Health News at Your Fingertips

A hospital director in Guadeloupe said he was punched and one of his deputies splashed with urine after anti vaccine mandate protesters laid siege to their offices.

Police in the French overseas territory had to rescue Gerard Cotellon and his deputies after protesters angry at a mandate for health staff surrounded their hospital administration building.

“I was evacuated after receiving a punch in the ribs and a huge blow to the head. I think I was unconscious for 10 seconds,” Cotellon told AFP. His deputy, Cedric Zolezzi, said his shirt was torn and he was splashed with urine while rushing towards a police vehicle. The experience was “shocking”, he said.

Nobody was arrested during Tuesday’s incident, which looked like a “rugby scrum” according to a police source.

A health worker union representative, Gaby Clavier, told AFP that the protesters were demanding “the money we are owed”, after the salaries of health workers who refuse to be vaccinated were frozen.

On Wednesday, the French government declared a “state of health emergency” in Guadeloupe and several other overseas territories, because of a rise in coronavirus cases combined with a low vaccination rate there.

Public health authorities in Sweden have advised restaurants, cultural venues and leisure centres to begin asking customers to show digital proof of vaccination against the coronavirus.

The measure is part of voluntary guidance for businesses from Sweden’s public health agency, rather than a legal requirement. Currently, the passes only are used for public gatherings and indoor events of more than 100 people.

According to the new guidance, locations can introduce certificates as entry requirements “in more activities where the risk of spreading of the infection is great,” said Lena Hallengren, the social affairs minister.

“The spread of COVID-19 is increasing in Sweden. We need to be prepared to quickly introduce more accurate infection-control measures,” Hallengren was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

Sweden reported a record-breaking 17,320 new daily cases on Wednesday.

Ireland’s government has agreed to fund the purchase of Covid antiviral drugs from GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Merck.

Ireland plans to purchase the drugs through the European Union’s procurement process and by dealing directly with the companies, the health ministry said in a statement.

Local media reported that ministers had agreed to set aside €90m for the treatments, which countries around the world are scrambling to secure. The health ministry did not say how many courses it would seek to purchase.

“This will be an additional tool to the range we currently have at our disposal to deal with Covid-19. The primary one of course remains the vaccines,” prime minister Micheal Martin told a news conference.

The Netherlands on Wednesday registered more than 24,000 new Covid infections in 24 hours, a record high, official data showed.

The figure came as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus became dominant in the country during a strict lockdown.

The Czech government has shortened the quarantine period for Covid positive people from seven days to five as it prepares for Omicron, which experts estimate will be the dominant variant in the country around mid-January.

The government also approved blanket testing in companies, effective from 17 January, in addition to mandatory tests at schools which reopened this week.

The country of 10.7 million people reported its daily count of new infections dropping sharply in recent weeks from a peak recorded in late November, and hospitalisations stand at roughly a third of the record numbers seen last March.

However, Omicron has already been detected in dozens of people and examples from countries like the US or Britain show that the spread is lightning-fast.

Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, has tested positive for Covid but has no serious symptoms, an aide said Wednesday.

The aide, Paweł Szrot, said on Twitter that Duda was under medical observation but feels well.

Duda, 49, has been vaccinated against the coronavirus and received a booster shot last month, Szrot said. The president got tested this week because of cases among employees in his office.

Duda previously tested positive in October 2020 and was reported at the time not to have experienced significant illness.

As reported on this blog earlier today, people who test positive for Covid on rapid lateral flow tests but aren’t displaying symptoms won’t need to confirm their results with a follow-up PCR test, the UK Health Security Agency has confirmed.

Britain is reporting record daily case numbers, and the guidance echoes a move during last winter’s Covid wave, where the requirement for confirmatory PCR tests was suspended until March.

Ireland will drop its requirement for vaccinated arrivals to have proof of a negative Covid test and return to seeking a proof of vaccination or recent infection upon entry, local media reported on Wednesday.

Ireland introduced the measure a month ago to slow the spread of the new Omicron coronavirus variant. Omicron now accounts for all Irish infections, which have rocketed to record levels in the last two weeks.

Limits could be placed on large gatherings and the sale of alcohol could be banned in Thailand, as the south-east Asian county considers measures to avert a new wave of Covid infections, a public health official has said.

The country reported 3,899 cases on Wednesday, up from an average of 2,600 daily cases towards the end of last year, and the Omicron variant itself has tripled from last month’s holiday period, government data showed.

Responding to the latest data, Sumanee Watcharasin, a spokeswoman for the country’s coronavirus taskforce, said that if measures like wearing masks and regular testing were not followed, infections could reach the “tens of thousands in the next two weeks”.

The government will decide on new curbs on Friday and also review the suspended “Test & Go” scheme that allowed vaccinated arrivals to skip quarantine, Reuters quoted her as saying.

Since the pandemic began, Thailand has had a total of 2.2 million infections and nearly 22,000 coronavirus-related fatalities.

Nearly 13 million people in Zhengzhou, China, have been ordered to take Covid tests after a handful of cases were detected in the city.

Everyone in Zhengzhou, which has been placed under a partial lockdown, must be tested to “thoroughly uncover infections hidden among the public”, the city’s government said in a statement Wednesday, according to AFP.

China, still pursuing a zero-Covid strategy, is aiming to stamp out any virus clusters ahead of the Winter Olympics in Beijing. Eleven cases were detected in Zhengzhou in recent days.

The president of Poland has tested positive for coronavirus for a second time, after several people around him were infected.

Andrzej Duda previously caught Covid in October 2020.

Paweł Szrot, one of Duda’s most senior aides, said in a tweet seen by Reuters: “The president feels good, is not seriously ill and is under constant medical supervision.” Szrot added that the president was in isolation.

Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates for large businesses and healthcare workers are to be tested in the US Supreme Court, after challenges were brought by business groups, religious groups and Republican-led states.

Reuters reports that the court will hear in-person arguments on Friday on emergency requests in two separate cases. The challengers maintain that Biden’s administration has overstepped its authority.

The court’s 6-3 conservative majority in the past has shown skepticism toward sweeping actions by federal agencies. Friday’s cases are the first tests of the federal government’s authority to issue its own vaccine mandates.

One mandate, issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), requires workers at businesses with at least 100 employees to be vaccinated or be tested weekly. It affects around 80 million workers.

A second mandate applies to a majority of the estimated 10.3 million Americans who work in clinics and hospitals funded by the federal government’s Medicaid and Medicare programmes.

In both cases, the challengers argued that the federal government overstepped its authority by acting beyond the powers given to it by Congress. Both vaccine mandates are of sufficient economic and political significance to require a “clear statement” from Congress, according to the challengers.

Some legal experts suspect the healthcare worker mandate has a better chance of surviving Supreme Court review because the regulation covers just facilities that decide to accept patients covered by Medicaid and Medicare.

Weekly registered deaths involving coronavirus in England and Wales fell in the week leading up to Christmas, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics.

In the week ending 24 December, 591 deaths registered mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate, the statistics agency said. Following the sixth consecutive weekly fall, it was the lowest number of deaths since the week to 20 August, when the total was 570.

Coronavirus accounted for 4.5% of all deaths registered in England and Wales in the latest week, down from 6.1% a week earlier.

A total of 174,961 deaths have occurred in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate, the ONS said.

Deaths have remained at a low level throughout the latest wave of cases, but according to the PA Media news agency it is too early to tell if the surge in cases caused by the Omicron variant is affecting the number of Covid-19 deaths.

This is due to the typical two- to three-week delay between infection, hospital admission and death.

This is Damien Gayle taking the reins of the live blog now. I’ll be with you for most of the afternoon and early evening.

Here is a round-up of the day’s top Covid stories so far:

• Israel has recorded its highest-ever number of new coronavirus infections – driven by the ultra-contagious Omicron variant – despite restrictions on travel and required quarantines, the government reported on Wednesday.
• Hong Kong has announced a two-week ban on incoming flights from eight countries and tightened local Covid restrictions as authorities feared a fifth wave of coronavirus in the city.
• In England, millions of people who test positive with lateral flow devices could be told they do not need to take follow-up PCR tests, according to reports.
• The French parliament suspended debate on a new Covid law early on Wednesday as opposition lawmakers demanded explanations from President Emmanuel Macron about comments in which he said he wanted to “piss off” unvaccinated people.
• India has reported its first Covid death linked to the fast-spreading Omicron variant in the western state of Rajasthan, a federal health ministry official said.
• Ukraine is reporting another 4,571 new coronavirus cases and 273 deaths, according to a recently released statement from the ministry of health.
• Germany needs to offer booster shots to an additional 15 million people to slow the spread of Omicron and avoid a rush on intensive care units, its health minister said.
• Three central Chinese cities have imposed varying degrees of curbs after sporadic cases. Xi’an has been in lockdown for two weeks and the city of Yuzhou ordered its 1.1 million residents not to leave town.
• Infections are surging across several Gulf Arab states, with the daily number of cases more than doubling in Saudi Arabia over two days to more than 2,500 and crossing the 1,000-level in Qatar and Kuwait.

That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, on the global Covid live blog for today. My colleague Damien Gayle will be along shortly so stay tuned for all the latest coronavirus news from around the world. Goodbye.

In Japan, Tokyo authorities may ask Japan’s government to reinstate emergency measures as a rise in Covid cases spurs concern that the capital is experiencing a sixth wave of infections, the Sankei newspaper reported.

Tokyo metropolitan government officials are preparing to make the request for a declaration of what are known in Japan as quasi-emergency measures, the paper reported on Wednesday, citing unidentified sources.

Such measures, which include restrictions on restaurant and bar opening hours, were lifted across Japan in September.