(Bloomberg) —
Omicron has flared in the Chinese port city of Tianjin that borders Beijing and spread inland, seeding the highly contagious variant on the doorstop of the nation’s capital less than one month before the winter Olympics begin.
Officials have told the 14 million residents of the city not to leave unless it’s essential as 21 new locally confirmed Covid cases in Tianjin triggered mass testing, closing of schools and halt to travel. As the Lunar New Year festivities approach, Taiwan brought back mask mandates and Vietnam asked provinces to consider canceling public gatherings or limit some to a small number of people. The Philippines reported record daily infections over the weekend.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York Democratic congresswoman, tested positive for Covid-19, her office said in a statement. Chicago schools canceled classes for a fourth day as negotiations with the teachers’ union failed to produce an agreement over the weekend.
Key Developments:
- Virus Tracker: Cases exceed 306.6 million; deaths pass 5.48 million
- Vaccine Tracker: More than 9.42 billion shots administered
- Omicron absenteeism poses fresh test to U.S. economic strength
- Awash with vaccines, nations struggle to get them in arms
- Hong Kong is at a Covid-19 tipping point
- Covid test makers struggle to cope with whiplash from omicron
- Most U.S. Covid hospital patients since start of pandemic
Hong Kong to Add Vaccination Centers (11:56 a.m. HK)
The city will add 22 clinics administering Sinovac shots starting Jan. 21, the government said, adding it plans to open two more community inoculation centers at the end of January. The Asian financial hub found a new preliminary positive Covid-19 case linked to a scandal-hit birthday bash that’s ensnared a minister in government quarantine as the city rushes to contain an omicron outbreak.
Philippines Daily Cases Soar to a Record (10:30 a.m. HK)
The Southeast Asian country reported record-high daily Covid-19 infections over the weekend amid a possible spread of the omicron variant, breaking the peak during the delta variant-driven surge last year. More than half of beds in hospitals’ intensive care units and wards in the capital are again occupied, with most severe and critical cases among the unvaccinated, prompting the government to restrict movement.
Australia’s Victoria State Requires Boosters (9:54 a.m. HK)
Australia’s Victoria state will force workers in critical service sectors to get a booster shot within the next month as it expects the latest surge in virus cases to peak by early February, health minister Martin Foley said Monday. Healthcare, emergency services and food distribution workers — including truckers, meat processors, fisherman and dock hands — will be required to have a third vaccine dose by mid-February, and other sectors are likely to follow, he said. The state recorded 34,808 new infections on Monday. Covid infected patients in hospitals have almost doubled to 818 in a week, with authorities expecting hospitalizations to peak next month.
Health authorities are wanting to “stretch out” and “top off” the infection and hospitalization curve to protect the state’s “extremely stressed” healthcare system, Foley said. While omicron appears less severe, “the weight of numbers is what threatens the critical services like hospitals and GPs,” he said.
Taiwan Brings Back Mask Mandate (9:52 a.m. HK)
The government reimposed its mandate on face coverings in the lead-up to the Lunar New Year festivities. The new rules are part of a range of tighter restrictions imposed by health authorities in Taipei over the weekend in an effort to slow the spread of a Covid outbreak centered around Taoyuan International Airport, the main gateway in and out of Taiwan. The government reported 11 new local Covid cases Sunday, the highest daily total since Aug. 29.
Masks are now required once again for all activities outside the home, except for eating and drinking, swimming and farm work. Revelers at New Year banquets will be barred from walking around the room toasting each table individually. Travelers arriving on long-haul flights will have to wait at the airport until the results of their Covid tests are released before heading to their quarantine hotels.
Chicago Schools Cancel Classes (9:49 a.m. HK)
Schools have been closed in the nation’s third-largest district since Wednesday after Chicago Teachers voted to shift back to remote learning. The union has insisted that the district put in place more stringent protections from a Covid-19 surge driven by the omicron variant.
Deltacron Variant Is No Error (8:12 a.m. HK)
A Cypriot scientist defended his assertion that a new strain of Covid-19 exists that combines characteristics of the delta and omicron variants. Other scientists have speculated that Leonidos Kostrikis’s findings are a result of laboratory contamination. But he told Bloomberg News in an emailed statement Sunday that the cases he has identified “indicate an evolutionary pressure to an ancestral strain to acquire these mutations and not a result of a single recombination event.”
Deltacron infection is higher among patients hospitalized for Covid-19 than among non-hospitalized patients, so that rules out the contamination hypothesis, said Kostrikis, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Cyprus and head of the Laboratory of Biotechnology and Molecular Virology.
Tianjin Requires Covid Testing (7:36 a.m. HK)
CCTV reported that authorities have tightened coronavirus checks in railway and highway links between Tianjin and neighboring Beijing. At least two districts in Tianjin have suspended classes and lockdown measures were imposed on schools in the city.
Eighteen of the 20 cases that tested positive for the coronavirus Saturday in Tianjin have been confirmed as local infections and the rest were asymptomatic, CCTV said.
Australia Hospital Pressure (7:26 a.m. HK)
Australia’s New South Wales will treat some Covid-19 patients in private hospitals starting Monday to alleviate pressure on the government-run system, according to Susan Pearce, the health deputy secretary of the country’s biggest state. Calling it a “planned exercise,” she said the measure was “pre-emptive and protective” and shouldn’t be “seen as a failure of the public hospital system.”
The issue is not hospital bed availability but staffing those beds, as the system has some health workers furloughed with Covid-19 or after being exposed, Pearce said. The state’s hospital and ICU admissions continue to surge as the omicron variant spreads through the community. Hospitalizations have climbed to 2,030, from 1,204 a week earlier.
Half of the 159 people in intensive care with Covid-19 in the state are unvaccinated, NSW premier Dominic Perrottet said Monday. The state has a vaccination rate of 93.7% for people aged 16 and over. Australia will start vaccinating children aged 5 to 11 from Monday.
Ocasio-Cortez Tests Positive for Covid (7:17 a.m. HK)
The congresswoman, who is fully vaccinated and has had a booster shot, is “experiencing symptoms and recovering at home,” her office said. Ocasio-Cortez, 32, was embroiled in a social-media war over Covid-19 in late December during a trip to Florida with her boyfriend. She was photographed having drinks outside, provoking criticism that she wasn’t abiding by strict pandemic safety rules she advocates.
Separately, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin tested negative and was cleared to return to work, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby tweeted.
Singapore’s Workplace Covid Fines (7:03 a.m. HK)
Singapore issued 140 fines last year totaling more than S$141,000 ($103,000) for breaches of Covid-19 safe management measures at the workplace, according to the Straits Times. The Ministry of Manpower told the Straits Times it inspected 12,000 companies.
Minister Says U.K. Moving Beyond Pandemic (5:59 p.m. NY)
Britain’s education secretary said the country is “on a path towards transitioning from pandemic to endemic” as the government drafts plans to live with Covid-19.
Becoming the first cabinet minister to back moves to cut the self-isolation period for people who contract the virus to five days from seven, Nadhim Zahawi on Sunday told the BBC that regular testing alongside vaccines, boosters and antiviral treatments would form the key parts of the country’s efforts to return to normality.
Hungary Braces for 200 Daily Deaths (3:45 p.m. NY)
Hungary expects more than 13,000 daily infections and about 200 daily deaths during the omicron-variant-fueled latest wave, the country’s health chief told Inforadio.
The number of Covid-related hospitalized patients may peak at between 8,000 to 9,000 during the fifth wave in Hungary, which is expected to last until May, Human Resources Minister Miklos Kasler, who’s in charge of healthcare, said.
Hungary’s daily Covid infections almost doubled in a week to 6,524 on Friday, while daily Covid-related deaths rose to 101 from 82 a week earlier.
Asymptomatic Driving Omicron, Gottlieb Says (2:33 p.m. NY)
The main driver of the omicron outbreak is “the fact that we’re probably only diagnosing somewhere between one and five and one in 10 actual infections,” said Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
It’s “a lot of people walking around with mild illness or asymptomatic infection who don’t know it, who are spreading it,” Gottlieb said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Gottlieb, a board member of Pfizer Inc., said that that young children not eligible for vaccines are most at risk now, with more than half of all pediatric hospitalizations in New York City age 4 and younger. He said the outbreak in the Northeast and “probably Florida” appears to be peaking but is building in other parts of the U.S.
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