Coronavirus live: Germany should lift all Covid curbs by September, says minister; Indonesia flies in oxygen | World news

Former World Health Organization director Anthony Costello has suggested that some major countries are more interested in seeing private companies profit than in ending the pandemic.

In a string of incendiary tweets, Costello took aim at the refusal of the the UK, Germany and Canada to support a US proposal for a vaccine patent waiver which would increase global production, amid the failure of a scheme to ensure equitable access to jabs.

Luxembourg prime minister Xavier Bettel remains in hospital, suffering from Covid symptoms after a positive test and experiencing low oxygen levels in his blood.

The country’s government said in a statement yesterday:

During this weekend, the symptoms observed did not abate, which led the prime minister to be hospitalized as a precaution. At that time, insufficient oxygen saturation was diagnosed and the prime minister has been under continuous medical observation since then.

The prime minister’s current medical condition is considered serious, but stable. Thus, the medical staff surrounding the prime minister decided that hospitalisation is currently necessary in order to be able to continue the observation, this for an estimated duration of 2-4 days.

In order to best guarantee the continuity of current affairs operations, the minister of finance, Pierre Gramegna received signing authority. The prime minister will continue to be responsible for the coordination of government work and will carry out his functions remotely.

After Bettel attended an EU summit meeting in Brussels late last month, the 48-year-old announced his positive test result and that he had mild symptoms. The PM received a first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine in May and was to receive the second one on 1 July.

Luxembourg, population 600,000, has reported 71,429 infections and 818 fatalities since the start of the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Japan has announced it is to ship millions more donated doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine – which the country does not want itself amid safety fears – to Asian neighbours this week.

Foreign minister Toshimitsu Motegi said Japan would send 1.13m more doses to Taiwan on Thursday, after delivering 1.24m doses last month, while a further 1m doses each will be sent to Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam this week, following earlier donations to Indonesia and Malaysia.

Japan has arranged to buy 120m doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, with most of that supply produced by domestic companies. Reuters reports that regulators approved the shot in May, but amid lingering concerns about blood clots, health authorities have relied on the mRNA-type vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna.

Japan has pledged $1bn and 30m doses to the global vaccine sharing scheme Covax, but so far its donations have been outside of the programme.

AstraZeneca doses produced in Japan have not yet been approved by the World Health Organisation for use in Covax, Motegi said, so the country has turned to bilateral deals to respond to “urgent requests for vaccine supplies.”

Japan’s first shipments through Covax are expected in the middle of this month, with some 11m doses bound for nations in south Asia and the Pacific islands, Motegi said.

“True friends always lend a hand when they need each other the most,” Taiwanese premier Su Tseng-chang wrote on his Facebook page. About 10% of Taiwan’s 23.5 million people have received at least one of the two-shot vaccines.

Health minister Chen Shih-chung said that 620,000 additional AstraZeneca doses would arrive tomorrow, part of the government’s direct order from the company.

Two people who live in London can win tickets to the Euro 2020 football final at Wembley on Saturday if they book an appointment to get vaccinated, in one of few gift schemes in the UK that has largely resisted offering rewards to coax sceptics to get jabbed.

With the British capital having the lowest rate of vaccine uptake in the country, with 63% of over-18s having had the first dose, mayor Sadiq Khan is seeking to boost the number of young people who are inoculated against Covid – though the risk for such groups from the virus remains extremely low.

From tomorrow, an online draw for the final tickets opens, with entrants who post on social media about having booked their vaccine appointment getting to be entered twice, according to the BBC. Khan told the broadcaster:

It’s really important we continue to boost the number of young people coming forward to be vaccinated. We are already seeing the big difference that the vaccine is making in our fight against the virus but the next two weeks are absolutely crucial in ensuring restrictions are lifted. I urge all Londoners to get both doses of the vaccine as soon as possible.

• Germany should lift all remaining coronavirus-linked social and economic curbs as soon as everyone has been offered a vaccine, foreign minister Heiko Maas was quoted as saying this morning, suggesting that point should be reached next month. Germany is already easing strict restrictions on travel from Britain, Portugal and some other countries that were imposed because of the rise of the more contagious delta virus variant.
• Indonesia is sourcing emergency oxygen for virus patients from neighbouring Singapore, and calling for help from other countries including China. About 10,000 concentrators – devices that generate oxygen – were to be shipped from the city-state with some arriving by a Hercules cargo plane earlier on Tuesday, officials said.
• The coronavirus pandemic is forcing organisers of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics to restrict attendance at the Games’ opening ceremony to a limited number of VIPs, Japanese media have reported. The curtain-raiser at the 68,000-seat main stadium on 23 July will be watched only by people connected to sponsors, along with diplomats and other special guests, with the number sharply reduced from an initial estimate of 10,000.
• Struggling to contain an outbreak of the Delta variant, Fiji reported a record 636 Covid infections and six deaths on Tuesday, with the mortuary at Pacific island’s main hospital already filled to capacity.
• Turkey has identified three cases of the new Delta Plus Covid variant in three provinces. The health minister also said that the separate Delta variant had additionally been identified in some 284 cases across 30 provinces. Turkey, which eased most restrictions on 1 July, has reported nearly 5.5 million Covid cases and some 50,000 deaths in total. A vaccination programme has ramped up to more than a million shots per day.
• Russia reported a record 737 deaths from coronavirus-linked causes in the past 24 hours on Tuesday, pushing the official national death toll to 139,316. The country confirmed 23,378 new Covid cases, including 5,498 in Moscow.
• In the UK, the NHS test and trace system will be made more “proportionate”, new health secretary Sajid Javid has promised, with double-vaccinated contacts expected to be spared the need to self-isolate.
• He warned that England could see as many as 100,000 new cases of Covid a day in August as the government moves forward with plans to drop all Covid restrictions in England on 19 July.
• UK education secretary Gavin Williamson will also make a statement today in the Commons on plans to replace the requirement for entire school bubbles to isolate after a positive Covid contact with enhanced testing.
• A second man has been charged over an incident in which the British government’s top medical adviser Chris Whitty was accosted in a London park.
• Richard Ashcroft has pulled out of his headline slot at Sheffield’s Tramlines festival later this month, as he opposes the event being used as part of government research into the transmission of Covid-19 at large events.
• England’s one-day cricket squad have been plunged into isolation after seven members of the bubble tested positive for Covid-19.
• Indian drug manufacturer Morepen Laboratories has begun production of the Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine.
• Israel will deliver about 700,000 expiring doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine to South Korea later this month and South Korea will give Israel back the same number, already on order from Pfizer, in September and October.
• Bangladesh has suffered its worst day, with 164 deaths and 9,964 new infections. The government has extended the current lockdown into next week as hospitals on border areas struggle with the Delta variant, which was first identified across those borders in India.
• Africa recorded its record number of cases over the past week, according to a count by AFP. There were 36,000 new infection reported per day, driven by a surge in South Africa.

Andrew Sparrow has our UK politics and Covid live blog, which are both very much the same thing today with reaction to the government’s announcement yesterday about lifting restrictions in England. You can follow all that with him here…

That’s it from me, Martin Belam, for today. Mattha Busby will be here shortly to continue our global Covid coverage.

Very brief from Reuters here just to confirm that Indonesia today has again set record numbers – health ministry data showed there were 31,189 new coronavirus infections and 728 deaths on Tuesday, both record daily increases.

Yesim Dikmen writes for Reuters this morning that Turkey has identified three cases of the new Delta Plus Covid variant in three provinces. The health minister also said that the separate Delta variant had additionally been identified in some 284 cases across 30 provinces.

Turkey, which eased most restrictions on 1 July, has reported nearly 5.5m Covid cases and some 50,000 deaths in total. A vaccination programme has ramped up to more than a million shots per day.

“The Delta Plus (variant) was seen in three people in three separate provinces (including) one in Istanbul,” health minister Fahrettin Koca told reporters after a cabinet meeting on Monday. “These people are in good condition.”

Turkey’s vaccine programme began in January with shots developed by Sinovac and has since also been using the Pfizer/BioNTech and Sputnik V vaccines.

If you are unfamiliar with the Delta Plus variant and what it means, our science editor Ian Sample wrote this a couple of weeks back: Delta Plus Covid variant – what is it and should we be concerned?

Germany should lift all remaining coronavirus-linked social and economic curbs as soon as everyone has been offered a vaccine, foreign minister Heiko Maas was quoted as saying this morning, suggesting that point should be reached next month.

Around 56.5% of people in Germany have received at least one dose and almost 39% are fully vaccinated, according to health ministry data.

“When everyone in Germany has received a vaccine offer, there is no longer a legal or political justification for any kind of restriction,” Maas told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. That should occur sometime during August, he added.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has previously said she wants to offer everyone in Germany a vaccine by 21 September.

Caroline Copley reports for Reuters that in January Maas was the first German government minister to call for restrictions to be eased for vaccinated people and suggested they should be allowed to visit the cinema or eat in restaurants. Other ministers opposed special exemptions for the vaccinated.

Andrew Sparrow has launched the UK live blog for today, and is understandably leading on that expectation from UK health secretary Sajid Javid that cases in the UK could be 100,000 per day in the summer, but that the government is planning to drop restrictions in England anyway.

Follow Andrew for UK news there, and I’ll be continuing here with the latest international Covid developments.

The coronavirus pandemic is forcing organisers of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics to restrict attendance at the Games’ opening ceremony to a limited number of VIPs, Japanese media have reported.

The curtain-raiser at the 68,000-seat main stadium on 23 July will be watched only by people connected to sponsors, along with diplomats and other special guests, with the number sharply reduced from an initial estimate of 10,000, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper said on Tuesday, citing multiple unidentified sources.

In addition, Olympic competitions at large venues and those scheduled for after 9pm will be held without spectators to discourage people spending time in the capital after the events have ended.

The Tokyo 2020 organising committee has already banned overseas spectators and set a cap on domestic spectators at 10,000 per venue for the Games, or 50% of capacity.

Read more of Justin McCurry’s report from Tokyo: Tokyo Olympics – attendance to be slashed at opening ceremony

David Hughes and Emma Bowden have teed up the rest of the day’s UK Covid developments for us after the morning media round, writing that the NHS Test and Trace system will be made more “proportionate”, Sajid Javid has promised, with double-vaccinated contacts expected to be spared the need to self-isolate.

The Health Secretary will update MPs on the latest plans for easing restrictions after Boris Johnson promised the wholesale lifting of coronavirus rules in England yesterday.

Javid will use his Commons statement to set out how the contact tracing system will operate in future, saying it is “absolutely right” that for people who have received both vaccination doses “we can take a different approach”.

Reports last week suggested ministers intend to drop all legal requirements on those who have had both jabs if they encounter a confirmed case, with advice for them to take a daily test but no compulsion to do so.

Javid also told MPs on Monday that ministers would set out “how we intend to exempt under-18s who are close contacts from the requirement to self-isolate”.

Education secretary Gavin Williamson will also make a statement in the Commons on plans to replace the requirement for entire school bubbles to isolate after a positive Covid contact with enhanced testing.

England’s one-day cricket squad have been plunged into isolation after seven members of the bubble tested positive for Covid-19.

Three players and four members of the team management tested positive yesterday and will self-isolate along with the remainder of the ODI squad who were deemed close contacts.

England’s ODIs and and T20 internationals against Pakistan will go ahead with Ben Stokes returning to the side to captain the squad which will be named later on Tuesday.

Tom Harrison, the chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board, said: ‘‘We have been mindful that the emergence of the Delta variant, along with our move away from the stringent enforcement of bio secure environments, could increase the chances of an outbreak.”

Read more here: Covid-19 outbreak forces England’s one-day cricket squad into isolation

Russia reported a record 737 deaths from coronavirus-linked causes in the past 24 hours on Tuesday, pushing the official national death toll to 139,316.

The country confirmed 23,378 new Covid cases, including 5,498 in Moscow.

Reuters remind us that federal statistics agency has kept a separate death count, and has said Russia recorded around 270,000 deaths related to Covid from April 2020 to April 2021, nearly double the official tally.