Hungarian drugmaker Richter Gedeon has made Covid-19 vaccinations mandatory for its over 12,000 workers to ensure business continuity after a government decision allowing companies to do so, chief executive Gabor Orban said today.
“We have made the decision to make (vaccinations) mandatory,” Orban told a news conference.
“The only question is the timeframe over which we will be able to carry this out the most efficiently,” he said, adding that the company was conducting a survey on the number of employees already inoculated against Covid-19.
Reuters reports the company said nearly 80% of its total workforce had been given a shot already. Those refusing the shot would be sent on unpaid leave.
“The vaccine is not mandatory, but then, neither is working at Richter,” Orban said. “It is extremely important that we retain our ability to keep the company running, to protect our workers’ health and their jobs.”
First lady Dr Jill Biden to visit Virginia school today to promote vaccines for those aged 5 to 11
In the US, the Biden administration is encouraging local school districts to host clinics to provide Covid-19 vaccinations to kids — and information to parents on the benefits of the shots — as the White House looks to speedily provide vaccines to those ages 5 to 11.
Zeke Miller reports for the Associated Press that today first lady Dr Jill Biden and surgeon general Dr Vivek Murthy are set to visit the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia, to launch a nationwide campaign to promote child vaccinations. The school was the first to administer the polio vaccine in 1954.
The visit comes just days after federal regulators recommended the Covid-19 vaccine for the age group. The White House says Biden will visit paediatric vaccination clinics across the country over the coming weeks to encourage the shots.
At the same time, health and human services secretary Xavier Becerra and education secretary Miguel Cardona are sending a letter to school districts across the country calling on them to organise vaccine clinics for their newly eligible students. The officials are reminding school districts that they can tap into billions of dollars in federal coronavirus relief money to support paediatric vaccination efforts.
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All Aer Lingus flights to the US were full on Monday after Covid travel restrictions were finally lifted, the chief executive of the airline Lynne Embleton has said.
Dublin is one of the key hubs for travel to the US because of a facility to clear immigration at the airport and avoid queues stateside.
In the US Delta said it has seen a 450% increase in bookings since the travel ban was lifted by Joe Biden, while United Airlines said it was expecting 30,000 passengers to arrive on Monday, a 50% hike on last Monday’s experience.
Delta Airlines warned passengers to be patient as the airports re-open to international travel.
“It’s going to be a bit sloppy at first. I can assure you, there will be lines unfortunately,” Ed Bastian chief executive said.
Russia's national paid holiday week to stem rising cases ends – some regions retain restrictions
Russia has ended the national week long paid holiday that it hoped would break the Covid transmission chain and lead to reduced case numbers. It will take a couple of weeks to see any impact in the figures – today Russia reported 39,400 new Covid cases, including 4,982 in Moscow. There were 1,190 further official deaths.
Most Russian regions left in place requirements for digital Covid passes to enter public areas and events. Moscow requires scannable QR codes for visits to any entertainment and sporting events with attendance of more than 500 people.
St Petersburg, meanwhile, has imposed strict QR code requirements to enter any venue, including shopping malls and hotels. Several regions have extended their paid holidays past Monday, including the Smolensk, Kursk, Chelyabinsk, Novgorod, Tomsk and Bryansk regions.
Flights carrying the first UK leisure travellers to the US since the pandemic began have taken off from Heathrow, after Joe Biden permitted a reopening of the US border.
Setting aside a longstanding rivalry, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic planes took off simultaneously in what the bosses of the two airlines described as a “pivotal moment” for the battered industry. Both airlines have reported huge losses and laid off thousands of staff during 20 months of restricted travel.
Virgin Atlantic flight VS3 (front) and British Airways flight BA001 (back) perform a synchronised departure on parallel runways at London Heathrow Airport. Photograph: Anthony Upton/PA
British Airways flight BA001 – a number previously reserved for Concorde – and Virgin flight VS3 took off from London Heathrow on parallel runways for New York’s JFK airport at about 8.30am, more than 600 days since the US travel ban was introduced.
Singapore and Malaysia commit to re-opening travel corridor on 29 November
A quick snap from Reuters here that Singapore and Malaysia will allow quarantine-free travel between both countries for individuals vaccinated against Covid-19, they said in a joint statement on Monday.
The two neighbours will launch a vaccinated travel corridor between Changi Airport and Kuala Lumpur International Airport from 29 November, it said.
Prof Peter Openshaw, chair of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), said the need for boosters had become “very clear”.
PA Media quotes the professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London telling Times Radio: “We don’t know how long a vaccine is going to last until we’ve had sufficient time to watch the immunity drifting downwards and I think that’s something which has become very clear recently is that these vaccines don’t appear to be forever – they do provide a lot of protection, but they have to be boosted.”
Asked if it is just the elderly at risk of not getting their booster, he added: “Well if we look at the people who are sadly still dying of Covid, it’s predominantly in those over 50.
“And it’s that group that really does need to have the boosters in order to stop them from dying - particularly those over 60 and especially in those over 70.”
He also urged people who are still yet to take up any offer of the vaccine to get jabbed “as soon as possible”.
He also said the NHS was in a “serious situation” and that Covid “is not over”.
“There’s an awful lot of Covid still around,” he said. “At the moment we’re seeing admission rates running at something like 1,000 people per day and there’s currently over 1,000 people on mechanical ventilators in our hospitals.
“And I just don’t think people realise the serious situation that there is out there in the National Health Service hospitals, with so many people on ventilators and over 9,000 people actually in the hospital currently with Covid-19. Covid isn’t done. It’s not over.”
Dr Mike Tildesley, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Modelling group (Spi-M) advising ministers in the UK, has said “we are not out of the woods yet” but the UK was not facing a winter lockdown.
Asked about the prospect of a winter lockdown, PA Media quotes him telling Sky News:
I think we’re a long way away from thinking in those terms. I think that clearly there is a situation that if the NHS is under severe pressure, if the number of deaths sadly starts to increase, then of course, obviously, there may be discussions around whether more restrictions need to come in.
I would hope that, with a very successful vaccination campaign, the idea of a winter lockdown is a long way away. But it is certainly true that if we don’t get good immunity across the population, there may need to be perhaps further measures taken.
So it’s really important that we encourage people to come forward when eligible to take those booster jabs.
Asked about the future of booster jabs, he said “I remember having these sorts of discussions about nine months ago when the vaccinations were starting to roll out, that it’s possible that this virus could become endemic, so circulate in the population every year in the way that flu does.
“It’s possible that every year … we’re having to go out and get our Covid jabs in the same way a lot of people are currently getting their flu jabs.”
Dr Tildesley said the booster programme was “going in the right direction but there clearly is work to do for the people over 50, for vulnerable adults”.
He added: “Immunity will be starting to wane from the second jab so it is really important that that acceleration continues and hopefully we get as many people protected as possible as we move into the colder months.”
NHS England staff should have Covid vaccine before winter, Hancock says
Jamie Grierson
NHS workers in England must be legally required to get Covid vaccinations before the winter, former UK health secretary Matt Hancock has said, in his first intervention since leaving government.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Hancock, who resigned as health secretary in June after it emerged he had breached Covid-19 social distancing restrictions with Gina Coladangelo, an adviser with whom he was having an affair, warned ministers against delaying mandatory jabs for nurses and doctors.
Hancock’s comments come as the chief executive of NHS England said the country faced “a difficult winter”, with hospital Covid admissions 14 times higher than they were this time last year.
