That’s it from me, Samantha Lock, for today.
Stay tuned in to all the latest Covid developments here.
And join us later when we launch our next live blog in a few hours time.
Summary
- Germany is enveloped in a “massive” pandemic of the unvaccinated, health minister says. Jens Spahn has warned: “The pandemic is far from over. We are currently experiencing a pandemic of the unvaccinated, which is massive. There would be fewer coronavirus patients on intensive care units if more people would let themselves be vaccinated.”
- The Covid pandemic has caused the loss of 28m years of life, according to the largest-ever survey to assess the scale of the impact of the pandemic. The enormous toll was revealed in research, led by the University of Oxford, which calculated the years of life lost (YLL) in 37 countries.
- Latvia declares three month state of emergency starting from Monday following a surge in Covid-19 infections to record levels as its vaccination rate remains one of the lowest in the EU. The number of daily infections is now well over 1,000 in the Baltic country of 1.9 million people, overtaking the peak infection rate seen during the pandemic earlier this year.
- Turkey will begin administering booster shots to people who have received two doses of the Pfizer Inc/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, its health minister Fahrettin Koca said.
- France reports highest daily cases since mid-September. Health authorities reported 10,050 daily new Covid-19 infections on Wednesday, the first time the tally has topped 10,000 since September 14.
- The UK recorded another 41,299 Covid cases, and a further 217 deaths within 28 days of a positive test, in the latest 24-hour period. This is compared to 293 deaths and 33,865 positive infections reported a day prior.
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UK launches trial of drug to tackle fatigue in long Covid patients. The first trial of a drug, called AXA1125, is set to target the fatigue and muscle weakness experienced by more than half of people with long Covid/ The drug targets cellular power plants called mitochondria, which it is thought could be dysfunctional in the subset of long Covid patients with severe fatigue.
- The US is set to begin giving Covid vaccines to children aged five to 11, with roughly 28 million school-age kids eligible for the shots that provide protection against the illness.
A new study suggests that Covid-19 does not infect human brain cells, raising hopes that Covid-related damage to sense of smell may be more superficial than previously feared.
The study, published in the journal Cell, contradicts earlier research that suggested the virus infects neurons in the membrane that lines the upper recesses of the nose.
This membrane, called the olfactory mucosa, is where the virus first lands when it is inhaled. Within it are olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs), which are responsible for initiating smell sensations. They are tightly entwined with a kind of support cell called sustentacular cells.
Read the full story here.
Updated
Hi I’m Samantha Lock and I’ll be taking over from my colleague Nadeem Badshah for the next short while.
It’s a rainy morning over here in Sydney, Australia, where I’ll be reporting to bring you all the leading Covid headlines.
Covid has caused the loss of 28m years of life, according to the largest-ever survey to assess the scale of the impact of the pandemic.
The enormous toll was revealed in research, led by the University of Oxford, which calculated the years of life lost (YLL) in 37 countries. The study measured the number of deaths and the age at which they occurred, making it the most detailed assessment yet of the impact of Covid-19.
Alongside significant falls in life expectancy in most countries, the number of years lost from premature deaths soared. Researchers said the true toll was likely to be even higher as they did not include most countries from Asia, Africa and Latin America in the study, due to a lack of data.
The US administered 425,272,828 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country as of Wednesday morning and distributed 525,071,855 doses, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Those figures are up from the 423,942,794 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by Nov. 2 out of 521,502,845 doses delivered.
The agency said 222,268,786 people had received at least one dose while 192,931,486 people were fully vaccinated as of 6:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday., Reuters reports.
Chilean presidential candidate Gabriel Boric, has tested positive for Covid-19, less than three weeks before the Andean country votes.
In a post on Twitter, center-left former student leader Boric, 35, said he had just received the positive test and called on his contacts to follow pandemic protocols.
The leader of the broad leftist Frente Amplio coalition, which includes the country’s Communist Party, had gone into preventive isolation earlier in the week when he posted that he had a fever, a challenge for his team ahead of the November 21 vote.
Boric is seen just behind ultra-conservative candidate Jos Antonio Kast in election polls, with many surveys showing the leftist winning a likely second-round run-off in December.
Denmark’s prime minister Mette Frederiksen, facing a probe over the slaughter of the country’s entire mink herd last year, has denied that she knew then that the government did not have legal authority to order the move.
Responding to the rising spread of coronavirus from mink to people, including a new mutated strain, Frederiksen’s Social Democratic government in November 2021 ordered all of the country’s 17 million minks killed, Reuters reports.
The government later admitted it did not have the legal authority to kill healthy mink herds, only those infected with coronavirus, leading to the exit of the minister of agriculture.
Parliament launched a probe in December into whether other ministers including Frederiksen knew of but ignored the faulty legal basis for the order.
“What motive should the government have had for not disclosing the lack of legal basis? Let me make it very clear: I did not know,” Frederiksen told a press briefing.
Latvia declares three month state of emergency over rise in Covid cases
Latvia has declared a three-month state of emergency starting from Monday following a surge in Covid-19 infections to record levels as its vaccination rate remains one of the lowest in the EU.
The number of daily infections is now well over 1,000 in the Baltic country of 1.9 million people, overtaking the peak infection rate seen during the pandemic earlier this year, AFP reports. Under the new rules, masks are now obligatory in all buildings accessible by the general public and anyone employed in government must have a vaccine by November 15 at the latest. Unvaccinated people will only be allowed to shop for food and other essential items in designated stores and only shops considered essential will be allowed to open at weekends. All Latvians are being encouraged to work from home where possible.
Turkey to begin administering booster jabs on Thursday
Turkey will begin administering boosters to people who have received two doses of the Pfizer Inc/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, its health minister Fahrettin Koca said.
Turkey has already administered a third dose to more than 11.2 million people who received two doses of the vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac, whose efficacy rate officials believe falls faster.
Koca said the booster shots for Pfizer/BioNTech recipients would begin on Thursday with the elderly, those with chronic illnesses, health workers and those in other high-risk jobs, Reuters reports.
He said 59% of the population had so far received two vaccines doses, adding: “That rate needs to get over 70% to achieve herd immunity.”
Updated
Brazil registered 164 Covid-19 deaths on Wednesday and 14,661 further cases, according to data released by the country’s health ministry.
The South American country has now registered a total of 608,235 coronavirus deaths and 21,835,785 total confirmed cases, Reuters reports.
U.S. president Joe Biden said there will be enough Covid-19 vaccines by next week for children and these shots will be available at about 20,000 locations around the country.
The US has started administering the vaccine to children ages 5 to 11, the latest group to become eligible for the shots that provide protection against the illness, Reuters reports.
Canadian employers are firing or putting on unpaid leave thousands of workers who refused to get Covid-19 jabs, Reuters reports.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised vaccine mandates as a central part of his successful campaign for re-election in September, setting a precedent that has spread from the public to the private sector.
The mandate for federal workers is one of the world’s strictest, and the government has extended it to federally regulated spaces, which include airports, and to air and rail travelers.
Across Canada, hospitals, banks, insurers, school boards, police and some provincial administrations are now implementing similar policies for current and future hires.
Unvaccinated workers whose livelihoods are on the line - in a country where more than 83% of the eligible population over 12 years old have had their jabs- are flooding labour lawyers with calls.
The latest Covid developments in Australia and elsewhere:
Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti tested positive for Covid-19 on Wednesday while attending the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, an event that has drawn world leaders and tens of thousands of other people from around the world.
More people may die from other conditions such as cancer than directly from Covid-19 due to the effect the pandemic has had on health services, according to a UK professor of respiratory medicine.
Professor Michael Peake, who received an OBE for services to medicine, said: “Not the direct effect of having Covid as an infection, but how that’s altered health services and access for patients to both GPs and hospital and access to tests, PA reports.
“And we’re beginning to quantify what that is. “It’s a huge... there’s probably going to be more people who die of other conditions - heart disease, cancer, kidney disease - than will have died directly of Covid, probably, just because of the effect of Covid on those services.”
France reports highest daily cases since mid-September
French health authorities reported 10,050 daily new Covid-19 infections on Wednesday, the first time the tally has topped 10,000 since September 14.
Hospitalisations for the disease are up by 84, at 6,764, a rise unseen since September 6th. The cumulative total of new cases now stands at 7.18 million, Reuters repots. The number of Covid-19 patients in intensive care rose by 5 in 24 hours to 1,096 and by 58 over a week. France also registered 35 new deaths, taking the total to 117,783.
The U.S. Federal Reserve has announced it is winding down the massive stimulus programme it put in place at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic amid fears that the central bank may have to raise rates soon to control rising inflation.
Fed officials have been debating for months over whether and when to taper the stimulus programmes that it set up to head off the economic headwinds caused by the pandemic. They announced on Wednesday that they would begin cutting that stimulus by $15bn a month but left interest rates unchanged.
Evening summary
Here is a quick recap of some of the main developments from today:
- The UK recorded another 41,299 Covid cases, and a further 217 deaths within 28 days of a positive test, in the latest 24-hour period. This is compared to 293 deaths and 33,865 positive infections reported a day prior.
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Russia’s one-dose Sputnik Light vaccine had a good safety profile and induced strong immune responses especially in people who had already encountered Covid, according to the results of phase I and II trials published in The Lancet medical journal. The vaccine, a single-dose version of the two-dose Sputnik V vaccine unveiled last year, has already entered later phases of studies and is widely used in Russia, but the publication of the early research in a top Western journal is a milestone as Russia moves towards making Sputnik Light its main vaccine for export.
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Face masks will again become compulsory from next week for French school kids in 39 regional departments where the Covid virus has been ramping up, government spokesman Gabriel Attal said.
- The Saudi Food and Drug Authority said on Wednesday it had given its approval to use Pfizer’s Covid vaccine for those between five and eleven years of age.
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Four Russian regions said they would extend a one-week workplace shutdown that took effect nationwide on 30 October in response to a surge in Covid cases. The president Vladimir Putin ordered the shutdown last month, giving regional authorities the option of extending it. Authorities in the Kursk and Bryansk regions, the Chelyabinsk region and Tomsk said their shutdowns would be prolonged.
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Italy’s medicines agency AIFA recommended a booster of the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccine to those inoculated with the Johnson & Johnson shot, a source close to the agency told Reuters. All those who have had a single shot of the J&J vaccine, regardless of age, about 1.6 million people in Italy, will be eligible to receive the booster, the source added.
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The first trial of a drug to target the fatigue and muscle weakness experienced by more than half of people with long Covid has been launched in the UK. It is also the first drug trial in patients with long Covid who were not hospitalised during their initial infection. Full story here.
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Nadhim Zahawi, the UK education secretary, said he has “no plans whatsoever” to close schools again during the pandemic. He pledged to keep schools open as he said testing pupils for Covid and vaccinating eligible children will help keep them in class. His comments came as a bill was set to be introduced in the Commons calling for a “triple lock” of protections to ensure that any future school closures would have to be approved by parliament.
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The World Health Organization approved Indian drugmaker Bharat Biotech’s Covid vaccine, Covaxin, for emergency use, paving the way for the homegrown shot to be accepted as a valid vaccine in many poor countries. The emergency use listing would allow Bharat to ship the vaccine to countries that rely on WHO guidance for their regulatory decisions.
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Covid vaccination is to be made mandatory for the NHS’s 1.2 million full-time staff in England from April next year, despite criticism that forcing frontline personnel to get jabbed is “heavy-handed” and will lead some to quit. Story here.
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The US is set to begin giving Covid vaccines to children aged five to 11, with roughly 28 million school-age kids eligible for the shots that provide protection against the illness.
- Germany is experiencing a “massive” pandemic of the unvaccinated, the health minister Jens Spahn said, calling for tougher action to combat a resurgence in Covid cases. Spahn expressed frustration that uptake of jabs has slowed and that a significant group of 18 to 59 year olds remain unvaccinated. He called for tougher checks at establishments or events where only those who can show they have been vaccinated, have recovered from Covid or have recently tested negative, are allowed to enter. He also called for a bigger push on booster jabs.
Updated
We reported earlier on Germany’s health minister Jens Spahn’s warning that the country is going through a “massive” pandemic of the unvaccinated.
Here is Philip Oltermann’s report:
Two-thirds of fully vaccinated over-80s in England have received an extra dose of Covid-19 vaccine, new figures suggest.
A total of 1.9 million people aged 80 and over in England are now estimated to have had either a third dose or a booster - the equivalent of 70% of those currently eligible for an extra jab.
The figures, from NHS England, also show that almost 66% of eligible double-jabbed people aged 75 to 79 are likely to have received an extra dose as of November 2, along with nearly 51% of those aged 70 to 74.
In total, 6.3 million extra doses of vaccine have been delivered to over-50s in England - the equivalent of around three in 10 of all double-jabbed people in this age group, according to analysis by the PA news agency.
Data for the number of boosters and third doses in England is not reported separately, even though they are being delivered to different categories of people at different stages in the vaccine roll-out.
Booster doses are offered to people who are at least six months on from receiving their second dose of coronavirus vaccine.
If eligible, people who can receive a booster dose include all adults aged 50 and over; frontline health and social care workers; and those living in residential care homes for older adults.
Booster doses are also being made available to people aged 16 to 49 with underlying health conditions that put them at higher risk of severe Covid-19, and adult household contacts of immunosuppressed individuals.
By contrast, third doses are being offered to individuals aged 12 and over who may not be able to mount a full immune response following two doses of Covid-19 vaccine, due to underlying health conditions or medical treatment.
A third primary dose of vaccine should ideally be given at least eight weeks after the second dose, according to official guidance from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.
Unlike in England, data for boosters and third doses is reported separately in Wales.
Around 61% of double-jabbed people aged 80 and over in Wales have received a booster dose, along with more than 57% of 75- to 79-year-olds and 45% of 70- to 74-year-olds, latest figures show.
Scotland and Northern Ireland do not publish take-up of booster doses broken down by age.
Nearly 21% of all double-jabbed people in north-west England have received an extra dose of vaccine - the highest proportion for any region. London has the lowest proportion of any region, at around 16%.
The virus that causes Covid-19 does not infect human brain cells, according to a new study published in the journal Cell.
The findings will raise hopes that the damage caused by Sars-CoV-2 might be more superficial and reversible than previously feared.
Read the full story here:
UK records 217 deaths and 41,299 new infections
The UK has recorded another 41,299 Covid cases, and a further 217 deaths within 28 days of a positive test, in the latest 24-hour period, the latest government data shows.
This is compared to 293 deaths and 33,865 positive infections reported a day prior.
Updated
Russia’s one-dose Sputnik Light vaccine had a good safety profile and induced strong immune responses especially in people who had already encountered Covid, according to the results of phase I and II trials published in The Lancet medical journal.
The vaccine, a single-dose version of the two-dose Sputnik V vaccine unveiled last year, has already entered later phases of studies and is widely used in Russia, but the publication of the early research in a top Western journal is a milestone as Russia moves towards making Sputnik Light its main vaccine for export.
Scientists from the vaccine’s developer, the Gamaleya Institute, oversaw 110 volunteers aged 18-59 in St Petersburg, who were inoculated in January 2021, looking at the response of the immune system and the main side effects.
The results analysed virus neutralisation against the original variant and showed a slight but statistically significant decrease in the antibody response for the Alpha and Beta strains. Russia’s dominant strain is now the Delta variant.
Russia has already said that subsequent research showed Sputnik Light demonstrated 70% effectiveness against the Delta variant three months after injection.
“Sputnik Light might be considered not only for primary vaccination, but also could be useful as an efficient tool for further revaccination or vaccination after previous Covid-19 infection,” the study said.
Last week, the health minister Mikhail Murashko said that with the spread of the Delta variant, the ministry recommended the usage of Sputnik Light for re-vaccination only.
The Kremlin later said Sputnik Light was a standalone Covid vaccine, but some Russian regions reported that they had begun to administer it only to people with antibodies.
Sputnik Light was approved for clinical use in Russia on 6 May based on the results of trials published in The Lancet and Gamaleya has started an international and placebo-controlled phase III study with 6,000 participants.
“We believe Sputnik Light vaccine could contribute towards accelerating the pace of vaccination in Russia as well as in other countries that are lacking sufficient vaccine supply,” the scientists wrote.
Face masks will again become compulsory from next week for French school kids in 39 regional departments where the Covid virus has been ramping up, government spokesman Gabriel Attal said on Wednesday.
French health authorities reported 7,360 daily new Covid infections on 30 October, the first time the tally has topped 7,000 since 21 September.
France’s cumulative total of new cases stood at 7,170,782 as of 2 November, with the number of patients with Covid in intensive care units reaching 1,091, a rise of 22 over 24 hours.
The Saudi Food and Drug Authority said on Wednesday it had given its approval to use Pfizer’s Covid vaccine for those between five and eleven years of age.
The authority added in a statement its decision was “based on data provided by the company, which showed the vaccine met the special regulatory requirements”.
The World Economic Forum said on Wednesday that it is postponing its event planned for later this month in the Chinese city of Tianjin due to the outbreak of Covid cases in the country, where new locally transmitted cases hit a near three-month high.
“Regretfully, due to the circumstances around the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and recent cases in major cities and provinces in China, the Annual Meeting of the New Champions will be rescheduled,” the WEF said in an email to participants.
Covid-19 deaths and infections have declined across the Americas for the 8th consecutive week, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said on Wednesday, warning that a very high percentage of hospitalised cases now are unvaccinated people.
In North America, all three countries reported drops in weekly cases and deaths, and there has been a notable decline in hospitalisations in the United States and Canada, PAHO said, with similar declines in South and Central America.
The regional health branch of the World Health Organization said 46% of the Latin American and Caribbean population have been fully vaccinated, and a majority of countries have already reached the WHO’s 40% vaccination coverage target set for the end of the year.
“Vaccine inequity remains the biggest barrier to reaching our coverage targets,” PAHO assistant director Jarbas Barbosa said in a briefing.
Given the limited supply of vaccines, he urged authorities to prioritise the elderly, frontline workers, and people with pre-existing conditions, to protect them and also to prevent health systems from becoming overburdened with severe cases.
PAHO recommends providing booster doses to people who are immunocompromised, including cancer patients, HIV positive individuals, patients on corticoids and transplant recipients.
PAHO said people over the age of 60 who received inactivated virus vaccines made by China’s Sinovac Biotech and Sinopharm should also get booster shots.
Updated
Four Russian regions said on Wednesday they would extend a one-week workplace shutdown that took effect nationwide on 30 October in response to a surge in Covid cases, Reuters reports.
It comes as the daily Covid death toll from the country’s epidemic hit a record high. A further 1,189 deaths were reported on Wednesday, and the government coronavirus task force also reported 40,443 new infections in the last 24 hours.
The president Vladimir Putin ordered the shutdown last month, giving regional authorities the option of extending it.
Authorities in the Kursk and Bryansk regions, which border Ukraine, the Chelyabinsk region near the Ural mountains and Tomsk in Siberia said their shutdowns would be prolonged.
“The tense epidemiological situation forces us to extend the period of non-working days by another week,” the Tomsk governor Sergei Zhvachkin said in a statement. “One non-working week is not enough to stop the chain of infection.”
Moscow authorities, meanwhile, said businesses there would reopen on Monday.
“The spread of the disease has stabilised in terms of its detection and its severe forms requiring hospitalisation,” RIA news agency quoted the capital’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, as saying.
Other measures, including a requirement that companies have at least 30% of their staff work from home, would remain in place, Sobyanin said.
The health consumer watchdog in Moscow said it had recorded violations of Covid regulations at more than a quarter of the businesses it inspected last week.
The Moscow region, which includes the small cities and towns surrounding the city, also said it would not prolong the shutdown.
The Novgorod region announced on Monday it was extending its shutdown by a week.
Italy’s medicines agency AIFA on Wednesday recommended a booster of the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccine to those inoculated with the Johnson & Johnson shot, a source close to the agency has told Reuters.
All those who have had a single shot of the J&J vaccine, regardless of age, about 1.6 million people in Italy, will be eligible to receive the booster, the source added.
Italy started to inoculate vulnerable groups and the over 60s with a third vaccine dose in September.
More than 44.8 million Italians, or 83% of the population over the age of 12, are fully vaccinated against Covid.
Italy has registered 132,161 deaths linked to Covid since its outbreak emerged in February last year, the second-highest toll in Europe after the UK and the ninth-highest in the world. The country has reported 4.78 million cases to date.
The weekly incidence of cases, after months of decline, has been rising rapidly since last week, the National Health Institute said in a report on Friday.
In Europe, Spain and Germany have already authorised boosters for those who have had the J&J vaccine.
The US Food and Drug Administration on 20 October authorised booster doses of Covid vaccines from Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, and said Americans can choose a different shot from their original inoculation as a booster.
Updated
Children as young as seven were held for hours in a Beijing school before being sent to centralised quarantine for two weeks after a staff member tested positive for Covid-19.
The incident, which drew alarm from parents and observers, came amid a rush of extreme measures imposed on the city over about 40 cases of the Delta variant, part of a national outbreak affecting at least 16 of China’s 31 provinces.
Tighter curbs are expected after the National Health Commission reported a near three-month high on Tuesday, with 93 new local symptomatic cases, up from 54 a day earlier.
The Huajiadi Experimental primary school in Chaoyang district was quickly sealed off on Monday afternoon after it emerged a teacher had been diagnosed with coronavirus, local media reported.
Parents were called to the school but spent hours gathered outside the gate waiting for information on their children caught inside by the lockdown. According to reports, school authorities said the children were all being tested and some would have to remain there overnight.
Read the full story here:
The first trial of a drug to target the fatigue and muscle weakness experienced by more than half of people with long Covid has been launched in the UK.
It is also the first drug trial in patients with long Covid who were not hospitalised during their initial infection.
The drug, called AXA1125, targets cellular power plants called mitochondria, which it is thought could be dysfunctional in the subset of long Covid patients with severe fatigue.
If successful, it could pave the way for similar trials in patients with other forms of post-viral fatigue, including myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).
Read the full story here:
Updated
The risk of reinfection with the dominant Delta variant of coronavirus is 74% greater than with the previous Alpha variant that was first spotted in Kent last year, official figures from the UK show.
A report published by the Office for National Statistics on Wednesday recorded 358 Covid reinfections in 20,757 people between July 2020 and October 2021. While overall rates of reinfection were low, they climbed significantly after May 2021 when the Delta variant became dominant, reflecting the variant’s increased transmissibility.
The ONS estimates that the rate for all Covid reinfections in the UK was 11.9 per 100,000 participant days at risk, meaning that once the participants had accrued 100,000 days at risk of reinfection between them, statisticians would expect to see about 12 cases. Most reinfections were seen seven to eight months after the initial infection.
People who had the lowest amount of virus in their system during their earlier Covid infection were at greater risk of contracting the virus again, as were people living in multiple-occupancy houses. Teachers and others working in education were also at higher risk of reinfection, probably because of the high levels of infection in schools, the ONS found.
Updated
The UK education secretary has said he has “no plans whatsoever” to close schools again during the pandemic, PA Media reports.
Nadhim Zahawi has pledged to keep schools open as he said testing pupils for Covid and vaccinating eligible children will help keep them in class.
His comments come as a bill is set to be introduced in the Commons that calls for a “triple lock” of protections to ensure that any future school closures would have to be approved by parliament.
Zahawi told MPs that a review of extending the school day – which has been suggested by experts to help children recover learning lost during the pandemic – will be published before the end of the year.
Addressing the Commons education committee, he said:
Protecting face-to-face learning is my absolute priority. I have no plans whatsoever to close schools again.
I know that the way we maintain face-to-face learning is through boosting the most vulnerable in our society … vaccinating the 12- to 15-year-olds as well, and of course the testing programme.
Zahawi told MPs:
My commitment to you is that this secretary of state will keep schools open because actually we know the damage by shutting schools.
A bill from Tory MP Robert Halfon, who chairs the education committee, aims to redefine schools as “essential infrastructure” to protect millions of pupils from future shutdowns.
Zahawi told MPs that he would look at Halfon’s bill, adding:
This is not a snowflake generation. They were really resilient, but actually keeping schools open has to be my priority.
His pledge came after the latest government figures showed that the number of children out of school for Covid-related reasons in England rose to nearly a quarter of a million in the week before the October half-term.
During the hearing, Zahawi was also questioned over whether the Department for Education (DfE) plans to lengthen the school day to help pupils catch up on lessons following school closures.
He said: “What the chair is asking about is ‘are we going to have a longer school day?’. No, we’re not on the whole. We’re saying we’ve got targeted funds to deliver.”
Last week, the government announced it would provide an extra £1.8bn to help children recover learning lost during the pandemic, bringing total catch-up funding so far to £4.9bn.
Zahawi said:
Let me deliver that 5 billion, continue to evaluate, come back to your committee and show you, I hope, how well we’ve done, because the evidence suggests that actually targeting and extending the day for 16- to 19-year-olds, which we’re doing, is the right thing.
Updated
WHO approves emergency use of India's Covaxin vaccine
The World Health Organization on Wednesday said it had approved Indian drugmaker Bharat Biotech’s Covid vaccine for emergency use, paving the way for the homegrown shot to be accepted as a valid vaccine in many poor countries.
“The Technical Advisory Group has determined that the Covaxin vaccine meets WHO standards for protection against Covid-19, that the benefit of the vaccine far outweighs risks and the vaccine can be used,” the WHO said in a tweet.
The Technical Advisory Group, convened by WHO and made up of regulatory experts from around the world, has determined that the #Covaxin vaccine meets WHO standards for protection against #COVID19, that the benefit of the vaccine far outweighs risks & the vaccine can be used 🌍.
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) November 3, 2021
The WHO’s advisory group was expected to make a decision on the shot known as Covaxin last week, but asked for additional clarifications from Bharat Biotech before conducting a final risk-benefit assessment for the vaccine’s global use.
Covaxin was also reviewed by WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization, which recommended its use in two doses, with an interval of four weeks, in all age groups 18 and above.
The emergency use listing would allow Bharat to ship the vaccine to countries that rely on WHO guidance for their regulatory decisions.
Covaxin is the seventh to win WHO backing following two mRNA shots by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, adenovirus vector vaccines developed by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, and China’s inactivated vaccines from Sinovac Biotech and Sinopharm.
The nod also mean that the shot may be accepted as a valid vaccine for millions of Indians who have received it and want to travel nL4N2RM0WR outside the country.
Oman last week and Australia on Monday said they will recognise Covaxin as a valid vaccine for travellers.
Updated
Covid jabs to be compulsory for NHS staff in England from April
Covid vaccination is to be made compulsory for the NHS’s 1.2 million full-time staff in England, despite criticism that forcing frontline personnel to get jabbed is “heavy-handed” and will lead some to quit.
However, the tough new approach will not come into force until next April year, after Sajid Javid heeded warnings that introducing it soon could lead to an exodus of staff during the winter, the health service’s busiest time of year.
An announcement is due as soon as Thursday, the Guardian understands.
The health secretary appears to have been influenced by NHS Providers and the NHS Confederation, the two organisations that represent NHS trusts in England, strongly advising him to delay implementing the move until next year.
Read the full story here:
US to begin vaccinating children aged 5-11 with Pfizer jab
The US is set to begin giving Covid vaccines to children aged five to 11 as soon as Wednesday, with roughly 28 million school-age kids eligible for the shots that provide protection against the illness, Reuters reports.
On Tuesday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the Pfizer/BioNTech shot for broad use in that age group after a panel of outside advisers voted in favour.
While about 58% of Americans are fully vaccinated, children under 12 have not yet been eligible for shots. The Delta variant of the virus has led to thousands of children being hospitalised and they make up 25% of US cases.
The vaccine, shown to be more than 90% effective at preventing symptomatic infection in children, offers an avenue for fewer quarantines or school closures and more freedoms.
The CDC director Rochelle Walensky said on Monday:
There has been a great deal of anticipation for parents surrounding the authorisation of vaccines for our children. I deeply understand the urgency and concern over providing the best protection to our children against the virus.
The US government will start sending 15 million vaccines for children this week to distribution centres around the country, with the paediatric program expected to be running full steam next week, White House officials said.
Once the shots are delivered, rather than mass vaccination centres, the rollout will rely on paediatrician’s offices, children’s hospitals and pharmacies, the White House has said.
The federal government has purchased 50m doses of Pfizer’s vaccine for the rollout, and has enough supply for all 28 million eligible children, US officials said this week.
Pfizer’s shot for younger children contains a lower 10-microgram dose of vaccine than the 30 micrograms given to those aged 12 and older.
Following the CDC’s decision, parents can visit the vaccines.gov website to find locations offering the vaccine for the children, White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said.
The US Food and Drug Administration authorised the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for emergency use for children aged five to 11 years on Friday.
So far, only Pfizer’s shot has been authorised for use in the US for those under the age of 12. A few other countries including China are already vaccinating children.
Moderna said on Sunday it would delay filing its request for an emergency use authorisation for its vaccine for children aged six to 11 while the FDA reviews safety data in connection with its application for 12- to 17-year olds.
The states with the highest adult vaccination rates against Covid are also preparing bigger pushes to get children inoculated than states where hesitancy remains strong, potentially widening the gaps in protection nationwide, public health officials and experts said.
Still, it remains unclear how parents will react. Many people who have been vaccinated themselves are more divided over whether or not to vaccinate their own younger children given that severe Covid is much less common for them.
While the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has been used in more than 400 million people, there is no long-term data yet for its use in adults or children.
California, New York and Washington state, all led by Democratic governors who have promoted vaccination and mask-wearing during the pandemic, are setting up mobile sites and high-volume vaccination clinics for children, spokespeople for the public health departments of those states said.
California has also mandated that school-age children get a vaccine once their age group is eligible, a measure being considered in New York and Washington.
Republican state governors have largely resisted measures such as mask mandates or vaccine requirements in workplaces, schools and public venues. More than a dozen states, including Florida and Texas, have tried to block schools from imposing such requirements themselves.
“The best-case scenario would be everyone... did their best to get the age group vaccinated because it’s going to protect their younger siblings, their older relatives and people who just don’t respond well to these vaccines,” said Pamela Zeitlin, the chair of the department of pediatrics at National Jewish Health, a hospital in Colorado.
Updated
Slovenia registered a record high new daily 3,456 Covid cases on Tuesday, or 44.7% of the number of people tested, the state health institute said, as medical experts suggest tighter restrictions to rein in the pandemic.
Currently there are 29,354 active infections in the small Alpine state of some two million people. There are 1.12 million fully vaccinated people, or 53% of the overall population.
Medical experts this week proposed tightening curbs on gatherings, including shorter opening hours for bars and restaurants and work from home for public sector employees, national television reported.
The government is expected to discuss the pandemic on Thursday.
Hundreds of Greek health care workers protested in central Athens against mandatory coronavirus vaccines for their profession on Wednesday, the Associated Press reports.
The protest comes a day after the government imposed more restrictions on unvaccinated Greeks amid a spike in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
About 300 demonstrators chanted slogans and held up banners outside the parliament building, protesting regulations that call for unvaccinated health care workers to be suspended from their jobs.
Health care unions have said they do not oppose the vaccines but object to them being required.
Vaccines against the coronavirus are compulsory for workers in Greece’s health care sector and those working in care homes for the elderly.
On Tuesday, Greece reported a record 6,700 new daily Covid cases and 59 deaths, bringing the total in the country of around 11 million to over 750,000 infections and more than 16,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
Intensive care units for patients with Covid are at over 82% capacity, while regular coronavirus wards in hospitals are nearly half full, officials said.
The health minister Thanos Plevris said on Tuesday that tougher restrictions would be imposed as of Saturday for all unvaccinated people in Greece.
Anyone without a certificate of vaccination or recent recovery from Covid will need to display a negative PCR or rapid test, conducted at their own cost at a private facility, for access to a wide range of facilities, including banks, public services, shops, hair salons and entertainment venues.
Public and private sector employees will also have to take two tests per week, up from the current one, to enter their workplaces.
Around 61% of Greece’s total population has been fully vaccinated, and people age 12 and over are eligible for shots.
Booster shots are available for those over 50, and will be available starting Friday to all adults who received their last vaccine dose six months earlier.
Updated
Germany is experiencing a “massive” pandemic of the unvaccinated, the health minister Jens Spahn has said, calling for tougher action to combat a resurgence in Covid cases.
“We are currently experiencing mainly a pandemic of the unvaccinated and it is massive,” Spahn told reporters on Wednesday. “In some regions in Germany intensive care beds are running out again.”
Germany, Europe’s most populous country with some 83 million people, has been grappling with a fourth wave of infections in recent weeks that has seen the seven-day incidence rate hit highs not seen since May.
The country added 20,398 cases over the past 24 hours, the Robert Koch health institute said Wednesday, while another 194 people died.
More than 66% of the population is fully vaccinated, but Spahn expressed frustration that the uptake of jabs has slowed and that a significant group of 18 to 59 year olds remain unvaccinated.
He also called for tougher checks at establishments or events where only those who can show they have been vaccinated, have recovered from Covid or have recently tested negative, are allowed to enter.
In some hard-hit regions, he said, access should be limited to those who are fully vaccinated or can show proof of recovery - a system knowns as 2G in Germany.
“It’s nothing to do with vaccine bullying,” he said, “but with avoiding an overloading of the health care system”.
His final recommendation was for a bigger push on booster jabs, saying the current pace “is insufficient”.
Good morning from London. I’m Lucy Campbell, I’ll be bringing you all the latest global developments on the coronavirus pandemic for the next eight hours. 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_
Today so far
- England’s deputy chief medical officer Prof Jonathan Van-Tam had some strong words this morning, saying that “too many people believe that this pandemic is now over. I personally feel there are some hard months to come in the winter and it is not over.”
- He warned the UK public that “the caution that people take or don’t take in terms of interacting with each other: that is going to be a big determinant in what happens between now and the darkest months of the winter.”
- Prof Jeremy Brown of the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has said it is “far too early” to be following the lead of the US by vaccinating children aged 11 and under against coronavirus – but added that there may be a case for some youngsters receiving a jab.
- The UK has had its highest number of daily Covid deaths reported since late February, as another 293 people have died within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test.
- Health expert Prof Devi Sridhar in Scotland has described the scenes of delegates queuing at the Cop26 conference in Glasgow as “really concerning” during a pandemic.
- The Netherlands is bringing back coronavirus measures including a requirement for face masks in many public spaces to combat a surge in cases. Neighbouring Belgium is also experiencing a sharp rise in the number of cases.
- Hong Kong will roll out booster doses of Covid-19 vaccines from next week, health secretary Sophia Chan said today. “The elderly are the most fragile group and we have a responsibility to protect their health,” Chan said. About 1.86 million people are eligible for the booster, which they can start booking from 5 November, to receive it as soon as 11 November.
- Tighter curbs are expected in China after the National Health Commission reported Covid cases surged to a near-three-month high with 93 new local symptomatic cases recorded for Tuesday, up from 54 a day earlier.
- China has already urged its citizens to stockpile daily necessities, prompting panic-buying, amid surging vegetable prices linked to recent extreme weather, fears of supply shortages
- South Korea has said it would ramp up Covid-19 testing at schools after a sharp rise of infections among children, weeks ahead of a plan to fully reopen schools nationwide.
- Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte said on Wednesday that local government officials will be punished for falling behind their targets for Covid-19 vaccinations.
- Russia today has confirmed 40,443 new Covid-19 infections and a new official pandemic record of 1,189 daily deaths. The country is in a week long enforced shutdown in order to try to stem the rising tide of infections.
- There have been protests in Kyiv, Ukraine today against government moves to try and halt the current wave of the virus. Ukrainian health minister Viktor Lyashko told a televised news conference “Trust me, this anti-vaccination spirit quickly disappears in intensive care units.”
- The number of daily Covid-19 cases reported in the Czech Republic neared 10,000 for the first time since March, health ministry data showed.
- Poland reported more than 10,400 Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, a 24% rise week on week, government spokesman Piotr Muller said.
- The number of foreign tourists visiting Spain more than quadrupled in September from a year ago to nearly 4.7 million, official data showed as widespread vaccination and looser travel restrictions enticed back more visitors.
- Seven gang leaders, representing four of New Zeland’s most well-known street gangs, joined forces in a video urging their communities to get vaccinated.
Alan Evans has got our live coverage of Cop26, while Andrew Sparrow has UK politics live. Lucy Campbell will be here shortly to lead you through the rest of the day’s coronavirus news from the UK and around the world. I’m Martin Belam signing off – I’ll see you here tomorrow.
Updated
This next block comes with an “awkward football analogy” health warning, as PA Media rounds up some of the things that England’s deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam said to the media this morning, including that he thinks we are “kind of half-time in extra time” of dealing with the pandemic, with the final whistle coming in spring. It is unclear if he thinks we then go to penalties.
More seriously, here are some more of his key quotes:
Christmas, and indeed all of the darker winter months, are potentially going to be problematic, and I think the things that are really going to determine this are, first of all, human behaviours and caution over the winter months, but particularly in the next couple of months if you’re talking about Christmas, so it’s how cautious we are.
The other things that are going to be really important are how people respond if they are in need of a booster, if they are in need of flu vaccine, if they are partially vaccinated, or indeed if they are unvaccinated – that will be another really important factor in terms of what happens over the next few months.
It’s of concern to scientists that we are running this hot this early in the autumn season. And so, from that perspective, I’m afraid it’s caution, followed by caution, and we need to watch these data very carefully indeed over the next days and weeks.
Updated
Last November, the WEAR-TV news station in northern Florida aired a segment on Dr Benjamin Marble, a local doctor who created a free telehealth website offering consultations for Covid-19. Marble, the reporter said, had made it so “patients don’t have to pay a cent” for coronavirus treatment and believed his site could replace Obamacare.
To the average viewer, the segment on the ABC affiliate, which is owned by Sinclair Broadcasting, was a local news report touting a local service. What the report didn’t mention, however, is that Marble is a member of America’s Frontline Doctors, a rightwing political group that gained notoriety in summer 2020 after some of its members appeared in a viral video touting unproven Covid-19 treatments as miracle cures.
AFD’s founder, Dr Simone Gold, has headlined anti-vaccine rallies and is facing charges for storming the Capitol during the 6 January riot. Also visible in a photo included in the clip was Dr Stella Immanuel, an AFD member who has claimed masks don’t help curb the spread of Covid-19 and repeatedly said some real world illnesses were caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches. Marble’s telehealth page itself links to anti-vaccine information and websites promoting unproven Covid-19 treatments such as the anti-parasite drug ivermectin.
Since the start of the pandemic, local newspapers, broadcast television and radio stations across the US have been among the most popular sources for information about Covid-19. Many anti-vaccine activists as well as doctors and groups promoting unproven Covid-19 treatments have turned to those same channels to spread their message.
Read more of Nick Robins-Early’s report here: How anti-vaxxers and ivermectin advocates have co-opted local news in the US
Updated
By the way, we’ve got two other live blogs running this morning. Andrew Sparrow has our UK politics live blog which I would expect to see dominated by the Tory sleaze row as they try and avoid Owen Paterson being suspended from parliament for thirty days by re-writing the way that the cross-party Commons standards committee works. There will also be PMQs. You can find that here:
Also blogging live at the moment is Alan Evans, who is covering Cop26 in Glasgow for us. You can follow the day’s progress in Scotland with him here.
Prof Van-Tam warns UK public: 'Too many people believe that this pandemic is now over'
England’s deputy chief medical officer Prof Jonathan Van-Tam had some strong words appearing on the BBC this morning, saying that “Too many people believe that this pandemic is now over. I personally feel there are some hard months to come in the winter and it is not over.”
Reuters quotes him warning the UK public that “the caution that people take or don’t take in terms of interacting with each other: that is going to be a big determinant in what happens between now and the darkest months of the winter.”
In other comments to the media this morning, he said the flu vaccine has “never been more important”.
PA Media quotes him saying: “Don’t forget flu. We have very few restrictions in society at the moment – this means all the other respiratory winter viruses will come back.
“We didn’t have any flu to speak of last winter because of the lockdowns and so forth, and that means we have a population who are more susceptible, less immune to flu at the moment.
“So, for the people who are at high risk who need a flu jab in the winter, it could never have been more important than right now that you come forward to get it.”
Updated
A member of the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has said it is “far too early” to be following the lead of the US by vaccinating children aged 11 and under against coronavirus – but added that there may be a case for some youngsters receiving a jab.
Jeremy Brown, professor of respiratory medicine at University College London Hospitals, said it is not the right time as the British regulatory bodies have not yet looked at the data from the US.
But he added that if the vaccines are approved for children aged 11 and under by regulators, they could be used for those who have underlying conditions.
PA Media quotes Prof Brown told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think there’s a case for using a vaccine on those children that have underlying diseases that make them more vulnerable to Covid, having severe side-effects from the Covid infection. That’s possible.”
Updated
Hong Kong will roll out booster doses of Covid-19 vaccines from next week, health secretary Sophia Chan said today. “The elderly are the most fragile group and we have a responsibility to protect their health,” Chan said.
The vaccination campaign in the global financial hub has lagged many other developed economies, with about 65% of the eligible population fully vaccinated with shots from either China’s Sinovac, or Germany’s BioNTech.
Reuters report that about 85% of those older than 80 in the Chinese-ruled city of 7.5 million have not been vaccinated. The elderly will get priority for the booster shots, along with health workers, cross-border truck drivers and others in categories deemed to be at higher risk of getting the disease.
About 1.86 million people are eligible for the booster, which they can start booking from 5 November, to receive it as soon as 11 November.
Updated
Russia sets another new records for official daily Covid deaths at 1,189
Russia today has confirmed 40,443 new Covid-19 infections and a new official pandemic record of 1,189 daily deaths. The country is in a week long enforced shutdown in order to try to stem the rising tide of infections.
Updated
South Korea to increase testing at schools over fears of teenage infection wave
South Korea has said it would ramp up Covid-19 testing at schools after a sharp rise of infections among children, weeks ahead of a plan to fully reopen schools nationwide.
The surge comes as new social distancing rules aimed at a phased return to normal came into effect on Monday as a part of the country’s plan to gradually move toward living with Covid-19.
South Korea has fully vaccinated nearly 90% of its adult population but only began inoculating children aged between 12 and 17 in recent weeks, administering just 0.6% of the age group with both doses so far.
“There is a growing concern as the frequency of new cluster outbreaks has been increasing, centred on educational facilities such as private tuition centres and schools,” interior and safety minister Jeon Hae-cheol said, Reuters reports.
The country recorded 2,667 new cases for Tuesday, an increase of more than 1,000 from the day earlier. Nearly a quarter of the new cases were found in teenagers, officials said.
“The teenagers spend a lot of time in communal living such as schools and tuition centres and they are also active in social activities,” Son Young-rae, a senior health ministry official, told a briefing.
“We believe that the risk of infection will inevitably rise and the confirmed cases will continue to surge stemming from these teenagers.”
Updated
Prof Jonathan Van-Tam: Covid wave in UK 'now starting to penetrate into older age groups'
England’s deputy chief medical officer, Prof Jonathan Van-Tam, has said he is worried that increasing numbers of deaths show “the infection is now starting to penetrate into older age groups”.
“Deaths are increasing – there might be some artefacts in the very latest figure – but essentially deaths are increasing,” PA Media quotes him telling BBC Breakfast and BBC Radio 5 Live.
“If you then look at hospital admissions, those have plateaued in the last four days. And if you look at the total number of patients in hospital with Covid, those have gone down in the last two or three days, but only a small bit.
“So what that tells me is that we have to just wait and see a bit longer – this could be a pause before things go up, it could be the very first signs that things are beginning to stabilise but at a high rate.
“On cases, they are now starting to fall, but that mainly reflects the fact that this big wave we’ve had in teenagers is now starting to slip away. But my worry is that the deaths are increasing and that shows that the infection is now starting to penetrate into those older age groups.
Updated
Ukraine health minister tells protestors: 'anti-vaccination spirit quickly disappears in intensive care units'
Faced with rising case numbers, the Ukrainian government has enacted a series of anti-Covid measures. Teachers, government employees and other workers have been told to get fully vaccinated by 8 November or face having their salary payments suspended. In addition, proof of vaccination or a negative test is now required to board planes, trains and long-distance buses. That has led to protests in the street today in the capital Kyiv.
Reuters reports that Ukraine lagged behind other European countries in obtaining coronavirus vaccines earlier this year and is now struggling to persuade a sceptical public to take them.
“Such rallies of people that we see today, with calls not to get vaccinated, in my opinion, make a mockery of our doctors and families, who, unfortunately, have lost their relatives due to the coronavirus,” Ukrainian health minister Viktor Lyashko told a televised news conference.
“Trust me, this anti-vaccination spirit quickly disappears in intensive care units, and fake certificates don’t work,” he said.
Updated
Queues outside Cop26 in Glasgow 'really concerning' during pandemic – health expert
A health expert in Scotland has described the scenes of delegates queuing at the Cop26 conference in Glasgow as “really concerning” during a pandemic.
Prof Devi Sridhar, a professor of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, said seeing pictures of hundreds of people in close proximity has left her anxious knowing how “fragile” the situation has been.
PA Media reports that, asked about the queues, Prof Sridhar told BBC Good Morning Scotland: “It is really concerning, this week I have been quite anxious seeing all that and knowing how fragile the situation has been.
“We’ve controlled the situation for quite a long time. Can we control it even after this big gathering? That’s the question. Will it lead to a spike, will it lead to a wave, will actually the mitigation measures have been enough?
“I know they thought a lot about making sure people were fully vaccinated, people were testing, it’s a really tricky one because obviously this is the worst timing ever during a pandemic, but at the same time I listened to those people who work in climate and they are saying now is the time, if not now we have an existential threat to humanity.”
Yesterday, Scotland’s health secretary, Humza Yousaf, said “scale and worldwide draw” of the summit “poses a risk of spread of Covid-19 both within delegates and to or from the local population of Scotland and the UK”.
Updated
The number of foreign tourists visiting Spain more than quadrupled in September from a year ago to nearly 4.7 million, official data showed as widespread vaccination and looser travel restrictions enticed back more visitors.
However, Reuters reports that number was still far below the 8.8 million who came to Spain in September of 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic hit.
Updated
Poland reported more than 10,400 Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, a 24% rise week on week, government spokesman Piotr Muller said.
Reuters note that the last time the number of daily infections in Poland was above 10,000 was in late April.
“Unfortunately over 10,400 infections have been reported today, that’s over 24% more than last week,” Muller told Radio Plus.
Ukraine is also one of the countries towards the east of Europe that is seeing rising numbers of Covid cases. This morning, the health ministry has reported 23,393 new cases, which is up on the previous day. The figures state that this number includes 1,406 children and 421 medics among the caseload. There were 720 further deaths, according to a statement the ministry posted on Facebook.
За весь період вакцинальної кампанії проведено понад 18 мільйонів щеплень!
— Ministry of Health of Ukraine (@MoH_Ukraine) November 3, 2021
За добу 02 листопада в Україні:
- зафіксовано 23 393 нових підтверджених випадків COVID-19;
- 310 439 людей вакциновано проти COVID-19.
Докладно: https://t.co/gJC0kZvekI pic.twitter.com/s2UZKuxwxL
Updated
Czech Republic nears 10,000 new daily cases for first time since March
The number of daily Covid-19 cases reported in the Czech Republic neared 10,000 for the first time since March, health ministry data showed.
Reuters reports the country recorded 9,902 new infections yesterday, up from 6,284 on the same day a week ago. Hospitalisations reached more than 2,000 for the first time since May, including 288 people in intensive care.
Yesterday, the head of the Institute for Health Information and Statistics in the Czech Republic, Ladislav Dušek, told Czech Radio that the number of cases was less important than the number of hospitalisations, which he predicted would soon reach 3,000.
He also said that cases in the country were growing not among young people, as was the case in September, but among unvaccinated 30- to 50-year-olds.
Updated
Economic secretary to the Treasury John Glen was asked about Covid in the UK on Sky News during his interview, and was pressed on two things in particular. Firstly he was asked about prime minister Boris Johnson saying he did not accept the premise that the UK was in a worse Covid situation than other comparable western European nations. Glen didn’t really have an answer for that – the numbers speak for themselves – he instead tried to simply go on about the success of the UK’s vaccination programme. Here is a map of case prevalence that clearly shows what an outlier the UK is – although both Belgium and the Netherlands have case numbers gathering pace.
Those vaccine figures don’t bear out Johnson or Glen’s argument though. The EU has collectively given one dose to 80.3% of eligible people, and has 75.2% of people fully vaccinated. The respective figures for the UK are 87% with a first dose and 79.5% fully vaccinated. So the UK rollout has performed better than the EU as a whole.
However, that EU-wide figure includes the extremely low rates in states such as Bulgaria and Romania, where the rate is about 27% and 40% respectively. The UK’s nearest neighbours, France and Ireland, both have higher first dose vaccination rates than the UK.
Secondly, the minister was pressed on what the situation with deaths and hospitalisations would have to be for the government to take action to enact “plan B” and introduce further Covid mitigation measures back to England.
He was unable to lay out that scenario, instead arguing that rates differed all over the country, that restrictions have consequences for people’s lives, and that the government continued to have a rolling discussion about the situation.
Updated
President Duterte says local officials will be punished in Philippines over slow vaccine rollout
Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte said on Wednesday that local government officials will be punished for falling behind their targets for Covid-19 vaccinations.
The Philippines has so far fully immunised a little over a third of 77 million people eligible for shots. Duterte said there was no reason why daily vaccinations could not be ramped up to at least a million from an average of 500,000 since the country has sufficient stock of vaccines.
“We saw fault lines in the overall picture of our vaccination programme. I am not contented,” Duterte said in a recorded address.
Karen Lema reports for Reuters that Duterte said local officials “who are not performing nor using the doses given to them in a most expeditious manner” would be sanctioned and made accountable. He did not spell out penalties.
The government has been gradually easing Covid-19 curbs, and on Wednesday it announced it was lifting the nightly curfew imposed in the capital region from Thursday.
The seven-day average for new cases in the Philippines is around 4,000, down from a peak of about 21,000 in the peak of the last wave of the virus in mid-September.
Updated
Hello, it is Martin Belam here in London. I imagine much of the UK morning media will be dominated by Cop26 in Glasgow rather than Covid, but I will bring you any lines that emerge from the early interviews. There may be some fallout from the resignation of Sir Jeremy Farrar from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), which emerged yesterday. John Glen, the economic secretary to the Treasury, is the government minister being put up for interviews today. Here is the latest UK Covid data.
Updated
The Netherlands reintroduces Covid curbs as cases rise
The Netherlands is bringing back coronavirus measures including a requirement for face masks in many public spaces to combat a surge in cases, prime minister Mark Rutte said on Tuesday.
He said the government will be reintroducing social distancing rules, extending so-called Covid passes to places such as museums and restaurant terraces, AFP reports.
People are also being advised to work from home for at least half the week and avoid rush-hour travel.
The move – which makes the Netherlands one of the first in western Europe to bring back restrictions – comes less than two months after it drastically relaxed anti-Covid measures.
Infections have since been rising for a month after most social distancing measures were scrapped in late September,
“It won’t surprise anyone that we have a difficult message tonight. Infections and hospital admissions are rising quickly,” Rutte told a press conference.
The Netherlands had some of Europe’s most lax restrictions early in the pandemic but drastically tightened up during a brutal second wave last year.
Rutte said masks would be required again in shops and for professions including hairdressers and massage parlours. They were already still obligatory on public transport, although not in stations or on platforms.
Sex workers in the Netherlands – where prostitution is legal – will continue to be excluded from the mask rule.
Updated
Here’s a fun story out of New Zealand today.
Seven gang leaders, representing four of the countries most well-known street gangs, joined forces in a video urging their communities to get vaccinated.
The video was commissioned by the minister for Maori development, Willie Jackson, after a discussion with gang leaders, who then provided footage that was edited by Jackson’s son, Hikurangi, the Herald reported.
In the four-minute video, Denis O’Reilly, who joined the Black Power gang aged 19, says he had “taken a few shots” in his time, including the two shots against Covid-19, and he is asking his community “to do the same”.
Read the full story here.
Hi and welcome back to our global Covid blog.
I’m Samantha Lock and I’ll be reporting from Sydney, Australia, to bring you all the latest developments from around the world.
Less than two months after drastically relaxing Covid restrictions, the Netherlands has become one of the first countries in western Europe to bring back them back again.
Faced with sharply rising coronavirus cases, the prime minister Mark Rutte said the Dutch government would be reinstating an order to wear face masks in public places and mandating an extension for the use of Covid passes in light of rapidly increasing case counts.
The country’s public health institute reported Tuesday that confirmed infections rose 39% compared to the week before and hospital admissions were up 31%.
Tighter curbs are also expected in China after the National Health Commission reported Covid cases surged to a near 3-month high with 93 new local symptomatic cases recorded for Tuesday, up from 54 a day earlier.
A key gathering of the highest-ranking members of the Communist Party in Beijing is expected to go ahead next week.
Here’s a round-up of the Covid headlines you might have missed.
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Australia may soon welcome foreign workers back into the country. NSW premier has pushed for further border re-openings as the state grapples with skilled labour shortages after 18 months of closed borders.
- Australia also remains on track to reach 80% of the population over 16 being fully vaccinated against Covid-19 in a matter of days.
- The Dutch government has reintroduced face masks in an attempt to stop rising Covid-19 cases. Prime minister Mark Rutte said the use of Covid passports would also be broadened out to include museums, gyms and outdoor terraces. The advice comes amid a major surge in new cases in the Netherlands.
- The UK has had its highest number of daily Covid deaths reported since late February, as another 293 people have died within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test.
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UK government is increasingly worried that hospitalisations and deaths among double-vaccinated people could rise due to waning immunity as an estimated 4.5 million people have failed to get their booster shots despite being eligible.
- The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) unanimously voted in favour of the broad use of Pfizer and BioNTech jabs for children as young as 5. The shots could be administered as soon as Wednesday.
- China has urged its citizens to stockpile daily necessities, prompting panic-buying, amid surging vegetable prices linked to recent extreme weather, fears of supply shortages and an ongoing Covid outbreak.
- Romania broke its daily death toll record, after another 591 people died from Covid. It has lagged behind on vaccinations and is well below the average within the EU.
- Russia also set another daily record for Covid deaths reporting 1,178 on Tuesday.
- Greece announced new restrictions on non-vaccinated people and increased fines for non-compliance after reporting a daily record high of Covid-19 cases on Tuesday.
- Public health officials in Ireland say that its case numbers are at their highest point since January, as another 3,726 were registered – 70% higher than a week ago.
- A scientist has quit the UK government’s pandemic advisery body Sage, saying that the Covid crisis is “a long way from over”. Sir Jeremy Farrar, quit the body at the end of October.
- The UK government’s independent vaccine advisers recommended against Covid shots for healthy teenagers despite considering evidence that the jabs would reduce infections, hospitalisations and some deaths in the age group.
