Coronavirus live news: US death toll nears 500,000; UK roadmap out of lockdown revealed

More now on the UK accelerating its vaccination plan:

The British government declared Sunday that every adult in the country should get a first coronavirus vaccine shot by July 31, at least a month earlier than its previous target, as it prepared to set out a “cautious” plan to ease the UK’s lockdown, AP reports.

The previous aim was for all adults to get a jab by September. The new target also calls for everyone 50 and over and those with an underlying health condition to get their first of two vaccine shots by April 15, rather than the previous date of 1 May.

The makers of the two vaccines that Britain is using, Pfizer and AstraZeneca, have both experienced supply problems in Europe. But U.K. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Sunday that “we now think that we have the supplies” to speed up the vaccination campaign.

Britain is delaying giving second vaccine doses until 12 weeks after the first, rather than three to four weeks, in order to give more people partial protection quickly. The approach has been criticized in some countries — and by Pfizer, which says it does not have any data to support the interval — but it is backed by the UK government’s scientific advisers.

Tanzania’s president is finally acknowledging that his country has a coronavirus problem after claiming for months that the disease had been defeated by prayer, AP reports.

Populist President John Magufuli on Sunday urged citizens of the East African country to take precautions and even wear face masks but only locally made ones. Over the course of the pandemic he has expressed wariness about foreign-made goods, including Covid vaccines.

The president’s comments came days after the country of some 60 million people mourned the death of one of its highest-profile politicians, the vice president of the semi-autonomous island region of Zanzibar, whose political party had earlier said he had Covid. The president’s chief secretary also died in recent days, though the cause was not revealed.

Magufuli, speaking at the chief secretary’s funeral in a nationally televised broadcast on Friday, urged the nation to participate in three days of prayer for unspecified “respiratory” illnesses that had become a challenge in the country.

Tanzania has not updated its number of coronavirus infections since April as the president has insisted Covid had been defeated. Tanzania’s official number of coronavirus infections remains at just 509, but residents report that many people have become ill with breathing difficulties and hospitals have seen a rise in patients for “pneumonia.”

The director-general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has added his voice to growing calls for Tanzania to acknowledge Covid for the good of its citizens, neighboring countries, and the world, especially after a number of countries reported that visitors arriving from Tanzania tested positive for the virus.

Tedros in a statement on Saturday called Tanzania’s situation “very concerning” and urged Magufuli’s government to take “robust action.” Others recently expressing concern include the United States and the local Catholic church.

The UK government vows to offer a first coronavirus vaccine dose to every adult by the end of July – a month earlier than previously planned – as it prepares to announce a gradual easing of its third lockdown.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson will outline the lockdown review in parliament on Monday.

Dr Anthony Fauci is calling the United States’ approaching milestone of half a million deaths from the coronavirus as “terribly historic” and stressed the need for continuing public health measures, AP reports.

Fauci says with virus infections overall going down and vaccinations continuing things are improving but that the US remains in a “terrible situation” and people should remain mindful of wearing masks and keeping social distance.

Currently there are over 497,000 deaths from the coronavirus in the US.

Fauci, who is President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, said he expects a “significant degree of normality” in everyday life toward the end of the year but that it was “possible” people will still need to be wearing masks into 2022.

He says ultimately it will depend on the trajectory of Covid variants as well as whether an “overwhelming majority” of people get vaccinated. Fauci says he wants to see infections get to a “very, very low” baseline before backing off recommendations to wear a mask, when the risk of exposure to someone with Covid has become minimal.

Fauci spoke on CNN’s “State of the Union” and NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The US is on the brink of a once-unthinkable tally: 500,000 people lost to the coronavirus.

AP: A year into the pandemic, the running total of lives lost was about 498,786 — roughly the population of Kansas City, Missouri, and just shy of the size of Atlanta. The figure compiled by Johns Hopkins University surpasses the number of people who died in 2019 of chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, Alzheimer’s, flu and pneumonia combined.

“It’s nothing like we have ever been through in the last 102 years, since the 1918 influenza pandemic,” the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

The US virus death toll reached 400,000 on 19 January in the waning hours in office for President Donald Trump, whose handling of the crisis was judged by public health experts to be a singular failure.

The first known deaths from the virus in the US happened in early February 2020, both of them in Santa Clara County, California. It took four months to reach the first 100,000 dead. The toll hit 200,000 deaths in September and 300,000 in December. Then it took just over a month to go from 300,000 to 400,000 and about two months to climb from 400,000 to the brink of 500,000.

Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan. As always, it would be great to hear from you on Twitter. Find me @helenrsullivan.

I’ll be bringing you the latest developments as US deaths edge closer to half a million lives lost – the highest toll of any country worldwide.

Meanwhile Boris Johnson will unveil the government’s much-anticipated ‘roadmap’ out of lockdown for England on Monday. We’ll have details on what the UK PM is expected to announce shortly.

Here are the other key pandemic developments from the last few hours:

• Nottinghamshire police have issued a £10,000 fine to the organiser of a church gathering in a pub car park. Officers said about 30 people in Nottingham attended the Church on the Streets service on Saturday afternoon in breach of lockdown rules.
• People living with HIV in England will no longer have to disclose their status in order to be prioritised for the Covid-19 vaccine, according to a report in inews.co.uk.
• Israel allowed a number of businesses to reopen their doors to customers on Sunday – with some venues only available to those who have received two Covid-19 vaccine doses.
• Coronavirus cases are rising again in Italy, a top virologist has warned in a newspaper interview, largely attributing the surge to the more transmissible variant first detected in the UK.
• Police have forcibly cleared demonstrators protesting against lockdown in Amsterdam’s Museum Square.
• India’s western Maharashtra state, home to the country’s financial hub Mumbai, is imposing new coronavirus restrictions in four districts, amid concerns about a second wave and slow vaccine rollout.
• The former neighbour of the health secretary Matt Hancock is under investigation by the UK’s medical regulator, the Guardian can reveal.
• Gaza received 20,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine from the United Arab Emirates on Sunday, a move secured by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s rival, Mohammad Dahlan, who is based in the Gulf state.
• US infectious diseases official Anthony Fauci said on Sunday that it is possible Americans will still be wearing masks in 2022, but that measures to stop the spread of Covid-19 would be increasingly relaxed as more vaccines are administered.
• Lorry drivers returning to France from the UK will not now need to have a coronavirus test if they have spent less than 48 hours in the country, UK transport secretary Grant Shapps said on Sunday.