Covid news live: US set to open land borders, Bali prepares to welcome back tourists

Ed Miliband is doing the UK media round for the opposition Labour party this morning. He’s just been questioned on Sky News about whether Labour should be apologising, in the wake of yesterday’s damning report on the country’s Covid response, for failing to force the government into an earlier lockdown.

He said that he felt “Collectively the whole of politics should apologise.” He went on to say:

Government as a whole, politics as a whole, let down the families and the people who died. The government is the lead on that, and they need to be held accountable for that. We’ve got to learn lessons from this, about what went wrong. But there are deeper lessons about the inequalities and deprivation in our country. They way the government handled it was chaotic, and they were deeply unprepared.

My colleagues Andrew Gregory and Robert Booth have this report today on the NHS in the UK facing a beds crisis as care homes stop taking patients from hospitals:

The NHS faces a mounting beds crisis as care homes suffering unprecedented staff shortages are forced to stop taking patients from hospitals, health and care leaders have warned.

Ministers are desperately trying to free up space in the NHS to tackle a backlog of 5.6 million people – equivalent to almost 10% of people in England – awaiting treatment.

But efforts to speed up the discharge of hospital patients into the community are being hampered by care worker shortages.

Thousands of staff who are declining Covid vaccinations are expected to be told they can no longer be deployed in care homes in the coming weeks. Many have already quit. Nearly 13% of staff in older adult care homes had not been double vaccinated by 3 October – over 59,000 workers.

Staffing levels in certain areas are likely to be disproportionately hit. Almost one in four care workers in Manchester have not had two jabs, and around one in five in Stoke, Thurrock, and Hackney and Lambeth in London, NHS England data shows.

The government has made double vaccination a “condition of deployment” in care homes in England from 11 November to limit infection spread. Care home operators have called for the deadline to be postponed.

Read more here: NHS faces beds crisis as care homes stop taking patients from hospitals

There is a little bit of news on the Reuters wire, which is coming out of Russia’s Interfax news agency. They are reporting that the Russian health ministry has said it will be having talks with the EU to discuss terms for the mutual recognition of Covid-19 vaccine certificates for their respective shots.

The European Medicines Agency is yet to approve Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine for use, which is the source of some friction between the two parties. Russia has accused the EU of doing so for political reasons, while the EU has in turn suggested that the vaccine’s manufacturer has not been forthcoming with the required data for approval.

Developing countries are increasingly turning to homegrown Covid vaccinations as the UN-backed Covax programme falls behind.

While western countries roll out booster jabs to their own populations, Covax, which was set up by UN agencies, governments and donors to ensure fair access to Covid-19 vaccines for low- and middle-income countries, has said it will miss its target to distribute 2bn doses globally by the end of this year.

According to the latest supply forecast, on 8 September, the programme is now expecting to provide 1.4bn vaccine doses over 2021 – a shortfall of nearly a third.

The shortage is largely a result of export and manufacturing constraints and increasing demand from vaccine-producing countries. India – a key producer – only delivered 28m of a promised 40m doses in March when infections surged domestically as the Delta variant spread around the country.

Developing countries have responded by producing new local vaccines. Among them is Egypt, which has launched human trials for its homemade vaccine Covi Vax, after successful laboratory tests.

Earlier this year, researchers in Saudi Arabia announced the start of early-stage human trials of a vaccine developed by researchers at Imam Abdulrahman bin Faisal University.

Cuba is seeking WHO approval for its own vaccines as it seeks to reach full immunisation, including children as young as two, by the end of 2021.

Several Brazilian research institutes are also betting on the development of homegrown vaccines against Covid-19.

Read more of Hazem Badr, Helen Mendes and Papiya Bhattacharya’s report here: Local Covid vaccines fill gap as UN Covax scheme misses target

I’ve just been watching Conservative co-chair Oliver Dowden be interview by Kay Burley on Sky News in the UK. After a bit of pressing he was much clearer in offering an apology to her viewers for the criticism of the government handling of Covid. He stressed that prime minister Boris Johnson had said earlier in the year that he was “deeply sorry” for the suffering of people and families with Covid. Dowden went on to say:

We’re sorry for the losses that all those families have suffered. And of course, we accept that during this Covid crisis, this was an unprecedented crisis, a once in a hundred year event. There wasn’t a perfect rulebook to follow, and of course, we would do some things differently with hindsight.

He was keen to stress areas like the vaccine rollout where he said the government had acted quickly.

There was a somewhat awkward exchange when Burley pointed out that on the previous day’s show, as we reported yesterday, Stephen Barclay, the minister for the Cabinet Office, refused to offer any apology. Burley said he had refused to do so on eleven occasions during the interview, and that it was the kind of behaviour that made her viewers feel politicians were out of touch with their feelings and lives.

In a not exactly ringing endorsement of his colleague, Dowden said “Steve said what Steve said yesterday.”

It should be noted that when the prime minister offered that apology in January, Johnson also said: “Of course as I was prime minister I take full responsibility for everything that the government has done. What I can tell you is that we truly did everything we could, and continue to do everything that we can, to minimise loss of life and to minimise suffering.”

The handling of the coronavirus crisis was yesterday described as “one of UK’s worst ever public health failures” in a report led by two former Conservative ministers.

Here’s how the New York Times has been reporting the news that the US is to reopen its land borders with Canada and Mexico in November. Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Emily Cochrane write that:

The lifting of the two bans will effectively mark the reopening of the United States to travelers and tourism, signaling a new phase in the recovery from the pandemic. But the new requirements also indicate that the country will be a welcoming destination only for those who are vaccinated.

They quote New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand claiming that the closure had cost “cost Erie County in New York at least $660m annually”, and saying:

Finally, the New York-Canadian border will be open again to vaccinated travelers from both nations. This reopening will be welcome news to countless businesses, medical providers, families and loved ones that depend on travel across the northern border.

They also have quotes from Texas Democrat representative Veronica Escobar saying:

Border communities have been hamstrung because of port closures. Not only did we suffer more significant health devastation in 2020, but the economic devastation has been longer for us because of those port closures. This is great, and long overdue, news

Read more here: New York Times – The US will open the Canada and Mexico borders for fully vaccinated travelers in November

A quick snap from Reuters here that Ukraine registered 471 coronavirus-related deaths over the past 24 hours health ministry data showed.

That sees the nation approaching the record daily toll of 481, which was reported on 7 April. The number of new daily coronavirus infections in Ukraine, which has a population of 41 million, has also increased over the past several weeks. Ukraine registered 16,309 new coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours.

Good morning from London, it is Martin Belam here taking over from my colleague Samantha Lock. Co-chairman of the Conservative party Oliver Dowden is the government spokesperson doing the media round in the UK this morning. I suspect he will mostly be asked about supply chains and Brexit arrangements in Northern Ireland, but I will endeavour to bring you any Covid lines that emerge, as well as the latest coronavirus news from around the world.

New Zealand reports 55 community cases of Covid-19, its second-highest daily count in six weeks.

Auckland continues to be the hardest hit region battling the nation’s Delta outbreak, with 53 cases announced on Wednesday alongside two in the Waikato.

The city’s lockdown, as well as Northland and much of the Waikato – involving more than half of New Zealand’s population – will next be assessed on Monday.

Thanks for joining us for all the latest coronavirus updates as they happen.

I’m Samantha Lock, coming to you from Sydney, Australia, and I’ll be giving you a rundown of developments in the pandemic.

After a 19-month travel ban, the US has announced it will reopen its land borders with Canada and Mexico for nonessential travel.

It’s a huge relief for families who have been separated since the beginning of the pandemic and comes after multiple countries pressed the US for months to ease restrictions.

Meanwhile hotels and hospitality businesses in Indonesia’s main tourism hotspot of Bali are slowly coming back to life after being shuttered for 17 months.

On Thursday, Bali is due to reopen to travellers from several countries including China, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, and the United Arab Emirates. Visitors will be required to follow certain regulations – they need to be fully vaccinated and take two PCR tests, both before their flight and on arrival. They will also need to quarantine for five days.

• Canberra, Australia’s capital city, is set to become the most Covid vaccinated city in the world. “The current evidence suggests that the ACT will be one of the most vaccinated cities in the world,” said the territory’s chief minister, Andrew Barr. “We expect to be at around 99% of the eligible population fully vaccinated by the end of November. It’s a testament to ACT residents and their willingness to protect themselves, their family and their community.”
• Senior figures in the UK say the failure to a prevent second wave was inexcusable given what was known about the virus. The failure to prevent tens of thousands of deaths during Britain’s brutal second wave of Covid infections was a more serious error than the timing of the first lockdown, senior scientists told the Guardian, after a damning report by MPs on the handling of the pandemic.
• Bereaved families call for acceleration of UK Covid public inquiry to be accelerated and for ministers to apologise after a damning report by MPs on the handling of the pandemic.
• A first official report on the UK’s early handling of the pandemic, published on Tuesday by cross-party MPs, described it as one of the worst public health failures in British history. “Groupthink” by ministers and scientists, including a deliberately slow approach to imposing the first lockdown, led the UK to fare “significantly worse” than other countries, it concluded.
• IMF says Covid support has left world open to new financial crisis. The emergency support provided by central banks and finance ministries during the Covid-19 pandemic has fuelled speculation and left the world vulnerable to another financial crisis, the International Monetary Fund has warned.
• The US has administered 403,576,826 doses of Covid-19 vaccines as of Tuesday morning and distributed 488,178,975 doses, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
• The UK reported a slight fall back in cases to below the 40,000 mark with 38,520 confirmed cases of Covid-19, down from 40,224 yesterday.
• Russia will test a nasal spray form of its Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19 among adult volunteers, according to a state document published on Tuesday.