Coronavirus live news: scrapping quarantine for double jabbed being considered; Vietnam reports highest daily total | World news

Nurses are holding a rally outside Downing Street, protesting the deaths of hundreds of health and care workers during the pandemic. Today marks 73 years since the NHS was founded.

A further 250,234 vaccinations have taken place in England, including first and second doses, taking the total to 65,932,869 since the rollout began.

Of the daily figure, 107,959 were first doses and 142,275 were second shots, NHS England said. A total of 37,859,897 have had an initial jab, while 28,072,972 are fully vaccinated.

Greece is considering vaccinating teenagers as cases begin to rise again, a scientific adviser to the government has said.

Vana Papaevangelou, a member of the committee of infectious disease experts advising the government, said the group was considering advising the vaccination of 15- to 17-year-olds, Kathimerini newspaper reports.

“June has been an exceptional month. Cases dropped by 75%,” she said. However, the number of new infections has started to rise again over the last week.

Meanwhile, measures are being put in place to stop the spread of the virus on the country’s islands. From Monday, people visiting an island will need to present a Covid-19 vaccination certificate, proof of recent recovery from the virus, a negative PCR test taken within 72 hours of travel or a negative rapid test taken 42 hours before travelling.

Driven by the Delta variant, infection numbers have risen across dozens of African countries over the last six weeks.

Deaths rose by 15% across 38 African nations to nearly 3,000 in the same period, according to AFP.

“The speed and scale of Africa’s third wave is like nothing we’ve seen before,” Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa, said this week.

South Africa, the continent’s worst-hit country, reported a new record of 24,000 cases on Friday.

“We are indeed … in the eye of the storm of the third wave,” deputy health minister Joe Phaahla said.

Just 5% of the country’s population have been vaccinated, and the surge in cases has overwhelmed hospitals, particularly in Johannesburg.

The UK government has confirmed that proposals to end the requirement to self-isolate for those who have received two doses of a coronavirus vaccine are under consideration.

Downing Street said it was looking at whether to drop all legal self-isolation measures for fully vaccinated people who come into contact with someone who is infected “as part of the post-step 4 world”.

The plans have been met with scepticism in some quarters. Prof Robert West, a health psychologist and adviser to Sage, said the problems associated with such an exemption “outweigh the potential benefits” and warned that it could cause “resentment”.

West, who is a member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours, which advises Sage, said: “The most serious problem is that if you have a situation where not everyone has been even offered the vaccine then you’ve already got clearly a huge unfairness.

“When you get unfairness in situations like this, you get resentment and when you get resentment you can get loss of compliance.”

In contrast, Dr Bharat Pankhania, a senior clinical lecturer in communicable diseases at the University of Exeter, supported the proposal, saying that vaccines were breaking the link between cases, hospital admissions and deaths, meaning “we can start thinking about other uncoupling measures, such as no need to quarantine after being fully immunised”.

Hundreds of healthcare workers in Italy have launched a legal bid against the requirement that they get the Covid-19 vaccination, according to media reports.

The case, brought by professionals throughout northern Italy, will be heard on 14 July.

“This isn’t a battle by anti-vaxxers but a democratic battle,” constitutional lawyer Daniele Granara, who helped build up the case, was quoted as saying in the Giornale di Brescia newspaper. “We force people to take a risk under threat of no longer being allowed to exercise their profession.”

Since April, anyone working in public or private social health positions, including in pharmacies and doctors’ offices, is required to get vaccinated against Covid-19 or be suspended without pay, unless their employer can reassign them to a less sensitive position.

According to recent official figures, 45,750 of the 1.9 million salaried healthcare workers have not yet received a single vaccine dose.

Vietnam’s health ministry reported 922 new coronavirus cases today, the highest daily total since the virus was first found in the country in January last year, Reuters reports

Most cases were in Ho Chi Minh City, where restriction orders have been in place for the past four weeks. Vietnam has recorded 19,043 infections overall and 84 fatalities.

New restrictions in Indonesia include tighter travel checks, a ban on restaurant dining and outdoor sports and the closure of non-essential workplaces.

Police have established road blocks and more than 400 checkpoints across Java, the archipelago’s most populous island, and the resort island of Bali, with more than 21,000 officers enforcing curbs and helping in random testing.

Reuters reports that traffic in the capital, Jakarta, in western Java, has been much lighter than usual, with trains and buses nearly empty, but some people still jogged and rode bicycles, even though main roads were blocked.

Joe Biden has warned that although America has Covid-19 “on the run” the latest variant is of particular concern among those who remain unvaccinated – as the president’s goal of 70% of US adults receiving at least one shot of vaccine by the Fourth of July holiday was set to fall short.

New US cases of coronavirus jumped by 10% in the past week as the highly contagious Delta variant spreads, especially where vaccination rates are low.

“I am concerned that people who have not gotten vaccinated have the capacity to catch the variant and spread the variant to other people who haven’t been vaccinated,” Biden said on Friday. “I’m not concerned there’s going to be a major outbreak … another epidemic nationwide. But I am concerned lives will be lost,” he added.

Read the full report, by Sarah Betancourt and Joan E Greve, here:

Indonesia has reported a new daily record number of coronavirus cases, with 27,913 infections on Saturday as the Delta variant sends part of the country into lockdown.

The south-east Asian country also reported 493 deaths, taking its tally to 2,256,851 cases and the death toll to 60,027, official data showed.

Battling one of Asia’s worst outbreaks, the government has imposed restrictions on Java and Bali, but senior minister Luhut Pandjaitan has said the government expects infections to keep rising for up to two weeks before the curbs begin to reduce cases.

The restrictions on more than 100 million people include tighter travel checks, a ban on restaurant dining and outdoor sports and the closure of non-essential workplaces. They will be in place until 20 July, and could be extended in order to bring daily infections below 10,000.

“In the next 10 days, in my opinion maybe two weeks, cases can continue to rise” as infections before the restrictions took place are now in incubation period, said Pandjaitan. “These two weeks is a critical time for us,” he said.

Saudi Arabia has halted flights to the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Vietnam to protect against a coronavirus variant, the interior ministry has said.

The move comes seven weeks after the kingdom opened up overseas travel for fully vaccinated citizens after a ban that lasted more than a year.

Flights to and from the three countries will be suspended from Sunday, an interior ministry official said, quoted by the state news agency SPA and Reuters. Citizens and residents returning from these countries will be required to quarantine for 14 days, it added.

The decision was taken due to “the spread of a new mutated strain of the (Covid-19) virus”, the ministry said, without explicitly mentioning the Delta variant.

Phase 3 trials for Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin vaccine showed it was 93.4% effective against severe disease, the Indian firm had said.

It was also found to be 77.8% effective against symptomatic Covid-19 in the trial, according to Reuters.

The data demonstrated 65.2% protection against the Delta variant, first identified in India, that led to a surge in infections in April and May, and the world’s highest daily death tolls.

Bharat Biotech now estimates it will make 23 million doses a month.

Cambodia has reported a record number of daily deaths as infections continue to surge in the south-east Asian country.

The nation of 16.49 million announced a 36 further deaths, taking the death toll to 696, according to a report in the Khmer Times. Coronavirus cases rose by 948, with active cases at 6,472.

The latest figures follow on from comments by Dr Or Vandine, the chairwoman of the country’s vaccination committee, who warned that the country’s infection levels had reached a “red line”, calling on Cambodia to “unite” to prevent it from crossing this point.

Malaysia will ease coronavirus lockdowns next week in five states that have achieved the government’s targets for relaxing restrictions, the security minister has announced.

The south-east Asian country has been under a nationwide lockdown since 1 June to rein in a surge of Covid-19 infections, according to Reuters.

Restrictions will be partially lifted in the states of Kelantan, Pahang, Perak, Perlis, and Terengganu on Monday as they have met the indicators for progressing to the second phase of lockdown, minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob told reporters.

However, stricter measures have been implemented in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, and the neighbouring state of Selangor, which are among Malaysia’s worst-hit regions.

Unlocking is being carried out in four phases, with infection numbers, vaccination rates, and the capacity of the healthcare system used as indicators to judge a region’s situation.

The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, has expressed fears the country is headed towards a fifth coronavirus wave as the Delta variant spreads.

“It is feared that we are on the way to a fifth wave throughout the country,” Rouhani told a meeting of Iran’s coronavirus taskforce, warning the public to be careful as “the Delta variant has spread” in southern provinces, according to Reuters.

Iran is battling the Middle East’s deadliest outbreak of the coronavirus, with a death toll of over 84,000. The capital of Tehran has been designated a “red” zone, along with nine other cities in the province. The southern and southeastern provinces of Fars, Hormozgan, Kerman and Sistan-Baluchistan are also now classified as “red”.

Iran says it is struggling to import vaccines for its population of 83 million due to US sanctions that complicate transferring money to foreign firms.

Just over 4.4 million of the country’s 82.9 million people have received a first jab, while only 1.7 million have received two doses, the health ministry says.