Covid-19 has reversed progress made in levels of activity among disabled people, according to a new report, amid concerns the gains may not be recovered because of the scarifying effects of the pandemic.
The observations come in the second Annual Disability and Activity Survey, which measures participation and attitudes towards physical activity among disabled people. Conducted by the UK disability charity Activity Alliance, it is seen as a companion to Sport England’s Active Lives study.
The survey found that before the onset of Covid the number of disabled people who said they were physically inactive had fallen to 34%, down from 41% the year before. This corresponded with an 18% rise (from 40% to 58%) in the share of those who said they had “the opportunity to be as physically active as they want to be”.
Following Covid, however, that number has fallen back to 39%, with the need to self-isolate the most common reason given, alongside a fear of contracting the virus.
British pharmaceutical group GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and German biotech firm CureVac today announced plans to jointly develop a coronavirus vaccine with the potential to counter multi-variants of Covid-19.
“The development programme will begin immediately, with the target of introducing the vaccine in 2022, subject to regulatory approval,” a joint statement said.
GSK will also support the manufacture this year of up to 100 million doses of CureVac’s first generation Covid-19 vaccine, it added.
The collaboration, building on an existing relationship, is to develop next generation Covid-19 vaccines “with the potential for a multi-valent approach to address multiple emerging variants in one vaccine”, AFP reports.
GSK chief executive Emma Walmsley said “next generation vaccines will be crucial in the continued fight against Covid-19”.
Russia on Wednesday reported 16,474 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, including 1,545 in Moscow, taking the national tally to 3,901,204. Authorities also reported an additional 526 deaths, raising the official total to 74,684.
People living in the postcodes in England where door-to-door testing is taking place to prevent the spread of the South African variant should consider not going to the shops if they have food in the house, health secretary Matt Hancock has suggested.
He told BBC Breakfast:
We’re in a national lockdown so there is not a stronger law we can bring in place that says ‘Really stay at home’ but the critical point is that everybody should be staying at home unless they have to.
If you are in one of those postcodes, it is absolutely imperative that you minimise all social contact outside of your house.
So this means, for instance, whereas the Government guidance to most of us is ‘Do go to the shops if you need to’, in those areas, in the immediate term, we are saying ‘If you have food in the house, please use that’.
It is about a more stringent interpretation of the existing rules, trying to make sure that in those areas we do everything we possibly can to end all transmissions so we can get this new variant right under control.
There are only a handful of cases, so we have the opportunity to really stamp on it now.”
Malawi faces a resurgence of Covid-19 that is overwhelming the southern African country where a presidential residence and a national stadium have been turned into field hospitals in efforts to save lives, AP reports.
President Lazarus Chakwera, just six months in office, lost two Cabinet ministers to coronavirus in January amid a surge that led him to declare a state of national disaster in all of Malawi’s 28 districts.
Chakwera declared three days of national mourning over the deaths of the ministers of transport and local government, which shocked the nation and inspired a raft of new measures aimed at stemming the spread of the virus in a country with a poor health system.
A more contagious strain of the coronavirus first reported in South Africa has since been confirmed in Malawi.
“Our medical facilities are terribly understaffed, and our medical personnel are outnumbered,” Chakwera said in a recent address.
Malawi has seen its number of confirmed cases of the disease go above 23,000, including a total of 702 deaths as of Monday, according to Dr. John Phuka, co-chair of the presidential task force on Covid-19.
The numbers appear relatively small in a country of 18 million, but the 14,000 active cases are many times more than the number of established hospital beds.
Officials are setting up makeshift facilities to increase the number of treatment units from 400 to at least 1,500, sometimes erecting tents on the lawns of hospitals.
The presidential residence State House in the southern city of Zomba soon will be turned into a 100-bed treatment facility, according to officials.
As a survey emerges showing France is at the very bottom of the European countries in terms of how many vaccines given, Emmanuel Macron gave a surprise TV interview last evening in which he said that everyone who wanted a vaccine would have one by the end of the summer.
He insisted that France was inoculating “at the same rhythm as her “German and other European neighbours” and that it is sticking to the vaccination programme outlined at the very beginning.
He said France’s vaccine roll-out “may seem too slow” when compared with countries that had “made other bets” but added “I defend the strategy we have adopted with Germany, with the European Union”.
The AstraZeneca vaccine, approved by the European Medical Agency, was approved by France’s Medical Agency on Tuesday, with a recommendation that it only be used on those under 65 years old.
There will be four new vaccine production sites in France - one in the Bordeaux region and three in the north west.
The president said a new lockdown wasn’t on the immediate agenda but, “we must never say never” and there would be a lockdown if the situation demanded.
“Protection measures, testing, isolating, declaring contact cases and being collectively responsible as the French have been for several weeks,” is the solution to avoid a lockdown, he suggested.
“We will continue to manage this epidemic in this way with one aim which is to protect the most weak and to be able to protect as best possible our youth who need to study and go to school, and to have a country that is as open as possible”.
He said he was following the day to day Covid-19 situation “very closely”.
Macron told TF1 television that 80% of care and nursing home residents - around 500,000 people - would be vaccinated with two doses by early March.
It is thought the new vaccine production in France will involve the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and will be bottling and packaging of doses for distribution.
Le Figaro is reporting that Ursula von der Leyen is considering using the Russian and Chinese vaccines in Europe.
Macron said “As soon as a request for authorisation is submitted by the producer…the European and national authorities will scientifically look at the vaccine in an independent manner and, depending on the results, will approve or not.”
Updated
A returned traveller in hotel quarantine in Victoria has tested positive to the exact same UK variant of Covid as a family staying across the hall with health authorities suspecting the viral load was “so high” it jumped across the corridor, reports Josh Taylor and Calla Wahlquist in Australia.
The hotel transmission comes as West Australian authorities reported a Perth quarantine guard who contracted coronavirus also did not come into close contact with a returned traveller with the UK infection.
The Victorian emergency services minister, Lisa Neville, announced on Wednesday the hotel transmission occurred between two rooms on the same floor of Melbourne’s Park Royal hotel.
A family of five arrived on 20 January and they all tested positive on 23 January. A woman in another room across the hall then tested positive on 27 January. All were moved to health hotels designed for supporting positive cases.
The Oxford vaccine trial chief, Andrew Pollard, said today the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine gives good immune responses in older people, even if there is a lack of data about its exact efficacy.
Asked about a reported comment from the French president. Emmanuel Macron. that the vaccine is “quasi-ineffective” among people over 65, Pollard said, “I don’t understand what that statement means.”
“The point is that we have rather less data in older adults, which is why people have less certainty about the level of protection,” Pollard told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“But we have good immune responses in older adults very similar to younger adults, the protection that we do see is in exactly the same direction, and of a similar magnitude.”
Pollard said different countries would recommend that the shot is used in different contexts after France’s top health body recommended it only given to people under 65, but he pointed out the EU regulator had approved it for all ages.
Updated
The UK has taken “enormous risks” regarding its Covid-19 vaccines strategy, said the French European affairs minister, Clément Beaune, as he defended the comparatively slower pace of vaccines rollout in France and the European Union.
Beaune highlighted how the UK had not limited AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine to those aged under 65, as has been the case in France and other European Union countries.
“You see, the United Kingdom has taken fewer precautions than ourselves,” Beaune told LCI TV on Wednesday.
Updated
The Chinese foreign ministry said on Wednesday that China will provide 10m doses of Covid-19 vaccines under the Covax initiative.
The global vaccine-sharing Covax scheme is due to start rolling out vaccines to low- and middle-income nations this month, with 2bn of 3bn doses expected to be delivered this year.
Updated
UK health secretary Matt Hancock has hailed “the really good news” that a study has shown a single dose of the Oxford vaccine may reduce transmission of coronavirus by two-thirds, which “categorically” supported the government’s strategy of delaying rollout of the second jab.
He told Sky News:
This Oxford report is very good news, it backs the strategy that we’ve taken and it shows the world that the Oxford vaccine works effectively.
The really good news embedded in it is that it not just reduces hospitalisations – there were no people in this part of the trial who are hospitalised with Covid after getting the Oxford jab – but also it reduces the number of people who have Covid at all, even asymptomatically, by around two-thirds.
That reduction in transmission, as well as the fact there is no hospitalisations, the combination of that is very good news and it categorically supports the strategy we’ve been taking on having a 12-week gap between the doses because it shows that the strength of the protection you get is, in fact, slightly enhanced by a 12-week gap between the doses. It is good news all round.
Hancock added that changes to vaccines to adapt them to new coronavirus variants could be given fast approval by the UK regulator.
We’re working with the companies on developing those and ensuring that they can get regulated and used much more quickly than first time round because it is just an adjustment to the vaccine rather than a completely new vaccine.
Updated
Two decades of progress in the reduction of extreme poverty, the elimination of which is one of the sustainable development goals, have been pushed into a sharp reverse by a combination of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the growing climate emergency and increasing debt.
With the World Bank warning of a “truly unprecedented increase” in levels of poverty this year, and renewing calls for debt forgiveness, experts are warning of a growing crisis in multiple areas from education to employment, likely to be felt for years to come.
While the World Bank was already pessimistic, in January it updated its forecast for the expected number of newly impoverished people this year from between 88 and 115 million to the new range of between 119 and 124 million.
Updated
A second wave of coronavirus infections threatens to upend a tourism boom in Dubai, although with so few places open globally its hospitality sector hopes tourists will keep coming.
Dubai, one of the few destinations open to international travellers since July, has yet to impose the toughest restrictions after record daily infections in the UAE, in the hope that vaccinations will spare a repeat of last year’s lockdown, Reuters reports.
But after a rush of visitors during December, hotel chain RIU saw a “significant slowdown” in January bookings in Dubai after some countries tightened entry restrictions for those travelling from the UAE, said Oliver Kluth, SVP Sales & Business Development Indian Ocean.
British and Israeli tourists largely disappeared from the city’s sandy beaches after the UK and Israel demanded those coming from the Gulf state to quarantine.Denmark – then Britain – suspended flights from the UAE.
The moves came as daily infections tripled over the past month to hit a record 3,966 on Jan. 28 in the UAE, which is now battling its biggest outbreak since the pandemic begun.
The Gulf state does not give a breakdown for each emirate, but some doctors told Reuters that private hospitals in Dubai were admitting sick patients for the first time in months.
Along with mandatory mask-wearing in public and social distancing, Dubai has further restricted capacity at restaurants and social gatherings and banned live entertainment.
It also limited hotel and shopping centre capacity and reinstated a requirement for all incoming passengers to take a test to prove they are virus-free.
The number of visitors began to taper off in early January, some bar and restaurant owners said, although that may be linked to the end of the peak winter travel season rather than the rising level of infections.
Updated
The Czech Republic reported 9,057 new cases of coronavirus on Wednesday, taking the total number of infections in the country since last March to more than 1 million.
The country of 10.7 million has reported 16,683 deaths in connection with Covid-19.
Updated
A parliamentary human rights committee has called on ministers to legislate against blanket bans on care home visits in England that relatives claim are causing deaths through loneliness and isolation, Robert Booth reports.
Harriet Harman, the chair of the cross-party joint human rights committee of MPs and peers, has asked the health secretary, Matt Hancock, to require care homes to allow face-to-face visits – including without screens – unless an individual safety assessment judges it unsafe.
It comes amid rising anger among relatives as many care homes remain shut to all but end-of-life visits in an attempt to keep out new fast-spreading Covid variants.
Updated
An 89-year-old passenger ship, out of commission in Switzerland due to the coronavirus pandemic, has been re-purposed as a Covid-19 vaccination centre for thousands of residents from cities on Lake Constance.
The 500-passenger MS Thurgau normally carries tourists and commuters between German and Swiss cities on Europe’s third-largest lake. In coming weeks it will serve as a floating inoculation hub for the northern Swiss towns of Romanshorn, Arbon and Kreuzlingen.
Regional officials emphasised the ship’s practicality since it can sail from harbour to harbour, earning it the nickname “vaccine vaporetto” among locals.
“I’ve heard of a fondue ship, and a spaghetti ship, but this is my first shot ship,” Switzerland’s health hinister Alain Berset told reporters shortly after the first people to be vaccinated walked up the gangway.
Updated
Good morning from London. Caroline Davies here, and I will be taking over the live blog for the next few hours. You can get in touch via email on caroline.davies@theguardian.com
Updated
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today.
Before I go, might I suggest African painted dogs and their enooooormous ears?
Updated
'Ambush' lockdowns: Hong Kong tries radical Covid testing strategy
Hong Kong is locking down entire residential blocks without warning as part of a controversial new strategy to contain outbreaks of Covid-19.
Over the past 10 days, squads of Hong Kong police officers have launched “ambush-style” lockdowns, racing up streets to cordon off buildings and their occupants, forcing everyone to be tested for Covid-19 or be fined HK$5,000 ($645).
On Tuesday the government said authorities could break into people’s homes and forcibly remove them if they did not submit to testing.
The government has defended the strategy and vowed to continue, despite criticism that it is causing anxiety and alarm for little impact. Authorities have reportedly detected about a dozen cases among more than 10,000 tested:
Summary
Here are the key recent developments in the global coronavirus pandemic:
- Majority of Covid patients develop antibodies that protect from reinfection for at least six months. The vast majority of people who contract coronavirus develop antibodies that may help protect them against reinfection for at least six months, researchers say.Blood samples collected from more than 20,000 UK residents between June and November 2020 revealed that 99% of those who tested positive had antibodies for at least three months, with 88% having them for the full six months studied.
- WHO team visits Chinese virus lab in Wuhan. World Health Organization inspectors visited a laboratory in China’s Wuhan city on Wednesday that American officials suggested could have been the source of the coronavirus. The inspection of the Wuhan virology institute, which conducts research on the world’s most dangerous diseases, will be one of the most-watched stops on the team’s probe into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.
- Covid-19 vaccine nationalism is harmful for all, the World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. He said weak cooperation between nations is a major barrier to achieving worldwide vaccination at the scale needed to end the pandemic.
- Australia’s economy is expected to recover to its pre-pandemic size by the middle of this year – six to 12 months early – the Reserve Bank governor has revealed. On Wednesday, Philip Lowe released the bank’s revised projections showing a faster than expected recovery during the Covid-19 recession is expected to translate to growth of 3.5% this year and next, with unemployment set to fall to 6% in 2021.
- New Zealand giaveprovisional approval to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has been provisionally approved for use in New Zealand, where the government will begin vaccinating frontline healthcare and border workers in the coming months.Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister, said the approval was a positive step in the country’s fight against Covid-19, of which there have been fewer than 2,000 cases nationally:
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The number of patients in hospital with coronavirus in France is at its highest since November. The health ministry reported 28,029 people were in hospital with the virus and 3,270 in intensive care. Both numbers set new 2021 highs.
- Macron made ‘end of summer’ vaccine pledge. French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday that all of his countrymen who want a vaccine will be offered one “by the end of the summer”. He told the TF1 channel that 80% of care-home residents - some 500,000 people - would be vaccinated by early March.
- Merkel saidall approved vaccines welcome after Russian Sputnik posted strong data. Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel has said “all vaccines” approved by the EU’s medicines regulator are welcome, including Russian and Chinese shots, Reuters reports.In a TV interview, she said Germany welcomed the strong data from trials of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine.
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Mexico on Tuesday approved Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine for emergency use in the country, one of the worst hit by the pandemic, following the release of positive trial results. The move is a boost to the Latin American nation’s efforts to keep its immunisation program on track in the face of limited supplies from other manufacturers.
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Treasury, World Bank stress need to improve vaccine access for poorest countries. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and World Bank President David Malpass on Tuesday stressed the need to coordinate in responding the global pandemic, improving vaccine access for the poorest countries, and combating climate change.
Chinese police have arrested more than 80 people suspected of being involved in the manufacturing and sale of fake Covid-19 vaccines, state media reported.
More than 3,000 fake doses were confiscated.
Xinhua News said the group had been active since September, selling saline solutions as vaccines both within China and overseas. It claimed all fake doses had been tracked down by the police operation, which covered multiple locations including Beijing and Shanghai.
“China has already reported the situation to the relevant countries,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a daily briefing Tuesday, but would not detail which ones.
“The Chinese government highly values vaccine safety and will continue to take efforts to strictly prosecute any counterfeits, fake sales and illegal business, and other related actions that involve vaccines.”
Previous scandals, including one in 2016 when two people were arrested in relation to the sale of millions of fake doses, have fuelled distrust among Chinese people, but China’s efforts with Covid-19 vaccines - at least seven in late stage clinical trials and one approved for domestic use - have restored confidence rates.
74% of respondents to a Caixin-published survey said they would take a Covid-19 vaccine if it was available, according to the Associated Press.
China is also selling or giving vaccines to numerous countries around the world, although experts have warned there is little transparency or published data on their effectiveness.
Majority of Covid patients develop antibodies that protect from reinfection for at least six months
The vast majority of people who contract coronavirus develop antibodies that may help protect them against reinfection for at least six months, researchers say.
Blood samples collected from more than 20,000 UK residents between June and November 2020 revealed that 99% of those who tested positive had antibodies for at least three months, with 88% having them for the full six months studied.
The findings suggest that infection with coronavirus induces a sustained immune response in most people which should substantially reduce the chances of another infection for many months, and lessen the severity of disease in those who are reinfected.
Naomi Allen, chief scientist for UK Biobank and professor of epidemiology at the University of Oxford, said that when taken together with other work, such as Public Health England’s Siren study of healthcare workers, the findings suggest “people may be protected against subsequent infection for at least six months, following a first infection with the virus.”
Allen and her colleagues gathered monthly blood samples and symptom information from 20,200 UK Biobank participants and their adult children and grandchildren. Nearly a quarter of those with a positive test, or 24%, reported no symptoms at all, while 40% had none of the classic symptoms of fever, persistent dry cough or a loss of sense of taste or smell.
Analysis of the blood samples revealed that antibodies to the virus – a marker of past infection – rose steadily from 6.6% at the start of the study to 8.8% by the end in keeping with the ongoing epidemic. But the UK picture varied from region to region with Scotland having a low infection rate of 5.5% compared with 12.4% in London.
The study highlights how black and Asian communities have borne the brunt of the Covid pandemic with antibodies being found in 16.3% of Black, 13.9% of South Asian and 8.5% of Whites. To understand the drivers for the variation, the scientists have sent out questionnaires to the participants asking about their jobs, how many people they share a house with, and other factors that might put Black and Asian people at greater risk.
Rory Collins, the UK Biobank’s principal investigator and professor of medicine and epidemiology at Oxford said the findings supported the government’s decision to delay second doses of vaccines, if a single shot emulated the antibody response of natural coronavirus infections. The researchers hope to collect more blood from the volunteers in a few months’ time to check whether their antibody levels have started to decline more steeply.
South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in called on Wednesday for seamless preparations for coronavirus vaccinations, as a refrigerated van drove in convoy with several military and police escort cars in a drill at the capital’s airport, Reuters reports.
Despite initial success in taming earlier outbreaks, South Korea is grappling with its third and largest wave of infections, which has fuelled criticism that it was slow to secure vaccines for a population of 52 million.
But no exact date has been set for the arrival of vaccines and this month’s start of an inoculation campaign targeting about 50,000 frontline health workers and the elderly that aims to cover about 10 million high-risk people by July.
Wednesday’s preparedness drill at the Incheon international airport, west of Seoul, mobilised special freezers and ran through scenarios such as a terror attack, theft and transport faults, military and police officials said.
“We need to accomplish our tasks in the actual process of transport, storage and distribution without any errors,” Moon said during the drill.
“Repetitive exercises are important to ensure there won’t be any trials and errors that have occurred overseas, including missing vaccines and cold chain problems.”
The vans carried containers specially made for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that require ultra cold storage, by Korean Air, the nation’s largest airline.
One container can carry up to 60,000 doses at temperatures of minus 18 Celsius (minus 0.4 F) for about 100 hours, an airline official said.
Vaccine centres have been designated in 250 indoor gyms and community halls nationwide, and equipped with cold storage facilities.
China’s Sinopharm vaccine is being offered to a handful of wealthy people paying for access to the United Arab Emirates’ Covid-19 vaccination programme as part of a partnership to “bring tourism into the area”, according to an exclusive London club that claims to be brokering the service.
The vaccine is in wide usage in the UAE but is yet to receive emergency approval from the UK government or the World Health Organization. The Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, also approved in the Emirates, is not included in the pay-to-access deal.
The offer is the first apparent evidence to surface of a state using its Covid-19 vaccine supplies as a selling point to foreign tourists, amid a global scarcity of doses and calls to share the resource with vulnerable people and health workers around the world.
The UAE health ministry, its national media office and the Dubai tourism authority did not respond to questions:
Japanese doctors and nurses fighting the novel coronavirus will not have the time to volunteer to help at the Olympics, a medical association has said, raising another headache for organisers determined to hold the postponed Games, Reuters reports.
The director of the Tokyo Medical Association, which represents 20,000 doctors from dozens of smaller medical groups, said doctors and nurses were under too much strain dealing with a third wave of the pandemic to even consider signing up for the Olympics.
“No matter how I look at it, it’s impossible,” said Satoru Arai, whose association was asked by both the Tokyo Olympic Organising Committee and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government last March to secure more than 3,500 medical staff for the event.
“I’m hearing doctors who initially signed up to volunteer say there’s no way they can take time off to help when their hospitals are completely overwhelmed,” Arai told Reuters this week, adding that he could not bring himself to push for volunteers at such a critical time.
Mexico authorises Russia’s Sputnik V virus vaccine
Mexico on Tuesday approved Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine for emergency use in the country, one of the worst hit by the pandemic, following the release of positive trial results, AFP reports.
The move is a boost to the Latin American nation’s efforts to keep its immunisation program on track in the face of limited supplies from other manufacturers.
Regulatory agency Cofepris “has just granted authorisation for the emergency use of the Sputnik V vaccine,” deputy health minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell told a news conference.
The shot - named after the Soviet-era satellite - faced criticism last year when it was approved in Russia before large-scale clinical trials.
But analysis of data from 20,000 Phase 3 trial participants, published Tuesday in medical journal The Lancet, suggests that the two-dose vaccination offers more than 90 percent efficacy against symptomatic Covid-19.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said last week after talking to President Vladimir Putin by telephone that Russia had agreed to provide 24 million doses of Sputnik V.
Mexico has more than 1.8 million known coronavirus cases and nearly 160,000 deaths - the world’s third-highest fatality toll after the United States and Brazil.
The country began mass immunisation on December 24 but so far has only used the vaccine developed by US drugs giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.
It has also authorised the shot developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, and has a deal to produce the vaccine in collaboration with Argentina.
Sputnik V is registered in more than a dozen other countries including former Soviet republics as well as allies such as Venezuela and Iran, as well as South Korea, Argentina, Algeria, Tunisia and Pakistan.
If you need a break from the bad news:
I wrote about 🎶wild wild do-ogs 🎶and their adorable ears: https://t.co/MedjvNoOPa pic.twitter.com/6swpgVkkhp
— Helen Sullivan (@helenrsullivan) February 3, 2021
WHO investigators visit Wuhan lab at heart of China Covid-19 conspiracy claims
The full story on the WHO team’s visit to a virus research laboratory in Wuhan seeking clues to the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The team, led by WHO virus expert Peter Ben Embarek, arrived at the heavily guarded Wuhan Institute of Virology at about 9.30am on Wednesday.
“I am looking forward to a very productive day, meeting the key people here and asking all the important questions that need to be asked,” team member Peter Daszak, who is the president of the EcoHealth Alliance, said on arrival.
The institute has been at the centre of a number of conspiracy theories – some promoted by former US president Donald Trump and his secretary of state Mike Pompeo – that claim a laboratory leak caused the city’s first coronavirus outbreak at the end of 2019.
Most scientists reject the hypothesis, but some speculate that a virus captured from the wild could have figured in experiments at the lab to test the risks of a human spillover and then escaped via an infected staff member:
Updated
One of Oxford’s oldest pubs has closed permanently during the coronavirus lockdown, AFP reports.
As the 16th-century Lamb & Flag wound up its operations, Oxford landlords warned of the “devastating” impact of national lockdowns on the university city’s cosy pubs.
Many were frequented by writers such as JRR Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and the fictional detective Inspector Morse, while they rely on student trade, social drinkers and tourists.
But like other English pubs, they have faced bans and restrictions since March last year and can currently only open for food delivery or takeaway.
“I know several publicans who have said, ‘enough’s enough, we cannot continue’,” Mark “Baz” Butcher, landlord of The White Hart in Wytham, on the outskirts of Oxford, told AFP.
“I think it’s inevitable there will be some closures,” with small traditional pubs most at risk, added Dave Richardson, spokesman for the local branch of the Campaign for Real Ale.
In January, St John’s College, a massively wealthy landowner, said The Lamb & Flag, which it owns, was not financially viable and its staff would be made redundant.
The college, part of the University of Oxford, said that as a registered charity, it could not run a loss-making business.
Richardson said he was aware of interest in taking over the pub, including from local landlords.
Nevertheless, big breweries and hospitality chains are most likely to sell off traditional smaller, mainly drinks-led pubs, like The Lamb & Flag, he said.
These have struggled to comply with restrictions, particularly in December when they were ordered to only serve alcohol with “substantial meals”.
Pubs have been “blamed out of all proportion to the risk they pose”, argued Richardson, urging the government to provide sector-specific support.
Updated
China eyes winter olympics
The Winter Olympics, due to begin in one year, offer China a chance to show off its epidemic controls, dazzle with spectacle, and seize a publicity win on the world stage - but human rights concerns and Covid-19 uncertainty cast a cloud over the games, AFP reports.
Organisers promise a “joyful rendezvous upon pure ice and snow” that will kick off on 4 February, 2022. Artificial powder will likely be needed to help cover the slopes carved out on the brown, arid mountains to Beijing’s northwest.
“China will want the Olympics to set a new narrative that is about the country opening up to the world again,” said Rana Mitter, who teaches Chinese history and politics at Oxford University.
Under President Xi Jinping, China has tightened control over civil society and clamped down on dissent, even as its economy recovers robustly from Covid and Beijing asserts itself on the global stage.
Rights groups and some Western politicians have condemned China’s hosting of the games, citing Beijing’s policies in Hong Kong and Xinjiang.
The Covid pandemic, which has delayed the much-larger 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, is unlikely to be fully controlled globally by next February, health experts say.
The United States Mint was unable to meet surging demand for its gold and silver bullion coins in 2020 and through January, due partly to pandemic-driven demand and plant capacity issues, it said.
Sales of US gold bullion coins rose 258% last year while silver coin demand was up 28%, the Mint said on Tuesday. Heavy buying has continued in 2021, it said, squeezing supplies, which had already been tight as the coronavirus affected production.
A social media-driven buying spree lifted silver futures to an eight-year high on Monday, but dealers in the market for coins were already grappling with a supply shortage and shipping delays before that rally.
It came as treasury secretary Janet Yellen announced she would be calling a meeting of key financial regulators this week to discuss market volatility driven by retail trading in GameStop and other stocks:
Podcast: How the EU’s vaccine effort turned into a crisis
Daniel Boffey, the Guardian’s Brussels bureau chief, looks at why the EU’s vaccination programme has become so chaotic. Last Friday the commission attempted an ill-fated plan to seek to erect a vaccine border on the island of Ireland by triggering a clause in the Brexit withdrawal agreement:
New Zealand gives provisional approval to Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine
The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has been provisionally approved for use in New Zealand, where the government will begin vaccinating frontline healthcare and border workers in the coming months.
Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister, said the approval was a positive step in the country’s fight against Covid-19, of which there have been fewer than 2,000 cases nationally:
More on the WHO team’s visit, from AFP:
Chinese state broadcaster CGTN said the WHO team would “visit the national biosafety laboratory and exchange ideas with experts of the institute on their daily work, international scientific cooperation, anti-epidemic efforts and contribution”.
China has faced criticism at home and abroad for playing down the initial outbreak and concealing information when it first emerged in Wuhan in December 2019.
China is also determined to put the focus on its recovery from the outbreak, and the WHO team toured a propaganda exhibition celebrating China’s recovery from the pandemic in Wuhan on Saturday.
On Sunday the team went to the market in Wuhan where one of the first reported clusters of infections emerged over a year ago, which Daszak tweeted was a “critical” stop.
Shi Zhengli, one of China’s leading experts on bat coronaviruses and deputy director of the Wuhan lab, raised some eyebrows in a June 2020 interview with Scientific American magazine in which she said she was initially anxious over whether the virus had leaked from the facility.
But subsequent checks revealed that none of the gene sequences matched the viruses held by the lab, Shi said, adding: “I had not slept a wink for days.”
She later said she would “bet her life that (the new coronavirus) had nothing to do with the lab”, according to Chinese state media.
WHO team visits Chinese virus lab in Wuhan
World Health Organization inspectors visited a laboratory in China’s Wuhan city on Wednesday that American officials suggested could have been the source of the coronavirus, AFP reports.
The inspection of the Wuhan virology institute, which conducts research on the world’s most dangerous diseases, will be one of the most-watched stops on the team’s probe into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The sensitive mission, which China had delayed throughout the first year of the pandemic, has a remit to explore how the virus jumped from animal to human.
But questions remain over what the experts can hope to find after so much time has passed.
The convoy of cars drove past security to enter a virology institute shrouded in mist Wednesday morning, with the first car pausing briefly to take questions from journalists.
WHO team member Peter Daszak said the team was “looking forward to a very productive day and to asking all the questions that we know need to be asked”.
Scientists think Covid-19 - which first emerged in Wuhan and has gone on to kill more than two million people worldwide - originated in bats and could have been transmitted to people via another mammal.
But there are no definitive answers so far.
There was speculation early in the pandemic that the virus could have accidentally leaked from the biosafety lab in Wuhan, although there was no evidence to back up that theory.
Updated
In case you missed this very sad news earlier:
Capt Sir Tom Moore, the second world war veteran who raised almost £39m for NHS charities during the first coronavirus lockdown in spring 2020, has died aged 100 after testing positive for coronavirus.
In a statement, his daughters, Hannah Ingram-Moore and Lucy Teixeira, said: “It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our dear father, Capt Sir Tom Moore. We are so grateful that we were with him during the last hours of his life; Hannah, Benjie and Georgia by his bedside and Lucy on FaceTime.
“We spent hours chatting to him, reminiscing about our childhood and our wonderful mother. We shared laughter and tears together.
“The last year of our father’s life was nothing short of remarkable. He was rejuvenated and experienced things he’d only ever dreamed of. Whilst he’d been in so many hearts for just a short time, he was an incredible father and grandfather, and he will stay alive in our hearts forever.
“The care our father received from the NHS and carers over the last few weeks and years of his life has been extraordinary. They have been unfalteringly professional, kind and compassionate and have given us many more years with him than we ever would have imagined.”
Moore was admitted to Bedford hospital on Sunday after having been treated for pneumonia for some time and testing positive for Covid-19 last week.
The Guardian’s Caroline Davies and Yohannes Lowe report:
Reserve Bank forecasts Australian economy will return to pre-pandemic size by mid-year
Australia’s economy is expected to recover to its pre-pandemic size by the middle of this year – six to 12 months early – the Reserve Bank governor has revealed.
On Wednesday, Philip Lowe released the bank’s revised projections showing a faster than expected recovery during the Covid-19 recession is expected to translate to growth of 3.5% this year and next, with unemployment set to fall to 6% in 2021.
But despite the positive news, Lowe warned in a speech to the National Press Club that withdrawal of wage subsidies in March will cause “some slowing in employment growth”, and the recovery is at risk from fresh coronavirus outbreaks or bouts of saving:
Treasury, World Bank stress need to improve vaccine access for poorest countries
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and World Bank President David Malpass on Tuesday stressed the need to coordinate in responding the global pandemic, improving vaccine access for the poorest countries, and combating climate change, Treasury said.
Reuters: during a call with Malpass, Yellen “emphasised that climate change is an existential threat to our environment and global economy and urged robust support to low-income countries,” Treasury said in a statement.
“The Secretary highlighted the need to work closely to help countries reduce debt vulnerabilities and improve debt sustainability and transparency,” it added. She noted her appreciation for the World Bank’s efforts in these areas.
Mexico nears approval of Russia vaccine
Mexico was on the verge of approving the Russian coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V following the publication of early results of an advanced study, Mexican officials said Tuesday.
AP: Assistant Health Secretary Hugo López-Gatell, the government’s pandemic spokesman, said the health ministry signed a contract Monday for 400,000 doses of Sputnik V that will arrive this month. He said regulatory approval was expected within hours.
It couldn’t come a moment too soon. Mexico has been hit so hard that hospitals in the capital were 87% full, and ambulance drivers waited hours to find an open bed for patients.
“Unfortunately, because of the saturation of the hospitals and the phone lines, we are waiting about three or four hours before they can assign us a hospital, and to get there,” said ambulance crew chief Eduardo Vigueras.
Vigueras noted patients are sometimes sent to the only available beds at hospitals, far away from the overwhelmed east side borough of Iztapalapa. He said some relatives get angry and aggressive with paramedics because of the delays in treatment.
Because some patients are in such bad shape, some families make an even harder choice. Paramedics say they often go to pick up a seriously ill coronavirus patient only to find their loved ones want to cancel the emergency call, because they know treatment is in such short supply and they may never see their relative again.
Merkel says all approved vaccines welcome after Russian Sputnik posts strong data
Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel has said “all vaccines” approved by the EU’s medicines regulator are welcome, including Russian and Chinese shots, Reuters reports.
In a TV interview, she said Germany welcomed the strong data from trials of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine.
Every vaccine that is approved by the European Medicines Agency is welcome. I’ve spoken to the Russian president about this. We saw good data today [about the Russian vaccine]. Every vaccine is welcome in the EU as long as it is approved by the EMA.
It comes after she said last month she was “open to the idea” of using European manufacturing capacities to increase the production of the Russian vaccine.
Earlier today, Merkel said Germany will have vaccinated 10 million people against the new coronavirus by the end of the first quarter.
Merkel added that the EU had been right not to go for the emergency approval that had allowed Britain to release the first vaccine for public use before anyone else, since it was crucial to maintain people’s confidence in vaccines.
“You could either say that we will already be able to vaccinate 10 million people using both vaccines in the first quarter, or others will say ‘only’ [10 million]; but either way it will go up from there,” she said.
She also said consideration would be given to whether those who refuse a vaccination should at some stage face restrictions.
The UK’s advertising watchdog has banned Ryanair’s controversial “jab and go” holiday TV campaign, saying it encouraged the public to act irresponsibly once they have received a coronavirus vaccination shot.
The Advertising Standards Authority’s decision to ban the two TV ads, which have become the third most complained-about campaign of all time, comes days after the Ryanair chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said the vaccine programme would allow British families to flock to Europe for summer holidays this year.
The ad campaign, which featured a small bottle labelled “vaccine” and a syringe, encouraged the public to snap up bargain deals to sunny European destinations such as Spain and Greece because “you could jab and go”:
Macron makes ‘end of summer’ vaccine pledge to France
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday that all of his countrymen who want a vaccine will be offered one “by the end of the summer”, Reuters reports.
He told the TF1 channel that 80 percent of care-home residents - some 500,000 people - would be vaccinated by early March.
Macron defended France’s record in the face of criticism for its slow rollout, especially compared with neighbour Britain which began its inoculation programme weeks earlier than EU countries and has set a much faster rate.
He said France’s rollout “may seem too slow” when compared with countries that had “made other bets”.
“But I defend the strategy we have adopted with Germany, with the European Union, which is precisely to vaccinate in Europe,” he said.
WHO warns 'vaccine nationalism will spawn new Covid mutations'
Coronavirus vaccine nationalism is harmful for all, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Tuesday, and said weak cooperation between nations is a major barrier to achieving worldwide vaccination at the scale needed to end the coronavirus pandemic.
“Despite the growing number of vaccine options, current manufacturing capacity meets only a fraction of global need,” the WHO director-general said in a piece published in Foreign Policy magazine.
“Allowing the majority of the world’s population to go unvaccinated will not only perpetuate needless illness and deaths and the pain of ongoing lockdowns, but also spawn new virus mutations as Covid-19 continues to spread among unprotected populations,” he wrote.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan.
As always, you can find me on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned on Tuesday that weak cooperation between nations is a major barrier to achieving worldwide vaccination at the scale needed to end the coronavirus pandemic.
“Allowing the majority of the world’s population to go unvaccinated will not only perpetuate needless illness and deaths and the pain of ongoing lockdowns, but also spawn new virus mutations as Covid-19 continues to spread among unprotected populations,” wrote Tedros in Foreign Policy magazine.
Here are the other key developments from the last few hours:
- The number of patients in hospital with coronavirus in France is at its highest since November. The health ministry reported 28,029 people were in hospital with the virus and 3,270 in intensive care. Both numbers set new 2021 highs.
- Nicola Sturgeon announced a phased return to school for Scotland’s youngest children, with nurseries and all primary pupils from P1 to P3 planned to be back in the classroom from 22 February. The announcement will put pressure on the UK government to answer calls from Conservative MPs as to why England is operating on a slower timetable.
- Saudi Arabia suspended entry from 20 countries in a bid to curb a surge in coronavirus infections. The interior ministry announced the “temporary suspension” would be effective from 9pm on Wednesday.
- A single dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine provides sustained protection against Covid-19 for at least three months and cuts transmission of the virus by two-thirds, according to a new study.
- The French president Emmanuel Macron said all French people who are willing to be vaccinated will be offered a vaccine by the end of summer.
- The Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte said most of the lockdown measures in the Netherlands, many of which have been in place since October, will remain in place until at least 2 March due to fears over a surge in cases as a result of new coronavirus variants.
- Portugal, currently feeling the full force of its third wave of the coronavirus pandemic, has appealed for international help to relieve overwhelmed hospital staff. The prime minister Antonio Costa acknowledged the nation’s hospitals are under “gigantic pressure”. The government acted after the country’s 24-hour death toll passed the 300-mark and television stations broadcast pictures of ambulances queueing up outside Lisbon’s largest hospital.
- The Palestinian Authority began vaccinating its health workers in the occupied West Bank against Covid-19 after receiving doses from Israel.
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