That’s it for today’s Covid blog. Please join us a little later for a new live feed where we will continue to cover the coronavirus crisis.
You can also keep up with the top headlines here.
Summary
Here are the main things that happened today:
- UK ministers have announced plans to scrap an order forcing all NHS staff in England to get vaccinated against Covid
- Turkey has recorded 93,261 new Covid-19 cases in the space of 24 hours, near the highest levels recorded during the pandemic.
- New research suggested that the world would be better protected against new Covid variants and there would be substantially fewer deaths in low- and middle-income countries if rich nations donated half of their vaccine doses
- Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau tested positive for coronavirus, as the protests against coronavirus mandates continued in Ottawa, the capital city.
- A study in Denmark suggested that the BA.2 subvariant of the Omicron coronavirus variant is more transmissible than the more common BA.1 and more able to infect vaccinated people
- The UK government will consult on ending mandatory jabs as condition of employment in health and all social care settings, with a view to revoking the regulations.
UK ministers have announced plans to scrap an order forcing all NHS staff in England to get vaccinated against Covid, in a U-turn that will prevent an exodus of many thousands of frontline health workers.
Sajid Javid, the health secretary, confirmed the move in a statement to MPs on Tuesday evening, ditching a policy that he had championed in spite of growing concern that it would endanger patient safety by triggering the loss of key personnel from the already understaffed health service.
The move came three days before the 3 February deadline that unvaccinated NHS workers who had face-to-face contact with patients had been given to have had their first dose or be dismissed.
The issue over mandatory jabs for frontline health staff has divided the sector’s leaders. As of Sunday, about 80,000 frontline NHS workers had still not had a Covid vaccination
Danny Mortimer, deputy chief executive of the NHS Confederation, told the Observer: “NHS leaders have always been clear there are risks as well as benefits to mandating the Covid-19 vaccination for all health and social care staff.” He warned that some frontline staff might leave their roles.
“This will reduce frontline NHS staff numbers even further and lead to more gaps in capacity at a time of intense pressure and patient demand,” he said.
Updated
Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt said NHS staff he has spoken to are broadly supportive of the mandatory jabs policy as a means of protecting vulnerable people.
He added:
Isn’t the real reason because we’re having a staffing crisis and the government still hasn’t brought forward plans to address this.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting emphasised that government messaging must be clear that the U-turn over mandatory vaccines doesn’t suggest there are any problems with the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.
He added that an important policy to prevent the spread of the virus in settings with vulnerable people would be ensuring that all social care staff are given full pay for sick leave.
Updated
UK government to consult on ending mandatory jabs for some workers
Javid says mandatory jabs were “the right policy at the time” of implementation, and has proven “the right policy in retrospect given the severity of Delta”, and enabling 127,000 extra people to get jabbed.
He said:
Given that Delta has been replaced it’s only right our policy on vaccination as a condition of employment is reviewed.
I have asked for fresh advice from the UK Health and Security Agency and chief medical office.
He noted there are two main factors:
- The population as a whole is better protected against hospitalisation.
- The current dominant variant, Omicron, is intrinsically less severe.
He said:
Given these dramatic changes is not only right but responsible to revisit the balance of risk and opportunities that guided our original decision last year. While vaccination remains our very best line of defence I believe it is no longer proportionate to require vaccination as a condition of employment by statute.
I will launch a consultation on ending vaccination as condition of employment in health and all social care settings. Subject to the response and the will of this house, the government will revoke these regulations.
Updated
Javid says citizens must remain vigilant due to rises in cases in primary and secondary school children and the emergence of a subvariant of Omicron BA2, which the UK Health and Security Agency has marked as a variant under investigation, one below a variant of concern. He added that so far 1,072 cases have been identified.
He said:
We are showing the world what safely living with Covid looks like.
Part of living with Covid means living with new variants and subvariants
Updated
The UK health secretary, Sajid Javid, is addressing MPs on mandatory jabs for frontline professions. We’ll keep you updated on the main lines.
Updated
France has reported 103,528 coronavirus deaths in hospital, up by 348, and that 3,700 people are in intensive care, up by 59.
The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said he would not be intimidated by the people protesting against Covid-19 vaccine mandates who have hurled abuse, adding that citizens were disgusted by their behaviour.
Reuters reports:
Dozens of trucks and other vehicles have jammed up central Ottawa since Friday and thousands descended upon Parliament Hill to complain about Trudeau and Covid-19 vaccine mandates.
Police said most demonstrators have been peaceful but local residents complain they are fed up with the non-stop blaring of truck horns and demonstrators using the streets as an open-air toilet. Some also forced a homeless shelter to give them food, the shelter said on Twitter, while others flew Nazi flags.
Updated
Amnesty International has accused Spanish prosecutors of failing to properly investigate dozens of Covid-related deaths of residents of nursing homes.
Reuters reports:
Accompanied by two women demanding answers after their mothers died in homes during the devastating first wave, Amnesty’s Spain director, Esteban Beltrán, said that in some cases authorities closed the investigations without contacting staff or victims’ families.
The state prosecutor declined to comment on the report.
The group said 89% of investigations opened by the public prosecutor last January into alleged criminal neglect at nursing homes were dropped without any clear consequences.
Updated
Turkey reports near record Covid-19 cases
Turkey has recorded 93,261 new Covid-19 cases in the space of 24 hours, near the highest levels recorded during the pandemic, health ministry data shows.
In late December, daily cases stood at about 20,000 but have since surged to touch a record high of nearly 95,000 cases on Saturday.
Data also showed 182 people died due to Covid-19 in the same 24-hour period.
Updated
More than a quarter of aged care staff in Australia say their workplace is not giving them free rapid antigen tests, with nearly 20% reporting they’ve had to find and buy their own kits before working, Josh Butler reports.
New study warns vaccine inequity will prolong the pandemic
Research suggests that the world would be better protected against new Covid variants and there would be substantially fewer deaths in low- and middle-income countries if rich nations donated half of their vaccine doses, Donna Lu reports.
Updated
Italy reported 57,715 new coronavirus cases on Monday, down from 106,065 on Sunday.
The health authorities recorded 349 deaths, up from 235 on Sunday.
Updated
Moderna has received full approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its Covid-19 vaccine for people aged 18 and over.
Reuters reports:
The vaccine received an emergency use authorisation in December 2020, and Moderna in August last year said it had completed the filing process for full approval of the vaccine.
Pfizer and partner BioNTech’s Covid-19 shot received full approval in the United States last year.
Moderna’s vaccine is cleared for use in more than 70 countries, including Canada and the European Union.
Updated
European countries are beginning to ease curbs with hospital admissions not rising in line with record Covid cases, Jon Henley reports.
Austria has lifted its “lockdown of the unvaccinated”, Switzerland is gearing up for a “turbo” reopening and Germany’s finance minister has demanded an end date for Covid curbs as more countries prepare to ease pandemic controls.
It follows the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and France, who last week began to take steps to return to a semblance of normal life, with the Danish government declaring Covid-19 “should no longer be categorised as a socially critical disease” after 31 January.
Police in Canada’s capital are investigating possible criminal charges after anti-vaccine protesters urinated on the National War Memorial, danced on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, harassed volunteers at a soup kitchen and used the statue of the Canadian hero Terry Fox to display an anti-vaccine statement.
Updated
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau tests positive for Covid
Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said on Monday he had tested positive for Covid-19 but was feeling fine and would continue to work remotely while following public health guidelines.
Trudeau went into isolation last week after one of his children tested positive but at the time a rapid test for him came back negative, he told the Canadian Press.
Updated
Danish study suggests Omicron subvariant is more transmissible
The BA.2 subvariant of the Omicron coronavirus variant, which has quickly taken over in Denmark, is more transmissible than the more common BA.1 and more able to infect vaccinated people, a Danish study has found.
Reuters reports:
The study, which analysed coronavirus infections in more than 8,500 Danish households between December and January, found that people infected with the BA.2 subvariant were roughly 33% more likely to infect others, compared to those infected with BA.1.
Worldwide, the “original” BA.1 subvariant accounts for more than 98% of Omicron cases, but its close cousin BA.2 has quickly become the dominant strain in Denmark, dethroning BA.1 in the second week of January.
Here’s a summary from Reuters on all the key coronavirus happenings around the world:
Europe
- The German government has failed to hit its goal of vaccinating 80% of the population against the coronavirus before the end of January, roughly a month before lawmakers are expected to vote on a draft law on mandatory vaccinations.
- Britain, which this week will begin offering vaccinations to children aged 5-11 who are most at risk from coronavirus, is also looking at possibly changing rules on mandatory vaccination for health service staff.
- Thousands of Czechs massed in Prague’s Wenceslas Square on Sunday, waving flags and chanting slogans against Covid-19 restrictions, even as infections surged.
Americas
- Dozens of trucks and other vehicles blocked the downtown area of Ottawa for a second day after thousands descended on Canada’s capital city on Saturday to protest against the prime minister Justin Trudeau and Covid-19 vaccine mandates.
- Thousands of truck drivers from Argentina were stuck at the Chilean border on Saturday due to slow Covid-19 testing, as Chile faced its second transport delay crisis.
Asia-Pacific
- During the past four days China has detected 119 Covid-19 cases among athletes and personnel involved in the Beijing Winter Olympics, with authorities imposing a “closed loop” bubble to keep participants, staff and media separated from the public.
- Australia’s federal government will offer extra payments to aged care staff as more than 1,200 nursing homes deal with Covid-19 outbreaks that have caused hundreds of deaths of elderly residents this year and staff shortages.
- Indonesia’s holiday island of Bali will start welcoming back travellers from all countries later this week, more than three months after announcing it was open to selected nationalities.
- Hong Kong’s home affairs secretary resigned weeks after attending the birthday party of a delegate to China’s legislature, where two of about 200 guests tested positive for Covid-19.
Africa and middle east
- Qatar’s ministry of health said on Sunday it had approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children aged 5-11 years.
- Algeria reported its first case of Covid-19’s fast-spreading BA.2 Omicron subvariant, Ennahar TV cited the general director of the Pasteur Institute as saying on Sunday.
Medical developments
- Merck & Co’s new antiviral pill, once touted as a potential gamechanger for treating Covid-19, is the last choice among four available options for at-risk patients given its relatively low efficacy and potential safety issues, US doctors, healthcare systems and pharmacies told Reuters.
- The Japanese trading and pharmaceutical company Kowa Co’s anti-parasite drug ivermectin showed an “antiviral effect” against Omicron and other variants of coronavirus in joint non-clinical research.
Updated
The German government has failed to hit its goal of vaccinating 80% of the population against coronavirus before the end of January, roughly a month before lawmakers are expected to vote on mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations.
Reuters reports:
As of Monday, 75.8% of Germans have received at least one vaccine dose, which places the country behind European peers such as Italy, France and Spain, according to data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
German government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit did not name a new target date for the 80% goal but said the aim was to raise the vaccination rate going ahead.
Last week German lawmakers debated mandatory vaccination, which has faced resistance from politicians and the general public.
Updated
Some insight from Reuters into the decisions US doctors and pharmacies are taking around Covid-19 treatments:
Merck & Co’s new antiviral pill, which was once touted as a potential game changer for treating Covid-19, is now the last choice among four available options for at-risk patients, US doctors, healthcare systems and pharmacies told Reuters.
A rival oral treatment from Pfizer, Paxlovid, is in high demand, followed by an intravenous antibody therapy made by GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology.
With supplies of those products tight, doctors facing a surge of cases caused by the Omicron variant are also turning to Gilead Sciences’ remdesivir, an antiviral that needs to be given as three daily infusions to help high-risk Covid patients avoid hospitalisation.
When Merck and its partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics announced initial data late last year showing their drug, molnupiravir, halved the risk of hospitalisation, it was hailed as a potential breakthrough, the first Covid treatment that could be taken at home.
Enthusiasm for the drug waned when full data showed about 30% efficacy. That was further eroded when Paxlovid was shown to cut hospitalisation risk by 90%. GSK’s sotrovimab and Gilead’s remdesivir – sold as Veklury – cut hospitalisation risk by 85% and 87%, respectively.
So far, 265,000 courses of Paxlovid and 1.1m courses of molnupiravir have been distributed, US health department data shows. That early data also shows hundreds of thousands of courses of Merck’s drug sitting on the shelves of pharmacies and hospitals around the country.
Updated
The UK government is poised to make a statement on vaccinations as a condition for employment for frontline health and social care professions, after protests against mandatory jabs.
Reuters reports that the chief secretary to the Treasury, Simon Clarke, said Britain was looking at possibly changing rules on mandatory vaccination for health service staff.
Updated
The Guardian’s video team have made a package featuring footage of the thousand-strong protest in Canada’s capital, Ottawa, against the prime minister Justin Trudeau’s Covid-19 vaccine mandates.
Updated
There’s not a lot of coronavirus-related news around this morning, but here’s a summary from AFP on the key developments today:
- Spotify says it will link content on Covid-19 to facts about the virus amid growing demands from music stars to drop the podcaster Joe Rogan for spreading misinformation about vaccines.
- Anti-vaxxer truckers threaten chaos in Ottawa for a third day with their “freedom convoy” against vaccine mandates amid fury at some protesters dancing on the tomb of the unknown soldier in the Canadian capital.
- Beijing records its highest number of new cases for a year and a half as the Chinese capital gears up to host the Winter Olympics.
- Greek Orthodox monks are fuelling anti-vax sentiment in the north of the country, with some clerics saying the jabs are the “mark of the antichrist”.
- The leader of the Cyprus Orthodox church warns he will suspend a dozen unvaccinated priests and those preaching against jabs.
- Ryanair cut its losses sharply in the third quarter of 2021 despite the Omicron variant, with net losses of €96m, a third of the figure for the same period in 2020.
- Bhutan mourns only its fourth death from the virus, which its premier says he felt like “a bullet hit”. The remote Himalayan kingdom has one of the lowest death tolls in the world.
- The coronavirus has killed at least 5,661,274 million people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to an AFP tally compiled from official sources on Monday.
- The US has recorded the most Covid deaths with 884,260, followed by Brazil with 626,854 and India on 495,050.
- Taking into account excess mortality linked to Covid-19, the WHO estimates the overall death toll could be two to three times higher.
Rachel Hall here taking over the global coronavirus blog for the rest of the day. Please do email me if there’s anything I’ve missed at rachel.hall@theguardian.com.
Updated
Summary
Here is a brief round-up of all the latest coronavirus news from around the world today:
-
China detected 37 new cases of Covid-19 among Olympic Games-related personnel on 30 January, up from 34 a day earlier, the Games organising committee has said.
- A sweeping new bill with powerful bipartisan support in the US Senate would establish an inquiry into the country’s Covid-19 response similar to the 9/11 Commission, among other provisions aimed at preventing the next pandemic.
- A top Hong Kong official has resigned after attending a birthday party with about 200 guests in early January as the city was battling a coronavirus surge.
- The New Zealand government has defended its strict quarantine system known as MIQ after a pregnant New Zealand journalist said she had to turn to the Taliban for help when her requests to get back to her own country were rejected.
-
Russia has registered 621 new Covid deaths in the past 24 hours, according to the Reuters news agency.
- In Australia, a large anti-vaccine protest on the front lawns outside Canberra’s Parliament House has seen hundreds of people mass outside the front doors of the building, demanding all politicians be “sacked”.
- The head of Cyprus’ Orthodox Christian Church has said he will suspend a dozen priests from his diocese because they refused to heed his call to get vaccinated against Covid-19, the Associated Press reports.
- In Britain, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is calling for a U-turn on mandatory Covid vaccines for health workers.
- Taiwan’s gift of 150,000 doses of its domestically developed Medigen Covid-19 vaccine has arrived in Somalia’s breakaway Somaliland region, according to the Taiwanese foreign ministry, part of the island’s renewed pandemic diplomacy push.
- Omicron is now the dominant variant of Covid-19 in New Zealand, the ministry of health has confirmed.
-
Tokyo has launched a mass inoculation drive for Covid booster shots at a temporary centre operated by the military as Japan tries to speed up delayed third jabs to counter surging infections.
- Britain’s public spending chief has asked fraudsters who scammed billions-worth of Covid support funds from the state to give the money back.
- The popular US podcaster Joe Rogan has apologised amid a backlash against Covid misinformation in his programme, while Spotify said it would add a “content advisory” to any episode with discussion of Covid.
-
Indonesia’s holiday island of Bali will start welcoming back travellers from all countries from later this week, officials have confirmed, more than three months after announcing it was open to selected nationalities.
That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, on the global Covid live blog for today. My colleague Rachel Hall will be along shortly to continue bringing you all the latest news and reaction throughout the day.
Updated
Indonesia’s holiday island of Bali will start welcoming back travellers from all countries from later this week, officials have confirmed, more than three months after announcing it was open to selected nationalities.
Though Bali officially opened to visitors from China, New Zealand, and Japan among other countries in mid-October, there has since been no direct flights, tourism minister Sandiaga Uno told a briefing.
The reopening follows similar announcements by Thailand and the Philippines, which put quarantine waivers on hold in December over initial uncertainty about vaccine efficacy against the Omicron variant of Covid.
The decision comes despite a steady rise in Indonesia’s Covid cases this month, despite having brought outbreaks under control in the second half of last year. Health authorities have attributed the increase to Omicron.
Russia records 621 Covid deaths in the past 24 hours
Russia has registered 621 new Covid deaths in the past 24 hours, according to the Reuters news agency.
The country has been averaging well above 100,000 new cases a day.
Updated
Popular US podcaster Joe Rogan has apologised amid a backlash against Covid misinformation in his programme, while Spotify said it would add a “content advisory” to any episode with discussion of Covid.
Rogan, a prominent vaccine sceptic, caused controversy with his views on the pandemic and on vaccines and government mandates to control the spread of the virus.
Singer-songwriters Neil Young and Joni Mitchell announced last week that they were removing their music from Spotify in protest at coronavirus misinformation broadcast on the platform.
Young objected to his music being played on the same platform as the top-rated podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience.
And 270 scientists and medical professionals wrote urging Spotify to prevent Rogan spreading falsehoods.
In a 10-minute Instagram video post on Sunday evening, Rogan apologised to Spotify for the backlash but defended inviting contentious guests.
“If I pissed you off, I’m sorry,” Rogan said. “I will do my best to try to balance out these more controversial viewpoints with other people’s perspectives so we can maybe find a better point of view.”
Updated
This is a new one on me. If a thief steals something from you, have you ever thought to just politely ask them to return it? No?
Well, Britain’s public spending chief has asked fraudsters who scammed billions-worth of Covid support funds from the state to give the money back.
Chief secretary to the Treasury Simon Clarke told LBC radio: “We will now pursue anybody who has taken this money fraudulently. And I would urge anyone who’s taken that money and didn’t really need it to make contact with HMRC.
“Anyone who thinks that they can escape the long arm of the HMRC is making a great mistake,” he added.
The exact amount of Covid fraud is unclear but various estimates put it at around £5bn ($6.7bn), Reuters reports.
Updated
Tokyo has launched a mass inoculation drive for Covid booster shots at a temporary centre operated by the military as Japan tries to speed up delayed third jabs to counter surging infections.
Japan began administering booster shots to medical workers in December, but has only provided such inoculations to 2.7% of the population after delaying a decision to cut the interval between the first two coronavirus shots and a booster to six months from the initial eight.
Online reservations that started on Friday resulted in all all slots for about 4,300 doses to be given at the centre this week being filled within nine minutes. The centre is providing the vaccine made by Moderna.
On a smaller scale, people 65 and older can get booster shots elsewhere.
Updated
In Britain, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is calling for a U-turn on mandatory Covid vaccines for health workers.
Under current plans, staff must have their first vaccine doses by 3 February and they must be double jabbed before the policy kicks in on 1 April.
Patricia Marquis, RCN director for England, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
We would say that Covid is still a serious disease and would absolutely urge all nursing staff to get vaccinated but the situation has changed in that Omicron is serious for those who are unvaccinated but actually overall as a country things have improved.
But the most important issue for us right now is the fact that there are so many nursing vacancies already, it makes no sense to risk losing thousands of registered nurses and health care support workers from both health and also what’s been lost from social care, which actually puts patients at more risk than not having nurses at all so we think the situation needs to be reviewed urgently and quick decisions need to be made before we start to lose people from the system.
Chief secretary to the Treasury Simon Clarke said a change to the rules may be possible. He told Sky News today:
This is a policy we have always kept under review.
We’ve been trying to strike, throughout this pandemic, the right balance between having the maximum impact in terms of measures that support public safety in the face of the virus, but also have the minimum impact in terms of our wider freedoms as a society.
It is in that context that a decision was made last autumn to make sure we went ahead with the mandatory vaccination policy, and that was because we had the Delta variant, extremely dangerous, which took a huge toll on our society and we wanted to make sure that people going into hospital – very vulnerable people, whether they had Covid or another condition that required treatment – weren’t going to be faced with an increased risk of infection on the wards.
We continue to monitor that situation very closely. What we know about Omicron is it is much more transmissible but less severe - any decision that is taken this week will reflect that reality.
I can’t pre-judge the decision that is going to be made but obviously we do recognise those realities, and that does open a space where we can look at this again.
Updated
A sweeping new bill with powerful bipartisan support in the US Senate would establish an inquiry into the country’s Covid-19 response similar to the 9/11 Commission, among other provisions aimed at preventing the next pandemic.
The new Covid commission would inform the US response to future outbreaks as well as the current impact of the disease. The bill will be co-sponsored by Senator Patty Murray of Washington and Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, who plan to mark it up in committee in coming weeks.
“The pain of this pandemic is unforgettable, and we have a responsibility to make sure its lessons are unforgettable, too,” Murray said.
The legislation, called the Prevent Pandemics Act, would lay the groundwork to enshrine new powers in federal health agencies.
It would also require Senate confirmation to appoint the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and it would better outline the duties of the assistant secretary for preparedness and response, a position Burr created in a 2006 law on pandemic preparedness.
Hello, Tom Ambrose here and I will be bringing you the latest Covid news from the UK and around the world over the next couple of hours.
We start with the news that a top Hong Kong official has resigned after attending a birthday party with about 200 guests in early January as the city was battling a coronavirus surge.
Secretary of home affairs Caspar Tsui was among several officials ordered to quarantine after the party, which was held for Witman Hung, a delegate to China’s legislature. At least one guest later tested positive, according to the Associated Press.
Mr Tsui said he had not “set the best example during the recent outbreak”. At the time, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam and health officials had urged the public to avoid large gatherings to prevent the spread of the virus.
Mr Tsui said:
I made the wrong decision to attend a banquet on 3 January and behaved in an inappropriate manner when all efforts should have been devoted to controlling the spread of the virus.
I will take responsibility for my actions, and I have therefore decided to resign from the position of secretary for home affairs.
Updated
The New Zealand government has defended its strict quarantine system known as MIQ after a pregnant New Zealand journalist said she had to turn to the Taliban for help after her requests to get back to her own country were rejected.
Charlotte Bellis discovered she was pregnant a short time after gaining international attention in 2021 for questioning Taliban leaders about their treatment of women and girls. She is due to give birth in May.
She resigned from Al Jazeera in November and had no choice but to leave Qatar, where sex outside marriage is illegal. She and her partner, Jim Huylebroek, moved to his native Belgium. But she could not stay long, she wrote in a column published in the New Zealand Herald on Saturday, because she was not a resident. She said the only other place the couple had visas to live was Afghanistan.
She said she had sent 59 documents to New Zealand authorities in Afghanistan but they rejected her application for an emergency return.
New Zealand’s Covid-19 response minister, Chris Hipkins, said on Monday there were places in MIQ for people with special circumstances. “No one’s saying there is not,” he said.
I understand she wanted to return on a specific date and that officials reached out to her for more information shortly after looking at her application. The emergency allocation criteria includes a requirement to travel to New Zealand within the next 14 days. Ms Bellis indicated she did not intend to travel until the end of February and has been encouraged by MIQ to consider moving her plans forward.”
Read more:
My colleagues Sian Cain and Michael Sun have this update on the Spotify controversy surrounding podcaster Joe Rogan.
In a 10-minute video posted to Instagram on Sunday night – hours after Spotify announced a plan to tackle the spread of Covid-19 misinformation – the comedian and host pledged to “try harder to get people with differing opinions on” and “do my best to make sure I’ve researched these topics”.
“A lot of people … have a distorted perception of what I do,” he said, defending two recent episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience that featured guests who shared Covid conspiracy theories. He called these guests “highly credentialed … people [with] an opinion that’s different from the mainstream narrative.”
Rogan framed his podcast – which reaches an estimated 11 million listeners per episode – as “just conversations” which “started off as … having fun and talking”.
“It’s become what it is today, which is some out of control juggernaut that I barely have control of,” he said. “Often times I have no idea what I’m gonna talk about until I sit down and talk to people.
“I am gonna do my best in the future to balance things out.”
He also apologised to Spotify. “I want to thank Spotify for being so supportive during this time, and I’m very sorry that this is happening to them and that they’re taking so much from it.”
The episodes sparked a fresh round of furore, including from musicians Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, who pulled their music from Spotify as a result.
You can read more here:
Updated
In Australia, a large anti-vaccine protest on the front lawns outside Canberra’s Parliament House has seen hundreds of people mass outside the front doors of the building, demanding all politicians be “sacked”.
Protesters are currently singing, drumming and playing musical instruments. Police have assembled lines in front of the glass Parliament House doors, to stop protesters reaching the entrance to the building.
The demonstration has been building for several hours, with participants claiming to have come from all around the country. The protest - which had been supported online by Coalition politicians George Christensen and Gerard Rennick, and which originally was set to feature a speech from Craig Kelly - was inspired by a truck drivers’ protest in Canada over the weekend, with supporters encouraging “convoys” of trucks and cars to assemble in Canberra.
Traffic jams and delays were experienced in the streets around Parliament House earlier on Monday, as protesters arrived. Police had initially blocked roads around the building, but more than a dozen trucks and cars managed to drive up onto grass opposite Old Parliament House.
A group of speakers, including members of prominent anti-vaccine groups, gave speeches raising debunked medical claims around vaccines, as well as claims relating to the Qanon conspiracy theory.
Protesters have variously held a minute’s silence, played the Last Post, and sang ‘Amazing Grace’.
“I’m surprised we haven’t been surrounded with police yet,” one man said on a live stream video, posted to Facebook by an anti-vaccine group.
Another man said he was surprised there were not more officers.
Police holding the line pic.twitter.com/M86w9hs0vh
— whatsdoinmedia (@whatsdoinmedia) January 31, 2022
The head of Cyprus’ Orthodox Christian Church has said he will suspend a dozen priests from his diocese because they refused to heed his call to get vaccinated against Covid-19, the Associated Press reports.
Archbishop Chrystostomos II told state broadcaster CyBC that most of the priests are also theologians who have swayed some of the faithful not to get vaccinated. The archbishop called the insubordination “unheard of” and warned that the suspensions could be extended to six months or lead to the priests being defrocked.
He suggested that some of the unvaccinated priests may be emboldened to defy him because of his frail health.
Archbishop Chrysostomos has been vocal in his support for vaccinations for all the faithful and the Church’s highest decision making body, the Holy Synod, has issued a clear appeal in favour of vaccination.
Covid-19 infections in Cyprus have in recent weeks tapered off, but remain high. The number of hospitalised coronavirus patients also remains high, but health authorities say the system is coping.
January recorded the second-highest number of virus-related deaths per month in Cyprus since the start of the pandemic.
That’s it from me, Helen Livingstone for today, I’m handing over to my colleague Elias Visontay.
Before I go, Reuters reports that Taiwan’s gift of 150,000 doses of its domestically developed Medigen Covid-19 vaccine has arrived in Somalia’s breakaway Somaliland region, according to the Taiwanese foreign ministry, part of the island’s renewed pandemic diplomacy push.
Taiwan has donated millions of face masks and other goods around the world in what the government has called the “Taiwan can help, Taiwan is helping” programme to show the island is a responsible member of the international community, despite being locked out of most global bodies because of China’s objections.
Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said the vaccine doses, made by Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corp, arrived in Hargeisa on Sunday and were met at the airport by Somaliland Health Minister Hassan Mohamed Ali Gafadhi and Taiwan’s de facto ambassador there, Allen Lou.
“On the basis of the shared values of democracy and freedom between Taiwan and Somaliland, our country’s government will continue to steadily strengthen the cooperative relationship between the two sides and jointly fight the global pandemic and defend universal values,” the ministry added.
Somaliland broke away from Somalia in 1991 but has not gained widespread international recognition for its independence. The region has been mostly peaceful while Somalia has grappled with three decades of civil war.
Taiwan and Somaliland set up representative offices in each other’s capitals in 2020. Both China, which claims Taiwan as its own, and Somalia have expressed their opposition to Taiwan and Somaliland’s forging of ties. In Africa, only tiny Eswatini maintains full relations with Taiwan.
The Medigen vaccine has so far only received limited international recognition, but strong support from Taiwan’s government, which backed its development partially over fears China could hamper its international purchase of vaccines.
The pandemic is well under control in Taiwan and most people have been vaccinated with shots made by AstraZeneca Plc, BioNTech SE and Moderna Inc, though some senior officials, including President Tsai Ing-wen, have chosen to take Medigen to show their confidence in it.
Almost 5bn items of personal protective equipment worth £2.7bn will be wasted as they are no longer needed or cannot safeguard NHS staff, UK ministers have revealed.
The huge sum of money involved has prompted the Liberal Democrats to accuse the government of “extreme negligence on an industrial scale” in its use of public funds during the pandemic.
The revelation came in a written parliamentary answer by the health minister Edward Argar.
He was responding to a question tabled by Wendy Chamberlain, the Liberal Democrats’ chief whip and MP for North East Fife, about how much of the PPE that had been procured had then not been used.
Argar said the government’s PPE programme had ordered more than 36.4bn items since the pandemic struck in March 2020. “Of this, approximately 3.4bn units are currently identified as potential excess stock. The estimated price for those items is £2.2bn,” he said. The minister did not explain why so much PPE had ended up as “potential excess stock”, or define precisely what that meant.
Omicron is now the dominant variant of Covid-19 in New Zealand, the ministry of health has confirmed.
It said it will no longer report the specific number of Omicron cases alongside the Delta case numbers.
As cases continue to increase, the priority for whole genome sequencing will be to highlight patterns of virus spread rather than individual cases,” it said.
On Monday, there were 91 new cases of the virus across eight regions in the community bringing the total number of active cases to 771. Ten people are in hospital.
With Omicron in the community, the best thing people can do is to get their booster shot, to reduce the chances of getting sick and being hospitalised, as well as slowing the spread of the virus, the ministry said.
Canadian police investigate anti-vaccine protesters
Police in Canada’s capital have said they are investigating possible criminal charges after anti-vaccine protesters urinated on the National War Memorial, danced on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and used the statue of Canadian hero Terry Fox to display an anti-vaccine statement, the Associated Press reports.
Thousands of protesters gathered in Ottawa on Saturday to protest vaccine mandates, masks and lockdowns. Some travelled in truck convoys and parked on the streets around Parliament Hill, blocking traffic. Many remained on Sunday.
Ottawa Police said officers are also investigating threatening behavior to police and others.
“Several criminal investigations are underway in relation the desecration of the National War Memorial/Terry Fox statue,” Ottawa police said.
Some demonstrators parked on the grounds of the National War Memorial and others carried signs and flags with swastikas, sparking widespread condemnation.
The statue of Fox, a national hero who lost a leg to bone cancer as a youngster, then set off in 1980 on a fundraising trek across Canada, was draped with a upside down Canadian flag with a sign that said “mandate freedom.”
Prime minister Justin Trudeau retweeted a statement from The Terry Fox Foundation that said “Terry believed in science and gave his life to help others.”
The Terry Fox Foundation is proud to continue Terry’s mission of funding cancer research. Terry believed in science and gave his life to help others. Thank you to all of our supporters who help us work toward realizing Terry’s dream of a world without cancer. 🇨🇦 pic.twitter.com/5MSky1YfVM
— TerryFoxFoundation (@TerryFoxCanada) January 29, 2022
Canada has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. Trudeau has said Canadians are not represented by this “very troubling, small but very vocal minority of Canadians who are lashing out at science, at government, at society, at mandates and public health advice.”
Deirdre Freiheit, president of the Shepherds of Good Hope, who run a soup kitchen for the homeless in Ottawa, said several protesters showed up at the soup kitchen on Saturday and verbally abused staff and volunteers while demanding they be served.
She said some protesters were given food to defuse the situation, and going forward meals will only be given to those who need them.
The convoy of truckers and others prompted police to prepare for the possibility of violence and warn residents to avoid downtown. A nearby mall and liquor stores closed early on Saturday and remained closed Sunday.
The demonstration was initially aimed at denouncing vaccine mandates for truck drivers crossing the Canada-US border, but the movement has morphed into a protest against a variety of Covid-19 restrictions and Trudeau’s government.
Sitting in his truck, Scott Ocelak said he planned to stay until Tuesday at the latest. “Everyone’s united and we just needed a spark, and this is the spark that we needed,” Ocelak said. “We’re all on board and we’re all here together. It’s end all mandates for everybody.”
A new rule took effect on 15 January requiring truckers entering Canada be fully immunized against the coronavirus. The United States has imposed the same requirement on truckers entering that country.
The Canadian Trucking Alliance said a great number of the protesters had no connection to the trucking industry, adding they have a separate agenda to push. The alliance notes the vast majority of drivers are vaccinated.
“People are losing their jobs because they don’t want to get the vaccine. I don’t want the vaccine,” said Eric Simmons, who drove in from Oshawa, Ontario.
Some opposition Conservative lawmakers served coffee to the protesters and Conservative party leader Erin O’Toole met with some truckers. The protest also attracted support from former US President Donald Trump.
Updated
China reports 37 new Covid cases relating to Winter Olympics
China detected 37 new cases of Covid-19 among Olympic Games related personnel on 30 January, up from 34 a day earlier, the organising committee of the Beijing 2022 Winter Games has said.
Eight of the total were athletes or team officials who tested positive after arriving at the airport on Sunday, according to Reuters.
Of the total infections, 28 were among new airport arrivals, with the remaining nine already in the “closed loop” bubble that separates event personnel from the public, according to a notice on the Games’ official website.
Mainland China meanwhile reported 58 new Covid-19 cases on 30 January, down from 81 a day earlier, the national health authority said on Monday.
The National Health Commission in its daily bulletin said 40 of the new cases were local infections, with the remaining 18 coming from overseas. Of the local transmissions, 24 were in the city of Hangzhou on the eastern coast, with 11 in northern Tianjin and three in the capital Beijing.
The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, stood at 52, down from 65 a daily earlier.
The total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Mainland China now stands at 106,073, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,636.
Welcome and summary of key developments
Hello, this is Helen Livingstone bringing you the Guardian’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
China has detected 37 new cases of Covid-19 among Olympic Games related personnel, up from 34 a day earlier, the organising committee of the Beijing 2022 Winter Games says. Eight of the total were athletes or team officials who tested positive after arriving at the airport on Sunday.
Police in the Canadian capital, Ottawa, have said they are considering criminal charges after anti-vaccine protesters urinated on the National War Memorial, danced on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and used the statue of Canadian hero Terry Fox to display an anti-vaccine statement.
Here’s what else has been happening over the past 24 hours:
- Spotify has pledged to add content advisory notices to all podcasts featuring coronavirus. This comes after Neil Young and Joni Mitchell withdrew their music from the streaming platform in protest against Covid misinformation.
- Harry and Meghan have expressed concerns about misinformation on Spotify, but have made it clear they plan to continue work on their lucrative contracts with the platform.
- The UK’s foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has said it is the government’s “intention to publish the full report” into alleged lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street. She also admitted: “It is a bit of a mess that we have the police investigation alongside the Sue Gray report”.
- Defying all odds, Portugal’s ruling centre-left Socialists won an outright parliamentary majority in Sunday’s snap general election, securing a strong new mandate for the prime minister, Antonio Costa. The result was boosted by a higher than expected turnout despite the coronavirus pandemic – around a tenth of the population is currently thought to be isolating.
- New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern has tested negative for Covid after she was deemed a close contact of a positive case. The prime minister’s office says Ardern will continue isolating until the end of Tuesday in line with Ministry of Health guidance.
- Former British prime minister David Cameron has caught the virus, New Zealand media are reporting. Cameron had been scheduled to open a retreat for the opposition National party in Queenstown this coming week.
- New cases in South Korea’s have hit a record 17,532 as the highly infectious Omicron variant spreads. The daily count broke the record for the sixth consecutive day, rising from 8,570 on Tuesday.
- There have been 62,399 new cases of Covid-19 in the UK, according to the latest government figures. This is the lowest number of daily Covid cases since mid-December.
- Thousands have gathered in Prague to protest against Covid restrictions. They are opposed to harsher restrictions for the unvaccinated, including a ban on eating in restaurants.
