Coronavirus live: second pandemic year to be deadlier than first, warns WHO; Germany to mark UK as high-risk | World news

A World Health Organization expert said on Friday that while more coronavirus variants are bound to be detected, “we know what to do,” Reuters reports.

“I would like fear (of variants) to be turned into something productive, something of strength,” Maria van Kerkhove, WHO technical lead for Covid-19 told a virtual briefing in Geneva.

Germany plans to classify Britain as a coronavirus risk region due to the emergence of the highly infectious variant first detected in India, government sources said on Friday.

Dutch tourists who visit Spain’s Balearic and the Canary Islands will no longer have to take a coronavirus test on their way home. The Dutch ambassador in Spain said on Friday, as the Netherlands updates the list of destinations deemed safe.

Ambassador Jan Versteeg said on Twitter: “I am pleased to announce that from tomorrow Dutch tourism will be open to the Balearic and Canary Islands.”

The Dutch government will revise its travel advice list on Saturday.

The Balearic Islands, with 52 cases per 100,000 people over 14 days, and the Canary Islands, with 86 cases, are well below the Spanish national incidence of 166 cases.

Spain expects foreign tourism to reach 45m this year, around half the pre-pandemic level, its tourism minister said this week, inviting potential visitors to start planning their Spanish vacations.

Slovakia ends its state of emergency as the coronavirus pandemic has receded, Prime Minister Eduard Heger said on Friday.

However, Heger cautioned that the struggle against the pandemic was not over and called for people to continue behaving responsibly, adding vaccination was the key to overcoming Covid-19.

Delta Air Lines will require all new hires in the United States to be vaccinated against Covid-19, becoming one of the first major companies to issue such a mandate.

In an interview late Thursday, Chief Executive Ed Bastian told CNN, “Any person joining Delta in the future, future employees, we’re going to mandate they be vaccinated before they can sign up with the company.”

However, the company is not making the requirement for current employees, he said.

Bastian added that employees who are not vaccinated may not be able to work on international flights given possible entry requirements by other countries.

Delta said in a statement on Friday:

We know that vaccines are the best tool we have to protect one another and bring an end to the pandemic.”

Delta called the move to require vaccines for new hires important as “our business recovers and demand for air travel continues to rise.”

World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the second year of the pandemic was set to be more deadly than the first, with India a huge concern.

The WHO also urged rich countries on Friday to reconsider plans to vaccinate children and instead donate Covid-19 shots to the COVAX scheme for poorer countries.

In a virtual meeting in Geneva, Tedros said, “I understand why some countries want to vaccinate their children and adolescents, but right now I urge them to reconsider and to instead donate vaccines to COVAX.”

An international cybercrime gang has been announced as being behind a significant ransomware attack on Ireland’s health service operator that halt diagnostic services on Friday and led to the cancellation of appointments, the minister responsible for e-government said.

Ossian Smyth told the national broadcaster RTE, “This is not espionage. It was an international attack, but this is just a cyber-criminal gang looking for money.”

While he said he could not share all the information he had, he added: “This is a human-driven attack using an exploit that was previously unknown. It is widespread and possibly the most significant cybercrime attack on the Irish state. It’s a high-impact attack, but it appears to have low transmissibility.”

Sweden has registered 9,192 new coronavirus cases since Wednesday, health agency statistics showed on Friday, Reuters reports.

The country of 10m recorded eight further deaths, taking the total to 14,275. The deaths registered have occurred over several days and sometimes weeks.

Sweden’s death rate per capita is several times higher than its neighbouring countries but lower than in most European countries that had lockdowns.

The Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has said that a state of emergency was being extended to a broader area due to a rapid rise of Covid-19 cases in those regions.

However, he added that holding a “safe and secure” Olympic games were still possible if tight preventive measures were implemented that would keep ordinary Japanese citizens from coming into contact with those arriving to compete.

The Olympics, postponed for a year due to the pandemic is set to start on July 23.