Covid-19 key updates: Quebec’s mask mandate, China’s virus outbreaks, and more

➡️ Second booster shields elderly from Covid but protection wanes quickly, finds study
A fourth dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine lowered rates of Covid-19 among the elderly but the protection against infection appeared short-lived, a large study in Israel has found. The second booster’s protection against infection dwindled after four weeks, Israeli researchers showed in their study published on Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. Protection against severe illness did not wane during the six weeks after the dose but more follow-up study was needed to evaluate its longer-term protection, the researchers said.
➡️ China holiday travel slumps after Covid outbreaks
The number of journeys taken over China’s three-day Tomb Sweeping Festival holiday tumbled nearly two-thirds from last year, state media said, citing data from the transport minry, as authorities battle outbreaks of Covid-19 across the country. The decline was worse than expected and comes as analysts warn that the economic cost of keeping infections to a minimum is likely to soar, with sectors like tourism bearing the biggest brunt.
➡️ Hong Kong funeral services overwhelmed Covid
Traditional wooden coffins are running short in Hong Kong as authorities scramble to add mortuary space in the global financial hub’s battle on Covid-19, which is swamping funeral parlours. Since the fifth wave of coronavirus hit the former British colony this year, it has reported more than a million infections and more than 8,000 deaths. Scenes of bodies stacked in emergency rooms next to patients have shocked many as places in mortuaries have filled up.
➡️ New Zealand’s director-general of health to step down in July
New Zealand’s Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield, who led the country’s health response to Covid-19, will step down at the end of July, the Public Service Commission said on Wednesday. New Zealand’s swift response to the pandemic and its geographic isolation kept the country largely Covid-19 free until the end of last year, winning Prime Miner Jacinda Ardern strong support both locally and overseas.

➡️ Greece will offer a second Covid-19 booster dose for people aged 60 and above, at least four months after the previous shot, Greek health officials said on Tuesday.
➡️ US President Joe Biden announced a national action plan to be developed the US health department to tackle the looming health crisis of long Covid, a complex, multi-symptom condition that leaves many of its sufferers unable to work.
➡️ US Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday that Democrats will need to agree to a vote on an amendment to preserve Trump-era, pandemic-related immigration restrictions in exchange for Republican support for a $10 billion Covid-19 spending package.
➡️  Quebec will require masks to be worn in indoor public spaces for all of April, delaying a plan to relax the measure the middle of the month as it and other Canadian provinces face a new Covid-19 wave, a top public health official said on Tuesday.
➡️ COVAX, the global project to share Covid-19 vaccines, and the African Union have declined options to buy additional doses of Moderna’s shot, as developing nations struggle to allocate supplies.
➡️ Most staff at South Korea’s POSCO have returned to their offices starting from April 1, a spokesperson of the steelmaker said on Tuesday, making it one of the first major firms in the country to implement back-to-office plans.
➡️ The US health regulator said on Tuesday GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology’s antibody therapy was no longer authorized to treat Covid-19 in the US due to an increase in the proportion of cases caused the Omicron sub-variant.
➡️ Two drugs that looked like promising treatments for Covid-19 in preliminary studies – remdesivir for hospitalised patients and camostat for patients who are not seriously ill – failed to show a benefit in those groups in randomised controlled trials, researchers reported in two separate papers.
(Compiled from Reuters and Associated Press reports)