Coronavirus live news: England GPs told to start vaccinating by 14 December; Moscow delivers Sputnik V vaccine to clinics

The British Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, is self-isolating after a member of his private office tested positive for coronavirus, the party has said.

“Keir is well and not showing any symptoms. He will now be working from home,” a spokesman said.

Moscow began vaccinating the city’s exposed groups with Russia’s Sputnik V Covid-19 jab via 70 clinics on Saturday, marking the country’s first large-scale immunisation against the disease, the city’s coronavirus taskforce said.

The Russian-made vaccine will first be made available to doctors and other medical workers, teachers and social workers because they run the highest risk of exposure to the disease.
“You are working at an educational institution and have top-priority for the Covid-19 vaccine, free of charge,” read a phone text message received by one Muscovite, an elementary school teacher, early on Saturday and seen by Reuters.

Vladimir Putin has ordered a nationwide voluntary vaccination programme to begin next week. He said Russia will have produced 2m vaccine doses within the next few days.

The head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev, said in an interview with the BBC on Friday that Russia expects to give the vaccine to about 2 million people this month.

“Over the first five hours, 5,000 people signed up for the jab – teachers, doctors, social workers, those who are today risking their health and lives the most,” Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, wrote on his personal website on Friday.

Russia has already vaccinated more than 100,000 high-risk people, the health minister, Mikhail Murashko, said this week during a presentation to the UN about Sputnik V.

The World Health Organization has said that vaccines are no magic bullet for the coronavirus crisis, as Russia started inoculating its high-risk workers on Saturday and other countries geared up for similar programmes.

The WHO said it was erroneous to believe that the Covid-19 crisis is over because jabs are on the horizon, nearly a year after the start of the pandemic that has killed 1.5 million people.

“Vaccines do not equal zero Covid,” said the WHO’s emergencies director, Michael Ryan, adding that not everyone will be able to receive it early next year.

“Vaccination will add a major, major, powerful tool to the toolkit that we have. But by themselves, they will not do the job.”

The WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, also cautioned against the “growing perception that the pandemic is over” with the virus still spreading fast, putting enormous pressure on hospitals and health care workers.

Health officials in Moscow said they had opened 70 coronavirus vaccine centres in the Russian capital that would initially offer jabs for health, education and social workers.

The WHO caution came as the United States clocked a record number of Covid-19 cases for the second day in a row on Friday, with the country preparing for what the US president-elect, Joe Biden, has called a “dark winter”.

America’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended “universal face mask use” indoors and Biden said he would scale down his January inauguration ceremony to mitigate the virus risk.

It comes as countries prepare for the approval and rollout of several vaccines that have proven effective in trials.

The number of people to die of Covid-19 in Iran surpassed 50,000 on Saturday, with more than a million infected, although transmission rates in the Middle East’s worst-affected country were slowing, state TV reported.

Turkey has entered its first full weekend lockdown since May after coronavirus infections and deaths hit record highs in recent days.
The country of 83 million people on Friday recorded 32,736 new cases, including asymptomatic ones, the highest number since the beginning of the pandemic in March.

An entire Virgin Airways flight to Melbourne has been advised to isolate at home after two travellers failed to quarantine in Sydney.

AFP reports:

The Department of Health and Human Services said that anyone who travelled on Virgin Airways flight VA 838 from Sydney at midday AEDT and arriving in Melbourne at 1.25pm on Saturday should “immediately quarantine at home and contact DHHS”.

The two travellers are now in mandatory quarantine in Victoria after arriving in Sydney from overseas earlier on Saturday.

“Anyone who has been at the Melbourne airport domestic terminal on Saturday afternoon is advised to monitor for Covid-19 symptoms and to seek testing if symptoms develop,” the department said. Meanwhile, a change to mask rules and increased social gathering caps are expected to be announced for Victoria on Sunday.

Chief health officer Brett Sutton has indicated it will be safe for the state to move to a “Covid normal” level of restrictions.

Victoria has been free of locally transmitted coronavirus cases for more than a month and with no active cases, has effectively eradicated the virus. Under the government’s original roadmap out of lockdown, “Covid normal” signifies a final easing of attendance restrictions on community sport, hospitality venues, gatherings and visitors to the home.

Prof Sutton said authorities were still working through details before premier Daniel Andrew’s Sunday news conference but confirmed advice around masks, which currently must be worn in indoor settings, would change.

“We will move to a phase where there is an even more limited use of masks in public,” he told the parliament’s public accounts and estimates committee on Friday.

Germany’s highest court upheld on Saturday a ban on a demonstration in the northern city of Bremen planned by opponents of lockdown measures aimed at containing the spread of the coronavirus, Reuters reports.

Lower courts had already denied permission for the protest, planned for Saturday afternoon, at which 20,000 demonstrators were due to convene in the city centren.

Last month, German police unleashed water cannon and pepper spray in an effort to scatter thousands of protesters in Berlin angry about coronavirus restrictions.

Although most Germans accept the latest “lockdown light” to curb the spread of the coronavirus in a second wave, critics say the amendment endangers citizens’ civil rights.