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France and Greece to mandate jabs for healthcare staff – as it happened

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Mon 12 Jul 2021 19.31 EDTFirst published on Mon 12 Jul 2021 00.34 EDT
A medical worker administers a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in Paris.
A medical worker administers a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in Paris. Photograph: Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters
A medical worker administers a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in Paris. Photograph: Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters

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Key events

People who are clinically extremely vulnerable will be advised to avoid others who are unvaccinated when all remaining coronavirus restrictions are eased in England next week.

Those most at risk of serious illness from the virus should continue to meet outdoors where possible and ask friends and family to take a lateral flow test before visiting from July 19, according to government guidance, PA reports.

The updated advice is aimed at the estimated 3.7 million in this group, which includes people with certain cancers and those with severe respiratory conditions.

“As someone who is at a higher risk of becoming seriously ill if you were to catch Covid-19, you may wish to think particularly carefully about additional precautions you might wish to continue to take,” the guidance says.

The advice acknowledges how difficult social distancing has been for people who were advised to shield in the past, as it suggests a series of measures to reduce the risk of the virus spreading once restrictions are lifted.

It suggests meeting outdoors wherever possible to reduce the risk of airborne transmission, as particles are blown away, and ensuring that indoor spaces are well ventilated.

The death toll in a fire likely caused by an oxygen tank explosion at a coronavirus hospital in Iraq’s southern city of Nassiriya has risen to 42.

More than 60 are injured , health officials and police said on Monday.

As rescuers combed the smoke-charred building in search of more bodies, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi held an urgent meeting with ministers and top security commanders to discuss the tragedy.

“Health crews carried charred bodies out of the burning hospital while many patients were coughing from the rising smoke,” a Reuters reporter at the site of the fire said.

US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said she is pressing for the easing of coronavirus restrictions that bar much of the world from traveling to the United States but that U.S. health officials remain concerned about more outbreaks.
Dozen of U.S. business groups, lawmakers and officials from foreign governments are urging President Joe Biden’s administration to relax tough restrictions put in place under former President Donald Trump. “We’re working it,” Raimondo told Reuters in an interview “I’m pushing really hard.”

The Kuwaiti Cabinet has decided to close down all activities for children, including summer clubs, from July 25 until further notice, as a precautionary measure to combat the spread of coronavirus.

After a briefing by the health minister, the Cabinet also ordered the ministry of defence and the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) to put their hospitals at the service of the country’s healthcare system, according to a Cabinet statement.

Kuwait on Monday reported 1,770 Covid-19 infections, and 19 deaths, bringing the total of infections to 37,7364 and deaths to 2,136.

A government minister in the UK has denied a planned free speech law for universities will result in anti-vaccination speakers being given a platform.
Universities minister Michelle Donelan said the Bill “categorically” did not give anti-vaxxers a right to speak on campus, PA reports. She said: “The Opposition raised the issue of anti-vaxxers. We have one of the world’s most successful vaccination programmes with over half of 18 to 24-year-olds already having had their first jab. “This Bill categorically does not give the right to a platform of anti-vaxxers who may make baseless claims.”

Brazil registered 745 Covid-19 deaths on Monday and 17,031 additional cases, according to data released by the nation’s health ministry.
The South American country has now registered a total of 534,233 coronavirus deaths and 19,106,971 total confirmed cases, Reuters reports.

Johnson & Johnson said it was in discussions with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about rare cases of a neurological disorder, Guillain-Barre syndrome, that have been reported following vaccination with the Janssen Covid-19 vaccine.

The chance of having Guillain-Barre syndrome occur is very low and the rate of reported cases exceeds the background rate by a small degree, J&J said.

The statement follows a Washington Post report on Monday, which said the FDA was expected to announce a new warning on J&J’s coronavirus vaccine related to a rare autoimmune disorder.

Guillain-Barre syndrome is a rare neurological disorder in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks part of its peripheral nervous system, or the network of nerves located outside of the brain and spinal cord.

At least 36 people dead after fire in Covid isolation ward in Iraq

At least 36 people died in a fire in the coronavirus isolation ward at an Iraqi hospital, the second such deadly inferno in a Covid-19 unit in three months, a health official said.

The fire broke out at the Al-Hussein hospital in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah late Monday and was still ongoing, according to an AFP correspondent.

Haydar al-Zamili, a spokesman for the local health authorities, told AFP that the “fire... ripped through the Covid isolation ward,” and put the death toll at 36.

Five were injured, “including two in critical condition,” he added.

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Anyone entering a restaurant, café, shopping centre, hospital or taking a long-distance train in France will have to show a special Covid health pass from August, Emmanuel Macron has announced, as France tightens restrictions to contain the rising Delta variant.

The same Covid health pass – which shows that a person has been vaccinated or had a negative Covid test – will be similarly required for anyone over the age of 12 to enter a cinema, theatre, museum, theme park or cultural centre from as early as 21 July, the president said, in a bid to pressure more French people to take up vaccines.

Macron also announced mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations for workers in healthcare and in retirement homes. Vaccine checks on those workers would begin in September, with a risk of sanctions or fines. The compulsory vaccines also applied to all volunteers or staff in contact with elderly or vulnerable people in their homes, including home-helps.

Saudi Arabia will send a medical aid package to Tunisia that includes one million doses of vaccine to help the North Africa country control the rapid spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Saudi Arabia joins other Arab countries in helping Tunisia, which is facing the collapse of its health care system, including Egypt, Algeria, UAE, Kuwait, Turkey and Qatar.

The Saudi Press Agency said on Monday the aid also includes 190 respirators and other equipment.

“We are in a catastrophic situation ... the health system has collapsed, we can only find a bed in hospitals with great difficulty,” said health ministry spokesperson Nisaf Ben Alaya.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has condemned the UK government’s decision to lift almost all remaining coronavirus restrictions in England at the same time.

Sir Keir said: “With infection rates still going up at the rate they are going up that is still reckless, I am afraid. We need a safe way to come through this.

“At the moment the Government wants to put the country in a car without a seatbelt to get us as quickly as possible to the end of the road map. Lifting all protections at the same time is just wrong.”

He said it was “basic common sense” to continue with the requirement to wear face masks in settings such as public transport.

“The Government is saying they are strongly recommended. The reason for that is because they keep the infection rate down,” he said.

A summary of today's developments

  • France will not allow health workers to go to work and will not pay them if they are not vaccinated against Covid-19 by September 15, the health minister Olivier Veran said.
  • Indonesia has reported its highest daily number of infections yet, with 40,427 cases logged on Monday, data from the country’s Covid-19 task force showed. Meanwhile, authorities have expelled four foreign tourists from Bali after they breached the island’s tough coronavirus restrictions.
  • South African president Cyril Ramaphosa said that days of protests, looting and riots in the country led to the cancellation of coronavirus vaccination efforts in some parts of the country and could lead to further disruption of the programme just when the country was picking up the pace to inoculate its citizens.
  • Vietnam has reported another new record in daily coronavirus infections, with 2,367 cases, its health ministry said.
  • Another grim record has been set in Bangladesh, where 13,768 new infections were logged in the 24 hours to Monday morning. A further 220 deaths were also registered.
  • The reopening of schools cannot wait for all pupils and teachers to be vaccinated, or for the number of Covid cases to be reduced to zero, the chiefs of Unicef and Unesco have said in a joint statement.
  • Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte apologised for relaxing coronavirus restrictions too soon as cases surge in the wake of reopening.
  • The number of people who did not have enough food to eat rose steeply during the Covid-19 pandemic to include almost a third of the world, according to a new UN report published on Monday.
  • Valencia’s regional government has succeeded in obtaining a court order to authorise lockdowns in more than 30 towns in eastern Spain as cases surge among unvaccinated young people.
  • Healthcare workers and nursing home staff in Greece will be required to be vaccinated against Covid, prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has said as infections rapidly soar again after a sustained decline.

France will not allow health workers to go to work and will not pay them if they are not vaccinated against Covid-19 by September 15, the health minister said on Monday.

Speaking on LCI television, health minister Olivier Veran said it was vital to impose obligatory measures given how contagious the Delta variant of the virus is, Reuters reports.

Meanwhile, French online medical booking site Doctolib temporarily froze as thousands of citizens scrambled to book COVID-19 shots after president Emmanuel Macron said a ‘health pass’ would be needed to go to bars and restaurants from August.

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