Merkel says vaccine patent waiver ‘not the solution’ – as it happened

Italy records 10,176 coronavirus cases and 224 deaths, up from yesterday’s death toll of 207, the health ministry said.

Since the outbreak first emerged, Italy has registered 122,694 deaths linked to Covid-19, the second-highest death toll in Europe after Britain and the seventh highest globally.

Patients in hospital with Covid-19, not including those in intensive care, stood at 15,799 on Saturday, down from 16,331 a day earlier.

There were 110 new admissions to intensive care units (ICU), from 109 on Friday. The total number of intensive care patients fell to 2,211 from a previous 2,253.

The Covid-19 variant first discovered in the UK now accounts for up 70% of infections across Pakistan, a research centre studying the disease in the country said.

Prof Muhammad Iqbal Chaudhry, director at the International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS), University of Karachi, told Reuters, “There is a 60% to 70% prevalence of the UK variant in Pakistan (today).”

He added that this figure was 2% in January.

B.1.1.7, also known as the UK variant, is believed to be more transmissible than other previously dominant coronavirus variants. However, Chaudhry said that it was yet to be established whether the variant was more deadly.

Also adding that a variant found in neighbouring India, which has seen a massive surge of cases in recent weeks, had not been detected in Pakistan yet, but that was because they did not have the kits needed to detect it.

Pakistan has seen a daily death toll of more than 100 in recent weeks.

With officials worried that the strained healthcare system could reach a breaking point if more contagious variants begin to spread, as they did in India.

The UK records 2,047 new cases and five new deaths in the past 24 hours. As of today, 35,188,981 people have now received a first vaccine dose and 17,214,436 have had both jabs.

Hi, I’m Edna Mohamed; I’ll be taking you through the latest Covid-19 developments across the globe for the next few hours. If you have any tips, you can message me on Twitter or email me at edna.mohamed.casual@theguardian.com

Key developments in our coronavirus coverage in the UK and around the world so far on Saturday include:

• Pope Francis has offered his support for waiving coronavirus vaccine patents to boost supply to poorer countries. In a recording made for the Vax Live concert, Francis backed “universal access to the vaccine and the temporary suspension of intellectual property rights”. He voice adds further weight to a call by the US president, Joe Biden, to waive patents.
• But Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, reiterated her rejection the call to waive the patents for Covid-19 vaccines, instead urging the US to export its domestically produced vaccines. Speaking at a press conference after a meeting with other EU leaders, Merkel doubled down on her claim that a patent waiver would harm innovation.
• The European Union has signed a new contract to buy a further 1.8bn doses of Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines for 2021-23. Supplies will cover booster shots, donations and reselling of doses, the European commission said on Friday. Ursula von der Leyen, head of the commission, said on Twitter: “Other contracts and other vaccine technologies will follow.”
• The population of the UK will be protected from Covid-19 by this summer, according to the departing chief of the country’s vaccine task force. Clive Dix, who stepped down last week, said he believed that by August no virus would be left circulating in Britain. Dix told the Daily Telegraph: “We’ll be safe over the coming winter.”
• India has recorded a new daily record for coronavirus deaths. The 4,187 new deaths reported on Saturday, took the overall toll to 238,270 since the pandemic started. It added another 401,078 new cases in 24 hours taking its caseload to nearly 21.9m. Experts say India may not hit a peak in its current surge until the end of May.
  
• An Eid shutdown has been imposed in Pakistan in a move to prevent an increase in coronavirus infections during the Muslim religious holiday. Businesses, hotels and restaurants as well as markets and parks will be closed, while public transport between provinces and within cities has been halted.

That’s it from me, Damien Gayle, for today.

Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, has reiterated her rejection of a call by Washington to waive the patents for Covid-19 vaccines, instead urging the US to export its domestically produced vaccines.

Pointing out that the EU has exported a proportion of vaccines made in the bloc, Merkel said:

Now that a further part of the American population has been vaccinated, I hope that we can come to a free exchange of components and an opening of the market for vaccines.

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Speaking at a press conference after a meeting with other EU leaders, Merkel doubled down on her claim that a patent waiver would harm innovation:

I do not think that a patent waiver is the solution to make more vaccines available to more people. Rather, I think that we need the creativity and the power of innovation of companies, and to me, that includes patent protection.

Vaccines were “highly sensitive” products, Merkel said, adding that manufacturers were already working at high speed to ramp up capacities, including through licensing partnerships.

Germany is home to BioNTech, the company that co-developed with Pfizer the first Covid vaccine to be approved for use in the west late last year, and another German company, Curevac, is in the final stages of clinical trials and eyeing authorisation for its Covid jabs in the EU in the coming weeks.

A total of 43,907,911 Covid-19 vaccinations took place in England between 8 December and 7 May, according to NHS England data, including first and second doses – a rise of 522,249 on the previous day.

NHS England said 29,441,213 were the first dose of a vaccine, a rise of 107,518 on the previous day, while 14,466,698 were a second dose, an increase of 414,731.

Researchers from the London School of Economics have said the UK government has “consistently failed” to consider gender in its response to Covid-19 despite men and women being affected in distinct ways by the pandemic, writes Hannah Summers for the Observer.

While more men have died from the virus, women have suffered more due to the impact of policies introduced to prevent disease transmission.

Yet the subject of gender was largely absent from crucial meetings that informed the government’s response to the crisis, say academics, who analysed the minutes from 73 meetings held in 2020 by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage).

“Despite mounting evidence women have been disproportionately furloughed or made redundant while absorbing more of the unpaid work associated with the pandemic, we were concerned we weren’t seeing policy changes to reflect that, particularly ahead of the third lockdown,” said Clare Wenham, co-author of Why We need A Gender Advisor on Sage.

A first batch of coronavirus vaccines has arrived in Madagascar, one of the last countries in Africa to receive the injections after the president insisted on holding out for months.

Andry Rajoelina shunned the vaccines for a long time, instead touting a locally brewed herbal drink, based on the anti-malarial plant artemisia, as a cure for Covid-19. The tonic was distributed for free among the population, but a sharp increase in infections last month forced Rajoelina to finally relent.

A plane carrying a first shipment of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines, provided through the World Health Organization’s Covax scheme, arrived in Madagascar on Saturday, where it was met by government officials and UN representatives. Rajoelina himself did not greet the flight in person.

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The health minister, Jean Louis Hanitrala Rakotovao, said vaccines would be distributed across the country in two phases, without providing further detail, according to the AFP news agency.

“The inoculation is among several efficient preventative measures that will be added to strategies already implemented by the state,” he said.

Madagascar has been grappling to contain a spiralling second wave of coronavirus infections, with more than a third of the country’s total coronavirus cases recorded in the past month alone. Health facilities in the capital Antananarivo have been overwhelmed by a rising number Covid-19 patients compounded by oxygen shortages.

To date the country of 27 million inhabitants has registered 38,874 infections, including at least 716 deaths.