Health News at Your Fingertips

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, has accused the devolved government of Scotland “hypocrisy” over a travel ban to the north west of England.

Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, announced on Friday all non-essential travel to Manchester and Salford would be banned from Monday but Burnham, a Labour politician, said he or his administration were not contacted before the announcement.

Salmond, who leader the Scottish National Party (SNP) pinpointed the areas as Covid-19 hotspots, despite figures in the cities matching case rates in parts of Scotland.

“Anyone travelling elsewhere in the Greater Manchester or Lancashire area, I’d ask to think carefully about whether your journey is really necessary, because we do see cases rising across that region,” she said on Friday in a coronavirus briefing.

Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, Burnham said: “I was really disappointed on Friday that the First Minister of Scotland just announced out of the blue, as far as we were concerned, a travel ban saying that people couldn’t travel from Scotland to Manchester and Salford and people couldn’t go the other way.

“That is exactly what the SNP always accuse the Westminster Government of doing, riding roughshod over people.”

“The SNP are treating the north of England with the same contempt in bringing that in without any consultation with us.”

Over half the new Covid-19 cases being reported in the Lisbon region are of the more infectious Delta coronavirus variant, preliminary data showed on Sunday as Portuguese authorities scramble to curb a worrying spike in infections.

Ricardo Jorge, the national health institute, said the Delta variant represented more than 60% of cases in the Lisbon area though still less than 15% in the northern half of Portugal.

The Alpha variant, which was previously dominant in Britain, is more prevalent across Portugal’s north, representing 80% of infections there and only 30% in and around Lisbon, according to the institute.

Portugal posted over 1,000 new Covid-19 cases for the fourth straight day on Saturday and the number of people testing newly positive every 24 hours is back to late February levels, when the country was still under lockdown.

However, about 2.5 million of Portugal’s 10 million population has now been fully vaccinated against Covid-19. While there has been a slight increase in hospitalisations in recent days, there has been no noticeable rise in deaths given that most older, more vulnerable people have been vaccinated.

The recent jump in infections comes around a month after Portugal opened to visitors from the rest of the EU as well as Britain.

Mandatory mask-wearing outdoors is being lifted and and an eight-month nightly coronavirus curfew is ending in France today.

Le Monde reports, however, that vigilance is still being called for, as health protocols for public places and event will remain in place until 30 June.

The lifting comes as France is voting in the first round of regional elections that could see Marine Le Pen‘s far-right party make gains and step further into the political mainstream.

The Financial Times cites forecasting by polling group Ipsos that turnout would reach only about 41%.

A low turnout – with polling showing voters are more concerned about crime, immigration and unemployment than Covid-19 is tipped to assist Le Pen.

Police in Belgium say they have found what is believed to be the body of a fugitive far-right soldier who had threatened a top virologist involved in the country’s efforts to counter Covid-19.

Hundreds of security forces scoured a swath of northeast Belgium after the 17 May disappearance of Jurgen Conings, who was the target of a huge manhunt and and was believed to have hoarded heavy weaponry.

A body was found on Sunday by people walking in the woods near the town of Dilsen-Stockem. Initial evidence indicates it is Conings and that he killed himself, but further examination is under way, Belgian federal police said in a statement.

Conings, 46, had hidden anti-tank missile launchers and other heavy arms in an army barracks before disappearing. He had threatened several people in recent months, including the virologist, and landed on the federal anti-terrorism watch list in February.

Covid vaccines manufactured by the Chinese company Sinovac are being administered to people in Singapore even though the city-state’s authorities have been casting doubt on their effectiveness, reports the New York Times.

Singapore allowed 24 private health clinics to administer the vaccine following authorisation by the World Health Organization for emergency use this month. It has yet to be added to Singapore state-run scheme.

The Times reports that Kenneth Mak, Singapore’s director of medical services, expressed concern about reports from other countries of people becoming sick with Covid-19 despite receiving a Sinovac jab.

He cited the situation in Indonesia, where more than 350 doctors have contracted Covid-19 despite being vaccinated with Sinovac and dozens have been hospitalised.

Prof Kevin Fenton warned we could be in the “foothills” of another wave of Covid-19 cases.

He told LBC it was unlikely London would have all over-30s double-vaccinated by 19 July when all restrictions are due to relax.

“We’re in the foothills of what could possibly be a third wave, we should be doing the hands, face, space, ventilate, prevention,” Prof Fenton said.

He continued: “Vaccinating now won’t stop the rises we are seeing in the community this week, but they will begin to build the resilience for the city as we get to 19 July.”

The London director at Public Health England (PHE) said the capital is entering a “summer sprint” to get as many people vaccinated as possible by 19 July.

The rate of uptake in London has been slower than elsewhere, but Prof Kevin Fenton said it had been making “incredible progress” over the past few weeks.

“We’re just about entering into a final summer sprint, where we’re working with local authorities to get the rates up among everybody over age 18, but especially those aged over 40,” he said. “That’s our number one focus in the city now.”

Prof Fenton told LBC that PHE staff in London were dealing with hesitancy over vaccine safety and “working in communities and knocking on doors, making sure we have those outreach persons giving vaccines”.

Russian workers who refuse Covid-19 vaccinations in areas where they are compulsory could be forced to take unpaid leave, the country’s labour minister has warned, as infections rise and inoculation drives slow.

“If the health authorities in a region make vaccination mandatory for some categories of workers, an unvaccinated employee could be suspended,” Anton Kotyakov said in comments posted on Sunday to a state-run channel on the Telegram messaging app.

He added the suspension would last as long as the decree for mandatory vaccination is in effect.

The Russian capital, Moscow, has ordered mandatory vaccination for residents working in the service industry, saying 60% would have to be fully inoculated by 15 August.

Seven other cities and areas, including Russia’s second city of St Petersburg, have imposed similar rules, according to Russian media.

The new wave of infections come as St Petersburg, the country’s worst Covid hotspot after Moscow, is slated to host seven Euro 2020 matches – including a quarter-final on 2 July – expected to draw thousands of European football fans.

Although free jabs have been available to Russians since December, only 19.5 million out of a population of 146 million have received at least one dose of a vaccine, according to the Gogov website, which tallies Covid figures from the regions and the media.

In Moscow, only 1.5 million of the city’s roughly 12 million people have been fully vaccinated.

A recent independent survey found that 60% of Russians do not intend to get the shot.

UK chancellor Rishi Sunak should think again about ending furlough as the scheme will be badly missed by businesses in hardest-hit sectors, writes Guardian economics correspondent Richard Partington.

Treasury insiders are quick to point out industry complaints about staff shortages when questions about furlough are raised. Tory MPs are also pressing to bring the scheme to a close, arguing that furloughed workers are bleeding the state dry and preventing the efficient functioning of the jobs market.

There are many reasons why this logic is upside down. After the worst recession for three centuries, severe risks to jobs remain. The Covid-19 pandemic is far from over. Although employers have started hiring again – and many can’t find enough staff – there are still half a million fewer people in work than before the pandemic. The continuing health emergency and restrictions are the main barrier to a functional jobs market, not support measures.

Vietnam has received a shipment of 500,000 Sinopharm vaccine doses donated by China, the health ministry said on Sunday, as the country is ramping up inoculations to battle against a more widespread outbreak.

Authorities in the country of 98 million approved China’s Sinopharm vaccine for emergency use against Covid-19 in early June.

The vaccines will be used for three groups: Chinese citizens in Vietnam, Vietnamese who have plan to work or study in China and people who live near the borders with China, the health ministry said in a statement.

Vietnam’s domestic inoculation programme, which started in March, has so far relied heavily on around four million shots of AstraZeneca’s vaccine.

Nearly 2.4 million people in Vietnam have had one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, while 115,315 have been fully vaccinated, according to official data.

Indonesia reported 13,737 new coronavirus infections on Sunday, the highest in a single day since January 30, bringing the total number of cases in the country to nearly two million, data from the Covid-19 task force showed.

On Sunday, the task force also reported 371 new deaths, the highest number of daily fatalities since early April, taking the total to 54,662.

The UK is moving towards a situation where those who have been double-vaccinated could be exempt from quarantine, a senior health official has said.

Dr Susan Hopkins, one of the key government advisers on the response to the pandemic, said a decision would be made after the results of a major study that uses daily lateral flow tests as an alternative to isolation for 10 days after coming into contact with a positive case.

Public Health England’s chief Covid-19 adviser told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday it would give evidence about whether vaccinated people were less likely to transmit the virus. “Then we have an evidence base to derive government policy,” she said.

She said it was possible it could be used to allow people to travel more freely. I’m not sure when, but a time in the future I can imagine a situation where we will have alternatives to isolation for people who have two doses of vaccine,” she said.

Hopkins said the UK was seeing the impact of vaccination in key infection hotspots but that infections were rising in other areas.

The number of Covid-19 jabs administered in China has passed the one billion mark, health officials said Sunday, more than a third of the doses given worldwide.

The announcement by the National Health Commission comes after the number of shots administered globally surpassed 2.5 billion on Friday, according to a count from official sources who spoke to the AFP news agency.

It is unclear what percentage of China’s population has now been inoculated but its vaccination drive got off to a slow start after a successful fight against the virus left little sense of urgency to get jabbed.

A lack of transparency and previous vaccine scandals have also led to resistance among residents.

Authorities have set an ambitious target of fully vaccinating 40 percent of the country’s nearly 1.4 billion people by the end of this month.

Some provinces are offering vaccines for free to encourage people to roll up their sleeves. Residents in central Anhui province have been given free eggs, while some living in Beijing have received shopping coupons.

A recent outbreak of the more contagious Delta variant of the virus in the southern city of Guangzhou has also served as a wake-up call for many dragging their feet.

China reported 23 new coronavirus cases on Sunday.

Australia’s state of Queensland recorded one locally acquired coronavirus infection on Sunday, the latest streak of small outbreaks that have been plaguing the country in recent months.

The Queensland case comes as a cluster of the highly infectious Delta variant has grown by two cases to nine in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, prompting health officials to expand mask wearing rules.

“We know this strain, which is becoming the dominant strain, is extremely contagious and some people are spreading it more than others, and what we want to avoid at this stage is a super spreading event,” New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said.