Health News at Your Fingertips

South Korea will distribute free coronavirus rapid test kits at elementary schools and nursing homes starting next week.

Health officials on Wednesday reported the country’s highest daily jump in coronavirus infections with 90,443 new cases, shattering the previous one-day record set on Tuesday by more than 33,000 cases. Some experts say South Korea could see daily cases of about 200,000 in March.

While Omicron has so far seemed less likely to cause serious illness or death compared to the Delta variant, which rattled the country in December and early January, hospitalisations have been creeping up amid the greater scale of outbreak, according to the Associated Press.

The prime minister, Kim Boo-kyum, Seoul’s second official behind the president, Moon Jae-in, said officials will start distributing free rapid test kits at kindergartens, elementary schools and nursing homes next week to strengthen protection for unvaccinated children and high-risk groups.

The education minister, Yoo Eun-hye, said schools will get enough kits for students to use twice a week, but added that tests won’t be mandatory.

“We ask for students to be tested at home with the rapid antigen test kits on the evenings of Sunday and Wednesday before coming to school,” Yoo said during a briefing. “When testing positive from those tests, please visit the local health office to get PCR tests.”

The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics Organising Committee said on Wednesday that two new Covid cases were detected among Games-related personnel on 15 February.

One of the cases was found among new airport arrivals, according to a notice on the Beijing 2022 official website.

Another case was among those already in the “closed loop” bubble that separates all event personnel from the public, the notice said.

A Japanese government delay in rolling out Covid booster shots left it more vulnerable than other rich countries when the Omicron variant brought a surge of deaths, say experts, local governments and a former vaccine czar.

The issue could mean political trouble for prime minister Fumio Kishida as nearly 30% of the population is aged 65 or older, and so at greater risk from the coronavirus without the protection of the booster, Reuters reported.

Kishida’s predecessor stepped down after widespread criticism of his handling of the pandemic and the prime minister’s ruling party faces an important test with an upper house election this year.

On Tuesday, Japan saw 236 new fatalities, its worst ever one-day toll from Covid. Although Japan was comparatively slow to launch its initial vaccination campaign, it ramped it up quickly and by November had the highest vaccination rate within the G7.

About 3,000 British volunteers are being sought to take part in a study for Moderna’s Omicron booster vaccine.

The jab, which is one of the world’s first to tackle the variant, will be trialled at sites across the UK thanks to a partnership between Moderna and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).

Led by a team based at St George’s, University of London, the study will see half the volunteers receive the new Moderna Omicron variant vaccine and the other half vaccinated with the regular Moderna jab, PA Media reported.

It is already known that people’s immunity wanes several months after Covid booster doses, meaning clinical trials are needed to determine whether people may need a fourth booster dose.

The trial will also seek to recruit people who have had just two doses of a vaccine and have not yet had a booster.

A separate COV-Boost sub-study will also run to compare using Moderna’s Omicron variant vaccine as a fourth dose with a standard dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab.

China’s president, Xi Jinping, has told Hong Kong’s leaders that their “overriding mission” was to stabilise and control a worsening Covid outbreak, pro-Beijing media reported, as infected patients lay in beds outside overwhelmed hospitals.

The directive ramps up pressure on the Hong Kong chief executive, Carrie Lam, a day after she said her government’s response to the outbreak had been unsatisfactory, with hospitals and medical staff unable to cope.

Xi instructed Chinese vice-premier Han Zheng to relay to Lam his “concern about the pandemic situation” and his care for local residents, according to front page stories in newspapers Wen Wei Po and Ta Kung Pao.

Health authorities in the global financial hub reported a record 1,619 confirmed new infections on Tuesday, and another 5,400 preliminary positive cases. The daily tally of Covid infections is now more than 20 times the level at the start of February, and worse is to come.

Broadcaster TVB said at least 4,285 new infections are expected to be reported on Wednesday, more than double the previous record, and there are another 3,000 preliminary positive tests.

Xi said the government “must mobilise all power and resources to take all necessary measures to ensure the safety and health of the Hong Kong people and ensure the stability of the society,” according to the newspapers.

Hello and welcome to the global Covid live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest coronavirus news over the next few hours.

We start with the news that South Korea has once again reported a daily record of 90,443 new coronavirus cases for Wednesday, as numbers nearly doubled within a week amid the spread of the highly infectious Omicron variant.

The record count for Tuesday marked a drastic surge from 57,177 a day before and brought total infections in the country since the pandemic began to 1,552,851. Deaths remain comparatively low, though, with 39 fatalities on Tuesday and a total of 7,202 so far, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).

The country of 52 million population has largely been a Covid mitigation success story, thanks mainly to widespread wearing of masks, social distancing and aggressive testing and tracing, the Reuters news agency reported.

But authorities have shifted testing and tracing policy, in line with the less fatal Omicron variant’s spread, toward self-monitoring and diagnosis and at-home treatment starting this month.

The prime minister, Kim Boo-kyum, said the government was considering easing strict distancing curbs that include a 9pm curfew for restaurants, cafes and bars, and a ban on gatherings of more than six vaccinated people.

More than 86% of South Koreans have been fully vaccinated and 58% have received a booster shot, KDCA data showed.