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UK’s approach to securing borders ‘chaotic and dangerous’, says Labour – as it happened

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 Updated 
Thu 24 Jun 2021 18.57 EDTFirst published on Thu 24 Jun 2021 00.54 EDT
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Key events

A summary of today's developments

  • Brazil recorded 73,602 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, along with 2,032 deaths, the country’s health ministry said on Thursday. Brazil has registered more than 18.2 million cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 509,141, Reuters reports.
  • Malta and the Balearic Islands will be added to England’s green list of places that are safe to visit without requiring quarantine on return, British transport minister Grant Shapps said on Thursday. “Six countries including Tunisia and Haiti will be put on the red list,” Shapps said on Twitter. He added that British residents who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 will not have to isolate when travelling from countries on the amber list, according to government plans that will be explained in more detail next month.
  • Mexico’s health regulator has given approval to U.S. drug maker Pfizer Inc’s Covid-19 vaccine for use in children 12 years old and older, Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell said on Twitter on Thursday.
  • African Union special envoy Strive Masiyiwa accused the world’s richest nations of deliberately failing to provide enough Covid-19 vaccines to the continent. Masiyiwa, the union’s special envoy to the African vaccine acquisition task team, said the Covax scheme had failed to keep its promise to secure production of 700 million doses of vaccines in time for delivery by December 2021.
  • The pandemic, and responses to it, is pushing more people into drug use, while illegal cultivation could also get a boost as joblessness increases globally, the UN said. The Vienna-based United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said its report showed that drug markets swiftly resumed operations after initial disruption at the onset of the pandemic – demonstrating the resilience of the market amid record demand for many substances.
  • The French president Emmanuel Macron joined the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and urged EU countries to coordinate more closely on how tourists from outside the bloc are able to come, amid calls for all UK arrivals to the EU to have to quarantine.
  • A former soldier has fired gunshots in a coronavirus field hospital in Thailand, killing a 54-year-old patient after earlier shooting dead a convenience store employee, police said. The suspect, 23, was said to believe that the patients in the hospital in Pathum Thani near Bangkok were people dependent on drugs, who he despises.
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Red, amber and green destinations
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Brazil recorded 73,602 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, along with 2,032 deaths, the country’s health ministry said on Thursday.

Brazil has registered more than 18.2 million cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 509,141, Reuters reports.

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Updated at 

Royal Caribbean Group said on Thursday two guests on its cruise liner, Adventure of the Seas, had tested positive for Covid-19.

Both guests were not vaccinated and had been quarantined before they disembarked on Thursday in Freeport, The Bahamas, Royal Caribbean International, a unit of the company said in a statement.

The news comes a week after the company said it would delay the launch of its new cruise liner by nearly a month after eight crew members tested positive for coronavirus, Reuters report.

Responding to the changes in the UK’s Covid travel restrictions, shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds said: “The Government’s approach to securing our borders against Covid and its variants has been chaotic and dangerous.

“Boris Johnson’s failure to act let the Delta variant take hold and held back our reopening with the British people paying the price.

“Labour wants to see travel reopen and is supportive of a limited and safe green list.
“We have been calling for an international vaccine passport and will look seriously at the details of proposals for travel or quarantine arrangements for people who have been double-vaccinated.

“Ministers must urgently publish the data that supports their decisions and scrap the amber list, which is still causing confusion, with too many people travelling to countries not deemed safe.”

Mexico’s health regulator has given approval to U.S. drug maker Pfizer Inc’s Covid-19 vaccine for use in children 12 years old and older, Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell said on Twitter on Thursday.

“It’s the first COVID-19 vaccine authorized for adolescents in our country,” he said, Reuters reports.

The easing of restrictions on UK travellers heading to the Balearics has prompted elation among officials and businesses in the islands, even as an outbreak of 394 coronavirus cases among Spanish students who had recently travelled to Mallorca highlighted the risks of opening up.

On Thursday, Britain’s transport secretary, Grant Shapps, announced that the Spanish archipelago was among the territories added to the UK’s green list as of next Wednesday, meaning travellers will not need to quarantine when returning to the UK.

Last month Spain began allowing British travellers into the country without the need to provide a negative Covid test, a move that sharply contrasts with the growing push by EU leaders to tighten restrictions on British tourists.

San Francisco city workers will be required to be vaccinated against the coronavirus when a vaccine receives full federal approval, Associated Press reports.

The policy covering 35,000 municipal workers may be the first by any city or county in the U.S., the San Francisco Chronicle reported Wednesday.

Employees who refuse to get vaccinated and don’t get an exemption could be fired, the Chronicle said.

The three Covid-19 vaccines currently available in the U.S. are being dispensed under emergency authorization by the Food and Drug Administration.

They are expected to receive full approval in several months. San Francisco city employees will then have 10 weeks to get their shots.

Venezuela received its first shipment of doses of Cuba’s Abdala coronavirus vaccine on Thursday, the South American country’s vice president said, while criticising wealthy countries for “sabotaging” the COVAX vaccine-sharing scheme.

Authorities did not specify how many doses had arrived from Cuba, but did say that Venezuela had signed a contract to purchase 12 million doses of the shot.

Cuba said earlier this week that the three-shot Abdala vaccine had proved 92.28% effective in last-stage clinical trials, Reuters reports.

“This is true international cooperation, the brotherhood and friendship that we must demonstrate and be an example for other governments,” vice president Delcy Rodriguez said in a state television address.

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