Covid live news: official cases in Africa pass 10m; London hospital chief says 10% of staff unvaccinated

Greece has announced that people who have not received their coronavirus booster jabs by 1 February will be barred from most indoor venues, Agence-France-Presse reports.

In an interview with Ant1, health minister Thanos Plevris said:

From February 1, anyone who has not taken the booster dose after a seven month period (from the second dose) will be considered unvaccinated.

The certificate will be valid, because it is a European certificate valid for nine months, but they will not be able to have the privileges and advantages as to access indoor and other activities that are for the fully vaccinated.

Since mid-November, unvaccinated people have been largely barred from indoor spaces, including restaurants, cinemas, museums and gyms, even if they test negative for Covid-19.

A leaked briefing from the UK’s Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) shows a backlog of 250,000 PCR tests this week.

The Sunday Times’ Shaun Lintern said the backlog affected 4,600 care homes and 70 prisons. In some cases, testing was so delayed in labs that they became void, he said.

The boss of one of London’s busiest hospitals has said he is worried about losing staff when new rules come in requiring them to be vaccinated, BBC News reports.

King’s College hospital’s chief executive, Clive Kay, said 10% of his staff of 14,000 were still unvaccinated. He said staff were “not being forced” to have the jab, but instead “being encouraged”. He added:

There’s a possibility if they choose not to be vaccinated they could be redeployed. And if we can’t find that opportunity to redeploy them then the consequence is that they will [not have a job].

Asked how many frontline staff he could lose under the law change, he replied:

I am confident that we are already seeing a number of staff choosing to be vaccinated. I don’t want at this stage to predict or give any numbers.

The US and Japan have reached an agreement to keep American troops within their bases amid concerns over a surge in Covid cases that has been linked to US military bases.

Starting Monday, US military personnel are confirmed to base facilities except for “essential activities”, a statement from the US Forces in Japan and the Japanese foreign ministry said.

The allies will share information and cooperate on coronavirus measures, “given the extraordinary virulence of the Omicron variant spreading throughout Japan,” the statement said.

Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, has come under increasing pressure to address outbreaks that began at US military facilities last month and have since spread to the local civilian population.

The Netherlands’ new finance minister Sigrid Kaag has said she will miss the ceremonial inauguration of the new Dutch government on Monday after testing positive for Covid.

She tweeted today: “I have tested positive for Corona. It will be a slightly different start than I had hoped for.

“My installation will take place digitally. Luckily I feel fine.”

A mandatory vaccination order would not be the most efficient way to encourage people to get vaccinated, French government spokesperson Gabriel Attal said.

People in France must currently show either proof of vaccination or a negative test to enter restaurants, bars or use inter-regional trains. But with Omicron cases surging, parliament is debating legislation that will drop the test options.

President Emmanuel Macron this week said he wanted to irritate the unvaccinated by making their lives so difficult they would get the jab, Reuters reports.

Here’s a useful thread on case rates in England and in particular, London, by Oliver Johnson, professor of information theory at Bristol University.

He points out that the seven-day average across England is down but data from London suggests the Omicron wave has not dropped as scientists had hoped.

Although the situation “could all be very much worse”, he warns that recorded deaths – which have been a mess because of holiday reporting – will likely get worse for a while.

Overall, he estimates that England could reach 25,000 Covid deaths in the six months since the so-called “Freedom Day”. He concludes:

Everything could be worse, it isn’t as bad as it has been in the past, but it’s not nothing either, and it may not be reasonable to expect that everything sorts itself out in the next couple of weeks.

Three people have been arrested for breaking India’s coronavirus measures after police raided a dog’s lavish birthday party.

The gathering in Gujarat’s Ahmedabad city was held to celebrate the second birthday of Abby, an Indian Spitz, and was attended by its owners as well as their family and friends. According to police, the birthday event cost 700,000 rupees (nearly £7,000) and featured an elaborate birthday cake, a performance by a popular folk singer and giant photo cutouts of the canine guest of honour.

Social media footage from the event showed a crowd of people dancing in front of an ornate stage in defiance of local social distancing rules and without masks. The video went viral and was seen by Gujarat police.

“We got information about a big party going on, so we raided the venue,” police inspector V.D. Zala told Agence-France-Presse. “As per Covid protocol, it is necessary to take permission before organising a party. The organisers are responsible for ensuring social distancing among guests.”

The three men arrested for their role in staging the event were later released on bail.

Covid should be treated as an endemic virus similar to flu, and ministers should end mass vaccination after the booster campaign, the former chairman of the UK’s vaccine taskforce has said.

With health chiefs and senior Tories also lobbying for a post-pandemic plan for a straining NHS, Dr Clive Dix called for a major rethink of the UK’s Covid strategy, in effect reversing the approach of the past two years and returning to a “new normality”.

“We need to analyse whether we use the current booster campaign to ensure the vulnerable are protected, if this is seen to be necessary,” he said. “Mass population-based vaccination in the UK should now end.”

He said ministers should urgently back research into Covid immunity beyond antibodies to include B-cells and T-cells (white blood cells). This could help create vaccines for vulnerable people specific to Covid variants, he said, adding: “We now need to manage disease, not virus spread. So stopping progression to severe disease in vulnerable groups is the future objective.”

Read the full article here:

Related: End mass jabs and live with Covid, says ex-head of vaccine taskforce

More on the Philippines, after the country set a record for new 28,707 Covid infections for a second consecutive day.

A senior government official confirmed an increase in hospital beds and medical resources in and around the capital Manila have been ordered, Reuters reports.

Nearly 60% of the cases recorded today came from the capital region, which has seen a steady increase in admissions in recent days, although government data showed hospital capacity still below critical levels.

Health authorities have also been instructed to push vaccination rates outside the region, acting presidential spokesperson Karlo Nograles said in a statement.

According to figures from the African Union’s health watchdog and seen by Agence-France-Presse, Africa has registered a total of more than 10m cases since the start of the pandemic.

As of Saturday 10,028,508 cases have been reported by the African Union’s 55 member states, data by the Africa Centres for Disease Control shows.

South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, Ethiopia and Libya are among the countries with the highest number of cases on the continent.

The total recorded Covid-19 death count in Africa stands at 231,157, the CDC said.

In the spring of 2020, Hart Island, a mile from City Island in the Bronx, was a focal point of grief in New York. It was here, at the city’s public cemetery or potter’s field, the final resting place of more than a million people, that officials ordered trenches dug to accommodate those the coronavirus was expected to kill.

The trenches were never filled. Many bodies were returned to funeral parlours or stored in mobile freezers on Randall’s Island, better known for music festivals and the Frieze art fair than cold storage of corpses.

Last week, as New York was once again in the grip of a pandemic spike, the ferry jetty was devoid of morbid feelings, even with infections running at a 35% positivity rate, close to five times the peak of last winter.

“We haven’t seen anyone here – or any of the trucks coming like they used to,” said one Hart Island worker.

The winter Covid wave has hit the Bronx hard. The borough has the city’s highest positivity rate, in some neighbourhoods near 50%. But for many this wave feels different, not least in the way leaders and health officials are treating it.

Read the full story here:

Related: Omicron drives Covid surge but New York a long way from pandemic’s early days

Wales may reach its peak of infections in around two weeks, the Welsh first minister Mark Drakeford has said.

Modelling shows there will be a “relatively rapid decline” after this point and the government should then be able to step down its coronavirus measures, he said.

Drakeford defended a recent comment that the UK government was the “outlier” in not introducing further restrictions, adding:

Wales is following the same path of putting protections in place that is being followed by Scotland, Northern Ireland, and not just devolved governments in the UK, but governments across Europe and across the world.

The questions as to why the UK government has decided not to follow that course of action are for them to answer, not for me.

Russia reported 16,246 new Covid cases in the latest 24 hour period, health officials said, bringing the country’s total number of cases to 10,650,849.

A further 763 deaths of patients with coronavirus were also confirmed, bringing the total death toll to 316,163.

Lateral flow tests will remain free, the UK’s education secretary Nadhim Zahawi has insisted amid reports they could be scaled back despite soaring Covid cases.

The Sunday Times had reported that prime minister Boris Johnson would announce that free tests would be axed and limited to high-risk settings and for people with symptoms.

But speaking to Sky News’ Trevor Phillips this morning, Zahawi said he was “slightly puzzled” by the report and that tests would continue to be available for free. He said:

I saw that story this morning, which I was slightly puzzled by because I don’t recognise it at all. This is absolutely not where we are at.

For January alone 425 million lateral flow tests (are) coming in and they will continue to be available for free.

I don’t really recognise where that story is coming from.

Asked whether there are plans to stop lateral flow tests being free, Zahawi replied: “Absolutely not.”

London’s public health chief has said the Omicron variant “may have passed its peak” in the UK capital. Speaking to Sky News’ Trevor Phillips this morning, Prof Kevin Fenton said:

Data from the ONS (Office for National Statistics) suggests that the peak may have occurred at or just about the New Year period.

We’re seeing reductions in overall case rates across the city and the prevalence of infection within the community.

But he warned infection levels are still “very, very high” and that more than one in 10 Londoners are still infected with the disease.

It means we’re not yet out of this critical phase of the pandemic, although we may well be past its peak.

For the second day in a row, the Philippines has reported a record number of new Covid-19 cases. Health officials today confirmed 28,707 new infections, up from 26,458 cases the previous day.

The total number of active cases reached 128,114, the highest in more than three months. This comprises 4.3% of all confirmed cases.

Earlier this week, the country’s president Rodrigo Duterte ordered the arrest of unvaccinated people who violate stay-at-home orders aimed at curbing “galloping” cases driven by the Omicron variant.

Hello and welcome to The Guardian’s rolling coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Léonie Chao-Fong. Here’s a rundown of all the most recent news from around the world:

• Tianjin, a major Chinese port city near Beijing, has begun mass-testing its 14m residents after a cluster of 20 children and adults tested positive for Covid-19, including at least two with the Omicron variant. Residents have been told that they must obtain a negative test result in order to receive a “green” code on smartphone Covid-tracing apps in order to use public transport and in other situations.
• The Philippines broke its own record for the highest single-day tally of new Covid-19 cases on Sunday, with 28,707 new infections reported by the health department. Acting presidential spokesperson Karlo Nograles has reportedly denied rumours that a “total lockdown” will be imposed in the country.
• Cutting the self-isolation period to five days would be “helpful”, the UK’s former vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi has said. Zahawi became the first government minister to publicly support the reduction of the Covid isolation period from seven to five days, amid staffing pressures across many private and public sectors.
• The dissident Iranian poet and filmmaker Baktash Abtin, 48, has died after contracting Covid-19 in a hospital in Tehran after being released on a furlough from prison where he was infected twice, Iranian news agencies said on Saturday. Abtin was serving a six-year sentence for “anti-government propaganda” and “actions against national security”.
• Moderna donated 2.7m doses of coronavirus vaccines to Mexico, after the country exceeded 300,000 test-confirmed coronavirus deaths this week. The Mexican government said the doses will go to teachers as the country tries to return to fully in-person learning.
• More than 150,000 people have died in the UK from coronavirus since the start of the pandemic, according to government figures. Britain on Saturday became the seventh country to pass the milestone after the US, Brazil, India, Russia, Mexico and Peru.
• Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon has warned Boris Johnson that axing universal free lateral flow tests would be an “utterly wrongheaded” approach to dealing with coronavirus. Her warnings came after reports that tests could be limited to high-risk settings – such as care homes, hospitals and schools – and to people with symptoms.
• More than 105,000 people took to the streets across France on Saturday in protest against the introduction of a new coronavirus pass that would in effect ban unvaccinated people from public life. Interior Ministry officials said 34 people were arrested and 10 police officers were injured after the protests turned violent in some places.
• The US has administered more than 518m doses of coronavirus vaccines as of Saturday morning and distributed 639.7m doses, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Please do get in touch with me on Twitter or by email if you have anything to flag you think we should be covering.

Tianjin, a major Chinese port city near the capital Beijing, has begun mass-testing its 14 million residents after a cluster of 20 children and adults tested positive for Covid-19, including at least two with the Omicron variant.

The citywide testing, which began on Sunday, is to be completed over two days. Residents have been advised to stay at or near home to be available for the community-level nucleic-acid screening. They have been told that until they obtain a negative test result, they will not receive a “green” code on smartphone Covid-tracing apps that nearly all people in China are now required to present when using public transport and in other situations.

China has stepped up its zero-tolerance Covid-19 strategy in the run-up to the Winter Olympics, which open on 4 February in Beijing. The Chinese capital is 150km (90 miles) north-west of Tianjin and connected by a high-speed rail link that takes less than one hour.

Elsewhere in China, millions of people are being confined to their homes in Xi’an and Yuzhou, two other cities that are farther away but have larger outbreaks. The city of Zhengzhou, a provincial capital 70km (40 miles) north of Yuzhou, is also conducting mass testing and closing schools starting Monday.

China reported 165 confirmed coronavirus cases for 8 January, up from 159 a day earlier, its health authority said on Sunday.