Health News at Your Fingertips

Austria has announced it will relax its coronavirus lockdown from Monday next week, moving to a nighttime curfew and allowing non-essential shops and schools reopen despite infections remaining above the level that the government would like.

Pupils will need a negative test in order to attend face-to-face teaching, with others able to join online, the government said in a statement reported by Reuters, adding that tests will be administered in schools and older pupils’ classes will be split into smaller groups.

The nighttime curfew will be in place between 8pm and 6am.

Customers will have to wear FFP2 face masks in shops, it added. Museums, galleries and zoos will also reopen.

Women made up nearly all of Italy’s job losses in the month of December, when the country’s unemployment level rose to 9.0% from 8.8% in November, national statistics bureau ISTAT said on Monday.

ISTAT said some 101,000 jobs were lost in the final month of 2020, with 99,000 of them women losing their employment. Over the entire year, 312,000 women lost their jobs compared with 132,000 men, according to Reuters.

Economists said the disparity is linked to women in Italy tending to work in less secure roles which have been especially badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic, such as the tourism and hospitality sectors.

Italy registered 329 coronavirus-related deaths on Monday, the health ministry said, while a further 7,925 new infections were added to its total.

Some 142,419 tests for Covid-19 were carried out in the past day, the health ministry said in a statement reported by Reuters. Testing numbers usually decline at the weekend.

Italy has registered 88,845 deaths linked to Covid-19 since its outbreak emerged last February, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the sixth-highest in the world. The country has reported 2.561 million cases to date.

Patients hospitalised with Covid-19 – not including those in intensive care – stood at 20,260 on Monday. There were 145 new admissions to intensive care units, while the total number of ICU patients stood at 2,252.

The UK has reported a further 18,607 lab-confirmed coronavirus cases – the lowest daily total of new cases since 15 December, when 18,450 cases were recorded.

It brings the total number of cases in the UK to 3,835,783, government figures show.

There were a further 406 deaths within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19, taking the toll to 106,564. This is the lowest figure since 28 December, when there were 357 fatalities recorded.

Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies for deaths where Covid-19 has been mentioned on the death certificate, together with additional data on deaths that have occurred in recent days, show there have now been 123,000 deaths involving Covid-19 in the UK.

South African nurses have called on the government to ensure rural healthcare workers are able to access Covid-19 vaccines as the hard-hit country received its first batch of doses.

Nurses in remote areas have reported shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) during the pandemic and there are fears that rural areas will be left behind in the country’s vaccine rollout, the Thomson Reuters Foundation reported.

“Healthcare workers’ hands are full as we speak, we are very concerned about overstretching them to breaking point,” said Sibongiseni Delihlazo, spokesman for the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (DENOSA), a union.

“It is important to not forget them,” Delihlazo told the Thomson Reuters Foundation over the phone.

One million shots of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine will rolled out to healthcare workers in the coming months, with 500,000 more due to arrive in February.

The health ministry recently showed there were about 1.25 million health workers to be vaccinated and unions are already calling for more vaccines as each employee will need two doses.

In places so remote that they cannot be reached by car, healthcare workers fear limited access to vaccines could worsen difficult working conditions.

“Ordinarily those clinics don’t have resources or even water, ablutions are not in good conditions,” said Kedibone Mdolo, the north west acting provincial secretary of DENOSA.

“Those nurses out there are forgotten so it will be a test for the (health) department to see how best they will reach them,” she said, adding that officials had given only “general answers” on rural roll-out plans.

The Department of Health did not respond to requests for comment, but health minister Zweli Mkhize said recently the “entire country” was being considered in the vaccination scheme.

South Africa has the most confirmed coronavirus cases in Africa, with more than 1.4 million cases and over 43,000 deaths to date.

Denmark, which has been under a tough lockdown since December, will reopen schools for the youngest children from next week.

According to the broadcaster TV2, grades 1 to 4 will be allowed back on 8 February. More details are expected to be given by health and education ministers in a press conference this evening.

Here’s a round up of the latest developments:

• Germany should use the Russian and Chinese coronavirus vaccines if they win EU approval. Jens Spahn said that if a vaccine “can be considered safe and effective, regardless of what country it has been produced in, then it could help”.
• The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said Europe had to act more efficiently and quickly on vaccines. “We are in a race against time,” he said.
• The Madrid region will begin easing its coronavirus restrictions this week, officials have announced, even as the rest of Spain ramps up restrictions. From Friday, groups of up to six people will be allowed to gather on outdoor restaurant terraces, rising from the current cap of four.
• The variant of the coronavirus first discovered in the UK now represents half of infections in the Netherlands, according to the Dutch health minister Hugo de Jonge. Last week, the country’s health authorities said the new, more transmissible variant was responsible for about a third of all new cases in the Netherlands.
• Older people in Poland will not be given the AstraZeneca jab until more data is available, the vaccination minister has said. Poland follows similar decisions by Germany and Austria.
• Israel has extended its nationwide lockdown to contain coronavirus, which has continued to spread despite aggressive vaccination campaign. The cabinet prolonged restrictions until Friday morning, but scheduled a fresh meeting for Wednesday to assess whether a further extension was required.
• Palestinians will receive an initial batch of 50,000 coronavirus vaccines by mid-February, when inoculations will begin in the West Bank and Gaza, their prime minister has announced. Mohammed Shtayyeh said the procurement had been secured through various sources, including the UN-backed Covax programme, established to provide vaccines to less wealthy states.
• Portugal reported nearly half of its total coronavirus death toll during January, underlining the rapid worsening of the pandemic as officials blamed the UK variant and relaxation of restrictions over Christmas for the surge. Last month, a total of 5,576 people died from the coronavirus, representing 44.7% of all 12,482 fatalities since the start of the pandemic.

Elderly people in Poland will not be given the AstraZeneca Covid-19 jab, the vaccination minister said on Monday, adding that the final call will be made following advice from medical experts.

Europe’s medicines regulator approved AstraZeneca/Oxford University’s jab for over-18s on Friday, according to Reuters, but said there were not yet enough results for people over 55 to determine how effective the vaccine will be.

Poland follows similar decisions by Germany and Austria. Although the AstraZeneca trial did not include enough over-65s to offer the same level of confidence of its effectiveness as in younger groups, experts have said that while more data needs to be gathered, “there is no data so far to indicate that the vaccine isn’t effective in people over the age of 65”, adding that the vaccine has a good safety profile and encouraging uptake by older people.

“If we are talking about the decision of the medical council, we expect it in the coming days or possibly hours, but it is clear that elderly people will not be vaccinated with this shot,” Michal Dworczyk, the prime minister’s top aide, who has been put in charge of vaccinations, told a news conference. “We are waiting for a clear recommendation from the medical council and then … we will take a decision,” he added.

Dworczyk said that teachers could be prioritised in the rollout.

Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is “doing well” in his recovery from Covid-19, the country’s interior minister said on Monday.

Olga Sanchez added that the president is expected to return to a regular morning news conference next Monday, Reuters reported.

López Obrador, 67, announced he had tested positive last Sunday, adding that his symptoms were mild and he was “optimistic” about the diagnosis.

The variant of the coronavirus first discovered in the UK caused half of all new Covid-19 infections in the Netherlands by 26 January, Dutch health minister Hugo de Jonge has said.

Last week, the country’s health authorities said the new, more transmissible variant was responsible for about a third of all new cases in the Netherlands.

The Netherlands’ primary schools and daycare centres will reopen as planned on 8 February, education minister Arie Slob confirmed on Sunday. Secondary schools and after-school clubs will stay shut, Dutch News reported.