “not tired of us”, AFP reports.
Speaking to WHO’s main annual assembly, which resumed Monday after being cut short in May, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also hailed the election of Joe Biden as the next US president, voicing hope it could signal tighter global cooperation to end the pandemic.
It was vital, he said, for people to follow the science and resist the urge to turn a blind eye to the virus.
“We might be tired of Covid-19. But it is not tired of us,” he said.
Tedros, speaking from quarantine after coming in contact with someone who tested positive for Covid-19, warned that the virus preys on weakness.
“It preys on those in weaker health, but it preys on other weaknesses too: inequality, division, denial, wishful thinking and wilful ignorance,” he said.
“We cannot negotiate with it, nor close our eyes and hope it goes away.”
“It pays no heed to political rhetoric or conspiracy theories,” he said.
“Our only hope is science, solutions and solidarity.”
Top UK scientist says vaccine 'feels like watershed moment'
Scientists have reacted positively to the announcement by Pfizer/BioNTech that their vaccine has been 90% successful in the vital large-scale trials:
Peter Horby, a professor of emerging infectious diseases and global health in the Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, said:
This news made me smile from ear to ear. It is a relief to see such positive results on this vaccine and bodes well for Covid-19 vaccines in general. Of course we need to see more detail and await the final results, and there is a long long way to go before vaccines will start to make a real difference, but this feels to me like a watershed moment.
“At face value, this is exceptionally good news,” said Eleanor Riley, a professor of immunology and infectious disease at the University of Edinburgh. However, she said there were important questions that had not been immediately answered by Pfizer or BioNTech, including: how long will the immunity likely last? How severe were the infections used in the trial? And what age were the trial participants?
Lawrence Young, a professor of molecular oncology at Warwick Medical School, described it as a “very timely and encouraging development”. He pointed out that it would be a challenge to distribute this vaccine as it needs to be stored at -70 to -80C. He added:
It is difficult to fully evaluate the interim data without more information but it appears that the vaccine is able to protect against Covid-19 disease. The big question is whether the vaccine can block virus infection and subsequent transmission.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live pandemic blog.
I’ll be bringing you the latest from around the world for the next while.
You can get in touch here.
As the US passes 10m coronavirus cases, the highest in the world and a fifth of the global total of 50m, pharmaceutical firms Pfizer and BioNTech revealed interim results of large-scale trials which showed that its Covid-19 vaccine was 90% effective. World leaders and scientists reacted to the news with cautious optimism.
You can read Sarah Boseley’s analysis of the vaccine announcement here and a Q&A by Nicola Davis here. There is also this piece by Philip Oltermann on the husband and wife dream team behind BioNTech and how the news was a shot in the arm for Germany’s Turkish community.
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
- Italy will ramp up coronavirus restrictions in Tuscany and four other regions from Wednesday to rein in the second wave of the pandemic, a health ministry source said on Monday. Last week, the government imposed nationwide curbs including a nightly curfew, and divided the country into three zones based on the intensity of their Covid-19 outbreaks, calibrating additional limitations accordingly.
- The US president-elect Joe Biden led the tone for much of the reaction from world leaders. He said it could be “many months” before the vaccine is widely available – providing it passes several more hurdles in the approval and distribution process – and warned Americans: “We’re still facing a very dark winter.”
- Sir John Bell, one of the UK’s most eminent vaccines experts, said he believed “with some confidence” that life should return to normal by spring next year following the Pfizer/BioNTech announcement. Bell went further than many of peers in the scientific community but his prediction carries significant weight given his role on the UK’s vaccines taskforce.
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A senior World Health Organisation official said a Covid-19 vaccine may be rolled out by March 2021 to the most vulnerable. Bruce Aylward told the WHO’s annual ministerial assembly that interim results from Pfizer’s late-stage vaccine trial were “very positive”.
- There was also positive news from Belgium, where health officials said a second wave of Covid-19 hospital admissions appeared to have peaked and would now begin to decline. About 400 people were hospitalised due to coronavirus complications on Sunday, compared with 879 on 3 November.
- Iran was one of a number of countries reporting a record rise in the daily number of coronavirus cases. It said the figure had reached 10,463 over the previous 24 hours, the first time the numbers for new infections had reached five figures. Russia also reported its highest 24-hour tally of new infections.
- Doctors in Italy have warned there will be an additional 10,000 Covid-19 deaths in a month in the country unless a national lockdown is imposed. As Italy edges towards a million coronavirus infections since the start of the pandemic, 32,616 new cases were registered on Sunday, a more than sevenfold increase since 8 October
- The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has tested positive for coronavirus. Zelenskiy said he “feels good” and was self-isolating, adding on Twitter: “It’s gonna be fine!”
