Over half of UK now vaccinated, NHS figures show

Here is your evening roundup of today's news: 

• The United States can immediately resume use of Johnson & Johnson's Covid-19 vaccine, top health regulators said on Friday, ending a 10-day pause to investigate its link to extremely rare but potentially deadly blood clots.

• At two anonymous Pfizer buildings, one in the US and one in Belgium, a remarkable experiment is under way. Up to 60 volunteers, all clean-living adults aged between 18 and 60, are being given the first pill specifically designed to stop SARS-CoV-2.

• Charities will "inevitably" be forced to ration their services due to the financial crisis caused by the Covid pandemic, fundraising experts have warned. 

• Why India's Covid catastrophe heralds dawn of ‘two-tiered’ world

• Several thousand anti-lockdown demonstrators marched through central London on Saturday despite restrictions on mass gatherings during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

• A man who infected 22 people with Covid-19 in Mallorca has been arrested on suspicion of assault for going to work and the gym despite signs he had the virus. 

Thailand's capital Bangkok has ordered the closure of public venues and sports premises, city official said on Saturday after the country reported a record daily rise in coronavirus cases and deaths amid a third wave of infections.

The closures, effective from Monday until May 9, apply to venues including public parks, gyms, swimming pools, meeting halls, internet shops, daycares centres, sports fields, museums and libraries, said Pongsakorn Kwanmuang, a Bangkok Metropolitan Administration spokesman.

Bangkok and 40 provinces have also ordered the wearing of face masks in public mandatory.

The new measures come after the Thai Retailers Association restricted opening hours for shopping malls to between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. for a week from Sunday.

Venezuela received a new shipment of some 80,000 doses of Russia's Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, officials said on Saturday, as cases surged and opposition lawmakers criticized the government's vaccine rollout.

The shipment brings the total number of vaccines that Venezuela has received to 880,000, Health Minister Carlos Alvarado said.

He said the government would focus on inoculating healthcare workers and the elderly with the new shipments. Venezuela has also inoculated public officials, firefighters, civil protection personnel and oxygen distribution workers.

"Venezuela's vaccination process has advanced in a satisfactory manner," Alvarado said in a state television broadcast from the Maiquetia International Airport near the capital city of Caracas, where the plane carrying the vaccines had arrived.

Several thousand anti-lockdown demonstrators marched through central London on Saturday despite restrictions on mass gatherings during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Protesters billed the event "Unite for Freedom".

The demonstrators view Covid-19 restrictions as unnecessary and a breach of their human rights. They oppose vaccinations, mask-wearing and so called vaccine passports.

Protesters chanted "freedom" and "take off your mask" and some carried placards saying: "No to vaccine passports" and "Lockdowns kill". Most were unmasked.

The Metropolitan Police said they were not aware of any arrests being made. 

The Whitehall investigation into the so-called "chatty rat" who leaked plans for the second coronavirus lockdown in England is still "live", sources have said.

Boris Johnson's former top adviser Dominic Cummings has accused the Prime Minister of seeking to shut down the investigation.

He said Mr Johnson was concerned he would face "very serious difficulties" with his fiancee, Carrie Symonds, after he was told that a close friend of hers had been implicated.

However, sources familiar with the inquiry - conducted by the Cabinet Secretary Simon Case - have indicated that it is still ongoing.

It was said that it would be "wrong" to assume that it had landed on any one individual - or had completely exonerated anyone.

The world hit a new daily record of coronavirus cases due mainly to an explosion of the virus in India, but Covid jabs also approached one billion globally on Saturday, offering hope after months of pandemic misery.

Cases topped 893,000 worldwide on Friday, with more than a third of the infections in India.

Authorities there announced 332,730 new cases on Friday and another 346,786 on Saturday, also a record for a single country since the start of the pandemic, according to an AFP count.

India also reported another 2,624 deaths hours, taking the official toll to nearly 190,000 since the pandemic started.

India has become the new pandemic hotspot - queues of Covid-19 patients and their fearful relatives have built up outside hospitals in major cities - and acute shortages of oxygen have been reported from all over the country.

The Government said a further 32 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Saturday, bringing the UK total to 127,417.

Separate figures published by the UK's statistics agencies show there have been 151,000 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.

The Government also said that, as of 9am on Saturday, there had been a further 2,061 lab-confirmed cases in the UK.

It brings the total to 4,403,170.

As Margaret Thatcher's education secretary, Lord Baker introduced 'all-or-nothing' exams for 16-year-olds – now he wants them abolished. 

In government, he oversaw the creation of the GCSE, which replaced O-levels as the national qualification for school leavers. Now, he wants them abolished – and thinks the pandemic is the perfect opportunity to kill them off.

“We’re going to have a few years in which we’ve not had GCSEs, I expect,” says Lord Baker, 86, from his home in west London. “We have to seriously think about an alternative.”

For the second year in a row, GCSE exams were cancelled this summer because of Covid-19; grades will instead be decided by teachers.

The qualifications now lie at the centre of a bitter back-and-forth between ministers, teachers and unions – and their future looks less certain now than at any point over their 33-year history. 

Luke Mintz has the full story here

At two anonymous Pfizer buildings, one in the US and one in Belgium, a remarkable experiment is under way.

Up to 60 volunteers, all clean-living adults aged between 18 and 60, are being given the first pill specifically designed to stop SARS-CoV-2.

If the trial is successful, it is just possible that a home cure for Covid-19 will become available later this year.

The Prime Minister, who announced the formation of a UK Antivirals Taskforce last week specifically to invest in such products, will no doubt be scanning his text messages for early updates.

The molecule being tested is a bespoke antiviral codenamed PF 07321332. Classed as a "protease inhibitor", it has been formulated to attack the "spine" of the SARS-Cov-2 virus and stop it replicating in our noses, throats and lungs.

Paul Nuki has the full story here

People in Hungary got a taste on Saturday of what life was like before the coronavirus pandemic as restaurants and bars served in-person customers for the first time in nearly six months. 

Dominika Alapi, 31, rose early and brought her young son to one of her favorite cafes in central Budapest. Drinking a lemonade in the spring sun, she said the experience was "liberating."

"So many of us have been frustrated for so long, thinking, 'Will this be the rest of our lives?' Now it seems like everyone's gotten their life back," Alapi said.

Other bars and restaurants in the capital filled their terraces with eager customers after Hungary reported on Friday that 3.5 million people in the country, or around 35 per cent of the population, had received a first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine,

Before Saturday, food establishments had been limited to take-out and delivery service since November. They still are not permitted to seat people indoors.

Charities will "inevitably" be forced to ration their services due to the financial crisis caused by the Covid pandemic, fundraising experts have warned.

Breast Cancer Haven announced this week that it was suspending its services after the effects of the crisis reduced its income "significantly". It is believed to be the first charity to fold due to the fundraising shortfall from Covid – but it is already having knock-on effects after another charity, Future Dreams, said it was now left to pick up Breast Cancer Haven's services.

The Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), which assists charities including by providing banking services, has warned that the shuttering of smaller charities will impact larger ones. 

Caroline Mallan, the CAF head of external affairs, said that when smaller charities reduce their services users will turn to bigger ones for help Breast Cancer Haven – but those have already had a "huge squeeze on their own finances".  

Lizzie Roberts has the full story here

Cambodia recorded a daily record of 10 new coronavirus deaths, its health ministry said, as infections spike following an outbreak first detected in late February.

The latest figures take the country’s overall number of cases to 9,359. Until recently, Cambodia had one of the world’s lowest infection rate.

However, in the past two months, 71 deaths were reported.

A donation by China of 150,000 doses of its Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine arrived in Damascus on Saturday, with another batch of the same size planned, Syrian officials said.

"We appreciate this aid which will allow the health ministry to combat the pandemic, to curb its impact on health, society and the economy," the health minister, Hassan Ghabash, told reporters at the airport. 

He said the shots would go first to healthcare workers, and then to the elderly and people with chronic diseases.

The Chinese ambassador to Syria said the next 150,000 doses would arrive soon.

Officials have said the country is also discussing vaccines with Russia, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's key ally, but no announcements have been made over receiving shots from Moscow.

More than half of the UK's total population has received a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, figures show.

NHS England data up to April 23 shows that of the 38,189,536 total doses given in England so far, 28,102,852 were first doses - a rise of 107,656 on the previous day.

It means the UK first dose total so far is now 33,496,293, with more recent figures still to be reported by Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Hundreds have descended into central London for an anti-lockdown and vaccine passports protest march. 

Israel has recorded no new daily Covid-19 deaths for the first time in 10 months, as the country pushes ahead with its speedy vaccination drive.

The country's coronavirus death toll remained unchanged at 6,346 on Thursday, health ministry data showed.

The last time Israel reported zero Covid-19 deaths was at the end of June last year, after lockdown measures curbed a first wave of infections.

Israel's outbreak has eased after hitting its peak in January this year.

The Israeli government started to relax lockdown restrictions a month later as vaccinations against Covid-19 were rolled out more widely.

Israel has the highest vaccination rate in the world. On Thursday, the country reached the milestone of five million Covid-19 vaccinations.

Switzerland has detected its first case of a coronavirus variant initially discovered in India, the public health authority said Saturday.

“The first case of the Indian variant of Covid-19 has been discovered in Switzerland,” Switzerland’s federal office of public health tweeted.

he virus variant was found in “a passenger who was transiting through an airport,” it said.

India is facing a devastating rise in infections, recording another 346,786 cases on Saturday – the highest figure recorded by a single country since the start of the pandemic.

Countries have been on high alert for the variant, known as B.1.617, with several halting flights from India.

Norwegian climber Erlend Ness chose not heed his country's advice not to leave the country amid a global rise in cases, flying to Nepal in his effort to scale the legendary peak.

But he became ill on the trek to the mountain's base camp and eventually had to be evacuated by helicopter.

He said he had climbed six of the "Seven Summits" - the highest peaks in each of the world's continents - but failed in his attempt to reach the top of Everest three years ago because he had "low energy".

And asked why he had chosen to try again in the midst of a pandemic that has killed more than three million people, he suggested it was because doing so would be cheaper now. 

Kuwait suspends all flights from India until further notice as cases in India continues to break records, AFP reports.

The regions busiest international air hub, the United Arab Emirates, had already announced on Thursday that it would suspend flights to and from India from Sunday.

The Kuwaiti government tweeted late on Friday: “In view of the health situation, it has been decided to suspend direct commercial air links with India until further notice.”

It added that Kuwaiti residents would only be allowed to return via third countries if they stopped over for at least 14 days.

A group of 15 French volunteers on Saturday left a cave where they had stayed for 40 days, in an experiment probing the limits of human adaptability to isolation.

Dazzled by the light and with pale faces but otherwise healthy, the group led by French-Swiss explorer Christian Clot emerged at around 10:30 am (0830 GMT) from the Lombrives cave in Ariege, southwest France.

The underground isolation experiment saw the subjects, aged between 27 and 50, give up watches, phones and natural light, exchanging modern comforts for a cave system with a constant 12 Celsius (54 Fahrenheit) temperature and 95 percent humidity.

Members had to generate their own electricity with a pedal bike and draw water from a well 45 metres below the earth.

Clot, founder of the Human Adaptation Institute, had said the so-called "Deep Time" experiment would test humans' ability to adapt to the loss of their frame of reference for time and space.

 A couple who spent their eighth wedding anniversary in hospital together after they both contracted Covid-19 have thanked staff for saving their lives.

Peter and Sheila Kirkup were admitted to Sunderland Royal Hospital within days of each other earlier this year.

"We just didn't think we were going to come out, that's how bad it was," said Mr Kirkup, 67.

Mrs Kirkup, 58, spent three days in intensive care after her condition deteriorated.

"It was very emotional but I am just so happy that we are both here together and alive," she said

The pair kept in touch via Facetime during their hospital stay and to celebrate their anniversary, staff arranged for the couple to have their hospital meals together.

Mr and Mrs Kirkup were discharged together six weeks ago.

Overwhelmed hospitals in India begged for oxygen supplies on Saturday as the country's coronavirus infections soared again overnight in a "tsunami" of disease, setting a new world record for cases for the third consecutive day.

Max Healthcare, which runs a network of hospitals in north India, tweeted that it had less than two hours of oxygen left while Fortis Healthcare, another big chain, said it was suspending new admissions in Delhi.

"We are running on backup, waiting for supplies since morning," Fortis said.

India is in the grip of a rampaging second wave of the pandemic, hitting a rate of one Covid-19 death in just under every four minutes in Delhi as the capital's underfunded health system buckles.

The government has deployed military planes and trains to get oxygen to Delhi from the far corners of the country and overseas including Singapore.

 Mallorca man who infected 22 people with Covid-19 has been arrested on suspicion of assault for going to work and the gym despite signs he had the virus, police said Saturday.

Police on the Spanish island began investigating at the end of January after an outbreak in the town of Manacor, following reports an employee had "become infected but hidden his illness", a statement said.

Days before the outbreak was detected, he began to show symptoms causing his colleagues concern but did not want to go home.

At the end of the day, he went for a PCR test but didn't wait for the result, returning the next day to his job and also attending his local gym.

At work, both the manager and staff insisted he go home because he could be infecting everyone, later telling police he had a temperature "of over 40 degrees Celsius" - more than 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

But he ignored them and spent the day walking around his workplace, deliberately lowering his mask when he coughed and taunting them by saying: "I'm going to infect you all with coronavirus," police said.

A close friend of Boris Johnson's fiancee Carrie Symonds has been accused of being the so-called "chatty rat" who leaked plans for a second coronavirus lockdown.

In an explosive attack on the Prime Minister, his former top aide Dominic Cummings said Henry Newman, a special adviser, had been identified as the likely culprit.

Mr Cummings claimed Mr Johnson had been so alarmed when he was told, he wanted the inquiry into the leak halted as he would have "very serious problems" with Ms Symonds if it resulted in Mr Newman being fired.

Mr Johnson has denied the claim.

Over the past years, Mr Newman has risen steadily through the ranks of Tory special advisers having begun working in Whitehall in the coalition years under David Cameron.

Sri Lankan authorities are urging people to avoid large gatherings and stay at home as much as possible as confirmed Covid-19 cases rapidly rise across the island nation.

Separately, prison authorities have banned visitors for two weeks starting Saturday due to the spike in infections.

The number of new confirmed cases in Sri Lanka has tripled in recent days. For several weeks, the number of cases reported daily stood below 300 and on Friday, it was 969.

The country is still in the midst of an outbreak that erupted in October after two infection clusters, one centered in a garment factory and the other in a fish market, emerged in the capital Colombo and its suburbs.

The number of confirmed cases from the two clusters had grown to 92,595 as of Friday. Sri Lanka has reported a total of nearly 99,000 cases and more than 630 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

Germany will shut out all travellers arriving from India apart from its own citizens, Health Minister Jens Spahn said Saturday, as a new variant has made the South Asian country the latest coronavirus hotspot.

"We're very worried about the new mutation of the virus discovered in India. So as not to endanger our vaccination programme, India travel has to be significantly limited," Spahn told the Funke newspaper group.

From Monday, only German citizens will be allowed to enter the country when arriving from India, he added.

As Spahn plans to designate India a "virus variant zone", travellers will have to be tested before departure for Germany and immediately enter a 14-day quarantine on arrival.

Berlin had already dubbed India a "zone with particularly high risk of infection" with effect from Sunday.

On December 8, 90-year-old British woman Margaret Keenan, resplendent in her Christmas T-shirt, received the Western world's first Covid vaccination - a chink of light at the end of the tunnel for humanity after a devastating pandemic year.

Six months on, nearly one billion Covid jabs - both first and second shots - have been administered globally, according to AFP's database.

The unprecedented inoculation drive is seen as the world's ticket out of the coronavirus disaster, despite concerns about rare side effects, worries over supply, and a glaring inequality between rich and poor.

With new Covid variants sparking a worrying fresh spike of cases and uncertainty over the vaccines' effectiveness against them, the planet is now racing to inoculate as many people as possible before being overwhelmed by yet another wave of a pandemic that has already killed three million people.

Police in Wales have pledged to clamp down on anyone causing anti-social behaviour at hotspots over the weekend.

Dispersal orders have been put in place in Cardiff Bay, Swansea, Ogmore-by-Sea and Barry Island, giving South Wales Police powers to break up crowds.

Action is also being taken in Tenby, Pembrokeshire, due to concerns about possible anti-social behaviour.

From Saturday, six people from six different households can meet outdoors under revised Covid rules.

The action comes after criticism of people gathering in large numbers in Cardiff Bay and other locations.

Shutting down society did not save the vulnerable so advocates of such measures are seeking scapegoats, writes Jay Bhattacharya &  Martin Kulldorf. 

Lockdowns have, nevertheless, generated enormous collateral damage across all ages.Depriving children of in-person teaching has hurt not only their education but also their physical and mental health.Other public health consequences include missed cancer screenings and treatments and worse cardiovascular disease outcomes.Much of this damage will unfold over time and is something we must live with – and die with – for many years to come. 

Read the full commentary here 

Healthcare workers have welcomed a change in scientific advice on how to protect them from coronavirus.

A document by the government's scientific advisory group (Sage) says higher grade masks may be needed when caring for Covid patients.

Current guidance says that thinner surgical masks are adequate, outside of intensive care units.

A long list of healthcare unions and professional bodies has been making increasingly desperate appeals for what are called FFP3 respirators.

These are designed to filter out infectious aerosols that may be lingering in the air, particularly in close proximity to patients.

Growing evidence of the risks of airborne transmission has led the government to emphasise the importance of ventilation - with the words "fresh air" now added to the public messaging.

Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday called on Germans to stick to tighter coronavirus restrictions imposed in areas with high infection rates over the weekend, saying the step was needed to break a third wave of infections.

Both chambers of parliament approved the amendments to the Infection Protection Act earlier this week to give the federal government more powers to fight the third wave in the pandemic.

Merkel drew up the law after some of the 16 federal states refused to implement tougher measures despite a surge in Covid-19 cases and in defiance of a lockdown agreement reached in March.

This is something new in our fight against the pandemic. And I am convinced that it's urgently neededIt serves the goal of first slowing down the third wave of the pandemic, then stopping it and finally reversing it.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Friday called on the Biden administration to release millions of doses of AstraZeneca vaccine from storage for shipment to India, Brazil and other countries hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.

"The vaccine doses will not be needed in the United States, where it's estimated that vaccine manufacturers will be able to produce enough doses by early June to vaccinate every American," Myron Brilliant, the chamber's vice president and head of international affairs, said in a statement.

Shipping stockpiled AstraZeneca vaccine doses to countries struggling with the coronavirus "would affirm U.S. leadership, including in COVAX" he said.

"No one is safe from the pandemic until we are all safe from it."

"The U.S. Chamber of Commerce strongly encourages the administration to release the millions of AstraZeneca vaccine doses in storage - as well as other life-support equipment - for shipment to India, Brazil and other nations hard hit by the pandemic," he said. 

Covid wiped £56bn off the value of the luxury goods market last year and sales for 2020’s spring season were 70pc lower than the year before.

As lockdown ends, luxury brands, bars and restaurants are doing everything they can think of - up to and including putting the verse into Versace - to lure us back out into the light and down to the shops. 

Dame Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue and fashion seer, has predicted a huge pent up demand for luxury goods is about to be unleashed. “People have been locked up for a long time and they are going to go out and want to spend,” she told the Financial Times.

For evidence, she pointed to “lines around the block” at reopened Gucci and Dior shops in London. There is no doubt that Brits collectively have plenty of cash to splash.

The Bank of England recently estimated households had saved roughly £125bn more than they would normally by the end of December. 

Millions of doses of AstraZeneca's vaccine manufactured at a U.S. plant that had a contamination issue and then shipped to Mexico are safe and have been approved by two regulators, Mexico's deputy health minister said on Friday.

The doses were sent to Mexico as part of an agreement with the administration of President Joe Biden for 2.7 million shots of AstraZeneca's vaccine to help supplement Mexico's vaccination campaign amid global delays and shortages.

"They were produced in the Baltimore plant," Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez Gatell wrote on Twitter. "The product is safe and of quality, it was evaluated by the FDA and (health regulator) COFEPRIS."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) halted production at the U.S. plant in Baltimore which produced the vaccines while it investigated an error that led to millions of doses being ruined last month.

Iran said on Saturday that it would bar travellers from India over a Covid-19 variant to avert its spread in the already stricken country.

Officials, however, did not say if any cases of the variant first identified in India in late March had been detected in Iran, the epicentre of the pandemic in the Middle East.

“The Indian coronavirus is a new threat we face,” President Hassan Rouhani said in remarks broadcast on state TV.

“The Indian virus is more dangerous than the English and Brazilian variants,” he added.

“All the eastern provinces should make sure people infected with the virus do not cross the borders into the country,” Rouhani said. Iran's eastern provinces border with Pakistan and Afghanistan. Visitors can also travel Iran by way of the Gulf.

 Russia reported 8,828 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, including 2,541 in Moscow, which took the national tally to 4,753,789 since the start of the pandemic.

The coronavirus crisis centre said 399 more deaths of patients had been confirmed in the past 24 hours, taking the national death toll to 107,900.

The federal statistics agency has kept a separate count and reported a toll of more than 225,000 from April 2020 to February. 

Pakistan on Saturday reported its highest Covid-19 death toll in a single day.

Authorities reported 157 deaths, bringing the overall fatalities to 16,999. A total of 5,908 additional cases pushed the toll to 790,016, as authorities complain of routine violations of social distancing and mask-wearing rules.

Prime Minister Imran Khan on Friday announced that military troops will be called to help police enforce the restrictions in public places. 

Authorities also decided to keep educational institutions closed until the situation improved.

Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said in a talk show Saturday that despite the increasing cases and deaths, Pakistan's situation was better than in neighboring India. He said a planeload of 500,000 doses of China's Sinovac vaccines arrived on Friday.

Cambodia closed all markets in the capital Phnom Penh on Saturday to contain a spike in coronavirus infections as thousands of families plead for food during a two-week lockdown.

The Southeast-Asian country has one of the world's smallest coronavirus caseloads, but an outbreak that started in late February has seen overall cases spike to 8,848 and 61 deaths.

Phnom Penh went into lockdown on April 15 and has declared some districts "red zones," banning people from leaving their homes except for medical reasons.

In a new order issued on late Friday, Phnom Penh City Hall said all markets are to be closed from Saturday till May 7, saying that they have seen rising infections in markets and urged vendors and guards to get tested for Covid-19.

"During the implementation of the Royal Government of Cambodia's lockdown measures, the Phnom Penh Municipal Administration has been paying close attention to the evolving status of COVID-19 epidemic," the City Hall said in a statement.

South Korea said on Saturday it signed a contract with Pfizer Inc to purchase an additional 40 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine amid fears of spiking infections at home.

That brings the current amount of Pfizer vaccines to 66 million doses, it said in a statement.

It added that it had secured a total 192 million doses of vaccines, including those from Moderna Inc, AstraZeneca PLC, Johnson & Johnson's and Novavax.

Prof Finn was asked if there is evidence that the Covid-19 vaccines are a risk to under-16s, and he told BBC Breakfast: "There is evidence for more or less all of the vaccines against Covid that the side-effect rate, the reactogenicity that we see, basically goes up the younger you are."

Asked how we can ever know what the risk factor is when children are not being given the jabs, Prof Finn said: "Well the way we do that is to run trials in younger people. 

First of all teenagers and then younger children, to monitor very closely their immune responses, and the rates of side effects in order to provide MHRA (the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) with the data that they would need in order to authorise the use of the vaccines in younger people."

He said a study with the Oxford vaccine has been temporarily suspended while the concerns around blood clots are investigated.

"The Pfizer vaccine has been trialled in teenagers and they've press released the results but we've not seen the full data yet, and we're just tooling up to start doing studies in some of the other vaccines as well in kids," he said.

Children have been frustratingly "left behind" in trials for Covid-19 vaccines, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has said.

Professor Adam Finn, from the University of Bristol, told BBC Breakfast: "I'm a paediatrician and in my normal life I spend my time doing vaccine trials in children.

"And children are very much prioritised for most vaccines, so it's a very weird and unusual situation we're in now because I and other colleagues have spent the last year doing vaccine trials in adults and mostly in older adults, because of the nature of the problems that Covid presents.

So the children have really got very much left behind in this programme really because the children for the most part have not been affected by Covid in any serious way.

More than two million people in the state of Western Australia on Saturday began their first full day of a snap three day lockdown after a coronavirus outbreak in a hotel quarantine facility led to community transmission.

Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan said on Saturday there were no new community transmissions from the outbreak, although contact tracing and testing were still underway.

McGowan called on the national government to establish designated quarantine facilities after the latest leakage of the virus from hotel quarantine .

"I have been calling for the commonwealth's assistance with quarantine for many months now," McGowan said.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 23,392 to 3,268,645, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Saturday.

The reported death toll also rose by 286 to 81,444.

India's  covid infections rose by 346,786 overnight, the health ministry said on Saturday, setting a new world record for the third consecutive day, as overwhelmed hospitals in the densely-populated country begged for oxygen supplies.

India is in the grip of a rampaging second wave of the pandemic, hitting a rate of one Covid-19 death in just under every four minutes in Delhi as the capital's underfunded health system buckles.

The government has deployed military planes and trains to get oxygen from the far corners of the country to Delhi. Television showed an oxygen truck arriving at Delhi's Batra hospital after it issued an SOS saying it had 90 minutes of oxygen left for its 260 patients.

"Please help us get oxygen, there will be a tragedy here," Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a conference on Friday.

The crisis is also being felt in other parts of the country, with several hospitals issuing public notices that they don't have medical oxygen. Local media reported fresh cases of people dying in the cities of Jaipur and Amritsar for lack of the gas.

People who have experienced smell loss as a result of Covid-19 should try "smell training", scientists have recommended.

Smell training involves sniffing at least four different odours, twice daily for several months.

Smell loss expert Prof Carl Philpott, from the University of East Anglia's Norwich Medical School, said that the method "aims to help recovery based on neuroplasticity - the brain's ability to reorganise itself to compensate for a change or injury".

Research by an international group of smell experts, published in the journal International Forum of Allergy & Rhinology, advised against using steroids to treat smell loss.

Itching to fasten your seat belt for take-off and disembark to the leisurely lunches, balmy beach days and plush hotel linens of a proper normal holiday?

You needn’t bide your time ’til May: on Monday the Bailiwick of Jersey reopens to UK tourists, and with the island pretty much back to business as usual (and requiring visitors from UK Green Zones to quarantine for a mere 12 hours), you could be sipping sauvignon blanc inside a chic restaurant (that’s right, inside), checking in to a seaside hotel and working on your tan – sans mask – before you know it.

And if a dose of normality isn’t enough to tempt you (and it really should be), perhaps the island’s dramatic hilltop castles, 45 miles of windswept coastline, spectacular beaches and 1,882 hours of yearly sunshine can tip the balance.

Read the full story

Read more: When can I go on holiday? Latest advice on travelling

Customers face having their cash locked up for months with tickets remaining on sale for events that can’t legally go ahead as planned.

Over the past year ticket firms have received a flood of complaints after thousands of live music and sports events were cancelled because of lockdowns.

Despite this, the firms have continued to sell tickets for concerts and shows scheduled to take place before the Government lifts restrictions on full-capacity events.

Read the full story

Pakistan on Saturday reported its highest Covid-19 death toll in a single day.

Authorities reported 157 deaths, bringing the overall fatalities to 16,999. A total of 5,908 additional cases pushed the toll to 790,016, as authorities complain of routine violations of social distancing and mask-wearing rules.

Prime Minister Imran Khan on Friday announced that military troops will be called to help police enforce the restrictions in public places.

Authorities also decided to keep educational institutions closed until the situation improved.

India's daily coronavirus death toll passed a new record on Saturday as the government battled to get oxygen supplies to hospitals overwhelmed by the hundreds of thousands of new daily cases.

Queues of Covid-19 patients and their fearful relatives are building up outside hospitals in major cities across India, the new world pandemic hotspot which has now reported nearly one million new cases in three days.

Another 2,624 deaths, a new daily record, were reported in 24 hours, taking the official toll to nearly 190,000 since the pandemic started.

More than 340,000 new cases were also reported, taking India's total to 16.5 million.

Read more: Now hunger stalks India as country’s Covid crisis deepens

More than 2 million people in the state of Western Australia on Saturday began their first full day of a snap three day lockdown after a coronavirus outbreak in a hotel quarantine facility led to community transmission.

People in the state capital Perth and the neighbouring Peel region have been asked to stay home except for essential work, and medical and shopping purposes.

Ceremonies to honour Australia's military personnel on the Anzac Day holiday on Sunday have been cancelled. Last year, the coronavirus pandemic forced most traditional memorials to be cancelled across Australia for the first time in decades.

• The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 23,392 to 3,268,645, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed on Saturday. 
• Thailand reported 2,839 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, a record number of new cases in the country's third wave of infection, bringing total infections to 53,022 cases.
• Millions of doses of AstraZeneca's vaccine manufactured at a US plant that had a contamination issue and then shipped to Mexico are safe and have been approved by two regulators, Mexico's deputy health minister said on Friday.
• The latest easing of coronavirus restrictions in Wales sees six people from six households allowed to gather outside from Saturday.

The US Chamber of Commerce on Friday called on the Biden administration to release millions of doses of AstraZeneca vaccine from storage for shipment to India, Brazil and other countries hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.

"The vaccine doses will not be needed in the United States, where it's estimated that vaccine manufacturers will be able to produce enough doses by early June to vaccinate every American," Myron Brilliant, the chamber's vice president and head of international affairs, said in a statement.

Shipping stockpiled AstraZeneca vaccine doses to countries struggling with the coronavirus "would affirm US leadership, including in COVAX" he said, referring to an international partnership to ensure broad access to vaccines. "No one is safe from the pandemic until we are all safe from it."

Read more: Indian hospitals forced to turn away Covid patients 

The US can immediately resume use of Johnson & Johnson's  vaccine, top health regulators said on Friday, ending a 10-day pause to investigate the vaccine's link to extremely rare but potentially deadly blood clots.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration said in a joint statement that they would warn of the risk of a potentially fatal syndrome involving severe blood clots and low platelets in a fact sheet given to recipients.

Top US FDA officials said the decision was effective immediately, clearing the way for shots in arms as early as Saturday.

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• Leading arts figures including Andrew Lloyd Webber and Ralph Fiennes have written to Boris Johnson to throw their support behind the use of Covid passports to open up theatres and concert venues.
• The Indian variant is now the most imported form of coronavirus, a new analysis by Public Health England has found, amid fears it contains mutations which could bypass immunity and make it more transmissible.
• A “rescue” flight from Covid-ravaged India with 350 passengers on board was blocked by the UK Government as it tried to reach Britain before a travel ban took effect.
• Changing rooms closures have seen customers take matters into their own hands and strip off on the shop floor at Primark.
• Vaccine chiefs are considering whether under-40s should be given a different vaccine to the AstraZeneca jab, after new figures showed a rise in risk of blood clots. 
• The AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine provides a "significant benefit" in avoiding hospital admission across all age groups, the European Medicines Agency has said.