Summary and goodbye
That’s all from the Guardian’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic for today. 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.
I leave you with a summary of the latest developments from the past 24 hours:
- New Zealand has announced it will reopen its border to visitors in stages, after its earlier plans to do so were derailed by Omicron. The country’s borders have been closed, apart from a short-lived travel bubble with Australia, for nearly two years.
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Serbia’s state prosecutors on Wednesday rejected suggestions that Novak Djokovic used a fake positive test for Covid-19 to try to enter Australia and compete in the Australian Open.
- In the UK, Conservative MP Mark Jenkinson has sparked a backlash this morning after arguing on ITV that breaching Covid rules is equivalent to parking on a double-yellow line.
- Italy will soon announce a timetable to roll back its Covid curbs, prime minister Mario Draghi said today. It comes as the surge in cases fuelled by the highly contagious Omicron variant started to show signs of slowing.
- Germany has recorded over 10 million total Covid cases, after detecting 208,498 new infections in the past 24 hours. Ministers said they hope to lift restrictions in March.
- Police in Ottawa, Canada, have seen signs that guns have been brought into a
truckers’ protest against vaccine mandates that has paralysed the Canadian capital, the police chief said.
- The chairman of The Ivors Academy has called for “major reform” so musicians are treated with “dignity and respect” amid criticism of Spotify over Covid misinformation on the platform.
- The US Virgin Islands has lifted a requirement that visitors present a negative Covid test taken no more than 72 hours ahead of their trip.
- UK Covid infections have stopped falling, with levels holding steady or climbing, the ONS said. For England one in 20 people had Covid in the week ending 29 January.
- Russia broke its record Covid tally, with 141,883 new infections over the past 24 hours, Reuters reports.
- In Japan, Tokyo detected a record-breaking 21,576 new cases, topping the previous record of 17,631, as the country battles Omicron.
- France will begin to lift some restrictions today, including mandatory outdoor mask-wearing.
- In the US, Pfizer and BioNTech are seeking approval to inoculate children under five, the last group of Americans still ineligible for vaccines against Covid.
- Lithuania will scrap its Covid certificate needed to enter public spaces from Saturday, saying they are ineffectual to stopping the spread of Omicron, despite a near-peak wave.
- Exposure to a single nasal droplet is sufficient to become infected with Covid-19, according to a landmark trial in which healthy volunteers were intentionally given a dose of the virus.
Czechs will no longer have to submit vaccination certificates at restaurants, cultural and sports events from next week despite record high coronavirus infections, the prime minister has said, according to AFP.
Since November 2021, only vaccinated Czechs and those who have had Covid-19 in the last six months have been allowed access to bars, restaurants, hotels and other services.
“The government will cancel the requirement to show a vaccination certificate or proof of recovery when entering restaurants, services, cultural, sports and similar events as of February 9,” prime minister Petr Fiala told reporters.
He added Czechs would still have to wear face masks indoors and the number of participants in mass events would be limited.
An EU member of 10.7 million people, the Czech Republic reported a record-high daily caseload of 57,195 infections on Tuesday as the highly contagious Omicron strain prevails in the country.
The increase brought the total tally of confirmed cases since the Covid-19 outbreak in early 2020 to 3.1 million with over 37,000 deaths.
But only 2,653 people were in hospital with the illness on Tuesday, far less than during a peak of more than 9,500 in March 2021.
The Czech Republic in early 2021 and again last autumn topped AFP’s global tally of Covid-19 infections and deaths per capita.
