Coronavirus live news: China pledges more vaccine support for south-east Asia | World news

The Gaby Hinsliff column today asks the question before Britain vaccinates children, should it vaccinate the world? She writes:

Personally I was thrilled to get my vaccine and would be more than happy for my son to have it, but what brought me up short was the question I saw posed recently by the epidemiologist Adam Kucharski: if rich countries have enough vaccine left to jab children at incredibly low risk of serious illness and death, why aren’t they offering it to poorer countries where people are dying for lack of it? Shouldn’t we be taking more seriously the threat not just of humanitarian crises, but of a more resistant variant emerging in some place where the virus is currently raging out of control, fatally undermining the vaccines that remain our only real route to freedom?

Only 2% of sub-Saharan Africa has had a first dose. Thailand, engulfed by a severe outbreak, is only just beginning mass vaccinations. Even if the G7 summit agrees this week to invest billions in ramping up vaccine production for poorer countries – as a group of former world leaders led by Gordon Brown wants – that takes months to come on stream.

If Britain doesn’t want to seal its borders – and nothing in ministers’ confused approach to foreign holidays suggests they do – then digging an ever-stronger domestic firebreak against the more contagious Delta variant we have just imported from India won’t be enough. We’re going to need a global firebreak against something worse evolving too, and fast.

Read more here: Gaby Hinsliff – Before Britain vaccinates children, should it vaccinate the world?

China’s vaccination numbers are never low. Official figures reported by Reuters say that the nation administered about 16.3 million doses of vaccine on 7 June, bringing the total number administered to 794m.

In India, the state of Uttar Pradesh has announced that it will end some Covid restrictions.

The Hindustan Times reports this morning:

The Uttar Pradesh government on Tuesday gave relaxations in ‘corona curfew’ in all 75 districts of the state. According to guidelines announced by the state government, districts with less than 600 active cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) can get relaxations.

A state government spokesperson said that there will be relaxation in coronavirus curfew in all the districts of the state from Wednesday onwards, from 7am to 7pm, for five days. However, the night curfew – 7pm to 7am and weekend curfew (for entire day) – will continue.

The UK’s environment secretary George Eustace – a man who clearly isn’t in the position where he hasn’t seen family and loved ones abroad for over a year due to travel bans – has told Sky News this morning: “I have no intention of travelling or going on a holiday abroad this summer.”

He was being pressed by newly returned presenter Kay Burley on the scramble for flights back from Portugal after it was moved from the “green list” to the “amber list” with very little warning. PA Media quotes him saying:

Our advice has been don’t travel unless it’s absolutely necessary. Obviously we had hoped, with these three categories that we had, we had hoped that situation would be improving in other parts of the world, that we’d be able to progressively add other countries to the green list. Sadly, that’s not the situation, we do have this new variant of concern first identified in India that is now cropping up in other countries, and we’ve just got to take a very cautious approach.

Asked about the UK government’s delay in shutting down travel from India, he said “India was added as soon as we saw a spike in rates and as soon as we saw there was a reason to”, denying that the delay had been political.

At the time Indian case numbers were rising and the government took no action, UK prime minister Boris Johnson had been planning to visit India in his first major trip abroad since the pandemic, with the aim of pushing a post-Brexit UK-India trade deal.

Unicef has urged rich members of the G7 to start donating vaccines to poor countries now, instead of waiting to donate leftovers all at once, saying many nations don’t have capacity to roll out huge amounts in one go.

Unicef’s vaccine lead Lily Caprani told BBC Newsnight governments in the UK and other G7 nations “need to donate their doses to those low income countries now, while still vaccinating their populations at home.”

“Low income countries need a steady supply that they can get off the tarmac and into the arms of health care workers… The unintended consequence of saving all these vaccines up to Christmas time is that countries won’t be able to absorb them and roll them out and therefore they could end up going to waste. We could see millions of doses of vaccines not used and expiring, and that will be a tragedy.”

The World Health Organization has also called on Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers to give the Covax scheme first refusal on new doses, or commit half of their volumes to the global jab equity scheme.

The president of the Tokyo 2020 organising committee, Seiko Hashimoto, is speaking this morning, and she is setting out some of the procedures that will be undertaken to try to keep the games safe.

So far, she’s said that media will not be able to use shared accommodation, and that the media will be GPS-tracked to ensure they don’t go into unauthorised areas. She has also said that they expect to start vaccinating Olympics-related staff by mid-June.

Reuters note that foreign spectators have already been banned, and organisers are expected to make a decision late this month on domestic spectators.

Toshiaki Endo, the vice-president of the Tokyo organising committee, has previously suggested to Reuters some spectators could be allowed into venues, although he personally preferred a total ban to calm persistent public opposition to the Games.

Good morning, it is Martin Belam here in London taking over today’s blog. The biggest news in England is the extension of vaccinations to those aged 25 and over this morning. If you fall into that category you can book your shot at the NHS England site here.

Northern Ireland has already been offering vaccines to anybody over 18, you can find out more here.

Those in Scotland and Wales can find out the latest information for them here:

China today pledged further assistance to Southeast Asian nations in battling the pandemic, the Associated Press reports.

The country’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, told his Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) counterparts that China had already delivered 100 million doses of vaccine to Asean nations along with other materials and technical help.

Wang said China would “urgently implement” the China-Asean Public Health Cooperation Initiative, continue to support the Asean Emergency Medical Materials Reserve and strengthen regional public health capacity-building. “China will work with Asean to overcome the outbreak as soon as possible,” Wang told a meeting of ministers.

He said the sides should explore establishing an expert panel to strengthen cooperation throughout the vaccine process, from research to use, and work to build production and distribution centres to help make vaccines affordable and accessible in the region.

Though Covid-19 was first detected in China in late 2019, the nation has largely stamped out domestic transmission, although it has been accused of insufficient transparency or even seeking to conceal the origins of the pandemic.

Beijing has been building influence with Asean, despite frictions with some members of the bloc over competing territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Welcome to another day of the pandemic, and our continuing global coverage of the latest developments.

Below are some of the key updates from the last day.

• Canada is preparing to ease birder restrictions for vaccinated travellers, Bloomberg reports.
• A top Japanese virologist and government adviser has warned of the risks of spreading infections during the Tokyo Olympics.
• Australia’s state of Victoria is on track to ease restrictions on residents, currently in a lockdown to deal with an outbreak of the Delta variant, authorities said.
• India’s government will provide free vaccinations for all adults, Prime Minister Narendra Modi says, as the capital New Delhi and financial hub Mumbai ease lockdowns on falling infection levels.
• A new coronavirus antibody drug appears to show promise in mouse studies, according to a study published in Nature.
• The Czech Republic has announced it will reopen its borders to EU and Serbian citizens on June 21.
• Just days before the start of the Euros, Spain’s football players and staff have returned negative Covid-19 tests after captain Sergio Busquets had to go home and quarantine.
• There was “delight across Ireland” as the country reopened pubs, restaurants and leisure facilities.
• Central Park is to host an “all-star” concert in August to mark New York’s comeback after the pandemic.
• New York governor Andrew Cuomo has announced that the state’s remaining coronavirus restrictions will be lifted when 70% of residents have had at least one vaccine dose.