Covid news – live: Latest updates as Wales to unveil roadmap out of lockdown

The EU will contribute one billion euros to the WHO’s Covax programme, twice as much as it had previously pledged.

Ursula von der Leyen is expected to announce the new commitment on Friday during a meeting of G7 leaders, according to sources in Brussels.

This comes after UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres described the global distribution of coronavirus vaccines as “wildly uneven and unfair”, as 10 countries have administered three-quarters of the world’s jabs so far.

Amnesty International agreed, saying the inequality in the vaccine rollout was an “abject moral failure that will ultimately harm rich countries”.

Covax, an initiate to provide middle- and low-income countries with jabs, expects to deliver 336 million Covid-19 doses by the end of June.

Ireland’s lockdown could last for another nine weeks, with its finance minister saying the lifting of restrictions will be “gradual”.

Paschal Donohoe added that the numbers of Covid-19 patients in hospitals is still high.

His comments come as Taoiseach Micheal Martin confirmed that “severe” lockdown measure will last until the end of April.

The Irish government will announced its revised Living with Covid-19 plan next week.

Getting the coronavirus vaccine does not break the Ramadan fast, the NHS Race and Health Observatory has said.

Dr Habib Naqvi, the director of the observatory, said Muslim communities had raised their concerns ahead of Ramadan, which lasts from 12 April to 12 May this year.

“There is no reason why a first or second dose vaccine cannot be administered during Ramadan. The content is halal, and receiving it will not invalidate the Ramadan fast, as per the opinion of Islamic scholars,” he added.

Here’s Aine Fox with more details:

Nearly one in five people aged over 80 in London have yet to have a coronavirus jab, provisional data from NHS England shows.

The figures, which go up to 14 February, reveal that across England 93.4 per cent of people in this age group have been vaccinated against the virus.

Russia has offered the African Union (AU) 300 million doses of its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, the bloc’s vaccine task force has said.

These doses will be available from May for a 12-month period.

John Nkengasong, director of the AU’s disease control body, said: “Bilateral and private sector partnerships such as these are critical in our efforts to bring the COVID-19 pandemic to an end.”

The AU previously confirmed it would receive 270 million jabs this year from AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson.

London mayor Sadiq Khan has received his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine because of his “severe asthma”.

“I am delighted, relieved and incredibly grateful to not just the scientists who invented this vaccine but to the NHS and volunteers who are working so hard,” he said.

The police broke up a 30-person house party in north-east London early on Friday morning, after forcing entry to the property when the revellers refused to open the door.

Inspector Alex Hope-Rollinson said: “Frankly it is shocking to see people act with such indifference for the rules, willing to put the health of their community at risk.”

My colleague Clea Skopeliti has the details:

Vietnam will receive a total of 60 million Covid-19 vaccines this year, half of which will come via the Covax scheme, the country’s health minister has announced.

Although it it has only recorded 2,347 coronavirus infections since the pandemic began, there are fears over an outbreak of the more contagious UK variant in the north of the country.

The health minister Nguyen Thanh Long said on Friday: “This wave’s virus variant is 70 per cent more transmissible. If we can’t keep up with testing amid this spike in cases, we can’t contain the outbreak.

“Testing is the key to fight the virus”.

Foreign Office minister James Cleverly has admitted there is no guarantee that the third national lockdown will be the last.

He told Sky News on Friday that the vaccine rollout was going well but added that no one knows how the virus might evolve.

“We can’t give complete 100 per cent certainty because viruses don’t work like that,” he said.

Earlier this week, Boris Johnson expressed his hope that the lifting of lockdown would be “irreversible” but confessed he could not give an “absolute cast iron guarantee”.