Coronavirus - 10th April 2021

Summary for Saturday, 10th April
Today's updates from The Guardian

• India records 145,384 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday and 794 deaths, the highest number of deaths in more than five months as the country deals with a deadly second wave of infections.
  
• Russia has reported 8,704 new Covid-19 cases and 402 deaths on Saturday.
  
• A scientist advising the British government has said that any blood clots associated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine are “extraordinarily rare events.”
  
• The German biotech firm Curevac believes the EU might give its Covid-19 vaccine approval in May or June.
  
• Cambodia’s prime minister Hun Sen has threatened quarantine-breakers with jail time on Saturday and told civil servants that they could lose their jobs if they go unvaccinated.
  
• Thailand plans to install 10,000 field hospital beds in Bangkok, as it deals with the third wave of Covid-19.
  
• Iran imposed a 10-day lockdown across most of the country today to curb the spread of its fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
  
• The Colombian capital, Bogotá, is under a strict lockdown to slow a third wave of the pandemic; as mayor Claudia Lopez has said, “only strictly essential activities will be allowed”.
  
• Nearly 2 million coronavirus home testing kits are being distributed across Greece’s pharmacies as pupils and teachers are asked to present biweekly negative tests.
  

India records more than 100,000 daily cases again this week

India records 145,384 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday and 794 deaths, the highest number of deaths in more than five months as the country deals with a deadly second wave of infections, Reuters reports.
The country’s overall caseload has increased to 13.21 million, the third-highest globally, behind the US and Brazil, recording 100,000 new cases on Monday and four more times after that.
Maharashtra, the Indian state with the highest number of cases, is imposing a weekend lockdown until Monday, after having already shut down restaurants, malls and places of worship.
As the government blames the resurgence mainly on crowding and a reluctance to wear masks, many states have complained about the shortage of vaccines.

Thailand reports 789 new cases

Thailand has reported 789 new Coronavirus cases and one new death today, as it deals with a new wave of infections. The new case numbers bring the total number of infections to 31,658, with 97 deaths, according to the Covid-19 information centre.
Thailand plans to install 10,000 field hospital beds in its capital, Bangkok, as the country deals with a third wave of Covid-19, a health official said today.
Hospitals are reluctant to test for Covid-19 because they must admit people if they test positive.
At least a dozen hospitals in the capital have said they had stopped testing because of a lack of kits or capacity, authorities said.
Suksan Kittisupakorn, director general of Thailand’s medical service department, said: “We aim to increase [field] hospital beds to 10,000 in no time, which should give the public confidence that we can still contain this round of outbreak.”
Reuters reported that Thailand aims to begin mass immunisation from June and has so far vaccinated more than 530,000 health workers and those deemed vulnerable.
On Saturday, the country received 1m doses of China’s Sinovac vaccine and is due to get another 500,000 doses this month, according to deputy government spokeswoman Traisuree Traisoranakul.

Iran orders 10-day lockdown as cases rise

Iran imposed a 10-day lockdown across most of the country today to curb the spread of its fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic, state media reported.
The new lockdown will affect 23 of the country’s 31 provinces, with businesses, schools, theatres and sports facilities forced to shut and gathering banned during the Muslim holy month Ramadan, whichbegins on Wednesday.
According to the health ministry, Iran’s cases have surpassed 2m with a new daily average of more than 20,000 infections over the past week and 64,000 total fatalities.
President Hassan Rouhani said in televised remarks: “Unfortunately, today we have entered a fourth wave.” Blaming the new surge in cases on the variant first discovered in the UK, which spread to Iran from neighbouring Iraq earlier this year.

Cambodia's quarantine-breakers threatened with jail time

Cambodia’s prime minister Hun Sen has threatened quarantine-breakers with jail time on Saturday and told civil servants that they could lose their jobs if they go unvaccinated.
Cambodia has registered more than 1,000 infections in the past two days, bringing the country’s tally to 4,081 cases and 26 deaths.
This week authorities banned travel between provinces, imposed a night-time curfew in the capital Phnom Penh and shut down popular tourism sites.
AFP reports:

Prime minister Hun Sen on Saturday threatened harsher measures, saying anyone who flouts a two-week quarantine period would face a quick trial and jail time.
“People who break Covid measures must be sentenced,” he said on state-run TV. “I accept being called a dictator, but I will also be admired for protecting my people’s lives.”
Cambodia has already passed a strict Covid-19 prevention bill that could mean people flouting virus rules are jailed for up to 20 years.
Hun Sen also announced that being vaccinated was mandatory for all state officials and the armed forces, warning them they could be fired if they refuse.
The kingdom’s vaccination programme began in February, and a million people have since received at least their first of two shots. Infection numbers started surging in late February when an outbreak was detected in the local Chinese community.

Over 100 diners fined in Paris, France

Police in Paris fined more than 100 diners on Friday at an underground restaurant for breaking coronavirus restrictions and arrested its organiser.
Police officers were called “for an excessive noise complaint about a restaurant,” the French capital’s police wrote on Twitter.
Underground restaurants offering wealthy people pre-coronavirus dining experiences have made headlines in France this week after a private television channel, M6, broadcasted a report into a restaurant in an affluent area of Paris where neither the staff nor the diners were wearing a mask.

Strict lockdown in Bogota, Colombia

The 8 million people living in the Colombian capital, Bogotá, are under a strict lockdown to slow a third wave of the pandemic mayor Claudia Lopez has said, “only strictly essential activities will be allowed”.
The strict lockdown comes in addition to night curfews that 7 million people in Medellín, Cali, Barranquilla and Santa Marta, where the health system is overwhelmed by the virus.
Colombia has the second-most cases in Latin America, recording more than 2.4m cases.

Home-testing kits distributed to Greek pharmacies

Nearly 2 million coronavirus home testing kits are being distributed across Greece’s pharmacies as pupils and teachers are asked to present biweekly negative tests.
About 1,950,000 kits are being sent to the country’s pharmacies, which will ask people for their social security number and ID in order to dispense the tests, Greek newspaper Kathimerini reports.
Students and teachers must present a negative test result to their school every Monday and Thursday.

Prisoners released in Bahrain as positive coronavirus cases revealed

Dozens of Bahraini detainees, including long-term political prisoners, have been released after protests by their families after positive Covid-19 cases in their prison, activists said today.
They said authorities had vowed to release 126 prisoners and 73 other detainees but only 166 had walked out so far from the jail in Faw, in the east of the kingdom, AFP reports.
Mohamed Jawad, 75, uncle of the prominent rights activist Nabeel Rajab, who spent 10 years behind bars, is one of the released detainees.
Those released are to serve out the rest of their terms under electronic tagging.
Bahraini officials say three Jaw inmates have contracted coronavirus but been isolated and that their condition is stable.
The London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy says dozens of prisoners have been infected by the virus in the reportedly heavily overcrowded jail. But according to the health ministry, a prison vaccination campaign has been completed.

Libya launches coronavirus vaccination campaign

Libya has officially launched its coronavirus vaccination campaign, starting with prime minister Abdelhamid Dbeibah, health authorities said. After the vaccination of Dbeibah, health minister Ali al-Zenati was next to receive a jab,
On Tripoli’s outskirts, Badreddine al-Najjar, head of Libya’s Centre for Disease Control, said, “The national vaccination campaign against Covid-19 has been launched at the CDC headquarters.”
AFP reports:

Dbeibah urged fellow citizens to register online for their vaccinations.
He has earmarked the country’s jab campaign as a policy priority, alleging vaccine delivery was hindered by outgoing authorities.
“The arrival of vaccines has been delayed by political, not financial, considerations,” he said.
[…]
The World Health Organization said Thursday that two new variants of the coronavirus are present in Libya.
Officially, Libya has registered a total of around 167,000 coronavirus cases, including over 2,800 deaths, out of a population of seven million.
No lockdown measures are currently in place, and while masks are obligatory in public places, the measure is widely flouted.
Libya has so far received 200,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, alongside over 57,600 AstraZeneca shots, the latter delivered through the Covax programme for lower and middle-income countries.

Further 40 coronavirus-related deaths reported in UK today

In the UK, 2,589 people have tested positive for the virus as of 4pm on Saturday, bringing the total to 4,368,045.
There have been 40 further deaths, bringing the total to 127,080.

Pubs and restaurants to allow outdoor dining from next month, Irish Government hints

Irish Post
Outdoor dining in pubs and restaurants may be allowed again as early as next month thanks to encouraging new data on Covid-19 transmission in Ireland.
According to the Irish Daily Mail, a number of Government ministers said that they were "excited" by the latest figures from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre that show that 0.1% of Covid-19 transmission occurs outdoors.
With that in mind, the reopening of outside dining areas has become a real possibility.
"If we take this exciting new information, and all the other data aligns, I think we can possibly look at the end of May as a viable target for outdoor dining and allowing pubs to serve in an outdoor setting," one minister said.
Adding to the optimism, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said on Monday that hairdressers and non-essential retail and services will be reopening in May too, so long as Covid figures continue to drop.
He also promised a "surprise" acceleration of the vaccine roll-out in the coming weeks and said that additional freedoms will be afforded to those who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19, confirming that the Government is developing a 'digital green certificate vaccine pass' for people to prove they have received their jab(s).
Varadkar also said that religious services, contact sports, museums, galleries and libraries will potentially be back on the cards by May as well.

Archbishop and Auxilliary Bishop of Santiago, Chile, test positive for coronavirus

The archbishop of Chile’s capital Santiago, Celestino Aos, has been hospitalised after testing positive for the coronavirus, the Roman Catholic Church in Chile said.
Aos, 76, and Monsignor Alberto Lorenzelli, the auxiliary bishop of Santiago, were confirmed by the church as having tested positive for Covid-19 earlier this week, Reuters reports.
Both had received two doses of the Sinovac vaccine being administered by the Chilean health authorities, the church said, with the second dose administered on March 11.
The church said in its Saturday statement that Aos was admitted to a university hospital in the capital “on medical advice and in a preventive manner”.
“Although the effects of the disease are moderate, they need to be addressed with specialised equipment to avoid possible complications,” the statement said, adding that Lorenzelli’s condition had not changed.

Mexico records one of its largest daily coronavirus-related death tolls of the pandemic

Mexico’s tally of 2,192 new coronavirus deaths is one of its biggest one-day tolls during the pandemic, bringing the country’s total to 209,212 deaths, Reuters reports.
The health ministry, which is due to have a news conference later in the day, reported 6,356 new confirmed cases of Covid-19, taking the country’s total to 2,278,420 infections.

A summary of today's developments

• In the UK, 2,589 people have tested positive for the virus, bringing the total to 4,368,045. There have been 40 further deaths, bringing the total to 127,080.
  
• France reported 72,450 coronavirus deaths in hospital, an increase of 227. It also reported 43,284 new coronavirus cases, Reuters reports. The country has registered more than 4.98 million cases in total.
  
• Italy reported 344 coronavirus-related deaths on Saturday compared to 718 the day before, Reuters reports. The daily tally of new infections fell to 17,567 compared to 18,938 the day before, the health ministry said. Italy has registered 113,923 deaths linked to Covid-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year.
  
• Tunisia’s prime minister announced a curfew tightened to combat a rise in coronavirus infections and deaths following a presidential request. The government this week had called on governors to begin the nightly curfew at 7 pm instead of 10 pm, from Friday until the end of the month.
  
• Several hundred people protested against Finland’s Covid-19 restrictions in Helsinki on Saturday without having obtained permission, leading to 20 arrests when they refused to disperse.
  
• India records 145,384 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday and 794 deaths, the highest number of deaths in more than five months as the country deals with a deadly second wave of infections.
  
• Russia has reported 8,704 new Covid-19 cases and 402 deaths on Saturday.
  
• A scientist advising the British government has said that any blood clots associated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine are “extraordinarily rare events.”
  
• The German biotech firm Curevac believes the EU might give its Covid-19 vaccine approval in May or June.
  
• Cambodia’s prime minister Hun Sen has threatened quarantine-breakers with jail time on Saturday and told civil servants that they could lose their jobs if they go unvaccinated.
  
• Thailand plans to install 10,000 field hospital beds in Bangkok, as it deals with the third wave of Covid-19.
  
• Iran imposed a 10-day lockdown across most of the country today to curb the spread of its fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
  
• The Colombian capital, Bogotá, is under a strict lockdown to slow a third wave of the pandemic; as mayor Claudia Lopez has said, “only strictly essential activities will be allowed”.
  
• Nearly 2 million coronavirus home testing kits are being distributed across Greece’s pharmacies as pupils and teachers are asked to present biweekly negative tests.