Greece to allow tourists with vaccines, antibodies or negative tests – as it happened

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• Brazil has suffered its highest daily death toll since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, with the confirmation of 1,972 new fatalities. The news, which took Brazil’s total death toll to nearly 270,000, comes as the South American lives through the most severe moment in its 13-month outbreak and sparked renewed calls for a nationwide lockdown.

• Italy recorded 100,000 coronavirus deaths, a year after it became the first western country to impose a total lockdown and as it braces for a third wave of the pandemic.

• Japan decided to stage this summer’s Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics without overseas spectators due to public concern about Covid-19, the Kyodo news agency has said, citing officials with knowledge of the matter.

• The World Trade Organization director-general called for urgent action on boosting Covid-19 vaccine production in developing countries, saying manufacturing sites could be prepared in six to seven months or less than half the time previously thought.

• Estonia’s government has banned groups larger than two people, closed non-essential shops and told restaurants to switch to take-aways as part of a drive to contain a surge in Covid-19 infections.

• Denmark’s health minister Magnus Heunicke said there were grounds to ease restrictions further since the epidemic was not worsening in the Nordic country.

• People who are vaccinated against Covid-19, have antibodies or test negative can travel to Greece this summer, tourism minister Harry Theocharis has said, after the country led calls for an EU-wide vaccination certificate.

• Seventeen European countries received doses from a batch of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine that authorities in Austria have stopped using while investigating a death and an illness, a senior health official said.

• Johnson & Johnson told the EU it was facing supply issues that may complicate plans to deliver 55 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine to the bloc in the second quarter of the year, an EU official told Reuters.

• The developers of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine have questioned the neutrality of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) after an EMA official urged EU members to hold off approving the vaccine.

• The UK’s foreign secretary Dominic Raab has written to the European Council president after he claimed the UK imposed an “outright ban” on coronavirus vaccine exports. Raab said he is seeking to “set the record straight”.

• Palestinian hospitals became overfull and intensive-care units were operating at 100% capacity with coronavirus patients in some areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said.

• Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, announced some limited relaxations to outdoor mixing in Scotland, in particular for teenagers.

• Bosnia’s foreign minister said she and her compatriots were “justifiably unhappy” after failing to yet to receive any of the promised vaccines from the EU-backed Covax scheme.

The White House medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci, has spoken about the challenge of containing more infectious variants of Covid-19 even as vaccines are rolled out, in an online conversation with Australia’s chief medical officer, Prof Paul Kelly.

“Here is the challenge: are we going to chase each variant in an almost whack-a-mole way, or are we going to try and get a vaccine that has a good degree of protection against several strains and get the level of virus so low that we don’t really have an outbreak?” he asked.

“Both strategies are being pursued in the United States.”

The Red Cross has warned of a glaring gap in the plans to roll out Covid-19 vaccines around the world, saying remote communities risked missing out.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is aiming to help vaccinate 500 million people.

The IFRC, which calls itself the world’s largest humanitarian network, is planning to throw its expertise into the distribution and acceptance of vaccines among some of the hardest-to-reach communities.

But it said that while the procurement of vaccines and delivery to airport hubs was crucial, “too little thought” had been given to the next step: how those doses would be distributed within countries, including the “last mile” in getting to those furthest away.

The Geneva-based federation said it needed 100 million Swiss francs ($111 million, 92.5 million euros) to fill the logistics gap between vaccines reaching airports in capital cities, and remote settlements.

But so far the IFRC has raised only three percent of that figure.

Without this funding, a gap will remain between the vaccines that will ultimately end this pandemic, and some of the most vulnerable and isolated people in the world,” said IFRC president Francesco Rocca.

Such a gap means that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, and that people will continue to get sick and die.”

The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to advance President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill, clearing the way for the measure to be considered on Wednesday, when a final vote is expected.

BioNTech SE could have capacity to make 3 billion doses of the Covid-19 vaccine it developed with partner Pfizer Inc next year, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing an interview with the German company’s chief executive officer.

While BioNTech could increase manufacturing capacity in principle, it depends on demand and factors such as requirement of additional boost to vaccinations, CEO Ugur Sahin said.

Pfizer last month said it aims to make at least 2 billion doses of its COVID-19 vaccine in 2021.

9 Mar 202117.05 EST

Brazil suffers highest daily death toll

Tom Phillips

Brazil has suffered its highest daily death toll since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, with the confirmation of 1,972 new fatalities.

The news, which took Brazil’s total death toll to nearly 270,000, comes as the South American lives through the most severe moment in its 13-month outbreak and sparked renewed calls for a nationwide lockdown.

“São Paulo is on the verge of a public health collapse unprecedented in its history,” warned Miguel Nicolelis, a leading Brazilian scientist. “Football must stop now. Schools must close. Churches must close and services stop now.”

A record 517 deaths were recorded in Brazil’s most populous state, São Paulo, on Tuesday.

But Brazil’s far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro, has declared he has no intention of ordering restrictions and last week told citizens to stop “whining” about the worst public health crisis in the country’s history.

Átila Iamarino, a Brazilian biologist who has become one of the country’s most prominent scientific voices during the pandemic, told the Guardian: “Without a shutdown, what we are going to witness here is unthinkable.

“ The numbers are insane … I simply cannot conceive a situation in which there is no shutdown. Nobody with a shred of humanity wants to see such a situation.”

The UK’s foreign secretary Dominic Raab has written to the European Council president after he claimed the UK imposed an “outright ban” on coronavirus vaccine exports.

Charles Michel accused Britain and the US of imposing bans on the movement of jabs as he used a newsletter to hit back at criticisms of the bloc’s vaccine rollout.

Raab sought to “set the record straight” in a letter to the EU chief on Tuesday evening, writing that “any references to a UK export ban or any restrictions on vaccines are completely false”.

He insisted the UK government “has not blocked a single Covid-19 vaccine or vaccine components”, adding: “We are all facing this pandemic together.”

• Italy recorded 100,000 coronavirus deaths, a year after it became the first western country to impose a total lockdown and as it braces for a third wave of the pandemic.

• Japan decided to stage this summer’s Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics without overseas spectators due to public concern about Covid-19, the Kyodo news agency has said, citing officials with knowledge of the matter.

• The World Trade Organization director-general called for urgent action on boosting Covid-19 vaccine production in developing countries, saying manufacturing sites could be prepared in six to seven months or less than half the time previously thought.

• Estonia’s government has banned groups larger than two people, closed non-essential shops and told restaurants to switch to take-aways as part of a drive to contain a surge in Covid-19 infections.

• Denmark’s health minister Magnus Heunicke said there were grounds to ease restrictions further since the epidemic was not worsening in the Nordic country.

• People who are vaccinated against Covid-19, have antibodies or test negative can travel to Greece this summer, tourism minister Harry Theocharis has said, after the country led calls for an EU-wide vaccination certificate.

• Seventeen European countries received doses from a batch of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine that authorities in Austria have stopped using while investigating a death and an illness, a senior health official said.
  

• Johnson & Johnson told the EU it was facing supply issues that may complicate plans to deliver 55 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine to the bloc in the second quarter of the year, an EU official told Reuters.

• The developers of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine have questioned the neutrality of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) after an EMA official urged EU members to hold off approving the vaccine.
  

• The UK’s foreign secretary Dominic Raab has written to the European Council president after he claimed the UK imposed an “outright ban” on coronavirus vaccine exports. Raab said he is seeking to “set the record straight”.

• Palestinian hospitals became overfull and intensive-care units were operating at 100% capacity with coronavirus patients in some areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said.

• Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, announced some limited relaxations to outdoor mixing in Scotland, in particular for teenagers.

• Bosnia’s foreign minister said she and her compatriots were “justifiably unhappy” after failing to yet to receive any of the promised vaccines from the EU-backed Covax scheme.

The World Trade Organization director-general called for urgent action on boosting Covid-19 vaccine production in developing countries, saying manufacturing sites could be prepared in six to seven months or less than half the time previously thought.

“The fact is that each additional day the vaccine shortage continues, people will pay with their lives,” said Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala at a two-day summit focused on Covid-19 vaccine production , Reuters reports.

Manufacturing capacity and ingredients shortages are the main bottlenecks to expanding Covid-19 vaccine production, several global drug groups said, not patents that some critics are demanding be removed.

IP (intellectual property) rights is not the issue,” said Thomas Cueni, who heads the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA).

The bottlenecks are the capacity, the scarcity of raw materials, scarcity of ingredients, and it is about the know-how.”

Cueni, who represents large drugmakers, spoke after a virtual meeting organised partly by the World Health Organization-backed COVAX vaccine sharing programme, Reuters reports.

It included manufacturers, suppliers and international organizations seeking to boost vaccine supplies.

Estonia’s government has banned groups larger than two people, closed non-essential shops and told restaurants to switch to take-aways as part of a drive to contain a surge in Covid-19 infections.

Primary schools will have to switch to online education, which was mandated to older students earlier this month in the Baltic nation of 1.3 million battles the second highest per capita rate of infections in the European Union after the Czech Republic.

The government said it had recorded 1,336 cases over the previous 14 days per 100,000 people, more than twice the level seen a month ago and a fifth more than last week, when it told restaurants and many shops to close during weekend to control the surge.

The new restrictions, which come into effect from Thursday, will stay until April 11.

“The fresh data shows that the more aggressive British variant of the coronavirus is spreading more seriously in Estonia than previously predicted. Our medical system is in a crisis,” Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said.

“This is the only way to the come out of the crisis. How fast we manage to do that depends of the behaviour of each individual*.

A representative of the EU’s delegation in Britain has been summoned by London after European Council President Charles Michel said the country has an outright ban on exports of Covid-19 shots, The Sun newspaper reported.

“(Foreign minister Dominic Raab has written written to Michel demanding this is corrected, according to the newspaper.

Earlier, a British government spokesman said the country has not blocked the export of coronavirus vaccines.

The Foreign Office has yet to comment on the reports.

No company in France has signed a contract with Russia to produce its Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine, a spokesman for France’s industry minister said, appearing to contradict the head of Russia’s RDIF sovereign wealth fund.

“We have not identified a site which meets their requirements,” the spokesman said when asked about a possible deal signed with RDIF.

“As far as we’re aware, no contract has been signed by a company in France to produce the Sputnik V vaccine,” he said.

Earlier, the head of Russia’s RDIF sovereign wealth fund said his organisation had struck deals with production facilities in Italy, Spain, France and Germany to manufacture the Russian shot.

Speaking to state channel Rossiya 24, RDIF head Kirill Dmitriev did not provide any details, Reuters reports.

Dmitriev was speaking after RDIF signed a commercial deal with Swiss-based drugmaker Adienne to produce the vaccine in Italy.

An adviser to President Emmanuel Macron left the door open for a partnership between France and Russia on Sputnik V.

“It’s one topic on which we can have a positive cooperation,” the adviser told reporters.

“One of the difficulties Sputnik is facing is having access to production capacity for the volumes they would want.”

Zimbabwe has authorised the emergency use of four Covid-19 vaccines, including Russia’s Sputnik V and China’s Sinovac, the minister of information said.

The southern African nation last month rolled out its Covid-19 vaccination programme after receiving a donation of 200,000 doses of shots from China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm).

Last week, India announced that Zimbabwe had become the first African country to authorise the use of its Covaxin vaccine.

The Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe has authorised the use of Sinopharm and Sinovac shots from China, Russia’s Sputnik V and India’s Covaxin, the information minister Monica Mutsvangwa said in a post-Cabinet briefing.

“All Covid-19 approved vaccines will be procured through the National Vaccine Procurement Fund managed by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development,” Mutsvangwa said.

She said private businesses wishing to import their own vaccines for employees should purchase only registered vaccines, Reuters reports.

The US has administered 93,692,598 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Tuesday morning and distributed 123,232,775 doses, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The tally is for Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech, and Johnson & Johnson’s vaccines as of 6:00 a.m. ET on Tuesday, the agency said.

According to the tally posted on March 8, the agency had administered 92,089,852 doses of the vaccines, and distributed 116,378,615 doses.

A total of 7,419,240 vaccine doses have been administered in long-term care facilities, the agency said.