Coronavirus live news: all over 40s in England to be offered jab – as it happened

That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. My colleague Martin Belam will be taking over the blog now.

Here is something silly, should you need a break from the bad news:

The United States has advised its citizens inside India to leave as soon as it is safe as the country reported another record day of Covid cases and deaths.

India’s health ministry on Thursday said the country had recorded 379,257 new cases and 3,645 new deaths. India’s total number of cases and deaths stood at 18.38 million and 204,832.

An alert on the US embassy website warned that “access to all types of medical care is becoming severely limited in India due to the surge in Covid-19 cases” and noted that deaths had risen sharply.

“US citizens who wish to depart India should take advantage of available commercial transportation options now,” it said.

The Department of State “advises US citizens not to travel to India or to leave as soon as it is safe to do so due to the current health situation in country”:

29 Apr 202101.21 EDT

Vincent Ni

As coronavirus rages across India, its neighbour China has made repeated offers of help. Some are asking whether this could be an occasion to ease the tense relations between the world’s two most populous countries following last year’s border skirmishes.

China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said this week that Beijing was “ready to provide support and assistance to the Indian people at any time according to the needs of India”. A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Delhi said it would “encourage and instruct Chinese companies to actively cooperate”.

On Sunday the Chinese embassy in Sri Lanka tweeted: “800 oxygen concentrators have been airlifted today from #HongKong to #Delhi; 10,000 more in a week.” A related hashtag on China’s social media site Weibo had been viewed more than 23m times as of Wednesday:

India reported on Thursday a record rise in coronavirus cases and deaths over the last 24 hours, with its overall caseload rising above 18 million, Reuters reports.

With 379,257 new cases and 3,645 new deaths, India’s total number of cases and deaths are now at 18.38 million and 204,832, respectively, according to health ministry data.

Cambodia reported a daily record of 698 new coronavirus cases, the health ministry said in a statement issued late on Wednesday, as the country struggles to contain a wave of infections that emerged about two months ago.

The Southeast Asian nation has recorded one of the world’s smallest caseloads, but the outbreak first detected in late February has seen infections climb to 11,761, with 88 Covid-19 deaths.

Authorities have put Phnom Penh and the nearby town of Takhmau under lockdown until May 5, while all markets were shut in the capital on Saturday.

The government has, however, eased movement restrictions for some residents in “yellow” zones designated as safe, while those in “red” and “orange” zones are still banned from leaving their homes except for medical reasons.

As many as one-third of Mexicans may have been exposed to the coronavirus by the end of 2020, according to a study of random blood samples taken between February and December, AP reports.

Antibodies were found in 33.5% of samples from blood banks and medical laboratory tests in Mexico unrelated to Covid-19. The levels varied according to regions; the highest exposure rate was in the northwest, from Baja California to Chihuahua, at 40.7%. The lowest was in western states, at 26.6%. In general, areas along the U.S. border had higher rates.

Victor Borja of the Mexican Social Security Institute said the rate may have risen by as much as 10 percentage points on average nationwide following the steep upsurge in cases in January. But even if the exposure rate is currently as much as 43.5 %, Borja stressed the country was still far from herd immunity.

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Authorities have suggested that with almost 350,000 virus-related deaths, and about 40 million Mexicans exposed to the virus, the mortality rate could be just under 1%.

Moreover, the study suggested about 86% of those infected had developed effective antibodies, but that around 14% hadn’t and could be re-infected.

Mexican authorities also announced they detected three cases of the South African variant on Tuesday. The UK and Brazilian variants have already been detected in the country, but Mexico does relatively little variant testing.

The country has received about 22.6 million vaccine doses and given almost 17 million shots, covering over 12 million people, some of whom have gotten two doses. That remains a small amount for a country of 126 million. Mexico has vaccinated many of its senior citizens and plans to begin vaccinating people between the ages of 50 and 59 in May.

29 Apr 202100.01 EDT

Two NSW deaths reported after AstraZeneca vaccine, including man who developed blood clots

Melissa Davey

Australia’s drug regulator and the New South Wales health department will not confirm whether two deaths that occurred after vaccination with the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine are being investigated, saying only that they are “aware” of the cases.

On Thursday the Northern Daily Leader reported that a man in the northern NSW city of Tamworth had died in hospital on 21 April from blood clots in his lungs, which developed after he received the vaccine. And the ABC reported that a man in his 70s had died in Sydney after receiving the vaccine, but did not name the cause of the man’s death.

It is unclear whether health authorities suspect that a rare and severe clotting condition linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine, called thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, is being investigated as a possible cause of the deaths. Though the Tamworth man developed clotting in his lungs, it is not yet clear whether the clotting was TTS or a more common form of clotting unrelated to the vaccine:

A hashtag calling for the resignation of the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, was briefly blocked on Facebook on Wednesday, hiding more than 12,000 posts critical of the Indian government as the coronavirus pandemic spirals out of control in the country.

Facebook users based in India noted on Twitter that the hashtag #ResignModi had been blocked from view on Facebook.

Users searching the hashtag were given a message that said such posts were “temporarily hidden here” because “some content in those posts goes against our Community Standards”:

The global caseload is nearing 150 million, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, with 149,206,501 cases currently confirmed and global infections rising by around 800,000 a day.

That means that about one in 50 people worldwide have contracted the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic.

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

As always, you can find me on Twitter @helenrsullivan.

The global toll of cases is nearing 150 million, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, with 149,206,501 cases currently confirmed and global infections rising by around 800,000 a day.

Meanwhile a hashtag calling for the resignation of the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, was briefly blocked on Facebook on Wednesday, hiding more than 12,000 posts critical of the Indian government as the coronavirus pandemic spirals out of control in the country.

Here are the key developments from the last few hours:

• “This pandemic is not only not over, it is accelerating,” the head of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Carissa Etienne, said, which is why equitable access to vaccines and effective preventive measures are crucial to helping turn the tide.
  
• India suffered its worst day yet of the pandemic, as both new Covid-19 cases and deaths break previous records. Crematoriums in Delhi have become so overloaded with bodies that they are running out of both space and wood, and are being forced to build makeshift funeral pyres on spare patches of land. Story here.
  
• The Philippines’ president Rodrigo Duterte extended restrictions in the capital region and four nearby provinces for another two weeks. From 1 May, non-essential movement, mass gatherings and dining in restaurants will remain banned in Metro Manila and in the provinces of Bulacan, Rizal, Laguna and Cavite. The country is battling one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in Asia, with hospitals and medical workers in Manila overwhelmed, while authorities face delays in the delivery of vaccines.
  
• Almost 30 million people will need humanitarian assistance and protection in the Sahel and the Lake Chad basin in 2021 amid a deepening crisis, a report by the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (Unocha) has estimated. Poverty, the climate emergency, armed conflicts, chronically high food insecurity and malnutrition have all contributed to the worsening crisis, and across the region Covid-19 is further compounding acute needs. Story here.
  
• British and European travellers should be able to visit EU countries this summer but may have to deal with multiple, potentially unconnected health certificates unless the bloc can agree on cost, privacy and technical aspects of a common pass. Story here.
• Italy has imposed an entry ban on travellers from Bangladesh in a move aimed to prevent a spread of Covid-19 infections from the country hard-hit by the virus. Restrictions will be imposed on returning residents.
• The UK has secured 60m doses of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to be used for booster shots later this year, the health secretary Matt Hancock said. He said said the extra doses would be used alongside other approved vaccines in “protecting the progress that we have made”. Story here.
• Progress with the UK’s vaccine rollout should limit the damage from any third wave of Covid-19 infections, one of England’s top doctors, Jonathan Van-Tam, said, adding that there would likely still be bumps in the road in the coming year.