At the Commons science committee, Dr Angelique Coetzee, chair of the South African Medical Association has accused the UK of a “knee jerk response” in bringing in a travel ban within 24 hours of Omicron being announced in South Africa last month.
It would have been better to get people to wear masks, socially distance and keep away from large gatherings, she added.
While proof of vaccination or a negative lateral flow test for certain events could help reduce the spread of the virus, Dr Coetzee said lockdowns were too restrictive.
“What I think is important to do is to get people vaccinated, get people to wear their masks, and get people to stay away from big gatherings. That should be the biggest plan at this stage to have in place,” she told MPs.
Dr Coetzee said she agreed with data released in South Africa today that the severity of disease might be 29% lower than in the country’s previous wave. But she added that the numbers were uncertain and that in many cases, doctors did not know which variant patients were hospitalised with.
Further data from South Africa suggest that a double dose of Pfizer, without a booster, provides 33% protection against Omicron infection, down from 80% with Delta, and 70% protection against severe illness, down from 93% protection against Delta.
In the UK most older people have now received booster shots of Pfizer on top of their original two doses.
“They can still get breakthrough infections,” Dr Coetzee said, “however the breakthrough infections that we are seeing in primary healthcare are mild.”
My colleague Andrew Sparrow has more from the committee over on the UK politics live blog:
Good morning from London. I’m Lucy Campbell, I’ll be bringing you all the latest global developments on the coronavirus pandemic for the next eight hours. Please feel free to get in touch with me as I work if you have a story or tips to share! Your thoughts are always welcome.
France has confirmed it has detected 130 cases of the Omicron variant. Government spokesperson Gabriel Attal said there were no plans to impose new domestic restrictions, although they were closely monitoring the situation in the UK in case they may need to impose travel restrictions.
South Korea has marked its deadliest day since the start of the pandemic. The country, which had done a comparatively good job at containing the virus – with fewer than 5,000 deaths in total – on Tuesday reported 94 deaths from Covid-19 during the previous 24 hours, while critical cases reached a record high of 906.
A person who was on Israel’s prime minister Naftali Bennett’s flight back from the United Arab Emirates has tested positive for Covid-19. Bennett is currently in quarantine in line with Israel’s regulations.
Norway’s government said it plans to reintroduce loan guarantees for companies facing liquidity shortages as a result of recently introduced lockdown measures. The government on Monday announced a four-week ban on serving alcohol in bars and restaurants, a closing of gyms and swimming pools to most users and mandatory work-from-home for those who can.
China’s economically important Zhejiang province is battling a Covid outbreak that has left half a million people quarantined and some districts under business shutdown.
Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon is expected to address parliament in Edinburgh at about 2.05pm today, and announce new measures to try and stave off the spread of the Omicron variant.
The UK parliament will vote on a series of anti-Covid measures today. There is expected to be a significant number of rebel Conservative MPs who will vote against their own government and the proposed public health measures.
Deputy prime minister Dominic Raab caused confusion in the UK this morning by saying there were 250 people in hospital with the Omicron variant and it had caused “deaths”, before having to confirm the true numbers are one death and ten people in hospital.
This is my last day on the live blog until after Christmas, so from me, Martin Belam, I’d like to say thank you to all the readers who have followed this blog during the year, especially those who have been in touch, or spotted a mistake and helped me correct it. I hope all of you enjoy a great Christmas or however you celebrate during the holiday season. I will see you back here again in a couple of weeks. Take care and stay safe.
At the Commons science committee in the UK, Dr Angelique Coetzee, chair of the South African Medical Association, has given evidence about the impact of Omicron in South Africa.
She said Omicron was at least as transmissible as the Delta variant. She said it generally produced a mild disease.
It was different for people in hospital, she said. Most people in hospital were unvaccinated, she said. She told the MPs that they did not do genomic sequencing for most patients, so the hospital statistics did not differentiate between Delta patients and Omicron patients. But she said intensive care units were “not overwhelmed” with Covid cases.
Yesterday there were only 11 Covid-related deaths in South Africa, far fewer than the 578 weekly average reported at Delta’s peak.
If Omicron really were such a deadly variant, we would expect the numbers to have shot up, yet that simply isn’t happening here.
This makes it all the more peculiar to see what’s happening in the UK. This huge over-reaction is scaring people unnecessarily, and if your government does decide go to for a hard lockdown in the new year, that could end up doing far more harm than good.
In our Science Weekly podcast today, Madeleine Finlay speaks to the Guardian’s science editor, Ian Sample, about the spread of Omicron, and what we can do to prevent a tidal wave of cases.
Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine has still not been approved by medical regulators for the European Union, which has sparked some terse diplomatic exchanges.
Reuters report that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters today that the certification process was under way. They quote him saying:
There is indeed some information that needs to be provided for certification that we have not yet provided because we had a different understanding of what exactly the information should be and how it should be presented.
We have different standards and so on. So we are gradually adapting to these requirements and we hope for a positive result from this work.
The situation is dire, and yet one year after the discovery of multiple effective vaccines, we still face a vaccine apartheid. Patent-protected vaccines are sold at great profit to wealthy countries by a few pharmaceutical companies. The global vaccine price ranges from $2 (for AstraZeneca) to $37 per dose, with mRNA vaccines such as Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna the most expensive. Between January 2020 and December 2021 the market capitalisations of Moderna rose from $6.9bn to $134bn; Pfizer from $206bn to $314bn; and BioNTech from $6.6bn to $84bn.
It is clear that the existing efforts to distribute vaccines to poorer countries are not working. The Covax Advanced Market Commitment was set up in September 2020 by the Global Alliance Vaccine Initiative, in alliance with the World Health Organization, to accelerate the development and manufacture of Covid-19 vaccines, as well as diagnostics and treatments, and to guarantee rapid, fair and equitable access to them for people in all countries. Donor countries would thereby fund guaranteed volumes of vaccines from manufacturers to supply low- and middle-income countries.
The Covax scheme’s target was to deliver 2bn doses by the end of this month. And yet, by 5 December, well over a year since its launch, the Covax scheme had shipped only 669m doses to 144 countries, with just 250m donated to the poorest 95 countries at time of writing. Not only is it way off track, millions of vaccine doses donated to African countries have passed their expiry dates and have either been sent back or destroyed.
A person who was on Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett’s flight back from the United Arab Emirates has tested positive for Covid-19, the prime minister’s office said on Tuesday.
Associated Press reports Bennett returned to Israel on Monday from the two-day trip to the Gulf state, the first by an Israeli leader to the country.
He was in a three-day quarantine on Tuesday as per health ministry regulations, which require all returning travellers to Israel, even those vaccinated, to self-isolate. He was expected to take a coronavirus test on Wednesday, also in line with health regulations, and then end his quarantine if he tests negative, the prime minister’s office said.
Bennett’s office did not specify who the person was who tested positive.
Bennett was meant to be accompanied by Israeli and foreign journalists and a sizeable entourage on the visit. But a day before his departure, journalists were notified that because of concerns over Omicron, they would not be joining and that Bennett’s entourage would be downsized.
Andrew Sparrow has launched the combined UK politics and Covid live blog for the day. I expect it is going to be very lively. You can find him here:
I’ll be continuing with the latest global coronavirus news on this live blog.
Billie Eilish has revealed that she had Covid-19 in August, and said that she felt sure she “would have died” had she not been vaccinated.
Appearing on Howard Stern’s US radio show on Monday, Eilish said: “The vaccine is fucking amazing and it also saved [her brother/musical collaborator] Finneas from getting it; it saved my parents from getting it; it saved my friends from getting it.”
Eilish said she was unwell with the virus for two months and that she was still experiencing undisclosed side effects.
“I want it to be clear that it is because of the vaccine I’m fine,” she said. “I think if I weren’t vaccinated, I would have died, because it was bad.
“When I say it was bad, I more just mean that it felt horrible. But really, in the scheme of Covid, it was not bad. You know what I mean? When you’re sick, you feel fucking horrible.”
But it’s not just the challenge of resources needing to be met that we must be ready for. There will be a need for huge amounts of patience and understanding by patients, many of whom have already waited too long for the tests, treatments and procedures they have been prescribed and promised. We had only just begun to tackle the backlog; with further delays, there will inevitably be a negative impact on the health and wellbeing of those patients waiting. We must also face the harsh fact that the waiting list itself will lengthen. It will also require – and this may be no less challenging for many – everyone to do their bit by going back to proper social distancing, getting ourselves fully vaccinated and appropriately boosted.
It is inevitable that tough choices need to be made. But, that doesn’t mean irresponsible choices. If a patient needs to be seen in the NHS, they should be seen, and while it won’t necessarily feel like business as usual for the next few weeks it certainly shouldn’t feel as if no regular business is being done at all.
And to be clear, no one is saying that we should “hit the pause button” on urgent care – that really does need to continue as closely as we can come to business as usual. And this is where we can all help: the more beds that are taken up with Covid patients, the fewer beds there are for those with other serious conditions who have been admitted via A&E departments. If that part of the system gets clogged, it makes it harder to bring people in by ambulance. Covid will hit all of us if we aren’t very careful.
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is expected to address parliament in Edinburgh at around 2.05pm today, and announce new measures to try and stave off the spread of the Omicron variant.
Yesterday health secretary Humza Yousaf refused to be drawn on what might be announced, saying:
I think it’s inevitable we will announce additional protective measures. I would be reluctant to get into detail on that because we’re working through that detail. The First Minister will rightly update parliament first tomorrow.
It is really important that we try to do this with as much support from the Treasury which hasn’t been forthcoming thus far, because we know that of course there’s been an impact on businesses.
There is some speculation here on what might be coming from the BBC’s Nick Eardley.
Nick Eardley (@nickeardleybbc)
Scottish cabinet meeting this morning to sign off new restrictions in response to Omicron.
They will consider restricting household mixing again – likely to be guidance rather than law. Could be stronger WFH guidance and social distancing too.https://t.co/4EyG1FlKZ0
Some of the Conservative MPs who have said they are intending to vote against the concept of vaccine passports for large venues in England have said they are doing so because of fears it is an infringement on civil liberties.
Tobias Ellwood, MP for Bournemouth East, has taken a slightly different tack this morning on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, arguing that he is against them because they will not be effective at curbing Covid. PA Media quotes him telling the programme:
Three votes are taking place today, firstly on face masks, I don’t disagree with that, that makes sense, secondly on mandatory vaccinations for NHS staff, I agree with that too.
It’s this final one to do with vaccine passports for large events, there are some practical implications as to how this will be enforced.
But, more importantly, you can go into a large venue with a recent negative lateral flow test, again that makes sense, but you can also turn up if you had proof of having two jabs, which may have been completed six months ago, so even with a new mutation you could actually be carrying Covid.
Leadership is about taking people to where perhaps they didn’t realise they needed to go, but they must understand the plan, and this is illogical at the moment.
If you can turn up with just a piece of paper, that documentation you’ve received that says you’ve had two jabs completed six months ago, that will not prevent Covid from entering a large venue.
It is 8.35am in the UK, and the government website has already run out of lateral flow testing kits for delivery again today.
LFT kits are out of stock again. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
You can still pick up rapid lateral flow tests from a pharmacy or other collection points today, but you cannot order them online.
It looks like my earlier suspicion about Dominic Raab’s command of his numbers was justified. [see 7.44am]
Kate McCann (@KateEMcCann)
Earlier, Dominic Raab told @KayBurley there are 250 omicron cases in hospital right now but the correct figure is 10. He later corrected himself.
Norway’s government said it plans to reintroduce loan guarantees for companies facing liquidity shortages as a result of recently introduced lockdown measures.
Reuters report the measure was one of several schemes intended to alleviate the situation, finance minister Trygve Slagsvold Vedum told a news conference. Recipients will in return face limitations on the dividends they can pay to shareholders, he added.
The government on Monday announced a four-week ban on serving alcohol in bars and restaurants, a closing of gyms and swimming pools to most users and mandatory work-from-home for those who can.
On Sky News, Labour’s shadow culture secretary Lucy Powell had some strong words over prime minister Boris Johnson’s leadership, saying:
The prime minister has just become somebody unable to persuade his own party, unable to persuade the country, because people have sort of lost trust in his judgment. Because they don’t feel that he’s putting himself through the same hardship, and to the same rules, that the rest of us are. And that’s been an incredibly unfortunate last few weeks for all of us, really. That the prime minister of the country is no longer trusted on some of these key issues.
Asked about Labour’s support for the proposed new Covid measures today when Johnson can’t persuade many members of his own party, Powell said:
I don’t see this in party political terms at all. We take our responsibilities as opposition incredibly seriously, and what we will always do is put public health ,we will put the scientific advice, and we will put the national interest first. So we’re not looking at party political calculations.
Pressed on whether introducing vaccine passports was an imposition on civil liberties in England, Powell told Kay Burley:
This doesn’t come naturally to any of us. These are not measures that any of us came into politics and into parliament to bring in. But what I would say is, I mean, firstly, these are Covid passes, so they’re not vaccine passports. You can take a lateral flow test before going to a large event instead.
And what I would say is, whether you’re going to a small gathering or a large gathering, I would encourage everybody to take lateral flow before they do that anyway.
But we have to think about the civil liberties of everybody, not just a small few who don’t want to use a vaccine or Covid pass. And all of our civil liberties are potentially at risk if we don’t all behave in a way that can suppress this variant and suppress this virus at this point in time. Because it might affect all of our civil liberties going into into the new year.
