Health News at Your Fingertips

Reuters report that the rising number of infections in Germany – where cases exceeded 200,000 in a day for the first time today – has led to staffing shortages in sectors including logistics, healthcare and child care.

Airline group Lufthansa’s cargo arm said a staffing crunch at its hub in Frankfurt meant it was currently unable to handle sorting of loose freight from the United States, Canada and Europe.

“Despite comprehensive preventative measures, we are now clearly feeling the rising infection numbers,” Lufthansa Cargo said, adding that up to 15% of cargo at Frankfurt was affected by delays.

It said its flight schedule was unaffected, as was transportation of time-sensitive goods such as organs for transplants or temperature-controlled cargo. Rival DHL said its operations in Frankfurt and Leipzig were still running smoothly.

The German Hospitals Federation had warned earlier this week that three-quarters of hospitals were reporting higher than usual numbers of staff out on sick leave.

Hong Kong will shorten its 21-day quarantine requirement to 14 days for incoming travellers starting from 5 February, its leader, Carrie Lam, has said. Reuters reports that it is a move that comes after months of pressure from financial executives and foreign diplomats who said the rule was eroding the city’s competitiveness.

Currently Hong Kong residents returning from more than 160 countries have to quarantine for 21 days at their own cost in designated hotels.

My colleague Kalyeena Makortoff has a run-down here of six UK firms that have handed bonuses to executives or payouts to shareholders despite refusing to refund taxpayers for support, including business rates relief and the furlough job retention scheme.

A very quick snap from Reuters confirming that Poland has set another new daily Covid caseload record, at 57,659. The deputy health minister there yesterday warned that the country could soon see case numbers over 60,000 each day.

The Israeli government has said in a report marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day that protesters against Covid-19 measures who liken themselves to Jews under Nazi persecution are stoking global antisemitism.

Such displays showed factual knowledge of the genocide was eroding, the report said, adding that some Covid-19 agitators had been “consuming and disseminating antisemitic conspiracy theories that Jews are responsible for the crisis and are using it for oppression, global domination, economic gain, etc”.

Expanding on the findings, the diaspora affairs minister Nachman Shai said Holocaust distortion or trivialisation was itself antisemitic and could sometimes lead to actual endangerment of Jews.

“There are people so fraught with hate who can, when faced with such imagery, be tipped over into action,” he told Reuters.

Yad Vashem, Israel’s main Holocaust memorial, has urged world leaders to come out against such discourse – a call apparently heeded by the UN secretary general, António Guterres, who on Monday said the yellow star protests were “reprehensible”.

“Covid brought Holocaust trivialisation to a summit,” said the Yad Vashem chairman, Dani Dayan. “Things like that, sometimes done by politicians, by public figures, are despicable and Yad Vashem is very clear in demanding those persons retract.”

Andrew Sparrow is live with our UK politics blog for today, which is of course heavily intertwined with the Covid story as we await the publication of Sue Gray’s report. You can find that here.

I’ll be continuing here with major UK Covid developments and the coronavirus news from around the globe.

Poland’s defence minister Mariusz Blaszczak has tweeted that he has tested positive for coronavirus. “I feel well, I will carry out my duties under isolation,” Blaszczak said.

Reuters remind us that Poland reported a record 53,420 new daily Covid infections yesterday.

Russia’s daily Covid-19 cases rose to 88,816 on Thursday, a new record high for the seventh consecutive day as the Omicron variant was identified in new regions, officials said.

The number of new infections was a significant jump from the 74,692 reported on Wednesday. Reuters report that officials also said that 665 people had died in the last 24 hours.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has take some time out of waiting for the Sue Gray report to arrive to tweet about England dropping Plan B measures today, and to urge people to continue to get vaccinated.

Care home staff in England have said they are facing Covid “testing fatigue” with up to 50% of services experiencing outbreaks, the chairwoman of the National Care Association has warned on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme today.

Responding to the Government announcement that visitor restrictions in care homes will be scrapped next week, Nadra Ahmed said the situation would need to be “considered carefully” by independent providers. PA Media quote her saying:

We also know that up to 50% of services are in outbreak at this moment of time, which is why we’ve got the NHS in the position it’s in because we can’t take people in, so I think all of this will need to be considered very carefully.

Somebody mentioned to me… that we’ve got testing fatigue going on at the moment because you know, we have introduced so much testing, but these (we) have to do because we have to keep people safe.

Asked whether independent providers would place their own restrictions on visitor numbers despite the Government announcement, Ahmed said care homes would be “aiming towards” allowing people to visit freely.

She added: “There may be some challenges for some providers if they are short-staffed or there’s an outbreak, and if there are additional challenges those are the things that we’ll need to take into consideration”.

EasyJet has said the Omicron variant hit passenger demand last month, but revealed it had seen a recent boost in bookings from the move to scrap Covid travel tests.

The low-cost airline said Omicron saw its load factor, a measure of how well it fills its planes, slump to 67% in December after recovering past 80% in October and November.

PA Media report that the carrier said it has seen a “step change” in bookings since the 5 January announcement that pre-departure Covid testing would be scrapped for fully vaccinated arrivals entering England, with demand buoyed further by last week’s news of restriction-free travel from 11 February.

There is a developing story from Associated Press that current and former staffers have accused the top director of the World Health Organization (WHO) in the Western Pacific of racist, unethical and abusive behaviour that has undermined the UN health agency’s efforts to curb the coronavirus pandemic.

The allegations were laid out in an internal complaint filed in October and again in an email last week, sent by unidentified “concerned WHO staff” to senior leadership and the executive board and obtained by the Associated Press. Two of the authors said more than 30 staffers were involved in writing it, and that it reflected the experiences of more than 50 people.

Maria Cheng reports that the internal complaint and the email describe a “toxic atmosphere” with “a culture of systemic bullying and public ridiculing” at WHO’s Western Pacific headquarters in Manila, led by Dr Takeshi Kasai, director of the region that includes China and his home country of Japan. Kasai denies the allegations.

The AP says it has also obtained recorded snippets of meetings where Kasai is heard making derogatory remarks about his staff based on nationality. Eleven former or current WHO staffers who worked for Kasai told the AP he frequently used racist language.

In an email to the AP, Kasai denied allegations of racism and unethical behavior. He said that after receiving the email last week, he immediately took steps to communicate with all his staff.

“I ask a lot of myself, and our staff,” he said. “This has particularly been the case during the Covid-19 response. But it should not result in people feeling disrespected.”

Isobel Frodsham at PA Media has a little bit more on those changes to care home rules in England. Limits on the number of visitors to care homes are being scrapped from Monday.

She writes that care homes will only have to follow outbreak management rules for 14 rather than 28 days, and self-isolation periods will be cut from 15 days to 10 days for those who test positive – with further reductions if they test negative on days five and six.

Isolation periods for those in care following an emergency hospital visit are also being reduced from 14 to 10 days. The move comes as 86.5% of care home residents have now had a booster vaccination.

Care minister Gillian Keegan said: “Thanks to the continued success of the vaccine rollout, I am delighted we can ease restrictions in care settings and allow unlimited visits to ensure people living in care homes see all their family and friends.

“The changes announced today are backed by scientists, ensuring we all have more freedoms from coronavirus, including care home residents and their families.”

The withdrawal of the requirement for Covid passes in England from today has been welcomed by those within the hospitality industry.

PA Media quote Michael Kill, chief executive of the Night Time Industries Association, described the requirement as having been a “debilitating and divisive mitigation” and said businesses across the night-time economy will celebrate the change.

Kill said the impact of the measure has left “many businesses now concerned that they will struggle to survive beyond February” and called for more government support.

Shaun Hinds, chief executive at Manchester Central, which describes itself as one of the UK’s leading events venues, described the end of plan B as “a very positive move”.

He said “a number of significant inquiries for events in 2022” and new bookings for 2023 indicate a “real appetite and eagerness in the live events sector as it continues in its recovery”.