Health News at Your Fingertips

Hongkongers stranded in the UK are contemplating a six-week journey to get home, the South China Morning Post is reporting today.

A couple of days before Christmas the Hong Kong government announced an entry ban on anyone who had been in the UK for longer than two hours in the previous 21 days. The shock announcement caught many people out, including those who had traveled to the UK to visit family for the holidays. Hong Kong, under British rule until 1997, has strong ties with the UK.

That ban was extended for another two weeks on Thursday, and came on top of other restrictions including a now three-week long period of mandatory hotel quarantine for people arriving back home.

It meant the only way for people to get home was to leave the UK for another country, stay there for 21 nights before flying on to Hong Kong and spending another 21 nights in hotel quarantine.

Those trying to get back home had been advised to consider stopping over in Dubai for three weeks before continuing home. Dubai allows people from the UK to enter, as long as they take a Covid-19 test on arrival. If it’s negative they are not required to quarantine.

But now the Hong Kong government has banned all Emirates flights from Dubai and Bangkok and three passengers tested positive on arrival.

“Had we known what would happen, we would never have got on that plane,” one woman, who traveled with her family to visit sick relatives, told the SCMP.

The ban on UK arrivals, even for Hong Kong residents, has been labeled potentially unconstitutional but the government has maintained it is both legal and necessary.

Britain said on Sunday it had helped raise $1bn from global donors towards the drive to help “vulnerable countries” access coronavirus vaccines, by match-funding contributions.

It has also committed £548m ($743.4m) to the Covax Advance Market Commitment after matching with £1 for every $4 pledged by other donors.

Canada, Japan and Germany are among the countries to make contributions that it matched, helping the AMC raise more than $1.7bn so far.

The fund will allow for the distribution of 1 billion Covid vaccine doses to 92 developing countries this year, according to Britain’s Foreign Office.

“We’ll only be safe from this virus, when we’re all safe – which is why we’re focused on a global solution to a global problem,” foreign secretary Dominic Raab said. (AFP)

Mexico reported a record 16,105 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Saturday, and 1,135 additional deaths, according to health ministry data, bringing its total tally to 1,524,036 infections and 133,204 deaths.

The new daily death toll marks the fifth consecutive day that officials have reported more than 1,000 fatalities due to the highly contagious disease caused by the virus.

The real number of infected people and deaths is likely to be significantly higher than the official count, the ministry has said, due to little testing. (Reuters)

In Victoria, Australia, health minister Martin Foley has reported six new cases – all in hotel quarantine, including one flight crew member.

He’s welcomed the two days of zero cases in Brisbane, but Victoria will wait for the final report tomorrow as well as the prime minister’s announcement before changing any policy.

96 travellers were given permits to go into isolation at home in Victoria yesterday. They came through Melbourne airport “in breach” of Queensland’s restrictions, but they have been assisted to go home and isolate anyway, he said.

About 900 permits have been approved for Victorians trying to get home from NSW.

“This isn’t over until the Australian population is vaccinated,” he said.

(You can catch up on earlier and detailed Australian updates in our previous blog here.)

Cuba will run phase three trials of its vaccine candidate, Sovereign 02, in Iran, after institutes in the two countries signed an agreement in Havana.

Cuba’s state-run Finlay Vaccine Institute announced on Twitter the clinical trial would run in Iran to “move forward faster in immunisation against Covid-19 in both countries”.

The Sovereign 02 is the country’s most advanced coronavirus vaccine candidate, showing “an early immune response [at 14 days],” institute director Vicente Verez said last month.

It has been difficult to do phase 3 clinical testing in Cuba because its outbreak has not been as serious as those in many larger countries, he said.

The Islamic republic has reported more than 1.2m cases of the virus, including more than 56,000 deaths.

It comes after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, banned the importation of US and British-produced vaccines saying they were “completely untrustworthy”.

“It’s not unlikely they would want to contaminate other nations,” he said in a tweet.

Cuba has reported about 14,000 cases among its population of 11.2m, and 148 people have died. While its case numbers are lower than other countries in the region, it is seeing an increase after opening its borders. The Cuban government intents to vaccinate the whole population in the first half of this year.

On Saturday Pope Francis and Britain’s Queen Elizabeth became the latest high-profile figures to join the global vaccination campaign against the coronavirus, as the UK reported it had surpassed more than 3m cases since the pandemic began more than a year ago.

Francis urged people to get the vaccination, calling opposition to the jab “suicidal denial” and saying he would get inoculated next week when the Vatican would begin its campaign.

“There is a suicidal denial which I cannot explain, but today we have to get vaccinated,” he said in an interview with Canale 5 due to be broadcast in full on Sunday.

The Queen and her husband, Prince Philip, were vaccinated on Saturday, Buckingham Palace said, in a rare public comment on the private health matters of the long-serving monarch.

A source told the domestic Press Association news agency that the Queen, 94, and Philip, 99, were given the injections by a royal household doctor at Windsor Castle.

Hello, and welcome to our continuing coverage of the pandemic. As it’s the weekend we’re running just one of our coronavirus blogs, so I’ll be bringing you a mix of international updates as well as Australian news.

You can catch up on detailed Australian updates in our previous blog here.

You can also reach me on Twitter @heldavidson with your thoughts and updates.

A quick summary of the latest so far:

• Pope Francis said he wishes to have a Covid vaccination as early as next week, as he urged others to get a shot in order to protect their own life as well as everyone else’s. The Vatican City confirmed it will shortly launch a vaccination campaign.
• Twenty-one people in Marseille have tested positive for the new Covid variant initially found in England, with officials saying the cases had been discovered within a family cluster.
• Marseille has also joined Strasbourg and Dijon in having its curfew moved forward to 6pm from 8pm, running through to 6am.
• Another 1,035 people have died within 28 days of testing positive in the UK, bringing the total to 80,868. It is the fourth day in a row that the UK has recorded more than 1,000 deaths.

• France has recorded 171 new Covid-related deaths in hospitals in the past 24 hours, with the number of new, confirmed cases up by 20,177.
• Brazil recorded 62,290 additional confirmed cases in the 24 hours to Saturday, and 1,171 deaths.
• In Australia, three new locally transmitted cases have been recorded in New South Wales. Two are linked to the Berala cluster, and one to the northern beaches cluster. The three-week lockdown of 70,000 people in Sydney’s northern beaches region is over. Brisbane remains in lockdown, despite reporting no new cases for the second day in a row.