Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, have begun testing a vaccine specifically designed to fight the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, the companies have announced.
The UK reported 439 deaths within 28 days of a Covid-positive test. That’s the highest tally since February 2021. Tuesday’s data showed 94,326 new daily cases. The figures are often higher on a Tuesday when most deaths at the weekend are included in the tally. Last Tuesday, 438 deaths were reported.
The UK’s health secretary, Sajid Javid, said 77,000 NHS workers remain unvaccinated, and Covid policies – including on mandatory jabs for NHS staff – should be kept “under review”.
Scotland will allow people to return to offices from Monday, in a “phased” plan announced by Nicola Sturgeon. The first minister asked employers to begin a phased return to work by introducing hybrid working next week after a continuing decline in Omicron variant cases in Scotland, in an update to MSPs at Holyrood.
Italy’s daily cases have more than doubled in a day to 186,740. This is up from 77,696 a day earlier, the health ministry said. The number of deaths jumped to 468 from 352, though more tests had been taken in the past day than on Monday.
In Germany, the anti-vaccination movement is ramping up, with thousands of people taking part in weekly protests across the country. More than 2,000 rallies were held on Monday.
Russia has cut the isolation time for Covid contacts from 14 days to seven, amid a surge in infections driven by the Omicron variant. On Tuesday, daily cases reached the record high of 67,809, official figures show.
Doctors have discovered an “antibody signature” that can help identify patients most at risk of developing long Covid.
That’s all from me, folks. Thanks for joining the feed today. We’re going to pause the global Covid blog for a while, but do head over to our politics live page which will keep running updates on “partygate” and more …
We will be launching another live Covid blog a little later today but in the meantime you can catch up with all the latest developments here.
Thanks for following along and, as always, I appreciate your tips and reader insights. You can email me at samantha.lock@theguardian.com or via Twitter @Samantha__Lock
The UK reported 439 deaths within 28 days of a Covid-positive test. That’s the highest tally since February 2021. Tuesday’s data showed 94,326 new daily cases. The figures are often higher on a Tuesday when most deaths at the weekend are included in the tally. Last Tuesday, 438 deaths were reported.
The UK’s health secretary, Sajid Javid, said 77,000 NHS workers remain unvaccinated, and Covid policies – including on mandatory jabs for NHS staff – should be kept “under review”.
Scotland will allow people to return to offices from Monday, in a “phased” plan announced by Nicola Sturgeon. The first minister asked employers to begin a phased return to work by introducing hybrid working next week after a continuing decline in Omicron variant cases in Scotland, in an update to MSPs at Holyrood.
Italy’s daily cases have more than doubled in a day to 186,740. This is up from 77,696 a day earlier, the health ministry said. The number of deaths jumped to 468 from 352, though more tests had been taken in the past day than on Monday.
In Germany, the anti-vaccination movement is ramping up, with thousands of people taking part in weekly protests across the country. More than 2,000 rallies were held on Monday.
Russia has cut the isolation time for Covid contacts from 14 days to seven, amid a surge in infections driven by the Omicron variant. On Tuesday, daily cases reached the record high of 67,809, official figures show.
Doctors have discovered an “antibody signature” that can help identify patients most at risk of developing long Covid.
Malta will start to scrap a requirement for people to present a vaccination certificate for entry to restaurants and other venues from next month.
Bars, restaurants and theatres in the Netherlands can reopen on 26 January, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said, further relaxing restrictions despite record infection levels.
South Korea’s daily count of new cases topped 8,000 for the first time, despite the recent extension of strict social-distancing rules.* Two years since its first infection, Australia recorded one of its highest number of Covid-related deaths in a day.
Japan expanded regions subject to tighter curbs to cover 70% of the country, as the government tried to counter a record wave of Covid-19 cases caused by the Omicron variant.
Middle East:
An Israeli government advisory panel has recommended offering a fourth vaccine dose to all adults, on condition that at least five months have passed since they received the third or recovered from the illness.
Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, have begun testing a vaccine specifically designed to fight the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, the companies have announced.
Elton John has postponed two farewell concert dates in Dallas, Texas, after contracting Covid-19.
The singer was reportedly vaccinated and boosted.
According to a statement, John is experiencing “only mild symptoms”.
“Elton and the Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour look forward to returning to the stage shortly.”
Elton John has postponed two farewell concert dates in Dallas, Texas, after contracting Covid-19. Photograph: Erika Goldring/Getty Images
John was due to hit the American Airlines Centre stage in Dallas on 25 January and 26 January but fans “should hold on to their tickets as they will be honoured at the rescheduled dates to be announced soon.”
John’s rescheduled 2020 North American tour kicked off on Jan. 19 in New Orleans and was scheduled to make stops in Houston, Chicago, Detroit, Toronto, New York and Miami.
John previously said he was postponing European dates on his world tour until 2023 so that he can have an operation on an injured hip.
An appeals judge has temporarily restored New York’s mask mandate on Tuesday, a day after a judge in a lower court ruled that Governor Kathy Hochul’s administration lacked the constitutional authority to order people to wear face coverings.
Judge Robert Miller in New York City granted the state’s request for a stay of a Long Island judge’s ruling while the governor’s administration pursues an appeal, the Associated Press reports.
Arguing before Miller on Tuesday, Judith Vale, an attorney for the state, said judge Thomas Rademaker’s earlier ruling would “radically disrupt the status quo” and endanger the health of students and staff at schools.
The state’s court filing read:
The order, if not stayed will allow individuals to refuse to wear face coverings in indoor public settings where the risk of Covid-19 spread is high, including in schools where many children remain unvaccinated against Covid-19.”
Attorney Chad Laveglia, who brought the challenge on behalf of a group of parents, vowed to take the challenge “as far as it needs to go.”
“The judge got it wrong entirely. It’s so blatantly unconstitutional to grant a stay whatsoever,” he said.
As I’m reporting to you from Sydney, here’s a snapshot of how Covid is unfolding across Australia. The country’s most populous state of NSW is expected to report its one-millionth infection of the pandemic today. Half of those cases were added in the last two weeks and more than 90% of them in the last two months. State premier Dominic Perrottet announced that reintroduced restrictions for mask use, hospitality density limits and bans on singing and dancing – due to end on Thursday – would be extended until the end of February in a bid to suppress the spread of Omicron as children return to school.
He said extending restrictions to February 28 was “the right approach” as it would suppress the spread of Omicron ahead of increased movement once schools return next week, he said.
A total of 73 Covid deaths were recorded across Victoria, NSW and Queensland.
Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, have begun testing a vaccine specifically designed to fight the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, the companies have announced.
The UK reported 439 deaths within 28 days of a Covid-positive test. That’s the highest tally since February 2021. Tuesday’s data showed 94,326 new daily cases. The figures are often higher on a Tuesday when most deaths at the weekend are included in the tally. Last Tuesday, 438 deaths were reported.
The UK’s health secretary, Sajid Javid, said 77,000 NHS workers remain unvaccinated, and Covid policies – including on mandatory jabs for NHS staff – should be kept “under review”.
Scotland will allow people to return to offices from Monday, in a “phased” plan announced by Nicola Sturgeon. The first minister asked employers to begin a phased return to work by introducing hybrid working next week after a continuing decline in Omicron variant cases in Scotland, in an update to MSPs at Holyrood.
Italy’s daily cases have more than doubled in a day to 186,740. This is up from 77,696 a day earlier, the health ministry said. The number of deaths jumped to 468 from 352, though more tests had been taken in the past day than on Monday.
In Germany, the anti-vaccination movement is ramping up, with thousands of people taking part in weekly protests across the country. More than 2,000 rallies were held on Monday.
Russia has cut the isolation time for Covid contacts from 14 days to seven, amid a surge in infections driven by the Omicron variant. On Tuesday, daily cases reached the record high of 67,809, official figures show.
Doctors have discovered an “antibody signature” that can help identify patients most at risk of developing long Covid.
That’s all from me, folks. Thanks for joining the feed today. We’re going to pause the global Covid blog for a while, but do head over to our politics live page which will keep running updates on “partygate” and more …
When pressed on the issue of mandatory jabs for NHS staff, Sajid Javid said Covid policies should be kept “under review”.
The health secretary said patient safety was the principle behind the decision to make jabs mandatory, but noted that this was decided when Delta was the dominant variant.
Javid told the health and social care committee: “That was the principle and we weighed it up. The dominant variant at the time was Delta, that was the dominant variant. The dominant variant now, in fact, almost all cases, are Omicron.”
Javid said people had “made representations” to him about Omicron being “very different” to Delta, suggesting while the former is more transmissible it is “intrinsically less severe”.
He said: “I think it is right in light of Omicron that we reflect on all this and keep all Covid policies properly under review. Because Omicron is different to Delta. Equally, we don’t know what the next variant is going to be.”
Health secretary Sajid Javid says 77,000 NHS workers remain unvaccinated
Sajid Javid has said about 77,000 NHS workers have not been jabbed. He added it was the “professional duty of every NHS worker to get vaccinated”.
Javid told the health and social care committee:
Even before the mandate, the vast majority had [been jabbed]. Since the mandate, since we announced a consultation in September, we’ve had around 100,000 in the NHS that were unvaccinated at that point that have come forward. So there’s been a very good response.
I think now almost 95% of NHS workers that have had at least one jab. The latest numbers I have is that around 77,000 that have not. That is improving every day.
I think it’s also reasonable to assume that not everyone ultimately is going to come forward.
He said the NHS was asking trusts to set out the estimations for the staff who “will ultimately just not come forward, and then to break down what kind of roles they are and see how they would manage that”.
Russia has cut the isolation time for Covid contacts from 14 days to seven, amid a surge in infections driven by the Omicron variant. On Tuesday, daily cases reached the record high of 67,809, official figures show.
AP reports:
The prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin,announced the new rules apply to those who had close contact with someone who has tested positive for Covid, not for those with a confirmed infection. Those who have Covid are still required to isolate for 14 days, with a mandatory test on day 10 or 11.
Daily new infections in Russia have been rising sharply for the past two weeks, increasing more than four-fold – from about 15,000 on 10 January to 67,809 on Tuesday, the highest daily tally in the pandemic.
However, according to health minister, Mikhail Murashko, there has been no significant increase in hospitalisations nationwide. Hospital admissions grew by 6.4%.
About 116,000 Covid patients were being treated in hospitals on Tuesday, leaving about 50,000 remaining hospital beds unoccupied.
Members of an infectious diseases medical team of St Petersburg’s City Hospital No 76 attend a suspected Covid patient during a house call. Over the past 24 hours, St Petersburg has confirmed 8,413 new cases. Photograph: Peter Kovalev/TASS
According to Anna Popova, head of Russia’s public healthcare watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, more than half of all new infections have hit the capital, Moscow,and St Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city.
The surge in Moscow, which reported nearly 19,000 new cases on Tuesday, has put a strain on the city’s outpatient clinics. Social media users have posted long lines of people waiting to see a doctor. Moscow mayor, Sergey Sobyanin, said that the influx of patients to outpatient facilities has grown four-fold.
In Germany, protests against Covid rules are escalating, with more than 2,000 rallies being held across the country on Monday alone.
Our Berlin correspondent Kate Connolly takes us to the heart of the action:
On Monday evening at 7pm people emerged from dimly lit side streets and gathered on the Oberkirchplatz square in Cottbus for what has become a weekly ritual in towns and cities across Germany: a protest against coronavirus restrictions.
The demonstrations have grown in strength as cases of the Omicron variant have surged, and in recent weeks a looming decision on bringing in a vaccine mandate has become the focus of protesters’ ire.
Anti vaccination protesters walk pass the counter protesters during the weekly anti vaccination protest march in Cologne, Germany on 24 January. Photograph: Ying Tang/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock
In Cottbus, a university city south-east of Berlin, a familiar pattern played out. Moments after the protest started, police declared over megaphone that it was illegal – the participants did not wear masks or physically distance from each other. Groups then broke away and began the Spaziergänge, walks that snake in a variety of directions and are designed to overwhelm any police response.
“I just want my freedom back,” said one woman. Another younger woman said she was trying to stop the government from forcibly vaccinating her nine-year-old, though there is currently no plan to oblige parents to have children vaccinated. A physiotherapist, one of the few protesters who was wearing a mask, said she was fearful of losing her job if she refused to get vaccinated under plans for a mandate for medical staff due to be introduced next month.
Asked why there was need for resistance, Maik, a landscape gardener who refused to wear a mask – calling them “chin nappies” – said: “When injustice becomes law, resistance is our duty.”
The US Department of Labor said on Tuesday it will scrap its Covid-19 vaccine-and-testing requirement for large employers after the Supreme Court blocked the rule.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court had ruled against president Joe Biden’s vaccine and testing mandate aimed at large businesses, but it allowed a vaccine mandate for certain health care workers to go into effect nationwide.
Biden’s controversial mandate for large employers – requiring workers to be vaccinated against Covid-19 or undergo weekly testing and wear a mask on the job – was designed to convince hesitant Americans to get their shots.
But the court’s conservative majority concluded the administration overstepped its authority by seeking to impose the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (Osha) vaccine-or-test rule on US businesses with at least 100 employees. More than 80 million people would have been affected.
Back to Downing Street parties now...Sue Gray’s report into the events could arrive at No 10 tonight, said Pippa Crerar, the Daily Mirror’s political editor. It’s up to the prime minister, Boris Johnson, when the report will be made public.
NEW: Sources tell me that No 10 is now expecting Sue Gray report at some point TONIGHT.
On a day of timetable twists and turns, the final decision on publication is in hands of PM.
Italy's daily cases more than double in a day to 186,740
Italy recorded 186,740 Covid-linked cases on Tuesday. This is up from 77,696 a day earlier, the health ministry said. The number of deaths jumped to 468 from 352, though more tests had been taken in the past day than on Monday.
Some 1.4m Covid tests were carried out in the past 24 hours, compared with a previous 519,293, the health ministry added.
Italy has registered 144,343 deaths linked to the virus since its outbreak emerged in February 2020, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the ninth highest in the world. The country has reported 10.2m cases to date.
Patients in hospital with Covid – not including those in intensive care – stood at 20,027 on Tuesday, increasing from 19,862 a day earlier.
This makes for bleak reading considering yesterday, a health official said Italy has reached a peak in the number of Omicron infections with cases of the variant now declining.
Covid emergency commissioner Francesco Paolo Figliuolo told journalists in Milan:
There is good news: it seems that we have reached the plateau of the curve for what concerns Omicron and it is going downhill.
In the past two days, even in Lombardy [where death rates are highest] the number of admissions to the hospital is lower than the number of discharged. This bodes well.
Western Australia, which has mostly dodged the virus by sealing itself off from the rest of the world, has scrapped plans to reopen next month due to fears of Omicron spreading. But experts say more public health measures are needed to ease the burden of staff shortages.
The president of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Omar Khorshid, said:
It takes something to be really on the horizon for you to understand how urgent it is to actually prepare. One of the good things about the 5 February date was it focused the health system’s collective mind on getting ready. You could finally see some action.
Now the 5 February border reopening has once again been delayed Khorshid is concerned some of that earlier momentum will be lost and may lead to a false sense of security. But with Covid-19 already spreading in the community, Khorshid said it was only a matter of time before health plans would need to swing into action.
On Sunday the state’s health minister, Amber-Jade Sanderson, conceded it would not be possible to eliminate Covid in WA. The premier, Mark McGowan, said the delay in border reopening was to give people more time to get their booster shot.
But Khorshid said borders should be opened to help address critical health worker shortages. At the same time, he wanted public health measures like venue density limits and social distancing to be introduced to slow spread and reduce the health system burden.
Guardian Australia’s medical editor, Melissa Davey, has the latest:
Long Covid: doctors find ‘antibody signature’ for patients most at risk
Ian Sample
Our science editor, Ian Sample,sheds light on an antibody signature that may help doctors identify who is most at risk of long Covid:
Doctors have discovered an “antibody signature” that can help identify patients most at risk of developing long Covid, a condition where debilitating symptoms of the disease can persist for many months.
Researchers at University hospital Zurich analysed blood from Covid patients and found that low levels of certain antibodies were more common in those who developed long Covid than in patients who swiftly recovered.
When combined with the patient’s age, details of their Covid symptoms and whether or not they had asthma, the antibody signature allowed doctors to predict whether people had a moderate, high or very high risk of developing long-term illness. Onur Boyman, a professor of immunology who led the research, said:
Overall, we think that our findings and identification of an immunoglobulin signature will help early identification of patients that are at increased risk of developing long Covid, which in turn will facilitate research, understanding and ultimately targeted treatments for long Covid.
Although there is no effective cure for long Covid, being able to work out who is most at risk could help doctors direct patients to clinical trials for long Covid therapies and arrange early rehabilitation.
Another hope is that early identification of long Covid patients will help doctors work out what causes the condition in particular people. Researchers have proposed several possible drivers, from long-term damage wrought by the virus to a misfiring immune system and pockets of virus hiding out in the body.
