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4.04pm BST

Peru has signed a deal to purchase 20m doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, Reuters reports, citing the country’s health ministry. The move will shore up the hard-hit Andean nation’s defences over fears of a potential third wave.

Officials said the agreement, signed with the Russian Fund for Direct Investment, would ensure the arrival of the vaccines within “the next few months”. Reuters reports:

Peru is among the most battered countries in Latin America by the pandemic; a predicament that has left its hospitals near collapse and often outstripped the availability of oxygen tanks. The country in late May tripled its official death count from the virus and leads the world in deaths per 100,000 inhabitants from the disease.

The Andean nation, which has a population of 33.2 million, has thus far vaccinated 10.9 million people with at least one dose and 4 million with two doses of Pfizer, Sinopharm and AstraZeneca shots, according to official data.

3.49pm BST

An Oxford University paper dubbed by the Daily Mail an “anti-lockdown” plan has emerged as the likely inspiration behind the UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s messages declaring “get Covid and live longer”.

The WhatsApp messages revealed by his former chief aide, Dominic Cummings, showed the prime minister was holding out against lockdown measures as cases spiralled in October 2020 and appear to suggest he was unconcerned by the deaths of people in their 80s. According to the texts released by Cummings to the BBC, Johnson says:

I must say I have been slightly rocked by some of the data on Covid fatalities. The median age is 82 – 81 for men, 85 for women. That is above life expectancy. So get Covid and live longer. Hardly anyone under 60 goes into hospital (4%) and of those virtually all survive.

And I no longer buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff. Folks, I think we may need to recalibrate.

Related: Boris Johnson’s ‘get Covid, live longer’ quip an echo of Oxford study

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Source: The Guardian