Health News at Your Fingertips

There have been a further 10,972 lab-confirmed coronavirus cases in the UK, according to government data – a fall from last Sunday’s figure at 15,845.

A total of 4,038,078 people have tested positive.

A further 258 deaths within 28 days of a positive test were reported, bringing the total to 117,166. There were 373 last Sunday.

There have been 121,674 fatalities where Covid-19 is mentioned as a cause on the death certificate, registered up to 29 January.

The seven-day rolling average, which evens out reporting irregularities in the daily figures, shows that cases are down by 28.1% compared to the previous week (1 – 7 February). Fatalities have decreased by 25.5% by the same measure.

Sunday figures are often lower because of reporting delays over the weekend.

I’m Clea Skopeliti and I’ll be manning the global blog for the next few hours. Please do get in touch with any suggestions for coverage via Twitter DM – thanks in advance.

• There is growing controversy over a World Health Organization investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic after one of its members said China had refused to hand over key data, and the US national security adviser said he had “deep concerns” about the initial findings.

• Germany has partially closed its borders with the Czech Republic and Austria’s Tyrol after a surge in coronavirus mutations, drawing a swift rebuke from the European Union.
The Czech authorities have meanwhile approved a new state of emergency to approve one that was due to end tonight, following last minute negotiations with regional governors.

• There is still “a long way to go” and “there will be bumps in the road”, UK prime minister Boris Johnson has said in a video which Downing Street had tweeted in the wake of the news that some 15 million people in Britain have had a first does of a Covid-19 vaccine.

• Britain’s foreign secretary, Dominic Raab has hit back at what he called “arbitrary” targets demanded by some MPs in the ruling Conservative Party to lift coronavirus restrictions in England, urging caution even as he said the government was on track to meet its target to vaccinate the most vulnerable people.

• Lockdown measures will be introduced across Auckland from midnight on Sunday, while restrictions will also be increased elsewhere in New Zealand, after three local cases were reported over the weekend.
The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said the government was taking a cautionary approach, and acting under the assumption that they involved new, more transmissible strains of the virus.

The Czech government has approved calling a new state of emergency, the country’s interior minister Jan Hamacek has said.

Czech authorities tweeted that an extraordinary meeting had been held by the government to resolve the issue after it lost a parliamentary vote on Thursday to extend another state of emergency.

The move came after a last-minute deal with the country’s regional governors.

The vote on Thursday would have meant the end from tomorrow of shop closures and curfews.

Parliamentarians had rejected the pleas of prime minister Andrej Babiš (pictured above) to extend the powers beyond today despite his warnings of a healthcare collapse as infections spread.

The country of 10.7 million has been in various levels of lockdown almost continuously since October.

China hit back at US criticism of the World Health Organisation and its investigation into the origins of Covid-19, the South China Morning Post reports.

Accusing Washington of “severely undermining” the world health body, the Chinese embassy in Washington referred to the US withdrawal from the WHO and subsequent post-Trump return.

“But the US, acting as if none of this had ever happened, is pointing fingers at other countries who have been faithfully supporting the WHO and at the WHO itself,” the embassy added.

“It is hoped that the US will hold itself to the highest standards, take a serious, earnest, transparent and responsible attitude, shoulder its rightful responsibility, support the WHO’s work with real actions and make due contribution to the international cooperation on Covid-19.”

There is still “a long way to go” and “there will be bumps in the road”, UK prime minister Boris Johnson has said in a video which Downing Street had tweeted in the wake of the news that some 15 million people in Britain have had a first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.

“But after all we’ve achieved, I know we can go forward with great confidence,” he added.

More than 15 million people in the UK have had a first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine – the equivalent of everyone in the British government’s top four priority groups – Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccines minister, has said.

Hugo Gye, the deputy political editor at the iPaper, notes that Saturday’s figure for vaccinations in Northern Ireland is still to come.

But excluding that, the number of people who have had a vaccine dose in the UK is 15,058,859.

The UK government has reached its target of offering at least first vaccinations to the four groups of people seen as most vulnerable to coronavirus by mid-February, it has announced.

The government has set a series of targets for offering vaccinations to a series of groups, with the priority order set out by the government’s Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunisation.

The Guinean government has officially declared a new Ebola outbreak after cases detected in the south-east of the west African nation were confirmed to be positive for the virus, the health ministry said on Sunday.

“Very early this morning, the Conakry laboratory confirmed the presence of the Ebola virus,” Sakoba Keita, the head of Guinea’s health agency, said after an emergency meeting. He called it an “epidemic situation”.

It is the first known resurgence of the virus in West Africa since the 2013-16 epidemic that started in Guinea and killed more than 11,300 in the region.

A World Health Organization representative said it would rapidly send assistance.

One in six children may never be able to catch up on lost school time during the pandemic without the right support, England’s children’s commissioner has warned.

Anne Longfield said measures needed to be in place ahead of plans for schools to reopen next month for children who have been struggling with learning at home.

Talking to Sky News, she said: “Part of that really needs to be as well about helping children to build back those social skills and that confidence. There’s a group of children who won’t make up the time they’ve lost, these are the ones who started behind, who are struggling. Potentially about one in six children, if they don’t get that level of support and boost, won’t ever catch up during their time at school.”

In an interview with the Observer, Longfield added that the pandemic had brought home the importance of schools and other local institutions in a child’s life, as well as highlighting the impacts of deprivation and abuse that had remained invisible for years.

“We will have had almost a billion school days lost by mid-April in this country, which is astounding,” she said.

“The place we all in some ways took for granted was whisked away. Over the pandemic, everyone has come to understand how important schools are, not just the education part, but friends, relationships with teachers, mental health. But also, for those kids where home is not a safe place, it’s schools that know that. We saw the drop in referrals [to social services] in the first few weeks and it’s still not back to where it should be.”

Mexico’s foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard ,has said shipments of the Pfizer’s Covid vaccine are expected to resume on Tuesday. The next shipment was expected to include about 494,000 doses, Reuters reports.

Mexico had been relying on the Pfizer vaccine for weekly deliveries before the company delayed shipments globally.

The virus that causes Covid-19 may not have emerged in China, a World Health Organisation (WHO) scientist has suggested.

Prof John Watson, who was part of the WHO team that travelled to China to investigate the origins of the pandemic, said the virus’s leap from animals to humans may have occurred outside the country’s borders.

He told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday that the pandemic most likely started with an infection in an “animal reservoir” that was then passed on to humans through an “intermediate host”.

Asked if he was sure the virus emerged in China, Prof Watson, who previously served as England’s deputy chief medical officer until 2017, said “no”.

In Ireland, about 3,000 GPs and nurses will be receiving their first Covid-19 vaccine today, though concerns remain about the potential impact of travel on the state’s attempts to contain the spread of new variants.

An infectious diseases consultant, Dr Cliona Ní Cheallaigh, told RTE this morning that Ireland could not afford to have people travelling in and out of the country at the current rate.

Investment was needed in public health teams to carry out work such as contact tracing, who she said needed to become “like SWAT teams”.

The French health ministry has asked regional health agencies and hospitals to go into “crisis organisation” from 18 February to prepare for a possible surge in coronavirus cases due to highly contagious variants, Le Journal du Dimanche reported.

The move, which would echo measures taken in March and November 2020 when France went into national lockdowns, involves increasing the number of hospital beds available, delaying non-urgent surgery and mobilising all medical staff resources.

“This crisis organisation must be implemented in each region, regardless of the level of hospital stress and must be operational from Thursday 18 February,” the health authority DGS said in a memo cited by the newspaper.

Tensions are rising in the Czech Republic after the government lost a parliamentary vote on Thursday to extend a state of emergency, leading to the end of shop closures and curfews from tomorrow and eliminating its main tool against a raging coronavirus pandemic.

But after fresh talks, all governors have agreed they will ask for a state of emergency, according to the governor of the Moravia-Silesia region, Ivo Vondrack.

“It is the only way to deal with the crisis in our country at the moment,” he tweeted.

Parliamentarians had rejected the pleas of prime minister Andrej Babiš to extend the powers beyond today despite his warnings of a healthcare collapse as infections spread.

Babiš’s minority government said it would be unable to extend nationwide limits on movement, including a night-time curfew and public gathering ban, and the closure of retail stores and services. Pubs and restaurants could stay closed while some other measures could remain under different legislation.

The country of 10.7 million has been in various levels of lockdown almost continuously since October.

Israel and Cyprus have agreed in principle a deal allowing coronavirus-vaccinated citizens of the two countries to travel between them without limitations, once flights resume, Israel’s president said on Sunday.

Israel reached a similar agreement last week with Greece, as the Mediterranean nations seek to revive tourism industries battered by the pandemic.

“Let me say how pleased I am with the recent understandings that will allow the renewal of flights between Israel and Cyprus and call on more countries to adopt the ‘green pass’,” Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, said in a statement after meeting his Cypriot counterpart, Nicos Anastasiades.