More than 200 million Europeans fully vaccinated but programme still behind summer target; more Olympic athletes confirmed to have Covid
- Stark silence in Tokyo speaks volumes about Olympic fears
- China refuses further inquiry into Covid-19 origins in Wuhan lab
- Tax raids target Indian paper that criticised government over Covid
- Australia PM says sorry for vaccine failures amid Sydney lockdown
- UK coronavirus updates – live
The EU has said that 200 million Europeans had been fully vaccinated, more than half of the adult population but still short of a 70% target set for the summer.
It comes as the bloc said it would donate more than 200m doses of Covid-19 vaccines to middle- and low-income countries before the end of the year, though member states have been heavily criticised for the pace of delivering pledges.
Hospitals in Lebanon have warned of a looming “catastrophe” as some were only hours away from running out of fuel to keep life-saving equipment on during endless state power cuts.
AFP reports that amid economic crisis the state electricity supplier has all but stopped providing power in recent weeks, forcing homes, businesses and hospitals to rely on backup generators almost around the clock.
Public anger at French government measures to curb the spread of Covid, which some people say are an attack on their liberty, has given the yellow vest protest movement fresh momentum, Reuters reports.
Last weekend, police estimated that 100,000 people joined protests against the measures - some of them under the banner of the gilets jaunes (yellow vests). Another round of protests is planned for this weekend.
Peruvian police have dismantled an alleged criminal ring that had charged as much $21,000 per bed for seriously ill Covid-19 patients in a state-run hospital, aggravating care in a country hit by one of the world’s deadliest outbreaks of the virus.
Authorities arrested nine people in an early morning raid on Wednesday, including the administrators of Lima’s Guillermo Almenara Irigoyen public hospital, according to the prosecutor Reynaldo Abia, Reuters reports.
Related: Peru police break up alleged scam charging huge sums for Covid ICU beds
National Geographic reports that scientists are investigating whether novel ways of injecting vaccine shots could bring more robust immunity – including delivering it up the nose.
Several promising studies have suggested intranasal vaccines are effective in mice, ferrets, hamsters and non-human primates, while six candidate Covid jabs administered as nasal sprays are undergoing phase 1 clinical trials.
Ordovas-Montañes says that when we get a jab in the arm, we are inducing immunity on a systemic, body-wide scale where our antibodies and T cells will distribute themselves around the blood vessels. While that might sound good, this approach is “sub-optimal” because the immune cells are “distracted” and not focused on the location where the virus enters the body.
A shot up the nose, on the other hand, provides a big boost of immunity in the upper respiratory tract and potentially the lungs, eliciting a local antibody response and T cell response. This enables immune cells to apprehend and destroy the pathogen on arrival.
Azerbaijan has extended its quarantine restrictions until 1 September, the government has said.
The restrictions mean the borders of the South Caucasus country of about 10 million people will remain closed. Only vaccinated people will be able to attend weddings and visit sports venues, Reuters reports. People are required to wear face masks indoors.
At the White House, officials are debating whether to urge Americans to wear masks more often to curb the spread of coronavirus. That is according to a new report in the Washington Post detailing the still-preliminary deliberations:
The talks are in a preliminary phase and their result could be as simple as new messaging from top White House officials. But some of the talks include officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who are separately examining whether to update their masking guidance, according to a Biden administration aide and a federal health official.
Officials cautioned that any new formal guidance would have to come from the CDC, and they maintained that the White House has taken a hands-off approach with the agency to ensure they are not interfering with the work of scientists. But the high-level discussions reflect rising concerns across the administration about the threat of the Delta variant and a renewed focus on what measures may need to be reintroduced to slow its spread.
Related: White House officials consider new push on masks as Covid cases rise – live
Johnson & Johnson’s Covid jab is much less effective in mitigating the symptoms of those with the Delta or Lambda variants than against the original virus strain, a new study suggests.
The New York Times reports that the conclusions of the paper appear to contradict smaller studies published by the drugmaker which suggest a single dose of the jab is indeed effective against the Delta variant.
NHS staff in England have suffered real-term falls in their pay of up to £2,949 over the last decade, research by a leading health thinktank shows.
After adjusting for inflation, nurses’ and health visitors’ pay has dropped by £1,583, doctors’ by £779 and midwives’ by £1,813. However, scientific, therapeutic and technical staff have suffered the biggest cut of £2,949.
Related: NHS staff have lost thousands in real pay since 2011, studies find
Hundreds of voters face being in effect excluded from the twice-postponed elections in the Isle of Man on Thursday because of a lack of contingency plans for those self-isolating, after delays to the vote due to Covid restrictions.
With case numbers rising, many people who need to isolate are said to have been unable to access alternative voting arrangements as a deadline for absentee ballots was seven days before polling day.
I am one of an unknown number of registered voters currently in legal isolation – we estimate that it’s affecting around 1,000 potential voters in the wards with candidates running, which for a total [adult] population of 82,000 people is not insignificant – after our Covid-19 case numbers have exploded in recent days.
The deadline for postal votes has long passed, and the government has had well over a year to prepare for the eventuality of Covid-19 cases returning to the island, which they have done following the relaxation of borders earlier this month. As the margins between councillors winning seats are often in the single figures, this renders the election illegitimate.
Related: Self-isolation could stop hundreds voting in Isle of Man elections
Japan’s emperor has acknowledged the difficulty of preventing the spread of coronavirus during the Olympics at a meeting with International Olympic Committee officials.
“Managing the Games while at the same time taking all possible measures against Covid-19 is far from an easy task,” Naruhito told the International Olympic Committee (IOC) president, Thomas Bach, and other IOC members ahead of declaring the official opening of the Games on Friday.
The mental health impact of the pandemic will be “long term and far reaching”, the World Health Organization has said.
“Everyone is affected in one way or another,” the WHO said in a statement at the start of a two-day meeting in Athens. It said “anxieties around virus transmission, the psychological impact of lockdowns and self-isolation” had contributed to a mental health crisis, along with stresses linked to unemployment, financial worries and social alienation, AFP reports.
Johnson & Johnson, which has produced a widely used Covid vaccine, has just resolved thousands of opioid lawsuits along with other drug companies – but campaigners say the affair has raised serious questions over its trustworthiness.
The world’s largest healthcare company helped “cause an epidemic” in the pursuit of “bottom lines over the health and safety and wellbeing of people”, according to the Pennsylvania attorney-general, Josh Shapiro.
EU countries have so far donated just a tiny portion of excess Covid-19 vaccines to poor nations, mostly out-of-favour AstraZeneca shots, less than 3% of the 160m doses they plan to give away in total to help tame the global pandemic, an EU document shows.
The EU has committed to helping inoculate the most vulnerable across the world but, like other wealthy countries, EU states have so far focused on buying shots to inoculate their own citizens, contributing to a shortage of vaccines elsewhere, Reuters reports.
Unemployed workers are pushing for reforms and changes to the US unemployment insurance system after millions of workers experienced severe problems in receiving benefits throughout the pandemic.
Workers across the US faced long delays in receiving unemployment benefits as state systems were quickly overwhelmed with the mass influx of applications that caused months-long backlogs. Meanwhile, workers who made errors on their applications, had missing records or had their claims flagged had their benefits stopped – and often had difficulty restarting them once problems were resolved.
Related: Reform unemployment, US workers say, as Covid reveals chaotic systems
Ireland will wait a few weeks before considering easing Covid-19 restrictions beyond Monday’s planned resumption of indoor dining and drinking in restaurants and bars, the deputy prime minister, Leo Varadkar, has said.
Ireland has been gradually unwinding its third and longest lockdown and earlier this month delayed plans to allow indoor service in pubs and restaurants for the first time this year due to concerns about the Delta variant, Reuters reports.
China’s government has refused to cooperate with the second stage of an international investigation into the origins of Covid-19, labelling a proposal to audit Chinese labs as “arrogance towards science”.
The lab theory – which posited the virus leaked from, or was manufactured in, a Wuhan lab – was amplified by the former US president Donald Trump and his allies, and largely dismissed as a rightwing conspiracy theory. However, calls for closer investigation of the possibility have recently gained ground, and last week the World Health Organization director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the push to discount the theory had been “premature”.
Related: China refuses further inquiry into Covid-19 origins in Wuhan lab
The New York Times reports that a telephone survey of 1,719 people suggests trust in US federal health agencies leading the pandemic response remains strong.
The paper said the University of Pennsylvania poll found that 76% of respondents were somewhat or very confident in the trustworthiness of information about Covid-19 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Indian tax authorities have raided a prominent newspaper and a TV channel which have been critical of the government’s handling of the pandemic, triggering accusations of intimidation.
AFP reports that Bhaskar, which has a readership of millions, had carried a series of reports on the devastation caused by the pandemic in April and May and criticised the government’s management of the crisis.
Uttar Pradesh has been governed by the Bharatiya Janata party of prime minister Narendra Modi since March 2017, under chief minister Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu monk turned politician. Mr Adityanath’s response in April to grave shortages of oxygen, ventilators and beds in intensive care units throughout the state and to the images of overcrowded cemeteries and crematories was to issue denials and threats. He directed state officials to invoke antiterrorism laws against and seize property from people he accused of spreading rumours.
Some light relief on a sanitised Olympics.
Surely, Tokyo 2020 organisers must have thought they were doing Mother Earth a solid by commissioning 18,000 beds made of cardboard and polyethylene and other sustainable materials. But you know what would really be doing the world a favour? Not having the Olympics in the middle of a global pandemic.
Related: US Olympic athletes running wild in Tokyo? Not at the Covid Olympics
Here’s a dispatch from Brazil by my colleague Tom Phillips on how the pandemic has piled further misery on what was already one of Brazil’s most depressed and vulnerable neighbourhoods, leaving its residents, like millions of fellow citizens, hungry and afraid.
Related: ‘Hunger has returned’: Covid piles further misery on Brazil’s vulnerable
Eric Clapton has said he will not perform at any venues that require attendees to show proof of vaccination.
In response to the UK government’s announcement that vaccination passports will be required to access nightclubs and venues by the end of September, the musician has issued a statement saying he would not play “any stage where there is a discriminated audience present. Unless there is provision made for all people to attend, I reserve the right to cancel the show.”
Related: Eric Clapton refuses to play venues that require proof of vaccination
That’s it from me for today. Handing over to my colleague Mattha Busby now. Thanks for reading!
In the UK, a record 618,903 alerts were sent to users of the NHS Covid-19 app in England and Wales in the week to 14 July, telling then they had been in close contact with a person who had tested positive for coronavirus, according to NHS figures.
Angela Merkel has urged Germans to get vaccinated as cases in the country rise.
“We all want our normality back,” the chancellor, who is preparing to step down later this year, said. “The more we are vaccinated, the freer we will be.”
A Czech beach volleyball player has reportedly tested positive for Covid-19 (see 10:11 and 05:45).
Retuers cited Czech Television as reporting that Marketa Nausch-Slukova has tested positive, bringing the number of infected Czech athletes at the Tokyo Olympics to three.
I have done everything I could and have worked so hard to get so close to the Games. This is the end of my career.
The Netherlands Olympic team has reported two new Covid-19 cases, one athlete and one staff member, according to Reuters.
It follows reports earlier today that two athletes had tested positive (see 05:45).
Back to Tokyo, where Emperor Naruhito has said Covid-19 prevention at the Olympics is a “far from an easy task”.
He said, however, that he hoped closely coordinated measures would allow athletes to compete in good health, according to Reuters.
Russia has reported 24,471 new Covid cases and 796 deaths in the last 24 hours, up from 23,704 and 783 on Wednesday.
Related: UK Covid live: minister says list of critical workers exempt from isolation rules will be limited
Tokyo has reported coronavirus cases at a six-month high on the eve of the opening of the Olympic Games.
The city reported 1,979 new cases on Thursday - the highest figure since January and a rise of more than 600 compared with a week ago.
The UK business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, has said a “very narrow” list of sectors whose workers will be exempt from self-isolation rules will be published on Thursday as “pingdemic” shortages grow across the country.
“We’re looking at different sectors and we will be publishing today the sectors that will be affected,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
In the UK, the Road Haulage Association has said the combination of Brexit and the “pingdemic” has created a “recipe for chaos” for lorry driver numbers.
Rod McKenzie, the association’s managing director of policy, said there was already a shortage of 100,000 drivers and with so many being required to self-isolate, it would get even worse.
We don’t know how many drivers are affected in terms of the pingdemic on a daily basis, but the effects are clear.
We started off with a shortage of 100,000 drivers, UK lorry drivers, and that’s because we’ve always had a shortage of 60,000 and we’ve lost an additional 20,000 European drivers, add to that 30,000 cancelled lorry driving tests in the past year which haven’t been made up.
What we’re able to see is the effect in terms of our shops, our supermarkets and everything else. There are fewer drivers than there were last week - and there were shortages last week.
Since the pingdemic has peaked we’re seeing this critical shortage get even worse.
In the latest developments from the UK, the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, has said he is “very confident” that the government would win a vote on vaccine passports legislation.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
You can never predict parliamentary votes but we’ve got a majority of 80 and I’m very confident we can pass the legislation we require.
I don’t know what the proposed vote will be, you can never tell what the actual vote in the House of Commons in terms of the wording and what the position is.
Also in Indonesia, a man with coronavirus was removed from a plane after boarding a domestic flight disguised as his wife.
The man, who the Associated Press reports was wearing a niqab and carrying fake ID and a negative PCR test, was spotted after an attendant on the flight from Jakarta to Ternate noticed him changing clothes in the toilet. He was subsequently arrested when the plane landed.
South Korea today reported another day of record cases amid one of its worst coronavirus outbreaks to date.
There were 1,842 new cases - including at least 270 sailors who were on an anti-piracy navy destroyer - breaking the previous record set on Wednesday.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has urged Indonesia to bring in stricter and wider lockdown measures in a bid to tackle surging Covid infections and deaths in the country.
It comes days after the country’s president said the government will start lifting restrictions on July 26 if cases continue to decline.
Indonesia is currently facing a very high transmission level, and it is indicative of the utmost importance of implementing stringent public health and social measures, especially movement restrictions, throughout the country.
The UK shadow home secretary has warned “we can’t afford to have a summer of chaos” as he urged the government to “take responsibility” for rising infections and ensuring that essential supplies and services can continue.
Speaking to Sky News, Nick Thomas-Symonds, shadow Home Secretary and Welsh Labour MP for Torfaen, refused to be drawn on exactly who should be on a self-isolation exemption list for those “pinged” by the NHS app, but that food workers and lorry drivers could be considered.
The chief executive of the British Retail Consortium has warned that some food retailers will be forced to close shops due to the numbers of staff having to self-isolate after being “pinged” by the NHS app.
But Helen Dickinson urged people not to panic, adding: “There’s plenty of food in the country.”
More from the UK, business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has elaborated slightly on the plans for a fully-vaccinated critical workers exemption list, saying it will be “very narrow”.
He told BBC Breakfast: “The list, I think, will be quite narrow, it will be very narrow, simply because we don’t want to get into a huge debate about who is exempt.”
In the UK, a doctor and member of the British Medical Association has said that people deleting the NHS app is “very unfortunate” and compares blaming the app for “pings” to blaming a fire alarm for a fire.
Dr Tom Dolphin, an anaesthetist, told Sky that hospitals don’t have very much spare capacity at the moment and that the number of people being pinged reflects the numbers being infected.
More from UK business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng who has said that the government’s offer of a 3% pay rise for NHS staff in England and Wales as they are faced with the huge repercussions of the pandemic is “fair”.
He told Sky News: “The independent review has recommended a 3% increase and the Government has decided that we’ll go with the independent review.
UK business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng this morning said he was “very concerned” about the shortages on supermarket shelves and that a list of critical workers eligible for less strict isolation rules would be created “very soon”.
It comes after Number 10 previously said that there would not be a list for individual sectors.
In the UK, where food supply chains are facing staff shortages due to Covid exposure, a food distribution company has told staff to go against government advice.
Bidfood is instructing workers who are “pinged” by the NHS app to follow a testing regime and keep working.
We know that they’re critical workers as part of the food supply chain, so if people are obviously positive or contacted by Test and Trace then they will have to isolate.
If they are pinged we ask them to take a PCR test, if that’s positive then clearly they’ll isolate, but if it’s negative we ask them to come back to work and we have a process of doing lateral flow tests daily away from their workplace, and if that’s negative they can proceed with their work.
Fiji has recorded its highest number of weekly deaths from Covid, including two pregnant women.
A total of 21 people died between 14 and 20 July, the country’s health minister, James Fong, said on Thursday. Another 1,091 new Covid cases were also confirmed in the 24 hours to 8am on Wednesday.
Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison has apologised for the country’s slow vaccine rollout, which has seen half the population plunged into lockdown after an outbreak of the Delta variant.
Morrison, whose federal government has been blamed for failing to order enough vaccines, had previously refused to apologise despite mounting fury at Australia being ranked bottom of OECD countries for vaccinations.
I’m certainly sorry we haven’t been able to achieve the marks we had hoped for at the beginning of the year. Of course I am.
Related: Australia PM says sorry for vaccine failures amid bleak outlook for Sydney lockdown
England is entering its fourth day without any restrictions on everyday life. But cases are climbing back to heights last seen in January, and 96 people died of the disease in the UK on Wednesday.
Our reporter Sarah Marsh talks to the families of some of the 1,000 people who have died from the virus since the beginning of June.
Related: ‘Covid has ripped the family apart’: the lives lost in the UK’s third wave
Thailand has recorded another record number of new daily cases on Thursday. There 13,655 new infections and 87 deaths. More public spaces will be closed in Bangkok and other high risk areas, including parks, writes our south-east Asia correspondent, Rebecca Ratcliffe.
The head of Thailand’s national vaccine institute apologised on Thursday for the slow vaccine rollout, saying that the country was facing unforeseen challenges, given the new variants that have emerged.
China has rejected a World Health Organization plan for a second phase of an investigation into the origin of the coronavirus, which includes the hypothesis it could have escaped from a Chinese laboratory, Reuters reports.
The WHO this month proposed a second phase of studies into the causes of the pandemic, including audits of laboratories and markets in the city of Wuhan, calling for transparency from authorities.
Joe Biden has suggested that his administrsation could soon give approval for vaccinations for children under-12.
Speaking on a national tour to encourage more people to get the vaccine, the US president told a televised town hall in Cincinnati in Ohio that children under 12, who are currently ineligible for the three coronavirus vaccines available in the US, could get shots by August or later in the fall.
Related: Biden says children under 12 could be eligible for Covid vaccines within months
The coronavirus pandemic continues to dog the Tokyo Olympics with only a day to go before the opening ceremony.
Two more athletes have tested positive for the virus in the Olympic village, according to Reuters citing the Games organisers. There are now 12 new positive cases overall, including the two athletes, bringing the total to 87.
Good morning/afternoon/evening wherever you are in the world, and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the coronaviris pandemic.
The main developments in the past few hours are:
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