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Related: Coronavirus live news: UK to start vaccinations on Tuesday; WHO criticises mandatory vaccines
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has urged Londoners to help ensure the city is not placed into tougher Covid-19 restrictions as data shows rising case rates across three-quarters of the capital’s boroughs.
A spokesman for the mayor warned there could be a “devastating” surge in cases this winter should people fail to follow the existing Tier 2 coronavirus measures.
If we begin to act like this virus has gone away we could see a devastating further surge in cases at a time of year when our NHS is already under enough pressure.”
The president of Sao Paulo’s Butantan Institute biomedical center, Dimas Covas, said all necessary data for the CoronaVac vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd has been or will soon be sent to health regulator Anvisa.
He expects Anvisa to approve it, regardless of the political storm between Brazil’s President Bolsonaro and Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria over competing vaccines.
I want to think that no political problem is bigger than people’s lives,” Covas said in an interview with GloboNews.
Victoria in Australia has reported no new cases.
Yesterday there were 0 new local cases and 0 new cases acquired overseas. There were 0 deaths reported. There were 7,043 test results received. #EveryTestHelps#StaySafeStayOpen
More info: https://t.co/2vKbgKHFvv#COVID19Vic#COVID19VicDatapic.twitter.com/tkg8JChpCg
The front page of Tuesday’s edition of The Guardian in the UK.
Tuesday’s GUARDIAN: “PM heads to Brussels after UK holds out olive branch” #TomorrowsPapersTodaypic.twitter.com/sRcw2hEP41
Trump administration officials passed when Pfizer Inc offered in late summer to sell more vaccine doses to the US, the New York Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The drugmaker now may not be able to provide more of its vaccine to the US until next June because of its commitments to other countries, the newspaper reported.
Vaccine developers Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc on Monday rejected U.S. President Donald Trump’s invitation to attend a White House “Vaccine Summit”, according to Reuters.
The meeting, scheduled for Tuesday, comes ahead of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) review of Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine candidates.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said the government will offer COVID-19 vaccines to all Brazilians, without cost or obligation, once health regulator Anvisa gives it scientific and legal approval.
In a post on his Twitter account, Bolsonaro also said the economy ministry has pledged there will be no shortage of resources for everyone who wants a vaccine to get one.
President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Tuesday to ensure that priority access for COVID-19 vaccines procured by the U.S. government is given to the American people before assisting other nations, a senior administration official told Reuters.
Trump, who has faced sharp criticism for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, is eager to take credit for the speedy development and distribution of a vaccine.
World Health Organisation experts have suggested they would support the coronavirus vaccination becoming “a requirement” for hospital workers.
The WHO’s immunisation director, Professor Kate O’Brien, told a WHO press conference there “may be some countries where there are professional circumstances where it would be required to be vaccinated”, specifying “certain jobs in hospitals”.
But I think all of us who work in public health would rather avoid that as a means of getting people back to business.
Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who tested positive for COVID-19, is doing well in the hospital and does not have a fever, the US president said.
“Rudy’s doing well,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
No temperature, and he actually called me earlier this morning. Was the first call I got.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada will get up to 249,000 doses of the vaccine developed by American drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech before the end of December.
The vaccine is expected be approved by Health Canada as soon as Thursday.
We are now contracted to receive up to 249,000 of our initial doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine in the month of December,” Trudeau said. “Pending Health Canada approval, the first shipment of doses is tracking for delivery next week.”
Canada has contracts with six other vaccine makers as well.
Here’s a summary of the most recent developments:
The US recorded 174,387 more cases and 1,118 deaths on Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said, taking the cumulative totals to 14,636,914 and 281,253.
The French health ministry’s top official, Jérôme Salomon, has backed up the bleak assessment attributed to the health minister, Olivier Véran, earlier, who said the country was unlikely to meet the conditions required for ending its national lockdown on 15 December.
“For the last few days, the level of infections has stopped falling,” Salomon told a press conference.
Italy’s interior minister, Luciana Lamorgese, discovered during a cabinet meeting on Monday that she had coronavirus, prompting her to leave the gathering hastily, political sources said.
Citing a source in her office, Reuters reported that Lamorgese was asymptomatic and tested positive after undergoing a routine swab before the meeting. Lamorgese, a 67-year-old former civil servant who has no political affiliation, returned home and will remain there in isolation while continuing to work.
The WHO wants to visit China “as soon as possible” to study the origins of the pandemic, its director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has said.
“We are planning and hope to be on the ground as soon as possible,” he told a news conference.
The World Health Organization (WHO) does not foresee countries making it mandatory for citizens to take the new vaccines that have been developed, an official has said. “I don’t think we envisage any countries creating a mandate for vaccinations,” Kate O’Brien, the WHO’s director of immunisation vaccines and biologicals, said.
“There may be some countries or some situations in countries where professional circumstances require it or highly recommend to be vaccinated,” she added, saying hospitals might be one such instance.
Hello, I’m taking over from Sarah Marsh and will be with you for the next few hours. If you’d like to get in touch, your best bet is probably Twitter, where I’m KevinJRawlinson.
Turkey’s daily coronavirus deaths rose to a record 203 in the last 24 hours, bringing the country’s total death toll to 15,103 since the beginning of the pandemic. It recorded 32,137 new coronavirus cases, including asymptomatic ones.
Turkey was on lockdown over the weekend to combat a recent surge in deaths and infections. On Friday Turkey had 32,736 new cases, the highest number since the pandemic began.
Denmark will close middle and high schools, bars, cafes and restaurants in 38 municipalities this week, affecting almost half of the country’s population.
The prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said the spread of the infection was “too high and the situation is too worrying. As a result, we have to adopt measures to control the infection and the epidemic.” Sh urged Danes to limit their Christmas and new year gatherings to 10 people.
Lithuania has extended its lockdown until the end of this year. It has recorded 1,037 cases per 100,000 people over the past two weeks – three times more than the 340 cases when the lockdown was announced on 4 November.
The country now trails only Croatia and Luxembourg on the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control list. “If people precisely kept to rules, we would not need to tighten them today,” said the acting prime minister, Saulius Skvernelis.
Italy reported 528 coronavirus-related deaths on Monday, against 564 on Sunday, the health ministry said, and 13,720 new infections, down from 18,887 the day before. The fall in cases reflected the usual drop in the number of swabs conducted on Sundays.
The first western country hit by the virus, Italy has recorded a total of 60,606 Covid-19 fatalities, the second highest toll in Europe after Britain. It has registered 1.74 million cases to date.
Hello, my name is Sarah Marsh and I am taking over the blog while my colleague takes a break. Please get in touch while I work to share comments and news tips.
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Merkel has told party colleagues that existing lockdown measures will not be sufficient to get the country through the winter, participants at the meeting have said.
“Relying on hope won’t help us,” she told legislators from her conservative bloc in a discussion of the rising numbers of cases, Reuters reported citing participants at the meeting.
German leaders are not officially due to meet to discuss further measures until 4 January. However, it is very likely they will be forced into an earlier encounter. On Monday the head of Merkel’s office, Helge Braun, said:
If the states are ready for a further coronavirus summit, we will be onboard immediately. The government has said all along we are in favour of doing more.
Söder said there was little sense in waiting. The newest “lockdown lite” – as it was dubbed – had only been partially successful, he said, adding: “If one is convinced that one must act, then there’s no point in waiting.”
There was a growing consensus that the rest of Germany, where it is also increasingly clear the virus is getting out of control, may have to follow. Karl Lauterbach, the health expert for the Social Democrats, who is in close communication with the chancellor, Angela Merkel, has supported extending Bavaria’s blueprint into a nationwide lockdown.
German leaders are considering reversing their decision to relax contact rules over Christmas amid growing evidence that tighter restrictions that have been in place since early November have failed to sufficiently dampen the disease’s spread.
Markus Söder, the leader of Bavaria, where the infection rate is particularly high, is leading the calls for tighter regulations, having put forward a 10-point plan to tackle the virus and called for a state of emergency.
Inovio Pharmaceuticals said on Monday it has dosed the first participant in a mid-stage clinical trial testing its vaccine candidate INO-4800.
The phase 2 portion of the phase 2/3 study will enrol about 400 participants who are 18 years or older, to assess the vaccine’s ability to produce an immune system response and to determine the dose for a later study, the company said.
England’s tour of South Africa has been called off without the one-day series being played following the recent outbreak at the team hotel.
The players and support staff were informed of the early departure at a team meeting on Monday and are now preparing to leave Cape Town on a chartered flight, three days earlier than was originally scheduled.
Related: England to fly home after South Africa ODI series called off due to Covid-19
France appears to have little chance of meeting the conditions required for ending its national lockdown on 15 December.
According to BFM TV, the health minister, Olivier Véran, has told parliamentarians that thedaily number of new cases is unlikely to fall to 5,000 in time. That was one of the prerequisites set by the president, Emmanuel Macron. Another was to get the number of people in intensive care to fewer than 3,000.
Hungary will maintain restrictions, including a 8pm curfew, until at least 11 January, the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has said. He added in a Facebook video that New Year’s Eve celebrations would not be held this year.
Petsas said the restrictions would expire at 6am on 7 January.
The nationwide lockdown already includes a 9pm to 5am curfew. He said new measures would apply to schools, courts, restaurants, gyms and ski resorts, and that travel between different districts in Greece would be prohibited.
Schools, restaurants and courts in Greece will not reopen until 7 January, the government’s spokesman Stelios Petsas has said.
Greece was forced to impose a nationwide lockdown in November, its second this year, after an aggressive rise in Covid-19 cases. It has extended it twice since then, most recently until 14 December.
Denmark will implement further lockdown measures in parts of the country to curb a recent spike in infections, the prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has said.
Bars, restaurants, museums and cinemas will have to close on 9 December in 38 municipalities, including Copenhagen, and students in upper primary school, high schools and universities will be sent home. The new restrictions will be in place until 3 January.
Some 3,000 to 5,000 Hungarians could participate in clinical trials of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, the Hungarian human resources minister Miklos Kasler said on his Facebook page on Monday.
Kasler said a Hungarian delegation of medical experts had received “detailed notification” about the Russian vaccine in Moscow and observed “that the vaccine is being manufactured with the latest technology and with WHO protocols being applied”.
Next year’s Paris airshow has been cancelled as the aerospace industry continues to weather the coronavirus crisis, a spokesman for the French organisers said today.
Together with Britain’s Farnborough airshow, with which it alternates every other year, the event is the industry’s largest showcase. Its cancellation is the latest sign of the depth of the pandemic-related crisis hitting airlines and manufacturers.
More than 66.66 million people have been reported to be infected by coronavirus globally and 1,533,752 have died, according to the latest Reuters tally.
Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
The number of new Covid-19 infections per day in France is unlikely to fall to a 5,000 target by 15 December as the population is not sufficiently respecting social distancing measures, one of France*s top coronavirus experts said today.
Eric Caumes, head of infectious diseases at Paris hospital La Pitié-Salpêtrière, told LCI television that if the French are not cautious enough over Christmas and year-end holidays, it will lead to a third wave of the virus in mid-January.
It’s back to school today for some New York City schoolchildren, weeks after the schools were closed to in-person learning because of rising Covid-19 infections.
The city’s public school system, which shut down in-person learning earlier this month, will bring back preschool students and children in kindergarten through fifth grade, whose parents chose a mix of in-school and remote learning. Special education students in all grades who have particularly complex needs will be welcomed back starting Thursday.
We have facts now for two straight months of extraordinarily low levels of transmission in our schools, our schools are clearly safer. This is what our health care leaders say. Our schools are safer than pretty much any place else in New York City. So, I really think everyone in the school community can feel secure because so many measures are in place to protect everyone.
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. Thanks for following along – and stay tuned for the latest with my colleague Haroon Siddique.
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
Some of England’s most ethnically diverse areas have suffered up to four times more coronavirus infections than mostly white neighbourhoods only a few miles away, a Guardian analysis reveals, as health experts said the UK had paid the price for failing to tackle structural racism.
A study of England’s 10 worst-hit council areas found huge disparities in the effect of Covid-19 on residents living alongside one another, with densely packed Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities bearing the brunt of the pandemic.
Related: Densely packed BAME communities in England bear brunt of Covid-19
The World Health Organization is holding discussions on Monday about the feasibility of trials in which healthy young volunteers are deliberately infected with coronavirus to hasten vaccine development – amid questions over whether they should go ahead given the promising data from the frontrunner vaccine candidates.
Some scientists have reservations about exposing volunteers to a virus for which there is no cure, although there are treatments that can help patients. However, proponents argue that the risks of Covid-19 to the young and healthy are minimal, and the benefits to society are high:
Related: WHO looks at giving Covid to healthy people to speed up vaccine trials
Indonesia received its first shipment of coronavirus vaccine from China on Sunday, President Joko Widodo said, as the government prepares a mass inoculation programme.
The vaccine still needs to be evaluated by the country’s food and drug agency while his administration prepares to distribute it across the vast archipelago of 270 million people, Jokowi said.
Britain is set to administer the first doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday, with the NHS giving top priority to vaccinating the over-80s, frontline healthcare workers and care home staff and residents, Reuters reports.
The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine needs to be kept at -70C (-94F) and only lasts five days in a regular fridge. For that reason, it will first be administered in 50 hospitals. About 800,000 doses are expected to be available within the first week.
Provincial governments across China are placing orders for experimental, domestically made coronavirus vaccines, though health officials have yet to say how well they work or how they may reach the country’s 1.4 billion people, AP reports.
Developers are speeding up final testing, the Chinese foreign minister said during a US meeting last week, as Britain approved emergency use of Pfizer Inc’s vaccine candidate and providers scrambled to set up distribution.
Even without final approval, more than 1 million health care workers and others in China who are deemed at high risk of infection have received experimental vaccines under emergency use permission. Developers have yet to disclose how effective their vaccines are and possible side effects.
China’s fledgling pharmaceutical industry has at least five vaccines from four producers being tested in more than a dozen countries including Russia, Egypt and Mexico. Health experts say even if they are successful, the certification process for the United States, Europe, Japan and other developed countries might be too complex for them to be used there.
A plea from Dr. Anthony Fauci for people to “wear a mask” to slow the spread of the coronavirus tops a Yale Law School librarian’s list of the most notable quotes of 2020.
The list assembled by Fred Shapiro, an associate director at the library, is an annual update to “The Yale Book of Quotations,” which was first published in 2006, AP reports.
Also on the list is “I can’t breathe,” the plea George Floyd made repeatedly to police officers holding him down on a Minneapolis street corner. Several quotes from the presidential campaign appear including Joe Biden telling a student: “You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier.”
Shapiro said he picks quotes that are not necessarily admirable or eloquent, but rather because they are famous or particularly revealing of the spirit of the times.
In case you missed this earlier: Jerrold M Post, a psychiatrist who profiled dictators for the CIA and who declared Donald Trump a “dangerous, destructive charismatic leader”, has died of Covid-19. He was 86.
A pioneer in his field, Post’s assessments of leaders such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and Kim Jong-il helped guide presidents and other US officials.
Related: Jerrold Post, CIA psychiatrist who profiled Trump, dies of Covid aged 86
China reported 15 new Covid-19 cases on Dec. 6, down from 18 cases a day earlier, the national health authority said on Monday.
The National Health Commission said in a statement 12 of the new cases were imported infections originating from overseas. Three locally transmitted infections were reported in the Inner Mongolia region.
The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, rose to six from two cases a day earlier.
The total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in mainland China now stands at 86,634, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
South Korea reported 615 new coronavirus cases on Monday, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said, capping a month of triple-digit daily increases that have driven the nation’s largest wave of infections in nine months.
Monday’s total was down slightly from Sunday, when the agency reported 631 new cases, the largest daily tally since a peak in February and early March.
The Arizona Capitol Times reports that the Arizona state legislature will close for the whole of this coming week, “after at least 15 current or future Republican legislators may have been directly exposed to Covid-19 by meeting with Rudy Giuliani.”
The decision seems to contradict a statement released earlier by the Trump campaign, saying Giuliani no legislators or members of the press were on Giuliani’s contact tracing list because he had tested negative and not experienced symptoms until at least 48 hours after meeting with any of them.
New statement concerning @RudyGiuliani covid diagnosis from Trump campaign. pic.twitter.com/ZfUrmZF0Hg
Several lawmakers who attended the unofficial hearing on 30 November also attended the Legislature’s new member orientation later in the week, potentially exposing even more lawmakers and many state government employees. Nguyen, Burges and Rogers were at both events.
Sen. Andrea Dalessandro, D-Sahuarita, said she’s making plans to take a test Wednesday after learning that several of the GOP legislators she attended the orientation with had spent time with Giuliani.
Mexico’s Health Ministry on Sunday reported 7,455 new cases of coronavirus infection and an additional 261 fatalities, bringing the country’s totals to 1,175,850 cases and 109,717 deaths.
The government says the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
Japan is preparing to send nurses from the Self-Defence Forces to Osaka and Hokkaido to help treat a surge in coronavirus infections as soon as the two prefecture governments request it, chief government spokesman Katsunobu Kato said on Monday.
The Serum Institute of India has sought emergency use authorisation from India’s drug regulator for AstraZeneca Plc’s Covid-19 vaccine on Sunday, according to several reports in Indian media, citing the Press Trust of India.
It applied to the Drugs Controller General of India, citing unmet medical needs due to the pandemic and in the interest of the public at large, the agency report said, citing official sources.
The Serum Institute was not immediately available to Reuters request for comment.
More on Japan’s prime minister now: Suga has defended his support for Go To Travel and the Olympics, which could see “large-scale” numbers of sports fans arriving in Tokyo from overseas, including those who have not been vaccinated.
Suga, who became prime minister in September after Shinzo Abe resigned on health grounds, said the government was tackling the latest surge in Covid-19 infections with a “strong sense of crisis”.
“Protecting the lives and livelihoods of the people is my administration’s top priority,” Suga, who did not hold a single press conference in November, told reporters on Friday.
Earlier, in a pre-recorded address to a US general assembly session on the pandemic, he insisted the Tokyo Games would be “proof that humanity had defeated the pandemic,” adding, “I will continue to spare no effort to bring about a Games that are safe and secure”.
Public support for Japan’s new prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, has plummeted over the past month amid mounting criticism of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
A new poll by the Kyodo news agency shows support for his cabinet at 50.3%, down 13 percentage points from a month earlier. Disapproval rose from 19.2% to 32.6%.
The poll, conducted over the weekend, revealed widespread opposition to the Go To Travel campaign to encourage domestic travel in an attempt to prop up regional economies during the pandemic. Just over 48% of respondents wanted the scheme to be suspended, soon after the government announced that it would be extended by five months until the end of June. Just 11.6% believed the government was managing the programme properly.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Monday ordered testing for the new coronavirus to be expanded by mobilizing the military and more people from the public service, as the country continued to report triple-digit daily new cases, Reuters reports.
US President-elect Joe Biden is expected to nominate Rochelle Walensky, chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, to run the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Reuters reports, citing a person familiar with the decision.
In Australia, the city of Melbourne has welcomed its first international passenger flight in five months, an arrival that will test the state of Victoria’s revamped hotel quarantine system.
Australia has since March closed its borders to non-citizens, but airports serving Victoria’s capital stopped accepting any arrivals in late June after an outbreak of Covid-19 that began at two hotels where arrivals were quarantining.
More on the lockdown in California now, from AP:
In California, the first place in the US to enact a statewide lockdown last spring, new stay-at-home orders were set to take effect Sunday night in Southern California, much of the San Francisco Bay area and other areas.
Questions, comments or news tips? Get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
Here is the full story on Biden’s pick for Health and Human Services secretary:
Related: Joe Biden to nominate California attorney general Xavier Becerra as health secretary – reports
President-elect Joe Biden has picked California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to be his health secretary, putting a defender of the Affordable Care Act in a leading role to oversee his administration’s coronavirus response, AP reports.
If confirmed by the Senate, Becerra, 62, will be the first Latino to head the Department of Health and Human Services, a $1-trillion-plus agency with 80,000 employees and a portfolio that includes drugs and vaccines, leading-edge medical research and health insurance programs covering more than 130 million Americans.
As California’s attorney general, Becerra has led the coalition of Democratic states defending “Obamacare” from the Trump administration’s latest effort to overturn it, a legal case awaiting a Supreme Court decision next year.
Crowded scenes on the first weekend of Christmas shopping after the easing of lockdown in England have prompted fears about a lack of social distancing and the risk of spreading coronavirus.
Despite overall footfall being down on the same period last year, images emerged on Sunday of busy high streets with shoppers standing close together, and a Christmas market in Nottingham had to be shut for good within 24 hours of opening. In addition four people were arrested as a crowd tried enter Harrods in the West End in London:
Related: Busy high streets after lockdown prompt Covid fears but numbers still down
Doctors are stepping up a legal effort to force a public inquiry into Covid-19 deaths among NHS staff and care workers because of a lack of personal protective equipment.
Doctors Association UK (DAUK), a union that represents frontline medics, has escalated its threat of judicial review against the government.
Related: Doctors step up drive for probe into PPE and Covid deaths among health workers
Multiple news outlets are reporting that Rudy Giuliani, personal lawyer to Donald Trump, has been admitted to hospital following the announcement by Trump on Twitter that Giuliani had tested positive for coronavirus.
CNN, the New York Times and the ABC, citing unnamed sources familiar with the situation, report that Giuliani has been admitted to Georgetown University Hospital. The Guardian has not been able to verify this independently.
Hello and welcome to today’s live coronavirus news with me, Helen Sullivan.
I’ll be bringing you the latest updates for the next few hours. As always, you can get in touch with me on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
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