Coronavirus live news: China and WHO criticised by independent Covid panel; US nears 400,000 deaths | World news

An independent panel has said that Chinese officials could have applied public health measures more forcefully in January 2020 to curb the initial Covid-19 outbreak, and criticised the World Health Organization (WHO) for not declaring an international emergency until 30 January.

The experts reviewing the global handling of the pandemic, led by former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark and former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, called for reforms to the Geneva-based UN agency.

Their interim report was published hours after the WHO’s top emergency expert, Mike Ryan, said that global deaths from Covid were expected to top 100,000 per week “very soon”.

“What is clear to the panel is that public health measures could have been applied more forcefully by local and national health authorities in China in January,” the report said, referring to the initial outbreak of the disease in the central city of Wuhan, in Hubei province.

As evidence emerged of human-to-human transmission, “in far too many countries, this signal was ignored”, it added:

Donald Trump, the US president, has rescinded entry bans imposed because of coronavirus on most non-US citizens arriving from Brazil and much of Europe, including the UK, effective 26 January, two officials briefed on the matter told Reuters.

The restrictions are set to end on the same day that new Covid-19 test requirements take effect for all international visitors. Joe Biden, the president-elect, once in office could opt to reimpose the restrictions.

Hello and welcome to today’s live global coronavirus coverage.

My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest developments for the next few hours. As always, you can get in touch on Twitter here.

An independent panel reviewing the global handling of the pandemic said on Monday that Chinese officials could have applied public health measures more forcefully in January and criticised the World Health Organization for not declaring an international emergency until 30 January.

Meanwhile the US is on the brink of the heartbreaking milestone of 400,000 deaths – the highest toll of any country worldwide and one in five global deaths.

Here are the other key developments:

• Morocco’s health ministry has confirmed its first imported case of the more contagious variant of coronavirus first discovered in the UK. The variant was detected in the northern port of Tangier in a Moroccan national returning from Ireland via Marseille, the ministry said in a statement.
• The UK had the highest Covid death toll in the world in the week to 17 January, with 16.5 deaths per 1 million people on average, according to Our World in Data.
• Brazil on Monday reported 23,671 new cases of coronavirus, bringing the new total to 8,511,770, the country’s health ministry said.Deaths rose by 452 to 210,299 in Brazil, which has the world’s highest death toll from the pandemic outside the US.
• Spain reported a record rise in coronavirus infections over the weekend and the number of new cases measured over the past fortnight spiked to 689 per 100,000 people on Monday from 575 on Friday, health ministry data showed.
• The Czech Republic has confirmed the detection of the new, more transmissible variant of coronavirus first found in Britain.
• Scientists have found new biological evidence that a South African Covid variant of binds more readily to human cells, making it more infectious, according to one of the world’s leading infectious disease experts.
• Portugal’s daily Covid death toll reached a record high of 167 on Monday, bringing the total to 9,028 deaths since the start of the pandemic. Stricter lockdown rules are now being enacted there.
• Steffen Seibert, Germany’s government spokesman, said on Monday that the number of Covid infections in the country is too high amid rising fears about new variants of the virus.
• Japan has detected a variant of the new coronavirus first discovered in Britain in three people who had not travelled there.
• The Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford, has defended the slower rollout of the inoculation programme in Wales, saying the Pfizer vaccine could not be used all at once as supplies had to last until the start of February.