European governments have said the credibility of their vaccination programmes is at risk after US pharmaceutical firm Pfizer announced a temporary slowdown of deliveries of its Covid vaccines.
Shots developed by Pfizer with its German partner BioNTech began being delivered in the EU at the end of December, but around nine of the 27 EU governments complained of “insufficient” doses at a meeting this week, a participant told Reuters (see 11.28am).
Pfizer initially said deliveries were proceeding on schedule, but today announced there would be a temporary impact on shipments in late January to early February caused by changes to manufacturing processes to boost output (see 12:41pm).
“This situation is unacceptable,” the health and social affairs ministers of six EU states said in a letter to the EU commission about the Pfizer delays.
“Not only does it impact the planned vaccination schedules, it also decreases the credibility of the vaccination process,” the ministers, from Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia said.
Germany, Europe’s largest purchaser of the Pfizer vaccine, called the decision surprising and regrettable, while Canada said it was also affected, because its supplies come from a Pfizer factory in Belgium.
Norway and Lithuania had earlier said the company was reducing supplies across Europe. “What we want is for Pfizer-BioNTech to restore their deliveries to the agreed schedule,” Lithuanian health minister Arunas Dulkys told Reuters.
The President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said Pfizer had reassured her that deliveries planned to the EU in the first quarter would not be delayed.
Pfizer, which is trying to deliver millions of doses at a breakneck pace to curb a pandemic that has already killed nearly 2 million people, said its changes would “provide a significant increase in doses in late February and March”.
The World Health Organization’s emergency committee has refrained from advising proof of Covid vaccination or immunity as a condition for international travel, citing “critical unknowns” regarding their efficacy in reducing transmission and limited availability.
The WHO’s 19-member panel of independent experts, in a list of recommendations, urged countries to monitor virus variants such as those identified by the UK and South Africa to assess the effects on the efficacy of vaccines, drugs and diagnostic tests.
Paraguay has become the fourth Latin American country to approve the use of the Russian-developed Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, according to Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, RDIF.
In a statement reported by the Reuters news agency, RDIF said Paraguay will begin use of the vaccine without any additional clinical trials. Argentina, Venezuela and Bolivia have also approved use of the vaccine while Chile is in talks about doing so.
Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the fund, said in the statement:
We expect that more countries in the region will approve it soon and are ready to create new partnerships to pool efforts in the fight against the pandemic.
A total of 119,640 people in Paraguay have so been tested positive for coronavirus, of whom 94,983 had been recorded as having recovered, while 2,466 had died.
RDIF claims a greater than 90% efficacy for Sputnik V is more than 90%, with full protection against severe cases of Covid-19.
“Supplies of the vaccine will be facilitated by RDIF’s international partners in India, China, South Korea and other countries,” it added.
More than 1.5 million people have already been vaccinated with Sputnik V, it said. The vaccine has also been approved in Russia, Belarus, Serbia, Algeria and Palestine.
“The process to approve the vaccine in the European Union has been initiated,” the statement said.
Businesses closed and most people were confined to their homes in Portugal on Friday, as the country began the first day of a new lockdown – although parents were still able to take their children to school.
All non-essential businesses must remain closed with remote working compulsory where possible. Fines for breaking the rules will double. Restrictions on movement will be eased on 24 January so voters can go to the polls for the presidential election.
Some parents were nervous about the decision to keep schools open, which the prime minister, Antonio Costa, said was based on studies showing that they were not a major point of contagion.
“There’s nothing we can do about it. I live far away and I have to work … if the government says we have to do it, then we have to do it,” Pedro Salgueiro was quoted as saying by Reuters, as he dropped his child off at school in Lisbon.
Lisbon on Friday. Photograph: Patrícia de Melo Moreira/AFP/Getty Images
Portugal reported a record 159 Covid-19 deaths on Friday and new cases, at 10,663, reached their second-highest level since the start of the pandemic.
The country has reported a total of 528,469 cases and 8,543 deaths from Covid-19. The health ministry is monitoring more than 140,000 active cases – more than 1% of its 10m population.
A political crisis is brewing in Slovenia, where five opposition parties on Friday filed a motion of no-confidence in the government, accusing it of failing to deal with coronavirus and using the crisis as a pretext for authoritarian policies.
Friday’s motion, which was supported by 42 out of 90 MPs, brings to a head a backlash against the conservative prime minister, Janez Janša. It will be put to a formal vote before 22 January, where some MPs in the governing coalition may vote to oust him.
Slovenia has been registering a high mortality rate from the coronavirus epidemic with over 3,100 deaths among the 2m population, more per capita than the UK, as well as Italy and Slovenia’s other close neighbours.
Karl Erjavec, the leader of the opposition DESUS party, said: “The main problem now is that this government has been exceptionally unsuccessful when it comes to the fight with the epidemic.”
Erjavec is being proposed as an alternative candidate for prime minister by the centre-left opposition parties who have proposed the no-confidence motion.
“We have to stop this madness and put the country back in the right direction,” he told public television on Thursday.
“The question in this case is whether to continue to support (Janša’s) brutal and populist politics … that will lead us into the ‘Orbànisation’ of Slovenia,” Erjavec said, referring to Janša’s ally, Viktor Orbàn, the nationalist prime minister of Hungary.
Hullo everyone, Damien Gayle here for the next hour or so covering Mattha’s break. If you have any comments, tips or suggestions in the meantime then drop me a line, either via email to damien.gayle@theguardian.com, or via Twitter DM to @damiengayle.
The Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, has issued a decree extending coronavirus restrictions in an attempt to control the rising number of cases after the health ministry warned that the epidemic was getting worse.
Recorded daily cases have settled at 15,000-20,000, compared with a peak of about 40,000 in mid-November, but pressure on hospitals remains high. Between 400 and 600 people die from the virus each day and the government fears that number will grow.
“In the past week there has been a generalised worsening of the epidemic. We are back to an expansionary phase,” the health minister, Roberto Speranza, told parliament on Wednesday.
The new decree extends a nightly curfew between 10pm and 5am until 5 March and confirms the zoning system designed in November to calibrate the curbs between Italy’s 20 regions according to infection levels.
Gyms and swimming pools will remain closed across Italy and in-person take-away services will not be allowed after 6pm.
The decree also extends to 15 February a ban on movement between regions, with people allowed to travel only for reasons of work, health or other emergencies. Ski resorts will not be allowed to reopen until 15 February.
However, the government said most curbs could be lifted in individual regions when their infection rates are sufficiently low.
Italy, the first western country hit by the virus, has reported almost 81,000 coronavirus-related deaths since its outbreak came to light in February, the sixth highest tally in the world. The country with a population of more than 60 million has recorded 2.33m confirmed cases.
Canadian Covid cases are set to continue growing rapidly, driven higher by a sharp rise in the populous provinces of Ontario and Quebec, health officials said in a long-range forecast.
It said that by 24 January the total death toll could be between 18,570 to 19,630 while total cases could range from 752,400 to 796,630. Canada, which has a population of 38 million, has recorded 17,538 deaths and 688,891 cases so far.
The consultant behind an informal recommendation at an NHS trust in the north-east of England to provide Covid patients with high doses of vitamin D has spoken to the BBC about the reason behind the unusual move.
Mattha Busby (@matthabusby)
Endocrinologist Dr Richard Quinton, whose hospital in Newcastle began megadosing Covid patients with vitamin D in March, says its efficacy is almost certainly proven ‘on balance of probabilities’ – with data suggesting it could well have saved lives locally pic.twitter.com/PaEJngeIGk
German toddlers called Fritz or Adele could be invited for a Covid-19 vaccination while octogenarian Peters and Brigittes will not, as an overzealous interpretation of data privacy laws in one state has forced officials to guess people’s ages from their first names.
Authorities in the northern German state of Lower Saxony claim legal hurdles blocked them from accessing official records when trying to send a written invitation for a vaccination appointment to all citizens aged over 80.
The state decided instead to use post office records, which it said met data protection requirements. But since the Deutsche Post database only partially includes dates of birth, officials have used people’s first names to estimate their ages and “increase the chances of reaching the right recipients”, a spokesperson told the newspaper Bild.
