UK ‘will suffer third wave of Covid this summer’ – follow live

Police in Berlin have clashed with thousands of demonstrators outside the Bundestag building as they tried to disperse a protest against a new nationwide lockdown.

Officers moved in to break up the protest because many of those taking part were not wearing face masks or keeping to social distancing, the police said on Twitter.

At least seven people have been arrested so far after officers were attacked and had bottles thrown at them.

Police used pepper spray against other demonstrators in an effort to disperse the crowds which were chanting “Peace, freedom, no dictatorship!”

They had gathered to oppose a new “emergency brake” lockdown law currently being debated in parliament which would impose federal restrictions on regions seeing a surge in Covid cases, over the heads of the state governments.

The AFP news agency is reporting France will begin to lift its current Covid restrictions at the start of next month, provided cases continue to fall as expected.

Current rules which impose a curfew, close restaurants, theatres and cinemas, and restrict travel will begin to be eased from 2 May, the report suggests.

France’s second wave of coronavirus appears to have peaked earlier this month and cases are slowly falling.

The country’s vaccine rollout has also significantly increased since a sluggish start and now 25 per cent of adults have received at least one dose.

The United States will hit its target of administering 200 million doses of Covid vaccines in the first 100 days of Joe Biden’s presidency.

But despite this success, Mr Biden’s administration plans to increase efforts to continuing getting jabs in arms across the US with all those aged over 16 now eligible.

About 28 million doses are currently being delivered each week in the US and over 50 per cent of adults have received at least one dose.

At first, Mr Biden set a goal of 100 million jabs in the first 100 days, but this was scaled up to first 150m and then 200m as it became clear the country would easily exceed the earlier targets.

Two new unexplained cases of coronavirus have been identified on the Isle of Man, just days after the island’s third lockdown was ended.

The government is currently trying to trace all the contacts of the two people who have tested positive and chief minister Howard Quayle said the cases had given the government “cause for concern”.

The last Covid case without an obvious source of transmission was on 30 March. The latest cases were found just two days after the Isle of Man ended its latest lockdown, scrapping almost all restrictions and reopening most businesses and venues.

Mr Quayle said: ‘It is an important reminder that although we were able to lift legal restrictions on Monday 19 April, we should not think of our situation as back to normal.

“A global pandemic is still happening around us and we need to maintain the highest levels of vigilance.”

The Isle of Man has seen 1,577 cases of coronavirus and only 29 deaths since the pandemic began. Although it is now out of lockdown, the island’s borders remain closed to non-residents.

Israel is investigating how to divert a pending shipment of 10 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses elsewhere after concluding it no longer required the vaccines.

The country has already largely completed the world’s fastest vaccine rollout using the Pfizer vaccine almost exclusively, with 81 per cent of its citizens over 16 having received two doses.

Its pandemic co-ordinator Nachman Ash told Israeli radio officials were working with AstraZeneca to decide where to send the 10 million doses instead.

“They can certainly be used in other places in the world. At the moment, we are trying to find, along with the company, the best way to do this,” he said.

“We believe it would be best if they (the vaccines) did not come to Israel and we agree with the company on some sort of way to divert them elsewhere.

“After all, we don’t want (the vaccines) to get here and have to throw them into the trash.”

As well as extensive use of the Pfizer vaccine, which has seen Israel’s cases plummet and its economy mostly reopened, the country has also an order for the Moderna vaccine, which unlike AstraZeneca uses similar mRNA technology to the Pfizer jab.

Protesters have gathered outside Germany’s parliament building as lawmakers prepare to vote on the government’s proposal to create a new “emergency brake” Covid lockdown protocol.

Currently, Germany’s 16 states have each handled restrictions independently and some have refused to impose tougher lockdowns even as cases soared.

In response, Angela Merkel has proposed creating a nationwide federal law which would kick in when a region tops 100 new cases per 100,000 residents. the restrictions would include a nighttime curfew, limiting personal contact, and closing some kinds of businesses and venues.

However, some Germans oppose the emergency brake as an unwarranted restriction on individual liberties. Thousands are now gathering, along with a heavy police presence, outside the Bundestag building in Berlin to protest the new law.

Earlier today, Germany’s authorities reported a further 24,884 Covid cases, although the incidence per 100,000 people had dropped slightly to 160.

Data from hospitals shows only a fraction of those who have been vaccinated against Covid are ending up in hospital, proving once again the vaccines are working as hoped.

Professor Calum Semple from the University of Liverpool, a member of the government’s SAGE advisory group, said of the 43,000 people admitted to hospital with the virus since vaccinations began only 32 were people who had caught the disease more than three weeks after getting their jab.

This is a “tiny number”, Prof Semple told the BBC, and also only included the elderly at-risk population and only after one dose of the vaccine.

“It’s really good real world data showing that this vaccine works and one dose works really well,” he said.

So far, just over 33 million people have been given the first dose of the Covid vaccine, of which 10.4 million have also had a second jab.

There is likely to be a third wave of Covid as restrictions are eased over the summer, a scientist and member of the government’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has said.

Adam Finn, a paediatrician and vaccines expert from the University of Bristol, said Boris Johnson was right to warn yesterday the country must be ready for another rise in cases of coronavirus.

“The models that we’ve seen on JCVI clearly point to a summer surge in cases as the lockdown is relaxed, because there are still many people in the adult population who’ve not been immunised and who will therefore start to transmit the infection between each other,” he told BBC Breakfast.

There remained lots of uncertainty over what kind of spike would occur, because it was unclear how many people would be vaccinated by that point, but it was wrong to believe the pandemic was drawing to a close, he said.

“The sense that the problem is all over, I’m afraid, is a flawed one. We’re still in a vulnerable situation, and there are still significant numbers of people who potentially could be harmed by this infection if this happens.”

The transport secretary Grant Shapps has indicated the United Arab Emirates is likely to stay on the government’s ‘red list’ of travel ban countries indefinitely.

Dubai and Abu Dhabi, two of the seven states which make up the UAE, are major international transit hubs, Mr Shapps told an online ConservativeHome event, which meant UK health authorities could not be certain about travellers’ origins.

A traffic light system of green, yellow and red listed countries is set to come into force in May when Britons are allowed to travel overseas again.

Countries on the red list, however, will have direct flights barred from landing in the UK and anyone returning from them via another country will have to complete ten days of costly hotel quarantine.

The UAE’s new cases rate per 100,000 people is about four times higher than that of Britain, although they also have an extensive vaccine programme which has already administered about 10 million doses to its adult population of 8 million people.

But the numbers of people who pass through Abu Dhabi and Dubai from other countries meant it was too risky to allow unrestricted travel from there, Mr Shapps said.

Around 800,000 vulnerable people told to “shield” at home at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic may have “slipped through the net” of government support, with some struggling to access food as a result, a scathing parliamentary report has found.

The government’s hastily drawn-up and centrally-directed scheme took too long to identify elderly and disabled people with urgent needs, found the cross-party House of Commons Public Accounts Committee.

The later devolution of responsibility to local health bodies uncovered a “postcode lottery” of support, with lists of those in need of help more than doubling in 33 authority areas and increasing by as much as 350 per cent in some.

Committee chair Meg Hillier said the pandemic had exposed the human cost of the government’s failure to plan for the likelihood that a pandemic would require those with certain clinical conditions to isolate themselves at home to avoid the risk of potentially fatal infection.