UK reports 23,511 cases in seventh daily drop in a row – as it happened

This blog is closing now but thanks very much for reading. We’ll be back in a few hours with more rolling coverage of the pandemic from all around the world.

In the meantime you can catch up with all our coverage of the pandemic here.

New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian is expected to shortly announce a four-week extension to the Greater Sydney lockdown.

The Guardian understands Berejiklian will not be introducing curfews, but the government is exploring rapid antigen testing for year 12 students to allow them to return to school ahead of their HSC exams. Other years will be expected to remain at home for their schooling over the additional four-week period.

These rapid tests may also be used at essential workplaces such as supermarkets.

A singles bubble, which would allow those who live alone to visit one other person in the same circumstances, is also likely to be introduced for this next phase of the lockdown.

Flexible working should become the “new normal” after the experience during the coronavirus pandemic, Labour said.

With millions moving to home working almost overnight in March 2020 in response to the first national coronavirus lockdown, the opposition party in England is calling for the right to flexible working to be made mandatory in all jobs to ensure that “work fits around people’s lives instead of dictating their lives”.

Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner said the concept would not just be about allowing people to work from home, as they have done to reduce Covid-19 transmissions over the past 16 months, but should also include flexible, compressed, staggered or annualised hours.

Kuwait’s civil aviation authority said all arrivals must have a negative Covid-19 PCR test before they board their flights and must not be showing any symptoms.
All arrivals will have to be home quarantined for seven days unless they take a Covid-19 PCR test inside Kuwait that comes out negative, Reuters reports. The Kuwaiti government on Monday eased some coronavirus related restrictions and resumed all activities except for gatherings which include conferences, weddings and social events.

US president Joe Biden will announce on Thursday a requirement that all federal employees and contractors be vaccinated against Covid-19 or be required to submit to regular testing, CNN reported.

The latest Covid situation in Australia:

Americans fully vaccinated against Covid-19 should go back to wearing masks in indoor public places in regions where the coronavirus and especially the Delta variant are spreading rapidly, US authorities said.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also recommended all students and teachers at kindergarten up to 12th grade schools wear masks regardless of vaccination status. The CDC said children should return to full-time, in-person learning in the autumn with proper prevention strategies.
The changes mark a reversal of the CDC’s announcement in May that prompted millions of vaccinated Americans to shed their face coverings, Reuters reports.

• Plans to significantly open up international travel are expected to be announced on Wednesday, with UK ministers poised to let people who have been fully vaccinated in the US and EU avoid quarantine if arriving from amber list countries.

• Kuwait said it will allow only vaccinated citizens to travel abroad starting 1 August, the government communication office reported.
  

• Iran’s Covid-19 cases hit a record high for the second time in as many days today, rising to almost 35,000, as the health minister warned there was little hope of improvement unless the public followed health precautions, state TV reported.

• The UK and Germany “have protected Covid vaccine patents over human lives”, campaigners have said as the World Trade Organization is reportedly about to delay a decision on whether to waive patents on Covid vaccines. The two countries are expected to resist efforts to allow poorer countries to produce their own vaccines, thus speeding up the global rollout of the jabs.

• The US’s top health agency is expected to backpedal and recommend that even vaccinated people wear masks indoors in parts of the US where Covid is surging, according to reports. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is expected to make an announcement later in the day revising guidance issued in May, which said vaccinated individuals did not need to wear masks in most indoor settings.

• Schools closed due to the pandemic must reopen as soon as possible, the United Nations said, estimating that the education of more than 600 million children was at stake. A spokesman said it was a “terrible mistake” to reopen bars and pubs before schools, after reports that an estimated 40% of children in eastern and southern Africa are not attending school due to closures.

• Ireland is set to open its vaccination programme to those aged 12 to 15 after its national immunisation advisory committee made a favourable recommendation. Foreign minister Simon Coveney said the decision meant “the benefit of vaccination can be extended to this much younger cohort” but that parents would retain the right to decide how to proceed.

• Almost 99% people who have died of Covid-19 in Italy since February this year were not fully vaccinated, the National Health Institute said. The study released by the public health body added that the few fully vaccinated people who died of Covid were also significantly older than those who died without full vaccination, at 88.6 years of age versus 80.

• An additional 18,000 New Zealand children were pushed into poverty in the first year of the pandemic, according to research, despite child welfare being one of prime minister Jacinda Ardern’s main concerns. The Child Poverty Action Group – which focuses on eliminating poverty – put much of the increased poverty, inequity, homelessness and food insecurity down to government neglect as it created its policies during the pandemic, with indigenous children hardest hit.

• The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, announced the EU has met the target of administering a Covid jab to 70% of adults by July, making good on the promise to “catch up” after a rocky start to the bloc’s vaccination rollout. The EU’s executive branch had been heavily criticised at the start of the year after promised vaccine doses did not materialise and national health systems failed to swiftly distribute those that did.

• Tokyo’s 2,848 daily coronavirus infections on Tuesday were the Olympic host city’s highest since the pandemic began, officials said, but Japanese prime minister Yoshihide Suga said it was “not a problem” for the Games and that Tokyo residents should focus on working from home to suppress the movement of people

• Germany is planning to introduce tighter controls on citizens returning from holiday in an attempt to control the growth in coronavirus cases. Jens Spahn, the health minister, is reported in German media to be gathering support for his plan for all returnees to have to test for the virus, regardless of whether they have been in a high-risk area or how they have travelled.

• People advised to shield during the first wave of the pandemic were eight times more likely to get Covid-19 and five times as likely to die following infection than the general population, a study indicated. Researchers also said people deemed at moderate risk from the virus due to health conditions such as diabetes were four times more likely to have confirmed infections than the low-risk group, and five times more likely to die following confirmed infection.

• Greater Sydney will remain locked down for a further four weeks but neighbouring Victoria will tentatively emerge from its fifth lockdown tomorrow, with the easing of restrictions accompanied by a tightening of the border with New South Wales.

Theatre lovers in Northern Ireland have been treated to a live performance for the first time since the start of the pandemic.

Only 90 minutes after regulations formally changed to permit theatres to reopen, the lights went down at the Lyric Theatre for the opening night of Dracula in Belfast.

It was the first audience the venue had hosted for 16 months.

Rules meant the 390-capacity theatre was only a third full and all audience members had to comply with a range of Covid mitigation measures, including the wearing of face masks, PA reports.

The US had administered 342,607,540 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country and distributed 395,460,845 doses as of Tuesday morning, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The figures are up from the 342,212,051 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by 26 July, out of 394,949,575 doses delivered.

It said 188,996,475 people had received at least one dose, while 163,312,474 people were fully vaccinated as of Tuesday, Reuters reports.

Kuwait said it will only allow vaccinated citizens to travel abroad starting August 1, the government communication office reported.

The statement excepted children under age 16, those with a health ministry certificate saying they cannot be vaccinated, and pregnant women who get a pregnancy proof certificate from authorities, Reuters reports.

27 Jul 202115.00 EDT

Aubrey Allegretti

Plans to significantly open up international travel are expected to be announced on Wednesday, with UK ministers poised to let people who have been fully vaccinated in the US and EU avoid quarantine if arriving from amber list countries.

The move would benefit millions of people by finally letting them be reunited with family and friends based in the UK, as well as businesses in the aviation and tourism sectors that have been hit hard by the pandemic.

Currently, only those who have been inoculated by the NHS are eligible for a “Covid pass” to show upon return that would allow them to skip the self-isolation period of up to 10 days if coming from an amber list country, under the rules of the traffic light system that grades countries according to their case, variant and vaccination rates.

Corporate landlords in the US continue to evict tenants - many of them people from ethnic minorities during the Covid-19 pandemic, despite a federal ban on evictions, a congressional panel was told.

The hearings followed last week’s announcement by the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis of an investigation into the practice, Reuters reports.

“Let me be clear, the aggressive actions of these large corporate landlords are unacceptable, and they must stop immediately,” said Representative James Clyburn, the panel’s chairman.

British prime minister Boris Johnson is expected to approve the reopening of England’s doors to double-vaccinated tourists from the EU and the US, Financial Times reported.

UK ministers pushed the prime minister to act, arguing that it was safe to start re-admitting foreign tourists without the need for quarantine if they had received two vaccine doses, the newspaper said.

Major aged care providers in the UK have warned vaccination rates for their home care staff remain extraordinarily low, just days after the government conceded it still has no specific plan for vaccinating the workforce.

About 150,000 aged care workers provide care to about 1 million older Australians in their own homes across the country, but the government revealed on Friday it still has no dedicated plan for vaccinating home care staff and has given the issue little focus.

It has not extended the vaccine mandate for residential workers to home care workers, despite warnings weeks ago that it was an “obvious blind spot” in the rollout.