Covid live: Brazil passes 500,000 coronavirus deaths; young people rush to take up vaccines in England

Covid-19 doesn’t dominate the front pages of stories here in the UK in quite the way it has in recent times, but the Sunday Telegraph has an interesting splash concerning the UK government’s Health Secretary.

It claims that Matt Hancock, who has led the Department of Health throughout the pandemic, failed to tell the Prime Minister about a major Public Health England (PHE) study showing the effectiveness of vaccines against a variant, first found in India, during a key meeting called to decide whether to extend Covid restrictions tomorrow.

The Sunday Telegraph says it understand that Hancock had known about the PHE data three days before a keye meeting of four senior ministers last Sunday to decide whether to postpone a planned June 21 reopening until July 19.

But multiple sources familiar with the meeting told the Telegraph it was not raised by Mr Hancock, or discussed at all during the course of the talks.

In Japan, the first detected positive case among athletes arriving for the Olympic Games – five weeks away – has heightened concerns and calls for caution among those worried that the event will be highly dangerous.

“Let’s all wait a minute,” opposition politician Renho said.

“This time, nine people arrived. For the Olympics, 100,000 people will be arriving. This is no time to be talking about how this will be a moving experience for our children.”

Yasutoshi Nishimura, a minister in charge of economic policy, told NHK TV on Sunday that the government was looking into its border controls. Japan requires a two-week quarantine for overseas arrivals, but Olympic teams aren’t subject to the same border controls.

The Ugandan athlete who tested positive was among athletes who arrived on Saturday night at Tokyo’s Narita airport. The group were all fully vaccinated with AstraZeneca and had negative PCR tests before boarding, the Asahi newspaper reported, quoting an anonymous cabinet secretariat official.

Japan requires a two-week quarantine for overseas arrivals, but Olympic teams aren’t subject to the same border controls.

The Ugandan team was the second, after the Australian women’s softball team, to arrive for the Olympics, which open on 23 July.

Uganda is seeing an alarming rise in Covid-19 variants and has just tightened lockdown measures. About 590 deaths have been reported, which is probably an undercount, given the scarcity of testing.

The Philippines has signed a supply agreement for 40m doses of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech , the head of the government’s Covid-19 vaccine procurement said on Sunday.

Deliveries of the vaccine, among several brands of coronavirus shots allowed for emergency use in the southe-ast Asian country, will begin “after eight weeks starting August”, Carlito Galvez said in a statement.

The deal comes as a delay in vaccine deliveries had earlier this month forced some cities in the capital region to close vaccination sites, complicating Manila’s efforts to ramp up its immunisation drive in an Asian country with one of the biggest numbers of infections and deaths.

Taiwan has reacted with an outpouring of thanks to the US for shipping 2.5m Covid-19 vaccine doses to the island, more than doubling its arsenal as it deals with a rise in domestic infections.

Washington, competing with Beijing to deepen geopolitical clout through “vaccine diplomacy”, initially had promised to donate 750,000 doses but increased that number as President Joe Biden’s administration advances its pledge to send 80m US-made shots around the world.

“What a sight! What a gesture!” Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, tweeted in thanks late on Saturday, linking to pictures of the vaccines being loaded on to a China Airlines Boeing 777 freighter at Memphis airport.

“The Taiwan-US relationship is rock solid, & we’ll keep cooperating closely in combating Covid-19. Forces for good will prevail!”

Good morning and welcome to live blog coverage of the latest developments, ranging from the situation in Australia, where measures are being taken to contain a new Covid-19 cluster in Sydney, to Brazil, where the number of deaths related to the virus has now passed 500,000.

It’s also a day when concerns about the Tokyo Olympics – five weeks away – have been brought into sharp focus by the news that a Ugandan athlete has been barred entry into Japan after testing positive for Covid-19. It is the first known infection among arriving athletes.

Rules requiring Sydney residents to wear coverings indoors across large swathes of the city came into force from 4pm on Sunday and cover seven local government areas in inner Sydney.

Anti-government protesters have meanwhile been taking to the streets in more than a score of cities across Brazil this weekend as the nation’s confirmed death toll from Covid-19 soared past half a million

We will bring you coverage of those stories and others from around the world, including here in the UK, where than 700,000 Covid-19 jabs were booked on the day a vaccination programme was opened up to people aged 18 to 20.

People in England made 721,469 appointments through the national booking service on Friday, more than 30,000 an hour or more than eight every second.

You can reach me by email or on Twitter at @BenQuinn75 if there are stories you would like to flag up.