Advisers to government in Tokyo say Covid surge requires harsher measures, while Australian state of NSW announces 262 new cases
- US disputes WHO call to delay Covid booster shots to help poorer nations
- Fully vaccinated UK arrivals from France will not need to quarantine
- Sydney Covid Delta variant outbreak ‘an epidemic of young people’
The French president Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that it was likely that the elderly and vulnerable would need a third Covid-19 vaccine shot, and that France was working on rolling these out from September onwards.
“A third dose will likely be necessary, not for everyone straightaway, but in any case for the most vulnerable and the most elderly,” said Macron in a post on his Instagram account.
Japan decided on Thursday to expand its Covid-19 emergency restrictions to cover more than 70% of the population, as a surge in cases strains the medical system in the Olympics host city Tokyo and elsewhere, Reuters reports.
Infections are rising faster than ever as new cases hit record highs in Tokyo, overshadowing the Olympics and fuelling doubts over the prime minister Yoshihide Suga’s handling of the pandemic.
For months, Briton Jamie Pierre has been trying to get approval to travel to Singapore for his new job there. But after repeated checks online, plus multiple emails and messages, he is frustrated, confused and still without an entry permit.
Now, as Singapore says it may ease quarantine in September for vaccinated people, he hardly dares feel optimistic. “It does give me some hope,” said Pierre, 32, who works for a marketing procurement platform. But that hope is tempered with worry of more delays, he added.
Australia’s second most populous state, Victoria, will go into a seven-day lockdown from 8pm on Thursday – the state’s sixth lockdown since the coronavirus pandemic began, my colleague Calla Wahlquist reports.
The premier, Daniel Andrews, announced the lockdown in response to two new mystery cases, including one cluster which is linked to Melbourne’s Al-Taqwa College and has grown to four cases.
There are no alternatives to lockdown. If you wait, it will spread. And once it spreads, you can never even hope to run alongside it let alone get out in front of it and bring it back down to zero or a low number of cases. This thing moves so fast.
We don’t have enough people that have been vaccinated, and therefore, this is the only option available to us. Once people are vaccinated, then we have many more options to the question about whether there are other things you could do.
Related: Victoria Covid update: snap seven-day lockdown announced after eight new cases reported
The new head of the NHS in England has urged young people to get a coronavirus vaccine, warning that more than one-fifth of those admitted to hospital with Covid are aged between 18 and 34.
The NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard warned that young people “are not immune and the best way they can protect themselves absolutely is to get that vaccine if they haven’t already”.
Related: Fifth of Covid hospital admissions are aged 18-34, says NHS England
Just over 86,000 vaccine doses have been administered in the Democratic Republic of Congo – enough to vaccinate fewer than 0.1% of the country’s 90 million people, Lisa Murray reports from Kinshasa.
The DRC is already facing shortages and huge logistical challenges in getting vaccines out to people in far-flung areas of a country almost the size of western Europe, and there is growing anger over the failures of rich countries to supply enough vaccines to poorer ones.
If people in Congo remain unvaccinated, the South African variant could meet with the Delta variant and the virus could mutate into a variant that is resistant to some vaccines.
If a Congo variant arrives in a country like the UK, which has high vaccination rates, it could put them back into the same position they were at the beginning of the pandemic. They’d have to get vaccinated again with a new vaccine.
The president said that he doesn’t trust AstraZeneca, so that makes me doubt it … I would die of anxiety if I took this vaccine, because of how the president described it. I would be worried that I was going to die.
They resisted, they doubted its existence. They thought it was a disease that killed white people.
Related: ‘They thought Covid only kills white people’: myths and fear hinder jabs in DRC
This is from Thursday’s Guardian morning briefing, by my colleague Warren Murray.
Millions of Britons have been given the green light to travel to Europe’s holiday hotspots, avoiding quarantine on return from France and Spain where concerns have been raised about Covid variants. Ministers announced fully vaccinated holidaymakers returning from France would no longer need to quarantine, and ditched plans for a “watchlist” of amber countries such as Spain. The move is likely to partially revive the struggling tourism sector but will raise questions about whether the government is being complacent about the spread of the Beta variant.
Related: Thursday briefing: Holidays get the green light
Good morning from London. I’m Lucy Campbell, I’ll be bringing you all the latest global developments on the coronavirus pandemic for the next few hours. Please feel free to get in touch with me as I work if you have a story or tips to share! Your thoughts are always welcome.
Email: lucy.campbell@theguardian.com
Twitter: @lucy_campbell_
That’s it from me today, I’m handing over to my UK colleague Lucy Campbell.
Here’s a roundup of what’s been happening over the past 24 hours:
And as the UK announces that it is offering vaccinations to 16 and 17-year-olds, here’s a rundown on how other countries are approaching the immunisation of minors:
Related: Which countries are vaccinating minors against Covid?
In case you missed it earlier, here’s an excellent analysis from China affairs correspondent Vincent Ni, who has been looking at the dilemma the country faces as it grapples with the Delta virus. Can it continue with its “zero tolerance” strategy?
Related: With Delta variant spreading is China ‘zero tolerance’ approach over?
Here’s more on the outbreak in the Australian state of New South Wales, where authorities are saying that a beach party in Newcastle attended by young people from western Sydney is what triggered a snap lockdown in eight regional local government areas.
NSW recorded 262 coronavirus cases and five deaths in the 24 hours to 8pm Wednesday – its worst day so far in the pandemic. At least 72 cases were in the community for all or part of their infectious period, our correspondent Anne Davis writes.
China has reported 62 new cases as it seeks to control outbreaks of the Delta variant across more than half of its provinces, our correspondent Helen Davidson reports.
Two thirds of the new cases were in Jiangsu, where many cases have been linked to airport workers who were infected after cleaning planes arriving from international destinations. Authorities have enacted sweeping travel restrictions, mass testing of entire cities, and lockdown measures affecting tens of millions.
Hello and welcome to our rolling coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Livingstone.
In Japan, some members of a government expert panel have warned that a recent surge in Covid-19 cases was severe enough to impose a nationwide state of emergency. But economy minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, who is in charge of the pandemic response, said the panel ultimately agreed to a government proposal to expand emergency restrictions to eight more prefectures.
Sydney has reported its worst day of the Covid-19 pandemic with five deaths and a record rise in locally acquired infections, Reuters reports, as a weeks-long hard lockdown is struggling to contain the highly contagious Delta strain of the coronavirus.
Four of the five people who died were unvaccinated while one had had one dose, New South Wales state health authorities said, as they implored residents to get inoculated as early as possible.
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