Health News at Your Fingertips

Northern Ireland’s Covid-19 certification service, which provides digital proof of coronavirus vaccination, has been temporarily interrupted after a technical fault saw some users presented with data related to other users.

A Department of Health statement said: “The Department is aware that a limited number of users in limited circumstance may be presented with data relating to other users.

“The Department of Health takes the privacy of citizen’s data very seriously and contact has been made with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) as part of due diligence in protecting citizen’s data.

“Immediate action has also been taken to temporarily remove a part of the service that manages identity.”

Many users will not be affected by the interruption, and those who have already been issued with a certificate can still use them, PA reports.

Others will face delays accessing electronic versions of their certificates and some will find their accounts on the NIDirect website locked, pending the resolution of the technical issue.

Australia’s health department was urged by the government’s vaccine advisory group to order as many Covid-19 vaccines as possible from different sources after a meeting in August last year, my colleagues Sarah Martin and Katharine Murphy report.

The health department secretary, Prof Brendan Murphy, said on Friday that the government’s procurement strategy was based on advice from the Science and Industry Technical Advisory Group (Sitag) – a group he chairs – as he sought to deflect criticism of the troubled vaccine rollout.

The comments disgruntled some members of Sitag. Multiple sources have told Guardian Australia that the group was asked to provide feedback on a procurement strategy that had already been prepared by the department after its negotiations with pharmaceutical companies.

Iran’s Covid-19 cases hit a record high for the second time in as many days today, rising to almost 35,000, as the health minister warned there was little hope of improvement unless the public followed health precautions, state TV reported.

The epicentre of the pandemic in the Middle East, Iran reported 34,951 new cases today, after registering a record 31,814 cases yesterday in a fifth wave blamed on the highly transmissible Delta variant. Deaths rose by 357 to 89,479 today, though the number of excess deaths were not reported by Reuters.

“If health protocols are followed as they are now, we will not have much hope of getting out of the [high risk] ‘red’ situation,” health minister Saeed Namaki told state TV.

Officials say less than 40% of Iranians wear masks and follow other precautions.
State television broadcast scenes from burials of Covid-19 victims with crying relatives appealing to the public to follow safety precautions.

The government has been accused on social media of mismanagement over the country’s slow vaccination drive, with just 2.5 million people fully vaccinated from a population of 83 million. Officials have blamed US sanctions for hampering efforts to buy foreign vaccines and delays in deliveries, Reuters reports.

Two ministers in the French government promoted the Covid-19 vaccine through their own example today, with one of them administering the shot to the other.

Health minister Olivier Veran, a doctor by profession, delivered the jab to Olivia Gregoire, junior economy minister, as France steps up its controversial efforts to cajole its populace into getting vaccinated.

As he got ready to give the injection in front of television cameras at Necker Hospital in Paris, Veran struggled to put on a surgical glove, which he put down to being out of practice, Reuters reports.

But Gregoire, who is pregnant and was getting her second dose of the vaccine, said she was not worried about his professional abilities. “I have complete faith,” Gregoire said.

After the injection was done, she told Veran she had not felt a thing. “You haven’t lost the knack,” she told him.

In the UK, pregnant women are being given dangerously mixed messaging from health professionals, with figures suggesting a “very high” vaccine hesitancy among the vulnerable group, according to campaigners.

A group said it had been inundated with stories of negative messaging given to pregnant women from healthcare professionals.

Almost 99% people who have died of Covid-19 in Italy since February this year were not fully vaccinated, the National Health Institute (ISS) has said.

The study, contained in a regular report on Covid-19 deaths released by the public health body, added that the few fully vaccinated people who died of Covid were also significantly older than those who died without full vaccination, at 88.6 years of age versus 80.

Reuters reports that they also had more underlying health problems before contracting the virus.

Italy last week followed France in announcing that proof of vaccination or immunity from Covid-19 would shortly be mandatory for an array of activities, including indoor dining and entering places such as gyms, pools, museums and cinemas.

To date, almost 57% of the population over the age of 12 are fully vaccinated. Italy reported 24 coronavirus-related deaths today against 22 yesterday, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 4,522 from 3,117.

From 1 February to 21 July, there were 423 Covid deaths among fully vaccinated people, representing 1.2% of the total of 35,776 Covid deaths, the institute said.

Italy’s vaccination campaign began around the start of this year, so by the start of the study the first people to be vaccinated could have completed their two-jab vaccination using Pfizer or Moderna.

Studying the medical records of 70 of the 423 fully vaccinated people who have died of Covid, the ISS said their average number of underlying illnesses was 5.0, compared with 3.7 for Covid deaths among people not fully vaccinated.