Health News at Your Fingertips

Kenya has extended its nightly curfew by 60 days to slow the spread of Covid-19, the interior ministry said, according to the Reuters news agency.

The move followed a decision by President Uhuru Kenyatta in late March to extend the 10pm to 4am curfew. A ban on political gatherings and processions that could turn into super spreader events was also extended for 60 days, as was a prohibition on overnight events and vigils, the ministry said.

When the first coronavirus cases were confirmed in Kenya in March 2020, the government closed schools, imposed a curfew, banned public gatherings and on multiple occasions restricted movement in and out of the most-affected regions.
Some restrictions, such as on schools, were eventually relaxed. The ban on public gatherings and processions and overnight meetings will stay in force, the ministry said.

Kenya has recorded 170,485 cases and 3,141 deaths, Ministry of Health data showed on Saturday, with a positivity rate of 8.9%. Covid-19 vaccinations began on March 5 and so far 968,733 people have received their first dose.

Boris Johnson faces a difficult decision about whether to end England’s lockdown on June 21 with hospitals already under “worrying” pressure, a health chief has warned.

According to the Press Association news agency, NHS Providers chief executive Chris Hopson said hospital bosses were concerned about the transmissibility of the B1617.2 variant and the large number of people who have still to receive doses of the vaccine.

He warned that although hospitals were not expecting to be overwhelmed by a surge of Covid-19 cases, they were already stretched by going “full pelt” on dealing with the backlog of cases built up during the pandemic and urgent care needs. Hopson said:

Significant numbers of Covid-19 hospital inpatients will adversely impact care backlog recovery, (the) current degree of pressure on hospitals is worrying especially since we saw clear summer demand surges in the two years before Covid-19. But if, as evidence above suggests, success of (the) vaccination campaign means much lower levels of hospitalisation, serious illness and mortality, even with (the) new variant, that is very significant and important. This means there is a difficult decision to make for June 21.

He also suggested the government needs to consider the increased burden on hospitals in UK holiday hotspots in coming months with people not travelling abroad, saying one trust chief on the south coast had warned they will “struggle” to meet the “significant extra demand”.

Dr Mike Tildesley, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (Spi-M) Government advisory panel, said there was still “quite a lot of uncertainty” around the June 21 date.

He told LBC radio scientists had “an awful lot of work to do” to analyse data on the link between cases and hospital admissions, while bearing in mind the situation with the Indian variant, to give evidence to the government.

South Korea will get 1m doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine this week mainly to inoculate military personnel, after the United States almost doubled a pledge made earlier this month, prime minister Kim Boo-kyum said on Sunday.

South Korea has reported a lower death toll than many comparable developed countries from Covid-19, but the government has come under criticism for a comparatively slow rollout of vaccines, Reuters reports. Less than 11% of its 52 million people have so far received a first dose.

US President Joe Biden, at his first summit with President Moon Jae-in earlier this month, promised to supply 550,000 shots for South Korean troops.

Kim said that offer had now been increased to 1m doses, and the shots will arrive this week.

On care homes, UK vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi today defended the government approach.

Boris Johnson’s former aide Dominic Cummings claimed the health secretary, Matt Hancock, had lied to the prime minister over tests being carried out on those discharged into care homes – a charge denied by Hancock.

Zahawi said the government had made the best use of the limited testing capacity available when the pandemic struck and it had put a “protective ring” around care homes.

Asked whether Hancock had promised care home residents would be tested before discharge from hospital, Zahawi told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show:

Matt Hancock was very much focused on delivery, I think it’s worth putting this in context … in the sense that in the eye of the storm, we were only able to do 2,000 tests a day. The diagnostics industry was almost non-existent in the UK.

He added Hancock had said that “people going into care homes absolutely should be tested and the system, the NHS, operationalised that” as testing capacity increased.

Asked why people had been sent home without tests, Zahawi said “hindsight is a wonderful thing”, adding:

We can sit here and sort of argue the toss about asymptomatic transmission … and when we really knew about that.

The whole point is you use every resource available to you, to the best of your ability, to save and to protect as many people as possible.

There have been more than 36,275 deaths involving Covid-19 in care homes since the pandemic began.

Zahawi said:

When the inquiry is held, and we will look at all these things in detail, we will of course examine where we could do better.

But to say that we didn’t deal with them to the best of our capability, with the resources that were available to us, is a mistake, is wrong.

Italy has extended an entry ban for people coming from India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, as a continued precaution against the more transmissible Indian variant. The ban, which does not apply to Italian citizens, was introduced in late April and was due to expire on Sunday. It was prolonged until 21 June, a spokesman for Italian health minister Roberto Speranza said in a statement.

Care homes were “forgotten” during the “dreadful” early stages of the Covid pandemic in the UK, a sector leader has said.

Mike Padgham, the chairman of the Independent Care Group, which represents providers in York and North Yorkshire, told Sky News it had been a “frightening” time for staff and residents.

Padgham was questioned in relation to the claim made by former Downing Street adviser Dominic Cummings to MPs this week that suggestions care homes were shielded were “complete nonsense”.

Padgham said:

I don’t believe myself there was a ring of protection thrown round us.

In those very early days it was difficult. We were forgotten. We’ve been forgotten over decades. That’s the only issue in social care.

We weren’t prepared. We weren’t ready. We didn’t have the PPE, we didn’t have the testing.

And it took the government many, many weeks to actually see what was happening in homes, despite our best efforts and protestations.

That is why providers … without their efforts, the figures … would have been much worse.”

Vietnam’s business hub Ho Chi Minh City will begin social distancing measures in the city for 15 days starting from Monday in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus, according to the state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper reported on Sunday.

“All events that gather more than 10 people in public are banned city-wide, but the city is considering to lower the number of people to just five,” the newspaper reported. “While all citizens of Go Vap district are not allowed to go out if not necessary,” the report added.

Ho Chi Minh City earlier this week shut down shops and restaurants.

Taiwan reported 355 domestic Covid-19 cases on Sunday. After recording just a handful of daily infections for months, Taiwan is dealing with relatively large numbers of community transmissions, though infection rates are starting to fall.

It has only vaccinated around 1% of its more than 23 million people but has almost 30 million shots on order, from AstraZeneca Plc, Moderna Inc and two domestic firms.

The UK government is waiting for the latest data on June 14 before deciding whether to proceed with easing the lockdown on June 21, vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi said.

Asked whether that step could be taken if cases were still increasing, he told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show:

What I’m saying to you is we have to be cautious. We have to look at the data and share it with the country.

Are we still vaccinating at scale? Big tick. Are the vaccines working? Yes. But are infection rates too high for us to then not be able to proceed because there are too many people getting into hospital? I don’t know the answer to it.

But we will know it on, hopefully on the 14th, a few more weeks.

He said that as the virus becomes endemic “we’re going to have to live with a certain amount of Covid being transmitted”.

On the possible compulsory vaccination of NHS staff in the UK, the shadow cabinet minister Thangam Debbonaire said “threatening” NHS staff to have the vaccine was not a good idea.

The shadow Commons leader told Sky News:

Given we have got a recruitment crisis in parts of the NHS I think it’s far more important we try and work with staff rather than against them. Threatening staff, I don’t think is a good idea.”

Public Health England and the NHS had been successful when they had worked with people to address their doubts and answer questions about the jab, she said.

I would like to see the government work with the NHS and social care staff.