Mandatory vaccination against coronavirus of care home staff is "unnecessary, disproportionate, and misguided", academics have warned.

       Government plans to make Covid-19 jabs a condition of deployment for care home staff in England is a "profound departure from public health norms", according to experts writing in the British Medical Journal.

       From October all people working in care homes registered with the Care Quality Commission must have two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, unless they have a medical exemption.

       The move, which follows a public consultation, is subject to parliamentary approval and a 16-week grace period.

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       There is a "real nervousness" about the number of unvaccinated young people who have mild Covid symptoms but go on to develop more severe long Covid, the chief executive of NHS Providers said.

       Chris Hopson told BBC Breakfast he had spoken to the chief executive of an NHS trust about the issue.

       He said: "The bit that was really striking for me yesterday... was they were saying they were really getting quite worried about the number of unvaccinated young people who were getting mild Covid symptoms because they caught Covid, but then quite quickly afterwards were developing much more severe long Covid-type symptoms.

       "And we just don't know exactly how this is going to pan out so we just need to be careful about recognising the risks that we're running here. It's not just about hospitalisations, it's actually potentially people having really quite serious long-term conditions once they have caught Covid.

       Here is your Daily Telegraph for Thursday, July 8.

       Double vaccinated and wearing a hazmat suit, Dr Ahmad Syaifuddin had hoped he would be protected from the catastrophic Covid-19 surge sweeping Indonesia, but when the thumping headache hit and he began to cough, he knew the virus had caught up with him.

       Fifteen colleagues at the Islamic Hospital of Sunan Kudus, central Java – one of the epicentres of the Southeast Asian nation’s latest outbreak – were also infected as they dealt with scores of patients flooding onto the wards.

       “With such a high level of fatigue and almost all of them exposed to Covid, how can we survive this virus?” said Dr Syaifuddin. “The vaccine works to improve immunity, but immunity also depends on the condition of our body. If we are tired or unfit, our immunity will be low.”

       Read the full story

       More than 100 scientists and doctors have signed a letter to The Lancet accusing the Government of conducting a “dangerous and unethical experiment” and urging it to reconsider its plans to abandon all coronavirus restrictions.

       The letter, signed by the chairman of the British Medical Association, the chairman of Independent Sage and scientists from Oxford University and University College London, says the decision to release restrictions is “premature”.

       The “Memorandum Against Mass Infection,” signed by 122 medics and scientists says any strategy that tolerates high levels of infection is both “unethical and illogical”.

       The group, backed by Dr Richard Horton, The Lancet's editor-in-chief, will hold an emergency summit on Thursday.

       Read the full story.

       South Korea on Thursday reported its highest one-day number of new Covid-19 infections, as officials consider tightening social distancing restrictions.

       The 1,275 cases in the 24 hours to midnight on Wednesday, reported by the the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), exceeds the number of daily cases reported at the peak of the country's third wave in December.

       The government warned on Wednesday it was considering raising movement restrictions to the highest level as the fourth wave was spreading rapidly, especially among unvaccinated people in their 20s and 30s. The rise of the Delta variant has also worried health officials.

       Authorities said on Wednesday the virus was spreading rapidly, while a growing number of highly contagious Delta variant cases raised new worries.

       Global efforts to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic are under threat because women are being excluded from critical decision-making roles, the United Nations said on Thursday.

       Only 6 percent of coronavirus task forces, which are responsible for co-ordinating government responses to the deadly virus, have equal numbers of men and women, while 11 percent have no women at all, found the UN Development Programme (UNDP).

       "The pivotal decisions being made today will affect the well-being of people and planet for generations to come," Achim Steiner, UNDP's administrator, said in a statement.

       "Sustainable recovery is only possible when women are able to play a full role in shaping a post-Covid-19 world that works for all of us."

       The Biden administration will not immediately lift any international travel restrictions, even as it faces growing pressure from US business groups and lawmakers, a White House official said on Wednesday.

       In June, the administration launched interagency working groups with the European Union, United Kingdom, Canada, and Mexico to look at how to lift restrictions and eventually resume travel.

       "While these groups have met a number of times, there are further discussions to be had before we can announce any next steps on travel reopening with any country," the White House official said.

       "We have made tremendous progress domestically in our vaccination efforts, as have many of these other countries, but we want to ensure that we move deliberately and are in a position to sustainably reopen international travel when it is safe to do so."

       Australia's New South Wales has reported its biggest daily rise in locally acquired cases of Covid-19 for the year as officials struggle to stamp out a growing cluster of the highly infectious Delta variant in Sydney.

       NSW reported 38 new local cases, up from 27 a day earlier, as its capital Sydney prepares for a third week of lockdown.

       "We don't want to prolong the lockdown, we don't want to see Sydney or New South Wales going in and out of lockdown until we have the vast majority of our population vaccinated," NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said.

       She implored residents to limit visits to family as data suggested the virus was spreading during such meetings, and urged people with flu-symptoms to take their entire family for Covid-19 tests due to the highly transmissible Delta strain.

       Japan's government is set to declare a state of emergency for Tokyo through August 22 amid a new wave of infections, a key minister said on Thursday, casting a shadow over the Olympic Games.

       Japan's economy minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, who is heading the government's coronavirus response, said the state of emergency is set to begin on July 12.

       The Tokyo area is currently under slightly less strict "quasi emergency" curbs. Under the heightened restrictions, restaurants will be asked to stop serving alcohol, Mr Nishimura said.

       The move is expected to be made official later on Thursday. Areas neighbouring Tokyo, such as Chiba and Kanagawa, are set to remain under "quasi emergency" through August 22.

       Ethnic minorities, the self-employed and low-income families in Britain suffered greater deprivation levels during the coronavirus pandemic despite "surprisingly positive" living standards figures, a report published on Thursday found.

       The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think-tank's annual report on living standards, poverty and inequality identified these groups as the hardest-hit, even as unprecedented state support mitigated the worst effects of the crisis.

       The research follows other studies showing that Britain's ethnic minorities were more likely to suffer worse health and economic outcomes during the pandemic and less likely to accept vaccines.

       "How fast and to what extent these groups recover as the economy reopens will be a key determinant of the pandemic's legacy," said report co-author Tom Wernham.

       Spain's health minister has warned that young people can develop severe cases of Covid-19 and asked for their cooperation in taming an infection rate that has more than doubled in a week, as the Delta variant tears through unvaccinated younger adults.

       "One in every 100 cases in 20 to 24-year-olds is admitted to hospital," Carolina Darias said on Wednesday, adding that the majority of recent outbreaks were linked to end-of-term student parties.

       "Interactions between young people are multiplying ... it is very important to ask them for responsibility but not to hold them responsible," she said.

       The national infection rate as measured over the past 14 days soared to 252 cases per 100,000 people on Wednesday from 117.2 a week ago, ministry data showed, putting the country back above the 250-case extreme risk threshold.

       Covid-19 infections in England have quadrupled in a month since early June, a large prevalence study showed on Thursday, ahead of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's plan to fully re-open the economy in two weeks' time.

       Mr Johnson said he aimed to end most legal restrictions on July 19, even though models suggested cases would rise, saying that he was reconciled to more deaths from Covid-19 but that life needed to return to normal.

       According to the research, led by Imperial College London, cases were estimated to be doubling every six days as a new wave fuelled by the Delta coronavirus variant picks up pace.

       The study, one of Britain's largest with 47,000 people returning tests from June 24 to July 5, found national prevalence was 0.59 percent, or 1 in 170 people, compared with 0.15 percent in the last round between late May and early June.

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