Australia has done a remarkable job in suppressing Covid-19, and reducing community transmission of the virus to single digit figures. But a new outbreak in the state of South Australia - now up to 17 confirmed cases - after a full seven months without a community case, has put the state back on high alert. Melissa Davey reports. Germany has warned its anti-coronavirus measures are likely to stay in place for several months. The predictions came as the World Health Organization unveiled data showing a record daily number of 660,905 new Covid-19 cases over the weekend. “We will have to live with considerable precautions and restrictions for at least the next four to five months,” Germany’s economy minister Peter Altmaier told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. The government is to meet Monday to decide whether to extend new measures provisionally in place until month’s end and as neighbouring Austria revealed it is planning mass testing as a second lockdown comes into force. The race for a vaccine continues, as does the effort to establish a logistics chain to get it to people all over the world. The head of drug-maker Sanofi says: “we will need to have several winners at the end of this race”. AFP reports: The coronavirus vaccine being developed by Sanofi won’t need to be super-cooled and a normal refrigerator will suffice, the Paris-based drugmaker’s France chief Olivier Bogillot said Sunday. His comments came days after American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech announced that their vaccine had proven 90 percent effective in preventing Covid-19 infections in ongoing Phase 3 trials involving more than 40,000 people. The companies said they expect to supply up to 50 million vaccine doses globally in 2020, and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021. However, Pfizer’s vaccine must be stored at -70 degrees Celsius (-94 degrees Fahrenheit) or else it falls apart, well beyond the capability of most hospital freezers let alone domestic appliances. Rachel Silverman, a policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, has already warned that maintaining the Pfizer vaccine’s “ultra-cold chain” from factory to patients’ arms constitutes “an enormous logistical challenge even in the West”. “Our vaccine will be like the ‘flu vaccine, you can keep it in your refrigerator,” this avoiding the problem, Bogillot told the CNews channel. “This will be an advantage for some countries,” he added. The Sanofi vaccine, one of many in development, will be available for distribution next June, Bogillot added. The results of the Phase 2 tests, involving hundreds of people, will be made public in early December, he added. If those results are positive then Phase 3 trials involving thousands of people will begin, alongside mass production. Eleven of the vaccines under development have already begun Phase 3 trials. The Pfizer vaccine is “a little more advanced” in the development process, said Bogillot, but “one laboratory is not going to be able to supply the doses for the whole planet. “We will need to have several winners at the end of this race.” The Sanofi product will also be made avaiable at an “affordable” price he said, without giving details. Some more detail here on the extraordinary news in the UK, that the prime minister Boris Johnson is back in isolation after potentially being exposed to Covid-19 again. Political editor Heather Stewart writes: Boris Johnson was forced into self-isolation on Sunday night just as he embarked on a crucial week designed to restore calm and project an air of competence after a vicious No 10 turf war. There were concerns that Covid-19 had returned to Downing Street as the result of a 35-minute meeting between the prime minister and a group of Tory MPs at No 10, one of whom subsequently tested positive for the virus. Johnson was pictured standing next to Lee Anderson, MP for Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, inside Downing Street on Thursday. The men appear to be less than 2 metres apart and neither is wearing a mask. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered a tightening of state emergency anti-coronavirus systems in the face of the worldwide pandemic, as he presided over a meeting of the politburo of the ruling Workers Party, state news agency KCNA said on Monday. The meeting came amid economic and political uncertainty surrounding the global Covid-19 pandemic that is putting additional pressure on the North’s economy, already battered by international sanctions aimed at stopping its nuclear program. Making his first public appearance in 27 days, Kim stressed the need for the country to stay on high alert for the virus and to intensify its anti-epidemic work, KCNA reported. North Korea had tested over 12,000 people and reported no confirmed cases of the coronavirus, as of early November, according to the World Health Organization. A total of 6,173 people, eight of whom were foreigners, were detected as suspected cases and 174 people were quarantined in the last week of October, the WHO said. More than 54 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 1,315,881 have died, according to the Johns Hopkins hospital. Kim had called on his country to embark on an 80-day campaign to attain its goals in every sector before a congress in January to decide a new five-year plan. Summary Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan. This is the place to be for pandemic news from around the world and this is where you can contact me directly (and see a photo of a gremlin). UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, is self-isolating after coming into contact with an MP who has subsequently tested positive for Covid-19, Downing Street said on Sunday. The prime minister was present at a 35-minute meeting with a small group of Conservative MPs on Thursday morning. One of them, Lee Anderson, subsequently developed symptoms of Covid-19 and has tested positive. Downing Street said the prime minister was “well” and insisted that No 10 was a Covid-secure workplace but that test and trace had advised the prime minister that, because of factors including the length of the meeting, he should self-isolate as a precaution. Meanwhile the US has passed 11m coronavirus cases, just one week after confirming its ten-millionth case. More than a million cases were recorded in the country over the last week, which saw four days in a row of world record infection totals. The current US total, according to Johns Hopkins University, is 11,003,469. At least 246,000 people have died in the country. The global case total is 54m and the death toll stands at 1.3m. ere are the other key developments from the last few hours: The Austrian chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, has said that the country will follow in Slovakia’s footsteps by mass testing its population to get out of lockdown in time for Christmas. The UK reported 24,962 new Covid cases on Sunday, down by 1,898 from Saturday’s 26,860. Italy has reported 546 Covid-related deaths, up from 544 the day before, the health ministry said on Sunday. The country also registered 33,979 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours, down from 37,255 on Saturday. In a statement on Sunday, the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, declared “the general mobilisation of the nation and the government” after health authorities announced the highest ever number of daily cases in the country. India is expected to fly doctors in from other regions of the country to double its testing capacity in an effort to contain the spread of coronavirus in the capital New Delhi. The prime minister of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Ambrose Dlamini, has tested positive for Covid-19 but is asymptomatic. France reports 302 deaths and 27,228 new cases in the last 24-hours, according to the French health ministry website. WHO registers highest Covid-19 cases in one-day over the weekend, reports AFP. Saturday’s figures of 660,905 and Friday’s 645,410 both surpassed the previous set highest daily total of cases which was recorded at 614,013 on 7 November.