Summary
Hello and welcome to our live coronavirus coverage with me, Helen Sullivan.
I’ll be bringing you the latest good and bad pandemic developments worldwide for the next few hours.
You can get in touch with me on Twitter @helenrsullivan or via email: helen.sullivan@theguardian.com – news, comments, questions all welcome.
Two mass vaccination locations opened in New York City on Sunday.
The mass sites were open for part of the day on Sunday before they start operating round the clock, seven days a week on Monday as part of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s push to set up 250 vaccination locations to meet the ambitious goal of inoculating 1 million New Yorkers by the end of the month.
Three other smaller sites also opened on Sunday.
Meanwhile the global coronavirus case total has come another sad milestone closer to a staggering 100m, with the total passing 90m on Sunday, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers. The death toll stands at 1,932,266.
Here are the other key recent developments:
- US House lawmakers may have been exposed to someone testing positive for Covid-19 during the Capitol siege by a violent mob loyal to Donald Trump. The Capitol’s attending physician notified all lawmakers Sunday of the virus exposure and urged them to be tested.
- A new coronavirus variant of coronavirus has been detected in four travellers from Brazil’s Amazonas state, Japan’s health ministry has said, in the latest recorded instance of the virus evolving.
- Seven people in Marseilles, southern France, have tested positive for the new, more infectious variant of Covid-19 first found in Britain, local authorities have announced.
- Russia has detected its first case of the more infectious coronavirus variant found in England, in a Russian who returned from Britain and tested positive late last month.
- Northern Ireland’s health minister said Covid-19 was placing the healthcare system under pressure “like never before,” as one hospital appealed on social media for the immediate help of all off-duty healthworkers nearby.
- One in five people in England may have had coronavirus, new modelling suggests, equivalent to 12.4 million people, rising to almost one in two in some areas.
