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Tunisia launched a Covid-19 vaccination drive for the over-40s, after receiving more than six million doses from abroad to combat surging infections.
The health ministry said 551,008 people had been given jabs in more than 300 centres across the country, in what was billed as an “open day” for vaccinations, AFP reports.
Updated
Boris Johnson has been urged to cap the cost of private Covid-19 tests in the UK to prevent foreign holidays becoming a luxury open only to the wealthiest families.
A list of providers which meet minimum testing standards on the government website shows more than 100 outlets charging £200 or more, PA reports.
Analysis of the list by the Liberal Democrats shows just 11% of the providers offer tests for under £50, with the cheapest charging £20.
Some 24% of the providers charge more than £200, with the Mayfair GP clinic tests listed as £575, although its own website said prices start at £399.
Health secretary Sajid Javid has asked the competition watchdog to investigate the market for travel PCR tests in response to concerns about the cost for families travelling abroad.
Updated
Brazil has recorded 13,893 new coronavirus cases and 399 further deaths, the country’s health ministry said.
The country has had more than 20.1 million cases and over 563,000 deaths in total.
Updated
Most people who received a third dose of Pfizer Inc’s Covid-19 vaccine felt similar or fewer side effects than they did after receiving the second shot, according to an initial survey in Israel.
Israel began offering the booster shots about 10 days ago to people over 60 as part of efforts to slow the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant, Reuters reports. Israel’s largest healthcare provider, Clalit, said on Sunday it had administered a third dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to more than 240,000 people. 88% of participants in the survey said that in the days after receiving the third shot, they felt “similar or better” to how they felt after the second shot. 31% reported some side effect, the most common being soreness at the injection site.
Updated
The latest Covid developments in Australia:
With new Covid-19 cases surging in Louisiana, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival will not be returning this year, organisers said.
The festival, which traditionally is held in the spring, had been scheduled to run 8-10 October and 15-17 October this year after being cancelled last year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
But organisers cited “current exponential growth” of new cases in the city and region, as well as an ongoing public health emergency, in announcing that the festival will not occur as planned, Associated Press reports.
“We now look forward to next spring, when we will present the Festival during its traditional timeframe,” organisers said, adding that next year’s dates are 29 April-8 May.
Updated
France has reported 20,450 new coronavirus cases, Reuters reports.
The country has recorded more than 6.28 million cases in total.
A summary of today's developments
- France’s health minister has appealed for volunteer doctors and nurses to travel to the overseas territories of Guadalupe and Martinique as a wave of Covid-19 infections overwhelms hospitals on the two Caribbean islands.
- The UK has recorded 27,429 new coronavirus cases and a further 39 deaths in the latest 24 hour period, bringing the total deaths to 130,321, government figures show.
- Seven more countries have joined the green list from Sunday – and France has left the “amber plus” list, under widespread changes to the UK’s traffic light system for travel.
- In Australia, south-east Queensland has emerged from lockdown just as Cairns residents begin one, as the state grapples with a Covid-19 outbreak.
- Russia reported 22,866 new Covid-19 cases on Sunday, including 2,761 in Moscow, taking the national tally to 6,447,750 since the pandemic began.
- The Philippines’ health ministry recorded on Sunday 9,671 new coronavirus cases and 287 additional deaths, the biggest single-day rise in the country’s death toll since 9 April.
- Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo said the coronavirus outbreak had eased in many parts of the country but remained worrying in the economic capital of Lubumbashi where not wearing a mask will now be punishable by up to seven days in jail.
- Iran, grappling with its most severe surge of the coronavirus to date, reported more new infections and deaths across the country on Sunday than any other single day since the pandemic began.
- Vietnam’s health ministry reported 9,690 coronavirus infections on Sunday, a record daily increase.
Updated
The US administered 351,400,930 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country as of Sunday morning and distributed 407,561,705 doses, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Those figures are up from the 350,627,188 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by 7 August, out of 407,550,175 doses delivered, Reuters reports. The agency said 194,866,738 people had received at least one dose, while 166,477,481 people were fully vaccinated as of Sunday.
Updated
Amid increased fears that children are now both victims and vectors of the latest Covid-19 variant surge, National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins signaled on Sunday that increasing numbers of children are falling ill in the US.
His comments also came as one of America’s largest teachers unions appeared to shift its position on mandatory vaccinations for teachers.
With about 90 million adult Americans remaining unvaccinated, and vaccines remaining unauthorised for 12 years and under, Collins told ABC News This Week with George Stephanopoulos that “the largest number of children so far in the whole pandemic right now are in the hospital, 1,450 kids in the hospital from Covid-19.”
Updated
Tesla Inc is telling workers at its Nevada battery factory they will be required to wear a mask indoors starting Monday regardless of vaccination status, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Workers at the Reno, Nevada-area facility had previously been required to wear a mask if they were not vaccinated, but could avoid that requirement if they were, the Journal said.
Tesla is the latest company to mandate masks after the Delta variant forced the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to reverse course and recommend that even fully vaccinated individuals wear masks indoors, Reuters reports.
France appeals for volunteer medics to tackle rising cases in Guadalupe and Martinique
France’s health minister has appealed for volunteer doctors and nurses to travel to the overseas territories of Guadalupe and Martinique as a wave of Covid-19 infections overwhelms hospitals on the two Caribbean islands.
health minister Olivier Veran said the first medical staff would fly out on Tuesday, as health authorities race to administer Covid-19 doses but come up against a deep-rooted culture of vaccine-hesitancy. Only 21% of the populations of Guadalupe and Martinique have received a first dose of a vaccine, according to the independent COVIDTracker website citing August 5th data, compared with two thirds of all French people having received one dose and 55% being fully vaccinated. Veran said Martinique and Guadalupe were facing “an intense wave of infections” that was hitting a population where vaccination levels were too low.
The competition watchdog has been asked by Sajid Javid to investigate the market for PCR travel tests.
The UK’s health secretary said he wanted to ensure consumers did not face “unnecessarily high costs”.
In a letter, Javid said: “We have all experienced enormous disruption to our lives over this pandemic, but it is not right if some families experience yet further disruption unnecessarily because of potentially unfair practices in the market for private travel tests.
“It is important that the sensible measures we have introduced at the borders are fair and transparent and don’t involve unnecessary costs or low quality provision to people who have made so many sacrifices during this pandemic.”
He asked the watchdog to conduct a “rapid high-level review of the market for PCR travel tests to assess what action might be taken to ensure that consumers do not face unnecessarily high costs or other poor provision”.
Mexico’s president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said that he will talk by phone with U.S. vice president Kamala Harris on Monday, citing Covid-19 vaccines as one of the issues the two leaders plan to discuss.
During the Olympic closing ceremony in Tokyo, International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach said: “You were competing fiercely with each other in pursuit of Olympic gold.
“At the same time you were living together in peace. This is a powerful message of solidarity and peace.
“For the first time since the pandemic began the entire world came together. Sport returned to centre stage … This gives us hope. This give us faith in the future.”
During the ceremony, the flame was handed over by video link to Paris 2024.
Former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said not requiring masks for students in the US as they return to full-day, in-person learning was reckless, telling CBS News: “No business would do that responsibly and yet that’s what we’re going to be doing in some schools.”
He also urged schools and families to utilise higher-quality masks to protect against the more contagious Delta variant, noting that Utah was providing KN95 masks for every student, Reuters reports.
France has reported 28 new coronavirus deaths in hospital, Reuters reports.
France has had over 112,000 deaths overall. It has also reported 1,556 people in intensive care units for Covid-19.
Parents in Japan are sending bags of rice that weigh the same as their newborn babies to relatives who are unable to visit them due to the pandemic.
The bags come in a wide range of designs, with some shaped like a baby wrapped in a blanket so that relatives can feel as though they are hugging the new arrival while looking at a picture of their face, which is attached to the front.
The amount of rice in the bag is matched to the newborn’s birth weight and the price increases in parallel with the size of the baby. Some firms charge one yen a gram, with a 3.5kg pack priced 3,500 yen (£22.90).
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Six Berlin nightclubs opened their doors this weekend to some 2,000 revellers free of masks and social distancing restrictions in a pilot project to assess whether testing for Covid-19 could prevent another lockdown for the city’s night life venues.
To be admitted to the clubs, all participants in the project, named “Clubculture Reboot”, had to have tested negative on Friday with a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test, the most reliable commonly-used method of detecting the virus.
They will be offered a cash incentive to get follow-up tests this coming Friday, Reuters reports.
Some 20 clubs applied to take part in the project, initiated by the Berlin Culture Ministry and scientists from the city’s Charité hospital.
The six selected clubs were chosen based on their ventilation systems, city districts, and music genre.
U.S. teachers should be required to get vaccinated against Covid-19 to protect students who are too young to be inoculated, the head of the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union said.
“The circumstances have changed,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” program.
“It weighs really heavily on me that kids under 12 can’t get vaccinated.”
“I felt the need ... to stand up and say this as a matter of personal conscience,” she said.
A rightwing TV and radio host in the US who was a vociferous critic of Dr Anthony Fauci and who urged his listeners not to get vaccinated against Covid-19 has died after contracting the virus.
Dick Farrel, who had described Fauci as a “power-tripping lying freak” who conspired with “power trip libb loons”, had urged people not to get vaccinated as recently as June.
He reportedly changed his opinion about vaccines after falling ill and later being admitted to hospital before passing away on 4 August aged 65. “He texted me and told me to ‘Get it!’ He told me this virus is no joke and he said, “I wish I had gotten [the vaccine]!” close friend Amy Leigh Hair wrote on Facebook.
The latest figures on vaccinations in the UK:
#COVID19 VACCINE UPDATE: Daily figures on the total number of COVID-19 vaccine doses that have been given in the UK.
— Department of Health and Social Care (@DHSCgovuk) August 8, 2021
As of 8 August, 86,466,264 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been given in the UK.
Visit the @PHE_uk dashboard for more info:
▶️ https://t.co/cQkuLQglz1 pic.twitter.com/HuoqV2wXHF
More data from Italy. Patients in hospital with Covid-19 - not including those in intensive care - stood at 2,631 on Sunday, up from 2,533 a day earlier.
There were 24 admissions to intensive care units, down from 29 on Saturday, Reuters reports.
The total number of intensive care patients increased to 299 from a previous 288.
Some 203,511 tests for Covid-19 were carried out in the last 24 hours, compared with 293,863 the day before, the health ministry said.
UK death toll increases by 39
The UK has recorded 27,429 new coronavirus cases and a further 39 deaths in the latest 24 hour period, bringing the total deaths to 130,321, government figures show.
Updated
Italy reported 11 coronavirus-related deaths on Sunday compared to 22 the day before, the health ministry said.
The daily tally of new infections fell to 5,735 from 6,902, Reuters reports.
Italy has registered 128,220 deaths linked to Covid-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year.
The country has reported 4.4 million cases to date.
Britons vaccinated abroad are still struggling to get their jabs registered with the NHS, a Lib Dem peer has warned, despite government promises that measures would be in place by the end of last month.
Brian Paddick, a former London mayoral candidate and a member of the House of Lords, said the government was “yet again, promising things that they fail to deliver” after his GP was unable to register vaccinations he had in Norway, where he has been staying.
This means that Lord Paddick, like many British nationals vaccinated abroad, cannot get an NHS Covid pass, which is needed to avoid quarantine when returning from amber-list countries and, from September, may be required to enter some bars and venues.
The former deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, who has spent the last three months in Norway where his husband lives, has already had three vaccinations. His first jab, a dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine delivered in the UK, was not recognised in Norway, requiring him to have two Pfizer shots to be considered fully vaccinated there.
He said that if the UK fails to recognise the jabs he received in Norway, he may end up needing a fourth jab in order to have a complete vaccination record in the UK, where he lives and works.
“Which bearing in mind the worldwide shortage of vaccines, seems to be ridiculous,” he said.
To make matters worse for Paddick, he has been dropped by his GP as a result of living outside the UK for more than three months, and now he cannot access the NHS Covid pass app.
He said:
I wanted to desperately come back to the UK, but it just wasn’t practical with the cost and the need to quarantine. Plus, the advice not to travel.
It wasn’t [necessary to travel] because I could work remotely, and so many people are in the same situation.
He has called for a relaxation of the rules to allow people who have spent longer than three months outside the UK access to their GP.
Read the full story here:
Summary
Here’s a roundup of the key developments of the day so far:
- Seven more countries have joined the green list from today – and France has left the ‘amber plus’ list, under widespread changes to the UK’s traffic light system for travel.
- In Australia, south-east Queensland has emerged from lockdown just as Cairns residents begin one, as the state grapples with a Covid-19 outbreak.
- Russia reported 22,866 new Covid-19 cases on Sunday, including 2,761 in Moscow, taking the national tally to 6,447,750 since the pandemic began.
- The Philippines’ health ministry recorded on Sunday 9,671 new coronavirus cases and 287 additional deaths, the biggest single-day rise in the country’s death toll since 9 April.
- Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo said the coronavirus epidemic had eased in many parts of the country but remained worrying in the economic capital of Lubumbashi where not wearing a mask will now be punishable by up to seven days in jail.
- Iran, grappling with its most severe surge of the coronavirus to date, reported more new infections and deaths across the country on Sunday than any other single day since the pandemic began.
- Vietnam’s health ministry reported 9,690 coronavirus infections on Sunday, a record daily increase.
US employers are scrambling to come up with Covid-19 policies for their workers as the country is experiencing a rise in infections, primarily among unvaccinated Americans, leading to a chaotic patchwork of requirements that varies by company and location.
The rapid spread of the highly contagious Delta variant, which has caused Covid cases to rise in the majority of states, has led many companies to announce vaccine mandates and mask requirements and to delay plans to return to the office.
On Wall Street, confusion has loomed as the largest banks have issued different rules.
Some firms, including Morgan Stanley, Jeffries and BlackRock, have required employees to be vaccinated in order to return to the office. .
Others, such as Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase are so far staying away from such mandates. Masks were largely optional for vaccinated employees until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently updated its guidance to encourage more indoor masking. Since the update, Citigroup and JPMorgan are requiring all employees to wear masks in the office.
Companies in the finance industry have been the staunchest proponents of getting workers back at their desks. Earlier in the summer, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman said he would be “very disappointed” if employees were not back in the office by Labor Day, September 6.
“If you want to get paid New York rates, you work in New York. None of this ‘I’m in Colorado, working in New York and getting paid like I’m sitting in New York City,” Gorman said in June. “Sorry, that doesn’t work.”
The spread of the Delta variant is on the radar of bank executives, some of whom are reportedly reconsidering when to require employees to return to the office. On Thursday, BlackRock and Wells Fargo announced they are delaying plans to have employees return to the office, citing the rise in Covid-19 cases.
Tech giants like Google, Facebook and retail chain Walmart – which are requiring employees to be vaccinated to return to the workplace – have also stalled their office return plans until October. Amazon postponed its return to the office to January 2022.
Other large companies have started to announce vaccine mandates for their workers. On Friday, United Airlines became the first major US airline to require vaccines of all its domestic US employees by October 25, or five weeks after the vaccines being used in the US receive full approval from the Food and Drug Administration, whichever comes first.
Read more here:
Vietnam’s health ministry reported 9,690 coronavirus infections on Sunday, a record daily increase.
This is up from 7,334 cases on Saturday, Reuters reports.
Iran, grappling with its most severe surge of the coronavirus to date, reported more new infections and deaths across the country on Sunday than any other single day since the pandemic began.
Health authorities logged over 39,600 new cases and 542 deaths from the virus. The fatality count shatters the previous record set during Iran’s deadliest coronavirus surge that gripped the country last November, signalling the current wave will likely only get worse.
The new all-time highs push Iran’s total number of infections over 4.1 million and death toll over 94,000 — the highest in the Middle East.
The crush of new cases, fuelled by the fast-spreading delta variant, have overwhelmed hospitals with patients too numerous to handle. The country has never seen so many Covid-19 patients in critical condition, with 6,462 more severe cases reported Sunday.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters, last week ordered officials to discuss the possibility of a total national shutdown. The government has been loath to enforce such a lockdown, fearing the damage it would do to an economy reeling from years of American sanctions.
Iran’s sputtering vaccination campaign hasn’t helped matters. Only 3.3% of the total population of some 80 million has been fully vaccinated, according to data compiled from government sources by the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford.
Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo said the coronavirus epidemic had eased in many parts of the country but remained worrying in the economic capital of Lubumbashi where not wearing a mask will now be punishable by up to seven days in jail.
Health minister Jean-Jacques Mbungani said there had been “a marked drop in Covid-19 cases across the country,” according to a statement released by the prime minister’s office. In Kinshasa, the situation was particularly hopeful.
Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe, in charge of the fight against the pandemic, told the press:
The third wave is steadily decreasing and we can say that it is behind us.
But we must be vigilant, continue to wear the mask properly and get vaccinated when the country has received the vaccines we are expecting.
Lubumbashi, however, was experiencing a “resurgence of the pandemic,” its mayor Ghislain Robert Lubaba Buluma said Saturday in a decree announcing new prevention measures.
People would have to wear a mask to access the city centre, and “checkpoints” would be put in place from Monday to make sure the measure was followed.
Anyone not wearing a mask “”will be sentenced to seven days’ imprisonment and a fine of 15,000 Congolese francs,” or about 6 euros, the decree states.
Coronavirus has infected 51,254 people in the DRC, with 1,045 fatalities, according to an AFP tally of official sources.
Updated
When the Great Plague struck Marseille in 1720, killing more than half of the city’s population, travellers were ordered to carry a “bill of health” and ships arriving at the Mediterranean port underwent a 40-day cordon sanitaire or quarantine. As a gateway for trade, the city authorities struggled to find a delicate balance between halting the spread of the disease and damaging vital commerce.
Three hundred years on, President Emmanuel Macron is walking an equally tricky tightrope just eight months before he seeks re-election in April 2022. And unlike the ancient Marseillais, Macron has to answer to social media.
On Monday, France’s contested pass sanitaire will be extended with the aim of coercing the final tranche of hardline vaccine sceptics to get inoculated, prompting protests across the country for the fourth consecutive weekend. Last week, more than 200,000 people turned out to demonstrate, according to figures from the interior ministry.
The protests have united the far left and far right and many in between. While there has been little opposition to the imposition of face masks, opponents fervently believe the pass sanitaire violates the most fundamental of French principles: the liberté and egalité of the national motto. They were joined in Paris yesterday by Gilets Jaunes and a motley crew of anarchists, conspiracy theorists and those who would compare the French president to Adolf Hitler and his centrist government to Nazis.
The protesters had pinned their hopes on the constitutional council – a nine-member body appointed by the president and the leaders of both houses of parliament to look at new legislation – stifling any extension of the pass. They were to be disappointed. On Thursday, council members, known as “the sages”, upheld the constitutional legality of almost all the proposed new measures.
Afterwards, Julien Odoul, a young rising star of the far-right Rassemblement National, said: “The constitutional council has approved a two-tier society where there are two categories of citizens who don’t have the same rights, depending on their vaccine status. This is Macron’s society and one that we condemn and reject. The principles of liberty and egality are sacred.”
Hard left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a presidential candidate, agreed, describing the health pass as “absurd, unfair and authoritarian”.
Macron urged his compatriots to remember the third element of the motto, fraternité, calling on them to “accept these collective rules … and get vaccinated”.
It’s about citizenship. Freedom only exists if the freedom of everyone is protected… it’s worth nothing if by exercising our freedom we contaminate our brother, neighbour, friend, parents, or someone we have come across at an event. Then freedom becomes irresponsibility.
The pass sanitaire, passed by French MPs last month and due to last until 30 September, already required those going to cinemas, theatres, museums or attending larger public events to prove they are either fully vaccinated, have a negative Covid test or proof that they have had and recovered from the coronavirus.
From 9 August this will be extended. Anyone wishing to dine in a restaurant or drink in a bar, even on an outside terrace, will need the pass as will passengers travelling long distance by train or bus or visiting nursing homes and hospitals, except in a medical emergency.
Read the full story:
After a turbulent 18 months running an online retail business during the pandemic, Julie Jones is now facing a new challenge.
One of her eight employees has decided not to get vaccinated against Covid-19. The company, based in the north-west of England, works in a small office space, and having one unvaccinated team member is causing health and financial concerns for Jones (not her real name) and her other staff.
Julie said:
It’s a difficult situation. I’m between a rock and a hard place. I would really rather she was jabbed, but I feel it is personal choice.
It’s not a healthcare setting, and I don’t feel it’s my place as an employer to ask her to do something medical she isn’t comfortable with.
But I am also very concerned about the potential impact on the business if she went off with Covid and the rest of us had to isolate.
Despite this, Jones has decided not to tell her employees they need to be fully vaccinated to enter the office, over fears it could lead to the loss of a valued team member.
She said:
She’s a fantastic employee and I would rather take the risk of her not being jabbed than risk an argument and her potentially leaving over it.
Thousands of businesses and organisations of all sizes are weighing up how best to bring workers safely back to their desks after many months of remote working. They are also aware that making vaccination demands of their staff is a moral, and legal, minefield.
Like Jones, some employers fear a “no jab, no job” policy could at best risk resignations, or at worst leave them open to legal claims of unfair dismissal or discrimination. As a result, companies are divided over how best to protect staff during a widespread return to the office.
Many workers have said they would feel safer in the workplace if they knew that other colleagues were also fully immunised. Almost a quarter (24%) of business managers said they would only be prepared to work with colleagues who had been double-jabbed, according to a recent survey by the Chartered Management Institute. The poll found employees aged 55 and over were more likely than younger people to say they would only want to share a work space with the fully vaccinated.
Large American corporates have embraced the policy of mandatory vaccinations more enthusiastically than their British counterparts. US financial firms, which have been the loudest in expressing their desire to get workers back to the office, were also among the first to tell their teams that only fully vaccinated staff could return to their headquarters.
Read the full story here:
The Philippines’ health ministry recorded on Sunday 9,671 new coronavirus cases and 287 additional deaths, the biggest single-day rise in the country’s death toll since 9 April.
In a bulletin, the ministry said total confirmed infections in the south-east Asian country had risen to 1.66m, while the death toll had climbed to 29,122, Reuters reports.
Updated
The UK government has dismissed criticism of Dominic Raab after a newspaper report accused the UK foreign secretary of dodging quarantine rules following a visit to France.
The Sunday Mirror reported Raab dodged the government’s travel stipulations by not going into quarantine visiting France, which was on the UK’s amber plus list, late last month.
While rules covering quarantining after visiting France have now been relaxed, at the time of Raab’s visit the government advice said people arriving from the country had to quarantine for 10 days.
However, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has responded to the Sunday Mirror’s report by saying Raab acted within the rules, PA Media reports.
Government ministers are exempt from quarantine on account of conducting essential state business for the UK outside of the country. The exemptions cover both red list and non-red list countries.
An FCDO spokesman said in a statement:
The foreign secretary travels on diplomatic business within the rules.
It is his job to pursue the UK’s interests abroad, including on security, trade, and international development.
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Russia reported 22,866 new Covid-19 cases on Sunday, including 2,761 in Moscow, taking the national tally to 6,447,750 since the pandemic began.
The government coronavirus taskforce also said 787 people had died of coronavirus-linked causes in the past 24 hours. It has confirmed a death toll of 164,881 people.
Russia registered around 463,000 excess deaths from April 2020 to June this year during the pandemic, according to Reuters calculations based on data released by the state statistics service on Friday.
Updated
South-east Queensland has emerged from lockdown just as Cairns residents begin one, as the state grapples with a Covid-19 outbreak.
Eleven local government areas in south-east Australia came out of an eight-day lockdown on Sunday amid a Delta variant outbreak that has grown to 111 cases, AFP reports.
Nine new cases were recorded on Sunday with seven linked to the Indooroopilly cluster centred on schools in western Brisbane.
None of those seven cases were infectious in the community, prompting the state premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, to lift lockdown.
She told reporters:
But we are not out of the woods.
I just want everyone to have a really good understanding that we are dealing with the Delta strain.
It is highly, highly infectious, and I can tell you from my conversations in Tokyo, with people around the world, this strain is sweeping the world.
As stay-at-home orders were eased in the south, Cairns and Yarrabah, in the far north of Queensland, entered a three-day lockdown.
The order came after an unvaccinated taxi driver tested positive in Cairns overnight.
Queensland’s chief health officer, Jeannette Young, said the man had been infectious for 10 days and she could not wait to make a risk assessment.
She said:
We’ve got to lockdown straightaway because if I were to wait another 24 hours, that’s another 24 hours that there might have been people infectious, (and) also out and about.
The other new locally acquired case on the Gold Coast has a low virus load, so authorities aren’t as concerned about it.
However, Young still urged anyone with symptoms to get tested.
South-east residents are still subject to a number of restrictions until 22 August at least. Face masks are mandatory, including for school and childcare staff and high school students.
South-east residents can have 10 visitors to their home and visits to hospitals and aged care facilities are allowed.
Weddings and funerals will be limited to 20 guests, and a capacity of one person per four square metre rule or 50% seated applies in venues. South-east residents are also being urged not to visit regional Queensland.
More than 11,000 people remain in home quarantine, mostly in Brisbane.
The deputy police commissioner Steve Gollschewski said officers would be enforcing the new rules.
He said:
There are still a lot of people out there who do not carry and wear masks.
I am going to bang on about this endlessly: please make sure you are wearing a mask, and take it with you.
Queensland authorities will also prioritise vaccinations for childcare and school staff, fly-in fly-out workers, and freight and distribution centre workers.
Updated
France moves to amber list while UK's green list expands
Seven more countries have joined the green list from today – and France has left the ‘amber plus’ list, under widespread changes to the UK’s traffic light system for travel.
Ministers announced on Wednesday that fully vaccinated travellers from England, Scotland and Northern Ireland returning from France no longer need to quarantine and ditched plans for a “watchlist” of amber countries such as Spain.
India, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are moving from red to amber, whilst Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Latvia, Romania and Norway are going green.
Those arriving from green list countries do not need to quarantine regardless of vaccination status.
The move is likely to partially revive the struggling tourism sector but will raise questions about whether the government is being complacent about the spread of the virus.
It will also end a tense diplomatic situation over the additional quarantine measures for France, to which senior politicians in Paris had vociferously objected.
Updated
