Health News at Your Fingertips

Hong Kong reported a new record of 8,798 Covid infections on Thursday, health authorities said.

It comes as the global financial hub struggles to control a worsening outbreak that has overwhelmed its health system ahead of a citywide compulsory testing scheme in March.

The rollout of the coronavirus vaccination programme has been praised by the UK’s public spending watchdog for meeting “stretching and unprecedented targets” and saving lives.

The National Audit Office (NAO) said securing a supply of vaccines early was “crucial to the successful rollout” which helped “to save lives and reduce serious illness and hospitalisation”.

The independent watchdog said there were risks ahead for the programme, including staff burnout and reaching groups with a lower rate of uptake, PA Media reported.

But in a report released on Friday, which covers a period up to the end of October 2021, the NAO said wastage of around 4.7 million vaccine doses – around 4% of the total supply – had been “much lower than the programme initially assumed” and that the whole operation had been “an effective use of public money”.

The report said the vaccine programme spent £5.6 billion up to the end of October last year, out of a total available pot of £8.3 billion available over two years up to March this year.

The NAO said its calculations had found the average procurement cost per Covid vaccine dose had been £15.02 including VAT, but this varied between suppliers and over time, while the average deployment cost was £25.70 per dose.

The report said the programme now “needs to maintain the high levels of vaccine uptake it has achieved among the general population”.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced he is removing emergency powers police can use after authorities ended the blockades at the borders and the occupation in Ottawa by truckers and others opposed to Covid restrictions.

Trudeau said the “threat continues” but the acute emergency that included entrenched occupations has ended. His government invoked the powers last week and lawmakers affirmed the powers on Monday, the Associated Press reported.

“The situation is no longer an emergency, therefore the federal government will be ending the use of the emergencies act,” Trudeau said. “We are confident that existing laws and bylaws are sufficient.”

The emergencies act allows authorities to declare certain areas as no-go zones. It also allows police to freeze truckers’ personal and corporate bank accounts and compel tow truck companies to haul away vehicles.

The trucker protest grew until it closed a handful of Canada-US border posts and shut down key parts of the capital for more than three weeks. But all border blockades have now ended and the streets around the Canadian Parliament are quiet.

“We were very clear that the use of the emergencies act would be limited in time,” Trudeau said.

Most pregnant women in the UK are still shunning Covid vaccines despite an increased chance of stillbirth, premature birth and risks to their own health, analysis shows.

Data from the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford shows 73% of Asian women, 86% of black women and 65% of white women were unvaccinated at the time of giving birth in October 2021.

The charity Wellbeing of Women, which funded the study with the National Institute for Health Research, called for “urgent action” to address “stark racial and social inequalities” among pregnant women, PA Media reported.

The study found that severe Covid infection in pregnant women, particularly in the third trimester, significantly increased the risk of giving birth early, having an induction or a Caesarean, having a stillborn baby or a baby that needed intensive care.

In the UK, an estimated 1.1 million women gave birth between 1 March 2020 and 31 October last year. Overall, 4,436 pregnant women were admitted to hospital with Covid during this period in the UK, of whom 65% had mild disease, 21% had moderate illness and 14% had severe infection.

Some 77% of all the women were in their third trimester of pregnancy. Of the 1,761 women whose vaccination status was recorded in this group (from when vaccines became available), 97% were unvaccinated, 2% had received their first dose, and 1% had received two doses.

During the study period, 22 women died with severe Covid-19 during pregnancy, 59 babies were stillborn and 10 babies died around the time of birth.

Hello. Tom Ambrose here and I’ll be bringing you all the latest Covid news from around the world over the next few hours.

We start with the news that Hong Kong’s government has invoked emergency powers to allow doctors and nurses from the Chinese mainland to practise in the financial hub as it struggles to tackle a spiralling coronavirus outbreak.

“The regulation will provide a legal framework for the CPG (central people’s government) to render the necessary emergent support to Hong Kong in a more effective and expeditious manner,” the government said in a statement.

The densely populated metropolis is in the throes of its worst-ever Covid wave, registering thousands of cases every day, overwhelming hospitals and the city’s requirement that all patients are isolated in dedicated units.

Local authorities adopted a zero-Covid strategy similar to China to keep infections mostly at bay for two years. But they were caught flat-footed when the highly infectious Omicron variant broke through those defences and have increasingly called on the Chinese mainland for help.

“Hong Kong is now facing a very dire epidemic situation which continues to deteriorate rapidly,” the government said in its statement announcing the use of emergency powers.

Chinese mainland medics are not currently allowed to operate in Hong Kong without passing local exams and licensing regulations.