COVID updates: WHO investigators blocked from entering China, Grammys postponed
World Health Organisation experts looking into the origins of COVID-19 have been refused entry into China.
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A much-trailed World Health Organisation (WHO) investigation into the origins of COVID-19 - first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan more than a year ago - is struggling to get off the ground.
The WHO announced that after months of preparation, its experts had begun travelling to China - only to be told that there were problems with their visas.
“I am very disappointed with this news, given that two members had already begun their journeys,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The mission is hugely sensitive to all parties - China does not want to be blamed for a global pandemic and the WHO needs to be seen to be impartial.
US President Donald Trump - who has repeatedly called the pandemic the “China virus” - accused the WHO of being under Chinese control.
Trump has begun withdrawing the US from the organisation.
VACCINE FACES HALAL HURDLE
There are fears a COVID-19 vaccine could be shunned among Indonesia’s Muslim population.
Indonesia is set to distribute the Chinese-made Sinovac coronavirus treatment once health authorities are satisfied it is safe.
However, it also faces another hurdle: whether or not it is halal.
Indonesia’s state-owned vaccine maker was told in July the vaccine was “manufactured free or porcine (pig) materials”, but a powerful group of Muslim clerics known as the Ulema Council is yet to give its approval.
The Council — which has reportedly asked Sinovac many times for vaccine documents so it can make a decision — is expected to reveal its verdict in the coming weeks, The New York Times reports.
If it declares the vaccine to be haram (forbidden by Islamic law), it could affect how widely it is accepted in Indonesia, where the government has an ambitious plan to inoculate 181.5 million adults within 15 months.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo said: “There shouldn’t be any concern about whether this vaccine is halal or not halal.
“We are in an emergency situation because of the COVID pandemic.”
Islamic groups in other nations with strong Muslim populations including Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates have given their approval to coronavirus vaccines even if they contain pork gelatine which often used to stabilise treatments.
GRAMMY’S POSTPONED AMID LA COVID CRISIS
The 2021 Grammys, which were set to be presented in Los Angeles on January 31, have been postponed due to COVID-19 concerns.
Multiple US outlets are reporting the event will now be held at a date to be confirmed, with March the preferred month.
The event was going to be held without an audience allowing for presenters and performers only.
It’s unclear if original host Trevor Noah is still set to host this year’s show.
Beyonce is leading nominations in nine categories, while Dua Lipa, Taylor Swift and Roddy Rich picked up six nominations each.
It comes as LA ambulance workers have been told not to transport patients with “little chance of survival” to local hospitals as intensive care units are overwhelmed with COVID patients.
The directive from the Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency, obtained by CNN, also tells the ambulance workers to “conserve the use of oxygen.”
In LA, many intensive care units are at capacity as a disastrous wave of the virus surges across Southern California.
NEW: The LA County EMS has directed ambulance crews not to transport patients with little chance of survival to hospitals, and to conserve the use of oxygen. Per â¦@alexandrameeksâ© pic.twitter.com/9Hnlnc7JaP
— Pervaiz Shallwani (@Pervaizistan) January 5, 2021
According to data from the county, more than 6000 patients are currently being treated for coronavirus in LA. Available hospital beds at most ICUs were virtually non-existent.
Due to these factors, EMS workers were told to “perform resuscitation for at least 20 minutes” if a patient’s heart has stopped instead of taking them to a hospital.
As hospitals in the country struggle to contain the massive spike in admissions, LA County Emergency Medical Services Agency issued a directive that ambulance crews ration oxygen by only administering it to patients with levels below 90 per cent on Monday, The Sun reported.
Resources and hospital space are wearing thin in other parts of the state as well, with some hospitals being forced to move care outside into makeshift ICUs.
California Governor Gavin Newsom formed a taskforce to “evaluate and upgrade outdated oxygen delivery systems” at six LA area hospitals.
California’s LA County is also reporting a devastating 1000 per cent spike in hospital admissions since November, as ambulance crews are being advised not to take patients who will not likely to survive to hospitals.
Yet hard-hit California has vaccinated just one per cent of its 40 million residents while hundreds of seniors in Florida camped up in their cars overnight in order to get shots as the “train wreck” vaccination rollout continues and the Surgeon General warned the US “needs to do a better job”.
Despite federal officials passing out 15.4 million doses to the states, only 4.66 million COVID vaccines have been administered across the US in the past three weeks.
It means more than two-thirds of the vaccines shipped within the US have gone unused and just 1.4 per cent of the population has been vaccinated as cases, deaths and hospitalisation continue to surge across the US.
Surgeon General Jerome Adams admitted that the largest vaccination campaign in US history, which has been in the works for months amid the pandemic, has been a “little bit messy”.
He said the states were partly to blame for the slower than expected rollout despite federal officials earlier vowing to have 20 million vaccinated by the end of 2020.
Meanwhile, the US has suffered the deadliest week of the COVID pandemic so far, with 18,400 dead as thousands of people have been seen lining up for tests in LA.
December was the deadliest month across the US with 78,000 COVID-related deaths, and health experts are warning that January’s numbers might be even more grim as the country begins to deal with the consequences of mass holiday travel.
More than 1.3 million people passed through US airports on Sunday, at the end of New Year’s weekend.
Throughout the whole weekend, the TSA logged 3.3 million travellers, despite CDC recommendations that Americans skip travel for the holiday season.
MUTANT STRAIN SPREADS TO NYC AS UK ENTERS THIRD LOCKDOWN
New York City now has the mutant UK strain of COVID-19, as England will enter its third national lockdown.
The new case in the Big Apple comes as US health officials said more than two-thirds of the 15 million coronavirus vaccines shipped within the United States have gone unused.
Governors of New York and Florida vowed to penalise hospitals that fail to dispense shots quickly, Reuters reports.
In New York, hospitals must administer vaccines within a week of receiving them or face a fine and a reduction in future supplies, Governor Andrew Cuomo said.
The NYC Health + Hospitals system, the city’s main public hospital network, has only administered 31 per cent of its allotment, compared with 99 per cent for a few private hospitals in the state.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported an even lower vaccine uptake for New York overall, saying fewer than one in five of the 896,000 doses shipped to the state since mid-December have been given.
UK TO ENTER THIRD LOCKDOWN
England will enter a third national lockdown immediately to stop the spread of a new, faster moving variant of COVID-19.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson made the announcement during a live televised address to the nation on Monday night local time.
He ordered the nation to stay at home until mid-February to try and save Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) from being further inundated with COVID cases.
In a dramatic move, the PM ordered the closure of all schools and non-essential shops for at least the next six weeks.
He said people will only be allowed out of their homes to buy essential food and medicine supplies, attend medical appointments, exercise, work if it is critical and cannot be done from home and to provide care for a vulnerable person.
The new rules will come into effect from tomorrow, but businesses are being told to shut from today.
Mr Johnson said he was left with no option but to introduce the strict measures after being confronted with terrifying new data on how the new strain of COVID is attacking the country.
Chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty told him the mutant virus is now in every part of the UK.
“It’s clear we need to do more, together, to bring this new variant under control,” he said.
“We must go into a new national lockdown which is tough enough to contain the virus.
“The Government is once again instructing you to stay at home.”
It’s the first time the COVID-19 alert was raised to five – meaning without immediate action there is a “material risk” of healthcare services being overwhelmed within three weeks, The Sun reports.
The number of patients in hospital has risen by a third in the last week alone – to more than 27,000.
It is far outstripping the peak of hospitalisations during the first wave, which hit 18,973 cases on April 12.
Another startling statistic that triggered the Government to act was the UK recording more than 80,000 positive cases in a single day last week – on December 29.
And deaths are up again in the last week, Mr Johnson said.
Scotland has announced legal requirements to stay home from midnight 4 January, GMT.
The UK parliament will be recalled, allowing MPs to vote on the new measures this week.
It comes as the first patient in the UK received the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine, in what the health secretary called a “real pivotal moment.”
Britain has taken a major step in the fight against COVID-19 by giving out the first shots in the world from the vaccine created by Oxford University and pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca.
Since 8 December, Britain’s National Health Service has been using a vaccine made by Pfizer and the German firm BioNTech.
On 4 January it boosted that approach with inoculations of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which is cheaper and easier to administer because it does not require the refrigeration of the Pfizer vaccine.
Officials say the UK currently has around 530,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and is moving toward a goal of vaccinating two million people per week as soon as possible.
US DEATH TOLL HIT GRIMS MILESTONE
The US coronavirus death toll has surpassed 350,000, the most of any country, while more than 20 million people nationwide have been infected.
States have reported record numbers of cases over the past few days, and funeral homes in Southern California are being inundated with bodies.
New York State surpassed 1 million COVID-19 infections over the weekend, according to state and Johns Hopkins University data, becoming the fourth US state to do so.
As of Sunday, local time, New York State reported 1,017,153 total infections to date since the pandemic began.
A record-breaking 125,544 Americans are currently hospitalised with COVID-19, with six states reporting record hospitalisations on Sunday, local time.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, has said vaccinations are offering a ‘glimmer of hope’
Dr. Fauci also said that President-elect Joe Biden’s pledge to administer 100 million shots of the vaccine within his first 100 days in office is achievable.
And he rejected President Trump’s false claim on Twitter that coronavirus deaths and cases in the US have been greatly exaggerated.
“All you need to do … is go into the trenches, go into the hospitals, go into the intensive care units and see what is happening. Those are real numbers, real people and real deaths,” Dr. Fauci said.
The infectious diseases expert said he has seen “some little glimmer of hope” after 1.5 million doses were administered in the previous 72 hours, or an average of about 500,000 per day, a marked increase in vaccinations. He said that brings the total to about four million.
The US has administered more than 4.2 million vaccine doses, according to the CDC, but is lagging behind some other countries as cases and hospitalisations continue to surge following the holidays.
TRUMP CLAIMS COVID TOLL ‘EXAGGERATED’
President Trump claimed the official US COVID death toll of more than 350,000 is “exaggerated” — and was immediately rebuked by his one-time top infectious diseases adviser Dr Anthony Fauci.
“The deaths are real deaths. All you need to do is go out into the trenches go to the hospitals, see what the healthcare workers are dealing with,” Dr Fauci retorted.
“The hospital beds are stretched, people are running out of beds, running out of trained personnel who are exhausted.
“Right now, that’s real. That’s not fake, that’s real.”
“The number of cases and deaths of the China Virus is far exaggerated in the United States because of @CDCgov’s ridiculous method of determination compared to other countries, many of whom report, purposely, very inaccurately and low. ‘When in doubt, call it COVID.’ Fake News!” the president posted on Twitter.
He later went back to Twitter to question why Dr Fauci was “revered by the Lamestream Media “while I am in no way given any credit for my work”.
Something how Dr. Fauci is revered by the LameStream Media as such a great professional, having done, they say, such an incredible job, yet he works for me and the Trump Administration, and I am in no way given any credit for my work. Gee, could this just be more Fake News?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2021
The number of cases and deaths of the China Virus is far exaggerated in the United States because of @CDCgov’s ridiculous method of determination compared to other countries, many of whom report, purposely, very inaccurately and low. “When in doubt, call it Covid.†Fake News!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2021
The death toll in the US has surpassed 350,000 and health experts predict the country will experience another surge of cases and deaths because of the millions who travelled over the holidays.
But despite Mr Trump’s protests, the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC) says the actual death toll is probably closer to 500,000 after it revised the death toll for 2020.
And the US set another daily case record with just under 300,000 more infections recorded on Saturday.
A number of states have reported a record number of coronavirus cases in the past few days — including North Carolina and Arizona.
And funeral homes in South California said they have been turning away grieving families because they can’t take care of the bodies quickly enough.
Two vaccines — one from Pfizer and one from Moderna — have received emergency use authorisation by the Food and Drug Administration.
But while millions of doses have been distributed, the nation is lagging on getting the shots getting into people’s arms.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which tracks the vaccines, said 13,071,925 doses have been distributed, but just 4,225,756 have been inoculated as of Saturday.
Mr Trump said the states simply couldn’t roll out the doses as quickly as they were receiving the supplies.
The vaccines are being delivered to the states by the Federal Government far faster than they can be administered!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2021
UNSAFE RAVE PARTY LEAVES MACRON RED-FACED
The sight of French police standing by as 2500 people broke a national curfew to attend an illegal rave has embarrassed the government and led to questions as to why the revelling was allowed to continue for two nights.
The party began on New Year’s Eve last Thursday at two disused hangars in a rural area of France’s northwestern Brittany region and had become a major international news story by the following day.
But it took until Saturday morning, more than 36 hours after techno music first began blaring from speakers, before police entered the premises and began confiscating material and cautioning participants.
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who regularly seizes on incidents of crime or disorder as evidence of France’s supposed decline, accused centrist President Emmanuel Macron of being “overwhelmed by a simple rave party”.
Reactions on social media have ranged from envy among those who have missed out on nightclubbing for most of 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic to mockery and accusations of double standards.
‘MAN-MADE’ VIRUS CAME FROM A LAB ‘MOST CREDIBLE THEORY’
A top White House security adviser has told British officials that the most “credible” theory around the origin of coronavirus is that it escaped from a lab in Wuhan.
US National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger said leaders in China are “admitting” there is a chance theories suggesting COVID started in a “wet market” are false.
He also called a World Health Organisation virus probe “a Potemkin exercise”, referring to fake villages created in Crimea in the 18th Century to convince royalty that the region was in good health.
Mr Pottinger, a staunch critic of Beijing, made the claim in a recent Zoom meeting with British officials, the New York Post reported.
“There is a growing body of evidence that the lab is likely the most credible source of the virus,” Pottinger reportedly said.
The Trump appointee pushed the theory as the European Union made a massive new investment deal with China last week over protests from Mr Pottinger and hesitance from the incoming Biden administration.
The timing of the EU-China deal was stunning, coming to light on the same day Britain signed off on a new Brexit trade deal with Europe.
Mr Pottinger told leaders during the call that the incident could we have been a “leak or an accident”.
“Even establishment figures in Beijing have openly dismissed the wet market story,” he said.
In the UK, former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan-Smith, who was present at the meeting, said the comments helped to “stiffen” the arguments surrounding the theory.
The news also comes amid reports US authorities are said to be talking to a “whistleblower” from the Wuhan institute.
Mr Duncan-Smith said: “I was told the US have an ex-scientist from the laboratory in America at the moment. That was what I heard a few weeks ago.
“I was led to believe this is how they have been able to stiffen up their position on how this outbreak originated.”
There have long been theories that coronavirus was accidentally leaked from the Institute, something that has been claimed by President Trump several times.
In May last year the president claimed the coronavirus outbreak was the result of a “horrible mistake” in China after claiming he’d seen evidence the virus originated in a Wuhan lab.
The president added the Chinese communist regime then tried to cover up their COVID-19 blunder — but “couldn’t put out the fire”.
In December a journalist who bravely exposed the “cover up” of Wuhan’s deadly coronavirus outbreak was jailed for four years for “trouble making”.
Mr Pottinger, one of the first US officials to raise alarms inside White House walls about the origins of the virus back in January 2020, has reportedly suspected since the early days of the outbreak that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese lab.
He ordered US intelligence agencies to search for evidence that it had, the New York Times reported in April.
A Chinese virologist who said she did some of the earliest research on COVID-19 has publicly claimed the virus was man-made, and that the Chinese government covered up its dangers. Western medical experts have discredited the theory.
ISRAEL HITS 1M VACCINATIONS
Israel is the first country to vaccinate 1 million citizens against the coronavirus, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claiming his country leads the world in the fight to defeat COVID-19.
Prime Minister Netanyahu said Israel is ready to inoculate residents with millions of vaccines – “more than any other country in the world relative to its population”.
The nation has a population of around 9 million, and has lost about 3400 citizens to the coronavirus.
Mr Netanyahu said it aims to vaccinate around 150,000 people per day.
“My goal is to reach 5.5 million vaccinated people,” he said.
“This is enough to be done with this. There will also be enough for 9 million citizens and the truth is that there will be more.”
Israeli Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said the nation’s place as the first to reach 1 million vaccinations was “a great achievement”.
“Now, after the 1,000,000th person to be vaccinated is here with us, it is possible to say with certainty that Israel, with [God’s] help, will be the first country in the world to be vaccinated,” he said.
“Within a few months, we will be able to say: ‘Hasta la vista’ to the coronavirus and return to normality.”
Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt told reporters on Sunday that Australia’s coronavirus vaccine program is “not only on track, but ahead of schedule”, with jabs set to be rolled out by October.
CHAT SHOW LEGEND LARRY KING MOVED OUT OF HOSPITAL
Broadcast legend Larry King has been reportedly moved out of the ICU at a California hospital where he is undergoing treatment for COVID-19.
According to the New York Post’s Page Six, King, 87, has been hospitalised at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for more than 10 days – and was moved from the ICU unit on Sunday, a source close to the family said.
The former CNN talk show host believes he contracted the potentially deadly bug from a health care worker who went to his home, the source said, according to the news outlet.
Additionally, one of King’s sons was infected with the virus, said the source.
In 2017, the TV host revealed that he had received treatment for lung cancer.
King rose to fame in the 1970s with his radio program, The Larry King Show. From 1985 to 2010, King was the host of Larry King Live on CNN.
Meanwhile, another US politician’s death has been blamed on the virus.
Virginia state Senator Ben Chafin Jr has died after contracting COVID, according to a statement from his office. He was 60 years old.
“State Senator Augustus Benton (Ben) Chafin, Jr., a native son of Russell County located in Southwest Virginia, passed away on January 1, 2021 from COVID-19 complications,” the statement said.
The Republican politician's family thanked the VCU Medical Center in Richmond for “its vigorous care and heartfelt support during his two weeks of medical services there.”
Sen Chafin, a cattle farmer and lawyer, served Virginia’s 38th District. He was elected to the state’s House of Delegates in 2013 before moving to the Senate in 2014.
His death followed that of Luke Letlow, a Congressman-elect from Louisiana. He was just 41.
BAN ON CLUBS, BOOZE IN THAI LOCKDOWN
Bangkok’s night-life will go quiet as a ban on bars, nightclubs and restaurant alcohol sales goes into effect Saturday, among a raft of restrictions aimed at curbing the kingdom’s rising coronavirus toll.
Thailand initially appeared to have escaped the worst of the virus, registering just under 4,000 total cases in November, despite being the second country to detect an infection in January.
But an outbreak last month at a massive seafood market has spiralled into a resurgence, with infections now detected in 53 of the kingdom’s 77 provinces. By Saturday the caseload had jumped to over 7,300.
In Bangkok, where more than 2,600 active cases have been detected, city authorities acted swiftly and announced a partial lockdown to go into effect Saturday.
Bars and nightclubs, boxing stadiums, cockfighting rings and massage parlours — as well as beauty salons and gyms — will be among a slew of businesses affected.
The capital also announced yesterday that public schools will be closed for two weeks, while more than a dozen virus checkpoints were set up Saturday across the city.
“We don’t want to use extreme measures like a lockdown and putting up a curfew, but we need a stronger medicine to prevent the new surge,” said Taweesin Visanuyothin, a spokesman for Thailand’s COVID-19 taskforce.
Nationwide restrictions and closures are expected to go into effect from January 4 to February 1, he added, allowing a two-day “grace period” for business owners to prepare.
Authorities worried about inciting alarm nationwide had been reluctant to classify the new emergence of the virus as a “second wave”.
MERKEL LASHES OUT OVER COVID-19
In one of her final major addresses, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has hit out at “cynical and cruel” coronavirus conspiracy theories.
Merkel, who will step down from her post later this year, said the pandemic was “one of the greatest political, social and economic challenges of the century”.
As Germany, other parts of Europe and the US tally new highs in COVID-19 deaths and infections, Ms Merkel warned the crisis would continue to plague the world well into the new year.
“I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that never in the past 15 years have we found the old year so tough,” she said.
“And, despite all the worries and a degree of scepticism, never have we looked to the new year with so much hope.”
The world’s most powerful woman also asked for her people to “pause for a moment and mourn” those who had died from the virus and lashed out at the “irredeemable” people who were spreading conspiracy theories about the existence of COVID-19.
“As a society we can’t forget how many of us have lost a loved one, without being able to be close to them in the final hours,” she said in her new year’s address.
“I can’t assuage their pain. But I am thinking of them, especially this evening.”
– with AFP, Shoba Rao, Amanda Sheppeard, David McCowen
Originally published as COVID updates: WHO investigators blocked from entering China, Grammys postponed
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