Coronavirus live news: New Zealand battles first Delta outbreak, vaccine warning for south-east Asia | World news

The government coronavirus taskforce said 799 people had died of coronavirus-linked causes in the past 24 hours, pushing the national death toll to 172,909.

The federal statistics agency has kept a separate count and has said Russia recorded about 315,000 deaths related to Covid-19 from April 2020 to June 2021.

The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, has put out a video on social media after testing positive for Covid-19 on Tuesday, saying he has no symptoms of the virus and is fully vaccinated.

The Republican spent weeks banning local mask requirements and meeting maskless crowds in the US state.

Texas has once again emerged as a hotspot for coronavirus, with only 314 available intensive care unit beds statewide. Paediatric ICUs are running out of space while children head back to class.

There’s more on New Zealand’s lockdown from Eva Corlett in Wellington and Tess McClure here:

New Zealand’s coronavirus cluster has grown to 10, with genomic sequencing linking it to the Delta outbreak that began in Sydney, as the country woke up to day one of a snap lockdown stemming from just one case.

The federal government has agreed to the temporary suspension. Emergency and urgent elective surgery will continue as normal.

A lacklustre US retail sales report also exacerbated worries about the latest Covid-19 wave, bringing Wall Street’s streak of five straight records for the Dow and S&P 500 indices to a stuttering halt.

Research should focus on diseases of the airways to help patients with long Covid, experts in the UK have said.

International bodies and governments are being advised of the research priorities which have been identified to address the long-term effects of coronavirus in airways diseases, PA reports.

This includes conditions such as in cystic fibrosis, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Professor Tony De Soyza, professor of pulmonary medicine at Newcastle University, who led the research on behalf of the International Group of Airways Diseases, said:

 

 

The challenges of long Covid cannot be understated – this is an entirely new disease which we need to understand better so we can treat better.

Symptoms of the condition can include extreme tiredness, shortness of breath, chest pain or tightness, and range from joint pain to depression and anxiety.

The international team adapted the established Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative (CHNRI) method to set research priorities.

This uses the principle of crowdsourcing to independently generate research ideas from a large group of experts and score these against a predefined set of criteria.

They also considered patients’ views.

Dr Samantha Walker, Asthma UK and the British Lung Foundation director of research and innovation, said:

 

 

We’re really pleased that these research priorities, which will guide the direction of future research into the long-term effects of Covid-19 on respiratory diseases, have been developed with patient needs at their heart.

Far too often the hugely valuable lived experiences of patients have been peripheral or absent.

By embedding the needs of those living with long Covid into the very structure of the research questions, people across the globe will benefit from this effort to deepen our understanding of the impact of Covid-19 and help improve the range and effectiveness of treatments in years to come.

Here is more detail on Red Cross’s call for more vaccines support for south-east Asia, from the Guardian’s correspondent Rebecca Ratcliffe:

The UK has called for an immediate and sustained pause in clashes and unrest in Myanmar to allow vaccinations as an intense Covid-19 surge is ravaging the country.

Britain’s deputy UN ambassador, James Kariuki, told reporters after closed Security Council discussions:

 

 

Prior to the coup, Myanmar had a strong vaccination record and was developing a COVID-19 plan. Now, Myanmar’s health system is barely functioning, unacceptable attacks on hospitals, doctors and nurses continue, and only 3% of the population are vaccinated.

Myanmar has been struggling with one of the worst Covid-19 surges in Southeast Asia, and the military leadership that ousted Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically elected government 1 February has been accused of diverting critical medical supplies to itself and its supporters.

Kariuki said: “The UK is calling for an immediate and sustained humanitarian pause to allow vaccines to get to all in need, and for medical and humanitarian staff to work without fear or attack.”

The US reported more than 1,000 Covid-19 deaths on Tuesday, or about 42 fatalities an hour, according to a Reuters tally, as the Delta variant continues to ravage parts of the country with low vaccination rates.

Coronavirus-related deaths have spiked in the past month and are averaging 769 per day, the highest since mid-April, according to a Reuters tally. Since the start of the pandemic, the country has lost 622,813 people to Covid-19, the highest number of deaths for any country i