Here’s a summary of events:
- Global Covid response programme ‘running on fumes’ amid budget shortfall, WHO says
- Canadian truckers block bridge to US as Trudeau demands end to protest
- Hamsters can transmit Covid to humans, data suggests
- Pfizer accused of pandemic profiteering as profits double
- France, Greece and Portugal relax Covid travel restrictions
- Italy to ease mask mandate in most outdoor spaces
- UK recorded 66,183 new Covid-19 daily cases and 314 Covid-related deaths
- England’s chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, has written to NHS staff telling them it is their “professional responsibility” to get vaccinated
- Japan reported 155 daily deaths today - a new daily record
- Poland has pushed back indefinitely a deadline for teachers, police, armed forces and firefighters to be vaccinated because it cannot be met
- A quarter of British employers cite long Covid as the main reason behind long-term sickness absences, a survey has found.
- Hundreds of people blocked streets outside New Zealand’s parliament today to protest against vaccine mandates and pandemic restrictions, inspired by demonstrations in Ottawa, Canada
- The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, has defended his government’s pandemic response over the last two years, citing high economic growth and middling inflation
- Scientists in China say they have developed a new coronavirus test as accurate as a PCR that gives results within four minutes
Updated
Mexico’s health ministry reported 132 more deaths from Covid-19, bringing the total number of fatalities in the country since the pandemic began to 309,884.
Updated
