Covid-19 Daily Bulletin

13 Apr

13 April 2021

A series of daily updates for CHO members regarding relevant updates pertaining to Coronavirus from home and abroad.

Key Announcements:

  • All over-50s and those in high-risk groups in the UK have now been offered a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, the government has announced.
  • People aged 45-49 will now be invited for vaccination, although some are unlikely to be able to book until later in the month.
  • The Moderna vaccine will begin to be given in England from
  • People aged 11 and over who live, work or travel through Wandsworth and Lambeth are being urged to get a PCR test, after confirmation of a cluster of coronavirus cases involving the South African variant.
  • The UK economy “showed some improvement” in February, growing by 0.4 percent despite Covid restrictions.
  • A widely-used asthma drug, Budesonide , is the first treatment to be proven to speed up the recovery of Covid patients who stay at home.

Devolved

  • Hospitality and tourism leaders in Scotland have criticised the Covid restrictions which prevent the sectors’ reopening.
  • More than half the people in Wales have now had their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccination.
  • Northern Ireland’s stay-at-home order has been lifted after being in place for more than three months, as further Covid lockdown restrictions ease.

International

  • The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine should be limited to over-60s, the Republic of Ireland’s National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC) has said.
  • Brazil’s Supreme Court is set to approve a congressional inquiry into President Jair Bolsonaro’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
  • India has approved the use of the Russian Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine.
  • The German government is expected to agree later today on controversial changes to a national infections control law that would hand Berlin more centralised power.
  • US infectious disease official Dr Anthony Fauci has said in an interview that the US may not ‘need’ to use the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, because of supplies of other shots.

Stakeholders

  • Different rules for the reopening of pubs in England and Wales are “a bitter pill to swallow”, according to the Welsh Beer and Pub Association.
  • More than 4.5m people missed out on hospital treatment in England last year due to the disruption to the NHS caused by Covid, an analysis of NHS hospital activity by the Health Foundation reveals.

Unconfirmed reports

  • The variant of the coronavirus first detected in Kent does not increase the chances of developing long Covid, serious illness or death, according to two “reassuring” studies.