Coronavirus live news: Tokyo has 1,359 new cases on first day of Olympics; Malaysia reports record daily cases

The Philippines is to suspend travel from Malaysia and Thailand and tighten coronavirus restrictions in Manila – including banning children from going out – in a bid to prevent Delta’s spread.

A spokesperson for president Rodrigo Duterte said today that the travel restriction will go into effect on Sunday and remain in place until the end of the month, reports Reuters.

The capital region, home to 16 cities and over 13m people, and four provinces have also been placed under tighter restrictions – including a ban on children aged 5-17 leaving the house – until the end of the month.

Other restrictions include bans on indoor sports and conference venues, indoor tourist attractions and gyms and reduced capacity at restaurants.

Spokesperson Harry Roque said: “This action is undertaken to prevent the further spread and community transmission of Covid-19 variants in the Philippines.”

The Philippines has previously issued bans on travellers from eight counties including India and Indonesia.

The Philippines has recorded 47 cases of the Delta variant – eight of which are active – and three deaths. Overall nearly 1.54 million infections and close to 27,000 deaths have been recorded – the second-highest numbers in south-east Asia.

Russia today reported 23,811 new Covid cases and 795 deaths.

The latest figures bring the overall total cases to 6,078,522 and the death toll to 152,296. The country is facing a surge in cases which authorities have attributed to the Delta variant and slow vaccination rate.

Malaysia’s health ministry today reported 15,573 new coronavirus cases – the country’s highest daily cases since the start of the pandemic.

The latest figure brings the total number of cases for Malaysia to 980,941.

As the Olympic Games kicked off today, Tokyo reported 1,359 new Covid cases as the city battles a wave of infection.

It comes after the city yesterday reported 1,979 cases – its highest number of cases since January.

A French government scientific adviser has said normal pre-pandemic life may not resume until next year or even the year after.

Prof Jean-François Delfaissy told BFM TV today France could reach around 50,000 new Covid cases per day by the beginning of next month.

It comes after he said yesterday that the fourth wave of infections in the country is expected to hit hospitals in the second half of August.

More from UK government scientific adviser Jeremy Farrar (see 08:10), who said there is “overwhelming” evidence that coronavirus jumped from animals to humans in China but that he “cannot completely rule out” that it leaked from a Wuhan lab.

The member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

My personal view is the overwhelming scientific evidence, consistent with many previous infections that came from animals, is this arose from the animal kingdom, came across to the human population in 2019 and, as the virus adapted to humans, it led to the pandemic.

That is where the wealth and weight of the scientific evidence currently sits, but you cannot completely rule out a laboratory accident, and we need to know which of those two things it is.

America’s No 2 diplomat has told of her concerns for North Koreans who are facing food shortages as a result of the pandemic.

The Associated Press reports that US deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman told reporters in Seoul: “We all feel for the people of the DPRK, who are indeed facing all the most difficult circumstances given the pandemic, and what it means as well for their food security.”

It comes after the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, recently warned of a “tense” food situation and admitted his country faces its “worst ever” crisis.

Latitude, the first music festival to take place since the lifting of England’s lockdown restrictions, kicks off today. As a government test event, festivalgoers had to present either a negative test or proof of full vaccination or immunity to enter.

In England, Ian Wright, chief executive of the food and drink federation, has praised the new government self-isolation exemption plans for food workers saying they have acted “expeditiously”.

But Luke Garnsworthy, owner of Crockers restaurants in Henley and Tring, which was not covered by the exemption, said it was “ridiculous”. He said the “stupid” government policy “traps people in their homes” even if they test negative.

UK government scientific adviser Jeremy Farrar has said Covid is an endemic infection now and believes it is “never going to go away”.

Farrar, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) and director of the Wellcome Trust, told BBC Radio 4’s Today that people are “going to have to learn to live with it”, but that the level of transmission, long Covid and disruption of education doesn’t have to continue.

He said the UK “remains very vulnerable” to variants in other parts of the world, which could cause problems in the way that Delta has done.

India has recorded 35,342 new cases – bringing the official total to 31.29 million.

The death toll stands at 419,470, the health ministry said, but the true figure is believed to be considerably higher, potentially as high as 4.7 million.

In the UK, the Police Federation of England and Wales has said they have “no confidence” in the home secretary after they were refused a pay rise following the pandemic.

National chair John Apter, told Sky News that the federation’s unanimous decision puts Priti Patel on notice that they are “not messing about”.

it has asked for a 3% increase – which it said would come at a cost of £138m.

More on England, the environment secretary, George Eustice, said ministers are “never going to take risks with our food supply”.

He said there would be two different isolation exemption schemes: one for the food sector, which would mean all employees at identified sites would be automatically included, and another for other key industries.

He told Sky News:

For sectors like the nuclear power industry, the rail network, the water industry, where you have a small number of highly skilled professionals that you need to ensure can come to work, we’re having an exemption for them as well … but it’s quite a narrow exemption. For the food sector, it’s very different. This is quite a big exemption.

In England, the environment secretary, George Eustice, has said that more than 10,000 food production workers will be exempt from self-isolation rules in a bid to combat “pingdemic” food shortages.

He told Sky News that the government has identified close to 500 key sites – including about 170 supermarket depots plus other “key manufacturers” – that will be able to use the scheme, which he said would cover “well over 10,000 people”.

He said the government has adopted this approach with the food sector but is keeping everything under review.

They are broadly maintaining isolation rules to “try to dampen the spread” to try to keep the peak of hospitalisations as low as possible but that he is confident the country has passed the peak of infection.

Until infections dip downwards he said it would be “premature” to change rules.

Hi, I’m taking over the blog now from Helen. Please get in touch with any tips or suggestions: miranda.bryant@guardian.co.uk

Vaccinations are beginning to rise in some states where Covid cases are soaring, White House officials said Thursday in a sign that the summer surge is getting the attention of vaccine-hesitant Americans as hospitals in the south are being overrun with patients.

Coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients told reporters that several states with the highest proportions of new infections have seen residents get vaccinated at higher rates than the nation as a whole. Officials cited Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri and Nevada as examples.

“The fourth surge is real, and the numbers are quite frightening at the moment,” the governor of Louisiana, John Bel Edwards, said on a New Orleans radio show. Edwards, a Democrat, added: “There’s no doubt that we are going in the wrong direction, and we’re going there in a hurry.”

Louisiana, for example, reported 2,843 new cases Thursday, a day after reporting 5,388 – the third-highest level since the pandemic began. Hospitalisations are up steeply in the last month, from 242 on 19 June to 913 in the latest report. Fifteen new deaths were reported Thursday.

Just 36% of Louisiana’s population is fully vaccinated, state health department data shows. Nationally, 56.3% of Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Warner Thomas, president and CEO of the Ochsner Health system serving Louisiana and Mississippi, said the system had seen a 10% to 15% increase in people seeking vaccination over the past week or two.

Taiwan will ease its Covid restrictions from next week though some will remain in place, the government said on Friday, with rapidly falling case numbers giving authorities confidence to further lower the alert level.

Reuters: Taiwan implemented restrictions on gatherings, including closing entertainment venues and limiting restaurants to take-out service, in mid-May following a spike in domestic cases after months of no or few cases apart from imported ones.

While some of those curbs were eased this month, the so-called level 3 alert has been in force and is due to end on 26 July.

Premier Su Tseng-chang said the alert would be lowered to level 2 from Tuesday. “The domestic epidemic has gradually stabilized and is heading towards a good direction,” Su said.

“Citizens should still strictly follow all pandemic prevention guidance to guard this hard-earned achievement after restrictions are relaxed.”

The health ministry will announce details of the new guidance later on Friday, he said.

Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan.

Taiwan will ease its Covid restrictions from next week though some will remain in place, the government said on Friday, with rapidly falling case numbers giving authorities confidence to further lower the alert level.

Meanwhile in the US, vaccinations are beginning to rise in some states where cases are soaring, White House officials said Thursday, in a sign that the summer surge is getting the attention of vaccine-hesitant Americans as hospitals in the South are being overrun with patients.

Here are the other key recent developments:

• Workers from 16 key services including health, transport and energy will not have to isolate after being pinged by the NHS Covid app, as it was revealed that more than 600,000 people in England and Wales were sent self-isolation alerts last week.
• Advisers to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will consider evidence suggesting that a booster dose of Covid vaccines could increase protection among people with compromised immune systems. Last week, Israel began administering third doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to immunocompromised people. Some experts believe the CDC is nearing a similar recommendation in the US.
• Chile announced that its citizens and foreign residents would be allowed to travel outside the country if they were fully inoculated against coronavirus, a fresh perk for Chileans participating in one of the world’s fastest vaccination campaigns.
• The White House said China’s decision to reject a World Health Organization plan for a second phase of an investigation into the origin of the coronavirus which would have a greater focus on a possible lab leak was “irresponsible and dangerous”.
• The EU has said that 200 million Europeans had been fully vaccinated, more than half of the adult population but still short of a 70% target set for the summer.
• Tax raids were carried out on the offices of one of India’s most popular newspapers, after months of critical coverage of the government’s handling of the pandemic.
• Johnson & Johnson’s Covid jab is much less effective in mitigating the symptoms of those with the Delta or Lambda variants than against the original virus strain, a new study suggested.
• Peruvian police dismantled an alleged criminal ring that had charged as much as $21,000 per bed for seriously ill Covid-19 patients in a state-run hospital. Authorities arrested nine people in an early morning raid on Wednesday, including the administrators of Lima’s Guillermo Almenara Irigoyen public hospital, according to reports.
• German pharmacies stopped issuing digital Covid-19 vaccination certificates after hackers created passes from fake outlets, the industry association said. The German Pharmacists’ Association said hackers had managed to produce two vaccination certificates by accessing the portal and making up pharmacy owner identities.