Coronavirus live updates: Ireland considering travel restrictions from Britain as other European countries suspend UK flights | World news

Brett Giroir, the US assistant Secretary for Health, has told ABC News in an interview that he sees “no reason for alarm yet” over the emergence of a new Covid-19 strain in the UK.

He also spoke about the ongoing distribution of vaccines in the US:

Thailand has started testing tens of thousands of people for coronavirus and extended curbs on movement, a day after locking down a province following the country’s worst outbreak yet.

The outbreak began at a shrimp market in Samut Sakhon, a province southwest of Bangkok and a centre of the seafood industry that is home to thousands of migrant workers, Reuters reported.

Four cases were reported there on Friday and that number had jumped to 689 by Sunday, the public health ministry said. Thailand had previously kept the epidemic in check, recording little more than 5,000 Covid-19 cases.

“Today is just the first stage,” Kiattiphum Wongrajit, the ministry’s permanent secretary, told a news conference. “Further results will show a lot more infections.”

He said up to 40,000 people would be tested in Samut Sakhon and nearby provinces, with over 10,000 tests to be conducted by Wednesday.

Migrant workers, mostly from Myanmar, lined up for testing on Sunday, along with some Thais. Most cases identified so far have been asymptomatic, health officials said.

Sutharee Wannasiri, a human rights specialist, tweets:

The organiser of anti-lockdown protests in which five police officers were injured and 29 people were arrested faces a fine of £10,000, police in London have said.

The woman was identified as the organiser of the demonstrations in which more than 150 people gathered on Saturday and marched through parts of central London – just as heightened ‘tier 4’ restrictions for the city and much of the south east of England were being announced.

Several clashes occurred between officers and unmasked demonstrators, who chanted “we demand freedom”.

Police said that the protest “endangered the health of Londoners” and that those arrested had been charged with breaching Health Protection Regulations.

The three men had also been charged with assaulting an emergency worker.

A further 266 people who tested positive for Covid-19 have died in hospital in England, bringing the total number of confirmed deaths reported in hospitals to 46,388, Britain’s National Health Service has said.

Patients were aged between 42 and 101. All except seven, aged between 53 and 90, had known underlying health conditions.
The deaths were between 8 November and 19 December.

Thirteen other deaths were reported with no positive Covid-19 test result.

Shipments of Moderna Inc’s Covid-19 vaccine have begun to leave warehouses in the US, heading for healthcare facilities in a push to distribute the second approved coronavirus vaccine.

Ireland’s health minister says additional restrictions in relation to Britain are being considered and that an announcement will be made later today.

Stephen Donnelly told RTE that flights, ferries, and general overall travel to and from Britain was being examined.

Irish people who cannot come from the UK due to the new restrictions are in an “awful situation”, he added.

There is speculation that fears about the new variant of Covid-19 spreading across England might result in a so-called ‘hard border’ between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

However, as tweeted by RTE’s London correspondent, Sean Whelan, Donnelly also said there was “no possibility” of sealing the border with Northern Ireland.

Speaking earlier, Dr Susan Hopkins of Public Health England said that samples of the new strain had been recorded in Scotland and Wales but not yet in Northern Ireland.

A paper about the new variant identified in England has been published by genomics researchers who say that the first two samples were recorded on 20 September in Kent.

More than 1,620 samples had been found in England’s south-east by 15 December.

The paper, from academics at the universities of Edinburgh, Birmingham, Oxford, Cambridge, Cardiff and with input from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research adds that samples were found in other regions of the UK, including Scotland and Wales, and four in other countries.

Italy plans to suspend flights to and from Britain over fears of a new strain of the coronavirus detected there, foreign minister, Luigi di Maio, said in a Facebook post.

Boris Johnson and scientists announced on Saturday that a new strain of the virus identified in the country was up to 70% more infectious than the original version.

Di Maio said:

As a government we have the duty to protect Italians, for this reason, after having notified the British government, with the Ministry of Health we are about to sign the provision to suspend flights with Great Britain.

Our priority is to protect Italy and our compatriots.

That’s all from me, Caroline Davies. Handing back to my colleague Ben Quinn now. Thank you for your time.