Coronavirus live news: UN says 130 countries have not received a single vaccine dose – The Guardian

Hong Kong’s government on Thursday approved the Chinese-made Sinovac coronavirus vaccine for emergency use after a panel of experts fast-tracked its recommendation despite the drug’s comparatively low efficacy, AFP reports.

“The first batch of one million jabs of Sinovac vaccines will arrive in Hong Kong soon,” the government statement said.

Local media reported that the first vaccinations could arrive as soon as Friday, finally kicking off the financial hub’s delayed inoculation drive.

But officials may face an uphill task persuading residents to take Sinovac’s shots in a city where public distrust of Chinese authorities runs deep.

On Tuesday, a government advisory panel unanimously supported Sinovac saying the benefits of authorising its use outweighed the risks.

Unlike rival vaccines such as those from Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca, SinoVac has yet to submit its third phase clinical trial data to medical journals for peer review.

Sinovac has been exempted from that hurdle by Hong Kong officials and told they could instead give the information directly to the experts.

US federal agents have seized more than 10 million fake 3M brand N95 masks in recent weeks, the result of an ongoing investigation into counterfeits sold in at least five states to hospitals, medical facilities and government agencies, AP reports.

The most recent seizures occurred Wednesday when Homeland Security agents intercepted hundreds of thousands of counterfeit 3M masks in an East Coast warehouse that were set to be distributed, officials said.

Investigators also notified about 6,000 potential victims in at least 12 states including hospitals, medical facilities and others who may have unknowingly purchased knockoffs, urging them to stop using the medical-grade masks. Officials encouraged medical workers and companies to go to 3Ms website for tips on how to spot fakes.

“Not only do they give a false sense of security, how dangerous is the exposed individual without any protective gear? They have no utility whatsoever,” Homeland Security Secretary Ali Mayorkas said of the fake masks.

The masks do not come through 3M’s regular distributors, they come from outside the normal supply chain, officials said. But hospitals and medical groups have increasingly gone around normal purchasing routines during mask shortages in the global pandemic, officials said. They said the scams are taking advantage of the panic over masks.

Homeland Security officials would not say which states the phony masks were sent to, but said criminal charges would be forthcoming.

The phony masks are not tested to see whether they meet strict N95 standards and could put frontline medical workers at risk if they are used while treating patients.

A first shipment of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against Covid could reach Mexico as soon as Saturday, Mexico’s Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez Gatell said on Wednesday.

The Mexican government has agreed to purchase 24 million doses of the vaccine, he added.

Germany’s BioNTech SE plans to provide Covid vaccine to Taiwan, the company said, after the island complained the firm in December pulled out of a deal to buy 5 million doses at the last minute, possibly due to Chinese pressure, Reuters reports.

Taiwan Health Minister Chen Shih-chung on Wednesday said officials were on the verge of announcing the deal in December when BioNTech pulled the plug, though added that the deal was still pending and had not been torn up.

While he did not directly say China was to blame, Chen implied there was a political dimension to the decision and that he had been worried about “outside forces intervening,” hence his caution in discussing the planned deal publicly at the time.

In an emailed statement late Wednesday, the company said it was planning on providing vaccine to Taiwan.

“BioNTech is committed to help bringing an end to the pandemic for people across the world and we intend to supply Taiwan with our vaccine as part of this global commitment. Discussions are ongoing and BioNTech will provide an update.”

China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory, has repeatedly sparred with the island over the coronavirus pandemic.

Taiwan has been angered by China’s assertion only it can speak for the island on the international stage about the subject, while Taiwan has accused China of lack of transparency.

A new report suggests the pandemic could present an opportunity to make the New Zealand’s tourism sector less environmentally harmful, but some operators are not so sure – the Guardian’s Elle Hunt takes a look:

Devastating winter storms sweeping the US have injected confusion and frustration into the nation’s Covid-19 vaccination drive, snarling deliveries and forcing the cancellation of thousands of shots around the country.

Across a large swath of the US, including deep south states such as Georgia and Alabama, the snowy, slippery weather either led to the closing of vaccination sites outright or held up the necessary shipments, with delays expected to continue for days.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday that states would face serious delays in receiving doses, with dangerous road conditions and power outages hampering delivery. In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio said doses expected this week were delayed by weather elsewhere in the country, forcing the city to hold off making 30,000 to 35,000 vaccination appointments:

China reported 11 new mainland Covid cases on 17 February official data showed on Thursday, up from seven a day earlier but once again there were no locally transmitted infections.

The National Health Commission said in a statement that all new cases were imported infections that originated from overseas. New asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed Covid cases, rose to 20 from six a day earlier.

The total number of confirmed Covid cases in mainland China now stands at 89,806, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,636.

Japanese Olympics Minister Seiko Hashimoto intends to accept the job of head of the beleaguered Tokyo 2020 games – postponed last year due to the pandemic – the organising committee for the games in Japan, Kyodo news agency said on Thursday, replacing Yoshiro Mori, who resigned after making sexist remarks.

Covid infections have fallen by two-thirds in a month in England but the virus is now spreading most among primary-age children and young people, research suggests.

The React 1 study from Imperial College London points to the third national lockdown having significantly curbed the spread of the coronavirus despite the emergence of new variants.

Prevalence remains high however, with about one in 200 people infected with Covid between 4 and 13 February, compared with about three times that number between 6 and 21 January, the interim findings showed.

The Guardian’s Nicola Davis and Sarah Boseley report:

Here is the full story on the UN warning that 130 countries have yet to receive a single vaccine dose:

A laboratory study suggests that the South African variant of the coronavirus may reduce antibody protection from the Pfizer Inc/BioNTech SE vaccine by two-thirds, and it is not clear if the shot will be effective against the mutation, the companies said on Wednesday.

Reuters: The study found the vaccine was still able to neutralise the virus and there is not yet evidence from trials in people that the variant reduces vaccine protection, the companies said.

Still, they are making investments and talking to regulators about developing an updated version of their mRNA vaccine or a booster shot, if needed.

For the study, scientists from the companies and the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) developed an engineered virus that contained the same mutations carried on the spike portion of the highly contagious coronavirus variant first discovered in South Africa, known as B.1.351. The spike, used by the virus to enter human cells, is the primary target of many Covid vaccines.

Researchers tested the engineered virus against blood taken from people who had been given the vaccine, and found a two- thirds reduction in the level of neutralizing antibodies compared with its effect on the most common version of the virus prevalent in US trials.

Their findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

Because there is no established benchmark yet to determine what level of antibodies are needed to protect against the virus, it is unclear whether that two-thirds reduction will render the vaccine ineffective against the variant spreading around the world.

However, UTMB professor and study co-author Pei-Yong Shi said he believes the Pfizer vaccine will likely be protective against the variant.

“We don’t know what the minimum neutralising number is. We don’t have that cutoff line,” he said, adding that he suspects the immune response observed is likely to be significantly above where it needs to be to provide protection.

Even if the concerning variant significantly reduces effectiveness, the vaccine should still help protect against severe disease and death, he noted. Health experts have said that is the most important factor in keeping stretched healthcare systems from becoming overwhelmed.

One in five diabetes patients admitted to hospital with Covid-19 die within 28 days, research suggests.

PA media: Results from an ongoing study by the University of Nantes in France also showed that one in eight diabetes patients admitted to hospital with coronavirus were still in hospital 28 days after they first arrived.

Diabetes UK said understanding which people with the condition are at a higher risk if they are admitted to hospital with Covid-19 will help to improve care and save lives.

The findings show that within 28 days of being in hospital 577 of the 2,796 patients studied (21%) had died, while almost 50% (1,404) had been discharged from hospital, with a typical stay of nine days.

Around 12% remained in hospital at day 28, while 17% had been transferred to a different facility to their initial hospital.

The authors of the Coronado (Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and Diabetes Outcomes) study, published in the Diabetologia journal, said: “The identification of favourable variables associated with hospital discharge and unfavourable variables associated with death can lead to patient reclassification and help to use resources adequately according to individual patient profile.”

In May last year, earlier results from the study, based on smaller sample of people, suggested that 10% of Covid patients with diabetes died within seven days of a hospital admission.

Dr Faye Riley, senior research communications officer at Diabetes UK, said the study supports previous research which showed certain risk factors, such as older age and a history of diabetes complications, “put people with diabetes at higher risk of harm if they catch coronavirus”.

“It also provides fresh insight into factors that are linked with a quicker recovery from the virus,” she said.

The United Nations on Wednesday led calls for a coordinated global effort to vaccinate against Covid-19, warning that gaping inequities in initial efforts put the whole planet at risk, AFP reports.

Foreign ministers met virtually for a first-ever UN Security Council session on vaccinations called by current chair Britain, which said the world had a “moral duty” to act together against the pandemic that has killed more than 2.4 million people.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres voiced alarm that just 10 nations have administered 75 percent of doses so far – and 130 countries have received no doses.

“The world urgently needs a global vaccination plan to bring together all those with the required power, scientific expertise and production and financial capacities,” Guterres said.

He said the Group of 20 major economies was in the best position to set up a task force on financing and implementation of global vaccinations and offered full support of the United Nations.

“If the virus is allowed to spread like wildfire in the Global South, it will mutate again and again. New variants could become more transmissible, more deadly and, potentially, threaten the effectiveness of current vaccines and diagnostics,” Guterres said.

“This can prolong the pandemic significantly, enabling the virus to come back to plague the Global North.”

Henrietta Fore, head of the UN children’s agency UNICEF, said: “The only way out of this pandemic for any of us is to ensure vaccinations are available for all of us.”

Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan.

As always, you can find me on Twitter @helenrsullivan.

After the good news yesterday from the WHO that global new infections had dropped by 16% in the last week, and new deaths by 10%, today the UN has a bleaker message: 10 countries have administered 75% of the world’s vaccines while 130 countries have yet to receive a single dose.

This comes from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who, speaking at the UN Security Council, said, “The world urgently needs a global vaccination plan to bring together all those with the required power, scientific expertise and production and financial capacities.”

Here is a summary of the key developments from the last few hours from my colleague Nicola Slawson:

• The pandemic has added $24tn to the global debt mountain over the last year a new study has shown, leaving it at a record $281tn and the worldwide debt-to-GDP ratio at over 355%.
• Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Wednesday the country would enter a gradual normalisation period, province by province, in March. Weekend lockdowns, which have been in place since December, would be lifted gradually on a provincial basis subject to low infection numbers, he said.
• Spain will administer AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine to people aged 45 to 55 in the next phase of its national inoculation plan, as new figures showed the third wave of infection receding further.
• Cyprus plans to reopen its airports with the help of a colour-coded health risk assessment from 1 March, applicable to travellers from its main tourism markets and the EU, authorities said on Wednesday.
• One in five diabetes patients admitted to hospital with Covid-19 die within 28 days, research suggests. Results from an ongoing study by the University of Nantes in France also showed that one in eight diabetes patients admitted to hospital with coronavirus were still in hospital 28 days after they first arrived.
• Central European countries asked the European council president, Charles Michel, to help ease tighter controls imposed by Germany on the Czech and Austrian borders to free up the flow of goods and industrial components, the Czech prime minister, Andrej Babis, said on Wednesday.