Coronavirus live news: more than half of UK population has had first Covid jab; Germany restricts travel from India | World news

At least 10 people were killed and 30 injured in a fire at a hospital in southeastern Baghdad, Iraq, that had been equipped to house Covis-19 patients.

Reuters reports:

The fire at the Ibn Khatib hospital in the Diyala Bridge area of the Iraqi capital occurred after an accident caused an oxygen tank to explode, the sources said.

Many ambulances were rushing towards the hospital, ferrying away those hurt by the fire, a Reuters photographer nearby said.

Patients not injured in the incident were also being transferred out of the hospital, medical sources said.

Brazil has recorded 71,137 new cases of coronavirus and 3,076 further deaths, the health ministry said on Saturday.

Following an anti-lockdown protest in London, the Metropolitan Police said: “Eight officers were injured as they worked to disperse crowds in Hyde Park this evening.
“Missiles including bottles were thrown in small pockets of disorder. “Two officers were taken to hospital. Thankfully, they are not believed to be seriously injured. “Three people were arrested for offences including assault on police and are now in custody.”

Immunologists and virologists are questioning the ability of populations to ever achieve herd immunity to Covid-19.

They say gradually waning immunity to the virus after infection or vaccination, and the impact of variants, mean it is likely annual vaccinations will be required and cases will continue to occur.

Prof Miles Davenport, the program head of the Kirby Institute’s infection analytics program at the University of New South Wales in Australia, says “the concept of herd immunity is that once it’s achieved, then you will not have circulation of virus in the community”.

The Indian government has asked Twitter to take down dozens of tweets, including some by local lawmakers, that were critical of the handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

Twitter has withheld some of the tweets after the legal request by the Indian government, a company spokeswoman told Reuters.
The government made an emergency order to censor the tweets, Twitter disclosed on Lumen database, a Harvard University project. In the government’s legal request, dated April 23 and disclosed on Lumen, 21 tweets were mentioned.

The law cited in the government’s request was the Information Technology Act, 2000.

“When we receive a valid legal request, we review it under both the Twitter Rules and local law,” the Twitter spokeswoman said.

“If the content violates Twitter’s rules, the content will be removed from the service. If it is determined to be illegal in a particular jurisdiction, but not in violation of the Twitter Rules, we may withhold access to the content in India only,” she said.

The spokeswoman confirmed Twitter had notified account holders directly about withholding their content and let them know that it received a legal order pertaining to their tweets.

In Bangalore, a city besieged by India’s disastrous second wave of coronavirus, Pippa Baxter and her young family remained stoic.

From their empty house, living out of bags packed in anticipation, they could see a way out.

They would be on a repatriation flight back home to Australia in little over a week, leaving a nation where crematoriums and burial grounds are being overwhelmed by the dead.

Mexico has reported 3,308 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 349 fatalities, according to the country’s health ministry data.

It brings the country’s total to 2,326,738 infections and 214,853 deaths, Reuters reports.

The government has said the real number of cases is likely significantly higher, and separate data published recently suggested the actual death toll is at least 60% above the confirmed figure.

The US administered 225,640,460 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country as of Saturday morning and distributed 290,685,655 doses, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.

That is an increase from the 222,322,230 vaccine doses the CDC said had been administered by April 23 out of 286,095,185 doses delivered, Reuters reports.

The agency said 138,644,724 people had received at least one dose while 93,078,040 people had been fully vaccinated as of Saturday.

Two men have been arrested after the anti-lockdown protests in Hyde park, London, today.

The Metropolitan Police said a 38-year-old man was arrested near Embankment on suspicion of a public order offence, while a 37-year-old man was arrested near Trafalgar Square on suspicion of being drunk and disorderly and a public order offence.