That’s it from the UK blog team, thanks for following our coverage.
Victoria in Australia has imposed a seven-day “circuit-breaker lockdown” in response to a growing Covid cluster in Melbourne’s northern suburbs.
From 11.59pm Thursday, 27 May until 11.59pm Thursday 3 June, the following rules apply to the entire state of Victoria, not just Melbourne.
Authorities in Australia have released a list of public exposure sites in New South Wales visited by a confirmed case of Covid-19.
Here are the current coronavirus hotspots, Covid exposure sites, venues and case location alerts and what to do if you’ve visited them.
Israel’s health ministry said it found a small number of heart inflammation cases observed mainly in young men who received Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine in Israel that were likely linked to their vaccination, Reuters reports.
Pfizer has said it has not observed a higher rate of the condition, known as myocarditis, than would normally be expected in the general population.
In Israel, 275 cases of myocarditis were reported between December 2020 and May 2021 among more than 5 million vaccinated people, the ministry said, in disclosing the findings of a study it commissioned to examine the matter.
Most patients who experienced heart inflammation spent no more than four days in hospital and 95% of the cases were classified as mild, according to the study, which the ministry said was conducted by three teams of experts.
The study found “there is a probable link between receiving the second dose (of Pfizer) vaccine and the appearance of myocarditis among men aged 16 to 30,” it said in a statement.
NSW Health (@NSWHealth)
PUBLIC HEALTH ALERT – JERVIS BAY
NSW Health has been advised by the Victoria Department of Health and Human Services that a confirmed case of COVID-19 from Melbourne was in Jervis Bay, Goulburn, Hyams Beach and Vincentia while potentially infectious on 23 and 24 May. pic.twitter.com/h6FKv177wU
Ecuador this week launched a plan to vaccinate 9 million people against coronavirus in 100 days, part of recently installed President Guillermo Lasso’s plan to revive the economy by battling the pandemic, Reuters reports.
Lasso said the government was in talks with Russia over the purchase of some 18 million doses of the Sputnik V vaccine.
“All of our logistical effort will be successful once we have vaccines,” Lasso said.
“It is urgent, and we depend on the provision of vaccines from abroad.”
Ecuador began its inoculation campaign in January, but former President Lenin Moreno’s administration advanced slowly due to logistical issues, allegations of nepotism in the allocation of shots, and frequent changes of top health officials.
Brazil registered 2,408 Covid-19 deaths and 78,926 additional cases, according to data released by the country’s health ministry.
The South American country has now registered 465,199 total coronavirus deaths and 16,624,480 total confirmed cases, Reuters reports.
As Anthony Fauci, the US’s leading infectious diseases official, grappled with the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic last spring, he was pulled in many directions.
Donald Trump’s White House, which was downplaying the dangers, was demanding he portray the outbreak on their terms; the media was hungry for answers; and Fauci’s email inbox was constantly full with officials, the public and celebrities offering advice and seeking information about the world’s deadliest health crisis for a century.
The US administered 296,404,240 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country as of Tuesday morning and distributed 366,317,045 doses, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Those figures are up from the 294,928,850 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by May 30 out of 366,316,945 doses delivered.
The agency said 168,489,729 people had received at least one dose while 135,867,425 people are fully vaccinated.
Moderna Inc said it has entered into an agreement with Thermo Fisher Scientific for manufacturing and packaging its Covid-19 vaccine, as the US vaccine maker looks to scale up production, Reuters reports.
Under the terms, Moderna said Thermo Fisher’s commercial manufacturing site in Greenville, North Carolina will be used to provide fill/finish manufacturing services and supply packaging for hundreds of millions of doses of the vaccine.
“The addition of Thermo Fisher to our network will support our efforts to scale up our manufacturing ability,” Moderna’s chief technical operations and quality officer, Juan Andres, said in a statement.
Earlier on Tuesday, Moderna filed for full U.S. approval of its COVID-19 vaccine for adults
The UK has reported no deaths from Covid in a day, for the first time in 10 months, raising optimism in Downing Street that England could forge ahead with the final stage of the roadmap despite scientists warning that extra restrictions might be needed to control a third wave.
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, hailed the statistic as proof that vaccines were breaking the link between infection and severe illness, though scientists warned against reading too much into the numbers following a bank holiday weekend.
- India said it is aiming to triple capacity to 10 million jabs per day by July to avert another wave of Covid-19 infections as deadly as the outbreak suffered since April.
- A Brazilian Supreme Court judge has given president Jair Bolsonaro five days to submit information regarding the government’s decision to host the Copa America football tournament despite the nation’s ongoing struggles with Covid-19.
- A decrease in local Covid-19 vaccine production has slowed the pace of Brazil’s inoculation drive and contributed to a growing number of people not taking their second doses, according to the latest data from the Fiocruz biomedical institute.
- Heathrow airport in London has begun processing arrivals from red list countries in a dedicated terminal following concerns about them mixing with other passengers. Travellers arriving from red list nations on direct flights are being taken to Terminal 3.
- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa called on faster delivery of vaccines to poorer countries, including by waiving patents on vaccine development.
- Peru has revised its official Covid-19 death toll to 180,764, nearly triple the previous official figure of 69,342, following a government review that shows the severity of the outbreak in the country.
- The World Health Organisation has recommended a new set of names for the coronavirus “variants of concern”, which will be known by letters of the Greek alphabet. Alpha is the new name for UK/Kent (B.1.1.7), Beta for South Africa (B.1.351), Gamma for Brazil (P.1) and Delta for the variant first detected in India (B.1.617.2).
- Malaysia has begun a tough nationwide lockdown to battle a worsening coronavirus outbreak. Of almost 2,800 deaths from Covid-19 recorded in the country of 32 million since the start of the pandemic, over 40 percent were in May alone.
- Israel announced it will begin phasing out coronavirus-related payments to the unemployed and Ireland announced similar steps later this year while maintaining other income and business supports as the economy fully reopens.
- The Coachella music festival will return to the US in April 2022 after being repeatedly delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic, organisers have announced.
Scotland is entering a “third wave” of coronavirus, according to the national clinical director, as Nicola Sturgeon paused plans to ease Covid restrictions in much of the country.
The First Minister insisted the country was still at a “delicate and fragile point” in the battle with the virus, in an announcement on restrictions which she described as a “mixed bag”.
Jason Leitch warned the Indian variant “is causing us some challenge and is spreading quicker than we hoped”.
When asked by BBC Radio Scotland’s Drivetime if the country was at the start of a third wave he replied: “Yes, I think we are.
“The question is how big that third wave is – everybody, every modelling higher education institution… they all said, if you open you will get more cases.
“Now I’m not sure I needed a university to tell me that, I think people in the street would have told me that.
“The question is, whether you control that to a level that doesn’t cause enough severe disease to fill hospitals, and enough severe disease to cause misery and death to families.
“That’s the balance we’re now trying to strike and the advice we’ve given and the decisions the First Minister and the Cabinet have made today.”
As part of those decisions the First Minister confirmed Glasgow, which had been under the strictest restrictions in Scotland, will see these relaxed, with the city moving to Level 2 from Saturday, PA reports.
On that date, many island communities will move to Level 0 – the lowest level there is under Scotland’s five tier system – while 15 council areas will step down to Level 1.
But 13 local authority areas, including Edinburgh, Dundee and Stirling, will remain in Level 2 for the time being.
A decrease in local Covid-19 vaccine production has slowed the pace of Brazil’s inoculation drive and contributed to a growing number of people not taking their second doses, according to the latest data from the Fiocruz biomedical institute.
Reuters reports:
Brazil administered 21 million COVID-19 shots in May, down 14.2% from the 24.5 million vaccines injected in April, according to data compiled by the federally funded Fiocruz and state Health Departments.
More than 10.5 million second doses were given in April, compared with 6.6 million last month, the data show. Experts said a lack of shots, coupled with misinformation about vaccines, had led millions of Brazilians to only take one dose so far. A lack of chemical ingredients, mainly delivered from China, has caused Brazil’s two main vaccine production hubs, Fiocruz and the Butantan institute in Sao Paulo, to temporarily pause production of their respective shots. Fiocruz is making the AstraZeneca PLC vaccine, while Butantan is manufacturing a shot developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd. Carlos Lula, president of the National Council of Health Secretaries (Conass), said about 5 million people had so far not shown up to take their second dose. “Conass is talking to the Health Ministry and seeing what we can do to speed up vaccinations,” he told Reuters.
The Coachella music festival will return to the US in April 2022, organisers have announced.
The 2020 event was scheduled for April of that year before being pushed to October.
It was then moved to April 2021 before again being cancelled due to the health crisis.
However promoter Goldenvoice has now confirmed Coachella will return over two weekends next year in California – April 15-17 and April 22-24.
Advance ticket sales begin on Friday, organisers added.
The Stagecoach music festival, a country music event scheduled for April on the same site as Coachella, is also making its return.
It is scheduled to take place over April 29-May 1.
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