March 30, 2023

Coronavirus live: Macron joins Merkel in call for EU to coordinate quarantine for non-EU countries such as UK

French president’s remarks come after German chancellor says all EU members should quarantine UK visitors...

French president’s remarks come after German chancellor says all EU members should quarantine UK visitors

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2.38pm BST

Joe Biden has warned that the Delta variant Covid-19 strain is “more contagious, it’s deadlier, and it’s spreading quickly around the world” as he urged unvaccinated people to get the vaccine.

In a tweet Biden said the Delta variant, which could become the dominant strain in the US within two to three weeks, leaves “young, unvaccinated people more vulnerable than ever”.

Related: Biden warns Delta strain ‘more contagious, deadlier’ and urges unvaccinated to get shots – live

2.35pm BST

African Union special envoy Strive Masiyiwa has accused the world’s richest nations of deliberately failing to provide enough Covid-19 vaccines to the continent.

Masiyiwa, the union’s special envoy to the African vaccine acquisition task team, said the Covax scheme had failed to keep its promise to secure production of 700 million doses of vaccines in time for delivery by December 2021.

It’s not a question of if this was a moral failure, it was deliberate. Those with the resources pushed their way to the front of the queue and took control of their production assets.

Imagine we are in a village and there is drought and there will not be enough bread and the richest guys grabs the baker and they take control of the production of bread and we all have to go to those [rich] guys to ask for a loaf of bread.

We were led down the garden path … We got to December believing that the whole world was coming together to purchase vaccines, not knowing that we had been corralled into a little corner while others ran off and secured the supplies.

Related: Rich countries ‘deliberately’ keeping Covid vaccines from Africa, says envoy

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