Covid news: UK reports 43,992 cases and 54 deaths; protests in Brussels turn violent – as it happened

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Failure to vaccinate the world against coronavirus created the perfect breeding ground for the emergence of the Omicron variant and should serve as a wake-up call to wealthy nations, campaigners have said.

Scientists and global health experts have called for action since the summer to tackle the crisis of vaccine inequality between rich and poor countries. The longer large parts of the world remained unvaccinated, they said, the more likely the virus was to mutate significantly.

The emergence of such a variant threatens to derail efforts to end the pandemic. The World Health Organization says the heavily mutated Omicron variant is likely to spread internationally and poses a very high risk of infection surges that may have severe consequences in some places.

“Omicron is with us because we have failed to vaccinate the world,” said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAids and co-chair of the People’s Vaccine Alliance, a campaign group. “This should be a wake-up call.

Read the full story from our reporter Andrew Gregory here.

US health officials said early indications suggest the Omicron variant may be less dangerous than Delta, which continues to drive a surge of hospitalisations.

US president Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, Dr Anthony Fauci, told CNN that scientists need more information before drawing conclusions about Omicron’s severity.

Reports from South Africa, where it emerged and is becoming the dominant strain, suggest that hospitalisation rates have not increased alarmingly.

Fauci said:

“Thus far, it does not look like there’s a great degree of severity to it. But we have really got to be careful before we make any determinations that it is less severe or it really doesn’t cause any severe illness, comparable to Delta.”

A Norwegian Cruise Line ship with at least 10 passengers and crew members infected with Covid-19 docked on Sunday in New Orleans, where health officials said they were trying to disembark people without worsening the spread of the coronavirus illness, the Associated Press reports.

Local news outlets in New Orleans confirmed the Norwegian Breakaway had arrived in the city. The ship departed New Orleans on 28 November.

The Louisiana Department of Health said in a late Saturday news release that over the past week, the ship made stops in Belize, Honduras and Mexico.

Norwegian Cruise Line issued a statement that confirmed a “handful of Covid-19 cases among guests and crew.” The company said all of the identified cases involved people without symptoms of the illness.

“We are testing all individuals on Norwegian Breakaway prior to disembarkation, as well as providing post-exposure and quarantine public health guidance by the (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention),” the company’s statement said. “Any guests who have tested positive for Covid-19 will travel by personal vehicle to their personal residence or self-isolate in accommodations provided by the company.”

Hello I’m Samantha Lock reporting from Sydney, Australia, as we begin our new week.

As usual, let’s start off with some Covid numbers out of Australia.

The state of NSW has recorded 208 new Covid-19 cases overnight and no deaths. Victoria’s daily case numbers are once again above 1,000, with 1,073 new infections recorded in the last reporting period. Sadly, six people infected with the virus have died.

Here’s a rundown of Sunday’s international developments with Covid and Omicron.

• Protests against Covid restictions in Brussels, Belgium bubbled over into violent clashes between demonstrators and police for the second time in two weeks. Police fired tear gas and water cannon while protestors threw cobblestones.
• Denmark reported a “concerning” jump to 183 total Omicron strain cases. The country has a highly developed sequencing regime but the surge is still worrying for its speed.
• The UK reported a total 246 Omicron cases, alongside 43,992 infections and 54 deaths, as ministers were told by one government scientific advisor it’s already too late to suppress Omicron with restrictions.
  
• States in India updated Covid death statistics, inflating the daily death tally to its highest rate since 21 July. Bihar state added 2,426 unrecorded deaths and Kerala added 263 deaths. The country confirmed a total 12 Omicron cases.
• The first Omicron case was detected in Tunisia.
  
• The World Health Organization continues to reject travel bans against southern African countries, with Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeting it is “disappointing” and “dismaying” to see bans on flights.
• The Omicron variant is now present in at least 15 US states, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said on Sunday.
• Italy reported 15,021 new Covid cases, 16% up from 12,927 on the same day last week.
• Poland detected 22,389 positive Covid infections in the past 24 hours, rising 9% on the 20,574 new cases on Sunday last week. The country recorded its worst death tally, at 570, since April on Wednesday.
• Russia confirmed October was its deadliest month in decades after spiking cases. The wave has since reduced but remains high, with a further 1,206 people dying from Covid-related causes on Sunday alongside another 32,602 infections.
• France recorded 42,252 new Covid infections in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said, a percentage change of 188% from the 14,646 cases recorded on Sunday three weeks ago. Ministers continue to see vaccination, not lockdowns, as the route out the current wave.
• Germany will introduce mandatory Covid vaccines for healthcare workers by 16 March, according to draft legislation seen by Reuters, as the new government led by incoming chancellor Olaf Scholz seeks to suppress Germany’s surging cases with jabs, not lockdowns.
• The UK’s justice secretary Dominic Raab stoked the fire of the 2020 Christmas party row, saying a “formal party” would have been “wrong” and broken the rules at the time, piling pressure on prime minister Boris Johnson.

This is me, Jem Bartholomew in London, signing off from today’s international Covid blog and handing over to my colleague Samantha Lock in Australia.

At least 300,000 housebound people in the UK unable to travel for vaccination, many of them clinically vulnerable to Covid, are yet to receive their boosters, the Telegraph reports.

That means nearly two-thirds of housebound people are yet to get the booster shot, after GPs opted out of home visits citing not enough time or staff. Ministers were accused of ignoring the most vulnerable.

Health secretary Sajid Javid said GPs would be paid a £30 incentive and be freed from over-75s health checks to speed up the rollout.

The Telegraph has further details:

Deborah Hughes, 61, from Rochester in Kent, has been trying to secure a booster vaccine for her 90-year-old mother, Mel, since the end of October.

“At the end of October, Mum became eligible for her booster jab,” she said. “Due to her housebound status, I had to ignore the text links to book a slot and contacted the surgery for guidance. I was told it was nothing to do with them and to ring the community nurses, who also told me that they hadn’t been commissioned for the programme.

“That left me with no option other than to contact Mum’s MP, who has taken up her case. Recently, it was said the time to gain immunity by Christmas was running out. If this is the case, how many elderly and vulnerable will be infected as a result of medical commissioners’ disregard and incompetence? Serious questions need to be asked regarding this failure.”

Organisers of the World Petroleum Congress in US-oil powerhouse state Texas were left scrambling to fill gaps in the agenda on Sunday, after a series of high profile speakers and attendees pulled out amid the Omicron variant’s spread.

Chief executives at BP, Sonatrach and Qatar Energy withdrew from the conference, as did the energy ministers of eight countries including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kazakhstan and Turkey.

The four-day event brings the oil industry’s main players together every three years and was rescheduled from its cancellation in 2020. A spokesperson told Reuters replacement speakers are being sought.

Disparities in the vaccine rollout see some children in England three times more likely to be vaccinated than others, House of Commons library figures revealed.

London lags behind, with just under 20% of 12- to 15-year-olds in the borough of Hackney having received at least one shot. South-east England is the only region where over half of this cohort have been inoculated.

Labour has attacked Boris Johnson’s administration over the figures as the Omicron variant circulates, with Bridget Phillipson, Labour’s new shadow education secretary, saying “the government’s lacklustre approach is putting children’s education at risk of further disruption.”

“The Conservatives have been complacent and children are paying the price. The government must get a grip and stop neglecting children’s education,” Phillipson said.

“Labour has been urging ministers to use every measure from pop-up and walk-in clinics to bringing back volunteers and retired clinicians to ramp-up vaccine rollout. This must come alongside finally introducing the ventilation in schools that Sage recommended well over a year ago.”

My colleague Richard Adams, the Guardian’s education editor, has the full story here.

In the UK, Labour’s leader of the opposition Keir Starmer called for a “renewed national effort” to deliver Covid vaccine booster shots and told prime minister Boris Johnson to “get a grip” to reignite maximum vaccination speed.

Labour warned on Sunday the programme had slowed, as an average of 435,542 jabs a day are being administered compared with a peak of 602,265 a day in March.

“With the number of vaccinations down a quarter from the peak earlier this year, we simply cannot afford for the government to take its eye off the ball in speeding up the rollout of the booster programme,” Starmer said. “The prime minister needs to break the habit of his tenure by stepping up and getting a grip.”

Stamer urged the unvaccinated to get inoculated and said it was “frustrating and worrying” medical workers are reporting hospital beds filling up with people without the shot.

About 11% of people in the UK over 12 have not yet been vaccinated, according to government data. Almost 65% of people over 12 have not yet had third or booster shots. Johnson says all adults will be offered a booster by the end of January.

Interesting New York Times report here, about what might be “patient zero” of the Omicron variant in the US – a man who tested positive on 23 November.

The variant was only later reported to the World Health Organization by South Africa on 24 November. But 30-year-old health care analyst Peter McGinn from Minneapolis already had it, sequencing released on 2 December showed.

It’s impossible to know how McGinn picked it up. But he did attend the 53,000-strong Anime NYC convention last month.

What we do know is that community transmission was taking place before the highly mutated strain even had its name. The variant, throught to be highly infectious, has outpaced public health officials and is now present in at least 15 US states.

Germany’s new government wants to make Covid vaccination mandatory for workers of hospitals, nursing homes and other medical staff by 16 March, according to draft legislation seen by Reuters.

As German infections have climbed, hesitations about losing medical staff have subsided and support for vaccine mandates has grown.

New cases in Germany have more than quadrupled in seven weeks, from 8,420 on Saturday 16 October to 43,500 on Saturday 4 December.

The new coalition – Social Democrats, Greens and Free Democrats, with Olaf Scholz becoming chancellor – will take office on Wednesday and introduce the legislation to parliament in the coming week.

Scholz, who takes over from Angela Merkel after her 16 years as chancellor, has so far ruled out lockdowns to suppress the new wave and looks set to bank on vaccination. The legislation would also grant permission for dentists, vets and pharmacists to administer vaccines. Germany seeks to vaccinate or offer boosters to 30 million people by Christmas.

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Brazil’s health ministry said a further 4,844 Covid infections were detected on Sunday, taking the seven-day average to 8,884 new cases a day.

Another 66 people did from Covid-related causes, down from 221 on Friday. (Reported figures are lower at weekends.) That means the seven-day average for daily deaths is 194 people a day.

Brazil has the second-highest death toll in the world behind the US. Over 615,000 people have died from the virus.

A congressional panel recommended president Jair Bolsonaro be charged with “crimes against humanity” in October, in a major report based on a six-month inquiry into his handling of the pandemic. Bolsonaro has consistently opposed measures to suppress the virus. Lawmakers wrote he was responsible for the deaths of more than 300,000 Brazilians and urged authorities to imprison him.

“Many of these deaths were preventable,” Renan Calheiros, centrist Brazilian senator and the report’s lead author, told the New York Times in October. “I am personally convinced that he is responsible for escalating the slaughter.”

After experiencing cases that topped 70,000 and 80,000 a day in June, Brazil’s infections over the past few months have remained low relative to its previous waves. About 64% of the population is double-vaccinated, according to Our World In Data.

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Interesting analysis piece from my colleague Jessica Elgot here.

She writes that, coming up to the UK government’s 18 December deadline for outlining Christmas holiday guidance, changes to cabinet and public mood from last year make further restrictions less likely.

One government advisor has warned prime minister Boris Johnson has “all the eggs in one basket.” And today Mark Woolhouse, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (Spi-M), said ministers have already left it too late to make a substantial difference to a potential wave of Omicron cases – measures now would be like “shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted,” he said.

There is a difference in the personnel around the table making the call this year: Steve Barclay and Sajid Javid have replaced Michael Gove and Matt Hancock, who were the key voices for caution last December.

Gove was a particular champion of vaccination certification and more sceptical of calls for returns to the office, while Hancock spoke forcefully about the pressures the NHS could experience. All of those contributions appear absent from the debate now.

Johnson and Javid are firm believers that a pact was made with the public that the vaccine was the way out of the pandemic – so the government has directed its firepower into turbocharging the booster vaccine campaign.

Javid will also direct the NHS to offer new antiviral treatment to the most vulnerable to take at home if they have a positive diagnosis, rather than wait to be admitted to hospital with the virus.

One adviser for the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) described that tactic this week as “all the eggs in one basket”, with hopes pinned almost entirely on scientific intervention to halt the spread of the variant rather than human behaviour.