Health News at Your Fingertips

Hairdressers, beauty salons and large department stores will close and schools will return to remote learning in Cyprus from 10 January, as the country enters a second national lockdown in response to a rise in coronavirus infections.

The health minister, Constantinos Ioannou, told a news conference that people will be allowed to leave home just twice a day for specific reasons such as buying groceries or medicines and taking exercise. A current curfew banning movement from 9pm to 5am daily will remain in force.

Cyprus has recorded 26,208 coronavirus infections since its first case was recorded in early March 2020, and 140 deaths. There has been an aggressive spike in infections over the past month, with cases regularly exceeding 300 a day.

Cyprus, like most European Union member states, began a vaccination programme on 27 December, starting with the elderly.

Authorities have also requested a supplementary amount of vaccines from neighbour and close ally Israel, the president, Nicos Anastassiades, told the daily Politis, according to Reuters.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the request would be considered in consultation with experts, Politis quoted Anastasiades as saying.

An interesting point to note on the European Union’s deal to double its order of Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccines is that it means the bloc now has dibs on nearly half the company’s total projected output of the vaccine for 2021.

Pfizer has said it can produce up to 1.3 billion doses around the world this year, according to a Reuters wire report. The new agreement with the EU – for 300m doses – comes on top of another order for 300m doses that the bloc agreed in November.

It seems that fears of wealthier countries monopolising the first tranches of the new vaccines – voiced repeatedly by the World Health Organisation and various NGOs – are coming to pass.

A 6pm (5pm GMT) curfew is to be imposed in Strasbourg, France, according to a wire report from Reuters.

The city in eastern France, which is home to one of the two buildings of the European parliament, will be under the new, earlier curfew from Sunday, the news agency said, citing a report on French broadcaster BFM.

The French government imposed an earlier curfew in 15 northeastern and southeastern departments at the start of January, with residents required to stay indoors from 6pm to 6am.

Jean Castex, the prime minister, had said on Thursday that the government from considering adding a further 10 local regions to the 6pm curfew rule. For now, Paris is not on the list.

Hullo – Damien Gayle here taking the reins on the coronavirus world news liveblog now, with thanks to Amelia for keeping things going this morning.

If you have any comments, tips or suggestions for what we could be covering on here – and news and experiences from less well-covered regions are always welcome – then you can reach me via email at damien.gayle@theguardian.com, or via Twitter direct message to @damiengayle.

The French government will only permit ski resorts to reopen lifts if the Covid-19 situation by January 20th allows, a minister said on Friday.

“The government’s decision on Januaryth 20 must by guided only by the situation of the epidemic,” French junior tourism minister Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne said on BFM television.

French Prime Minister Jean Castex said yesterday that restaurants would remain shuttered until at least mid February and ski resorts might not open before the February holiday because the coronavirus is still spreading too fast and hospitals remain under severe pressure.

Following on from this story earlier, Pfizer has said that it is in talks with the EU over a firm order for an additional 200 million doses of the Comirnaty vaccine to be supplied to its 27 member states, with an option for an additional 100 million doses.

This is in addition to the 300 million doses already committed to the EU for 2021.

Sweden’s parliament has voted today in favour of a new pandemic law giving the government power to close certain businesses or limit visitor numbers and opening hours, which will come into effect from January 10th.

Parliament was recalled from its Christmas recess for the first time since 2005 in order to debate the coronavirus bill, reports Sweden’s English-language online newspaper, the Local.

“We know that Covid-19 is in the society and will be here for a long time to come. More precise measures are needed, that are possible to maintain over time,” Health Minister Lena Hallengren said.

The new pandemic law gives the government the possibility to shut down businesses, but Hallengren stressed that this is not the main goal of the legislation.

It also introduces extra measures, such as the possibility to introduce limits on visitor numbers or opening times in order to reduce the risk of infection spread. The new law means these measures could be applied to places including public transport, shops and shopping centres, cinemas and theatres, and public parks or beaches for example.

Any measures introduced using the new law would be legally enforced. This means people could face sanctions for violating them, which is not the case with the Public Health Agency’s recommendations, the main tool used thus far as part of Sweden’s non-coercive coronavirus strategy.

The pandemic law will come into force on Sunday January 10th and applies until September 2021.

A Covid-19 vaccine produced by Sinovac Biotech is deemed halal, or permissible under Islam, Indonesia’s Ulema Council said today, days before the country is scheduled to start its inoculation programme using the Chinese vaccine.

Asrorun Niam Sholeh, of the council’s fatwa commission, told a news conference that the vaccine, named CoronaVac, was “holy and halal”, although authorisation still rests on the Indonesia’s food and drug agency.

Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, has received 3m doses of CoronaVac.

Sri Lanka’s government insisted today on the cremation of all coronavirus victims, rejecting international pleas and recommendations from its own experts to allow the Muslim minority to bury their dead in line with Islamic custom.

The government first banned burials in April amid concerns – which experts say are baseless – by influential Buddhist monks that burying bodies could contaminate groundwater and spread the virus, the Channel News Asia is reporting.

The World Health Organization has said there is no such risk, recommending both burials and cremations of virus victims, but the Sri Lankan government has refused.

“This decision will not be changed for social, religious, political or any other personal reason,” health minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi said, according to ministry officials.

The announcement came despite a government-appointed expert committee noting this week that while it felt cremations were safest, burials could be allowed under strict conditions.

EU countries are not allowed to negotiate separate vaccine deals with pharmaceutical companies in parallel to the efforts of the European Union as a whole, the president of the European commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has said.

“The only framework we are negotiating in is as 27. We do this together and no member state on this legal binding basis is allowed to negotiate in parallel or to have a contract in parallel,” Von der Leyen told reporters in Brussels.

“The whole portfolio covers 2.3bn doses of vaccines so this is more than enough to vaccinate the whole European population,” she said.

But health minister Marta Temido told reporters that member states were allowed to take further steps towards securing vaccines on their own if they deem them necessary. But she stressed that any vaccine side deals “couldn’t run any risk” to what was already agreed under joint purchases.

The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has reported its first Covid-19 death 10 months after initially detecting the virus and managing to keep the disease under control by largely sealing off the tourism-dependent country.

In a statement issued late on Thursday, Bhutan’s health ministry said a 34-year-old man with chronic liver disease and renal failure, who tested positive for Covid-19, had died at a hospital in the capital, Thimphu.

Bhutan has reported 767 cases of the coronavirus, having conducted just over 300,000 tests since it detected the first infection in an American tourist last March.

Taking swift measures, the country of 750,000 people closed itself to visitors and imposed a mandatory quarantine for everyone returning from abroad.

Since then, Bhutan has kept its borders sealed, enforced lockdowns twice, intensified testing and screening at entry points, including at its only international airport at Paro.

The country is reporting 13 new infections on average each day, about 56% of the peak it reached in late December, according to a Reuters tally.

An adviser to Bhutan’s health ministry said the 34-year-old had been in isolation and had twice tested positive for Covid-19 this week.

“It was not easy and clear to include this as a Covid-19 death,” Dr Tshokey told Bhutan’s Kuensel newspaper, which gave only one name. “But since he died with Covid-19, we have included the death as a Covid-19 death.”