Coronavirus live news: Denmark to give third jab to care home residents; UK watchdog rules out vaccine for children

You can follow the latest Covid developments in Australia in our dedicated blog –

American Airlines said it would not provide special leave from next month to unvaccinated employees who have to quarantine due to coronavirus.
Unvaccinated workers will have to use their sick time or medical leave if they miss work due to the disease, it said. “Given there is an FDA-approved vaccine, pandemic leave will only be offered to team members who are fully vaccinated and who provide their vaccination card to us,” the carrier said in a memo to staff seen by Reuters. The move comes after United Airlines Inc last month became the first U.S. carrier to require vaccinations for all domestic employees.

Brazil recorded 25,565 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the past 24 hours along with 756 deaths, the country’s health ministry said on Friday.

Brazil has registered more than 20 million cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 582,670, according to ministry data, Reuters reports.

Five officers were injured and 10 people arrested during clashes with anti-vaccine protesters in London, the Metropolitan Police said.
The force said a number of protesters had “become violent” towards police during action in the capital. In a tweet, Scotland Yard said “These ugly scenes are not why police officers come into work. This level of violence is totally unacceptable and it will not be tolerated. “Five officers were injured while policing a protest group in Canary Wharf and at South Kensington.

“Crowds quickly became hostile when they reached a building in Canary Wharf. Officers moved in to prevent those protesting from gaining entry.”

It took nine days for the New South Wales health department to contact Antoinette Chidiac after she visited Trim’s Fresh in Merrylands, western Sydney, where there was a positive Covid case in mid-July.

Across New South Wales, people have been experiencing long delays between visiting a high-risk Covid exposure site and being notified to isolate and test as a close contact, prompting warnings from one epidemiologist that the contact tracing system is “overwhelmed”, which would be “a recipe for disaster”.

For Liz Giusti in Liverpool, who visited a Sydney Woolworths in mid-July, and Jodie Wright, who also visited a Woolworths last month, there was no notification at all.

“I checked in to the supermarket QR code,” Giusti told Guardian Australia. “I later realised, after scrolling through my check-in history on the Service NSW app, that my visit was within the same hour as the positive case. But I still wasn’t alerted.

The US administered 373,516,809 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country as of Friday morning and distributed 447,619,715 doses, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC0 said.

Those figures are up from the 372,116,617 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by Sept. 2 out of 445,672,595 doses delivered, Reuters reports.

The agency said 206,461,869 people had received at least one dose while 175,538,025 people were fully vaccinated as of 6:00 a.m. ET on Friday.

Moderna Inc said on Friday it has submitted for conditional approval of a booster dose of its Covid-19 vaccine at a 50 microgram dose level to the EU drugs regulator, Reuters reports.

A White House plan to offer Covid-19 booster shots will most likely start this month only with the vaccine made by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech, a source told Reuters.
President Joe Biden had expected to launch a campaign to administer 100 million booster shots on September 20. But U.S. vaccine makers other than Pfizer have lagged in seeking authorization of an additional dose. Moderna Inc only started submitting data for regulatory approval of a booster shot on Wednesday and said on Friday it had completed its submission. “We are awaiting a full review and approval by the FDA and advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)“, White House spokesman Chris Meagher said. “When that approval and recommendation are made, we will be ready to implement the plan our nation*s top doctors developed so that we are staying ahead of this virus.”

Four officers have been injured during clashes with anti-vaccine protesters in London, the Metropolitan Police said.

The force said a number of protesters had “become violent” towards police during action in the capital.
The Met said it had made 10 arrests while policing the group.

It said: “We have made 10 arrests while policing this protest group. They originally gathered at Canary Wharf and then travelled to South Kensington.”

Ministers have faced calls to “get a grip” after it emerged flu vaccine deliveries to GPs will be delayed.

Appointments for many patients will have to be rescheduled after Seqirus, the largest provider of flu vaccines to the UK, confirmed delays of up to two weeks in England and Wales.

The company blamed “unforeseen challenges linked with road freight delays” for the delivery disruption, PA reports.

GP Online reported the company had sent a letter advising practices not to rebook appointments until they receive confirmation of a new delivery date of vaccine supplies.

An apparent exodus of HGV drivers from EU countries, who returned to the continent during the coronavirus pandemic and remained there, has been blamed for disruption in sectors of the economy in recent weeks.

A Seqirus spokeswoman said: “Seqirus supplies influenza vaccines to all GP practices in England and Wales.

“Due to unforeseen challenges linked with road freight delays, we have informed all our customers of a consequent delay to their scheduled vaccine delivery by a maximum of one to two weeks.

“Seqirus is working hard to resolve the delay to allow customers to reschedule their influenza vaccination clinics.”

After much deliberation, the government’s independent vaccine advisers concluded that, on the strength of evidence so far, there was a marginal benefit to vaccinating healthy children aged 12 to 15 years old.

But that benefit was deemed so very marginal the advisers would not give the green light to mass vaccination of healthy children in the age group.

Instead, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) broadened out the existing group of 12- to 15-year-olds eligible for Covid vaccination. Beyond the extremely vulnerable who have already been called forward for shots, the JCVI drew on research from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health to include children with major, chronic heart, lung, kidney and neurological conditions.

Children with sickle cell disease and type I diabetes will also be eligible.

Consumers have been warned of an autumn rise in living costs from sharp increases in household energy bills and food prices, as Covid and Brexit disruption ripple through the UK economy.

Sounding the alarm for a wide range of products and services going up in price, business leaders said the UK was facing a “perfect storm” of worker shortages and problems with global supply chains that would lead to a burst of inflation within months.

The warning over the cost of living comes as millions of households face a drop in their income as the government prepares to cut universal credit by £20 a week from 6 October and close the furlough wage subsidy scheme, in moves charities warn will push more people into poverty.

Rebecca McDonald, senior economist at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said: “Millions of families are facing mounting stress and anxiety about how they will cover the cost of living as the planned cut to universal credit rapidly approaches.