Britain records 21,088 new coronavirus cases – latest updates

Sunday, January 31, 2021:

Britain records 587 new Covid deaths, 21,088 cases

Britain has recorded 587 deaths from Covid-19, down from 1,200 a day earlier, and a further 21,088 cases of the disease, also a decrease from a day earlier.

The figures record deaths of those who tested positive for the coronavirus within the past 28 days.

Official data showed that 8.98 million people have been given the first dose of a vaccine, up from a figure of 8.38 million people announced on Saturday.

France reports 19,235 new cases
France has reported 19,235 new Covid-19 cases and said the number of patients infected with the coronavirus in intensive care increased by 45 to 3,158.

Italy reports 237 deaths and 11,252 new cases

Italy has reported 237 coronavirus-related deaths, down from 421 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections was equal to 11,252 compared with 12,715 on Saturday.

Some 213,364 tests for Covid-19 were carried out in the past day, against a previous 298,010, the health ministry said.

Italy has now registered 88,516 deaths linked to Covid-19 since last February, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the sixth-highest in the world. The country has reported 2.553 million cases to date.

Patients in hospital with Covid-19 - not including those in intensive care - stood at 20,096 on Sunday, compared with 20,098 a day earlier.

Vietnam reports 50 more infections

Vietnam has reported 50 more Covid-19 infections, most linked to a new outbreak that began on Thursday in the northern province of Hai Duong, the Ministry of Health said.

The outbreak has spread to at least nine cities and provinces, including economic hub Ho Chi Minh City and capital Hanoi, with 238 locally transmitted infections, the ministry said. That has raised the total number of Covid-19 cases in the country to 1,817 with 35 deaths. 

EU's Von Der Leyen says Astrazeneca will deliver 9M more vaccine doses

EU Commission President Ursula Von DerLeyen has said that Astrazeneca Plc will deliver 9 million additional Covid-19 vaccine doses in the first quarter, making a total of 40 million doses to Europe.

Astrazeneca will start deliveries one week earlier than scheduled, Von Der Leyen said on Twitter.

"The company will also expand its manufacturing capacity in Europe," she said.

China sees uptick in Covid-19 cases

China has recorded more than 2,000 new domestic cases of Covid-19 in January, the highest monthly total since the tail end of the initial outbreak in Wuhan in March of last year.

The National Health Commission said that 2,016 cases were reported from January 1-30. That does not include another 435 infected people who arrived from abroad. The tally for January 31 is due to be released Monday.

Two people have died in January, the first reported Covid deaths in China in several months.

Most of the new cases have been in three northern provinces. The Hardest-hit Hebei province, which borders Beijing, has reported more than 900 cases.

Beijing, the Chinese capital, has itself had 45 cases this month.

Turkey reports over 6,000 new cases

Turkey reported 6,562 new coronavirus infections.

Among the fresh cases, 641 symptomatic patients were confirmed across the country, according to Health Ministry data.

Turkey's overall case tally topped 2.47 million, including 25,993 deaths with 128 new fatalities recorded over the past day.

As many as 7,006 more patients have recovered in the country, raising the total past 2.36 million.

More than 29.63 million Covid-19 tests have been carried out in Turkey to date, with 136,418 done over the past 24 hours.

The latest figures show that the number of Covid-19 patients in critical condition has dropped to 1,634.

Britain's Captain Tom hospitalised after testing positive

British centenarian Captain Tom Moore, who raised millions of pounds for the health service by walking laps of his garden, has been admitted to hospital after testing positive for Covid-19, his daughter said.

"I wanted to update everybody that today ... my father was admitted to hospital," his daughter, Hannah, said on Twitter.

"Over the last few weeks he was being treated for pneumonia and last week tested positive for Covid-19. He was at home with us until today when he needed additional help with his breathing. He is being treated in a ward, although he is not in ICU (intensive care unit)."

Israel to give Palestine 5,000 Covid-19 vaccines

Israel has agreed to transfer 5,000 doses of the coronavirus vaccine to the Palestinians to immunise frontline medical workers, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s office announced.

It was the first time that Israel has confirmed the transfer of vaccines to the Palestinians, who lag far behind Israel’s aggressive vaccination campaign and have not yet received any vaccines.

The World Health Organization has raised concerns about the disparity between Israel and Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, and international human rights groups and UN experts have said Israel is responsible for the well being of Palestinians in these areas. Israel says that under interim peace agreements reached in the 1990s it is not responsible for the Palestinians and in any case has not received requests for help.

EU offers guarantees for vaccine deliveries, says UK minister Truss

British trade minister Liz Truss said the European Union had offered guarantees that vaccinations London had ordered would be supplied, after Brussels acknowledged it was a mistake to trigger emergency powers under the Brexit deal.

“It is vital that we keep borders open, we resist vaccine nationalism, we resist protectionism ... We are pleased that the EU admitted that the article 16 invocation ... was a mistake and they are not now proceeding with that,” Truss told Sky News.

“We are absolutely confident that we can continue to deliver our programme. We have received reassurance from the European Union that those contracts will not be disrupted.”

Venice has people in masks but no Carnival fun

In another year, masks would be a sign of the gaiety in Venice, an accessory worn for games and parties as big crowds parade about to show off their frivolous, fanciful costumes, especially ones with decorative face coverings.

The Italian canal city’s Carnival festivities should have started Saturday, but the Covid-19 pandemic has made its annual appointment for more than two weeks of merry-making impossible.

Last year, with fears over the new coronavirus mounting, authorities abruptly shut down the Venice Carnival on its third day, just before Italy became the first country in the West to face a outbreak. 

Africa fears vaccine shortage, urges equity

As the world gears up to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, policymakers and health experts in Africa are calling for equity and fairness in the distribution of vaccines to ensure the continent is not left behind in the global fight against the coronavirus.

South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa, who also chairs the African Union, announced on Jan. 14 that the continental league had secured a provisional 270 million Covid-19 vaccine doses on behalf of its member states. This was done through advance procurement commitment of up to $2 billion to the manufacturers.

Priority would be given to people at risk such as the elderly, persons with comorbidities, key frontline workers, social workers, and those in security services.

However, with a population of about 1.3 billion facing unequitable distribution of the vaccine, concerns are mounting that Africa’s target of immunizing the majority of the population to achieve herd immunity could be thrown off track.

Countries tighten borders against virus

A number of countries are tightening their borders against a surge in variant strains.

The US has ordered travellers to wear masks on most public transport.

With doses of the different Covid-19 jabs so far approved for use still in relatively short supply -- and mass inoculation programmes in their early stages -- Britain and the EU have become embroiled in an ugly row over the shots they had been promised by drugmaker AstraZeneca.

The jab developed by the British-Swedish firm is only the third to be rolled out in Europe. But the company has said it can only deliver a fraction of the doses promised to the Brussels and London because of production problems. 

As the World Health Organization warned against "vaccine nationalism," both Britain and EU said they were confident the problems could be resolved. 

Single virus case sends Australia's Perth into snap lockdown

The Australian city of Perth will begin a snap five-day lockdown after a security guard at a quarantine hotel tested positive, authorities announced .

Roughly two million residents of the city must stay at home as of Sunday evening, as will those living in the nearby Peel and South West regions.
A scheduled return of schools on Monday will be delayed, with locals only permitted to leave their homes for exercise, medical care, essential work or to buy food.

The new rules follow the first case of community transmission in Western Australia state for 10 months, officials said.

Swedish film festival offers nurse an isolated, island cinema for a week

A front-line Swedish nurse is getting some Covid downtime with a week of private screenings of the Gothenburg film festival, in a former lighthouse off the country's west coast.

More than 12,000 candidates from 45 countries applied to watch the festival's films in almost near isolation on an island 400 kilometres (250 miles) from Stockholm.

The prize is a week viewing as many of the festival's 70 premieres as they like in a hotel in the former Pater Noster Lighthouse. But they will be in isolation and will have no access to their own computer or laptop.

The bright-red lighthouse, built on a tiny island off Sweden's west coast in 1868, is surrounded by a scattering of squat, red buildings originally built to house the lighthouse keeper's family. It can only be reached by boat or helicopter, depending on the weather.

After a series of interviews and tests, festival organisers chose emergency nurse and film buff Lisa Enroth for the prize, in keeping with the 2021 festival's theme, Social Distances.

China temporarily bars entry of foreigners travelling from Canada

China has temporarily banned entry of foreign nationals travelling from Canada, even if they hold valid Chinese residence permits for work, the Chinese consulate in Toronto said.

“All foreign nationals who hold valid Chinese residence permits for work, personal matters and reunion are temporarily not allowed to enter China from Canada,” the consulate said in a statement on its website.
Entry with diplomatic and service visas will not be affected, it said.

The suspension comes as Canada clamps down on cross-border travel due to Covid-19 concerns. Canada reported 4,255 new cases on Saturday, with 19,942 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

South Korea to extend curbs into Lunar New Year holidays

South Korea will extend its social distancing curbs by two weeks until the end of the Lunar New Year holidays as new infection clusters emerge in the country, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said on Sunday.

The announcement dashed earlier expectations that the government would ease the rules from the current highest levels, which include a restaurant curfew and a ban on gatherings of more than four people and have been in place since early December.

But health authorities decided to maintain the curbs after a new large outbreak emerged from missionary training schools across the country last week, reversing a recent downtrend in daily infections ahead of the Lunar New Year break, which begins on February 11. 

Flaming Lips hold socially-distanced show

American rock band The Flaming Lips have come up with a creative way to put on live shows in the midst of the pandemic - putting themselves and their audience in protective “space bubbles”.

The group performed two concerts over the weekend in Oklahoma, where audience members danced along while enclosed in plastic bubbles.

In pre-show posts, photographer and cameraman Nathan Poppe tweeted pictures of the venue, saying there were 100 bubbles, each capable of holding a maximum of three people.

The capsules were equipped with a speaker, fan, bottle of water, towel and a sign reading “I gotta go pee/It’s hot in here” to be shown to stewards, who escorted revellers or refilled the bubbles with cool air.

Australia reopens New Zealand 'travel bubble'

Australia reopened its “travel bubble” with New Zealand after the neighbouring country reported no new locally acquired cases, but added new screening measures as it marked its longest infection-free run since the outbreak began.

The decision marks the resumption of the only international arrivals into Australia who do not require 14 days in hotel quarantine.

Australia had paused quarantine exemptions for trans-Tasman arrivals six days earlier after New Zealand reported its first new case in months.

Arrivals from New Zealand “are now judged to be sufficiently low risk, given New Zealand’s strong public health response to Covid-19”, acting Australian Chief Medical Officer Michael Kidd told reporters.

Fresh data show toll South African virus variant takes on vaccine efficacy

Clinical trial data on two vaccines show that a variant first identified in South Africa is lessening their ability to protect against the illness, underscoring the need to vaccinate vast numbers of people as quickly as possible, scientists said.

The vaccines from Novavax Inc and Johnson & Johnson were welcomed as important future weapons in curbing deaths and hospitalisations in a pandemic that has infected more than 101 million people and claimed over 2 million lives worldwide.

But they were significantly less effective at preventing Covid-19 in trial participants in South Africa, where the potent new variant is widespread, compared with countries in which this mutation is still rare, according to preliminary data released by the companies.

Brazil to receive 10-14M AstraZeneca vaccine doses mid-February

Brazil will receive between 10 million and 14 million doses of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine starting in mid February through the World Health Organization’s COVAX programme, the health ministry said.

Brazil has had 58,462 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus reported in the past 24 hours, and 1,279 deaths from Covid-19, the ministry said.

The South American country has now registered 9,176,975 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 223,945, according to ministry data, in the world’s third worst outbreak outside the United States and India and its second-deadliest.

Algeria launches coronavirus vaccination campaign

Algeria launched its vaccination campaign starting in the northern city of Blida, the epicentre of the country's outbreak in March 2020.

Algiers said it had received a first shipment of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine on Friday, having announced in late December it had ordered 500,000 doses from its long-time ally Moscow.

Health Minister Abderrahmane Benbouzid said the country was working to acquire sufficient vaccine doses to immunise all of Algeria's 44 million people, the official APS news agency reported.

The vaccination campaign wil l be carried out in "phases" across all regions, "without exception", he said, cited by APS.

Most Australian Open participants clear quarantine

The Australian Open quarantine facilities are still holding 15 people, including one player and two others who tested positive earlier in their lockdown, Melbourne health authorities said.

The vast majority of the more than 1,000 players and their entourages undergoing 14 days of isolation in Melbourne and Adelaide were released by midnight on Saturday and have started preparing for the Grand Slam.

Spain’s Paula Badosa was the only player to have confirmed that she tested positive for Covid-19 in Melbourne, restarting the clock on her mandatory period of isolation.

Mexican telecoms magnate Slim returns home after hospitalisation

Mexican businessman Carlos Slim, one of the world’s richest men, has returned home from hospital following a bout of Covid-19 and is feeling well, his spokesman Arturo Elias said on Saturday.

During the past week, Slim had been getting medical attention at the National Institute of Nutrition, a public health centre in Mexico City.

Slim’s son, Carlos Slim Domit, revealed on Monday that the telecoms magnate had caught the coronavirus, and was making a good recovery from what he said were mild symptoms.

Honduras says to get first vaccine doses in February

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez said that his country will receive its initial batch of Covid-19 vaccines during the second half of February through the COVAX programme backed by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Co-led by the Gavi vaccine alliance, WHO and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, COVAX is aiming to deliver 1.3 billion doses of approved vaccines to 92 eligible low- and middle-income countries in 2021.

Hernandez said in a post on Twitter his government had been informed by COVAX-Gavi that Honduras would receive up to 800,000 doses of vaccine in the second half of February.

Mexico reports 1,495 deaths

Mexico's health ministry has reported 1,495 new confirmed fatalities from the virus, bringing the total in the country to 158,074.

The ministry did not provide an update on the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus at the start of its regular evening news conference. 

Germany threatens legal action over vaccine delays

Germany's government has threatened legal action against laboratories failing to deliver coronavirus vaccines to the European Union on schedule, amid tension over delays to deliveries from AstraZeneca.

"If it turns out that companies have not respected their obligations, we will have to decide the legal consequences," Economy Minister Peter Altmaier told German daily Die Welt.

"No company can favour another country over the EU after the fact," he added.

There has been growing tension in recent weeks between European leaders and the British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, which has fallen behind on promised delivers of its Covid-19 vaccine.

Britain focused on collaboration with EU after vaccine row

Britain's focus is on "collaboration" with the European Union on vaccines, the country's vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi told the Sunday Telegraph, after a showdown between the two sides over vaccine exports.

Zahawi told the newspaper in an interview that Britain's focus was on collaborating with the bloc and that the country had tried to help Brussels with its vaccine supply problems and would continue to do so.

The EU had on Friday attempted to restrict some exports of Covid-19 vaccines by invoking an emergency Brexit clause before reversing part of its announcement within hours. 

Italy agency cautious on AstraZeneca jab for over 55s

Italy's medicines agency has approved the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine for all adults but recommended alternatives be given to people aged over 55.

AIFA's decision comes a day after the European Union gave the green light for the jab, but Germany's vaccine commission recommended against using it on older people amid questions over its effectiveness that have been rejected by the company.

"AIFA authorises the AstraZeneca vaccine for the prevention of Covid-19 disease in individuals over the age of 18, as per European Medicines Agency guidance," it said.

But it noted "a level of uncertainty" about claims of the jab's effectiveness in people over the age of 55, because the age group was "poorly represented" in trials.

To help with the best use of the vaccine, it recommended "preferential use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, pending further data, in subjects between 18 and 55 years old, for whom more solid evidence is available".

It urged the "preferential use of messenger RNA vaccines in older and/or more frail subjects".

CDC orders sweeping US transportation mask mandate

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a sweeping order requiring the use of face masks on nearly all forms of public transportation on Monday.

The order, which takes effect at 11:59 p.m. EST on Monday (0459 GMT Tuesday), requires face masks to be worn by all travelers on airplanes, ships, trains, subways, buses, taxis, and ride-shares and at transportation hubs like airports, bus or ferry terminals, train and subway stations and seaports.

President Joe Biden on January 21 ordered government agencies to "immediately take action" to require masks in airports and on commercial aircraft, trains and public maritime vessels, including ferries, intercity bus services and all public transportation.

Bolivia expects 1 million vaccine doses in February

Bolivian President Luis Arce said that the country has reached a deal to receive some 1 million Covid-19 vaccine doses in February via the COVAX programme backed by the WHO and Gavi vaccine alliance.

The COVAX programme is aiming to deliver 1.3 billion doses of approved vaccines to 92 eligible low- and middle-income nations in 2021, though it faces potential delays amid a global scramble for vaccines.

"In February we will receive almost a million vaccines. We are making progress, we have vaccines, we have hope, we will move forward," Arce said in a televised message.

Bolivia, which has been trying to make up ground with vaccine deals as its hospitals strain under rising cases, received 20,000 doses of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine this week to start inoculating high risk groups.