Coronavirus latest news: Airlines entice passengers by cutting fares for newly green countries
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Top scientists remain puzzled over how and why Covid spreads
Janet Daley: Why are Britons obsessed with holidaying abroad?
Airlines are reducing prices for flights to countries that have been put on the green list to attract holidaymakers for a last-minute summer getaway.
Travellers brave enough to venture abroad will be rewarded with cheaper journeys as fares for the most popular destinations have been cut when the country concerned moves up the Government’s traffic light system.
Travel companies have rushed to switch flight schedules to give priority to green-list destinations in an attempt to reverse the collapse in passenger numbers brought about by the coronavirus pandemic.
Air fares to nations that had been rumoured to move to the amber-plus category but remained amber also fell.
Follow the latest updates below.
07:48 AM
AstraZeneca starts shipping vaccine doses from Oxford to Europe
AstraZeneca has started to ship vaccine doses from a British factory to the EU in a move expected to thaw icy relations between the pharmaceutical giant and officials in Brussels, reports Hannah Boland.
Doses of the Covid-19 vaccine made in a factory in Oxford are understood to have started being distributed to the continent after a protracted dispute over why the site was not being used to supply EU countries.
The facility, which is run by Oxford Biomedica, proved a sticking point during the recent court case between Brussels and AstraZeneca.
The pharma firm had argued that it had struck a deal with the UK Government earlier than the EU, and had agreed to prioritise UK citizens when it came to doses made in Britain.
As part of the ruling, a court in Brussels said AstraZeneca’s decision to not use the facility was inconsistent with a clause in the EU contract whereby AstraZeneca agreed to use “best reasonable efforts” on supply.
07:33 AM
Top scientists remain puzzled over how and why Covid spreads
In 15th-century Italy, a puzzling epidemic swept through the population, its origins and spread so baffling it was named “influenza” from the Italian “influence of the stars”.
Today, nearly 600 years later, the world is facing an equally perplexing respiratory virus, with unclear origins and confounding transmission dynamics.
Even now, after nearly two years of scientific endeavour, which has given us multiple vaccines and drugs to fight coronavirus, we’re still not completely sure about how it spreads or how to stop it. It is why the mask debate rages on.
One of the biggest arguments between scientists is whether the virus is truly airborne, by which we mean that it is floating around in sufficient quantities to have a noticeable impact on infections.
Our science editor Sarah Knapton has this analysis.
05:40 AM
China's variant numbers continue to rise
China reported 96 new cases of Covid on the mainland for Saturday, down from 107 cases a day earlier, the country's health authority said today.
The latest clusters were mainly driven by the highly transmissible delta variant.
Among the new confirmed infections, 81 were locally transmitted.
05:35 AM
Brunei detects locally transmitted cases
Brunei has imposed strict curbs to halt the spread of Covid-19 after finding its first locally transmitted cases in the country in more than a year.
Seven community infections were found, the health ministry said on Saturday, leading the government to close all places of worship and postpone social events for two weeks.
Mass events are limited to groups of 30 people over this period as school classes are moved online and restaurants barred from serving dine-in.
The tiny Islamic sultanate has largely remained coronavirus free, logging only three deaths since the pandemic began.
More than half of its 347 infections so far were imported, with tight border controls and quarantine measures keeping the virus' spread in check.
03:32 AM
Australia's struggle with delta continues
Australia's three most populous states of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland reported 282 locally acquired Covid infections today, with authorities struggling to quell outbreaks of the delta variant.
NSW reported 262 fresh cases, down from the pandemic high of 319 seen on Saturday, with more than five million people in Sydney regions along the coastline under a lockdown for six weeks already.
One woman in her 80s died overnight, bringing the total number of deaths in the current outbreak to 28.
Neighbouring Victoria reported 11 new locally acquired cases, as the state remains under a seven-day strict lockdown.
Queensland recorded nine new local cases, with parts of the state to come out of lockdown today, but a three-day lockdown has been imposed on the city of Cairns after a report of a case with unknown origin.
01:59 AM
Today's top stories
AstraZeneca has started to ship vaccine doses from a British factory to the EU in a move expected to thaw icy relations between the drugmaker and Brussels officials.
In 15th-century Italy, a puzzling epidemic swept through the population, its origins and spread so baffling it was named “influenza” from the Italian “influence of the stars”; today, nearly 600 years later, the world is facing an equally perplexing respiratory virus, with unclear origins and confounding transmission dynamics.
New coronavirus variants could be named after star constellations once letters of the Greek alphabet are exhausted, a senior World Health Organisation official has suggested.
An artificial intelligence heart scanner promises to cut the NHS backlog in half by delivering results within 15 minutes, scientists have found.
