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The prevalence of COVID-19 in the U.K. has reached record levels, with about 1 in 13 people estimated to be infected with the virus in the past week, according to the latest figures from Britain’s official statistics agency. Some 4.9 million people were estimated to have the coronavirus in the week ending March 26, up from 4.3 million recorded in the previous week, the Office for National Statistics said Friday. The latest surge is driven by the more transmissible omicron variant BA.2, which is the dominant variant across the U.K. (Hui, 4/2)

The British government on Friday shut down or scaled back a number of its Covid surveillance programs, curtailing the collection of data that the United States and many other countries had come to rely on to understand the threat posed by emerging variants and the effectiveness of vaccines. Denmark, too, renowned for insights from its comprehensive tests, has drastically cut back on its virus tracking efforts in recent months. (Zimmer, 4/2)

KHN: Travel In The Time Of Covid: Getting There Is Easy — It’s Getting Home That’s Hard 

I’m being held captive in England by the U.S. government. On the day my wife and I were to fly home from London after a brief visit, we took a covid-19 test, as required by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to travel to the U.S. The United States will not allow anyone to fly into the country who has tested positive for covid, and it is up to the airlines to enforce that. My wife’s test was negative. My test was positive. She flew out. I stayed put. (Darlin, 4/4)

As a viral video ricocheted around China’s internet, showing toddlers and infants in a Shanghai medical facility, crying as they were crammed in threes and fours on metal-barred beds, one 39-year-old mother was particularly distraught. “I searched for any sight of my daughter in the video but couldn’t find her,” said the mother, who asked to be identified only by her surname, Zhu. Ms. Zhu said she had been separated from her 2½-year-old daughter on Tuesday after they tested positive for Covid in Shanghai, home of what is quickly becoming China’s biggest coronavirus outbreak in more than two years. (Xie and Qi, 4/3)

China added more than 13,000 new Covid-19 infections with state media reporting a case infected with a new subtype of the omicron variant. The new iteration of the virus, isolated from a mild Covid-19 patient in a city less than 70 kilometers (43 miles) from Shanghai, evolves from the BA.1.1 branch of the omicron variant, Global Times reported, citing sequencing data from local health authorities. The report said the subtype doesn’t match other coronavirus that’s causing Covid in China nor those submitted to GISAID, where scientists around the world share the coronavirus they sequenced as a way to monitor mutations. (4/3)

As Hong Kong’s outbreak became the deadliest in the world, among the aid Beijing sent to the financial hub were 1 million packets of honeysuckle, rhubarb root, sweet wormwood herb and other natural ingredients, all mixed according to principles of traditional Chinese medicine. Practitioners of the centuries-old medicinal system argue such herbal combinations can be just as effective as antiviral pills like Pfizer Inc.’s Paxlovid. (4/3)

A 60-year-old man allegedly had himself vaccinated against COVID-19 dozens of times in Germany in order to sell forged vaccination cards with real vaccine batch numbers to people not wanting to get vaccinated themselves. ... He was caught at a vaccination center in Eilenburg in Saxony when he showed up for a COVID-19 shot for the second day in a row. Police confiscated several blank vaccination cards from him and initiated criminal proceedings.(Grieshaber, 4/3)

The World Health Organization suspended procurement and supply of Covaxin, a Covid-19 vaccine made by Bharat Biotech International Ltd., citing issues following an inspection at the company’s facilities. The Indian vaccine maker has committed to address deficiencies in good manufacturing practices and is developing a corrective and preventive action plan, the World Health Organization said, without specifying when the suspension will be lifted. It recommended countries which have received the vaccine to “take actions as appropriate.” (Trivedi and Kay, 4/3)