We are going to close this live blog now. But we roll on. Our coverage will continue here.
Colombia’s daily confirmed cases of coronavirus reached their highest level since mid-August on Thursday, as the government warned people against large holiday gatherings.
The Andean country, which has had a total of 1,468,795 confirmed cases and 39,787 deaths, recorded 12,196 new cases on Thursday, according to health ministry data.
The figure was the highest since Aug. 19, when there were 13,055 new cases.
Morning/afternoon/evening, wherever these words find you. This is Ben Doherty here in Sydney, Australia, taking over our continuing live coverage of the global coronavirus pandemic. My many thanks to my colleagues for their stewardship thus far.
As ever, comments, contributions and correspondence all welcomed at ben.doherty@theguardian.com or by twitter @BenDohertyCorro.
The city where I sit is braced for further lockdowns or restrictions, with a new cluster of infections, still small in number, discovered after a long period of no community transmission. We will have more details on that in about an hour, and I shall bring you those.
US president-elect Joe Biden tested negative for Covid-19, after an incoming White House adviser, Cedric Richmond, contracted the virus, a spokeswoman for Biden said in a statement.
Richmond was not in close contact with Biden as defined by the Centers for Disease Control, spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield said.
Summary
Here’s a quick recap of the latest coronavirus developments across the world over the last few hours:
- Macron ‘very likely’ infected with Covid-19 during EU council. President Emmanuel Macron tested positive for the coronavirus on Thursday, prompting a track-and-trace effort across Europe following numerous meetings between the French leader and EU heads of government in recent days.
- Six week lockdown to start in Northern Ireland from Boxing Day. Northern Ireland is preparing for a sweeping lockdown and the deployment of paramedics from the Republic of Ireland in an effort to control Covid-19. Health officials on Thursday proposed a six-week lockdown and approved a plan to reinforce the ambulance service with units from across the border.
- Portugal imposes overnight curfew on New Year’s Eve. An overnight curfew from 11pm will come into force in Portugal on New Year’s Eve, prime minister António Costa said, as the country introduces measures to reduce the spread of the coronavirus during the usually busy night.
- Australia’s largest city of Sydney told to brace for more Covid-19 cases. Australia’s largest city of Sydney should brace itself for more Covid-19 cases, New South Wales state premier Gladys Berejiklian has warned, as authorities rushed to contain a new virus cluster in the city’s northern coastal suburbs.
- Colombia daily coronavirus cases reach highest since August. Colombia’s daily confirmed cases of coronavirus reached their highest level since mid-August on Thursday, as the government warned people against large holiday gatherings.
- King of Sweden blasts country’s ‘failed’ coronavirus response. The king of Sweden has said the country has failed in its response to Covid-19, as hospitals in the Stockholm region warned they were struggling to cope with a surge in cases and polls showed public confidence in the authorities had plunged to a new low.
- US surpasses 17m coronavirus cases as vaccines are distributed. The United States on Thursday surpassed a total of 17m coronavirus cases, with infections rising by more than a million a week during the early winter surge – while at the start of the year it took three months for the US to accumulate its first million cases.
Colombia daily coronavirus cases reach highest since August
Colombia’s daily confirmed cases of coronavirus reached their highest level since mid-August on Thursday, as the government warned people against large holiday gatherings.
The Andean country, which has had a total of 1,468,795 confirmed cases and 39,787 deaths, recorded 12,196 new cases on Thursday.
The figure was the highest since 19 August, when there were 13,055 new cases.
President Iván Duque and health officials have repeatedly warned Colombians against gathering in crowds at shopping areas and urged them to keep family celebrations limited in order to reduce spread of the virus.
Duque on Wednesday said rising cases numbers could be traced to celebrations to mark the feast of the Immaculate Conception - known locally as Night of the Candles - when families gather to put candles in their windows or outside their homes.
The daily death toll also rose past 200 on Wednesday and Thursday, reaching 204 and 227 respectively. Daily new recorded deaths have not surpassed 200 since September.
Colombia expects to vaccinate about 15 million people against Covid-19 in 2021, including health care workers, those over 60 and those with pre-existing conditions.
Intensive care units in Bogotá, a centre for infection, were at 74% capacity on Thursday, according to local health department figures.
Brazil and Colombia are reporting the highest number of new cases in South America, the World Health Organization said this week.
A panel of outside advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration have endorsed emergency use of Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine, virtually assuring a second option for protecting against Covid-19 for a pandemic ravaged nation.
The committee voted 20-0 with one abstention that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh its risks in people aged 18 and older, one week after the same panel backed a similar vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech, leading to an FDA emergency use authorisation (EUA) a day later.
The FDA is expected to grant the EUA as early as late Thursday or Friday, providing another ray of hope to a nation that has lost more than 300,000 lives to Covid-19 - including a one-day high of 3,580 deaths on Wednesday - while record numbers of patients threaten to overwhelm US hospitals.
The Moderna vaccine is set to begin distribution as soon as the FDA gives the green light. Health and human services secretary Alex Azar told CNBC on Thursday that 5.9m doses have been allotted for state governors and were ready to ship nationwide.
The vaccines are not a panacea, however, as they will take months to roll out to a nation where the virus is running rampant and public health measures such as social distancing and mask wearing are being rejected by large parts of the population.
Unlike Pfizer’s vaccine, which comes with complex distribution challenges due to its need to be shipped and stored at -70C, Moderna’s vaccine does not require specialised ultra-cold freezers or vast quantities of dry ice, making it easier to supply rural and remote areas.
US officials have said they expect to have 40m doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines by the end of the year - enough to inoculate 20 million people.
Both vaccines were about 95% effective at preventing illness in pivotal clinical trials with no serious safety issues.
The first wave of doses are expected to be earmarked for healthcare workers who treat Covid-19 patients and vulnerable residents and staff of nursing homes.
Documents prepared by FDA scientists and released ahead of the meeting, said a two-dose regimen of the Moderna vaccine was highly effective in preventing Covid-19 and did not raise any specific safety issues.
Perhaps even more significant, as hospital intensive care units fill to capacity across the country, there were no cases of severe Covid-19 among those who got the vaccine in the trial versus 30 such cases in the placebo group.
The vaccine, based on the new technology of synthetic messenger RNA (mRNA), is administered in two shots about 28 days apart. The Pfizer/BioNTech shot is also an mRNA vaccine.
Australia's largest city of Sydney told to brace for more Covid-19 cases
Australia’s largest city of Sydney should brace itself for more Covid-19 cases, New South Wales state premier Gladys Berejiklian has warned, as authorities rushed to contain a new virus cluster in the city’s northern coastal suburbs.
About a quarter of a million residents in the affected suburbs in Sydney have been asked to stay home for three days and people from outside areas urged not to visit as authorities set up more emergency testing centres.
“We’re bracing ourselves for more cases today, no doubt about that.... the next 24-48 hours will be critical,” Berejiklian told the Australian Broadcasting Corp television.
“We’re taking this extremely seriously. We want to get on top of it as soon as we can, to give people as normal a Christmas as possible.”
Berejiklian said the original source of the virus was an international strain and that genomic experts were trying to find how it reached the local community.
The number of coronavirus cases jumped to 17, authorities said late on Thursday just hours after reporting two new cases.
New South Wales, of which Sydney is the capital, have been easing social distancing curbs in recent days due to low or no local cases. The new cluster has prompted other states to tighten their internal borders.
Australia has reported just over 28,000 coronavirus cases and 908 deaths since the pandemic began and estimates most active cases in the country are returned overseas travellers in hotel quarantine.
Brazil recorded 1,092 new Covid-19 deaths on Thursday, the highest number in over three months.
Brazil, which has the second deadliest outbreak behind the US, also reported 69,826 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus as daily infections rocket up once more after a brief lull.
Ireland, which has the second lowest Covid-19 infection rate in Western Europe, is set for a “serious increase” in cases following the relaxation of restrictions, its health minister said, as officials called for new curbs.
Only Iceland has a lower infection rate among the 31 countries monitored by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, after a six-week lockdown introduced in Ireland in mid-October drove rates down.
But cases hit a five-week high of 484 on Thursday, while forward-looking indicators like the number of people being referred for testing and the proportion of tests being returned positive were both rising quickly, officials said.
“The situation is precarious,” health minister Stephen Donnelly told parliament.
The lead indicators “are all pointing to a serious increase in cases,” he said, speaking after what he described as a “very sobering” talk with the country’s chief medical officer.
Prime minister Micheál Martin later said health officials had told him tighter Covid-19 restrictions should be introduced before the end of the year.
The government will take the recommendation “very seriously,” he told state broadcaster RTÉ.
Earlier on Thursday, the head of the Irish Health Service Executive warned of an “explosive concoction” of factors pointing towards a surge in cases.
The government has focused on the reproduction number, which measures the number of people who become infected as a result of each positive case. It increased from 0.9-1 last week to between 1.1 and 1.3 this week, Donnelly said.
Ireland reopened restaurants earlier this month and was due to lift restrictions on people visiting other homes and travelling around the country on Friday.
Portugal imposes overnight curfew on New Year's Eve
An overnight curfew from 11pm will come into force in Portugal on New Year’s Eve, prime minister António Costa said, as the country introduces measures to reduce the spread of the coronavirus during the usually busy night.
“We have to totally cut out on New Year celebrations,” Costa told reporters after a meeting with ministers, adding people would not be allowed to leave their homes between 11pm and 5am from 1-3 January.
Two weeks ago, Costa had said people would be able to return home before a 2am curfew on New Year’s Eve. But a previously announced reevaluation of measures took into consideration the current pandemic situation and forced the government to take a step back.
“The number of cases per week are dropping but not as fast as they were before,” Costa said, explaining the government decided to toughen New Year’s Eve measures so rules over Christmas were not as severe.
There is no limit on how many people can gather per household for Christmas and a ban on domestic travel will not be imposed between 23-26 December.
“Christmas celebrations have to be carried out with the utmost care,” he said, urging people to avoid poorly ventilated spaces and to use face masks during family gatherings whenever possible.
After a relatively mild first wave of the disease compared with countries such as Spain or Italy, Portugal has had a record number of infections and deaths during the second wave though the daily tally has dropped slightly in recent weeks.
Portugal, which has a population of just over 10 million, has recorded 362,616 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 5,902 deaths.
Updated
Coca-Cola will cut 2,200 jobs globally, including 1,200 in the US, as the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic forces the world’s largest soda maker to accelerate its business restructuring.
The company said in August it was offering voluntary separation packages to 4,000 workers in the US, Canada and Puerto Rico, as it looked to streamline itself while its sales were taking a hit from the health crisis.
Coca-Cola said on Thursday it will not disclose the number of employees who have accepted the package. It also did not give details about the timeline for the job cuts.
The news of job cuts come as millions of Americans are already stuck on unemployment benefits as a relentless wave of new Covid-19 infections hobble business operations.
“The pandemic was not a cause for these changes, but it has been a catalyst for the company to move faster,” Coca-Cola said in a statement.
It had about 86,200 employees at the end of last year, of which 10,400 were located in the US. About 500 job cuts will be in metro Atlanta, where Coca-Cola’s headquarter is based.
