Covid live news: hydroxychloroquine scientist may be pushed out of institute he founded; Israel expands booster programme

Further 804 Covid patients also admitted to UK hospitals; Spanish court lifts coronavirus curfew imposed on most of Catalonia

• UK Covid booster jabs highly unlikely to begin soon, JCVI sources say
• Are Covid booster jabs necessary?
• Jabbed adults with Delta can match virus levels of unvaccinated'
• Japan sees record number of Covid cases days before Paralympics begin
• Hong Kong reportedly lets Nicole Kidman skip Covid quarantine

11.09pm BST

Here's a roundup of the key developments:

11.01pm BST

Brazil has had 36,315 new cases of the novel coronavirus reported in the past 24 hours, and 979 deaths from Covid-19, the health ministry said on Thursday.

The South American country has now registered 20,494,212 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 572,641, according to ministry data, in the world's third worst outbreak outside the US and India and its second-deadliest after the US.