Coronavirus live news: Germany backs limits on EU vaccine exports; South African president decries ‘vaccine nationalism’ | World news
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The German government has challenged reports of a lower-than-expected efficacy rate of the AstraZeneca vaccine for older people, while reiterating concerns about the British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant’s data reporting.
An article in German business daily Handelsblatt had reported that the German government was expecting the European Medical Agency’s (EMA) assessment to show the AstraZeneca vaccine to be only 8% effective among the over-65s, describing it a “setback for Berlin’s vaccination strategy”.
AstraZeneca instantly dismissed the reports on Monday night, saying the 8% figure was “completely incorrect”. German health minister Jens Spahn on Tuesday morning described the report as “speculation” and declined to comment while EMA’s analysis of AstraZeneca’s trial data was ongoing.
A later statement by the German health ministry suggested that the report had mixed up the efficacy rate for over 65s with the number of seniors involved in AstraZeneca’s trials.
“At first sight it appears that two things have been muddled in the reports”, said the statement. “Around 8% of participants in the AstraZeneca efficacy trials were aged between 56 and 69 years old, only three to four percent were over 70. This does not result in an efficacy of only 8% among seniors.”
But the German government also voiced concerns about AstraZeneca’s data reporting: “It has been known since the autumn that fewer seniors were included in the trials supplied by AstraZeneca than the trials of other manufacturers.”
Scientists have previously raised questions about the representative value of AstraZeneca’s trial design.
Updated
Here’s more from Jon Henley, the Guardian’s Europe correspondent, on the latest night of rioting to hit cities in the Netherlands, where mostly young people are railing against the imposition of a nighttime curfew.
About 150 people were arrested on Monday in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, where shops were vandalised and looted, and the mayor, Ahmed Aboutaleb, issued an emergency decree giving police broader powers of arrest.
“These people are shameless thieves, I cannot say otherwise,” he said. “I had to threaten them with the use of teargas – a far-reaching measure. I find that sad, because I have never had to do that in my entire career as mayor.”
But trouble also flared in smaller centres around the country such as Den Bosch, Zwolle, Amersfoort, Alkmaar, Hoorn, Gouda – where several cars were set on fire – and Haarlem, where police were attacked with stones.
Officials said the rioters, who reportedly used social media apps to organise, were overwhelmingly teenagers, and questioned the extent to which they were motivated by opposition to the 9pm curfew, which came into force on Saturday.
More than 1m cases of coronavirus have now been detected in Indonesia since the pandemic began, with the Southeast Asian country passing the milestone as it launches one of the world’s biggest vaccine drives.
Indonesia has recorded 1,012,350 virus cases and almost 29,000 deaths, according to official data. But, according to the AFP news agency, low testing rates mean the crisis is believed to be much bigger than those figures suggest.
Pandu Riono, a University of Indonesia epidemiologist, told AFP:
I think we hit one million cases of Covid-19 a long time ago. We are still climbing a mountain and we don’t even know where the peak is. This is a never-ending climb.
Indonesia is now beginning the mass distribution of vaccines, produced by Chinese company Sinovac, with health workers and other high-risk groups among the first in the queue.
The president, Joko Widodo, received the country’s first Covid-19 jab on live television along with his health minister, several senior officials, as well as business and religious leaders.
The Guardian US has an interesting story just out on allegations that employers in the country are exploiting coronavirus-related unemployment as tool to attack unions. Michael Sainato writes:
Dalroy Connell has worked as a stagehand for the Portland Trailblazers since 1995 when the basketball team began playing games at the Rose Garden Arena. When the pandemic hit the US in March 2020, public events were shut down and NBA games were briefly suspended before the season moved to a “bubble” in Orlando, Florida, and the season recommenced without fans in July 2020.
Connell and his colleagues have been on unemployment ever since, but when the 2020-2021 NBA season began in December 2020, instead of bringing back several of these workers, the Portland Trailblazers replaced most of the unionized crew who work their games with non-union workers, even as their jobs running the sound and lighting equipment are required whether or not fans are in attendance.
Like many workers around the US Connell believes he has been locked out from his job by a company that has used the coronavirus pandemic as a tool to break unions.
The Philippines has abandoned plans to relax it’s lockdown by allowing some children out of their homes after the country confirmed domestic transmission of the highly contagious British variant of coronavirus.
“Right now, we have local transmission where this individual or these cases with the variant have already infected their community, their family,” the ealth undersecretary, Maria Rosario Vergeire, told news channel ANC on Tuesday. Reuters has the story:
The world is scrambling to contain the spread of the B.1.1.7 variant, despite travel bans, new lockdowns and a tightening quarantine measures in dozens of countries, amid concerns it could not only be more transmissible, but deadlier.
The Philippine health ministry said the B.1.1.7 variant had spread among 12 people in Bontoc, a mountainous northern province, with 17 such cases in the country.
Its first case of the British variant was found in a Filipino who had travelled from the United Arab Emirates.
Citing the British variant, the president, Rodrigo Duterte, said he had scrapped a plan to allow children ages 10 to 14 in low-risk areas to go outside the home starting on 1 February.
The Philippines, which has imposed some of the world’s toughest coronavirus restrictions, including internal travel bans, has since March last year officially prohibited minors from leaving the home.
Richard Partington, the Guardian’s economics correspondent, has now written on the UK unemployment figures published by the Office for National Statistics this morning.
Unemployment in the UK has reached the highest level for more than four years as the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic and tougher lockdown measures place more pressure on businesses and workers.
The Office for National Statistics said the unemployment rate rose to 5% in the three months to the end of November – representing more than 1.7 million people – from 4.9% in the three months to the end of October, reaching the highest level since April 2016. Unemployment was 4% in February before the pandemic struck.
In a snapshot of the jobs market during the second English lockdown and as tough restrictions were imposed in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to limit the spread of Covid-19, the ONS said redundancies hit a record high during the quarter.