A Palestinian health worker prepares a syringe as he treats coronavirus patients at a hospital in Turmus Ayya near Ramallah. Photograph: Ammar Awad/Reuters
A Palestinian health worker prepares a syringe as he treats coronavirus patients at a hospital in Turmus Ayya near Ramallah. Photograph: Ammar Awad/Reuters
Jerome Salomon, France’s director of health, has said that authorities are not considering a regional lockdown around Paris, despite strain on hospitals in and around the city due to the spread of coronavirus variants.
On Monday medical directors in the region had ordered hospitals to cancel 40% of their regular procedures to make space for Covid patients. In spite of that, Salomon was quoted by Reuters as telling French radio station RTL:
A lockdown in the greater Paris region is not on the agenda.
Lockdown is a last resort measure that would be submitted to the government and the president if we were under the impression the hospital system could not cope,
The Paris region accounts for about one-sixth of France’s population
According to Reuters the number of people treated in French intensive care units for Covid-19 reached a 14-1/2-week-high on Monday, at 3,849. That figure is close to 1,000 in the Paris region.
Russia reported 9,445 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, the first time since early October that the daily tally has dropped below 10,000, Reuters reports.
That took the total number of coronavirus infections in Russia to 4,342,474.
Authorities said 336 people had died in the last 24 hours, pushing the official death toll to 89,809.
Matt Hancock, the UK health secretary, has described the closure of England’s Nightingale hospitals as an “important moment in our national recovery”.
In a video posted to Twitter, Hancock said the hospitals were a “monument to this country’s ability to get things done fast when it really matters” and played a “critical role” in the UK’s response to the Covid outbreak.
Speaking in a somewhat strained, awkward and hesitant manner, apparently reading the words out from an autocue, Hancock said:
Built in just a matter of days, they gave us the confidence that the NHS would fulfil its timeless promise always to be there for you, to care for you and your family.
Thanks to the vaccine rollout & our national effort, we can now stand down our Nightingale hospitals
This is such an important moment in our national recovery
In replies beneath his tweet, Hancock was criticised for dishonesty. As my colleague Nadeem Badshah reported last night, the network of seven hospitals was barely used.
The showpiece east London site treated only 54 patients in the first wave and was hamstrung by hospitals’ reluctance to release doctors and nurses to work there. It reopened in January and was used to treat non-coronavirus patients to free up beds for a surge in Covid cases and other serious illnesses.
North Yorkshire’s 500-bed Nightingale hospital at Harrogate convention centre, opened by Captain Sir Tom Moore last April, will close without treating a single patient and will operate as a testing centre until then.
Of all the countries to post coronavirus numbers so far today, the Czech Republic reports the highest numbers of infections, with 10,466 new cases and 110 new deaths.
So far the country has reported a total 1,335,815 confirmed cases of coronavirus, the fourth highest rate of infection in the world per million people, according to figures collated by the Worldometers website. Its 22,147 deaths gives the country the world’s third highest per capita death rate from the virus.
Public health authorities in Germany this morning report the country’s smallest rise in the number of confirmed coronavirus cases since last October.
The number of confirmed cases in Germany by 4,252 to 2,509,445, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed. According to the tally kept by the Worldometers website that is the lowest daily number since 11 October.
The reported death toll rose by 255 to 72,189, the tally showed.
Ministers must start war-gaming the next pandemic and their plans should be independently audited to prove the UK is prepared for global health threats to come, the Labour party has said, writes our chief political correspondent, Jessica Elgot, this morning.
The shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, will give a speech on Tuesday attempting to refocus the blame for the catastrophic UK death toll on government failings, after polls showed support for Boris Johnson surging on the back of the the vaccine programme.
Covid-19 is not a once in a lifetime event, but a symptom of a chronic reduction in global health security. As a result, the UK needs to improve health resilience
Ashworth said Labour would introduce statutory duties to plan, audit and invest in pandemic response, alongside obligatory training for ministers in “germ-gaming”, imitating how the military prepares for conflict scenarios.
Speaking to the Guardian, Ashworth said Labour needed to highlight not only that the UK was “ill-prepared and ignored the warnings” about the Covid-19 pandemic but that there was more it could be doing now to prepare for future threats.
Hello world, this is Damien Gayle picking up the live blog from London, where for the next few hours I’ll be updating you with the latest coronavirus-related news and updates from these shores and beyond.
If you have any comments, tips or suggestions for what we could be covering, please feel free to drop me a line, either via email to damien.gayle@theguardian.com, or via Twitter direct message to @damiengayle.
According to the most recent data made available by the French health ministry, for the end of February, France was using 24% of its AstraZeneca doses, compared with 82% for vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech, and 37% for the Moderna shot.
Reuters reports that this is partly due to logistical bottlenecks, but also because some French people don’t trust the AstraZeneca shot - despite multiple scientific studies that indicate it is safe and effective - according to interviews Reuters conducted with eight people involved in France’s vaccine rollout.
China has launched a health certificate programme for domestic travellers, leading the world in plans for so-called virus passports, AFP reports.
The digital certificate, which shows a user’s vaccination status and virus test results, is available for Chinese citizens via a programme on Chinese social media platform WeChat that was launched on Monday.
The certificate is being rolled out “to help promote world economic recovery and facilitate cross-border travel,” a foreign ministry spokesman said.
However, the international health certificate is available only for use by Chinese citizens and it is not yet mandatory.
The certificate, which is also available in paper form, is thought to be the world’s first known “virus passport”. The US and Britain are among countries considering implementing similar permits. The European Union is also working on a vaccine “green pass” that would allow citizens to travel between member countries and abroad.
China’s programme includes an encrypted QR code that allows each country to obtain a travellers’ health information, state media agency Xinhua reported Monday.
“QR health codes” within WeChat and other Chinese smartphone apps are already required to gain entry to domestic transport and many public spaces in China.
The apps track a user’s location and produce a “green” code – synonymous with good health – if a user has not been in close contact with a confirmed case or has not travelled to a virus hotspot.
The system has sparked privacy concerns and fears it marks an expansion of government surveillance.
