That’s it for our live Covid blog today and thanks for following along.
Don’t miss any of our coronavirus coverage by keeping up with all the latest developments here.
Or join us a little later when we launch our new Covid blog.
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A summary of today's developments
- The UK recorded 38,009 new infections, but the rise in weekly cases is down 13.5%. A further 74 deaths saw the weekly average Covid deaths a day climb 15.8% on last week.
- Russia reported 40,993 new Covid-19 infections, its highest single-day case tally since the start of the pandemic.
- The US jabbed the most vaccine doses into arms in 5 months,
delivering 1,412,416 doses of Covid vaccines in the last 24 hours. - White House press secretary to US President Joe Biden, Jen Psaki, tested positive for the coronavirus on Sunday, but said she last saw Biden on Tuesday in masks and outside.
- France recorded the highest jump in Covid hospitalisations for 6 weeks. New infections surged 26.5% on the previous week.
- Taiwan will receive a total of 4 million vaccine doses from the US, up 1.5 million from the former amount, Reuters reported.
- Singapore recorded 3,163 Covid-19 cases, a high tally for the city state during the pandemic which until recently pursued a zero-Covid strategy.
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New York City’s municipal worker vaccine requirements come into force on Monday, and officials said 2,000 fire department workers took medical leave to protest the measures. But officials said the part-vaccinated rate had jumped to 91% on Saturday from 76% on Thursday.
- Italy saw 26 more Covid-related deaths, taking the country’s death toll to 132,100 – the highest tally in Europe behind the UK.
- Poland reported 7,145 new Covid cases as the Eastern European epidemic continued to grow.
- Moderna said the US Food and Drug Administration will require additional time to complete its assessment of the Covid-19 vaccine for adolescents aged 12 to 17. The FDA is looking into a rare heart inflammation called myocarditis after vaccination.
- More than 800 English secondary schools will receive visits from health teams to offer the coronavirus vaccine to children aged 12 to 15. England has lagged behind Scotland in vaccinating children, and the UK health secretary Sajid Javid said the vaccines “will help keep children in the classroom” as they return from their half-term holidays.
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Following on from the earlier post on New York City’s incoming vaccine requirements for municipal workers, around 9% remain unvaccinated as of Saturday, officials said.
But the rate of workers with their first shot has jumped ahead of the deadline. Now 91% of city workers have been inoculated with at least one dose, up from 76% on Thursday.
Here’s how different departments compare:
- 84% of NYPD staff are at least semi-vaccinated
- 79% of sanitation workers
- 78% of fire department workers
Some protesters thronged the streets of New York City’s Upper East Side on Thursday demonstrating against the requirements. Victoria Bekiempis has the full report.
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US White House press secretary tests positive for Covid
Jen Psaki, White House press secretary to US President Joe Biden, said on Sunday she had tested positive for Covid.
Psaki, 42, did not travel to Rome with the president for the G20 summit. She said she quarantined from Wednesday, when a member of her household tested positive.
Psaki said in a statement:
“While I have not had close contact in person with the president or senior members of the White House staff since Wednesday and tested negative for four days after that last contact, I am disclosing today’s positive test out of an abundance of transparency.”
Psaki said she last saw 78-year-old Biden on Tuesday, “when we sat outside more than 6ft apart and wore masks”.
My colleague Martin Pengelly in New York has the full story here.
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Really worth reading this report from my colleague Donna Lu, who spoke to Australia’s junior doctors – finding they’re suffering plummeting morale, staff shortages and backbreaking caseloads.
That’s a risk not only for the junior doctors, but patients, too.
“I desperately want to quit. The combination of last year and this year is just exhausting,” one doctor says. “You’ll start a night shift and you have nine or 10 hours of wait time and like 40 people waiting to be seen. It’s like this massive wall of work that you know you’re not going to get through, even if everyone works at twice the pace.”
Check it out here.
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US delivers highest daily vaccine doses for five months
The US delivered 1,412,416 doses of Covid vaccines in the last 24 hours, the highest rate since 1,419,490 on 26 May.
The US Center for Disease Control said over 422 million jabs have gone in arms as of Sunday, up from 420.6 million on Saturday.
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Protests in northern Greece by virulent anti-vaxxers are under way this evening. Demonstrators in Thessaloniki have been chanting: “We are living under occupation. We have to understand it in order to liberate Greece.”
The protests come amid a surge in Covid-19 infections that is causing growing alarm as the country battles a fourth wave of the pandemic blamed largely on the refusal of a significant number of Greeks to have the jab.
The public health body (EODY) announced 2,727 new cases today following a record- breaking 4,696 diagnoses on Saturday. An additional 44 Covid-related fatalities brought the death toll to just under 16,000 in a population of around 11 million.
Of the 421 people on life support, 357 (85%) are unvaccinated, or only partially inoculated, with epidemiologists speaking of an “epidemic” among those who have yet to be fully jabbed.
Anti-vaccine protests has been especially strong in northern Greece, where far-right groups have also infiltrated the movement.
Prominent frontline doctors, many of whom speak regularly about the pandemic and the need to vaccinate against Covid-19, have reportedly received death threats.
In the latest case, Theodoros Vassilakopoulos, a leading professor of respiratory and critical care medicine, was physically assaulted in a taverna on Saturday after asking the restaurant’s owners to inspect whether its clientele were in possession of Covid-19 certificates.
Organisers of the anti-vaccine protest in Thessaloniki called on participants to support the taverna’s proprietors by giving the eatery glowing reviews on social media.
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WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus welcomed G20 plans to scale up the global vaccine equity drive on Twitter, but urged greater urgency and action from vaccine-manufacturing countries.
I thank @g20org Leaders for agreeing to scale up global action to ensure #VaccineEquity by meeting @WHO vaccination targets in all countries:
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) October 31, 2021
-40% of the population by the end of 2021
-70% by mid-2022
But urgent, unprecedented action is needed now by manufacturing countries. pic.twitter.com/I5cixVUyCR
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Ahead of New York City’s Covid vaccine mandate for public sector workers starting on Monday, more than 2,000 firefighters have taken sick days this week – which officials say is a large-scale protest at the measures.
The New York Times reports that the Fire Department’s deputy commissioner for public information, Frank Dwyer, said 2,000 have been on medical leave out of a total uniformed workforce of 11,000.
“Irresponsible bogus sick leave by some of our members is creating a danger for New Yorkers and their fellow firefighters,” the fire commissioner, Daniel A. Nigro, said in a statement. He attributed the uptick in sick leave to “anger at the vaccine mandate.”
The personnel shortage has put a strain on Fire Department operations. The department said that all its firehouses remain open, but maintaining coverage across the city has required shuffling personnel around to reconstitute fire companies.
Countries like France and Italy have also faced protests after enacting vaccine or testing requirements to drive down virus cases.
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Here’s a visualisation of UK vaccination data. (See this earlier post for today’s stats).
As you can see, vaccinations dipped in September – to their lowest rates since the rollout started – before picking up speed again in October, driven by booster jabs (in red).
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Poland reports 7,145 new Covid cases as Eastern European epidemic grows
Covid cases continued to surge in Poland on Sunday, with health authorities recording 7,145 new cases.
That’s down slightly from the 9,798 new cases reported by local media on Saturday, but doesn’t buck Poland’s October trend of cases growing after it had flattened the curve between June and September.
Saturday’s tally of new cases is the highest jump since 23 April. A further nine people died from coronavirus on Sunday.
Eastern European countries have struggled against rising cases this month. But it’s worth noting that surging figures in countries such as Poland, Ukraine and Bulgaria are still far lower than the UK’s daily caseload.
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France sees highest Covid hospitalisations in six weeks
France reported the highest jump in daily Covid hospitalisations since 6 September, as 48 people entered hospital in the past 24 hours. That means there are 6,572 people in French hospitals with coronavirus.
France saw 6,329 new Covid infections on Sunday, down slightly on Saturday’s figure of 7,360 but a 26.5% rise from a week ago.
President Emmanuel Macron has banked on France’s “pass sanitaire,” which requires proof of vaccination or a negative test to take part in many public activities, to stamp down new infections after a summer surge driven by Delta.
French cases have ticked upwards slightly through October but have not reached the highs of more than 25,000 new cases a day seen back in August.
The country recorded 12 new coronavirus-related deaths on Sunday, down from 22 on Saturday and taking the country’s total death toll to 90,771.
A further seven people were admitted to intensive care for Covid in France, taking the current total of coronavirus intensive care patients to 1,046.
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UK vaccinates 420,099 on Sunday as booster jabs climb
UK vaccine stats are out. Government figures show 420,099 new vaccinations over the past 24 hours.
Today’s breakdown:
- 361,428 new booster and third shots
- 24,908 second jabs
- 33,763 first doses
That takes the total number people with at least one dose to 49,955,853, from the UK’s total population of about 68 million.
The UK’s Covid vaccination drive reached a nadir of 41,523 jabs on 26 September – the lowest daily count since the roll-out began – before kicking up a gear in October. The 7-day average for last week climbed above 330,000 shots a day.
My colleague Rachel Hall wrote earlier that 800 secondary schools in England will receive visits from health teams to offer the vaccine to children aged 12 to 15, in an effort to boost uptake for this age group. England has lagged behind Scotland in vaccinated children.
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Moderna said the US Food and Drug Administration will require additional time to complete its assessment of the Covid-19 vaccine for adolescents aged 12 to 17.
The FDA told Moderna the review may not be completed by January 2022. Children in this age group are already able to get vaccinated from the Pzifer/BioNTech vaccine.
Reuters has the details:
The US biotech company said it was told late on Friday that the FDA needed the additional time to evaluate recent international analyses of the risk of a type of heart inflammation called myocarditis after vaccination, a rare side effect that has primarily affected young males.
Moderna also said it will delay filing its request for an EUA for a half strength 50-microgram dose of the vaccine for children ages 6 to 11 while the FDA completes its review of the 12-17 filing.
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Italy reports 4,526 new Covid cases
Italy reported 26 Covid deaths on Sunday, down from 37 on Saturday.
New cases also dipped slightly, with 4,526 on Sunday compared with 4,878 the day before.
Italy has the second-worst Covid death toll in Europe, recording 132,100 deaths in total – behind only the UK, which reports 163,515 deaths with Covid on the death certificate.
Italy has banked on its “green pass,” which requires workers to be vaccinated or give regular proof of a negative test or antibodies, to suppress cases. The measures are among the strictest in Europe and came into effect on 15 October.
Italian Covid deaths have mostly stayed below 100 a day since June.
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Here’s that new UK Covid case data visualised (up to 30 October).
As you can see, while new positive infections remain high, the September and October incline is starting to fall and become a spike.
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UK records 38,009 new Covid cases; weekly tally down 13.5%
The UK recorded 38,009 new positive Covid tests on Sunday. Cases remain high but have ticked down slightly from a mid-month peak of 56,658 new cases on 18 October.
Average new cases for this week were down 13.5% on the previous week, but deaths, which lag case rises, climbed.
A further 74 deaths were recorded in the past 24 hours, slightly down on yesterday’s 166 deaths, and taking the number of UK over the last seven days to 1,099. That’s a jump of 15.8% on the previous week.
This is Jem Bartholomew taking charge of the blog from here.
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Singapore recorded 3,163 Covid-19 cases on Sunday, a rise from 3,112 the previous day, Reuters reports.
Official health sources reported 13 new deaths.
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Six more Covid-19-related deaths were reported in Northern Ireland on Sunday, bringing the total since the start of the pandemic up to 2,705.
Another 1,001 cases of coronavirus were reported, according to a BBC report of data from the Department of Health.
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US delivering 1.5 million vaccine doses to Taiwan
The US is delivering an additional 1.5 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to Taiwan, Reuters reports.
A senior US administration official told Reuters that the government plans to increase to 4 million the total number of shots donated to the self-ruled island, which is under increasing pressure from China.
Reuters reports:
“Our vaccines do not come with strings attached” and were not donated to “secure favors or extract concessions,” the Biden administration official said, in an apparent reference to criticism that Beijing is trying to strengthen its geopolitical clout through so-called vaccine diplomacy.
The official added that Taiwan was a “vital partner” on global health issues.
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One in six municipal workers in New York City in the US remained unvaccinated after a Friday deadline to show proof of at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.
The Associated Press reports that there was a last-minute rush of jabs boosted the vaccination rate from 76% to 83% among police officers, firefighters, garbage collectors and other city workers covered by the mandate as of 8pm on Friday, despite opposition from rightwing politicians and media that culminated in a protest at City Hall this week.
Workers who have not complied with the requirement will be put on unpaid leave starting on Monday, leaving the city bracing for the possibility of closed firehouses, fewer police and ambulances and mounting trash.
Coronavirus has killed at least 4,992,831 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to a new estimate.
A tally from official sources compiled by Agence France Presse at 11am on Sunday also showed at least 246,316,520 cases of coronavirus have been registered.
The vast majority have recovered, though some have continued to experience symptoms weeks or even months later.
The figures are based on daily reports provided by health authorities in each country.
The World Health Organization estimates that the pandemic’s overall toll could be two to three times higher than official records, due to the excess mortality that is directly and indirectly linked to Covid-19. A large number of the less severe or asymptomatic cases also remain undetected.
On Saturday, 6,238 new deaths and 399,027 new cases were recorded worldwide. The countries with the highest number of new deaths were Russia with 1,158, followed by India with 446 and Romania with 413.
The United States is the worst-affected country with 745,670 deaths from 45,953,780 cases, followed by Brazil with 607,694 deaths from 21,804,094 cases, India with 458,186 deaths from 34,273,300 cases, Mexico with 288,276 deaths from 3,805,765 cases, and Russia with 238,538 deaths from 8,513,790 cases.
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More than 800 secondary schools in England will receive visits from health teams to offer the coronavirus vaccine to children aged 12 to 15.
The BBC reported that health secretary Sajid Javid said the vaccines “will help keep children in the classroom” as they return from their half-term holidays.
More than 600,000 children have been vaccinated since the rollout was extended last month, NHS England said, adding that some 140,000 children have made appointments to book their vaccine over the next few weeks.
Covid infections in the UK are at record levels, with 1.28 million people suffering from the virus, but scientists say that cases may have peaked as separate figures suggest the number of daily infections has declined by 14%.
Russians are spurning the Sputnik jab and heading west for vaccines to enable them to travel more freely as international regulators delay approval.
Although Russia became the first country to register and mass-produce a vaccine at the end of 2020, Sputnik V has struggled to get international approval, effectively barring Russians from travelling to the west, where only those with EU, US or UK-approved vaccinations are able to visit.
This has led to a boom in Russian vaccine tourists heading to nations such as Serbia, which allow visa-free travel from Russia.
EU and World Health Organisation approval of the vaccine would ease international travel for Sputnik-vaccinated Russians, who are currently barred from travelling to most European capitals. The US is also set to ban entry to non-citizens who have not been jabbed with a vaccine approved by the WHO or US Food and Drug Administration.
However, the EU has repeatedly delayed the approval of the Russian vaccine and has said Russia hasn’t provided its regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), with the right data about the vaccine. Russia has dismissed these claims as politically motivated and said the EMA was “dragging its feet” on purpose.
Russia reports highest day of new Covid-19 cases
Russia on Sunday reported 40,993 new Covid-19 infections, its highest single-day case tally since the start of the pandemic.
The country’s coronavirus task force also reported 1,158 coronavirus-related deaths in the past 24 hours, Reuters reports.
The Associated Press reported that President Vladimir Putin ordered a nonworking period from Saturday until 7 November to curb the spread of the virus. Most state agencies and private businesses are to suspend operations. Unvaccinated people older than 60 have been ordered to stay home.
Many Russians have rushed to use the time off for a seaside Black Sea holiday or to take a trip to Egypt or Turkey.
Moscow introduced new measures on Thursday, shutting down kindergartens, schools, gyms, entertainment venues and most stores, and restricting restaurants to takeout or delivery. Food stores, pharmacies and companies operating key infrastructure remained open.
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UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has warned double-vaccinated Britons against complacency over Covid, saying that waning immunity over time meant booster jabs were vital for continued protection.
The prime minister insisted, however, that there was no need yet for the government’s so-called plan B, which would reimpose restrictions such as mask wearing and home working, despite data showing infections in England at levels last seen at the height of the second wave in January.
“We’re watching the numbers every day,” Johnson told reporters before the G20 summit in Rome, which he is attending in the run-up to next week’s Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.
“Yes it’s true that cases are high, but they do not currently constitute any reason to go to plan B. I think it’s agreed among absolutely everybody, apart from possibly the Labour party. So we’re sticking with the plan.”
China has slammed a US intelligence review into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, calling it “political and false” while urging Washington to stop attacking China.
On Sunday, the Chinese foreign ministry published a statement firmly opposing the initial findings published in the summary report in August, days after the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a fuller version from a 90-day review ordered by president Joe Biden.
The paper said that, without new information, intelligence agencies would not be able to offer a better judgment on whether the virus emerged via animal-to-human transmission or a lab leak.
The lab-leak theory posits that the virus was spread from a research facility in Wuhan, the city where the contagion was first reported. The theory remains unsubstantiated, and China has repeatedly rejected it.
The paper said goothat China’s cooperation would probably be needed to reach a conclusive assessment on origins, although it emphasised that Beijing continued to “hinder the global investigation”.
Rachel Hall here, launching the blog for today. You’ll find all the global news on coronavirus, including from the UK. Please do get in touch if you think there’s something we haven’t covered, or if you have any tips or thoughts. You can reach me at rachel.hall@theguardian.com or on Twitter.
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