Coronavirus live news: Germany may use Russian and Chinese vaccines, leaders suggest; Israel extends lockdown | World news

Hong Kong will extend social distancing measures for a further two weeks until after the Chinese New Year holiday and will impose stricter testing rules when cases of COVID-19 are detected.

The measures, which include a ban on more than two people gathering and dining in restaurants after 6 p.m. local time, will remain in place until Feb. 17, Reuters reported.

“More time is going to be needed before we see a substantial improvement,” Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung told a news briefing on Monday.

The government has in the past week set up testing zones for residents of some areas with little warning. It will also now require all residents of a building to get tested if a single untraceable infection is found in their building.

Schools will remain closed. Cheung said he hoped they could reopen after the holiday period.

Hong Kong has been logging double-digit daily case numbers for several weeks with 34 infections recorded on Monday, down from Sunday’s 53. It has had around 10,500 COVID-19 cases since January last year and 181 deaths.

BioNTech and Pfizer said on Monday they will ramp up their coronavirus vaccine deliveries to the European Union, pledging to send up to 75 million extra doses to the bloc in the spring.

“Pfizer and BioNTech continue to work toward increased deliveries beginning the week of February 15, ensuring we will supply the full quantity of vaccine doses in the first quarter we contractually committed to and up to an additional 75 million doses to the European Union in the second quarter,” they said in a statement reported by AFP.

The EU has ordered a total of 600 million doses.

The statement came hours ahead of a national conference called by Chancellor Angela Merkel with vaccine manufacturers amid growing anger over the bloc’s sluggish inoculation campaign.

BioNTech and Pfizer, which will take part in the meeting, said that improvements in their production capabilities would allow them to speed up supplies.

These included the completion of modifications at Pfizer’s plant in Puurs, Belgium. “Now, we are back to the original schedule of vaccine dose deliveries,” they said.

In the face of a political firestorm – and after the EU reversed its decision to use an emergency Brexit provision to control vaccine exports via Northern Ireland – European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said Sunday that AstraZeneca had now agreed to increase its coronavirus vaccine deliveries to the EU by 30 percent.

An EU source said the first deliveries would start in the second week of February.

Israel’s nationwide lockdown was extended Monday to contain the coronavirus which has continued to spread rapidly as the country presses ahead with an aggressive vaccination campaign.

The current lockdown, declared on 27 December, is the third since the pandemic began last year.

The cabinet prolonged the closure until Friday morning, but scheduled a fresh meeting for Wednesday to assess whether a further extension was required, a statement from prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the health ministry reported by AFP said.

With Israel, a country of about 9 million people, still regularly registering more than 5,000 new cases per day, Netanyahu had pushed for the lockdown’s extension. His political opponents said they would only agree if fines were increased for rule violators.

Netanyahu’s critics have particularly highlighted persistent violations among Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jews, the premier’s key political allies who have repeatedly disregarded public safety measures throughout the pandemic.

Israel’s lockdown also includes an unprecedented airport and border closure, which Netanyahu has described as a necessary weapon in the “arms race” against coronavirus variants.

The cabinet has extended the ban on commercial flights imposed last month until 7 February. Road crossings to Egypt and Jordan will also remain closed.

Israel hopes to vaccinate its entire over-16 population by the end of March.

The Covax global vaccine sharing scheme expects to deliver 35.3m doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine to 36 Caribbean and Latin American states from mid-February to the end of June, the World Health Organization’s regional office said.

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said the Americas region needed to immunise about 500 million people to control the pandemic.

According to a Reuters report, PAHO said WHO would complete its review in a few days of the AstraZeneca vaccine for emergency use listing (EUL).

“The number of doses and delivery schedule are still subject to EUL and manufacturing production capacity,” PAHO said, adding that supply deals also had to be agreed with producers.

Of the 36 nations receiving AstraZeneca’s shot, it said four countries, namely Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador and Peru, would also receive a total of 377,910 doses of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine from mid-February.

The GAVI alliance, the group that co-leads Covax with WHO, said last week it aimed to deliver 2.3bnn vaccines worldwide by the end of 2021, including 1.8bn free doses to lower-income countries.

Geneva-based GAVI was expected to publish details of its allocations by country on Monday.

The 36 Caribbean and Latin American nations to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine ranged from regional giants Brazil and Mexico to small islands such as Dominica and Montserrat.

In the UK, the government has ordered an extra 40m doses of the Valneva Covid-19 vaccine.

The move means 100m doses of Valneva have been put on order, enough for every adult in the UK, with the latest batch earmarked for delivery in 2022. The government has also retained options over a further 90m doses for supply between 2023 and 2025.

Valneva said the total value of the entire order was up to €1.4bn (£1.24bn). The vaccine is still in clinical trials, with the early-stage phase 1/2 study expected to read out within the next three months.

With the UK having secured more than 400m vaccine doses, the international trade secretary, Liz Truss, said on Sunday it is “too early” to determine when the government will send vaccines abroad.

She said “we first need to make sure that our population is vaccinated” but added that it would be damaging to become a “vaccinated island” while other countries go without.

“It’s a bit too early to say about how we would deploy ‘XX’ vaccine, but we certainly want to work with friends and neighbours, we want to work with developing countries because we’re only going to solve this issue once everybody in the world is vaccinated,” Truss told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday.

Russia reported 17,648 new Covid-19 cases on Monday, including 2,037 in Moscow, taking its official national tally to 3,868,087. That figure was down from 18,359 the day before.

Authorities also confirmed 437 deaths in the last 24 hours, pushing the official death toll to 73,619. There had been 485 deaths reported on Sunday.

The Guardian’s Christopher Thomond has been photographing Manchester’s northern quarter during the third UK lockdown. You can see the rest of his pictures here:

A World Health Organization-led team investigating the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic on Monday visited the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in China’s central region of Hubei, where the outbreak emerged in late 2019.

Reuters reported that the group of independent experts (see earlier post) spent about four-and-a-half hours on its longest site visit since completing two weeks of quarantine on Thursday, and did not speak to waiting journalists.

The WHO, which has sought to manage expectations for the mission, has said its members would be limited to visits organised by their Chinese hosts and have no contact with community members, because of health curbs.

The group has so far also visited hospitals where early cases were detected, markets, and an exhibition on the battle with the outbreak in the provincial capital of Wuhan.

No full itinerary for the group’s field work has been announced, and journalists covering the tightly controlled visit have been kept at a distance from team members.

Beijing has sought to cast doubt on the notion that the coronavirus originated in China, pointing to imported frozen food as a conduit.

On Sunday, the experts visited the Huanan seafood market linked to initial infections, and the Baishazhou wholesale food market, where a loudspeaker repeatedly announced that the sale of imported cold chain products was banned at the market

Good morning from London. This is Archie Bland taking over our coronavirus global coverage for the next few hours, and beginning in France, where finance minister Bruno Le Maire has indicated that a new lockdown to curb the spread of the virus will only be considered as a last resort.

In comments reported by Reuters, Le Maire told RTL Radio that the country’s current curfew measures were delivering results in terms of trying to contain the virus.

He said that the 6pm to 6am curfew cost the economy about €6bn (£5.3bn) a month whereas a full lockdown would cost it around €15bn a month. France decided against imposing a third nationwide coronavirus lockdown on Friday.

That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. Thanks for following along – and stay tuned for the latest from around the world with my colleagues in London.

Until then – I’m out of here like a giant panda in the snow:

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

• China’s daily new cases fell to a three-week low. China reported the lowest daily increase in new Covid cases in more than three weeks, official data showed on Monday, reversing a sharp uptick a day earlier, amid efforts to contain the disease ahead of a major holiday break. New confirmed reported cases more than halved to 42, the National Health Commission said in a statement, down from 92 a day earlier and marking the lowest one-day increase since 33 reported on 8 January.
• An expert warned the US to brace for virulent Covid strain. A leading infectious disease expert predicted on Sunday that the deadlier British variant of Covid-19 will become the dominant strain of the virus in the US and could hit the country like a hurricane.
• Chicago schools postponed in-person classes over Covid safety plan. Chicago Public Schools on Sunday delayed the resumption of in-person classes for thousands of elementary and middle school students by at least a day as the district and teachers failed to reach an agreement on a Covid safety plan.
• Japan is expected to extend a state of emergency this week for Tokyo and other areas as hospitals remain under pressure despite a decline in cases from their peaks, local media reported on Monday.
• Taiwan health authorities are still battling an outbreak centred around a Taoyuan hospital, which claimed the first Covid-related death almost nine months on Friday. The woman in her eighties was a relative of another confirmed case. Authorities said she presented with Covid-like symptoms on Thursday and was taken to hospital. A test returned a negative result for Covid, but she passed away on Friday night. She had chronic kidney disease and other underlying health issues.
• Hong Kong is continuing its “ambush lockdowns” on housing blocks. As Hong Kong continues to fight its widespread outbreak, authorities have employed a new tactic in response to clusters of infection in residential housing blocks. Since last week, police have launched four ambush-style lockdowns, arriving unannounced at buildings to immediately prevent anyone leaving and to run mandatory testing.
• The NHS has offered Covid jab to all older residents in care homes in England. The NHS has said official figures are expected to confirm on Monday that it has offered a coronavirus vaccine to every older care home resident across England.In another milestone for the vaccine programme, coming after it set a new daily record of almost 600,000 people being inoculated against Covid-19 on Saturday, nurses, GPs and other NHS staff have offered the jab to people living at more than 10,000 care homes with older residents.
• Pakistan received its first batch of Covid vaccine doses, 500,000 from China’s Sinopharm, on Monday, Health Adviser Faisal Sultan said in a statement released on Twitter. “Thank God, the first batch of Sinopharm vaccine has arrived! Grateful to China and everyone who made this happen,” he said. “I salute our frontline healthcare workers for their efforts and they’ll be first to get vaccinated.”
• Ghana tightened restrictions as virus cases climb. Ghana has reimposed a ban on social gatherings as the number of Covid-19 cases spiral in the West African nation, the president announced Sunday. Schools reopened in January after a 10-month closure, but President Nana Akufo-Addo said a return to stricter measures was needed. “Our hospitals have become full, and we have had to reactivate our isolation centres,” he said.
• Israel extended lockdown as Covid variants offset vaccination drive. Israel extended a national lockdown on Sunday as Covid variants offset its vaccination drive and officials predicted a delay in a turnaround from the ongoing crisis.
• EU wants 70% of adults vaccinated by end of summer. AstraZeneca will increase its coronavirus vaccine deliveries to the EU by 30%, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said Sunday as the bloc sought to claw back time lost rolling out the jabs. The aim was still to vaccinate 70% of adults in the EU by the end of summer, she added.
• WHO team to visit Hubei CDC on Monday. A World Health Organization-led team investigating the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic was due on Monday to visit the Center for Disease Control and Prevention of Hubei province, the central Chinese region where the outbreak emerged in late 2019. The team has already visited the Huanan food market in Wuhan.
• Two million Australians in lockdown over one case. About 2 million Australians begun their first full day of a strict coronavirus lockdown on Monday following the discovery of one case in the community in Perth, capital of Western Australia state, but no new cases have since been found.