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Brazil on Saturday said that 1,202 more people had died from Covid-19, bringing total fatalities in the country to 216,445. There have been more than 8.8 million confirmed cases, Reuters reports.

Another Datafolha poll found that 53% of respondents are against Congress opening impeachment proceedings against the president for his handling of the pandemic, compared with 50% in a previous survey. Those favouring impeachment fell to 43% from 46% previously.

Both polls were conducted on 20 and 21 January, interviewing 2,030 Brazilians, with a 2 percentage point margin of error.

The UK will force travellers from high-risk countries to quarantine for 10 days, the British prime minister Boris Johnson said on Saturday, in a decision to be taken on Monday, the Daily Mail reports.

The Telegraph newspaper echoed this report, writing that arrivals in the UK will have to pay for an extra 10 days in an airport hotel under heavy guard, in plans backed by the Home Office.

The Telegraph wrote:

Senior Cabinet ministers are likely to approve a plan to force people returning from overseas to quarantine in a hotel to ensure that they cannot bring variants of Covid-19 back into the UK.

The chief dispute at Cabinet level is whether the hotel quarantine rules apply to all visitors or just to those returning from coronavirus hotspots.

Downing Street sources confirmed that hotel quarantining was likely to form part of the “next steps”, after Boris Johnson made clear at his press conference on Friday that more would have to be done on securing the borders.

New York state will distribute Covid-19 vaccination kits to four additional New York City public housing sites and eight more churches to try to “strengthen fairness and equity in the vaccine distribution process,” governor Andrew Cuomo said on Saturday, CNN reports.

5.26% of all coronavirus tests in New York state have been positive on Saturday, down from 5.65% on Friday, Cuomo said during a press conference.

Overall, hospitalisations are down statewide and New York City has a 5.71% positivity rate.

A further 144 people in the state died due to Covid-19, Cuomo said.

Poland will likely ease some coronavirus-related restrictions on 1 February since the number of new daily cases in the country has stabilised, First News reports.

“The situation with regard to the number of new daily Covid-19 cases is stable so I think that some restrictions will be eased as of February,” deputy health minister Waldemar Kraska told a private radio broadcaster on Saturday, adding that it was “possible that shopping centres will open in February”.

At the same time, Kraska said that three of Poland’s neighbouring countries, Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, had been hit by a third wave of the virus.

“We have a very cautious approach,” Kraska stated, adding that “all the decisions, which are being taken, as well as the ones which will be taken at the beginning of next week, are and will be duly considered”.

The official expressed his conviction that the retail trade sector will be the first to open, and said that shopping centres may also possibly open in February.

In mid-January, the government decided to extend all coronavirus-related restrictions to the end of January.

Hotels and ski slopes as well as all shopping centres have been closed, as have been gyms, fitness clubs and aquaparks.

Grocery stores, book stores, newsagents and pharmacies are exempt from mandatory closures, as are large free-standing furniture stores.

Restaurants are only allowed to open for takeaway or home delivery sales.

Coronavirus infections linked to the Australian Open are continuing to emerge as the states and territories continue their run of no new locally acquired cases, the Australian Associated Press reports.

Victorian authorities on Saturday reported one new case linked to the Open, a man in his 20s who is not a player.

A further three non-players – two men in their 30s and one in his 50s – have meanwhile been confirmed to have the highly contagious UK strain of the virus.

Covid-19 Quarantine Victoria said all three had been in hard lockdown since they landed in Melbourne.

“The residents arrived in Melbourne on a dedicated Australian Open charter flight on 15 January and returned their first positive tests on 15, 17 and 18 January,” a spokesperson said.

There are 10 active cases linked to the Open and 970 people associated with the tournament in quarantine.

Calls of UK doctors to cut the gap between the first and second doses of the coronavirus vaccine are being resisted by officials at Public Health England.

The British Medical Association (BMA) has warned that delaying the second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab to 12 weeks after the first is not justified by the science.

However, PHE medical director Dr Yvonne Doyle said it is essential to protect as many people as possible to prevent the virus getting “the upper hand”, the PA reports.

In a letter to the chief medical officer for England, Prof Chris Whitty, the BMA said the gap between the first and second doses of the Pfizer vaccine should be no more than six weeks, in line with the advice of the manufacturers and the World Health Organization (WHO).

However, Doyle insisted the decision to extend the gap had been taken on “public health and scientific advice” based on the need to get at least some protection to as many people as possible.

“The more people that are protected against this virus, the less opportunity it has to get the upper hand. Protecting more people is the right thing to do,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had administered 20,537,990 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country as of Saturday morning and distributed 41,411,550 doses.

The tally of vaccine doses are for both Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines as of 6am ET on Saturday, the agency said.

17,390,345 people have received one or more doses, while 3,027,865 people got the second dose as of Saturday.

A total of 2,437,670 vaccine doses have been administered in long-term care facilities, the agency said.

According to the tally posted on 22 January, the agency has in total administered 19,107,959 vaccine doses, and distributed 39,892,400.

Sweden plans to introduce a temporary ban on entry from Norway, it said on Saturday, due to the spread of a new mutated form of the coronavirus in the neighbouring country.

Norway’s capital Oslo and nine nearby municipalities imposed some of their toughest lockdown measures yet after an outbreak of the more contagious UK coronavirus variant.

Sweden’s health authority recommended that travellers from Norway self-isolate for at least a week and test for Covid-19 upon entry to Sweden.

Concern over the new variant means travellers from Britain have been banned from entering Sweden since December.

“The government is also working on introducing an entry ban for Norway to reduce the risk of contagion. The decision will be taken shortly,” a spokesman for Swedish interior minister Mikael Damberg said in a text message.

“The government is taking these actions due to the spread of the British mutation of the Covid-19 virus in Norway,” he said.

Norway has 55 confirmed cases of the virus variant that has already spread widely in the UK, according to Norwegian health authority data.

Damberg’s spokesman said Sweden has the same number of confirmed cases of the variant.