Health News at Your Fingertips

A total of 42,323 cases of the Delta variant of coronavirus that was first detected in India have now been confirmed in the UK, up by 29,892 from last week, Public
Health England (PHE) said in new data.

PA note that more than 90% of new Covid-19 cases are now the Delta variant, which continues to show a significantly higher rate of growth compared to the Alpha (or Kent) variant, PHE said.

New research suggests the Delta variant is associated with an approximately 60% increased risk of household transmission compared with the Alpha variant.

The figures show that growth rates for Delta cases are high across all parts of the country, with regional estimates for doubling time ranging from 4.5 days to 11.5 days.

Those attending the Euro 2020 fan zone in Glasgow have been urged to take a coronavirus test before they go, however it will not be mandatory to show a negative result.

Professor Jason Leitch, Scotland’s national clinical director, said “there will have to be a reverse gear” if clusters of virus cases are linked to the fan zone.

The fan zone in Glasgow Green, which opens on Friday, will see up to 6,000 people per day gather to watch matches for the duration of the tournament.

Speaking to the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland radio programme on Friday, PA report Prof Leitch said the fan zone is a “gateway event” as part of the move out of lockdown.

He said: “I think they’ve done a good job. It’s not zero risk, the fan zone cannot be zero risk. The only way to take away all of the risk of Covid is to lock the city down, not let any crowds in the fan zone or the stadium. That’s not what I think the pandemic stage we’re at suggests.”

He said gaining entry to the fan zone will not require evidence of vaccination or a recent negative test, however testing is “very, very recommended”.

Making the tests mandatory could lead to people “gaming” or cheating the system, he said, arguing persuasion is a better way forward.

By the way, if like me, you are getting a little excited about the prospect of Euro 2020 kicking off tonight, then my excellent colleague Gregg Bakowski has got our tournament live blog up and running this morning…

A UK government that has been extremely vocal about taking away foreign aid was always potentially on sticky ground when offering to donate vaccines to poorer countries.

Britain’s vaccine minister, Nadhim Zahawi, has been pressed to reassure Conservative voters that the government isn’t giving away doses that are needed in the UK.

On LBC radio, Reuters notes that he said supplies of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for coronavirus would be “tight” over the next few weeks, but that he was still confident that the country’s immunisation targets would be met.

“It is tight. I’m confident that Scotland will be able to meet the target of offering every adult at least one dose by the end of July as we will in England as well,” he said.

Russia on Friday reported 12,505 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, its highest number of daily infections since late February. Cases had been running at a steady 7,000-9,500 per day for weeks on end, but have seen an uptick this week.

Thailand has signed a purchase order for 20m doses of the Covid vaccine develop by Pfizer and BioNTech to be delivered before the end of this year, its health minister said.

Details of the deal, delivery timeframe and the vaccine’s approval by the Food and Drug Administration would be worked out in about a month, Thai health minister Anutin Charnvirakul said.

Reuters note that Anutin said Thailand also plan to buy 5m doses of Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot vaccine within this year.

Another little bit from that Dominic Raab interview on Sky, by the way, he said the resumption of travel between the UK and the US was discussed by Boris Johnson and Joe Biden yesterday but there will be no announcement “imminently”.

PA Media notes he told Sky News: “We all want to do it, it was something that was discussed yesterday and we’ve got an idea … but it’s not something that we’ll be announcing imminently.”

Currently the UK government has the US on its “amber” list of countries, meaning “You should not travel to amber list countries or territories” from England.

The US state department advice on visiting the UK is that it is on “Level 3: Reconsider Travel” on their travel advisory list.

Coronavirus news can often seem like a bit of a repetitive grind of numbers, but this morning AFP has a quirkier bit of coverage, about a train cafe in Cambodia.

Train travel has largely ground to a halt in the country due to the coronavirus. A new airport rail link was closed last year and passenger trains to the seaport of Sihanoukville have been suspended since March when Cambodia was hit with the worst of its Covid-19 outbreak. But railway fans can still get their fix onboard a stationary carriage converted into a hipster cafe.

The new train cafe at Phnom Penh railway station has become a hub for Instagrammers and Facebookers looking for a selfie location and cold drink. As authorities relax virus restrictions following a three-week lockdown in the capital, patrons have flocked to the cafe for impromptu photoshoots and iced coffees.

Among them, AFP spoke to Chan Thol, a 19-year-old student, who along with her friends has made the cafe a regular haunt. She said it was a delightful change of scenery after weeks of boredom staying home.

“I come for leisure and to take pictures with my friends and enjoy the coffee,” she said. “It helps reduce my stress.”

Se Sokunaphors, 27, said the train cafe concept was unique. “I never took a train before. And this is fun,” she said.

Sak Vanny, manager of passenger operations for Royal Railway Cambodia said: “We had the idea to turn a train carriage into a train cafe in order to generate some income for the company and help staff members with work during the pandemic.”

“We did not make a lot of changes to it so that its original look wouldn’t disappear … When guests come here they can have the same feeling like they are riding a train.”

“Is the 100m enough, or is it just a drop in the bucket?” – that’s Sky News’ Kay Burley challenging the UK’s foreign secretary Dominic Raab on whether the UK is doing enough to vaccinate the world with the expected pledge of 100m surplus vaccines from the UK as part of an overall package of 1bn vaccines from the G7. Raab defended the UK’s record saying:

Remember, at the start of this we put £90m into developing the AstraZeneca vaccine. Not only have we had a very successful rollout at home, but 95% of the Covax vaccines – the global mechanism to get vaccines to the poorest and most vulnerable countries around the world – 95% of those have come from AstraZeneca, so very much part of Britain’s push for an internationalist approach. On top of that we secured a billion doses by funding Covax.

Now what we’re saying is we’re far enough forward with our domestic rollout that we can now make the pledge to deliver 100m from our excess vaccine at home to vaccinate the world’s poorest. We’re going to do 5m in the coming weeks and months, we will do 25m more of those doses by the end of this calendar year and 100m by the mid part of next year.

In the UK, opposition foreign spokesperson Lisa Nandy has said there was a moral, economic and health case for Britain to help vaccinate the world against coronavirus.

PA Media reports she told BBC Breakfast that prime minister Boris Johnson’s pledge ahead of the G7 summit to donate at least 100m surplus vaccine doses to some of the world’s poorest countries was a “welcome agreement” but there needed to be a plan not just an ambition.

She added: “What we need over the next 48 hours is not just ambitions to get the world vaccinated but an actual plan.

“That would be in Britain’s interest as well, the International Monetary Fund says that this would represent the biggest return on investment in modern history for wealthier countries because of the economic fallout if we don’t deal with this.

“So there’s a moral case, a health case but there’s an economic case for Britain as well and the prime minister absolutely has to deliver this.”

China administered about 20.4m doses of Covid vaccines on 10 June, bringing the total number administered to 845m, according to official figures. Huizhong Wu reports for Associated Press that meeting its target of vaccinating 80% of its population be the end of the year may involve inoculating millions of children.

Regulators took the first step last week by approving the use of the country’s Sinovac vaccine for children aged three to 17, though no announcement has been made about when the shots will start.

Children have been largely spared the worst of the pandemic, becoming infected less easily than adults and generally showing less severe symptoms when they do catch the virus. But experts say children can still transmit the virus to others and some note that if countries are going to achieve herd immunity through their vaccination campaigns, inoculating children should be part of the plan.

“Vaccinating children is an important step forward,” said Jin Dong-yan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong’s medical school.

Doing so, however, may be easier said than done for reasons ranging from vaccine hesitancy to vaccine availability. Even in countries with enough vaccines to go around, some governments are having problems convincing adults that the shots are safe and necessary despite studies demonstrating they are. Such concerns can be amplified when dealing with society’s youngest.

There’s also the issue of approval. Few regulators around the world have evaluated the safety of Covid-19 shots in kids, with the majority of shots approved only for adults right now. But the approvals are starting. The US, Canada, Singapore and Hong Kong are all allowing the use of the Pfizer vaccine in children as young as 12.

The Sinovac announcement could open the way for the vaccine, already in use in dozens of countries from Brazil to Indonesia, to be given to children across the world.

Also on the airwaves in the UK this morning is Jim McManus, vice-president of the Association of Directors of Public Health. He spoke in favour of pushing back the June 21 reopening.

“Businesses and organisations have done so well in reopening that if we just keep that going for a few more weeks, and invest that little bit of time to keep us going forwards, it will stop us going backwards,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“If you get enough people infected, you will get a rise in hospitalisations. You will also get a significant rise in long Covid, which is something we want to avoid too.

“The second thing is that the more people infected, the more variants will develop, and the more risk we have that a variant will develop that evades the vaccine completely. So actually, investing a bit of time is really important to enable the vaccine programme to finish and do its job.”

He said it was a “a fiendishly difficult decision for anybody, nobody wants lockdown”.

The Times was leading last night on the prospect of a four-week delay.

Of that proposal, PA Media reports McManus told Today: “I think if they are considering that, that is really welcome. If that is what they are doing – and of course we are speculating – then good on them for actually really thinking closely about how we keep the progress we have made.”

Today looks to be another day where the domestic agenda in the UK is dominated by the fact that the G7 summit is taking place in Cornwall. Andrew Sparrow will be bringing you live coverage of that in due course.

In the meantime, the UK vaccines minister, Nadhim Zahawi, has been on Times Radio. He has said he wants people to continue to be careful in the run-up to Monday’s announcement on whether the planned unlocking on 21 June will be taking place. PA Media reports he said:

There has been some really hard won battles against this virus and we don’t want to squander those hard fought gains that we have made through the vaccination programme. In saying that, the virus hasn’t gone away, the virus will continue to attempt to mutate, to escape, to try and survive, and I think it’s really important that we are really careful.

The Philippines will exempt elderly people who have been fully vaccinated from stay-at-home orders to encourage more to get inoculated and help authorities meet Covid-19 immunisation targets, officials have said.

Recording nearly 1.3 million infections and more than 22,300 deaths, the Philippines is battling the second-highest Covid-19 caseload in the region, next to Indonesia.

Seniors living in areas under looser quarantine restrictions will be allowed to go out from Wednesday, but will still need to wear masks, face shields and practise social distancing, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said in a statement.

The elderly, who account for four-fifths of Covid-19 deaths in the country, were among priority groups in the government’s vaccination drive that began on 1 March, but as of 6 June, only 1.54 million, or 16%, of the elderly population had got their first sho

“Get vaccinated to enjoy the incentive of going out to exercise and chat with your fellow senior citizen,” health undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire told a news conference.

Neil Jerome Morales reports for Reuters that from Friday the government’s coronavirus tas force also allowed non-contact sports venues like gyms, fitness studios and historical sites and museums to reopen but with a limited number of guests.