Health News at Your Fingertips

Employees at a further 1,200 workplaces will have daily testing set up in a bid to deal with the wave of staff shortages hitting key industries in the UK.

The move is an expansion of the government policy announced last week to allow fully vaccinated workers at 800 sites in the food industry and transport sector among others to avoid self-isolation if they test negative.

The requirement to self-isolate following contact with a Covid case will end for all fully vaccinated people on 16 August.

On Monday, the health ministry said it would set up daily testing at a further 1,200 workplaces including military bases and prisons.

California and New York City will mandate government workers to be vaccinated or regularly get tested for the virus, officials said on Monday, as they battle to curb a wave of infections caused by the highly transmissible Delta variant.

Reuters reports New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said that the city would require its more than 300,000 employees to get vaccinated by 13 September or otherwise take weekly tests. His announcement came a week after the city passed a vaccine mandate for all healthcare workers at city-run hospitals and clinics.

Soon after, California governor Gavin Newsom said that all state employees, around 246,000 people, would be required to get vaccinated starting in August or else be subjected to Covid-19 testing on a minimum weekly basis.

“We’re at a point now in this pandemic where an individual’s choice to not get vaccinated is impacting the rest of us,” Newsom told a press conference on Monday.

Russia has approved clinical trials combining the AstraZeneca and Sputnik V vaccine, according to Russia’s state drug register.

Reuters reports that five Russian clinics will hold trials that will conclude in early March 2022. Trials mixing the two vaccines have already been given the go-ahead in Azerbaijan, the United Arab Emirates and Belarus.

The Russian health ministry’s ethical committee had halted the approval process for the trials in May, requesting further information.

“Has immunity finally got the upper hand, or will the sudden drop in Covid cases prove no more than a brief downturn?” The Guardian’s science editor, Ian Sample, analyses the factors driving the UK’s recent downturn in cases:

Tunisian president Kais Saied has ordered a month-long nighttime curfew, banning the movement of people and vehicles between 7pm to 6am.

Urgent health cases and night workers are exempt from the curfew, wihich is due to last until 27 August, the presidency said in a statement posted on Facebook.

The presidential order also prohibits people from travelling between cities, except for essential or urgent health reasons. It also banned the gathering of more than three people on public roads or in public squares.

Hello, I’m Clea Skopeliti and I’ll be updating the blog for the next few hours. Feel free to send me a DM on Twitter if you spot a development I’ve not included. Thanks in advance.

I’m signing off for the day so here’s a summary of today’s coronavirus news.

• The US has decided to keep in place travel restrictions on the UK and Schengen area put in place under Trump, citing the delta variant as a cause for concern.
• Cases fell in the UK fell for the sixth day running, to 24,950 new cases. That’s the lowest number of new cases since 4 July, three weeks ago.
• Tanzania received its first shipment of vaccines through the Covax facility, donated by the US. The planned vaccine rollout marks a massive turnaround after late President John Magafuli had denied the coronavirus was a threat and refused to accept vaccines.
• Indonesia is expecting to receive 45m more doses of Covid-19 vaccines in August, health minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin told a virtual news conference on Monday. The country also plans to relax some of its restrictions after going through a harsh outbreak of cases but there are concerns about the potential impacts. Some experts believe social and economic concerns are driving the changes more the scientific advice.
• For the second day running Thailand reported a record-breaking number of coronavirus cases, hitting 15,376 cases and 87 new deaths.
• Singapore plans to vaccinate 80% of its population by September in the hope it can begin to open borders and establish travel corridors with other countries with widespread vaccination.
• South African pharmaceutical company Aspen said it is releasing its first batch of vaccines manufactured in Africa. The doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccines will be distributed within South Africa and also made available to the African Union’s vaccination initiative.
• Heathrow airport has urged the UK government to reopen travel to fully vaccinated flyers from the EU and US after announcing cumulative losses from the Covid-19 pandemic have hit £2.9bn.
• More than 10 million residents of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam will be placed under a strict overnight curfew beginning on Monday, an unprecedented move to curb infections as Vietnam battles a rapid Covid-19 surge.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said concerns about the delta variant are the cause for the US maintaining travel restrictions.

In response to a reporter’s question about the reasoning behind the move, considering the delta variant is already spreading in the US, Psaki said: “That doesn’t mean that having more people who have the delta variant is the right step.”

Psaki said infection numbers are going in the wrong direction but said it was positive that while there were hospitalisations among the unvaccinated, major illness was mostly being avoided in people who were vaccinations.

Psaki also said they saw good signs of increasing people being willing to encourage vaccination, including those who had changed their views after falling ill.

“We don’t want that to be the breaking point for anyone but we are seeing that across the country,” said Psaki, referring to a hospitalised radio host who planned to now advocate for the vaccine.