Health News at Your Fingertips

New Zealand’s Covid-19 outbreak has worsened, with 82 new cases reported on Saturday. All of the new cases were in Auckland, with the Pacific community again over-represented with 62 cases.

It brings the total number of cases of the community outbreak to 429, 415 of which are in Auckland and the remaining 14 in the capital city Wellington.

New Zealand has reached day 11 of a harsh lockdown designed to curb the spread of the virus. The lockdown prevents most people from leaving home other than to exercise, or to buy groceries or medicine. Retail stores are closed, as are restaurants – including takeaway – schools and most businesses.

The vast majority of recent cases are coming from household contacts, and not gatherings or essential workplaces.

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Coronavirus restrictions have been extended in The Philippines after the country reported a record number of daily infections, Reuters reports.

The health ministry reported 19,441 new cases on Saturday, a record-high for the third time in the past nine days and bringing the total number of confirmed cases to more than 1.93m. A further 167 deaths were also reported, bringing the total official death toll to 33,008.

“We expect the number of cases will continue to increase in the coming days,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire told reporters.

Current restrictions in the capital region, the epicentre of the pandemic and home to more than 13m people, have been extended until 7 September.

Although some businesses can operate at up to 50% on-site capacity, restaurant dine-in, personal care services and religious activities are still prohibited, a spokesperson for President Rodrigo Duterte said.

Russia reported 19,492 new cases and 799 further deaths on Saturday.

Data released by state statistic service Rosstat on Friday showed Russia saw the highest monthly coronavirus death toll of the pandemic in July. Some 50,421 people died from Covid or related causes in that month.

Overall, Russia recorded around 365,000 deaths related to Covid-19 between April 2020 and July – more than double the initial figures reported by the government’s coronavirus task force.

Recent data that showed researchers are seeing some waning of protection against Covid infections in double-jabbed people is “promising”, a government scientific adviser has said.

Dr Mike Tildesley, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (Spi-M), said the report on results from the UK-based Zoe Covid Study app suggested that immunity levels dropped six months after vaccination but this was “not significant”.

Speaking on Times Radio, he said:

We do need to remember that no vaccine is really 100% protective forever, or the vast majority are not. We have this with influenza, that every year you have to have a vaccine to protect against whatever’s circulating. So we might expect in the long term immunity will wane and there may be a need for a booster vaccine.

But actually, I think what’s come out this week is pretty promising that immunity levels seem to remain high for several months, which is hopefully promising as we move into the winter.

The study, which looked at data on positive Covid PCR test results between May and July 2021 among more than a million people, suggested protection against infection after two shots of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab decreased from 88% at one month to 74% at five to six months, while protection against infection after two Oxford/AstraZeneca jabs fell from 77% to 67% at four to five months.

US President Joe Biden has accused China of withholding “critical information” on the origins of Covid-19 after the US intelligence community said it did not believe the virus was a bioweapon – but remained split on whether it escaped from a lab.

In a statement on Friday, Biden said:

Critical information about the origins of this pandemic exists in the People’s Republic of China, yet from the beginning, government officials in China have worked to prevent international investigators and members of the global public health community from accessing it.

To this day, the PRC continues to reject calls for transparency and withhold information, even as the toll of this pandemic continues to rise.

Biden’s comments followed a report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that concluded organisations within the US intelligence community disagreed about the origins of the novel coronavirus.

Several thought it emerged from “natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus”, according to the report summary. But they only had “low confidence” in that conclusion. Other groups were not able to come to a firm opinion.

One intelligence community segment developed “moderate confidence” that the first human infection with Covid was probably due to a “laboratory-associated incident, probably involving experimentation, animal handling or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology”.

The report concluded that analysts would not be able to provide “a more definitive explanation” without new information from China, such as clinical samples and epidemiological data about the earliest cases.

China has ridiculed the theory that Covid-19 escaped from the lab in Wuhan and pushed theories including that it slipped out of a lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland, in 2019.

Two people died after receiving Moderna jabs that were among batches later suspended following the discovery of contaminants, Japan’s health ministry said on Saturday.

The men in their 30s died this month within days of receiving their second Moderna doses, the ministry said in a release. Each had a shot from one of three manufacturing lots, the use of which was suspended on Thursday. The cause of the deaths is still being investigated.

In both cases, each man had a fever the day after his second dose and died two days after developing the fever, Reuters reported. There was no evidence that their shots contained contaminants, a health ministry official told reporters.

Japan suspended the use of 1.63m Moderna doses shipped to 863 vaccination centres nationwide after reports of contamination in several vials.

Moderna and the country’s domestic distributor, Takeda Pharmaceutical, said in a statement on Saturday: “At this time, we do not have any evidence that these deaths are caused by the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine. It is important to conduct a formal investigation to determine whether there is any connection.”

The government also said no safety or efficacy issues had been identified and that the suspension of the three Moderna batches was a precaution.

Fumie Sakamoto, the infection control manager at St Luke’s International Hospital in Tokyo, cautioned against drawing a connection between the doses and the deaths.

“There may only be a temporal relationship between vaccination and death,” he told Reuters. “There are so many things we still don’t know to make any conclusions on these two cases.”

India has administered more than 10 million vaccine doses in the past 24 hours, a national record that the prime minister, Narendra Modi, called a “momentous feat” for the country.

Authorities said it is the highest ever number of jabs achieved in a single day since the start of the vaccination programme, as the country prepares for a predicted surge in infections.

India has administered more than 622m vaccine doses in total, giving at least one dose to more than half of its 944 million adults.

Modi hailed the milestone on Twitter, writing: “Record vaccination numbers today! Crossing 1 crore [10 million] is a momentous feat. Kudos to those getting vaccinated and those making the vaccination drive a success.”

India is currently administering three vaccines: the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab, known locally as Covishield, Covaxin by Indian firm Bharat Biotech, and the Russian-made Sputnik V.

It has shipped more than a billion doses, saved countless lives – and faced controversy over its safety and supply.

Oliver Franklin-Wallis spoke to some of those who created the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine to tell the story of their epic race against the virus.

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September will be a key month for monitoring Covid-19 as pupils return to school in England, Dr Mike Tildesley, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (Spi-M) government advisory body has said.

Speaking on Times Radio this morning, Dr Tildesley said it “remains to be seen” how things might change when people start to mix more.

I think the key thing for me, actually, is what’s going to happen next month.

Children are going back to school, people are coming back off their summer vacations and I think monitoring what that does to the data – and not just cases but monitoring very carefully hospital admissions and deaths – will really dictate, I think, what’s going to happen in the autumn.

He acknowledged that the country is in “quite a different place” than it was a year ago.

Obviously, we have the Delta variant, which is more transmissible – we have quite high prevalence, a lot of cases; but of course on the other side, we have a very good and effective vaccination campaign.

So I think it remains to be seen how they will trade off against each other and what that will do when September comes and people start to mix a little bit more.”

India reported 46,759 new Covid cases on Saturday, the highest daily number of recorded cases in nearly two months and the third consecutive day that case numbers have exceeded 40,000.

The southern state of Kerala, which last week celebrated the local Onam festival, accounted for 70% of the new cases, Reuters reports.

India also recorded a further 509 deaths, taking the taking official death toll since the pandemic began to 437,370.

The Delta variant doubles the risk of Covid hospitalisation compared with the previously dominant Alpha variant, a new study has found.

The analysis – based on data collected in England – suggests that outbreaks of the Delta variant are likely to put an additional strain on health services, particularly in places with low rates of vaccination.

The Delta variant is already understood to be far more infectious than the previously dominant Alpha variant that was initially detected in Kent. This analysis underscores Delta’s ability to put people in hospital once infected, especially those who have not been vaccinated.

In the study, researchers analysed healthcare data from 43,338 Covid-19 cases in England between 29 March and 23 May 2021. Only 1.8% of the cases had received both doses of the vaccine, 24% had been vaccinated once and 74% were unvaccinated.

After accounting for key factors such as age, ethnicity and vaccination status, the researchers found the risk of being admitted to hospital was more than doubled with the Delta variant compared with the Alpha variant (a 2.26-fold increase in risk), according to the paper published in the Lancet journal.

Dr Gavin Dabrera, one of the study’s lead authors and a consultant epidemiologist for Public Heath England, said:

This study confirms previous findings that people infected with Delta are significantly more likely to require hospitalisation than those with Alpha, although most cases included in the analysis were unvaccinated.

We already know that vaccination offers excellent protection against Delta and as this variant accounts for more than 98% of Covid-19 cases in the UK, it is vital that those who have not received two doses of vaccine do so as soon as possible.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s rolling coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Léonie Chao-Fong.

• The Delta variant of Covid-19 doubles the risk of Covid hospitalisation compared with the previously dominant Alpha variant, a new study has found. The analysis – based on data collected in England – suggests that outbreaks of the Delta variant are likely to put an additional strain on health services.
• The US intelligence community failed to reach a conclusion over whether a Chinese laboratory incident was the source of Covid-19, US officials said in a report summary on Friday. The report was issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in response to Joe Biden’s request.
• In Australia, New South Wales recorded 1,035 new cases on Saturday – the worst daily total for any Australian state or territory since the pandemic began. Figures obtained by Guardian Australia show a huge gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Covid vaccination rates in every region of the state.
• Secondary school and college pupils will need to wear face masks in communal areas outside their classrooms in parts of south-west England, following a rise in cases in Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly and Devon. The new measures are expected to be in place for five weeks.
• Denmark is to lift all its remaining Covid-19 restrictions by 10 September after the health ministry declared the virus “no longer a critical threat to society”. Denmark is the EU’s third-most vaccinated country, with 71% of the population having received two shots.
• School districts in Florida in the United States may impose mask mandates, a judge said on Friday, ruling that the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, overstepped his authority by issuing an executive order banning the mandates. The Leon County circuit judge John Cooper agreed with a group of parents who claimed in a lawsuit that DeSantis’s order was unconstitutional and could not be enforced.