Health News at Your Fingertips

Hong Kong’s Covid-19 vaccine pass came into effect today, requiring people entering restaurants, shopping centres and supermarkets to have received at least one Covid-19 jab.

Masks are also required for all outdoor exercise and people are not permitted to remove their face coverings to eat or drink on public transport.

From Thursday, people must also use their phone’s LeaveHomeSafe contact tracing app to scan a QR code to enter specified premises.

Restaurants will proactively scan people’s vaccination records, while higher traffic venues such as malls and supermarkets will only see spot checks.

To qualify for a vaccine pass, the person must have received at least one Covid-19 jab, or have a doctor’s certificate certifying they are medically unfit to be inoculated. Anybody caught using somebody else’s vaccination records as their own could face legal consequences, authorities said.

From today, people in England who test positive for the coronavirus will no longer be legally required to isolate themselves.

Guidance will remain in place until April for those who test positive to stay at home and avoid contact with others for at least five full days, but there will be no penalty for not doing so.

Unveiling his government’s strategy for “living with Covid” on Monday, Boris Johnson told the public:

Until April 1 we will still advise people who test positive to stay at home but after that we will encourage people with Covid-19 symptoms to exercise personal responsibility, just as we encourage people who may have flu to be considerate to others

England’s chief medical officer Prof Sir Chris Whitty said people should still isolate if they have the virus, despite the legal requirement ending on Thursday.

He said it was “standard public health advice” and warned that while rates are coming down it is “still a very common infection”.

Self-isolation support payments of £500 for people on low incomes have also ended today, as has the legal obligation for workers to tell their employer that they need to isolate.

Routine contact tracing has also ended, meaning people will no longer be advised to test or isolate after coming into contact with someone who has the virus.

Isolation rules are not changing in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, meaning people will still be required to isolate for at least five full days after testing positive.

Iceland will lift all remaining coronavirus restrictions on Friday, including a 200-person indoor gathering limit, restricted opening hours for bars and quarantine requirements for those infected with the virus.

Iceland’s Minister of Health Willum Thór Thórsson confirmed the country will remove all restrictions from 25 February, including lifting all border measures, with no additional restrictions for unvaccinated travellers.

Speaking at a government meeting today, Thórsson said:

We can truly rejoice at this turning-point, but nonetheless I encourage people to be careful, practice personal infection prevention measures and not to interact with others if they notice symptoms

Iceland, with a population of some 368,000 people, has reported between 2,100 and 2,800 daily infections recently. More than 115,000 infections have been recorded in the country since the start of the pandemic and 60 have died due to the virus.

Taiwan is reopening to business travellers and shortening quarantine for all arrivals, in a move to slightly ease restrictions in one of the few places still pursuing a zero-Covid strategy.

Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Centre (CECC) announced restrictions would ease from early March for foreigners coming in for business purposes, including inspection, investment, employment or fulfilling contractual obligations.

Chen Tsung-yen, deputy head of the CECC, said:

We will open to foreign business people starting March 7 in line with some relaxations in the overall pandemic prevention measures.

Chinese, Hong Kong and Macau residents can only apply for entry to fulfil business contracts or due to transferrals within multinational companies.

Also from 7 March, the 14-day mandatory quarantine for all arrivals will be cut to 10 days, in addition to a week of monitoring at home.

A mask mandate and some other restrictions will be eased from 1 March, authorities said.

Chou Jih-haw, head of the CECC’s disease surveillance division, said:

We had some domestic cluster infections before Lunar New Year but the number of local cases continued to fall in recent weeks.

The domestic situation is stable and under control.

Hello everyone. It’s Léonie Chao-Fong here again, taking over the live blog from Tom Ambrose to bring you all the latest global developments on the coronavirus pandemic. Feel free to get in touch on Twitter or via email.

We start with the news that the Queen has postponed two scheduled virtual audiences on Thursday after her Covid-19 diagnosis, Buckingham Palace said.

The palace said the 95-year-old monarch was “continuing with light duties”. The update comes amid heightened concerns for her health, given her age, frailer appearance of late and recent health scare.

The Queen tested positive for the virus on Sunday when she was said to be suffering from mild cold-like symptoms.

A palace spokesperson said today:

The two virtual audiences that had previously been scheduled to take place today will now be rescheduled for a later date. Her Majesty is continuing with light duties. No other engagements are scheduled for this week.

Here is a round-up of today’s main Covid news stories:

• A group of shouting protesters have chased the New Zealand prime minister’s van down a driveway as she visited a Christchurch primary school amid tensions over increasingly volatile anti-vaccine mandate protests.
• Hong Kong’s government has invoked emergency powers to allow doctors and nurses from the Chinese mainland to practise in the financial hub as it struggles to tackle a spiralling coronavirus outbreak.
• The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has announced he is removing emergency powers police can use after authorities ended the blockades at the borders and the occupation in Ottawa by truckers and others opposed to Covid restrictions.
• Japan has said international travellers showing proof of a Covid vaccination with the Johnson & Johnson shot would be allowed in and be eligible for a shorter time in quarantine when border controls are eased next month.
• The Omicron BA.2 sub-variant of Covid appears to be more infectious than the original BA.1 sub-variant, according to data from South Africa.
• The rollout of the coronavirus vaccination programme has been praised by the UK’s public spending watchdog for meeting “stretching and unprecedented targets” and saving lives.
• Most pregnant women in the UK are still shunning Covid vaccines despite an increased chance of stillbirth, premature birth and risks to their own health, analysis shows.
• Hong Kong reported a new record of 8,798 Covid infections on Thursday, health authorities said.

That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, until tomorrow. My colleague Léonie Chao-Fong will be along shortly to take over the global Covid live blog. Bye for now.

The Omicron BA.2 sub-variant of Covid appears to be more infectious than the original BA.1 sub-variant, according to data from South Africa.

However, it does not cause more severe disease, the head of Africa’s top public health body said on Thursday.

Japan has said international travellers showing proof of a Covid vaccination with the Johnson & Johnson shot would be allowed in and be eligible for a shorter time in quarantine when border controls are eased next month.

The J&J shot, which has not been approved in Japan, will join a list of three other shots that have been approved by regulators as sufficient for non-residents to enter, after a nearly two-year ban on such travellers.

The other approved vaccines on a list that the foreign ministry released on Thursday are the ones developed by Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca, Reuters reported.

Vaccines developed by Chinese and Russian makers are not included.

From 1 March, authorities will raise the number of people allowed in to Japan to 5,000 a day, from 3,500, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters last week. The easing applies to students, workers, and other visa holders, but not to tourists for the time being.

The quarantine period will be reduced to three days in some conditions, from seven, and it will be waived entirely depending on the traveller’s point of origin, and if they have had a booster shot.

Hong Kong reported a new record of 8,798 Covid infections on Thursday, health authorities said.

It comes as the global financial hub struggles to control a worsening outbreak that has overwhelmed its health system ahead of a citywide compulsory testing scheme in March.

The rollout of the coronavirus vaccination programme has been praised by the UK’s public spending watchdog for meeting “stretching and unprecedented targets” and saving lives.

The National Audit Office (NAO) said securing a supply of vaccines early was “crucial to the successful rollout” which helped “to save lives and reduce serious illness and hospitalisation”.

The independent watchdog said there were risks ahead for the programme, including staff burnout and reaching groups with a lower rate of uptake, PA Media reported.

But in a report released on Friday, which covers a period up to the end of October 2021, the NAO said wastage of around 4.7m vaccine doses – around 4% of the total supply – had been “much lower than the programme initially assumed” and that the whole operation had been “an effective use of public money”.

The report said the vaccine programme spent £5.6bn up to the end of October last year, out of a total available pot of £8.3bn available over two years up to March this year.

The NAO said its calculations had found the average procurement cost per Covid vaccine dose had been £15.02 including VAT, but this varied between suppliers and over time, while the average deployment cost was £25.70 per dose.

The report said the programme now “needs to maintain the high levels of vaccine uptake it has achieved among the general population”.

The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has announced he is removing emergency powers police can use after authorities ended the blockades at the borders and the occupation in Ottawa by truckers and others opposed to Covid restrictions.

Trudeau said the “threat continues” but the acute emergency that included entrenched occupations has ended. His government invoked the powers last week and lawmakers affirmed the powers on Monday, the Associated Press reported.

“The situation is no longer an emergency, therefore the federal government will be ending the use of the emergencies act,” Trudeau said. “We are confident that existing laws and bylaws are sufficient.”

The emergencies act allows authorities to declare certain areas as no-go zones. It also allows police to freeze truckers’ personal and corporate bank accounts and compel tow truck companies to haul away vehicles.

The trucker protest grew until it closed a handful of Canada-US border posts and shut down key parts of the capital for more than three weeks. But all border blockades have now ended and the streets around the Canadian Parliament are quiet.

“We were very clear that the use of the emergencies act would be limited in time,” Trudeau said.

Most pregnant women in the UK are still shunning Covid vaccines despite an increased chance of stillbirth, premature birth and risks to their own health, analysis shows.

Data from the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford shows 73% of Asian women, 86% of black women and 65% of white women were unvaccinated at the time of giving birth in October 2021.

The charity Wellbeing of Women, which funded the study with the National Institute for Health Research, called for “urgent action” to address “stark racial and social inequalities” among pregnant women, PA Media reported.

The study found that severe Covid infection in pregnant women, particularly in the third trimester, significantly increased the risk of giving birth early, having an induction or a Caesarean, having a stillborn baby or a baby that needed intensive care.

In the UK, an estimated 1.1 million women gave birth between 1 March 2020 and 31 October last year. Overall, 4,436 pregnant women were admitted to hospital with Covid during this period in the UK, of whom 65% had mild disease, 21% had moderate illness and 14% had severe infection.

Some 77% of all the women were in their third trimester of pregnancy. Of the 1,761 women whose vaccination status was recorded in this group (from when vaccines became available), 97% were unvaccinated, 2% had received their first dose, and 1% had received two doses.

During the study period, 22 women died with severe Covid-19 during pregnancy, 59 babies were stillborn and 10 babies died around the time of birth.

Hello. Tom Ambrose here and I’ll be bringing you all the latest Covid news from around the world over the next few hours.

We start with the news that Hong Kong’s government has invoked emergency powers to allow doctors and nurses from the Chinese mainland to practise in the financial hub as it struggles to tackle a spiralling coronavirus outbreak.

“The regulation will provide a legal framework for the CPG (central people’s government) to render the necessary emergent support to Hong Kong in a more effective and expeditious manner,” the government said in a statement.

The densely populated metropolis is in the throes of its worst-ever Covid wave, registering thousands of cases every day, overwhelming hospitals and the city’s requirement that all patients are isolated in dedicated units.

Local authorities adopted a zero-Covid strategy similar to China to keep infections mostly at bay for two years. But they were caught flat-footed when the highly infectious Omicron variant broke through those defences and have increasingly called on the Chinese mainland for help.

“Hong Kong is now facing a very dire epidemic situation which continues to deteriorate rapidly,” the government said in its statement announcing the use of emergency powers.

Chinese mainland medics are not currently allowed to operate in Hong Kong without passing local exams and licensing regulations.