Covid news: UK reports 259 deaths; Turkish president tests positive – live | World news

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Canadian cities, including the financial hub Toronto, faced disruption on Saturday as protests against vaccine mandates spread from the capital of Ottawa, raising fears of clashes with counter protesters.
About 500 healthcare workers and supporters rallied in downtown Toronto, near the site of the planned trucker convoy demonstrations, according to an eyewitness. Several Toronto healthcare workers said they received advice from their hospitals to not wear hospital scrubs in public in light of the protest. Police said this was not their advice. “The notion that we have to somehow skunk around or be afraid of who we are and what were doing, I think, is offensive and regrettable and, I think, a sad commentary on our society,” emergency room doctor Raghu Venugopal told Reuters. Some protest vehicles arrived in Quebec City for a planned protest, coinciding with the city’s annual winter carnival.

Some U.S. Republicans have vowed to investigate GoFundMe’s decision to take down a page accepting donations in support of protesting truckdrivers in Canada.

West Virginia and Louisiana’s attorney general were among those who called on constituents to let them know if they had been a donor.

The website has already said it would refund all donations, Reuters reports.
The Freedom Convoy 2022 began as a movement against a Canadian vaccine requirement for cross-border truckers, but has turned into a rallying point against public health measures in Canada. GoFundMe said in a tweet that it had revised its original plan on how to handle funds already donated to support the truckdriver protest, saying that all donations would be refunded.

“This refund will happen automatically, you do not need to submit a request. Donors can expect to see refunds within 7-10 business days,” GoFundMe said in its tweet.

A report has found that around 20 Covid patients in the UK are being admitted to intensive care units each day as Omicron fails to cause serious illness among most vaccinated people.

The study by the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre put the number of admissions to ICU of patients with Covid at 19 on January 23.

About 400 people were being admitted daily at the peak of the second wave in January last year, The Sunday Times reported.

Pakistan’s prime minister Imran Khan with a message for Turkey’s president and his wife who have tested positive for Covid-19.

France has reported 104,974 coronavirus deaths in hospital, up by 170.
It has also reported that 3,606 people are in intensive care units with Covid-19, down by 12, Reuters reports.

Here are some further details on fifty members of Iran’s 290-seat parliament contracting Covid as the Omicron variant spreads unabated across the country.
Senior MP Alireza Salimi, speaking to YJC, a news agency linked to Iran’s state TV, said this week’s parliamentary session would be held in accordance with health regulations. Parliament was suspended for two weeks last April due to an outbreak among MPs. In the early days of the pandemic, several lawmakers died from the virus.

Some further data from Italy.

Patients in hospital with Covid-19 – not including those in intensive care – stood at 18,615 on Saturday, down from 19,000 a day earlier, Reuters reports.

There were 104 new admissions to intensive care units, down from 114 on Friday. The total number of intensive care patients fell to 1,411 from a previous 1,440.

Some 846,480 tests for Covid-19 were carried out in the past day, compared with a previous 884,893, the health ministry said.