Coronavirus live news: Fauci warns of ‘surge upon surge’ in US cases after Thanksgiving
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan for today. Thanks for following along – I’ll be back on the good ship Blog tomorrow – in the meantime, my colleague Haroon Siddique is taking the helm.
In a normal year in the run-up to Christmas, Glen Duckett, landlord of the award-winning Eagle + Child in Ramsbottom, would be accompanying five or six of his staff on a trip to Angoulême in France, an annual culinary excursion he introduced as part of an apprenticeship scheme. Back at the pub, the team would be gearing up for festive gatherings, designing special menus, preparing turkeys and digging the Christmas decorations out of the cellar.
But this year is anything but normal. The Eagle will still twinkle with fairy lights, but it won’t be open this Christmas. When lockdown in England ends on 2 December, the pub, near Bury in Greater Manchester, will return to tier 3, only this time the restrictions will be more severe.
In total, 38,000 hospitality venues will fall under tier 3 in England from 3 December – representing 20% of trade. All of them will remain closed except for providing pre-ordered takeaways, a move the trade body UKHospitality described as “unfair and arbitrary”:
London has suffered the biggest fall in job opportunities among Europe’s biggest cities, according to a report showing that national capitals across the region have been damaged most by Covid-19.
Britain’s capital is also among five of the biggest cities in western Europe – London, Berlin, Madrid, Paris and Rome – that have recorded a larger drop in new job adverts than elsewhere in their respective countries, according to Indeed.
The world’s largest jobs website said tougher restrictions applied by governments across the continent to contain the second Covid wave had extracted the heaviest price for the jobs markets of these usually dominant cities:
India’s coronavirus cases rose by 38,772, the health ministry said on Monday, making it the 23rd straight day that daily cases have stayed below the 50,000 mark.
Relatives of a man who died of Covid-19 related complications, wait to cremate his body at Vadaj Cemetery in Ahmedabad, India, Sunday, 29 November, 2020. Photograph: Ajit Solanki/AP
The country now has 9.43 million cases, the second-highest in the world after the United States, but daily cases have been dipping since hitting a peak in September.
Deaths rose by 443 in the last 24 hours, and now total 137,139.
Six inmates were killed and 35 others were injured when guards opened fire to control a riot at a prison on the outskirts of Sri Lanka’s capital, officials said Monday. Two guards were critically injured, they said.
AP reports: Pandemic-related unrest has been growing in Sri Lanka’s overcrowded prisons. Inmates have staged protests in recent weeks at several prisons as the number of coronavirus cases surges in the facilities.
Police spokesman Ajith Rohana said inmates created “unrest” Sunday at Mahara prison, about 15 kilometers (10 miles) north of Colombo, and officials attempted to control the situation.
The guards opened fire, and the clash left six inmates dead and 35 injured, he said. Two prison officers were critically injured.
Inmates protest on the top of a prison building earlier this month, demanding to speed up their judicial process and that they be granted bail, after the number of the coronavirus disease cases increased in prisons in the country, in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Photograph: Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters
An inmate was killed in similar unrest at another prison last week. Another died in March.
More than a thousand inmates in five prisons have tested positive for the coronavirus and at least two have died. About 50 prison guards have also tested positive.
Sri Lankan prisons are highly congested with more than 26,000 inmates crowded into facilities with a capacity of 10,000.
Sri Lanka has experienced an upsurge in coronavirus infections since last month when two clusters — one centered at a garment factory and other at a fish market — emerged in Colombo and its suburbs.
Confirmed cases from the two clusters have reached 19,449. Sri Lanka has reported a total number of 22,988 coronavirus cases, including 109 fatalities.
Japan will be saddled with a bill of almost $2bn to cover the additional cost of postponing the Tokyo 2020 Olympics due to the coronavirus.
The Kyodo news agency and the Yomiuri newspaper reported that the Games’ organising committee, the Tokyo metropolitan government and the Japanese government will decide how much each of the parties will contribute.
The extra costs will come from introducing coronavirus countermeasures, such as setting up testing centres, as well as expenses related to venues, equipment and labour, Kyodo said.
The Tokyo Games, which will open a year later than scheduled on 23 July 2021, are already the most expensive summer Olympics in history, according to a study by Oxford University.
The official cost has been put at $12.6bn, but a government audit last year said the real figure was probably double that.
All but $5.6bn is public money, Reuters said, raising the question of how Japanese taxpayers will react to shouldering an even greater financial burden at a time of economic uncertainty.
The Japanese government, organisers and the International Olympic Committee [IOC] insist that the Games will go ahead despite the pandemic, albeit in a more compact form.
The IOC’s president, Thomas Bach, said during a recent visit to Tokyo that the development of Covid-19 vaccines had boosted the event’s prospects, but warned that they were not a “silver bullet”.
Tens of thousands of athletes and officials are expected to be closely monitored and to live in quarantine-like conditions during the Games. They will be encouraged to forego sightseeing trips and to leave Japan as soon as their events have ended.
No decision has been made on overseas fans, however, with some reports suggesting that a limited number from countries that have brought their infection rates under control may be able to attend.
In the UK, NHS bosses plan to enlist celebrities and “influencers” with big social media followings in a major campaign to persuade people to have a Covid vaccine amid fears of low take-up.
Ministers and NHS England are drawing up a list of “very sensible” famous faces in the hope that their advice to get immunised would be widely trusted, the Guardian has learned.
Health chiefs are particularly worried about the number of people who are still undecided, and about vaccine scepticism among NHS staff. “There will be a big national campaign [to drive take-up],” said one source with knowledge of the plans. “NHS England are looking for famous faces, people who are known and loved. It could be celebrities who are very sensible and have done sensible stuff during the pandemic.”
No names are thought to have been confirmed. But NHS communications experts suggested privately that the footballer Marcus Rashford, who is widely admired for his child food poverty campaign, which has forced
In Japan, the number of Covid-19 patients with serious symptoms has reached record levels, as the country battles a third wave of infections. The number of people with severe symptoms rose to 462 on Sunday, the health ministry said – an increase of 22 from the previous day.
On Saturday, authorities reported a record 2,684 cases and 14 deaths in Japan, bringing the total to 146,214 cases and 2,123 deaths.
The recent surge in infections prompted Tokyo and the central prefecture of Aichi to ask bars and restaurants to close early to prevent infections from spiraling out of control towards the end of the year.
But the voluntary measure is due to end on 17 December, just as the bonenkai season, when groups of colleagues traditionally eat and drink in large groups to “forget the year”, gets into full swing.
A staff member wearing protective mask disinfects a handrail in the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium on 28 November 2020 in Kunigami, Japan. Photograph: Yuichi Yamazaki/Getty Images
To encourage compliance, the Tokyo metropolitan government will pay places that serve alcohol ¥400,000 yen ($3,800) if they close by 10 pm. The Aichi prefectural government is offering a similar financial incentive to businesses that close by 9 pm.
Media reports said the sharp rise in serious cases is putting additional pressure on hospitals, particularly in the worst-affected cities of Tokyo and Osaka. The Asahi Shimbun said hospital beds for Covid-19 patients with severe symptoms are filling up at such a rate that health workers fear they may soon be unable to treat people with other illnesses that require urgent attention, including those needing emergency surgery.
Just over half of the beds in Osaka reserved for Covid patients are occupied, along with 40% in Tokyo, the newspaper said.
Occupancy rates for beds set aside for coronavirus patients have risen in 40 of Japan’s 47 prefectures over the past week, according to public broadcaster NHK.