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The coronavirus pandemic has fostered “a greater sense of connection”, spurring millions to volunteer to help others in their communities, research suggests.
An ICM poll found that almost three times as many people said Covid had made their community more united (41%) than said it had become more divided (13%).
When extrapolated to the entire UK population, the results of the nationally representative survey of 2,373 UK adults suggest 12.4 million adults volunteered during the pandemic. Out of these, 4.6 million were first-time volunteers, of which 3.8 million people were interested in volunteering again.
Panama has approved the purchase of nearly two million doses of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine for close to $24m, the health ministry said on Sunday, in addition to previous agreements to buy three million doses from the US drugmaker.
Panama has so far received three shipments of the Pfizer Inc /BioNtech vaccine with nearly 158,000 doses, and is also due to receive vaccines through the World Health Organization’s Covax program, Reuters reports.
The the new deal will help the country vaccinate the country’s 4.2 million people more quickly, the ministry said in a statement.
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Police broke up an anti-lockdown demonstration in Amsterdam on Sunday after hundreds gathered in the city’s Museumplein square to protest coronavirus restrictions.
Of the 500 protesters present, 17 were arrested, according to a report in Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.
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UK universities are taking extreme measures to ensure a supply of recruits for the coming academic year, with some accused of operating secret waiting lists to encourage school leavers to accept their offers amid uncertainty over A-level results.
With many admissions offices braced for a second year of turmoil over results and grade inflation, experts are predicting record-breaking numbers of applications for university places.
But universities vying for highly qualified candidates fear that popular universities – including those in the Russell Group of leading research institutions – may seek to benefit from the likely grade inflation by increasing their undergraduate recruitment for a second year in a row, leaving less popular universities with fewer students to choose from.
Read the full story by Rachel Hall and Richard Adams here:
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Israel has authorised plans to offer vaccines to Palestinians with Israeli work permits.
The country has come under fire for not extending its campaign to the 5.2 million Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, who have so far received around 32,000 vaccines doses.
Israel has vaccinated more than a third of its population. It agreed earlier this month to give Palestinian health officials 5,000 Moderna Inc doses, of which it has since distributed 2,000.
Now, the state has said it will offer Moderna vaccines to the roughly 130,000 Palestinians who work in Israel or its West Bank settlements. Vaccinations will begin within days.
Human rights groups have criticised the step as not going far enough. Since its vaccine rollout began, Israel has argued that under the Oslo peace accords, the Palestinian Authority is responsible for vaccination in Gaza and parts of the West Bank where it has limited self-rule.
Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said that the state was bound by international law to vaccinate Palestinians living under its effective control.
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Summary of recent events
- South Africa’s coronavirus alert level has been downgraded from three to one following a fall in infections, president Cyril Ramaphosa has announced, with the change coming into effect at midnight.
- The Norwegian capital Oslo is ramping up its coronavirus restrictions after a surge in infections connected to the more transmissible variant first detected in the UK.
- Cases of the virus variant first detected in Brazil have been discovered in the UK for the first time, Public Health England has said. Three cases have been found in England and three in Scotland. Officials will begin surge testing in the South Gloucestershire postcodes of BS320, BS328, BS329, BS345 and BS346 tomorrow.
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Nigeria will receive its first batch of Covid-19 vaccines this week, with nearly 4m of its 16m vaccines due to arrive in Africa’s most populous nation via the Covax scheme.
- The UK has recorded its lowest rise in cases since late September, with a further 6,035 infections registered on Sunday.
- In the US, Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease official, said he would take the newly approved Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine as he encouraged Americans to accept any of the three approved shots.
- The Johnson & Johnson jab likely to be approved for use in the European Union in early March, a French minister said on Sunday.
- More than 20 million people in the UK have now received their first dose of coronavirus vaccinations, new figures released on Sunday showed.
Hospital chiefs are urging UK ministers to expand the NHS’s supply of beds in intensive care units, which have borne the brunt of the Covid-19 pandemic over the last year.
It is unsafe for patients and unfair on frontline staff for the health service to continue with one of the lowest numbers of intensive care beds in Europe, they have told the Guardian.
ICUs across the UK have played a key role in treating more than 25,000 people whose health has been the worst affected by Covid since it struck last March. Patients at serious risk of death have received oxygen through either a ventilator or continuous positive airway pressure and also steroids in an attempt to keep them alive, with some spending many weeks in ICU.
France has reported 19,952 new confirmed Covid-19 cases in past 24 hours, down from 22,046 last Sunday, the health ministry said.
The data from the ministry showed that 122 had died in hospital with the coronavirus, compared with 159 a week today.
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Police have dispersed a crowd of around 250 people who had come together for an “organised fight” in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland.
The gathering took place near the village of Benburb on Sunday morning, causing concern for local residents.
Ch Insp Barney O’Connor told the BBC that the event was “clearly a breach” of the coronavirus lockdown rules.
“Significant engagement took place between our officers and those in attendance and the crowd subsequently left the area,” he told the broadcaster.
“An investigation is underway and evidence gathered will now be reviewed, and breaches of the regulations will be reported to the Public Prosecution Service.”
Germany will tighten its border restrictions for those coming from France’s Moselle region after it declared the area high-risk for virus variants.
France’s eastern Moselle region is now classed as an area “at particularly high risk of infection due to widespread occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 virus variants”, Germany’s Robert Koch Institute for disease control announced.
From Tuesday onwards, travellers from Moselle will need to be able to show a negative coronavirus test from the previous 48 hours, AFP reports.
Germany has stepped up its restrictions despite the EU urging member states to keep borders open within the bloc.
The country has already introduced tough measures at its land borders with the Czech Republic and Austria’s Tyrol region, allowing only Germans and non-German residents to enter, as well as lorry drivers and cross-border commuters working in certain roles.
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Mexico recorded a further 458 coronavirus deaths on Sunday, bringing its overall death toll to 185,715, according to health ministry data, as the country marks the one-year anniversary of its first confirmed infections.
The ministry’s data also showed an additional 2,810 confirmed cases, taking the total to 2,086,938, Reuters reports.
The government says the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine may be less effective in people with obesity, data suggests.
Italian researchers have discovered that healthcare workers with obesity produced only about half the amount of antibodies in response to a second dose of the jab compared with healthy people. Although it is too soon to know what this means for the efficacy of the vaccine, it might imply that people with obesity need an additional booster dose to ensure they are adequately protected against coronavirus.
South Africa lowers alert level from three to one
South Africa’s coronavirus alert level has been downgraded from three to one following a fall in infections, president Cyril Ramaphosa has announced, with the change coming into effect at midnight.
“As we ease restrictions, we cannot let our guard down. The few remaining restrictions under Alert Level 1 are meant to maintain low levels of infections and, in particular, to prevent super-spreading events,” Ramaphosa said.
“We were able to emerge from the second wave because most people adhered to the tighter restrictions and observed the basic health protocols, including wearing masks in public and social distancing.”
The country has also signed a deal with Johnson & Johnson to secure 11m vaccine doses, Ramaphosa announced on Saturday, with 2.8m doses set to arrive in the second quarter.
The rest will be spread over the rest of the year.
Unlike most available vaccines, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine does not require a second shot.
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Shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds has labelled the news that the Brazil variant has been found in the UK “deeply concerning”.
He said: “It is now vital that we do everything we can to contain it.
“But this is further proof that the delay in introducing a hotel quarantine was reckless and the continuing refusal to put in place a comprehensive system leaves us exposed to mutations coming from overseas.”
The Norwegian capital Oslo is ramping up its coronavirus restrictions after a surge in infections connected to the more transmissible variant first detected in the UK.
The varaint started spreading in Oslo in January and now accounts for 50-70% of infections, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI) said on Saturday, Reuters reports.
The city registered a daily record of 245 new coronavirus infections on Friday.
“We have to tighten the measures,” Raymond Johansen, the governing mayor of Oslo, told a news conference.
All restaurants, except take-away services, and non-essential shops, except groceries, pharmacies and liquor stores, will have to close from Tuesday, while the “red” level is imposed at upper secondary schools, meaning that students will return to remote learning.
Surge testing rolled out in parts of South Gloucestershire
Residents in some postcodes of South Gloucestershire are being asked to take a coronavirus test after a variant first detected in Brazil was found in the area.
People over 16 who live or travel in five postcode areas and do not have symptoms of Covid-19 are invited to come forward for testing.
The following postcode areas have been identified for surge testing: BS320, BS328, BS329, BS345 and BS346.
Drive-in surge testing sites will be open at Stoke Gifford Parkway Park & Ride, as well as The Mall Coach Park at The Mall Cribbs Causeway from 9am on Monday.
The enhanced programme is expected to run for a week and any positive tests will be be followed up with genome sequencing to identify which strain of Covid-19 is present.
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Brazil variant cases found in UK
Cases of the virus variant first detected in Brazil have been discovered in the UK for the first time, Public Health England has said.
The variant has been labelled a “variant of concern” as there are fears that it ma existing vaccines may be less effective against it.
Three cases have been detected in England and three in Scotland, PA reports.
The first two cases of the P1 strain are from one household in South Gloucestershire with a history of travel to Brazil but the third is not linked.
The third person’s whereabouts is unknown, as PHE says they did not complete their test registration card so follow-up details are unavailable. This case is not believed to be linked as the virus was found to have slight genetic differences.
Officials are asking anyone who took a test on 12 or 13 February and who has not received a result or has an uncompleted test registration card to come forward immediately.
The Brazil variant shares key mutations with the variant detected in South Africa.
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The Metropolitan police have handed out fines worth almost £70,000 after breaking up two parties in central London in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Officers responded to a report of an illegal gathering at an address in Mayfair at about 1.30am. They found about 50 people in the flat on Green Street, W1, all of whom were issued £800 fixed penalty notices.
The organiser, a 29-year-old man, was reported for a £10,000 fine for breaching Covid regulations.
Police then dispersed another illegal gathering in the same area at around 2am, fining each of the 20 people at the property in Brooks Mews, £800. Officers were unable to identify the organiser.
The total value of the fines issued for the two gatherings comes to £66,000.
Inspector Kevin Fagan of the Central West Command Unit, which covers Westminster, said: “Despite recent announcements about how and when Covid restrictions may be eased, nothing has changed in terms of the regulations.”
He criticised the gatherings as “irresponsible” and said that “people’s selfish actions” worsen pressure on emergency services, adding that police will continue to enforce the rules.
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Nigeria will receive its first batch of Covid-19 vaccines this week, with nearly 4m of its 16m vaccines due to arrive in Africa’s most populous nation via the Covax scheme.
The first doses will be administered to frontline healthcare staff.
The 3.92m doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine are set to arrive on Tuesday, the National Primary Health Care Development Agency said in a statement reported by AFP.
“The delivery will mark the first arrival of Covid-19 vaccine in the country and make Nigeria the next West African country to benefit from the Covax facility after Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast),” it said.
Nigeria, which is home to 200 million people, aims to immunise at least 70% of its adult population over the next two years.
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UK records lowest number of new cases in five months
There have been a further 6,035 lab-confirmed coronavirus cases in the UK, according to government data – the lowest rise in cases since late September.
There were 9,834 new cases last Sunday. A total of 4,170,519 people have tested positive since the pandemic began.
A further 144 deaths within 28 days of a positive test were reported, bringing the total to 122,849. There were 215 last Sunday.
The seven-day rolling average, which evens out reporting irregularities in the daily figures, shows that cases are down by 21.2% compared with the previous week (15-21 February). Fatalities have decreased by 33.5% by the same measure.
There have been 135,613 deaths where Covid-19 is mentioned as a cause on the death certificate, registered up to 12 February.
Sunday figures are often lower because of reporting delays over the weekend.
Hello, I’m taking over the blog from Archie Bland now and will be updating it for the next few hours. If you want to draw my attention to a story or new development please DM me on Twitter.
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The Italian health ministry reported 17,455 coronavirus cases on Sunday, down from Saturday’s figure of 18,916. It also reported 192 deaths, down from 280 the previous day.
That’s it from me. Clea Skopeliti will take over shortly.
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Covid-19 curbs have curtailed celebrations of the Jewish costume festival of Purim, with police in Israel preventing parties and some rabbis urging people not to drink too much so social distancing is maintained.
Israel, which began emerging from its third national lockdown on 21 February, reimposed night curfews for the long Purim weekend and limited access to Jerusalem.
Purim parties were banned, with fines for anyone hosting them. That led to spontaneous street parties in Tel Aviv. Police commander Ziv Saguy said officers were giving out 200 fines an hour.
Several ultra-Orthodox Jewish leaders took out a front-page ad in a community newspaper urging a more abstemious Purim this year. “He who gets drunk loses his clarity of mind and is liable not to conduct himself with the necessary caution to safeguard his health,” the ad read, according to the Arutz 7 news site.
Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community make up about 15% of the population but have at times accounted for as much as 35% of coronavirus cases. Some ultra-Orthodox have defied state-ordered closures of schools and synagogues, touching off clashes with police.
As Purim festivities wound down on Sunday, one such confrontation flared up in Mea Shearim, an ultra-Orthodox district of Jerusalem, when costumed celebrants put up an effigy of the national police chief, a Reuters photographer said.
Riot police in surgical masks closed in, removing the effigy and scattering the celebrants, some of whom yelled abuse at the officers while others danced. Saguy said two men were arrested.
Meanwhile on Sunday, Israel confirmed it will vaccinate Palestinians in the West Bank with permits to work in Jewish settlements in the occupied territory and inside Israel against the coronavirus.
The Palestinian Authority said last week it had reached an agreement with Israel that would see the Jewish state vaccinate 100,000 Palestinian labourers.
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A single-shot Covid-19 vaccine by US drugmaker Johnson and Johnson is likely to be approved for use in the European Union in early March, a French minister said on Sunday.
The vaccine was cleared for emergency use in the US on Saturday, becoming the third available vaccine there. The single-shot vaccine is highly effective in preventing severe Covid-19, including against newer variants, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said before giving it the green light.
The French industry minister, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, told France 3 television that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) was also evaluating information transmitted by the US pharmaceuticals company.
An EU approval in early March would allow the vaccine to be rolled out in late March or early April, she said, adding this was “good news” because it offers protection with a single shot in contrast to other vaccines requiring two.
She said it was possible that a booster shot was needed later “but we can’t be sure yet”.
The EU hoped to receive 600m doses of the vaccine by the end of June, she said.
France has so far vaccinated 1.5 million people, the minister said.
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Boris Johnson has tweeted about the UK’s vaccination programme, saying: “Twenty million people across the UK have now got the jab – a huge national achievement and a testament to the tireless work of NHS staff, volunteers, the armed forces and many more. I urge everyone to get the jab when called. Every jab makes a difference in our battle against Covid.”
NHS England chief executive Sir Simon Stevens said: “Vaccinating 20 million people – including 17 million across England – in a few short weeks shows the NHS vaccination campaign is firing on all cylinders, and looking out to Easter and beyond it’s full speed ahead.
“As we can see from other parts of the world, having vaccines from the manufacturers versus actually administering them to patients can be two different things. So this latest milestone is also a tribute to careful health service planning, effective organisation and amazing teamwork across the whole of the country.”
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Families with children in school or college will be able to test themselves for coronavirus twice a week from home under plans for schools to safely reopen in England from 8 March, Rajeev Syal reports.
The story continues:
Free tests will be provided to pupils’ households, as well as those in their childcare or support bubbles, regardless of whether anyone has symptoms, the government said on Sunday.
The rapid tests will be ordered and collected from local sites or administered through workplace testing programmes, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said. Secondary and college pupils will be tested with lateral flow tests twice a week, receiving three initial tests at school before they start taking them at home.
You can read the full piece here:
In the US, Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease official, said he would take the newly approved Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine as he encouraged Americans to accept any of the three approved shots.
“All three of them are really quite good, and people should take the one that’s most available to them. If you go to a place and you have J&J, and that’s the one that’s available now, I would take it,” Fauci said on NBC’s Meet the Press.
The US government authorised Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose Covid-19 vaccine on Saturday, making it the third to be available in the country following ones from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. Both of those vaccines require two doses.
Shipments to vaccination sites of J&J vaccine are expected to begin Sunday or Monday.
Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines showed higher efficacy rates in trials that used two doses versus J&J’s single-shot vaccine. However, direct comparison is difficult because the trials had different goals and J&J’s was conducted while more contagious new variants of the virus were circulating.
“You now have three highly efficacious vaccines, for sure. There’s no doubt about that,” Fauci said.
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More than 20m people now vaccinated in UK
More than 20 million people in the UK have now received their first dose of coronavirus vaccinations, new figures released on Sunday showed.
Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi hailed the news on social media, tweeting:
BINGO! One Score 💉💉💉 over 20,000,000 people have had the vaccination (1s dose). What an achievement for February 2021. What a team! Proud to be with you on this journey. @NHSuk https://t.co/pwGWJLOpcb
— Nadhim Zahawi (@nadhimzahawi) February 28, 2021
The UK vaccination programme, widely viewed as a success, leaves the country second only to Israel in vaccinations per capita.
Health secretary Matt Hancock said vaccinating more than 20 million people against coronavirus across the UK is a “magnificent achievement for the country”.
In a video on his Twitter account, Hancock said: “I’m absolutely delighted that over 20 million people have now been vaccinated across the UK – it’s absolutely fantastic.
“I want to thank every single person who’s come forward to get the jab because we know with increasing confidence that the jab protects you, it protects your community and it also is the route out of this for all of us.”
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A further 149 people who tested positive for coronavirus have died in hospital in England, bringing the total number of confirmed deaths reported in hospitals to 83,123, NHS England said on Sunday.
Patients were aged between 23 and 103. All except six, aged between 34 and 89, had known underlying health conditions.
The deaths took place between 8 January and 27 February. There were 22 other deaths reported with no positive Covid-19 test result.
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There are “definite lessons to learn” one year on from Wales’s first case of coronavirus, the country’s health minister has said.
Vaughan Gething said Wales would “definitely have done things differently” if it had the knowledge about Covid-19 that is available now.
Since a year ago, 203,625 confirmed cases and 5,340 deaths of people with coronavirus have been reported by Public Health Wales.
Gething told BBC Wales’s Sunday Supplement programme: “When I think about when coronavirus arrived in Europe, across Europe we plainly were shocked because we hadn’t had the sort of significant impact that Sars and Mers had in other parts of the world …
“We didn’t have the same level of response that other parts of the world did, who were much more rapid to take the sort of society-wide interventions that we eventually did.”
“Looking back, we’d say with our knowledge today we definitely would have done things differently,” he told the BBC. “We’d definitely have intervened more quickly but it was still the case that the advice to me was, with the knowledge we had at the time, ‘we think we gave you the right advice’.”
The Welsh government would like to “go further” on current measures at airports, with an approach to all international travel, not just a red list, Gething said.
“I think with the learning we had now, looking back then yes, I think we would have taken different measures earlier,” he said. “I think we would have taken a more restrictive approach to international travel.”
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Germany has classed France’s Covid-battered Moselle region as a high-risk area for virus variants, triggering tougher entry requirements at the border between the two neighbours.
France’s eastern Moselle region has been listed as an area “at particularly high risk of infection due to widespread occurrence of Sars-CoV-2 virus variants”, Germany’s Robert Koch Institute for disease control announced.
From Tuesday, cross-border travellers from Moselle will need to be able to show a recent negative coronavirus test.
Germany has already introduced tough checks at its borders with the Czech Republic and Austria’s Tyrol region, ignoring calls from Brussels to keep borders within the bloc open. The checks at the Moselle crossing will be less strict, with random stops and requests for negative tests rather than every vehicle being stopped.
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Summary of recent events
Here’s a roundup of key events around the world.
• In the UK, chancellor Rishi Sunak indicated that emergency support measures such as the furlough scheme will be extended beyond the end of April in the budget on Wednesday.
• In Germany, several states called for unused AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines to be given to younger people, amid a low uptake of doses among the older population because of concerns, in contradiction of EU-wide guidance, over the safety of the AstraZeneca vaccine for over-65s.
• President Andres Manuel López Obrador of Mexico is expected to ask Joe Biden to consider sharing part of the US coronavirus vaccine supply at a virtual summit.
• Jordan’s interior and justice ministers were sacked for breaching health regulations to stem the spread of coronavirus.
• Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has been vaccinated with a coronavirus jab developed by China’s Sinopharm.
• Iran’s health ministry said the country’s coronavirus fatalities went past the 60,000 mark.
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In the UK, Public Health Wales said a total of 923,615 first doses of the Covid-19 vaccine had now been given in Wales, an increase of 7,279 from the previous day.
The agency said 96,408 second doses had also been given, an increase of 7,355. In total, 91.2% of over-80s in Wales have received their first dose, along with 93.4% of those aged 75-79, 93% of those aged 70-74, 77% of those aged 65-69, 28.4% of those aged 60-64, 21.7% of those aged 55-59 and 19.3% of those aged 50-54.
For care homes, 86% of residents and 83.5% of staff have received their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.
Public Health Wales said 86.3% of health care workers had received their first dose, along with 87.7% of people in the clinically extremely vulnerably category and 16.4% of those in clinical risk groups.
Jordanian ministers sacked for coronavirus breaches
Jordan’s interior and justice ministers were sacked on Sunday for breaching health regulations to stem the spread of coronavirus.
The pair were asked to step down by the prime minister, Bisher al-Khasawneh, a move immediately endorsed by King Abdullah II, according to a statement from the royal palace reported by AFP.
They are accused, according to a government source, of “having violated the emergency law” put in place to curb Covid-19.
The Jordanian news website Ammon claimed interior minister Samir Mobaideen and justice minister Bassam Talhuni had attended a dinner in a restaurant in Amman with a total of nine people, when the law allowed a maximum of six.
Following a surge in virus cases, Jordan toughened this week its Covid-19 restrictions, returning to rules imposed in March last year, and which were only eased last month.
Jordan, which began vaccinations last month, has officially recorded more than 386,000 novel coronavirus cases and 4,675 deaths out of a population of 10.5 million people.
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In Santiago, John Bartlett reports on Chile’s rapid vaccine rollout, which stands in stark contrast to other countries in the region. He reports:
Having initially endured heavy criticism over its handling of pandemic restrictions, Chile has moved quickly to secure vaccines from a range of suppliers and aims to have 80% of its population immunised against the virus by June. It has already vaccinated 16% of its 19 million citizens at hospitals, schools, stadia and municipal buildings throughout the country.
You can read the story here:
Czech Republic’s prime minister, Andrej Babiš, said on Sunday the country could use Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine even without approval by European Union’s EMA drugs agency, Reuters reported.
The Czech Republic has been struggling with the resurgent Covid-19 pandemic in the past weeks, ranking among the worst-hit countries in the world in terms of infections and deaths from the global virus.
On 10 February, Babiš has said Czechs would wait for the approval by EMA before using the vaccine. France is expected to provide 100,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to the Czech Republic by mid-March.
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Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has been vaccinated with a coronavirus jab developed by China’s Sinopharm, Orbán announced on his official Facebook page on Sunday.
“Vaccinated,” Orbán said, with photos of him receiving the shot and a doctor showing the vaccine’s packaging box.
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Iran’s health ministry said the country’s coronavirus fatalities went past the 60,000 mark on Sunday, as the Islamic republic battles the Middle East’s worst outbreak of the illness.
“Sadly in the past 24 hours, 93 people lost their lives to Covid-19, and total deaths from this disease reached 60,073,” health ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said in a televised address reported by AFP.
Iran has registered a total of 1,631,169 infections, according to the ministry.
In Germany, several states called on Sunday for unused AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines to be given to younger people, Reuters reported, as concerns about side-effects and efficacy, as well as a recommendation it be used only for under-65s, have meant low take-up of available doses.
The German health ministry said this week it had administered only 15% of the AstraZeneca shots it has available, confirming concerns that Germans were being selective, slowing vaccination efforts.
Elderly people are first in line to be vaccinated, but Germany has recommended that the AstraZeneca vaccine be given only to people aged 18 to 64. EU regulators have declared it safe for all.
“We cannot afford the vaccine sitting around and not being used because some of those entitled reject it”, Baden-Wuerttemberg’s prime minister, Winfried Kretschmann, told Welt am Sonntag. Bavaria’s Markus Soeder made similar remarks to Bild am Sonntag and Saxony’s Michael Kretschmer to Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
The recommendation that the vaccine go only to people under 65 came from Germany’s expert panel on vaccine use (Stiko). Stiko’s head, Thomas Mertens, said on Friday that it would update its recommendation very soon. “Somehow the whole thing went kind of badly,” he told broadcaster ZDF.
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Mexico expected to ask Biden to share US vaccine supply
Moving away from UK politics to Mexico, where Reuters reports that president President Andres Manuel López Obrador is expected to ask Joe Biden to consider sharing part of the US coronavirus vaccine supply at a virtual summit on Monday.
Biden is open to discussing the matter as part of a broader regional effort to cooperate in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic but will maintain as his “number one priority” the need to first vaccinate as many Americans as possible, a White House official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
López Obrador has been one of the most vocal leaders in the developing world pressing the richest countries to improve poorer nations’ access to the vaccines. He has called the current distribution system “totally unfair”.
“We fully expect that to come up,” the White House official said when asked whether López Obrador was likely to raise a request for shared vaccines when the leaders hold their first virtual meeting since Biden’s 20 January inauguration.
A Mexican official said López Obrador would ask for a loan of the US vaccine supplies, to be paid back when vaccines that Mexico has contracts for are delivered later in the year.
López Obrador’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Reuters said.
The White House official made clear that while Biden is focused on “getting jabs in the arms” of Americans, the US recognises the need to forge a strategy to assist its neighbours since national borders cannot seal it off from the pandemic.
“Once we actually get the pandemic under control, the economic recovery is one where we’re going to have to eventually open our borders,” the official said. “But we cannot open our borders if Canada and Mexico have not similarly addressed the pandemic. So collaboration with Mexico is a top priority.”
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Sunak says the £20 increase in Universal Credit is “just one part” of the government’s help to people, and seems to be paving the way for its removal at the budget by emphasising other parts of the government’s support package.
“I’m proud of our actions over the last twelve months … there will be more support to come at the budget,” he says. “We’ve already announced things for next year like the national living wage and the local housing allowance. … there’s lots we’re doing to help those who need our help the most.”
On the self-employed, he says that the government doesn’t have perfect information about the self-employed, but that the approach of focusing support on those earning the majority of their income through self-employment was more generous than many suggested, with others proposing a threshold of 60% or two thirds.
He says that we have to keep “a watchful eye” on coronavirus variants and that he has seen no evidence that more variants are circulating.
He is also presented with a video of him serving people food without a mask last summer as part of promotion for the Eat Out to Help Out scheme, and asked about whether the plans were a mistake and if the same is planned for this summer. He says “lots of things we do cause transmission and we have to balance all of these things”. He rejects the suggestion that the scheme was a mistake and notes that young people, women and those on lower incomes work in hospitality and it was a matter of “social justice”. He declines to say whether the same support will be in place this year.
He says there are “complicated ethical practical issues” with a vaccine certificate, saying not everyone will be able to take a vaccine and there will be verification issues. But he says the prime minister has established a review to look at these questions and it is “a potentially very relevant question for helping us reopen”.
He again says that there is no prospect of the dates already set out by Boris Johnson being moved forward and talks about “a cautious but irreversible one-way ticket”. And that, after a couple of questions about Brexit and the City, is that.
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Sunak is now on Marr. He acknowledges that the national debt is sensitive to interest rate increases and says that he was only able to respond to the current crisis because of the strength of the public finances. He reiterates many of the same points he made on Sky News, again saying that he wants to “level with people” about the steps that need to be taken.
Should businesses which have done well during the pandemic be paying some of that back in tax, Marr asks? Sunak points to the existing digital services tax and says he is working through the G7 and G20 on how to tax large multinational digital companies properly. He declines to comment on his view of a windfall tax in principle.
Asked if David Cameron and Keir Starmer are right that now is not the right time for corporation taxes to rise he says: “Now is the time to keep supporting the economy … that’s what I have been doing and that’s what we’ll continue doing … but it’s right to level with people about the challenges we face in the public finances”. He says “it’s not obvious that the Labour party even know what their position is”.
He again says he doesn’t recognise reports that he told backbench MPs that he will look to reduce taxes ahead of an election and refuses to answer any questions about specific tax rises.
Updated
Dodds’ position – opposing immediate corporation tax rises but saying that the policy must be addressed in the long-term – will have sounded contorted to many viewers and maintained the prospect of Labour voting against taxes on business profits which a Conservative government is backing. But former strategic adviser to Jeremy Corbyn James Mills argues on Twitter that she has at least avoided being boxed into opposing tax rises in perpetuity:
good pivot by Dodds moving on from tax rises *now* linking to council tax rises in May for reasons below, so not boxing Labour into opposing tax rises over the next few years announced next week... #Marr https://t.co/6oe0Dk6zG6
— James Mills (@JamesMills1984) February 28, 2021
Updated
Dodds and Sunak are also on the Andrew Marr show, Dodds first. She reiterates the point about it being the wrong time to focus on tax rises and says there should be a focus on stamping out waste and mismanagement, and on securing jobs for the future, “otherwise the chancellor will have less to tax in the first place”. Again, she says Labour will look favourably at a long-term plan for changing the corporation tax regime but adds: “I would be concerned about additional taxes on business right now.”
Here’s a clip:
#Marr: Will Labour support raising corporation tax?
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) February 28, 2021
Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds: "If there's a long-term plan… we would look at that favourably"
Budget 2021 https://t.co/93Gj5WDclS pic.twitter.com/mYvvTdOyNZ
Marr points to backbench anger at the prospect of Labour voting against corporation tax rises. She says that businesses are “really concerned about confidence” and says that former party chairman Ian Lavery, quoted by Marr, has “got this one wrong”.
On furlough, she says the scheme must be reformed to include training and that abuses within the scheme must be stamped out. She says the chancellor should be clear that as long as there are health-based restrictions which impact demand, wage support should be available. She also says the £20 uplift in universal credit should be maintained but that universal credit should in the long term be subject to radical reform. She declines to say the £20 should be maintained in perpetuity because she wants to reform the system.
Marr asks if Labour is too timid in its strategy for taking on the government. Unsurprisingly, Dodds says no, it isn’t. And that’s it.
Updated
Asked about proposals by her predecessor, John McDonnell, for a windfall tax on companies that have profited from the pandemic, Dodds says the government “should be focused on protecting jobs and businesses”.
Again she says that discussions about tax rises should be for the future. She declines to say she would support any tax rises in this budget. The state of the public finances is a concern, she says, but “we have to focus on the size of the tax base … it’s really important that we build that economic activity back up. That’s what’s happening in other countries.” She says Sunak is “well out of the mainstream” on increasing taxes.
Updated
Anneliese Dodds is now being interviewed on Ridge. Labour wants to see “an absolute determination to protect jobs and businesses in the UK … not any party political considerations about what’s best for the Conservative party at the next general election.”
On reports that Sunak will increase corporation tax and Labour will oppose them, Dodds says the government has “pulled our country further and further away from the mainstream on corporation tax” but that in the short-term the government is trying to get any increases “out of the way quickly”. She says the UK has had the worst economic crisis of any major economy.
Pressed on why Labour has apparently changed its position on corporation tax, she says Labour would welcome a “longer-term debate around corporation tax” but asks “why are they focused on this now? Why are they focused on increasing council tax directly for families right now? … because the chancellor has said to his MPs that he wants to get tax changes out of the way now so that he can have a clear run through to the next election … it seems to be driven by party political considerations”.
She says Labour would back serious long-term proposals on tax but says “what we don’t want to see right now is what the chancellor is doing particularly in relation to council tax, the imposition of additional costs right now at a point where our country is experiencing the worst economic crisis of any major economy”. She declines to say Labour would vote to support higher corporation tax.
Updated
Sunak is asked about evidence that his Eat Out to Help Out scheme played a part in extending the pandemic. “There are many different studies … and I don’t agree with that,” he says, saying it is a “bit odd to ascribe causality in that way” given, he says, the rises in infection rates did not match the areas where the scheme was most used. That’s the end of his interview.
Updated
Sunak is asked about reports saying he told MPs he wants to “plug the £43bn black hole so [he] can cut taxes in a pre-election budget” and is asked if doing so would be playing politics with the recovery. Did he says that, she asks? “I don’t recognise that figure, actually,” he says.
Asked if he would like to cut taxes in a pre-election budget, he says: “I would like to be able to keep taxes low for people, I’m a Conservative and I believe in that, but I want to deliver our promises that we made to the British people that we would be responsible with their money,” he says.
It sounds like you did say this, Ridge says. “I think in the short term what we need to do is protect the economy … and over time we need to make sure our public finances are sustainable,” he replies. “If you’re asking me do I want to deliver low taxes for people, of course I do.”
Updated
Sunak refuses to speak about specific tax policy or tax rises, saying it is not appropriate to do so outside of the budget. On reports that the government is considering freezing the amount at which people start paying basic and higher rate income tax, he says again that he cannot speak about specific tax policy but adds: “This is about appreciating the damage coronavirus has done to our economy, recognising the scale of the support we have put in place, ensuring we protect the economy through the rest of the crisis, but also making sure that our public finances over time are returned to a strong position so that we can respond to the next crisis … as Conservatives I think people elect us to deliver those things.”
While he persistently declined to speak about tax policy, that answer could be read as a justification of the prospective tax band freezes Ridge referred to.
Updated
On the scale of the impact of the costs of the pandemic for the economy, Sunak says the “coronavirus has had an enormous toll on our economy and I want to level with people about that, about the problems that causes and the challenges it presents us with and be honest about our plan to address those.”
He adds: “We do have a challenge in our public finances. If we don’t do anything borrowing will continue to be at very high levels even after we’ve recovered from covid, debt will continue to rise indefinitely, and that’s not a good situation.” He says that interest rates have been at very low levels but that that can always change. “We have to be attuned to that possibility,” he says.
“Given the scale of the shock we’ve experienced, this is going to take time to fix,” he says. He does not say whether he expects to start rebalancing public finances this year.
Updated
UK chancellor sets out plans to tackle economic impact of Covid
Rishi Sunak is on Sophy Ridge’s programme on Sky now.
Ridge begins by asking if the government’s roadmap could be accelerated if the data is better than it initially appeared. He says that the dates announced are the earliest possible, that the approach will be “cautious” and that businesses “want to know it’s a one-way road”.
He sets out planned restart grants (see earlier post). He declines to say specifically that the government furlough scheme will be extended but says that the government will “keep supporting people as we reopen the economy”.
Asked if the support packages will be wound up as restrictions are eased, he says: “I think it’s right that the support aligns with the road map … we want to make sure that our support supports people along that path and that’s what you will see on Wednesday [at the budget].”
Asked if the government will be removing the £20 increase in universal credit, he says that people should wait for the budget to see the details of the next stage of the government’s response.
Updated
The Philippines is due to receive its first batch of Covid-19 vaccine Sunday, AP reported, making it among the last countries in south-east Asia to secure the critical doses despite having the second-highest number of coronavirus infections and deaths in the hard-hit region.
President Rodrigo Duterte and top Cabinet officials will welcome the arrival of 600,000 doses of China-donated vaccine in a ceremony at an air base in the capital that will underscore their relief after weeks of delays, officials said. Vaccinations initially for health workers are scheduled to start Monday.
Aside from the donated vaccine from Sinovac Biotech Ltd., the government has separately ordered 25 million doses from the China-based company. An initial 525,600 doses of Covid-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca were also scheduled to arrive Monday, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said.
The initial deliveries are a small fraction of at least 148m doses the government has been negotiating to secure. The bulk of the vaccine shipments are expected to arrive later this year.
Coronavirus has infected more than 574,000 people in the Philippines and killed at least 12,289. Lockdowns and quarantine restrictions have also set back Manila’s economy in one of the worst recessions in the region and sparked unemployment and hunger.
“Although we are still a long way from herd immunity, the arrival of the initial supply of vaccine provides hope that our road to normalcy has finally begun,” Padilla told the Associated Press.
Duterte’s administration has come under criticism for lagging behind most other Southeast Asian countries in securing the vaccines, including much smaller and poorer ones like Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos.
Updated
We’ll be covering the Sunday morning political shows in the UK, with chancellor Rishi Sunak and shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds appearing on both Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday and the BBC’s Andrew Marr show ahead of Wednesday’s budget.
Here’s the Observer’s story overnight, which reports that Sunak will offer 700,000 shops, pubs, restaurants, hotels and other businesses grants of up to £18,000 each as part of a £5bn rescue scheme.
Planned tax rises are likely to be a major theme this morning after reports suggesting Sunak is likely to announce increases in corporation tax and capital gains tax - but Keir Starmer and Dodds have alarmed many in their party by saying they will oppose any tax rises for now.
As our political editor Heather Stewart noted this week, their stance opens up “the possibility... of a Tory chancellor proposing to tax big business to pay for the crisis – and Labour opposing it.”
Updated
Good morning from London. This is Archie Bland picking up our coronavirus live coverage, which will cover UK and global updates today, and begins in Russia, where 11,359 new coronavirus cases were reported on Sunday, bringing the national tally to 4,246,079.
The coronavirus crisis centre said that 379 more deaths of coronavirus patients had been confirmed in the past 24 hours, Reuters reported. That figure pushes the official Russian death toll to 86,122.
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, and over to my colleagues in London. Happy last day before March, the month when things really went belly up last year.
In case you missed this earlier:
More than 20 million people in the UK have received at least a first dose of coronavirus vaccine, with under 4% of those given as second doses.
Government data shows that of the 20.5m jabs given in the UK up to 26 February, 19.6m were first doses.
About 770,000 of the doses given were second jabs, an increase of nearly 33,000 on figures released the previous day.
This means just over 1.1% of the UK population have been fully vaccinated with two doses.
A total of 17.25m Covid-19 vaccinations took place in England between 8 December and 26 February, according to provisional NHS England data, a rise of just under 470,000 on the previous day’s running total:
Summary
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
- Nearly 20m have received the first dose of a Covid vaccine in the UK. More than 20 million people in the UK have received at least a first dose of coronavirus vaccine, with under 4% of those given as second doses.Government data shows that of the 20.5m jabs given in the UK up to 26 February, 19.6m were first doses.
- Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city, woke up on Sunday morning to a second lockdown in a month as health authorities try to rein in a coronavirus cluster of the more contagious UK variant.
- The US Food and Drug Administration has authorized Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine for emergency use, making it the third vaccine available to the US public and securing another vital step in the US fight to control Covid-19.
- Hundreds of anti-lockdown protesters clashed with police in Dublin. Ireland’s premier has slammed the “thuggish behaviour” and attacks on Irish police as anti-lockdown protesters stormed Dublin city centre, PA Media.
- All English households with school children offered twice weekly tests. All households in England with school or college aged children will be offered two rapid Covid tests per person per week to support the government’s priority to get young people back in the classroom, the health ministry said on Sunday.
- The first AstraZeneca shipment arrived in Sydney. The first shipment of 300,000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses has landed in Sydney on Sunday, paving the way for the first major expansion of Australia’s rollout of the jab.
- Thailand started its Covid vaccination campaign. Thailand kicked off its Covid inoculation campaign on Sunday, with cabinet ministers, health officials and medical professionals among the first in the queue to receive vaccinations.
- Europe less at risk of inflation and rate fears: analysts. Investors are watching inflation carefully, worried that a boiling over of prices will ruin the expected strong pandemic recovery although analysts believe Europe faces much less of a risk than the United States.
It’s time we talked about “K”. Britain, it’s now commonly agreed, will be climbing out of our economic nadir in the months ahead even if the rate of recovery is unclear – but what worries thoughtful economists, notably but not only the new US treasury secretary Janet Yellen, is its Covid-dominated K character.
Essentially winners from the pandemic – the better-off, hi-tech companies, leading brands, the healthy, those whose work held up over lockdown and live in prosperous neighbourhoods – are going to do even better, moving up the upward-sloping part of the K.
At the same time others – the disadvantaged, small- and medium-sized companies, the digitally challenged, those working in stricken sectors such as hospitality and who live in less well-off neighbourhoods, the young – are going to have it tough, sliding down the downward slope of the K. To put it at its most graphic, some will be partying while simultaneously the numbers sleeping rough and using food banks will reach epidemic proportions. On some estimates destitution is set to double:
In the UK, people who have been furloughed before being made redundant, or out of work for six months, would be guaranteed training, education or work placements geared to the needs of the post-pandemic economy, under ambitious plans unveiled on Sunday by Labour.
The pledge to youngsters, whose progress in the jobs market has been blighted by Covid-19, comes as party analysis of House of Commons library figures suggests that more than one million people will become “long-term unemployed” (out of work for more than a year) during 2021 and 2022. The data also suggests that 660,000 16- to 24-year-olds will reach a point where they have spent six months out of work, education or training during the same period, at what they hoped would be the start of their working lives:
More on the reduced risk of inflation in Europe, from AFP:
The European Commission’s recovery programme is worth €750bn (US$920 bn), with several EU members also having their own national programmes.
“We have a European recovery programme... considerably less strong, and a loss of growth that is much greater, so there aren’t the same risks of overheating as in the United States,” said Fabien Tripier, an economist at CEPII, a Paris-based research centre on the world economy.
The US economy shrank 3.5% last year while the drop for the eurozone was nearly double that.
There is “no risk of overheating or a sustained rise in inflation” in the eurozone, the head of the Banque de France, Francois Villeroy de Galhau, insisted this past week.
The French Economic Observatory’s Ragot also does not believe that if the Fed is pushed by the markets into raising rates that the European Central Bank would be forced to follow suit.
“It doesn’t work like that in macroeconomics,” he said, noting that the monetary policy of the Fed and ECB had diverged considerably at the start of the last decade.
“With loose financial conditions still necessary to support the economy, the ECB is unlikely to react to the coming inflation overshoot,” said Capital Economics economist Jack Allen-Reynolds.
Francois Villeroy de Galhau, who as head of the Banque de France also sits on the ECB’s Governing Council, said the central bank wants to “maintain favourable financing conditions”.
For Fabien Tripier, the ECB needs to send “a strong signal” to the markets against the idea that “just because inflation hits 1.5% or 2.2%, speculation it will hike rates should begin.”
The ECB issued a reassuring message on Friday as executive board member Isabel Schnabel said it could broaden its support for the economy in case of a sharp rise in interest rates.
On the pandemic providing a chance to reverse the brain drain from Greece, by AFP:
The pandemic was a wakeup call that reminded Christophoros Xenos of what he misses most in London - the Greek sun and pleasant Mediterranean way of life.
The 36-year old risk manager left Greece in his early 20s for Britain, aiming to complete his studies, gain professional experience abroad and come back.
This never happened, as the decade-long Greek crisis that followed killed thousands of jobs.
But during the first coronavirus wave, Xenos took advantage of remote work to return to Greece for three months - and homesickness hit him hard.
“I worked for three months from Athens and the Greek islands and really enjoyed the weather, the quality of life, the return to the homeland,” he told AFP.
With thousands of employees like Xenos capable of working remotely, Greece sees an opportunity to bring back some of the minds the country lost during the past decade.
“We want you back,” Alex Patelis, chief economic adviser to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, said at a recent Delphi Forum online event.
“Open offices, set up new companies or move part of your businesses to Greece. We have the sun, the technology, and we are by your side,” he said.
Some 500,000 people moved abroad during the Greek crisis. The economy shrank by a quarter and unemployment skyrocketed to 28 percent. Since then, job figures have improved, but unemployment remains more than double the European Union and eurozone average.
The exodus of half a million people cost the Greek economy more than 15 billion euros ($18 billion), according to a report by the Hellenic Authority for Quality in Higher Education (ADIP).
Around 90 percent of those who left were college graduates and 64 percent held a postgraduate degree, according to a survey by consulting firm ICAP.
Western Australia vaccinations reach 4,000 people
About 4,000 doses of the coronavirus vaccine have been administered in Western Australia with officials hailing the first week of the program a “great result”.
Australian Associated Press: Health Minister Roger Cook said more than 2800 frontline workers had so far received the Pfizer jab with the federal government also vaccinating more than 1000 people across the aged care network.
Mr Cook said there had been no reports of any vaccine doses being wasted.
“It’s gone extremely well. We haven’t had any hitches,” he told reporters on Sunday.
The minister said another 5000 doses were expected to arrive in WA in the coming days with the government planning to extend the program to Bunbury, south of Perth, on Tuesday.
With the arrival of the first 300,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Australia, Mr Cook said the state government was still waiting to hear from the commonwealth on the distribution process in March.
He said that was expected to include a large shipment to bolster the government’s program, but also the provision of the vaccine directly to the GP network.
His comments came after a survey of Australian Medical Association members in WA expressed concern over the state’s ability to cope with a major outbreak of COVID-19.
AMA president Andrew Miller said, the virus aside, the government needed to open more hospital beds, including an extra 100 in emergency wards.
But Mr Cook said the AMA survey came before the state’s recent COVID-19 lockdown, which showed how well its testing and contact tracing systems could operate and how hospitals were ready to act.
“Our system has demonstrated that it is battled-hardened and it is match fit and it would deal with any crisis that befell our community,” the minister said.
WA reported no new coronavirus infections on Sunday.
Europe less at risk of inflation and rate fears: analysts
Investors are watching inflation carefully, worried that a boiling over of prices will ruin the expected strong pandemic recovery although analysts believe Europe faces much less of a risk than the United States, AFP reports.
Fears that US President Biden’s $1.9tn stimulus plan - which was passed by the House of Representatives on Saturday - will stoke up the economy too much have unnerved investors in recent weeks.
A rise in yields on 10-year US Treasury bonds - a key indicator of expectations - shows the markets believe prices are set to rise much more sharply than last year’s gain of 1.4%, which could force the US Federal Reserve to hike interest rates earlier than it says it plans to do.
Bond yields have risen elsewhere too, with 10-year French government bonds turning positive on Thursday for the first time in months while the benchmark 10-year German Bund has also risen although it remains negative.
European inflation data for January showed a jump in prices of 0.9 percent compared to a minus 0.3% reading in December, as increased costs of raw materials fed through into services and industrial goods.
After having slowed considerably in 2020, inflation is expected to rise this year in Europe as the economy picks up following the relaxation of measures to slow the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.
But it is not so much a spike in inflation that worries investors but that the Fed would raise interest rates faster than it has communicated.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell pledged Tuesday that the US central bank will keep benchmark lending rates low until the economy is at full employment and inflation has risen consistently above its 2.0 percent target.
But bond yields continued to rise, indicating investor concern about a rise in interest rates that would make borrowing and investment more expensive and slow the economy.
However, many analysts are sceptical that Biden’s stimulus programme will spark considerable inflation.
“It isn’t clear that Biden’s recovery plan will create lots of inflation,” said Xavier Ragot, head of the French Economic Observatory think tank.
For the European Union, there is no likelihood that its pandemic recovery programme would, he believes.
“The amounts of the European recovery plans pose absolutely no inflationary risk,” he said.
A musical interlude from AFP:
With an orchestra spread out across the entire parterre, audiences limited to the balconies, and no breaks but plenty of disinfectant, the Bulgaria’s Sofia Opera is one of the few music venues still hosting live performances in Europe.
Across the continent, a third wave of Covid-19 infections is keeping opera houses and other cultural venues closed - loud singing poses a particular risk as the virus spreads through droplets - but in Bulgaria, classical music plays on, from “Tosca” to “La Traviata”.
“I am hungry for music. And the risk, why think about it? It’s not riskier here than in the supermarket or the subway,” says 81-year-old Petya Petkova, who attended Verdi’s “La Traviata” with her daughter last week.
Despite the disinfectant, social-distancing and staff taking people’s temperature, a festive spirit reigns at the historic opera house in the Bulgarian capital, a stark contrast to its silenced counterparts in Paris, Vienna or Milan.
Bulgaria first eased pandemic restrictions in June and allowed operas, concert halls and cinemas to reopen at 30 percent capacity, leading the Sofia Opera to arrange plastic and fabric flower bouquets as placeholders on the majority of the crimson plush seats.
“We perform in front of 250 spectators, but it’s better than not playing or performing,” Sofia Opera director Plamen Kartaloff says.
Even as Europe struggles with a third wave of infections, in part due to a number of mutations that spread more easily, Kartaloff expects the opera to remain open.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 7,890 to 2,442,336, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed on Sunday.
The reported death toll rose by 157 to 70,045, the tally showed.
In the year since the first coronavirus case was identified in Mexico, the disease has killed at least 185,257 people and sickened almost 2.1 million.
Mexico registered its first case on 26 February, 2020, in a man who had travelled to Italy.
The Associated Press: The Health Department reported just over 8,000 more confirmed infections and 783 more confirmed deaths Saturday, but because Mexico does so little testing the real number is certainly much higher.
Excess death statistics, which have not been updated since the end of 2020, suggest the real death toll is probably well over 220,000 even before the surge of cases in January.
Mexico has administered a total of almost 2.4 million doses of various vaccines, but still has not received enough shots to vaccinate even 1 percent of the country’s 126 million people because most require two shots.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said late on Saturday it has approved the use of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose Covid vaccine for use by pilots and air traffic controllers, Reuters reports.
The FAA announcement, which came shortly after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the vaccine’s use, will require recipients to wait 48 hours after receiving the vaccine before conducting safety duties like flying or controlling air traffic.
The FAA previously allowed FDA-approved Moderna and Pfizer vaccines for aviation use, subject to the same 48-hour waiting period.
Updated
Here is the full story on the next stage of Australia’s vaccine rollout:
Thailand starts Covid vaccination campaign
Thailand kicked off its Covid inoculation campaign on Sunday, with cabinet ministers, health officials and medical professionals among the first in the queue to receive vaccinations, Reuters reports.
The first doses of vaccine, developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech, were given to Deputy Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, who is also the health minister, among others at an infectious diseases institute on the outskirts of Bangkok.
“I hope that the vaccination will result in people being safe from the spread of Covid and it allows Thailand to return to normalcy as soon as possible,” Anutin told reporters afterwards.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, 66, attended the event, although his age falls outside the range of 18 to 59 suitable to receive SinoVac’s CoronaVac vaccine, so he did not get it.
Thailand received its first 200,000 doses of the Sinovac vaccine from China and 117,00 imported doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine this week.
CoronaVac has been distributed to 13 high-risk provinces, which will start injecting front-line health professionals and volunteers on Sunday, the health ministry has said.
AstraZeneca’s vaccine will be ready for use by the second week of March, after going through quality control tests, the company said in a statement.
Thailand is expected to take delivery of a further 1.8 million doses of CoronaVac in March and April.
A mass campaign to administer 10 million doses a month is set to begin in June, with 61 million shots of AstraZeneca vaccines produced by local firm Siam Bioscience.
With a tally of just over 25,000 infections, Thailand has escaped the kind of fallout suffered by some other countries since the pandemic began last year.
In Australia, New South Wales state premier Gladys Berejiklian has again implored the federal government to keep states better informed of their vaccine rollout plans, AAP reports.
Phase 1a of the nation-wide vaccination program began last week, with healthcare and border workers the first to be jabbed.
But Ms Berejiklian told reporters state leaders are still unsure of how and when the general population will get access to a vaccine.
“I’ve made no secret of the fact... that we would appreciate as much information in a timely way, but we also appreciate that’s not always possible,” she said on Sunday.
“Our NSW health officials were able to turn around the Pfizer vaccine supply we’ve got very quickly - within days - because we’ve been planning for it.”
Of key concern is information about the supply NSW will receive, and at what time, she said.
“I’m not going to hide the fact that our information is key for the states to be able to do our work as best we can.”
“The more notice we have the better.”
Her comments come as NSW notched up a 42nd day without a single case of the coronavirus transmitted locally.
First AstraZeneca shipment arrives in Sydney
The first shipment of 300,000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses has landed in Sydney on Sunday, paving the way for the first major expansion of Australia’s rollout of the jab.
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, announced the arrival in a statement on Sunday, saying it was “the next step as we ramp up the vaccine rollout”.
“The University of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine will undergo the same rigorous TGA [Therapeutic Goods Administration] process to batch-check the vaccine that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine underwent. We will now be able to scale up the vaccination rollout to our priority groups, including our most vulnerable Australians and to our frontline border and health workers.
“Most Australians will receive the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, with the rollout of these due to commence from 8 March 2021 – provided they clear the TGA’s rigorous batch testing process.”
It is the second vaccine to arrive in Australia, with the first week of the Pfizer vaccinations already completed for frontline workers and aged care residents.
The first batches are being imported, while later batches will be developed locally.
Updated
All English households with school children offered twice weekly tests
All households in England with school or college aged children will be offered two rapid Covid tests per person per week to support the government’s priority to get young people back in the classroom, the health ministry said on Sunday, Reuters reports.
Last week British Prime Minister Boris Johnson set out a phased plan to end England’s latest Covid lockdown, offering a “cautious” approach to try to prevent a return to wholesale restrictions that have hobbled the economy.
He said the first stage would prioritise schools returning on 8 March when only minimal socialising outdoors would be allowed.
The health ministry said rapid test kits would be made available to collect from Monday at more than 500 locations, or through workplace testing and local community testing services.
Secondary school and college students will be tested twice a week, receiving initial tests at school or college before moving to home testing.
Primary school children without symptoms will not be tested at school but parents will be encouraged to test their children at home.
“We know that one in three people with Covid don’t have any symptoms, so targeted, regular testing will mean more positive cases are kept out of schools and colleges,” said health minister Matt Hancock.
The prevalence of Covid infections in England is falling, with 1 in 145 people infected in the week ending 19 February, the Office for National Statistics said on Friday.
Hundreds of anti-lockdown protesters clash with police in Dublin
Ireland’s premier has slammed the “thuggish behaviour” and attacks on Irish police as anti-lockdown protesters stormed Dublin city centre, PA Media.
Up to 20 people were arrested after hundreds of demonstrators clashed with police as they marched through the city centre and attempted to make their way to St Stephen’s Green park.
There was a heavy police presence around the city centre ahead of the protest, which started at around 2pm, and police used batons to push protesters away from the park.
Videos of the protest show a demonstrator point a firework at gardaí before it went off, while other missiles and items were thrown at the police:
The US Justice Department said on Saturday it will appeal a judge’s ruling that the nationwide eviction moratorium during the Covid pandemic is unlawful, Reuters reports.
The measure authorised by Congress and issued by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention covers most residential evictions in an effort to help curb the spread of the coronavirus. A federal judge in Texas ruled on Thursday that Congress did not have the power to authorise the moratorium under the US Constitution.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton said in a statement in addition to the health benefits, the moratorium “protects many renters who cannot make their monthly payments due to job loss or health care expenses.”
Siding with a group of landlords and property owners challenging the evictions freeze, US District Judge J Campbell Barker ruled Congress exceeded its authority under two provisions of the Constitution.
Boynton noted that the judge’s ruling only applies to the plaintiffs who sued in that particular case meaning that the moratorium remains in effect everywhere else.
The moratorium order was issued in September under President Donald Trump and extended on 21 January, the day after President Joe Biden took office, to run at least another two months.
Nearly 20m receive first dose of Covid vaccine in the UK
More than 20 million people in the UK have received at least a first dose of coronavirus vaccine, with under 4% of those given as second doses.
Government data shows that of the 20.5m jabs given in the UK up to 26 February, 19.6m were first doses.
About 770,000 of the doses given were second jabs, an increase of nearly 33,000 on figures released the previous day.
This means just over 1.1% of the UK population have been fully vaccinated with two doses.
A total of 17.25m Covid-19 vaccinations took place in England between 8 December and 26 February, according to provisional NHS England data, a rise of just under 470,000 on the previous day’s running total:
President Joe Biden cheered an announcement on Saturday that the US Food and Drug Administration has authorised Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose Covid vaccine, but cautioned Americans to not let their guard down as new variants spread.
“Though we celebrate today’s news, I urge all Americans: keep washing your hands, stay socially distanced, and keep wearing masks,” Biden said in a statement.
“As I have said many times, things are still likely to get worse again as new variants spread, and the current improvement could reverse.”
Australian state of Victoria reports zero new cases
The Australian state of Victoria has recorded no new Covid cases for the second day in a row.
The state, which was plunged into a five-day lockdown earlier this month, recorded two cases on Friday which authorities said were linked to the Holiday Inn cluster.
On Sunday morning, local time, the health department said 7,440 test results were received the day before and that no new cases were found.
UK records lowest cases in five months
In case you missed this earlier: The British government said a further 290 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Saturday, bringing the UK total to 122,705.
Seven days prior, on 20 February, 445 further fatalities from the virus had been recorded.
Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies for deaths where Covid-19 has been mentioned on the death certificate, together with additional data on deaths that have occurred in recent days, show there have now been 143,000 deaths involving Covid-19 in the UK.
The government also said that, as of 9am on Saturday, there had been a further 7,434 lab-confirmed cases in the UK, the lowest daily rise in cases since 2 October.
A week ago, the daily tally of new cases stood at 10,406.
FDA approves Johnson & Johnson's single-dose coronavirus vaccine
The Food and Drug Administration has authorized Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine for emergency use, making it the third vaccine available to the US public and securing another vital step in the US fight to control Covid-19.
The decision was a formality after an independent expert advisory panel late on Friday afternoon recommended drug regulators approve the one-shot vaccine.
The move is a boost to the Biden administration’s vaccination plans as it seeks to tackle a pandemic that spiraled out of control under Donald Trump amid a largely botched response that was marked by anti-scientific sentiment, skepticism over the wearing of masks, and the promotion of baseless conspiracy theories:
The Auckland lockdown has complicated several high-visibility sporting events planned in Auckland, Reuters reports. The organisers of the America’s Cup yacht race are reviewing plans for the head-to-head final between Italy and New Zealand.
New Zealand’s fourth Twenty20 International cricket match against Australia has been shifted to Wellington where it will be played behind closed doors on Friday.
New Zealand and neighbouring Australia have been highly successful in keeping the coronavirus pandemic from spreading through border closure, aggressive contact tracing and high community compliance with swift public health orders.
New Zealand, with a population of 5 million, has recorded just over 2,000 coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic and 26 deaths.
Auckland lockdown begins
Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city, woke up on Sunday morning to a second lockdown in a month as health authorities try to rein in a coronavirus cluster of the more contagious UK variant.
Reuters: The seven-day lockdown, announced late Saturday by prime minister Jacinda Ardern, follows a three-day stay-at-home order in mid-February after a local emergence of the UK variant of the new coronavirus that causes Covid-19.
Genomic sequencing of a new case recorded on Saturday, which prompted the lockdown, was linked to the existing cluster, health authorities said on Sunday, bringing it to 13 cases.
“It’s unlikely we wouldn’t see more cases,” Covid-19 response minister Chris Hipkins told the state-owned television network TVNZ on Sunday. “How many cases at this point we simply don’t know.”
The new case has been considered infectious for a week. The person, a 21-year-old student, visited a number of public spaces during that time.
The new lockdown, with level 3 restrictions, allows people to leave home only for essential shopping and essential work. Public venues will remain closed.
Restrictions in the rest of the country will be tightened to level 2, including limits on public gatherings.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live global coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
I’m Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest for the next few hours.
As always, you can say Hi or Gah! or Will this pandemic ever end?! on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
The US Food and Drug Administration has authorised Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine for emergency use, making it the third vaccine available to the US public.
Meanwhile Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city, woke up on Sunday morning to a second lockdown in a month as health authorities try to rein in a coronavirus cluster of the more contagious UK variant.
Here are the other key recent developments:
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The UK recorded the lowest number of new cases in nearly five months on Saturday, although it still reported 7,434 new infections.
- Brazil for the fifth consecutive day registered over 1,300 deaths and 60,000 coronavirus cases on Saturday.
- The Australian state of Victoria has recorded no new Covid cases for the second day in a row.
- Wales has relaxed its coronavirus restrictions to allow households with a baby below the age of one to bubble with one other household.
- Three Irish police officers were injured in today’s anti-lockdown protest in Dublin, and up to 20 people were arrested.
- Schools in the occupied West Bank will shut down for 12 days in an effort to stop a sharp rise in coronavirus variant infections, Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said on Saturday.
