Covid live: UK records 36,100 new cases; Pfizer vaccine safe for children aged 5-11, company says | World news

Here are the key developments in today’s Covid news:

• Canadians are voting today in a tight pandemic election that threatens to knock prime minister Justin Trudeau from power, as he gambles that Canadians will reward him for navigating the coronavirus crisis better than most countries did.
• The Dutch government says a vaccine ‘pass’ will be needed to use restaurant toilets.
• The leader of the Scottish Conservative party, Douglas Ross, called on the Scottish government to follow the rest of the UK and relax Covid travel restrictions.
• UK transport secretary Grant Shapps has been telling MPs in parliament that the UK’s successful vaccination programme can be used to “restore lost freedoms”.
• US vet shops have reported a shortage of ivermectin despite warnings against using it to treat Covid.
• Construction sites across the state of Victoria in Australia are to close for at least two weeks following violence at anti-vaccine protests earlier today.
• The UK has recorded 36,100 new cases in the latest 24-hour period, with the number of Covid patients in hospital now at 7,847.
• The British prime minister welcomed the news that the US will lift Covid-19 travel restrictions to allow fully vaccinated passengers from the UK and EU to travel into the country from November.
• Pfizer and BioNTech said trial results showed their Covid vaccine is safe and produces a robust immune response in children aged five to 11, adding that they would seek regulatory approval shortly.

Here’s a snippet of UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s meeting with Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian president.

Boris Johnson has used a meeting with Brazil’s coronavirus-denying president to promote Covid vaccinations – only to undermine his message by failing to wear a face mask, report Peter Walker and Tom Phillips.

The UK prime minister met Jair Bolsonaro – who has been accused of sabotaging Brazilian vaccination efforts and claims not to have been jabbed – at the British consulate general’s residence in New York on Monday, on the eve of the United Nations general assembly.

Johnson, who was joined by the new foreign secretary, Liz Truss, told Bolsonaro he had planned to travel to Brazil before what he called the “bummer” of the Covid-19 pandemic.

New York City will begin conducting weekly, random Covid-19 tests of unvaccinated students in the nation’s largest school district in an attempt to more quickly spot outbreaks in classrooms.

The mayor of the US city, Bill de Blasio, made the announcement on Monday, a day after the city’s teachers’ union sent de Blasio a letter calling for weekly instead of biweekly testing in the district with about a million students, AP reports.

The mayor also announced also a change in quarantine rules for schools, no longer requiring unvaccinated students to quarantine at home if they were masked and at least three feet away from someone who tested positive for the coronavirus.

De Blasio said the changes followed US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and would keep students from missing vital classroom time.

The changes come after the first full week of the school year in which nearly 900 classrooms, including those in charter schools, were fully or partially closed in the city’s 1,876 schools because of reports of positive Covid-19 cases. One school entirely closed for 10 days after a cluster of cases.

The new rules take effect on 27 September.

The US has administered 386,237,881 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country as of Monday morning, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The agency said 212,035,328 people had received at least one dose, while 181,728,072 people are fully vaccinated, as of 6am ET (10am GMT) on Monday.

The CDC tally includes two-dose vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, as well as Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine.

Over 2.2 million people received an additional dose of either Pfizer’s or Moderna’s vaccine since 13 August, when the US authorised a third dose of the vaccines for people with compromised immune systems who are likely to have weaker protection from the two-dose regimens.

An interesting piece here from Natasha May in Australia about the Indigenous students at boarding schools who have felt especially isolated from their communities through lockdown.

Canadians are voting today in a tight pandemic election that threatens to knock Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from power.

Trudeau gambled on an early election in a bid to win a majority of seats in parliament. But the opposition has been relentless in accusing Trudeau of calling an unnecessary early vote during the pandemic – two years before the deadline – for his own personal ambition, AP reports.

Polls indicate Trudeau’s Liberal Party is in a tight race with the rival Conservatives: it will likely win the most seats in parliament, but still fail to get a majority, forcing it to rely on an opposition party to pass legislation.

Trudeau is betting that Canadians will reward him for navigating the coronavirus crisis better than most countries did. Canada is now one of the most vaccinated nations in the world and Trudeau’s government spent hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up the economy amid lockdowns.

Trudeau argues that the Conservatives’ approach, which has been more skeptical of lockdowns and vaccine mandates, would be dangerous and says Canadians need a government that follows science.

O’Toole hasn’t required his party’s candidates to be vaccinated and won’t say how many are unvaccinated. O’Toole describes vaccination as a personal health decision, but a growing number of vaccinated Canadians are becoming increasingly upset with those who refuse to get vaccinated.

I’m handing over now to my colleague Robyn Vinter for the evening’s Covid news

Here’s a summary of the day’s Covid news

• Dutch government warns vaccine ‘pass’ will be needed to use restaurant toilets.
• The leader of the Scottish Conservative Party, Douglas Ross, called on the Scottish government to follow the rest of the UK and relax Covid travel restrictions.
• UK transport secretary Grant Shapps has been telling MPs in parliament that the UK’s successful vaccination programme can be used to “restore lost freedoms”.
• US vet shops report shortage of ivermectin despite warnings against using it to treat Covid.
• Construction sites across the state of Victoria in Australia are to close for at least two weeks following violence at anti-vaccine protests earlier today.
• The UK has recorded 36,100 new cases in the latest 24-hour period, with the number of Covid patients in hospital now at 7,847.
• The British prime minister welcomed the news that the US will lift Covid-19 travel restrictions to allow fully vaccinated passengers from the UK and EU to travel into the country from November.
• Pfizer and BioNTech said trial results showed their Covid vaccine is safe and produces a robust immune response in children aged five to 11, adding that they would seek regulatory approval shortly.

In the Netherlands, where new rules will require a covid pass to eat inside in restaurants, a minister has stressed there will be no going indoors even to use the toilet without being jabbed.

Measures about to be brought in were hotly debated by MPs who forced an exception to the vaccine passport rule for punters eating or drinking outdoors – saying the infection risk was low.

But today health minister Huge de Jonge was quoted saying ‘if you want to use the restroom you will have to show your QR code.’

QR codes are the machine-readable array of black and white squares on a mobile phone.

If scanned, the pass showed proof of vaccination, recovery from the virus or a negative test and is required for all people aged 13 and older.

Last week, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said it was unwise to make an exception for patrons sitting outside, as people would inevitably have to enter to pay bills or indeed go to the toilet.

“It could also start raining and then everyone wants to go inside,” Rutte said.

“The government wanted the QR code everywhere in the hospitality sector,” Health ministry spokeswoman Rinske Wieman told AFP.

“This is not to bug people, but because people want more freedom from restrictions. Unfortunately these freedoms are not without boundaries,” she said.

The leader of the Scottish Conservative Party Douglas Ross has called on the Scottish government to follow the rest of the UK and relax Covid travel restrictions.

Speaking in Parliament Ross said: “What can the Secretary of State do to convince the Scottish Government to follow the lead of the UK Government and ensure these industries are not put at risk?”

Transport secretary Grant Shapps replied: “I do encourage all parts of the UK to come together on this. It is incredibly confusing for passengers… that takes money out of the Scottish economy, it threatens jobs in Scotland and it threatens the airline capacity, and I think the faster we can get this resolved the better.”

UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has been telling MPs in Parliament that the UK’s successful vaccination programme can be used to ‘restore lost freedoms’.

“In 2020 the only weapon we had to fight the spread of COVID was simply to keep people apart,” Shapps said.

But as one “of the world’s most vaccinated countries”, he said that “we must use that to our advantage to restore freedoms that were by necessity lost over the past 18 months”.

Outlining the changes to travel, which were unveiled last Friday and referring to the news that the US travel ban will be lifted later in the autumn, he said: “Vaccines mean that the emphasis can now shift to an individual status.”

US vet shops report shortage of ivermectin despite warnings against using it to treat Covid

Oliver Milman reports that US horse owners are finding the anti-parasitic ivermectin hard to come by because the medicine is being used as a treatment against Covid – despite warnings that it is unproven and potentially dangerous for humans.

Press in the US including the Washington Post have reported the shortages – quoting QC Supply a livestock supply distributor in Nebraska that is out of stock of ivermectin paste, usually used in treating pinworms and largemouth stomach worms in horses

Construction sites across the state of Victoria in Australia are to close for at least two weeks following violence at anti-vaccine protests earlier today.

From Thursday 23 September construction workers will be required to show proof that they have had at least one vaccine dose in order to continue to work, local media report.

Hundreds of construction workers wearing hi-vis vandalised the Victoria branch of Australia’s Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU).

The CFMEU condemned “in the strongest possible terms” the attack on its Melbourne office, where members had shown up in support of the government mandate, saying the violence occurred after the protest was “infiltrated” by right-wing groups.

The Master Builders Association of Victoria informed members of the development in a Facebook post, saying the government was concerned about “an increase in Covid-19 transmissions in the building and construction industry, combined with the riots in Melbourne today”.

They said the shutdown would be in place from 11.59pm Monday.

The UK has recorded 36,100 new cases in the latest 24-hour period, with the number of COVID patients in hospital now at 7,847.

It is the first time since 7 September that the number of patients has been below 8,000.

There have been a further 49 deaths of people who tested positive for coronavirus within the past 28 days.

The 7 day average of how many people have tested positive in a week is down by 12 per cent.