Coronavirus live news: China reports 69 new cases; Vietnam limits flights for lunar new year | World news

Vietnam will limit flights bringing citizens home from now until the end of the Lunar New Year in mid-February, when big gatherings indoors are expected, to reduce coronavirus risks, the country’s prime minister said.

With a new Covid-19 variant spreading around the globe and the upcoming Lunar New Year, the country’s most important holiday, only necessary flights approved by health, foreign, defence, public security and transport ministry are allowed to enter the country, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said.

After the Lunar New Year, which falls on February 10-16, the transport ministry will study the possibility of international flights resumption, Phuc added.

Vietnam has suspended all inbound international commercial flights since late March, but the government has been operating repatriation flights to bring home Vietnamese citizens stuck abroad amid the pandemic.

Some special flights carrying foreign experts and investors have been allowed to fly into Vietnam. All people entering the country have to spend 14 days in quarantine. The country on Tuesday suspended inbound flights from countries with new Covid-19 variants, initially Britain and South Africa.

Thanks to strict quarantine and tracking measures, Vietnam fared much better than many nations, registering a total of 1,513 coronavirus infections and 35 deaths. It has gone 38 days with no locally transmitted cases. (Reuters)

Now the UK has the coronavirus vaccine, how soon can we get back to normal life? Robin McKie takes a look at the key questions.

The government has ordered sufficient doses to inoculate the entire population of the UK against Covid-19 but we are in for a long haul.

An alarming but informative data visualisation from the Straits Times, on the environmental impact of all the disposable medical masks being used during the pandemic.

Experts now estimate that each month, 129 billion face masks and 65 billion gloves are used and disposed of globally. With a surgical mask weighing roughly 3.5g, that would equate to 451,500 tonnes of masks a month and, when placed next to one another, cover an area roughly three times the size of Singapore.

Conservationists and non-governmental organisations are increasingly concerned that a lot of the plastic waste, especially pandemic-related waste, is ending up in landfills, waterways and oceans, adding to the millions of tonnes of plastic waste already dumped into the world’s oceans every year.

Read the full story here.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 16,946 to 1,908,527, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Sunday.

The reported death toll rose by 465 to 40,343, the tally showed.

Thousands of Israelis on Saturday renewed weekly demonstrations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calling for the long-serving leader to resign over corruption charges against him and his alleged mishandling of the coronavirus crisis.

Protesters held signs reading “Go,” and “Bibi, let my people go,” referring to Netanyahu by his nickname.

The protest in a Jerusalem square near Netanyahu’s official residence comes as Israel is the midst of its third national lockdown, which was recently tightened to shutter schools, and as the country presses forward with a world-leading vaccination drive. Netanyahu’s trial was set to resume this week, but was postponed indefinitely amid the tighter restrictions.

Netanyahu has been indicted on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust connected to three long-running investigations. He has denied any wrongdoing and says he is the victim of a “witch hunt” by hostile media, law enforcement and judicial officials. Protesters argue that Netanyahu cannot properly lead the country while under indictment.

Israel has seen a recent surge in cases despite unleashing one of the world’s fastest vaccination campaigns. The country has given the first of two vaccine doses to nearly 20% of its population, and Netanyahu said Thursday that Israel has secured enough vaccines to inoculate the whole adult population by the end of March.

Netanyahu has placed the vaccination drive at the centre of his campaign for reelection that same month. On March 23, Israel will hold its fourth nationwide vote in less than two years. In the meantime, he has called on Israelis to make “one last big effort” to halt transmission by adhering to the tightened restrictions. (AP)

Here’s today’s wrap on pandemic-related events in Australia, by Christopher Knaus.

It includes Brisbane’s three-day lockdown continuing despite no new cases, and the lifting of lockdowns in Sydney’s north, despite one new case.

In New South Wales three new locally transmitted cases were recorded from 24,000 tests, two linked to the Berala cluster in Sydney’s west, which has grown to 23 cases, and one linked to the northern beaches cluster, now responsible for 150 cases.

All three had been in the community while infectious and the state has updated its list of potential exposure sites

Read the full story here:

Monday marks the anniversary of China confirming its first death from Covid-19, a 61-year-old man who was a regular at the now-notorious Wuhan wet market, writes AFP.

Nearly 2m deaths later, the pandemic is out of control across much of the world, leaving tens of millions ill, a pulverised global economy and recriminations flying between nations.

Yet China, which has broadly controlled the pandemic on its soil, is still frustrating independent attempts to trace the virus’s origins and the central question of how it jumped from animals to humans.

There is little dispute that the virus which brought the world to its knees sparked its first known outbreak in late 2019 at a wet market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan where wildlife was sold as food, and the pathogen is believed to have originated in an undetermined bat species.

But the trail ends there, clouded by a mishmash of subsequent clues that suggest its origins may predate Wuhan as well as conspiracy theories – amplified by US president Donald Trump – that it leaked from a Wuhan lab.

Establishing the source is vital for extinguishing future outbreaks early, leading virologists say, providing clues that can guide policy decisions on whether to cull animal populations, quarantine affected persons, or limit wildlife hunting and other human-animal interactions.

“If we can identify why [viruses] keep emerging, we can reduce those underlying drivers,” said Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a global NGO focused on infectious disease prevention.

Read the rest of the story here.

A fascinating read by my colleagues Melissa Davey, Elle Hunt, and Justin McCurry on some of the most successful nations not rushing to vaccinate.

They are the nations that have been held up as shining examples of coronavirus management. In Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan, daily Covid infections are in the single digits and outbreaks are quickly suppressed.

But there is one area where these nations lag well behind the pack: vaccination. Countries with some of the most enviable healthcare systems in the world – including Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea – will not begin to inoculate until the end of February or later.

The delay is deliberate. The millions of people already being vaccinated against Covid-19 will provide valuable data to those countries who have – for various reasons – decided to wait for more information about the vaccine, its efficacy and side effects before rolling it out to vulnerable populations and the public …

In Western Australia a crew member of a bulk carrier ship who allegedly jumped into the water and swam ashore at a port has been charged with failing to comply with quarantine directions.

WA police said the 37-year-old Vietnamese national was a crew member on a bulk carrier which berthed at the Albany port on Thursday. On Saturday he allegedly swam ashore in contravention of border and maritime crew directions.

Crew of ships are not permitted ashore on to WA land under the emergency management quarantine directions.

The man was found by police shortly before 7pm on Saturday at an Albany backpackers’ lodge. He was tested for Covid-19, which was negative, and his health assessed.

The man was charged with failing to comply with a direction and will appear in Perth magistrates court on Sunday. (AAP)