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Summary
Here’s a roundup of the key events from the last few hours:
- France, which had a slow start to its inoculation rollout, will make vaccinations with the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson jabs available to all citizens over the age of 55 on Monday.
- The Czech Republic’s state of emergency and the associated ban for people to move outside their home districts will end at midnight from Sunday to Monday, alongside the scrapping of a night curfew and a partial reopening of schools, Czech Radio reports.
- Italy reported 331 coronavirus-related deaths on Sunday, compared with 344 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections fell to 15,746 from 17,567 the day before.
- The UK has distributed a further 586,339 Covid-19 vaccines, according to daily data published on Sunday. The UK has now given 32.12 million people a first dose of the vaccine and 7.47 million a second dose, putting it on track to start reopening its economy.
- The Dutch government on Sunday dashed hopes of an early easing of lockdown, saying a night-time curfew and other restrictions would remain until at least 28 April as daily infections rose to a two-week high.
- About 80% of Sicilians are refusing to be inoculated against Covid-19 with the AstraZeneca vaccine, Sicily’s governor said on Sunday.
- China’s top disease control official has admitted that the efficacy of the country’s domestically produced vaccines is low as it emerged the authorities are considering mixing them to try to offer greater protection against coronavirus.
- Mexico’s government reported 1,793 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 126 more fatalities, according to new data from the health ministry, bringing the total to 2,280,213 infections and 209,338 deaths.
I’m handing this liveblog over to my colleagues in Australia. Thanks for joining me.
Updated
People should enjoy new freedoms but remain wary of the risks, Boris Johnson has said, as beer gardens, alfresco restaurants, shops and salons prepared to reopen across England on Monday for the first time in almost four months.
The prime minister hailed the reopening – a major and “irreversible” step in the roadmap of easing restrictions – as “a chance to get back to doing some of the things we love and have missed”.
It came as just seven coronavirus deaths were reported in the UK within 28 days of a positive test, the lowest number since mid-September. There were also 1,730 people who tested positive, while 221 were admitted to hospital, where there are 2,862 Covid patients overall. The number of vaccine doses distributed is nearing 40m, including more than 7m second doses. More than 400,000 second doses were given in the UK for the fourth consecutive day on Saturday, along with 111,109 first doses.
Mexico’s government reported 1,793 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 126 more fatalities, according to new data from the health ministry, bringing the total to 2,280,213 infections and 209,338 deaths.
The government said the real case numbers are likely significantly higher, and separate data published by the health ministry suggested the actual coronavirus death toll may be at least 60% above the confirmed figure.
Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, vowed on Sunday to push the Biden administration for more Covid-19 vaccines as her state experiences a worrying spike in cases.
Joe Biden has said Washington will give Michigan more federal resources to support vaccinations and testing, but not additional vaccines.
Whitmer, also a Democrat, told CBS’s Face the Nation she would work with the White House but wanted to do everything she could to get additional doses.
“We did not have a national strategy for a long period of time,” Whitmer said, “and then the Biden White House came in and we have one. And by and large, they’re doing a great job.
“I would submit, though, that in an undertaking of this magnitude, with such consequence, it’s important to recognize where there might need to be some adjustments along the way.”
Michigan has the highest rate of new Covid-19 infections in the US. The state reported 6,900 cases on Saturday and 74 more deaths. It does not report data on Sundays.
Read more here:
China’s top disease control official has admitted that the efficacy of the country’s domestically produced vaccines is low as it emerged the authorities are considering mixing them to try to offer greater protection against coronavirus.
The rare admission of weakness on the part of Beijing’s pandemic approach came from the director of the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Gao Fu, who said Chinese vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates”.
“It’s now under formal consideration whether we should use different vaccines from different technical lines for the immunisation process,” he said at a conference on Saturday in the south-western city of Chengdu.
Read more here:
Cameroon took delivery on Sunday of 200,000 doses of China’s Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccines, the first vaccines to arrive in the country, which will enable it inoculate frontline workers as it battles rising cases of coronavirus, the health ministry said.
The Central African nation has been hit hard by a second wave of the pandemic. The health ministry has so far reported over 61,700 cases with 919 deaths since the outbreak, Reuters reports.
Reuters data shows that daily average numbers of coronavirus-related deaths reported in Cameroon has reached a new high of more than 53.
The health ministry said in a statement on Friday the doses would help the country, which is yet to start its vaccination campaign as it awaits vaccines that are in tight supply.
Cameroon is expected to receive vaccines through the COVAX global vaccines sharing scheme aimed at helping poor nations access vaccines. It was allocated around 1.75 million doses in the scheme and has ordered 1.29 million doses.
For ski resorts, spring normally marks a final chance for visitors to carve sun-drenched runs before the season ends.
But at Canada’s most famous ski resort, the gondolas have stopped, and the slopes are eerily quiet.
The Whistler Blackcomb ski resort was shut down by provincial authorities at the end of March after they realised that P1, the highly infectious coronavirus variant traced back to Brazil, was spreading rapidly throughout the community.
As provinces across Canada break records for new cases of the virus, experts have grown increasingly troubled by the rapid and covert spread of variants. With 877 confirmed cases of P1, the province of British Columbia is now the centre of the world’s largest sequenced outbreak of the variant outside Brazil – and nearly a quarter of those cases have been linked to Whistler.
P1 is believed to be a highly infectious mutation of the virus that appears to be more fatal among young people and has the ability to reinfect victims. In Brazil, the P1 variant – along with myriad policy failures – has ushered in a total collapse of the country’s healthcare system.
Read the full story here:
About 80% of Sicilians are refusing to be inoculated against Covid-19 with the AstraZeneca vaccine, Sicily’s Governor said on Sunday.
Nello Musumeci said:
Every 100 people, 80 say ‘no’ to the Oxford Vaccine.
I understand people are worried, but they have to trust scientists who are saying it is more dangerous not to get vaccinated than to be vaccinated.
According to media reports, prosecutors in the region, one of most populated in the country, have launched an investigation over the death of at least five people who have died as a result of severe coagulation disorders.
They had all allegedly received the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Italy’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign risks being held back again after the country’s health authorities recommended the AstraZeneca vaccine only be used for over-60s.
Italy’s government has set a target of giving out half a million shots a day, but that goal, so far, is still distant. There have been 15,746 new Covid-19 cases in Italy in the last 24 hours, and 331 more victims of the virus, the health ministry said on Sunday.
According to health authorities, 12,920.208 doses of vaccines have been inoculated and 3,8 million of people have received the second dose.
The Dutch government on Sunday dashed hopes of an early easing of lockdown, saying a night-time curfew and other restrictions would remain until at least 28 April as daily infections rose to a two-week high.
Earlier the government had said they were looking at easing restrictions on 21 April by lifting the curfew and allowing bars and restaurants to welcome guests in outdoor spaces.
But a government spokesman told ANP news agency they would move back the easing of measures by at least one week.
“It is still too early,” the spokesman was quoted as saying about the April 21 date. He declined to give further details and added that prime minister Mark Rutte would explain the decision in the government’s Covid-19 press conference set for Tuesday.
On Sunday health authorities reported 8,218 new coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours, the highest daily increase in more than two weeks. There are currently 788 Covid-19 patients in Dutch intensive care units, according to the data.
Several hospitals and scientists had warned against early easing of the lockdown measures, saying the peak of the third wave had not yet passed.
Updated
The UK has distributed a further 586,339 Covid-19 vaccines, according to daily data published on Sunday.
The UK has now given 32.12 million people a first dose of the vaccine and 7.47 million a second dose, putting it on track to start reopening its economy, Reuters reports.
The data also showed that a further 1,730 people had tested positive for the virus, down from 2,589 the day before, while seven people had died within 28 days of a positive test, down from 40 on Saturday.
Updated
Italy reported 331 coronavirus-related deaths on Sunday, compared with 344 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections fell to 15,746 from 17,567 the day before.
Italy has registered 114,254 deaths linked to Covid-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the seventh-highest in the world. The country has reported 3.77 million cases to date, Reuters reports.
Patients in hospital with Covid-19 – not including those in intensive care – stood at 27,251 on Sunday, down from 27,654 a day earlier.
There were 175 new admissions to intensive care units, down from 186 on Saturday. The total number of intensive care patients fell to 3,585 from a previous 3,588.
Some 253,100 tests for coronavirus were carried out in the past day, compared with a previous 320,892, the health ministry said.
Updated
The Czech Republic’s state of emergency and the associated ban for people to move outside their home districts will end at midnight from Sunday to Monday, alongside the scrapping of a night curfew and a partial reopening of schools, Czech Radio reports.
Several businesses, such as shoe stores and dry cleaners will also be allowed to reopen, while restaurants will be allowed to trade one hour longer until 10pm.
Monday will also see the reopening of zoos and botanical gardens, and weddings and funerals will be able to take place with a maximum of 15 attendees.
Health minister Petr Arenberger told Czech Television on Saturday that he will propose bringing back limitations on the number of people that can gather together in outside and inside spaces at a government meeting on Monday.
According to the original plans made by his predecessor Jan Blatny, public gatherings could include up to 20 people outside and 10 people indoors.
Infections are decreasing in the Czech Republic, with 4,034 new infections reported on average each day, according to Reuters. That’s 30% of the peak – the highest daily average reported on 28 October.
To date there have been 1,577,972 recorded infections, while 27,734 coronavirus-related deaths have been reported in the country.
Updated
France, which had a slow start to its inoculation rollout, will make vaccinations with the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson jabs available to all citizens over the age of 55 on Monday, AFP reports.
Antoine Flahault, an epidemiologist from the University of Geneva, warned that vaccinations alone are not enough to beat back France’s stubbornly high infections numbers.
“Stopping adult activities is important, but another major breeding ground is schools,” he said, calling for schools to stay closed after 26 April, which is the date from which schools will reopen.
Updated
NHS England data shows a total of 4,047,546 jabs were given to people in London between 8 December and 10 April, including 3,296,920 first doses and 750,626 second doses.
This compares with 5,263,799 first doses and 1,070,174 second doses given to people in the Midlands, a total of 6,333,973, PA Media reports.
The breakdown for the other regions is:
• East of England: 3,235,736 first doses and 757,963 second doses, making 3,993,699 in total
• North East and Yorkshire: 4,283,721 first and 1,059,214 second doses, in total 5,342,935
• North West: 3,452,484 first and 843,711 second doses, in total 4,296,195
• South East: 4,407,623 first and 1,001,998 second doses, in total 5,409,621
• South West: 2,988,118 first and 671,104 second doses, in total 3,659,222
Updated
Several hospitals in the Netherlands are being forced to delay heart and cancer surgery because of staff shortages, as more beds are taken up by coronavirus patients, the Volkskrant reported on Sunday.
The country on Sunday logged 8,218 new infections over the past 24 hours, the highest surge in two weeks, according to Reuters.
Despite rising infections, the Dutch governmentis discussing a possible easing of restrictions, including lifting a night curfew.
Dutch News reports:
The national acute care association said on Friday that it wanted to scale up the number of IC beds by 100 to 1,550.
This, hospital chiefs say, will have an impact on the number of staff available for regular care. The paper bases its claim on a ring round of hospitals and IC chiefs.
Some 800 people are currently being treated for coronavirus in intensive care wards, the highest total since the first wave.
Until now, the impact on regular hospital services had been limited to delays in operations to treat issues which are not life threatening, such as knee and hip operations, the Volkskrant said.
However, national acute care chief Diederik Gommers said that now some open heart surgery and cancer treatments are being delayed.
“These are operations you cannot delay for more than six weeks,” he said. “We had said we did not want to reduce services but we are now at the point where we cannot stick to that.”
Updated
Canada is shifting its vaccination campaign to target frontline workers, moving away from a largely age-based rollout amid a persistent third wave of the pandemic.
Reuters reports:
Canada’s approach thus far has left unvaccinated many so-called “essential workers”, like daycare providers, bus drivers and meatpackers, all of whom are among those at higher risk of Covid-19 transmission. Provinces are now trying to adjust their strategy to tackle the surge driven by new variants.
Targeting frontline workers and addressing occupation risk is vital if Canada wants to get its third wave under control, says Simon Fraser University mathematician and epidemiologist Caroline Colijn, who has modelled Canadian immunisation strategies and found “the sooner you put essential workers [in the vaccine rollout plan], the better”.
Initially, Canada prioritised long-term care residents and staff for the vaccines, as well as the very elderly, health workers, residents of remote communities and Indigenous people.
Updated
Pubs in England have spent thousands of pounds updating outdoor areas, as venues with outdoor seating will reopen on Monday for the first time since the beginning of January.
PA Media reports:
Half of Britons are planning to make a dash for the pub or a restaurant when the rules ease, a recent poll by investment bank Jefferies found.
The Alma Inn near Halifax, West Yorkshire, has invested heavily in converting an overflow area by the car park to make what its Instagram account dubbed a “second pub”.
The new area includes a mobile bar, food truck and new benches, while the land also had to be levelled.
“Previously we just had a few benches on it,” John Priest, 38, one of the pub’s managers, told PA Media.
[...]
“We have to be ready for the demand. If we get to a point next week or the week after where we didn’t have anywhere for people to sit, then we would have failed as a business in our eyes. “If we can’t satisfy the demand that’s there, then we’ve got it wrong.”Priest said the next two weeks at the Alma Inn – which is run by general manager James Sullivan and owned by Lee Roberts – will be among the biggest of his career.
“I know that everything I have done before is going to pale in comparison to the kind of numbers we are going to do in the next couple of weeks,” he said. “That’s got to be an exciting thing.”
In Hayle, Cornwall, Damian Knight, 45 – who runs the Cornubia Inn with his wife Miranda – said the pandemic had changed the “traditional” pub model.
While they have spent money on a covered shelter, heating and updated furniture, the addition of wifi and a new ordering and payment system are important updates that customers may not notice at a glance.
“It’s one of those things we’re sort of used to doing now,” Mr Knight, who estimated they had spent about £5,000 preparing for the latest reopening, told PA Media.
“This is the third time we’re coming out of lockdown. Every time we’ve come out, inside (and) outside the rules have changed. If you open your doors with what you had before, you’re going to get left behind”
Updated
India said on Sunday it had banned the export of the anti-viral drug Remdesivir and its active pharmaceutical ingredients after a record rise in Covid-19 cases sent demand surging.
The country’s daily new Covid cases continue to increase and 145,384 new cases were registered in the last 24 hours.
On Saturday, 152,879 fresh cases were recorded.
“In light of the above, Government of India has prohibited the exports of Injection Remdesivir and Remdesivir Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) till the situation improves,” the health ministry said in a statement.
Seven Indian companies have licensed the drug from Gilead Sciences, with an installed capacity of about 3.9m units per month, Reuters reports.
The Times of India reports:
In addition, [the government] has taken the following steps to ensure easy access of hospital and patients to Remdesivir:
All domestic manufactures of Remdesivir have been advised to display on their website details of their stockists/distributors to facilitate access to the drug.
Drugs inspectors and other officers have been directed to verify stocks and check their malpractices and also take other effective actions to curb hoarding and black marketing. The State Health Secretaries will review this with the Drug Inspectors of the respective States/UTs.
The Department of Pharmaceuticals has been in contact with the domestic manufacturers to ramp up the production of Remdesivir.
Updated
The EU must shoot for a more ambitious Covid-19 recovery plan than the landmark €750bn stimulus agreed last summer after the epidemic’s first wave, French European affairs minister Clément Beaune said on Sunday.
Reuters reports:
Beaune said Europe must not repeat errors made after the global financial crisis a decade ago and this time should underpin the recovery with investment, in fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks, green and digital technologies, among others.
Asked in an interview on LCI television how much would be needed, Beaune said: “No doubt something like a doubling (of the existing fund). “The economic response has to be more ambitious,” he said.
Beaune said he hoped the EU’s 27 member states would ratify the recovery fund by May and that the €750bn would be available from the summer.
France is due to receive €40bn under the scheme.
EU governments are still submitting detailed spending plans for their share of the pot, and frustration is growing in Paris and some other capitals at the slow speed of disbursing the money.
In an interview published on Saturday, the European Council president, Charles Michel, said he did not share the view held by some that the EU’s recovery fund was insufficient when compared with the US spending plan.
Updated
This from my colleague Jason Rodrigues in London:
Crowds urged not to gather to pay respects to Prince Philip, nonetheless around 200 hundred people are outside Buckingham Palace having arriving on foot and some even by penny farthing pic.twitter.com/GXWIsX9MmP
— Jason Rodrigues (@RodriguesJasonL) April 11, 2021
The South African Covid-19 variant can “break through” Pfizer/BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine to some extent, a real-world data study in Israel found, though its prevalence in the country is low and the research has not been peer-reviewed.
Reuters reports:
The study, released on Saturday, compared almost 400 people who had tested positive for Covid-19, 14 days or more after they received one or two doses of the vaccine, against the same number of unvaccinated patients with the disease. It matched age and gender, among other characteristics.
The South African variant, B.1.351, was found to make up about 1 percent of all the Covid-19 cases across all the people studied, according to the study by Tel Aviv University and Israel’s largest healthcare provider, Clalit.
Israel’s health ministry registered 86 new infections cases on Sunday, while the number of people who got the second vaccine dose stood at 4,921,648 (52.92% of the population). 5,310,216 people, or 57.1% of the population, have received a first dose to date, Haaretz reports.
The number of seriously ill patients rose from 259 to 263 overnight, while the number of active cases dropped to 3,890.
There are currently 153 patients in critical condition and 139 are on ventilators. Out of the 11,173 coronavirus tests carried out Saturday, less than one percent – 0.8% – came back positive.
Updated
The chairman of the UK government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag) has urged caution ahead of Monday’s easing of lockdown restrictions.
Professor Peter Horby told Times Radio:
The watchword has got to be caution, really. The modelling which is now pretty good does show that we can expect some kind of rebound.
It’s not clear exactly when or how big it will be but there is, I think, inevitably going to be a bit of a rebound in the number of cases when things are relaxed.
Hopefully it won’t translate too much into hospitalisations and deaths because of the vaccine programme, but there will be some of that. Now the extent of it really depends on how well we comply with the ongoing restrictions, so we really have to take this step by step.
I think we can be joyful and enjoy the freedoms, but we’ve still got to realise there’s still a large number of people who’ve not been infected or vaccinated and so they will be at risk.
Updated
Iran records highest daily death toll in 4 months
Iran reported a further 258 Covid-19 deaths in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said on Sunday, the highest daily toll since early December.
Reuters reports:
That brings the total number of fatalities from the coronavirus to 64,490 in Iran, the worst-hit country in the Middle East.
Health ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari told state TV that 21,063 new cases were identified in the past 24 hours, taking the total number of identified cases since the pandemic began to 2,070,141.
“Unfortunately, in the past 24 hours 258 people have died from the virus,” Lari said. State TV said it was the country’s highest daily death toll since December 10.
Iran’s Health Minister Saeed Namaki, in a televised news conference, warned about more fatalities in the coming week if Iranians fail to adhere to health protocols.
On Saturday, Tehran imposed a 10-day lockdown across most of the country to curb the spread of a fourth wave of the coronavirus. The lockdown affects 23 of the country’s 31 provinces.
Businesses, schools, theatres and sports facilities have been forced to shut and gatherings are banned during the holy fasting month of Ramadan that begins on Wednesday in Iran.
Updated
Thousands of low-level US inmates released during the pandemic could be headed back to prison, now that a vast number of Americans have received at least their first jab.
Reuters reports:
[A]s more people are vaccinated, thousands could be hauled back into prison to serve the remainder of their sentences, thanks to a little-noticed legal opinion issued by the Justice Department in the waning days of Republican former President Donald Trump’s administration.
Congressional Democrats and justice-reform advocates have called on President Joe Biden and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to reverse the opinion, but so far the new administration has not acted to rescind the memo.
The memo offers a strict legal interpretation of the CARES Act, a 2020 law that gave the attorney general the authority to release low-level inmates into home confinement during the pandemic.
Once the emergency is lifted, the memo says, the federal Bureau of Prisons “must recall prisoners in home confinement to correctional facilities” if they do not otherwise qualify to remain at home - a move that could impact as many as 7,399 BOP inmates who currently remain out on home confinement because they still have time left on their sentences.
At the current pace of the US vaccination programme, 75% of the population will have received jabs in three months’ time, Bloomberg reports.
Here some more detail on the easing of lockdown restrictions in the UK from Monday from PA Media:
Pints will be poured for pub gardens, restaurants will serve diners outside and long-overdue haircuts will be sought in a major easing of England’s coronavirus lockdown on Monday.
Non-essential retail, as well as indoor gyms and swimming pools, will also reopen as lives take another leap back towards normality along the road map to ending restrictions.
Libraries, zoos and nail salons will also reopen as greater outdoor interaction is permitted while mixing with other households indoors remains heavily restricted.
Businesses and citizens eagerly anticipated the renewed freedoms, but any fanfare for the easings has been somewhat muted by the national mourning for the Duke of Edinburgh.
[...]
Wales will also see freedoms returned, with non-essential retail reopening and border restrictions eased to permit travel again with the rest of the UK and Ireland.Remaining school pupils will return to face-to-face teaching in Wales and Northern Ireland, moves being echoed in Scotland as pupils return from their Easter breaks.
The “stay at home” order in Northern Ireland will also end as the number of people permitted to meet outdoors rises from six to 10.
In England […] both the 10pm curfew rule and the requirement to order a substantial meal with a drink have been scrapped, but social distancing must be abided by.
Domestic holidays can resume to an extent, with overnight stays permitted in self-contained accommodation, such as holiday lets and campsites where indoor facilities are not shared.
But these can only be used by members of the same household or support bubble.
Updated
Thailand reports record rise in infections
Thailand on Sunday reported 967 new coronavirus cases, its biggest daily jump, but no new deaths as the country deals with a third wave of infections driven by a highly contagious virus variant first identified in the UK.
Reuters reports:
Of the infections, 964 were domestic transmissions, including 236 in the capital Bangkok, the epicentre of an outbreak that has spread to most of Thailand’s 77 provinces.
The spike comes ahead of major national Songkran holidays, known for big street water fights that authorities have now banned for a second year due to the pandemic.
Authorities have urged people to avoid unnecessary travel and reduce gatherings to help limit the outbreak, which includes the highly transmissible B.1.1.7 variant first identified in Britain.
“Right now, the situation is worrying. But we can manage it if everyone helps,” senior health official Sopon Iamsirithaworn told a briefing.
At least 38 provinces have required visitors from risk areas to undertake a 14-day quarantine. Nightspots such as pubs and karaoke bars in Bangkok and 40 provinces will be closed until April 23.
The managers of two entertainment venues in Bangkok, where many infections were reported, had been sentenced to two months in jail for Covid-19 violations, police said on Sunday.
Thailand has reported 3,661 domestic infections so far this month, including 1,294 cases in Bangkok, the highest amid the new outbreak. That brings total to 32,625, with 97 deaths.
Updated
China has administered 164.47m doses of Covid-19 vaccines as of Saturday, the National Health Commission said on Sunday.
Reuters reports:
This represents around 24.5m doses in the past six days, as the country’s vaccine rollout continues to accelerate.
Last week a Chinese official said the country is expected to produce around 3bn doses of Covid-19 vaccines by the end of the year.
Chinese health authorities on Sunday reported 10 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 22 asymptomatic cases, bringing the country’s total to 90,410, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,636.
As we reported earlier, China is mulling the mixing of different Covid-19 vaccines to improve the relatively low efficacy of the country’s vaccines.
Updated
Poland recorded 24,856 fresh coronavirus cases and 749 further deaths over the past 24 hours to Saturday morning, against 28,487 cases reported on Friday, the health ministry said.
First News reports:
The healthcare system is now handling 34,167 Covid-19 hospitalisations, down from 34,550 recorded the day prior, including 3,373 patients on ventilators, against the total of 4,386 ventilators available, the health ministry said on Twitter.
The health ministry also reported that 430,830 people are under quarantine. So far, 2,143,065 people have recovered.
7,485,164 Poles have already received jabs against Covid-19, with 2,101,160 of those having had both doses of the vaccine, according to data posted on the official government website, gov.pl.
I’m Jedidajah Otte and will be taking over for the next few hours. Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you would like to share tips and updates, I’m on Twitter @JedySays or you can email me.
Updated
New Covid-19 cases in India surged to a record 152,879 as the country battled a second wave of infections by pushing for faster vaccinations, with some states considering tougher restrictions to slow the spread of the virus.
India leads the world in the daily average number of new infections reported, accounting for one in every six infections reported globally each day.
Daily cases have set record highs six times this week, according to data from the federal health ministry.
The number of deaths has also soared, with the federal health ministry reporting 839 fatalities on Sunday – the highest in over five months – as hospitals and crematoriums in some parts of the country struggled to cope with the worsening situation.
India’s tally of more than 13.35 million cases is the third-highest globally, behind only Brazil and the US.
The prime minister, Narendra Modi, launched a four-day “vaccination festival” on Sunday to encourage a greater number of eligible Indians to get a Covid-19 shot.
People queue to receive a dose of the Covid-19 vaccine at a healthcare centre in New Delhi on Saturday. Photograph: Prakash Singh/AFP/Getty Images
Dutch roller-coaster fans who were willing to endure nose swabs to get their adrenaline fix were allowed back into a theme park over the weekend in an experiment to ease prolonged Covid-19 restrictions.
Two thousand tickets were on offer at the “Hellendoorn” amusement park, which on Saturday became the first in the Netherlands to reopen since coronavirus lockdown measures forced it to temporarily shut down last year.
The popular Keukenhof flower exhibition, zoos, casinos and historic tourist attractions also took part in the trial, which required serious planning to enable social distancing.
Visitors over 12 years old needed to order a ticket online and book a Covid-19 test at a small number of designated locations. A negative test result taken no more than 40 hours prior to admittance had to be presented on a smart phone app at the entrance, along with proof of identification.
Chermaine Streppel, 20, travelled 100km (60 miles) to the amusement park. “The trade off of having a swap stuck up your nose for five seconds was a whole day of fun,” she said.
Today we are at Adventure Park #Hellendoorn for their pilot opening day!
— Robbin | SEEKING THE THRILL 🖤🎢 (@STTHRILL) April 10, 2021
(negative covid-19 test required)
Feels great to finally get on some rides again! 🎢 pic.twitter.com/7jk7M1fZRF
Updated
Hundreds of people have been booking flights to Ireland from the US as they race to get ahead of a new hotel quarantine requirement before it comes into force on Thursday, Ireland’s Sunday Independent reports.
The Irish government announced on Friday night that the US, Canada, France, Belgium, Italy, Turkey and 10 other countries would be added to a hotel quarantine list from 4am on Thursday.
Afterwards, there was a surge in bookings on flights from the US.
Ireland’s taoiseach has meanwhile rejected suggestions that the addition of the 16 countries could lead to chaos at airports and at quarantine hotels.
“I think, in the first instance, no one wants these types of measures and we know we have been in a lockdown situation since Christmas because of the terrible wave at that particular time and the variant, the B117, has been a key factor in terms of the situation over the last while,” he said.
Taoiseach defends addition of 16 countries to quarantine list | Read more: https://t.co/9IfrFjWO3f pic.twitter.com/PxHcEVh5bE
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) April 10, 2021
Updated
While there is still criticism in scientific circles of the British government’s approach to lifting lockdown measures, overall approval for the government’s handling of the pandemic is now positive for the first time since May 2020, in a sign the vaccine rollout has helped transform its fortunes.
The latest Opinium poll for the Observer found that 44% approve of the government’s Covid handling, with 36% disapproving.
Driving the approval is support for the vaccine distribution programme, with 72% approving of the efforts and only 8% disapproving.
Support is high even among Labour (71%) and SNP voters (57%).
A majority of voters (54%) believe the government’s roadmap out of Covid restrictions is at about the right pace, up slightly from 47% a fortnight ago.
Updated
Amid warnings by leading scientists that the UK government is risking a third wave of Covid-19 by easing the lockdown, there are fears on the part of experts that there are still far too many hotspots causing concern.
Stephen Griffin, of Leeds University medical school, told the Observer:
There are areas in West Yorkshire, the Black Country and other regions that still have high infection rates. However, many people there cannot afford to self-isolate. We need to tackle that issue urgently or the virus will come back again.
The government has said it would not lift restrictions until infection levels are low enough but Griffin said that its promise to follow “data not dates” now appeared to have been abandoned.
Professor Lawrence Young of Warwick medical school added:
The test, trace and isolate system that is supposed to contain outbreaks has not worked well, and even when people test positive, they are not isolating.
We need a properly funded system for quarantining infected people. We don’t have that and that raises the risk we could head back into trouble again quite quickly.
Russia has reported on Sunday 8,702 new COVID-19 cases, including 2,090 in Moscow, taking the national infection tally to 4,641,390 since the pandemic began.
The government coronavirus taskforce reported 337 deaths in the last 24 hours, pushing the total death toll to 102,986.
The statistics agency has kept a separate count and reported a much higher toll of 225,000 from April 2020 to February.
With one of the lowest Covid rates in Britain, the ancient city of Bath is preparing to reopen as businesses across England and Wales pull up shutters on Monday.
The last seven days have seen cases drop to under 12.9 per 100,000 in Bath and north-east Somerset.
Apart from the odd dog-walker, Bath’s much-loved Walcot Street was deserted last week. But the area’s celebrated artisan shops were a hive of activity as the owners prepared to reopen to the public.
In the street’s tiny wool shop, A Yarn Story, the owner, Carmen Schmidt, had mixed feelings about the reopening as she won’t be able to offer people the same intimate, relaxed experience.
“We are a very tactile business so we are excited to have people back in – to feel the yarn and see the colours,” she said as the street’s colourful bunting fluttered in the wind.
Elsewhere in the city, there was growing optimism about the post-lockdown retail world.
In Topping and Company Booksellers the manager, Saber Khan, and two other staff members were filling the maze-like shop’s already bulging floor-to-ceiling shelves with the latest releases.
Khan has no fear of Amazon and is confident that people still enjoy whiling away an hour or two in a bookshop. “So many people have chosen not to go to Amazon [during lockdown],” he said.
“We’re moving to a larger premises in November because we have faith in bookshops. People love physical books. People love browsing.”
Updated
China considering mixing different Covid-19 vaccines
China is considering the mixing of different Covid-19 vaccines to improve the relatively low efficacy of its existing options, a top health expert has told a conference.
Authorities have to “consider ways to solve the issue that efficacy rates of existing vaccines are not high”, Chinese media outlet The Paper reported, citing Gao Fu, the head of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
His comments mark the first time a top Chinese expert has publicly alluded to the relatively low efficacy of the country’s vaccines, as China forges ahead in its mass vaccination campaign and exports its jabs around the world.
China has administered around 161 million doses since vaccinations began last year - most people will require two shots - and aims to fully inoculate 40 percent of its 1.4 billion population by June.
Outdoor attractions and self-catering accommodation providers in England and Wales are preparing for a rush of visitors when they reopen on Monday.
Chester Zoo chief executive Jamie Christon said it has enjoyed a “great deal of demand”, with the majority of tickets sold out for the coming days.
He said it has been “pretty difficult” for the business during the pandemic, as it costs around 1.6 million every month to maintain the zoo, including looking after its 19,000 animals.
“Even though the gates have been closed to the public, life in the zoo still goes on”, he said
Steve Jarvis, co-founder of website Independent Cottages, which promotes around 1,800 self-catering properties, said around 80% of its sites are booked over the next fortnight.
The “huge appetite for UK holidays” began at the start of the year, he explained.
Another holiday home firm, Cottages.com, said two-thirds of its properties in coastal destinations or with hot tubs are booked for the first week of reopening.
As vaccine efforts in the European Union finally appear to be picking up pace, France is struggling to contain a third Covid-19 wave, but announced it had hit its 10 million inoculations target a week earlier than expected, while Germany doubled the number of vaccinations, administering a record 720,000 doses on Thursday after the rollout was extended to family doctors.
Across the border, German health minister Jens Spahn said the country was heading towards giving 3.5 million vaccinations a week by the start of May, aiming to cover the population by the end of summer.
French health minister Olivier Véran said the country had delivered a record 510,000 vaccinations on Friday after opening the first of 40 mass vaccine centres across the country, including at the Stade de France stadium.
The good news has been tempered, however, by AstraZeneca’s announcement of further delays to vaccine deliveries.
The Anglo-Swedish company warned the EU, Iceland and Norway it would be delivering only half the 2.6 million doses promised for the coming week due to production problems.
The EU has said it is looking to acquire a further 1.8 billion doses of what it called “second generation” vaccines to inoculate the continent’s children and adolescents and combat emerging coronavirus variants. The contract will be for 900 million doses with an option on a further 900 million to be used in 2022 and 2023.
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has approved placing the capital region and four adjacent provinces under a less restrictive community quarantine status from April 12, his spokesman has said.
Metro Manila and the provinces of Bulacan, Rizal, Laguna and Cavite, which have been in a strict lockdown due to COVID-19 infections, will be under Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine status until April 30, spokesman Harry Roque said.
Voting to get underway in Peru, Ecuador and Benin
Masks are accompanying pens and polling cards as voting gets underway in different parts of the world today.
Ecuador and Peru are choosing new presidents under strict public health measures prompted by the pandemic, which has recently strengthened in the neighbouring South American nations.
In Ecuador, voters have been ordered to wear a mask, bring their own hand sanitiser and pencil, keep a 5-foot (1.5-meter) distance from others and avoid all personal contact in the polling place. The only time voters will be allowed to lower their mask will be during the identification process.
Polls in Peru were scheduled to open at 7 a.m. local time with twice as many sites available to voters than in previous elections as authorities try to avoid fuelling a second coronavirus wave that has gripped the Andean nation.
Voting has begun in Benin’s presidential election following a week of violent protests against incumbent Patrice Talon, who is heavily favoured to win a second term.
Updated
Good morning and welcome to liveblog coverage of the pandemic, taking in global and also UK developments on a day when India announced that it it has become the “fastest country in the world” to administer more than 100 million doses of coronavirus vaccines.
But that vaccine milestone comes as the country remains in the grip of a brutal second wave, recording 145,384 Covid-19 cases on Saturday and 794 deaths, the highest number of deaths in more than five months.
In Europe, vaccine rollouts in France and Germany have finally begun to pick up speed, after a slow start and problems with supplies and bureaucracy.
But British scientists have warned that the government is risking a third wave of Covid-19 by easing the lockdown at a time when official data still shows virus hotspots across many parts of the country.
With the UK poised to lift many Covid restrictions on Monday, the scientists accuse ministers of abandoning their promises to “follow the data, not dates” in a rush to reopen society and the economy.
We’ll be bringing you coverage of those developments and more. You can flag up any Covid-19 news stories which you think we have missed today by emailing me or finding me on twitter at @BenQuinn75
