New Zealand tightens border again amid fears over new Covid strain New Zealand has further tightened border controls amid mounting anxiety about the new strain of coronavirus driving up infections overseas. Six cases of the new variant of the virus – five in arrivals from the UK and one from South Africa – were recorded in managed isolation facilities in the two weeks leading up to Christmas. Travellers to New Zealand from the US and UK will now be required to show a negative test for Covid-19 before departure, as well as taking a test on their arrival in quarantine in addition to those on days three and 12. The border remains mostly closed to non-citizens. The Ministry of Health said in a statement on Sunday that these were “extra precautionary steps [to] provide another layer of protection” against the new strain of coronavirus, recorded in more than 30 countries: Hello blog readers – Helen Sullivan with you again for what will hopefully not be another almost year of coronavirus blogging. It is good to be back, though would of course be better if the news weren’t so dire. But we’ll be here when the pandemic news eventually changes to be mostly good, too. As always, you can get in touch or follow me on Twitter @helenrsullivan. I’m going to hand over to my inexhaustible colleague Helen Sullivan now. Thanks all for your comments and company. Be well, and look after each other. As richer countries race to distribute COVID-19 vaccines, Somalia remains the rare place where much of the population hasn’t taken the coronavirus seriously. Some fear that’s proven to be deadlier than anyone knows. “Certainly our people don’t use any form of protective measures, neither masks nor social distancing,” Abdirizak Yusuf Hirabeh, the government’s Covid-19 incident manager, said in an interview. “If you move around the city (of Mogadishu) or countrywide, nobody even talks about it.” And yet infections are rising, he said. It is places like Somalia, the Horn of Africa nation torn apart by three decades of conflict, that will be last to see Covid-19 vaccines in any significant quantity. With part of the country still held by the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group, the risk of the virus becoming endemic in some hard-to-reach areas is strong — a fear for parts of Africa amid the slow arrival of vaccines. “There is no real or practical investigation into the matter,” said Hirabeh, who is also the director of the Martini hospital in Mogadishu, the largest treating Covid-19 patients, which saw seven new patients the day he spoke. He acknowledged that neither facilities nor equipment are adequate in Somalia to tackle the virus. Fewer than 27,000 tests for the virus have been conducted in Somalia, a country of more than 15 million people, one of the lowest rates in the world. Fewer than 4,800 cases have been confirmed, including at least 130 deaths. Some worry the virus will sink into the population as yet another poorly diagnosed but deadly fever. One important protective factor for the Somalian population is its relative youth, said Dr Abdurahman Abdullahi Abdi Bilaal, who works in a clinic in the capital. More than 80% of the country’s population is under age 30. “The virus is here, absolutely, but the resilience of people is owing to age,” he said. It’s the lack of post-mortem investigations in the country that is allowing the true extent of the virus to go undetected, he said. The next challenge in Somalia is not simply obtaining Covid-19 vaccines but also persuading the population to accept them. That will take time, “just the same as what it took for our people to believe in the polio or measles vaccines,” a concerned Bilaal said. Hirabeh, in charge of Somalia’s virus response, agreed that “our people have little confidence in the vaccines,” saying that many Somalis hate the needles. The logistics of any Covid-19 vaccine rollout are another major concern. Hirabeh said Somalia is expecting the first vaccines in the first quarter of 2021, but he worries that the country has no way to handle a vaccine like the Pfizer one that requires being kept at a temperature of -70 degrees Celsius. For 45-year-old street beggar Hassan Mohamed Yusuf, fear of a virus outbreak has turned into near-certainty, and grief. “In the beginning we saw this virus as just another form of the flu,” he said. Then three of his young children died after having a cough and high fever. As residents of a makeshift camp for people displaced by conflict or drought, they had no access to coronavirus testing or proper care. At the same time, Yusuf said, the virus hurt his efforts to find money to treat his family as “we can’t get close enough” to people to beg. To the US: The pedestrian pace of Covid-19 vaccinations in the US came under new scrutiny on Sunday, as the pandemic death toll passed 350,000 and experts warned of another surge in infections and deaths arising from gatherings at Christmas and New Year. Richard Luscombe and Martin Pengelly report. A little more on India’s approval of two Covid vaccines for rollout. India has undertaken extraordinary public health initiatives in the past, most notably in its efforts to eradicate polio, which involved the largest public immunisation campaign in history. My colleague Hannah Ellis-Petersen reports: India has granted emergency approval to both the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine and the domestically developed Covaxin, signalling the start of one of the largest Covid-19 immunisation drives in the world. We will watch this as it develops, but Fuji TV has reported Japan is considering declaring a state of emergency for capital Tokyo and three surrounding prefectures as early as this week, as coronavirus cases climb. Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is due to hold a news conference to mark the start of 2021 at 11am Tokyo time (2am GMT). We will bring you that news as it emerges. Tokyo reported 816 new cases on Sunday. On Thursday, Tokyo logged a record 1,337 new infections, exceeding the 1,000 mark for the first time since the pandemic began. A nationwide record was also set Thursday, with 4,520 new cases. In Australia (where your correspondent currently sits), mass testing drives are seeking to restrict outbreaks in the country’s two most populous states New South Wales and Victoria. By global standards, Australia’s outbreaks are small, but there is a concerted push to break these chains of community transmission. Victoria has reported three new cases of locally acquired Covid-19 infection in the past 24 hours. NSW reported zero new local cases in the 24 hours to 8pm yesterday, but seven in hotel quarantine. However, in NSW, two new cases have been detected overnight. These will be counted in tomorrow’s figures. Yes, it is confusing. To follow updates in Australia, see the work of my indefatigable colleague Calla Wahlquist here: Mainland China reported 33 new Covid-19 cases on 3 January, up from 24 cases a day earlier, the country’s national health authority said on Monday. The National Health Commission said in a statement 20 of the new cases were imported infections originating from overseas. The commission also reported 13 new locally transmitted cases: six in Liaoning province, four in Hebei province, two in Beijing and one in Heilongjiang province. The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, rose to 40 from eight cases a day earlier. The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in mainland China now stands at 87,150, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634. Irene Chavez, senior vice president and area manager of Kaiser Permanente San Jose Medical Center, said in an emailed statement that 43 staffers in the emergency department tested positive between 27 December and 1 January. “We will ensure that every affected staff member receives the care and support they need,” the statement said. The hospital is investigating whether an inflatable costume worn by one of the infected staff members may have contributed to the spread of of the virus. “Any exposure, if it occurred, would have been completely innocent, and quite accidental, as the individual had no Covid symptoms and only sought to lift the spirits of those around them during what is a very stressful time,” the hospital said in the statement. Summary Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. My name is Ben Doherty and I’ll be bringing you the latest updates from around the world for the next few hours. Correspondence and comments always welcome, you can reach me at ben.doherty@theguardian.com or on twitter @BenDohertyCorro. The US has passed 350,000 coronavirus deaths – the highest toll in the world, amid several days of more than 2,500 deaths per day. The US also confirmed nearly 300,000 new cases in 24 hours on 2 January (the most recent available toll), according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker. Meanwhile India authorised two Covid-19 vaccines on Sunday, paving the way for a huge inoculation program to stem the coronavirus pandemic in the world’s second most populous country. The country’s drugs regulator gave emergency authorization for the vaccine developed by Oxford University and UK-based drugmaker AstraZeneca, and another developed by the Indian company Bharat Biotech. Here are the key recent developments: Coronavirus deaths in the UK have passed 75,000, with 54,990 new cases reported on Sunday as well as 454 more deaths within 28 days of a positive test. The Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, has urged Boris Johnson to bring in new national Covid restrictions in England within the next 24 hours, rather than hint that he will do so soon. A number of local councils in England have asked the government to allow primary schools to remain shut ahead of the first day of term tomorrow, including Southampton city council and Cumbria county council, both of which have said they support schools in prioritising education for children of key workers and vulnerable children in light of staffing shortages. Ireland has reported a further 4,962 cases of Covid-19, taking the total number of cases past 100,000. Sunday’s figure breaks the previous day’s record of 3,394 cases – itself almost double the highest number of cases previously recorded in 24 hours. The new variant of the coronavirus, first spotted in the UK, has been detected in Greece, it was reported this evening. Five Greeks and a Briton who tested positive for the virus upon arrival from the UK were found to have been infected with the new strain according to Skai radio. France has recorded 12,489 new coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours, up from the 3,466 reported a day earlier, according to the country’s health ministry. Kuwait’s civil aviation authority has suspended direct commercial flights to and from the UK, according to a tweet published a few minutes ago. Egypt has said it had opened an investigation into the deaths of four Covid-19 patients in an intensive care unit allegedly due to lack of oxygen, which caused a public outcry. Brazil’s health regulator Anvisa has approved the import of 2 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, although the jab is not yet approved for use in the country.