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Thu 7 Jan 2021 18.32 ESTFirst published on Wed 6 Jan 2021 18.33 EST
Key events
Medical staff in protective suits treat a patient with Covid with a CT at a Berlin hospital.
Medical staff in protective suits treat a patient with Covid with a CT at a Berlin hospital. Photograph: Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters
Medical staff in protective suits treat a patient with Covid with a CT at a Berlin hospital. Photograph: Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters

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With Brazil’s Covid-19 death toll surpassing 200,000 on Thursday, health minister Eduardo Pazuello said the country is already in a second wave.

Rafael Deucher, a doctor in Paraná state, where 80% of public intensive care beds are occupied, said: “It’s a shame what happened in the summer. What we expect is that after 15 January, we will unfortunately face a critical state again in hospitals.”

Immunologists say various factors are likely to exacerbate the second wave. Brazil is still at least three weeks away from beginning its vaccine campaign, according to the government, which has been widely criticised for not moving as quickly as other countries.

“People are tired and are no longer adhering to preventive measures due to psychological strain, but also due to the lack of a unified political discourse,” said Alexandre Naime, head of the department of infectious diseases at Universidade Estadual Paulista’s faculty of medicine.

There are many people who are against science and public health, against the mask, and in favour of big gatherings.”

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A Mexican health official has travelled to Buenos Aires to discuss Covid-19 vaccines with the Argentine president, Alberto Fernández, whose government has begun administering Russia’s Sputnik V to hundreds of thousands of healthcare workers.

Citing “reasons of urgency,” Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Thursday said the official would enquire about Argentina’s experience with the Russian vaccine, including any adverse reactions, to see whether Mexico could also acquire it.

We need to vaccinate and to have sufficient vaccines,” he said at a news conference.

Deputy health minister Hugo López-Gatell traveled with foreign ministry official Efraín Guadarrama to exchange information about “distinct vaccine initiatives”, Guadarrama had said on Twitter.

Argentina’s government said in a statement the Mexican officials requested information about Sputnik V during the meeting, since Mexico “is interested in acquiring it”.

The officials also discussed “the strategic agreement signed between both countries to produce and distribute the [vaccine] developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, which is produced in Argentina”, the statement said.

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The government of Australia has signed an advanced agreement to purchase 51m doses of Novavax Inc’s experimental Covid-19 vaccine, the company disclosed in a regulatory filing.

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Current testing requirements for hauliers, in which drivers wishing to enter France from Britain must show proof of a negative Covid-19 test taken in the previous 72 hours, will continue, the Department for Transport (DfT) has said.

Following discussions on Thursday, the DfT said the French government made the decision to keep current measures in place until further notice.

The DfT said arrangements would be reviewed regularly, after French authorities closed the border to the UK last month and subsequently reopened it to hauliers on the condition of a negative Covid-19 test on 23 December.

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Australian city enters lockdown after UK strain detected

Australia’s Queensland state enforced a three-day lockdown in Brisbane, the state capital, from Friday evening after a hotel quarantine worker tested positive for the more contagious variant of Covid-19 that emerged in Britain last month.

We know that this UK strain is highly infectious. It is 70% more infectious, and we are going to go hard and we are going to go early to do everything we can to stop the spread of this virus,” state premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told reporters.

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The number of confirmed or suspected respiratory outbreaks reported in UK care homes with at least one coronavirus case has tripled in a month, new figures show.

There were 549 acute respiratory infection incidents with at least one Covid-19 case reported to Public Health England (PHE) in the week ending 3 January.

This is more than three times the 176 incidents reported in the week ending 6 December.

Numbers of weekly reported incidents fell for three weeks in November, when a four-week lockdown was in place, but they have been rising since the week ending 6 December.

The rate of the rise has also increased, with most recent figures showing a 61% rise from the previous week, when 341 incidents were reported.

This is compared to a 29% week-on-week rise in confirmed or suspected outbreaks between the weeks ending 6 and 13 December.

While incidents are rising, the number of coronavirus cases as a proportion of overall cases has dropped.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokeswoman said: “We have been doing everything we can to protect care homes since the start of the pandemic, and have provided billions of pounds of additional funding, free PPE to care homes and have increased staff testing to identify and rapidly isolate more cases.

More than 1.5 million people have already been vaccinated, including more than 650,000 over-80s, and the vaccination programme is rapidly scaling up now the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is available to protect as many vulnerable people as possible.”

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The UK’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, struggled with pronouncing the names of two drugs that can significantly reduce the risk of death from coronavirus as well as reducing time spent in hospital.

NHS patients will have access to tocilizumab and sarilumab under updated guidance due to be issued on Friday by the government and the NHS to trusts across the UK.

However, the names of the treatments do not roll off the tongue, and caught out the prime minister at the Downing Street press conference on Thursday.

Johnson said: “I am pleased to tell you today, British scientific research has now contributed to the creation of more new lifesaving treatments that have just passed rigorous clinical trials.”

Emphasising each syllable, he added: “In particular toci-lizu-mub.

“Sorry, I will say that again, tocilizumab, and sarilumab – they will shortly be on everybody’s lips – which have been found to reduce the risk of death for critically ill patients by almost a quarter.

“They cut time spent in intensive care by as much as 10 days.

“These lifesaving drugs will be available through the NHS with immediate effect, potentially saving thousands of lives.”

The drugs, which are typically used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, are named in a way common for similar medications.

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The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had administered 5,919,418 first doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country as of Thursday morning, and distributed 21,419,800 doses.

The tally of vaccine doses distributed and the number of people who received the first dose are for both the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines, as of 9am ET on Thursday, the agency said.

According to the tally posted on 6 January, the agency had administered 5,306,797 first doses of the vaccines and distributed 17,288,950 doses.

A total of 3,770,425 vaccine doses were distributed for use in longterm care facilities and 603,313 people in the facilities got their first dose, the agency said.

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Tom Phillips
Tom Phillips

Brazil has hit another dire milestone in its struggle with coronavirus as its death toll rose above 200,000 with the epidemic again worsening.

On Thursday afternoon a coalition of news groups that tracks the number of deaths said Brazil’s death toll had risen to 200,011.

The South American country’s first Covid case was recorded last February. More than 7.9 million infections have since been confirmed. On Wednesday Brazil registered 1,266 deaths, the highest daily number since mid-August.

Few world leaders have responded to the Covid crisis in a more provocative and haphazard way than Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who has called Covid a “little flu”.

Nearly a year after the global pandemic began, he continues to trivialise the risks of the disease and undermine containment efforts with regular public appearances.

Last week Bolsonaro appeared in the water off a beach in São Paulo, one of Brazil’s worst-hit states, swimming towards a huge crowd of maskless supporters.

He has also been criticised for sabotaging immunisation efforts by saying he will refuse to be vaccinated, and delaying the rollout of a nationwide vaccination programme.

Bolsonaro’s behaviour has led many political opponents to accuse him of genocide. On Thursday he rejected that label. “They accuse me of genocide,” he reportedly told supporters. “Who did I kill?”

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A summary of today's developments

  • The UK said it will extend a ban on travellers entering England to southern African countries in a measure to prevent the spread of a new Covid-19 variant identified in South Africa. The restriction will go into effect on Saturday and remain in place for two weeks, the government said.
  • France reported 21,703 new confirmed Covid-19 cases on Thursday, down from 25,379 on Wednesday. The health ministry also reported 277 new virus deaths in hospitals compared to 283 on Wednesday.
  • Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said supply agreements with Pfizer meant that all Israelis over the age of 16 would be able to be vaccinated by the end of March, or perhaps even earlier.
  • Germany reports over 1,000 Covid-linked deaths. Health authorities registered 26,391 new coronavirus infections on Thursday, and 1070 deaths. But the government’s disease control agency, the Robert Koch Institute, said the numbers remain skewed following underreporting over the Christmas break, and a true picture of where the virus is at in Germany won’t be clear until 17 January at the earliest.
  • Europe has surpassed over 25m cases of Covid, according to Reuters analysis. Several countries are reinstating or extending lockdowns as a resurgence in the pandemic threatens to overwhelm health services.
  • UK records highest number of daily deaths since 21 April. The UK government said a further 1,162 people have died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Thursday. This is the highest daily reported total since 21 April when 1,224 were recorded. It brings the UK’s total number of deaths to 78,508. 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 94,000 deaths involving Covid-19 in the UK.
  • Japan declares state of emergency for Tokyo area as Covid-19 cases surge. Japan has declared a one-month state of emergency in the capital, Tokyo, and in three neighbouring prefectures to stem the spread of coronavirus infections, as new daily cases surged to a record of more than 7,000, media reported.
  • WHO calls for intensified measures over “alarming” virus variant. The World Health Organization’s European branch said more needs to be done to deal with the alarming situation brought on by a recently discovered variant of the coronavirus. WHO’s regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, also urged safe flexibility on the time between the first and second doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.
  • Russia’s official number of coronavirus deaths passes 60,000. Russia reported 23,541 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, which brought the total number of cases to 3,332,142.
  • Covid kills half of Sussex care home’s residents over Christmas. A care home in East Sussex has been devastated by Covid, losing half of all its residents to the disease over Christmas, fuelling fears the new, more transmissible virus variant sweeping the south-east of England is beginning to breach homes’ defences.
  • France’s border with UK to remain closed ‘for foreseeable future’, said the prime minister, Jean Castex. So far 19 cases of the new fast-moving variant of the coronavirus, identified by scientists in the UK and called the “English variant” in France, have been identified. Castex said bars, restaurants and ski resorts would not be opening at the end of the month and it was too early to say if they would be able to reopen by mid-February.
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Harry Potter star Jessie Cave’s newborn son is out of hospital after testing positive for coronavirus.

The actor, best known for her role as Lavender Brown in the film adaptations of the books, welcomed Tenn in October after a “traumatic” delivery that left him in the neonatal unit.

On Tuesday the 33-year-old revealed her baby had caught the virus and they were back in hospital in London but reassured her followers that Tenn was “doing well” and the doctors were being “vigilant and cautious”.

Cave shared an update on Thursday, writing on Instagram: “Baby is home now. Thank you for all the well wishes and messages of support. Be safe everybody. Amazing care from everybody at Chelsea & Westminster.”

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UK to extend ban on travellers entering from southern African countries

The UK said it will extend a ban on travellers entering England to southern African countries in a measure to prevent the spread of a new Covid-19 variant identified in South Africa.

The restriction will go into effect on Saturday and remain in place for two weeks, the government said.

Entry will be barred for those who have travelled from or through any southern African country in the last 10 days, including Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, as well as Seychelles and Mauritius.

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People applaud as the Clap for Carers resumes as ‘Clap for Heroes’, to show thanks to key-workers, including Britain’s NHS (National Health Service) workers and other frontline medical staff, for their work during the coronavirus pandemic, in Marsden, northern England. Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images

The UK is now coming together for a nationwide applause of NHS and key workers, in an initiative called Clap for Heroes.

France records further 277 deaths

France reported 21,703 new confirmed Covid-19 cases on Thursday, down from 25,379 on Wednesday.

The health ministry also reported 277 new virus deaths in hospitals compared to 283 on Wednesday.

The cumulative cases toll now stands at 2,727,321 and the total death toll at 66,841.

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