Dutch government to appeal against ruling to scrap curfew
The Dutch government is to appeal against a court ruling (see 9.36am) which ordered it to end a night-time curfew on the grounds that it lacked any legal basis, news agency ANP reports.
It has asked the court to suspend its verdict until an appeal is heard, and the court is to decide on this request later today.
The court order dealt a blow to the government’s response to the pandemic, as it has repeatedly said the measure was required to prevent a surge of new infections due to more contagious new variants of the virus, though many other countries have not imposed curfews.
The court sided with an anti-lockdown group in finding the 9pm until 4.30am curfew, the first in the Netherlands since World War Two, amounted to an unwarranted limitation of personal freedom and lacked proper legal basis. It said in its ruling:
The curfew is based on a law for emergency situations, where there is no time for debate with parliament … There was no such pressing need in this case. Far-reaching measures such as these need to be based on proper laws.
The court ruled it should be lifted before the scheduled end on 3 March. However, it said the verdict did not automatically mean the curfew would end, as that was for the government to decide.
But police would abide to the ruling, the police trade union told ANP, adding that it raised questions over the validity of the almost 15,000 curfew fines handed in the past two weeks.
The curfew sparked several days of riots by anti-lockdown protesters when it was introduced on 23 January.
“We’ll have a party tonight”, anti-lockdown group Viruswaarheid spokesman Willem Engel said on Dutch public radio. “I’m happy and relieved that justice in the Netherlands still exists.”
There have been over 1 million confirmed cases in Holland, which has a population of 17 million, throughout the pandemic, with 14,843 deaths.
Updated
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Aung San Suu Kyi charged for breaking Covid restrictions, her lawyer says
Police in Myanmar have filed a new charge against ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi, her lawyer has said, which may allow her to be held indefinitely without trial, AP reports.
Khin Maung Zaw said after meeting a judge in the capital, Naypyitaw, that Aung San Suu Kyi has been charged with violating Article 25 of the Natural Disaster Management Law, which has been used to prosecute people who have broken coronavirus restrictions.
Aung San Suu Kyi, who was ousted in a military coup on 1 February, has already been charged with possessing walkie talkies that were imported without being registered. She is under house arrest. Details of her alleged Covid restriction transgression remain unclear.
The maximum punishment for the violation is three years’ imprisonment. However, the new charge may allow her to be held indefinitely without trial because a change in the Penal Code instituted by the junta last week permits detention without court permission.
Protests with thousands of people demanding that the elected leader and members of her ousted government be freed from detention are taking place in defiance of an order banning gatherings of five or more people.
Updated
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Singapore is to provide a fresh multibillion-dollar package to help struggling businesses and fund a vaccination drive, as part of the city-state’s annual budget, AFP reports.
Finance minister Heng Swee Keat announced the new package totalling Sg$11bn (US$8.3bn) as he unveiled the budget in parliament. A substantial chunk will be allocated to helping workers and businesses still affected by the pandemic, including in the travel and aviation sectors.
More than 40% of the funds will go to financing public health and measures to ensure a safe reopening of the economy, he said. This includes inoculation efforts – vaccines are given for free to all residents – as well as the tracking of people possibly exposed to a coronavirus carrier.
Heng said close to 250,000 people have received their first dose, and 55,000 have had their second jab. Singapore has had a relatively mild outbreak with nearly 60,000 cases and 29 deaths, and in recent times has recorded very few local transmissions.
Updated
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Public health experts in New York City are warning locals not to rush back into restaurants, which have reopened at 25% capacity following months of restrictions, Miranda Bryant reports.
Although eating out is a pastime for which the city is famous, New Yorkers were mostly tentative about returning to their favourite spots over the Valentine’s Day reopening. Restauranteurs said that diners were apprehensive about sitting inside, preferring to opt for more Covid-secure outdoor heated areas.
Last spring, New York City was at the global centre of the pandemic that has killed 28,341 in the city as of Monday, according to official figures.
Updated
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Palestinians have accused Israel of blocking a vital first shipment of 2,0000 Covid-19 vaccines intended for frontline health workers from entering Gaza, Oliver Holmes reports.
The Palestinian Authority said a planned transfer of Russian Sputnik V vaccine doses to the coastal enclave, which is geographically disconnected from the West Bank where the authority is headquartered, was blocked on Monday at an Israeli checkpoint.
“[T]he occupation authorities prevented their entry,” the authority’s health minister, Mai al-Kaila, said in a statement. “These doses were intended for medical staff working in intensive care rooms designated for Covid-19 patients, and for staff working in emergency departments.”
An Israeli security source told the Guardian the authority had previously made a request to the national security council, a body that belongs to the Israeli prime minister’s office, to send vaccines to Gaza, but that it had not made a decision.
The Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is meeting in emergency session with civil protection officials as media outlets report that the heavy snowstorm sweeping the county, which has halted its vaccination drive, has now resulted in the death of a man on Crete.
With widespread power cuts in Athens the leader called the meeting to coordinate efforts to deal with snowfall described as unprecedented. People have been “strongly advised” to avoid leaving their homes with all Covid-19 vaccination centres closed until the bad weather passes. Two mega facilities capable of vaccinating 20,000 people a day were opened in the capital and the northern city of Thessaloniki only on Monday.
The 56 –year- old man was found dead outside an animal pen, on the southern island of Crete after suffering what is believed to have been a heart attack.
Calls have mounted this morning for refugees living in tents in Elaionas, a camp in central Athens, to be relocated because of the snowfall forecast to last through Wednesday.
On Monday, the migration minister Notis Mitarachis said the estimated 100,000 refugees in Greece would receive the Covid-19 jab when it is rolled out. To date, the centre-right government has focused inoculating those in care homes, the elderly and people with underlying health conditions.
Updated
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A Catholic priest in Ireland is providing takeaway ashes in plastic sauce containers so parishioners can honour Ash Wednesday despite coronavirus restrictions.
A Centra shop in Clonmany, county Donegal, has helped Fr Brian Brady to pack and distribute ashes in 200 containers usually used for dips and sauces.
Parishioners have snapped up the containers so they can administer their own ashes by placing them in the form of a cross on their foreheads tomorrow. The ritual signifies repentance and marks the first day of Lent, a six-week period of penitence before Easter.
“A lot of our parishioners would come every year for their ashes and it’s so important that we honour those traditions – even at these most difficult times,” Fr Brady told the BBC. “We really did have to stretch the old imagination on this one though.”
The ashes are from burnt palms. Containers also include a prayer and are limited to one per household.
Updated
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Snow in Athens causes Greek authorities to cancel vaccinations
An unusually heavy snowfall has paralysed Athens in Greece, and led authorities to cancel planned vaccinations.
Associated Press report that authorities have been warning residents – particularly in the Greek capital’s northern and eastern suburbs – to avoid leaving their homes this morning.
It has had a knock-on effect for the nation’s vaccination plans. Health authorities announced they were postponing all coronavirus vaccinations across the greater Athens region of Attica for today.
One line of the Athens subway that runs partially above ground to the northern suburbs was halted, while most buses were withdrawn from the capital’s streets for safety reasons. Snow is common in Greece’s mountains and in the north of the country, but much rarer in the capital. Parts of Athens experienced electricity cuts from downed power lines
More than a quarter of Australians ‘unsure’ about getting a Covid-19 vaccine – survey
Just 64% of Australians will “definitely” get a Covid-19 vaccine while more than one quarter (27%) are unsure, according to government research.
Some 9% of Australians aged over 16 said they will “definitely not” get the vaccine, according to the poll of 4,001 people commissioned by the health department.
The research was released by the government on Tuesday after the arrival of Pfizer vaccines and approval of AstraZeneca for a rollout to begin on Monday.
The government is confident that achieving full approval from the Therapeutic Goods Administration for both vaccines will help support the rollout, and public confidence will improve as vaccines are administered.
But other data sources point to an uptick in vaccine hesitancy. Between August and January the Guardian Essential poll found the proportion of people who said they would “never” be vaccinated rose from 8% to 11%.
In September, the Australian National University found that 5.5% of Australians would definitely not get the vaccine and a further 7.2% would “probably not” – results that are expected to deteriorate when it releases the next phase of its longitudinal research later this week.
According to the health department research, 48% of Australians would choose to get the vaccine as soon as it is available. A total of 71% would choose to do so by October.
The top three motivators for taking the vaccine were to protect oneself from catching Covid, to keep Australia safe from Covid, and to protect the elderly and most vulnerable.
The top three barriers were that long-term side effects are still unknown, that “vaccines have been developed too quickly” and concerns about having an allergic reaction.
Read more of Paul Karp’s report here: Two-thirds of Australians ‘definitely’ want Covid vaccine, while 27% are unsure
