Covid news live: Omicron variant ‘75% less likely to lead to severe illness’; clashes continue in NZ over measures

Hong Kong reported 6,211 new Covid infections on Tuesday, and another 9,369 cases who came up positive in preliminary tests.

It comes as the city battles to curb a coronavirus outbreak that has overwhelmed healthcare facilities in the global financial hub.

In Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon will set out her new strategic framework for dealing with coronavirus on Tuesday.

The First Minister will speak in the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday afternoon as the Scottish Government’s blueprint for managing and recovering from Covid is published, PA Media reported.

When she updated MSPs on the pandemic earlier this month, she said Scotland was “through the worst” of the Omicron wave and the situation was “much more positive” than at the start of the year.

On Monday, Sturgeon said it would be “unacceptable” for public health decisions of the devolved administrations to be impacted by funding decisions taken by the UK Government.

During a visit to the Social Bite cafe in Edinburgh, the First Minister was asked if she was considering automatic trigger points for new restrictions. She said:

In terms of fixed automatic trigger points – we need to be a bit cautious about that.

Because we know that, if we look at the risks we may face in the future in the form of new variants for example, not all variants have the same impact.

She continued:

You need to have attention to data, to evidence.

But inevitably, there will have to be judgement applied in any given situation about the actual severity of the threat that any new risk might pose.

Canada’s parliament has backed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to invoke rarely-used emergency powers to end pandemic-related protests that have blocked streets in the capital Ottawa for more than three weeks.

The Emergencies Act was approved in parliament by 185 to 151, with the minority Liberal government getting support from left-leaning New Democrats.

The special measures, announced by Trudeau a week ago, have been deemed unnecessary and an abuse of power by some opposition politicians, Reuters reported.

Over the weekend, Canadian police restored normalcy in Ottawa. The protesters initially wanted an end to cross-border Covid vaccine mandates for truck drivers, but the occupation turned into a broader demonstration against Trudeau and his government. Protesters blocked the busiest land crossing between Canada and the United States for six days.

Earlier on Monday, Trudeau told reporters his government still needed temporary emergency powers citing “real concerns” about threats in the days ahead. “This state of emergency is not over. There continue to be real concerns about the coming days,” Trudeau said. The act grants authorities broader powers.

Police spent two days clearing protesters from downtown Ottawa, making 191 arrests and towing 79 vehicles by the time the operation ended on Sunday.

Hong Kong authorities said they found Covid in samples taken from the packaging of imports of frozen beef from Brazil and frozen pork skin from Poland, vowing to step up inspections of imported food.

The global financial hub deploys a “dynamic zero Covid” strategy similar to mainland China’s, aiming to eradicate any outbreaks at all costs. Authorities have been on high alert as a new wave of infections is proving harder to control, Reuters reported.

Daily infections numbers have risen sharply this year, reaching a record 7,533 cases on Monday, overwhelming the government’s testing, hospital and quarantine capacities.

The Centre for Food Safety (CFS) took 36 samples for testing from a batch of around 1,100 cartons of frozen beef, weighing a total of 29 tonnes, imported from Brazil by sea. It found one outer packaging and two inner packaging samples tested positive.

It also collected 12 samples from a batch of around 300 cartons of frozen pork skin, weighing around 7 tonnes, imported from Poland via sea. One inner packaging sample tested positive for Covid.

“The CFS has ordered the importers concerned to dispose the beef and pork skin of the same batches,” the government said in a statement late on Monday. “In addition, the CFS will step up the sampling of similar products for testing.”

A protester drove a car toward a New Zealand police line, narrowly avoiding officers, while other protesters sprayed officers with a stinging substance, police said.

It comes as they tightened a cordon around a convoy that has been camped outside Parliament for two weeks.

The clashes in the capital of Wellington came a day after police reported that some of the protesters had thrown human faeces at them, the Associated Press reported.

Police Assistant Commissioner Richard Chambers told reporters the actions of some of the protesters, who oppose coronavirus vaccine mandates, were unacceptable and would be dealt with assertively.

“Our focus remains on opening the roads up to Wellingtonians and doing our absolute best to restore peaceful protest,” Chambers said. “The behaviour of a certain group within the protest community is absolutely disgraceful.”

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said protesters had taken things too far and needed to return home. “What’s happening in Wellington is wrong,” she said.

The latest clashes began after about 250 officers and staff arrived at dawn and used forklifts to move concrete barriers into a tighter cordon around the encampment, where hundreds of cars and trucks remain blocking city streets. Police have used the barriers this week to allow protest cars to leave but none to enter.

Video posted online shows a white car driving the wrong way down a one-way street toward a group of officers who quickly get out of the way while people shout. The vehicle comes to a stop at the police line and several officers climb inside and pull out the driver.

Police said the officers had been lucky to escape injury after the car stopped just short of colliding with them. They said they had arrested one person for driving in a dangerous manner and two others for obstructing police.

Chambers said the three officers who were sprayed with the unknown stinging substance had been treated at a hospital and were recovering well.

Hello. Tom Ambrose here and I’ll be bringing you all the latest Covid news over the next four hours.

We start with news that people infected with the Omicron coronavirus variant are nearly 75% less likely to develop serious illness or die than those who contract the Delta variant, real world data released by South Korea’s health authorities showed.

A study by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) of some 67,200 infections confirmed since December showed the Omicron variant’s severity and death rates averaged 0.38% and 0.18%, respectively, compared with 1.4% and 0.7% for the Delta cases.

The KDCA classed severe cases as people who were hospitalised in intensive care units, Reuters reported.

Around 56% of 1,073 people who died over the past five weeks were either unvaccinated or had received only one dose, the study showed, with people aged 60 or older accounting for 94% of deaths.

More than 86% of South Korea’s 52 million population have been double vaccinated and nearly 60% have received a booster shot.