Health News at Your Fingertips

France has reported a record high of 179,807 new confirmed cases in a 24-hour period today, by far the highest number since the start of the pandemic.

The previous record of 104,611 was set on Saturday.

Portugal reported a record 17,172 new cases today, beating the previous high of 16,432 cases in late January this year.

Despite the rise in cases, the numbers of people admitted to hospital and intensive care with Covid-19 are a fraction of the peak reached during Portugal’s winter wave. The latest data showed hospitals had 936 patients with Covid, compared with a peak of 6,869 on 1 February.

In the last 24 hours, 19 further deaths have been recorded, compared to a peak of 303 deaths reported on 28 January.

Official data showed the Omicron variant, which has fuelled a sharp rise in cases across Europe, representing 61.5% of all new cases in the country.

With about 87% of its 10 million population vaccinated and almost 2.4 million people having received a third booster jab, Portugal has one of the world’s highest Covid vaccination rates. The United Arab Emirates is the only country with a higher proportion of vaccinated people.

Hello, I’m Léonie Chao-Fong and I’ll be bringing you all the latest global development on the coronavirus pandemic for the next few hours. Feel free to get in touch on Twitter or via email.

The UK’s care minister has said people should enjoy themselves but exercise caution when celebrating the new year. Speaking to BBC News, Gillian Keegan advised that people should take a lateral flow test before going out and celebrate in well-ventilated areas.

“I’ve been to a couple of outdoor parties,” she said. “Just be cautious but do try to enjoy yourself as well.”

The UK recorded 129,471 new Covid cases on Tuesday, the government’s Covid dashboard says. This is the highest recorded total ever, and up from 98,515 reported yesterday. The previous record high of daily infections was 122,186 on 24 December.

The data is not complete as it does not include figures for Scotland and Northern Ireland due to differences in reporting practices over the Christmas holidays. The 12,378 cases reported for Wales included data that would normally have been reported in previous days.

A further 18 deaths were also reported. This data is incomplete due to the holiday period, so the true figures are likely to be higher.

Here’s the breakdown of cases:

• England – 117,093
• Scotland – no data yet
• Wales – 12,378
• Northern Ireland – no data yet

There were 1,374 Covid-19 hospital admissions in England on 26 December, NHS England said.

This is up 48% week-on-week and is the highest number since 11 February.

During the second wave of coronavirus, admissions peaked at 4,134 on 12 January.

In London, 374 admissions were reported on 26 December, up 53% week-on-week but slightly below the 390 admissions reported on 23 December.

Admissions during the second wave peaked in London at 977 on 6 January, PA reports.

The number of Covid-19 admissions includes people admitted to hospital in the previous 24 hours who were known to have Covid-19, plus any patients diagnosed in hospital with Covid-19 in the previous 24 hours.

A total of 9,546 people in England were in hospital with Covid-19 as of 8am on 28 December, according to figures from NHS England, a rise of 38% from a week earlier and the highest number since 3 March.

During the second wave, this number peaked at 34,336 on 18 January.

In London, 3,024 people were in hospital with Covid-19 on 28 December, up 59% week-on-week and the highest number since 19 February.

London’s peak in the second wave was 7,917 on 18 January.

Demand for free Covid-19 testing kits provided by Madrid’s regional government, which is relying on increased testing instead of restrictions on socialising, far outstripped supply on Tuesday, with long queues forming outside pharmacies, Reuters reports.

Madrid-based pharmacist Cristina Sanchez said she had only received 20 test kits to distribute on Tuesday as part of a plan to reinforce supply after pharmacies started running out of paid tests, but there were already more than 30 people waiting ouside when she opened.

Fuelled by the highly contagious Omicron variant, cases in Spain have soared in the past month, pushing the national 14-day incidence to a record 1,206 cases per 100,000 people on Monday, a five-fold rise since the beginning of December.

Despite the surge, hospital admissions and intensive-care occupancy remain well below the peaks of last January.

The government reintroduced an outdoor mask mandate last week, but has so far not attempted to reimpose any tougher national restrictions.

However, regional administrations, which are responsible for implementing their own health policy, have introduced measures ranging from a night curfew in Catalonia to limits on social gatherings and bar opening times.

Denmark has the world’s highest Covid infection rate, with 1,612 cases per 100,000 people.

The country of 5.8 million reported a new record on Monday for daily infections and now has the highest recorded incidence of the virus in the world.

New daily cases exceeded 15,000 for the first time, with health authorities registering 16,164 Covid-19 cases in 24 hours. The 16,164 positive results came from 130,686 PCR tests, giving a remarkably high positivity rate of 12.4%.

As of last week, the Omicron variant is the dominant form of the virus in the country.

The five countries with the highest case rates over the last seven days were all European, according to statistics compiled by news wire AFP and drawn from official sources.

The numbers, taken from statistics bureau Our World in Data on 27 December, place Denmark as the country with the highest incidence of the virus.

There is, however, a large variation in the amount of testing undertaken by different countries, with Denmark among the countries that carries out the most tests per resident.

Here’s a roundup of the latest news on Omicron and Covid from around the world.

• The Delhi government announced lockdown-like restrictions as the Omicron variant spreads, with certain public venues shuttered and others at 50% capacity or facing curfews, impacting the Indian city’s more than 19 million people.
  
• China shut down the city of Yan’an, joining Xi’an as millions are now locked down to prevent Omicron taking hold.
• Malaysia banned New Year’s Eve mass celebrations and people will require negative tests for private celebrations.
• Japan reported its first suspected Omicron cluster in Osaka, leading to fears of community transmission despite Japan’s strict border policies.
• Wales reported 12,378 Covid cases in the past 48 hours, with the UK reporting 17,269 new Omicron cases in the past 24 hours.
• Scotland is suffering with up to five-day PCR test waiting times, and England is experiencing a shortage of lateral flow tests that threatens New Year’s Eve celebrations.
• Hospitality bosses in England welcomed news of no further restrictions over the new year. Meanwhile, a leading immunologist said Omicron is “not same disease as a year ago” and horrific levels of UK deaths are “now history.”
• Indonesia detected its first Omicron case, in a 37-year-old man.
  
• France reduced the waiting time for a third booster shot to three months from four in response to the rapid spread of Omicron.
• Omicron cases make up 58.6% of US Covid cases, CDC data showed.
• Also in the US, top infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci suggested the federal government should consider a vaccine mandate for domestic air travel.
• Globally, 3,500 flights were cancelled on Monday and Tuesday as airlines crews become infected with the Omicron Covid strain.
• The S&P 500, the benchmark US stock market index, opened at record highs after four buoyant days as investors shrug off Omicron concerns.
• Health authorities in Denmark are concerned over low vaccination rates for children ahead of the 5 January return to schools and urged parents to come forward.

That’s all from me, Jem Bartholomew in London, for today. I’ll be back on Thursday. Do get in touch with tips and stories via email or on Twitter for then. Bye for now.

There have been a bunch of changes recently around the world on Covid isolation rules.

My colleague Nicola Davis has this helpful explainer on how long people with Covid are infectious and how isolation rules differ internationally.

Public health authorities in the UK and US cited data on infectiousness when cutting their isolation times from 10 days to seven and five, respectively.

Dr Richard Tedder, a member of the Clinical Virology Network, said the shift was a compromise, and was based on the assumption that people with two negative tests are unlikely to transmit coronavirus to contacts.

“On a balance of probabilities this is probably correct,” he said, although he suggested the situation may be different for some people, such as those who are immunosuppressed, and it may not hold if future variants are not picked up by lateral flow tests.

But not everyone agrees – paricularly in the US, where a negative test is not required.

Dr Michael Mina, an assistant professor at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, noted that some people can stay infectious for 12 days, so testing is crucial. “I absolutely don’t want to sit next to someone who turned positive five days ago and hasn’t tested [negative],” he said on Twitter.

The UK Health Security Agency detected 17,269 new cases of the Omicron variant in the past 24 hours, taking the country’s tally to 177,201 identified through sequencing.

The majority of tests are not sequenced, so the figure is likely to be far higher. (Wales has not reported case numbers since 23 December. Scotland is no longer separating Omicron from other cases.)

The number of people in England who have died with the Omicron variant has risen to 49, the UKHSA said. Hospitalisations reached a total of 668 in England.

It comes as PCR tests are taking up to five days for results in Scotland and a shortage of lateral flow tests in England threaten New Year’s Eve plans.

Record demand in Scotland for PCR tests has left some families waiting up to five days for results over the Christmas period.

Some people taking tests on 23 December only got them back on 28 December, the BBC reports. The normal waiting time is within 48 hours.

Both Scotland and England detected record-level daily case numbers over the Christmas period, with infections peaking provisionally in Scotland at 11,030 on 26 December.

“I couldn’t see my mum on Christmas Day and my dad couldn’t see his partner. It was all a bit strange,” teacher Matthew Campbell from Dundee told the BBC. Campbell spent Christmas Day in isolation awaiting a PCR test taken on 23 December – only for it to be negative on 28 December.

The BBC has more details:

The UK Health Security Agency apologised to those waiting “a little longer” for their result. They said they were adding extra capacity to their laboratories to meet “exceptional demand”.

Scotland’s national clinical director, Jason Leitch, told BBC Radio’s Good Morning Scotland the delays were caused by the scale of demand. “Quite a lot of people went for testing before Christmas in order to try and get Christmas celebrations that were safe if they had symptoms, or if they had contact,” he said. “So I apologise for that, I’m sorry if people had to wait a little bit longer.”

Shortages in England of lateral flow tests and lack of walk-in test slots are threatening to undermine the UK government’s plans for New Year’s Eve celebrations to go ahead unimpeded, the Guardian reports.

Some community pharmacies in rural areas said they had not received deliveries of LFTs since early last week, although many remained closed on Monday and Tuesday because of the extended bank holidays.

People turning to the NHS website were also out of luck: on Tuesday morning it said no delivery slots for LFTs were available, for the second day in a row. But by mid-afternoon deliveries were again being offered, with a warning that the LFT kits could take three days to arrive.

The UK Health Security Agency said it encouraged people to revisit the sites “every few hours” if they were unable to order tests, as more would become available, and to use any tests they may already have before ordering or collecting more kits.

A UKHSA spokesperson said: “Despite unprecedented demand, we are continuing to supply millions of rapid lateral flow tests every day. Our total delivery capacity has doubled to 900,000 test kits per day since Saturday 18 December so more people can order tests.”

Read the full story here.

The S&P 500, the US’s benchmark stock market index widely used as a barometer of economic confidence, opened on Tuesday at a record high.

It follows four buoyant days in global markets as investors shrug off Omicron concerns amid studies of potentially lessened severity and new drugs to treat the virus. Reuters reports:

The [benchmark] S&P 500 and [tech-heavy] Nasdaq index on Monday posted their best four-day rally since November 2020, with the S&P 500 scaling a peak as an upbeat outlook on the US economy helped investors look past thousands of flight cancellations and Apple shutting its New York stores due to surging cases.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday shortened the recommended isolation time for Americans with asymptomatic cases of Covid-19 to five days from the previous guidance of 10 days.

The CDC’s update along with approvals to new pills and more vaccines to fight Covid have all helped put the three main indexes on pace for monthly gains.

“This policy change is sending the message that it is becoming more like the flu and less like the variants we saw early on when we had no treatments, no vaccines and it was much more deadly,” Thomas Hayes, the managing member at Great Hill Capital in New York, told Reuters.

It comes after a leading UK immunologist told the BBC on Tuesday that Omicron is “not the same disease we were seeing a year ago” and high UK Covid death rates are “now history”.

In the US, National Basketball Association (NBA) players who test positive for Covid now have a quicker path to return to play, AP reports, after the league cut isolation times from 10 to six days for vaccinated asymptomatic players.

The NBA has seen coronavirus numbers soar in recent days, even with 97% of players vaccinated and at least 65% of eligible players boosted against the virus.

It follows a move from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to cut the isolation period for people testing Covid-positive from 10 to five days. Officials said that data shows people are most infectious in the two days before, and three days after, symptoms appear.

Read the full NBA story here.