Live news about Coronavirus: EU states to discuss passports for vaccines; Olympic torch audience asked not to cheer | World News

In England, an advertising campaign has been launched to encourage people to stay home despite declining coronavirus transmission rates, the successful launch of the vaccine and the launch of the government’s containment roadmap, reports PA Media.

The campaign also encourages people to continue with behavioral changes, including wearing masks, social distance and hand washing.

The television ad was shown for the first time on ITV on Wednesday night, but the campaign will also run on radio, billboards and social media:

Australia continued on Thursday its downward trend in Covid cases, fueling hopes of a faster return to normal, reports Reuters.

Victoria, the country’s second most populous state, has not registered a single case for almost a week, suggesting that the most recent outbreak in Melbourne was contained, prompting authorities to signal easing of further restrictions soon.

“With six days of zero cases, with the number of active cases falling every day … we can be quite positive about making some announcements tomorrow,” state premier Daniel Andrews told reporters when asked about lifting brakes at meetings.

Queensland said it would open its borders to Melbourne residents starting Saturday after South Australia, which plans to lift its border restrictions as of Friday.

The state of New South Wales did not report any new local cases for the 39th consecutive day, as it appears to relax restrictions on dancing at weddings, singing indoors and meeting at home on Friday.

Singapore received its first batch of Covid vaccine made by China’s Sinovac Biotech on Tuesday, its health ministry said, although the vaccine is still awaiting approval for use in the city-state, Reuters reported.

Sinovac has started sending the initial data, but the Health Sciences Authority is awaiting all the information it needs to conduct a full assessment, the ministry said in a statement late on Wednesday.

Singapore is the only rich country considering the use of the Sinovac vaccine, which has been shown to have an efficacy rate ranging from about 50% to 90% in studies.

The city-state has been implementing its Covid vaccination program for the past two months. Approved photos from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

Podcast: No sex, please, we are British. Dating in a pandemic

Blocking rules left few opportunities for people who are not yet living with a partner to pursue romantic relationships, explains Zoe Williams:

In other news from Australia:

Australian Olympics athletes will not need to be vaccinated with Covid-19, but will be encouraged to do so as planning increases for the late Tokyo Games in July, the Australian Associated Press reported.

IOC Vice President and AOC President John Coates said that planning has reached the finite stage for the show, scheduled to begin a year later than planned on July 23:

China is moving ahead with two more Covid vaccines in the regulatory process, one from state-owned Sinopharm and the other from a private CanSino company, reports the AP.

Both vaccines were submitted to regulators for approval this week.

CanSino said Chinese regulators are reviewing their application for the Covid vaccine, in a stock file on Wednesday.

Sinopharm’s subsidiary, the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, announced on Wednesday that it had submitted an order on Sunday and that regulators were considering it.

China has already approved two vaccines it is using in a mass immunization campaign. One of them is also from Sinopharm, but it was developed by its subsidiary in Beijing. The other is the Sinovac vaccine.

Sinopharm’s Wuhan shot is 72.51% effective, the company said. Both Sinopharm photos have inactivated viruses, a traditional technology.

The CanSino vaccine is a single dose that depends on a harmless virus from the common cold, called adenovirus, to deliver the virus’s spike gene to the body. The technology is similar to vaccines from Astrazeneca and Johnson & Johnson, which depend on different adenoviruses.

The CanSino vaccine is 65.28% effective, the company said on Wednesday. None of the companies have published their test data in peer-reviewed scientific journals yet.

Tokyo Olympics organizers will give the promotion of gender equality as high a priority as efforts to secure free coronavirus games, her boss said on Wednesday.

Reuters: Seiko Hashimoto, admitting that the Covid epidemic worried many people about the Games, said organizers planned to release detailed guidelines on the coronavirus on Thursday for the torch relay starting in late March.

Hashimoto was named chairman of the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee last week, replacing former prime minister Yoshiro Mori, 83, who resigned after making a splash with sexist comments.

Hashimoto said the organizing committee set up a team to promote gender equality and reiterated the goal of increasing the proportion of women on its board to 40%.

“Even with limited time until the Games, we will work hard so that people can look back and say that this is a great turning point for Japan,” Hashimoto told reporters in reference to the new equality team.

She spoke after a meeting with the International Olympic Committee board, and how – in comments that are unlikely to allay public concerns about the Olympics – the minister who oversees Japan’s vaccination program said in a separate event that the Games did not were part of their planning.

About 1,000 volunteers from the Games have given up since the beginning of this month, while four torch runners have resigned so far, according to the organizing team.