Portugal's health system 'very close to limit' – as it happened

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• South Africa has delayed reopening its schools amid a rapid resurgence of Covid-19 driven by a more infectious variant of the virus.
• There have been a further 38,598 lab-confirmed coronavirus cases in the UK, according to government data. This compares to 54,940 infections registered last Sunday and is the lowest number since 27 December.
  
• The United Arab Emirates has lowered the minimum age requirement to receive a Covid-19 vaccination to 16, from 18 previously, its ministry of health said.
  
• Israel’s prisons service has said they will begin vaccinating all incarcerated people against Covid-19, including Palestinians, following calls from right groups, Palestinian officials and Israel’s attorney general.
  
• Greece’s health authorities have announced 237 new infections, taking the country’s total 148,607 confirmed cases. Today’s figure is significantly lower than last Sunday’s, when 445 new cases were reported, and is the smallest daily increase since October.
• Over-70s and clinically extremely vulnerable people will begin receiving invitations for coronavirus jabs this week in a “significant milestone” for the vaccination programme, the UK government has announced.
• Brazil’s health regulator, Anvisa, has approved the emergency use of two coronavirus vaccines during a politically-charged televised meeting that Brazilians watched with bated-breath.
  
• Portugal’s public health system is on the verge of collapsing as hospitals in the areas worst-affected by a worrying surge in coronavirus cases are quickly running out of intensive care beds to treat Covid-19 patients.
• Schools in Malawi will be shut for at least 15 days while bars have been given an 8pm closing time under new coronavirus restrictions announced by President Lazarus Chakwera in a television address on Sunday.
  

Brazil had 33,040 new confirmed coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours and 551 fatalities, the first day in six the death toll has been below 1,000, the health ministry said on Sunday.

The South American country has now registered 8,488,099 cases since the pandemic began, and the official death toll has risen to 209,847, according to ministry data. It is the world’s third worst outbreak behind the United States and India.

Dealing with the deadly second wave of Covid has left the NHS in the most precarious position in its 72-year history, chief executive Sir Simon Stevens has warned, as ministers said they were aiming to get all adults in the UK vaccinated by September.

Stevens said the NHS was now giving 140 jabs a minute, as the race to vaccinate the public picks up, but warned of the stress the service was under.

“The facts are very clear and I’m not going to sugar coat them. Hospitals are under extreme pressure and staff are under extreme pressure,” Stevens said on Sunday.

Over-70s and clinically extremely vulnerable people will begin receiving invitations for coronavirus jabs this week in a “significant milestone” for the vaccination programme, the UK government has announced.

More than 3.8 million people – including over-80s, care home residents and NHS and social care staff – have already received their first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, but from Monday it will begin to be offered to the next two priority groups.

The government said it would remain the priority to vaccinate those in the first two groups but sites that have enough supply, and capacity to vaccinate more people, will be allowed to offer jabs to the next two cohorts.

Ghana’s Covid-19 infection rates are skyrocketing and include strains of the virus not previously seen in the country, threatening to overwhelm the health system, President Nana Akufo-Addo said on Sunday.

Since 5 January, the number of active cases has risen to 1,924 from about 900, Akufo-Addo said in a speech. There are now 120 severe cases, up from 18 a week ago.

The president said that some people arriving from abroad had tested positive for “new variants” of the virus. Last week, Gambia recorded its first two cases of the highly infectious UK variant, in what appears to be the first confirmation of its presence in Africa.

Ghana is not yet close to the peak seen during the first wave of infections in the middle of last year, but could quickly reach that level if cases keep rising at the current rate.
If they do, the president said he would impose another partial lockdown, despite worries about what that would do to one of west Africa’s largest economies.

“Our Covid-19 treatment centres have gone from having zero patients to now being full because of the upsurge in infections,” the president said. “At this current rate ... our healthcare infrastructure will be overwhelmed.”

Across Africa, a second coronavirus wave is infecting twice as many people per day than at the height of last year’s first wave and has yet to peak, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

The rise has raised concern across the continent where, unlike in Europe and the United States, cash-strapped governments have been unable to secure supply deals with vaccine manufacturers, putting the onus for now on containment. Akufo-Addo said details about access to vaccines and a rollout plan would be announced “very soon”.

Schools in Malawi will be shut for at least 15 days while bars have been given an 8pm closing time under new coronavirus restrictions announced by President Lazarus Chakwera in a television address on Sunday.

After reporting no positive cases for almost two months, the country has seen a sudden resurgence in coronavirus cases since the middle of last month.

The country of 19 million people has reported 12,470 cases of Covid-19 and 314 deaths since the pandemic began last year. Chakwera said a third of those deaths were reported in the past 16 days, forcing the government to seek additional funding to contain the pandemic at a time when the country is in 4.1tn kwacha ($5.37bn) of debt.

The new measures concerning schools and bars will take effect from Monday.

Chakwera also said the government has allocated an additional 1.6bn kwacha ($2.1m) in funds to be spent on recruiting frontline healthcare workers, 1,000 intensive care unit beds and 1,000 oxygen cylinders among other requirements.

Last week the government reported that two senior cabinet ministers and two other high-profile members of the government had died from Covid-19.

Workers in Melbourne are expected to return to city offices in large numbers on Monday, with research indicating most feel safe and ready to return after nine months of remote working.

Private workplaces in Victoria are able to return to 50% capacity from Monday, with public service offices permitted to ramp up to 25%.

A Roy Morgan survey of 503 city workers from late November to mid-December shows almost two-thirds were either willing to return to their central Melbourne workplaces (44%) or had already (15%).

The most commonly cited factors making workers feel safe to return were Covid-safe plans and adherence to health measures.

France reported a further 141 deaths from coronavirus on Sunday, taking the cumulative toll since March to 70,283, the public health authority said. It also reported 16,642 new infections within the previous 24 hours.

The infection figures on Sundays are usually lower because fewer tests are taken. The number of daily cases has been hovering around 20,000 for the last week.

The health ministry said in a separate statement that 422,127 people had now been vaccinated, up from about 413,000 on Saturday.

Eurostar has said it is facing an existential threat, as business leaders pleaded with the government to step in and save the “vital link” with Europe.

A 95% drop in passenger numbers has brought the cross-Channel train service to its knees, and the company reiterated on Sunday that while government loans had been extended to aviation, international high-speed rail had also been severely affected by the pandemic.

Here’s a graphic showing the number of vaccine doses US states have administered, courtesy of ourworldindata.org

Portugal’s public health system is on the verge of collapsing as hospitals in the areas worst-affected by a worrying surge in coronavirus cases are quickly running out of intensive care beds to treat Covid-19 patients.

“Our health system is under a situation of extreme pressure,” Health Minister Marta Temido told reporters on Sunday afternoon after a visit to a struggling hospital. “There is a limit and we are very close to it.”

The health system, which prior to the pandemic had the lowest number of critical care beds per 100,000 inhabitants in Europe, can accommodate a maximum of 672 COVID-19 patients in intensive care units (ICUs), according to health ministry data.

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The number of people in ICUs with COVID-19 reached 647 on Sunday, according to health authority DGS. The Portuguese Association of Hospital Administrators said the number of coronavirus patients needing hospitalisation was likely to dramatically increase over the next week.

Three days into a nationwide lockdown, the country of just 10 million people reported 10,385 new cases and 152 fatalities on Sunday, bringing the total number of infections to 549,801, with the death toll increasing to 8,861.

According to ourworldindata.org, supported by Oxford University, Portugal had the highest number of coronavirus cases in Europe per capita over the last seven days.

Most new cases were concentrated in Lisbon, where many patients at the city’s public hospitals have already been transferred elsewhere, including to health units in the country’s second biggest city Porto.

The UK variant of the coronavirus has killed three residents at a retirement home in northwestern Belgium and infected 111 people including 39 staff members, its director Jurgen Duyck told AFP on Sunday.

The cluster represents two-thirds of the residents of the De Groene Verte home in the western Flanders city of Houthulst near the border with France.

Belgium has suffered one of the worst per capita death rates in the world during the epidemic with its nursing homes representing more than half of overall deaths from the disease, according to the Public Health Institute.

Mayor Joris Hindryckx said the outbreak prompted a halt to “all social and sporting activities” in the town of around 10,000 people.

The source of the contamination is unknown, but the mayor said the infection must have been “indirect” as none of those testing positive was known to have travelled to Britain.

17 Jan 202113.10 EST

Brazil approves emergency use of two vaccines

Tom Phillips

Brazil’s health regulator, Anvisa, has approved the emergency use of two coronavirus vaccines during a politically-charged televised meeting that Brazilians watched with bated-breath.

The vaccines produced by Oxford/AstraZeneca and China’s Sinovac will both now be permitted in South America’s biggest country, which has the world’s second highest Covid death toll with more than 209,000 deaths. The decision was taken on Sunday afternoon after three of Anvisa’s five directors voted for the move.

The ruling is a major victory for Brazil’s 212 million citizens - reeling from one of the worst epidemics in the world - but a stinging political defeat for the Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro has failed to acquire any doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine and as a result vaccination with Sinovac’s CoronaVac is likely to begin on Sunday in São Paulo state. São Paulo is governed by one of the president’s biggest political rivals, João Doria, who has championed the Chinese vaccine.

Doria will reportedly offer the first shot to a local intensive care nurse called Mônica Calazans on Sunday, making a high-profile pronouncement he hopes will cement his image as Brazil’s Covid saviour in the public imagination.

“Brazil is in a rush to save lives,” Doria tweeted on Sunday afternoon. Bolsonaro’s Twitter account remained silent.