Miami Cracks Down; Report Suggests Wildlife Origin: Virus Update

The European Union’s relations globally will be damaged if it reneges on vaccine contracts, the U.K. said amid growing concern over vaccine nationalism. The United Arab Emirates expanded its successful inoculation drive to all residents above 16 years of age.

Some residents of Ireland, part of the EU, are now crossing over to Northern Ireland to get vaccinated, but the U.K. region won’t penalize them, the Financial Times reported.

The infection rate in Germany crossed a threshold that makes it more challenging for authorities to relax lockdown restrictions.

Subscribe to a daily update on the virus from Bloomberg’s Prognosis team here. Click CVID on the terminal for global data on cases and deaths.

Northern Ireland will not penalize visitors from the Irish Republic that cross the border to receive vaccination, the Financial Times reported, citing Northern Ireland’s Department of Health.

The much faster rollout in the North is drawing people from the south where the suspension of the AstraZeneca vaccine has hampered progress.

Germany’s seven-day rate of cases per 100,000 people rose to 103.9, the most since Jan. 26, the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s health agency, said on its website. Cases increased by 24,034 in the 24 hours to Sunday, compared with 10,568 recorded a week earlier, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Cases are rising again after authorities began to relax restrictions in late February and set out a plan to unwind curbs further.

The European Union must honor its vaccine contracts despite the sluggish rollout in the bloc, the U.K.’s Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told Sky News.

“It would damage the EU’s relations globally if they should renege on these contracts,” Wallace said. The U.K. has inoculated half of its adult population, while fewer than one in 10 in the EU have received at least one shot.

Meanwhile, The Telegraph reported that British ministers are working on plans to accelerate domestic coronavirus vaccine production to make the country self-sufficient.

The news came as European Commission boss Ursula von der Leyen threatened to block exports from the bloc if the pharma firm didn’t start meeting its delivery targets.

China has administered 74.96 million doses of coronavirus vaccines to key population groups, Mi Feng, spokesman for National Health Commission, said at a news conference on Sunday.

Authorities have started vaccinating people over 60 and plan large-scale inoculations for the elderly when data from clinical trials show that they are enough safe and effective, National Health Commission official He Qinghua said.

The country will consider implementing differentiated policy on visa, flights and entry-number control in line with vaccination rates and severity of outbreaks in different countries, National Health Commission official Feng Zijian said.

Having inoculated the most vulnerable people, the United Arab Emirates has thrown open its vaccine drive to anyone above 16.

The oil-rich nation has one of the fastest coronavirus vaccine rollouts in the world, having administered more than 7 million doses to its population of about 10 million. It has approved shots from Sinopharm, Pfizer Inc., AstraZeneca Plc and Russia’s Sputnik V for emergency use.

The ban will remain effective from March 23 to April 5, according to PTI. Pakistan began its inoculation campaign last month and had obtained more than a million free Sinopharm doses from China.

Amid a rise in coronavirus cases, authorities imposed restrictions in most of the main urban areas. Limits on wedding halls, cinemas and outdoor dining have been extended until April 15, and lockdowns will continue in the worst-affected provinces. Last week, Prime Minister Imran Khan tested positive for Covid-19, the latest world leader to be infected with the coronavirus as his country battles a new wave of infections.

Japan is planning to require virus tests from visitors coming from countries where the coronavirus variant infections are climbing, health minister Norihisa Tamura said on a program by national broadcaster a NHK.

“It’s important to prevent a spreading of coronavirus from overseas travelers. And it’s important to detect infected visitors,” Tamura said.“We’ll require them to test before the coming to Japan. We’ll test at quarantines and will inspect again three days later. We’ll test them three times. On top of that, we’ll will follow them for two weeks by using a GPS application when they actually enter the country.”

Regarding vaccine approvals, the minister said Japan may be able to secure the Pfizer vaccine for older people to get vaccinated twice by June. Evaluation of AstraZeneca’s vaccine is also proceeding, he said. Data for the domestic clinical trail of Moderna’s vaccine will be available by May, and if things move smoothly, there is a possibility it will to be approved as soon as then.

Brendan Murphy, secretary of the Department of Health, said that while a reduction in quarantine requirements was being considered, the first step is to cut domestic restrictions, while making sure state borders aren’t being closed.

Australia’s rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine has been slowed by torrential rains for a government that’s already facing criticism for poor organization and a slower-than-expected start to its vaccine rollout. Western Sydney and the NSW Mid-North coast are bearing the brunt of the relentless downpour that has caused the Warragamba Dam, Sydney’s primary source of water, to overflow for the first time in five years.

Residents along the New South Wales coast, including parts of Sydney, are evacuating. The downpour will probably cause disruptions to freight and logistic services across the state with vaccine deliveries likely to be impacted, Finance Minister Simon Birmingham said on Sky News’ Sunday Agenda show.

Duke University will ease on Sunday a stay-in-place order it imposed on all undergraduates on March 14 after a serious outbreak linked to events at fraternities and sororities.

In an letter to students Saturday, the Durham, North Carolina, school said the number of new cases had fallen, though it did not give details. In the week leading up the shutdown, the university reported a total of 231 cases, almost as many as all of last semester. With the easing, on-campus undergraduates can return to classes and leave their dormitories but were asked not to leave campus.

Positive Covid-19 tests at Virginia Commonwealth University are forcing the 10th-seeded team in the West region out of the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament, the New York Times reported.

Although organizers went ahead with the tournament even as infection numbers rose, adopting protocols, a team dropping out was a worst-case scenario for the sports body, which stands to make $850 million in television revenue from the tournament, the newspaper said.

Brazil exceeded half a million weekly cases for the second time in a row, capping a week marked by record daily deaths and infections.

Latin America’s biggest country added some 79,000 cases, bringing the total for the seven days through Saturday to 510,901 — the fifth consecutive week with an increase. During the previous surge, weekly cases peaked at 379,000 in early January, according to Health Ministry data.

Weekly deaths increased by almost 3,000 to a record of 15,650, the most since the pandemic began. With almost 12 million cases and some 292,000 deaths, Brazil lags behind only the U.S. on both counts.

The highly anticipated findings from experts convened by the World Health Organization and the Chinese government are expected to show parallels to the spawning in 2002 of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, a bat-borne coronavirus spread by civets that killed 800 people. The path trod by SARS-CoV-2 — as the new coronavirus is known — before it emerged in central China in December 2019 remains a mystery, though it’s one researchers say can be solved.