January 11 coronavirus news

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said it welcomes China's announcement earlier today, which stated that a WHO team investigating the origins of Covid-19 would arrive in the country on Thursday.

China's announcement effectively greenlights the team's entry into the country. It comes after Beijing blocked the arrival of the global experts last week as the necessary permissions to enter China had not been approved.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the time that he was "very disappointed," in a rare rebuke from the UN health agency.

Gaining access: For months, WHO officials have been negotiating with Beijing to allow a team of global scientists access to key sites to investigate the origin of the virus -- first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019 -- and its likely jump from an unidentified host species to humans.

In May, WHO agreed to hold an inquiry into the global response to the pandemic after more than 100 countries signed a resolution calling for an independent probe.

The United Kingdom is now at the deadliest point of the coronavirus pandemic, with numbers higher now than during last year's peak, England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty said on Monday. 

“We’ve got to be very clear that we’re now at the worst point of this epidemic for the UK, in the future we will have the vaccine, but the numbers at the moment are higher than they were in the previous peak -- by some distance,” Whitty told the BBC. 

He said he expects the next few weeks to be the “most dangerous time,” before the vaccines that are being rolled out across the country can have an impact. Currently, there are over 30,000 people in hospital and that number is still rising, Whitty added.

Whitty's warning comes as seven mass vaccination centres are opened in England, as efforts continue to massively ramp up the numbers receiving the shot. People over 80 years old and health and social care workers who live near to the sites are being offered the chance to book appointments.

The UK is aiming to vaccinate around 15 million of its most vulnerable members of society by mid-February, according to vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi.

"This is really a race against time," he told the BBC's Radio 4 program.

"Once we open up more vaccination centers next week and the week after and of course the community pharmacies ... nobody should be more than a ten-mile radius of a site."

UK Health Minister Matt Hancock told the BBC on Sunday that all adults in the UK would be inoculated by the autumn. Hancock will hold a press conference later on Monday to announce the delivery plan.

The Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, which was approved for use by European Union regulators last week, will start arriving in Germany Monday, according to the country's health minister.

"The delivery ... of the vaccine from Moderna will happen today ... tomorrow it will go to the federal states and they can then begin to vaccinate," Jens Spahn told on German public broadcaster ZDF.

He added that by the end of the first quarter of 2021, "we expect two million doses of Moderna, during this year we have ordered 50 million doses."

Vaccine pace: Members of the EU vaccine procurement scheme, agreed in June, are reliant on regulators granting authorization of Covid vaccines -- but the EU has taken longer than the UK, the US and Canada to give the green light.

So far, the European Medicines Agency has authorized the BioNTech/Pfizer shot and, last week, the Moderna vaccine -- with initial orders for 300 million doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine and 160 million of Moderna.

Germany, which started its campaign in December, has administered over 500,000 shots but also faced criticism for the speed of its vaccination campaign. Amid calls for the country to take control over purchases from European Union authorities, Spahn said there will be "enough vaccine" and urged patience.

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With Covid-19 hospitalizations surpassing 100,000 for 40 days in a row, officials are trying to ramp up the pace of vaccinations across the United States.

On Sunday, 129,229 people were in US hospitals with coronavirus, but the day marked only the sixth highest in pandemic history, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

Experts have long said the best defenses against surging cases are preventative measures like masks and social distancing, as well as widespread vaccination. So far, at least 22.1 million doses of coronavirus vaccines have been distributed and nearly 6.7 million have made their way into patients' arms.

Health officials had hoped to get 20 million people vaccinated at the start of the new year, but the administration of vaccines has undergone delays and roadblocks.

Gottlieb's warning comes just days after the US crossed a grim threshold for the first time -- reporting more than 4,000 new Covid-19 deaths in a single day on Thursday. Since the pandemic began, more than 374,000 people have died in the US and more than 22.4 million people have been infected, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

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French government spokesman Gabriel Attal told radio station Europe 1 that “at this stage we aren’t planning a lockdown,” adding that authorities are following the coronavirus pandemic closely.

“We are looking at what’s happening around us, at other countries that are in lockdown where the virus is circulating twice, sometimes three times faster than here because the French have made a lot of efforts and we took decisions early on,” Attal said on Monday. 

Arnaud Fontanet, a government health advisor, told BFM TV Monday that to limit the spread of the virus France needs to vaccinate 10 to 15 million people by the end of March. Fontanet also said the country should consider closing its borders with the UK because the new variant of the virus first discovered in England is a “big threat.” 

France has been under fire for the sluggish pace of its vaccination campaign since it started on December 27. Only 516 people were given the jab in the first week, according to data from the French health authority on January 1. 

French Health Minister Olivier Veran said last Thursday more than 50,000 doses of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine would be ready for use this week. 

In his New Year's Eve address, French President Emmanuel Macron said he would not tolerate any "unjustified slowness" in the country's vaccination campaign.

France has been one of the hardest hit countries in Europe, with almost 68,000 deaths from the virus as of January 11, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

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Political leaders are promising that mass vaccination campaigns will see life return to normal, as a more contagious variant of the coronavirus spreads across dozens of countries, adding urgency to the race to end the pandemic.

But vaccination efforts are rolling out slower than promised, raising doubts about an imminent way out of the crisis.

In nations where vaccines have been authorized, criticism is mounting over shortages and delays to getting shots into people's arms. And solutions devised to stretch supplies -- from administering half doses to spreading out the time between two doses -- have raised concerns from some experts.

Some governments are pointing the finger at manufacturers for bottlenecks, while vaccine developers say it's an issue of supply. Others cite complications with distribution plans and a lack of trained staff to administer shots. But most public health experts say the slow pace is the inevitable consequence of creating a new vaccine rollout in real time.

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North Korea claims to have tested 13,257 people and found no positive cases of Covid-19, according to a report issued on January 8 by the World Health Organization.

The report is based on data from 15 laboratories in North Korea, which the country's Ministry of Public Health provided to WHO.

The report also said that travel restrictions in North Korea have been imposed and all points of entry are closed for an undefined period of time. 

The North Korean government has maintained that there have not been any positive cases of Covid-19 detected in the country, a claim widely questioned by experts.

The UK government will publish its Covid-19 UK Vaccines Delivery Plan on Monday, with Health Secretary Matt Hancock scheduled to hold a news conference at Downing Street in the afternoon to provide details on the program.

The plan will lay out the strategies behind the development, manufacturing and deployment of the vaccines, according to a government statement.

The Health Secretary will visit one of the seven new regional vaccination centers to see an element of the plan in action.

More than 1,000 vaccination sites have already been established across the United Kingdom, helping those who are most at risk from Covid-19 to access vaccines for free, regardless of where they live.

Mexico on Sunday reported its first case of the Covid-19 variant first identified in the United Kingdom, a Mexican Health Ministry official said.

Mexico's Director General of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía said the patient is a 56-year-old British citizen who traveled from Amsterdam to Mexico City on December 28, and then to the northeast city of Matamoros.

On Sunday, the patient was intubated in hospital. 

It's the first confirmed case of the UK variant in Mexico. Health officials have tested more than 500 suspected cases of the variant but this is the first verified case. 

Mexican health authorities are tracking cases from people who traveled on the same plane as the patient from Mexico City to Matamoros. On Sunday, two people who showed symptoms tested negative to Covid-19. Another 31 are asymptomatic and there are still 12 people who haven't been found, Alomía said.

According to the Health Ministry, at least 1,534,039 total Covid-19 cases have been recorded in Mexico, including 133,706 deaths.