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Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has slammed a far-right website in the final days of the country’s federal election, accusing it of spreading misinformation about coronavirus vaccines and contributing to the growing number of protests across the country.
After Wednesday night’s French language debate between federal leaders, Trudeau was asked by a member of Rebel News – a website whose contributors have included Katie Hopkins and Tommy Robinson – if he would continue to exclude the group from covering the election.
Trudeau said:
The reality is, organisations – organisations like yours – that continue to spread misinformation and disinformation on the science around vaccines … is part of why we’re seeing such unfortunate anger and lack of understanding of basic science,.
Frankly your – I won’t call it a media organisation – your group of individuals need to take accountability for some of the polarisation that we’re seeing in this country.
My colleague Leyland Cecco reports:
In an article for the Guardian, the former UK prime minister, Gordon Brown, has called on the G7 rich industrial nations to hold an emergency summit in order to prevent millions of unused Covid vaccine doses going to waste by the end of the year.
Hoarding of vaccines by wealthy western nations will result in thousands of needless deaths from Covid-19 in the world’s poorest countries every month unless urgent steps are taken to distribute jabs more fairly, he writes.
You can read Brown’s full piece here:
More than 8,000 people in the UK were in hospital with Covid on Wednesday – the highest figure for nearly six months – leading to fears of a resurgence in the virus’ ability to cause serious illness and death among the population.
In countries with high rates of vaccination, such as the UK, fewer people are predicted to become ill enough to require hospital treatment, even if infection rates remain high. But the latest figures show the highest number of patients on wards since 10 March.
The 8,085 people in hospitals across the UK represents a 6% increase on the previous week.
Nevertheless, the figures are still well below those recorded at the peak of the second wave. On 18 January, 39,254 patients with Covid-19 were in hospital – the highest at any point since the pandemic began.
More on this story here:
Here is my colleague Libby Brooks’s story on the Scottish parliament’s approval of plans for vaccine passports – in the form of a QR code or paper document – for entry to nightclubs and large events from 1 October.
Bahrain extended an “alternative sentencing” scheme including community service and home detention to all prisoners on Thursday following protests over overcrowding and Covid fears, AFP reports.
The Gulf kingdom eased a requirement for prisoners to have served one half of their sentence as it made the alternatives available to all, even those who haven’t started their jail time.
“Under the new system all adults sentenced to imprisonment will become eligible for their cases to be dealt with by alternative sentencing, even prior to commencement of any sentence of imprisonment,” a government statement said.
“Alternative sentences may include community service, home detention, exclusion orders, non-contact orders, electronic tagging, rehabilitation programmes or compensation.”
In April, Bahrain allowed more than 100 inmates to serve the balance of their jail time out of prison, following reports of coronavirus outbreaks and protests by family members for their release.
Activists say Bahrain’s Jaw prison has a maximum capacity of approximately 1,200 but that the number of inmates, including political opponents, is at least three times that number.
Since Bahrain’s 2011 pro-democracy uprising, which ended in a bloody crackdown with the help of Saudi forces, opposition parties have been banned and dozens of political opponents jailed, triggering international criticism.
Bahrain has recorded so far more than 273,000 cases of coronavirus, including 1,388 deaths.
Joe Biden, seeking to restore public confidence in his handling of the pandemic, was expected to order on Thursday that nearly all US federal government workers must get vaccinated.
Reports of the requirement emerged ahead of a major speech by the president outlining a six-point plan to address the latest dramatic surge in Covid cases and the stalling rate of vaccinations.
Biden seemed to be on course to effectively defeat the virus in early July, but has been accused of underestimating the highly contagious Delta variant and the intransigence of millions of unvaccinated Americans.
His remarks on Thursday are seen as a high-profile attempt to claw back momentum and offer reassurance to Americans feeling anxious about outbreaks in schools and despair about whether the pandemic will ever end.
Biden will sign two executive orders to require vaccination for employees of the executive branch, federal agencies and members of the armed services, a workforce of more than 4 million, according to multiple media reports.
The order will also apply to contractors who do business with the federal government. It was not clear if this includes exceptions for workers or contractors seeking religious or medical exemptions from vaccination.
The move represents a toughening of measures that Biden announced in late July, requiring federal workers to offer proof of vaccination or submit to regular testing and physical distancing measures in the workplace.
On Thursday the president is also expected to outline plans to increase testing in schools, offer further protection for the vaccinated and show that his administration is winning the battle against the pandemic, which he blamed for last month’s disappointing jobs report.
Follow live updates on our US politics live blog:
Spain’s coronavirus incidence slipped below 150 cases per 100,000 people – a threshold the health ministry considers a “high risk” of contagion – for the first time in more than two months on Thursday, Reuters reports.
The indicator, measured over the past 14 days, fell to around 140 cases from 150 the previous day, a dramatic change from a record 900 cases per 100,000 people at the end of January, health ministry data showed.
It added 4,763 cases to its tally of daily infections on Thursday which now stands at 4,903,021 since the start of the pandemic.
The total death toll increased by 71, to a total of 85,218.
The occupancy rate at intensive care units also slipped to 13.7% compared to 14.36% reported on Wednesday and 21.98% just a month ago.
With a fifth wave quickly receding and the full vaccination rate exceeding 70% of the population, central and regional authorities have agreed to increase occupancy in outdoor sports facilities, such as soccer stadiums, for September.
The Italian government has ruled that catering and cleaning staff in schools and nursing homes can only work if they have proof of Covid immunity, extending mandatory vaccination and the use of the so-called “Green Pass” document, Reuters reports.
The health pass was already required for teachers in Italy, while mandatory vaccination for health workers was introduced in March.
The government said on Thursday that under the new rules people working in schools in any capacity must have the health document, and that all nursing home staff will have to be vaccinated.
The Green Pass – a digital or paper certificate showing someone has received at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose, tested negative or has recently recovered from the virus – was originally conceived to facilitate travel among EU states.
However, Italy was among a group of countries that also made it an internal requirement for people to access a range of cultural and leisure venues such as museums, gyms and indoor dining in restaurants.
From 1 September it became necessary for travel on inter-city transport. The prime minister Mario Draghi said it would be extended further, despite opposition from groups who say it tramples on freedoms and is a back-door way of making vaccination mandatory.
“We will expand the Green Pass requirement in coming weeks,” the health minister Roberto Speranza said on Thursday after the cabinet decreed the latest, limited extensions.
The issue has caused tensions in Draghi’s national unity coalition. Several government officials have said the pass should become a requirement for all public sector workers and even private firms, but the right-wing League opposes this. This week the League voted with a hard-right opposition party in parliament against the Green Pass requirement in restaurants.
Italy has the second-highest Covid death toll in Europe after the UK and the eighth-highest in the world. Around 72% of its 60-million-strong population have had at least one vaccine dose.
Good evening from London. I’m Lucy Campbell, I’ll be bringing you all the latest global developments on the coronavirus pandemic for the next few hours. Please feel free to get in touch with me as I work if you have a story or tips to share! Your thoughts are always welcome.
Email: lucy.campbell@theguardian.com
Twitter: @lucy_campbell_
The Scottish government’s plans for vaccine passports have been backed by MSPs as the Greens provided the necessary votes.
In the first major vote since the co-operation agreement between the SNP and the Greens was finalised, the party joined the government in backing vaccine passports by 68 votes to 55, PA news reports.
Thursday’s vote was not to pass legislation, but rather to pass a motion supporting the implementation of vaccine passports.
A paper released just hours before MSPs were due to vote on the scheme stated there would be a legal requirement for businesses to “take all reasonable measures” to ensure compliance, while ministers are also considering if there is a need for an offence to stop the “misuse” of the certificates.
From October 1, the scheme will make a QR code available through a smartphone app – along with a paper alternative for those who need it – which will be scanned before entry is allowed to nightclubs or similar venues, adult entertainment, unseated indoor events with more than 500 people, outdoor unseated events with more than 4,000 people or any event with more than 10,000 in attendance.
Moderna Inc said on Thursday it is developing a single vaccine that combines a booster dose against COVID-19 with its experimental flu shot.
The company hopes to eventually add vaccines it is working on for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and other respiratory diseases as an annual shot.
During a presentation to update investors on its drugs in development, Moderna chief executive officer Stéphane Bancel said:
We believe this is a very large opportunity that is ahead of us, if we could bring to market a high efficacy pan-respiratory annual booster.
We believe Moderna could be first to market in this important new opportunity.
The company is conducting clinical trials for an RSV vaccine in older adults.
People in Scotland will need proof they have been fully vaccinated in order to attend nightclubs and mass events in Scotland from 1 October.
The mandatory vaccine passport plan was formally approved by Holyrood on Thursday after the SNP and Greens voted in favour.
Businesses which fail to enforce the rules will be breaking the law.
Earlier on Thursday the executive director of UK Hospitality Scotland Leon Thompson said there was a lack of clarity about what the Covid passport plans would entail.
He said:
We’re very concerned about the proposals and the vote that’s going ahead today.
We weren’t so consulted about this ahead of the first minister’s statement last week, we had some very rushed and hurried conversations with officials over the last few days.
The number of patients with Covid-19 in hospital in the UK has risen above 8,000 to reach the highest level for nearly six months.
A total of 8,085 patients were in hospital on September 8, according to the latest government figures. This is up 6% from the previous week, and is the highest since March 10, PA news reports.
The figures are still well below those recorded at the peak of the second wave of coronavirus, however. Some 39,254 patients with Covid-19 were in hospital on January 18 – the highest at any point since the pandemic began.
Hospital numbers have been rising slowly but steadily since the third wave of the virus began in May.
In Scotland, 928 patients with Covid-19 are currently in hospital – the highest since late February. In Wales patient numbers stand at 428 – the highest since mid-March.
By contrast, Northern Ireland is currently recording 472 patients, down slightly from a recent peak of 488. In England the number is 6,254, up 1% week-on-week but just below the 6,375 recorded on September 6.
As millions of children head back to school across the US, health experts are highlighting a troubling trend: hundreds of thousands of them are testing positive for Covid.
More than 250,000 children had new cases in the last week of August, the American Academy of Pediatrics said in a report published on Tuesday. That’s the highest weekly rate of new pediatric cases since the pandemic began, and it’s a 10% increase in two weeks.
With slightly more than 1m new Covid cases reported in the US during that period, that means one of every four new cases in the country was among children.
Children’s hospitals are straining under the spike in cases. About 2,500 children were hospitalized with Covid-19 in the week up to 6 September, which is also more than ever before, data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows.
A total of 750,000 children tested positive between 5 August and 2 September, the AAP said.
Over the course of the pandemic, 5 million children in the US have tested positive for Covid-19 and at least 444 have died, the AAP said.
The CDC released a report on 3 September showing a fivefold increase in child hospitalization rates because of the Delta variant. The differences in children’s hospitalizations were even more startling when broken down by age. In the same June-August time period, hospitalizations were 10 times higher for children under the age of four and for those between the ages of 12 to 17, the report said.
Hospitalization was 10 times greater among unvaccinated than vaccinated children, the report said. In the US, children aged 12 and up are eligible for vaccination.
Dr Mary Caserta, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Rochester medical center and a member of the AAP’s committee on infectious diseases, told the Guardian:
It’s very important for children who are eligible to be vaccinated.
There’s just no other way to protect ourselves right now except using vaccination along with mitigation – wearing masks, washing our hands, trying to maintain our social distance.
Read more here:
Sajid Javid, the UK’s health secretary, said he was “confident” the vaccine booster programme will start later in September, PA news reports.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has said the Pfizer and AstraZeneca jabs are safe to use as boosters, but the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has yet to give its advice to ministers.
Javid, who was speaking during a visit to Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, said:
We are heading towards our booster programme, so the news from the MHRA today is welcome.
But also I want to wait for the final opinion of the JCVI, it’s important that we do and we listen to what they have got to say.
I’m confident that our booster programme will start later this month but I’m still awaiting the final advice.
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