Coronavirus: UK records 18,270 new cases – as it happened

Spain loosened outdoor mask requirements today for the first time in over a year.

Reuters reports:

Spaniards were allowed to ditch their face masks for a walk in the park or a trip to the beach on Saturday for the first time in more than a year, but some people were in no rush to dispense with their facial protection against Covid-19.

“I’m surprised because I expected to see many people without masks, but most are still wearing them,” said Manuel Mas, 40, a singer, in the centre of the capital, Madrid.

While masks do not have to be worn outdoors under the country’s newly relaxed rules, people still have to use them indoors or in crowded outdoor spaces where social distancing is impossible.

Andrea Sosa, 20, a waitress from Madrid, said she would continue to keep her face covered because she had not been vaccinated yet.

“For me it’s important to keep wearing the mask,” she said as she waited to meet a friend in the city’s busy Puerta del Sol square.

Spain’s nationwide infection rate as measured over the preceding 14 days was 95 cases per 100,000 of population, down from about 150 cases a month ago, according to Spanish Health Ministry figures on Friday.

Half of the nation’s 47 million population have received at least one vaccine dose, the ministry said earlier this week.

Some 3,782,463 coronavirus cases have been confirmed while 80,779 people have died from Covid-19, according to official data.

Brazil recorded 64,134 new coronavirus cases on Saturday and 1,593 new deaths. Overall the country has reported more than 18.3m cases and 512,735 deaths, Reuters reports.

Worldwide, the pandemic is slowing down, reports AFP. The World Health Organisation reported the lowest number of new global cases since February and overall there are fewer Covid deaths. But there are growing fears over the Delta variant, the most contagious strain so far identified, which is now in at least 85 countries.

Here’s more from AFP:

The Delta variant is so contagious that experts say more than 80% of a population would need to be jabbed in order to contain it – a challenging target even for nations with significant vaccination programmes.

Israel, which has one of the world’s most successful vaccination campaigns, has seen infections linked to the variant surge since dropping a requirement to wear masks in enclosed public places 10 days ago.

After four days of more than 100 new cases a day, the health ministry reversed the decision.

The variant is also fuelling an alarming rise in infections in several countries across Africa, where cases as a whole jumped 25% over the past week.

South Africa, the continent’s hardest-hit country, warned on Saturday that soaring caseloads linked to the Delta variant were forcing authorities to consider tighter restrictions.

“We are in the exponential phase of the pandemic with the numbers just growing very, very, extremely fast,” warned top virologist Tulio de Oliveira.

In India meanwhile, where the Delta variant was first detected around April, the human impact of the pandemic has been laid bare after seasonal flooding of the Ganges river flushed out shallow graves where hundreds were buried at the peak of the crisis.

Neeraj Kumar Singh, an official in the northern city of Allahabad, said that almost 150 bodies have had to be cremated after resurfacing from the river in the past three weeks.

The US has administered more than 322m vaccine doses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has announced.

As of this morning, 322,123,103 doses had been administered in the US and 381,276,030 doses had been distributed, reports Reuters.

The CDC said that 178,873,816 people had received at least one shot and 152,184,243 were fully vaccinated.

And the UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s response to health secretary Matt Hancock’s resignation in full:

Thank you for your letter this evening, tendering your resignation as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. I am sorry to receive it.

You should leave office very proud of what you have achieved - not just in tackling the pandemic, but even before Covid-19 struck us. Under your leadership, the Department has led fundamental reforms to the provision of care in this country. The NHS Long Term Plan was a major milestone in the history of that great institution. Your work on the Health and Care Bill will support our NHS and deliver greater integration between health and social care. And your efforts mean that we have a record numbers of doctors and over 14,800 more nurses working in our NHS than last year.

Above all, it has been your task to deal with a challenge greater than that faced by any of your predecessors, and in fighting Covid you have risen to that challenge - with the abundant energy, intelligence and determination that are your hallmark. Under your leadership, the Department for Health and Social Care has identified and deployed critical life-saving treatments such as Dexamethasone, rapidly increased hospital capacity through the Nightingale programme, and provided 11.7 billion items of PPE to the frontline at record speed. In March 2020, we had the capacity to test 2,000 people a day; now, we have built the largest diagnostic network in British history and have administered over 200 million tests. The vaccine procurement and deployment programme - in my view one of the greatest successes of the modern state - is now forging our path out of the pandemic.

Through the establishment of the United Kingdom Health Security Agency, you have also built the foundation to ensure the UK is better prepared for any future pandemic.

You made a considerable contribution to Government before becoming Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. I know that previous Prime Ministers were grateful for your work in ministerial positions in the Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills, the Cabinet Office, and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. You have, across those roles, been a consistent and vigorous champion of the power of digital transformation.

You should be immensely proud of your service. I am grateful for your support and believe that your contribution to public service is far from over.

More reaction from the UK on Matt Hancock’s resignation as health secretary.

Labour chair Anneliese Dodds tweeted:

A Health Secretary who behaved like rules didn’t apply to him. A Prime Minister who didn’t have the guts to remove him. A government riddled with sleaze. Now Matt Hancock has gone, the Prime Minister must clean up this crony government.

PA reports that Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s shadow health secretary, said:

It is right that Matt Hancock has resigned. But why didn’t Boris Johnson have the guts to sack him and why did he say the matter was closed?

Boris Johnson has demonstrated that he has none of the leadership qualities required of a Prime Minister.

Hancock’s replacement cannot carry on business as usual. On Hancock’s watch waiting times soared, care homes were left exposed to Covid and NHS staff were badly let down. Our NHS deserves much better.

UK health secretary Matt Hancock’s resignation letter to the prime minister in full:

I am writing to resign as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. We have worked so hard as a country to fight the pandemic. The last thing I would want is for my private life to distract attention from the single-minded focus that is leading us out of this crisis. I want to reiterate my apology for breaking the guidance, and apologise to my family and loved ones for putting them through this. I also need (to) be with my children at this time.

We owe it to people who have sacrificed so much in this pandemic to be honest when we have let them down as I have done by breaching the guidance.

The NHS is the best gift a nation has ever given itself, and the dedication and courage of the NHS staff and the ceaseless work of the officials in the Department is something we should all be proud of. We didn’t get every decision right but I know people understand how hard it is to deal with the unknown, making the difficult trade-offs between freedom, prosperity and health that we have faced. I am so proud that Britain avoided the catastrophe of an overwhelmed NHS and that through foresight and brilliant science we have led the world in the vaccination effort, so we stand on the brink of a return to normality.

The reforms we have started in the health system will ensure it continues to provide even better care for people in years to come. We are building a better NHS which makes smarter use of technology and data, forming a new UK Health Security Agency, delivering positive changes to mental health care and will fix the problems in social care once and for all.

Many times I stood at the podium in Downing Street and thanked the team - my own team, the NHS, the volunteers, the Armed Services, our pharmacists GPs, the pharmaceutical industry and the whole British public who have made such sacrifices to help others. Those thanks are heartfelt and sincere and so I must resign.

It has been the honour of my life to serve in your Cabinet as Secretary of State and I am incredibly proud of what we have achieved. I will of course continue to support you in whatever way I can from the back benches, and I would like to thank you for your unwavering support, your leadership and your optimism, particularly as we worked together to overcome this awful disease.

In his resignation video, posted to Twitter, UK health secretary Matt Hancock said: “I understand the enormous sacrifices that everybody in this country has made, you have made. And those of us who make these rules have got to stick by them and that’s why I’ve got to resign.

“I want to thank people for their incredible sacrifices and what they’ve done. Everybody working in the NHS, across social care, everyone involved in the vaccine programme and frankly everybody in this country who has risen to the challenges that we’ve seen over this past 18 months.”

Leading reaction, UK prime minister Boris Johnson said he was “sorry” to receive his resignation.

He said Hancock “should leave office very proud of what you have achieved - not just in tackling the pandemic, but even before Covid-19 struck us”. He added: “I am grateful for your support and believe that your contribution to public service is far from over.”

Labour leader Keir Starmer tweeted:

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey tweeted:

And the SNP Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, tweeted:

UK health secretary Matt Hancock’s resignation letter and Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s reply:

The latest data from the UK government shows that of the 76,322,467 vaccines administered so far, 44,078,244 were first doses (a rise of 200,383 on the previous day). 32,244,223 were second doses (a rise of 158,307).

Meanwhile, scenes from the anti-lockdown protests in London today:

China has said that it provides vaccines to other countries without any “political conditions attached”, reports the Associated Press.

Responding to a story by AP claiming that the country put pressure on Ukraine over a humans right statement on Xinjiang by threatening to withhold Covid vaccines, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said it welcomed Ukraine’s decision to remove its name from the statement but added: “We haven’t heard that Ukraine has encountered any difficulty in importing vaccines from China.”

The statement, signed by over 40 countries and presented at the Human Rights Council on Tuesday, called on China to allow immediate access for independent observers to Xinjiang.

China’s statement to AP said: “China’s provision of vaccines and anti-epidemic materials to other countries is not meant to gain benefits from other countries and there isn’t any geopolitical purpose nor any political conditions attached.”

Italy reported 40 Covid deaths and 838 new infections today, Reuters reports.

While the death toll was lower than yesterday – when 56 people died – today’s figures mark a rise in new infections from yesterday’s 753.

Since the start of the outbreak, Italy has recorded 127,458 deaths – Europe’s second highest death toll after the UK.

A cruise ship is to leave a US port for the first time since the start of the pandemic after a 15-month shutdown of the industry.

Celebrity Edge will leave Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at 6pm today with a 40% capacity of almost entirely vaccinated passengers.

My colleague Jedidajah Otte has left for the day and I’ll be taking over the liveblog. Please get in touch with any tips or suggestions: miranda.bryant@guardian.co.uk

Here some more detail on South Africa’s third wave of infections from Reuters:

New coronavirus infections in South Africa appear to be dominated by the Delta variant that was first identified in India, scientists said on Saturday as a third wave sweeps the hard-hit African country.

South Africa is the continent’s worst-affected nation in terms of coronavirus cases and deaths, accounting for roughly a third of confirmed infections and more than 40% of deaths.

But the rollout of vaccines has been slow, with just 2.7 million administered so far out of a population of 60 million.

The country’s second coronavirus wave was driven by the Beta variant first detected locally, but the Delta variant now looks to be leading new infections, specialists said.

“A new variant seems to be not only arising, but it seems to start dominating the infections in South Africa,” Professor Tulio de Oliveira at the University of KwaZulu-Natal told a news conference.

“It completely took over,” he said, adding that the Delta variant was more transmissible even than the Beta variant.

De Oliveira said there appeared to be community transmission of the Delta variant in KwaZulu-Natal province and that scientists were analysing the data for Gauteng, the province where the biggest city Johannesburg is located.

South Africa recorded more than 18,000 new infections on Friday, with 215 deaths.

Acting health minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane told the news conference it was now likely that the peak of the third wave would surpass that of the second wave in January, when more than 21,000 new daily cases were recorded.

A government statement said a flurry of meetings would take place on Saturday and Sunday to consider measures to respond to the Delta variant and the ongoing surge in infections.

President Cyril Ramaphosa will address the nation at 8 pm local time (1800 GMT) on Sunday.

Thousands of anti-lockdown protesters are walking down Northumberland Avenue in central London carrying placards and flags.

Drums, whistling and chanting can be heard for some distance around, with people young and old taking part, PA reports.

One speaker stood on a plinth near Embankment station and told crowds: “We are here to take our freedom back.”

Iain McCausland, one of the participants, travelled to London from Devon to attend the rally. He said:

The main reason I’m here is because I feel this lockdown has come at the cost of our liberty and rights.

Our freedom to assemble, our freedom to travel, and work. I’m really quite angry with the government, so are everyone here.

There was a party atmosphere as the crowds headed down the Embankment past New Scotland Yard.

But tennis balls in their dozens were then thrown over the fence into the grounds of parliament.

Asked why protesters were throwing tennis balls, one man, who did not wish to be named, said:

They have little messages on them. Most of them are not very nice.

Germany will soon have enough Covid vaccine doses to be able to offer shots in walk-in clinics in city centres or at places of worship as it seeks to vaccinate at least 80% of the population, health officials said on Saturday.

While demand is still outstripping supply in many doctors’ practices, this will switch to a surplus in the next few weeks, the health minister, Jens Spahn, said, adding that the country needed to press on fast with vaccinations to prevent the Delta variant from taking hold.

The government will deliver 5m doses to regional vaccination centres in the first week of July and the drugmaker Moderna Inc will be able to deliver double the doses it had originally promised Germany, Spahn said in a televised discussion on the pandemic.

Rising supply levels will enable the country to shift to campaigning more actively to encourage those who are hesitant to get a shot, offering vaccines to passers-by in city centres, or at churches and mosques.

Spahn said there were already hundreds of thousands of doses of vaccines produced by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson that were not immediately being used in doctors practices. Many Germans favour the vaccine made by Pfizer/BioNTech, Reuters reports.

Germany has now fully vaccinated more than one-third of the total population, while 53% have had a first shot, with 852,814 doses injected on Friday alone, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) public health agency reported on Saturday.

The RKI head, Lothar Wieler, said Germany wanted to vaccinate at least 80% of the population: “We need to reach that figure so we have basic protection.”

Even though infection rates are currently low in Germany – with only 592 new cases reported on Saturday – Spahn said the rapid spread of the Delta variant in the UK and Israel showed the need for speedy vaccinations.

Germany’s death toll rose by 68 to 90,746 on Saturday.

The RKI declared on Friday that Portugal and Russia would be added to its list of “virus-variant zones” that already includes Britain and that triggers restrictions on travel.

If the residents of Apes’ Den are pleased to see a larger than usual number of Britons snapping them, cooing over them or, indeed, edging gingerly away from them, they give little indication of it.

It is not much of a stretch to suggest that the social, political and economic ramifications of the current pandemic have been wholly lost on the crag-haunting, tourist-attracting Barbary macaques as they lounge around their lair high above the busy streets and marinas of Gibraltar.

The small but admirably menacing primates do what they always do: they skulk, squabble, snooze and groom each other – and study their visitors with a gaze that is disdainful until a particularly tempting rucksack renders it covetous.

The human denizens of the Rock are altogether more grateful for Gibraltar’s much-envied spot on the British government’s travel green list. And so are the many UK visitors who have touched down on the territory’s airstrip-cum-road in search of sun and an escape from the hardships of the past 15 months.

Malta will move to the green list at 4am on 30 June – with Madeira and the Balearic islands being added to the green “watchlist” at the same time – but, for now, Gibraltar remains the only familiar European option for those hankering for sun and sand.

Richard Candler, a 53-year-old prison officer from Devon, had intended to spend part of June in the US with his wife and two friends. But things had not panned out as planned and the group were exploring the historic gun batteries and tunnels of the Rock on a clammy Thursday afternoon. Taken as he was by the “fascinating” tunnels, Candler admitted Gibraltar had been very much Plan D.

“We were meant to be going to New York but that got cancelled, and then so did Florida,” he said. “Then we were going to go to Portugal but it turned amber.” Singapore, Iceland and the Faroe Islands were also mooted but, in the end, the group opted for Gibraltar. In a conclusion unlikely to be adopted as a slogan by the territory’s tourism authorities, Candler added: “We’re purely here because we couldn’t go anywhere else.”

A total of 64,089,251 Covid-19 vaccinations took place in England between December 8 and June 25, according to NHS England data, including first and second doses, which is a rise of 310,890 on the previous day.

NHS England said 36,944,843 were first doses, a rise of 177,515 on the previous day, while 27,144,408 were a second dose, an increase of 133,375.

Iran’s Actoverco pharmaceutical firm has produced a test batch of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19, the Russian Direct Investment Fund said on Saturday.

Iran is the first country in the Middle East to produce the vaccine, RDIF said, adding that this would help accelerate vaccinations without boosting logistic costs.

Iran approved Sputnik V for domestic use in January and had planned to start domestic production in April.

Namibia will from Tuesday temporarily suspend administering first doses of Covid-19 vaccines as supplies run low, a health ministry memo seen by Reuters showed.

The southern African nation, in the midst of a deadly third wave of infections, recorded more than 2,500 new cases on Thursday, the highest daily tally since the virus was first detected in the country in March last year.

The memo seen by Reuters said vaccine stocks had almost been depleted due to delays in the delivery of procured doses.

It said remaining doses of the AstraZeneca and Sinopharm vaccines should be reserved for people getting their second doses.
Out of Namibia’s population of 2.5 million people, only about 116,000 have received a first dose of either the Sinopharm or AstraZeneca vaccine, while about 23,000 have received two vaccine doses.

Because it is classified as an upper-middle-income country, Namibia had to pay to participate in global vaccine distribution scheme Covax. Despite making payment, it has received only 24,000 doses out of 108,000 allocated by the facility.

It has received donations of 100,000 Sinopharm doses from China and 30,000 AstraZeneca doses from India.

It still expects a further 150,000 Sinopharm doses, 100,000 AstraZeneca shots, 80,000 Johnson & Johnson doses and 80,000 shots of Russia’s Sputnik V, the health ministry executive director Ben Nangombe told reporters on Friday.

Nangombe was quoted by the state-owned New Era newspaper as saying delays in vaccine deliveries were linked to pharmaceutical companies focusing on orders from bigger clients.

Seasonal flooding of the Ganges is flushing out shallow graves and exposing some of the hundreds of bodies that were buried by the river during India’s recent Covid-19 surge.

Neeraj Kumar Singh, an official in the northern city of Allahabad, said almost 150 bodies have had to be cremated in the past three weeks.

“We are not exhuming any bodies but only those which are floating up due to rising water levels are being cremated,” he told AFP.

“The area is spread over a kilometre [half a mile] and our guess is there are around 500-600 bodies buried.”

“Every precaution is taken in dealing with the bodies while performing their final rites.”

Most are believed to have died from coronavirus in April and May when India was hit by a spike in infections that overwhelmed hospitals in many areas.

South Africa is in the middle of a “third wave” of infections, recording more than 18,000 new cases on Friday, Reuters reports.

The acting health minister, Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane, said it is likely that the peak of this wave would surpass the peak of the second wave in January.

The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, “risks jeopardising vital public health measures” by retaining Matt Hancock as health secretary, the Scottish National party said.

The party has added to the growing pressure on Hancock to resign after he was caught kissing a close aide in breach of coronavirus restrictions.

The SNP said there were “very serious questions” for Hancock and that the incident could not “simply be brushed under the carpet”.

Its Westminster deputy leader, Kirsten Oswald, said: “Boris Johnson risks jeopardising the vital public health measures in place the longer he desperately clings on to his shamed health secretary - just like he did with Dominic Cummings.
“The prime minister must at long last do the right thing and put his responsibilities to public health first.”

The Delta variant of the coronavirus appears to have started dominating Covid-19 infections in South Africa, scientist Tulio de Oliveira told a news conference, Reuters reports.

Russia’s Euro 2020 host, St Petersburg, has reported the country’s highest daily Covid-19 toll for a city since the start of the pandemic, data showed.

Official figures said the city, which has already hosted six Euro 2020 matches and is due to host a quarter final on Friday, recorded 107 virus deaths over the past 24 hours, AFP reports.

Russian news agencies said this was the highest toll of any Russian city since the start of the pandemic.

St Petersburg was where dozens of Finland supporters caught coronavirus after they travelled to the city for their team’s defeat against Belgium.

Russia as a whole reported 21,665 new infections on Saturday, the highest daily figure since January.

More than 70% of coronavirus cases in the Lisbon area are from the more contagious Delta variant, which is quickly spreading to other parts of the country, a report said late on Friday, as authorities scramble to stop a worrying rise in infections.

On Friday, the country reported 1,604 new cases, the biggest daily rise since 19 February, when the country of just over 10 million people was still under lockdown.

The national health institute, Ricardo Jorge, said in its report that the Delta variant represented 51% of cases in mainland Portugal, showing the variant was “spreading rapidly” as it had done in the UK.

In total, Portugal has recorded 871,483 cases and 17,081 deaths.

Although most new cases are still concentrated in the populous Lisbon region, the southern Algarve region, famous for its beaches and golf courses, has the highest Covid-19 reproduction “R” number of 1.34, the report said.

Tourism-dependent Portugal opened to visitors from the EU and Britain in mid-May. Most businesses have reopened and, as the summer season kicks off, beaches are packed, Reuters reports.

On Thursday, Portugal imposed stricter rules, including forcing restaurants to shut earlier over the weekend in Lisbon and in the Algarve tourism magnet Albufeira, a popular destination for British visitors.

The UK removed Portugal from its quarantine-free travel list earlier this month and Germany declared Portugal to be a “virus-variant zone” on Thursday, a measure that will trigger severe restrictions on travel to and from the country.

The number of people in need of hospital care in Portugal, which faced its toughest battle against the virus in January, has also increased. There are 71 Covid-19 patients in intensive care in Lisbon, occupying 86% of beds allocated to those infected by the virus.

Portugal is speeding up the vaccination of younger people. Only about 30% of the population has been fully vaccinated so far.

A central Russian region on Saturday suspended Covid-19 vaccinations for two days due to a shortage of doses, local officials said, as the country reported its highest daily increase in coronavirus cases since mid-January.

Russia is facing a surge in new cases that authorities blame on the highly infectious Delta variant and slow progress on vaccinating people, with deaths hitting a new record in the capital, Moscow, on Friday.

Following shortages that suspended inoculation campaigns from Friday at some centres in the Bashkiria and Khabarovsk regions, health officials in the central Udmurtia region said vaccinations would stop until Monday due to a supply crunch.

The Kremlin said the issue would be resolved in the coming days, and the prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, announced additional health spending of 25 billion roubles ($346.80m) for the care of Covid-19 patients.

So far, 21 million of Russia’s 144 million people have received at least one vaccine dose, the health minister, Mikhail Murashko, said on Friday.

By the end of this month, 2.5m doses of the country’s Sputnik Light single-dose vaccine will be put into circulation, he said on Saturday.

As virus cases surge in Uganda, making scarce hospital beds even more expensive, concern is growing over the alleged exploitation of patients by private hospitals accused of demanding payment up front and hiking fees.

The Associated Press reports:

Uganda is among African countries seeing a dramatic rise in the number of infections amid a severe vaccine shortage. The pandemic is resurging in 12 of Africa’s 54 countries, the World Health Organization reported Thursday, saying the current wave is “picking up speed, spreading faster, hitting harder.”

Africa’s top public health official, John Nkengasong of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Thursday that Africa’s third wave is “very devastating” as the delta variant drives infections in many countries.

Just 1% of people across Africa have been fully vaccinated, and Uganda has vaccinated under 1% of its 44 million people. It has confirmed 75,537 infections, including 781 deaths. The actual totals are believed to be much higher because only a few thousand samples are tested daily.

Hospitals in cities including the capital, Kampala, report difficulties in finding bottled oxygen, and some are running out of space for Covid-19 patients. Intensive care units are in high demand.

Although the practice of requiring deposits from patients has long been seen as acceptable in this East African country where few have health insurance, it is raising anger among some who cite attempts to profiteer from the pandemic.

Without a national health insurance scheme, Covid-19 has highlighted that health care in Uganda is “commoditised, available to the highest bidder,” said Daniel Kalinaki, a columnist with the Daily Monitor newspaper.

“The lingering question is how did we go from a place where you paid what you could and made sure to clear your dues on your next visit, to one where patients will not be touched until the whiny-voiced bean counter in the accounts office confirms that their deposit has cleared?”

Many Ugandans don’t trust government hospitals, citing the decay they find there as well as the occasional lack of basic supplies. Top government officials routinely seek treatment abroad. Most people attend private facilities that have mushroomed across the country in the years since the health sector was opened up to private investors.

Some hospital bills shared by families of Covid-19 patients emerging from intensive care show sums of up to $15,000, a small fortune in a country where annual per capita income is less than $1,000.

Private hospital directors who spoke to the local press defended their fees policy, saying looking after Covid-19 patients is risky and not cheap.

Health authorities have said they are investigating allegations of exploitation.

My colleague Sarah Marsh has written a piece on why the UK health secretary, Matt Hancock, has been called a hypocrite for breaking guidelines while telling the public what to do, and has created a handy timeline of what Hancock told the public to do and when.

Hancock previously said he had been left “speechless” by Prof Neil Ferguson’s “extraordinary” behaviour, and that it was right for Ferguson to resign as a government Sage adviser after he was caught breaking social distancing rules to meet a woman he was seeing.

One comment stands out in particular. On 24 March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, Hancock stressed that the government’s measures to contain the virus were “not advice, they are rules”.

On Friday, he apologised for having breached “guidance”.

Just 11% of Russia’s population of 146 million is fully vaccinated – whether due to vaccine scepticism, doubts about Sputnik or other Russian-made vaccines, or “nihilism”, as a Kremlin spokesperson has suggested.

But with more than 20,000 new cases reported across Russia in the past two days, as well as tough new restrictions on those who have not received their jabs, lines at public vaccination centres are now stretching out the door.

At an emergency vaccination site in Moscow’s Metropolis mall, dozens of Russians were lined up on a recent morning for a shot of Sputnik.

“It’s three hours now, soon it will be four,” an attendant said as he ran among a mostly young crowd filling out forms with their medical data. I asked if it was always like this. “It’s just this week – just since Monday,” he replied.

What has changed are a series of strict new measures by Moscow and other cities that will target those who refuse to vaccinate. From Monday, Moscow cafes and restaurants will require vaccine QR codes for patrons to be seated. Hospitals will turn away patients seeking non-emergency surgeries. Public spaces, including outdoor playgrounds, have been closed. Government and service industries have been set a goal of vaccinating 60% of their employees.

“No, I don’t completely trust [the vaccine], but at this point I don’t believe that I have a choice,” said Anastasia Lavrentyeva, who works in human resources and also has a freelance event and training business for corporate clients. “It’s the vaccine or soon I won’t be able to work at all.” She hopes the harsh restrictions will be temporary, and that outdoor events will be allowed by the end of summer.

My colleague Andrew Roth reports.

This from the British Labour MP and former shadow chancellor John McDonnell on the future of the health secretary, Matt Hancock:

Russia reported 21,665 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday, including 8,457 in Moscow, taking the official national tally since the pandemic began to 5,430,753.

A week ago, on 18 June, Russia had reported 17,051 new cases, as well as 447 further deaths.

The government coronavirus taskforce said 619 people had died of coronavirus-linked causes in the past 24 hours, pushing the national death toll to 132,683.

The federal statistics agency has kept a separate count and has said Russia recorded around 270,000 deaths related to the virus from April 2020 to April 2021.

A healthcare company that employs as a senior director the brother of the aide the UK health secretary, Matt Hancock, was pictured kissing has said it had never benefited from the connection to the him.

PA reports:

Reports suggested Roberto Coladangelo, strategy director at Partnering Health Limited (PHL Group), was the brother of Gina Coladangelo.

And as the familial connection between the two was confirmed on Saturday, PHL, which provides urgent and primary care services, said it had never been awarded any contracts by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

Mr Hancock’s job hangs in the balance after he was caught on video kissing Mrs Coladangelo in his DHSC office.

Mrs Coladangelo, who is married to the founder of the retailer Oliver Bonas, Oliver Tress, is a friend of Mr Hancock from their days together at Oxford University and was appointed to the DHSC last year.

She was initially taken on as an unpaid adviser on a six-month contract in March 2020, before being appointed as a non-executive director at the department.

There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing in regard to the awarding of any contracts to PHL.

But it comes after Mr Hancock was ruled to have committed a “minor” but undeliberate breach of the ministerial code by failing to declare that a family firm in which he held shares won an NHS contract, following a probe by the Prime Minister’s ethics adviser.

Independent adviser on ministerial standards Lord Geidt found that Mr Hancock, 42, should have declared that Topwood Limited, a firm owned by his sister and in which he held 20% shares, was approved as an NHS contractor.
Lord Geidt did not recommend that he resign.

In February, Mr Hancock was also forced to defend his connection to Hinpack, a manufacturing business run by former publican Alex Bourne.

The Guardian reported at the time that Mr Bourne, who used to run the Cock Inn in Little Thurlow, a village in the Health Secretary’s West Suffolk constituency, contacted Mr Hancock over WhatsApp to offer his services during the pandemic.

The firm partnered with a diagnostics supplier to produce specimen collection tubes and funnels for Covid-19 testing but Mr Hancock and Mr Bourne both said the Health Secretary had not been involved in awarding the contract and told Mr Bourne to apply through the Government website like everyone else.

Commenting on the Hancock saga, the human rights barrister Adam Wagner told BBC News:

I am pretty clear, although you never know for sure, that there was a breach of the regulations, on the basis that at the time it was illegal to have any gathering of more than one person anywhere indoors unless an exception applied.

The only one that could reasonably be said to apply or possibly said to apply would be that this was reasonably necessary for work purposes.

But based on what we know and what we can see in the images, it doesn’t seem that that was reasonably necessary for work purposes.

The Labour party chair, Anneliese Dodds, said if the UK health secretary, who has been married to the mother of his three children, Martha, for 15 years, had been secretly having a relationship with an adviser he appointed to a taxpayer-funded role, it was “a blatant abuse of power and a clear conflict of interest”.

A No 10 spokesman said the “correct procedure” had been followed in relation to Hancock’s aide Gina Coladangelo’s appointment but refused to go into detail.

Prof Stephen Reicher, a government behavioural science adviser on the Spi-B committee, said the prime minister sticking by aides and ministers who may have breached the rules made the repercussions for restriction compliance “toxic”, PA reports.

The British health secretary, Matt Hancock, is facing mounting pressure to resign, while families bereaved by Covid have written to the prime minister, Boris Johnson, urging him to sack the minister. Others pressured Johnson to call in the government’s ethics adviser.

Hancock apologised only for breaking social distancing “guidance” after he was caught on CCTV kissing his aide Gina Coladangelo, a non-executive director at the Department of Health and Social Care he befriended while at Oxford University, and said he was “very sorry” for letting people down.

A video from 6 May showing Hancock in an embrace with Coladangelo in his ministerial office was published on Friday night, after stills from the CCTV clip earlier in the day prompted Labour to call his position “hopelessly untenable”.

Hancock asked for “privacy” to deal with this “personal matter”. Downing Street said the prime minister had accepted Hancock’s apology for breaking the rules, and “considers the matter closed”.

But lawyers described how Hancock may have broken the law regarding coronavirus restrictions, although he admitted only to breaching guidance.

The Daily Telegraph reported that Tory MPs were telling the prime minister to “pull the plug”, as a snap poll from Savanta ComRes found 58% of UK adults thought that Hancock should resign, compared with 25% who thought he should not.

A snap poll by YouGov found that 49% of those surveyed thought Hancock should step down, up from 36% in May.

The Covid-19 Bereaved Families For Justice group, which represents those who have lost loved ones to the pandemic, also called for the health secretary’s resignation.

Hancock is also accused of breaking the ministerial code and in a letter to the prime minister, Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner said Lord Geidt, the independent adviser on ministerial interests, should probe Hancock’s behaviour.

The Metropolitan police said it was not investigating any offences, which allegedly took place last month, because “as a matter of course the MPS is not investigating Covid-related issues retrospectively”.

I’m Jedidajah Otte and I’ll be running this blog for the next few hours. As ever, feel free to get in touch if you have anything to flag, I’m on Twitter @JedySays or you can email me.