Netherlands to restart J&J vaccine after regulator says benefits outweigh risks – as it happened

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Moderna Inc said on Tuesday it had secured a new Covid-19 vaccine supply agreement with Israel for 2022, under which the country has the option to buy doses of one of the company’s variant-specific vaccine candidates.

The announcement follows two earlier agreements between Israel and Moderna to supply a total of 10 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine.

Moderna’s Covid-19 booster vaccine is in early-stage trials. The company in April said it should be able to provide a booster shot for protection against variants of the novel coronavirus by the end of this year.

Israel has agreed with Pfizer Inc and Moderna to buy 16 million more vaccine doses for the country’s 9.3 million population, the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in televised remarks on Tuesday.

The UK government has launched an antiviral taskforce to find at least two drugs by autumn that people could take at home as pills or capsules at home to stop coronavirus infections turning into serious illness and speed recovery times.

But these will not be the first medicines to have shown promise in the treatment of Covid-19. In this explainer, the Guardian’s health editor, Sarah Boseley, looks at some that been found to help in the pandemic so far:

Canada and the United States on Tuesday extended a land-border closure for non-essential travellers, and air passengers arriving in Canada will continue to be tested for Covid-19 ahead of a hotel quarantine period, authorities said.

The land-border restrictions, imposed in March 2020, have been extended to 21 May, Reuters reports. Now in place for 13 months, they are being renewed month by month. Mexico said late on Monday it was maintaining some of its border curbs too.

The US Department of Homeland Security said it was “engaged in discussions with Canada and Mexico about easing restrictions as health conditions improve”.

The restrictions have hit many border communities and businesses hard. Many US lawmakers have urged loosening the restrictions or setting a road map to resuming normalised travel.

But Canada lags the US on vaccinations against coronavirus, and much of the country is now fighting a virulent third wave with school and business closures.

Canada’s mandatory three-day hotel quarantine following testing at airports, which was introduced as a temporary measure to discourage spring break travel, was also extended to 21 May, health authorities said.

In February, Canada began testing and requiring international air arrivals to pay for a three-day hotel quarantine, a measure criticised by airlines squeezed by the pandemic. More flight restrictions may be coming.

“We are continuing to look at more [measures],” the prime minister Justin Trudeau told a news conference. “I have asked our officials to look carefully at, for example, what the UK has done very recently on suspending flights from India.”

Quebec’s premier Francois Legault also expressed concern on Tuesday about international flights from India and Brazil - two of the world’s worst hot spots for the coronavirus.

Air travellers to Canada are required to have had a test within three days of departure, and then again on arrival. If the airport text comes back negative, they can finish a 14-day quarantine at home.

However, data obtained by Reuters showed that more than 1,000 passengers, or 1.5% of those who arrived from 22 February to 25 March, tested positive for Covid-19, raising doubt about a broad easing of restrictions before the summer travel season.

Reuters reports that authorities in the Indian capital Delhi would start running out of medical oxygen by Wednesday, as the prime minister Narendra Modi said the country faced a coronavirus “storm” overwhelming its health system.

Major government hospitals in the city of 20 million people had between eight and 24 hours’ worth of oxygen while some private ones had enough for just four to five hours, said Delhi’s deputy chief minister, Manish Sisodia. Calling for urgent help from the federal government, he said:

If we don’t get enough supplies by tomorrow morning, it will be a disaster.

Modi said the federal government was working with local authorities nationwide to ensure adequate supplies of hospital beds, oxygen and anti-viral drugs to combat a huge second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a televised address to the nation, where he urged citizens to stay indoors and not panic amid India’s worst health emergency in memory, he said:

The situation was manageable until a few weeks ago. The second wave of infections has come like a storm. The central and state governments as well as the private sector are together trying to ensure oxygen supplies to those in need. We are trying to increase oxygen production and supply across the country.

Modi faces criticism that his administration lowered its guard when infections fell to a multi-month low in February and allowed religious festivals and political rallies that he himself addressed to go ahead.

The world’s second most populous country and currently the hardest hit by the virus, reported its worst daily death toll on Tuesday, with large parts of the country now under lockdown amid a fast-rising second wave.

The health ministry said 1,761 people had died in the past day, raising India’s death toll to 180,530 - though experts believe India’s actual toll far exceeds the official count.

“While we are making all efforts to save lives, we are also trying to ensure minimal impact on livelihoods and economic activity,” Modi said, urging state governments to use lockdowns only as a last resort.

One local hospital with more than 500 patients on oxygen has enough supplies for only four hours, Delhi’s health minister Satyendar Jain said late on Tuesday.

Tata Group, one of India’s biggest business conglomerates, said it was importing 24 cryogenic containers to transport liquid oxygen and help ease the shortage in the country.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Protection has said all travel should be avoided to India, while the UK prime minister Boris Johnson cancelled a visit to New Delhi that had been scheduled for next week, and his government said it will add India to its travel “red list”.

Several major cities are already reporting far larger numbers of cremations and burials under coronavirus protocols than those in official Covid-19 death tolls, according to crematorium and cemetery workers, the media and a review of government data.

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Delhi reported more than 28,000 fresh infections on Tuesday, the highest daily rise ever, with one in three people tested returning a positive result.

“The huge pressure on hospitals and the health system right now will mean that a good number who would have recovered, had they been able to access hospital services, may die,” said Gautam I. Menon, a professor at Ashoka University.

On Tuesday, the health ministry reported 259,170 new infections nationwide - a sixth day over 200,000 and getting closer to the peak of nearly 300,000 seen in the United States in January.

Total coronavirus cases in India are now at 15.32 million, second only to the US, with epidemiologists saying many more infectious new variants of the virus were one of the main factors behind the latest surge in cases.

Reuters reports that an Argentine firm has produced test batches of Russia’s Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine, the first in Latin America, with aims to scale up manufacturing of the drug by mid-year as the wider region grapples with a new surge in infections.

Russian sovereign wealth fund RDIF and Laboratorios Richmond said on Tuesday that the Argentina pharmaceutical company had carried out the test production and that the batches would be sent to Russia’s Gamaleya Institute for quality inspection.

“We estimate that, if the process is positive, scale production would begin in June 2021,” Richmond said in a statement, adding it aimed to have the vaccine ready “in the shortest possible time for the country and the region.”

Argentina’s inoculation program has relied heavily on Sputnik V. The South American country was one of the first globally to use the vaccine on scale to inoculate its population and has faced delays getting other vaccines.

The country has seen Covid cases hit daily records highs over the last week, forcing the government to tighten restrictions in and around the capital Buenos Aires and pledge to speed up its vaccination program.

Russian scientist Denis Logunov, a lead developer of the Sputnik V vaccine, said on Friday that the vaccine had proven itself 97.6% effective against Covid-19 in a real-world assessment, based on data from 3.8 million people.

That was higher than the 91.6% rate outlined in results from a large-scale trial of Sputnik V published in The Lancet medical journal earlier this year.

Israel is planning a second round of Covid-19 vaccination in six months, by which point it expects children to be approved by health regulators to receive jabs, the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday.

Around 81% of Israeli citizens or residents over 16 - the age group eligible for the Pfizer vaccine in Israel - have received both doses in one of the world’s fastest rollouts.

Reuters reports that Israel has said it plans to administer vaccines to 12- to 15-year-olds upon approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Pfizer and its partner BioNTech requested emergency FDA authorisation earlier this month for use in that age group.

In televised remarks on Tuesday, Netanyahu said Israel had agreed with Pfizer and Moderna to buy 16 million more doses for the country’s 9.3 million population, adding:

We are preparing for another vaccination campaign in six months’ time.

Get your shoulders ready and your muscles, if you want, and also the kids, because we estimate there will be approved vaccines by then, for children.

Inoculating children and young people is considered a critical step toward reaching herd immunity and taming the pandemic, according to many experts. Pfizer says its vaccine is safe, effective and produces robust antibody responses in 12- to 15-year-olds.

Pfizer’s chief executive has said that people will “likely” need a third booster shot of the drugmaker’s two-dose vaccine within 12 months and could need annual shots.

Iceland’s government said on Tuesday it would propose tightening some of its border controls in order to ease domestic Covid-19 restrictions, Reuters reports.

Passengers entering Iceland from countries with high infection rates - 1,000 infections per 100,000 inhabitants - will need to go into quarantine, while authorities can also prohibit unnecessary travel to Iceland from those countries.

The changes will take effect from 22 April to 30 June. Rules currently in place regarding vaccine certificates remain unchanged until 1 June.

“The aim is to create conditions that make it possible to lift as many domestic restrictions as possible, despite the widespread spread of the epidemic abroad,” the government said in a statement.

Good evening from London. I’m Lucy Campbell, I’ll be bringing you all the latest global developments on the coronavirus pandemic for the next few hours. Please feel free to get in touch with me as I work if you have a story or tips to share! Your thoughts are always welcome.

Email: lucy.campbell@theguardian.com
Twitter: @lucy_campbell_

• The European Medicines Agency has stated that the overall benefits of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine outweigh any risks after eight cases of unusual blood clots, including one death, were reported in the US out of 7 million people vaccinated.
• The EU drug regulator also said a warning about very rare blood clots should be added to label of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after finding a “possible link” between the shot and the clots.
• The Netherlands will resume its use of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine from Wednesday, Dutch health minister Hugo de Jonge has announced following the European drug regulator’s statement earlier on Tuesday.
• Spanish health officials have rejected a proposal to widen the interval between first and second vaccine doses, Reuters reports, citing an announcement on Cadena Ser radio on Tuesday.
  
• Yemen started its vaccine rollout on Tuesday, with government-held areas in the war-torn country administering the first doses three weeks after initial supplies arrived.
  
• The US has warned against travel to India, where cases are rising to staggering levels and a new coronavirus variant has been detected.
• Authorities will impose a strict lockdown this week on India’s western state of Maharashtra, the worst-hit state in India’s latest coronavirus wave, Reuters reports two senior ministers as saying.
• Sweden will give people under 65 who have had an initial AstraZeneca vaccine dose a different vaccine for the second dose, the country’s health agency said on Tuesday.
  

That’s it from me for today – my colleague Lucy Campbell will be here soon to take you through the rest of the evening. Thanks for reading along.

20 Apr 202113.57 EDT

Helena Smith

Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has predicted the country will soon return to normality saying “the health crisis in one way or another is reaching its end”.

Addressing members of his New Democracy party, the centre right leader appeared upbeat this evening declaring the country’s vaccination drive had intensified dramatically.

“Vaccinations will increase even more over the next two months. The weather will help, self-tests will help … it’s only a matter of time, which I think we’ll be in a position to determine with greater precision in the coming days, that we’ll begin to return to normality and economic activity will start to pick up.”

The date on everyone’s calendar, he said, was mid-May – the date set to reopen the country to foreign tourism, provided visitors had been vaccinated against Covid-19 or had proof of testing negative for the virus.

Mitsotakis, whose business-friendly government has put foreign investment high on the agenda, also said he was optimistic about Greece’s economic prospects despite the pandemic’s crippling effects hampering recovery from its long running debt crisis.

“On the one hand we have the Recovery Fund, and on the other European structural funds,” he said referring to the EU’s regeneration plan, post-pandemic, and monies earmarked for infrastructure improvements in the coming years.

Not everyone is convinced. Greece has also struggled to suppress a third wave of the pandemic. While it has fared better than most countries on the continent handling infection rates, the case load in areas including Athens’ greater Attica region has shot up with the Public Health Organisation, EODY, announcing it had risen by 171% in the heavily populated region between 12 –18 April.

Epidemiologists have blamed the rise on large gatherings of mostly young people in squares particularly at night.

The vaccination drive has also affected foreigners struggling to register on a system that has linked the nation’s inoculation program to possession of a social security number.

Spanish health officials have rejected a proposal to widen the interval between first and second vaccine doses, according to Reuters’ which cites an announcement on Cadena Ser radio on Tuesday.

The interval between doses of Pfizer and Moderna will be kept to the recommended period of three and four weeks respectively.

It follows a report on Monday in Spanish daily El Mundo that the health ministry was considering delaying second doses for under-80s to maximise the number of people who have received at least one shot.

Some 7.2% of people in Spain have been fully vaccinated while almost 20% have received at least one dose.

The Netherlands will resume its use of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine from Wednesday, Dutch health minister Hugo de Jonge has announced following the European drug regulator’s statement earlier on Tuesday.

“The Johnson & Johnson vaccine can be used as planned and we’ll start using it tomorrow”, De Jonge said at a news conference, a few hours after the European Medicines Agency stated that the overall benefits of the vaccine outweigh any risks.

The Netherlands received its first shipment of 79,200 doses from the company on 12 April but has yet to use the vaccine.

The Amsterdam-based EMA said that its safety committee had concluded a warning should be added to the vaccine’s product information, but that the shot’s benefits outweighed its risks.

Its review comes after eight instances of serious cases of unusual blood clots associated with low levels of blood platelets, including one death, were reported in the US. More than seven million people have received J&J’s vaccine.