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Coronavirus live news: Italy to relax restrictions; Latvia offers mass jabs to clear AstraZeneca backlog – as it happened

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A passenger in a railway station in Milan on Friday
A passenger in a railway station in Milan on Friday, as the first Covid-free ‘Frecciarossa’ train prepares to run on the Milan-Rome route where only passengers who have tested negative for Covid are allowed to travel. Photograph: Piero Cruciatti/AFP/Getty Images
A passenger in a railway station in Milan on Friday, as the first Covid-free ‘Frecciarossa’ train prepares to run on the Milan-Rome route where only passengers who have tested negative for Covid are allowed to travel. Photograph: Piero Cruciatti/AFP/Getty Images

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Summary

Here’s a roundup of tonight’s updates:

  • An official in Brazil has urged women to put off getting pregnant until the worst of the pandemic has passed.
  • Italy will ease restrictions in many areas in ten days time, its government confirmed on Friday, but warned caution was needed to avoid any resurgence in the virus.
  • Moderna is struggling to supply promised shots to the UK because of issues with increasing production at its European plant.
  • El Salvador and Honduras will receive a combined $70m (£50m) from the World Bank for vaccine purchasing and distribution.
  • Scientists at US firm Johnson & Johnson have refuted allegations that the design of its Covid-19 jab, which is similar to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, may be why both are linked to rare blood clots.
  • Businesses are defying new restrictions in Argentina, as infections surged to record highs.
  • The Canadian province of Ontario has announced sweeping new police powers to enforce an extended stay-at-home order amid a record level of new cases.
  • Brazil’s health regulator lacks the necessary information to evaluate the safety and efficacy of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, according to documents seen by Reuters on Friday.
  • Kyrgyzstan will use a herbal tonic to treat Covid, according to its health minister, despite warnings from experts that it contains a potentially lethal poison.
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Ian Sample
Ian Sample
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Brazil’s health regulator lacks the necessary information to evaluate the safety and efficacy of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, according to documents seen by Reuters on Friday.

The documents were sent to the nation’s supreme court as part of an emergency request to import the jab by the state of Maranhão.

In the documents the regulator, Anvisa, lists types of data it lacks, including mass trial results and quality assurances. It says it does not have the sufficient information to carry out a “positive benefit-versus-risk analysis of the vaccine”. It has been given 30 days to make a decision on the emergency request by a judge.

Brazil is ahead of some of its neighbours in Latin America in its vaccination programme, but is still behind many developed countries and has missed its own targets due to a shortage of doses.

The country is suffering its worst period of the pandemic, with more daily deaths than anywhere else in the world. Earlier on Friday a health official urged women to delay getting pregnant until after the worst of the pandemic had passed.

Leyland Cecco

Ontario has announced sweeping new police powers to enforce an extended stay-at-home order, in the latest sign that officials in Canada’s most populous province have lost control of the rapidly spreading coronavirus.

With a record number of new cases, there is growing worry among experts that the already-strained healthcare system is being further pushed to the brink.

“We’re losing the battle between the variants and vaccines,’’ Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, said on Friday as he announced the new measures. “We’re on our heels. If we dig in, remain steadfast, we can turn this around.”

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Businesses are defying new restrictions in Argentina, as infections surged to record highs.

The country’s daily per capita case rates have risen above hard-hit neighbour Brazil. The new measures have effectively introduced a curfew after 8pm, indoor activities in public spaces are banned and schools are closed.

But according to Reuters, many restaurants, gyms and bars appear to be defying government orders.

In the Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Almagro, bar owner Marcelo said he didn’t want to stick to the new regulations that only allow people to be served outdoors, adding he needed to protect the business he had run for 18 years.

“The president does what he has to do. I do not agree with these measures,” he said. “Last year was very tough.”

President Alberto Fernández said the country needed to buy time in its battle against Covid. Nearly 59,000 people have died from the virus during the pandemic.

“For me we can’t have this rebellion. I am not going to tolerate letting them do what they want,” he said.

Scientists at US firm Johnson & Johnson have refuted allegations that the design of its Covid-19 jab, which is similar to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, may be why both are linked to rare blood clots.

The US paused its distribution earlier this week to investigate six cases of rare blood clots in US women, out of 7 million who have had the vaccine.

The clots are similar to the 169 cases in Europe from the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine from 34 million doses. Both are based on a new technology that uses a modified version of adenoviruses, which cause the common cold, as vectors to ferry instructions to human cells.

Reuters reported that in a letter on Friday to a US medical journal, scientists from the pharmaceutical company refuted a case report which said the blood clots could be down to using adenoviral vectors.

Macaya Douoguih, a scientist with J&J’s Janssen vaccines division, said that the vectors used in its vaccine and the AstraZeneca shot are “substantially different” and that those differences could lead to “quite different biological effects”.

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Brazil asks women to delay pregnancy until after peak of pandemic

An official in Brazil has urged women to put off getting pregnant until the worst of the pandemic has passed, saying that the variant affecting the country can affect expectant mothers more than earlier versions of the virus.

According to Reuters, a health ministry official, Raphael Parente, told a news conference: “If it’s possible, delay pregnancy a little until a better moment.

“The clinical experience of specialists shows that this new variant acts more aggressively in pregnant women.”

He added that the request was partly due to the pressure on the health service, but also due to a more easily transmissible Brazilian variant.

Hospitals are buckling under the strain and stocks of drugs needed for intubating severely ill patients are running perilously low, with Brazil turning to international partners for help with emergency supplies. More than 350,000 people in the country have now died. Data shows that the latest wave is affecting more younger people.

Parente said previously cases were focused on the final trimester and birth, whereas there had been more serious cases in the second and first trimester.

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Italian restrictions to relax from 26 April

Italy will ease restrictions in many areas in ten days time, its government confirmed on Friday, but warned caution was needed to avoid any resurgence in the virus.

Restrictions on business and movement have been in place for most of 2021 in the country. It has the seventh highest death toll in the world and still reports hundreds of deaths a day.

Reuters reports that current restrictions were set to expire at the start of May, and no decision had been taken on how to replace them.

Prime minister Mario Draghi set out a timetable for reopening after pressures from other parties in his government, particularly the League.

He said: The government is taking a reasonable risk based on data that is improving, although not dramatically.”

Italy abandoned its four-tier, colour-coded system in March as new infections and hospitalisations rose. From 26 April, more lenient yellow and white zones will be reinstated where case numbers are low.

Bars and restaurants will be able to serve customers at outside tables, and cinemas and theatres will reopen with limits on the number of people allowed in audiences.

Health minister Roberto Speranza added: “Our idea is to allow open-air swimming pools from 15 May and restart some gym activities on 1 June.”

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Kyrgyzstan will use a herbal tonic to treat Covid, according to its health minister, despite warnings from experts that it contains a potentially lethal poison.

Minister Alymkadyr Beishenaliyev drank a solution made from the roots of aconitum soongaricum at an online briefing in a bid to show it was safe, Reuters reports.

It has also been praised by its president Sadyr Japarov, despite a former health ministry adviser Bermet Baryktabasova saying aconitum was “the most poisonous plant in Kyrgyzstan”.

She added: “Even the smallest doses of its extract have strong negative effect on the body and the person might quickly die.

“We are falling back into the Middle Ages.”

The country has reported more than 90,000 cases and in excess of 1,500 deaths.

El Salvador and Honduras will receive a combined $70m (£50m) from the World Bank for vaccine purchasing and distribution.

According to Reuters, El Salvador will get $50m while its neighbour will be sent $20m. The sums will also be used to boost their healthcare systems.

“This financial support will enable affordable and equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines for El Salvador and Honduras and will play a critical role in strengthening the countries’ capacity to deliver quality health services for their citizens,” said Michel Kerf, World Bank director for Central America and the Dominican Republic.

Burials in Paris’ graveyards has fallen to an average of 250 a week, down from the peak of 466 in 2020. Photograph: Alain Jocard/AFP/Getty Images

France passed the grim milestone of 100,000 people dead from Covid-19 this week, but a warden at a Paris cemetery has already been witnessing the death toll as she oversees a constant procession of burials, reports Reuters.

The number of burials carried out at Raymonde Boulon’s cemetery in Thiais, a south-eastern suburb of Paris, was 700 higher in 2020 than in the previous year.

She recalled the point early last year when she and her colleagues realised the COVID-19 epidemic was exacting a heavy toll.

“When we crossed the threshold of 15 burials, 15, then 17, then 19, up to 20, we said ‘Ooh la’,” said Boulon, surrounded by freshly-filled burial plots with temporary wooden markers standing in for headstones.

During the peak of mortality from the epidemic, between March and June 2020, one section of the cemetery alone carried out 305 burials, a figure she said was “enormous.”

Some caskets arrive at the cemetery direct from hospitals and mortuaries – for cases where there is no family to organise the burial, or they cannot afford it. Normally they would come twice a week, but during the worst period, these caskets were arriving almost daily, said Boulon.

“We just said to ourselves: ‘We need to get organised and make sure everything runs smoothly,” said Boulon, a 49-year-old mother of two. “We realised the scale.”

Ordinarily, many families from immigrant communities repatriate deceased relatives’ bodies for burial in their country of origin. The pandemic closed international borders, so they were buried in Paris instead, further ramping up the pressure on the cemetery.

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