It’s been another busy 24 hours on the Covid front as the world attempts to understand the possible consequences of the new Omicron variant.
That’s all for today’s coronavirus blog.
Thanks for joining us and please follow our latest Covid coverage here.
Summary
- Cases of the Omicron variant could be spreading even faster in England than in South Africa, according to a senior scientific adviser, who warned that the variant was a “very severe setback” to hopes of bringing the pandemic under control.
- European Union countries are expected to agree to limit to nine months the duration of Covid-19 certificates for travel around the bloc, three EU sources told Reuters, but some states are concerned that such a limit could hinder travel.
- Slovakia is to give cash handouts to people over 60 who get vaccinated or have their booster shot.
- Austria’s planned vaccine mandate has a minimum age of 14, the health minister said. The government also said holdouts face fines of up to 3,600 euros ($4,071) every three months.
- Malta will return to mandatory mask-wearing in outdoor and indoor spaces as from Saturday, Health Minister Chris Fearne said.
- The United States rushed millions of vaccine doses for children ages 5 to 11, but demand for inoculations for younger children has been low, more than a dozen state public health officials and physicians said.
- The US Food and Drug Administration authorised booster shots of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for those aged 16 and 17.
- Early hospital data from South Africa shows less than a third of patients admitted for Covid-19 during the latest wave linked to the Omicron variant are suffering severe illness, compared with two thirds in the early stages of the last two waves.
- Covid cases in South Africa surged by 255% in the past seven days (the Omicron variant produced a record 22,391 new cases) but there is mounting anecdotal evidence that infections with the Omicron variant are provoking milder symptoms than in previous waves (only 22 deaths were recorded).
- Germany’s vaccination advisory commission recommended the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine is given to children aged five to 11 with pre-existing conditions.
- The World Health Organization warned wealthy countries against hoarding vaccines for booster shots as they try to fight off the new Omicron variant, threatening supplies to poorer countries where inoculation rates are low.
- The European Union’s drugs regulator said it could make sense to administer vaccine boosters as early as three months after the initial two-shot regimen.
- Brazil will require international travellers who aren’t vaccinated against coronavirus to quarantine for five days in the city they arrive by plane.
- Australian children aged five to 11 will receive the Pfizer Covid vaccine from 10 January, after the federal government accepted a recommendation for its use from immunisation experts.
Updated
Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison has just spoken regarding the announcement to offer Covid jabs to children aged five to 11 from January.
He said:
Today we can announce there have been more than 40m doses of vaccine delivered in Australia and that is a great achievement by the entire team who have been involved in delivering these doses all around the country.
... Back in September, we made the decision, based on the best possible medical advice that we would extend [the] vaccination program to 12- to 15-year-olds, and that program has been going extremely well and now we have taken the decision, based on the best possible medical advice, through the TGA, that we’ll be extending that vaccination program to five to 11-year-olds and giving parents the choice.
To all those five- to 11-year-olds, those brave five- to 11-year-olds, they will come to places like here ... they will now join this program which has helped to keep Australians safe.
The fact that we’ve achieved such a high rate of vaccination means we can look into 2022 with confidence. Even though other strains come, as we’ve seen with Omicron and Delta and others in the past, is Australia is set up to live with this virus, to live together with this virus.”
Hi, Samantha Lock here, taking over from my colleague Tom Ambrose.
Some more news out of Australia, where I will be reporting to you from.
It was another relatively high day of cases for NSW with 516 new infections recorded in the last 24 hours. No deaths were reported.
Victoria recorded 1,206 new Covid-19 cases and two deaths.
Tests are also underway to determine if the new Omicron variant has been detected in South Australia.
Australia to offer Covid jabs to children aged 5-11 from January
Australia will begin administering Covid vaccines for children aged 5 to 11 from 10 January, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced.
“This will be welcome news for millions of families across the country who want the opportunity for their children to be vaccinated,” Morrison said in a statement.
After reviewing clinical data from Canada, the country’s vaccination advisory group recommended an eight-week interval between the two doses, which can be shortened to three weeks if there is an outbreak.
Pfizer doses will be administered in the initial phase, while regulators assess the suitability of Moderna shots. A decision is expected in the coming weeks.
The decision comes as Australia seeks to accelerate the rollout of booster shots after becoming one of the world’s most-vaccinated countries against Covid, inoculating nearly 90% of its population above 16 with two doses.
US president Joe Biden said the United States was making progress in the battle against Covid and it was good news regulators had expanded eligibility for coronavirus vaccine booster shots to 16 and 17-year-olds.
Biden also said it was encouraging news that preliminary data shows three doses of Pfizer’s vaccine offers protection against the Omicron variant.
“My message is very straightforward and simple. If you got vaccinated six months ago ... get your booster right away,” he said.
![]President Joe Biden delivers brief remarks before a meeting with his coronavirus response coordinator Jeffrey Zients and members of the White House COVID-19 Response Team.](https://media.guim.co.uk/573fb386baaf463325bf926531bd830681020727/0_200_6000_3600/1000.jpg)
People should take a lateral flow test before going out Christmas shopping or to a festive party, the Welsh government has said.
The first minister, Mark Drakeford, is also asking people to wear face coverings in pubs and restaurants except when they are eating or drinking.
Drakeford said he expected cases of the Omicron variant to rise “quickly and sharply”, though there have only been a handful in Wales so far.
There will be no new restrictions in Wales when Drakeford announces the results of its regular three-weekly review on Friday. Many of the “plan B” measures the UK government is bringing in for England, such as wearing masks in indoor public places, are already in force in Wales.
But the Welsh government has said it is “strongly advising” that people “flow before they go”. This means taking a lateral flow test before going out – for example to a Christmas party, shopping, visiting friends or family, to any crowded or busy place, or before travelling.
If the test is positive, they should not go out but arrange for a PCR test and self-isolate, the government said.
Brazil will require international travellers who aren’t vaccinated against coronavirus to quarantine for five days in the city they arrive by plane.
The decision issued by the ministries of health, justice, infrastructure and the government’s chief of staff was published on Thursday.
The administration of President Jair Bolsonaro, who is unvaccinated himself, will start enforcing the measure Saturday. It is unclear how effectively Brazil can or will track those required to quarantine.
The head of the country’s health regulator, Antonio Barra Torres, told The Associated Press that the policy will “mean discouragement of anti-vaccine tourism to Brazil.”
The quarantine requirement “is a deterrent and educational measure,” Torres said by phone.
Travellers coming to Brazil still need to submit a negative PCR test result before boarding in their country of origin and submit a declaration to the country’s health regulator.
Unvaccinated travelers will have to take a new virus test after the five-day quarantine period and must check in with a health agency center that will have their addresses.
Updated
Revelations surrounding a number of coronavirus rule-breaking gatherings appear to have had an impact on the opinion polls in the UK as the opposition have opened up a six-point lead over the governing Tories.
The survey was conducted by Survation for the Daily Mirror after its story about the alleged Christmas party at 10 Downing Street last year. The Mirror reports:
An exclusive survey, conducted by Survation on December 1, after the Mirror’s bombshell story about No 10’s lockdown-breaking festive knees-up, sees support for Labour soar to 40% (+1%) while the Conservatives slump to 34%.
It represents a breakthrough for Keir Starmer as it is the highest poll lead for his party since Boris Johnson took power. The last time backing for Labour reached 40%, with the same pollster, was January 2, 2019, when Theresa May was PM and Jeremy Corbyn was at the Opposition’s helm.
However, it is important to note that because the UK uses the First Past The Post voting system, a party’s vote share in the polls does not equate to winning that percentage of seats in a General Election.
The next General Election is not due to be held until 2024.
A probe into alleged Covid rule-breaking parties in Government last year has been branded a “sham” as fresh claims emerged about a Christmas gathering reported to have taken place in Downing Street.
According to reports, No 10’s most senior spin doctor, Jack Doyle, made a speech and handed out awards at the alleged event on December 18 2020. PA Media reported:
The Prime Minister announced on Wednesday that an internal investigation led by Cabinet Secretary Simon Case would look into reports of a staff gathering held at Downing Street on that date. The probe was subsequently widened to include another festive celebration and a reported staff leaving do.
ITV News reported on Thursday that Mr Doyle, who was then deputy director of communications at No 10, addressed up to 50 people at the Christmas gathering - said to have been held on December 18. It is understood that Mr Doyle spoke to the press office to thank them for their work, as he did every week, and presented some awards to mark the team’s efforts.
Following the latest claims, Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner said the inquiry “has been exposed as a sham” as she argued more detail had emerged from the media than the Cabinet Office.
Ms Rayner said:
As more details emerge about the Downing Street Christmas party, the Government’s internal investigation has been exposed as the sham it is. The investigation has only just published its terms of reference and we are already seeing more details from the media than the Cabinet Office about the parties.
We all know there was a party that broke the rules. The Conservatives think it’s one rule for them, and another for everyone else. The Prime Minister is unfit to lead.
US health authorities said Thursday that 16 and 17-year-olds should get a booster dose of Pfizer’s Covid vaccine once they’re six months past their last shot.
The US and many other nations already were urging adults to get booster shots to pump up immunity that can wane months after vaccination, calls that intensified with the discovery of the new Omicron variant.
The Associated Press reported:
On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration gave emergency authorization for 16 and 17-year-olds to get a third dose of the vaccine made by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech. And hours later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lifted the last barrier — saying those teens should get their booster as soon as it’s time.
Boosters are important considering that protection against infection wanes over time and “we’re facing a variant that has the potential to require more immunity to be protected,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC’s director, told The Associated Press.
About 200 million Americans are fully vaccinated, including about 4.7 million 16 and 17-year-olds, many of whom got their first shots in the spring and would be eligible for a booster.
“Vaccination and getting a booster when eligible, along with other preventive measures like masking and avoiding large crowds and poorly ventilated spaces, remain our most effective methods for fighting Covid-19,” Dr Janet Woodcock, acting FDA commissioner, said in a statement.
Cases of the Omicron variant could be spreading even faster in England than in South Africa, according to a senior scientific adviser, who warned that the variant was a “very severe setback” to hopes of bringing the pandemic under control.
Prof John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said that plan B measures announced by the prime minister were “absolutely not an overreaction” even if Omicron turned out to be milder than the current dominant variant.
Edmunds told a Royal Society of Medicine webinar on Thursday that it was “extremely likely” there were many more cases of Omicron in the community than those confirmed by testing, and that the numbers were set to soar in the weeks ahead.
The UK Health Security Agency identified a further 249 Omicron cases on Thursday, almost twice the number announced the day before, bringing the UK total to 817. Edmunds said that if the UK had 1,000 cases today, then a doubling time of two to three days would drive the number up to 8,000 in a week and 64,000 in two weeks. Those would come on top of the continuing wave of Delta infections.
“Nobody wants to have to reintroduce these measures. It’s very damaging for parts of the economy – the hospitality and retail sector, in particular, are going to be affected – but unfortunately we have to do it,” he said.
“With the speed of spread of this virus, we may well have really significant numbers of cases by Christmas,” he added. “I suspect that whatever we do now, we are unlikely to overreact.” Given the rate of community transmission, he said, travel restrictions were “not really going to do much now”.
Updated
Nightclubs have said they face rising costs and lost bookings amid confusion over Covid regulations for England being introduced at their busiest time of year.
Bookings have been cancelled and visitor numbers have already dropped, club owners said.
The introduction of Covid passes in Scotland and Wales earlier this year hit takings by up to 30%, according to figures from the Night Time Industries Association.
Peter Marks, the head of the UK’s biggest nightclub and bar operator, Rekom, which runs 42 venues, said the group would need to hire about three extra security staff at each venue to implement the measures, which make proof of two Covid vaccine doses or a negative lateral flow test mandatory for entry to nightclubs.
“It is all a nightmare,” he said. “We need more staff in an age where security staff are hard to come by.” He said bookings at the group’s clubs in Scotland and Wales had taken a hit after mandatory Covid passports were introduced there.
Good evening. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest Covid news throughout this evening.
We start with news that South Africa’s regulatory authority has approved the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine as a booster shot, opening the way for third doses to be administered to fight the current surge driven by the Omicron variant.
The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority approved the Pfizer vaccine as a booster shot for people 18 years and older, six months after they received their second dose, the Associated Press reported.
The regulatory body also approved a third dose for people aged 12 years and older who were “severely immunocompromised”, which may be taken 28 days after their second dose.
The regulatory body encouraged vaccine manufacturers to provide data regarding the use of different vaccines on an individual, known as “mix-and-match”.
Updated
Teaching at Imperial College London has moved online because of rapidly rising Covid cases – including Omicron – on campus and in the wider community.
Students and staff were informed that urgent measures were needed to reduce the spread of the virus and teaching would be moved online for the final days of term from today.
Only essential in-person teaching and research will be allowed to continue, in small groups with social distancing. Staff have been asked to work remotely where possible and both staff and students have been advised to either postpone or scale back large Christmas gatherings.
Emails went out on Wednesday, shortly before the prime minister announced the implementation of plan B for England, which asks people to work from home where possible. Department for Education guidance published today, however, said face-to-face teaching in universities should continue.
Updated
Summary
Here is a recap of some of the main developments from today so far:
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People and businesses in Scotland have been urged not to go ahead with parties over the festive period, in light of the rising number of Omicron cases. Public Health Scotland said the warning follows a number of outbreaks caused by Omicron being linked to Christmas parties. Dr Nick Phin, its director of public health science, said early evidence suggests Omicron is much more transmissible than previous variants, and postponing plans would help to “protect ourselves and our loved ones”. Story here.
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Michael Gove is the third UK government minister to enter isolation after coming into close contact with the Australian deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, who later tested positive for coronavirus. Gove came into close contact with Joyce when he visited London this week, as did the deputy prime minister, Dominic Raab, and the transport secretary, Grant Shapps. They are isolating while they wait to hear if Joyce is infected with the Omicron variant. Story here.
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Malta will return to mandatory mask-wearing in outdoor and indoor spaces from Saturday as a precautionary measure amid fears over Omicron, the health minister, Chris Fearne, said. He added that the administration of booster doses was being brought forward and people would be eligible for the vaccine four months after having had their second jab, instead of six months, as was the case to date. Children aged 5 to 11 will start getting their own vaccine from Tuesday. The Mediterranean island has not yet detected cases of the Omicron variant. It has also had one of the highest vaccination take-ups in the EU, with well over 90% of the adult population vaccinated.
- The US Food and Drug Administration authorised booster shots of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for those aged 16 and 17, as public health officials urged Americans to get the additional shots amid concerns about the Omicron variant. The emergency use authorisation (EUA) will allow 16- and 17-year-olds to receive their third shot at least six months after their second vaccine dose. Regulators from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) need to sign off on the shots before the teenagers can begin receiving the doses.
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The UK reported another 50,867 coronavirus cases and a further 148 deaths within 28 days of a positive test, according to the latest data from the government’s Covid dashboard.
- Covid cases in South Africa surged by 255% in the past seven days but there is mounting anecdotal evidence that infections with the Omicron variant are provoking milder symptoms than in previous waves. South African and other experts have said it is still too early in the Omicron outbreak to determine the longer-term course of the illness, and the younger population profile of South Africa means other countries may not necessarily see the same public health outcomes. But early hospital data released by South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases shows less than a third of patients admitted for Covid during the latest wave linked to the Omicron variant are suffering severe illness, compared with two-thirds in the early stages of the last two waves. And South Africa’s biggest private healthcare provider, Netcare, said data from its facilities indicated less severe Covid symptoms in the current fourth wave than in previous waves. More here and here.
- Austria’s planned Covid vaccine mandate will apply to people 14 and over and holdouts face fines of up to €3,600 (£3,080) every three months, the government announced. “We do not want to punish people who are not vaccinated. We want to win them over and convince them to get vaccinated,” the minister for constitutional affairs, Karoline Edtstadler, told a news conference with the health minister, Wolfgang Mückstein. The mandate, which must be approved by parliament, is due to start in February and last through January 2024. Two opposition parties support it, suggesting it will pass easily. There will be quarterly vaccination deadlines, Mückstein said, adding that the authorities will check a central vaccination register to see if members of the public are in it. “If that is not the case, proceedings will be brought. In regular proceedings the amount of the fine is €3,600,” Mückstein said, adding that fines would be means-tested. “As an alternative, the authorities have the option to impose a fine in shorter proceedings immediately after the vaccination deadline. Here the amount of the fine is €600,” he said, adding that if this was not paid it would lead to regular proceedings. There would be exemptions for pregnant women and people who could not get vaccinated for medical reasons.
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The EU medicines watchdog said preliminary data on Omicron suggested it may be more transmissible than Delta but cases appeared to be mostly mild. “However we need to gather more evidence to determine whether the spectrum of disease severity caused by Omicron is different to that of all the variants that have been circulating so far,” Marco Cavaleri, the head of biological threats to health and vaccines strategy at the European Medicines Agency, said said. “Only time will tell.” He said it appeared that the currently approved Covid vaccines were considerably less effective in neutralising Omicron, but “we need to gather a more precise picture around the level of immunity that can be retained”.
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More than 40 people in the US have been found to be infected with the Omicron variant so far, but nearly all of them were only mildly ill, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said. But, Dr Rochelle Walensky said, the data was very limited and the agency was working on a more detailed analysis of what the new mutant form of the coronavirus might hold for the US. More here.
- This post was amended on 10 December 2021. Dominic Raab is deputy prime minister and justice secretary, not foreign secretary as an earlier version said.
Updated
People in Scotland urged to cancel Christmas parties
People and businesses in Scotland have been urged not to go ahead with parties over the festive period, in light of the rising number of cases of the Omicron variant.
Public Health Scotland said the warning follows a number of outbreaks linked to Christmas parties.
Dr Nick Phin, its director of public health science, said early evidence suggests Omicron is much more transmissible than previous variants, and postponing plans would help to “protect ourselves and our loved ones”.
He said:
There is much that we still need to learn about Omicron, but early evidence suggests that this new Covid variant is much more transmissible.
The impact of this transmissibility has been seen in recent weeks, with a number of Omicron outbreaks linked to parties.
He continued:
To help minimise the further spread of Covid-19, and Omicron in particular, I would strongly urge people to defer their Christmas parties to another time.
I appreciate that everyone is keen to celebrate this festive season, particularly after the pressures of the last 20 months, but by postponing some plans we can all do our bit to protect ourselves and our loved ones.
One case of Omicron was detected in Scotland on Thursday, taking its total to 109 – though the true number is believed to be much higher.
Nicola Sturgeon is expected to give a televised update on Omicron in Scotland on Friday.
PHS’s warning stands in stark contrast to the message given at Thursday’s Downing Street press conference from the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, who said Christmas parties could take place if people exercised caution. He said: “We don’t want people to cancel such events.”
Scientists have voiced fears over the plan B measures for England, given Johnson’s advice to go ahead with parties despite cases climbing at the current rate. Indeed, Christmas parties and large indoor gatherings have already been linked to Omicron super-spreader events.
Dr Deepti Gurdasani, a clinical epidemiologist and senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, told the Guardian:
People working from home makes a lot of sense as it can massively reduce contacts at a population level. Having said that, the other measure that has the largest effect is reducing gathering sizes. For me it makes no sense to be instituting working from home policies and saying go ahead with parties. That is frankly ridiculous.
Prof Paul Hunter of the University of East Anglia told the Guardian:
The problem with Christmas parties, unlike clubbing, is that you get senior managers – wrinklies like me, who are not normally in high-transmission environments.”
The advice I gave my university was to shut down faculty-level Christmas parties. Going out with a few direct colleagues doesn’t worry me. It’s where you get the whole faculty turning up and cramming into the atrium of a building and mixing for a few hours that is a risk.
Prof Susan Michie, the director of the Centre for Behaviour Change at University College London, told the Guardian:
To tell people to work from home then to say to go to Christmas parties is contradictory and lacks coherence. It’s a high-risk situation and it undermines the message to work at home where you can and to be cautious. It’s a problem for both those reasons.
Let’s learn from the past. This is the third time of delaying measures when we have clear exponential growth of infection.
Related: Stricter measures than plan B may be needed to rein in UK’s Omicron growth
Updated
Michael Gove, the UK communities secretary, is self-isolating after coming into close contact with the Australian deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, who later tested positive for coronavirus.
Gove is the third cabinet minister to have gone into isolation after coming into close contact with Joyce when he visited London this week – the others being the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, and the transport secretary, Grant Shapps – while they wait to hear if he is infected with the Omicron variant.
Under the law, close contacts of positive Covid cases do not have to isolate as long as they get a PCR test and the result comes back negative. However, anyone who is a close contact of someone confirmed or suspected of being infected with Omicron must take daily tests.
Aubrey Allegretti has the story: Raab, Shapps and Gove in isolation after close contact with Australian deputy PM
Updated
Malta to return to mandatory mask-wearing and bring forward boosters
Malta will return to mandatory mask-wearing in outdoor and indoor spaces from Saturday, the health minister Chris Fearne said on Thursday.
The measure is being taken as a precaution to prevent any significant increase in Covid-19 cases, although the Mediterranean island has not yet detected cases of the Omicron variant.
“It has been shown that masks, as well as booster doses, are effective to ward off the virus, including the new Omicron variant,” Fearne told media.
He added that the administration of booster doses was being brought forward and people would be eligible for the vaccine four months after having had their second jab, instead of six months, as was the case to date.
Children aged 5 to 11 will start getting their own vaccine from Tuesday.
Malta had 81 Covid cases on Thursday, with 26 patients needing hospitalisation.
Fearne said the situation was well under control and the government did not intend to introduce further restrictive measures, as long as everyone acted responsibly.
Malta has had one of the highest vaccination take-ups in the European Union, with well over 90% of the adult population vaccinated.
Updated
Stricter measures than plan B may be needed to rein in UK’s Omicron growth
Work from home but keep going to Christmas parties: Boris Johnson’s advice has prompted questions about the logic behind plan B for England and left a lingering sense of confusion about the scale of the threat posed by the Omicron variant. So does the plan stand up to scrutiny?
Scientists say that making working from home a first line of defence, before social gatherings, is not necessarily a frivolous choice. In the hierarchy of measures that can be deployed, working from home is an effective way to bring down people’s daily contacts and is relatively painless economically.
Nevertheless, many fear that the threat posed by Omicron will require more than the first line of defence and that plan B does not go far enough.
“People working from home makes a lot of sense as it can massively reduce contacts at a population level,” says Dr Deepti Gurdasani, a clinical epidemiologist and senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London. “Having said that, the other measure that has the largest effect is reducing gathering sizes. For me it makes no sense to be instituting working from home policies and saying go ahead with parties. That is frankly ridiculous.”
The problem is that the UK is on such a steep trajectory that hospitals could easily be overwhelmed by January, depending on how case numbers translate into severe illness. “What we are doing now is very unlikely to be sufficient,” said Gurdasani.
This view is hinted at in official advice to the government by the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling this week that outlines a number of scenarios the UK could face. Under the worst three scenarios, which together are judged to be almost inevitable for the UK, “very stringent measures” are expected to be needed to control the growth of infections.
Read our science correspondent Hannah Devlin’s full analysis here: Stricter measures than plan B may be needed to rein in UK’s Omicron growth
Updated
FDA approves Pfizer booster jabs for 16- and 17-year-olds in US
The US Food and Drug Administration has authorised booster shots of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for those aged 16 and 17, as public health officials have urged Americans to get the additional shots amid concerns about the Omicron variant.
The emergency use authorisation (EUA) will allow 16- and 17-year-olds to receive their third shot at least six months after their second vaccine dose.
Regulators from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) likely need to sign off on the shots before the teenagers can begin receiving the doses.
About 4.7 million 16- and 17-year-olds in the US are fully vaccinated and more than 2.5 million of them are six months past their second dose.
Some scientists have raised concerns about additional shots for the age group because of the elevated risk of rare cases of heart inflammation in young men that have been linked to messenger RNA vaccines such as the Pfizer/BioNTech shot.
All US adults are eligible for booster shots of the three authorised Covid vaccines.
The FDA’s authorisation comes a day after Pfizer and BioNTech released data suggesting that booster shots could be vital for protection against infection from Omicron.
The CDC has identified fewer than 100 cases of the variant in the US, but they are expected to increase in the coming weeks and months.
Meanwhile, the dominant Delta variant, which is very transmissible and can be passed on by people who are fully vaccinated, has driven up infections.
Regions where activities have moved indoors for winter, such as the north-east, have had some of the biggest increases in new cases, which average close to 120,000 each day.
Updated
UK reports another 50,867 cases and 148 deaths
The UK has reported another 50,867 coronavirus cases and a further 148 deaths within 28 days of a positive test, according to the latest data from the government’s Covid dashboard.
That is compared with 51,342 infections and 161 fatalities reported in the previous 24 hours.
Updated
Covid cases in South Africa have surged by 255% in the past seven days but there is mounting anecdotal evidence that infections with the Omicron variant are provoking milder symptoms than in previous waves.
According to a South African private healthcare provider, the recent rise in infections – which includes the Omicron and Delta variants – has been accompanied by a much smaller increase in admissions to intensive care beds, echoing an earlier report from the country’s National Institute for Communicable Disease (NICD) [see 2.32pm].
The World Health Organization said Africa accounted for 46% of reported Omicron cases globally.
South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has said that despite the global concern over Omicron, it was still unclear whether it was more transmissible or caused more severe disease, and he criticised western countries for imposing a travel ban on the country.
South Africa’s biggest private healthcare provider, Netcare, said data from its facilities indicated less severe Covid symptoms in the current fourth wave than in previous waves.
“Having personally seen many of our patients across our Gauteng hospitals, their symptoms are far milder than anything we experienced during the first three waves,” Netcare’s Richard Friedland told the Daily Maverick on Wednesday.
“Approximately 90% of Covid-19 patients currently in our hospitals require no form of oxygen therapy and are considered incidental cases. If this trend continues, it would appear that, with a few exceptions of those requiring tertiary care, the fourth wave can be adequately treated at a primary care level.”
Friedland said that in previous waves 26% of Netcare’s Covid patients were treated in high care and intensive care units.
Friedland’s comments echo earlier analysis from Dr Fareed Abdullah, of the South African Medical Research Council, who said many of the patients diagnosed with coronavirus in hospitals in badly hit Gauteng province and elsewhere were often “incidental” identifications in patients presenting with other conditions.
“The main observation that we have made over the last two weeks is that the majority of patients in the Covid wards have not been oxygen dependent. Sars-CoV-2 has been an incidental finding in patients that were admitted to the hospital for another medical, surgical or obstetric reason,” Abdullah said.
“A snapshot of 42 patients in the ward on 2 December reveals that 29 (70%) are not oxygen dependent. These patients are saturating well on room air and do not present with any respiratory symptoms. A significant early finding in this analysis is the much shorter average length of stay of 2.8 days for patients admitted to the Covid wards over the last two weeks, compared to an average length of stay of 8.5 days for the past 18 months.”
South African and other experts have said it is still too early in the Omicron outbreak to determine the longer-term course of the illness, and the younger population profile of South Africa means other countries may not necessarily see the same public health outcomes.
South Africa has struggled at times with initially distinguishing between Covid variants, with some testing equipment unable to quickly spot Omicron without sequencing.
Read the full story here: South African Covid cases up 255% in a week as Omicron spreads
Updated
Minimum age of 14 and fines of up to €3,600 in Austria's planned vaccine mandate
Austria’s conservative-led government on Thursday gave details of its plan to make coronavirus vaccines compulsory, saying it will apply to people 14 and over and holdouts face fines of up to €3,600 (£3,080) every three months, Reuters reports.
Roughly 68% of Austria’s population is fully vaccinated against Covid-19, one of the lowest rates in western Europe. Many Austrians are sceptical about vaccines, a view encouraged by the far-right Freedom party, the third biggest in parliament.
As infections set records three weeks ago, the government announced a fourth national lockdown and said it would make vaccinations compulsory for all, the first country in the European Union to do so.
“We do not want to punish people who are not vaccinated. We want to win them over and convince them to get vaccinated,” the minister for constitutional affairs, Karoline Edtstadler, told a news conference with the health minister, Wolfgang Mückstein.
The vaccine mandate, which must be approved by parliament, is due to start in February and last through January 2024. Two opposition parties support it, suggesting it will pass easily.
There will be quarterly vaccination deadlines, Mückstein said, adding that the authorities will check a central vaccination register to see if members of the public are in it.
“If that is not the case, proceedings will be brought. In regular proceedings the amount of the fine is €3,600,” Mückstein said, adding that fines would be means-tested.
“As an alternative, the authorities have the option to impose a fine in shorter proceedings immediately after the vaccination deadline. Here the amount of the fine is €600,” he said, adding that if this was not paid it would lead to regular proceedings.
There would be exemptions for pregnant women and people who could not get vaccinated for medical reasons, he added.
Updated
The EU medicines watchdog has said there are early indications the Omicron variant may cause milder disease, AFP reports.
The tentative judgment from the European Medicines Agency comes after the World Health Organization said this week there was some evidence that Omicron causes less severe disease than Delta, the currently dominant variant.
The EMA echoed the finding, but said more investigation was being done.
“Cases appear to be mostly mild, however we need to gather more evidence to determine whether the spectrum of disease severity caused by Omicron is different [to] that of all the variants that have been circulating so far,” said Marco Cavaleri, EMA’s head of biological health threats and vaccines strategy.
The highly mutated variant sparked global panic when it emerged last month, prompting fears it could be more transmissible than others, and could cause more severe illness or evade vaccines.
The WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Wednesday that “emerging data from South Africa suggests increased risk of reinfection with Omicron”.
Cavaleri said that early data suggested Omicron was more infectious than Delta, but it was not year clear whether it would replace the older dominant strain.
He also stressed that there were better means of prevention and treatment available than last winter.
Pfizer and BioNTech said on Wednesday that a third dose of their vaccine was effective against the variant, and that they were developing an Omicron-specific jab that should be available by March.
The WHO vaccines chief, Kate O’Brien, said the WHO was examining data from Pfizer and BioNTech about the booster shot, and that it may turn out that “additional doses have benefit to provide added protection against Omicron”, but stressed it was still “very early days”.
Cavaleri also said that “at this stage we do not have enough data”.
The UN health body’s Africa branch said, meanwhile, that detections of new coronavirus cases had almost doubled over the past week, to 107,000, as the new variant “is reaching more countries in Africa”.
The biggest surge in numbers – 140% on average – was in the south of the continent.
However, in South Africa, which discovered the new variant last month, “severe cases remain low,” the WHO said [see 2.32pm].
Updated
More than 40 people in the US have been found to be infected with the Omicron variant so far, and more than three-quarters of them had been vaccinated, the chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said. But she added nearly all of them were only mildly ill.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, said the data was very limited and the agency was working on a more detailed analysis of what the new mutant form of the coronavirus might hold for the US.
“What we generally know is the more mutations a variant has, the higher level you need your immunity to be … we want to make sure we bolster everybody’s immunity. And that’s really what motivated the decision to expand our guidance,” Walensky said, referencing the recent approval of booster shots for all adults.
She said “the disease is mild” in almost all of the cases seen so far, with reported symptoms mainly a cough, congestion and fatigue. One person had been admitted to hospital, but no deaths had been reported, CDC officials said.
Some cases can become increasingly severe as days and weeks pass, and Walensky noted that the data was a very early glimpse of US omicron infections. The earliest onset of symptoms of any of the first 40 or so cases was 15 November, according to the CDC.
The first US case was reported on 1 December. As of Wednesday afternoon, the CDC had recorded 43 cases in 19 states. Most were young adults. About a third of those patients had travelled internationally.
More than three-quarters of those patients had been vaccinated, and a third had had boosters, Walensky said. Boosters take about two weeks to reach full effect, and some of the patients had received their most recent shot within that period, CDC officials said.
Fewer than 1% of the US Covid cases genetically sequenced last week were Omicron; the Delta variant accounted for more than 99%.
The CDC has yet to make any projections on how the variant could affect the course of the pandemic in the US. Walensky said officials were gathering data but many factors could influence how the pandemic evolved.
“When I look to what the future holds, so much of that is definitely about the science, but it’s also about coming together as a community to do things that prevent disease in yourself and one another. And I think a lot of what our future holds depends on how we come together to do that,” she said.
The CDC is also trying to establish whether Omicron causes milder – or more severe – illness than other variants. The finding that nearly all of the cases so far are mild may be a reflection that this first look at US omicron cases captured mainly vaccinated people, who are expected to have milder illnesses, CDC officials said.
Another key question is whether it is better at evading vaccines or the immunity people build from a bout with Covid-19.
Read the full story from AP here: CDC chief says omicron is ‘mild’ as early data comes in on US spread of variant
Updated
Severe illness in South Africa's Omicron outbreak lower than in past waves, initial data suggests
Early hospital data from South Africa shows fewer than a third of patients admitted for Covid during the latest wave linked to the Omicron variant are suffering severe illness, compared with two thirds in the early stages of the last two waves, Reuters reports.
Data released by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) for Tshwane, the metropolitan area which includes Pretoria where the first suspected Omicron outbreak occurred, showed 1,633 admissions in public and private hospitals for Covid between 14 November and 8 December.
Of those, 31% were severe cases – defined as patients needing oxygen or mechanical ventilation – compared with 66% early in the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic and 67% in the early weeks of the first.
South African scientists first sounded the alarm on the Omicron variant late last month, when they noticed it had an unusually large number of mutations, especially on the spike protein that the virus uses to enter human cells.
Since then, they have been urgently trying to figure out whether the mutations make Omicron more transmissible or more severe, and the extent to which they can help it blunt protection from vaccines or past Covid infection.
The NICD cautioned that the study had some inherent limitations – it is not yet peer-reviewed – and that severe cases could rise as the fourth wave gets going.
“It may take a few weeks for hospitalisation outcomes to accumulate,” the report said.
The report also said nothing about whether the patients studied had been vaccinated, so it wasn’t clear to what extent higher vaccine coverage was keeping symptoms milder.
Early evidence suggests Omicron is far more transmissible than any previous variant, but that symptoms may be less severe, with lower levels of hospitalisation, especially in vaccinated patients.
South Africa reported nearly 20,000 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, a record since the Omicron variant was detected, and a further 36 Covid-related deaths.
Updated
An Italian dentist who presented a fake arm for a Covid vaccine says he has since been jabbed and that the vaccine “is the best weapon we have against this terrible disease”.
Dr Guido Russo faces possible criminal fraud charges for having worn an arm made out of silicone when he first showed up at a vaccine hub in the northern city of Biella. Italy has required doctors and nurses to be vaccinated since earlier this year.
Russo insisted during a Wednesday night appearance on the Italian talkshow La7 that he was not trying to defraud the government nor dupe anyone because the arm was obviously not real. He said he wanted to make a personal protest against vaccine mandates.
Here is the full story from AP: Italian who presented fake arm for Covid jab ‘has since been vaccinated’
Updated
The price of a pint could rise by about 10p as a result of the latest Covid restrictions for England, according to the chairman of the City Pub Group, who said Christmas party cancellations had risen since the move to plan B was announced on Wednesday.
Clive Watson said the cost of a pint was already on course to rise by about 25p as a result of higher costs, including energy and wage bills, but that weaker than expected trading over the key Christmas period would lead to further hikes.
“From about 10 days ago, office parties started to get cancelled, particularly those office parties which were being funded by companies, so typically parties for 40 to 50 people,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
While some companies had postponed their celebrations until the new year when there may be more certainty, others had cancelled their parties outright.
“After yesterday’s announcement, that has again accelerated, so we’ve seen … a meaningful drop off in those types of bookings,” Watson said.
It could result in further pain for chains such as City Pub Group, which has 50 pubs in market towns and cities nationwide.
“Not only are you not making the money, but you’re not building out the cash to help you in the very lean periods in January and February … It’s almost like just taking off the life support machine,” he said.
“Energy prices have gone through the roof. Labour prices … have also gone up significantly. Inflation is running at 5%. A price of beer in London could be £5. So that comes out at 25p but probably has to increase even more over the course next year.
“But … now we haven’t got the Christmas froth that we were anticipating and somehow we have got to try and recoup that,” Watson said. “[So that’s] probably another 10p.”
He joined a chorus of hospitality bosses now calling for government support to help prop up the sector amid restrictions that include work-from-home orders, which could reduce footfall in city centre establishments over the crucial Christmas period, which makes up a third of some businesses’ annual profits.
Read the full story here: Pubs bracing for disastrous December after Covid plan B adopted in England
Updated
A parliamentary commission grilled Denmark’s prime minister on Thursday over her government’s illegal decision last year to cull all farmed minks nationwide over fears of a new coronavirus variant, which she insisted was the right thing to do, AFP reports.
Formerly the world’s leading exporter of mink fur, the Scandinavian country in November last year controversially decided to kill all of its 15-17 million minks after studies suggested the variant found in some of the animals could jeopardise the effectiveness of future vaccines.
A large crowd of protesters gathered outside the court in Copenhagen, booing the prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, as she arrived.
“We unfortunately had to make a decision a year ago to cull all minks, and that was the right decision,” Frederiksen told reporters before rushing into the courtroom where the hearing was held.
The commission is seeking to determine whether the prime minister was aware that the order had no legal basis – a fact that emerged soon after the cull was under way and led the country’s agriculture minister to resign.
“It was in my view crucial that we acted quickly,” the prime minister told the hearing, adding that she knew the decision would be devastating for the industry.
At the time, the government only had the authority to ask mink farmers in the seven municipalities affected by the mutation to cull their minks.
An agreement was reached retroactively, rendering the government’s decision legal, and the nationwide cull went ahead as planned.
Prior to the cull, Denmark was also the world’s second largest producer of mink fur after China.
At the outset of her hearing, Frederiksen stressed that government decisions are made by the relevant cabinet ministers, even though she formally announced the cull.
A specially appointed parliamentary commission has since April been scrutinising the government’s decision and all documents related to it, as well as questioning witnesses to dissect the decision-making process.
Ultimately, the commission will decide whether to recommend Frederiksen’s impeachment before a special court that judges the actions of cabinet members while in office.
Frederiksen has maintained that she did not know her decision was unlawful, and has insisted that it was “based on a very serious risk assessment”.
In October, controversy around the decision was reignited when it was revealed that Frederiksen’s text messages from the time had disappeared.
Her office said they had been automatically deleted after 30 days for security reasons.
But many politicians greeted the claim with scepticism. Only two of the 51 ministers and ex-ministers interviewed by the public broadcaster DR said they had the same setting installed on their phones while in office.
The commission called on police and intelligence services to help, but they were unable to recover the text messages.
Media and lawmakers have repeatedly questioned Frederiksen on the issue.
A few weeks after the cull in the North Jutland region in north-western Denmark, where many mink farms were concentrated, the mutation was declared “very likely extinct”.
The Danish parliament later passed an emergency law that banned the breeding of the mammals in 2021, which was then extended to 2022, a blow to the industry.
Mink is the only animal so far confirmed to be capable of both contracting Covid-19 and recontaminating humans.
Related: Mink farms a continuing Covid risk to humans and wildlife, warn EU experts
Updated
The Lebanese health ministry is investigating what could be the country’s first two cases of the Omicron variant in passengers tested on arrival at the airport, AFP reports.
“Two cases detected in airport testing” are suspected to be Omicron, the health minister Firass Abiad told a press conference.
He said both passengers had flown in from the African continent and had been placed in quarantine. The minister did not specify which country or countries they had arrived from.
The two people were “in good health” and experiencing mild symptoms, Abiad said.
Lebanon reported 1,994 new Covid cases on Wednesday, one of the country’s highest figures for a single day since the start of the pandemic, the minister said.
Abiad voiced concern over a resurgence of the virus. The country’s ailing health system, in the midst of a severe financial crisis, was even less prepared to handle than during previous waves.
When cases surged in late 2020, the influx of critical patients had brought Lebanon’s hospitals to breaking point.
A worsening depreciation of the local currency and the mass emigration of health workers has only made the situation worse.
Last week, Lebanon declared a night-time curfew for the unvaccinated ahead of and during the holiday season, in a bid to stem a recent rise in infections and as a precaution against the new variant.
Lebanon has recorded more 683,000 cases of Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, and 8,804 deaths, according to government figures.
Updated
The Austrian government is due to announce details of a plan to make Covid vaccination compulsory, which according to officials will include a minimum age of at least 14 and a fine of more than €3,000, but not prison, for holdouts.
The health minister, Wolfgang Mückstein, and the minister for constitutional affairs, Karoline Edtstadler, said this week the specifics were subject to change in talks with experts and opposition parties. However, the scheduling of an announcement for Thursday suggested major shifts were unlikely.
Since the conservative chancellor, Karl Nehammer, took office on Monday, Mückstein and Edstadler have repeated that there will be no jail terms for those who still refuse to get vaccinated even once this becomes compulsory in February.
In an interview with the national broadcaster ORF on Tuesday, Edtstadler stopped short of confirming media reports that the minimum age would be 14, but said the government had received legal advice that it would be hard to set the age lower than that, adding that children below 14 would be exempt.
We have set a maximum fine of 3,600 euros but I emphasise again that we are still in discussions with experts because of course the fine should be dissuasive, but it should not be so dissuasive that we generate more resistance...
While some countries have introduced vaccine requirements for parts of their populations like health workers, Austria is the first European Union member state to announce a general requirement.
There will be exceptions for some categories of people like pregnant women, Edtstadler said.
A news conference with Edtstadler and Mückstein is due to be held at 1pm, the government announced on Thursday morning.
Updated
The UK government has rushed in plan B Covid restrictions in England after confirming that cases of the new Omicron variant are doubling every three days or faster. It brings England closer in line with elsewhere in the UK, but rules and guideline still vary between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
For England, Boris Johnson announced four new measures as part of the move to plan B:
- From Friday 10 December the legal requirement to wear face masks in shops and on public transport will be extended to most public indoor venues, including theatres and cinemas. But you will not have to wear masks in cafes, restaurants or pubs.
- From Monday 13 December people have been urged to work from home. “Go to work if you must but work from home if you can,” Johnson said.
- From Wednesday 15 December the NHS Covid pass or negative lateral flow test will be mandatory in nightclubs and other large venues. The venues are listed as: nightclubs; indoor unseated venues with more than 500 people; unseated outdoor venues with more than 4,000 people; any venue with more than 10,000 people.
- Daily tests for contacts of people suspected of having the Omicron variant will be introduced to replace the current isolation rules. But until the new tests are available, contacts of suspected Omicron cases will be required to self-isolate for 10 days, regardless of their age or vaccination status. Anyone who tests positive for Covid is still required to self-isolate.
These measures are in addition to the existing travel restrictions requiring anyone entering the UK to take a PCR or lateral flow test within 48 hours of departure. Travellers also have to take a PCR test within 48 hours of arrival in the UK and self-isolate until they have a negative result.
Here is the full explainer of the restrictions in each of the four nations from my colleague Matthew Weaver: What are the Covid rules and guidelines in the four nations of the UK?
Good morning from London. I’m Lucy Campbell, I’ll be bringing you all the latest global developments on the coronavirus pandemic for the next eight hours. Please feel free to get in touch with me as I work if you have a story or tips to share! Your thoughts are always welcome.
Email: lucy.campbell@theguardian.com
Twitter: @lucy_campbell_
Today so far
- The Omicron variant of Covid-19 has now been reported in 57 countries and continues to spread rapidly in South Africa, the World Health Organization (WHO) says. However, they maintain it is too early to tell if it is more infectious.
- Prof Alejandro Cravioto of WHO has warned that in the context of ongoing global supply constraints, “broad-based administration of booster doses risks exacerbating inequities in vaccine access.”
- WHO also said wealthy countries donating Covid-19 vaccines with a relatively short shelf life has been a “major problem” for the Covax dose sharing programme.
- Kate O’Brien, the WHO’s vaccine director, warned that in the face of the Omicron variant, there is a risk that wealthy countries go back to hoarding vaccine supplies.
- Travel bans imposed on African countries are likely to affect supplies of materials needed for the fight against Covid-19 to the continent, the head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control, John Nkengasong, has said.
- Denmark has decided that school students up to the 10th grade must study remotely for the last few days before Christmas and ordered nightclubs, bars and restaurants to close at midnight in an attempt to counter an uptick in cases. Prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, warned there was “a significant risk of critically overloading the health service.”
- Two UK cabinet ministers – Dominic Raab and Grant Shapps – have gone into isolation after being in close contact with the Australia’s deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, who has tested positive for Covid while in Washington, following his UK trip.
- British prime minister Boris Johnson imposed tougher Covid-19 restrictions in England, ordering people to work from home, wear masks in public places and use vaccine passes to slow the spread of the Omicron variant.
- The Democratic-controlled US Senate approved a Republican measure that would overturn president Joe Biden’s Covid-19 vaccine-or-test mandate for private businesses, with two Democrats joining Republicans to back the initiative.
Andrew Sparrow has our UK live blog at the moment – where Covid and politics are very heavily inter-twined.
Lucy Campbell will be here shortly to pick up the rest of the days global coronavirus news. And I am off to host the comments on our Thursday quiz. I’ll maybe see you there.
While the World Health Organization briefing expressed some reservations about broad-based booster jab programmes exacerbating vaccine inequity around the world, they did suggest that booster jabs could be useful if administered to elderly and immunosuppressed people.
The Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (Sage) on immunisation chair, Alejandro Cravioto, said emerging data showed that vaccines’ efficacy against Covid-19 wanes, with a significant decline seen in older people in particular.
Covid-19 vaccines protect “very well” through six months after the last dose with some “minor, modest reduction” in protection, said Kate O’Brien, the director of the WHO’s immunisation department.
Worries about the new Omicron variant have prompted some countries – including the UK – to expand the use of booster jabs to larger portions of their populations.
But, Reuters report, with vaccination rates worryingly low in much of the developing world, the WHO has said that administering primary doses – rather than boosters – should be a priority.
Updated
Wealthy countries donating Covid-19 vaccines with a relatively short shelf life has been a “major problem” for the Covax dose sharing programme, a senior official at the World Health Organization has said.
Kate O’Brien, the WHO’s vaccine director, said in a briefing the proportion of wasted doses is smaller in countries receiving doses through Covax than in many high-income countries.
Her comments come as concerns grow that many African countries in particular are finding they do not have the capacity to get shots in arms before they expire.
Reuters reported on Tuesday that up to 1m vaccines are estimated to have expired in Nigeria last month without being used, one of the biggest single losses of doses during the pandemic.
O’Brien also said that in the face of the Omicron variant, there is a risk that wealthy countries go back to hoarding vaccine supplies.
Updated
Two UK cabinet ministers have gone into isolation after being in close contact with the Australian deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, who later tested positive for Covid.
Dominic Raab, the deputy prime minister and justice secretary, and Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, pulled out of events after their contact with Joyce when he visited London earlier this week.
Joyce, who is fully vaccinated, has since left the UK and only tested positive once he was in Washington.
In an interview on Sky News, Joyce said he did not know when he acquired Covid-19 – but that the UK was crowded with people preparing for Christmas and going shopping. “You wouldn’t think there’s a pandemic on in areas of the UK,” he noted.
Read more of Aubrey Allegretti’s report here: Raab and Shapps in isolation after close contact with Australian deputy PM
Updated
Travel bans imposed on African countries are likely to affect supplies of materials needed for the fight against Covid-19 to the continent, the head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control, John Nkengasong, has said.
Nkengasong also said during an online media briefing that his organisation was not recommending blanket booster shots in Africa, and that anyone who was offered a booster should be elderly or immunocompromised, Reuters reports.
Updated
For Dr Rina D’Abramo of the MetroHealth System in Cleveland, it’s difficult when patients in the emergency room tell her they have not been vaccinated.
“You can hear it in their voice when you say, ‘Are you vaccinated?’” said D’Abramo, who works at a hospital in the Brecksville suburb. “They shrink down and are like, ‘No. Now I know why I need to be vaccinated.’ ”
Unfortunately, there are plenty of people in Ohio and the rest of America too who have not yet learned that lesson, even as infection rates nationally start to surge again amid fears of the highly contagious new Omicron variant.
Ohio is one of the states that has seen the largest recent increases in hospitalizations due to Covid amid a surge in cases across the country. There has been 19% increase in hospitalizations over the past two weeks in the United States, according to a New York Times analysis of data.
While the increased number of people vaccinated against Covid had inspired hopes that Americans would be able to experience a relatively normal winter, the rise in Covid cases; holiday gatherings; and unanswered questions about the Omicron variant have sparked fresh concerns and warnings from doctors and public health officials in the US.
“The yellow caution light has gone on because I think our progress in vaccination has slowed,” said William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
Read more of Eric Berger’s report: US Covid cases surge as vaccine progress slows and Omicron variant sparks fears
Andrew Sparrow has our UK politics live blog. It feels like everything is very intertwined there with Covid and the new restrictions for England, so I will be leaving all of that to him unless there are major developments, and will be concentrating on global news here.
Updated
WHO vaccine expert group: 'broad-based administration of booster doses risks exacerbating inequities in vaccine access'
The two main points from that World Health Organization briefing came from Prof Alejandro Cravioto.
- WHO believe it is more important to be vaccinating people for the first and second times rather than distributing booster doses.
- They believe it is still best to use the same vaccine for the two primary doses, though mix’n’match can be done where there are supply constraints.
He said:
The primary public health goal of the acute stage of the pandemic is to reduce deaths and severe disease and to protect the health systems. In this context of ongoing global supply constraints, broad-based administration of booster doses risks exacerbating inequities in vaccine access. The vast majority of current infection are the results of infections in non-vaccinated people, who we believe should be vaccinated instead of giving further doses to those that have already received the full immune system.
The Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (Sage) from the World Health Organization (Who) are giving a briefing this morning on booster jabs.
You should be able to see a live feed of it at the top of the page. You may need to refresh the page if it doesn’t appear.
I will be following along too, so I’ll bring you any top lines that emerge.
Associated Press are carrying this update on the latest situation in Denmark, where the government has decided that school students up to the 10th grade must study remotely for the last few days before Christmas and ordered nightclubs, bars and restaurants to close at midnight in an attempt to counter an uptick in cases.
The prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, also recommended that people work from home, banned concerts with more than 50 people standing, and ordered people to wear face masks in eateries when not seated.
The measures apply as of Friday and are set to last for four weeks.
Speaking of the Omicron variant, Frederiksen said that it was “expected that this will mean more infected, more sick and thus potentially more hospitalised patients. Thus, the new variant also entails a significant risk of critically overloading the health service, and that is why we now have to do more.”
Updated
Dr Mike Tildesley, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Modelling group (Spi-M), which advises the UK government, has also made some comments about whether people should be enjoying Christmas parties this year. PA Media quote him telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
It’s a really difficult one because I do think we do need to be responsible, of course. We do need to be aware of the fact that this variant has not gone away, and so we have to take that into account.
But of course we do need to think about people’s mental health and wellbeing as well. We had a really, really tough year last year around Christmas, and I think it’s actually very important that we allow people to be together but to be together in a safe way.
There is a bit more from Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner here. She said people should be “diligent” when getting together in groups, and test themselves for Covid-19 beforehand.
Asked if she was happy for Christmas parties to go ahead, PA Media report Rayner told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think people are looking at this now and they’re looking at whether or not they can get together and how they do that.
“People should be diligent about that. Obviously the more we interact in groups, especially in indoor settings, the more opportunity there is for the virus to spread.
“We’ve been very clear from the Labour Party that if you are going out to an event, a Christmas party or an event, that you should take a test beforehand and therefore you’ll know that you’re safe and you’re keeping other people safe.”
We reported yesterday that the Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s largest manufacturer of vaccines, was planning to cut production of its Covishield-branded AstraZeneca shots due to sluggish demand. There’s been some pushback on that today.
Krishna N Das reports from New Delhi for Reuters that co-lead Gavi has said the global vaccine-sharing network Covax is still seeing strong demand for India-made doses.
Gavi said Covax had allocated 40m Covishield doses to countries after the Indian government last month let the SII resume supplies for the first time since April. It said it had the option to buy vaccines keeping a “flexible approach as the pandemic and countries’ needs continue to evolve”.
“We are still experiencing robust country demand for SII-Covishield ...” a Gavi spokesperson said in an email to Reuters. “Covishield will continue to play an important role within Covax’s diverse portfolio of vaccines ... to achieve higher coverage rates in lower-income countries.”
“Covax’s goal is to protect populations as quickly as possible but every care must be taken to ensure recipient countries are able to deploy the doses we send them,” Gavi said.
“And this is why it is so important that all manufacturers provide as much transparency as possible as to when and in what quantity volumes will be supplied.”
Updated
Labour deputy leader Rayner: Boris Johnson has 'completely undermined' Covid efforts
In the UK, Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner has been doing the media round this morning. She has called for the government to act on sick pay for those affected by the Omicron variant and the new measures, and also for more effort to be made on ventilation in schools. She told Sky News:
We had a meeting, and Keir Starmer spoke to the chief medical officer and had a briefing from those in the position of knowledge, who said that we need to take these measures. So the Labour party are clear that we’re following the medical and the science and expert advice on this, and we hope that people will do that. Boris Johnson has completely undermined those efforts. And we you know, it’s incredibly disappointing.
I am calling on the government today to provide sick pay for people. This is a massive big problem when it comes to people being able to do the right thing and self isolate. They need sick pay so that that can happen. And that will help control the virus.
And we need to make sure that we have proper ventilation in schools. It’s cold this time of year. Many schools have still not got adequate ventilation. We know this would help and we know the infection spreads in school.
So we’re calling on the government to really step up their efforts to make sure that people have got access to the booster jabs, access to vaccines, but also to fix sick pay, and that they sort out the situation with ventilation in our schools.
Updated
Martin Kettle’s latest column has his focus on the Boris Johnson Christmas party furore. He writes:
The question facing British politics today is whether the image of a Downing Street Christmas party, and the excruciating insensitivity there would be in holding it on a day when nearly 500 people were dying of Covid, may be the event to burst Johnson’s bubble. Last week an online video spoof showed Johnson apparently receiving a Covid booster jab, then shrivelling up like an empty balloon. That video was someone’s fantasy. Now nature is imitating art. It was a deflated Johnson, a rare sight in any season, who turned up to answer prime minister’s questions today.
ITV’s toe-curling video of staffers smirking and joking about the party is the real thing, not a spoof. The reality it portrayed is likely to lodge in the collective mind. In less than a minute, the video captures all the shallow amateurism of modern politics: its absence of moral awareness, its capacity for awful judgment and its corrosive sense of entitlement, acted out against the backdrop of a wholly unnecessary, flag-draped new briefing room that is an expensive monument to a man-child prime minister’s ego and his absurd great-man view of himself.
Read more here: Martin Kettle – Will the furore over the No 10 party be enough to burst Boris Johnson’s bubble?
Sage member: new restrictions in England 'an essential first move'
Prof Andrew Hayward, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) from University College London, has described the new restrictions in England as “an essential first move.”
PA Media quote him telling Sky News “virus is moving very fast so it’s important that we react to that fast”.
He said a doubling time of every two to three days was “very fast” and “you’ll get a very large peak”.
“And it’s a bit like if you think of a month’s worth of rain falling in a few days, that leads to flooding and it’s a similar type of scenario … we can reduce that by reducing social mixing and allow time to slow the virus down and get vaccine into more people’s arms.”
He said Plan B measures would “slow the spread” but “it’s not going to turn it around”, adding: “I think you would need much more severe restrictions to turn it around, but I think what the encouraging thing is that we’ve started to see, through some of the laboratory data, is sort of that third dose of vaccine is really providing much better immunity, whereas just with the two doses, it’s not really so good.
“So this idea of slowing it down ... more social distancing, not going to work if you don’t have to, not going on public transport to go to work when you don’t have to, will make a difference.
“I think it’s very difficult to predict whether that’s going to be enough but I think it’s an essential first move.”
Updated
The Covid-sceptic Conservative MP Marcus Fysh has described plans to bring in vaccine certificates as “really draconian” and an “utter disgrace”.
PA Media quote him saying on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that vaccine passports are “such a massive imposition on our liberties” and a “massive attack” on personal freedom.
“Of course I’ll vote against it. Everybody should vote against it. This is a fundamental thing about what sort of society we want to live in.
“It’s a disgrace that they’re pursuing that, utter disgrace,” he told the programme.
Fysh, who studied literature at university, also said: “The Sage panel and the CMO etc do have a history of over-egging the data and picking data points out that suit their narrative.”
This week the Office of National Statistics reported that between March 2020 and November 2021 there had been 128,740 excess deaths above the five-year average in England and Wales.
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Away from the UK for the moment, Sangmi Cha report for Reuters from Seoul that several parents associations in South Korea held protests today against a vaccine pass mandate for children aimed at containing the spread of Covid-19 among teenagers.
The government has said that from February, anyone aged 12 years or older will have to show a vaccine pass to enter public spaces, including private tuition centres, libraries and study cafes that most students attend after school. The exemption age is currently set at 17 years.
The mandate, however, has sparked uproar among some parents who refuse to vaccinate their children, citing potential side effects.
At least 70 members of parents associations gathered in front of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency building in Cheongju city on Thursday, holding up signs that read “Vaccine Dictatorship”.
Sajid Javid says he agreed media no-show with Downing Street yesterday
On Sky News, the UK health secretary Sajid Javid has explained why he made a no-show on the UK media round yesterday. After the emergence of the video of Downing Street staff laughing and joking about holding a party, no government minister appeared on television and radio.
Sajid Javid and Maggie Throup, the vaccines minister, had both been due to appear on various outlets to celebrate the anniversary of the first Covid vaccination in England, and the further expansion of the booster jab programme. This morning, Javid said:
Well, I didn’t appear because I saw that video, the video you’ve just played again. It upset me. Upset a lot of people across the country. And upset the prime minister.
He was pressed on whether he had refused to come on, and replied:
No it wasn’t that. I spoke to my colleagues in No 10, and I said “Look …” and we actually agreed that it’s best to have some time to respond to the video in the way that the prime minister has now, by ordering an investigation by the cabinet secretary.
And so I think that the idea was just to give them space to react. But I’m pleased the prime minister has asked for the investigation. And I can see also why so many people would have been upset by that video.
He also repeated a line we have heard a lot over the last few days, that he wasn’t there – Javid was at pains to point out he wasn’t even in government at the time – that he doesn’t know what happened, but “senior people have assured me that rules have been followed”.
And he replied to one question with a line about alleged Christmas parties and the investigation that I expect we will hear a lot of in the coming days, too: “I don’t want to pre-empt the outcome of it.”
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UK health secretary Sajid Javid appears to have ruled out any further financial help for the hospitality sector in England, following the imposition of new rules regarding face masks and vaccine passport which are due to take effect over the coming days. Asked on Sky News if a financial package was coming, he said:
The measures we’ve taken under the plan B, although they have an impact, they’re designed to have a minimal impact. So whether it’s wearing face masks, exempting hospitality from certain measures and the Covid passes. We’ll keep that under review but the measures are designed to have this minimal impact.
Sajid Javid: universal mandatory vaccination 'ethically is wrong'
On Sky News this morning, UK health secretary Sajid Javid was asked if the government were considering making vaccines mandatory. He categorically dismissed the idea, saying:
No. I mean, I’ve got no interest in mandatory vaccination, apart from the high risk settings like in the NHS and social care which we’ve already set out, and we will legislate for that in future.
Other than that, if you are talking about universal mandatory vaccination, I think, ethically it is wrong. But also at a very practical level, it just wouldn’t work. Getting vaccinated has to be a positive decision.
Sajid Javid: UK could have 'about a million infections' from Omicron within a month
The first question to the UK health secretary, Sajid Javid, on Sky News is why act over Omicron now. He said:
On this new variant, our strategy has been to buy time to assess it and also to build up protective defences. In recent days, we’ve started learning more about the variant. And one of those things we’ve learned is that it spreads very, very quickly. It spreads faster than any other Covid we’ve seen so far. It’s doubling time, that’s the number of days it takes for the number of infections to double in the community, we estimate it is between two and a half to three days, which would mean that by even this month, we could get about a million infections in the community throughout the UK.
And we’ve always been clear that actually if the data changes and should move in the wrong direction, that looks like the NHS might come under unsustainable pressure. Remember what that would mean. We wouldn’t be able to get emergency care, not just for Covid, but for a car accident or anything like that. We would act and implement that. I don’t enjoy doing that. No one does.
It’s a very difficult thing for many people to ask them to work from home or wear face masks and things. So it’s a real impact on our liberties. But I hope that most people will understand that by taking some decisive action now, we could potentially avoid action later, and our vaccines and our antivirals also remain a very important part of our defences.
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Here’s a reminder of what those new “Plan B” rules are for England.
- From Friday face masks will be a legal requirement in most public indoor areas such as theatres and cinemas, with exemptions for eating and drinking in hospitality venues.
- People must work from home where possible from Monday
- From Wednesday vaccine passports available to the double-vaccinated on the NHS app will be necessary for those wanting to attend large, potentially crowded venues such as nightclubs. Proof of a negative lateral flow test will also be accepted.
- However, people are being told they can still attend Christmas parties and nativity plays, and nightclubs will remain open.
These rules broadly bring England into line with rules that have continued to be in place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The health secretary, Sajid Javid, is doing the UK media round today, after yesterday’s no show. I’ll being you the key points from those interviews.
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Hello, it is Martin Belam here in London, taking over from Samantha Lock in Sydney.
Doesn’t time fly? It feels like only two days ago I was live blogging UK deputy prime minister Dominic Raab saying “No 10 have been very clear. There was no party, and there were no rules breached” and “We don’t think plan B is required. Why? Because of the success of the vaccine programme.”
And that’s because I was.
Here are the latest Covid stats from the UK:
Over the last seven days there have been 339,861 new coronavirus cases recorded in the UK. Cases have increased by 11.3% week-on-week.
There have been 847 deaths recorded in the last week. Deaths have decreased by 0.8% week-on-week.
Hospital admissions have increased by 0.8% week-on-week. This is a change today, they were previously decreasing slightly. At the latest count on the UK government’s own dashboard, there were 7,317 people in hospital in total, of whom 880 are in ventilation beds.
UK’s renewed Covid fight must not come at cost of cancer patients, medics say
Health experts have expressed fears over the impact tighter Covid restrictions in England could have on cancer patients as alarming new figures reveal that the number taking part in clinical trials plummeted by almost 60% during the pandemic.
Almost 40,000 cancer patients in England were “robbed” of the chance to take part in life-saving trials during the first year of the coronavirus crisis, according to a report by the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), which said Covid-19 had compounded longstanding issues of trial funding, regulation and access.
Figures obtained from the National Institute for Health Research by the ICR show that the number of patients recruited on to clinical trials for cancer in England fell to 27,734 in 2020-21, down 59% from an average of 67,057 over the three years previously. The number of patients recruited for trials fell for almost every type of cancer analysed.
Health experts said the relentless impact of Covid on the ability of doctors and scientists to run clinical trials was denying many thousands of cancer patients access to the latest treatment options and delaying the development of cutting-edge drugs.
Read the full story by our reporter Andrew Gregory here.
Japan's Covid cases defy Asia rebound
Japan’s Covid-19 infections are falling in contrast with rebounds in other parts of Asia, baffling experts.
New daily infections have slowed to fewer than one per million people, the fewest among major economies except China, and there have been very few fatalities recorded in recent days.
One new hypothesis to explain the divergence is that the type of coronavirus dominant in Japan evolved in a way that short-circuited its ability to replicate.
Ituro Inoue, a professor at Japan’s National Institute of Genetics, said that a subvariant of Delta, known as AY.29, now may be conferring some immunity in the population.
“I think AY.29 is protecting us from other strains,” Inoue told Reuters, cautioning that his research remained a theory. “I’m not 100% confident.”
Japan’s late start on vaccination means that the potency of the shots are still strong. Others point to seasonal trends, that the virus tends to crest and fall in two-month intervals.
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China grants emergency approval for its first Covid drug
China’s drug authority has granted emergency approval for the country’s first specialised treatment against Covid-19, found in clinical trials to significantly reduce hospitalisations and deaths among high-risk patients, Agence France-Presse reports.
China has several conditionally approved vaccines as well, but their published efficacy rates lag behind rival jabs developed in other countries.
In an official notice published Wednesday, China’s National Medical Products Administration said it has granted “emergency approval” for a monoclonal antibody treatment.
A monoclonal antibody is a type of protein that attaches to the spike protein of the coronavirus, reducing its ability to enter the body’s cells.
The treatment involves a combination of two drugs, administered through injections, and can be used to treat certain cases that are at risk of progressing in severity, the drug authority said.
It was co-developed by Tsinghua University, the Third People’s Hospital of Shenzhen and Brii Biosciences.
Trial data showed that the combination therapy could reduce the risk of hospitalisation and death in high-risk patients by around 80%, Tsinghua University said in a statement on social media late Wednesday.
A state media report last month added that the treatment has also been used on patients infected in local flare-ups.
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Authorities in Pakistan have detected the first case of the Omicron variant of coronavirus in the South Asian nation, a provincial health ministry official told Reuters on Thursday.
The spokesperson in the southern province of Sindh said the infection was found in an unvaccinated patient being treated at a private hospital in Pakistan’s most populous city of Karachi.
The patient had travelled abroad, said the official, who gave no details of the location, but added that contact tracing was underway.
We will have more on this story as it develops.
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Summary
- The Omicron variant of Covid-19 has now been reported in 57 countries and continues to spread rapidly in South Africa, the World Health Organization (WHO) says. However, it is too early to tell if it is more infectious.
- British prime minister Boris Johnson imposed tougher Covid-19 restrictions in England, ordering people to work from home, wear masks in public places and use vaccine passes to slow the spread of the Omicron variant.
- The UK Health Security Agency said the Omicron variant was likely to outcompete Delta and replace it to become dominant, and that it could account for at least half of new cases in the next 2-4 weeks.
- The Democratic-controlled US Senate approved a Republican measure that would overturn president Joe Biden’s Covid-19 vaccine-or-test mandate for private businesses, with two Democrats joining Republicans to back the initiative.
- France may introduce a fourth Covid vaccine booster shot, the government’s top Covid-19 adviser Jean-Francois Delfraissy has said.
- Cuba detected its first Omicron case in a person who had travelled from Mozambique, Cuban state media agency ACN reported late.
- Indian Covid-19 vaccine makers are lobbying the government to authorise boosters as supplies have outstripped demand.
- South Africa reported nearly 20,000 new cases on Wednesday, a record since Omicron was detected, and 36 new Covid-related deaths.
- The US Food and Drug Administration authorised the use of AstraZeneca’s antibody cocktail to prevent Covid-19 infections in individuals with weak immune systems or a history of severe side effects from coronavirus vaccines.
- Three doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine are likely to protect against infection with the Omicron variant but two doses may not, according to laboratory data.
- A mix-and-match approach to Covid-19 vaccines is safe and effective, and some combinations even improve upon immune responses, UK researchers found.
Australia’s strict border closures became the subject of international criticism throughout the pandemic.
Findings from a national audit office report now reveals Australian families separated by international border closures during the pandemic were frustrated by inconsistencies from government decision makers on travel exemptions.
The department of home affairs also failed to give applicants specific reasons about why applications for travel exemptions were refused. Nor did the department have an adequate review process in place.
An audit of Australia’s international travel restrictions between March 2020 and June 2021 found the department’s management of those restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic had “been largely effective”.
But it found decisions on exemptions made by home affairs officers were not consistent with the department’s own policies.
A sample of 71 inward travel exemption cases finalised between August 2020 and March this year showed 12 decisions (17%) were not consistent with policy requirements.
The auditors found:
Decisions about inward travel exemptions have not consistently been managed in accordance with policies and procedures.”
Home Affairs spent $2.85m on an online travel exemption portal for prospective arrivals to provide relevant documentation to support their case.
Yet, the audit office found the decision-making framework still allowed officers “considerable discretion” when assessing applications.
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India has just released its daily Covid figures.
A total of 9,419 new coronavirus cases were reported in the last 24 hours, according to the ministry of health.
It is so far unclear how many deaths were also reported during the past day.
Omicron spreads to 57 countries but too early to tell if more infectious, WHO says
The Omicron variant of Covid-19 has now been reported in 57 countries and continues to spread rapidly in South Africa, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.
But the latest epidemiological report from WHO says given the Delta variant remains dominant, particularly in Europe and the US, it is still too early to draw any conclusions about the global impact of Omicron.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has predicted that the Omicron variant could become the dominant variant in Europe within months.
For now, though, the Delta variant continues to dominate cases, and more data is needed to determine Omicron’s infectiousness and severity, WHO says.
“While there seems to be evidence that the Omicron variant may have a growth advantage over other circulating variants, it is unknown whether this will translate into increased transmissibility,” the WHO report said.
Read the fully story here.
As the Omicron variant continues to spread, here is a quick recap of where the world stands.
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Cuba has detected its first case of the Omicron Covid variant, according to Cuban state media agency ACN.
The case was identified in a person who had travelled from Mozambique.
The traveller, a health worker that resides in Cuba’s Pinar del Rio province, returned to the Caribbean island on 27 November and tested positive for Covid-19 the following day, according to the ACN report.
Health officials are monitoring the traveler’s contacts since arriving in Cuba, ACN said.
The Caribbean nation previously tightened travel rules for inbound international passengers arriving from southern African nations, requiring travellers to show vaccination certificates and negative results of PCR tests taken within 72 hours before arrival.
In addition, arrivals are required to take PCR tests on arrival and on the sixth day of their visits as well as to stay in quarantine hotels for a week at their own expense.
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US Senate passes Republican bill to overturn Biden vaccine mandate
The Democratic-controlled US Senate on Wednesday approved a Republican measure that would overturn president Joe Biden’s Covid-19 vaccine-or-test mandate for private businesses, with two Democrats joining Republicans to back the initiative.
The 52-48 vote sends the legislation to the Democratic-led House of Representatives, where it faces strong headwinds, while Biden has threatened to veto it.
The legislation would overturn administration rules ordering businesses with 100 workers or more to require vaccinations or coronavirus testing for millions of employees.
The measure was not subject to Senate rules that require 60 of its 100 members to agree on most legislation, meaning it could pass with just a 51-vote simple majority. Two Senate Democrats - Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana - joined 50 Republicans in voting for the bill.
“I have always supported a vaccine mandate for federal employees and the military because maintaining essential services and military readiness the federal government provides is a matter of national importance,” Manchin said in a statement following the vote.
“However, I do not support any government vaccine mandate for private businesses. It is not the place of the federal government to tell private business owners how to protect their employees from Covid-19 and operate their businesses,” he said.
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A quick update from South Korea following recent figures released by the ministry of health.
An additional 7,102 confirmed cases were reported over the past 24 hours and 57 deaths.
About 83.4 % of the eligible population has received one Covid vaccine dose and 80.8 % has received at least two doses.
China has reported 83 new confirmed coronavirus cases for Wednesday, 8 December, up from 74 a day earlier, its health authority said on Thursday.
Of the new infections, 60 were locally transmitted, according to a statement by the National Health Commission as seen by Reuters, compared with 44 a day earlier.
The new local cases were reported by authorities in Inner Mongolia, Zhejiang, Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, and Yunnan.
China reported 33 new asymptomatic cases, which it classifies separately from confirmed cases, compared with 23 a day earlier.
There were no new deaths, leaving the total death toll at 4,636.
France may introduce a fourth Covid vaccine booster shot, the government’s top Covid-19 adviser Jean-Francois Delfraissy has said.
“The peak is clearly not behind us, the pandemic continues to gain ground,” government spokesman Gabriel Attal said during a press briefing on Wednesday, Reuters reports.
France, whose adult population is more than 90% fully vaccinated, is hoping a national campaign inviting everyone over age 18 to get a third vaccine - or booster shot - as fast as possible will avoid the need for tougher curbs on daily life.
Jean-Francois Delfraissy said:
For now, there’s a call for one booster shot. Will that be enough? I don’t know. Maybe we’ll need a fourth shot.”
The latest seven-day average of new confirmed new infections set a new 2021 high of more than 44,500 on Tuesday.
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South Africa has reported nearly 20,000 new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, a record since the Omicron variant was detected, and 36 new Covid-related deaths.
A total of 19,842 new cases was reported by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, a daily change of 50%.
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Brazil has reported 10,055 new cases of the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, and 233 deaths from Covid-19, the health ministry said on Wednesday.
The South American country has now registered 22,167,781 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 616,251, according to ministry data. It is the world’s second-deadliest outbreak outside the United States.
With 85% of adults now fully vaccinated, the rolling 14-day average of Covid-19 deaths has fallen to 208 per day, compared to the toll of almost 3,000 a day at the peak of the pandemic in April.
In light of British prime minister Boris Johnson’s plan B announcement, here is a quick snapshot of Covid-19 in the UK.
Three doses of Pfizer can protect against Omicron, tests suggest
Three doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine are likely to protect against infection with the Omicron variant but two doses may not, according to laboratory data.
Tests using antibodies in blood samples have given some of the first insights into how far Omicron escapes immunity, showing a stark drop-off in the predicted protection against infection or any type of disease for people who have had two doses. The findings suggest that, for Omicron, Pfizer/BioNTech should now be viewed as a “three-dose vaccine”.
The vaccine makers said they would continue “at full speed” with plans to develop an updated Omicron-based vaccine by March 2022 if needed – and their working presumption is that it will be.
Read the full story here.
Hello I’m Samantha Lock and I’ll be taking you through all the Covid developments this Thursday.
We start with the news that England will be implementing a raft of plan B measures to combat a surge in Covid cases in the lead-up to Christmas.
British prime minister Boris Johnson made the announcement at a Downing Street press conference on Wednesday night amid fears of an exponential rise in the Omicron variant. Johnson said people must work from home where possible from Monday and that face masks would be a legal requirement in most public indoor areas such as theatres and cinemas from Friday, with exemptions for eating and drinking in hospitality venues.
The move comes as government experts warned Omicron infections could rise to 1m by the end of the month with up to 2,000 hospital admissions a day.
In more promising news, three doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine are likely to protect against infection from the Omicron variant but two doses may not, according to laboratory data.
Tests using antibodies in blood samples have given some of the first insights into how far Omicron escapes immunity, showing a stark drop-off in the predicted protection against infection or any type of disease for people who have had two doses. The findings suggest that, for Omicron, Pfizer/BioNTech should now be viewed as a “three-dose vaccine”.
Here’s a snapshot of the latest coronavirus stories from around the world:
- The WHO said early data indicates the Omicron Covid variant may more easily reinfect people who have already had the virus or been vaccinated than previous variants, but could also cause milder disease.
- In the UK, Boris Johnson rushed forward new Covid restrictions amid fears of an exponential rise in the Omicron variant. “It’s now the proportionate and the responsible thing to move to plan B.” From Monday people must work from home.
- Omicron cases in the UK could exceed 1 million by the end of this month on the current trajectory, Sajid Javid has told MPs.
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Denmark will again impose restrictions aimed at curbing the rapid spread of Covid including the new Omicron variant, the country’s prime minister said on Wednesday.
- France has reported 93,071 coronavirus deaths in hospital, up by 129. It reported that 2,426 people were in intensive care units for Covid, up by 75 on the previous day’s figures.
- Slovakia will on Friday reopen non-essential shops and some services for those vaccinated against Covid-19 while at the same time extending a lockdown for others and closing some schools, health minister Vladimir Lengvarsky said.
- South Africa has approved Pfizer’s coronavirus booster shots for over-18s, as the Omicron variant dominates rising new infections.The South African Health Products Authority said in a statement that it was authorising a third vaccine dose “in individuals aged 18 years and older, to be administered at least six months after the second dose”.
- Italy has reported 17,959 Coronavirus cases, up from 15,756 on Tuesday.Elsewhere, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia continue to see an increase in cases, while Ecuador, Chile and Argentina saw a drop.
- UK figures show 51,342 new people had a confirmed positive test result reported on 8 December 2021.Between 2 and 8 December, 339,861 people had a confirmed positive test result, an increase of 11.3% compared to the previous week.
- BioNTech and Pfizer said on Wednesday a three-shot course of their Covid-19 vaccine was able to neutralise the new Omicron variant in a laboratory test and they could deliver an Omicron-based vaccine in March 2022 if needed.
