Covid news live: Tories condemned for ‘coercive’ vaccine passports

A shadow cabinet member has questioned the government’s intention to offer incentives such as takeaways and discounted taxis in exchange for getting a Covid vaccine.

Luke Pollard, Labour’s environment spokesman, said he was not convinced the plan would work in encouraging the final 30 per cent of young people to get vaccinated.

Speaking to LBC, he said: “Kebabs for jabs? If it is an initiative that helps increase the number of people coming forward, then let’s give it a go. We do need everyone double jabbed, especially with the big stick the ministers are proposing using in terms of restricting access to certain services, which I’m very cautious about in terms of these domestic Covid passports, and Labour certainly is as well.”

Mr Pollard continued: “I do want to see a different approach here. If this is going to work to get more people to take up a jab, that’s brilliant. But I don’t think it is going to be enough to get that last 30 per cent of young people and that is where ministers just need to loosen up a little bit here and allow young people to be the main communicators of this, and keep that encouragement going because we need everyone to get double jabbed.”

Mr Pollard also issued a reminder that young people were at the “very end of the queue to be vaccinated” and that the “vast majority” are “taking up the jabs, are trying to be vaccinated”, but called for young people to lead efforts to encourage their peers to take up the inoculation offer.

One of the 43 Tories who signed a declaration opposing vaccine passports has said Parliament should be recalled from the summer recess if ministers are “serious” about enforcing checks in nightclubs and other events.

Andrew Bridgen, MP for North West Leicestershire, said members needed to debate the “threat” of British people having to show proof of their vaccine status to gain entry to domestic venues and events.

Speaking to LBC radio, he said: “I think if the government is serious about the threat of bringing in domestic vaccine passports, then of course Parliament should be recalled. This is a very serious infringement on people’s liberties, it is basically unprecedented in this country, and I and a number of colleagues would oppose it.”

He continued: “I think it is a very blunt instrument, to threaten people with domestic Covid passports. I personally don’t think it would get through the House of Commons in any event and that’s why the government has moved on to this ‘carrot’ inducements for young people.”

Mr Bridgen, who predicted a vote on vaccine passports in the Commons would result in an “embarrassing defeat” for Boris Johnson’s administration, criticised the government for “trying to aggressively coerce young people” into getting vaccines.

Thinking about the future of the Conservative Party, he added: “In the next few years, we are going to have another general election and we are going to be asking them for a vote – this is not a sensible policy.”

It’s no secret that the Tokyo 2020 Olympics – being held in 2021 – have seen athletes endure unprecedented conditions, including tight quarantine rules to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

Unsurprisingly, though, that hasn’t stopped cases cropping up among athletes and other people involved with the games.

Here’s a look at the state of infections in Tokyo over the last seven days.

1 August: Some 18 people, including one athlete staying at the Olympic village, tested positive for the coronavirus on Sunday, bringing the total games-linked number since 1 July to 259, Tokyo 2020 organisers said.

31 July: Trinidad & Tobago long jumper Andwuelle Wright and 400 metres hurdler Sparkle Ann McKnight withdrew from the games after testing positive for Covid-19. Meanwhile, 14 contractors and seven members of the games personnel tested positive for the coronavirus on the same day, Tokyo organisers said.

30 July: Twenty-seven people, including three athletes and four volunteer workers, tested positive.

29 July: Pole vaulters Sam Kendricks of the US and Argentina’s German Chiaraviglio are ruled out of the Olympics after testing positive. A further 24 people tested positive for the virus on the same day, Tokyo organisers said.

28 July: Sixteen people, including two members of the media, tested positive for the virus.

27 July: One athlete and five other Games-related people tested positive for the coronavirus.

26 July: The Dutch men’s tennis doubles team withdrew after one of the pair, Jean-Julien Rojer, tested positive for Covid-19, according to the International Tennis Federation. Fifteen others, including three athletes, tested positive too.

25 July: Dutch rowing coach Josy Verdonkschot tested positive for coronavirus and went into a 10-day quarantine, the Netherlands Olympic Committee said. Meanwhile, 10 others, including two athletes and one member of the media, also tested positive for coronavirus.

Additional reporting by Reuters

Children aged between 12 and 17 have begun receiving their Covid vaccines in Cambodia’s capital today, with premier Hun Sen’s grandchildren among the first to receive the jab.

Phnom Penh and three other provinces – Kandal, Koh Kong and Preah Sihanouk – are the first to offer vaccines to their younger residents.

“The vaccination for children today is a key step to herd immunity in communities,” Mr Sen said. “Children are like bamboo shoots. If the health of children is damaged now, we won’t have good bamboos.”

His grandchildren, who received the Chinese-made Sinovac jab, will be among the total two million teenagers expected to be vaccinated.

The kingdom is also apparently considering extending vaccination to children aged ten and eleven.

In case you missed this from last night. Forget about offering young people discounted taxi rides and cheap takeaways – just pay them to get a vaccine, says the Liberal Democrats’ leader.

Sir Ed Davey suggested the UK government took a leaf out of Joe Biden’s rulebook, after the US president this week promoted financial rewards of $100 (£72) for people who get inoculated.

Insisting that using vaccine passports for nightclubs was the “wrong approach”, Sir Ed said: “Look at what President Biden’s doing. He’s taking an incentivising approach … should we not be looking at that?” Pressed by LBC presenter Iain Dale that he was “surely not suggesting that we should be paying people to be vaccinated”, Sir Ed responded: “I think we should look at that model – why has he done that? Why has Biden done that?”

Tokyo 2020 organisers are said to have kicked at least six people out of the Olympics, including two silver medalists from Georgia, the country, for breaking designated coronavirus rules.

Judokas Vazha Margvelashvili and Lasha Shavdatuashvili were caught sightseeing near Tokyo Tower on Tuesday after their events were finished.

Toshiro Muto, the games chief executive, said this was a “clear and serious violation” of the so-called playbooks of health and safety rules designed to protect competitors and staff from contracting coronavirus.

The Georgian embassy in Tokyo has apologised for the incident, Mr Muto added.

The other four people asked to leave the games were accredited contractors from Britain and the United States, arrested for allegedly using cocaine before the Olympics opened.

Mr Muto says there have been eight cases of games credentials being temporarily suspended. In four cases, organisers collected a “signed pledge” from people suspected of breaking rules. In all, ten strict warnings have been issued so far, he told reporters over the weekend.

Chinese cities have rolled out mass testing on millions of people and imposed fresh travel restrictions, as health authorities battle to contain the country’s most widespread coronavirus outbreak in months.

On Sunday, the country reported 75 new cases with 53 local transmissions, including a cluster linked to an eastern airport now reported to have spread to over 20 cities and more than a dozen provinces.

The outbreak is geographically the largest to hit China in several months after the country’s successes in largely snuffing out the pandemic within its borders last year.

That record has been thrown into jeopardy after the fast-spreading Delta variant broke out at Nanjing airport in eastern Jiangsu province in July.

Authorities have now conducted three rounds of testing on the city’s 9.2 million residents and placed hundreds of thousands under lockdown, in an effort to curb an outbreak Beijing has blamed on the delta variant and the peak tourist season.

Around one in five businesses have said they are likely to make staff redundant in response to the changing furlough rules, the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) has said.

From Sunday, companies are being asked to contribute 20 per cent of their furloughed staff’s wages, up from 10 per cent in the previous month, reports Tom Batchelor.

Of 250 businesses with employees still on furlough surveyed by the BCC, 18 per cent told the chamber they were considering axing jobs because of the changes, while a quarter said they would aim to reduce hours or move staff to part-time shifts. On the other hand, almost 40 per cent said the change would have no impact on the business.

There is a chance Britain will experience thousands of annual Covid deaths for years to come, according to a report in which scientists said they believe waves of cases are likely to crop up every winter as Covid-19 joins other seasonal viruses, including the flu.

The warning comes as Covid case numbers look set to stabilise through the summer, but with researchers saying incidence could rise again in autumn as vaccination rates falter and schools return. This could lead to a fourth wave this winter – one that could become an annual occurrence, The Observer reports.

“We are going to see problems with Covid for a long time,” Prof Adam Finn of Bristol University told the Sunday paper. “The virus has shown itself to be genetically more nimble than we expected, though not as much as the influenza virus. So I would envisage Covid being a continuing problem for some time, with annual death tolls reaching thousands and possibly tens of thousands.”

This view was supported by Prof James Naismith, director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute in Oxford. “We won’t see Covid-19 spread like wildfire again. There will be enough herd immunity in the population to ensure it will never kick off like that again,” he said.

“But everything will not be hunky dory. We will have waves of illness similar to flu, I think. And they will kill. The issue is: how many? That is difficult to assess but if you look at current Covid deaths, these are occurring at about 100 a day. So a wave that kills a few thousand seems a reasonable measure of what you might expect in a future winter wave. And then, you might get a bad wave one year and have the tens of thousands of deaths.”

Most of those who will die will probably be the old and the seriously ill, as is the case every winter when older people succumb to influenza and other respiratory diseases. However, the experts stressed Covid will not always “bring society to a halt” as it has done since last March.

“And we can minimise the problems it poses – through careful use of vaccines, for example,” Prof Finn explained to the paper.

Health officials in Cambodia have decided to begin offering a booster coronavirus shot, switching between the AstraZeneca and Chinese Covid-19 vaccines in an effort to fight the virus spreading.

PM Hun Sen, launching the vaccination campaign for 12-17 years old, said on Sunday that the third dose will be offered to between 500,000 to one million frontline workers as a priority.

“People who have already been vaccinated with Sinopharm and Sinovac should be given AstraZeneca as the third booster dose,” Mr Sen said in a speech which was broadcast on social media. “For Cambodians who have been vaccinated with AstraZeneca, Sinovac should be given as the third dose,” he added.

The prime minister also said the country will purchase more AstraZeneca vaccines through Covax for the booster shots and the recent US funded Johnson & Johnson vaccines will be used to vaccinate indigenous peoples in northeastern Cambodia.

Cambodia has launched a lockdown in eight provinces bordering Thailand this week in a bid to prevent the spread of the Delta variant. “We are racing against new variants. We must act today, and we must act fast to have no regrets tomorrow,” said Li Ailan, the southeast Asian country’s WHO representative, over the weekend.