Covid news live: US deaths rise 40% on last week, CDC says; German chancellor calls for mandatory vaccination of all adults

Israel has also reported a new daily record of 43,815 Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, according to the ministry of health.

Citing official figures released Wednesday, the Times of Israel said that out of 360,038 virus tests carried out, 12.09% returned positive, the highest value since September 29, 2020, when it was 15.29%.

The number of seriously ill patients was 254, one fewer than the day before, and of those, 84 are considered critical.

Norway has surpassed 10,000 daily Covid cases for the first time, breaking a new record for a second day in a row on Wednesday.

A total of 11,825 new infections were reported in the last 24 hours after 9,622 new cases of infection were registered on Tuesday, local media reports.

The figure is an increase of 4,960 on the previous seven-day average of 6,865.

Teachers in France will walk off the job en masse on Thursday over what they say is the government’s failure to adopt a coherent policy for schools to manage the Covid-19 pandemic, or properly protect pupils and staff against infection.

Teachers, parents and school administrators have struggled to keep up with new testing rules, announced before the end of Christmas holidays but changed twice since following criticism, Reuters reports.

The government, having reversed an earlier policy of quickly shutting down classes with positive coronavirus cases, says some degree of complication is the price to pay for keeping schools open.

But a new-year surge in infections to record daily levels close to 370,000 in France has led to cases soaring within schools too.

That has meant many schools have been hard pressed to keep teaching anyway, partly because of infections among pupils and staff but also because each positive case has resulted in dozens being sent to labs and pharmacies for testing.

Eleven unions said in a joint statement:

The exhaustion and exasperation of the entire educational community have reached an unprecedented level.

The responsibility of the minister and the government in this chaotic situation is total because of incessant changes of footing, unworkable protocols and the lack of appropriate tools to guarantee (schools) can function properly.”

Unions said they expected many schools to be closed on Thursday and very large numbers of teachers – including about 75% in primary schools – to join the one-day strike.

Urging teachers not to walk off the job, Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer told BFM TV: “One does not strike against a virus.”

In response, unions said they had called the strike not against a virus but over disorganisation caused by the test and contact-tracing rules, heightened contagion risk and a shortage of face masks for staff.

Quebec’s proposal to tax unvaccinated people may be lawful but may also go against the spirit of Canada’s universal public health system, rights and medical experts say.

Premier François Legault announced the new “contribution” for the unvaccinated on Tuesday, though his government would not say how the tax would be levied, when or against whom.

Canada’s Civil Liberties Association said it could violate Canadians’ fundamental rights, while health advocates expressed concern about its broader implications.

Danyaal Raza, a doctor with Unity Health in Toronto and former chair of Canadian Doctors for Medicare, told Reuters:

I’ve not seen anything like this in Canada before. I’m worried about the precedent it would set.”

© Provided by The Guardian
A man walks along Ste-Catherine Street in Montreal, on 2 January. Photograph: Canadian Press/REX/Shutterstock

Dr Yv Bonnier-Viger, public health director of the Gaspé region, asked Quebec to “think seriously” about the repercussions of such a measure, saying: “these are not measures that correspond to public health values” in an interview with Montreal’s CTV news.

I think that we would be completely forgetting our system of coverage and universal health insurance. We know that about 40 per cent of illnesses are preventable. If we start taxing all the sick people for the bad decisions they made at some point in their lives, we’re going off the rails.”

Cara Zwibel, acting general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said it might however violate Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms if viewed as “a way of compelling people to get vaccinated”.

McGill University biomedical ethicist Phoebe Friesen was also concerned the logic of taxing unvaccinated people could be extrapolated to other behaviours seen as driving health spending such as obesity, but that are tied to marginalisation.

If you want to be consistent and logical, you should charge all sorts of people for their hospitalisation if it’s based on behaviour that they’re ‘responsible’ for,” she said “… And it’s incredibly tricky to figure out what that looks like.”

Quebec, Canada’s second-most populous province, is struggling with surging Covid hospitalisations. The province’s public health director stepped down earlier this week citing an “erosion” of public trust in anti-pandemic measures.

Guardian reader and Montreal resident, Chris Batory, said the fact that more than 7,000 people lined up to receive their first vaccination in Quebec on Wednesday shows the strategy has worked, “for one day anyway!” he added.

“Our highest in several days,” Quebec’s health minister Christian Dubé tweeted, noting that 5,000 appointments were also made on Monday. “This is encouraging.”

Hello it’s Samantha Lock back with you on the blog, ready to take you through all the Covid news this Thursday.

Let’s start off with news from the United States where Covid hospitalisations increased by 33% and deaths are up by 40% from a week earlier, the head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Wednesday.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said US Covid cases are expected to peak in the coming weeks.

“The magnitude of this increase is largely related to the Omicron variant, which now represents about 90% of the Covid-19 cases in the country,” she told reporters.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz has argued Covid vaccinations should be mandatory for all adults as the European country reported a record of 80,430 coronavirus infections on Wednesday.

“With the decision not to get vaccinated, one ultimately is not just making a decision for oneself but also for 80 million others,” Scholz said.

Scholz credited his new government’s measures to tighten curbs on public life and step up booster doses for preventing an even worse onslaught.

Here’s a comprehensive snapshot of how the coronavirus is unfolding across the world.

Europe:

• Switzerland will halve its quarantine time to five days.
• France is poised to lift blanket ban on UK travellers ‘by end of the week’.
• Denmark is to offer a fourth coronavirus vaccination to vulnerable citizens as it faces record infection numbers from the Omicron variant.
• Sweden will cut the recommended time interval between the second and third Covid vaccine shot to five months from six.
• Greece will extend restrictions by a week at restaurants and bars to help curb the Omicron variant.
• Doctors in Spain will be awarded up to €49,000 (£40,882) each in compensation for working without proper personal protection gear in the first few months of the pandemic.
• Boris Johnson has admitted and apologised for attending a No 10 garden drinks event in May 2020. Johnson said he went to thank staff before going back into his office 25 minutes later.
• The UK government’s operation of a “VIP lane” for suppliers of personal protective equipment during the coronavirus pandemic was illegal, a judge has ruled.
• Germany has reported 80,430 coronavirus cases – a new daily record – and 384 deaths, according to figures from the Robert Koch Institute.
• Austria also set a new record of 18,427 daily Covid cases.
• Russia’s deputy prime minister Tatiana Golikova said that the government will prepare new measures to combat Covid by the end of the week.
• More than half of people in Europe could contract the Omicron in the next two months if infections continue at current rates, the WHO said.

Asia:

• China is battling coronavirus outbreaks in several cities, severely testing the country’s strict “zero-Covid” strategy just weeks before Beijing hosts the Winter Olympics. The northern city of Tianjin has ordered a second round of Covid testing on all 14 million residents after the discovery of 97 cases of the Omicron variant during initial screenings that began Sunday.
• A Chinese woman became an overnight sensation after she posted video diaries documenting her life after being stuck at a blind date’s house when the city was put under lockdown. Story here.
• In Australia, state and territory leaders will consider relaxing isolation requirements for the trucking and logistics sector, as the prime minister, Scott Morrison, calls for patience over the country’s disrupted supply chains.
• Novak Djokovic has blamed his agent for an “administrative mistake” when declaring he had not travelled in the two weeks before his flight to Australia and acknowledged an “error of judgment” by not isolating after he tested positive for Covid.

Americas: