Covid news: 8% of hospital cases may have come from wards, as NHS says it is set to hit vaccine target

German Chancellor Angela Merkel pushed back Friday against critics of the country’s slow vaccine rollout, saying vast vaccination centers set up last year will be full to capacity by April. In an interview with public broadcaster ZDF, Merkel acknowledged that there was “disappointment” at the slow start, but insisted that it was surprising there even was a vaccine just one year after the virus was first discovered. “That’s a huge achievement that nobody could have expected,” she said. “And then we didn’t point out clearly enough that there wouldn’t be enough vaccines for everybody at the start.” Germany began vaccinating older people in December and has so far administered some 3.8 million shots. But the vast inoculation centers set up in exhibition halls and sports arenas have seen few patients, as many of the shots were given to people in nursing homes or hospitals.

Air travellers to Canada will be forced to quarantine in a hotel starting on 22 February as they await the result of a coronavirus test, Justin Trudeau has said.

Mr Trudeau said it could take up to three days for test results to become available - travellers would then isolate at home or elsewhere if the test comes back negative.

Canada already requires those entering the country to self-isolate for 14 days and bans non-essential travel to the country.

The Canadian prime minister previously announced stricter rules would be imposed on air travellers in response to new Covid-19 variants and said hotel stays would be at travellers’ own expense.

Hungary will be able to vaccinate millions more people by the end of May than other European countries with similarly sized populations due to its plans to use a vaccine made in China, the Hungarian prime minister predicted.

Europe’s medicines regulator is planning to speed up assessments of any vaccines that are modified to protect against variants of the virus, the head of the agency’s Covid-19 task-force says.

Marco Cavaleri, chairman of the vaccine evaluation team at the European Medicines Agency (EMA), said there should be no need for lengthy large-scale trials like those needed to evaluate the first Covid-19 vaccines, since tweaks for new variants can be tested on smaller groups.

“We are working on updated guidelines, assuming that we cannot ask for large Phase III trials. This will allow us to go faster,” said Mr Cavaleri.

“We will ask for much smaller trials, with a few hundred participants, rather than 30,000 to 40,000,” he told Reuters. He said the EMA would focus primarily on immune response data.

Drugmakers including Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca have been testing their vaccines against several fast-spreading, more infectious variants of the novel coronavirus.

Variants which emerged in Brazil (known as P1), Britain (known as 20I/501Y.V1 or B117) and South Africa (known as 20I/501Y.V2 or B1351) have already spread around the world, piling more pressure on governments struggling to tame the pandemic which has killed almost 2.5 million people.

These are the three major variants that are worrying scientists, with their spread raising the risk that newly-developed vaccines will need to be updated or tweaked to be effective against some variants, and that people may require one or more booster shots.

Vaccine makers Pfizer and BioNTech, as well as AstraZeneca and Moderna, whose Covid shots have been authorised for emergency use in Europe, have said they are preparing for the possibility that variants will emerge that could require tweaks to their vaccines.

Normally, an EMA approval requires extensive studies with large numbers, starting with safety and ending with efficacy.

The Government claims it is set to hit its UK-wide target of offering a Covid-19 vaccine to people most at risk by Monday, after England and Wales said those groups had been reached.

However, some housebound people in those groups have been left waiting, The Independent has revealed.

NHS England said the top four priority groups in England - people aged 70 and over, care home residents and staff, health and care workers and clinically extremely vulnerable patients - “have now been offered the opportunity to be vaccinated”.

The NHS urged health and care workers who have not accepted a vaccine but would like one to contact their employer who is responsible for arranging their vaccination.

People eligible for a jab who are able to travel can also arrange one through the national booking system or by calling 119.

It comes as Government data up to 11 February shows that 14,012,224 people in the UK have now received a first dose of the vaccine.

Sir Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, praised staff for their efforts in reaching millions of people with vaccines.

He said: “The whole of the NHS has mobilised to protect the most vulnerable, supported by communities coming together with volunteers, local authorities, the armed forces and local businesses.”

The success of the coronavirus vaccination programme has put the UK on track to reopen schools next month, further relax social restrictions in April and be “back to normal” by this time next year, a leading epidemiologist has said. Andrew Woodcock reports:

The prime minister has hailed the success of the vaccination programme, saying it appeared Monday’s target of inoculating the most vulnerable would be met.

More than 14 million people in the UK have received a first dose of a vaccine.

In a video posted on his Twitter account, Boris Johnson said: “As I speak we’ve vaccinated about 14 million people now across the whole of the UK - that’s the first jab for 14 million people. It looks like we are on target, we very much hope to reach the JCVI, the most vulnerable groups one to four, by the 15th.

“There’s obviously a lot of work going on to make sure we do that and I want to thank, again, everyone involved who’s helping.”

He added that people were working “absolutely flat out” to keep the vaccinations going, despite adverse weather conditions.

Immigration officers have not yet received operational guidance on how the new system of mandatory quarantine hotels will work, little more than 48 hours before the scheme comes into effect, the Immigration Services Union told The Independent. Andrew Woodcock reports:

About 8.8% of Covid-19 hospital cases in England over the first wave of the pandemic may have been nosocomial - or hospital-acquired - infections, according to scientists advising the Government.

In a new document published by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) on Friday, figures suggest that between 2 February and 26 July last year, there were about 7,906 cases of Covid-19 infections, where patients tested positive 15 or more days after hospital admission.

Experts analysing the data said this figure increased to 14,635 cases (or 16.4%), when factoring in positive Covid-19 tests eight or more days after hospital admission.

However, they add that when taking into account missed hospital-acquired infections - those with a symptom onset after discharge, or those with symptom onset prior to the defined cut-off - the numbers may have been as high as 31,000 in England over the first wave.

The experts said that while the proportion of Covid-19 cases linked to hospital transmission is considerable, this is relatively small at a population level.

The undated document said: “A simple calculation assuming 5% of infections are hospitalised and of these hospital cases, if 25% are due to nosocomial infection, the complete prevention of nosocomial transmission would have led to approximately 1% impact on the number of infections in the English epidemic overall.

“However, since hospitalised patients tend to be old and/or frail, the impact in terms of morbidity and mortality would nonetheless be expected to be substantial.”

NHS national medical director Professor Stephen Powis said: “We disagree with these claims, since as the paper itself admits, this research makes large speculative assumptions about Covid cases in hospitals which are not actually backed up by data, notably during a period when testing availability for Covid-19 was often limited.

“The ONS and other data have conclusively demonstrated that the root cause of rising infection rates in hospitals is rising rates in the community, which is why it’s so important the public continue to follow hands, face, space advice.”

Homebuyers using the government’s help to buy scheme in England are being given an extra two months to complete their purchase amid delays caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, writes Emily Goddard: