Health News at Your Fingertips

Italy has unveiled new Covid measures, set to come into force on 6 December, that will ban unvaccinated people from entering venues including cinemas, restaurants and sports events (see also 15:17).

“We are seeing the situation in bordering countries is very serious and we also see that the situation in Italy is gradually but constantly getting worse,” the prime minister, Mario Draghi, told reporters after the cabinet approved the new rules.

“We want to be very prudent to try to safeguard what Italians have achieved in the last year.”

From 15 December, mandatory vaccination will be extended to include all school staff, police and the military. Healthcare workers are already required to be vaccinated.

Booster shots, currently available to people aged 40-plus, will be made available to all adults.

British prime minister Boris Johnson has said he was “personally very disappointed” that Valneva’s Covid vaccine has not been approved in the UK, reports Reuters.

It comes two months after the government cancelled a supply deal worth $1.57 billion with the French pharmaceutical company.

Valneva said it hoped for approval by the end of the year and that it was working with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

The MHRA said Valneva had initiated a rolling review, which was ongoing. A spokesperson told the news agency: “Due to commercial confidentiality we are unable to provide details of our review.”

Johnson said he was “personally very disappointed when we couldn’t get approval for the Valneva vaccine in the way that we had hoped”.

“What we are doing is investing massively in this country’s vaccine capability across the country so that we are prepared for the next pandemic and I very much hope that Valneva will be part of that,” he said.

Valneva said in a statement: “We regret the decision made by HMG [the UK government] to end the UK Government’s supply contract with Valneva, and remain hopeful that HMG will seek an amicable resolution.”

France reported 32,591 new Covid cases today. It was an increase on yesterday when 30,454 new cases were reported, marking the first time that the daily total had exceeded 30,000 since August.

Portugal’s health secretary today pledged to give Covid booster shots to a quarter of the population by the end of January to tackle the “pandemic storm that has not yet passed”.

More than 850,000 people in Portugal have already received a booster shot. Antonio Sales said 2.5 million would get the additional dose by the end of January.

It comes as the country, one of the world’s most vaccinated, reported 3,773 cases, a four-month daily high.

Around 87% of Portugal’s population of just over 10 million is vaccinated. But as Europe once again becomes the epicentre of the pandemic, the government is preparing to announce new rules tomorrow to limit the virus’ spread.

The prime minister, Antonio Costa, said last week the government was unlikely to bring back a lockdown and that the measures would aim to “disturb people’s lives as little as possible.”

Nearly three-quarters of local authorities in the UK experienced a week-on-week rise in Covid rates in the seven days to 20 November.

According to an analysis by PA Media, 74% of Britain’s 377 local authority areas saw a rise, 25% a fall and the remainder were unchanged.

Torridge in Devon continues to have the highest rate in the UK – with 1,030 new cases per 100,000 people – followed by Mid Sussex (849 per 100,000) and Gwynedd in Wales (848 per 100,000).

Mid Ulster has the highest rate in Northern Ireland (837 per 100,000) and Falkirk the highest rate in Scotland (544 per 100,000).

The five areas with the biggest rises in the UK were: Guildford, Eastbourne, Shetland Islands, East Hampshire and Newark & Sherwood.

Health workers from the US and the UK who have long Covid have spoken to the Atlantic about their shock at how rapidly their symptoms were dismissed by their peers.

Clare Rayner, an occupational physician, is part of a Facebook group of around 1,400 British people with long Covid who work in healthcare.

She said that for many the scepticism of other medical professionals has been “absolutely shattering”.

“That people in their own profession would treat them like this has led to a massive breakdown in trust.”

Senior doctors from Russia’s biggest hospitals have urged anti-vaccination figures to visit intensive care units and morgues to witness the deadly impact that Covid is having on the country.

In a letter signed by chief physicians from leading hospitals including in Moscow, St Petersburg and Sochi, the group called on “opponents of vaccination” to see the severity of the situation for themselves, reports RFE/RL’s Russian Service.

Russia has reported record Covid deaths in recent weeks as infections surge. Only around 37% of Russia’s population of 146 million people are vaccinated.

The number of people testing positive for coronavirus is on the rise in the UK, with 43,676 new cases according to the latest figures.

According to the 4pm update of the UK government’s coronavirus dashboard, 303,071 people have tested positive for the virus in the past seven days – a rise of 11.1%.

There were 149 more deaths 28 days after a positive test for coronavirus, according to the update. Overall the number of people dying over the past seven days was trending down, with the 926 total deaths 9.4% down on the previous figure.

The number of patients admitted to hospital also fell, down 11.6% over the past seven days, with 722 new admissions reported in the most recent data.

A total of 112,627,026 doses of coronavirus vaccine have now been administered, the data show. Of those, 50,827,554 have been first doses, 46,208,81 have been second doses, and 16,004,629 have been third or booster doses.

Uptake of coronavirus vaccines has been high in the UK compared to some other European countries, with 80.4% of people aged over 12 in the country having completed their two-dose course of Covid vaccinations.

Police in London trained the laser sights on their Tasers on workers at a juice bar which they had raided over suspicions of a lockdown rule-breaking party, a court has heard.

Workers at Joe and Juice in Soho were discovered by police having the after-hours party when police arrived at the premises at 3am on 7 March, according to London paper the Evening Standard.

PC Michael Trype was quoted as telling Westminster magistrates court that officers who gained entry through the front door saw a man and a woman enter from the toilets.

“Officers were equipped with Tasers and both male and female was red-dotted,” he was quoted as saying.

One worker, Isabelle Von-Erbach-Schonbery, 21, was fined £200 for breaking lockdown rules. She admitted to to police that they were “having a work gathering at the venue”, but did not pay the fine. A magistrate subsequently dismissed the charge.