UK reports nearly 400 virus-linked deaths; German chancellor calls for mandatory jabs – as it happened

British skiers could soon be able to return to French slopes after an announcement that France is due to lift its blanket ban on non-essential travel from the UK, Jon Henley and Nazia Parveen report.

The French government’s official spokesman, Gabriel Attal, said after a weekly cabinet meeting on Wednesday that Paris would ease travel restrictions from the UK to France in the next few days.

“I confirm that a further easing of the restrictions with the UK will be announced in the coming days,” Gabriel Attal told reporters. “Work is continuing. I hope that the announcement can be made by the end of the week.”

France dramatically tightened restrictions on travel from and to Britain on 18 December in an attempt to curb the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant, effectively banning all non-essential journeys by requiring vaccinated and unvaccinated travellers to show a “compelling reason” for travel.

The rule, which effectively limited entry from the UK to France and EU nationals and British citizens resident in France, was later eased to allow people in “for the pursuit of an economic activity requiring an on-site presence that cannot be postponed.”

The rules also require all arrivals from the UK to present a negative PCR or antigen test taken within the previous 24 hours, rather than 48 hours, and to quarantine in France for seven days – reduced to 48 hours if they can produce a new negative test.

On December 30, the French government suspended one of the new rules to allow British nationals who were legally resident in other EU countries to transit through France to reach their homes by road and rail. Border officials would “show tolerance” in order to allow people to return home after the Christmas and New Year period, the interior ministry said, without specifying when the rule would be reimposed.

On Wednesday, Attal said he had said at the time that the new rules were introduced that “if we continued to see the same situation, that is the Omicron variant becoming dominant in France, of course we would continue to ease the restrictions.”

More on this story here: France poised to lift blanket ban on UK travellers ‘by end of the week’

Here is a quick recap of some of the main developments from today so far:

• Quebec’s announcement that it will impose a healthcare tax on unvaccinated residents has prompted a fierce debate, as the province looks to salvage its crumbing healthcare system amid the latest Covid wave. Story here.
• A Chinese woman became an overnight sensation after she posted video diaries documenting her life after being stuck at a blind date’s house when the city was put under lockdown. Story here.
• The Omicron variant of Covid-19 is dangerous – and especially so for those who have not been vaccinated against the disease, the World Health Organization said. “While Omicron causes less severe disease than Delta, it remains a dangerous virus, particularly for those who are unvaccinated,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference. “We mustn’t allow this virus a free ride or wave the white flag, especially when so many people around the remain unvaccinated.” The “overwhelming majority” of people admitted to hospitals around the world were unvaccinated, he added.
• Sweden will cut the recommended time interval between the second and third Covid vaccine shot to five months from six. “The purpose of the shorter time interval is for more people to be able to be vaccinated earlier. The regions should not have to stand idle with unused capacity,” the health agency chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, said in a statement. A number of other countries, including the UK, Denmark and France, have already reduced the interval between the second and third shots of the vaccine for at least some sections of their populations, sometimes to as little as three months.
• Greece will extend restrictions by a week at restaurants and bars to help curb the Omicron variant. The country imposed curbs on bars, restaurants and nightclubs over the Christmas holidays last month, which were due to end on 17 January. The restrictions, which have forced bars, nightclubs and restaurants to close at midnight, with no standing customers and no music, will be extended to 24 January, health authorities said on Wednesday. A double mask will still be mandatory in supermarkets and transport.
• The UK reported 129,587 new Covid cases and 398 more deaths within 28 days of a positive test. The figures compare with Tuesday’s total of 120,821 cases and 379 deaths. The latest data shows 398 deaths were recorded today – the second day in a row that the daily figure has hit an 11-month high. Wednesday’s number is the highest since 24 February 2021, when 442 deaths were reported.
• Germany should make Covid-19 vaccinations mandatory for all adults, chancellor Olaf Scholz told parliament, brushing off heckling from opposition lawmakers who accused him of fomenting social divisions. Scholz credited his new government’s measures to tighten curbs on public life and step up booster doses for preventing an even worse onslaught. But as Omicron increases its spread, infections would likely continue to rise and measures such as mandatory vaccination will be needed, he said, adding: “With the decision not to get vaccinated, one ultimately is not just making a decision for oneself but also for 80 million others.”
• Doctors in Spain will be awarded up to €49,000 (£40,882) each in compensation for working without proper personal protection gear in the first few months of the pandemic. A doctors’ union in Valencia, on the east coast of Spain, took the region’s government to court for failing to protect its health workers in the first three months of the Covid-19 pandemic.
• Denmark is to offer a fourth coronavirus vaccination to vulnerable citizens as it faces record infection numbers from the Omicron variant, the health minister said. The move comes as lawmakers agreed to reopen theatres, cinemas, museums, entertainment parks and botanic gardens, as well as allowing spectators at indoor and outdoor sports events, albeit with limited attendance, as hospitalisation rates and deaths have stabilised despite the surge in cases. The European Union’s drug regulator has expressed doubts about the need for a fourth dose and said there was currently no data to support this approach as it seeks more data on the fast-spreading variant. [see 3.13pm.].
• The Biden administration has announced a new set of measures to keep classes open, including doubling Covid testing capacity in schools with 10 million more tests, as the Omicron variant spreads rapidly through the US.
• An estimated 4.3 million people in the UK had Covid in the week ending 6 January, figures from the ONS showed. [see 2.41pm.].
• The UK government’s operation of a “VIP lane” for suppliers of personal protective equipment during the coronavirus pandemic was illegal, a judge ruled. In a written judgment, Mrs Justice O’Farrell said the Good Law Project and EveryDoctor, which together had challenged the lawfulness of the way billions of pounds worth of contracts were awarded through the high priority lane, had established that its operation was “in breach of the obligation of equal treatment”. More than 32bn items of PPE with a value of £14bn were bought through directly awarded and negotiated contracts. Story here.
• Switzerland will halve its quarantine time to five days to help tackle a wave of Covid infections that threatens to hamstring the economy. The reduction in the self-isolation requirement will go into effect from Thursday. This could be done because the Omicron variant had a shortened time between infection and transmission to other people, the government said. The government also proposed extending until the end of March curbs on public life that were tightened last month. It is trying to avoid not only another lockdown but also mandatory vaccinations, a route neighbouring Austria has taken.
• Tunisia will reimpose a night curfew and ban all gatherings for two weeks from Thursday to counter the rapid spread of Covid, the government has said in a move critics decried as aimed at stopping protests. The ban on gatherings and a request to avoid travel within the country except for emergencies comes two days before a planned demonstration against the Tunisian president, Kais Saied, called by major political parties. A senior official in the main opposition Ennahda party, Mohamed Goumani, told Reuters on Wednesday the protest would go ahead in defiance of the new ban.
• Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, admitted attending a gathering in the Downing Street garden during the first lockdown and apologised to the nation while arguing it was a work event and “technically” broke no rules. Johnson said he went into the garden of Downing Street on 20 May 2020 to thank staff before going back into his office 25 minutes later. He said at the time he believed it was a “work event” and in hindsight he should have sent everyone back inside. The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, rejected Johnson’s version of events and called on the prime minister to resign. “The only question is: will the British public kick him out, will his party kick him out, or will he do the decent thing and resign?” Starmer said. Story here.

The Omicron variant of Covid-19 is dangerous – and especially so for those who have not been vaccinated against the disease, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

The WHO said the huge global surge in cases was being driven by Omicron but insisted there should be no surrender to the variant of concern.

“While Omicron causes less severe disease than Delta, it remains a dangerous virus, particularly for those who are unvaccinated,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference.

He went on:

We mustn’t allow this virus a free ride or wave the white flag, especially when so many people around the remain unvaccinated.

In Africa, over 85% of people are yet to receive a single dose of vaccine. We can’t end the acute phase of the pandemic unless we close this gap.

Tedros said he had wanted every country to have 10% of their population vaccinated by the end of September 2021, 40% by the end of December, and 70% by mid-2022.

But 90 countries had still not reached 40%, 36 of them still short of the 10% mark, he said.

The “overwhelming majority” of people admitted to hospitals around the world were unvaccinated, he added.

And while vaccines remain very effective at preventing death and severe Covid-19 disease, they do not fully prevent transmission, and so the risk of a more deadly variant emerging was real, he said.

More transmission means more hospitalisations, more deaths, more people off work – including teachers and health workers – and more risk of another variant emerging that is even more transmissible and more deadly than Omicron.

On the news that the number of deaths worldwide had stabilised at around 50,000 per week, Tedros said:

Learning to live with this virus does not mean we can, or should, accept this number of deaths.

The WHO emergencies director, Michael Ryan, added:

This is not the time to declare this is a welcome virus.

Sweden will cut the recommended time interval between the second and third Covid vaccine shot to five months from six, Reuters reports.

The decision will affect people between the age of 18 and 64. People above 65 were already eligible to get their booster shot five months after the second. Children aged 12 to 17 will still have to wait six months.

A number of other countries, including the UK, Denmark and France, have already reduced the interval between the second and third shots of the vaccine for at least some sections of their populations, sometimes to as little as three months.

“The purpose of the shorter time interval is for more people to be able to be vaccinated earlier. The regions should not have to stand idle with unused capacity,” the health agency chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, said in a statement.

Sweden has vaccinated 86% of the population aged 12 and up with one shot and 82% with two shots or more.

The country stood out early in the pandemic by opting against lockdowns, instead focusing on a mostly voluntary strategy based on social distancing and good hygiene.

It has an official Covid death toll of over 15,000, several times higher per capita than its Nordic neighbours but lower than most other European countries.

Greece will extend restrictions by a week at restaurants and bars to help curb the Omicron variant, which has dominated the country and has driven a surge in Covid infections in recent weeks, Reuters reports.

The country imposed curbs on bars, restaurants and nightclubs over the Christmas holidays last month, which were due to end on 17 January.

The restrictions, which have forced bars, nightclubs and restaurants to close at midnight, with no standing customers and no music, will be extended to 24 January, health authorities said on Wednesday. A double mask will still be mandatory in supermarkets and transport.

Authorities have said that Omicron variant, which is highly contagious, is dominant in the community, after it was first detected in early December.

Greece reported 32,694 new infections and 80 related deaths on Tuesday, bringing the total official number of infections since the pandemic began to 1,568,215 and the death toll to 21,559.

It registered a record of 50,126 coronavirus infections in a day on 4 January.

The UK has reported 129,587 new positive Covid-19 cases and 398 more deaths within 28 days of a positive test, according to the ONS.

The figures compare with Tuesday’s total of 120,821 cases and 379 deaths.

The latest data shows 398 deaths were recorded today – the second day in a row that the daily figure has hit an 11-month high. Wednesday’s number is the highest since 24 February 2021, when 442 deaths were reported.

The new data also showed that 139,584 people had received their booster or third dose, bringing the total number of booster or third doses administered in the UK to 35,953,243.

Germany should make Covid-19 vaccinations mandatory for all adults, chancellor Olaf Scholz told parliament on Wednesday, brushing off heckling from opposition lawmakers who accused him of fomenting social divisions, reports Reuters.

It comes the same day Germany reported a record of 80,430 coronavirus infections, where the previous record was 65,000 in November. The Robert Koch Institute, the country’s national disease control agency, said 384 people had died in the previous 24 hours, bringing the death toll from coronavirus in Europe’s most populous country to about 115,000.

Scholz credited his new government’s measures to tighten curbs on public life and step up booster doses for preventing an even worse onslaught.

But as Omicron increases its spread, infections would likely continue to rise and measures such as mandatory vaccination will be needed, he said, adding:

With the decision not to get vaccinated, one ultimately is not just making a decision for oneself but also for 80 million others.

Doctors in Spain will be awarded up to €49,000 (£40,882) each in compensation for working without proper personal protection gear in the first few months of the pandemic.

A doctors’ union in Valencia, on the east coast of Spain, took the region’s government to court for failing to protect its health workers in the first three months of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Associated Press reports:

The lawsuit brought by a doctor’s union is the first of its kind to be won in Spain, whose health care system was pushed to the brink when COVID-19 first struck.

The judge ordered compensation between €5,000 – 49,000 (£4,171 – 40,882) to be paid to the 153 doctors who formed part of the suit, adding the lack of personal protection suits created a “serious safety and health danger for all health workers, especially for doctors due to their direct exposure”.

“This ruling is groundbreaking in Spain,” said Dr. Victor Pedrera, secretary general of the Doctors’ Union of Valencia CESM-CV, told AP.

Pedrera, a family doctor, said he got ill with Covid-19 shortly after it hit Spain in March 2020 and spent two months at home “quite badly off and with no idea of what was being done for treatment.”

Those doctors who were forced to work without proper protection but did not get infected nor were forced to isolate will receive 5,000 euros. The compensation increases to 15,000 euros for those who were forced to isolate, 35,000 euros for those who were infected but did not need hospital care, and to 49,000 euros for those who needed hospital treatment.

Valencia’s government will appeal the ruling. Regional chief Ximo Puig apologised to the medical workers, adding that the initial impact of the pandemic was “completely unexpected”.

As families grieving for lost loved ones call on authorities for answers, there are likely to be similar legal proceedings on the horizon. France’s former health minister Agnès Buzyn was charged in September with “endangering the lives of others”, according to the prosecutor in a special court that deals with ministerial accountability. In the UK, a public inquiry is due to begin in the spring.

Hello, it’s Georgina Quach here, taking over from Lucy Campbell.