Norway halts AstraZeneca vaccine – follow Covid news live

Four new cases of the coronavirus variant first detected in Brazil have been discovered in England, Public Health England said, taking the UK’s total number of known cases to 10.

Three of the new cases have been found in South Gloucestershire and are said to be close or household contacts with the two cases previously discovered in the area.

The other case was found in Bradford, West Yorkshire, after the person tested positive late last month having travelled back from Brazil via Paris on 14 February.

A PHE statement said: “Contact tracing teams have followed up close contacts of the individual and advised them to isolate and get a test.”

The new cases bring the number of cases of the variant, named P1, detected in the UK to ten – seven in England and three in Scotland.

“Sixty-two per cent of [drug dealers] said they had adhered to the two-metre rule – a rate higher than the general population at the time. And like supermarkets, many dealers wouldn’t accept cash, preferring instead bank transfer or PayPal to minimise Covid transmission.”

In case you missed it, here’s Ian Hamilton’s piece on lockdown’s effect on drug dealers and users:

Covid infection rates are continuing to fall across all regions of England and among all age groups, Public Health England’s latest weekly surveillance report shows.

The highest rate was recorded in Yorkshire and Humber, where the rate of new cases stood at 97.6 per 100,000 people in the seven days to 7 March. This compares with 115.6 in the previous week.

The East Midlands recorded the second highest rate at 84.0, down from 122.9.

South-west England recorded the lowest rate, with just 32.3 new cases, a fall from 43.9.

Infection rates are also continuing to drop among all age groups, with the highest rate recorded among 30 to 39-year-olds at 88.9 cases per 100,000 people in the seven days to 7 March – a decrease from 123.6 the week before.

Among 20 to 29-year-olds the rate fell from 113.9 to 78.9, while for 40 to 49-year-olds it dropped from 103.7 to 72.7.

For people aged 80 and over, the rate fell from 66.6 to 44.2.

Denmark’s decision to pause its AstraZeneca Covid vaccine programme is a “precautionary measure” and people should continue to get their jab, the UK regulator has said, adding that blood clots occur naturally and are “not uncommon”.

Danish authorities have temporarily halted their rollout of the jab after a small number of blood clots and one death were reported, though they have said a connection to the vaccine has not been confirmed.

The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said evidence had not confirmed the vaccine caused the problems, and said people should still go and get their Covid-19 vaccine when asked to do so.

Dr Phil Bryan, MHRA vaccines safety lead, said: “Vaccine safety is of paramount importance and we continually monitor the safety of vaccines to ensure that the benefits outweigh any potential risks. It has not been confirmed that the report of a blood clot, in Denmark, was caused by the Covid-19 vaccine (from) AstraZeneca.

“The Danish authorities’ action to temporarily suspend use of the vaccine is precautionary whilst they investigate.

“Blood clots can occur naturally and are not uncommon. More than 11 million doses of the Covid-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca vaccine have now been administered across the UK.”

He said that the number of reports of blood clots received so far are not higher than the number that would have normally occurred in the vaccinated population.

The proportion of Black, Asian and minority ethnic NHS staff who reported experiencing discrimination at work rose in 2020, according to a survey of more than half a million NHS workers in England.

A total of 16.7 per cent said they had been discriminated against by a manager, team leader or other colleague in the last 12 months, compared with 14.5 per cent in 2019.

The NHS Staff Survey 2020 also found that Black and minority ethnic staff were more likely to report working in coronavirus settings than white staff –  47 per cent compared with 31 per cent of white workers.

Meanwhile, the proportion of Black and minority ethnic staff who said their organisation offers equal opportunities fell from 71 per cent in 2019 to 69 per cent in 2020. A total of 87 per cent of white staff said it provided equal opportunities.

The European Commission will formally authorise Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine shortly, European health commissioner Stella Kyriakides has said, after the EU’s medicines regulator recommended granting it conditional marketing approval.

“This marks another key step towards ensuring that all citizens can access safe and effective vaccinations as soon as possible. EU Commission authorisation will follow shortly,” Ms Kyriakides wrote on Twitter.

The approval of Johnson & Johnson’s single dose vaccine follows authorisations in the United States and Canada.

Norway has suspended the use of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, health authorities said.

“This is a cautionary decision,” Geir Bukholm, director of infection prevention and control at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, told a news conference.

The decision follows a similar decision by Denmark, which paused its AstraZeneca programme for two weeks after reports of cases of blood clots forming, including one death.

A pharmaceutical chief has suggested scientists may look to produce vaccines in single-use plastic vials, rather than multiple-dose glass vials in future as demand grows.

Ian Muir, chief executive of Porton Biopharma and lead for the contract manufacture team of the UK’s Vaccine Task Force, said there were only a few manufacturers in the world who can make the specialised vials the vaccines are currently delivered in.

He said the supply chain for the vials was getting longer as demand for them grew around the world.

“As we look forward more globally, I think the question that needs to be addressed is whether 10-dose glass vials are really the answer for seven billion people and whether we need to look at other delivery systems.

“So whether that is single-use plastic vials or single-use prefilled syringes or other alternative technologies that are out there, because just making enough glass, anywhere in the world, and filling it is going to be a real constraint,” he said.

The British public have more confidence in vaccines than those in other countries, a survey for The Independent suggests.

Elsewhere, people are particularly wary of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab, whereas in the UK, as many people believe it is effective as believe the Pfizer/Biontech jab is.

Less than 40 per cent of the French public has confidence in the Oxford and Moderna vaccines, and less than 60 per cent has confidence in the Pfizer.

Progress in the fight against Covid-19 has meant the next phase of opening schools and changes to outdoor mixing will go ahead in Scotland, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon says.

She confirmed all primary school pupils and more secondary pupils will be back in school from Monday, while changes to current rules will allow four people from two households to mix outdoors from Friday.

On the one-year anniversary of Covid-19 being declared a pandemic, a leading animal-welfare organisation is writing to United Nations and World Health Organisation chiefs, calling on them to lead radical overhauls by governments of how humans treat animals to prevent future pandemics.

They call for a ban on fur farms, live animal markets, the dog and cat meat trade and wildlife trade, and a crackdown on dangerous factory farming practices. My report on the warning that the world must stop tackling the symptoms without tackling the root causes of the pandemic:

The proportion of NHS workers in England who reported feeling unwell due to work-related stress in 2020 has risen past four in ten, a survey of more than half a million employees has found.

Rises were sharpest in acute and community trusts and acute specialist trusts, the annual survey found.

More than four in ten workers (44 per cent) reported feeling unwell because of work-related stress in the previous 12 months, up from 40 per cent the previous year.

A total of 595,270 NHS employees in England responded to the NHS Staff Survey 2020, which was carried out between September and December last year.

The proportion of staff members who said they had worked shifts in the last three months while feeling unwell fell from 59 per cent in 2019 to 46 in 2020, as people were told to stay home if they had Covid symptoms.

Danny Mortimer, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said the general findings were encouraging but there were “significant areas of concern”.

He said: “The overall picture is encouraging given the unprecedented and most challenging of times NHS staff have worked through over the past 12 months. There are, though, significant areas of concern and the recent data on the continued poorer experience of ethnic minority staff starkly reminds NHS leaders that staff experience varies unacceptably in their organisations.”

Mr Mortimer said with nearly one in five people (18.2 per cent) considering leaving the health service, there can be “no room for complacency”, referring to the government’s “intention to offer only a 1 per cent pay rise” to NHS workers.

Denmark has temporarily paused its AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine programme after reports of cases of blood clots forming, including one death, Danish authorities said on Thursday.

The vaccine will be suspended for 14 days but officials have not disclosed how many reports of blood clots there had been.

Any complications with the vaccine are likely to stem from a specific batch rather than a wider issue.

The proportion of people successfully contacted by Test and Trace in the week to 3 March has fallen slightly since the previous week.

Of the 44,508 people transferred to the Test and Trace system in the week to 3 March, 88.6 per cent were reached and asked to provide details of recent close contacts, compared to 89.1 per cent the week before.

More than one in ten (10.9 per cent) of people transferred to Test and Trace were not reached, while a further 0.5 per cent did not provide any communication details.

More than 300,000 NHS patients in England have now been waiting more than a year for routine surgery, according to the latest NHS data.

The statistics for waiting times in January show the impact of the second wave of coronavirus, with year-long waits jumping by 75,000 in a month from December 2020.

The number of people having to wait more than 52 weeks for hospital treatment stood at 304,044 in January 2021, the highest number for any calendar month since January 2008. There were just 1,643 patients waiting over a year in January 2020.

Read Shaun Lintern’s report here:

Train ticket sales plunged by 77 per cent in the year up to March 2021 compare to the previous year, Trainline has said.

The train and coach ticket travel platform said net sales for the 12 months to the end of February were 23 per cent of levels before the pandemic, with revenues of just £473 million, compared with £2 billion a year earlier.

Meanwhile, business travel made just £75 million in net ticket sales, compared with £1.2 billion a year earlier.

Bosses said they were optimistic for the future and saw a rise in sales during the summer months when restrictions were eased.

The company said: “Encouragingly, when lockdowns and restrictions were eased during the summer months of 2020, leisure and commuter passenger volumes recovered relatively quickly in Trainline’s key European markets, while Trainline’s UK consumer net ticket sales recovered faster than the market, reflecting an acceleration in the shift to online and digital channels.”

Hundreds of homeless EU nationals were sent back to their home countries under a controversial “reconnection” process during the first eight months of the pandemic, new figures reveal.

Data obtained through freedom of information (FOI) law and seen by The Independent shows 396 EU citizens in England were subject to voluntary reconnection between March and October 2020. This was up from the annual average of 338 in the previous five years.

The true figure for the pandemic expected to be higher, as 28 per cent of local authorities did not respond to the FOI request submitted by researchers at the University of Cambridge.

Read May Bulman’s exclusive here:

Urgent cancer referrals by GPs in England fell by 11 per cent in January compared to a year ago, NHS England figures show.

A total of 171,231 referrals were made in January 2021, compared with 191,852 in January 2020.

The year-on-year drop follows increases of 7 per cent in December 2020 and 2 per cent in November.

Urgent referrals for breast cancer symptoms decreased by 13 per cent, from 14,299 in January 2020 to 12,437 in January 2021.

A&E attendances at hospitals in England were down by one-third in February compared to a year ago, the latest figures from NHS England show.

A total of 1.3 million attendances were recorded in February 2021, down from 2 million in February 2020.

After adjusting for the leap year in 2020, NHS England said attendances were down year-on-year by 33 per cent.

NHS England said the drop is “likely to be a result of the Covid-19 response” – suggesting that people are still staying away from A&E departments because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Emergency admissions to A&E at hospitals in England also fell last month, down from 510,811 in February 2020 to 421,651 in February 2021 – NHS England also attributes this to the pandemic.

Cancer patients receive limited protection from a single dose of Pfizer’s Covid vaccine, researchers have said, urging a review of the 12-week gap for patients.

A study from King’s College London and the Francis Crick Institute found that three weeks after the first shot, antibody responses were found in 39 per cent of people with solid cancers and 13 per cent of people with blood cancer.

This compares with 97 per cent of people without cancer, according to the research on 205 people, who comprised 151 with cancer and 54 healthy controls.

When cancer patients were given their second shot within three weeks, 95 per cent of people with solid tumours had detectable antibodies.

Although researcher called for patients to be given the second jab within Pfizer’s recommended three-week window, Cancer Research UK said the study – which has not yet been peer-reviewed – was relatively small and people should continue to follow the advice of their doctors.