Coronavirus live news: UK set for worst weeks pandemic, warns Whitty; China says WHO team to arrive within days – The Guardian

Teachers in Malta have turned to their classrooms and ended a two-day strike after the government agreed to give them priority in the vaccination campaign.

Schools on the small Mediterranean island have been open since September but unions called a strike last week following a spike in infections, with a record 245 cases reported last Thursday.

The Malta Union of Teachers said that, after talks with the government, it was agreed teachers would be vaccinated sooner than planned, immediately after medical staff and vulnerable elderly persons.

Malta’s medical authorities have said that, to limit the spread of COVID-19, it was better to keep schools open rather than closed.

Charmaine Gauci, the superintendent of public health, said a study of virus cases had shown that children and their families did not have many social events while children were at school, and therefore mixed less.

The issue of whether to keep schools open has been a hot debate in many countries, with various governments opting for different policies.

In Malta’s closest European Union neighbour, Italy, high schools have still not returned to normal after a nationwide shutdown was ordered last March. Face-to-face teaching had been expected to resume on Monday, but the date has been put back to 18 January.

In Malta, the authorities have reduced the number of pupils in each classroom and created “bubbles” within which pupils cannot mix with other children. School arrivals and departures have also been staggered.

“The measures have worked, we have not had any infection clusters in schools since September,” Gauci said.

Indonesia’s food and drug agency has granted emergency use approval to a vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech, as it becomes the first country outside China to give the regulatory green light to the vaccine.

Interim data from a late-stage human test in Indonesia showed the shot was 65.3% effective, Penny K Lukito, who heads the country’s food and drugs authority BPOM said.

England’s chief medical officer Prof Chris Whitty has tacitly criticised Covid deniers who have sought to downplay the scale of the epidemic, saying this winter “is in a completely different league” for the NHS. He told the BBC:

We will get through together, but at this point in time we’re at the worst point in the epidemic for for the UK.

There are always going to be noises of people coming up with absurd theories, and suggestions of things that are either obviously not true, or a misunderstanding of what’s going on.

But I think anybody who looks at some of the reports that the BBC and other news outlets done from hospitals, anyone who talks to a doctor or a nurse working in the NHS, anybody who actually reads any newspaper, they will know this is a really serious problem – this is not a typical winter.

Every winter there are problems. This is in a completely different league.

Whitty also told a Q&A on BBC Radio 5 Live that people may need to be re-vaccinated in the future.

I don’t think we’ll have anything on this scale that we’re going to have to do over the next several months but I think there is a reasonable chance that, rather like with flu, we have to vaccinate every year – we may well have to re-vaccinate for Covid.

The UK’s test and trace system does not work effectively and needs to be fixed, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation has said, as he warned of high infection rates. Speaking to Sky News, Danny Mortimer said:

We need the rate of infection to go down well in advance of the benefit of the vaccination programme. We still, for the last few weeks now, have seen growing incidences of infection in our communities.

We’ve struggled as a country to have a test, trace and isolate system that works effectively – it just doesn’t work as well as it does in countries like Australia and various other parts of the world. That has to be fixed.

Here’s a little more detail on Fontanet’s suggestion that France think about closing its borders. He told BFM television

It is important that we consider whether we need to close the borders to a limited number of countries, notably the United Kingdom and Ireland. This is certainly a point for the agenda. It is not up to the scientific council to decide this, but we want to raise the issue.

French authorities said on Sunday that the more infectious variant had now been detected in the Mediterranean port of Marseille and in the Alps. And Fontanet said:

The new Covid variant is nearly a new epidemic within the epidemic.

He said it was more contagious but that, for now, there were no signs that its mortality rate was higher.

Russia has reported 23,315 new cases, including 4,646 in Moscow, taking the national tally – the world’s fourth highest – to 3,425,269 since the pandemic began. Authorities also confirmed 436 deaths in the last 24 hours, pushing the official death toll to 62,273.

France should consider closing its borders with the UK and other countries that have a strong presence of the UK variant, a French epidemiologist and government adviser has said.

Arnaud Fontanet, a member of the French government’s scientific council, also said on BFM television that, to get the epidemic under control, France needs to vaccinate 10-15 million people by the end of March and 25-30 million people by the end of June.

The worst is yet to come for the UK, as the new highly infectious variants of the virus rampages across the country, the government’s chief medical adviser Chris Whitty has warned. He told the BBC:

The next few weeks are going to be the worst weeks of this pandemic in terms of numbers into the NHS (National Health Service). What we need to do before the vaccines have had their effect, because it will take several weeks before that happens, we need to really double down.

Zahawi said vaccinations were “the greatest invention known to humankind”, though told Times Radio they would not be made compulsory in the UK.

You don’t want to have to go down the route of mandating vaccines because that would be completely wrong, we don’t have those sorts of values in the UK. We want them to see the value … to themselves and to the community. This is the greatest invention known to humankind.

But, the moment you say it is mandatory, there will be those that say ‘well, I don’t want to be vaccinated’ – hence why we have used the word offered.

Zahawi said the vaccination programme could run 24 hours a day when the UK has enough jabs, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

If we need to go to 24-hour work we will absolutely go 24 hours a day to make sure we vaccinate as quickly as we can.

In the UK, ministers appear to have downgraded their promise to vaccinate the most vulnerable by mid-February, committing only to offering them an inoculation by that point.

The prime minister Boris Johnson said last week that they would have received their first jab by that date – and that daily figures for vaccinations carried out would be published from this week. But, speaking to Sky News, the UK’s vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi has said:

The top four categories, actually, for the UK is 15 million people, in England it’s about 12 million people, so we will have offered a vaccination to all of those people.

Pressed on the difference between being offered a jab and being vaccinated, he said:

When you offer a vaccination it doesn’t mean a Royal Mail letter, it means the vaccine and the needle and the jab are ready for you. What you will see us publishing is the total numbers of people being vaccinated, not being offered a vaccine, and that’s the number to hold us to account to.

Zahawi has used slightly more temperate language than the prime minister in the past, saying that meeting Johnson’s target would be “challenging” and pledging instead to offer vaccines to the most vulnerable by the date the prime minister set.

Passenger numbers at London’s Heathrow airport were down 72.7% in 2020, with 22.1 million people travelling through it.

In December, demand fell by 82.9% to 1.1 million as the new variant of the virus spread in the UK. Heathrow’s chief executive John Holland-Kaye said:

The past year has been incredibly challenging for aviation. While we support tightening border controls temporarily by introducing pre-departure testing for international arrivals, as well as quarantine, this is not sustainable.

The aviation industry is the cornerstone of the UK economy but is fighting for survival. We need a road map out of this lockdown and a full waiver of business rates.

This is an opportunity for the government to show leadership in creating a common international standard for pre-departure testing that will allow travel and trade to restart safely so that we can start to deliver the prime minister’s vision of a global Britain.

That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. Thanks for following along.

Today marks a year since the first known coronavirus victim died.

Little is still known about the first victim, including his name, while the market where the first reported clusters of cases were traced back remains closed, surrounded by boarding.

Here are the key global developments from the last few hours:

• China says WHO Covid-19 origins probe team to arrive 14 January. A World Health Organization team of international experts tasked with investigating the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic will arrive in China on 14 January, China’s national health authority said on Monday. The team was initially aiming to enter China in early January for the investigation but their arrival was delayed due to lack of authorisation from Beijing for their entry.
• Seven mass vaccination sites to open Monday in England. The new centres – including at a football stadium and a tennis club – will be joined later this week by hundreds more GP-led and hospital services along with the first pharmacy-led pilot sites, taking the total to around 1,200, NHS England said. The locations – Ashton Gate in Bristol, Epsom racecourse in Surrey, the Excel Centre where London’s Nightingale hospital is based, Newcastle’s Centre for Life, the Manchester Tennis and Football Centre, Robertson House in Stevenage and Birmingham’s Millennium Point – will offer jabs to people aged 80 and above, along with health and care staff.
• Two mass vaccination locations opened in New York City on Sunday. The mass sites were open for part of the day on Sunday before they start operating round the clock, seven days a week on Monday as part of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s push to set up 250 vaccination locations to meet the ambitious goal of inoculating 1 million New Yorkers by the end of the month. Three other smaller sites also opened on Sunday.
• India is preparing for a mass coronavirus vaccine rollout. India aims to begin vaccinating its 1.3 billion people against coronavirus from Saturday, a colossal and complex task compounded by safety worries, shaky infrastructure and public scepticism. In one of the world’s biggest rollouts, the planet’s second-most populous nation hopes to inoculate 300 million people – equal almost to the entire US population – by July.
• England’s chief medical officer has warned the NHS faces the “most dangerous situation” in living memory as the pandemic causes record deaths and hospital admissions. Chris Whitty has said the only way to prevent avoidable deaths is for the public to stay home wherever possible.
• Mainland China saw its biggest daily increase in Covid-19 cases in more than five months, the country’s national health authority said on Monday, as new infections in Hebei province surrounding Beijing continued to rise. Hebei accounted for 82 of the 85 new local infections reported on 10 January, the National Health Commission (NHC) said in a statement, with Liaoning Province also reporting two new cases and Beijing reporting one new case. The country also saw 18 new imported infections from overseas.
• A county in the northeastern China’s Heilongjiang province on Monday moved into lockdown after reporting new novel coronavirus infections, state television also reported separately.
• Monday marks a year since the first coronavirus death was announced in Wuhan. China announced the first death from a new virus in Wuhan on 11 January 2020. Twelve months later, Covid-19 has claimed 1.9 million lives worldwide.
• Coronavirus infections have now surpassed 90 million confirmed cases around the world, according to Johns Hopkins University, as more countries brace for wider spread of more virulent strains of a disease that has now killed1.9 million people worldwide.
• Mexican president’s spokesman tests positive for coronavirus. The spokesman for Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he tested positive for coronavirus on Sunday, the same day the country detected a case of a Covid-19 variant that is spreading in the United Kingdom.
• South Korea reported fewer than 500 new coronavirus infections on Monday for the first time since record high daily case numbers over the Christmas holiday period. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency reported 451 new cases as of midnight on Sunday, driven by a lull in testing as well as an apparent easing in infections. The country reported a record 1,241 cases in one day during the Christmas holiday, the peak of the country’s largest wave of infections yet.
• Headteachers in England forced to ration on-site lockdown learning. Nearly half of England’s headteachers are being forced to prioritise class places among vulnerable students and the children of key workers because of a huge increase in demand, according to a survey of school leaders.
• About 80% of people in Japan are against holding the Tokyo 2020 Olympics this summer, amid a surge in coronavirus cases in the host city and other parts of Japan. A weekend poll by the Kyodo news agency found that 35.3% wanted the Games to be cancelled, while 44.8% favoured another delay. Local organisers and the International Olympic Committee have said that it will not be possible to postpone a second time. The Games, which are due to open on 23 July, were delayed by a yeardue to the Covid pandemic.

The full story now on China agreeing to let the WHO Covid investigators into the country: