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A summary of today's developments
- Brazil on Wednesday registered an unprecedented 90,303 new coronavirus cases, a day after the country reported a fresh record for deaths related to the virus, Reuters reports. Infections now total 11,693,838. Deaths rose by 2,648, the second highest tally after the record reported on Tuesday, bringing the total to 284,775.
- Tanzania’s president, John Magufuli, one of Africa’s most prominent Covid-19 sceptics, has died after a two-week absence from public life which prompted speculation that he had contracted the disease.
- Magufuli’s death was announced on Wednesday by the country’s vice-president Samia Suluhu, who said the president died of heart failure. He was 61.
- The UK will see a significant reduction in the amount of vaccines available from the end of March due to a cut in supply, a letter sent around the state-run health service said. National Health Service trusts in England were informed by the UK government’s vaccines task force that there will be “a significant reduction in vaccine supply” from 29 March, “meaning volumes for first doses will be significantly constrained.” Pfizer Inc said it was on track to meet its delivery targets for Covid-19 vaccines in the UK in line with an agreed monthly schedule.
- White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the US has received requests for Covid-19 vaccines from both Mexico and Canada and is considering them carefully, Reuters reports.
- Mexico has registered 6,455 new confirmed cases of coronavirus and 789 additional deaths, Reuters reports. It brings the total in the country to 2,175,462 cases and 195,908 deaths, health ministry data showed on Wednesday.
- The British foreign minister, Dominic Raab, said on Wednesday that the European commission’s threat to ban exports of Covid-19 vaccines cut across previous assurances, adding that the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, needed to explain herself.
- Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, has announced a tough new nationwide lockdown amid surging infections. The country’s health minister said shopping centres, theatres, cinemas and hotels will close from Saturday, while schools will have to switch to online learning.
- A World Health Organization vaccine safety panel said on Wednesday that it considers the benefits of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to outweigh its risks and recommends that vaccinations continue.
- Norway is experiencing a third wave of coronavirus infections, health minister Bent Høie said. From 16 March tougher measures came into force in Oslo and the whole of Viken county, affecting about 1.2 million residents in a region where 82% of the country’s coronavirus infections are clustered, according to Høie.
Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro said he was happy that supporters have been staging anti-social distancing protests, on the same day as the country registered more than 90,000 new Covid-19 cases for the first time, Reuters reports.
The infections record came one day after Brazil posted a separate record for deaths related to the virus, more than 2,800 in one day.
“Logically, I was happy,” Bolsonaro said of the protests in remarks broadcast on social media. “They show that the people are alive ... we want our freedom, we want the world to respect our constitution.”
Brazil now has 11,693,838 confirmed cases. Deaths on Wednesday rose by 2,648, the second highest tally after the record reported Tuesday, and now total 284,775.
The front page of Thursday’s Guardian in the UK:
GUARDIAN: Covid jabs for under 50s delayed by a month due to vaccine shortages #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/oA10MY7Klh
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) March 17, 2021
An update from the governor of California in the US:
NEW: CA has now administered 13.1 million vaccines.
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) March 17, 2021
In the last 48 hours, we administered nearly one million vaccines -- a new record.
Israel’s government announced a bailout of its airlines to help them weather the coronavirus crisis and maintain operations in the midst of a year-long halt to international travel.
Reuters reports:
As part of a financial assistance program overseen by the finance ministry, the government will buy $210 million-worth of flight tickets in advance from flag carrier El Al Israel Airlines and its low fare subsidiary Sun Dor.
The tickets are for the airline security personnel posted at airports that its carriers will fly to over the next 20 years, the finance ministry said in a statement. The sum will stay the same even if security requirements change.
The government plans to offer ticket purchase arrangements to other Israeli airlines that fly Israeli aviation security personnel in the coming days, the ministry said.
Israel’s government had drawn criticism for previous aid offers that would have backed loans to airlines but stopped short of giving direct financial assistance. Other global carriers, like Germany’s Lufthansa, received government bailouts as far back as last summer.
Updated
Tanzania’s president, John Magufuli, one of Africa’s most prominent Covid-19 sceptics, has died after a two-week absence from public life which prompted speculation that he had contracted the disease.
Magufuli’s death was announced on Wednesday by the country’s vice-president Samia Suluhu, who said the president died of heart failure. He was 61.
“The president of the United Republic of Tanzania, the honourable Doctor John Pombe Joseph Magufuli … (has) died of a heart condition, at hospital Mzena in Dar es Salaam, where he was receiving treatment,” she said on state broadcaster TBC.
Magufuli had not been seen in public since 27 February and rumours swirled online that he was sick and possibly incapacitated from illness. Government officials had insisted Magufuli was working normally and citizens should ignore rumours from outside the country. Last week, the country’s opposition leader, Tundu Lissu, told the BBC that Magafuli was critically ill in a hospital in Kenya after contracting Covid-19.
AstraZeneca’s scheduled deliveries of Covid-19 vaccines to Britain are unaffected and its supply chain in the country is not experiencing disruption, the company said.
Reuters reports:
It comes after Britain said vaccine supplies would dip at the end of March.
“Our UK domestic supply chain is not experiencing any disruption and there is no impact on our delivery schedule,” an AstraZeneca spokesman said.
Brazil suffers new daily record of cases
Brazil on Wednesday registered an unprecedented 90,303 new coronavirus cases, a day after the country reported a fresh record for deaths related to the virus, Reuters reports.
Infections now total 11,693,838.
Deaths rose by 2,648, the second highest tally after the record reported on Tuesday, bringing the total to 284,775.
To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and to reaffirm our nation’s close partnership with Ireland, I hosted a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Micheál Martin. We’re committed to working together to combat COVID-19, address global challenges, and increase our shared prosperity. pic.twitter.com/U2CZB3Hzhv
— President Biden (@POTUS) March 17, 2021
France saw the number of Covid-19 patients in intensive care units (ICU) fell slightly, the first decline in nearly two weeks, easing by 20 to 4,219,Reuters reports.
The Paris region, which had 1,177 people in ICU on Tuesday, is under heavy pressure and has had to evacuate patients to elsewhere in the country.
The number of deaths in hospital rose by 247 to 91,437 on Wednesday.
A summary of today's developments
- The UK will see a significant reduction in the amount of vaccines available from the end of March due to a cut in supply, a letter sent around the state-run health service said. National Health Service trusts in England were informed by the UK government’s vaccines task force that there will be “a significant reduction in vaccine supply” from 29 March, “meaning volumes for first doses will be significantly constrained.” Pfizer Inc said it was on track to meet its delivery targets for Covid-19 vaccines in the UK in line with an agreed monthly schedule.
- White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the US has received requests for Covid-19 vaccines from both Mexico and Canada and is considering them carefully, Reuters reports.
- Mexico has registered 6,455 new confirmed cases of coronavirus and 789 additional deaths, Reuters reports. It brings the total in the country to 2,175,462 cases and 195,908 deaths, health ministry data showed on Wednesday.
- The British foreign minister, Dominic Raab, said on Wednesday that the European commission’s threat to ban exports of Covid-19 vaccines cut across previous assurances, adding that the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, needed to explain herself.
- Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, has announced a tough new nationwide lockdown amid surging infections. The country’s health minister said shopping centres, theatres, cinemas and hotels will close from Saturday, while schools will have to switch to online learning.
- A World Health Organization vaccine safety panel said on Wednesday that it considers the benefits of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to outweigh its risks and recommends that vaccinations continue.
- Norway is experiencing a third wave of coronavirus infections, health minister Bent Høie said. From 16 March tougher measures came into force in Oslo and the whole of Viken county, affecting about 1.2 million residents in a region where 82% of the country’s coronavirus infections are clustered, according to Høie.
Tanzania's president John Magufuli has died
Tanzania’s vice president Samia Sulhu Hassan has announced the death of President John Magufuli on state television, Reuters reports.
Hassan said: “The President of the United Republic of Tanzania, the honourable Doctor John Pombe Joseph Magufuli, ... (has) died of a heart condition, at hospital Mzena in Dar es Salaam, where he was receiving treatment.
Magufuli, one of Africa’s most prominent coronavirus sceptics, had not been seen in public since Feb. 27, sparking speculation that he had contracted Covid-19.
Opposition politicians earlier this week said Magufuli was in a serious condition after contracting Covid-19 and had been flown abroad for treatment.
Updated
Public health officials have “even more confidence in the vaccines” after new data showed both jabs being used in the UK provide “good protection” against coronavirus among elderly people.
PA reports:
People aged over 70 who have had one dose of the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines are 60% less likely to catch Covid-19, according to a Public Health England (PHE) report.
The jabs also reduce the risk of hospital admission among people aged over 80 by 80%, and the Pfizer vaccine is 85% effective at preventing deaths among this age group.
Health secretary Matt Hancock said: “After a single dose of either vaccine, protection against Covid-19 is around 60%, that’s protection against getting it.
“Protection against hospitalisation is around 80% and protection against death is around 85%.”
Labour has thrown its weight behind calls for a full-blown public inquiry to learn the lessons of the Covid pandemic in the UK.
Rachel Reeves, who shadows the Cabinet Office minister, Michael Gove, told the Guardian the government should start preparing now, to allow an inquiry to begin in earnest over the summer.
“We’re supposed to be out of the roadmap by 21 June,” said Reeves. “Let’s get ready for it now, and from 21 June this inquiry can really get started and use the summer months where we should be better protected, and the vaccine has been rolled out to most adults.”
Pfizer Inc said it was on track to meet its delivery targets for Covid-19 vaccines in the UK in line with an agreed monthly schedule, after Britain warned of a significant reduction in its available supplies of vaccines.
Reuters reports:
We can confirm that Q1 deliveries remain on track and continue to progress in line with the monthly schedule,” a spokeswoman for Pfizer said.
Britain is rolling out Pfizer’s vaccine along with one made by AstraZeneca.
“We will work closely with the Government to ensure this remains the case; our overall projected supply for Q2 remains unchanged and we are on course to continue to deliver a steady supply of vaccines to the UK, April through to June, in line with our contractual commitments,” the Pfizer spokeswoman said.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Wednesday the US has received requests for Covid-19 vaccines from both Mexico and Canada and is considering them carefully, Reuters reports.
“I don’t have any update for you on whether they will be granted and a timeline for that,” Psaki said.
Psaki added there is “no question” that the Trump administration’s rhetoric on the coronavirus pandemic has elevated threats against Asian-Americans.
Former Republican President Donald Trump has been repeatedly accused of racism over his use of labels such as the “Chinese virus” when referring to the pandemic.
Chile’s vaccination program has reached the icy shores of Antarctica, bringing a sense of relief to one of the most isolated and vulnerable outposts on Earth.
Reuters reports:
The pandemic hit Antarctica in December, making it the last of the world’s continents to report an outbreak of COVID-19. Chilean health and army officials scrambled to clear out staff from a remote region with limited medical facilities.
Marcela Andrade, an official with the Chilean Antarctic Institute (INACH), told Reuters by phone that air force personnel, followed by staff at the Profesor Julio Escudero research base, were inoculated on Sunday with vaccine from China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd.
She said the outbreak scare several months ago was well-managed, but a reminder of the importance of speedy vaccination in such a remote and unforgiving location.
“It’s a relief,” said Andrade, who said workers in the isolated region were at special risk.
“We don’t have flights or ships departing every day here. It’s complicated to transport people that (are ill) or a risk to others.”
England’s deputy chief medical officer has said evidence suggests there is no increased risk of blood clots from the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine.
PA reports:
Professor Jonathan Van-Tam said that “vaccines don’t save lives if they’re in fridges” as he sought to reassure the public after a dozen European countries suspended the vaccine over isolated cases of blood clotting.
He referred to comments by the European Medical Agency (EMA), which said there was “no indication that vaccination has caused these conditions”.
The regulator said on Tuesday it was “firmly convinced” that the benefits of the AstraZeneca jab outweighed the risks, but a “very rigorous analysis” was ongoing.
It comes after the UK’s prime minister Boris Johnson said he was due to receive his vaccine shortly and that it will “be Oxford/AstraZeneca” in a show of support for the jab.
Mexico has registered 6,455 new confirmed cases of coronavirus and 789 additional deaths, Reuters reports.
It brings the total in the country to 2,175,462 cases and 195,908 deaths, health ministry data showed on Wednesday.
The government says the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
Spain’s health minister warned on Wednesday that a seven-week decline in the national Covid-19 infection rate could have ground to a halt after cases began rising again in several regions.
Reuters reports:
“We could be facing a possible change in trend,” Carolina Darias told a news conference. “So maximum caution should be exercised to avoid a fourth wave.”
The infection rate as measured over the preceding 14 days has fallen from a peak of nearly 900 cases per 100,000 people at the end of January to below 130 cases as authorities brought a post-Christmas third wave under control.
But the pace of decline has slowed recently, and infections inched higher on Wednesday to 127.9 cases per 100,000 from 127.8 cases a day earlier.
Madrid, Catalonia and seven other regions reported slight increases in the incidence, Health Ministry data showed, though the national rate remained at its lowest since August.
The ministry added 6,092 new cases, largely in line with recent increases and bringing the tally to 3.21 million. The death toll climbed by 228 to 72,793.
I’m now handing over to my colleague Nadeem Badshah.
Updated
The British health minister Matt Hancock said on Wednesday the UK had a legal right to AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, which it helped to fund and develop, in a sharp rebuke to criticism from the EU that Britain has not been exporting the shots.
European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen earlier threatened to ban exports of Covid-19 vaccines to Britain unless the bloc gets a “fair share”, airing frustration over a lack of deliveries from AstraZeneca factories in the UK.
In the EU Commission’s view, it has been cotractually agreed that the EU will get deliveries from two British plants of the company.
Asked about the issue of vaccine supplies from the EU, Hancock said that he worked with European colleagues all the time but the shot, created with the University of Oxford, was developed with British funding.
He said:
We set up the supply chain, not just here in the UK but indeed, we helped set up the supply chain in the EU.
We legally signed a contract for delivery of the first 100 million doses here for people in the UK, as you would expect, both to ensure that people in the UK can get their jab and also because this is a UK-funded, UK-delivered vaccine.
Hancock said that Britain was happy for the shot to be manufactured around the world, but quoted a tweet von der Leyen sent in late January saying “there should not be restrictions on the export of vaccines by companies where they are fulfilling contractual responsibilities”.
“So the supply of vaccines from EU production facilities to the UK is indeed fulfilling contractual responsibilities, and we fully expect those contracts to be delivered on,” he said.
Uganda on Wednesday launched a rapid Covid-19 antibody test partly funded by France that developers hope to market in sub-Saharan Africa, where the laboratory infrastructure needed for extensive coronavirus testing is thin.
Reuters reports:
The test, which requires a finger prick to draw blood, was developed by a team at Makerere, Uganda’s oldest public university, with partial funding from the French embassy.
The east African country has long experience of infectious diseases like HIV and Ebola which it has drawn on to develop diagnostics expertise.
“This is a point-of-care test that can be used within equatorial Africa village settings, remote areas where there’s no laboratory, there’s no electricity, there’s no expert,” said Misaki Wayengera, a researcher at Makerere’s Department of Pathology.
The kits work by detecting two antibodies, immunoglobulin M (IgM) and immunoglobulin G (IgG), triggered when someone is infected with coronavirus.
Makerere partnered with local firm Astel Diagnostics Uganda, a World Health Organisation-certified manufacturer, to make an initial batch of 2,400 tests. Wayengera said they are in talks with bigger investors about larger commercial production.
The kit, which has been approved by Uganda’s state-run National Drugs Authority, has an accuracy rate of 70%, he said, but researchers hope eventually to raise that to 90%.
Although rapid testing is seen as key to combating Covid-19, poor countries like Uganda have struggled to find a cheap and easily available point-of-care diagnostic tool for mass testing.
The Covid-19 outbreak in Uganda has been kept relatively mild, with only about 40,600 cases in total and 334 deaths.
The US has administered more than 113m doses of Covid-19 vaccines as of Wednesday morning and distributed almost 148m doses, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.
The tally includes Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech, and Johnson & Johnson’s vaccines as of 6am EST, the agency said.
As of 16 March, the CDC had administered 110,737,856 doses of the vaccines and distributed 142,918,525 doses.
The agency said 73,669,956 people had received at least one dose and that 39,989,196 were fully vaccinated as of Wednesday.
A total of 7,585,936 vaccine doses have been administered in long-term care facilities, the agency said.
Updated
Greece has urged doctors to volunteer their services to the state health system as it struggles to contain fast-spreading coronavirus infections.
Reuters reports:
“We are at the most critical juncture of the pandemic,’ Health Minister Vassilis Kikilias told a weekly briefing, calling for general practitioners and pneumonologists to volunteer to work in state hospitals.
He said that if some 200 doctors did not respond to his call in the next 48 hours he would recommend to the prime minister to allow health authorities to force them work for the state health system.
Two private hospitals were enlisted last week to treat Covid-19 patients in Athens, where half of the country’s 11 million population lives, and Kikilias said that another would be repurposed to take Covid-19 patients.
With more than 7,000 coronavirus-related deaths in total, Greece has fared better than many other European countries.
Authorities have tightened and loosened movement restrictions since November, hired health staff and set up new intensive care units to fight the pandemic.
But infections were still high and the health system, badly hurt by a decade-long financial crisis, was struggling to treat 4,648 Covid-19 patients across the country – 1,000 more than to last week – Kikilias said.
Some 3,465 new daily cases were reported on Wednesday, bringing the total number of infections in the country during the pandemic to 227,247.
Updated
England’s deputy chief medical officer said on Wednesday there was a lot of reassuring evidence suggesting there was no increased risk of blood clots from AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, adding he expected the European Medicines Agency to agree.
Jonathan Van-Tam said at a news conference:
Behind the scenes, there is a lot of work going on to look at whether there is a signal in relation to what we call venous thrombo-embolic events - clots.
And there’s a lot of evidence emerging now that is reassuring that there is no overall excess signal or increased risk. And I expect, without prejudice to their absolute findings, those to be the final conclusions of the EMA and [Britain’s] MHRA in due course.
Updated
The British health minister, Matt Hancock, said on Wednesday that the UK was on target to vaccine the top priority groups in the country by 15 April.
‘We’re committed to all adults being able to get the jab by the end of July, and we’re on track to deliver on that commitment,’ he added.
Referring to the news that the UK’s vaccine supply would be significantly reduced from late March, Hancock said:
Vaccine supply is always lumpy and we regularly send out technical letters to the NHS to explain the ups and downs of the supply over the future weeks, and what you’re referring to is a standard one of those letters.
This from the BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, on Hancock’s remarks:
I'm told the problem is fewer Astra Zeneca vaccines are available than expected. There have been some other letters to health trusts about managing supply which has been 'lumpy' but this is more significant than previous bumps and lumps
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) March 17, 2021
Source tells me this letter is not just a standard one like others than have been written in course of vaccine programme - really important to note tho, no one who has a slot for their vaccine should lose their slot
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) March 17, 2021
Updated
Paraguayan opposition lawmakers launched an attempt on Wednesday to impeach President Mario Abdo over the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, though the motion appeared to be well short of the votes needed to formally start the process.
Reuters reports:
Abdo’s conservative government has faced fierce protests in recent weeks as a surge in Covid-19 cases has left hospitals on the brink of collapse and out of drugs, while the country has been slow to secure vaccines.
Opposition lawmakers in the lower house of deputies put forward the motion to impeach Abdo. Fifty-three votes are required for it to pass, but they have around 37.
‘We need 16 more votes,’ Celeste Amarilla, deputy of the Liberal party, involved in writing the motion, told reporters. “But we are not looking for votes, we ... are presenting this suit, because (people) took to the streets to ask for it.”
The push, however unlikely to succeed, adds pressure on Abdo’s government, which has been forced to shuffle several ministers, including the health minister and chief of staff, to help calm public anger.
Updated
Sixteen people have been arrested at anti-lockdown protests in Dublin for failing to comply with public health guidelines, gardai said.
PA reports:
A massive Garda security operation is under way to prevent planned lockdown protests to mark St Patrick’s Day in Ireland.
By 3pm, gardai said 13 men and three women had been arrested in connection with the events in the capital and failure to follow Covid-19 public health regulations.
Ten people have been charged and were due to appear before a sitting of Dublin district court on Wednesday afternoon.
About 100 anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination protesters, the majority of whom were not wearing face masks, gathered in Herbert Park in Ballsbridge carrying banners and posters.
Many of the demonstrators voiced their disappointment at the turnout.Several protest events were planned via social media, by disparate groups in different locations in Dublin city centre.
Updated
France reported 38,501 further infections on Wednesday, up from 30,303 a week earlier.
The number of people in intensive care units with Covid-19 in France has fallen by 20 to 4,219, health ministry data showed on Wednesday, the first fall since 4 March, Reuters reports.
France reported 246 further deaths from the virus on Wednesday, compared to 264 a week ago and 320 on Tuesday.
Updated
The first batch of vaccines for Syria from the global vaccine sharing platform COVAX will be delivered within weeks, allowing the war-torn country to kick off its national inoculation programme as early as next month, the UN health agency’s country head said on Wednesday.
Reuters reports:
The first shipments are from a consignment of one million doses of AstraZeneca Serum Institute India (AZSII) vaccines, Akjemal Magtymova, head of the World Health Organisation’s Syria mission told Reuters from Damascus in a phone interview.
The first rollout that could begin as early as end of April or early May aims to inoculate nearly 20 percent of Syria’s population by year-end or almost five million people in both government held areas and the northeast and northwest.
The Damascus government’s national programme across state-run territory where most of the country’s nearly 20 million inhabitants live will deploy dozens of teams across 76 hospitals with over 300 mobile units to access hard to reach areas.
A small batch of 5,000 doses of China’s Sinopharm vaccine were the first to be delivered to Syria, outside the COVAX initiative, as a donation from China for frontline health workers, health officials say.Syria was hard hit by the pandemic last year during two spikes in August and December and health workers cite a rise in infections in the last month.
There have been 45,453 reported cases and 1,761 deaths across the whole of Syria since the first cases surfaced a year ago, according to the latest WHO data.
Updated
UK vaccine supply to see significant cut from end of March, forcing focus on second doses
The UK will see a significant reduction in the amount of vaccines available from the end of March due to a cut in supply, a letter sent around the state-run health service said on Wednesday.
National Health Service trusts in England were informed by the UK government’s vaccines task force that there will be “a significant reduction in vaccine supply” from 29 March, “meaning volumes for first doses will be significantly constrained.”
On Wednesday’ those 50 years old and over in England were for the first time invited to book their vaccine appointment.
“We have today opened up national booking to everyone aged 50 and over, so over this next periodit is vital we focus onvaccinating those in cohorts 1 –9, who are most vulnerable to Covid-19,as well as delivering to the agreed schedulesignificantlyincreased numbers of second doses, which double fromthe beginning of April,” an NHS England statement says.
Almost half of British adults have received a Covid-19 jab in the first 100 days of the biggest vaccination programme in NHS history, new figures show.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said that more than 25 million people have received their first vaccine and 1.7 million have had their second vaccine.
Updated
Germany is sticking to its goal of offering a coronavirus vaccination to everyone by the end of the summer, a government spokeswoman said on Wednesday despite its decision this week to suspend use of AstraZeneca.
More than a dozen European countries have paused use of the vaccine while the EU regulator EMA investigates reports of 30 cases of unusual blood disorders out of 5 million recipients of the vaccine.
EMA is expected to announce the results of a review on Thursday and Germany has said it will follow that advice.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has said all Germans will have been offered a vaccination by 21 September – five days before a federal election.
Reuters reports:
A government spokeswoman said the goal was unchanged.
The suspension has raised concerns that Germany will fall behind in its vaccine campaign which already lags countries like Britain, Israel and the US.
Some 8.1% of the 83-million population have been received at least one shot.
Facing some criticism that the move, even if only temporary, will put Germans off getting vaccinated, the health minister, Jens Spahn, said the decision proved that controls were safe.
“Our system works,” Spahn said on Facebook, adding that incidents were reported, checked and, if necessary, action was taken. “That should actually strengthen confidence in vaccination,” he said.
Updated
Italy reported 431 coronavirus-related deaths on Wednesday, compared to 502 the day before, the health ministry said, as well as 23,059 new infections, up from 20,396 the day before.
Italy’s overall death toll from the virus now stands at 103,432, the second-highest toll in Europe after the UK’s and the seventh-highest in the world. The country has reported 3.28 million cases to date.
Patients hospitalised with Covid-19 – not including those in intensive care – stood at 26,517 Wednesday, up from 26,098 a day earlier, Reuters reports.
There were 324 new admissions to intensive care units, compared with 319 on Tuesday. The total number of intensive care patients increased to 3,317 from a previous 3,256.
During the peak of Italy’s second wave in the first half of November, hospital admissions were rising by about 1,000 per day, while intensive care occupancy was increasing by about 100 per day.
I’m Jedidajah Otte and taking back over from my colleague Tobi Thomas. Do get in touch if you have updates or anything else that’s relevant to flag, I’m on Twitter @JedySays or you can email me.
Updated
Heidi Chow, senior policy and campaigns manager at Global Justice Now, has said that the EU was right to look at suspending intellectual property for coronavirus vaccines because of the implication vaccine patents would have on poorer counties.
Chow said:
The EU is right to look at suspending intellectual property for Covid-19 vaccines. It’s something that low- and middle-income countries have been demanding at the World Trade Organization and yet the EU has been blocking these proposals.
Vaccine patents mean that big pharmaceutical companies are the sole producers of their vaccine which has created supply constraints not just in the EU but in the rest of the world too. Low and middle income countries are set to wait years longer than they need to for vaccines – and, when they finally get them, pharma corporations can charge rip-off prices.
If the EU backs the proposal to suspend global patent rules, it will set a global precedent that could unlock the world’s productive capacity and ensure vaccines reach all countries, not just the richest ones.
Updated
The UK has reported a further 141 new deaths within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test. This brings the total amount of deaths to 125,831.
There have also been, as of this morning, a further 5,758 confirmed cases in the UK.
Updated
Updated
Reuters reports that new coronavirus cases are accelerating in half of the countries within the Americas, according to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).
Carissa Etienne, the PAHO director, said that Brazil was reporting the highest number of coronavirus infections in the region, with several areas in the country witnessing record-high levels of infections. She said:
The situation in Brazil is a cautionary tale that keeping this virus under control requires continuous attention by public health authorities and leaders to protect people and health systems from the devastating impact of this virus.
Etienne added that although the US and Mexico are seeing a drop in new infections, cases in Canada are accelerating particularly among young adults. Cases are said to be rising in Uruguay, Ecuador and Venezuela in the last week, with Paraguay’s health system issuing an urgent warning as hospital beds were filling with coronavirus patients.
Updated
The UK has announced that over 25 million people have now received at least one coronavirus vaccination.
In a statement, the prime minister, Boris Johnson, said:
The latest milestone is an incredible achievement – representing 25m reasons to be confident for the future as we cautiously reopen society.
Updated
Good afternoon, Tobi Thomas here. I’m covering for my colleague Jedidajah Otte while she has a break.
If you would like to get in touch with any tips please do email me: tobi.thomas@theguardian.com.
UK foreign secretary says EU threat to block exports of vaccine needs 'some explaining'
The British foreign minister, Dominic Raab, said on Wednesday that the European commission’s threat to ban exports of Covid-19 vaccines cut across previous assurances, adding that the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, needed to explain herself.
Raab told Reuters:
I think it takes some explaining, because the world’s watching. We’ve, all of us, including with our European friends, been saying throughout the pandemic that you’d be wrong to curtail or interfere with lawfully-contracted supply. We all said it last year on PPE. We’ve been saying it this year, on vaccines and other things.
Frankly, I’m surprised we’re having this conversation. It is normally what the UK and EU team up with to reject when other countries with less democratic regimes than our own engage in that kind of brinkmanship.
Updated
About 6.5% of coronavirus vaccine doses in India are going to waste, health officials said on Wednesday, urging states to manage their immunisation drives better to optimise use of what one called “this elixir-like precious commodity”.
Reuters reports:
One reason for the wastage is that, while many urban vaccination centres have been crowded, some rural sites have had to nudge people to get shots due to a lack of awareness among the public, which can lead to vaccine wastage.
Once a vaccine vial is opened, doses need to be administered within four hours, making it vital for health workers to coordinate the flow of recipients.
The federal health ministry has distributed 75.4m vaccine doses to India’s states, of which some 36m doses have so far been used. India is using the AstraZeneca shot and another developed at home by Bharat Biotech.
The government did not say how many doses had been wasted, but the percentage figure suggests it could be more than 2m, a big number given that many countries have yet to start inoculating their citizens and India itself is only immunising priority groups.
Updated
Australia said on Wednesday it would ask the EU to release 1m doses of a Covid-19 vaccine to help Papua New Guinea (PNG) battle a dangerous outbreak that authorities fear could spread to other parts of the region.
Reuters reports:
The request could inflame existing tensions between Canberra and Brussels amid claims of vaccine nationalism after the EU recently blocked an Australia-bound shipment of the doses.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Wednesday said the vaccines were contracted to Australia and were now badly needed to contain a surge in coronavirus cases in the Pacific island nation, parts of which are just a short boat ride from Australian territory.
‘We’ve contracted them. We’ve paid for them and we want to see those vaccines come here so we can support our nearest neighbour, PNG, to deal with their urgent needs in our region,’ Morrison told reporters in Canberra.
‘They’re our family, they’re our friends. They’re our neighbours. They’re our partners … This is in Australia*s interests, and is in our region’s interests.’
‘We confirm that the president of the European commission has received a letter from the Australian prime minister on this topic and we will reply in due time,’ a spokeswoman for the EU executive said on Wednesday.
Australia will donate 8,000 locally produced Covid-19 vaccines to PNG as an immediate response to the outbreak, and would make a million doses available as soon as they arrived from Europe, he said.
Earlier this month, the EU, at Italy’s request, blocked a shipment of 250,000 doses of the AstraZeneca PLC vaccine to Australia, citing vaccine shortages in Europe.
Updated
Spanish health officials said Wednesday they were investigating three cases of people who suffered from thrombosis after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine, one of whom died.
AFP reports:
The announcement by Spain’s AEMPS medicines agency came two days after the government suspended use of the vaccine for at least a fortnight as a precautionary measure.
The three cases occurred between late Monday and early Tuesday.
Local press reports said the person who died was a 43-year-old teacher with no pre-existing health conditions who died of a cerebral haemorrhage.
Neither health authorities nor the clinic where she was admitted would confirm details, citing data protection laws.
Monday’s decision to suspend all AstraZeneca shots came just hours after Germany, France and Italy announced similar moves linked to fears the vaccine could generate serious side effects such as blood clots which can cause swellings, heart attacks and haemorrhages.
In a statement, the AEMPS said the three cases might be linked to the ‘formation of blood clots in areas of the body where they are less common’ without drawing firm conclusions.
Its investigators were ‘gathering more information and carrying out an exhaustive investigation to find out whether there was not only a causal link to the administration of the vaccine, but also a possible temporal link’.
Until the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine was suspended, 975,661 people in Spain had received a shot, official figures show.
Updated
Almost 222,0000 NHS and social care staff in Wales will receive a £735 bonus payment to recognise their efforts during the coronavirus pandemic, the health minister Vaughan Gething has said.
LBC reports:
The one-off payment bonus is expected to see most workers taking home around £500 after tax and national insurance deductions.
Staff working for NHS Wales, in primary and social care, and students deployed to help professionals are all in line for the bonus, which will be funded by the Welsh government.
Updated
Poland to enter new national lockdown
Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, has announced a tough new nationwide lockdown amid surging infections.
The country’s health minister said shopping centres, theatres, cinemas and hotels will close from Saturday, while schools will have to switch to online learning.
Adam Niedzielski added that Poland could see more than 30,000 new daily coronavirus cases starting next week if the trend continues.
First News reports:
Poland reported 25,052 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Wednesday, a figure not [far] below the all-time records of around 27,000 seen last autumn, during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. The fatality count also spiked to 453 deaths.
Duda said that ‘probably we can expect the introduction of restrictions across the country’, adding that the prime minister and the health minister were slated to break the news soon.
‘Indeed, the situation is bad and containing it is of fundamental importance today,’ Duda added.
So far, four out of 16 Polish provinces have been slapped with the toughest measures against the coronavirus spread.
Some 1.6 million people in the nation of 38 million have been given the full two doses of coronavirus vaccine, according to Wednesday’s data.
Updated
Bangladesh said on Wednesday the rollout of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine would continue despite many European nations pausing its use to investigate reports of 30 cases of unusual blood disorders among 5 million people who have received the vaccine in the EU/EEA.
Reuters reports:
Bangladesh has vaccinated nearly 4.6 million people since beginning its inoculation campaign last month with the AstraZeneca shots developed with Oxford University.
The World Health Organization’s spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said on Monday there was no evidence that adverse incidents were caused by the vaccine and ‘it is important that vaccination campaigns continue so that we can save lives and stem severe disease from the virus’.
Bangladesh has had a sudden increase in coronavirus cases in recent weeks that the government has blamed on people crowding together, ignoring health rules like wearing masks and maintaining physical distancing.
The south Asian country on Wednesday recorded 1,865 new cases of the coronavirus, the highest daily count in more than three months, taking infections to 562,752, with 8,608 deaths.
Updated
More than 25,000 people in Sardinia, the only region in Italy in the least restrictive “white zone” coronavirus category, have signed a petition calling on authorities to ban non-residents from coming to the island.
Inhabitants fear that those permitted to travel to their second homes could trigger a resurgence in infections, especially over the Easter weekend.
“The possibility that someone can come from the Italian red zones to Sardinia represents a paradox and a risk to the health of all Sardinians,” said Michele Zuddas, who launched the petition on Change.org. “The experience of last summer ought to have taught us something, but it seems it hasn’t.”
Sardinia became the first region in Italy to be designated a “white zone” earlier this month, meaning many coronavirus restrictions were dropped. Most of the country has been in the tougher “red zone” category since Monday.
The island, which is home to 1.6 million inhabitants, registered 79 new infections on Tuesday. Sardinia came under fire last summer for reopening nightclubs, which then prompted an increase in cases on the island and across other Italian regions due to returning holidaymakers.
Residents want the island’s president, Christian Solinas, to follow in the footsteps of authorities in the Aosta Valley, Bolzano and Campania and block the arrival of second-home owners unless they have a valid reason to travel to the island.
There has been a ban on non-essential inter-regional travel in Italy since December.
Updated
AstraZeneca vaccine benefits outweigh risks, WHO says, as review continues
A World Health Organization vaccine safety panel said on Wednesday that it considers the benefits of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to outweigh its risks and recommends that vaccinations continue.
“The WHO global advisory committee on vaccine safety is carefully assessing the latest available safety data for the AstraZeneca vaccine. Once that review is completed, WHO will immediately communicate the findings to the public,” it said in a statement a day after experts held a closed-door meeting.
Updated
Bosnia plans to buy Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine amid month-long delays in deliveries under the Covax vaccine-sharing scheme and from the EU, and other western Balkan countries could follow suit.
Reuters reports:
There has been a spike in coronavirus cases in many countries in recent weeks and inoculation is seen as urgent to lift the burden from health systems and facilitate an easing of virus-curbing restrictions that have also hurt economic growth.
Late on Tuesday, after months of hesitation, the government of Bosnia’s autonomous Bosniak-Croat Federation approved the purchase of 500,000 Sputnik V vaccines, under public pressure as coronavirus cases and deaths have spiked over the past weeks.
On Wednesday, the country’s health authorities reported 1,725 new coronavirus cases and 35 deaths, with 824 cases in the capital Sarajevo alone.
Bosnia has been late with its vaccination programme and had expected since end-January to start getting the first batches of 2.1m vaccines it had ordered under the Covax scheme led by the World Health Organization and Gavi vaccine alliance and from the EU.
Most western Balkan countries, which are keen to follow the EU’s vaccination policy, have ordered Pfizer/BioNTech and AstraZeneca vaccines, shipment of which has been slowed to Europe.
In the absence of those vaccines, these countries have increasingly turned to Russia and China for supplies.
In February, Bosnia’s autonomous Serb-dominated region ordered 400,000 Sputnik V vaccines, of which about 40,000 have been delivered so far, enabling the start of inoculation of residents, on top of 5,000 donated by Serbia.
Updated
The EU may halt exports of Covid-19 vaccines to Britain to safeguard scarce supplies for its own citizens unless the UK starts shipping doses to the bloc, the European commission president has said.
“We want to see reciprocity and proportionality in exports and we are ready to use whatever tool we need to deliver on that,” Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday. “This is about making sure that Europe gets its fair share.”
She said the EU had received more than 300 requests for overseas vaccine shipments over the past six weeks and refused just one, and the bloc had exported 41m doses to 33 countries.
“This shows that Europe is trying to make international cooperation work,” she said. “But open roads run in both directions … It is hard to explain to our citizens why vaccines produced in the EU are going to other countries that are also producing vaccines, but hardly anything is coming back.”
The majority of vaccines exported from the EU to the UK have been made by Pfizer, which distributes globally from its European production sites. The EU has blocked only one export request, a shipment of 250,000 Oxford/AstraZeneca doses from Italy to Australia.
Updated
The World Health Organization-backed Covax vaccine scheme has an agreement to send out “hundreds of millions” of Johnson & Johnson shots, Kate O’Brien, the director of WHO’s department of immunisation, said on Wednesday.
Covax, which is also backed by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (Gavi), aims to secure 2bn doses by the end of 2021.
In early March, it said the target was to deliver 237m doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to 142 countries by the end of May, and it also shipped its first Pfizer vaccine, Reuters reports.
Updated
Norway facing third wave of infections, government says
Norway is experiencing a third wave of coronavirus infections, health minister Bent Høie said on Wednesday.
“We are in a third wave,” he told a a news conference.
From 16 March tougher measures came into force in Oslo and the whole of Viken county, affecting about 1.2 million residents in a region where 82% of the country’s coronavirus infections are clustered, according to Høie.
Norway’s Institute of Public Health chief said the country was, independently of the outcome of investigations into safety concerns over the AstraZeneca vaccine, assessing whether to continue administering the vaccine because of supply delays.
The country’s health authorities said on Wednesday it was still too early to determine whether there is a link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and three cases of bleeding, blood clots and low levels of platelets reported in Norway.
Reuters reports:
Norway halted the roll-out of AstraZeneca’s vaccine last week, following a similar move by Denmark, amid reports of “unusual symptoms” that required hospitalisation for three health workers who had received the shot. One has since died.
“Based on the information we have now, we do not know whether there is a link between the serious reported conditions and the AstraZeneca vaccine,” Camilla Stoltenberg, the head of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI), told a news conference.
FHI was analysing the number of such cases in the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations to make comparisons.
Authorities are also awaiting initial findings from the European Medicines Agency (EMA), expected on Thursday, before deciding whether to resume AstraZeneca inoculations.
The EMA said this week it sees no reason to change its recommendation of AstraZeneca - one of four vaccines that it has approved.
Updated
Sweden registered a further 6,781 coronavirus cases on Wednesday, health agency statistics showed.
The country also recored another 56 deaths from the virus, taking the total to 13,228. The extra deaths have occurred over several days and sometimes weeks.
Since 10 February, Sweden’s seven-day average of new infections has been rising again.
The country, which has so far avoided full lockdowns, has a death rate per capita that is many times higher than that of its Nordic neighbours’ but lower than that of several European countries that opted for lockdowns, Reuters reports.
Updated
The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, said on Wednesday he would get the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine very soon, reiterating his confidence in a vaccine some countries have suspended from being used after reports of blood clots.
Asked whether EU/EEA countries had disregarded scientific evidence, Johnson told parliament:
The best thing I can say about the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine programme is that I finally got news that I’m going to have my own jab ... very, very shortly.
It will certainly be Oxford/AstraZeneca that I will be having.
Updated
France’s prime minister, Jean Castex, will announce new tougher Covid-19 measures for some regions including Paris on Thursday, a government spokesman, Gabriel Attal, told reporters after a cabinet meeting.
Attal said new restrictions would take effect this weekend.
Reuters reports:
The announcement paves the way for new curbs in the greater Paris region, where intensive care wards are full and the hospital system is buckling with an incident rate of more than 400 per 100,000 inhabitants.
Attal said the new measures for Paris could include some form of lockdown. Weekend lockdowns have already been imposed on top of a nationwide nightly curfew along parts of the Mediterranean Riviera and some areas of the north.
The head of public hospitals in Paris earlier warned that the virus was running amok in the capital and surrounding departments, an area that accounts for about a third of economic activity.
“The virus is not under control,” Martin Hirsch said.
France is not planning to close schools, Attal said.
Updated
EU could block exports of vaccines to the UK, Von der Leyen suggests
The EU commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, hinted on Wednesday that the bloc could withhold vaccine exports to the UK, reopening a dispute with the British government over supply delays affecting the European inoculation campaign.
Bloomberg reports:
As the European Union struggles to quicken the pace of its Covid vaccination programme, Von der Leyen said the bloc will consider blocking supplies to countries that aren’t reciprocating or which already have high vaccination rates. She singled out the UK as the No 1 importer of shots from the EU.
‘We have observed that in the last six weeks, 10 million doses have been exported to the UK,’ Von der Leyen told reporters in Brussels.
’The UK is producing AstraZeneca. In our contract with AstraZeneca there are two sites in the UK that are put in the contract for potential deliveries to the EU.’
In further comments, Von der Leyen said:
I want to be clear on reciprocity. If the situation does not change, we will have to reflect on how to make exports to vaccine-producing countries dependent on their level of openness.
We are exporting a lot to countries that are themselves producing vaccines and we think this is an invitation to be open, so we also see exports from them coming back to the European Union.
The second point that is of importance for us, we will reflect on whether exports to countries who have higher vaccination rates than us are still proportionate.
This about making sure Europe gets its fair share.
[...]
[The UK] is country number one where exports from the European Union is concerned and indeed, the United Kingdom is producing AstraZeneca.
We are still waiting for doses to come from the UK, so this is an invitation to show us that there are also doses from the UK coming to the European Union.’
Updated
Brazilians’ disapproval of President Jair Bolsonaro’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic has hit a record high, a poll suggests.
Bolsonaro’s handling of the crisis was consider bad or very bad by 54% of the 2,023 respondents to the Datafolha poll, which was published by the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper.
In the previous poll, which was carried out between 20-21 January, 48% expressed disapproval.
Covid-19 has killed more than 282,000 people in Brazil and more than 11.6m case have been recorded to date.
Bolsonaro initially sought to portray the virus and respiratory illness as a “little flu” after the first case was registered in February 2020, Reuters reports.
Updated
Kazakhstan has paused talks on purchasing the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, the Kazakh health ministry said on Wednesday.
Reuters reports:
We are carrying out negotiations with regards to vaccines that have the least side effects,’ Asylbek Nurlybekov, deputy head of the ministry’s pharmaceutical and medical control department, told a briefing.
Kazakhstan, which has already secured supplies and even arranged local production of Russia-developed Sputnik V vaccine, is also in talks on buying vaccines produced by Pfizer, Moderna, Sinovac and Johnson & Johnson, he added.
Kazakhstan’s neighbour Uzbekistan, which received its first 660,000-dose batch of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Wednesday, provided for free under the Covax initiative, said it would press ahead and use it.
Updated
Thai sniffer dogs trained to detect Covid-19 in human sweat proved nearly 95% accurate during training and could be used to identify infections at busy transport hubs within seconds, the head of a pilot project said.
Reuters reports:
Six labrador retrievers participated in a six-month project that included unleashing them to test an infected patient’s sweat on a spinning wheel of six canned vessels.
‘The dogs take only one to two seconds to detect the virus,’ Prof Kaywalee Chatdarong, the leader of the project at the veterinary faculty of Chulalongkorn University, told Reuters. ‘Within a minute, they will manage to go through 60 samples.’
The dogs can detect a volatile organic compound secreted in the sweat of infected people, even in the absence of disease symptoms, the Thai researcher said.
The dogs would not need to directly sniff people, but could screen samples of sweat, a task that should not be difficult in a tropical country such as Thailand, she added.
Chile, Finland and India are other countries that have also launched efforts to get sniffer dogs to detect the virus, with a German veterinary clinic saying last month its sniffer dogs had achieved 94% detection accuracy in human saliva.
Updated
A World Health Organization advisory group statement on the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine is expected very soon, a WHO spokesman said on Wednesday.
Global health experts have come under increasing pressure to clear up questions over the safety of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, as more countries suspend its use, further slowing down Europe’s vaccination rollout.
Updated
India has no concern about possible side-effects of the AstraZeneca vaccine being used in its immunisation campaign, a government health official, Vinod Kumar Paul, told a news conference on Wednesday.
The country’s inoculation drive began on 16 January, with 3.48m shots administered so far, Times of India reports.
Health experts have warned that the vaccination campaign needs to be ramped up to at least 3.8m doses a day to reach the target of 600m by August.
Updated
The US president, Joe Biden, said on Wednesday that relaxing Covid-19 restrictions by the summer’s Independence Day holiday may not be possible if people do not continue to take precautions.
He told ABC News’ Good Morning America:
I won’t even be able to meet the July 4 deadline unless people listen, wear masks, wash their hands and social distance because not everyone by July 4 will have been vaccinated.
On Monday, the White House Covid-19 response team tweeted: ‘For the first time on a Monday, we administered more than 2m doses, pushing our 7-day daily average up to 2.4m shots per day.’
More than 37 million adults in the US are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 by now.
Updated
Germany has extended border control with the Czech Republic and Austria’s Tyrol region, the German interior minster, Horst Seehofer, said on Wednesday, citing the number of new coronavirus infections and more virus variant cases.
“We decided today to extend border controls in mutation areas in the Czech Republic and Austria,” Seehofer said.
The border checks were reinstated on 14 February, following the introduction of a stricter lockdown in the Czech Republic.
Updated
Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, on Wednesday signalled his intention to end the Covid-19 state of emergency curbs when they expire on Sunday.
Hospital bed capacities in the Tokyo region have improved enough to allow for the measures to be lifted, Suga said, adding that he would make a final decision towards ending the curbs after consulting experts.
Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba and Saitama prefectures have been under the emergency order since early January, with people urged to refrain from non-essential outings, and restaurants and bars told to close by 8pm, according to Kyodo News.
The rest of the country’s prefectures lifted the measures at the end of February.
Businesses have been encouraged to adopt remote working and large-scale events such as concerts and sports fixtures had been capped at 5,000 visitors.
Infections have fallen since the restrictions were imposed, but the pace of decline has slowed and even rebounded in some prefectures.
On Wednesday, Tokyo reported a further 409 coronavirus cases, the highest daily rise since mid-February.
Nearly 9,000 people in Japan have died from the virus so far.
Updated
The EU will unveil on Wednesday plans to reopen summer travel with the help of a new coronavirus passport, a scheme that would be welcomed by the tourism sector but is also raising discrimination concerns.
Reuters reports:
The proposed, EU-wide ‘green digital certificate’ would collate information on vaccinations, tests and Covid recovery to let travellers cross borders freely again after a year of curbs that have left beaches and famous landmarks deserted.
The 27-member EU’s executive will also put forward an option to allow in outsiders with proof of vaccination, including those inoculated with Russian, Chinese or other non-western doses.
But with the number of EU Covid-related deaths above 550,000 and less than a tenth of the population inoculated, countries including France, Belgium and Germany fear discrimination. Others said tests or quarantine might still be necessary.
Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Latvia and Slovenia raised concerns ‘on possible gaps in the vaccine distribution between member states’, an EU official said.
EU countries will be under pressure to agree a common position swiftly for their 450 million people. The task is complicated, however, by uncertainty over whether those inoculated can still transmit the virus, a sluggish vaccine rollout and some public scepticism about the campaign.
Updated
The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and his wife, Asma, are recovering from Covid-19 and will soon resume their full duties after having self-isolated at home, his office said on Wednesday.
Reuters reports:
The office had said on 8 March that Assad, 55, and his 45-year-old wife, who announced her recovery from breast cancer in 2019, had tested positive for Covid-19 after showing minor symptoms and that they would work in isolation at home.
[...]Syria has seen a sharp rise in infections since mid-February, a member of the government’s coronavirus advisory committee told Reuters in early March as the country kicked off its vaccination campaign.
Health and aid officials say it remains difficult to gauge the full scale of the outbreak given the lack of testing facilities in a health system devastated by a decade of war.
I’m Jedidajah Otte and will be taking over for the next few hours. As always, feel free to get in touch with updates, tips and comments, you can reach me on Twitter @JedySays or via email.
Updated
Residents in the Australian province of New South Wales are now allowed to stand with their drinks in bars after the latest easing of Covid-19 restrictions, Elias Visontay reports.
Updated
Two South Korean provinces have ordered all foreign workers to be tested for Covid-19 in moves to curtail the spread of the virus which have been criticised as discriminatory.
Korea Times reports:
On Tuesday, the Seoul Metropolitan Government said it would issue the order for all foreign workers and their employers to undergo coronavirus testing by 31 March, following a similar measure taken by the surrounding Gyeonggi Province last week.
Many foreigners said the labelling of all foreign workers as a “high-risk group” for contracting and spreading the virus is racist and discriminatory, and also complained about unclear guidelines of who needs to be tested and insufficient preparation for carrying out large scale testing for all foreigners. There are 242,623 registered foreign workers in the city as of last December, but city officials estimate the total number may be as high as 390,000.
Updated
Iceland reopens borders
Iceland will open its borders this week to all visitors who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 without mandatory testing or quarantine in a effort to revive its coronavirus-hit economy.
Reuters reports:
“The Icelandic government has announced that all those who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 will be allowed to travel to Iceland without being subject to border measures, such as testing and quarantine,” the government said in a statement late on Tuesday.
The North Atlantic country, which will become one of the first countries to open its borders since the beginning of the pandemic, had until now allowed vaccinated visitors from EU countries to enter without restrictions.
“From 18 March this exemption will apply to citizens outside the Schengen area, including the UK and US,” it said.
Updated
A majority of Germans believe the government was right to suspend AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 shots pending an investigation of cases where recipients developed unusual blood disorders.
Reuters reports:
Germany, along with more than a dozen European Union member states, halted AstraZeneca after its vaccine oversight body found seven people had suffered rare cerebral vein thromboses, three of whom died.
According to the Forsa snap poll for broadcasters RTL and ntv, 54% of respondents said the decision by Health Minister Jens Spahn had been right. Nearly four in 10 said the reaction was excessive. Some 39% thought the suspension was wrong.
China will allow foreign visitors who have had Chinese-made vaccine to enter the country, Helen Davidson reports.
Poland reports highest cases since November
Poland has reported 25,052 daily coronavirus cases, its highest rate since November, Reuters reports.
In total, the country of 38 million has reported 1,956,974 cases and 48,032 deaths.
Updated
French president Emmanuel Macron will hold a meeting with the country’s Scientific Council this morning amid growing speculation that Paris, and the wider Île-de-France region is heading for new restrictions, including a weekend lockdown as there is in Nice and the Calais region.
The number of new coronavirus infections continues to grow and intensive care units in the Paris region hospitals are under such intense pressure, they are moving patients out to hospitals in less affected areas. The rise in i/c admissions of Covid patients has forced hospitals in Paris and around to cancel non-urgent surgery.
“The moment has come to envisage measures for the [Île-de-France] region,” the Prime Minister Jean Castex warned on Tuesday evening.
The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, previously described the suggestion of weekend lockdowns in the French capital as “inhumane” saying city residents, many of whom live in apartments with no outside space, needed to be able to get out into fresh air at the weekends.
After France, like some other European countries, paused the roll-out of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Monday because of fears over possible side effects, Castex also said that as soon as the suspension is lifted - as he hopes it will be on Thursday when he EMA issues its safety report - he will have it to reassure the population that it is safe and also highlight that “vaccines are the only way out of this crisis”.
The eight patients that contracted the new “Brittany variant” have died. “For the moment there’s no established causal link” say health authorities. The recently discovered variant is especially problematic as it appears not to show up on existing Covid tests, giving rise to false negatives.
Updated
Concerns are emerging in the US over the role of private companies in the vaccine rollout following the failure of a partnership between Google and healthcare provider One Medical, Jessica Glenza reports.
The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, has warned that the country needs to take quick and decisive steps soon to stop an emerging second “peak” of Covid-19 infections, Reuters reports.
Updated
The Palestinian Authority is due to receive 60,000 doses of Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines from a WHO-backed initiative to help poorer countries, according to an Israeli security official.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the shipment arrived in Israel’s Ben Gurion airport and was now being transferred to the authority in the occupied West Bank. “About a third of the vaccine shipment (20,000 doses) will be transferred to the Gaza Strip later today,” the official said.
The WHO’s Covax scheme aims to vaccine 2 billion people across the globe and has pledged to pay for 20% of doses for places that are not able to secure enough supplies on their own.
The occupied Palestinians territories has seen a recent surge in infections. It has lagged far behind Israel in its vaccination drive.
Updated
The International Energy Agency has warned that the world’s oil demand could exceed pre-Covid 19 levels within the next two years unless concrete government action and legislation leads to a much stronger move towards clean energy, Jillian Ambrose reports.
Updated
Clea Skopeliti has the full story on UK business minister Kwasi Kwarteng’s appearance on Sky News this morning:
Most finance companies which had pledged to meet government targets for hiring women to senior management positions by 2020 have blamed Covid-19 for falling behind due to hiring freezes.
Reuters reports:
The fourth annual review from think tank New Financial for Britain’s finance ministry, said the Women in Finance Charter faced its biggest test yet after the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020.
Over 70 of the 209 signatories, including the finance ministry, have met their self-imposed targets, or were on track to meet future targets, the review said. Just over 60% of the signatories have set a target of at least 33% of female representation in senior management.
A group of 81 firms were due to hit their target by the end of 2020, but 44 of them failed to do so, citing deliberately ambitious targets, and recruitment or promotion freezes due to COVID, the review said.
More on the situation in France’s Paris region from Reuters:
Enforcing a weekend lockdown in the greater Paris region may not be enough to rein in the coronavirus there, an executive at the AP-HP Paris hospitals organisation, Remi Salomon, said on Wednesday.
Salomon, who heads the group’s medical committee, also told BFM TV the currently suspended AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine was as efficient as the Pfizer one.
Rapidly increasing Covid-19 infections in the Pacific island nation of Papua New Guinea are hitting its fragile health system “like a tornado”, health workers have warned.
Reuters reports:
Australia said it would send 8,000 vaccines to its northern neighbour Papua New Guinea, responding to a request for urgent assistance for the country’s small health workforce of 5,000 nurses and doctors.
David Ayres, country director with Marie Stopes PNG, which has nurses in 13 hospitals, told Reuters health workers throughout the country were falling ill. He had received multiple reports from hospitals on Wednesday that between 10 and 25 staff had fallen ill and were off work.
Sections of major hospitals were shutting down and services were reduced, he said.
Russia has reported 8,998 new Covid-19 cases, including 1,201 in Moscow, pushing the national infection tally to 4,418,436 since the pandemic began, Reuters reports.
The government coronavirus task force also said that 427 people had died in the last 24 hours, taking Russia’s death toll to 93,364.
Taiwan will form its first travel bubble during the coronavirus pandemic, with the tiny Pacific nation of Palau, according to the government.
Reuters reports:
Taiwan has kept the pandemic well under control thanks to early and effective prevention, but has kept its borders largely shut, and the bubble marks a small return to normality. Taiwan currently has only 29 active cases being treated in hospitals.
Palau, one of only 15 countries to officially recognise the Chinese-claimed island’s government, and whose president plans to visit Taiwan, has reported zero cases.
The UK’s health secretary Matt Hancock has sought to reassure the public that the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine is safe after some European nations halted its roll-out.
He told broadcasters: “The Oxford/AstraZeneca jab is safe, we know that over 10 million people have had it in this country, and that’s what the British regulator says but also the World Health Organisation and even the European regulator.
“We keep the effects of these vaccines under review all the time and we know that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is saving lives in the UK right now so if you get the call, get the jab.”
Asked if there has been evidence of people turning the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine down in the wake of the European suspensions, Hancock added: “We’re still getting huge numbers of people vaccinated every day and in fact the numbers yesterday were one of the highest numbers that we’ve seen.
The enthusiasm for getting the vaccine is incredibly strong and we’re still seeing that.”
Dutch voters are headed to the polling stations for the final day of an election that is expected to return conservative prime minister Mark Rutte to power in a vote seen as a referendum on in his handling of the coronavirus crisis.
Reuters reports:
With a night-time curfew in place due to continuing high infection rates, and a ban on public gatherings during the day, the campaign was conducted mostly through television debates. Rutte’s main rivals have criticised a slow vaccine roll out, but struggled to distinguish themselves as they support government policy.
Britain will proceed with an inquiry into the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic but it is too early to do so yet, Reuters reports.
“It seems premature to launch an inquiry when the pandemic is still all around us,” business minister Kwasi Kwarteng told Sky News.
Reiterating the UK government’s confidence in the Astrazeneca vaccine, he added that 50% of the UK adult population is set to have been vaccinated by the end of the week, and that the country is on course to meet its targets for reopening the economy in spring.
Discussions are ongoing on whether to use vaccine passports to permit travel but any decisions will be driven by the data, Kwarteng said.
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UK cruise operator P&O is to restart domestic holidays this summer, but only for British residents who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, Joanna Partridge reports.
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Students at UK universities have accused their universities of granting police officers access to halls of residence to check for breaches of coronavirus rules, with some complaints of officers entering accommodation in the middle of the night.
The coronavirus situation is worsening in France’s greater Paris region, where the hospitals are under immense strain, Reuters reports.
Martin Hirsch, director general of the AP-HP Paris hospitals system, told RTL radio that there were two options to contain the disease - a local weekend lockdown, already in place in other parts of the country, or a broader lockdown in the region.
Hirsch said almost 1,100 people were in intensive care with Covid-19 in the region, and that number could reach 1,700 by the end of the month if the current trend continues.
In normal times, the greater Paris region has an intensive care bed capacity of around 1,000, Hirsch said.
In France as a whole, there were 4,239 patients in intensive care with Covid-19 as of Tuesday, close to a four-month high.
Rachel Hall here taking over from Alison Rourke for the morning. Please do get in touch with any tips or ideas at rachel.hall@theguardian.com.
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Summary
I’ll be handing over to my colleagues in London shortly, but here’s a summary of the main news so far:
- The UN says the coronavirus pandemic may have indirectly contributed to around 228,000 additional child deaths in 2020, 11,000 maternal fatalities and 3.5m unwanted pregnancies in South Asia.
- Former US president Donald Trump has again urged people to get vaccinated against coronavirus, saying he would recommend vaccination to “a lot of people that don’t want to get it, and a lot of those people voted for me”. Polls show that more than 40% of Republican voters say they will probably or definitely get vaccinated.
- India’s daily cases jumped by 28,903 on Wednesday, data from the health ministry showed, the highest increase since 13 December, taking the total to 11.44m. Deaths increased by 188 to 159,044.
- Vietnam’s domestically developed Covid-19 vaccine, called nanocovax, is expected to be available by the fourth quarter of this year, the government said in a statement on Wednesday.
- Pregnant women vaccinated against Covid-19 could pass along protection to their babies, according to a new study in Israel. The authors noted the small size of the study (20 women) and said further research was necessary to gauge the effect of vaccination at different stages of pregnancy, and the safety and efficacy of the different vaccines now available.
- The Philippines’ coronavirus task force said it will suspend the arrival of foreigners and some returning citizens as the country battles a renewed surge in Covid cases and increasing infections of new variants. The travel ban announcement comes as two cases of a new coronavirus strain first reported in the Philippines were found in England.
- Australia will immediately provide 8,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses and critical health equipments to Papua New Guinea (PNG) due to the spike in new coronavirus infections in the country, prime minister Scott Morrison said. He also said he will request AstraZeneca and European authorities release 1 million doses of the vaccine that had been contracted for shipment to Australia, to PNG.
- In France, health authorities say they are investigating a new coronavirus variant found in the western Brittany region. The variant appears to be more difficult for nasal tests to detect, however for now it does not appear to be more dangerous or contagious.
UN sounds alarm on South Asia child deaths due to Covid
The coronavirus pandemic may have indirectly contributed to around 228,000 additional child deaths in 2020, 11,000 maternal fatalities and 3.5m unwanted pregnancies in South Asia, the UN said in a report Wednesday.
The study commissioned by UNICEF blamed “drastic cuts in the availability and use of essential public health services” because of the pandemic across India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, home to 1.8 billion people.
“The fall-off of these critical services has had a devastating impact on the health and nutrition of the poorest families,” said UNICEF regional director George Laryea-Adjei.
“It is absolutely vital that these services are fully restored for children and mothers who are in desperate need of them, and that everything possible is done to ensure that people feel safe to use them,” Laryea-Adjei said.
The estimates were based on actual observed changes and modelling exercises using data from before the pandemic in South Asia, where in 2019 alone 1.4 million children under five died, 63% of them newborn babies.
Countries in the region, like elsewhere, imposed stringent lockdown measures to halt the spread of coronavirus. Many restrictions have since been eased although many schools remain shut.
The report said that even where health services were not shut down, the number of people visiting them declined.
In Bangladesh and Nepal, for example, the number of young children being treated for severe acute malnutrition fell by over 80%, while child vaccinations fell sharply in India and Pakistan.
With some 420 million children in South Asia out of school due to the pandemic, the report also warned that nine million children were likely never to return to school, the report added.
This in turn is expected to lead to an increase in child marriages, resulting in an additional 400,000 adolescent pregnancies, as well as an increase in the number of maternal and neonatal deaths, and in rates of child stunting.
Trump urges people to get vaccinated
Former US president Donald Trump has again urged people to get vaccinated against coronavirus, saying he would recommend vaccination to “a lot of people that don’t want to get it, and a lot of those people voted for me.”
In an interview on Tuesday night on Fox News, Trump acknowledged that people were free to decide for themselves whether they would be vaccinated against Covid-19.
“We have our freedoms and we have to live by that and I agree with that also. But it is a great vaccine. It is a safe vaccine and it is something that works,” he said.
Republican opposition to receiving the vaccine is strong. A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research found that 42% of Republicans say they probably or definitely will not get the shot, compared with 17% of Democrats.
Trump has promoted vaccination before. When he appeared at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference at the end of February, he said: “Everybody, go get your shot.”
Earlier, Donald Trump’s former coronavirus testing tsar, Admiral Brett Giroir, urged the former president to address Covid vaccine hesitancy among Republicans, even as the man who some say has assumed Trump’s platform and megaphone, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson, criticised vaccine outreach by the Biden administration.
You can read our full story below:
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The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 13,435 to 2,594,764, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday. The reported death toll rose by 249 to 73,905, the tally showed.
India’s daily cases jumped by 28,903 on Wednesday, data from the health ministry showed, the highest increase since 13 December and taking the total to 11.44m. Deaths increased by 188 to 159,044.
The three-month case high comes as it was announced that the former governing BJP leader Dilip Gandhi, who had tested positive for Covid-19, passed away on Wednesday.
Former Union Minister and BJP leader, Dilip Gandhi passed away at a private hospital in Delhi. He had tested positive for #COVID19 and was under treatment.
— ANI (@ANI) March 17, 2021
(File photo) pic.twitter.com/NExHeHW0lZ
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Vietnam to offer domestically developed vaccine
Vietnam’s domestically developed Covid-19 vaccine, called nanocovax, is expected to be available by the fourth quarter of this year, the government said in a statement on Wednesday.
The country has inoculated more than 16,000 people with AstraZeneca vaccines it received last month, the government said, adding that it was also in talks to buy vaccines from other producers, including Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and the Sputnik V maker.
Dutch voters are to cast their ballots at bike-through polling stations and museums Wednesday on the final day of a coronavirus-dominated election that could return Prime Minister Mark Rutte to power.
Europe’s first Covid election of 2021 has taken place over three days, with the elderly and at-risk voting at selected locations on Monday and Tuesday before the polls open for everyone else on Wednesday.
People have also been allowed out past a 9:00 pm nationwide curfew to ensure they can vote – the controversial health restriction in January sparked the Netherlands’ worst riots for decades.
The election is set to be a verdict on Rutte’s handling of the pandemic, with opinion polls showing his liberal VVD (People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy) on course to lead a fourth successive coalition, after already spending a decade in office.
Taiwan is helping its sole diplomatic ally in South America, Paraguay, to buy Covid vaccines, Taiwan’s foreign ministry said, after protests in the country over the Paraguayan government’s handling of the health crisis.
Thousands of Paraguayans have protested in the capital Asunción over the lack of medicine and intensive care beds amid a spike in coronavirus cases and calls to impeach President Mario Abdo. Vaccines have been slow to arrive.
Only 15 countries have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and Taipei has long been nervous at Beijing’s efforts to entice away its remaining friends.
In a statement late on Tuesday, foreign ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou said Taiwan was extending a helping hand to Paraguay at a time when it was facing a public health crisis and unable to obtain enough vaccines.
“Based on the friendship between Taiwan and Paraguay, under the existing bilateral cooperation framework, we are assisting Paraguay to negotiate and obtain vaccines through different channels,” she said.
Taiwan’s first vaccines – 117,000 doses of the AstraZeneca shots – arrived on the island earlier this month, though they have yet to start being administered.
In December, Taiwan said it had agreed to buy almost 20 million vaccine doses, including 10 million from AstraZeneca.
Ou said the help they were offering Paraguay “had nothing to do” with the AstraZeneca vaccines Taiwan has purchased.
Israeli study suggests vaccinated pregnant women could pass protection to their babies
Pregnant women vaccinated against Covid-19 could pass along protection to their babies, according to a new study in Israel, Reuters reports.
According to the research conducted in February, antibodies were detected in all 20 women administered both doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine during their third trimester of pregnancy and in their newborns, through placental transfer.
“Our findings highlight that vaccination of pregnant women may provide maternal and neonatal protection from SARS-CoV-2 infection,” the study said.
The findings by researchers from Jerusalem’s Hadassah University Medical Center were posted this month on medRxiv – an online distribution service for unpublished research manuscripts that have not been peer-reviewed.
The authors noted the small size of the study and said further research was necessary to gauge the effect of vaccination at different stages of pregnancy, and the safety and efficacy of the different vaccines now available.
One of the researchers, Dana Wolf, was quoted by the Jerusalem Post as saying the group will now start looking at how long the antibodies triggered by the vaccinations will last in the babies.
Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE said last month they had started a 4,000-volunteer international study to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of their Covid vaccine in healthy pregnant women.
The trial will also assess whether vaccinated pregnant women transfer protective antibodies to their babies.
A separate U.S. study posted last week and also awaiting peer review, found that the antibodies induced in pregnant women from mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, such as the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna Inc shots, were transferred to the babies via the placenta or breast milk
England identifies two cases of Philippines' variant
The Philippines’ travel ban announcement comes as two cases of a new coronavirus strain first reported in the Philippines were found in England.
As Press Association reports, Public Health England (PHE) said the variant contained a number of notable mutations, including the E484K spike protein found in the Manaus variant from Brazil.
Concerns have been raised that vaccines may not be as effective against this protein.
The new strain has been designated as a “variant under investigation” (VUI) rather than a “variant of concern” (VOC), such as the Manaus strain.
It was first reported on 9 March by the Philippines, when 33 cases were recorded.
PHE said it had now identified two cases of the variant in England and that all appropriate public health interventions were being taken.
It said that one of the cases was linked to international travel and the other is still being investigated, but did not confirm where either had been found.
This variant has been designated VUI-21MAR-02 (P.3) and PHE said it is continuing to monitor the situation closely.
The findings mean there are now six VUIs and four VOCs being tracked by scientists in the UK.
Other VUIs include P2, from Brazil, which has had 43 probable or confirmed UK cases, and A.23.1 and B.1.525, which have seen 78 and 86 probable or confirmed UK cases detected respectively.
Additional testing is currently being made available for targeted areas of England to suppress the spread of VOCs.
It comes as two more cases of the Manaus VOC have been found in England.
One was found in the West Midlands and the other in Haringey, London, and both are linked to international travel to Brazil, according to PHE.
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Philippines suspends entry to foreigners and some returning citizens
The Philippines’ coronavirus task force said it will suspend the arrival of foreigners and some returning citizens as the country battles a renewed surge in Covid cases and increasing infections of new variants.
Foreign citizens and returning nationals who had not been working overseas will not be able to enter the country from 20 March until 19 April, the coronavirus task force said in a statement issued late on Tuesday.
The exemptions to the rule include accredited officials of foreign governments, Filipino workers returning from overseas and cases that are considered to be an emergency.
The Philippines’ Civil Aeronautics Board on Tuesday capped passenger arrivals at Manila’s international airport to a maximum of 1,500 per day from 18 March 18 to 19 April to help contain the spread of Covid which has infected 631,320 people and killed 12,848 in the country.
China reported four new Covid cases in the mainland on March 16, down from 13 cases a day earlier, the country’s national health authority said on Wednesday.
The National Health Commission, in a statement, said all of the new cases were imported infections originating from overseas. The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, rose to 15 from seven cases a day earlier.
The total number of confirmed cases in mainland China now stands at 90,066, while the death toll remains unchanged at 4,636
Australia to provide PNG with 8,000 Covid doses
Australia will immediately provide 8,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses and critical health equipments to Papua New Guinea (PNG) due to the spike in new coronavirus infections in the country, prime minister Scott Morrison said on Wednesday.
It will also request AstraZeneca and European authorities to grant access to one million doses of the country’s contracted vaccines for PNG, Morrison said.
Australia will also suspend all charter flights for two weeks from Wednesday midnight and outbound travel to the country, the prime minister said:
“We’ll be suspending all charter flights from Papua New Guinea to Australia, with limited exemptions for medevac and other critical flights.
We’ll be reducing passenger caps by one-quarter from flights from Port Moresby to Brisbane, effective at midnight tonight.
We’ll be suspending all outbound travel exemptions by Australians to Papua New Guinea, except for essential and critical workers, including humanitarian and medevac-related activity.”
Of particular concern is fly-in-fly-out workers who commute between PNG and the northern state of Queensland.
Morrison added:
“We will be beefing up the medical support we’re providing by gifting essential PPE to PNG. That includes 1m surgical masks, 200,000 P295 masks, 100,000 gowns, 100,000 goggles, 100,000 pairs of gloves, 100,000 bottles of sanitiser, 20,000 face shields and 200 non-invasive ventilators.
Our government will also be moving immediately to gift 8,000 doses of our Covid-19 vaccine stocks from our domestic stocks to support the vaccination of front frontline health workers in PNG from next week.”
Australia’s chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, added that the situation in PNG was deteriorating:
Over the last couple of weeks, and very rapidly, the situation has changed in Papua New Guinea.
Of the cases diagnosed in PNG, half of them have been diagnosed in the past couple of weeks, from the beginning of the pandemic. Recognising that they did not have the resources for mass testing like we have in Australia, so any number you see out of Papua New Guinea of cases and even deaths will be a major underestimate. There is a big outbreak of Covid-19 in Papua New Guinea. We know this from the places that are able to be doing testing.
He says half the women who are being admitted into hospitals in Port Moresby due to pregnancy are positive. There are also a large number of healthcare workers infected, he says.
You can read more about the situation for pregnant women at Port Moresby General Hospital below:
France investigates new variant found in western Brittany
In France, health authorities say they are investigating a new coronavirus variant found in the western Brittany region.
The variant appears to be more difficult for nasal tests to detect, however for now it does not appear to be more dangerous or contagious.
It comes as the French PM, Jean Castex, said he would get the Oxford vaccine “very quickly” to give the public confidence in the jab if it is ruled as safe by the EU medicines agency.
Castex, 55, said that as a person of his age with no underlying health conditions he had been ready to wait his turn until later in the year for a vaccination, but had changed his mind to help restore confidence in AstraZeneca’s shot.
“I have decided that it would be wise if I was vaccinated very quickly once the suspension, as I hope, is lifted and all the guarantees are given, to show my fellow citizens that the vaccine is the way out of this crisis and can be taken in all security,” he told BFM TV in a live interview.
France, Germany and several other EU countries have suspended the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine as a precaution pending a ruling Thursday by the European Medicines Agency following reports of blood clots.
“If there is the slightest doubt among my fellow citizens we have to lift it. We are awaiting the opinion of the EMA and once we have it we will follow it,” he said.
“I think the opinion will be positive and... we can restore a full confidence in this vaccine.”
Covid-19 infections are stubbornly high in France, which has not imposed any nationwide lockdown since last year, as pressure on hospitals in the Paris region forces the government to think about tightening its measures.
Castex indicated that new restrictions could be put in place for the Paris region, such as the weekend lockdowns already imposed in the Nice and Calais regions.
“We are in a worrying and critical situation and, clearly, measures of the type that have been used in other parts of the territory are on the table,” he said.
EU says 'no indication' blood clots are linked to Oxford vaccine
The EU’s medicines regulator said on Tuesday it was “firmly convinced” the benefits of AstraZeneca’s vaccine outweigh potential risks, insisting there was no evidence linking it to blood clots after several nations suspended the shot over health fears.
“We are still firmly convinced that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine in preventing Covid-19 with its associated risk of hospitalisation and death outweigh the risk of these side effects,” EMA chief Emer Cooke said Tuesday.
“At present there is no indication that vaccination has caused these conditions,” she added, echoing the WHO and drugmaker AstraZeneca itself.
Cooke noted however that the regulator was “looking at adverse events associated with all vaccines”.
Experts at both the World Health Organization and the European Medicines Agency held talks on the vaccine on Tuesday, with the European organisation expected to publish conclusions Thursday.
France and Italy welcomed the news from the EMA.
“Today’s preliminary statements from EMA are encouraging,” said a joint statement from French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi.
Hello and welcome to our ongoing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, with me, Alison Rourke. Before we get started, here’s a summary of the main news so far today:
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The European Medicines Agency (EMA) says it is “firmly convinced” the benefits of AstraZeneca’s vaccine outweigh potential risks, insisting there was no evidence linking it to blood clots after several nations suspended the shot over health fears. Experts at both the World Health Organization and the EMA met on Tuesday to discuss the vaccine, with the EMA expected to publish conclusions Thursday.
- French prime minister Jean Castex has said that France had entered a third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, as the seven-day average of new cases rose above 25,000 for the first time since 20 November. Castex also said he intends to get an AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine once European health authorities confirm the jab is safe.
- There was chaos and confusion in Germany and Italy after their decisions to suspend use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid jab, with vaccination centres closing their doors and appointments being abruptly cancelled.
- Two cases of a new coronavirus strain first reported in the Philippines have been found in England. Public Health England said the variant contains a number of notable mutations, including the E484K spike protein found in the Manaus (Brazil) variant.
- Iceland is to allow entry to all visitors bearing proof of vaccination against Covid starting from Thursday, the country’s health ministry said. The move makes the country one of the first European nations to open its borders beyond the Schengen area.
- Former UK prime minister Tony Blair called for world leaders to make sure that groundbreaking future vaccines are not subject to restrictive intellectual property laws.
- The number of deaths from Covid-19 across Europe passed 900,000, according to an AFP tally. There were more than 530,000 additional deaths in the EU and EFTA countries from January to December 2020, against the average number of deaths during the same period between 2016 and 2019.
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The number of new coronavirus infections in the Netherlands increased by 24% in the last seven days, the biggest weekly jump since mid-December, Dutch health authorities said.
