Summary
Here’s a round up of this evening’s Coronavirus news
- Future travellers to the United States will have to be fully vaccinated a White House official has said. The new requirement is being discussed as part of a phased approach to easing restrictions for foreign visitors.
- Millions of Britons have been given the green light to travel to Europe’s holiday hotspots, avoiding quarantine on return from France and Spain where concerns have been raised about Covid variants. The announcement was part of wider changes to travel rules for people travelling in and out of the UK.
- Coronavirus cases in Australia, while still low, are rising in some areas despite weeks of lockdown, with authorities warning that infections will rise further because of the more contagious Delta variant.
- Mental health services suffered across the whole of Europe because of pandemic restrictions. New pan-European research shows that psychiatric services were reduced to emergency care only in many countries.
- The boss of one of the UK’s largest insurance firms has suggested that employers in London’s financial district may be struggling more than those in other cities to persuade office workers to return to their desks as coronavirus restrictions ease. Nigel Wilson, chief executive of Legal & General, said there were “a lot fewer people working in the City” compared with urban centres across the UK, Europe and the US.
- Vaccinating older teenagers has been welcomed by many scientists as the “logical next step” in the rollout of the vaccine. But some experts believe more research is needed before extending the programme further. Prof Russell Viner, professor of child and adolescent health at UCL, said more safety data is needed “before we consider vaccinating younger teenagers”.
- These comments followed the news earlier today that the UK will be offering 16 and 17 year olds a first dose of the coronavirus vaccine. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said its decision had been made after ‘large changes’ in the way that Covid has been spreading in the UK, “particularly in younger age groups”.
- Earlier today The World Health Organization called for a moratorium on Covid-19 vaccine boosters until at least the end of September to enable that at least 10% of the population of every country was vaccinated.
Travellers to US will have to be vaccinated White House says
The United States government is working on plans to introduce mandatory vaccination requirements for travellers hoping to enter the country. The Associated Press report that a White House official said on Wednesday that nearly all foreigners arriving into the US will have to be vaccinated against Covid.
If it goes ahead the new requirement will be part of the Biden administration’s phased approach to easing travel restrictions on foreign visitors. No timeline has been put in place for the rule and travel restrictions remain in place severely curtailing international trips to the US.
UK Government announces changes to travel rules
Millions of Britons have been given the green light to travel to Europe’s holiday hotspots, avoiding quarantine on return from France and Spain where concerns have been raised about Covid variants.
Ministers announced on Wednesday that fully vaccinated holidaymakers returning from France would no longer need to quarantine and ditched plans for a “watchlist” of amber countries such as Spain.
The move is likely to partially revive the struggling tourism sector but will raise questions about whether the government is being complacent about the spread of the Beta variant.
The decision to abandon plans for a watchlist under pressure from mutinous cabinet ministers will also put UK tourists at risk of having their plans aborted without any notice, raising the spectre of a repeat of last summer’s chaotic travel corridors.
A number of key destinations as well as international travel hubs will be removed from the red list – India, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE. India’s placement on the red list was the subject of substantial controversy after MPs accused Boris Johnson of delaying its inclusion in the spring as cases rapidly rose and the new Delta variant emerged.
Mexico, Georgia, Réunion and Mayotte are to be added to the red list. More countries will also be added to the green list where travellers can go regardless of vaccine status. New green list countries are Austria, Germany, Slovenia, Slovakia, Latvia, Romania and Norway. All changes come into effect at 4am on Sunday 8 August in England.
Australian authorities warn Covid cases will rise despite lockdowns
Coronavirus cases in Australia, while still low, are rising in some areas despite weeks of lockdown, with authorities warning that infections will rise further because of the more contagious Delta variant.
New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, reported 124 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, up from 110 a day ago. Most cases were in the state capital Sydney which is in its fourth week of a lockdown.
“We anticipate case numbers will continue to go up before they start coming down and we need to brace ourselves for that,” said Gladys Berejiklian, premier of NSW. She added: “Until we have enough of our population fully vaccinated, we will be living with some level of restriction.”
Vaccination rates have not matched those seen in some European countries, with only about 20 per cent of over 16’s fully vaccinated.
The country is still pursuing a hardline Zero Covid policy, attempting to eliminate all cases through tough border controls and contact tracing internally. In Melbourne a school of 2000 students and 300 staff was closed after one female teacher in her 20s tested positive. The entire school are now isolating and being tested.
Victoria state, entering a second week of stay-at-home orders, had 26 new cases, up from 22.
Sydney is in lockdown until August 28th at the earliest.
Mental health services across Europe suffered during the pandemic new research shows
The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared early on that mental health services should be considered an essential service to be maintained during the pandemic. But new pan-European research shows that psychiatric services were reduced to emergency care only in many countries, with many other services being switched from in person to online.
The European Psychiatric Association (EPA) surveyed 857 psychiatrists and found that in most European countries, 50% of face-to-face psychiatric consultations were replaced with remote consultations. In Western Europe this was much higher.
City of London ‘still fairly empty’ says L&G boss as Covid restrictions lift
The boss of one of the UK’s largest insurance firms has suggested that employers in London’s financial district may be struggling more than those in other cities to persuade office workers to return to their desks as coronavirus restrictions ease.
Nigel Wilson, chief executive of Legal & General, said there were “a lot fewer people working in the City” compared with urban centres across the UK, Europe and the US, adding that it may take years for the historic streets to return to pre-pandemic levels of bustle.
“Some 525,000 people work in the City, that’s an awful lot of people,” he said in an interview from his office in L&G headquarters near Moorgate station in the City of London. “When I’m looking out of my office window, the streets look fairly empty.”
Wilson said central London employers, local authorities and the Lord Mayor of London would need to do a “really good job over the next few years” to attract workers – who often commute long distances into the centre of the capital – to come to their offices more regularly.
Vaccinating older teenagers has been welcomed by many scientists as the “logical next step” in the rollout of the vaccine PA Media reports.
But some experts believe more research is needed before extending the programme further. Prof Russell Viner, professor of child and adolescent health at UCL, said more safety data is needed “before we consider vaccinating younger teenagers”.
He said: “Any decisions about vaccinating children and teenagers must balance risks and benefits, and this is never easy.
He welcomed the decision to vaccinate teenagers, saying: “Vaccinating older teenagers is a reasonable first step and will be important for young people themselves in the return to school, and also benefit wider society including the elderly and younger children.
“This step is particularly useful now as high vaccination levels are concentrating infection amongst the unvaccinated children and teenagers.”
Chief executive of NHS Providers Chris Hopson said: “We urge everyone, including 16 and 17-year-olds, to have their Covid-19 jab when they are offered it, in line with the advice of Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.
England’s deputy chief medical officer. Prof Jonathan Van Tam, said the government’s scientists are committed to giving the JCVI “time” to assess the impact of vaccination on healthy children aged 12 to 15, adding the option has not been ruled out.
- The World Health Organization called for a moratorium on Covid-19 vaccine boosters until at least the end of September to enable that at least 10% of the population of every country was vaccinated. WHO officials have also said it is not proven that giving booster shots to people who have already received two vaccine doses is effective.
- The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is reportedly aiming to fully approve the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine by the start of next month despite the absence of long-term safety data. The New York Times reported that the FDA has accelerated the process, recognising that an upgrade from emergency authorisation might increase take-up rates.
- Sixteen and 17-year-olds in the UK should be offered a first dose of coronavirus vaccine, the country’s vaccine advisory board recommended. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said its decision had been made after “large changes” in the way that Covid has been spreading in the UK, “particularly in younger age groups”.
- The EU executive approved a contract with US biotech firm Novavax for a potential 200m vaccine doses as a safeguard against coronavirus variants, allowing EU member states to buy 100m doses of the Novavax shot, with an option for 100m more until 2023, once the jab has been approved by the European regulator.
- The News Corp Australia journalist Sharri Markson said that YouTube’s suspension of Sky News Australia for violating its Covid medical misinformation policy, through disputing the seriousness of the disease and the need for lockdowns while promoting hydoxychlorquine and ivermectin, was “the most extreme cancellation of free speech imaginable”.
- The UK health minister who oversaw the award of Covid contracts replaced his mobile phone before it could be searched for information relevant to £85m of deals that are subject to a legal challenge. Lord Bethell, a health minister, is one of those under scrutiny over the way contracts for PPE and Covid tests were awarded at the height of the pandemic.
- Dozens of restaurants in the western French region of Brittany vowed to defy controversial new rules requiring them to check whether diners have been vaccinated, tested negative for Covid-19 or recovered from the virus before serving them. They said a “red line had been crossed” in terms of personal freedoms and that welcoming all patrons without distinction was part of their “core values”.
- Animal rights organisation Peta UK urged for a change in the law so that it is not compulsory to test vaccines on other creatures, after it emerged vegans could be exempt from any potential jab mandates. Legal experts have argued that vegans’ beliefs are protected by employment law after a tribunal last year ruled that ethical veganism is a protected status.
- A row between Ireland’s church and the state is escalating after the archbishop of Dublin told Catholic priests they can resume communions and confirmations in defiance of government coronavirus guidance. In a robust letter he said the guidance is “perplexing” and “discriminatory” given the loosening of curbs on civic life and sporting events.
- Pete Parada, drummer with Californian pop-punks the Offspring, has said he has been ousted from the band over his refusal to be vaccinated for Covid-19. He cited medical advice for not taking the vaccine, due to his “personal medical history and the side-effect profile of these jabs”.
Errors with the Australian immunisation register have prevented a frontline health worker from properly recording her two Covid vaccine doses, a problem that is being increasingly reported.
Guardian Australia this week revealed multiple instances of erroneous coronavirus vaccine records on the Australian Immunisation Register, the national database used to track vaccine status.
Some reported errors with only a first dose or second dose showing when both doses had been administered. Others said they were recorded as already being fully vaccinated despite not having a single dose.
The NHS has lost its prestigious ranking as the best health system in a study of 11 rich countries by an influential US thinktank.
The UK has fallen from first to fourth in the Commonwealth Fund’s latest analysis of the performance of the healthcare systems in the nations it studied.
Norway, the Netherlands and Australia now provide better care than the UK, it found. The findings are a blow to the NHS, which had been the top-rated system in the thinktank’s two previous reports in 2017 and 2014. The US had by far the worst-rated system, despite spending the most on care.
The Washington-based Commonwealth Fund blamed the NHS’s slip down its league table on the delays patients face in accessing care and treatment, lack of investment in the service and poverty.
The makers of the Russian Covid-19 vaccine Sputnik V have pledged to resolve delivery delays this month after several South American countries complained to Russia.
The delays occurred due to a “production scale up” and would be “fully resolved” this month, Russia’s Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) that financially backs Sputnik V, said, according to AFP.
Sputnik V will “double” its capacity in September thanks to a partnership with the world’s largest vaccine producer, the Serum Institute of India, the statement said. It added that Sputnik V has “built production partnerships with producers in 14 countries.”
Several Latin American countries that have relied on the Russian vaccine to protect their populations have in recent weeks complained to Moscow about delivery delays. Inoculation with Sputnik V requires two doses that differ from one another and cannot be swapped or mixed with other vaccines.
Guatemala last week cancelled its order of a second batch of eight million Sputnik vaccines due to a delivery delay of a previous order. Argentina – the first Latin American country to approve the Sputnik vaccine – also complained to Moscow about the delivery delays, AFP reports.
As the highly transmissible Delta variant continues to spread across at least 17 provinces, China is now facing a new dilemma: is its once-successful “zero tolerance” approach to containing the spread of the virus over, and what comes next?
Unlike Britain and Singapore, where officials have explicitly encouraged people to “learn to live with the virus”, China has yet to officially shift its messaging.
But experts are asking what next for the country’s strategy, now that it’s clear the virus is not going away any time soon. Last week, Chinese virologist Zhang Wenhong – widely known as China’s Dr Fauci – wrote in an essay about the need for the “wisdom” of long-term coexistence with the virus.
Zhang said the recent outbreak in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing should serve as “food for thought for the future of our pandemic response”. “The data tell us that even if each of us were to be vaccinated in the future, Covid-19 would still be endemic, but at a lower level with a lower fatality rate. After the liberalisation of vaccines, there will still be infections in the future …” he wrote.
Less than a week after Zhang’s opinion piece was published, the Delta variant has now spread to more than half of China’s 31 provinces, shutting down transport routes.
On Wednesday, China reported 96 new cases – 71 of them were locally transmitted. Residential areas, including those home to more than 10,000 people in the capital Beijing, have been sealed off for mass testing. In Wuhan, where the virus was first reported in late 2019, authorities have begun testing all 11 million residents.
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