France registers 464,769 new Covid-19 infections over the last 24 hours; Italy’s cases jump from 83,403 a day earlier
France has registered 464,769 new Covid-19 infections over the last 24 hours, official data showed on Tuesday, the highest ever-recorded tally since the start of the pandemic, reports Reuters. Official figures show coronavirus deaths in hospital have increased by 288 to 100,339.
That’s it from me, Samantha Lock, for today’s Covid blog.
Please join me on our latest live feed here where I’ll be focusing a little more on the coronavirus crisis across Asia, Australia and the Pacific.
We also expect to hear new announcements regarding Plan B Covid measures across England after British prime minister Boris Johnson meets with his cabinet on Wednesday morning.
You can also keep up with the top headlines here.
New Zealand has temporarily cut off the only pathway home for overseas citizens and visa holders, citing the risk of the Omicron variant.
Officials announced on Tuesday evening that new spaces in the country’s managed isolation and quarantine system (MIQ) would not be released.
The Covid-19 response minister, Chris Hipkins, said on Wednesday that while the pause was “temporary” there was no date for when spaces would again be available – meaning New Zealand’s border would be closed for an indeterminate time to citizens without an existing booking. “Pausing the next MIQ lobby is a temporary position while MIQ is under extreme pressure from New Zealanders returning with Omicron,” he said.
Read the full story here.
The mood of Conservative MPs hardened against Boris Johnson on Tuesday night, with open talk of how to oust the British prime minister and who should succeed him as he gave a disastrous interview claiming not to have lied over Downing Street parties.
A string of Tory MPs from various ranks and wings of the party said they believed there would be enough letters to trigger a leadership contest after the publication of the Sue Gray report into allegations of lockdown breaches.
Johnson was trying to shore up his support in the parliamentary party after it emerged a group of a dozen or so of the 2019 intake had met in the office of Alicia Kearns to discuss his future as prime minister.
After the meeting – dubbed the “pork pie putsch” as Kearns’ constituency contains Melton Mowbray – one MP said there were about 20 letters, “some sent, some in draft”. There needs to be 54 letters submitted to trigger a confidence ballot against the prime minister, who met some of the new cohort on Tuesday evening.
Read the full analysis here.
Returning to Boris Johnson’s fight to salvage his premiership for a moment.
With all the commotion over Westminster parties and the future of the prime minister, you may have lost track of how the Covid crisis is unfolding in the UK.
Johnson will attempt to change the national conversation by announcing the end of Plan B Covid measures.
The PM is expected to instruct millions to return to workplaces across England as he tries to placate furious MPs with a review of Covid restrictions that could end all rules introduced to combat Omicron.
The cabinet will meet on Wednesday morning to examine Covid data and review plan B restrictions imposed in December amid the rapid spread of the variant, with Johnson set to update the Commons later in the day.
While an official statement said decisions remained “finely balanced”, ministers are widely expected to approve the end of current advice for people to work from home where possible and the use of vaccine certificates to enter venues like nightclubs and sports stadiums. This would happen from Monday 26 January, the pre-set review point for the plan B measures.
It is also possible, if considered less likely, that the cabinet could drop the final plan B restriction which mandates masks on public transport and in shops. This move in particular would please many Conservative backbenchers, especially those in the influential Covid Recovery Group.
Samantha Lock back with you on the blog as my colleague Tom Ambrose calls it a night in London. I’ll be bringing you all the latest Covid news from Sydney.
Here’s a quick snapshot of how Covid is unfolding across Australia.
The country’s most populous state of NSW has recorded 32 deaths and 32,297 new cases while Victoria reported 18 Covid deaths and 20,769 new cases as hospitals move to emergency measures.
Australia’s chief medical officer says the daily death toll will continue to rise for several weeks.
Boris Johnson is expected to announce an easing of England’s coronavirus restrictions as he battles to save his premiership.
The prime minister and his cabinet will examine the latest Covid data on Wednesday morning before making a statement in the Commons on Wednesday afternoon, PA Media reported.
England’s Plan B measures – which include guidance to work from home, the use of the Covid pass and mandatory mask-wearing in shops and on public transport – are set to expire on 26 January.
The health secretary, Sajid Javid, told MPs on Tuesday that he was “cautiously optimistic that we will be able to substantially reduce restrictions next week”.
No final decisions have yet been made, although any attempt to extend the restrictions beyond the cut-off date would trigger a fresh confrontation with Tory MPs, something the prime minister would wish to avoid as his position has already been weakened due to the row over Downing Street parties.
Asked whether restrictions would be lifted during a visit to a hospital on Tuesday, Johnson said: “We’ve got to be careful about Covid. We’ve got to continue to remember that it’s a threat.”
The United Nations is preparing for distanced relief operations in Tonga to avoid a Covid outbreak in the Pacific island nation that is reeling under the impact of a volcanic eruption and tsunami, an official said on Wednesday.
All the homes on one of Tonga’s small outer islands have been destroyed and three people have so far been confirmed dead, the government said in its first statement after Saturday’s devastating eruption.
With communications badly hampered by the severing of an undersea cable, information on the scale of the devastation so far has mostly come from reconnaissance aircraft.
Fiji-based UN co-ordinator Jonathan Veitch said in a media briefing that the agency will conduct most operations remotely, and may not send personnel to the island.
“We believe that we will be able to send flights with supplies. We’re not sure that we can send flights with personnel and the reason for this is that Tonga has a very strict Covid-free policy,” Veitch said.
Tonga is one of the few countries that is Covid free and an outbreak there would disastrous, he said. The tiny island nation has 90% immunisation coverage both in adults and also younger people over the age of 12, Veitch said.
The Omicron variant may cause less severe disease on average, but Covid deaths in the US are climbing and modellers forecast 50,000 to 300,000 more Americans could die by the time the wave subsides in mid-March.
The seven-day rolling average for daily new Covid deaths in the US has been trending upward since mid-November, reaching nearly 1,700 on 17 January — still below the peak of 3,300 in January 2021.
Deaths among nursing home residents started rising slightly two weeks ago, although still at a rate 10 times less than last year before most residents were vaccinated.
“A lot of people are still going to die because of how transmissible Omicron has been,” said University of South Florida epidemiologist Jason Salemi. “It unfortunately is going to get worse before it gets better.”
The worst of the coronavirus pandemic — deaths, hospitalisations and lockdowns — could be over this year if huge inequities in vaccinations and medicines are addressed quickly, the head of emergencies at the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.
Dr Michael Ryan, speaking during a panel discussion on vaccine inequity hosted by the World Economic Forum, said “we may never end the virus” because such pandemic viruses “end up becoming part of the ecosystem.”
But “we have a chance to end the public health emergency this year if we do the things that we’ve been talking about,” he said.
The Associated Press reported:
WHO has slammed the imbalance in COVID-19 vaccinations between rich and poor countries as a catastrophic moral failure. Fewer than 10% of people in lower-income countries have received even one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Ryan told the virtual gathering of world and business leaders that if vaccines and other tools aren’t shared fairly, the tragedy of the virus, which has so far killed more than 5.5 million people worldwide, would continue.
“What we need to do is get to low levels of disease incidence with maximum vaccination of our populations, so nobody has to die,” Ryan said. “The issue is: It’s the death. It’s the hospitalisations. It’s the disruption of our social, economic, political systems that’s caused the tragedy — not the virus.”
Ryan also waded into the growing debate about whether Covid should be considered endemic, a label some countries like Spain have called for to better help live with the virus, or still a pandemic — involving intensified measures that many countries have taken to fight the spread.
“Endemic malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people; endemic HIV; endemic violence in our inner cities. Endemic in itself does not mean good. Endemic just means it’s here forever,” he said.
The Biden administration on Tuesday quietly launched its website for Americans to request free at-home Covid-19 tests, a day before the site was scheduled to officially go online.
The website, CovidTests.gov, now includes a link for Americans to access an order form run by the US Postal Service.
People can order four at-home tests per residential address. It marks the latest step by Joe Biden to address criticism of low inventory and long lines for testing during a nationwide surge in Covid-19 cases due to the Omicron variant.
The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said the website was in “beta testing” and operating at a “limited capacity” ahead of its official launch. The website will officially launch mid-morning on Wednesday, Psaki said.
There were isolated reports of problems relating to the address verification tool erroneously enforcing the four-per-household cap on apartment buildings and other multi-unit dwellings, but it was not immediately clear how widespread the issue was.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has advised against travel to 22 nations and territories because of a rising number of Covid cases.
The countries include Israel, Australia, Egypt, Albania, Argentina and Uruguay.
The CDC raised its travel recommendation to “Level Four: Very High,” telling Americans they should avoid travel to those destinations, which also include Panama, Qatar, the Bahamas, Bahrain and Bolivia.
Spain’s coronavirus infection rate dropped for the first time in two-and-a-half months, health ministry data showed on Tuesday.
The latest figures suggest the Omicron variant’s rapid-fire advance may be slowing, according to the Reuters news agency.
Even as Spain reported over 94,400 new cases, the rate as measured over the preceding 14 days fell to 3,306 cases per 100,000 people from a record 3,397 cases on Wednesday, the first decline since 2 November when it was below 50.
The seven-day rate fell even more sharply, to 1,522 from 1,657 per 100,000.
Infections had climbed without interruption amid mass testing, turbo-charged by Omicron’s elevated transmissibility and large swathes of the population mixing over Christmas.
Hospital admissions remain well below those seen in earlier waves, however, thanks to Spain’s high vaccination rates.
Hello, I’m Tom Ambrose and will continue to bring you all the latest Covid news as it happens over the next few hours.
We begin with the news that Paraguay’s president Mario Abdo has tested positive for Covid and has mild symptoms from the virus.
The country’s health ministry confirmed the development in a tweet today.
It comes as the South American country has seen a spike in cases driven by the Omicron variant.
“We inform that the President of the Republic, Mario Abdo, tested positive for Covid-19 today,” the ministry said.
“The president has mild symptoms and will continue to maintain preventive isolation in accordance with the provisions of the current health protocols.”
