Live Updates: India Registers 12,923 New COVID-19 Cases

South Africa will receive the first 80,000 doses of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine next week to begin an inoculation campaign, after the nation abandoned the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Thursday.

Earlier this week, the South African government announced suspending the rollout of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine due to its "minimal protection" against the new variant, which is currently prevalent in the country.

"While it should not delay the start of the vaccination program by March, it will affect the choice of vaccines and the manner of their deployment. The first phase of our vaccination program, which is targeted at health and other front-line workers, will now use the Johnson & Johnson vaccine which has been shown to be effective again 501.V [South African Variant]. We have secured nine million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The first batch of some 80,000 doses will arrive in the country next week. Further consignments will arrive over the next four weeks totaling half a million Johnson & Johnson vaccines", the president said at the State of the Nation Address to lawmakers.

The South African variant was first detected last October. Like the UK variant, detected approximately at the same time, it has proved to be more contagious than the original coronavirus strain, but data is lacking as to whether it is more deadly or causes worse symptoms.

Spain has approved the use of transparent face masks so that deaf people and those hard of hearing can read lips and understand facial expressions, Marcos Lechet, who was advocating for adopting the regulation for months, told Sputnik on Thursday.

Lechet, who is deaf himself, launched a public initiative half a year ago demanding that the Spanish authorities greenlight the use of transparent face masks. He managed to gather 100,000 signatures in support of his initiative and met with then-Health Minister Salvador Illa in September to talk about issues that deaf people face when communicating with their relatives and friends who wear usual face masks.

Consumer Affairs Minister Alberto Garzon personally revealed the positive news about the decision on transparent masks to Lechet over the phone. The relevant decree will be published on Friday.

"We have demanded this since the beginning of the epidemic. This decision will help us, the deaf and many other people, to get out of isolation. This decree will finally establish the criteria to determine which masks are legal and which are not, and guarantees our safety and at the same time our accessibility. I am very excited. This is important news", Lechet said.

According to Spain’s National Statistics Institute, there are over one million people in the country who are either deaf or hard of hearing. As of now, all residents are required to wear masks outdoors and in public spaces across Spain.

The new online system for booking a room in the COVID-19 quarantine hotels that will accommodate travellers arriving in the United Kingdom from 33 red-listed countries was taken down only minutes after it was launched on Thursday, the Department of Health and Social Care confirmed.

“Due to a minor technical issue, the link to the booking portal in this guidance will not be available until later today. Please return to this page later if you wish to make a booking”, the official website said.

On Tuesday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced that starting on 15 February, UK and Irish citizens and residents in the UK arriving from "red list" countries will have to quarantine for 10 days in hotels designated by the government, in an attempt to prevent new coronavirus variants from entering the country.

Passengers will have to prebook the rooms at a cost of 1,750 pounds ($2,400) and allow themselves to be regularly tested for COVID-19, and those who give false information on the locator forms upon arrival or fail to comply with the quarantine rules will incur heavy fines or up to 10 years in prison.

The UK's "red list" includes those in South America, large parts of southern Africa, Portugal and the United Arab Emirates.

Addressing the House of Commons on Wednesday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the quarantine policy “measured” and “proportionate,” but the opposition Labour Party has considered it “too limited,” as they advocate for a comprehensive system of quarantine for all arrivals.

The Hungarian government has decided to introduce certificates of COVID-19 immunity, acquired both via vaccination and natural infection, Daily News Hungary reported on Thursday, citing Prime Minister Gergely Gulyas.

Gulyas made the statement during a regular weekly briefing, according to the report.

The Hungarian certificate will indicate the date of vaccination with the second dose for vaccinated people or the date of discharge from a hospital or, alternatively, the date of the first negative PCR test for persons who have recovered from the natural infection, the prime minister was cited as saying.

The certificate will reportedly be free of charge unless acquired from a certified laboratory.

The vaccines approved in Hungary include Russia's Sputnik V, the one by China's Sinopharm and the one developed jointly by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, in addition to the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines approved at the common EU level.

Bolivia inked an agreement with China’s Sinopharm to receive 500,000 doses of its COVID-19 vaccine in February, President Luis Arce said on Thursday.

"We have signed an agreement with Sinopharm to import 500,000 vaccines for the Bolivian population, which we will receive in February. This vaccine has been approved in more than 20 countries", the president said at a briefing.

Arce specified that Bolivia will purchase 400,000 doses and receive the rest free of charge.

Bolivia has ordered over five million doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine and started an inoculation campaign in late January.

The use of Sinopharm’s vaccine is greenlighted in Hungary, Serbia, Cambodia, Pakistan and a number of Middle Eastern and South American countries.

The European Union and the World Health Organisation announced an initiative on Thursday to help six Eastern Partnership countries prepare for the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

"With this new program that we launch today in partnership with the WHO, the EU shows that it delivers on its commitment to support our Eastern Partners to fight the health crisis", Oliver Varhelyi, a commissioner in charge of the EU neighbourhood policy, said.

The $49 million programme will prepare Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine for the receipt and administering of vaccines through WHO’s COVAX vaccine sharing tool, as well as excess shots from EU nations.

The programme includes the training of managers and medical staff involved in the campaign, the scheduling of the vaccinations, safety monitoring and key logistical support for the delivery and handling of the vaccines and supplies.

GENEVA (Sputnik) - The South African strain of the coronavirus has been detected in 19 European countries, including several outbreaks, WHO Europe Incident Manager Catherine Smallwood said Thursday.

"There are several variants of concern that we are tracking very carefully across Europe and one of these is the variant that was first identified in South Africa, so the lineage of that one is B.1.351. As the regional director said, it has been identified in 19 countries. For the time being, most of those are linked to travel, but we have seen some outbreaks and those outbreaks have been occurring with slightly increasing frequency over time", Smallwood said at a briefing.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The ongoing coronavirus disease pandemic has made reforming the UK's National Health Service (NHS) "more, not less, urgent," Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Thursday.

Hancock spoke in parliament as he unveiled a new white paper that sets out proposed legislation that would see the government take greater control over the state health service in order to establish greater integration between medical and social care services.

"The pandemic has made the changes in this white paper more, not less, urgent", the health secretary said.

The proposed changes would also see the NHS place greater emphasis on tackling obesity, bureaucracy, and health inequalities, improving oral health, and giving patients greater choice.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russia's Sputnik V vaccine against coronavirus does not contain any pig products and is allowed under Islam, the head of a genetic laboratory at the Gamaleya Research Institute said Thursday.

Muslim communities around the world have been concerned about whether COVID-19 vaccines contain prohibited animal products, such as pork gelatin which is used to stabilize the ingredients.

"None of this is used to make the vaccine", Vladimir Gushchin, who leads the institute's research of pathogen variability mechanisms, said during a roundtable with Muslim clerics. "Environments used by us are chemically identifiable. They contain no animal extracts, serums etcetera".

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the health authority of the African Union, recommended on Thursday that the coronavirus vaccine by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford be used in those member-states which have not reported cases of the South African virus strain.

On Monday, the South African government announced suspending the rollout of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine due to its "minimal protection" against the new variant, which is currently prevalent in the country.

"For now, the strategy is not to throw away 100 million doses but rather target countries ... which have not reported that specific variant", CDC Director John Nkengasong said at a virtual weekly briefing.

According to the official, seven African nations have so far reported cases of the South African variant, referred to as 501Y.V2.

"In the AstraZeneca study in South Africa, we believe that more needs to be done to gain more insights into how that vaccine is working vis-a-vis that variant", Nkengasong said.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russia registered 15,038 COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, up from 15,019 the day before, taking the tally to 4,027,748, the coronavirus response centre said on Thursday.

"Over the past day, 15,038 coronavirus cases were confirmed across 84 regions, including 1,672 cases (11.1 percent) that were detected among people showing no clinical symptoms", the centre said, adding that the cumulative case count has now reached 4,027,748, with the rate of increase at 0.37 percent.

LONDON (Sputnik) – UK Health Minister Matt Hancock said on Thursday that the government is doing everything it can to ensure people in the United Kingdom can go on holidays during the summer, but asked the public to be patient and wait for 22 February when prime minister Boris Johnson is expected to announce the roadmap out of the COVID-19 lockdown.

"We are doing everything we can to make sure people can have that holiday in the summer, and, even before then, to be able to see their loved ones", Hancock told Sky News broadcaster.

The health secretary said he understands people's "yearning for certainty", but asked them to be patient and wait for Johnson's announcement in two-weeks' time.

"Thankfully, because the vaccine roll-out is going so well, with now 13 million people vaccinated, …that will all help us to get out of this and get back to normal", Hancock said.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The World Health Organisation's (WHO) team investigating the coronavirus' origins is not ruling out that the virus was already spreading in China as far back as October 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported.

According to the newspaper, some 90 people were hospitalised with coronavirus-like symptoms in central China in the two months before first cases were detected in the city of Wuhan. In the past few months, Chinese authorities tested two-thirds of these people for antibodies, but found no traces that they had had the virus.

The WHO investigators reportedly suggest that any antibodies could have dropped to undetectable levels due to time passed.