Health News at Your Fingertips

Zoom shares continued to fall as people returned to in-person work and school.

Zoom Video Communications’ shares fell by 11% despite generating $1.02bn against expected quarterly revenues of $990bn.

The company’s chief financial officer Kelly Steckelberg saying: “We had expected that [the slowdown] towards the end of the year, but it’s just happened a little more quickly than we expected.”

And Zoom said it expected to see a decline in revenues from business customers with 10 or fewer employees.

The company is a poster boy for pandemic growth stocks as businesses and academic institutions became highly reliant on video communications from March 2020.

Singapore has reported 156 new local coronavirus cases today, its highest number in almost six weeks.

Singapore had fully vaccinated 80% of its population against Covid-19 as of Sunday, one of the highest rates in the world, reaching a threshold for the city-state to further ease its restrictions.

Tuesday’s local cases were the highest since 22 July, reports Reuters.

Singapore progress comes in sharp contrast to most of its neighbours, which have been struggling with low inoculation rates while battling deadly outbreaks driven by the highly transmissible Delta variant.

The rise in cases in Singapore comes as the country brokered a “dose swap” for 500,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine with Australia.

Scotland’s finance secretary Kate Forbes is self-isolating after being identified as a close contact of a family member who has Covid-19.

She will self-isolate for up to 10 days because she received her second dose of a coronavirus vaccine less than two weeks ago, she said.

Israel has recorded its highest daily coronavirus case tally of nearly 11,000 new infections, amid a surge caused by the highly transmissible Delta variant as schools prepare to reopen.

The previous high came on 18 January, with 10,118 cases.

Despite today’s 10,947 confirmed cases, AFP reports Israel is pressing ahead with plans to fully open its school system tomorrow as it tries to boost vaccination rates.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a critic of the cycle of lockdowns implemented by his predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu, has maintained that the surge can be controlled through inoculation and protective measures such as masks.

His government has encouraged all residents aged 12 and above to get a third get jab of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.

About 60% of Israel’s 9.3m residents have received two vaccine doses, including 80% of adults.

Thailand’s elderly population lags behind in terms of vaccination rates, data shows.

Government data analysed by Reuters shows Thailand has fully vaccinated just 6.7% of its elderly population (people 60 and older) compared with 15% of adults aged 18 to 59 and 10.2% of the total population.

Thailand was the only one of 30 countries for which Reuters reviewed data that had a lower percentage of seniors vaccinated than those in younger age groups.

Since April, people aged 60 and over have accounted for at least 62% of deaths in Thailand and about 8.7% of cases. The proportion of elderly deaths has risen, pointing to the possible impact of slow vaccinations.

Neighbouring Malaysia had fully vaccinated at least 82% of its senior citizens by Aug. 22, according to government data, compared with 45.6% of its total population to date. In Indonesia, only 17% of the elderly have been fully vaccinated, but that is still higher than the 13% for the total population.

More on the news that 70% of the European Union’s adult population has been fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

In January, the European Commission said that “by summer 2021, member states should have vaccinated a minimum of 70% of the adult population.”

This was interpreted as meaning that each of the 27 EU member states should hit that target by September.

The bloc has now cumulatively has vaccinated 70% of its adult population but the situation differs vastly between countries. Malta has fully vaccinated over 90% of its adult population, while Ireland and Portugal have also immunised more than 80% of their adult population.

However, Bulgaria has fully vaccinated just one fifth of its adult population, and Romania about 30% of adults. Croatia, Latvia, Slovenia and Slovakia have immunised about half of those aged above 18.

Alex Mistlin here taking over from my colleague Tom Ambrose on the Guardian’s global coronavirus blog.

If you’ve spotted a mistake or a story I’ve missed then feel free to get in touch via Twitter: @amistlin

Here is a brief round-up of this morning’s top coronavirus headlines:

• Australia will ramp up its vaccination programme this week after prime minister Scott Morrison announced it is set to receive 500,000 doses of the Pfizer jab in a swap deal with Singapore.
• Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline and South Korean pharmaceutical firm SK Bioscience have begun a phase three trial of their combined Covid vaccine.
• Taiwan has confirmed that 900,000 doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine will arrive in the country “soon”. The arrival of the first batch of vaccines has proved a controversial issue on the island, with ministers blaming China blocking an order earlier this year.
• In the UK, a new “centre of excellence” and training facility specialising in the technology used to create the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines is to be launched.
• Two leaders of the anti-lockdown movement have been arrested in Australia and New Zealand in separate incidents, on the same day protests were held in defiance of stay-at-home orders in both countries.
• Seven in 10 (70%) of the European Union’s adult population has been fully vaccinated against Covid, hitting a target it had set at the beginning of the year.

That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, this morning. My colleague Alex Mistlin is taking over now to bring you all the latest breaking Covid news throughout the afternoon.

Seven in 10 (70%) of the European Union’s adult population have been fully vaccinated against Covid, hitting a target it had set at the beginning of the year.

The announcement marks an important milestone in the EU vaccination strategy after a slow start.

It also masks the contrast among EU countries, with some nations being well above the 70% goal while others in the poorer eastern region of the bloc are far behind.

“70% of adults in EU are fully vaccinated. I want to thank the many people making this great achievement possible,” the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said on Twitter.

Pressure is mounting on the Hong Kong government to reopen borders or face losing executives an investment.

Business lobby groups are calling on the government to relax its quarantine programme, which has seen bankers working on billion-dollar deals while locked away in hotel rooms for three weeks.

Hong Kong’s decision to increase mandatory hotel quarantine to three weeks for arrivals from most countries prompted a backlash from banks, hedge funds and traders.

By contrast, their counterparts in London and New York are able to go straight back into the office after travelling.

City leader Carrie Lam said on Tuesday many people had complained that quarantine policies were “excessively strict” but maintained that restrictions were needed to open up to the Chinese mainland.

She added at a weekly press briefing:

The more you relax on overseas arrivals, the lesser you will have a chance to go into the mainland … we will try to make our measures more humanistic whenever possible, but to relax altogether the restrictions on arrivals is not a wise move.

In the UK, a new “centre of excellence” and training facility specialising in the technology used to create the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines is to be launched.

It will be based in north-east England and will work with the British government, as well as industry, to help protect the world against future pandemics and infectious diseases.

The facility will be based at an existing site in Darlington but with an expanded capacity. It is estimated to be ready to open in November, with courses to train technicians and scientists from January, according to PA Media.

Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use mRNA, which carry instructions telling the body to produce a specific tool that can be used to fight disease.

As well as coronavirus, the technology can be used in the treatment of HIV, cancer and heart disease, scientists involved in the new centre said.

Dr Lucy Foley, the director of Biologics at CPI – the technology innovation organisation behind the new facility – said:

I think that industry is really shining a light on RNA and these chemically synthesised products now, saying ‘these are much, much faster to manufacture, if we can get the cost of goods down, this is a much more promising way to treat disease in the future’.

On the subject of mental health during Covid, the actor Stephen Fry has called for a network of mental health walk-in centres for UK children and young people who he said have been hit worst by the pandemic.

Writing in the Telegraph, the actor and comedian, who is also president of Mind, voiced the charity’s appeal to ministers for hubs through which children can access support without a referral from a doctor or their school.

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