Health News at Your Fingertips

The number of workers on UK payrolls has fallen by nearly 730,000 since the start of the pandemic and the jobless rate has surged to its highest level since 2016, but official figures revealed “early signs” of a stabilising jobs market.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the number of payrolled workers rose by 83,000 between January and February in the second small monthly increase in a row.
But the data showed the toll taken by the coronavirus crisis on the jobs market, with 726,000 fewer workers on payrolls since February 2020.
The rate of unemployment has also now hit 5.1% between October and December – up from 5% in the previous quarter.
Figures show this is the highest since early 2016 when it was also 5.1%. The rate was last above this in the autumn of 2015, when it was 5.2%.

Tui, the UK’s largest tour operator, recorded a sixfold increase in bookings after the government’s roadmap announcement for England, making Monday its busiest day in more than a month.

The hotspots of Greece, Spain and Turkey from July onwards are the most in-demand locations.

Managing director Andrew Flintham said the government could work with the travel industry to develop a “risk-based framework” that will give holidaymakers “the opportunity to travel abroad this summer”.

He added that there was “huge demand to travel” and “people can look forward to a well-deserved break away after what has been a very difficult year for many”.

Online travel firm Thomas Cook said traffic to its website was up 75% on Monday as people rushed to book holidays for this summer and 2022.

Chief executive Alan French described the announcement as “good news for those of us desperate to get away on holiday”.

Afghanistan has launched a Covid-19 vaccination campaign aimed at inoculating hundreds of thousands, as the war-weary nation reels from near-daily attacks by insurgents, AFP reports.

Doctors, security personnel, and journalists were among the first volunteers to receive doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, donated earlier this month by India.

“Today, I congratulate the people of Afghanistan for the launch of the first stage of Covid-19 vaccine [drive] with 500,000 doses of vaccines. This is a big opportunity for the people of Afghanistan,” said the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, as the first jabs were administered.

“We don’t expect any miracles, but let’s help this campaign to be implemented justly,” the country’s acting health minister, Waheed Majroh added.

Afghanistan is believed to have been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic in the last year, but limited testing and a ramshackle healthcare sector have hampered its ability to track the virus.

Russia has reported 11,823 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, including 1,198 in Moscow, taking the national tally to 4,189,153 since the pandemic began.

The government taskforce also reported 417 deaths in the last 24 hours, pushing the official death toll to 84,047.

The UK health secretary, Matt Hancock, said the number of variant cases across the UK had “fallen quite sharply” and suggested this meant measures at the border were “working”.

He told Sky News:

In the last week or so, there were just over a dozen new cases, which is far smaller than we were seeing even a couple of weeks ago.

So the extra measures that we’re taking at the border are working.

He said the review into international travel in the road map would be informed by evidence about vaccine effectiveness against new variants.

We do have to protect against these new variants, and that is a big challenge.

One of the reviews announced yesterday is a review into international travel. And that review will be informed by the evidence that we’re currently collecting on the impact of the vaccine on these, the so-called South Africa and Brazil new variants.

If the vaccine works well against them, then we can be much more relaxed about international travel. If the vaccine doesn’t work against them, then that will be much, much more difficult.

Airlines and travel firms are experiencing a surge in demand in the UK following prime minister Boris Johnson’s road map for how coronavirus restrictions will be eased.

Johnson said on Monday that a government taskforce will produce a report by 12 April recommending how international trips can resume for people in England.

Foreign holidays could be permitted from 17 May.

In the hours after the announcement, easyJet said bookings by UK customers for the summer season were more than four times higher compared with the same period during the previous week.

The Luton-based firm’s holiday division reported an even larger rise, with demand up sevenfold. The most popular destinations for this summer are beach resorts including Malaga, Alicante and Palma in Spain, Faro in Portugal and the Greek island of Crete.

August is the most booked month, followed by July and September.
The EasyJet chief executive, Johan Lundgren, told PA Media:

We have consistently seen that there is pent-up demand for travel and this surge in bookings shows that this signal from the government that it plans to reopen travel has been what UK consumers have been waiting for.

The prime minister’s address has provided a much-needed boost in confidence for so many of our customers in the UK with demand for flights up 337% and holidays up 630% already compared to last week and beach destinations proving most popular for this summer.

While the summer may be a little while off, we will be working around the clock to ensure we will be ready to ramp up our flights to reconnect friends and family or take them on a long-awaited holiday to remember.

That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. Thanks for following – and stay tuned for more updates from my colleague Caroline Davies.

If you would like some calm with your pandemic-mandated indoor monotony, might I suggest these poet-recommended Keats poems:

Here are the key coronavirus developments from the last few hours:

• More than half a million people have died of Covid-19 in the US, according to Johns Hopkins University. The country had recorded more than 28 million cases and 500,071 lives have been lost as of Monday afternoon. In a somber address to the nation as the US surpassed half a million coronavirus deaths on Monday, Joe Biden urged the country to unify in its battle against the virus.
• Dr Fauci: the political divide added to ‘stunning’ US deaths. Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said political divisiveness contributed significantly to the “stunning” US coronavirus death toll, which on Monday surpassed 500,000 lives lost.
• Italy allegedly misled the World Health Organization on its readiness to face a pandemic less than three weeks before the country’s first locally transmitted coronavirus case was confirmed.
• Syria has authorised the use of Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, its embassy in Moscow said Monday. The country is the latest to approve the Russian vaccine, named after the Soviet-era satellite. Sputnik V was registered in August before clinical trials were underway, which left experts wary.
• UK govt eyeing return to normal by end of June. British Prime minister Boris Johnson on Monday set out a four-step plan to ease coronavirus restrictions, expressing hope that life could get back to normal by the end of June.
• Austria is betting on millions of tests to contain Covid-19. While Austria has struggled to contain the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, it is fast emerging as a world leader in testing as a way to reopen schools and businesses.
• The World Health Organization has agreed a no-fault compensation plan for claims of serious side effects in people in 92 poorer countries due to get Covid vaccines via the Covax sharing scheme, resolving a big concern among recipient governments.
• Guinea will launch an Ebola vaccination drive Tuesday after a flight delayed by a Saharan dust storm arrived carrying thousands of jabs, as the West African country fights to stamp out a resurgence of the deadly virus.
• New Zealand has confirmed three new coronavirus cases – a schoolmate of a person from the original Auckland cluster and their two siblings. One of the siblings had been working at a K-Mart and 31 staff have now been identified as close contacts.

In the UK, the government has set out a four-step roadmap for relaxing coronavirus restrictions in England, including likely dates for reopening the hard-hit hospitality industry and non-essential retail. Here we gauge the reaction of businesses to a pathway out of the crisis:

New Zealand has confirmed two new coronavirus cases – the siblings of the case confirmed earlier on Tuesday, NewsHub reports.

One of the cases had been working at a K-Mart and 31 staff have now been identified as close contacts:

Therefore anyone who was at Kmart Botany, 500 Ti Rakau Drive, Botany Downs, at these times is considered a casual plus contact. If you are a casual plus contact, you are advised to immediately isolate at home and call Healthline on 0800 358 5453 for advice on isolation timeframes and testing requirements,” the ministry says.

Thirty-one staff at Kmart have already been identified as close contacts and are isolating and being provided with public health advice.

Other locations of interest for the three cases are continuing to be investigated and will be notified when available.”

Guinea will launch an Ebola vaccination drive Tuesday after a flight delayed by a Saharan dust storm arrived carrying thousands of jabs, as the West African country fights to stamp out a resurgence of the deadly virus, AFP reports.

The outbreak, declared last weekend, is the first in the region since a 2013-16 epidemic left more than 11,300 people dead, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The start of the inoculation campaign had to be delayed by one day after a plane carrying more than 11,000 vaccine doses was unable to land in Guinea’s capital Conakry due to a dust storm.

A special flight carrying the Merck vaccine finally landed in Guinea late Monday, an AFP correspondent reported.

Health authorities said some of the doses would head straight to Nzerekore, the capital of Guinea’s southeastern forest region where five people have recently died of Ebola.

Inoculations are also planned in Conakry on Tuesday.

Ebola causes severe fever and, in the worst cases, unstoppable bleeding. It is transmitted through close contact with bodily fluids, and people who live with or care for patients are most at risk.

As well as Guinea, the disease has also recently reemerged in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A further 8,700 vaccine doses were set to arrive from the United States on Wednesday.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 3,883 to 2,394,811, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed on Tuesday.

The reported death toll rose by 415 to 68,318, the tally showed.