Covid live news: UK considering compulsory vaccination for NHS staff; Malaysia to increase immunisation efforts

On the possible compulsory vaccination of NHS staff in the UK, Labour’s shadow cabinet minister Thangam Debbonaire, said “threatening” NHS staff to have the vaccine was not a good idea.

The shadow commons leader told Sky News:

Given we have got a recruitment crisis in parts of the NHS I think it’s far more important we try and work with staff rather than against them. Threatening staff, I don’t think is a good idea.”

Public Health England and the NHS had been successful when they had worked with people to address their doubts and answer questions about the jab, she said.

I would like to see the Government work with the NHS and social care staff.

More on the question of vaccinating children, one expert has said that the emergence of new variants could influence the decision in the UK.

Professor Peter Openshaw, a member of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), told Times Radio that there were “debates” about the possible risks of “very, very rare complications” associated with vaccination, which had to be balanced against the “certainty” that someone can get “very severe complications” by catching Covid.

Speaking in a personal capacity, he added:

It may well be that actually giving children vaccines will become a clearer option once we know more about the disease in children and whether the new variants are spreading further into the paediatric population and causing more significant disease. That could certainly change the risk-benefit ratio.”

Prof Openshaw said the UK placed an emphasis on “public health benefits” and therefore “vaccinating those who may be transmitting disease, sometimes unknowingly, is a perfectly good justification for vaccination”.

He added:

The new variants extending further down the age range and being of quite high prevalence even in children as young as four, it may be that actually children and school children are going to be a more important part of the transmission chain as the virus becomes more transmissible as new variants arise.

So… the benefits might change and that might affect the decision about whether to vaccinate children in the future.

British regulators were still considering whether to offer jabs to children, UK vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi told Sky News:

Our own regulator has not yet approved giving vaccines to children.

You have to make sure the vaccines are incredibly safe before you give them to children.

The Pfizer jab has been approved for use in 12-year-olds by regulators in the European Union, US and Canada and Zahawi said the “infrastructure” was in place to jab children in the UK if required.
But he said the issue was complicated because the main benefits of the jab were not necessarily felt by children themselves but instead by those around them. He said:

On the whole you are vaccinating to protect their families and their communities and the country.

UK vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi confirmed the government was considering whether coronavirus jabs should be compulsory for NHS staff.

He told Sky News:

It’s absolutely the right thing and it would be incumbent on any responsible government to have the debate, to do the thinking as to how we go about protecting the most vulnerable by making sure that those who look after them are vaccinated.

There is precedent for this, obviously surgeons get vaccinated for hepatitis B, so it’s something that we are absolutely thinking about.

He also said that the World Health Organisation investigation must be able to fully investigate the origins of the pandemic.
The Sunday Times reported that British agents believe it is “feasible” that the crisis began with a coronavirus leak from a Chinese research laboratory in Wuhan.
Asked about the report, Zahawi said:

I think it’s really important that the WHO is allowed to conduct its investigation unencumbered into the origins of this pandemic and that we should leave no stone unturned to understand why – not only because of the current pandemic that has swept the world but also for future-proofing the world’s capability to deal with pandemics.

Russia reported 9,694 new cases on Sunday, the highest number since the end of March, which took the national tally to 5,063,442 infections.
The Russian coronavirus task force said that 355 more deaths of Covid-19 patients were confirmed in the past 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 121,162.
The federal statistics agency has kept a separate count and has said Russia recorded around 250,000 deaths related to Covid-19 from April 2020 to March 2021, Reuters reports.

The British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) chief executive Emma McClarkin has called on the UK government to provide advance notice to businesses if restrictions are to remain after June 21. McClarkin acknowledged the government was in a “difficult situation” but said Whitehall had to “stick to its road map”.

She told BBC Breakfast:

We need the Government to stick to its road map of removing those restrictions by the 21st of June if we want to see the great British pub really begin its recovery.

What I need to say is June 21 is absolutely critical to the recovery of the sector. Recovery day only starts when the restrictions are removed.

If the Government does leave any lingering restrictions in play then they really need to give us advance notice of that and it needs to talk seriously about financial compensation.

But right now we are asking the Government to stick to their road map.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 3,852 to 3,679,148, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Sunday. The reported death toll rose by 56 to 88,406, the tally showed.

Malaysia is planning to set up more mega vaccination centres and get private doctors to join immunisation efforts, after five consecutive days of record daily coronavirus infections, Reuters reports.

Science minister Khairy Jamaluddin told a virtual news briefing on Sunday that the government will set up another five mega vaccination centres around the capital, Kuala Lumpur, and are considering two in the northen state of Penang and in the southern state of Johor.

Nearly 6% of the country’s 32 million people have been vaccinated, according to the website of the governmental Special Committee for Ensuring Access to COVID-19 Vaccine Supply.

Khairy said the government is also looking to allow drive-through vaccination centres in the country, after guidelines are firmed up.

Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin on Friday announced a nationwide total lockdown from June 1-14 in an effort to curb the spread of the virus.

Malaysia reported 6,999 new cases on Sunday, bringing the total infections in the country to 565,533.

More than half of people in their 30s in England have received a coronavirus vaccination in a period of little over two weeks, new figures reveal.

NHS England said that, since it began opening up the vaccine rollout to this age group on May 13, 53% of those aged 30 to 39 have been given at least one dose.

The data comes as Prof Stephen Reicher, a psychologist on the Sage sub-committee advising ministers on behavioural science, said the government was in a “pickle” because it appeared to have abandoned the “data not dates” principle.

The NHS, meanwhile, is asking people aged 50 and older, as well as those who are clinically vulnerable, to bring forward their second Covid-19 vaccination to help combat the spread of the B1.617.2 variant first identified in India.

It follows the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) recommending earlier this month that the second dose interval be shortened from 12 weeks to eight for people in priority cohorts.

India today reported its lowest daily rise in new coronavirus infections in 46 days at 165,553 cases during the previous 24 hours, while deaths rose by 3,460.

The south Asian nation’s tally of infections now stands at 27.9m, with a death toll of 325,972, health ministry data showed on Sunday.

Good morning, and welcome to the coronavirus global blog. Caroline Davies here, taking you through key developments today. You can get in touch on [email protected].

In the UK, there are calls for a more informed debate on the planned lifting of all legal limits on social contact in England on June 21 as Labour questioned if the move would proceed. The continued spread of the Indian coronavirus variant has prompted experts to argue restrictions should remain in place until more people have received both doses of a vaccine amid reports ministers are drawing up plans for a partial end of lockdown. NHS Providers chief executive Chris Hopson said a “much better quality of debate” was needed on the implications of easing measures, according to the BBC. Writing in The Observer, opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer said “weak, slow decisions” by the Government on border policy had allowed the Indian variant to spread.

Meanwhile, leaders of Australia and New Zealand have had their first face-to-face meeting since the coronavirus outbreak prompted both countries to close their borders. Australian prime minister Scott Morrison arrived in the tourist resort of Queenstown for an overnight visit on Sunday. He greeted his New Zealand counterpart Jacinda Ardern with a traditional Maori hongi, in which the pair pressed noses together. Morrison is the first major world leader to visit New Zealand since both countries shut their borders last year to contain the virus. The neighbours opened a quarantine-free travel bubble last month, although a recent outbreak of the virus in Melbourne has prompted New Zealand to suspend the arrangement with Victoria state.