Extra help called in for overwhelmed hospitals in California; two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech are about 90% effective at preventing hospitalisations for at least six months, research reveals; Russia’s daily Covid cases hits highest level in months
- New Zealand ends Covid elimination strategy in favour of suppression approach
- England sees sustained decline in hospital admissions for the first time out of lockdown
- US sees dramatic drop in Covid cases and hospitalizations over past few weeks
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Good morning I’m Harriet Grant I’ll be bringing you Covid news from around the world this morning.
New Zealanders are grieving for the end of the country’s Covid elimination strategy and anxious about what the future holds, after prime minister Jacinda Ardern announced the country would switch to a suppression approach.
New Zealand has held fast to a Covid-zero strategy for the past 18 months. That has been rewarded with some of the world’s best outcomes through the pandemic: extremely low hospitalisations and deaths, little in the way of day to day restrictions, low unemployment and robust economic survival. But on Monday, almost two months into a Delta outbreak, the country stepped into the unknown, pivoting for the first time away from strict elimination despite vaccination rates that remain low.