France to administer J&J vaccine as planned – as it happened

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The US health panel agreed they wanted more data before voting to resume vaccinations with Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 jab, even as a US Food and Drug Administration scientist said warnings could mitigate the risk of rare but serious blood clots, Reuters reports.

The panel is reviewing six reported cases of rare brain blood clots in women who received the J&J vaccine, a day after federal regulators paused its use to assess the issue.

Dr Lynn Batha, an epidemiologist at the Minnesota health department, and several others spoke in favour of extending the pause to gather more safety information.

“By having more robust information, I think we can be more confident about how we talk about the safety of this vaccine,” she told other members of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advisory panel.

A US health advisory panel on Wednesday did not make a decision related to the pause in the use of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine and aims to reconvene possibly in a week or 10 days, Reuters reports.

Consistency in Scottish government messaging has seen more trust in following Covid-19 guidelines than in England, according to an expert adviser.

Linda Bauld, professor of public health at Edinburgh University, said key differences between the approaches of Nicola Sturgeon’s and Boris Johnson’s administrations during the pandemic had contributed to changes in confidence.

She said: “We have a first minister – and this isn’t a political point – who is generally popular in the country, that has contributed and been very present throughout the pandemic.

“The daily briefings have been much more consistent, so people have known when they are taking place.

“The slogans have not chopped and changed much in Scotland, although they have changed recently.”

A UK government spokeswoman said: “Our top priority has always been to work in partnership with the devolved administrations and focus on defeating the coronavirus right across the UK.

“Throughout the pandemic we have set out consistent, targeted instructions to the public on how to prevent the spread of the disease and stay safe.

“Our data shows that our multi-channel communications approach continues to have a significant impact on people’s behaviour.”

Mexico’s unwillingness to spend money, do more testing, change course or react to new scientific evidence contributed to the country being one of the worst hit by the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report released this week by the University of California.

The country would have had a significantly lower death toll if it had reacted as well as the average government, according to the University’s Institute for Global Health Sciences, which also released a report sharply critical of the US response to Covid-19.

Mexico’s health department says there have been almost 210,000 deaths in the country of 126 million, but because so little testing is done, it acknowledges the real toll is about 330,000. The US and Brazil have higher total tolls but these are out of much larger populations.

The failure by officials to recommend face masks, institute travel restrictions, provide enough testing and protective equipment and institute social distancing measures were among the mistakes cited by the report, which was commissioned by the World Health Organization’s Independent Panel to the Institute for Global Health.

“Key decisions about how to confront the health crisis were based on unwarranted assumptions, without sufficient evaluation and judgement of the risks,” according to the report.

The head of the World Trade Organization set out a series of proposals for countries, vaccine makers and international bodies to increase production of vaccines and make them more widely available, Reuters reports.

The WTO director general, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, called a meeting of producers, governments and finance institutions and laid out challenges for each, including action to reduce export restrictions and progress in talks on a proposal to temporarily waive pharmaceutical companies’ intellectual property rights.

Venezuela is risking further delays to an already stalled Covid-19 vaccination campaign by seeking to use specific brands of vaccines while shunning readily available ones, opposition leader Juan Guaido said.

The Covax global vaccine program has offered to sell doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Venezuela, pending a payment arrangement, but the government of president Nicolas Maduro blocked its use following concerns about blood clotting, Reuters reports.

Guaido told a news conference that Maduro allies had internally discussed the idea of seeking out the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, but that they had not mentioned it in talks with the opposition or formally requested access to the vaccine.

“Insisting on one type of vaccine over another means delaying, it means complicating” the vaccination campaign, he said.

“There are not enough vaccines on planet Earth to meet the needs at this time.”

Lionel Messi has helped to obtain 50,000 Covid vaccines from China for an ambitious but controversial plan to inoculate all of South America’s football players before this summer’s Copa América tournament.

The deal with the Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinovac was secured after Messi donated three autographed sweatshirts. “Sinovac’s directors manifested their admiration for Lionel Messi, who kindly sent us three shirts for them,” tweeted the Conmebol official Gonzalo Belloso.

A new survey by biomedical institute Fiocruz found that 86% of beds in intensive care units (ICUs) in São Paulo are full, Reuters reports.

Nearly all of Brazil has ICUs suffering critical capacity shortages and 10 out of 26 Brazilian states have occupancy over 95%, the data shows.

• Turkey recorded 62,797 new coronavirus cases and 279 deaths in the last 24 hours, health ministry data showed on Wednesday, registering the highest daily death toll and rise in cases since the beginning of the pandemic.
• Portugal’s parliament extended on Wednesday a state of emergency for 15 days as health experts warned that a gradual relaxation of strict lockdown rules now underway could soon lead to a significant jump in coronavirus cases.
• Mexico’s government reported 5,113 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 518 more fatalities, according to data from the health ministry on Wednesday. It brings the country’s total to 2,291,246 infections and 210,812 deaths, Reuters reports.
• An NHS trust in England is planning to make Covid-19 vaccinations part of staff contracts, it has been reported. A letter from the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Foundation Trust in London that is set to go out to staff is said to state: “We will be making Covid vaccination mandatory for all our employees and it will form part of the employment contract.”
• Russia has announced the start of production of its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine in Serbia, the first European country outside Russia and Belarus to begin manufacturing the jab.
• France will use Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine as planned despite its suspension in the US, a government spokesman said, adding France had received a first shipment of 200,000 doses.
• The pace of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine production is unlikely to speed up markedly in the next few months, though the drugmaker expects its manufacturing capacity to expand significantly by 2022, chief executive Stephane Bancel said during an investor call, Reuters reports.
• Sweden’s Health Agency said it would pause plans to start vaccinations using Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine following reports of rare blood clots similar to those reported for the AstraZeneca shot.
• EU countries will receive 50 millionm Covid-19 vaccines produced by Pfizer and BioNTech by the end of June, the head of the EU commission said on Wednesday, as deliveries expected at the end of the year will be brought forward.
• Denmark will permanently cease to administer AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, broadcaster TV 2 reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed sources.