Coronavirus live: efforts to trace Covid origin ‘not blame game’ says WHO – as it happened | World news

• The number of people in hospital with coronavirus in England has risen to its highest level in four months, data shows. The latest figures from NHS England show that 4,401 hospital beds were occupied by confirmed Covid-19 cases on Friday, the highest level since March 22.
• The US purchased 200m more doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for flexibility in case booster shots are needed later and the shots are approved for younger children, the White House said.
• Iceland has announced new curbs following a spate of infections, AFP reports. Public gatherings will be restricted to 200, the one-metre social distancing rule will be reimposed and bars and restaurants will have to close at 11:00pm.
• All countries must work together to investigate the origin of the coronavirus that sparked the pandemic, the World Health Organization said, a day after China rejected the proposed scope of a second phase, which would have a greater focus on a possible lab leak. WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic, asked about China’s rejection, said: “This is not about politics, it’s not about a blame game. It is about basically a requirement we all have to try to understand how the pathogen came into the human population.”

• Meanwhile, the row over American funding of potentially risky research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology is deepening, after Dr Anthony Fauci, the US infectious diseases chief, restated his denial this week that he helped bankroll potentially risky ‘gain of function’ experiments. But, in a meaty fact-check today, the BBC quoted an expert saying that two studies by the Chinese institute – one from 2015, and another from 2017 – included gain-of-function research, where diseases are genetically altered to increase their transmissibility.

• New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, announced that the country is pausing quarantine-free travel from Australia for at least eight weeks, due to Covid outbreaks on the neighbouring island. It is the first time New Zealand has taken this course of action – which will come into force at 11.59pm local time tonight – since the bubble was introduced in April.

• Australia’s most populous state declared a “national emergency” as it struggles to contain a record-breaking surge of the Delta variant of Covid-19 amid a lockdown affecting half the country. The state of New South Wales announced 136 new locally acquired cases of Covid-19 today, with continued community transmission among essential workers, including in supermarkets and pharmacies.

• The Republican governor of Alabama said it is “time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks” for rising cases of Covid-19, amid concern that months of misinformation over the need and efficacy of vaccines is fuelling a resurgence of coronavirus infections in several states. Only about a third of eligible people in Alabama have received a vaccine shot, one of the lowest rates in the US.

• About 100 of the 613 US athletes arriving in Tokyo for the Olympics are unvaccinated, the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s medical chief said. Medical director Jonathan Finnoff said 567 of the American athletes had filled out their health histories as they prepared for the trip, and estimated that 83% had replied that they had been vaccinated.

• An Australian clothing brand was fined A$5m for claiming that its garments stop the spread of Covid. Lorna Jane advertised that its clothes used “a groundbreaking technology” called LJ Shield to prevent the “transferal of all pathogens”. But a judge ruled that the claim was “exploitative, predatory and potentially dangerous”.

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Mexico’s health ministry on Friday reported 16,421 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the country and 328 more fatalities, Reuters reports.

It brings the total to 2,726,160 infections and 237,954 deaths.

The government has said the real number of cases is likely significantly higher, and separate data published recently suggested the actual death toll could be 60% higher than the official count

Brazil registered 108,732 new cases of coronavirus and 1,324 additional deaths in the last 24 hours, the country’s health ministry said on Friday.

The country has had over 19.5 million cases in total and more than 547,000 deaths.

Australian authorities said fragments of Covid-19 had been detected at the sewage treatment plant at Moss Vale in the NSW Southern Highlands where there were no known cases in this area.

The department said this was of “great concern”.

Moss Vale area residents are asked to be vigilant for any symptoms and if they appear to immediately be tested and isolate until a negative result is received.

The England football manager Gareth Southgate has joined the campaign to encourage people to have their coronavirus vaccine, saying it will allow them to “get your freedom back”.

Downing Street has released a message from the manager thanking the public for their support during the team’s journey to the Euro 2020 final and urging younger people in particular to get the jab.

In the UK, only 58% of people aged 18-25 have their first dose, according to new Public Health England data, despite all adults having been offered the jab. There are also large disparities in uptake by ethnicity.

Southgate, 50, said: “Oldies like me have had both jabs, so we can crack on with our lives, but for you younger ones especially, it’s the chance for everything to open up, to get your freedom back.”

Iceland has announced new curbs following a spate of infections, AFP reports.

At the end of June, Iceland lifted rules around social distancing, mask-wearing, limits on public gatherings and the opening hours of bars and restaurants after introducing virus restrictions in March last year.

Starting from midnight on Sunday until 13 August, public gatherings will be restricted to 200, the one-metre social distancing rule will be reimposed and bars and restaurants will have to close at 11:00pm.

Swimming pools and indoor sports facilities can only operate to 75% of capacity and masks will be mandatory indoors.

The US administered 340,363,922 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country as of Friday morning and distributed 393,929,955 doses, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Those figures are up from the 339,763,765 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by July 22 out of 391,998,625 doses delivered.

The agency said 187,579,557 people had received at least one dose while 162,435,276 people are fully vaccinated as of Friday, Reuters reports.

The north-east of England is to be given a five-week package of support by the UK’s government in a bid to slow the growth of Covid-19 in the region.

The package includes the option to deliver extra testing in the area, as well as providing logistical support to maximise vaccine and testing uptake, PA reports.

It will be deployed to the seven local authorities across Tyne and Wear, Northumberland and County Durham, and five local authorities in the Tees Valley.

The move comes as similar support in Bedford and much of the north-west, which has been in place for between six and 10 weeks, is being scaled back.

Health authorities in Australia has issued a warning about misinformation circulating on WhatsApp that claims Sydney supermarkets will close as part of the ongoing lockdown, with owner Facebook saying it is working to limit the spread of misinformation on its private messaging app.

On Thursday, it was reported that a screenshot purporting to be from NSW Health saying that supermarkets would close for four days as part of the Covid-19 response was circulating on WhatsApp.

Supermarkets in NSW have remained open during the greater Sydney lockdown and are considered essential retail. In a statement, the state’s health department urged people not to take advice from anywhere but the official NSW Health channels.

“NSW Health is urging people to use trusted and credible sources of information to inform them about the most up-to-date Covid-19 information in NSW,” a spokesperson said.

Chilean authorities said China’s Sinovac had begun evaluating potential sites for the construction of a vaccine plant in Chile that could begin producing doses of the Chinese shot as early as the first half of 2022.
Chile, a global leader in vaccinating its citizens against the coronavirus, has leaned heavily on the Sinovac vaccine in its fast-paced mass vaccination program. The Andean nation also helped spearhead clinical trials of the shot late last year. A delegation of executives from Sinovac this week visited potential sites for the factory near the capital Santiago and in Chile’s northern desert. “This is an investment that could be made very quickly and that would make the plant … operational in the first quarter next year,” economy minister Lucas Palacios told reporters. Palacios said the plant could produce as many as 50 million vaccine doses annually and in addition to its CoronaVac COVID-19 jab, it could produce vaccines for hepatitis B or influenza, Reuters reports.

Covid-19 hospitalisations in Mexico City and its suburbs, increased by a third in the last week, authorities said, amid a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
There are currently 3,382 people hospitalised in the metropolitan area of the Valley of Mexico, city official Eduardo Clark said.

He added that if necessary more hospital beds would be turned over to Covid-19 treatment.

Positive coronavirus test results, however, had decreased since mid-July, he said.
“Fortunately, we see signs that in the last week positive (results) have stabilised,” Clark said, citing it as a sign that the infection curve might be flattening, Reuters reports.

The state of Florida has asked the US Supreme Court to allow a lower-court decision to take effect that said the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) could not enforce its coronavirus cruise ship rules in the state.

The ruling had been blocked by a US appeals court, Reuters reports.

Florida asked the Supreme Court to lift the appeals court order warning without action. “Florida is all but guaranteed to lose yet another summer cruise season while the CDC pursues its appeal,” the state said in its filing to the Supreme Court.

England is facing weeks of disruption to bin collection, transport and food supply due to staff self-isolating, companies and councils have warned, amid concerns the 16 August date to lift quarantine for the double-vaccinated could be delayed.

No 10 was on Friday scrambling to set up a system to let more key workers take daily tests rather than isolate for 10-days, over fears that large parts of the economy could grind to a halt over the so-called “pingdemic”.

Ministers initially said that there would only be a narrow definition of critical workers allowed to be routinely excused from quarantine, with about 10,000 workers at 500 food distribution sites and some NHS and social care workers permitted to take daily tests instead of isolation.

Public Health England has upgraded its risk assessment of the Delta variant after national testing data revealed it is more likely to cause reinfections than the Alpha variant, which was first identified in Kent.

The health agency’s analysis found the risk of reinfection with Delta may be 46% greater than with the Alpha variant, with the highest risk seen six months after a first infection – when second cases caused by Delta were 2.37 times more common than with Alpha.

The finding is bolstered by new data from Public Health England’s (PHE) Siren study, which monitors more than 40,000 NHS staff for Covid infections. The latest figures show that positive tests rose steadily from May to July when 1.1% had the virus. Nearly a third of the healthcare workers had Covid before enrolling on the study and more than 95% have been vaccinated.

It is unclear why Delta may be causing more reinfections, but one possibility is that immunity from infections early on in the pandemic may be waning a little and so reducing the body’s defences against the variant which became dominant in the UK this year. PHE said that further work is now being undertaken to examine the risk of reinfection.