Israel to open leisure facilities to vaccinated – as it happened

More contagious variants of the new coronavirus are taking hold in France but their spread is not as fast as initially feared, Bruno Lina, a French virus specialist and a member of the scientific body advising the government, said on Wednesday, Reuters reports.

Lina told France Inter radio:

For now, we have the feeling the introduction of these variants is somewhat curtailed.

He added that the variant first detected in Britain now accounted for around 30-35% of Covid-19 cases in Paris/Île-de-France region, and that the one stemming from South Africa represented 2-3% of Covid-19 cases in France at present.

10 Feb 202102.24 EST

Jasper Jolly

Beer sales in British pubs halved last year to the lowest since the 1920s as they faced some of the toughest and longest-lasting restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic, according to industry figures, write my colleagues Jasper Jolly and Richard Partington.

Overall beer sales in pubs were down 56% in 2020 to about £6.1bn, a loss of £7.8bn in sales compared with 2019, said the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA) – the lowest volume of beer sold in at least a century.

The evidence of a collapse in spending comes as the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, faces mounting pressure to take action to prevent a wave of business failures in the hospitality sector that experts say would hold back Britain’s economic recovery after lockdown is relaxed.

This is Ben Doherty, signing off from our rolling coverage. The estimable Alexandra Topping in London is taking over from me.

Thanks for your company, comments and correspondence today. Be well, and look after each other.

A summary of the latest developments in the global coronavirus pandemic.

• A member of the WHO mission to China exploring the origins of the coronavirus pandemic took a swipe Wednesday at US intelligence on the issue, after the State Department cast doubt on the transparency of their probe. Briton Peter Daszak said in a tweet as the mission ended: “Please don’t rely too much on US intel: increasingly disengaged under Trump & frankly wrong on many aspects.”
  
• Estonia is working on a pilot project with the World Health Organisation on how globally recognised electronic vaccine certificates - so-called ‘vaccine passports’, might work.
• New Zealand will administer the Pfizer and BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines to quarantine personnel, frontline health workers and airline staff, after the government formally approved its use on Wednesday.
• People may need to get vaccinated against Covid-19 annually for the next several years, Johnson & Johnson chief executive Alex Gorsky told CNBC on Tuesday, due to mutations to the virus.
• Venezuela will receive the first 100,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine next week, President Nicolas Maduro said on Tuesday.
• Brazil has reported 51,486 new coronavirus cases, as well as 1,350 deaths, the health ministry said on Tuesday.
• In London, Lambeth council is asking some residents to take a coronavirus test after the variant first identified in South Africa was detected in the local area.
• The Athens region will enter a stricter coronavirus lockdown from Thursday, Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has said, with schools and non-essential shops closed.
• Spain has now recorded more than 3 million Covid cases, while also registering 766 deaths over the past 24 hours - the highest daily death toll of the current third wave.
• Two new Covid variants, one of which has been classified as a “concern”, have been identified in England with some similarities to the South African and Brazilian variants, a government advisory scientific committee said.
• The Navajo Nation’s vaccination rollout continues to surpass the broader United States, Al Jazeera reports, having distributed 94 per cent of the doses it has received.
• Ireland is likely to gradually emerge from its strict lockdown between April and June with outdoor dining and domestic tourism likely to be possible during the summer, deputy prime minister Leo Varadkar has said.

Raucous dragon dance shows have been banned in Manila’s Chinatown due to the pandemic, casting aside a crowd-drawing Lunar New Year tradition many believe helps drive misfortunes away.

The Philippine government’s ban on large public gatherings and street parties to fight the coronavirus dealt a big blow to hundreds of dragon dancers and production crews who are struggling to find other sources of income.

“There would have been large crowds wanting to drive away the misery and bad luck, but our street dance shows were prohibited this year,” said Therry Sicat, a Filipino slum-dweller who with his siblings manages one of several dragon dance troupes in Chinatown.

“If we had 100% fun in the past, I only feel 30% of that this time around. It’s really depressing,” said the 31-year-old, whose wife is pregnant with their fourth child.

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The absence of the dragon dances is a palpable sign for many Manila residents that the pandemic crisis that shut down much of Manila’s economy and locked down millions of Filipinos in their homes is spilling over well into this year.

A member of the WHO mission to China exploring the origins of the coronavirus pandemic took a swipe Wednesday at US intelligence on the issue, after the State Department cast doubt on the transparency of their probe.

President Joe Biden “has to look tough on China”, expert Peter Daszak said in a tweet as the mission ended, adding: “Please don’t rely too much on US intel: increasingly disengaged under Trump & frankly wrong on many aspects.”

The WHO mission to China ended without finding the source of the coronavirus that has killed more than 2.3 million worldwide.

The experts had to walk a diplomatic tightrope, with the United States urging a “robust” probe before they left and China warning against the politicisation of the issue.

As they wrapped up the mission team member Daszak, a British zoologist and an expert on disease ecology, tweeted that they worked “flat out under the most politically charged environment possible.”

Later he issued the extraordinary tweet referencing Biden, wading directly into the soupy geopolitics which covers the pandemic origin story.

Dasak’s comments were linked to an article referencing US State Department comments that cast doubt over the transparency of China’s cooperation with the WHO mission.

Beijing is desperate to defang criticism of its handling of the chaotic early stages of the outbreak. Former US president Donald Trump frequently laid the blame with China and repeated a controversial theory that a lab leak may have been the source of the pandemic.

The WHO team also concluded the theory of a lab experiment gone wrong was “extremely unlikely”, while introducing new avenues of inquiry, chiming with China’s view that it may have originated overseas or been spread by frozen foods.

Despite failing to finding the virus origins, a year after the pandemic began, the team of foreign experts did agree the virus likely jumped from bats to an unknown animal species before transmitting to humans.

Thailand on Wednesday reported 157 new coronavirus cases, taking its total infections to 23,903.

One additional death was reported, taking fatalities to 80 recorded overall, the coronavirus taskforce said.

Thailand’s daily cases so far this week are among the lowest numbers reported since its latest and biggest outbreak emerged in mid-December.

Cambodia launched its coronavirus inoculation drive on Wednesday, using 600,000 vaccine doses donated by China, with the sons of long-serving prime minister Hun Sen and government ministers among the first recipients.

The south-east Asian nation of about 16 million has managed to limit the spread of the disease, reporting 478 infections and no deaths, although a rare cluster of cases emerged in November.

Hun Sen had vowed to take the first dose, but later said that at 68 he was above the age to get the vaccine, made by Sinopharm. His sons and the justice and environment ministers were among the first to get it instead.

“I feel even more confident that I have a defence system in my body against Covid,” said Hun Manet, the prime minister’s eldest son, flashing a thumbs-up sign at the Calmette hospital in the capital, Phnom Penh.

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Doctors had advised Hun Manet, a deputy commander of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, not to eat seafood or drink alcohol after taking the vaccine, he told reporters, urging them to also get shots.

China’s first consignment of 600,000 doses had arrived in Phnom Penh on Sunday by special airplane, most of them earmarked for health workers and the military.

One of Asia’s poorest countries, Cambodia has been an important ally of China in recent years.

Beijing has said it will send 1 million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine to Cambodia, sufficient for 500,000 people.

“We were worried that we might infect family members with the virus, now there is the vaccine as the defence wall,” justice minister Keut Rith said after his injection.

“A vaccine is the best defence solution for us, for family and the community.”

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 8,072 to 2,299,996, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday.

The reported death toll rose by 813 to 62,969, the tally showed.

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Zero deaths from Covid-19 in Delhi. The first coronavirus fatality-free day in the Indian capital since May.