Coronavirus - 4th November 2021

• The Covid pandemic has caused the loss of 28m years of life, according to the largest-ever survey to assess the scale of the impact of the pandemic. The enormous toll was revealed in research, led by the University of Oxford, which calculated the years of life lost (YLL) in 37 countries.
  
  
• Germany is enveloped in a “massive” pandemic of the unvaccinated, health minister says. Jens Spahn has warned: “The pandemic is far from over. We are currently experiencing a pandemic of the unvaccinated, which is massive. There would be fewer coronavirus patients on intensive care units if more people would let themselves be vaccinated.”
  
  
• The US has administered 425,272,828 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country as of Wednesday morning and distributed 525,071,855 doses, the CDC said.
  
  
• Turkey will begin administering booster shots to people who have received two doses of the Pfizer Inc/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, its health minister Fahrettin Koca said.
  
  
• France reports highest daily cases since mid-September. Health authorities reported 10,050 daily new Covid-19 infections on Wednesday, the first time the tally has topped 10,000 since September 14.
  
• The UK recorded another 41,299 Covid cases, and a further 217 deaths within 28 days of a positive test, in the latest 24-hour period. This is compared to 293 deaths and 33,865 positive infections reported a day prior.
  
  
• UK launches trial of drug to tackle fatigue in long Covid patients. The first trial of a drug, called AXA1125, is set to target the fatigue and muscle weakness experienced by more than half of people with long Covid/ The drug targets cellular power plants called mitochondria, which it is thought could be dysfunctional in the subset of long Covid patients with severe fatigue.
  
  
• The US is set to begin giving Covid vaccines to children aged five to 11, with roughly 28 million school-age kids eligible for the shots that provide protection against the illness.
  
  
• A recent study found a record prevalence of Covid in England throughout October. Researchers at Imperial College London warn the virus is spreading from schoolchildren into more vulnerable age groups, noting that rates had doubled in older groups compared to September, a concerning sign as the government races to give booster shots to the most vulnerable.
  “We did see a doubling in that group, and clearly that’s the worry,” Paul Elliott, the Imperial epidemiologist who leads the programme, told reporters.
  
  
• WHO has granted an emergency use license to a coronavirus vaccine developed in India, offering reassurance for a shot that was authorised by the country’s regulators long before advanced testing was completed to prove it was safe and effective.
  Covaxin, the Indian domestically developed Covid vaccine, was rolled out as part of India’s vaccination drive.
  

What the papers say:

• The Telegraph reports that ministers are considering not forcing NHS workers to have the Covid jab this winter. It says this is despite warnings from scientists that rising cases could ultimately lead to greater restrictions.  In its opinion column, the Telegraph argues that if health care staff are not being immediately required to be vaccinated, then it would be "wrong to impose additional constraints on the rest of us who have had jabs"
  

• On its front page, the Daily Express picks up on comments made on Wednesday by England's deputy chief medical officer, Prof Jonathan Van-Tam.  He warned that the pandemic was not over yet, saying Christmas and the winter months could potentially be "problematic". The paper urges readers to heed carefully what he's saying. "Let us do what we can to protect ourselves and everyone else," it concludes.
  
  
• The Daily Mail's lead is "MPs sink back into sleaze". It refers to moves to change Parliament's disciplinary system in response to a report recommending the suspension of Conservative MP Owen Paterson.  The Mail has a front page editorial which begins: "Now we know the lengths to which a venal political class will go to protect its own."
  
  
• The Guardian has the same story on its front page, under the headline: "PM accused of corruption as rules on sleaze torn up".  Its opinion column concludes: "This is an insidious rot that weakens the foundations of democracy, eating away at public confidence and spreading suspicion of the motives that lead people to seek election."
  
  
• The Times has spoken to several Conservative MPs who aren't happy about the government's handling of the situation.  One - Kevin Hollinrake - says: "It just looks wrong for the powerful to be able to change the system when they get a judgment they don't like." The paper reports that some Tories view Boris Johnson's support for Wednesday's amendment as a "colossal misjudgement".
  
  
• On the HuffPost UK website there is the headline: "Shouts of 'shame' as MP's suspension dropped". It has a quote from Tory peer Lord Barwell saying: "I can understand my former colleagues feeling compassion for Owen, but this is a terrible decision."
  
  
• The Mirror's lead is "PM's flying shame". It says Boris Johnson returned to London from the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow on a private jet, to have dinner with a friend, "after telling world leaders to crack down on CO2 emissions". The paper's leader says the move shows "contempt for the vital cause of saving the planet". But Mr Johnson's spokesman responds by saying: "It is important that the prime minister is able to move around the country, and we faced significant time constraints. The fuel we use for the flight is sustainable and the emissions are offset."
  
  
  

WHO approves Indian-made Covaxin vaccine

China keeps close vigil at ports to cut Covid risks

Ukraine sets new daily record for cases – exceeds 3 million official cases in total

Festival of light celebrations amid Covid fears

Vaccine certificates-for-sale scam undermines Lesotho’s Covid effort

Germany reports highest daily caseload since start of pandemic

ONS estimates 1.2 million people in UK have self-reported long Covid symptoms

• fatigue (55%)
  
• shortness of breath (39%)
  
• loss of smell (33%)
  
• difficulty concentrating (30%)
  

Today so far

• Diwali celebrations have been taking place in south Asia, amid concern that they may cause another rise in Covid cases.
  
• After months of delay, the World Health Organization (WHO) has finally given emergency approval to Covaxin, the Indian domestically developed Covid vaccine, which was rolled out as part of India’s vaccination drive.
  
• Germany reported its highest-ever daily new infection tally of 33,949, ahead of a two-day meeting of state health ministers. There’s a note of caution on the numbers, though – they were likely inflated by a public holiday in parts of Germany on Monday that led to a delay in data-gathering. The previous record was on 18 December, with 33,777 cases.
  
• The German health minister, Jens Spahn, has warned that Germany is developing a “massive” pandemic of the unvaccinated.
  
• The total number of Covid-19 cases in Ukraine has exceeded 3 million, with more than 70,000 deaths, the health ministry said today. It also registered a record daily high of 27,377 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours
  
• Slovakia reported 6,713 new Covid-19 cases, the highest daily tally since the pandemic hit last year. Bulgaria, with the lowest vaccine uptake in the EU, saw 4,922 new cases. Hungary reported a jump in daily Covid-19 infections to 6,268 with the government saying that the daily tally had more than doubled from the middle of last week.
  
• Europe has been warned by the World Health Organization that due to rising case numbers, it could record “another half a million Covid-19 deaths” by February.
  
• In the UK the Office for National Statistics estimates that 1.2 million people in private households were experiencing self-reported long Covid as of 2 October 2021. This is just shy of 2% of the population.
  
• A separate study has recorded its highest overall Covid infection rate ever for England, at 1.72%.
  
• China is on high alert at its ports as strict policies on travel in and out of the country are enforced to reduce Covid risks amid a fresh domestic outbreak.
  
• A poll in the US found that Americans are increasingly turning their attention away from the coronavirus and focusing it elsewhere. Just 12% of US adults rated public health issues such as the coronavirus as a top national priority, even as the country continues to experience over 1,000 deaths per day.
  
• South Korea has opened Covid-19 quarantine centres to house potentially thousands of teenagers ahead of the country’s annual ritual of eight-hour college entrance exam in two weeks.
  
• The Lesotho government’s plans to implement a Covid passport system this week are being undermined by widespread fraud involving certificates being sold to unvaccinated people.
  
• The Covid pandemic has caused the loss of 28m years of life, according to the largest-ever survey to assess the scale of the impact of the pandemic. The enormous toll was revealed in research, led by the University of Oxford, which calculated the years of life lost (YLL) in 37 countries.
  

Today is a historic day for our country, as the UK is now the first country in the world to approve an antiviral that can be taken at home for Covid.
This will be a gamechanger for the most vulnerable and the immunosuppressed, who will soon be able to receive the ground-breaking treatment.

• 7.3% of those given molnupiravir were hospitalised
  
• that compares with 14.1% of patients who were given a placebo or dummy pill
  
• there were no deaths in the molnupiravir group, but eight patients who were given a placebo in the trial later died of Covid
  

We must change our tactics, from reacting to surges of Covid-19, to preventing them from happening in the first place.

Today every single country in Europe and central Asia is facing a real threat of Covid-19 resurgence or already fighting it.

If you have been waiting for an elective procedure for the last 18 months and are finally scheduled – you’re vaccinated, you don’t have Covid – your procedure might still get canceled if a hospital is totally full.
While this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated at this point – and the surges in the hospital are entirely being driven by unvaccinated folks – it is having a massive bleed-over effect onto the entire population.

The message has always been: do it all. Vaccines are doing what was promised, preventing severe forms of the disease and especially mortality … But they are our most powerful asset only if used alongside public health and social measures.

However, the more cases you have in crude terms, the more people will end up in hospital, and the more people will in the end go on do die. So there’s a very simple explanation for what’s going on. We have many susceptible individuals, including in high-vaccinated countries, and this is leading to unpredictable explosive outbreaks of Covid-19. And that’s not where we want to be right now.

If we stay on this trajectory, we could see another half a million Covid-19 deaths in Europe and central Asia by the first of February next year, and 43 countries in our region will face high to extreme stress on hospital beds.

Hospitalisation rates in countries with low vaccine uptake are markedly higher, and rising more quickly, than in those with higher uptake. Most people hospitalised and dying from Covid-19 today are not fully vaccinated.

Preventive measures do not deprive people of their freedom, they ensure it.

What needs to be done every year between now and 2050 is - broadly speaking - about the same [reduction] as we had during the Covid crisis.

UK records 214 deaths and 37,269 new infections

Latvia allows businesses to sack unvaccinated workers

Summary

• Latvia will allow businesses to fire workers who refuse to either get a Covid vaccine or transfer to remote work, as the country battles one of the worst Covid waves in the EU. Taking effect from 15 November, the new law allows businesses to suspend the unvaccinated without pay if they refuse to either get the Covid jab or, if possible, to get transferred to remote work. They can then fire the employees if they do not get the vaccine in three months of the suspension.
  
  
• Vienna will tighten coronavirus restrictions to only allow those vaccinated or recovered from Covid to enter restaurants, go to hairdressers and attend bigger gatherings. From the end of next week, negative Covid tests will no longer be sufficient to enter restaurants, for services with close contact such as at hairdressers and for gatherings of 25 people or more, in the Austrian capital.
  
  
• Uneven vaccine coverage and a relaxation of preventive measures have brought Europe to a “critical point” in the pandemic, the World Health Organization said, with cases again at near-record levels and 500,000 more deaths forecast by February. Hans Kluge, the WHO’s Europe director, said all 53 countries in the region were facing “a real threat of Covid-19 resurgence or already fighting it” and urged governments to reimpose or continue with social and public health measures. Story here.
  
  
• Europe registered a 55% rise in Covid cases in the last four weeks, despite the availability of vaccines, which should serve as a “warning shot” to other regions, the WHO emergency director, Mike Ryan, said.
  
  
• The gene responsible for doubling the risk of respiratory failure from coronavirus has been identified by researchers. A study found that about 60% of people with south Asian ancestry carry the high-risk genetic signal, compared with around 15% of those with white European backgrounds. The findings could partly explain why people of south Asian heritage are more vulnerable to the disease. Story here.
  
  
• The World Health Organization called for vaccine makers to prioritise deliveries of Covid jabs to the Covax dose-sharing facility for poorer countries and said that no more doses should go to countries with more than 40% coverage. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, said boosters should not be administered except to people who are immunocompromised.
  
  
• Tens of thousands of care home staff in England have not been fully vaccinated against coronavirus and are due to lose their jobs next week. The UK government has made it mandatory for staff in registered care homes in England to have both jabs as a condition of deployment, unless they are exempt for valid medical reasons. With the deadline next Thursday, sector leaders believe there may be an exodus of staff which they say will threaten safe care.
  
  
• The European Union’s drug regulator is in discussions with AstraZeneca over possible authorisation of booster doses of the drugmaker’s Covid vaccine, after it already gave the green light to mRNA booster shots.
  
  
• Joe Biden will begin enforcing his mandate that private-sector workers in the US be vaccinated against Covid or be tested weekly from 4 January, in a reprieve to companies struggling with labour shortages during the crucial US holiday season. US officials also said a requirement that federal contractors be vaccinated was moved back a month to the same date. Millions of workers in healthcare facilities and nursing homes participating in Medicare and Medicaid will also need to get their shots by 4 January.
  
  
• Carbon emissions have rebounded to near pre-pandemic levels, according to a study, with coal and natural gas emissions surging in the power and industry sectors even as transportation emissions remain low. To reach net zero in the next three decades, drastic CO2 reductions are needed, said the study’s lead author, Pierre Friedlingstein, a climate modelling researcher at the University of Exeter. “What needs to be done every year between now and 2050 is – broadly speaking – about the same [reduction] as we had during the Covid crisis,” he said.
  
  
• The UK became the first country in the world to approve the first pill designed to treat symptomatic Covid. The oral antiviral pill - molnupiravir - will be given as a priority to elderly patients with Covid and those with particular vulnerabilities, such as weakened immune systems. The health secretary, Sajid Javid, said the treatment would be a “gamechanger” for the most frail and immunosuppressed. Story here.