Covid live: UK allows quarantine-free travel from France as restrictions change | World news

Most people who received a third dose of Pfizer Inc’s Covid-19 vaccine felt similar or fewer side effects than they did after receiving the second shot, according to an initial survey in Israel.
Israel began offering the booster shots about 10 days ago to people over age 60 as part of efforts to slow the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant, Reuters reports. Israel’s largest healthcare provider, Clalit, said on Sunday it had administered a third dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to more than 240,000 people. Eighty-eight percent of participants in the survey said that in the days after receiving the third shot, they felt “similar or better” to how they felt after the second shot. Thirty-one percent reported some side effect, the most common being soreness at the injection site.

With new Covid-19 cases surging in Louisiana, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival will not be returning this year, organisers said.

The festival, which traditionally is held in the spring, had been scheduled to run 8-10 October and 15-17 October this year after being cancelled last year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

But organisers cited “current exponential growth” of new cases in the city and region, as well as an ongoing public health emergency, in announcing that the festival will not occur as planned, Associated Press reports.

“We now look forward to next spring, when we will present the Festival during its traditional timeframe,” organisers said, adding that next year’s dates are 29 April-8 May.

France has reported 20,450 new coronavirus cases, Reuters reports.
The country has recorded more than 6.28 million cases in total.

The US administered 351,400,930 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country as of Sunday morning and distributed 407,561,705 doses, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Those figures are up from the 350,627,188 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by 7 August, out of 407,550,175 doses delivered, Reuters reports. The agency said 194,866,738 people had received at least one dose, while 166,477,481 people were fully vaccinated as of Sunday.

Amid increased fears that children are now both victims and vectors of the latest Covid-19 variant surge, National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins signaled on Sunday that increasing numbers of children are falling ill in the US.

His comments also came as one of America’s largest teachers unions appeared to shift its position on mandatory vaccinations for teachers.

With about 90 million adult Americans remaining unvaccinated, and vaccines remaining unauthorised for 12 years and under, Collins told ABC News This Week with George Stephanopoulos that “the largest number of children so far in the whole pandemic right now are in the hospital, 1,450 kids in the hospital from Covid-19.”

Tesla Inc is telling workers at its Nevada battery factory they will be required to wear a mask indoors starting Monday regardless of vaccination status, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Workers at the Reno, Nevada-area facility had previously been required to wear a mask if they were not vaccinated, but could avoid that requirement if they were, the Journal said.

Tesla is the latest company to mandate masks after the Delta variant forced the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to reverse course and recommend that even fully vaccinated individuals wear masks indoors, Reuters reports.

France’s health minister has appealed for volunteer doctors and nurses to travel to the overseas territories of Guadalupe and Martinique as a wave of Covid-19 infections overwhelms hospitals on the two Caribbean islands.
health minister Olivier Veran said the first medical staff would fly out on Tuesday, as health authorities race to administer Covid-19 doses but come up against a deep-rooted culture of vaccine-hesitancy. Only 21% of the populations of Guadalupe and Martinique have received a first dose of a vaccine, according to the independent COVIDTracker website citing August 5th data, compared with two thirds of all French people having received one dose and 55% being fully vaccinated. Veran said Martinique and Guadalupe were facing “an intense wave of infections” that was hitting a population where vaccination levels were too low.

The competition watchdog has been asked by Sajid Javid to investigate the market for PCR travel tests.

The UK’s health secretary said he wanted to ensure consumers did not face “unnecessarily high costs”.

In a letter, Javid said: “We have all experienced enormous disruption to our lives over this pandemic, but it is not right if some families experience yet further disruption unnecessarily because of potentially unfair practices in the market for private travel tests.

“It is important that the sensible measures we have introduced at the borders are fair and transparent and don’t involve unnecessary costs or low quality provision to people who have made so many sacrifices during this pandemic.”

He asked the watchdog to conduct a “rapid high-level review of the market for PCR travel tests to assess what action might be taken to ensure that consumers do not face unnecessarily high costs or other poor provision”.

Mexico’s president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said that he will talk by phone with U.S. vice president Kamala Harris on Monday, citing Covid-19 vaccines as one of the issues the two leaders plan to discuss.

During the Olympic closing ceremony in Tokyo, International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach said: “You were competing fiercely with each other in pursuit of Olympic gold.

“At the same time you were living together in peace. This is a powerful message of solidarity and peace.

“For the first time since the pandemic began the entire world came together. Sport returned to centre stage … This gives us hope. This give us faith in the future.”

During the ceremony, the flame was handed over by video link to Paris 2024.

Former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said not requiring masks for students in the US as they return to full-day, in-person learning was reckless, telling CBS News: “No business would do that responsibly and yet that’s what we’re going to be doing in some schools.”
He also urged schools and families to utilise higher-quality masks to protect against the more contagious Delta variant, noting that Utah was providing KN95 masks for every student, Reuters reports.

France has reported 28 new coronavirus deaths in hospital, Reuters reports.
France has had over 112,000 deaths overall. It has also reported 1,556 people in intensive care units for Covid-19.

Parents in Japan are sending bags of rice that weigh the same as their newborn babies to relatives who are unable to visit them due to the pandemic.

The bags come in a wide range of designs, with some shaped like a baby wrapped in a blanket so that relatives can feel as though they are hugging the new arrival while looking at a picture of their face, which is attached to the front.

The amount of rice in the bag is matched to the newborn’s birth weight and the price increases in parallel with the size of the baby. Some firms charge one yen a gram, with a 3.5kg pack priced 3,500 yen (£22.90).