Coronavirus live news: China sees lowest cases in three weeks; Israel extends lockdown

Japan is expected to extend a state of emergency to fight the spread of Covid-19 this week for Tokyo and other areas as hospitals remain under pressure despite a decline in cases from their peaks, local media reported on Monday.

Via Reuters: The government will decide on the extension after a meeting of its experts panel this week, public broadcaster NHK said.

The government last month declared a one-month state of emergency, due to end on Sunday, for 11 areas, including Tokyo and its neighbouring prefectures, as part of measures to rein in the pandemic.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has launched a raft of measures to contain a third wave of infections as his government remains determined that the Olympics go ahead as planned on 23 July.

But support for his administration has weakened over unhappiness with its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which critics have called too slow and inconsistent.

The government may also consider lifting the state of emergency in some less-populated areas such as Tochigi Prefecture, which has seen a decline in cases, local media said.

A Nikkei newspaper poll showed 90% of respondents favoured extending the emergency period in areas where it is implemented.

Japan has had a total of 390,687 coronavirus cases and 5,766 deaths, NHK said. In Tokyo, new cases totalled 633 on Sunday, below 1,000 for the third consecutive day.

Separately, the lower house is expected to pass on Monday a revision to the coronavirus special measures law, followed by upper house approval on Wednesday, NHK said. The revision would toughen regulations and allow authorities to levy fines on those who break the law.

China reported the lowest daily increase in new Covid cases in more than three weeks, official data showed on Monday, reversing a sharp uptick a day earlier, amid efforts to contain the disease ahead of a major holiday break, Reuters reports.

New confirmed reported cases more than halved to 42, the National Health Commission said in a statement, down from 92 a day earlier and marking the lowest one-day increase since 33 reported on 8 January.

Of the 33 new locally transmitted infections, northeastern Heilongjiang reported 22 new cases while new patients reported in neighbouring Jilin province fell to 10 from 63 a day earlier. The remaining nine cases were imported infections involving travellers arriving from overseas.

National and local authorities continue to discourage travel even as the number of new cases fell, underscoring their concerns about another flare-up as the country approaches the Lunar New Year holiday period next month when hundreds of millions typically travel.

Official forecasts are for the total number of trips taken during the holiday break to fall 60% from 2019, the last time when Chinese travellers did not face any major restrictions in movement during the period.

The number of asymptomatic infections, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, also fell to 16 from 19 a day earlier.

The total number of confirmed mainland Covid infections to date now stands at 89,564, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,636.

A World Health Organization-led team investigating the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic was due on Monday to visit the Center for Disease Control and Prevention of Hubei province, the central Chinese region where the outbreak emerged in late 2019, Reuters reports.

The group of independent experts left two weeks of quarantine on Thursday in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, and is conducting two weeks of field work. So far, it has included visits to hospitals, markets, and an exhibition commemorating Wuhan’s battle with the outbreak.

The WHO, which has sought to manage expectations for the mission, has said that team members would be limited to visits organised by their Chinese hosts and would not have any contact with community members, because of health restrictions.

No full itinerary for the group’s field work has been announced, and journalists covering the tightly controlled visit have been kept at a distance from team members.

The UK’s children face losing £350bn in lifetime earnings unless the UK’s governments invest in radical catch-up efforts when the pandemic is over, according to a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

The IFS is urging policymakers to consider options including nearly nine million children repeating a year of schooling, the use of large-scale tuition in summer holidays and extended hours to make up for the classroom time lost during the Covid-19 lockdowns.

The Guardian’s Richard Adams and Heather Stewart report:

A World Health Organization team has visited the Huanan food market in Wuhan as part of its fieldwork in a politically sensitive mission to investigate the origins of the pandemic, AFP reports.

Their visit is being tightly controlled, and the WHO has already lowered expectations of pinpointing the source of the virus, which is known to have infected more than 102 million people so far with over 2.2 million deaths.

The experts did not take any questions from journalists as they visited the market.

In recent days, Chinese authorities have relentlessly pushed a positive narrative of heroism and decisive, swift action against the virus.

But it has faced criticism at home and abroad for its handling of the initial Wuhan outbreak and its lack of transparency.

AstraZeneca will increase its coronavirus vaccine deliveries to the EU by 30%, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said Sunday as the bloc sought to claw back time lost rolling out the jabs, AFP reports.

The British-Swedish company had announced last week that it could deliver only a quarter of the doses originally promised to the bloc for the first quarter of the year because of problems at one of its European factories.

But AstraZeneca, whose vaccine was authorised for use in the EU on Friday, has now agreed to send 9 million additional doses and “will start deliveries one week earlier than scheduled”, Von der Leyen said in a tweet.

An EU source said the first deliveries would start in the second week of February.

“They are bringing forward the delivery now by another week … and they will increase the vaccine doses for February and March by about 30 percent, that is 9 million doses,” von der Leyen said.

But she also acknowledged that February and March would remain “a difficult phase” for vaccine supply.

In the second quarter, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will be on the market “and the manufacturers will have resolved their initial difficulties, so we can expect more vaccine”, she said.

The aim was still to vaccinate 70% of adults in the EU by the end of summer, she added.

Israel extended a national lockdown on Sunday as Covid variants offset its vaccination drive and officials predicted a delay in a turnaround from the ongoing crisis.

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet voted to extend the five-week-old national lockdown until Friday, pending parliamentary approval, Israeli media reported.Highlighting the country’s challenges in enforcing restrictions, thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews attended the Jerusalem funerals of two prominent rabbis on Sunday, drawing criticism from Netanyahu’s coalition partners, Reuters reports.

The prime minister has promoted a speedy vaccination of around 24% of 9 million citizens and the lockdown as dual pathways to a possible reopening of the economy in February.

But a projected mid-January turnaround in curbing the pandemic did not transpire, as serious cases have surged among Israelis who have not yet been vaccinated.

Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.

My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest news from around the world for the next few hours.

Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the European Commission, has said that the EU wants 70% of all adults in the blog to be vaccinated by the end of summer, Reuters reports.

Meanwhile Israel extended a national lockdown on Sunday as Covid variants offset its vaccination drive and officials predicted a delay in a turnaround from the ongoing crisis.

Here are the other key recent developments:

• Primary schools in the Netherlands will reopen from 8 February, the Dutch government announced on Sunday, in the first easing of lockdown restrictions in months.
• The number of Covid patients in French hospitals hit a near nine-week high on Sunday, with 27,613 Covid sufferers being treated in hospitals, up 331 on Saturday and reaching a level last seen on 1 December.
• The UK has carried out the highest number of Covid vaccinations in one day, with figures showing 598,389 received their first dose on Saturday. The Government said a further 587 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Sunday, bringing the UK total to 106,158.
• On Sunday, police in Brussels said they have detained scores of people in an attempt to prevent two banned demonstrations against measures to curb the spread of Covid-19. A police spokesperson said more than 200 had been arrested by around midday.
• The UK’s priority is vaccinating its own population before it can think about supplying doses to help the EU or developing countries, the international trade secretary has said. Earlier, the World Health Organization called on the UK to halt its vaccination programme after vulnerable people and healthcare workers have been inoculated to ensure a “fair rollout”.
• Both France and Germany have threatened legal action against the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca in the row over a shortage of coronavirus vaccine in the EU. Brussels raising concerns that doses may have been diverted from plants in Belgium and Germany to the UK.
• A World Health Organization team looking into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic today visited a market in the Chineses city of Wuhan where the virus was initially located. The team arrived at Huanan market amid heavy security, with additional barricades set up outside a high blue fence surrounding the market, and left in a convoy after about one hour. The experts did not take questions from journalists.
  
• Germany said today that it will support Portugal with medical staff and equipment after an appeal for help from the Iberian country, which said on Saturday that only seven of 850 ICU beds set up for Covid-19 cases on its mainland were vacant. Austria said it would assist by taking in some intensive-care patients from Portugal.