Starting on 6 July foreigners and nationals entering Indonesia must be vaccinated; Fauci says 99.2% of recent US deaths were unvaccinated; Boris Johnson set to press ahead with final lifting of restrictions
- Boris Johnson to confirm 19 July end to Covid rules despite scientists’ warnings
- UK scientists caution that lifting of Covid rules is like building ‘variant factories’
- Luxembourg prime minister admitted to hospital with Covid
- See all our coronavirus coverage
To mask or not to mask looks like it is going to be one of the looming debates of the summer in England. The signals coming out of government today are very much in favour of avoiding using masks except in limited circumstances. Social care minister Helen Whately has just told the BBC that she is keen to stop wearing masks “as much”.
Care Minister Helen Whately says she is “looking forward to not wearing a mask as much….there are real downsides to wearing masks. But she says she “might” carry on wearing a mask on trains #today
As case numbers continue to rise at an alarming rate due to the rapid transmission of the Delta variant and an increase in people mixing with one another, it makes no sense to remove restrictions in their entirety in just over two weeks’ time.
A report from AFP here on the situation in China where the city of Ruili, home to more than 210,000 people, has been locked down again after the discovery of cases imported from Myanmar.
Ruili is a major crossing point from Muse in neighbouring Myanmar, which has seen escalating unrest since the 1 February military coup, raising fears that people will try to flood across the border into China to escape the violence. One of the three infected patients was a Myanmar national, according to health authorities in China’s Yunnan province.
