Coronavirus live news: Ireland tightens lockdown as cases hit record high; EU approves Moderna vaccine

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Ireland registers 7,836 new cases as it shuts down schools and construction work; Moderna is second vaccine to get EU approval

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10.50pm GMT

England and Wales recorded the most deaths in 2020 of any year in more than a century, with the pandemic leading to a rise in the number of excess deaths, a senior statistician has revealed in a sobering analysis.

Some 604,000 deaths were registered in the two nations in the last 52 weeks, about 73,000 or 14% above the five-year average, Nick Stripe from the Office of National Statistics said on Twitter (see full thread).

We can adjust by population to get crude excess death rates

2020 will also be the highest since 1940

Even with measures taken to limit COVID spread, 2020 will still top 1951, the year of a major flu epidemic

Without all our efforts, 2020 could have been much worse

9/11 pic.twitter.com/RrHghNcRBm

10.36pm GMT

Tunisia recorded 2,820 new confirmed coronavirus cases, the health ministry said on Wednesday, a record since the start of the pandemic last year.

Seventy more deaths were reported, taking the death toll to more than 5,000, the ministry added, while the total number of cases has jumped to around 150,000.

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