The Metropolitan police has said that it is going to review its decision not to include the Christmas quiz in Downing Street on 15 December 2020 in its partygate investigation in the light of the new prosecco picture. It has just issued a statement saying:

The MPS previously assessed this event and determined that on the basis of the evidence available at that time, it did not meet the threshold for criminal investigation. That assessment is now being reviewed.

That means that the party of the event published by the Daily Mirror this afternoon was not considered by the Sue Gray inquiry. Gray passed all her evidence on to the police, who used it to decide which events seemed to involve a serious breach of the rules.

This is potentially a worrying development for No 10. Dame Cressida Dick, the Met commissioner, told the London assembly recently that the threshold for criminal investigation in after the fact lockdown rule cases was particularly high; she said the Met would only consider cases that seemed to involve the “most serious and flagrant” breaches of the rules, and where those involved appeared to have no “reasonable defence”.

You can follow all of Andy’s coverage here:

Related: Met to review decision not to investigate quiz night party after photo emerges – live

All remaining domestic Covid legal restrictions in England are likely to be scrapped later this month, Boris Johnson has announced.

Here my colleague Peter Walker explains what we know – and what is yet to be set out: What will happen after Covid rules are scrapped in England?

Related: What will happen after Covid rules are scrapped in England?

Palestinian authorities have ramped up Covid testing and vaccinations in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, and have warned that public indifference to calls for mask-wearing and social distancing is hampering efforts to fight the pandemic, Reuters reports.

The Palestinian Authority health ministry registered more than 64,000 active cases of Covid on Wednesday, in what officials described as an unprecedented daily increase due to the Omicron variant.

“Three weeks ago we were recording up to 300 infections daily, but in the last few days we crossed the 11,000 mark,” said Mahdi Rashed, director of health services in Ramallah. “It’s clear this is a result of the Omicron variant spreading.”

Rashed cautioned that the real number of infections is likely higher, because many people are not getting tested, and he blamed the rise on peoples’ “recklessness and indifference” by not adhering to health safety rules.

The Palestinian health minister Mai al-Kaila warned that governmental hospitals in the West Bank were at full capacity on Saturday. In the past week alone, the number of people who were seriously ill more than doubled in Gaza and nearly doubled in the West Bank.

Across Gaza and the West Bank, masking is mandatory inside public offices and government employees are required to get vaccinated, officials said.

But Ahmed Al-Atrash, a 28-year-old resident of the West Bank city of Hebron, where he runs a clothing stand, said public apathy had set in. “No one cares about corona,” he told Reuters. “No one stresses about it. They do not care, and this has become a normal thing among Palestinians.”

Palestinian authorities in both the West Bank and Gaza have opened more testing sites, approved rapid tests and are urging people to get vaccinated.

Of the 3.1 million Palestinians living in the West Bank, 60% are fully vaccinated, while the rate for Gaza’s 2.3 million population stands at 43%, according to health officials. The death toll in the West Bank and Gaza from the virus has reached nearly 5,000.

In August 2020, the Guardian spoke to workers in the live music industry who had their livelihoods destroyed by Covid. How are they faring in 2022?

Michael Hann reports: ‘We all need a plan B now’: the dicey world of live music after Covid

Related: ‘We all need a plan B now’: the dicey world of live music after Covid

Here is our story on Boris Johnson’s plans to abolish the last domestic Covid restrictions in England, including the requirement for people with the virus to self-isolate, in less than two weeks, a month earlier than initially proposed.

While guidance will remain in place for people to stay at home, as they would if they had flu, there will be no legal requirement backed up with fines of up to £10,000.

Unions urged measures to improve sick pay and ensure people were not forced to work, warning about the potential of “a green light for bosses to cut corners”, while school leaders said there had been no prior discussion of the change.

Ministers would publish new guidance, Downing Street said after Johnson’s announcement, adding it was possible some travel restrictions could remain such as passenger locator forms and quarantine for non-vaccinated people. Covid tests will remain free for now.

Full story: Boris Johnson plans to lift England’s last Covid rules a month early

Related: Boris Johnson plans to lift England’s last Covid rules a month early

Only five hospitals in Afghanistan still offer Covid treatment, with 33 others having been forced to close in recent months for lack of doctors, medicines and even heating, the Associated Press reports.

It comes as the economically devastated nation is hit by a steep rise in the number of reported coronavirus cases.

At Kabul’s only Covid treatment hospital, staff can only heat the building at night because of lack of fuel, even as winter temperatures drop below freezing during the day. Patients are bundled under heavy blankets. Its director, Dr Mohammed Gul Liwal, said they need everything, from oxygen to medicine supplies.

The facility, the Afghan Japan Communicable Disease Hospital, has 100 beds. The Covid-19 ward is almost always full as the virus rages. Before late January, the hospital was getting one or two new coronavirus patients a day. In the past two weeks, 10 to 12 new patients have been admitted daily, Liwal said.

“The situation is worsening day by day,” said Liwal. Since the Taliban takeover of the country six months ago, hospital employees have received only one month’s salary, in December.

Afghanistan’s healthcare system, which survived for nearly two decades almost entirely on international donor funding, has been devastated since the Taliban returned to power in mid-August, amid the chaotic end to the 20-year US-led intervention. Afghanistan’s economy crashed after nearly $10bn in assets abroad were frozen and financial aid to the government was largely halted.

The health system’s collapse has only worsened the humanitarian crisis in the country. Roughly 90% of the population has fallen below the poverty level, and with families barely able to afford food, at least a million children are threatened with starvation.

The Omicron variant is hitting Afghanistan hard, Liwal said, but he admits it is just a guess because the country is still waiting for kits that test specifically for the variant. They were supposed to arrive before the end of last month, said public health ministry spokesman Dr Javid Hazhir. The World Health Organization now says Afghanistan will get the kits by the end of February.

Between 30 January and 5 February, public labs in Afghanistan tested 8,496 samples, of which nearly half, were positive for Covid-19. Those numbers translate into a 47. 4% positivity rate, the WHO said.

As of Tuesday, WHO recorded 7,442 deaths and close to 167,000 infections in the country since the start of the pandemic almost two years ago. In the absence of large-scale testing, these relatively low figures are believed to be a result of extreme under-reporting.

Meanwhile, the new Taliban administration says it is trying to push vaccines on a sceptical population that often sees them as dangerous.

With 3.2m vaccine doses in stock, Hazhir said the administration has launched a campaign through mosques, clerics and mobile vaccine clinics to get more people vaccinated. Barely 27% of Afghanistan’s 38 million people have been vaccinated, most with the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Getting Afghans to follow even a minimum of safety protocols, like mask-wearing and social distancing, has been near impossible, Liwal said. For many struggling to feed their families, Covid ranks low on their list of fears, he said, despite the public health ministry running awareness campaigns about the value of masks and social distancing.

Even in the Afghan Japan hospital, where signs warn people that mask wearing is mandatory, most people in the dimly lit halls were without masks. In the intensive care unit, where half of the 10 patients in the ward were on ventilators, doctors and attendants wore only surgical masks and gowns for protection as they moved from bed to bed.

The head of the unit, Dr Naeemullah, said he needs more ventilators and, even more urgently, he needs doctors trained on using ventilators. He is overstretched and rarely paid, but feels duty-bound to serve his patients. Liwal said several doctors have left Afghanistan.

Most of the hospital’s 200 employees come to work regularly despite months without pay.

In December, a US-based charity affiliated with Johns Hopkins University provided two months funding, which gave the hospital staff their December salary and a promise of another paycheck in January. The public health ministry is now in negotiations with WHO to take over the cost of running the hospital through June, said Liwal.

Liwal said other Kabul hospitals used to be able to take some patients, but now no longer have the resources. With a lack of funds and staff leaving, 33 facilities offering Covid-19 treatment nationwide have shut down, he said.

The Afghan Japan hospital’s only microbiologist, Dr Faridullah Qazizada, earned less than $1,000 a month before the Taliban took power. He has received only one month’s salary since August, he said. He says his equipment and facilities are barely adequate.

“The whole health system has been destroyed,” he said.

The United Arab Emirates will gradually lift Covid restrictions as the number of infections and hospitalisations has gone down, the state news agency WAM reported on Wednesday.

Venues will be allowed to function at maximum capacity by mid-February, it said, citing the National Emergency Crisis Management Authority.

The UAE, which has one of the world’s highest vaccination rates, reported on Wednesday 1,538 new coronavirus infections and four deaths in the past 24 hours, according to WAM.

The total numbers of Covid-related cases and deaths recorded in the country are respectively 862,514 and 2,273, it said.

Despite the success of Covid jabs, there is huge – and understandable – mistrust of the pharmaceutical industry, writes Laura Spinney.

An extract reads:

It is true social media has done us a disservice and our social contract was fraying before Covid came along. But it’s also true that, if anti-vaxxers and their enablers are ready to stop at nothing in pursuit of fat profits, they have an excellent role model in big pharma. If governments, industry and physicians acknowledge this needs to change, at long last, then this crisis won’t have gone to waste.

You can read the full piece is here: Yes, vaccines are lifesavers – but big pharma still needs to get its house in order

Related: Yes, vaccines are lifesavers – but big pharma still needs to get its house in order | Laura Spinney

Police have been urged to investigate another party in Downing Street after a new photograph apparently showed Boris Johnson at a Christmas quiz in December 2020, with an open bottle of champagne and staff wearing Santa hats and tinsel.

The image published by the Daily Mirror shows the prime minister with three members of staff at the event on 15 December, which No 10 has said was a virtual quiz.

Asked at prime minister’s questions if the Met police should add this to the events they are investigating, Johnson said the allegation was “completely in error”.

At the time the photo was taken, London was under tier 2 restrictions, which banned social mixing between households. The government had explicitly told people they must not meet for Christmas parties.

Johnson was challenged about the image at prime minister’s questions by the Labour MP Fabian Hamilton, who said:

It looks a lot like one of the Christmas parties he told us never happened.

Citing the case of a constituent who was unable to have family visit her in hospital when she was being treated for a tumour, Hamilton asked if Johnson would refer the event to police for investigation.

Johnson replied only by expressing his sympathy for the constituent, saying: “I understand very much her feelings. But in what he has said just, I am afraid, he is completely in error.”

Asked again in PMQs about the photo, Johnson replied: “That’s precisely the point. That event already has been submitted for investigation.”

The Met police are examining potential law-breaking at 12 gatherings in Downing Street, three of which Boris Johnson is known to have attended. A fourth event, in his Downing Street flat, is also under investigation and the prime minister has declined to say whether he was in attendance.

But the event on 15 December, which was a virtual quiz for staff, was not among those gatherings referred to the Met police and Johnson insinuated they had already seen the evidence before making the decision.

The police said they had been handed more than 300 photographs of events in Downing Street and 500 pages of evidence. A full report from the Cabinet Office official Sue Gray, who was asked to investigate the rule-breaking, is also expected to be released once the police work is concluded.

The former No 10 adviser Dominic Cummings, now a fierce critic of Johnson, said further pictures would soon come out. “There’s waaaaay better pics than that floating around, incl[uding] in the flat,” he tweeted.

“The pics will come out and the public will think ‘Met [police] lying’, not ‘oh PM innocent after all’. Penny dropping with MPs.”

The new picture came just hours after sources suggested Johnson did not intend to resign if he was given a fixed penalty notice by police, though MPs could trigger a vote of no confidence.

More on this story here: Boris Johnson pictured at Christmas quiz with champagne and tinsel

Related: Boris Johnson pictured at Christmas quiz with champagne and tinsel

New York governor Kathy Hochul will on Wednesday announce the end of the state’s mask mandate for most indoor public places, The New York Times reported, joining several states due to lift face-covering rules as the latest US Covid surge eases.

The Democratic governor intends to let the mask mandate, which has been challenged in court, expire rather than seeking to renew it, the newspaper reported, citing three individuals briefed on the move.

It remains unclear whether Hochul’s administration would renew or drop a separate compulsory masking rule in New York public schools that is due to lapse in two weeks.

Representatives for the governor did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Hochul called the general mask mandate temporary when she imposed it 31 December as the Omicron variant threatened to strain healthcare systems.

Officials in several other Democratic-led states – New Jersey, California, Connecticut, Delaware and Oregon – announced on Monday that they were lifting mask mandates for schools and other public settings in the coming weeks.

In all those instances, authorities cited the receding Omicron wave of Covid infections, hospitalisations and deaths that began sweeping the United States during the year-end 2021 holiday season.

But the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director, Dr Rochelle Walensky, told Reuters on Tuesday that with cases still high nationwide, “now is not the moment” to drop mask mandates in schools and other public places.

The relaxation of masking rules signals an inclination by politicians to take pandemic-weary residents off an emergency footing and shift toward treating the virus as part of everyday life.

A New York state judge struck down Hochul’s mask mandate last month, ruling she had overstepped her authority.

But an appeals court judge stayed that decision the next day, keeping it intact while the case remained under judicial review.

Good morning from London. I’m Lucy Campbell, I’ll be bringing you all the latest global developments on the coronavirus pandemic for the next eight hours. Please feel free to get in touch with me as I work if you have a story or tips to share! Your thoughts are always welcome.

Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @lucy_campbell_

Andrew Sparrow’s UK politics blog is now up and running. This blog will continue with global Covid news.

Related: Boris Johnson faces last PMQs before mini recess as Tory donor hits out at his ‘lack of honour’ – live

More on UK health minister Gillian Keegan (see also 08:16), PA Media cites a quote from November when she was asked about how new Covid rules about face coverings would be enforced.

She then told BBC Radio 4’s Today:

Well, largely due to the good sense of British people who will hopefully listen to the rules, try to protect each other, and do what the right thing is.

That’s largely what … how it’s always been. That’s pretty much what it’s always been, but the police do have powers to enforce.

The UK health minister, Ed Argar, has said he understands the health secretary Sajid Javid has accepted an apology from his fellow minister Gillian Keegan after she continued a meeting despite getting a positive Covid test (see also 08:16).

He said Keegan had “clearly issued a fulsome apology”, adding that he believed she had apologised to Javid.

He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain:

I saw that Twitter thread, I think, late last night, I think it was. She’s clearly issued a fulsome apology there, that she did make an error of judgment, she was open about that and she accepted she made an error of judgment.

He added:

I understand – I haven’t spoken to or seen Gillian yesterday or today, so I don’t know first hand – but I understand from her Twitter thread that she set out the circumstances and apologised, and I understand that she has also spoken to and apologised to the secretary of state, who has accepted that apology.

The BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, responding to UK health minister Gillian Keegan’s tweet (see also 08:16 and 08:38):

And the shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy:

More from the UK: The Labour mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has told Sky News that if he were in Gillian Keegan’s position, he would have left the meeting on getting a positive Covid result (see also 08:16).