Covid live: UK records 34,460 new cases; Germany quarantine pay to end for unvaccinated | World news

Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni has eased anti-coronavirus restrictions including allowing resumption of education for universities and other post-secondary institutions, citing a decline in infections in the country.

The east African country started experiencing a second wave of the pandemic around May which resulted in a lockdown, Reuters reports.

Some of the restrictions were lifted at the end of July after cases started to drop.

Museveni said: “The Covid-19 transmission rates in the country have continued to decline. ..the daily average number of confirmed cases over the last one month has declined and stabilised.”

An antiviral medication reduces the risk of people being admitted to hospital with Covid-19, a pharmaceutical company said.

Patients who were given a three day course of remdesivir, also known as Veklury, as an injection saw an 87% reduction in risk of being admitted to hospital with the disease or dying, Gilead Sciences announced, PA reports.

The study saw 562 patients assigned the drug or a placebo in a randomised trial.

Results also showed an 81% reduction in hospital visits or people dying 28 days after receiving the drug.

The data, from phase three of the trial, is expected to be presented at a virtual medical meeting on September 29.

Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro isolated himself at home on Wednesday and cancelled a trip after his health minister tested positive for Covid-19 and had to stay in quarantine in New York after the UN general assembly.

Brazil’s health regulator Anvisa recommended that the entire presidential delegation to the U.N. General Assembly remain in isolation and undergo more tests.

Health minister Marcelo Queiroga tested positive hours after accompanying Bolsonaro to give the first speech from a head of state at the annual assembly on Tuesday, the government said.

Bolsonaro defied U.N. rules that asked all those attending the assembly be inoculated against the coronavirus, Reuters reports.

The rapid spread of Covid makes it “inevitable” that children will be infected and have their education disrupted, making a strong case for vaccinating those aged 12 and over, the UK government’s leading medical advisers told MPs.

Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, rejected suggestions from one Conservative MP that “white boys” who have previously contracted Covid should be exempt from vaccination, saying that discrimination on that basis wasn’t practical or desirable.

Whitty and Prof Jonathan Van-Tam, the deputy chief medical officer, appeared before the Commons education committee over the decision to offer Covid vaccines to 12- to 15-year-olds, after the Joint Committee on Vaccines and Immunisation (JCVI) had said the benefits were too small.

Italy plans to give other countries 45 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines before the end of the year, three times its original pledge, prime minister Mario Draghi said.

In a video message to a U.S.-hosted global Covid-19 Summit, Draghi said his government had previously promised to donate 15 million doses of vaccine by the end of the year, Reuters reports.

“Nearly half of these have already been delivered and today I am glad to announce that we will triple our efforts. We will donate another 30 million additional doses by the end of the year to reach 45 million,” he said.

U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken said he would personally convene world foreign ministers before the end of the year to follow up on commitments made toward fighting the coronavirus pandemic, Reuters reports.

At a virtual Covid-19 summit on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, President Joe Biden earlier promised to buy 500 million more vaccine doses to donate to other countries as the US comes under increasing pressure to share its supply with the rest of the world.

Blinken said he would convene foreign ministers to follow up on commitments made at the virtual summit and at an upcoming G20 meeting, ahead of a meeting of heads of state led by Biden to be held in the first quarter of 2022.

“We have to have the sustained engagement, continuing to hold ourselves accountable, for real progress,” Blinken said.

The Reverend Jesse Jackson was released on Wednesday from a US hospital, a month after he was admitted for a Covid-19 infection and to receive physical therapy for Parkinson’s disease.

The civil rights leader and his wife, Jacqueline, were first hospitalised at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago last month, Associated Press reports.

Jesse Jackson, 79, was vaccinated for Covid-19, but his 77-year-old wife was not.

She required oxygen and a brief intensive care unit stay before she was released earlier this month.

Here is a round-up of the main Covid news stories from around the world today:

That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, as I hand over to my colleague Nadeem Badshah, who will keep you up-to-date with all the breaking coronavirus news throughout the evening. Goodbye.

As mentioned earlier this afternoon, Joe Biden has announced that the US will donate an additional 500m Covid vaccines to low- and middle-income countries around the world, bringing America’s total global donation to more than 1.1bn doses.

The US president outlined the plan on Wednesday at a virtual coronavirus summit where he urged world leaders to “go big” in tackling the pandemic and closing the vaccination gap with poorer nations.

For the full story, see below.

Spain will donate 7.5 million doses of Covid vaccine to Latin America and the Caribbean, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Wednesday.

It will provide a further 7.5 million to sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Europe, the Spanish government confirmed.

The latest pledge increases Spain’s overall commitment to the COVAX vaccine sharing programme to 30 million dose.

Police in the Canadian province of Quebec are searching for a man they suspect of punching a nurse in the face for giving his wife a Covid vaccine without his consent, a police spokesman said on Wednesday.

The man confronted the female nurse on Monday morning in the office of a pharmacy in the city of Sherbrooke, about 155 kilometres (96 miles) south-east of Montreal, where she was assigned to administer vaccines, a police spokesman, Martin Carrier, said by phone.

“Our suspect went directly into the office and began to yell at the nurse,” Carrier said.

The man appeared to be very shocked that his wife was vaccinated at the pharmacy “without his authorization”, and hit the nurse in the face, Carrier added.

Sherbrooke police are asking for the public’s help in finding the assailant, who they say has short dark hair, dark eyes, thick eyebrows and a tattoo resembling a cross on his hand.