France reports nearly half a million new cases, a record increase; Italy records 228,179 daily infections – as it happened

That’s it from me, Samantha Lock, for today’s Covid blog.

Please join me on our latest live feed here where I’ll be focusing a little more on the coronavirus crisis across Asia, Australia and the Pacific.

We also expect to hear new announcements regarding Plan B Covid measures across England after British prime minister Boris Johnson meets with his cabinet on Wednesday morning.

You can also keep up with the top headlines here.

The mood of Conservative MPs hardened against Boris Johnson on Tuesday night, with open talk of how to oust the British prime minister and who should succeed him as he gave a disastrous interview claiming not to have lied over Downing Street parties.

A string of Tory MPs from various ranks and wings of the party said they believed there would be enough letters to trigger a leadership contest after the publication of the Sue Gray report into allegations of lockdown breaches.

Johnson was trying to shore up his support in the parliamentary party after it emerged a group of a dozen or so of the 2019 intake had met in the office of Alicia Kearns to discuss his future as prime minister.

After the meeting – dubbed the “pork pie putsch” as Kearns’ constituency contains Melton Mowbray – one MP said there were about 20 letters, “some sent, some in draft”. There needs to be 54 letters submitted to trigger a confidence ballot against the prime minister, who met some of the new cohort on Tuesday evening.

Read the full analysis here.

Returning to Boris Johnson’s fight to salvage his premiership for a moment.

With all the commotion over Westminster parties and the future of the prime minister, you may have lost track of how the Covid crisis is unfolding in the UK.

Johnson will attempt to change the national conversation by announcing the end of Plan B Covid measures.

The PM is expected to instruct millions to return to workplaces across England as he tries to placate furious MPs with a review of Covid restrictions that could end all rules introduced to combat Omicron.

The cabinet will meet on Wednesday morning to examine Covid data and review plan B restrictions imposed in December amid the rapid spread of the variant, with Johnson set to update the Commons later in the day.

While an official statement said decisions remained “finely balanced”, ministers are widely expected to approve the end of current advice for people to work from home where possible and the use of vaccine certificates to enter venues like nightclubs and sports stadiums. This would happen from Monday 26 January, the pre-set review point for the plan B measures.

It is also possible, if considered less likely, that the cabinet could drop the final plan B restriction which mandates masks on public transport and in shops. This move in particular would please many Conservative backbenchers, especially those in the influential Covid Recovery Group.

Samantha Lock back with you on the blog as my colleague Tom Ambrose calls it a night in London. I’ll be bringing you all the latest Covid news from Sydney.

Here’s a quick snapshot of how Covid is unfolding across Australia.

The country’s most populous state of NSW has recorded 32 deaths and 32,297 new cases while Victoria reported 18 Covid deaths and 20,769 new cases as hospitals move to emergency measures.

Australia’s chief medical officer says the daily death toll will continue to rise for several weeks.

Boris Johnson is expected to announce an easing of England’s coronavirus restrictions as he battles to save his premiership.

The prime minister and his cabinet will examine the latest Covid data on Wednesday morning before making a statement in the Commons on Wednesday afternoon, PA Media reported.

England’s Plan B measures – which include guidance to work from home, the use of the Covid pass and mandatory mask-wearing in shops and on public transport – are set to expire on 26 January.

The health secretary, Sajid Javid, told MPs on Tuesday that he was “cautiously optimistic that we will be able to substantially reduce restrictions next week”.

No final decisions have yet been made, although any attempt to extend the restrictions beyond the cut-off date would trigger a fresh confrontation with Tory MPs, something the prime minister would wish to avoid as his position has already been weakened due to the row over Downing Street parties.

Asked whether restrictions would be lifted during a visit to a hospital on Tuesday, Johnson said: “We’ve got to be careful about Covid. We’ve got to continue to remember that it’s a threat.”

The United Nations is preparing for distanced relief operations in Tonga to avoid a Covid outbreak in the Pacific island nation that is reeling under the impact of a volcanic eruption and tsunami, an official said on Wednesday.

All the homes on one of Tonga’s small outer islands have been destroyed and three people have so far been confirmed dead, the government said in its first statement after Saturday’s devastating eruption.

With communications badly hampered by the severing of an undersea cable, information on the scale of the devastation so far has mostly come from reconnaissance aircraft.

Fiji-based UN co-ordinator Jonathan Veitch said in a media briefing that the agency will conduct most operations remotely, and may not send personnel to the island.

“We believe that we will be able to send flights with supplies. We’re not sure that we can send flights with personnel and the reason for this is that Tonga has a very strict Covid-free policy,” Veitch said.

Tonga is one of the few countries that is Covid free and an outbreak there would disastrous, he said. The tiny island nation has 90% immunisation coverage both in adults and also younger people over the age of 12, Veitch said.

The Omicron variant may cause less severe disease on average, but Covid deaths in the US are climbing and modellers forecast 50,000 to 300,000 more Americans could die by the time the wave subsides in mid-March.

The seven-day rolling average for daily new Covid deaths in the US has been trending upward since mid-November, reaching nearly 1,700 on 17 January — still below the peak of 3,300 in January 2021.

Deaths among nursing home residents started rising slightly two weeks ago, although still at a rate 10 times less than last year before most residents were vaccinated.

“A lot of people are still going to die because of how transmissible Omicron has been,” said University of South Florida epidemiologist Jason Salemi. “It unfortunately is going to get worse before it gets better.”

The worst of the coronavirus pandemic — deaths, hospitalisations and lockdowns — could be over this year if huge inequities in vaccinations and medicines are addressed quickly, the head of emergencies at the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.

Dr Michael Ryan, speaking during a panel discussion on vaccine inequity hosted by the World Economic Forum, said “we may never end the virus” because such pandemic viruses “end up becoming part of the ecosystem.”

But “we have a chance to end the public health emergency this year if we do the things that we’ve been talking about,” he said.

The Associated Press reported:

WHO has slammed the imbalance in COVID-19 vaccinations between rich and poor countries as a catastrophic moral failure. Fewer than 10% of people in lower-income countries have received even one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Ryan told the virtual gathering of world and business leaders that if vaccines and other tools aren’t shared fairly, the tragedy of the virus, which has so far killed more than 5.5 million people worldwide, would continue.

“What we need to do is get to low levels of disease incidence with maximum vaccination of our populations, so nobody has to die,” Ryan said. “The issue is: It’s the death. It’s the hospitalisations. It’s the disruption of our social, economic, political systems that’s caused the tragedy — not the virus.”

Ryan also waded into the growing debate about whether Covid should be considered endemic, a label some countries like Spain have called for to better help live with the virus, or still a pandemic — involving intensified measures that many countries have taken to fight the spread.

“Endemic malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people; endemic HIV; endemic violence in our inner cities. Endemic in itself does not mean good. Endemic just means it’s here forever,” he said.

The Biden administration on Tuesday quietly launched its website for Americans to request free at-home Covid-19 tests, a day before the site was scheduled to officially go online.

The website, CovidTests.gov, now includes a link for Americans to access an order form run by the US Postal Service.

People can order four at-home tests per residential address. It marks the latest step by Joe Biden to address criticism of low inventory and long lines for testing during a nationwide surge in Covid-19 cases due to the Omicron variant.

The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said the website was in “beta testing” and operating at a “limited capacity” ahead of its official launch. The website will officially launch mid-morning on Wednesday, Psaki said.

There were isolated reports of problems relating to the address verification tool erroneously enforcing the four-per-household cap on apartment buildings and other multi-unit dwellings, but it was not immediately clear how widespread the issue was.

Spain’s coronavirus infection rate dropped for the first time in two-and-a-half months, health ministry data showed on Tuesday.

The latest figures suggest the Omicron variant’s rapid-fire advance may be slowing, according to the Reuters news agency.

Even as Spain reported over 94,400 new cases, the rate as measured over the preceding 14 days fell to 3,306 cases per 100,000 people from a record 3,397 cases on Wednesday, the first decline since 2 November when it was below 50.

The seven-day rate fell even more sharply, to 1,522 from 1,657 per 100,000.

Infections had climbed without interruption amid mass testing, turbo-charged by Omicron’s elevated transmissibility and large swathes of the population mixing over Christmas.

Hospital admissions remain well below those seen in earlier waves, however, thanks to Spain’s high vaccination rates.

Hello, I’m Tom Ambrose and will continue to bring you all the latest Covid news as it happens over the next few hours.

We begin with the news that Paraguay’s president Mario Abdo has tested positive for Covid and has mild symptoms from the virus.

The country’s health ministry confirmed the development in a tweet today.

It comes as the South American country has seen a spike in cases driven by the Omicron variant.

“We inform that the President of the Republic, Mario Abdo, tested positive for Covid-19 today,” the ministry said.

“The president has mild symptoms and will continue to maintain preventive isolation in accordance with the provisions of the current health protocols.”

It’s the question bugging us every time we leave the house. Which mask is best to wear during the Omicron outbreak? Are cloth masks still effective?

Earlier in the coronavirus pandemic, the public was encouraged to wear reusable cloth masks or surgical masks, while P2/N95 respirators were not recommended for community use. But the Omicron variant’s increased transmissibility has prompted the question: should you consider switching your reusable mask for a respirator instead?

Guardian Australia produced this helpful explainer...

Here’s a stark reminder of the potential long-lasting impacts of Covid, including on mental health. Sam Unsted, an editor at Bloomberg news, offered this anecdote of his experience with Covid.

“So for anyone also suffering with the fatigue and brain fog, I’m there with you. Be kind to yourself,” he writes.

Vaccine developers should tailor jabs to multiple variants, said the EU drugs regulator.

Reuters reports:

The European Union drugs regulator said pharmaceutical companies should work on more than one upgraded Covid-19 shot, not only tailored to the fast-emerging Omicron variant but also versions that address a combination of variants.

Head of vaccines strategy Marco Cavaleri said it is “important not to exclude any options”.

Vaccine makers including BioNTech-Pfizer, Moderna and the alliance between AstraZeneca and Oxford University are working on a redesign of their established shots to tackle Omicron, which is becoming dominant in many regions.

BioNTech boss Ugur Sahin last week questioned the need to develop products tailored to more than just Omicron because immunity against Omicron has been shown to protect people against preceding virus variants.

“Omicron infection and an Omicron vaccine will most likely, with a high probability, also boost immune responses against all existing variants,” Sahin said in an analyst call as part of JP Morgan’s virtual healthcare conference.

“What is the value if we now combine a potential Omicron vaccine with another variant as the Omicron vaccine alone would most likely do the job?” he added.

In pictures: Berlin rolls out portable cabins for Covid testing as Germany reaches 8m reported cases

Covid jabs made using mRNA technology do not cause pregnancy complications for expectant mothers and their babies, the EU’s drug regulator said today, following a detailed review of several studies.

Billions of doses of mRNA vaccines have been administered across the globe since the Covid-19 outbreak began.

Reuters reports:

The review based on studies involving around 65,000 pregnancies at different stages did not find any sign of higher risk of complications, miscarriages, preterm births or severe side-effects on the unborn babies from mRNA jabs, the European Medicines Agency said.

Pfizer and BioNTech, as well as Moderna, currently supply such vaccines to the European Union.

While the EMA acknowledged there were some limitations in the data, it said results were consistent across studies.

“The benefits of receiving mRNA Covid-19 vaccines during pregnancy outweigh any possible risks for expectant mothers and unborn babies,” the agency said.

Abu Dhabi has announced it will ban visitors who have not had their booster jab from entry to the city, as the United Arab Emirates reports a surge in Covid cases driven by the spread of Omicron.

People entering the capital of the UAE must show a ‘green pass’ confirming their vaccination status, said the government health app.

Visitors are no longer considered fully vaccinated unless they have received a booster at least six months after their second dose.

Those wishing to enter Abu Dhabi must also have tested negative for the virus within the last two weeks to maintain their ‘green’ status.

More than 90% of Abu Dhabi’s population are vaccinated, health authorities have said.

The UAE has seen daily cases jump from about 50 a day in early December to more than 3,000 a day this week. The country has reported 2,195 deaths involving Covid as of Monday.

Global tourism inched back in 2021, with Europe and the Americas showing the strongest recovery, but is still a fraction of pre-pandemic levels, said the World Tourism Organisation on Tuesday (UNWTO).

After 2020, the worst year on record for tourism, there were faint hopes the industry would regain footing in 2021. But all indicators show it has barely improved.

Global tourism arrivals have tumbled to less than a quarter of what they were in 2019, and industry professionals are not expecting a full recovery before 2024, according to a report by the UN agency.

Rising vaccination rates and the easing of travel rules did allow a small rebound in the second half of 2021, though the spread of the Omicron variant close to Christmas triggered another dip in both travel bookings and industry optimism.

“The pace of recovery remains slow and uneven across world regions due to varying degrees of mobility restrictions, vaccination rates and traveller confidence,” the report said.

Southern Mediterranean Europe, Central America and the Caribbean reported the biggest increases in tourist arrivals compared with 2020, but were still respectively 54%, 56% and 37% below the 2019 numbers. Tourism in the Asia Pacific has suffered the most, with visitor numbers down by 94% compared with pre-pandemic levels.

Global tourism’s direct gross product rose 19% in 2021 from 2020 to $1.9tn, the report said, as each tourist spent more and stayed longer than in 2020. But the tourism industry’s revenue still barely surpassed half its 2019 levels.

About 64% of tourism professionals polled by the UNWTO in December do not expect a full recovery before 2024 or later – up from the 45% polled in September, when perspectives for travel revival had not yet been marred by Omicron.

“The recent rise in Covid-19 cases and the Omicron variant are set to disrupt the recovery and affect confidence through early 2022 as some countries reintroduce travel bans and restrictions for certain markets,” the report said.

Will tourism survive the pandemic? And what kind of world will there be without it? A terrific long-read by Christopher de Bellaigue digs into the consequences for our planet and societies.

Russia will halve the isolation period for infected people to seven days, AP reports.

Here’s another update from Russia, where daily cases have more than doubled in the past week – from about 15,000 on 10 January to 31,252 on Tuesday. Officials have sounded the alarm about the rising spread of cases, but so far haven’t announced any nationwide curbs to stem it.

Deputy prime minister Tatyana Golikova, who runs the country’s coronavirus taskforce, said health officials were “optimising our approaches to quarantine and testing of our citizens, including shortening the quarantine period to seven days”. Currently, people who test positive need to isolate for two weeks, with a mandatory follow-up test on day 11.

Golikova added that other policy changes will be adopted in the coming days, without going into details about what these changes might be. She didn’t say why the government is cutting the isolation period.

Moscow’s mayor has extended coronavirus curbs and says there will be tough weeks ahead with Omicron, reports Reuters.

Sergey Sobyanin announced on Tuesday he will extend Covid-19 home-working rules and guidance to protect elderly people until 1 April as the city prepares for a sharp rise in infections with the Omicron variant.

“Given the rapid and wide spread of omicron, it is clear that the workload of outpatient clinics will increase sharply,” he said.

“For clinics to cope with their increased work load, more doctors have been put on duty … We have a few difficult weeks ahead of us.”

Moscow imposed rules from late October to the end of February requiring people over 60 to stay at home unless they were vaccinated or had recovered from Covid, and obliging businesses to move at least 30% of staff to remote work.

Russia’s Covid death toll stands at more than 670,000, the second highest in the world behind the US, according to official data.

Let’s quickly dip into some of the top stories from our UK Covid and politics blog, hosted today by Andrew Sparrow:

• Boris Johnson insists he did think the gathering in No 10 garden was a “work event”, PA Media reports. Chancellor Rishi Sunak said he stands by Johnson’s account of the parties.
  
• The PM says in an interview with Beth Rigby no one told him the No 10 party was against the rules.
  
• No 10 says PM did not lie to MPs – but that he accepts lying to parliament would be a resignation matter.
  
• The government has won its legal bid to overturn a ruling that a contract given to a company whose founders were friends of former adviser Dominic Cummings was unlawful, PA Media reports.
• Johnson won’t rule out having to resign following the publication of Sue Gray’s report.
  

Our lobby reporters have been watching the Downing Street scandals closely. Catch up on all the government party revelations – and the fallout here:

News of Japan’s plans to declare a state of quasi-emergency broke earlier. Here’s our Tokyo correspondent, Justin McCurry, with the latest on the country’s Covid measures.

Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, is poised to declare a quasi-state of emergency in Tokyo and several other regions after the country reported the highest number of new coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic.

Kishida is expected to make a formal announcement this week, giving local governors the power to ask bars and restaurants to stop serving alcohol and close early and residents not to travel across prefectural borders.

Japanese authorities do not have the legal power to impose shorter operating hours or restrictions on people’s movements, but businesses that refuse to cooperate can face fines.

Japan reported more than 30,000 new infections on Tuesday, well above the previous record of almost 26,000 last August, just after Tokyo had hosted the summer Olympics. The Japanese capital reported 5,148 new cases – a more than fivefold increase from the same day last week – while Osaka recorded 5,396 infections.

The measures will reportedly go into effect on Friday in Tokyo and 12 other prefectures and end on 13 February. Okinawa and two other prefectures are already under quasi-emergency measures following outbreaks at US military bases that spread to local civilian populations.

The Omicron variant appears to be driving the latest surge in cases in what officials are describing as a sixth wave. “The Omicron variant is clearly different from existing variants. It is crucial to take effective measures that suit its characteristics,” the government’s chief health adviser, Shigeru Omi, told reporters after meeting Kishida.

The chief cabinet secretary, Hirokazu Matsuno, acknowledged that infections were spreading at an “unprecedented speed”, adding that there were concerns over pressure on hospitals if cases continued to rise dramatically.

Tokyo’s occupancy rate of hospital beds for Covid-19 patients reached 23.4% on Tuesday – occupancy would have to reach 50% to trigger a full-blown state of emergency.

About 80% of Japan’s 125 million population is double vaccinated, but only around 1% has received a booster shot. The government has promised to speed up boosters, but most people will have to wait until March or later under the current schedule.

Russia has so far recorded 1,682 cases of the Omicron variant, as authorities brace for a new wave of infections, reports Reuters.

Deputy prime minister Tatiana Golikova said on Tuesday that Russia has recorded 1,682 cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant across 42 regions, as authorities brace for a significant rise in infections.

Omicron has pushed case figures to record highs in parts of western Europe and the US but the variant has been slower to hit Russia.

Coronavirus cases in Russia have been steadily rising in the past week, and officials have warned the rapid spread of Omicron will lead to a surge in infections. Anna Popova, head of Russia’s public health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, said last week that daily new cases might reach six-figure levels.

The country’s state coronavirus task force registered 30,726 new infections on Monday – twice as many as just a week ago and the highest daily tally since early December. The task force has also reported 670 deaths.

Russia’s state coronavirus task force has registered over 10.8m confirmed infections and 321,990 deaths since the start of the pandemic. Russia’s state statistics agency, which uses broader counting criteria, puts the death toll much higher, saying the overall number of virus-linked deaths between April 2020 and October 2021 was over 625,000.

Greetings from London. I’m Georgina Quach and I’ll be at the helm for the next eight hours. As always, feel free to get in touch with comments, story tips and suggestions.

Email: georgina.quach@theguardian.com

Twitter: @georginaquach

A quick snap from Reuters here confirming that Japan’s prime minister Fumio Kishida has said he plans to impose a state of quasi-emergency, meaning stronger Covid-19 curbs on dining and gatherings, on 13 regions including Tokyo from 21 January to 13 February.

Incidentally, if like me, you are fascinated by Hong Kong authorities deciding that hamsters might be a potential Covid infection risk, late last year, science correspondent Linda Geddes had a look for us at how scientists are studying which animals can and cannot be infected with the novel coronavirus that sparked the global pandemic. It is well worth your time.

Read Linda Geddes’ report here: From hippos to hamsters – how Covid is affecting creatures great and small

Indonesia recorded 1,362 new Covid-19 cases today, report Reuters, making it the biggest single one-day increase for the country since 8 October.

Andrew Sparrow has launched his live blog for today, leading with Dominic Raab saying that Dominic Cummings is talking nonsense about Boris Johnson and the Downing Street parties. You can find that here.

I’ll be continuing here with global news about coronavirus.

Professor Andrew Hayward, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) in the UK, has told Times Radio he agrees that the “pandemic will end and we will move to a situation where we’re living with the virus continuing to transmit but causing much less disruption”.

He added: “It will tend to, I think, settle into a seasonal pattern - we may still get quite big winters of infection but not the sort of level where we can justify wholesale societal closedown. So I think it is genuinely an optimistic picture, but we’re still not quite there yet.”

“It doesn’t do the virus any good to become increasingly severe. In fact, it looks like the Omicron variant, by becoming more transmissible, that it’s also become less severe, and we would hope that’s the general direction of travel.”

PA Media quote him saying that in future not everyone will need booster vaccines, adding: “I think the people that we might want to think about boosting the most are the same as flu really – people with chronic illness and elderly people – and we’ll probably move into a sort of more regular annual vaccination programme, or it may not even need to be that frequent. We need to wait for the evidence on that.”

Dominic Raab, the UK’s deputy prime minister, has moved a little closer on the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme to suggesting that a prime minister who had misled parliament might feel obliged to resign. In his earlier appearance on Sky News he dismissed this as a “hypothetical” and would not be drawn on it.

Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s shadow secretary for work and pensions, has been on Sky News this morning. He said:

Not only Boris Johnson has he broken the rules, he also makes the rules. And we’ve had party after party after party at Downing Street. And not only that he was beamed into our front rooms night after night standing at podiums, telling us not to socialise outdoors, while at the same time doing the exact opposite of what he was telling us all we weren’t allowed to do.

It would have been obvious that as soon as you go into a garden when there’s trestle tables, with bottles of rosé and sausage rolls or whatever else, that’s pretty obvious that is a party, and he should have brought it to an end. And he should have said to his staff “I’ve never want to see anything like that ever again.”

William Hague says – former Conservative leader of course, not a Labour politician, absolutely not Labour – he says culture is set at the top. And this culture goes back to Boris Johnson.

A rather cutting observation on one aspect of deputy prime minister Dominic Raab’s media appearances in the UK this morning

The Tennis Australia board has come out in support of its under-pressure chief executive, Craig Tiley, while acknowledging it “deeply regrets” the distraction the Novak Djokovic deportation saga caused other Australian Open players.

The Jayne Hrdlicka-led board, which has been quiet throughout the two weeks of the scandal, finally broke its silence on Tuesday evening to note it “respects the decision of the immigration minister and the finding of the federal court of Australia” in cancelling Djokovic’s visa and then dismissing his bid to have it restored.

Read more of Emma Kemp’s report here: Tennis Australia board breaks silence to ‘commend’ Craig Tiley following Novak Djokovic saga

Abu Dhabi has announced it is requiring people entering the city to show proof of booster shots.

The government’s health app said earlier this week that people entering the city in the United Arab Emirates must show a “green pass” confirming their vaccination status. The app says that visitors are no longer considered fully vaccinated unless they have received a booster at least six months after their second dose.

Associated Press reports that those wishing to enter Abu Dhabi also must have have tested negative for the virus within the last two weeks to maintain their “green” status.

Another interesting quote from Dr David Nabarro, the World Health Organization’s special envoy on Covid-19, this time about testing. PA Media quotes him telling BBC Breakfast:

I do think that it’s going to be difficult to read too much into the numbers right now with the shift to more and more people using auto-testing and self-reporting.

Quite honestly, I know numerous people who’ve got Covid have picked it up on auto tests, who are not telling the authorities – not because they don’t want to be known or anything like that, it’s just simply they’ve got other things to do and they’re getting on with their lives. So, we just need to be careful with the numbers and, most importantly, it’s looking to see what’s happening in hospitals and whether or not death rates are starting to climb again.

I do think wearing masks, especially in crowded places, is really important. I do think physical distancing is important. I do think keeping yourself isolated if you’ve got Covid symptoms can save lives and other people.

Here’s the Mirror’s online political editor Dan Bloom with a less cleaned-up transcript of that priceless exchange between Sky News’ Kay Burley and deputy prime minister Dominic Raab again:

Dr David Nabarro, the World Health Organization’s special envoy on Covid-19, has repeated his message from yesterday that the situation in the UK “gives us grounds for hope” but continued to urge caution.

He told BBC Breakfast this morning: “The situation in the UK. It gives us grounds for hope and I’m personally very pleased to see that. The goal that we’re all aiming for is a situation where this virus is present, but life is organised so that it is not disrupted.

PA Media quotes him saying:

We also need to be humble, this virus is continuing to evolve and we’re never quite sure that we know exactly where it’s going to go next.

We need real honesty – it’s just no good anybody suggesting that the situation is rosier than it really is.

That’s why I’ve been careful. I’m saying I can see where the end is, I can see light at the end of the tunnel, but I really do anticipate right throughout the world a bumpy journey ahead during 2022.

There’s a raft of economic news about the UK out today, indicating a further bounce back from the Covid impact. My colleague Graeme Wearden has the details here. He says:

The UK’s unemployment rate has dropped again, as employers continue to add workers to their payroll … but wages are now lagging inflation again.

China has been an outlier in asserting that Covid-19 can be transmitted via cold-chain imports such as frozen meat and fish, and parcels through the mail, even though the World Health Organization has played down the risk, and scientists say that airborne transmission is by far the likeliest route of infection.

Nevertheless, with one Omicron case being discovered in Beijing ahead of the Winter Olympics, Chinese authorities appear to be doubling-down on this message. China Post has been reminding recipients of overseas mail to disinfect the contents “in a timely manner” with stickers pasted on parcels.

Associated Press notes that state broadcaster CCTV said late on Monday in a social media post “Minimise purchases of overseas goods or receiving mail from abroad. Be sure to protect yourself during face-to-face handovers and wear masks and gloves; try to open the package outdoors.”

On Sky News, deputy prime minister Dominic Raab has been asked if he witnessed a drinking culture at No 10 when he was running the country while Boris Johnson was in hospital in Covid. He said:

The thing I would say is that people were working extremely long hours, and so it doesn’t surprise me if they were people, as you see in other walks of life, having a glass of wine or beer at the end of the very long week.

Asked if that wasn’t against the rules at the time, he replied: “Not in a work setting.”

The deputy prime minister then got himself into a bit of a tangle, telling Kay Burley:

I’ll tell you something, OK, because I think it’s important, and I can only talk to what I know. And what I saw. And incredibly, I mean, there was speculation that the 20 May party was held in my honour to thank me, and it was just ridiculous.

She immediately picked up on this, asking “Was it?”. Raab said “No, of course not, ridiculous.”

“So it was a party on 20 May, then?” asked Burley.

Raab immediately went back to saying that it was just “a claim that was made”.

He defended staff at Downing Street, saying:

You asked me for my personal experience, and what I’m telling you is I think that the conditions in a crucible-like context, in a pandemic, the likes of which we’ve never seen before. All of my exposure, direct and personal, was to an incredibly hard-working team.

The deputy prime minister, Lord Chancellor and secretary of state for justice, Dominic Raab, is doing the media round for the government in the UK. He’s on Sky News at the moment, and he is very much trying to push the line that what people really care about is the cost of living, the vaccine and booster programme, and that his constituents barely mentioned the prime minister and the Downing Street parties at the weekend when he was out canvassing.

He has said “The prime minister has been very clear” that Dominic Cummings is not telling the truth in his claims that Boris Johnson knew about an email inviting people to a party. He said he would not be drawn into the “soap opera”.

Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA union for civil service managers, has been on the BBC’s Radio 4 programme this morning. He told listeners that the row over lockdown parties at Downing Street was “no doubt damaging to the reputation of the prime minister. But I think also, increasingly, it is damaging the reputation of the civil service in government.”

He said:

When I say it is damaging, yesterday I was approached by a pretty reputable American broadcaster, asking about the drinking culture of the civil service.

And I think there’s a real danger here that what has been clearly a fairly dysfunctional culture at No 10 when it comes to to Covid rules and breaking them, starts to look like a broader culture across the civil service. And some around the prime minister are running that defence, but it’s very damaging and it’s not true.

Here is a catch-up if you need it on the latest Covid figures in the UK.

There were 84,429 new Covid cases recorded yesterday, that is slightly up on the day before, but that is quite usual for a Tuesday due to the lag in counting the weekend numbers. Over the last seven days there have been 700,366 new coronavirus cases recorded in the UK, which means cases have decreased by 41% week-on-week. That seven-day average has been on a downward curve since 1 January.

It is worth noting, as illustrated by John Burn-Murdoch of the FT here, that the ONS sampling data also shows cases falling, suggesting it is probably not just a dip in testing numbers that are causing new case numbers to fall.

There have been 1,845 deaths recorded in the last week, with 85 added to the tally yesterday. Deaths have increased by 38.7% week-on-week.

Hospital admissions have decreased by 2% week-on-week. At the latest count on the UK government’s own dashboard, there were 19,345 people in hospital with Covid in total, of whom 746 are in ventilation beds. According to the government’s figures, the peak of hospitalisations during the pandemic was in January 2021, with 39,254 patients in hospital.

Hello from London, it is Martin Belam here. I see everything in the news over the last couple of days appears to have some special operation codeword like “Operation Save Big Dog” or “Operation Red Meat” and now “Operation Rinka”, so welcome to “Operation Live Blog” I guess? I’ll bring you the key lines from the morning TV and radio interviews in the UK over the next couple of hours. Deputy prime minister Dominc Raab is on duty this morning. I’m fairly certain that the lines “I can’t comment because I wasn’t there” and “I can’t comment because we need to wait for Sue Gray’s investigation” will be quite prominent. London mayor Sadiq Khan and Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary Jonathan Ashworth are also on media duties.

While we are in the European region, Germany is reporting a further 74,405 confirmed coronavirus cases and 193 deaths, according to the Robert Koch Institute.

The figures are a significant jump on cases recorded at the end of the last week.

Ukraine is reporting another 8,558 new confirmed coronavirus cases for Monday, according to a statement from its ministry of health.

Another 188 deaths were also recorded.

More than 15 million Ukrainians have received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.

Four inmates at an Arkansas jail in the US have filed a lawsuit against the facility and its doctor after they said they were unknowingly prescribed ivermectin to treat Covid-19 as a form of “medical experimentation” despite US health officials warning that the anti-parasitic drug should not be used for that purpose.

The Arkansas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of the men last week against Washington county jail, Washington county sheriff Tim Helder and jail physician Dr Robert Karas. Last August, Helder revealed that the drug had been prescribed to patients with Covid-19.

“The lawsuit charges the defendants for administering ivermectin to incarcerated individuals without prior informed consent as to the nature, contents, or potential side effects of the drug,” the ACLU said in a statement last week.

Read the full story here.

Hello, it’s Samantha Lock with you on the blog for the next hour or so before my colleague Martin Belam brings you all the morning news rounds from London.

Boris Johnson’s fight to salvage his premiership continues to somewhat overshadow the Covid crisis unfolding in the UK.

Rebel Tories are upping pressure on the PM to quit over the Downing Street parties scandal, with one backbencher naming the plan “Operation Rinka” in reference to the dog killed in the Jeremy Thorpe affair in the 1970s.

Others are stepping up pressure on colleagues to submit letters of no confidence in the prime minister.

The fury comes after John Griffin, the taxi firm tycoon who has given £4m to the Tories since 2013 and one of the Conservatives’ most generous donors, called on Johnson to resign and stand again for the Tory party nomination.

Griffin is at least the fifth donor to publicly raise concerns over the Downing Street parties scandal.

And with all the commotion over Westminster parties and the future of the prime minister, you may have lost track of what is happening elsewhere in the world.

On the other side of the pond, Australia recorded its deadliest day of the pandemic on Tuesday, with 74 deaths across the country.

New South Wales reported a record 36 deaths along with 29,830 new cases; Victoria reported 22 deaths and 20,180 new cases, while Queensland reported 16 deaths and 15,962 cases.

NSW chief health officer, Dr Kerry Chant, warned on Monday that a higher death toll over the coming days was likely, while NSW premier, Dominic Perrottet, lamented the new record, saying it was a “very difficult day”.

Another curious story to emerge from Australia concerns a coffee roaster that has come under fire for offering free rapid antigen tests with purchase orders over $159.99 as the country battles a shortage of tests.

In a text message sent out to “special VIP customers,” St Ali in Melbourne offered two free rapid antigen tests if customers bought $159.99 worth of coffee or merchandise from their online store.

“We’ve been fortunate to secure a limited number of Rapid Antigen Tests for our staff, families and friends. As a special VIP customer, we’d like to extend these to you too,” they said in the text.

The coffee roasters were also offering pulse oximeters, hand sanitiser, and contactless thermometers for sale via their website, alongside bags of coffee, filters and Champagne.

The roasters faced a fierce backlash to the text message, amid national shortages of rapid antigen tests and reports of price gouging and exploitation by some businesses, and have since retracted the offer.

Here are some more details from Guardian reporter Mostafa Rachwani surrounding Australia’s deadliest day of the pandemic.

The country’s most populous state of New South Wales reported a record 36 deaths along with 29,830 new cases; Victoria reported 22 deaths and 20,180 new cases, while Queensland reported 16 deaths and 15,962 cases.

NSW chief health officer, Dr Kerry Chant, warned on Monday that a higher death toll over the coming days was likely while NSW premier, Dominic Perrottet, lamented the new record, saying it was a “very difficult day”.

Almost two thirds of British adults feel the government should share coronavirus vaccines with the world rather than deliver additional boosters domestically, polling suggests.

Most adults understand that “we need to vaccinate the world to end the pandemic at home”, according to a survey for the ONE Campaign, which works to end global poverty and disease.

They also feel that the disparity in vaccination levels between rich and poor countries is both “unwise and unfair”.

Some 2,186 UK adults were surveyed by Savanta ComRes online between January 7 and 9. The results, as reported by PA Media are below:

• 63% said that, if new variants were likely in countries with poor vaccine access, the UK should prioritise ensuring the vaccine is available everywhere over giving people a second booster.
• 65% said it is unfair that significantly fewer people in low-income countries are fully vaccinated than those in high-income countries.
• 53% said they would be willing to forgo a fourth dose so a vulnerable person or frontline worker in another country could receive their first.
• 72% say the UK should make ending the global pandemic its top priority, with a similar proportion agreeing that the UK economy will continue to suffer unless the virus is beaten everywhere.

Respondents also agreed that uneven access to the vaccine is a “moral failure” (66%); that the UK should rapidly speed up delivery of doses it has promised to share (70%); and that the UK should stop buying more doses than it needs (64%).
The UK delivered more than 30 million vaccines internationally last year. It has committed to donate 100 million doses around the world.

While we are in the Asia region, South Korea has confirmed another 4,072 coronavirus cases and 45 daily deaths in the past 24 hours, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There are 543 people in critical condition, with an average of 463 new admissions per day. The intensive care bed utilisation rate stands at 28%.

Thailand is reporting a daily rise of 6,397 confirmed coronavirus cases and 18 deaths, according to recently released government data.

The government is also considering reviving a scheme that allows tourists to visit with only minimal quarantine.

The “Test and Go” scheme, which was introduced late last year, was suspended when the Omicron variant emerged.

China has reported another 171 new confirmed Covid-19 cases for Monday, 17 January, according to a recently released statement by the National Health Commission.

The figure is down from 223 a day earlier, according to government data.

Of the new infections, 127 were locally transmitted, down from 163 a day earlier. The other new cases were imported.

The new locally transmitted cases were in Henan, Tianjin, Guangdong, Beijing and Shaanxi, the NHC said.

The country also reported 33 new asymptomatic cases, which it classifies separately from confirmed cases, up from 28 infections a day earlier. There were no new deaths, leaving the death toll at 4,636.

Hello it’s Samantha Lock with you on the blog today as we unpack all the latest Covid developments from across the world.

I’ll be reporting to you from Sydney and my colleagues from London will take over a little later in the day.

Case numbers are just coming in across Australia this morning, confirming the country has hit a new bleak pandemic milestone. A record 74 deaths have been reported from the country’s two most populous states of NSW and Victoria with 36 deaths and 22 deaths respectively. It’s the highest daily toll of the pandemic for Australia to date.

The Omicron outbreak has continued to push up hospitalisation rates to record levels with more people in hospitals and intensive care than at any other time during the pandemic even as daily infections eased slightly.

On the other side of the world in Poland, the European Union’s largest eastern member says it is currently battling a fifth wave of Covid-19 infections, with cases expected to hit record levels in coming weeks.

Health minister Adam Niedzielski warned that the spread of the Omicron variant could send daily case numbers soaring to levels not yet seen in the country.

“We predict that the peak of infections will be in mid-February and that peak is about 60,000 cases a day,” he told a news conference on Monday.

Here’s a comprehensive run-down of all the latest global developments:

Europe:

• Covid booster shots will be offered to children in England aged 12 to 15 who are most at risk from coronavirus, NHS England has said. People in England are also now able to end their coronavirus isolation after five full days in the latest change to self-isolation guidance.
• Greece has imposed a vaccination mandate for people over age 60.
  
• The EU should continue to suspend strict fiscal rules to help debt-mired countries such as Italy until the pandemic is over, the new chairman of the German parliament’s powerful EU affairs committee has said.
• A return to global pre-pandemic employment levels could take years, a UN report revealed.
• French teachers’ unions have called for a second major strike this week to protest the government’s Covid testing and isolation protocols, which they say are severely disrupting classes.
• France’s parliament has given final approval to the government’s latest measures to tackle Covid-19, including a vaccine pass contested by anti-vaccine protesters.
• Uzbekistan has reported 1,037 new daily Covid cases, the highest number on record.
• Kazakhstan reported a record 13,523 cases on Sunday, and the Kazakh government has announced middle and high school students in the country’s three largest cities would study remotely until the end of March.
• The chairman of Credit Suisse, António Horta-Osório, has resigned after the Swiss bank reportedly found that he had broken Covid-19 quarantine laws.

Asia:

• The number of Covid-19 cases across China reached the highest level since March 2020 on Monday, as the country reported a daily rise of 223 new infections.
  
• Several cities in China are now on a high Covid alert in preparation for the lunar new year holiday travel season when hundreds of millions of people are expected to travel around the country. Cities such as Luoyang in central China and Jieyang in the south now require residents to report details of their trips in advance.
• Chinese authorities are urging citizens not to order goods from overseas, claiming a recent Omicron infection detected in Beijing came from an international package sent from Canada. There is not a strong scientific basis to the claim, according to experts.
• Beijing Winter Olympics tickets will not be sold to general public in latest Covid setback.
• Japan will bring forward its Covid vaccination booster shots by as much as two months while also considering placing 11 prefectures, including Tokyo and its surrounding area, under a quasi-state of emergency to curb a rapidly accelerating sixth wave of infections.
• Hong Kong police have arrested and charged two Cathay Pacific flight attendants for allegedly contravening Covid regulations.
• Thailand is considering bringing back a quarantine waiver for vaccinated visitors, its health minister said on Monday, as part of a proposed easing of some Covid measures later this week.

Americas:

• Travellers to Hawaii may soon need to have supplemented their vaccinations with a booster does in order to visit the islands without having to quarantine.

Middle East:

• Israel cuts Covid isolation to five days for asymptomatic people.

Medical:

• The chief executive of Pfizer, Albert Bourla, has said that while the coronavirus will continue to circulate for many years to come, this current wave should be the last to have to lead to restrictions.
• Moderna is aiming to launch a single booster vaccination that will protect against both Covid-19 and flu within two years, its chief executive said.
• A fourth shot of Covid vaccine raises antibodies to even higher levels than the third jab but it is not enough to prevent Omicron infections, according to a preliminary study in Israel.
  
• Moderna CEO says data for Omicron-specific jab likely available in March.

Please feel free to get in touch with me if you have a story or tips to share. Your thoughts are always welcome.

Email: samantha.lock@theguardian.com
Twitter: @Samantha__Lock