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Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city, emerged on Sunday from a strict weeklong lockdown imposed after a community cluster of the more contagious UK coronavirus variant, Reuters has reported.
There were no new local Covid-19 cases recorded on Sunday, health officials said, allowing for the restrictions to ease. If no community cases are confirmed during the rest of Sunday, it would make a full seven days since the last community case.
There are still limits on public gathering in the city of nearly two million, however, and masks are obligatory on public transport.
Footage on TVNZ, New Zealand’s state-owned television network, showed people lining up at coffee shops on Sunday morning with many saying they were feeling relieved.
The government said it might ease restrictions in Auckland further on Friday, to bring them to the same level as in the rest of New Zealand.
In neighbouring Australia, the state of Victoria, which was under a five-day lockdown in mid-February after a small Covid-19 outbreak, recorded nine straight days of no local transmissions on Sunday.
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The reopening of England’s schools to all pupils on Monday will mark the first step back towards normality, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.
Johnson has announced a roadmap for lifting lockdown measures that sees schools open first, followed in later stages by the gradual easing of restrictions on mixing with other people and the re-opening of non-essential shops and other venues. In the final stage, which will take place no earlier than June 21, the government hopes to remove all remaining legal limits on contact with others.
“The reopening of schools marks a truly national effort to beat this virus,” Johnson said.
“It is because of the determination of every person in this country that we can start moving closer to a sense of normality and it is right that getting our young people back into the classroom is the first step.”
Each step on the roadmap will depend on the level of Covid-19 cases, the government has said. It hopes the pandemic can be contained by a vaccine programme that has already delivered a dose to nearly 22 million people, as well as regular testing.
Many secondary schools and colleges had already started inviting students for their first “lateral flow” Covid-19 tests, which give rapid results, with nearly 1 million conducted last week, the government said.
After three initial tests on site, students will be provided with two tests to use each week at home, it said, adding that nearly 57 million tests had been delivered to schools and colleges across the country.
Summary
Here’s a summary of the latest developments:
- France reported 23,306 new confirmed Covid-19 cases on Saturday, down from 23,507 on Friday. The French health ministry reported 170 new deaths, taking the total to 88,444.
- A further 158 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 in the UK as of Saturday, bringing the total to 124,419, according to the latest official figures. The government also said that, as of 9am on Saturday, there had been a further 6,040 lab-confirmed cases in the UK.
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Italy has reported 307 coronavirus-related deaths on Saturday against 297 the day before, the health ministry said. The daily tally of new infections fell to 23,641 from 24,036 the day before.
- The US Senate has passed President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief plan. The all-night session saw Democrats battling among themselves over jobless aid and the Republican minority failing in attempts to push through some three dozen amendments.
- Ireland reached the milestone of half a million coronavirus jabs administered. The taoiseach, Micheál Martin, hailed progress made fighting the pandemic. He said he was inspired by recent visits to vaccination centres where thousands of frontline healthcare workers are receiving the vaccine doses.
- The Dalia Lama had a Covid-19 vaccine administered. The Tibetan spiritual leader said: “In order to prevent some serious problems, this injection is very, very helpful.”
- Hundreds of thousands of people in northern France went back into lockdown. The residents of Pas-de-Calais on the north coast joined those in the region’s port of Dunkirk – and the Mediterranean resort of Nice – already shut down on Saturdays and Sundays.
There have been 779 further deaths from coronavirus and 6,561 new confirmed cases in Mexico, bringing its total to 2,125,866 infections and 190,357 deaths, Mexico’s health ministry reported.
Officials have been frustrated by bottlenecks in the vaccine supply and raised concerns that wealthy countries are hoarding vaccines.
On Monday, the administration of the US president, Joe Biden, downplayed the prospect of sharing vaccines with Mexico.
Mexico has so far administered roughly 2.7m vaccine doses, enough for about 1.1% of the population, according to data compiled by Reuters.
Health officials have said the real number of infected people and deaths in Mexico is likely significantly higher than the official count.
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Joe Biden hailed “one more giant step forward on delivering on that promise that help is on the way”, after Democrats took a critical step towards a first major legislative victory since assuming control of Congress and the White House, with a party-line vote in the Senate to approve a $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill.
After a marathon voting session through the night on Friday and into Saturday afternoon, Democrats overcame unified Republican opposition to approve the sweeping stimulus package. The final tally was 50-49, with one Republican absent.
One of the largest emergency aid packages in US history now returns to the House for final approval before being signed into law by Biden. Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, has said she expects to approve the measure before 14 March, when tens of millions of Americans risk losing unemployment benefits if no action is taken.
Read the full story here:
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The US has administered 87,912,323 doses of Covid-19 vaccines as of Saturday morning and delivered 116,355,405 doses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The tally of doses are for both Moderna Inc and Pfizer Inc/BioNTech SE vaccines, the agency said.
The agency said 57,358,849 people had received one or more doses, while 29,776,160 people have received the second dose as of Saturday.
A total of 7,349,495 vaccine doses have been administered in long-term care facilities, the agency said.
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French police cleared the banks of the River Seine in central Paris on Saturday over concerns people were getting too close together and not respecting coronavirus social distancing rules.
Hundreds of people were asked to leave the area – popular for strolling and picnicking on sunny days – and police officers closed the riverbanks for the rest of the day, Reuters reports.
“Social distancing rules are not being respected,” police called out through a megaphone.
The police have regularly been clearing the area over the past few weeks with warmer weather bringing people out to take advantage of the sunshine before a curfew kicks in from 6pm to 6am.
The Paris police banned the consumption of alcohol on the riverside on Friday and asked people to limit their gatherings.
The government has resisted putting the capital and its surrounding area back under lockdown despite a rise in coronavirus cases and growing numbers of patients in the capital’s intensive care units.
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There is no evidence the mutated coronavirus strain first found in the Brazilian city of Manaus has been transmitted by the three Scots infected with the variant, Scotland’s health secretary Jeane Freeman has said.
A total of six cases of the P1 variant were identified in the UK last month – three in Scotland and three in England.
Since then, approximately 300 contacts or contacts of contacts linked to the three Scottish cases have been reached, told to self-isolate and offered a Covid-19 test, Freeman has revealed.
Freeman has now announced that there has been no community transmission linked to the variant strain of coronavirus identified since the first cases were discovered on 27 February.
She also confirmed that attempts to track down all passengers on the Heathrow to Aberdeen flight taken by the three Scots who tested positive for the mutated virus have ended, despite a failure to locate 21 of the 90 people on the plane.
Although the search for the remaining passengers has been called off, anyone who was on flight BA1312 on 29 January who has not been contacted is still being asked to call the national contact tracing centre on 0800 030 8012.
She said:
There is no evidence of any community transmission of the P1 variant so far, and I am grateful to health protection teams, local clinicians and contact tracers for their efforts to contact the remaining passengers.
We have used all available options and done everything possible to contact all passengers, including referring to flight manifests and telephone information from the Community Health Index to make contact.
Some passengers only have international telephone numbers so it is possible they are no longer in Scotland.
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Ireland has now administered half a million coronavirus jabs.
The taoiseach, Micheál Martin, hailed Irish progress in the pandemic, tweeting on Saturday afternoon that he had been informed by the Health Service Executive that the country had passed the half-million mark.
Speaking earlier in a video posted on Twitter, Martin said he had been inspired by recent visits to vaccination centres where thousands of frontline healthcare workers were receiving the inoculation.
He said the government and the HSE were doing everything they could to secure supplies and to give vaccines to people as quickly as possible.
The first coronavirus vaccine in Ireland was given to a Dublin woman, Annie Lynch, on 29 December.
Read the full story here:
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In the UK, Prince Charles has paid tribute to the courage shown throughout the Commonwealth in response to coronavirus in a broadcast that will air on Sunday.
The prince was joined by other royals, including his elder son and heir Prince William, in talking about the impact of Covid-19 in messages recorded for a programme marking Commonwealth Day dedicated to the countries, mainly from the former British empire, that maintain links with Britain.
He said:
The coronavirus pandemic has affected every country of the Commonwealth, cruelly robbing countless people of their lives and livelihoods, disrupting our societies and denying us the human connections which we so dearly cherish.
Amidst such heartbreaking suffering, however, the extraordinary determination, courage and creativity with which people have responded has been an inspiration to us all.
Commonwealth Day is usually marked with a service held at London’s Westminster Abbey, but it was cancelled this year due to the pandemic.
It will be replaced by a special programme – A Celebration for Commonwealth Day – which will be broadcast on BBC One at 5pm on Sunday.
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US Senate passes $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief plan
The US Senate has passed President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief plan in a party-line vote after an all-night session that saw Democrats battling among themselves over jobless aid and the Republican minority failing in attempts to push through some three dozen amendments.
The final bill includes $400 billion in one-time payments of $1,400 to most Americans, $300 a week in extended jobless benefits for the 9.5 million people thrown out of work in the crisis, and $350 billion in aid to state and local governments, Reuters reports.
The Senate voted 50-49, with no Republicans voting in favour, on what would be one of the largest stimulus packages in US history.
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The US Senate on Saturday began voting on Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan at the end of an around-the-clock session that began on Friday involving nearly two dozen preliminary votes and hours of closed-door negotiations.
Democrats, who narrowly control the chamber, agreed to scale back aid to the millions who have lost their jobs in the crisis, Reuters reports.
As Friday night turned to Saturday morning, they stuck together to turn back Republican attempts to modify the bill, which according to the Congressional Budget Office would be the largest stimulus package ever.
If the Democratic bill becomes law, Washington will have provided about $6 trillion in emergency assistance over the past year to battle the coronavirus pandemic and help stabilise the American economy.
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A further 170 people have died in France
France reported 23,306 new confirmed Covid-19 cases on Saturday, down from 23,507 on Friday.
The French health ministry reported 170 new deaths, taking the total to 88,444, Reuters reports.
The number of people in intensive care rose by nine to 3,689.
The Dalai Lama, the 85-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader, was administered the first shot of the coronavirus vaccine on Saturday at a hospital in the north Indian hill city of Dharamshala.
After receiving the injection, he urged people to be brave and come forward to be vaccinated.
“In order to prevent some serious problems, this injection is very, very helpful,” he said.
Dr GD Gupta, of Zonal hospital, where the shot was administered, told reporters that the Dalai Lama was observed for 30 minutes afterwards. “He offered to come to the hospital like a common man to get himself vaccinated,” he said.
Read the full story here:
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Thousands of people turned out for Sydney’s 43rd Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras on Saturday, one of the world’s few Pride events allowed to go ahead.
The British pop star Rita Ora closed the event with an electric performance at the Sydney Cricket Ground, where the Mardi Gras was held for the first time in the event’s history.
The venue allowed crowds to stay seated while parade participants marched and danced past.
Read more here:
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Italy reports 307 more deaths
Italy has reported 307 coronavirus-related deaths on Saturday against 297 the day before, the health ministry said.
The daily tally of new infections fell to 23,641 from 24,036 the day before, PA news reports.
Some 355,024 tests for Covid-19 were carried out in the past day, compared with a previous 378,463, the health ministry said.
A further 158 people have died in the UK
A further 158 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 in the UK as of Saturday, bringing the total to 124,419, according to the latest official figures.
The government also said that, as of 9am on Saturday, there had been a further 6,040 lab-confirmed cases in the UK.
It brings the total to 4,213,343.
There have been 22,887,118 jabs given in the UK so far with 21,796,278 being first doses – a rise of 437,463 on the previous day.
Some 1,090,840 were second doses, an increase of 56,772.
Summary
Here’s a summary of the latest developments:
- Ireland reached the milestone of half a million coronavirus jabs administered. The taoiseach, Micheál Martin, hailed progress made fighting the pandemic. He said he was inspired by recent visits to vaccination centres where thousands of frontline healthcare workers are receiving the vaccine doses.
- The Dalia Lama had a Covid-19 vaccine administered. The Tibetan spiritual leader said: “In order to prevent some serious problems, this injection is very, very helpful.”
- Passengers flying indirectly to Portugal from the UK or Brazil were told they would have to present a negative test taken 72 hours before departure and quarantine for two weeks upon arrival. Reuters reported that the move was designed to close a loophole that allowed travellers from Britain and Brazil to reach Portugal by stopping over in a country from which travel was authorised.
- The Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari received a first Covid vaccine dose, the day after the distribution of the shots began in the west African nation. According to AFP, Buhari said he wanted to encourage all Nigerians to have the jab, although the country faces massive security and logistical challenges in delivering the vaccines.
- England and Wales passed the 20m mark in respect of vaccine doses administered. NHS England said about 19.25m vaccinations – whether first or second dose – had been given, while Public Health Wales reported nearly 1m more.
- The UK government came under increasing pressure to reverse a plan to offer health workers only a 1% pay rise. Workers representatives, the Tory party’s own and MPs and the opposition offered severe criticism of the proposal.
- Hundreds of thousands of people in northern France went back into lockdown. The residents of Pas-de-Calais on the north coast joined those in the region’s port of Dunkirk – and the Mediterranean resort of Nice – already shut down on Saturdays and Sundays.
- The UK was told the next few weeks would crucial for keeping infections down. An infectious disease expert said that, as schools reopen, there would be a rise in the reproductive number.
- Businesses in England will now be able to sign up to receive free rapid coronavirus tests under the UK government’s workplace testing programme. From Saturday, businesses of all sizes, including those with fewer than 50 employees, can register to order lateral flow tests for their workers, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said.
A further 185 people who tested positive have died in hospital in England, bringing the total number of confirmed deaths reported in hospitals to 84,276, NHS England says. Patients were aged between 42 and 96. All except six, aged between 54 and 84, had known underlying health conditions.
The deaths were between 31 December and 5 March. There were 40 other deaths reported with no positive Covid-19 test result.
More than 20m vaccine doses administered in England and Wales
Health authorities in England and Wales have given 20.24m Covid vaccine doses, they have said.
Provisional NHS England data shows a total of 19,258,271 vaccinations took place between 8 December and 5 March, including first and second doses, which is a rise of 422,916 on the previous day’s figures.
Of this number, 18,491,771 were the first dose of a vaccine, a rise of 385,681 on the previous day, while 766,500 were a second dose, an increase of 37,235.
Public Health Wales said a total of 983,419 first doses of the Covid-19 vaccine have now been given, an increase of 16,377 from the previous day. The agency said 168,163 second doses had also been given, an increase of 13,344.
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France reintroduces lockdown measures in north of country
Hundreds of thousands of people in northern France have gone back into lockdown, while health officials stepped up their nationwide vaccination campaign to make up ground after a slow start. AFP reports:
The residents of Pas-de-Calais on the north coast joined those in the region’s port of Dunkirk – and the Mediterranean resort of Nice – already shut down on Saturdays and Sundays.
That puts more than 2 million people across France under the weekend restrictions, required to stay at home unless they can provide a written exemption.
With hospital capacity at 90% in Pas-de-Calais, the region’s prefect insisted the new restrictions were necessary to prevent local health services from being overwhelmed.
Two thirds of the cases recorded there recently have been the more contagious variant first detected in England, said local officials.
But with a 6pm-6am curfew already in place and non-essential shops closed there, the new restrictions will hurt already hard-pressed businesses.
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Swedish police have started to disperse hundreds of opponents of coronavirus restrictions who staged a protest in the capital, Stockholm, in defiance of a ban on large gatherings, Reuters reports. The agency says:
Police blocked a bridge in the centre of the city and said on their website they were in dialogue with organisers to persuade demonstrators to disperse.
TV images showed police shoving some protesters, while the police said one officer had been slightly injured and taken to hospital.
“Police have taken the decision to break up the non- authorised gathering which is ongoing,” Stockholm police said on their website on Saturday.
Earlier this week, the protest organiser Filip Sjöström told local media that he was expecting around 2,000 people to join the demonstration, which had been announced on Facebook.
TV images showed hundreds of people had gathered. According to Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, demonstrators had travelled from several parts of Sweden, which has a ban on public gatherings of more than eight people.
Sweden, which has 10 million inhabitants, registered 4,831 new cases on Friday, and 26 new deaths, taking the death toll to 13,003.
The government said last month that it would cut opening hours for restaurants, bars and cafes and tighten limits on the number of people allowed in shops, in a bid to ward off a third wave of the pandemic.
The centre-left government has gradually tightened restrictions since late last year after keeping most schools, restaurants and businesses open, relying primarily on voluntary measures.
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As we reported earlier, all businesses in England are now able to sign up to receive free rapid coronavirus tests under the government’s workplace testing programme.
Here’s a little more detail: from Saturday, businesses of all sizes, including those with fewer than 50 employees, can register to order lateral flow tests for their workers, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said.
The department said rapid Covid-19 testing, where results can be returned in under 30 minutes, would help people testing positive to “isolate immediately” as well as “breaking chains of transmission”.
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Gavin Williamson, the UK’s education secretary, is facing criticism for awarding another £190m contract to a company blamed for the problems with a school meals voucher system that left families without food during the first lockdown.
The French company Edenred’s new contract, revealed on the government’s website, appears to bring its total income from the scheme to £615m since the pandemic began. An earlier investigation into the scheme by the National Audit Office (NAO) found that previous contracts had been signed with the company despite “limited evidence” of its capacity to deliver.
The voucher scheme, hastily set up last year, was hit with problems as schools complained of difficulties in registering for the weekly vouchers and teachers struggled to log on to the website. At one point last April, the Edenred helpline was receiving almost 4,000 calls and nearly 9,000 emails a day from school staff and parents.
Williamson confirmed that Edenred’s contract would be extended when the scheme was reopened in January, but its value has only just been revealed. When previously asked by the public accounts committee to disclose the profits made by Edenred, the Department for Education (DfE) declined to do so on the grounds of “commercial confidentiality”.
Ireland has now administered 500,000 first doses of a Covid vaccine, its taoiseach has confirmed.
Just been informed by the HSE that we have passed the half a million mark of #CovidVaccine doses administered.
— Micheál Martin (@MichealMartinTD) March 6, 2021
Good news. The vaccines are having a significant impact on mortality and serious illness.
The number of COVID patients in hospitals and ICU is reducing all the time.
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Finland is postponing the municipal elections that were due next month as a rise in coronavirus cases raises concerns about low turnout and a possible surge in infections after polling day, Reuters is report, citing the country’s justice minister.
It says the elections are now planned for mid-June instead. Reuters reports:
Finland is among the European countries least affected by the pandemic, but authorities are on alert due to the recent increase in cases and the appearance of new variants – especially in and around the capital, Helsinki.
The municipal election that had been scheduled for April 18 will now be held on June 13, said Justice Minister Anna-Maja Henriksson, warning that the poll’s legitimacy could be compromised if too many people stayed home instead of voting.
“The risk that the elections will fail is too big,” she told a news conference.
In Finland, there are 309 municipalities run by councils that tax residents and govern basic services such as healthcare and education.
Nine out of 10 parties currently in the Finnish parliament were in favour of postponing the local election with the True Finns, the right-wing, anti-euro party being the only one to support holding the vote next month as planned.
To date, Finland has recorded 61,552 coronavirus cases, 767 deaths and currently has 239 people hospitalised.
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California has cleared a path for fans to attend opening-day baseball games and for tourists to return to Disneyland, nearly a year after coronavirus restrictions shuttered major entertainment spots, the Associated Press reports.
On Friday, the state relaxed guidelines for reopening outdoor venues as a fall and winter surge seemed to be ending, with Covid-19 infection rates, hospital admissions and deaths plummeting and vaccination rates rising.
New public health rules would allow live concerts at stadiums and sports arenas to reopen with limited attendance from 1 April. Amusement parks will also be permitted to reopen in counties that have fallen from the state’s purple tier – the most restrictive – to the red tier. In all cases, park capacities will be limited and Covid-19 safety rules such as mask-wearing requirements will apply.
The move followed a week of milestones, with California ramping up vaccinations for the poorest neighbourhoods, counties reopening more businesses and the governor, Gavin Newsom, passing a measure aimed at encouraging schools that have restricted students to online learning to reopen classrooms this month.
Dr Jeffrey Klausner, a clinical professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California, said:
Steady opening is consistent with the data. As cases decline, we want to return to work and school. Outdoor activities in particular have always been low risk. Opening these sites makes sense.
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Sydney’s 43rd Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras has adapted seamlessly for the pandemic as it became one of the world’s few pride events allowed to go ahead, the Australian Associated Press reports.
The agency reports:
The British pop star Rita Ora closed the event with an electric performance at the Sydney Cricket Ground, where the Mardi Gras was held for the first time in the event’s history.
The venue allowed crowds to stay seated while parade participants marched and danced past.
Wearing a sparkling electric blue costume and knee-high rainbow-coloured boots, Ora treated revellers to songs including Let You Love Me, Carry On and Bang Bang.
“I’m a little bit emotional. This is my first show in a very, very long time so thank you,” she said.
Earlier, the crowd took in live performances from Australia’s upcoming Eurovision contestant Montaigne, First Nations singer Scott Hunter, Electric Fields and G-Flip.
The Mardi Gras chief executive, Albert Kruger, said the event almost didn’t go ahead due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“This is actually better than any expectations we ever had,” he said.
For the first time in its 43-year history, the Mardi Gras parade did not head down Oxford St, and did not feature traditional large floats, but focused on costumes, puppetry and props.
Dykes on Bikes delighted the crowd at the beginning, followed in the arena by thousands of participants.
With the theme Rise, about 5,000 people marched in the parade, representing more than 100 LGBTQI community groups.
Participating organisations included the NSW Rural Fire Service, ANZ, Department of Defence and mental health organisation Headspace.
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In Scotland, Rangers fans have broken coronavirus lockdown rules by gathering outside Ibrox Stadium and setting off flares.
Fans were seen crowding around a car entering the ground as police tried to hold them back, PA Media reports.
Under Scotland’s coronavirus rules, public gatherings are banned and a maximum of two people from two households are allowed to meet outdoors.
Football games are continuing to take place behind closed doors with no fans permitted inside stadiums.
Rangers could win the league title this weekend if they beat St Mirren on Saturday and Celtic drop points against Dundee United on Sunday.
The first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has previously criticised fans for gathering in large numbers. After Celtic fans took part in a protest outside the club’s stadium in November, she said:
We have advice against gatherings and every day I stand up here and say avoid crowded places.
We have a limit on people coming together outside ... so it stands to reason any group of people that are gathering together in a crowd are putting themselves and others at risk.
Whether it’s football fans, rugby fans, any other kind of sport fans or just people in general, please don’t do it because right now, in the middle of this pandemic, it is a risky thing to do that puts you and other people at risk.
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Nigerian president gets inoculated and encourages others to do the same
The Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari has received a first Covid vaccine dose, the day after the distribution of the shots began in the west African nation.
According to AFP, Buhari said he wanted to encourage all Nigerians to have the jab, although the country faces massive security and logistical challenges in delivering the vaccines. The agency quotes him as saying:
As a demonstration of leadership and faith in the safety and efficacy of the vaccines, I have received my first jab and I wish to commend it to all eligible Nigerians, to do same so that we can be protected from the virus.
His vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, also received a first dose on Saturday in the event broadcast on public television from the presidential palace in Abuja, AFP reports.
On Friday, a doctor hwas the first of Nigeria’s 200 million people to be vaccinated. About 4m doses of vaccines provided through the global Covax scheme had arrived on Tuesday.
About 16m doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca shots are expected in the coming months, and Nigerian officials hope to vaccinate 70% of over-18s within two years.
So far, almost 2,000 Nigerians have died out of 158,000 confirmed cases, although both figures are believed to be underestimates due to limited testing, AFP reports.
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Portugal to increase restrictions on travellers from UK and Brazil
Passengers flying indirectly to Portugal from the UK or Brazil must present a negative test taken 72 hours before departure and quarantine for two weeks upon arrival from Sunday onwards, the interior ministry said on Saturday.
Reuters reports that the move is designed to close a loophole which allowed travellers from Britain and Brazil to reach Portugal by stopping over in a country from which travel was authorised.
Direct commercial or private flights to and from Britain and Brazil have been banned since January to limit the spread of Covid variants.
Direct humanitarian and repatriation flights will still be authorised but passengers must present a negative test taken 72 hours before departure and quarantine for 14 days. The measures are due to be reviewed on 16 March, the news agency says.
Portugal’s tourism minister told the BBC on Friday the country hoped to allow British tourists who could prove they had tested negative or were immune into the country from 17 May, when England lifts its ban on international travel.
Portugal, which has so far reported 808,405 cases and 16,486 deaths, is set to begin a sector-by-sector lifting of restrictions next week after nearly two months of strict lockdown following a devastating surge in cases at the beginning of the year.
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India’s federal government has asked local authorities to prioritise vaccinations in several districts of eight states, including New Delhi, that have seen a spike in coronavirus cases in recent weeks.
Reuters reports:
More than 60 districts across New Delhi, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa and Chandigarh, “continue to be of concern”, the government said.
“These districts are seeing a decrease in total tests being conducted, low share of (tests), increase in weekly positivity and low number of contact tracing of the COVID positive cases,” it added, citing a risk of transmission to neighbouring regions.
India is the second worst-hit country from the coronavirus after the US, with more than 11 million recorded cases and more than 150,000 deaths.
The country began vaccinations in mid-January and at least 12 million health and frontline workers have received the shot so far. India aims to vaccinate 300 million of its 1.35 billion people by August.
The federal government statement said state officials have been asked to speed up vaccinations for “priority population groups in districts reporting higher cases” and focus on the critical districts.
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More than 1,000 people in north-east England have been checked for coronavirus in the first day of surge testing after a variant from South Africa was discovered in their area.
The BBC reports that everyone aged over 16 living in Stockton’s TS19 postcode area was being urged to get tested even if asymptomatic. The local council said the variant was “more infectious” and cases needed to be identified “as quickly as possible”. Early studies indicate that this variant could be much more resistant to vaccines than the original strain.
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The US senate worked through the night into today to advance president Joe Biden’s $1.9tn coronavirus relief plan in a marathon session involving more than a dozen votes and hours of closed-door negotiations.
Reuters reports:
Democrats who narrowly control the chamber agreed to scale back aid to the millions who have lost their jobs in the crisis. As Friday night turned to Saturday morning, they stuck together to turn back Republican attempts to modify the bill, which according to the Congressional Budget Office would be the largest stimulus package ever.
With Republicans united in opposition, Democrats must keep all 50 of their members on board in order to pass the package, as they hope to do this weekend. They were tested several times yesterday, as Democrats split over an effort to raise the minimum wage. The senate set a record for its longest single vote in the modern era - 11 hours and 50 minutes - as Democrats negotiated a compromise on unemployment benefits to satisfy centrists like senator Joe Manchin, who worried the massive package might overheat the economy.
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The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has warned that the pandemic risks rolling back progress made on gender equality, as women take on the lion’s share of childcare in lockdown and are more likely to work in at-risk jobs. Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports:
“We have to make sure that the pandemic does not lead us to fall back into old gender patterns we thought we had overcome,” Merkel said in a video message ahead of International Women’s Day on 8 March.
Women have been disproportionately affected by the health crisis, she said, while being underrepresented in decision-making positions.
“Once again it’s more often women who have to master the balancing act between homeschooling, childcare and their own jobs,” said the veteran leader. Women also outnumber men in care professions at a time when those jobs are “particularly challenging”.
“More than 75% of those working in the health sector are women, from doctor’s offices and hospitals, to labs and pharmacies,” Merkel said – yet women account for barely 30% of management positions in those areas.
“It cannot be that women are to a large extent carrying our society yet at the same time are not equally involved in important political, economic and societal decisions,” she added.
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Alex Norris, a Labour shadow health minister, said the government was clapping for carers one day, and cutting their pay the next. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
I think we are in unprecedented circumstances. This will be a pay review like no other. We’ve been out on our doorsteps clapping, we’ve been saying we’re going to recognise and thank the incredible work that the NHS staff have done.
So I think for us to then turn and say to the pay body we think those people deserve a pay rise, which they do, rather than what we’ve seen from the government, which is clapping for one day and cutting their pay the next.
Put to him that more nurses had joined than left the profession last year, Norris said the pandemic was “likely to have an impact on recruitment and retention that we are yet to truly understand”, with some set to leave after a challenging year.
Choosing actively when trying to balance the budget to take money from the NHS pay cut seems a very strange set of priorities to us.
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Sara Gorton, the head of health at the Unison union, said there would be “widespread industrial upset” if the UK government sticks to its 1% pay offer NHS England workers. She told BBC Breakfast:
We wouldn’t be a very good trade union if we weren’t preparing for the worst outcome. What we need to focus on is the fact this is by no means a done deal.
Unions and health workers all over the country are calling for the public to support them and show the government there really is an appetite to support health workers to get something more significant in organising a slow hand clap on Thursday night in reaction to this news.
The issue is we want the chance to make the economic case. All of the trade unions have been working together to try and persuade the chancellor of the benefits this could bring economically.
It puts money into the pockets of people who live in every part of our country, every part of the UK – there isn’t a family I know who doesn’t have a friend or family member who works in the health service.
We think putting money in the pockets of health service workers is a really good and sensible economic strategy.
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Dr Dan Poulter, a Conservative MP and former health minister, criticised his own party over the offer. The former NHS doctor told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
I think Matt Hancock’s point about understanding the public finances is very valid because, at some point, we are going to have to pay back all the borrowing that has taken place to keep the whole country afloat during the pandemic.
A note at this point: economists have often pointed out that the view of public finances as similar to household finances, which the Conservatives have pushed for more than a decade, is misleading.
Nevertheless, Poulter added:
However, for me, and I obviously condition on the fact I’ve been working alongside health professionals, nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists on the front line during the pandemic, I feel it is the wrong time to be making this decision.
A lot of health professionals in the early part of the pandemic were working without the right equipment to protect themselves and many people have gone above and beyond the hours they are already paid for during the pandemic and have really pulled together in very difficult circumstances.
So for me, this is, from a moral perspective, the wrong time to be applying pay restraint.
And Poulter said pay restraint had previously had a knock-on effect on the NHS’s ability to recruit permanent staff and had caused NHS agency bills to balloon, adding: “It is actually quite counterproductive economically to squeeze permanent wages.”
The whole proposal is a “slap in the face from the government”, according to a Royal College of Nursing (RCN) official.
Patricia Marquis, the RCN’s south east regional director, told Times Radio that after feeling shocked and speechless, “quite quickly both myself and my members moved to upset, a real, genuine feeling of hurt and into anger, because we had not expected such a slap in the face from the government”.
Going on strike is “certainly” on the minds of RCN members but was not the first option, she said. On whether nurses would strike during a pandemic, she told the station:
I think the answer to that is no, we are not talking about striking tomorrow. What we are talking about as an organisation is preparing ourselves for what we see will be a few months of opportunities for the government to change its mind and to do something different.
But, in the meantime, we need to prepare ourselves for if they don’t change their mind and we need to take the next steps, which initially will not be strike or industrial action – there is a long way to go before we get to that, but it is certainly in the minds or our members.
And she said large numbers of nurses who feel undervalued could leave the profession.
We know there are significant numbers who are planning to leave and this slap in the face from the government really has just reinforced their belief that they are not valued by either the government or perhaps some of the public in the way they would want to be.
There is a real risk that, yes, we might get some new people in, but significant numbers of experienced, expert nurses will see the end of the pandemic (and think) that enough is enough, and ‘for all I have done for the last 30 years and certainly for the last year, I am still not valued and it is time to move on’.
She told the programme there were 40,000 vacancies when the nation went into the pandemic and people were working to cover those roles.
The last year has been as tough as anybody has had it for healthcare workers and those 40,000 vacancies will re-emerge as we come out of the pandemic over the next few months.
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The pay offer “will in fact be a pay cut” because the Office For Budget Responsibility is predicting inflation will rise to 1.5% in the coming year, the doctors’ trade union says.
Simon Walsh, the deputy chairman of the British Medical Association’s UK consultants committee, said the “derisory” recommendation “reflects that the government is really out of touch with the feeling of the public on this”. He told BBC Breakfast:
Healthcare workers have been literally laying their lives on the line during the pandemic, and then to be faced with this announcement ... is just completely astonishing for healthcare workers.
He said strike action is “not in the nature” of health service workers, adding: “It’s the last thing any of us would want to do.
We hope the pay review body will take on board both the evidence we have submitted but also the public support for what people have seen healthcare workers doing ... we absolutely don’t want to be in a situation where healthcare workers are going on strike.
I hope (the government) realise that their policies are in danger of preventing the NHS being able to recover from this pandemic and catch up with all the backlog of work.
In England, the government is facing fierce opposition from NHS staff, as well as some of its own MPs, over its plan to offer only a 1% pay rise for the health workers who have helped the country through the pandemic.
Saffron Cordery, the deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, said a greater pay rise for health staff had been “baked in” to spending assumptions for the NHS. She has told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
We are really clear that the government had already budgeted for a pay rise of 2.1%, so what we are saying is, given where the NHS is at, given what frontline staff have been through, it seems absolutely wrong to take from their pocket right now a pay rise that was due to them.
For more on the anger being directed at ministers, see today’s main story:
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Ireland to reach 500,000 first doses
Ireland is expected to reach the milestone of half a million coronavirus jabs administered this weekend.
The taoiseach, Micheál Martin, hailed progress made fighting the pandemic. Speaking in a video posted on Twitter, he said he was inspired by recent visits to vaccination centres where thousands of frontline healthcare workers are receiving the vaccine doses.
An update on our #CovidVaccine rollout. #holdfirm pic.twitter.com/E8xcaFpHCx
— Micheál Martin (@MichealMartinTD) March 6, 2021
He said government and the HSE were doing everything they could to secure supplies and to give those vaccines to people as quickly as possible.
Over the coming days, we will have administered half a million doses since the first vaccination was given to Dubliner Annie Lynch 63 days ago. Next week we will begin to vaccinate those with underlying health conditions as well as continuing to vaccinate the over-70s and healthcare workers.
The taoiseach said the vaccines are reducing the impact of the virus.
This can be seen in the reduced levels of infection in our nursing homes and amongst our frontline healthcare workers. This brings hope, along with the continued fall in Covid numbers thanks to the sacrifices you have been making.
The 14-day incidence level fell below 200 this week for the first time since Christmas. While our health services are still under pressure, the number of patients in our hospitals and ICUs is reducing significantly.
However, Martin added a note of caution, warning that variants of the virus mean people should not relax around restrictions.
On Saturday, the number of patients with Covid-19 dropped to 99 with the number of cases in hospital at 401.
Paul Reid, the chief executive of Ireland’s HSE, described it as a “great sign”. On Friday, one further death with the virus and 522 new cases were notified in the Republic of Ireland.
Meanwhile, protesters calling for an end of lockdown restrictions are set to gather in Cork city centre later. It follows a demonstration in Dublin last weekend which saw chaotic scenes in the capital, 23 arrests and three Garda officers left injured.
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Vaccines need to be redesigned to prevent widespread transmission of variants such as that first found in Manaus, Brazil, an infectious disease expert has said.
Prof Ravindra Gupta, a member of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), said it was “fantastic” that the mystery person infected with the Manaus variant had been found. He told Times Radio:
But there will be people out there who have not been tracked and traced who have the variant and who may have transmitted it.
Prof Gupta, an expert in clinical microbiology at the University of Cambridge, said it is “always a possibility” that the Manaus P1 variant could become dominant in the UK but it is “unlikely at the moment because, first of all, we have low rates of transmission and we have a virus that has a transmission advantage”.
On the other hand, once many of us have been vaccinated, the shift for evolutionary paths for the virus will become to avoid immunity rather than just to transmit rapidly, it will be a combination of both.
We need to have redesigned our vaccines for the coming year with some of the key mutations present in those vaccines so actually we can prevent transmission of those variants if they were to take off in the coming months.
He added it was “inevitable that the list (of mutations) will grow because in many areas of the world transmission is still significant and transmission equals chronic infections”. He added:
On the other hand, we can take comfort in the fact that the virus is doing very similar things across all of these variants, so there are some very common themes coming along and very common mutations, so that helps us to design the next generation of vaccines.
Prof Sir Ian Diamond, the head of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), said the lockdown had been a “success” but that the UKwas “still not out of the woods”.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme there had been “very strong reductions everywhere”, although in the north-east and east of England, the decline had “flattened off, potentially”, unlike in the south-west and south-east of the nation, where the decline in cases has continued.
I think this lockdown has been a success but at the same time, while we have seen major reductions, we are still relatively high. I’m in very much the view that we should do everything we can not to blow it nationally.
We have done fantastically well in the last couple of months but we are not completely out of the woods yet.
He added that it was “very difficult” to work out the difference between the lockdown impact and the effect the vaccine was having, but it was clear both were working in reducing the numbers.
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Every positive quick-result test of a school pupil in the UK should be checked with a PCR test to ensure it was accurate, a member of the Royal Statistical Society has suggested.
Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme about the likelihood of a false positive reading from a lateral flow test, Prof Sheila Bird said:
Very likely. In the present circumstances, when infection incidence is low, the false positive rate with lateral flow tests remains to be absolutely determined in the context of schools but may be between one and three per 1,000 children.
So, to differentiate a false positive from a true positive, is to do that PCR confirmation.
Bird said the recommendation to ask school pupils to produce tests twice a week when they return to classrooms should be reviewed to ensure consent is continued.
The Royal Statistical Society warns that pupils and families’ willingness to take part is likely to decrease over time.
There is initial interest and curiosity, but twice a week is a big ask of children and families, and the additional benefit from doing this twice a week versus once a week is modest and it has to be offset against the implications for the consent rate and the willingness to continue to do it.
The next few weeks are going to be crucial for keeping coronavirus infections down in the UK as schools reopen, according to an infectious disease expert. Dr Mike Tildesley, a member of the UK government’s SPI-M modelling advisory panel, has told Times Radio that children going back to classrooms would cause a rise in the reproductive number – or R value – of the virus while more vaccinations would cause it to reduce.
We do need to get this balancing act correct and we need to open up at the rate of vaccinations and keep the R number in check, as it were.
Definitely, things are moving in the right direction but the next few weeks are going to be crucial for us to monitor what happens when schools open. Hopefully, we can keep everything down and most importantly we can prevent seeing a rise in hospitalisations.
Tildelsey said parents need to keep social distancing and following other rules while dropping their children off at school.
Just because you’re not in the home with your young children don’t use it as an excuse to go out and mix with other people that you otherwise wouldn’t have done. It’s possible that, with schools open, we can keep the R number below one but if we are going to achieve that we all need to keep following all the other rules.
He added that falling infection rates were most likely due to lockdown measures and that the impact of vaccinations “hopefully is yet to come”.
I think most of the reason the numbers are going in the right direction now is still due to lockdown.
I think we haven’t quite seen the impact of vaccinations, [that will] probably start to come in round about now and have a little bit of an effect. But most of the effect thus far actually is probably the fact we have been under severe restrictions since the start of January.
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Saudi Arabia will end most restrictions on Sunday, including resuming indoor dining, reopening cinemas and resuming entertainment activities and events, the state news agency SPA said on Saturday.
Some activities will remain banned, including weddings and corporate meetings. Social gatherings will continue to be limited to a maximum of 20 people, SPA said, citing an interior ministry source.
The EU will urge the US to permit the export of millions of doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine to Europe, underlining Brussels’ scramble to bridge supply shortfalls, the Financial Times reports.
The EU also wants Washington to ensure the free flow of shipments of crucial vaccine ingredients needed in European production, according to the FT. It quotes the European commission as saying:
We trust that we can work together with the US to ensure that vaccines produced or bottled in the US for the fulfilment of vaccine producers’ contractual obligations with the EU will be fully honoured.
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Hungary has reported 7,269 new cases; representing its worst daily caseload and a jump of 14% from Friday’s tally, Reuters reports.
The central European country of 10 million people is grappling with some of the highest infection and death rates in the world and the government has imposed tough new lockdown measures – including closing all schools and most shops – in response.
Here’s a little more detail on the news that the Dalia Lama has had a Covid-19 vaccine. The Associated Press reports:
The Tibetan spiritual leader said: “In order to prevent some serious problems, this injection is very, very helpful.”
Dr GD Gupta of Zonal Hospital, where the shot was administered, told reporters that the Dalai Lama was observed for 30 minutes afterwards. “He offered to come to the hospital like a common man to get himself vaccinated,” he said.
Ten other people who live in the Dalai Lama’s residence were also vaccinated, Gupta said. All 11 received the vaccine developed by Oxford University/AstraZeneca, and manufactured by India’s Serum Institute.
India has confirmed more than 11m cases of the coronavirus and more than 157,000 deaths. The country, which has the second-highest caseload in the world behind the US, rolled out its vaccination drive in January, starting with health care and frontline workers. Earlier this month, it expanded its inoculation drive to older people and those with medical conditions that put them at risk.
The Dalai Lama made Dharmsala his headquarters in 1959, fleeing Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. China doesn’t recognise the Tibetan government-in-exile and accuses the Dalai Lama of seeking to separate Tibet from China.
The Dalai Lama denies being a separatist and says he merely advocates for substantial autonomy and protection of the region’s native Buddhist culture.
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English businesses to get rapid testing
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
Businesses in England will now be able to sign up to receive free rapid coronavirus tests under the UK government’s workplace testing programme. More on that to come.
The Associated Press reports that the Dalai Lama, the 85-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader, has been administered the first shot of a vaccine at a hospital in the north Indian hill town of Dharmsala. After receiving the injection, he urged people to come forward, be brave and get vaccinated.
And, in Russia, health authorities have reported 11,022 new cases, including 1,820 in Moscow, taking the official national tally to 4,312,181. The government’s coronavirus taskforce said 441 people have died in the last 24 hours, bringing the Russian death toll to 88,726.
But that contradicted data from Russia’s Rosstat statistics agency, which said on Friday that more than 200,000 have died since the pandemic began.
- France reported 23,507 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Friday, down from 25,205 a week ago, but the number of people in intensive care with the disease reached its highest level so far this year, health ministry data showed.
- The arrival of Covid vaccines should not tempt countries to relax efforts to fight the pandemic, top World Health Organization officials said on Friday, citing particular concern about the situation in Brazil.
- A variant of Covid-19 first identified in Britain now accounts for 25% of the reported cases in Poland, according to the country’s health minister.
- Italy will further tighten coronavirus restrictions in three of its 20 regions after health officials warned of the growing spread of new variants.
- Germany has expressed concerns over the EU’s vaccine export ban, as Australia asked for a review of Italy’s decision to “tear up the rulebook” and block export of 250,000 doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine to its shores.
- The Belgian prime minister, Alexander De Croo, set out a roadmap for easing lockdown restrictions on Friday, even as Covid-19 infections rose, with restaurants, bars, gyms and cinemas set to reopen on 1 May.
- Saudi Arabia said it would ease coronavirus-related restrictions on entertainment and events and reopen cinemas, gyms and sports centres starting 7 March.
- Paraguay’s minister of public health, Julio Mazzoleni, resigned on Friday as a record-breaking surge in coronavirus cases left medication in short supply and the country’s hospitals near collapse.
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