4.18am EDT04:18
Melbourne celebrates end of lockdown despite concerns about rising Covid cases
As Melbourne continues to celebrate opening up, health officials in Australia have expressed concern about a growing proportion of Covid cases in young people, particularly in regional Victoria.
Victoria recorded 1,750 new Covid cases and nine deaths in the 24 hours since Melbourne emerged from its sixth lockdown. The new infections were found from 72,858 test results processed on Friday.
But as the state entered its second day of newly relaxed freedoms, the Covid commander, Jeroen Weimar, said Victoria was “not out of the woods yet”.
He pointed to an increase in young people catching the virus in recent days, while about 14% of the cases recorded on Saturday were from regional Victoria. In metropolitan Melbourne 29% of all cases recorded were under the age of 19 and in regional Victoria the figure was 38%.
“To all the young Victorians amongst us, you are particularly vulnerable at this time to running into friends and associates who are Covid-positive,” Weimar said. “These are our children and students who are clearly very active in the community.”
It came as the city began its first weekend out of the world’s longest string of Covid lockdowns with spontaneous street parties, live music and packed pubs, bars and restaurants.
Despite rain on Saturday morning, people queued for barbers and breakfast restaurants, all of which are open only to the fully vaccinated.
Late on Friday, people broke into a spontaneous street party in Melbourne’s south-east and many rejoiced with their first drink in months in a pub with friends, social media footage showed.
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4.13am EDT04:13
New Zealand has reported 104 new coronavirus infections, including the first community case in the country’s South Island in nearly a year, health officials said.
Most of the new infections reported on Saturday were in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, which has been under a strict lockdown for more than two months. Looser restrictions are in place in most of the rest of the country of 5 million.
The risks of a further spread from the case reported in Blenheim, in the north-east of South Island, was low, health officials said, because the person was likely to have been in the late stage of infection.
“So far, initial case interviews have identified a small number of close contacts, who have been contacted and are currently isolating with tests arranged,” the health ministry said in a statement.
The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said on Friday that the country would end its strict lockdown measures and restore more freedoms only when 90% of its eligible population was fully vaccinated. As of Saturday, the figure stood at 70%.
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4.09am EDT04:09
Covid testing failures at UK lab ‘should have been flagged within days’
Health officials should have known about major failings at a private Covid testing lab within days of the problem arising, rather than taking weeks to shut down operations at the site, senior scientists say.
Immensa Health Clinic’s laboratory in Wolverhampton is believed to have wrongly told about 43,000 people, most of them in south-west England, that they did not have the virus in a debacle described as one of the worst scandals in the UK’s Covid crisis.
The affected swabs were processed from 2 September, but neither Immensa’s own quality control processes nor oversight from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) raised the alarm before concerned members of the public complained, triggering a formal investigation.
“In the long list of Covid disasters and scandals, this is pretty near the top,” said Alan McNally, a professor in microbial evolutionary genomics at the University of Birmingham, who helped set up the Lighthouse Covid testing lab at Milton Keynes. He said:
You shouldn’t be relying on anecdotal reports to spot a problem of this size. That’s the unforgivable thing about this.
I don’t think it’s going too far to say that an absolute failure of quality in that lab is going to lead to very serious illnesses, maybe hospitalisations, and maybe worse.
The UKHSA suspended work at the Immensa lab on 12 October, at least three weeks after academics and others raised concerns about discrepancies in regional Covid test data.
The failure has prompted calls for the government to publish its contract with Immensa, transfer as much testing as possible to NHS and university labs, and establish more stringent oversight of the hundreds of private companies that have rushed into the Covid testing business, often without any track record of delivering critical clinical tests.
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4.06am EDT04:06
Local public health chiefs in England are breaking from the government’s official guidance and recommending so-called plan B protective measures to combat a surge in coronavirus cases.
At least a dozen directors of public health (DPHs) have called on residents in their areas to readopt protective measures such as mask-wearing and working from home.
The government is likely to face questions over why local authority public health experts feel it necessary to break from the official national guidance.
Alice Wiseman, the DPH for Gateshead who is among the health leaders to call for changes, said:
Given the concerning rise in case numbers and the considerable pressures that we’re already seeing on NHS services, now is the time for us all to do whatever we can to avoid reaching crisis point. Taking basic precautions now like wearing face masks, working from home where possible and keeping indoor spaces well ventilated could help us to avoid returning to more disruptive restrictions.
So although mandatory measures are not yet being introduced, I’d urge all of our communities to pull together and take these simple but effective steps now. They’re actions which cause minimal inconvenience for individuals but collectively will make a big difference in reducing the spread of Covid, flu and other seasonal illnesses – which, together, could stretch our NHS beyond its limit.
Wiseman has written to headteachers in the local authority area recommending they take additional measures at their schools when pupils return from the half-term break, including all adults and pupils wearing face coverings in secondary schools.
She also recommends reintroducing class bubbles in primary schools and year group bubbles in secondary schools.
4.03am EDT04:03
Vaccines mean no more lockdowns for England – Rishi Sunak
The success of the vaccine rollout means shops, pubs and nightclubs should remain open and there will be no more lockdowns in England, according to the country’s Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Rishi Sunak gave a wide-ranging interview with The Times this morning and although it leads on his ambitions to be the next Prime Minister, there are some interesting lines regarding his view on any potential further lockdown.
He said that there must not be a return to “significant economic restrictions” despite warnings from some health experts that the virus could overwhelm the NHS this winter.
The chancellor added:
I think we’re just in a very different place to where we were a year a go because of the vaccine. There’s this enormous wave of protection and that changes things. That’s our first line of defence.
There’s a range of options that are available and those are not options that involve lockdowns or very significant economic restrictions.
However, it came as polling for the same newspaper showed that 69 per cent of the British public would support a return to the work-from-home edict, while a further 76 per cent back compulsory masks.
Another 22 per cent said they support closing pubs and restaurants to help fight another wave of Covid.
4.03am EDT04:03
FDA says Pfizer Covid vaccine is effective in young children
Federal health regulators in the United States have announced child-sized doses of Pfizer’s Covid vaccine appear highly effective at preventing symptomatic infections in primary school age children.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said late on Friday that the vaccine caused no unexpected safety issues, as the US considers beginning vaccinations in young people.
It posted its analysis of Pfizer’s data ahead of a public meeting next week to debate whether the jabs are ready for the nation’s roughly 28 million children aged between five and 11. The agency will ask a panel of outside vaccine experts to vote on the question.
The Associated Press reported:
In their analysis, FDA scientists concluded that in almost every scenario the vaccine’s benefit for preventing hospitalisations and death from Covid-19 would outweigh any serious potential side effects in children. But agency reviewers stopped short of calling for Pfizer’s shot to be authorised.
The agency will put that question to its panel of independent advisers next Tuesday and weigh their advice before making its own decision.
If the FDA authorises the shots, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will make additional recommendations on who should receive them the first week of November. Children could begin vaccinations early next month – with the first youngsters in line fully protected by Christmas.
Full-strength Pfizer shots already are recommended for anyone 12 or older, but paediatricians and many parents are anxiously awaiting protection for younger children to stem infections from the extra-contagious delta variant and help keep kids in school.
The FDA review backed up results from Pfizer posted earlier in the day showing the two-dose shot was nearly 91% effective at preventing symptomatic infection in young children.
Most of the study data was collected in the US during August and September, when the Delta variant had become the dominant Covid strain.
The FDA review found no new or unexpected side effects. Those that did occur mostly consisted of sore arms, fever or achiness.
However, FDA scientists noted that the study wasn’t large enough to detect extremely rare side effects, including myocarditis, a type of heart inflammation that occasionally occurs after the second dose.
