Coronavirus live: UK reports 138 deaths amid 21,691 new cases; row in Germany over jabbing children

Israel has warned against travel to the US and other countries and said it would tighten quarantine measures for inbound travellers as part of efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus Delta variant.

Reuters reports that Covid-19 cases have surged in highly-vaccinated Israel since the emergence of the highly contagious Delta variant, prompting health officials this week to begin administering vaccine booster shots to people over 60.

It also began mandating isolation for returning travellers – including those vaccinated or recovered from the virus – from countries deemed “red”, indicating a rapid spread of the disease.

Today, the health ministry said it would add 18 countries to its red list, including the US, France, Italy, Iceland, Greece and others.

“Beginning 11 August, complete isolation for all age groups is required, even for the vaccinated and recovering,” the health ministry said of the 18 countries, warning of “a significant increase in morbidity coming from abroad”.

Italy has reported 27 additional coronavirus deaths and 4,845 new cases.

Microsoft has joined a number of tech giants in mandating vaccination for all employees entering its US buildings.

From September, the company said it would require proof of vaccination for all employees, vendors and guests entering its workplaces, reports Reuters.

But the company said it would continue to review the situation on a local basis.

Uber, Facebook and Google have all implemented similar policies.

Argentina‘s Laboratorios Richmond has announced that it plans to produce over 3m doses of the second component of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine this month, reports Reuters.

Nicola Sturgeon has suggested that new advice from the UK’s vaccine advisory panel in the coming days will recommend opening up the vaccine programme to all over-16s across the UK.

Making a statement to the Scottish parliament on Tuesday afternoon, Sturgeon told MSPs that she was “hoping” to get the updated advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) “over the next day or so”.

During the subsequent question and answer session, Sturgeon went on:

She later said she was hoping and “veering towards expecting” the committee would recommend further vaccination of people in the 12-18 age group, and in particular “hopeful that we will see some updated recommendations in relation, as a priority as a first part of this, for 16- and 17-year-olds.”

During the first year of the pandemic 25 children and teenagers died as a direct result of Covid-19 in England and about 6,000 were admitted to hospital, according to the most complete analysis of national data on the age group to date, equating to an absolute risk of one in 481,000, or approximately two in a million.

The US has now shipped more than 110m doses of coronavirus vaccines to more than 60 countries, the White House has said.

According to a fact sheet from the White House, the United Nations has said the US vaccine donations surpass those of all other countries combined. The countries that have received the vaccine donations range from Ecuador to Nigeria and Vietnam. Indonesia has received the highest number of vaccines from the US, with 8m doses going to the south-east Asian country.

My colleague Joan E Greve has all the latest US-focused updates here.

The White House announcement comes as Helen Clark, a former New Zealand prime minister and co-chair of an influential Covid panel, criticised more developed countries for buying up many more vaccines than they require, and in many cases only redistributing their surplus when the vaccines are approaching their expiry date.

Uzbekistan has passed a law allowing employers to prevent staff from working if they are not vaccinated against coronavirus, state media reported.

AFP reports employers in Uzbekistan will be permitted to suspend employees if they refuse to get vaccinated, according to the law signed by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.

Exceptions to the rule are employees who have health conditions that prevent them from receiving the vaccine. As of today, the central Asian country of more than 34 million people has reported more than 130,000 cases and over 890 deaths.

Uzbekistan borders two countries, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, who have made vaccinations compulsory for citizens over the age of 18. Another neighbour, Kazakhstan, a country of 19 million, ordered mandatory vaccinations for most workers last month.

The EU has made the first payouts to member states from its EUR800bn post-Covid recovery plan.

The first instalments from the pooled “Next Generation EU” fund were EUR2.2bn to Portugal, EUR770m to Belgium, and EUR12.1m to Luxembourg, the European Commission said.

These payments are intended to finance essential reforms and investments, laying the groundwork for member states to receive the rest of their allocations, AFP reports.

The fund was originally announced as a EUR750bn plan, but that was calculated on 2018 prices. The commission now estimates that, in 2021 prices, it amounts to EUR806.9bn euros.

All but two member states in the 27-nation EU have submitted spending plans and 16 have been definitively approved, while evaluations are continuing on seven. The two countries yet to submit their plans were Bulgaria and the Netherlands. The next deadline for them to do so is mid-2022.

Poland and Hungary, whose plans are still being weighed, are at loggerheads with Brussels over their authoritarian governments’ approaches to LGBT rights and the rule of law, AFP reports.

European Commission spokeswoman Arianna Podesta said the order in which member states receive their first payments would depend on the speed with which national governments can process their agreements. “For some member states it is a matter of days, for other member states it may take longer,” she said.

Belgium is to receive a total of EUR5.9bn in grants and Luxembourg EUR97m. Portugal’s allocation totals EUR16.6bn, including EUR2.7bn in loans.

Activists in the US fear millions will be evicted on to the streets after the Biden administration allowed the federal moratorium to expire over the weekend and Congress was unable to extend it.

The Associated Press reports that historic amounts of rental assistance allocated by Congress had been expected to avert a crisis. But the distribution has been painfully slow: only about $3bn of the first tranche of $25bn had been distributed through June by states and localities. A second amount of $21.5bn will go to the states.

More than 15 million people live in households that owe as much as $20bn to their landlords, according to the Aspen Institute. As of 5 July, roughly 3.6 million people in the US said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to the US Census Bureau’s household pulse survey.

Johnson & Johnson has withdrawn its application seeking accelerated emergency approval of its Covid-19 vaccine in India, the country’s drugs regulator has said.

But Yahoo News reports that the reason for the withdrawal of the application remains unclear, after J&J previously faced obstacles to delivering doses to India.

Yesterday, J&J said it remained in talks with the Indian government over its vaccine after its drug regulator announced the company had pulled its proposal seeking accelerated approval for local trials.

Reuters reports that India in May scrapped local trials for “well-established” foreign coronavirus vaccines as it tried to speed up its rollout.

“We are in ongoing discussions with the government of India and are exploring how best to accelerate our ability to deliver our Covid-19 vaccine to India,” Johnson & Johnson said yesterday.

The Indian junior health minister said last week that a team had been formed to engage with vaccine makers. “This team is in continuous dialogue with Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson to discuss and address various issues including the issue of indemnity,” Bharati Pravin Pawar said.

Johnson & Johnson is yet to request a full approval for its shot with the US Food and Drug Administration, while Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna have already moved to obtain full approval – despite an absence of long-term safety data that candidate vaccines usually require.