Health News at Your Fingertips

Germany plans to start offering Covid-19 booster shots to the elderly and at-risk from September 1, according to a draft document seen by AFP.

The plan also recommends promoting vaccination for those aged 12-17, which would go further than earlier guidance issued by the country’s vaccine regulator.

Health minister Jens Spahn and Germany’s 16 regional health ministers are expected to finalise the plans, drawn up by ministry officials, in a meeting Monday.

Mobile vaccination teams will be sent into care and nursing homes to offer Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna booster shots to residents, regardless of which vaccine they had originally, says the document.

Some more data from Italy:

Patients in hospital with Covid-19 – not including those in intensive care – stood at 1,954 on Sunday, up from 1,851 a day earlier.

There were 22 new admissions to intensive care units, down from 25 on Saturday, and the total number of intensive care patients increased to 230 from a previous 214, Reuters reports.

Some 167,761 tests for Covid-19 were carried out in the past day, up from a previous 264,860, the health ministry said.

Italy reported five coronavirus-related deaths on Sunday, down from 16 the day before, the health ministry said.

The daily tally of new infections fell to 5,321 on Sunday compared to 6,513 the previous day.

Italy has registered 128,068 deaths linked to Covid-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year, Reuters reports.

The country has reported 4.355 million cases to date.

The UK has registered 24,470 new Covid cases in the last 24 hours.

There were 911 further hospitalisations and 65 more people have died within 28 days of a positive test.

A fall in case numbers last month raised hopes that Britain may be reaching herd immunity, but experts warn against complacency, given uncertainty about new variants and autumn’s return to school

Dominic Raab said the UK’s spare donated vaccine doses were starting to be used after being shipped out last week.

The foreign secretary tweeted: “Pleased to see the first of nine million Covid-19 vaccines the UK sent overseas this week going in arms in Jamaica.”

He added that vaccines were also on the way to Kenya, Guyana, Belize, Laos and elsewhere.

More than 85 million doses of a Covid-19 vaccine have been administered across the UK, the latest figures show.

A total of 85,196,986 doses have been administered in the UK, with 46,851,145 people receiving a first dose (88.6%) and 38,345,841 people receiving both doses (72.5%).

The latest data from Public Health England (PHE) and Cambridge University shows that around 60,000 deaths, 22 million infections and 52,600 hospitalisations have been prevented by vaccines up to 23 July.

Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid said:

In under eight months, health services across the UK have delivered more than 85 million doses – this is a phenomenal achievement. It has shown Britain at its best.

From our NHS administering the jabs, to the armed forces, thousands of volunteers and civil servants, you have all played an important role in getting us to this life-saving milestone – and I want to thank you all for your tireless efforts.

Please get both of your jabs if you haven’t already to protect yourself and your loved ones.

Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi added:

Our Covid-19 vaccination programme has been an enormous success and has allowed us to cautiously ease restrictions.

Getting both doses of the vaccine is one of the most important things people can do to help build a wall of defence around yourself, your loved ones and our country.

I urge everybody to get their jabs so we can carry on doing the things we’ve missed.

“I don’t think we’re going to see lockdowns,” said Fauci, who is Chief Medical Avisor to US President Biden.

“I think we have enough of the percentage of people in the country – not enough to crush the outbreak – but I believe enough to not allow us to get into the situation we were in last winter.”

Although Fauci does not think the United States will need to shut down again as it did last year, he warned on ABC that “things are going to get worse” as the Delta variant continues to spread.

An internal report compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the Delta variant spreads much faster, is more likely to infect the vaccinated, and could potentially trigger more severe illness in the unvaccinated compared with all other known variants.

Fauci added: “We have 100 million people in this country who are eligible to be vaccinated who are not getting vaccinated.”

US President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci has told ABC News he does not expect the United States will be returning to lockdowns, despite the growing risks of Covid-19 infections posed by the Delta variant.