Covid live: Brazil passes 500,000 deaths; 70% of England’s adults ‘should be fully vaccinated by 19 July’ | World news

Australia’s state of Queensland recorded one locally acquired coronavirus infection on Sunday, the latest streak of small outbreaks that have been plaguing the country in recent months.

The Queensland case comes as a cluster of the highly infectious Delta variant has grown by two cases to nine in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, prompting health officials to expand mask wearing rules.

“We know this strain, which is becoming the dominant strain, is extremely contagious and some people are spreading it more than others, and what we want to avoid at this stage is a super spreading event,” New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said.

Vaccinations have been key to keeping levels of the Delta variant of Covid-19 low in Ireland at a time when it has been surging in the UK, according to an Irish expert.

There have been 180 known cases of the Delta variant in Ireland, according to the Journal.ie. That accounts for 5% of sequenced cases in Ireland.

Dr Fidelma Fitzpatrick, a consultant and senior lecturer in microbiology at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), told the online publication: “The vaccination programme has been a game-changer here. We’ve seen that in hospitals in particular where in December and January we had lots of positive cases and suddenly those numbers just fell off a cliff.”

Tighter restrictions and travel measures such as mandatory hotel quarantine and PCR testing, had also played a major role, she added.

“England has a bigger population and also historic links with countries where Delta originated, more so than we have.”

Vaccinations mean there is hope that the latest wave of Covid-19 across the UK won’t look quite the same as previous, more deadly ones, according to a senior health official in England.

It should also be possible for 70% of the adult population to be double vaccinated before the 19 July date, which is pencilled in as the final stage of lockdown lifting, she added.

“We are definitely seeing some signs of slowing down … but there are definitely other parts of country, including some parts of the north-east, some parts of London that are still rising quite fast,” said Dr Susan Hopkins, strategy director for Covid-19 at Public Health England.

“This is not doing the same thing all over the country. We are seeing rises and falls as people really go out and get tested and I think we are seeing the impact of vaccination and that is good news.”

The extra time time to vaccinate and double vaccinate people means that this wave will look quite different to previous ones, she told the BBC in an interview on the Andrew Marr Show.

She was asked what level of double vaccination was needed for people in England to “feel comfortable” about the 19 July date for the final lifting of lockdown restrictions.

Seventy per cent – a figure mentioned by other experts – would be a “good figure” and the UK should be able to hit that before the 19 July date.

She also indicated that if Covid hospital admissions continue to rise but discharges also continue at a steady rate, then the health service will be able to cope without too much extra strain.

Covid-19 doesn’t dominate the front pages of stories here in the UK in quite the way it has in recent times, but the Sunday Telegraph has an interesting splash concerning the UK government’s Health Secretary.

It claims that Matt Hancock, who has led the Department of Health throughout the pandemic, failed to tell the Prime Minister about a major Public Health England (PHE) study showing the effectiveness of vaccines against a variant, first found in India, during a key meeting called to decide whether to extend Covid restrictions tomorrow.

The Sunday Telegraph says it understand that Hancock had known about the PHE data three days before a keye meeting of four senior ministers last Sunday to decide whether to postpone a planned June 21 reopening until July 19.

But multiple sources familiar with the meeting told the Telegraph it was not raised by Mr Hancock, or discussed at all during the course of the talks.

In Japan, the first detected positive case among athletes arriving for the Olympic Games – five weeks away – has heightened concerns and calls for caution among those worried that the event will be highly dangerous.

“Let’s all wait a minute,” opposition politician Renho said.

“This time, nine people arrived. For the Olympics, 100,000 people will be arriving. This is no time to be talking about how this will be a moving experience for our children.”

Yasutoshi Nishimura, a minister in charge of economic policy, told NHK TV on Sunday that the government was looking into its border controls. Japan requires a two-week quarantine for overseas arrivals, but Olympic teams aren’t subject to the same border controls.

The Ugandan athlete who tested positive was among athletes who arrived on Saturday night at Tokyo’s Narita airport. The group were all fully vaccinated with AstraZeneca and had negative PCR tests before boarding, the Asahi newspaper reported, quoting an anonymous cabinet secretariat official.

Japan requires a two-week quarantine for overseas arrivals, but Olympic teams aren’t subject to the same border controls.

The Ugandan team was the second, after the Australian women’s softball team, to arrive for the Olympics, which open on 23 July.

Uganda is seeing an alarming rise in Covid-19 variants and has just tightened lockdown measures. About 590 deaths have been reported, which is probably an undercount, given the scarcity of testing.

The Philippines has signed a supply agreement for 40m doses of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech , the head of the government’s Covid-19 vaccine procurement said on Sunday.

Deliveries of the vaccine, among several brands of coronavirus shots allowed for emergency use in the southe-ast Asian country, will begin “after eight weeks starting August”, Carlito Galvez said in a statement.

The deal comes as a delay in vaccine deliveries had earlier this month forced some cities in the capital region to close vaccination sites, complicating Manila’s efforts to ramp up its immunisation drive in an Asian country with one of the biggest numbers of infections and deaths.

Taiwan has reacted with an outpouring of thanks to the US for shipping 2.5m Covid-19 vaccine doses to the island, more than doubling its arsenal as it deals with a rise in domestic infections.

Washington, competing with Beijing to deepen geopolitical clout through “vaccine diplomacy”, initially had promised to donate 750,000 doses but increased that number as President Joe Biden’s administration advances its pledge to send 80m US-made shots around the world.

“What a sight! What a gesture!” Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, tweeted in thanks late on Saturday, linking to pictures of the vaccines being loaded on to a China Airlines Boeing 777 freighter at Memphis airport.

“The Taiwan-US relationship is rock solid, & we’ll keep cooperating closely in combating Covid-19. Forces for good will prevail!”

Good morning and welcome to live blog coverage of the latest developments, ranging from the situation in Australia, where measures are being taken to contain a new Covid-19 cluster in Sydney, to Brazil, where the number of deaths related to the virus has now passed 500,000.

It’s also a day when concerns about the Tokyo Olympics – five weeks away – have been brought into sharp focus by the news that a Ugandan athlete has been barred entry into Japan after testing positive for Covid-19. It is the first known infection among arriving athletes.

Rules requiring Sydney residents to wear coverings indoors across large swathes of the city came into force from 4pm on Sunday and cover seven local government areas in inner Sydney.

Anti-government protesters have meanwhile been taking to the streets in more than a score of cities across Brazil this weekend as the nation’s confirmed death toll from Covid-19 soared past half a million

We will bring you coverage of those stories and others from around the world, including here in the UK, where than 700,000 Covid-19 jabs were booked on the day a vaccination programme was opened up to people aged 18 to 20.

People in England made 721,469 appointments through the national booking service on Friday, more than 30,000 an hour or more than eight every second.

You can reach me by email or on Twitter at @BenQuinn75 if there are stories you would like to flag up.