Japan and Poland log record cases; Germany seven-day rate at new high – as it happened

That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, for today. Here’s a quick roundup of what’s happened today:

• New Zealand will move to its highest red traffic light setting at midnight on Sunday in an effort to tackle the spread of the Omicron variant. Face coverings are mandatory when travelling on public transport, in retail and to an extent in education. Public facilities and retail outlets are open, with capacity limits.
• The head of Pfizer has said that an annual Covid-19 vaccine would be preferable to more frequent booster shots in fighting the pandemic. Asked whether he sees booster shots being administered every four to five months on a regular basis, Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla replied: “This will not be a good scenario. What I’m hoping (is) that we will have a vaccine that you will have to do once a year.”
• The UK detected 76,807 new Covid infections in the past 24 hours, a 54% drop on the 176,191 cases detected two weeks ago as the record-breaking Omicron wave appears to have spiked. The UK reported a further 297 people died within 28 days of a positive Covid test on Saturday, 3% up on the 287 deaths reported last Saturday.
• The deadline for health workers to be vaccinated against Covid-19 should be delayed to prevent staff shortages in England, the Royal College of GPs has said. Martin Marshall, the chairman of the college, described compulsory vaccination for health professionals as “not the right way forward”.
• The small Pacific nation of Samoa has been placed under a 48-hour nationwide lockdown after 15 passengers on a flight from Australia tested positive for Covid-19. The passengers were on a flight from Brisbane carrying 73 people, all of whom were fully vaccinated and had tested negative for Covid-19 before departure.
  
• Food banks across the United States are experiencing a critical shortage of volunteers driven by fears over the Omicron variant. The extent of the problem was highlighted this past week during the Martin Luther King Jr. Day national holiday, when many food banks were forced to cancel their plans or had far lower numbers than pre-pandemic years.
• Thousands of people took to the streets of Sweden’s two biggest cities, Stockholm and Gothenburg, on Saturday to protest against the use of vaccine passes. In France, hundreds of people took part in small-scale demonstrations two days before tighter restrictions come into force against unvaccinated people.
• Greece has detected two cases of an offshoot of the Omicron variant in passengers arriving at Athens international airport. The travellers, who have the BA.2 sub-variant, are in isolation. The BA.2 sub-variant, of which 426 cases have been sequenced in the UK, may have an “increased growth rate” over the earlier form of Omicron, officially designated as BA.1, according to UKHSA.
  

New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Arden has cancelled her wedding to partner Clarke Gayford, as the country prepares to move to red traffic light setting at midnight on Sunday.

“My wedding will not be going ahead,” she told reporters, adding she was sorry for anyone caught up in a similar scenario.

Asked how she felt about her wedding cancellation, Ardern replied: “Such is life.” She added: “I am no different to, dare I say it, thousands of other New Zealanders who have had much more devastating impacts felt by the pandemic, the most gutting of which is the inability to be with a loved one sometimes when they are gravely ill. That will far, far outstrip any sadness I experience.”

22 Jan 202218.31 EST

Mark Townsend

Pressure is building on the Metropolitan police from Tory MPs who want the force to investigate Downing Street’s lockdown parties regardless of the findings of the Sue Gray report this week.

Although many MPs have said that they are withholding judgment until the outcome of the Gray inquiry, some believe that the details of what is already publicly known are sufficient to merit police action.

The Met’s stance, reiterated again on Saturday, is that it is content to wait for the result of the inquiry from the senior civil servant before deciding whether to investigate if potential criminal offences are unearthed.

Since news of the first party emerged, opposition MPs have been calling for the Met to investigate, but backbench Tory MPs are now also urging the force to step in.

Martin Vickers, Conservative MP for Cleethorpes since 2010, last week told constituents that “disciplinary actions, and possibly prosecutions, should follow”.

“The truth is that none of this should have happened. I despair at the management structure in Downing Street that this could happen,” Vickers told the Observer on Saturday night.

Read the full article below:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has confirmed the entire country will move to the red traffic light setting at midnight on Sunday in an effort to tackle the spread of the Omicron variant.

“Omicron is now circulating in Auckland and possibly the Nelson area, if not further,” she said today.

Red is the highest level on New Zealand’s Covid traffic light system, but domestic travel can continue. Face coverings are mandatory when travelling on public transport, in retail and to an extent in education. Public facilities and retail outlets are open, with capacity limits.

Vaccine passes are legally required to enter venues such as weddings, gyms and hospitality with a maximum of 100 people. Without passes, hospitality services must remain contactless and gatherings are limited to 25 people.

When customers walk through the doors of V’s Punjabi Grill, a family-run restaurant in Gravesend in Kent, the sign above their heads says in gold-letters: cocktails, grills, events.

Now, the family may need to paint a fourth bullet point: vaccinations.

After their father, Jagtar Chopra, was hospitalised with Covid in December 2020, brothers Rav and Raj Chopra were inspired to immunise the local community from their Punjabi grill.

The brothers’ kebab shop is one of hundreds of little walk-in vaccine centres, alongside sports stadiums and shopping centres and nightclubs, that form part of the NHS’s wider vaccination programme. It opened on 10 January in a marquee attached to the restaurant and has already immunised dozens of people.

“Come down, get your jabs” to “protect everyone in society”, said Rav Chopra, who along with his brother is also a pharmacist.

Raj, 43, told the PA news agency he was inspired by the experience of his 74-year-old father, who has since fully recovered, in battling the virus.

“From a personal point of view, it was very debilitating to see Dad like that,” said Raj. “It got everyone’s emotions in play.

“To see it hit home so close to our hearts, it was a very tough pill – pardon the pun – to take. However, every cloud has a silver lining and it’s inspired us to really emphasise the job that we do, help the community and help out the fellow citizens in our home town and really try and protect as many people as we can.”

Read the full article here:

22 Jan 202216.13 EST

Jessica Glenza

A Virginia mother was charged with making a threat on school property after she told local board members she would bring “every single gun loaded” if the district instituted a mask mandate.

Renewed mask fights were touched off this month after the new Republican governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, issued an executive order making masks optional for students, subject to the preference of parents.

In Luray, a small town in the Shenandoah Valley, the governor’s move prompted a special board meeting on Covid-19 mitigation strategies.

At the Thursday meeting, Amelia Ruffner King, 42, told school board members: “No mask mandates – my child, my children will not come to school on Monday with masks on. That’s not happening.”

She continued: “And I will bring every single gun loaded and ready to – I will,” before she was cut off.

Food banks across the United States are experiencing a critical shortage of volunteers driven by fears over the Omicron variant, at a time when food banks are already dealing with higher food costs due to inflation and supply chain issues.

The extent of the problem was highlighted this past week during the Martin Luther King Jr. Day national holiday, when many food banks have traditionally organised mass volunteer drives as part of a day of service, Associated Press reports.

Many food banks chose to cancel their plans this year or had far lower numbers than pre-pandemic years. In Tallahassee, Florida, plans for a volunteer-driven event on the holiday were abruptly cancelled when all the volunteers dropped out.

The head of Pfizer has said that an annual Covid-19 vaccine would be preferable to more frequent booster shots in fighting the pandemic, Reuters reports.

In an interview with Israel’s N12 News, Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla was asked whether he sees booster shots being administered every four to five months on a regular basis.

“This will not be a good scenario. What I’m hoping (is) that we will have a vaccine that you will have to do once a year,” Bourla said.

“Once a year - it is easier to convince people to do it. It is easier for people to remember.”

The UK detected 76,807 new Covid infections in the past 24 hours, a 54% drop on the 176,191 cases detected two weeks ago as the record-breaking Omicron wave appears to have spiked.

The UK reported a further 297 people died within 28 days of a positive Covid test on Saturday, 3% up on the 287 deaths reported last Saturday. Over 177,000 people in the UK have Covid on their death certificate, according to the Office for National Statistics, the seventh highest tally in the world.

It comes after the health secretary, Sajid Javid, reiterated his message the UK is “learning to live with” Covid. Javid confirmed steps on Wednesday to axe virtually all Covid restrictions in England despite warnings from senior NHS figures it could provoke a resurgent wave.

Ahead of the deadline for England’s NHS workers to be vaccinated or lose their jobs on 1 April, Dr Nikki Kanani, deputy lead for the NHS Covid vaccination programme, said it’s the “duty” of staff to protect patients. Kanani’s comments were made amid protests against mandatory vaccines in London on Saturday.

Read the full article here:

France reported 389,320 new coronavirus cases today, after seeing four consecutive days with more than 400,000 new cases.

The health ministry also reported 3,746 Covid patients in intensive care units, 46 fewer than on Friday and marking the fifth day in a row that the number of patients has fallen.

Banners reading “Boot him out! - Stop Boris.com” were flown over Premier League matches held at Old Trafford in Manchester and Elland Road in Leeds.

Campaign group Open Britain told the PA news agency it had “booked the aircraft”, adding it was taking its “campaign fighting to have Boris Johnson removed from power...to the skies”.

The group said it had decided to “increase public pressure after the Prime Minister failed to step down this week” after he claimed “nobody warned me it was against the rules” for a drinks party to be hosted in Downing Street during the first lockdown.

View image in fullscreen

View image in fullscreen

The deadline for health workers to be vaccinated against Covid-19 should be delayed to prevent staff shortages in England, the Royal College of GPs has said.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Martin Marshall, the chairman of the college, described compulsory vaccination for health professionals as “not the right way forward”.

He said the vast majority of NHS staff were vaccinated, but between 70,000 and 80,000 were not, accounting for 10% of staff at some hospital or GP surgeries.

If unvaccinated staff were taken out of frontline roles by 1 April, there would be “massive consequences” for the NHS, and a delay would allow time for booster jabs and a “sensible conversation” about whether vaccines should be mandatory at all, he said.

22 Jan 202212.32 EST

Martin Pengelly

The Fox News host Tucker Carlson has compared coronavirus vaccine mandates imposed by US President Joe Biden’s government to medical experiments conducted by Nazi Germany and imperial Japan.

“I thought that we had a kind of consensus,” he said on Friday.

“I mean, after watching what the imperial Japanese army and the Nazis did in their medical experiments, I thought that American physicians agreed that compulsory medical care was unethical, it was immoral and it could never be imposed on anyone. When did we forget that?”

Carlson’s guest, the virologist and anti-vaxxer Robert Malone, said: “Apparently about a year ago, I think yesterday” – a reference to Biden’s inauguration on 20 January 2021 – “was when we must have forgotten that, although Mr Biden prior to his election made clear statements that he wasn’t going to force vaccination.”

Carlson is vastly influential, commanding huge primetime audiences. He has promoted resistance to vaccine mandates and conspiracy theories about the effects of the shots. It is not known if he is vaccinated, but Fox News has strict rules for its staff.

Read the full article here:

Italy reported 171,263 new cases on Saturday, down from 179,106 on Friday, the health ministry said.

A further 333 deaths were also recorded, against 373 the previous day. The country’s overall toll stands at 143,296, the second-highest in Europe after the UK and the ninth highest in the world.

The small Pacific nation of Samoa has been placed under a 48-hour nationwide lockdown after 15 passengers on a flight from Australia tested positive for Covid-19.

The passengers were on a flight from Brisbane carrying 73 people, all of whom were fully vaccinated and had tested negative for Covid-19 before departure.

The prime minister, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, said government may cancel further flights from Australia. The local governor in neighbouring American Samoa announced the cancellation of flights between the territory and Samoa for a week.

Another Pacific island, Kiribati, went into lockdown on Friday after two-thirds of passengers on the first commercial flight in almost two years tested positive for Covid-19.

Thousands of people took to the streets of Sweden’s two biggest cities, Stockholm and Gothenburg, on Saturday to protest against the use of vaccine passes. Police had warned of possible clashes between neo-Nazi groups and opponents but the marches unfolded calmly, Agence France-Presse reports.

Vaccine passes have been mandatory for indoor events of more than 50 people in Sweden since 12 January. More than 83% of Swedes over the age of 12 are fully vaccinated.

In France, hundreds of people took part in small-scale demonstrations two days before tighter restrictions come into force against unvaccinated people. Although the size of protests has dropped off in recent weeks, a hard core remain angry at the country’s president, Emmanuel Macron, who has said he will continue to extend restrictions forthose who have not been vaccinated.

From Monday, a new vaccine health passport system will require those aged 16 and above to show they have been vaccinated in order to access restaurants or bars, leisure activities or use inter-regional public transport. A negative Covid test will no longer be sufficient except to access health services.

According to the UK government’s daily dashboard, 641,929 people had a confirmed positive test result for Covid-19 between 16 and 22 January, a decrease of 22.2% compared with the previous seven days.

There were 1,888 deaths within 28 days of a positive test in the same period, increase of 2.4% compared with the previous seven days.

Separate figures published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show there have been 177,000 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.

Hello, I’m Léonie Chao-Fong taking over from Jedidajah Otte to bring you all the latest global development on the coronavirus pandemic for the next few hours. Feel free to get in touch on Twitter or via email.

This from my colleague Jason Rodrigues on anti-vaccine protests in London today: