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Retrieved from: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro speaks during a signing decrees ceremony of gas assistance in Brasilia, Brazil December 2, 2021. REUTERS/Adriano Machado
Brazil will require that unvaccinated travelers entering the country go on a five-day quarantine followed by a COVID-19 test, its health minister said on Tuesday, after its president said he opposed the use of a vaccine passport.
President Jair Bolsonaro criticized Brazil's health regulator Anvisa for proposing the vaccination passport be required for arriving travelers to help prevent the spread of new coronavirus variants.
"Anvisa wants to close the country's airspace now. Not again, damn it," Bolsonaro, a vaccine skeptic, said at a business event in Brasilia.
Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga, speaking after a Cabinet meeting later on Tuesday, said Brazil would not discriminate against people who are not vaccinated by adopting the passport.
He said, however, that Brazil will require unvaccinated travelers entering the country to quarantine and have a COVID-19 test. He did not give details on how that would be implemented.
Anvisa last month proposed adopting a "vaccination passport" for entry into Brazil, but the government has not yet decided on the matter. Bolsonaro has repeatedly attacked the proposal.
Vaccine skepticism from Bolsonaro, who says he has not gotten a COVID-19 shot, has done little to dampen Brazilians' eagerness to get immunized, with more than 85% of adults now fully vaccinated.
The Supreme Court on Monday gave 48 hours for the executive branch to explain why the vaccination passport had not yet been adopted.
Last week, at the suggestion of Anvisa, the government suspended flights from six countries in southern Africa, where the new, fast-spreading Omicron variant of the coronavirus was identified.
Bolsonaro repeated his criticism of COVID-19 vaccines on Tuesday, saying vaccinated people can still be infected, spread the coronavirus and die from COVID-19. He also minimized the new variant, saying there are "thousands of viruses" and the pandemic was ending.
While much is still not known about Omicron, unvaccinated people account for the vast majority of severe COVID-19 cases and deaths.
Retrieved from: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/bolsonaro-dismisses-vaccination-requirement-entry-into-brazil-2021-12-07/
By Sangmi Cha
Women wearing masks to prevent contracting the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) walk under a Christmas illumination at a shopping district in central Seoul, South Korea, December 1, 2021. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji
South Korea will consider expanding home treatment of COVID-19 patients, a health official said on Wednesday, as both new daily infections and severe cases hit record highs, putting hospital capacity under strain.
Infections in South Korea have skyrocketed this month after the government began to ease restrictions under a so-called "living with COVID-19" scheme in November.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) reported 7,175 new coronavirus cases and 63 deaths for Tuesday, the first time daily infections topped 7,000, while hospitals treated a record 840 critical and serious cases. read more
"It is important to retain or reduce the trend of the current scale of the severely-ill patients within a week or two," Son Young-rae, a senior health ministry official, told a news conference.
He said the government may need to make significant adjustments to the healthcare system if daily cases top 10,000, and consider expanding at-home treatment from around 50% currently, as four-fifths of COVID-19 patients are symptomless or have only mild symptoms.
Less than 3% of the COVID-19 patients were hospitalised in the UK, 6.95% in Singapore and 12.8% in Japan, Son said.
The government will mobilise additional personnel to oversee coronavirus patients treating themselves at home and improve the emergency transfer system to hospitals for those who develop severe symptoms, Kim told a COVID-19 response meeting. Private clinics will also treat COVID-19 patients in addition to large hospitals.
Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum urged the elderly to get booster shots with people aged 60 and above accounting for 35% of infections were and 84% of severe cases. He also urged adolescents to get vaccinated.
South Korea has so far confirmed 38 cases of the Omicron variant.
With 80% of South Korea's cases located in greater Seoul, authorities have struggled to secure enough beds for hospitalised patients in the area.
South Korea imposed stricter measures on Monday, including reduced numbers of people allowed at private gatherings and expanding vaccine pass mandates.
The country has so far reported a total of 489,484 COVID-19 cases, with 4,020 deaths. It has fully vaccinated 91.8% of its adult population aged 18 and above, KDCA data showed.
Retrieved from: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/skorea-reports-over-7000-new-daily-covid-19-cases-first-time-yonhap-2021-12-07/
By Aina J. Khan
Pedestrians, some wearing masks and some without, on Oxford Street in central London on Saturday.Credit...Daniel Leal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Omicron variant is continuing to spread across communities throughout Britain, the health secretary, Sajid Javid, said, with the number of confirmed cases on Monday rising to 336 from 160 on Saturday.
“There are now 261 confirmed cases in England, 71 in Scotland and four in Wales,” Mr. Javid said in a speech Monday at the Houses of Parliament, adding that some cases had “no links to international travel.”
The sharp increase in infections came as Britain moved on Tuesday to enforce broader travel restrictions on people entering from countries that are not included on its “red list.” Vaccinated travelers aged 12 and up entering the country must now show proof of a negative P.C.R. or lateral flow test before their trip.
Previously, these vaccinated travelers were required only to self-isolate and take a coronavirus test by the second day after arrival.
Travelers from red list countries are required to quarantine in a government-approved hotel for 10 days at their own expense, where they will be required to take two P.C.R. tests.
Mr. Javid conceded that the renewed travel restrictions would “bring disruption” and “impact people’s plans to spend time with their loved ones over the festive period.” But he said that the authorities were “taking early action now so we don’t have to take tougher action later on.”
Britain continues to enforce travel restrictions on countries in Africa, most recently adding Nigeria to the red list on Monday.
Mr. Javid praised Britain’s booster program, adding that the government planned to enlist 10,000 more vaccinators and deploy approximately 350 military personnel in England this week to speed up vaccination efforts.
Until more is understood about the Omicron variant, Mr. Javid said that the measures would be temporary, and that the government would review them next week.
So far, 76 percent of Britain’s population have received a single vaccination, while 70 percent are fully vaccinated, according to Our World in Data.
Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/12/07/world/covid-omicron-vaccine/uk-covid-testing-travel-omicron
By Isabella Kwai
A patient received the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine on Saturday in London.Credit...Alberto Pezzali/Associated Press
The World Health Organization estimated on Tuesday that by the end of the year, one in 10 people across Europe and Central Asia overall will have had a confirmed case of the coronavirus, and called on governments to speed up vaccination efforts as the world races to curb the spread of the Delta and Omicron variants.
With detected cases of the Omicron variant rising in the region as countries turn a laser focus on finding them, several countries in Europe adopted entry rules and travel bans last week, even as questions remain about the transmissibility and seriousness of Omicron. Still, the uncertainty alongside a surge of Delta variant-driven infections is fueling worries that even tougher restrictions are looming ahead of an anticipated holiday period.
Some early signs exist that Omicron may cause only mild illness, though that observation was based mainly on South Africa’s cases among young people, who are less likely overall to become severely ill from Covid. The true impact of the virus is not always felt immediately, with hospitalizations and deaths often lagging considerably behind initial outbreaks.
And at the moment, scientists say there is no reason to believe Omicron is impervious to existing vaccines, although they may turn out to be less protective to some unknown degree.
In a virtual news conference, W.H.O. experts highlighted the need for countries to escalate vaccination efforts. Vaccines are estimated to have prevented at least 470,000 deaths from December 2020 to November 2021, according to the W.H.O. and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.
Worldwide, about 73 percent of shots that have gone into arms have been administered in high- and upper-middle-income countries, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford. Only 0.8 percent of doses have been administered in low-income countries.
Despite the clear-cut benefits of vaccines, mandates requiring their use should be a “last resort” after all other options had been exhausted, said Dr. Hans Kluge, the organization’s Europe director. “We need to do everything possible to increase the vaccine uptake within a legal and cultural context of each specific community and country,” he said.
Dozens of countries have imposed new travel measures in response to Omicron, the agency said, but it stressed that travel bans were not effective at stemming the spread of the virus. “Disease outbreaks are contained at their source, not at their borders,” Dr. Smallwood said.
Referring to the recent trajectory of the virus overall, Dr. Kluge said the highest current rates of new cases were occurring in children, the last age group eligible to receive the vaccine.
“There will be further spread,” said Dr. Catherine Smallwood, a W.H.O. senior emergency officer, adding that the “extent and rapidity and speed of that spread is still a question.”
On Tuesday, Spain’s health ministry extended the nation’s vaccination rollout to children between 5 and 11 years of age amid concerns about the spread of the Omicron variant, particularly as more people gather for Christmas parties.
A leading World Health Organization official says that Omicron does not appear to cause more severe disease than previous Covid variants, and is “highly unlikely” to fully dodge vaccine protections.
WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said that while a lot remained to be learned about the new, heavily mutated variant of Covid-19, preliminary data indicated it did not make people sicker than Delta and other strains.
“The preliminary data doesn’t indicate that this is more severe. In fact, if anything, the direction is towards less severity,” Ryan said in an interview with Agence France-Presse, insisting though that more research was needed.
“It’s very early days, we have to be very careful how we interpret that signal.”
A sign outside a vaccine clinic in New York. Photograph: Andrew Kelly/Reuters
At the same time, he said there was no sign that Omicron could fully sidestep protections provided by existing Covid vaccines.
“We have highly effective vaccines that have proved effective against all the variants so far, in terms of severe disease and hospitalisation,” the 56-year-old epidemiologist and former trauma surgeon said.
“There’s no reason to expect that it wouldn’t be so” for Omicron, he said, pointing to early data from South Africa where the variant was first detected that “suggest the vaccine at least is holding up in protection terms”.
Here’s a round-up of the day’s leading Covid stories:
· Daily cases in South Korea have surpassed 7,000 for the first time since the start of the pandemic, the prime minister Kim Boo-kyum said on Wednesday morning, putting hospital capacity under strain as deaths and severe cases rise.
· Scientists have identified a “stealth” version of Omicron variant which cannot be detected with the routine tests that public health officials are using to track its spread around the world. The stealth variant has many mutations in common with standard Omicron, but researchers say it is genetically distinct and so may well behave differently.
· A new Omicron variant, known as Omicron “like”, has been identified in an overseas arrival to Queensland from South Africa, the health minister of the Australian state said on Wednesday morning.
· UK prime minister Boris Johnson is facing accusations of lying after senior No 10 officials were filmed joking about a staff Christmas party last year that would have contravened strict Covid regulations in place at the time. Johnson and his aides have repeatedly denied that the event broke Covid rules or took place at all.
· The Omicron variant can partially evade protection from the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine, according to early data from South Africa. Researchers found there was about a 40-fold reduction in vaccine-induced antibodies that could neutralise Omicron relative to an earlier strain.
· The African Union has called for an urgent end to travel restrictions imposed on some of its member states, arguing that the measures effectively penalise governments for timely data sharing in line with international health regulations.
· US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said preliminary evidence indicates that the Omicron variant likely has a higher degree of transmissibility but causes less severe illness, warning it will take a few weeks to reach any definitive conclusions.
· Millions of people in England will be able to book their Covid booster vaccine on Wednesday as the NHS cuts the qualifying time from six months after a second dose to three.
· No more than 10 visitors will be allowed in private homes in Norway, and people must keep a distance of at least one metre from anyone outside of their household in new restrictions introduced by the government today.
· Swedes will face new measures to curb rising Covid infections from Wednesday, including renewed social distancing, home-working and the use of face masks on public transport.
· EU health agencies say vaccines should be mixed and matched for both initial courses and booster doses. Evidence suggests that the combination of viral vector vaccines and mRNA vaccines produces good levels of antibodies against the coronavirus, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said in a joint statement.
Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/dec/08/covid-live-news-south-korea-surge-sparks-hospital-alarm-stealth-omicron-variant-found
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