Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to key eventsSkip to navigation

Covid live: UK reports 40,004 new cases and 61 new deaths; Brussels protest turns violent

This article is more than 2 years old
Violence breaks out in Brussels in protests against Covid restrictions – video

Live feed

Key events

Summary

  • Austria has clamped down on public life from Monday as its fourth national Covid-19 lockdown began, making it the first western European country to reimpose the measure in the face of surging coronavirus infections.
  • German politicians are debating making Covid-19 vaccinations compulsory for citizens in light of soaring infections and low inoculation rates.
  • The US government’s chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci warns that time is running short to prevent a “dangerous” new surge of Covid-19 infections from overwhelming the upcoming holiday season.
  • England’s flagship test-and-trace service is still spending more than £1m a day on private consultants, official figures reveal weeks after MPs lambasted it as an “eye-watering” waste of taxpayers’ money that is failing to cut Covid infection levels.
  • In the UK, Covid booster jabs are likely to be offered to all adults eventually, with the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation already considering the issue, the health secretary has suggested.
  • Some Pacific countries will have less than a quarter of adults vaccinated by the end of the year, with predictions that Papua New Guinea will take five years to vaccinate just one-third of its population, undermining economic recovery and threatening huge loss of life across the region.
  • The Delta variant was first detected a year ago and is now dominant across the globe. Scientists are concerned that a new strain could supersede it.
  • Violence erupted at demonstrations in Belgium and the Netherlands over the weekend as tougher Covid-19 restrictions to curb the resurgent pandemic led to angry protests in several European countries.
  • The US Marine Corps has the worst vaccination record among US military branches, Reuters reports, with thousands of active-duty staff set to miss a 28 November deadline for personnel to be fully vaccinated.
  • The World Health Organisation said it is “very worried” about a fresh wave of European infection.
  • The French government has warned that Covid is spreading at “lighting speed”. The seven-day average of new cases in France reached 17,153 on Saturday, an increase of 81%.

Germany mulls compulsory vaccination

German politicians are debating making Covid-19 vaccinations compulsory for citizens in light of soaring infections and low inoculation rates.

Several members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc said on Sunday that federal and state governments should introduce compulsory vaccinations soon as other efforts to push up Germany’s low inoculation rate of just 68% have failed.

“We’ve reached a point at which we must clearly say that we need de facto compulsory vaccination and a lockdown for the unvaccinated,” Tilman Kuban, head of the youth wing of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), wrote in Die Welt newspaper.

Bavarian State Premier Markus Soeder called for a quick decision to make Covid-19 vaccinations compulsory while Schleswig-Holstein State Premier Daniel Guenther said authorities should at least discuss such a step to increase the pressure on unvaccinated citizens.

Danyal Bayaz, an influential member of the Greens and Finance Minister in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg where infection rates are very high, said it would be a mistake at this point of the pandemic to rule out compulsory vaccination.

The Greens are currently in talks with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) and the libertarian Free Democrats (FDP) to form a three-way coalition government on the federal level, Reuters reports.

The three parties are in the final stages of sealing a coalition agreement which would pave the way for outgoing Finance Minister Olaf Scholz from the SPD to succeed Merkel as chancellor in the first half of December.

Scholz has said he wants a debate about whether to make vaccination compulsory for health care workers and geriatric nurses. FDP members have voiced their objections to such a step as the party puts a bigger emphasis on individual freedom.

Hello I’m Samantha Lock taking over from colleague Jem Bartholomew from over here in Sydney, Australia.

First up, some news out of Austria for you.

The European nation has clamped down on public life from Monday as its fourth national Covid-19 lockdown began, making it the first western European country to reimpose the measure in the face of surging coronavirus infections.

This lockdown is similar to previous ones but is the first introduced since vaccines became widely available. Most places people gather, like restaurants, cafes, bars, theatres, non-essential shops and hairdressers cannot open their doors for 10 days initially and maybe as many as 20, the government says.

Christmas markets must also shut but ski lifts can remain open to the vaccinated. Hotels will, however, close to tourists not already staying there when the lockdown began.

“It is a situation where we have to react now,” Health Minister Wolfgang Mueckstein told ORF TV on Sunday night, Reuters reports.

“A lockdown, a relatively tough method, a sledgehammer, is the only option to reduce the numbers (of infections) here.”

The conservative-led government imposed a lockdown on the unvaccinated last week but daily infections kept extending far above the previous peak reached a year ago and intensive care beds are running short.

On Friday, the government announced it was reimposing a full lockdown as of Monday and would make it compulsory to get vaccinated as of 1 February.

Thought-provoking opinion article here from an anonymous NHS respiratory consultant in the UK.

They discuss how the “selfish” decisions of the unvaccinated are hard to sympathise with, despite a medical professional’s typical instinct to treat patients without judgement.

Full story here: “ICU is full of the unvaccinated – my patience with them is wearing thin”

As a respiratory doctor, I have spent my whole career treating people whose lung diseases have been caused by smoking, including long after they knew the risks. ... I personally – unlike some of my colleagues – have never felt any ambivalence about treating smokers without judgment in exactly the same way as people with diseases that are not seen as self-inflicted.

Enshrined in the way we protect patients’ autonomy is the recognition that others may reasonably make decisions we may see as irrational or wrong...

Translating this to the choice not to take the vaccine, however, I find my patience wearing thin. ... Even if you are not worried about your own risk from Covid, you cannot know the risk of the people into whose faces you may cough; there is a dangerous and selfish element to this that I find hard to stomach.

Share
Updated at 

The New York Times reports on the toll on US hospital staff from the pandemic and a recent rise in hospitalisations.

The state of Michigan has seen Covid cases up 78% over the last two weeks, according to the NYT database, with hospitlisations jumping 46% over the same period – the second-worst percentage rise in the country behind New Hampshire.

The surge in hospitalisations are exerting further strain on an already-creaking medical system – with staff morale taking a pummelling by the new wave.

“We’re all scared to death because this is now so hard to predict what will happen,” Dr. Darryl Elmouchi, the president of Spectrum Health West Michigan, said in an interview Saturday. “We’re preparing for the worst.”

“It’s one thing if you ask people to take extra shifts for a few weeks,” he said. “It’s another thing if you ask people to take extra shifts for months.”

NYT reporter Vimal Patel has the full story here.

Share
Updated at 

The US Marine Corps has the worst vaccination record among US military branches, Reuters reports, with thousands of active-duty staff set to miss a 28 November deadline for personnel to be fully vaccinated.

The Marine Corps recorded 91% of active personnel fully vaccinated and 94% part-vaccinated by Wednesday, it said in a statement on Sunday.

That trails behind the US Navy (96.7% fully-jabbed), the Air Force (96.4%) and the Army (93%).

Reuters has the details:

Service members are considered fully vaccinated 14 days after getting a single Johnson & Johnson shot or 14 days after their second dose of Pfizer or Moderna vaccine - meaning it is too late for many to complete the vaccination process by the deadline.

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth warned on Tuesday that soldiers, including National Guard members, who refuse to get vaccinated would not have their service renewed unless they have an approved exemption, according to a memo seen by Reuters.

US Army Secretary Christine Wormuth (left) and US Army Chief of Staff General James McConville (right) at a House Armed Services Committee hearing in June. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA
Share
Updated at 

Brazil reports 5,126 infections and 72 new deaths

Brazil registered 5,126 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, down from 14,642 new infections last Saturday.

The country reported a further 72 Covid-related deaths on Sunday, Reuters reports. The seven-day average for Covid deaths is now 197.

Brazil has the second-highest Covid deaths in the world, behind the US, with coronavirus-related deaths over 600,000. Daily deaths peaked in April this year – when they reached heights of 3,000 people dying a day – before falling gradually over summer and autumn.

After the World Health Organisation said it is “very worried” about a fresh wave of European infections, here’s the data visualised across continent.

WHO regional director Dr Hans Kluge warned that 500,000 more deaths could be recorded by March unless urgent action is taken.

Share
Updated at 

Anthony Fauci, the US federal government’s chief medical adviser, warned on Sunday that time is running out to prevent a “dangerous” new surge in cases from overwhelming the upcoming holiday season.

The US is reporting a jump in Covid cases for the first time in weeks and there are fears Thanksgiving on 25 November will turbocharge infections, as families travel across the nation to celebrate together.

The daily average of new cases has risen 29% in the last 14 days, according to analysis by the New York Times.

Fauci urged unvaccinated Americans to go get jabbed on CNN:

We still have about 60 million people in this country who are eligible to be vaccinated who have not been, and that results in the dynamic of virus in the community that not only is dangerous and makes people who are unvaccinated vulnerable, but it also spills over into the vaccinated people.

Read the full report here from my colleague Richard Luscombe in Miami, Florida.

Anthony Fauci at Washington National Cathedral earlier this month. Photograph: Tom Brenner/Reuters

Bulgaria reported 1,455 new coronavirus infections on Sunday, showing signs the country’s epidemic is decreasing after new daily infections peaked at 6,816 on 26 October. Bulgaria saw a spike in cases amid late-October and early-November.

A further 56 people died from Covid-related deaths in the past 24 hours, local media reported, taking the seven-day average to 137 deaths a day. (Reported figures tend to be lower at weekends.)

Most viewed

Most viewed