Passports ‘needed to keep England venues open’ – as it happened

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Two flights from London carrying 164,970 and 292,500 doses of the Pfizer vaccine landed in Sydney on Sunday evening.

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, announced the four million dose deal with the UK last week.

5 Sept 202117.23 EDT

Tom Phillips

A World Cup qualifier between Argentina and Brazil was abandoned amid farcical, confused scenes after four Premier League players apparently violated Brazilian regulations designed to contain a Covid outbreak that has killed more than 580,000 Brazilians.

Aston Villa goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez and Tottenham’s Cristian Romero and Giovani Lo Celso were on all the pitch at São Paulo’s Neo Química Arena on Sunday afternoon when federal police and officials from Brazil’s health agency, Anvisa, took to the field to halt play after just seven minutes.

Furniture store Ikea has said it is struggling to supply 1,000 product lines including mattresses because of Covid-19 and Brexit, reports the BBC.

Ikea said: “Like many retailers, we are experiencing ongoing challenges with our supply chains due to Covid-19 and labour shortages, with transport, raw materials and sourcing all impacted. In addition, we are seeing higher customer demand as more people are spending more time at home.

“As a result, we are experiencing low availability in some of our ranges, including mattresses.”

The retailer said it hoped the situation would improvise “in the coming weeks and months”.

“What we are seeing is a perfect storm of issues, including the disruption of global trade flows and a shortage of drivers, which have been exacerbated by the pandemic and Brexit,” it said.

The Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, has said he would give his 12-year-old son a Covid jab if the vaccine for younger children gets the go-ahead, reports the Mirror.

The government’s scientific advisers will soon make a decision on jabs for 12- to 15-year-olds.

He also backs the rollout of Covid jabs to all secondary school children.

He told the publication:

Only one of children falls into that bracket but I am in favour of everybody having the vaccine if they possibly can. Therefore, if the advice is for that age children to have it, we would follow that advice.

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Tennis player Andy Murray spoke with UK nurse May Parsons, the first person in the world to administer the Covid-19 vaccine outside of clinical trials.

From one champion to another.

AP reports on Mississippi, whose low vaccinated rate, with about 38% of the state’s three million people fully inoculated against Covid-19, is driving a surge in cases and hospitalisations and overwhelming medical workers.

Dr Risa Moriarity, executive vice-chair of the University of Mississippi Medical Center’s emergency department:

There’s no point in being judgmental in that situation. There’s no point in telling them: ‘you should have gotten the vaccine or you wouldn’t be here’. We don’t do that. We try not to preach and lecture them. Some of them are so sick they can barely even speak to us.

Nearly 50 shops closed a day in the first half of the year, a survey conducted for accountancy firm PwC found.

PA reports that figures collected by the Local Data Company showed 8,739 shops shut across Britain in the first half of the year. With 3,488 opening in the same period, this reflected a net decrease of 5,251.

In the first half of last year as the Covid crisis began to bite, 11,120 shops closed for a net decrease of 6,001 - 750 more net closures than in the first six months of this year.

Paddy Lillis, general secretary of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (Usdaw), said: “The UK retail sector has been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic on an unprecedented scale, as the staggering number of shop closures demonstrates.

“With over 180,000 jobs lost across the industry last year and 200,000 predicted for this year, we need immediate action from the Government to reduce rents and rates for high street retailers, alongside levelling the playing field with an online sales tax.

“The coronavirus pandemic has pushed many retailers and retail workers to breaking point, so we need government measures to be equally significant.

“Retailers need urgent measures to deal with the immediate crisis and a longer-term strategy to deal with some of the more fundamental structural issues facing the industry. Usdaw is calling for the government to adopt an urgent recovery plan for the retail sector.”

The New York Times reflects on the surge in Covid-19 deaths in the US.

Iraq said they will allow only 40,000 foreigners, 30,000 from Iran, to attend the Arbaeen pilgrimage later this month in Karbala because of the pandemic, AFP reports.

The annual pilgrimage usually sees millions of worshippers, mostly Iraqis and Iranians, converge on the central city of Karbala on foot.

According to official figures, around 14 million attended in 2019 - a third of them were foreigners arriving mostly from Iran, the Gulf, Pakistan and Lebanon.

Iraq’s health and security committee said foreign pilgrims would be allowed to arrive only by air.

France has recorded 10,410 new coronavirus cases, Reuters reports.

Israel says it will soon be reopening its gates to foreign tour groups - despite battling one of the world’s highest rates of coronavirus infections, reports AP.

The tourism ministry said it will begin allowing organised tour groups into the country on 19 September.

Tourists will have to be vaccinated against coronavirus, present a negative PCR test before their flight and undergo both PCR and serological testing upon arrival. Visitors would then have to quarantine in their hotels until the test results come back - a process expected to take no more than 24 hours.

But tourists from a handful of “red” countries with high infection rates - including Turkey and Brazil - will not be permitted to visit for the time being.

In recent weeks, the country has begun administering booster shots to anyone who was vaccinated more than five months ago.

The BBC reports that Scottish Labour will not support the Scottish government’s plans to introduce vaccine passports.

Anas Sarwar told BBC Scotland’s The Sunday Show:

This is not opposition for opposition’s sake. Neither is this an ideological opposition to the principle of vaccine passports. This is about what works, and what’s going to make a meaningful difference. We all agree the vaccine is working in helping reduce hospitalisations and reduce deaths but there is a fear that using vaccine passports might actually entrench vaccine hesitancy rather than encourage uptake.

US officials have expressed optimism that Covid-19 booster shot delivery can start for all adults on 20 September, the goal set by President Joe Biden, as cases continue to rage across the country fueled by the highly transmissible Delta variant.

The officials insist, however, that boosters will not be rolled out without US health agencies’ authorisation, leaving open the possibility of delays.

5 Sept 202112.08 EDT

Josh Halliday

MPs and their staff are buckling under the strain of a “phenomenal” rise in appeals for help from constituents, with some reporting a 12-fold increase in casework fuelled in part by an “absolute crisis” in mental health issues.

Parliamentary aides said they were becoming burnt out and struggling to help people in desperate need, because of a “massive backlog” of issues caused by the Covid pandemic.

Data shared with the Guardian by Labour and Conservative MPs shows that some are dealing with an average of 12 times more casework than before 2020, while many have seen the number of cases at least double.

AP reports that the Italian health minister, Roberto Speranza, has indicated a meeting of his G20 counterparts could yield a pledge about ensuring Covid-19 vaccines reach everyone in poor countries.

He said he hopes the two-day gathering in Rome which began today would result in a “pact ... so that the vaccine is the right of everybody and not just a privilege for few”.

Government data up to 4 September shows that of the 91,623,530 Covid jabs given in the UK, 48,245,337 were first doses. This is a rise of 39,752 on the previous day. 43,378,193 were second doses – an increase of 127,156, PA reports.

The government said a further 68 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Sunday, bringing the UK total to 133,229.

Yesterday 120 Covid deaths were reported.

Separate figures published by the Office for National Statistics show there have been 157,000 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.

As of 9am on Sunday, there had been a further 37,011 lab-confirmed Covid-19 cases in the UK, the government said.