That’s it from me, Samantha Lock, for today.
Please join us a little later for our next Covid blog but in the meantime you can follow along with all the latest developments here.
Summary
Here’s a run down of today’s key stories.
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Europe is once again at centre of the Covid pandemic, the World Health Organization has said. Cases are at near-record levels and 500,000 more deaths are forecast by February. Uneven vaccine coverage and a relaxation of preventive measures have brought Europe to a “critical point” in the pandemic, WHO says.
- The UK has become the first country to approval an oral antiviral pill to treat Covid. Nearly half a million doses of molnupiravir, a pill that can be taken twice daily at home, are due for delivery from mid-November and will be given as a priority to elderly Covid patients and those with particular vulnerabilities, such as weakened immune systems. The drug will initially be given to patients through a national study run by the NHS.
- Central and Eastern Europe are grappling with spiralling coronavirus cases with several countries hitting new daily records in the regions, which have lower vaccination rates than the rest of the continent. Ukraine, Croatia, Slovenia and Slovakia reported their highest ever numbers of daily cases, while other countries registered the most infections in months.Most Central and Eastern European countries have vaccinated about half of their populations or less, which is lower than the European Union average of some 75%.
- Understanding the origins of Covid-19 remains a key focus of the Biden administration and that they will continue pushing for answers, The White House said.
- A study suggests UK Covid cases may have peaked for this year. The study, which estimates the number of Covid cases in the community from the information that users log on an app, found a clear decline in cases in under-18s since mid-October, with infection rates levelling off in most other age groups though still climbing in 55- to 75-year-olds.
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Latvia will allow businesses to fire workers who refuse to either get a Covid vaccine or transfer to remote work, from 15 November as the country battles one of the worst Covid waves in the EU. The new law allows businesses to suspend the unvaccinated without pay if they refuse to either get the Covid jab or, if possible, to get transferred to remote work. They can then fire the employees if they do not get the vaccine in three months of the suspension.
- US vaccine mandate for private sector workers to begin 4 January. President Joe Biden will begin enforcing the mandate that private-sector workers in the US be vaccinated against Covid or be tested weekly from 4 January.
Updated
Cyprus expanded its Covid-19 vaccination booster shot drive on Thursday to include everyone aged 50 and over, as well as those who have been diagnosed as obese irrespective of age.
The country began administering booster shots last month to people aged 60 and over.
Around one in 10 people on Cyprus have been diagnosed with Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic with some 570 having died as a result of the virus, AP reports.
Germany has reported a record number of new Covid cases since the outbreak of the pandemic.
The Robert Koch Institute said 33,949 new cases had been registered in the last 24 hours, up from 28,037 daily cases a week ago. The previous record was 33,777 new cases on 18 December, 2020.
The all-time high comes as the country’s federal Health Minister Jens Spahn is set to meet with the 16 state health ministers to discuss how to limit the spread of the virus in the winter as intensive care units in the hospitals are starting to fill up again and infections among children are skyrocketing.
Germany hasn’t made coronavirus vaccinations obligatory for any professional groups, unlike some of its European counterparts.
It’s Samantha Lock here, taking over from Nadeem Badshah for the next short while.
Here’s a quick update on where Australia stands with Covid.
The state of Victoria has recorded 1,343 Covid cases and 10 deaths, NSW has recorded 249 cases and 3 deaths as the border with Victoria opens.
The Northern Territory town of Katherine has gone into a full 72-hour lockdown after the Top End recorded its first community transmitted Covid-19 case.
The NSW premier Dominic Perottet and prime minister Scott Morrison are expected to make a joint press conference very soon.
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration and unions representing over 70,000 workers reached a deal on Thursday on a Covid-19 vaccine mandate, including on exemption requests and leave policies, Reuters reports.
New York City’s public-sector employee union District Council 37 said union members who have not provided proof of at least one dose of the vaccine will have the option to resign or take a leave of absence. In both cases, employees will maintain their health benefits.
Employees without proof of vaccination who have either not submitted an application for an exemption or have been denied an exemption may be placed on unpaid leave beginning as of last Monday through November 30, the union said. It added that employees will remain eligible for health benefits during that time.
Vaccine developer Novavax Inc said it has completed the submission process for emergency use listing of its Covid-19 vaccine candidate with the World Health Organization, Reuters reports.
The company submitted to the health agency all modules required for the evaluation of NVX-CoV2373, its protein-based vaccine, days after receiving its first emergency use authorisation from Indonesia. “The first authorisation of the Covid-19 vaccine... will fill a vital need for Indonesia, which is the fourth most populous nation on earth and continues to work to procure sufficient vaccine for its population,” chief executive Stanley Erck said during an investor call. The company is also expecting regulators in countries including India and the Philippines to decide on its jab within weeks.
Brazil registered 436 Covid-19 deaths on Thursday and 13,352 additional cases, according to data released by the country’s health ministry.
The South American country has now registered a total of 608,671 coronavirus deaths and 21,849,137 total confirmed cases, Reuters reports.
The US administered 426,728,092 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country as of Thursday morning and distributed 528,775,895 doses, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Those figures are up from the 425,272,828 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by Nov. 3, out of 525,071,855 doses delivered. The agency said 222,591,394 people had received at least one dose, while 193,227,813 people were fully vaccinated as of 6:00 a.m. ET on Thursday, Reuters reports.
The White House said understanding the origins of Covid-19 remains a key focus of Biden administration and that they will continue pushing for answers.
“It’s incredibly important for us to get to the bottom of this,” said spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre.
She said the US and its partners will continue to fight for transparency from China, Reuters reports.
Updated
Scientists on the Zoe Covid study believe UK cases of coronavirus may have peaked for the year, a suggestion that prompted some experts to warn that it was too soon to know how the epidemic would play out in the weeks ahead.
The study, which estimates the number of Covid cases in the community from the information that users log on an app, found a clear decline in cases in under-18s since mid-October, with infection rates levelling off in most other age groups though still climbing in 55- to 75-year-olds.
The trends are based on 42,359 swab tests taken between 16 and 30 October and point to 88,592 daily symptomatic cases, a decrease of 4.7% on the previous week’s Zoe data. The numbers equate to one in 53 people in the UK currently with symptomatic Covid infections.
Pacific islanders at risk of rising sea levels are struggling to be heard at the climate summit in Glasgow as the Covid-19 pandemic impacts travel from the other side of the Earth, Reuters reports.
Only three Pacific leaders - of Palau, Fiji and Tuvalu - have travelled to the COP26 U.N. climate talks in Scotland to make speeches to press for deep cuts in greenhouse gases by major emitters. Usually, almost all the leaders of 14 Pacific island states come to the annual talks. “It has been a huge challenge,” Seve Paeniu, finance minister of Tuvalu, said of getting to Glasgow. He said it was the first time he had left the low-lying nation of about 12,000 people in almost two years. Paeniu faces a three-week quarantine on his return home to Tuvalu, one of the only countries in the world to have recorded zero cases of Covid-19.
The statistics are stark. In the second wave of the pandemic those with Pakistani backgrounds were more than twice as likely to die from Covid-19 than those from white European backgrounds. For those of Bangladeshi heritage the risk was three- to four-fold.
The disproportionate impacts of the pandemic have required policymakers to confront the question as to why some people have experienced far worse outcomes than others.
Now, it seems, part of the explanation could be genetic. A gene has been found that alters the way that cells in the lining of the lungs respond to the Covid-19 infection.
If you carry the low-risk genetic variant your cells will be quicker to batten down the hatches against the virus. With the high-risk gene this defence mechanism is more sluggish, doubling risk of respiratory failure and death.
Updated
Apple Inc will remove its mask mandate for customers at many US retail stores from Friday as Covid-19 cases decline, Bloomberg News reported.
More than 100 of the company’s about 270 stores across the country will scrap the requirement, with more stores adopting it gradually, according to sources.
The mask mandate will continue for Apple’s retail employees, the report added.
Updated
Updated
French health authorities reported 9,502 daily new Covid infections on Thursday, pushing the seven-day moving average of new cases to a six-week high.
That average, which smoothes out daily reporting irregularities, rose to 6,226, a level unseen since 22 September, from a three-month low of 4,172 on 10 October.
It had set a 2021 record of 42,225 in mid-April before falling to a 2021 low of 1,816 at the end of June. The cumulative total of new cases now stands at 7.19 million.
In another sign the virus is ramping up again, the number of patients in intensive care with Covid rose by 3 in 24 hours to 1,099 and by 62 over a week.
France also registered 49 new deaths from coronavirus, taking the total to 117,832. The seven-day moving average of new fatalities reached an almost one-month high of 34.
Updated
Summary
Here is a recap of some of the main developments from today so far:
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Latvia will allow businesses to fire workers who refuse to either get a Covid vaccine or transfer to remote work, as the country battles one of the worst Covid waves in the EU. Taking effect from 15 November, the new law allows businesses to suspend the unvaccinated without pay if they refuse to either get the Covid jab or, if possible, to get transferred to remote work. They can then fire the employees if they do not get the vaccine in three months of the suspension.
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Vienna will tighten coronavirus restrictions to only allow those vaccinated or recovered from Covid to enter restaurants, go to hairdressers and attend bigger gatherings. From the end of next week, negative Covid tests will no longer be sufficient to enter restaurants, for services with close contact such as at hairdressers and for gatherings of 25 people or more, in the Austrian capital.
- Uneven vaccine coverage and a relaxation of preventive measures have brought Europe to a “critical point” in the pandemic, the World Health Organization said, with cases again at near-record levels and 500,000 more deaths forecast by February. Hans Kluge, the WHO’s Europe director, said all 53 countries in the region were facing “a real threat of Covid-19 resurgence or already fighting it” and urged governments to reimpose or continue with social and public health measures. Story here.
- Europe registered a 55% rise in Covid cases in the last four weeks, despite the availability of vaccines, which should serve as a “warning shot” to other regions, the WHO emergency director, Mike Ryan, said.
- The gene responsible for doubling the risk of respiratory failure from coronavirus has been identified by researchers. A study found that about 60% of people with south Asian ancestry carry the high-risk genetic signal, compared with around 15% of those with white European backgrounds. The findings could partly explain why people of south Asian heritage are more vulnerable to the disease. Story here.
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The World Health Organization called for vaccine makers to prioritise deliveries of Covid jabs to the Covax dose-sharing facility for poorer countries and said that no more doses should go to countries with more than 40% coverage. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, said boosters should not be administered except to people who are immunocompromised.
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Tens of thousands of care home staff in England have not been fully vaccinated against coronavirus and are due to lose their jobs next week. The UK government has made it mandatory for staff in registered care homes in England to have both jabs as a condition of deployment, unless they are exempt for valid medical reasons. With the deadline next Thursday, sector leaders believe there may be an exodus of staff which they say will threaten safe care.
- The European Union’s drug regulator is in discussions with AstraZeneca over possible authorisation of booster doses of the drugmaker’s Covid vaccine, after it already gave the green light to mRNA booster shots.
- Joe Biden will begin enforcing his mandate that private-sector workers in the US be vaccinated against Covid or be tested weekly from 4 January, in a reprieve to companies struggling with labour shortages during the crucial US holiday season. US officials also said a requirement that federal contractors be vaccinated was moved back a month to the same date. Millions of workers in healthcare facilities and nursing homes participating in Medicare and Medicaid will also need to get their shots by 4 January.
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Carbon emissions have rebounded to near pre-pandemic levels, according to a study, with coal and natural gas emissions surging in the power and industry sectors even as transportation emissions remain low. To reach net zero in the next three decades, drastic CO2 reductions are needed, said the study’s lead author, Pierre Friedlingstein, a climate modelling researcher at the University of Exeter. “What needs to be done every year between now and 2050 is – broadly speaking – about the same [reduction] as we had during the Covid crisis,” he said.
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The UK became the first country in the world to approve the first pill designed to treat symptomatic Covid. The oral antiviral pill - molnupiravir - will be given as a priority to elderly patients with Covid and those with particular vulnerabilities, such as weakened immune systems. The health secretary, Sajid Javid, said the treatment would be a “gamechanger” for the most frail and immunosuppressed. Story here.
Updated
Latvia allows businesses to sack unvaccinated workers
The Latvian parliament on Thursday allowed businesses to fire workers who refuse to either get a Covid vaccine or transfer to remote work, as the country battles one of the worst Covid waves in the EU, Reuters reports.
About 61% of Latvian adults are fully vaccinated, less than the EU average of 75%.
The country was the first in the EU to return to a lockdown this autumn as Covid cases spiked, and has asked other EU members for medical help as makeshift Covid facilities are installed in halls and garages of its hospitals.
The new law allows businesses to suspend the unvaccinated without pay if they refuse to either get the Covid jab or, if possible, to get transferred to remote work. They can then fire the employees if they do not get the vaccine in three months of the suspension.
“There is a sufficient reason to believe that such person is not suitable for the position,” the Latvian government wrote in a submission to the parliament, explaining the reasoning.
The new rules will take effect on 15 November as Latvia emerges from the lockdown, and there are exceptions for those with medical reason to not vaccinate, such as recent survivors of the disease.
Previously, the vaccine mandate only applied only to workers in healthcare, education, and social care, the Latvian public broadcaster reported.
Updated
Spain’s coronavirus infection rate rose above 50 cases per 100,000 people on Thursday, crossing back over the threshold considered “medium risk” by the health ministry just four weeks after dropping into low-risk territory.
More than 80% of Spain’s population has been fully vaccinated against Covid and most restrictions on movement and socialising have been dropped, although masks remain mandatory in enclosed spaces.
The infection rate, or incidence, as measured over the preceding 14 days, reached 51.6 cases per 100,000 people on Thursday. It had been edging higher since bottoming out at 41.9 cases per 100,000 people on 19 October.
The health ministry added 3,291 cases to its tally of infections, bringing the total up to 5.02 million people since the pandemic began. The death toll rose by 15 to 87,477.
Updated
A quarter of young teenagers in England have had a first dose of Covid-19 vaccine. An estimated 25.3% of 12 to 15-year-olds had received a jab as of 3 November, up from 20.1% a week earlier, UK government figures show.
Take-up of vaccines among young teens in England has picked up pace in recent days, after jabs became widely available at vaccination centres across the country. Previously first doses were being delivered mostly in schools.
England still lags some way behind Wales and Scotland, however. Some 45.9% of 12 to 15-year-olds in Wales are thought to have received a first dose, along with 54.7% in Scotland.
Figures for take-up are calculated slightly differently in the three nations, with England and Wales using age groups based on their national immunisation databases, and Scotland using population estimates from the Office for National Statistics.
Vaccines have been available to 12 to 15-year-olds in Scotland since 20 September, and have been delivered mostly at drop-in clinics and other community settings.
The rollout in England also began on 20 September, but was initially delivered mainly by NHS teams in schools. This changed just before the half-term holiday, when parents and children became able to book a jab online at a local vaccination centre.
Take-up in England is also likely to have been affected by the level of infection circulating in the community.
A first dose of vaccine cannot be delivered to someone if they are within four weeks of testing positive for Covid, waiting for the results of a coronavirus test, or self-isolating.
Around 9% of children in England in school years seven to 11 were likely to have tested positive for Covid-19 in the week to 22 October, the highest rate for any age group, according to estimates from the ONS.
Meanwhile, there are signs that take-up of first doses among young teenagers in Scotland might be slowing, with the latest figure of 54.7% up only slightly from 53.2% a week earlier.
NHS Wales began offering a first dose of vaccine to 12 to 15-year-olds from 4 October. Most vaccines are being given at vaccination centres, with a small number being delivered in schools.
In Northern Ireland, 12 to 15-year-olds are being offered the vaccine in schools, but no figures have yet been published on the level of take-up.
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Vienna said it would tighten coronavirus restrictions to only allow those vaccinated or recovered from Covid-19 to enter restaurants, go to hairdressers and attend bigger gatherings.
The new rules in the Austrian capital come as the daily surge in nationwide cases hit a record high for 2021, at almost 8,600 infections.
“The situation in all of Austria is serious,” Vienna mayor Michael Ludwig told a press conference on Thursday as he announced the stricter rules for the capital.
From the end of next week negative Covid tests will no longer be sufficient to enter restaurants, for services with close contact such as at hairdressers and for gatherings of 25 people or more, he said.
Austria’s vaccination rate has stagnated at 64% of its almost 9 million people, below the EU-wide average of almost 67%.
Two provinces have launched lotteries - with cars as prizes in the state of Burgenland - as part of their vaccination campaigns.
So far, more than 11,400 people have died of Covid in Austria.
Updated
Europe registered a 55% rise in Covid cases in the last four weeks, despite the availability of vaccines, which should serve as a “warning shot” to other regions, World Health Organization (WHO) officials said on Thursday.
WHO emergency director Mike Ryan said that some European countries had “suboptimal vaccination coverage” despite availability.
“It’s a warning shot for the world to see what is happening in Europe despite availability of vaccination,” Ryan told a news conference.
WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said that Indian drugmaker Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin showed about 70% efficacy against the Delta variant. The WHO said on Wednesday that it has granted approval for its emergency use listing.
Related: Europe once again at centre of Covid pandemic, says WHO
Updated
Gene that doubles risk of respiratory failure from Covid identified
Researchers have identified the gene responsible for doubling the risk of respiratory failure from coronavirus.
About 60% of people with south Asian ancestry carry the high-risk genetic signal, a new study found.
Scientists say this partly explains the excess deaths experienced in some UK communities, and the impact of Covid-19 in the Indian subcontinent, but stress that they are not suggesting that socioeconomic factors are not important for Covid risk and outcome.
The gene is also common in the European population, occurring in about 15%.
Study co-lead Prof James Davies, who worked as an NHS consultant in intensive care medicine during the pandemic and is an associate professor of genomics at Oxford University’s Radcliffe Department of Medicine, said:
If you have the high-risk genotype and you get very unwell with Covid, there’s a 50% chance that that wouldn’t have happened to you had you had the lower-risk genotype.
The study, published in Nature Genetics, also found that the gene does not alter immune cell function.
Because the effect is in the biology of the lungs, people with the higher-risk version of the genes should respond fully to vaccination, the scientists say.
Previous research had identified a stretch of DNA on chromosome three that doubled the risk of adults under the age of 65 from Covid. But it was not known how this genetic signal worked to increase the risk, nor the exact genetic change that was responsible.
Study co-lead Prof Jim Hughes, professor of gene regulation at the University of Oxford, said:
The reason this has proved so difficult to work out, is that the previously identified genetic signal affects the ‘dark matter’ of the genome. We found that the increased risk is not because of a difference in gene coding for a protein, but because of a difference in the DNA that makes a switch to turn a gene on. It’s much harder to detect the gene which is affected by this kind of indirect switch effect.
The gene was identified using a combination of artificial intelligence and cutting-edge molecular technology, which visualises the structure of DNA inside cells in unprecedented detail.
Dr Damien Downes, who led the laboratory work from the Prof Hughes research group, said:
Surprisingly, as several other genes were suspected, the data showed that a relatively unstudied gene called LZTFL1 causes the effect.
The researchers found that the higher-risk version of the gene probably prevents the cells lining airways and the lungs from responding to the virus properly.
They hope drugs and other therapies could target the pathway preventing the lung lining from transforming to less specialised cells, raising the possibility of new treatments customised for those most likely to develop severe symptoms.
Davies said:
The genetic factor we have found explains why some people get very seriously ill after coronavirus infection. It shows that the way in which the lung responds to the infection is critical. This is important because most treatments have focused on changing the way in which the immune system reacts to the virus.
The study also found that 2% of people with African-Caribbean ancestry carried the higher-risk genotype, meaning this genetic factor does not completely explain the higher death rates reported for black and minority ethnic communities.
Davies added:
Although we cannot change our genetics, our results show that the people with the higher risk gene are likely to particularly benefit from vaccination. Since the genetic signal affects the lung rather than the immune system it means that the increased risk should be cancelled out by the vaccine.
Updated
UK records 214 deaths and 37,269 new infections
A further 214 deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid test have been recorded in the past 24 hours in the UK, and another 37,269 new cases reported, according to the latest figures from the government dashboard.
This compares with 41,299 cases and 217 deaths reported the day before.
Updated
Prioritise getting Covid vaccines to poorer countries, not profit, WHO tells manufacturers
The World Health Organization has called for vaccine makers to prioritise deliveries of Covid jabs to the Covax dose-sharing facility for poorer countries and said that no more doses should go to countries with more than 40% coverage.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, said boosters should not be administered except to people who are immunocompromised.
“We continue to call on manufacturers of vaccines that already have WHO emergency use listing to prioritise Covax, not shareholder profit,” he said.
The WHO listing of Indian drugmaker Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin on Wednesday contributed to vaccine equity, he said.
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The Eiffel Tower is clocking up visitor numbers not seen since Covid-19 kept most tourists away and ripped a deep hole in its finances, AFP reports.
A substantial job on the “Iron Lady” has resumed after an interruption during the pandemic because of high lead levels, its operator said, with the aim of having the landmark look its best in time for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The Eiffel Tower had “a good month of October”, operator Sete said, thanks to tourists returning to Paris.
It received an average of more than 20,000 visitors per day in October, up from 13,000 during the summer when curbs kept down numbers allowed into the tower’s lifts. October weekend numbers were better than in 2019, Sete said.
One big factor was the return of American tourists, who accounted for 10% of overall visits, as well as tourists from nearby European countries.
But overall visits this year are still only expected to reach 1.5 million, against 6.2 million in 2019, leaving the tower in dire financial difficulties. Sete expects to post a loss of €75m (£64m) this year, adding to 2020’s loss of €52m.
Sete has arranged a near-€60m recapitalisation by the city of Paris, its main shareholder, plus a government-backed loan of €25m.
To make up for the shortfall, the operator has asked for help elsewhere, notably from the French government. “Discussions are ongoing,” it said.
The Eiffel Tower shut from mid-March to late June last year during the first Covid lockdown, and then again from end-October 2020 to mid-July of this year, its longest closure since the second world war.
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Tens of thousands of care home staff in England have not been fully vaccinated against coronavirus and are due to lose their jobs next week, PA Media reports.
About 89.4% of staff working in older age care homes had received two vaccine doses as of 31 October, according to the latest figures from NHS England.
The remaining 49,040 staff – about one in 10 of the total – had not been recorded as having received two doses at this point.
The equivalent figure for staff in care homes for under-65s is 13.6% – 11,924 staff.
The data suggests a total of 60,964 staff have not had a second jab or their second jab has not been reported as of the end of October.
The total includes staff who cannot be vaccinated for valid medical reasons and those whose vaccination status is unknown, while there may also be a time lag in some vaccinations being reported.
There is no published data on how many staff have self-certified as exempt or have applied for official proof. But it is understood that this is about several thousand staff.
The UK government has made it mandatory for staff in registered care homes in England to have both jabs as a condition of deployment, unless they are exempt for valid medical reasons.
The deadline for staff to be double-jabbed is next Thursday.
Sector leaders believe there may be an exodus of staff which they say will threaten safe care.
A government consultation on extending the mandatory vaccination condition to wider social care and NHS staff has recently concluded. The government is expected to make an announcement imminently.
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Among the UK’s under-18s, vaccine uptake is low, and there is a growing issue with misinformation spread on social media and at school. Is there anything a concerned caregiver can do? Emine Saner speaks to pro-vax parents with vaccine-hesitant kids to find out:
The European Union’s drug regulator said on Thursday it was in discussions with AstraZeneca over possible authorisation of booster doses of the drugmaker’s Covid vaccine, after it already gave the green light to mRNA booster shots.
“AstraZeneca is submitting data to us. Actually today they submitted a new package of data that could support an extension to use the booster,” the European Medicines Agency’s head of vaccines strategy, Marco Cavaleri, said at a briefing.
“We will be discussing with them whether this data could be sufficient for [authorisation] or whether we need more evidence,” Cavaleri added.
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The new US workplace rule that requires tens of millions of Americans to get vaccinated for Covid or submit to weekly testing will exclude employees who work exclusively outdoors, according to regulatory filing by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
An estimated 2.4 million healthcare workers will need to be vaccinated or replaced under a related rule issued by Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
For more on that story, please see 12.59pm.
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Millions of people around the world have quit their jobs during the pandemic or are planning to. Emma Beddington has some advice for business leaders worried about the growing gaps in their workforce on how to encourage staff to stay.
An extract from her column reads:
In August, 4.3 million Americans resigned, beating the previous record, set in April. In the UK, the interminable carnival of Brexit gave us a summer of incredulous headlines like “HGV drivers paid more than CEOs”. (If only they were; it seems obvious that people who sleep in laybys, relying on baby wipes for personal hygiene and ruining their health to keep us fed, should earn more than anyone whose day involves nothing more arduous than some blue-sky thinking conducted from an ergonomic desk chair.) But the UK staffing crisis is deepening: more than a quarter of firms surveyed last month said a lack of staff was affecting their ability to operate.
This new economic landscape, for all its real horrors, offers scope to do things differently. Employers need us; although we still require food, shelter, wifi and Netflix (the 2021 pyramid of needs), we seem to have entered a period of existential reckoning about the role of work in our lives. Tǎng píng (“lying flat”), the Chinese protest movement against a frenetic working culture that treats employees as expendable, profit-maximising units, is becoming a reasoned philosophy and gathering momentum.
Of course, the thing about not caring quite so much is that it is the perfect negotiating position. For once, we have an opportunity to exercise our bargaining power, so what do we want? Justice, yes, but here are some more specific suggestions.
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US vaccine mandate for private sector workers to begin 4 January
Joe Biden will begin enforcing his mandate that private-sector workers be vaccinated against Covid or be tested weekly from 4 January, in a reprieve to companies struggling with labour shortages during the crucial US holiday season, Reuters reports.
US officials on Thursday also said a requirement that federal contractors be vaccinated was moved back a month to the same date. Millions of workers in healthcare facilities and nursing homes participating in Medicare and Medicaid will also need to get their shots by 4 January.
President Biden established the requirements to raise vaccination rates and get more people back to work. But in numerous meetings with companies and industry groups representing retailers, logistics companies, construction workers, executives asked the administration to delay the implementation deadline after the New Year, citing concerns about worker shortages.
Employers will also not be required to provide or pay for tests and the rule offers medical and religious exemptions.
Failure to comply with the mandate will result in an approximately $14,000 fine per violation with a scale that increases with several violations, senior administration officials said. They did not offer clarity on whether workers would be fired if they refused to get the shot or get tested.
“It is important to understand that there are still so many workers who are not protected and remain at risk from being seriously ill or dying from Covid-19,” said a senior administration official.
Biden initially set a deadline for 70% of US adults to get at least one shot by 4 July, but the White House missed the deadline as it underestimated growing anti-vaccine sentiment in the country fuelled by rightwing talk show hosts, anti-vaxxers, online disinformation campaigns and resistance from Republican lawmakers.
Biden announced his mandate in September after his administration’s efforts reached a breaking point as the country was struggling to control the virus spread.
A large swath of the population was refusing to accept free vaccinations despite a major rollout and incentive campaign from the administration involving 42,000 pharmacies, dozens of mass vaccination sites, free rides and free beer.
In many parts of the country, it worked. Millions lined up for shots, and the vaccination rate increased nationwide with latest data showing 70% of US adults have been fully vaccinated and 80% have received at least one shot.
But an average of 1,100 Americans are still dying daily from Covid, according to the latest US data, the vast majority of them unvaccinated. Covid has killed more than 745,000 Americans.
The mandate is likely to unleash a frenzied legal battle that will hinge on a rarely used law and questions over federal power and authority over healthcare.
“The new emergency temporary standard is well within OSHA’s authority under the law...there is a well established legal precedent for OSHA’s authority,” a senior administration official said, explaining the legal authority of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to issue the rule.
The mandate will apply to businesses with 100 or more employees and could affect roughly 84 million workers nationwide, the White House estimates. Goldman Sachs economists estimate that as few as 12 million people would be vaccinated as a result of the mandate.
Along with Biden’s executive order that requires all federal workers and contractors be vaccinated, the rules cover 100 million people, about two-thirds of the US workforce, the White House estimates.
The rule for healthcare workers covers 17 million employees across 76,000 healthcare facilities even though a majority of them are already vaccinated, data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) shows.
The administration estimates the rule will prevent over 250,000 hospitalisations and save thousands of lives during the six months after it is implemented.
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Carbon emissions have rebounded to near pre-pandemic levels, according to a study released on Thursday, with coal and natural gas emissions surging in the power and industry sectors even as transportation emissions remain low.
“We were expecting to see some rebound. What surprised us was the intensity and rapidity of the rebound,” said the study’s lead author Pierre Friedlingstein, a climate modelling researcher at the University of Exeter.
In 2020, CO2 emissions fell by a record 1.9bn tons – a 5.4% drop – as countries locked down and economies ground to a halt. The new report, produced by the Global Carbon Project, forecasts emissions to rise by 4.9% this year.
Among major emitters, China and India are expected to post higher emissions in 2021 than in 2019, while the US and Europe are expected to have slightly slower emissions.
China was an outlier in 2020 because investments to spur pandemic recovery led to large increases in coal use, even as emissions in other countries dropped.
The study projected total global emissions this year to reach 36.4bn tons of CO2.
The report comes as global leaders meet at a UN climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, to try to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change.
In order to do so, scientists say, CO2 emissions must reach net zero by 2050. Total global commitments to reduce emissions fall far short of meeting this goal.
Already, deadly wildfires, hurricanes, and floods have become more frequent and more intense because of climate change, and sea level rises are locked in for centuries to come.
To reach net zero in the next three decades, drastic CO2 reductions are needed, said Friedlingstein.
What needs to be done every year between now and 2050 is – broadly speaking – about the same [reduction] as we had during the Covid crisis.
At the current level of emissions, the researchers found, it will take only 11 years before the odds of staying within the Paris Agreement’s goal of 1.5C of warming will be no better than a coin toss.
You can follow the Guardian’s live coverage of day four of Cop26 here:
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The mayor of Los Angeles has tested positive for coronavirus a day after attending a breakfast with the British prime minster, the leaders of the UK’s devolved nations and a host of other heads of government.
Eric Garcetti, who is fully vaccinated, is now isolating in his hotel room and is “feeling good”, a message posted on the mayor of LA Twitter account said.
Mayor Garcetti tested positive for COVID-19 earlier today.
— MayorOfLA (@MayorOfLA) November 3, 2021
He is feeling good and isolating in his hotel room. He is fully vaccinated.
Boris Johnson made a brief appearance at the event on Tuesday in the blue zone at Cop26 in Glasgow.
Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, and her Welsh counterpart, Mark Drakeford, hosted the event, along with Northern Ireland’s first minister, Paul Givan, and the deputy first minister, Michelle O’Neill.
Among those in attendance at the breakfast were the prime ministers of Norway, Sweden, Barbados and Vietnam, as well as the UK foreign secretarym Liz Truss. The presidents of Armenia, Costa Rica and Zambia also took part, as well as the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and Glasgow city council leader, Susan Aitken.
Everyone attending the Cop26 blue zone must take a lateral flow test each morning, and increased hygiene procedures are in place at the venue.
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Europe once again at centre of pandemic, WHO says
Uneven vaccine coverage and a relaxation of preventive measures have brought Europe to a “critical point” in the pandemic, the World Health Organization has said, with cases again at near-record levels and 500,000 more deaths forecast by February.
Hans Kluge, the World Health Organization’s Europe director, said all 53 countries in the region were facing “a real threat of Covid-19 resurgence or already fighting it” and urged governments to reimpose or continue with social and public health measures.
“With a widespread resurgence of the virus, I am asking every health authority to carefully re-consider easing or lifting measures at this moment,” he said, adding that even in countries with high vaccination rates, vaccination could only do so much.
The message has always been: do it all. Vaccines are doing what was promised, preventing severe forms of the disease and especially mortality … But they are our most powerful asset only if used alongside public health and social measures.
Catherine Smallwood, WHO Europe’s senior emergency officer, said countries that had mostly lifted preventive measures had experienced a surge in infections.
Vaccinations meant that they had not seen “the same rates of hospitalisation or mortality we would have otherwise expected”, she said.
However, the more cases you have in crude terms, the more people will end up in hospital, and the more people will in the end go on do die. So there’s a very simple explanation for what’s going on. We have many susceptible individuals, including in high-vaccinated countries, and this is leading to unpredictable explosive outbreaks of Covid-19. And that’s not where we want to be right now.
Kluge said case numbers in Europe and central Asia had risen by 6% – and deaths by 12% – in a week, with new daily infections surging by 55% over the past month. Europe and central Asia combined now accounting for 59% of all confirmed cases globally and nearly half of all deaths.
Kluge said the most alarming development was the rapid increase in infections and deaths in older population groups, with hospital admission rates more than doubling in a week and 75% of fatal cases now occurring in people aged 65 years and over.
If we stay on this trajectory, we could see another half a million Covid-19 deaths in Europe and central Asia by the first of February next year, and 43 countries in our region will face high to extreme stress on hospital beds.
Kluge said insufficient vaccination coverage and the relaxation of public health and social measures were to blame. With a billion doses now administered in Europe and central Asia, vaccines “are saving thousands upon thousands of lives”, he said.
But while 70% of people are fully vaccinated in some countries, barely 10% are in others. “Where vaccine uptake is low, in many countries in the Baltics, central and eastern Europe and the Balkans, hospital admission rates are high,” he said.
Authorities must accelerate vaccine, rollouts including booster shots for at-risk groups, he said:
Hospitalisation rates in countries with low vaccine uptake are markedly higher, and rising more quickly, than in those with higher uptake. Most people hospitalised and dying from Covid-19 today are not fully vaccinated.
But public health measures such as test and trace, and social measures such as mask-wearing and social distancing, were equally vital, he said, adding that WHO estimates suggested that 95% universal mask use in Europe and central Asia we “could save up to 188,000 of the half a million lives we may lose” before February.
When applied “correctly and consistently”, preventive measures “allow us to go on with our lives, not the opposite”, Kluge said.
Preventive measures do not deprive people of their freedom, they ensure it.
Covid passes showing proof of vaccination should be viewed as “a collective tool towards individual liberty”, he added.
Updated
Belgium today reported a steep rise in Covid infections and hospitalisations, back to levels last experienced in October 2020, Reuters reports.
It comes three days after the United States advised its citizens against travelling to the country that hosts EU and Nato headquarters.
Data from Belgium’s Sciensano health institute showed 6,728 daily new cases on average in the past 14 days, up 36% from the previous week. An average of 164 patients with Covid were admitted to hospitals daily in the last seven days, a 31% increase, and 343 patients were in intensive care.
Belgium went into its second coronavirus lockdown in October 2020, a few days after recording similar hospitalisation numbers.
On Monday, the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC) added Belgium to its highest risk level, discouraging international travel there for those not fully vaccinated. “Because of the current situation in Belgium, even fully vaccinated travellers may be at risk for getting and spreading Covid-19 variants,” it said.
There are nine other EU countries on the US maximum Covid risk level including Austria, Britain, Croatia, Greece and the Baltic countries.
More than 8.6 million people in Belgium have been fully vaccinated, 74% of its population. But the country has eased face mask requirements in recent months and is now facing a fresh spike in infections as winter nears.
So far in the nearly two years of the pandemic, Belgium has had one of the world’s highest per-capita mortality rates, mostly due to deaths in care homes in the first wave.
Updated
A recent surge in Covid cases in the US state of Colorado has increased the number of unvaccinated patients needing care and prompted concerns that hospitals may have to ration services for other issues.
Dr Anuj Mehta, a pulmonologist with Denver Health who serves on the governor’s expert emergency epidemic response committee, said:
If you have been waiting for an elective procedure for the last 18 months and are finally scheduled – you’re vaccinated, you don’t have Covid – your procedure might still get canceled if a hospital is totally full.
While this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated at this point – and the surges in the hospital are entirely being driven by unvaccinated folks – it is having a massive bleed-over effect onto the entire population.
There are about 1,300 patients hospitalised with Covid in Colorado, according to the New York Times data; that’s the highest number since December 2020, when the figure rose above 1,900 patients.
That number has increased by 15% over the last two weeks, the third largest increase in the country, and at a time when the national picture for the US is of a Delta variant surge that is firmly on the way down.
The trend in Colorado can be attributed in part to the almost 40% of the state population that has not been vaccinated and people again gathering indoors without masks. It also shows that, despite the national downwards trends of infections, that regional surges can still happen that can cause havoc in state healthcare systems.
Read the full story from Eric Berger here:
Updated
European countries must work harder to prevent the coronavirus spreading further as deaths and new cases surge, the World Health Organization’s Europe head said on Thursday.
Current transmission rates in 53 European countries are of “grave concern” and new cases are nearing record levels, exacerbated by the more transmissible Delta variant of the virus, Hans Kluge told a media briefing.
We must change our tactics, from reacting to surges of Covid-19, to preventing them from happening in the first place.
The region recorded a 6% increase in new cases last week of nearly 1.8m new cases, compared to the week before. The number of deaths rose 12% in the same period.
On the current trajectory, Kluge said, another 500,000 Covid-related deaths could occur in the region by February next year.
Today every single country in Europe and central Asia is facing a real threat of Covid-19 resurgence or already fighting it.
Updated
Austria’s daily new coronavirus cases surged on Thursday towards the record set a year ago, making a lockdown for the unvaccinated ever more likely as the government struggles to convince holdouts to get their shot, Reuters reports.
Roughly 64% of Austria’s population is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. That is in line with the EU average but it is also among the lowest rates in western Europe.
Many Austrians are sceptical about vaccines, a view encouraged by the far-right Freedom party, the third-biggest in parliament.
The number of new daily infections rose to 8,594 on Thursday, data from the interior and health ministries showed. That was a 32% increase from Wednesday and approaching the record of more than 9,000 set in November of last year, when the second of three nationwide lockdowns was ordered.
Having taken a hands-off approach to restrictions last summer, the conservative-led government has since outlined a plan under which the unvaccinated population will be placed under lockdown, with restrictions on their daily movements, once 600 intensive-care beds are filled with patients with Covid-19.
Under that incremental plan the unvaccinated, not including those who have recovered from a coronavirus infection, will be barred from cafes and restaurants once 500 intensive-care beds are occupied by patients with Covid. The number of those beds currently in use is 352 and rising by more than 10 a day.
Of Austria’s nine provinces, Salzburg and Upper Austria accounted for 45% of Thursday’s new cases. Those two conservative-led provinces have by far the most infections relative to population. Upper Austria, a Freedom party stronghold, has Austria’s lowest vaccination rate.
Updated
UK becomes first country to approve antiviral pill to treat symptomatic Covid in vulnerable patients
The UK has become the first country in the world to approve the first pill designed to treat symptomatic Covid.
Having been approved by the UK medicines regulator, the “gamechanging” tablet – molnupiravir – will be given twice a day to vulnerable patients recently diagnosed with the disease.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said the drug is safe and effective at reducing the risk of hospital admission and death in people with mild to moderate Covid who are at extra risk from the virus.
Molnupiravir is for people who have had a positive Covid test and have at least one risk factor for developing severe illness, such as obesity, being over the age of 60, diabetes or heart disease.
The MHRA said the drug should be taken as soon as possible following a positive Covid test and within the first five days.
In clinical trials the pill, originally developed to treat flu, cut the risk of hospitalisation or death by about half.
The health secretary, Sajid Javid, said the treatment as a “gamechanger” for the most frail and immunosuppressed.
In a statement he said:
Today is a historic day for our country, as the UK is now the first country in the world to approve an antiviral that can be taken at home for Covid.
This will be a gamechanger for the most vulnerable and the immunosuppressed, who will soon be able to receive the ground-breaking treatment.
Developed by the US drug company Merck, molnupiravir is the first dedicated oral antiviral medication for Covid.
It works by interfering with the virus’s replication. It prevents the virus from multiplying, keeping levels low in the body and therefore reducing the severity of the disease.
Merck said that should make it equally effective against new variants of the virus as it evolves in the future.
According to data published in a press release and not yet peer-reviewed, clinical trials on 775 patients in the study found:
- 7.3% of those given molnupiravir were hospitalised
- that compares with 14.1% of patients who were given a placebo or dummy pill
- there were no deaths in the molnupiravir group, but eight patients who were given a placebo in the trial later died of Covid
Trial results suggest molnupiravir needs to be taken soon after symptoms develop to have an effect.
An earlier study in patients who had already been hospitalised with severe Covid was halted after disappointing results.
Updated
Today so far
- Diwali celebrations have been taking place in south Asia, amid concern that they may cause another rise in Covid cases.
- After months of delay, the World Health Organization (WHO) has finally given emergency approval to Covaxin, the Indian domestically developed Covid vaccine, which was rolled out as part of India’s vaccination drive.
- Germany reported its highest-ever daily new infection tally of 33,949, ahead of a two-day meeting of state health ministers. There’s a note of caution on the numbers, though – they were likely inflated by a public holiday in parts of Germany on Monday that led to a delay in data-gathering. The previous record was on 18 December, with 33,777 cases.
- The German health minister, Jens Spahn, has warned that Germany is developing a “massive” pandemic of the unvaccinated.
- The total number of Covid-19 cases in Ukraine has exceeded 3 million, with more than 70,000 deaths, the health ministry said today. It also registered a record daily high of 27,377 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours
- Slovakia reported 6,713 new Covid-19 cases, the highest daily tally since the pandemic hit last year. Bulgaria, with the lowest vaccine uptake in the EU, saw 4,922 new cases. Hungary reported a jump in daily Covid-19 infections to 6,268 with the government saying that the daily tally had more than doubled from the middle of last week.
- Europe has been warned by the World Health Organization that due to rising case numbers, it could record “another half a million Covid-19 deaths” by February.
- In the UK the Office for National Statistics estimates that 1.2 million people in private households were experiencing self-reported long Covid as of 2 October 2021. This is just shy of 2% of the population.
- A separate study has recorded its highest overall Covid infection rate ever for England, at 1.72%.
- China is on high alert at its ports as strict policies on travel in and out of the country are enforced to reduce Covid risks amid a fresh domestic outbreak.
- A poll in the US found that Americans are increasingly turning their attention away from the coronavirus and focusing it elsewhere. Just 12% of US adults rated public health issues such as the coronavirus as a top national priority, even as the country continues to experience over 1,000 deaths per day.
- South Korea has opened Covid-19 quarantine centres to house potentially thousands of teenagers ahead of the country’s annual ritual of eight-hour college entrance exam in two weeks.
- The Lesotho government’s plans to implement a Covid passport system this week are being undermined by widespread fraud involving certificates being sold to unvaccinated people.
- 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.
On the site today there is live UK politics with Andrew Sparrow – which has been incredibly eventful this morning. Bibi van der Zee is covering Cop26 live. Lucy Campbell will be here to take over from me shortly, and I’m off to host our Thursday quiz. See you tomorrow.
Updated
ONS estimates 1.2 million people in UK have self-reported long Covid symptoms
In the UK there is an Office of National Statistics (ONS) bulletin this morning, and they find that an estimated 1.2 million people in private households were experiencing self-reported long Covid as of 2 October 2021. This is just shy of 2% of the population.
The ONS say that of those reporting long Covid symptoms, about a third (35%) were experiencing these symptoms for at least a year after their first suspected infection. Symptoms adversely affected the day-to-day activities of about two-thirds of those with self-reported long Covid.
Symptoms reported include
- fatigue (55%)
- shortness of breath (39%)
- loss of smell (33%)
- difficulty concentrating (30%)
The study found that self-reported long Covid was more common among those aged 35 to 69 years, females, people living in more deprived areas, those working in health or social care, and those with another health condition or disability. The ONS noted that compared with the survey the previous month, self-reported long Covid was higher among young people aged 12-16 or 17-24 years.
Updated
There’s a World Health Organization briefing about Covid in Europe going on at the moment. I’ll have a full report in due course, but just for now there’s quite an alarming message coming out about the prospects for a winter wave sweeping the continent.
#BREAKING Europe could see 'another half a million Covid-19 deaths' by February: WHO pic.twitter.com/GGJn5I0rh9
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) November 4, 2021
Updated
Poll – only 12% of US adults rate Covid as a top national priority, even as more than 1,000 die daily
Americans are increasingly turning their attention away from the coronavirus and focusing it elsewhere, especially toward rising consumer prices and other economic areas where Democrats are less trusted, Reuters/Ipsos polling shows.
While Covid-19 continues to claim more than 1,000 lives a day in the US, the 18-22 October national opinion survey shows the country’s fixation on public health and diseases has faded since the beginning of the year. In October, just 12% of US adults rated public health issues such as the coronavirus as a top national priority, down from 20% in February.
Chris Kahn reports for Reuters that it is a dramatic shift in the political landscape in just one year. Joe Biden and his Democratic party won the White House and control of Congress last year on a campaign focused on the pandemic and the former president Donald Trump’s handling of it.
Updated
As is often the case at the moment, we have two other live blogs running alongside this, which may be of interest to you. Andrew Sparrow is live with our UK politics blog. There is more than enough fallout from yesterday’s vote to demolish the oversight of MPs’ behaviour to keep him busy today.
Also live is my colleague Bibi van der Zee, who continues our coverage of the Cop26 conference in Glasgow. You can find that here.
I will be continuing here with the latest coronavirus-related news from the UK and around the world.
Updated
I know it is early for a Christmas tale, but Reuters have this from Naples this morning. The Three Wise Men will have something extra to carry along with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh when they travel to visit Baby Jesus this year: Covid-19 health passes.
Craftsmen along San Gregorio Armeno street in the historical centre of Naples, Italy, are famous for using art to adapt their nativity scenes to the times they are living in.
“Last year was the year of the masks, so the figurines of Mary, Joseph and the Three Wise Men were wearing masks. This year it seemed like the right thing to keep following this direction,” said craftsman Marco Ferrigno.
The Green Pass, which shows someone has received at least one vaccine dose, tested negative or recently recovered from the virus, is a requirement in Italy for travel on much inter-city transport and to access a range of cultural and leisure venues.
“Because the Three Wise Men have to take a long journey to the crib, I gave them all their own Green Pass so that they have the proper documents for travelling,” said Ferrigno.
Updated
Slovakia reported 6,713 new Covid-19 cases, the highest daily tally since the pandemic hit last year, data from Health Ministry showed.
Reuters note the country of 5.5 million has 1,890 patients in hospital, including 327 in a serious condition. The ministry said that 79% of the hospitalised people were not vaccinated.
Updated
In Kiev, the director of hospital number four, Tetiana Mostepan, says: “Five of our patients have died since yesterday.” In the hospital’s morgue, rows of bodies in black plastic bags testify to the deadly surge in infections. The hospital’s 455 Covid beds are 70% full.
Among those hospitalised, “only 3-4%” were vaccinated, Mostepan says.
A despatch from Agence France-Presse today says that Ukraine, one of Europe’s poorest countries, has been hit by a huge rise in infections with the more contagious Delta variant. The country of about 40 million reported 720 new daily Covid deaths on Wednesday, the third-highest number in the world after the US and Russia.
Ukrainians have access to three vaccines – AstraZeneca, Pfizer and the Chinese-made CoronaVac – with about 180 vaccination centres in Kiev alone, including in shopping malls and at the main train station.
But so far only 7.6 million people in Ukraine have been fully vaccinated – less than 20% of the population – despite a strong government push and restrictions on the unvaccinated.
Some Ukrainians even prefer to pay for fake certificates, and police have opened hundreds of cases into false vaccination documents.
“It is distrust of the state,” says Mostepan. “Covid is preventable, so why not prevent it instead of listening to all sorts of nonsense?” she says.
Last week, President Volodymyr Zelensky pleaded with Ukrainians to ignore the noise and get vaccinated. “Switch off social networks and turn on your brain,” he said.
Updated
Here’s a reminder of our science editor Ian Sample’s overnight story that England’s Covid infection rates doubled in over-65s between September and October:
The study, which analyses swabs from a representative group of people in the community whether they have symptoms or not, recorded its highest overall infection rate ever for England, at 1.72%. The study launched in May 2020, after the peak of the spring wave that year and, because of a pause in data-taking, missed the peak of last winter’s wave.
By far the sharpest rise in cases between September and October was seen in the south-west, home to the 10 lower-tier local authorities with the highest rates in the country. According to the study, prevalence of the infection almost quadrupled from 0.59% in September to 2.18% in October in areas around Bristol, Swindon and Gloucester.
Prof Paul Elliott, director of the React study, said the study could not explain why cases had surged in the south-west, but added that the rise might be related to issues at the Immensa lab which issued tens of thousands of false negative test results in the region, leading infected people to believe they were safe to mingle. The UK Health Security Agency is investigating how the lab failed to spot the problem before the public did.
Read Ian Sample’s full report here: England Covid infection rates doubled in over-65s between September and October
Updated
Bulgaria is also in the grip of a new Covid wave. There were 4,922 new cases yesterday, and the government said there were 954 new hospitalisations, of which 89.5% of people had not been vaccinated. Bulgaria has the lowest uptake of Covid vaccination in the EU, with only 28.5% of eligible adults having received at least one dose, well below the overall EU figure of 80.5%.
A very quick snap from Reuters here just to note that Hungary reported a jump in daily Covid-19 infections to 6,268 on Thursday, with the government saying that the daily tally had more than doubled from the middle of last week.
Germany reports highest daily caseload since start of pandemic
Speaking of Germany, it has reported 33,949 new Covid-19 infections, the highest daily increase since the start of the pandemic last year, ahead of a two-day meeting of state health ministers which starts today.
There’s a note of caution on the numbers though – they were likely inflated by a public holiday in parts of Germany on Monday that led to a delay in data-gathering. The previous record was on 18 December, with 33,777 cases.
Helge Braun, chief of staff to acting chancellor Angela Merkel, said that German states needed to make faster progress in giving older people booster shots.
“That should have happened long ago,” he told broadcaster ZDF on this morning.
Maria Sheahan reports for Reuters that as of Wednesday, only 6.7% of people over 60 in Germany had received a booster shot, according to data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases.
Older people were also more likely to be admitted to hospital with Cover-19. The number of infected people in hospital stood at 3.62 per 100,000 on Wednesday – up from 1.65 in early October – but at 8.27 per 100,000 for those over 60.
Updated
Here’s a reminder of the latest picture of case numbers across Europe. You can see the surge of cases in the east of the continent, but also a concerning change of colour from recent days for Germany and Denmark, as Belgium and the Netherlands seem to be in the foothills of their next Covid wave. The prevalence of cases per 1 million people in Ireland and in the UK has dipped slightly.
Updated
Vaccine certificates-for-sale scam undermines Lesotho’s Covid effort
The Lesotho government’s plans to implement a Covid passport system this week are being undermined by widespread fraud involving certificates being sold to unvaccinated people.
Covid-19 vaccination certificates are being sold for less than £20 by unscrupulous health workers to the largely vaccine-averse population in Lesotho, where there has been little positive campaigning around the jabs.
The prime minister, Moeketsi Majoro, announced in October that from this week, restaurants, bars, nightclubs, gyms and sporting facilities would only admit people who had a Covid-19 vaccination certificate.
It led to an immediate increase in the numbers presenting for vaccination, with queues at health centres, but has also sparked a burgeoning hidden market in fraudulent certificates.
The latest scam follows a reported jabs-for-cash scandal involving health workers from Motebang hospital in Leribe, about 50 miles north-east of the capital, Maseru. The health workers allegedly sold Covid-19 jabs to ineligible people, among them expatriates, for about £19, during a period when the government was still vaccinating frontline workers and vulnerable people.
Read more of Silence Charumbira’s report from Maseru: Vaccine certificates-for-sale scam undermines Lesotho’s Covid effort
It is the second year that Diwali will be taking place under the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic. That obviously hasn’t stopped people celebrating, or creating scenes of light and great beauty across south Asia.
Varying degrees of Covid prevention measures are being taken by different countries in the region, with many devotees wearing face masks while they celebrate.
The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, has returned to India from the Cop26 conference in Glasgow, and used the opportunity to visit troops in Jammu & Kashmir’s Nowshera district, saying: “It is because of you all that people of our country can sleep peacefully and there is happiness during festivals.”
India is currently experiencing a respite from Covid, with the seven-day average number of new cases detected at about 13,000, down from a peak of nearly 400,000 at the height of May’s crisis.
Updated
South Korea has opened Covid-19 quarantine centres to house potentially thousands of teenagers ahead of the country’s annual ritual of eight-hour college entrance exam in two weeks.
The quarantine centres will house confirmed Covid-19 cases and possibly any students who come into contact with an infected person over the next two weeks.
The highly competitive exam is seen as a life-defining event, as success and a good college place are considered the main route to a prosperous job in the future.
It was unclear how many, if any, students were in the quarantine centres on Thursday. The Education Ministry is not expected to disclose the number of quarantined students who plan to take the test until closer to the exam date of 18 November.
On the test day, there will be 112 centres specifically for students who have been in quarantine and 33 hospitals and treatment centres will prepare special rooms for students with the virus, on top of the regular 1,255 test centres.
Around 510,000 final-year high school students, about 40% of the total across the country, are scheduled to take the lengthy test, which encompasses subjects ranging from languages to mathematics and science.
Ukraine sets new daily record for cases – exceeds 3 million official cases in total
The total number of Covid-19 cases in Ukraine has exceeded 3 million with more than 70,000 deaths, the health ministry said today.
Pavel Polityuk reports for Reuters that the ministry said it had registered a record daily high of 27,377 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours, exceeding the previous high of 26,870 on 29 October. Ministry data also showed 699 new coronavirus-related deaths.
Ukraine has registered record-high rates of new cases and deaths from the coronavirus in recent weeks, and the government has imposed strict lockdown restrictions to curb new infections.
Several thousand people blocked traffic in the centre of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Wednesday in a protest against coronavirus restrictions and mandatory vaccinations.
Vaccines have become mandatory for some state workers, and in “red” zone areas including Kyiv only vaccinated people or those with negative COVID test results are allowed into restaurants, gyms and on public transport
It is Martin Belam here in London taking over from Samantha Lock in Sydney. I’ll bring you any quotes from UK business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng doing the early morning media round in the UK for the government if he talks about coronavirus, although I suspect Cop26 and Tory sleaze will be the dominant themes. Here’s the latest Covid numbers for the UK.
Indians celebrate festival of light amid Covid fears
Indians across the country began celebrating Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, on Thursday amid concerns over the coronavirus pandemic and rising air pollution.
Diwali is typically celebrated by socialising and exchanging gifts with family and friends. Many light oil lamps or candles to symbolise a victory of light over darkness, and fireworks are set off as part of the celebrations.
Last year, celebrations in India were upended by a renewed spike in Covid infections, but festivities this year seem to be back, AP reports. Even though the government has asked people to avoid large gatherings, markets have been buzzing ahead of Diwali, with eager crowds buying flowers, lanterns and candles.
As dusk fell on Wednesday, over 900,000 earthen lamps were lit and kept burning for 45 minutes in the northern city of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh state, retaining the Guinness World Record it set last year. As part of the Diwali celebrations, the city last year lit 606,569 oil lamps.
The festival is being celebrated at a time when India’s pandemic crisis has largely subsided, however some experts have warned that the festival season could bring a renewed spike in infections if health measures are not enforced.
China keeps close vigil at ports to cut Covid risks
China is on high alert at its ports as strict policies on travel in and out of the country are enforced to reduce Covid risks amid a fresh domestic outbreak, Reuters reports.
The National Immigration Administration (NIA) said on Thursday it would continue to guide citizens not to go abroad for non-urgent and non-essential reasons.
China aims to ensure no outbreaks among people arriving from overseas for the Winter Olympics, according to a recent state television report, citing Huang Chun, an official on the Beijing organising committee for the event.
Authorities will strive to avoid failures in virus control for the Games that would then disrupt the event or lead to clusters among residents, Huang said.
WHO approves Indian-made Covaxin vaccine
After months of delay, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has finally given emergency approval to Covaxin, the Indian domestically developed Covid vaccine which was rolled out as part of India’s vaccination drive.
The approval is good news for Indian travellers who received the vaccine, as it will now be recognised to allow entry into countries such as the US.
“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 across the planet,” tweeted WHO on Wednesday.
The decision by the Indian government back in January to begin administering Covaxin, developed by Indian pharmaceutical company Bharat Biotech, was initially mired in controversy over concerns it was being rolled out before all the efficacy data had been released.
It was administered in much smaller quantities than AstraZeneca, the only other approved vaccine in India. Figures from September show that Covaxin accounted for just over 12% of jabs in India.
Data released in July showed that Covaxin has an efficacy of 77.8% against Covid.
On Wednesday, health minister Mansukh Mandaviya tweeted: “This is a sign of a capable leadership. This is the story of Modi ji’s resolve. This is the language of the faith of the countrymen. This is a Diwali of self-reliant India. Thanking @WHO for granting emergency use listing (EUL) to Made-in-India #Covaxin,.”
Hello and thanks for joining us back on 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.
In promising news as the world looks towards vaccinating all its citizens, The World Health Organization (WHO) has granted an emergency use license to a coronavirus vaccine developed in India, offering reassurance for a shot that was authorised by the country’s regulators long before advanced testing was completed to prove it was safe and effective.
Covaxin, the Indian domestically developed Covid vaccine, was rolled out as part of India’s vaccination drive.
A recent study found a record prevalence of Covid in England throughout October. Researchers at Imperial College London warn the virus is spreading from schoolchildren into more vulnerable age groups, noting that rates had doubled in older groups compared to September, a concerning sign as the government races to give booster shots to the most vulnerable.
“We did see a doubling in that group, and clearly that’s the worry,” Paul Elliott, the Imperial epidemiologist who leads the programme, told reporters.
- 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.
- 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 US has administered 425,272,828 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country as of Wednesday morning and distributed 525,071,855 doses, the CDC said.
- 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.
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