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The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and some senior cabinet ministers will review the Covid situation on Wednesday, the Elysée has said, amid another surge in cases that has spurred fears of a third lockdown in France.
The European Union rolled out a massive vaccination drive on Sunday to try to rein in a pandemic that has crippled economies worldwide and claimed more than 1.7 million lives worldwide. France reported 8,822 new infections on Sunday up sharply from Saturday’s 3,093.
Russia’s first big international shipment of its vaccine – 300,000 doses sent to Argentina last week –consisted only of the first dose of the two-shot vaccine, which is easier to make than the second dose, sources have told Reuters.
Unlike most others, which are given as two shots of the same product, the Russian Sputnik V vaccine relies on two doses delivered using different inactive viruses, known as vectors. The Gamaleya Institute that developed the vaccine says it is more than 91% effective after the two-dose course.
But some Russian manufacturers are finding the second dose, which is administered 21 days after the first, to be less stable, two sources said, revealing a new challenge for the country’s ambitious national inoculation programme.
The decision to send doses of the vaccine to Argentina caused an outcry at home, where the lifesaving drug is still mostly unavailable to the general public outside the capital Moscow.
Russia has not said exactly how many people have received it. The Gamaleya Institute said last week 650,000 doses had been released for Russia’s domestic vaccination programme so far.
Argentina is the first foreign country apart from Belarus to approve Sputnik V, a win for Moscow’s drive to secure international blessing for its vaccine. Argentinian officials have said they expect to start administering the vaccine in the days ahead.
However, a source close to the manufacturing process, and another in the government, said the shipment was made up only of surplus doses of the first component, which had been produced in greater quantities than the second.
We reported earlier that the UK’s cabinet office minister Michael Gove had indicated the government’s plan for a staggered return of England’s secondary school pupils after the Christmas holidays could yet change because of Covid transmission rates.
Now, the Labour opposition’s shadow education secretary, Kate Green, has accused ministers of “failing to be honest with parents and pupilsâ€. She has said:
Parents, pupils and staff will be increasingly worried by the drip-feed of media reports saying scientists have advised the closure of schools in January, yet the prime minister has failed to be clear about the advice he has received.
Labour has been clear that keeping pupils learning should be a national priority, but a litany of government failures – from a lack of funding for safety measures through to the delayed and chaotic announcement of mass testing – is putting young people’s education at risk.
It is time for the prime minister to get a grip on the situation and show some leadership.
The country needs to hear from him today, alongside the chief medical officer and the chief scientific adviser, about the evidence on the spread of the virus, how he plans to minimise disruption to education and a clear strategy for schools and colleges that commands the support of parents, pupils and staff.
Here’s a little more detail on that news from Kazakhstan, where authorities have signed a preliminary agreement for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. The country’s deputy health minister, Marat Shoranov, has said:
Today we signed a non-disclosure agreement with Pfizer, and we are ready to deal with the supplies of these vaccines on the territory of Kazakhstan by issuing special permits.
Everything will depend on the production capacity and the company’s ability to supply the drug to our country.
Kazakhstan has started producing Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, Russia’s RDIF sovereign wealth fund said last week. Since the start of the pandemic, the Central Asian country of more than 18 million people has reported 152,460 infections and 2,196 deaths.
The distribution of an initial 200m doses of the vaccine developed by Pfizer/BioNTech will be completed for the European Union by September, a spokesman for the European commission has said.
He added that talks were under way to agree the delivery of a further 100m doses, which are optional under the contract.
EU ambassadors have unanimously approved the provisional application of the EU-UK trade and cooperation agreement, a spokesman for the German European council presidency has said.
Hello, I’m taking over from Molly Blackall and I’ll be with you for the next few hours. If you’d like to draw my attention to anything, your best bet’s probably Twitter, where I’m KevinJRawlinson.
I’m going to be handing over to my colleague Kevin Rawlinson shortly, but before I go, here is a brief summary of some of the key developments in the coronavirus pandemic so far this Monday:
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Donald Trump has signed a $900bn coronavirus relief package to help the US economy recover from the pandemic, after threatening to reject the bill last week.
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It is likely to be summer before herd immunity is reached through a coronavirus vaccine programme in the UK, respiratory disease expert Prof Calum Semple has said. Semple said between 70% and 80% of the population needed to be vaccinated before herd immunity could be achieved.
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GCSE and A-Level exams will “absolutely†go ahead next year in England, cabinet minister Michael Gove has said, despite other UK nations either reducing or cancelling exams. England is still planning a staggered return for secondary school pupils after the Christmas holidays, but this may change following the spread of a new variant of coronavirus in England.
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Indonesia is set to ban international visitors for two weeks, beginning on 1 January, amid a spread of new strains of coronavirus elsewhere in the world.
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China has jailed a citizen journalist who reported on the early spread of coronavirus in Wuhan, where it broke out. A Chinese court handed a four-year jail term to Zhang Zhan on grounds of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,†her lawyer said. She is the first such person known to have been tried on this account, Reuters said.
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Ireland is likely to retain maximum Covid-19 restrictions for months until the most vulnerable population groups are vaccinated.
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The current Covid restrictions in Wales will need to be in place for at least three weeks to halt the exponential growth of the virus, Public Health Wales has said.
Kazakhstan has signed a preliminary agreement with Pfizer to potentially buy its vaccine against Covid-19, the Interfax news agency reported.
I’ll bring you more information as I get it…
The current Covid restrictions in Wales will need to be in place for at least three weeks to halt the exponential growth of the virus, Public Health Wales has said.
Dr Giri Shankar, incident director for the Covid outbreak response at PHW, said the alert level 4 would need to remain even longer than that to bring cases back to “reasonably manageable levelsâ€.
Speaking on BBC Radio Wales, he said: “We do have to brace ourselves for an incredibly challenging couple of months in January and February.â€
Shankar said the picture in Wales’ hospitals remained “incredibly concerning†with large numbers of patients suffering from Covid and other conditions – plus a “significant proportion†of staff off sick.
Ireland is likely to retain maximum Covid-19 restrictions for months until the most vulnerable population groups are vaccinated.
Leo Varadkar, the deputy prime minister, signalled on Monday that the current level five restrictions, the highest tier, may continue until spring.
“With the vaccine now being available, I think there would be a case of saying to the Irish people that we should keep these restrictions in place until such a time that we have protected our healthcare workers and most vulnerable,†he told RTE.
The restrictions are to be reviewed on 12 January but Varadkar said he did not envisage relaxations because infections levels were not expected to start falling until mid January. Ireland’s first vaccinations are to start on Tuesday in acute hospital settings, then expand to nursing homes on 4 January.
Northern Ireland last week started a six-week lockdown. The health minister, Robin Swann, urged people to stay home and shun new year’s eve parties which he said could be “super-spreader†events.
Ministers in both jurisdictions were to hold separate meetings on Monday to discuss the Brexit deal’s impact on trade across the Irish Sea.
China has jailed a citizen journalist who reported on the spread of coronavirus in Wuhan, where it broke out.
A Chinese court handed a four-year jail term on Monday to Zhang Zhan on grounds of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,†her lawyer said. She is the first such person known to have been tried on this account, Reuters said.
Her reports from Wuhan relayed first hand accounts of crowded hospitals and empty streets, painting a bleaker picture than the official narrative from the Chinese government.
“We will probably appeal,†the lawyer, Ren Quanniu, told Reuters. “Ms Zhang believes she is being persecuted for exercising her freedom of speech,†he had said before the trial.
Laurie Chen, news agency AFP’s China and Mongolia correspondent, said the case was a “litmus test for China’s freedom of speech.â€
Thailand recorded 3,065 foreign tourists in November, its second month of receiving long-stay visitors after a ban was imposed in April to reduce the spread of coronavirus.
The figure is a fraction of the 3.39 million arrivals in the same period last year. In October, there were 1,201 foreign visitors.
In the January-November period, the number of foreign visitors slumped by 81% from a year earlier.
