Coronavirus live news: Spain joins France, Germany and Italy in pausing use of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines

7.38pm EDT 19:38

Australia has no plans to halt the use of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said on Tuesday, as several European countries paused administering the vaccine after reports of possible serious side-effects.

Frydenberg said the European medicines regulator and the World Health Organization (WHO) had confirmed that the AstraZeneca PLC vaccine was effective and safe to use.

“So we will continue to proceed with the vaccine rollout of AstraZeneca,” Frydenberg told Sky News.

Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Cyprus joined several other European nations in temporarily suspending vaccinations with AstraZeneca shots after isolated reports of bleeding, blood clots and low platelet count.

WHO said there have been no documented deaths linked to Covid-19 vaccines and that people should not panic.

7.31pm EDT 19:31

Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro has named a doctor as the country’s new health minister.

Marcelo Queiroga, a cardiologist, is set to replace General Eduardo Pazuello and become the fourth health minister in Brazil since the start of the pandemic.

Pazuello’s job was on the line after a week that saw record Covid-19 fatalities in Brazil.

More than 279,000 Brazilians have died in a worsening outbreak that killed more people in Brazil than any other nation last week.

Bolsonaro told reporters that Queiroga would follow Pazuello’s agenda at the health ministry and that the government would redouble efforts to implement mass vaccinations against the coronavirus. He added the transition would take one or two weeks to complete.

Pazuello, an active duty Army general without a medical degree, has been criticized for lacking public health expertise and supporting Bolsonaro’s push to use unproven drugs to fight Covid-19, while downplaying the need for social distancing.

Pazuello’s two predecessors resigned in roughly the span of a month last year, in part because as physicians they would not fully endorse treating Covid-19 patients with the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine.

6.50pm EDT 18:50

Brazilian doctor Marcelo Queiroga is set to become the country’s new health minister, CNN Brasil reported, replacing a general whose leadership has been widely criticised because of Brazil’s high death toll during the pandemic.

If confirmed, Queiroga would become Brazil’s fourth health minister since the pandemic began.

6.33pm EDT 18:33

Ocugen is seeking to sell 100 million doses of India’s state-backed Covid-19 vaccine Covaxin in the United States this year, the American firm’s chief executive, Shankar Musunuri, told Reuters.

The Pennsylvania-based biopharmaceutical firm is partnering with India’s Bharat Biotech, a developer of the vaccine, to commercialise the shot in the United States. Covaxin was shown to be 81% effective in an interim analysis of late-stage trial data on some 26,000 people in India.

Musunuri said Ocugen aimed to launch the two-dose vaccine in the US from next month, initially with imported shots before beginning production there. It is unclear whether the government is seeking additional vaccine suppliers.

He said Ocugen had held initial talks with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and planned to seek emergency use authorisation in April.

“They’re fine with the way the interim analysis is being done,” Musunuri said of the FDA, adding that Ocugen had “a regulatory path” to take the process forward.

Updated at 6.44pm EDT

6.12pm EDT 18:12

Mexico has asked the US to share doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine it has in stock, a senior diplomat said, following up on a request made by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to his counterpart Joe Biden.

The deputy foreign minister for multilateral affairs, Martha Delgado, said that since the United States had not yet approved the AstraZeneca vaccine it would be a good candidate to offer to Mexico, which has started using it already.

“The possibility exists of being able to have access to some AstraZeneca batches they have,” Delgado said in an interview with Reuters last week, saying Mexico had made the request in diplomatic conversations since Lopez Obrador spoke to Biden on 1 March.

“That vaccine is already authorised in Mexico, but doesn’t have authorisation at the moment in the United States,” she said.

“They could release it.”

Lopez Obrador asked Biden for a vaccine “loan” during the virtual meeting, after Mexico’s vaccine strategy was knocked off course by a delay in deliveries of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.

Updated at 6.47pm EDT

5.52pm EDT 17:52

Slovenia has temporarily halted the use of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, joining a number of the European Union states in the move, the national news agency STA reported, citing health minister Janez Poklukar.

“An expert group suggested out of caution a temporary halt until the decision by the European Medicines Agency,” STA quoted Poklukar as saying.

Updated at 6.48pm EDT

5.41pm EDT 17:41

Brazil’s death toll surpasses 279,000

Brazil has registered 1,015 new coronavirus deaths, the health ministry said, bringing the total to 279,286 since the pandemic began.

Confirmed cases rose by 36,239 to 11,519,609.

5.31pm EDT 17:31

Norway’s capital will close all middle and high schools and limit visitors in private homes to two people until early April to fight the spread of the coronavirus, the governing mayor of Oslo said.

In a separate press conference, Norwegian health minister Bent Hoeie announced that the government is introducing stricter measures for 52 municipalities surrounding the capital region, including the closure of non-essential shops and in-restaurant dining, although schools will remain open.

The government said last week that tougher national restrictions could be imposed unless local authorities managed to curb the Covid-19 outbreak.

The Nordic country has maintained one of Europe’s lowest rates of infection but now faces a third wave of the disease.

“There is no doubt now that we are in a third wave,” said Oslo governing mayor Raymond Johansen, adding the reproduction rate, which measures the number of people infected by each positive case, had risen to 1.5 in Oslo.

“These measures are on top of all the existing ones and, in summary, will be the most invasive measures introduced in Oslo since the start of the pandemic,” he told a news conference.

Updated at 6.49pm EDT

4.47pm EDT 16:47

Portugal temporarily suspends use of AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine

Portugal temporarily suspended use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine on Monday, following on the heels of several other European countries.

Earlier, Spain, France, Germany and Italy had joined Denmark, Norway and several others in suspending use of the vaccine after reports of blood clots in some patients who had received the vaccine.

Graça Freitas, head of the health authority DGS, told a news conference that although the side effects were “extremely severe”, they were “extremely rare”, adding no such cases had been reported in Portugal so far.

The World Health Organisation said there was no evidence that the incidents are caused by the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca, an Anglo-Swedish company, with Oxford University.

The EU’s EMA medicines regulator said it would meet on Thursday to analyse the situation and reaffirmed its view that the benefits of the drug outweigh the risks.

Portugal, which has suffered 814,513 cases and 16,694 deaths, has so far administered around 1.1 million vaccine doses, with the vast majority of shots administered being those produced by Pfizer/BioNTech.

Henrique Gouveia e Melo, the head of Portugal’s vaccination taskforce, said the Oxford/AstraZeneca shots that have so far arrived in Portugal would be kept in storage until further notice.

Updated at 5.19pm EDT