Coronavirus live news: England ends ‘pingdemic’ for vaccinated; New Zealand details plans to reopen border

Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.

Fully vaccinated people in England will no longer be legally required to self-isolate upon contact with a positive Covid case from Monday, and will instead be advised to take a PCR test – in a marked shift from rules that have led to more than 14m instructions to stay at home.

Meanwhile New Zealand plans to allow quarantine-free entry to vaccinated travellers from low-risk countries from early next year as part of a phased reopening of its borders that were shut last year due to the pandemic, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Thursday.

Here are the other key recent developments:

• The UK is sending low- and middle-income countries who are struggling to access vaccines “to the back of the queue” by ordering millions of “overpriced” booster jabs from Pfizer, according to vaccine equity campaigners from Global Justice Now.
• A UK government scientific adviser has said Covid is unlikely to be eradicated entirely because there is no vaccine that is 95% protective against infection. Prof Andrew Hayward also said that Covid would likely continue to mutate, meaning true herd immunity was even further unlikely.
• Iran’s supreme leader has said the pandemic is the country’s “No 1 problem” and must urgently be curbed, as he called for greater efforts to import and produce vaccines.
  Europe’s drugs regulator said it is looking into three new conditions to assess whether they may be possible side-effects related to Covid-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, following a small number of cases.
• A new US practice of transferring asylum-seekers and migrants expelled under public health orders by plane to southern Mexico contravenes international law, the UN refugee agency said.
• Thai police fired water cannon, rubber bullets and tear gas at protesters in Bangkok for a second consecutive day as demonstrators rallied against the government and its handling of the coronavirus crisis.
• China’s drug regulator approved the country’s first mixed-vaccine trial, a company involved in the study has said, amid concern about the efficacy of domestically produced jabs.
• Chinese state media articles quoted a Swiss biologist accusing the US of politicising Covid origin investigations were quietly deleted, after the Swiss government said no such person exists.
• A video of the Republican senator Rand Paul disputing the effectiveness of wearing masks was removed from YouTube. Its policy is to ban videos that claim masks do not play a role in preventing the contraction or transmission of Covid is based on the guidance of the World Health Organization – which u-turned last year after initially refraining from recommending people wear face masks in public.
• Authorities in northern Germany have appealed to thousands of people to get another shot of Covid vaccine after a police investigation found a Red Cross nurse may have injected them with a saline solution.
• The Australian Olympic Committee condemned the South Australian government over its “cruel and uncaring” Olympic decision, which forces athletes who have already quarantined in Sydney to complete an additional 14-day home quarantine on return to the state.