Daily roundupMonday's key coronavirus developments from Luxembourg and abroad

Starting with Luxembourg

• [block type="summary”]The Ministry of Health has reported 131 new cases of coronavirus in Luxembourg over the past 48 hours, with two further deaths.

  • The Horesca foundation argues that hospitality staff should be considered a priority group for vaccination as restaurants are set to offer indoor table service from next week.
  • New CSV president Claude Wiseler has criticised the government’s new Covid laws, calling the plan “incoherent”.
  • The Chamber of Civil Servants repeated the criticism, claiming the laws are “legally unsafe”.

  And abroad

  • Britain on Monday was set to announce a further easing of its coronavirus lockdown, joining several European nations in gradually reopening their economies, but India remained in the grip of a devastating outbreak.
  • The World Health Organization in Geneva said the B.1.517 variant spreading in India appears to be more contagious and might possibly have some increased resistance to vaccine protections.
  • The EU is “fully on track” to ensure all its citizens and residents are able to have a free Covid health pass next month to ease travel, a spokesman said Monday.
  • An emergency legal challenge to Australia’s contentious ban on citizens returning from Covid-struck India failed Monday, dashing stranded travellers’ hopes of an immediate return.
  • Covid jab maker BioNTech said Monday it would build a Southeast Asia headquarters and manufacturing site in Singapore to produce hundreds of millions of mRNA-based vaccines per year.
  • Germany on Monday opened access to Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccines to all adults, lifting a priority system determining who gets the jabs first.
  • Ireland on Monday lifted domestic travel restrictions and began a phased reopening of non-essential retailers in the most significant loosening of pandemic curbs so far this year.
  • Visitors to Romania’s forbidding Bran Castle, widely known as the inspiration for the lair of Dracula, are being jabbed with needles rather than vampiric fangs this weekend in a coronavirus vaccination drive.
  • A 23-year-old Italian woman was under observation in a hospital in Tuscany after receiving six doses of the Pfizer vaccine in error, news agency AGI reported Monday.
  • A growing number of current and recovered Covid-19 patients in India are contracting a deadly and rare fungal infection, doctors told AFP Monday as the vast nation battles to contain a massive outbreak of virus cases.
  • US biotech firm Novavax on Monday said it had positive results from preclinical studies of a shot combining its influenza and Covid vaccine candidates.