Health News at Your Fingertips

Cyprus has said it will start giving a booster Covid vaccines to vulnerable groups, the country’s health minister Michalis Hadjipantelas said on Thursday.

The booster jab will be available to people in care homes, those aged over-65, people with “compromised immune systems” and healthcare workers where six months have passed since their last shot, Mr Hadjipantelas told journalists after a cabinet meeting.

He is reported by the Reuters news agency to have said:

Its imperative that we complete building a wall of immunity.

Cyprus has registered 507 deaths and 114,131 cases of coronavirus since the first outbreak in March 2020. Some 74% of the population had completed their inoculation by 31 August.

In case you missed it earlier, here is a video of Prince Harry blaming overwhelming “mass-scale misinformation” for Covid vaccine hesitancy.

He urged governments to address vaccine inequality in poorer countries as he presented an award to the team behind the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab.

Prince Harry warned: “Until every community can access the vaccine and until every community is connected to trustworthy information about the vaccine, then we are all at risk.”

Hundreds of healthcare workers in Greece marched through Athens this morning to protest against mandatory Covid vaccines for anyone working in their sector.

The regulation came into effect yesterday and any healthcare worker who isn’t vaccinated against Covid or recovered from the disease within the past six months will be suspended from work without pay.

About 400 protesters marched outside the health ministry in the centre of the Greek capital, before marching to parliament accompanied by about a dozen ambulances, reports the Associated Press.

They say they are not against vaccinations, but object to making them compulsory, saying the measure will lead to staff shortages.

The Greek government claims is necessary to protect the most vulnerable amid a third surge of Covid infections in the country.

More than 5.7 million people are fully vaccinated in Greece, a country of about 11 million.

In Bulgaria, restaurants and bars will have to close at 10pm from 7 September, while indoors sports will have to be held without spectators.

The new restrictions come as the Balkan country prepares for an expected surge in coronavirus cases.

Bulgaria is the least vaccinated country in the European Union, reports the Reuters news agency, and has seen a significant spike in infections in recent weeks.

Like elsewhere on the continent, it has been caused by the highly transmissible Delta variant.

On Thursday the country registered 1,745 new cases, bringing its tally of active infections to some 32,192.

Some 18,950 people have died since the beginning of the pandemic, with 54 more deaths reported on Thursday in the country with the highest mortality rate in the European Union, figures from Our World in Data showed.

Interim health minister Stoicho Katsarov encouraged Bulgarians to get vaccinated and told reporters:

There is no place for panic. The situation is serious, but not out of control.

The low percentage of vaccinations forces us to impose these measures.

The African Union’s Covid envoy has announced that vaccine doses produced by a plant in South Africa will no longer be exported to Europe.

It comes following an intervention from South Africa’s government to keep and distribute shots in Africa. The Associated Press reports:

Strive Masiyiwa told reporters that South African drug manufacturer Aspen, which has a contract with Johnson & Johnson to manufacture the ingredients of its vaccine, will no longer ship vaccine doses out of the continent and that millions of doses warehoused in Europe will be returned to the continent.

“That arrangement has been suspended,” he said, adding that J&J doses produced in South Africa “will stay in Africa and will be distributed in Africa.”

He said the issue had been “corrected in a positive way,” with Aspen’s arrangement with Johnson & Johnson changing from a contract deal to “a licensed arrangement” similar to the production in India of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Johnson & Johnson was criticised for shipping doses to countries in Europe, which have already immunised large numbers of people and have even donated vaccines to other countries.

Good morning. Tom Ambrose here, taking over the blog for the next eight hours.

We start with some breaking news that Norway will begin to offer Covid vaccines to children aged 12 to 15, its prime minister, Erna Solberg, said on Thursday.

The country is currently experiencing a sharp increase in infections, particularly among young people.

Some 72% of all Norwegians have now received a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine and 57% of the population is fully vaccinated, according to the Institute of Public Health.

That’s it from me, Robyn Vinter. Here’s a quick summary of the day’s events, as I hand over to my colleague Tom Ambrose.

• The World Health Organization has added another version of coronavirus, the Mu variant, to its list of “variants of interest” amid concerns that it may partially evade the immunity people have developed from past infection or vaccination.
• India reported the biggest single-day rise in Covid-19 cases in two months today, as the government worries about the virus spreading from the most-affected Kerala state, schools reopening, and the start of the festival season.
• Being double-jabbed almost halves the likelihood of long Covid in adults who get coronavirus, a new study from King’s College London has suggested.
• Taiwan received its first batch of Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccines on Thursday, a delivery organised by two tech giants and a charity because of diplomatic pressure from China.
• The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said there was no urgent need for the administration of booster doses of Covid-19 vaccines to fully vaccinated individuals based on available data on vaccine effectiveness, Reuters reports.
• Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, said people will have to show digital proof of vaccination to enter a wide range of establishments, dropping earlier opposition to the idea. From 22 September people will need proof of full vaccination to visit bars, restaurants, nightclubs and indoor sporting facilities.
• Egypt has set out its ambitions to manufacture 1bn doses of China’s Sinovac vaccine annually, claiming it will become the “biggest vaccine producer” in the Middle East and Africa. Two factories will produce doses to cover domestic demand as well as for export across the region.
• About 10,000 unvaccinated health workers in Greece – 10% of the sector’s workforce – are facing suspension, a union has said. The Greek parliament in July passed legislation to make vaccinations mandatory for health staff from 1 September, leading to protests outside hospitals across the country.
• Contaminants found last week in suspended Moderna vaccines in Japan were particles of stainless steel, the health ministry has said, adding that it did not expect they would pose health risks.
• Cuba plans to vaccinate children aged two to 18 with its domestically developed Soberana-2 vaccine as the country tries to reach inoculation levels of 90% by December.

The suicide rate in England and Wales fell during the first national coronavirus lockdown, analysis of death registrations suggests.

Some 1,603 suicides occurred between April and July 2020, around three-quarters of which were of males, according to analysis of provisional data by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

This is down 18% from the same period in 2019 and 12.7% below the average for the previous five years, PA reports.

It equates to a mortality rate of 9.2 deaths per 100,000 people – significantly lower than rates for the same period in the previous three years, but similar to the 2016 rate. The fall was primarily fuelled by a drop in the male suicide rate (to 13.9 deaths per 100,000 males), while the female rate remained at a similar level (4.7 deaths per 100,000 females).

The ONS said the findings are consistent with more contemporaneous surveillance, and research on other countries such as the US, Germany, Japan and Australia.

Four out of five (83%) adults arriving in England between 12 and 17 July from an amber list location fully adhered to coronavirus quarantine requirements, according to a survey by the Office for National Statistics.

During this period, people arrivals from an amber tier location were required to quarantine for 10 days unless they were exempt due to their job, or they took part in the test-to-release scheme.

Some 91% of respondents said they took both of the required day-two and day-eight coronavirus tests.

Restaurants and bars in Bulgaria will have to close at 10pm from 7 September, while indoor sports competitions will be held without spectators, the health minister said on Thursday, as the Balkan country braces for a surge of new coronavirus infections.

Bulgaria, the least vaccinated country against coronavirus in the European Union, has recorded a rise in infections in recent weeks, mostly of the highly infectious Delta variant.

On Thursday alone the country of 7 million people registered some 1,745 new cases, bringing its tally of active infections to 32,192.

Some 18,950 people have died since the beginning of the pandemic, with 54 more deaths reported on Thursday in the country with the highest mortality rate in the European Union, figures from Our World in Data showed.

Interim health minister Stoicho Katsarov told reporters:

There is no place for panic. The situation is serious, but not out of control. The low percentage of vaccinations forces us to impose these measures.

He appealed again for Bulgarians to get vaccinated.

Under the new restrictions, which will be in force until the end of October, music festivals will be banned, while cinemas and theatres will have to operate at 50% capacity.

Students will be allowed to attend classes when the school year begins on 15 September, Katsarov said, but he warned that if the infections continue to rise, they may have to switch to online studies.

Vaccinated travellers from all international destinations now no longer need to quarantine at Abu Dhabi, a spokesman for the United Arab Emirates capital has said.

More on the UK government’s plans for Covid booster jabs here from Damien Gayle: