‘There’s a voice in your head saying you’ve killed these people’, says one employee of a UK home with 12 dead
It’s already hard for care workers to cope with Covid outbreaks that kill residents they have known for years. Guilt that they may possibly have caused it only makes things worse.
That is the anxiety faced by many, according to a carer who has spoken to the Guardian from the midst of a care home outbreak which has so far claimed 12 lives.
Continue reading...Oxford vaccine shown to have only limited effect against South African variant of coronavirus
Leading vaccine scientists are calling for a rethink of the goals of vaccination programmes, saying that herd immunity through vaccination is unlikely to be possible because of the emergence of variants like that in South Africa.
The comments came as the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca acknowledged that their vaccine will not protect people against mild to moderate Covid illness caused by the South African variant. The Oxford vaccine is the mainstay of the UK’s immunisation programme and vitally important around the world because of its low cost and ease of use.
Continue reading...Researchers say vaccines’ focus must shift to protecting people from hospitalisation and death
The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine will not stop people becoming ill if they contract the South African variant of Covid-19, researchers have confirmed, warning that vaccines’ focus needs to shift from population immunity to protecting individuals from hospitalisation and death.
The small study in 2,000 people aged 31, who are less likely to become severely ill, adds to evidence from big trials of other vaccines carried out after the variant appeared in South Africa. Trial data from the Janssen and Novavax vaccines showed efficacy in South Africa was up to 60% against the variant, substantially lower than against the original virus.
Continue reading...Schemes are in development from Sweden to China, but there are fears around transmission and social unrest
It is the question being asked with increasing urgency around the world, at least in countries where the vaccine is already available: how much freedom to live life as it was before the pandemic should be granted to those who have been vaccinated against Covid-19?
Its impacts range from the speed at which economies can open, to when grandparents and grandchildren can hug again, but it is causing growing unease among decision-makers who warn there is a danger of dividing societies already under huge strain due to pandemic restraints.
Continue reading...Childbirth rights group supports examination into disproportionate health outcomes
An urgent inquiry to investigate how alleged systemic racism in the NHS manifests itself in maternity care will be launched on Tuesday with support from the UK charity Birthrights.
The inquiry will apply a human- rights lens to examine how claimed racial injustice – from explicit racism to bias – is leading to poorer health outcomes in maternity care for ethnic minority groups.
Continue reading...Campaigners call for the introduction of an age of consent as 20 firefighters face charges
Protests will take place across France on Sunday in support of a woman allegedly raped by 20 firefighters when she was between 13 and 15 years old. Her case is being examined in the country’s highest court this week and campaigners hope it will lead to an age of sexual consent being enshrined in law as it is in the rest of the European Union.
Julie* says she was raped by Parisian firefighters over a period of two years, having been groomed by Pierre, a firefighter who had assisted her during a severe anxiety seizure when she was 13 in early 2008. Three of the accused have admitted they had sex with her but say it was consensual. In a journal written shortly afterwards Julie says she was “terrified and paralysed with fear” at the time.
Continue reading...When I decided to adopt orphaned twins from Ethiopia, it felt like the most natural thing to do. But it raised many questions about motherhood and the bond we have with our children
I assumed I would conceive naturally when John and I decided to start a family. I didn’t. We turned to fertility drugs with ambivalence. Reports of the mood swings the drugs sometimes caused worried me. I had only gone through one round when I broke a wooden dish-drying rack over John’s head. I don’t remember what he said, but I’m sure it was something I’d otherwise have considered innocuous. Instead, a growling, uncontrollable rage emerged from nowhere and then overcame me like an emotional tsunami. We decided the drugs weren’t for us.
I had gone along with fertility treatments for the same reason I went along with other non-decisions I’ve made in my life, like having an enormous wedding, because people whom I loved wanted it for me. I thought I was supposed to want it, just like I was supposed to want to get pregnant by any means. Yet I cried genuine tears when, month after month, I was unable to conceive. I felt like a failure.
Continue reading...At best, vaccines and lockdown could make life more normal by May. But at worst, a new mutation could undo any progress
Hopes are rising that Britain may soon put the worst of Covid-19 behind it. After a year in which the disease has paralysed the nation, killed more than 100,000 people, closed schools and universities, and brought the NHS to its knees, there are now signs of hope emerging.
Most optimism stems from Britain’s vaccination programme, which has resulted in the inoculation of more than 10 million people in the past two months alone, and which aims to have vaccinated the entire adult population later this year.
Continue reading...Frank Rothwell, 70, raised more than £640,000 for Alzheimer’s Research UK in tribute to his brother-in-law Roger
A grandfather has become the oldest person to row 3,000 miles solo across the Atlantic Ocean, raising more than £640,000 for dementia research.
Frank Rothwell, 70, from Oldham, set off from La Gomera in the Canary Islands on 12 December and crossed the finish line in Antigua in the Caribbean on Saturday – reuniting with Judith, his wife of 50 years, in good time for Valentine’s Day.
Continue reading...Teaching via Instagram and Zoom is both more and less intimate than a real-life class
Fifteen people lie down in rectangles on my screen. I am telling them to relax their jaws and soften the muscles around their eyes. I am also having a silent, hand gesture-based conversation with a five-year-old girl in one of the rectangles. This morning the girl’s mother sent me an email that read: “I’m going to attempt as much of the class as she will allow me to do – sometimes she is fine with it, and sometimes not.” In the next box, a cat strolls into view and settles down on its owner’s back as they rest in the child’s pose. Elsewhere, a dog is causing chaos at the back of someone’s mat. This is what I’ve learned from teaching Zoom yoga; mostly, small children and pets rule a household.
I’ve observed couples having conversations in class, giving me a delicious feeling of embarrassment and curiosity
Continue reading...Dr Clive Dix also says UK well-placed to respond if vaccine-resistant variant emerges
The head of the UK’s coronavirus vaccination taskforce has said he is optimistic that government will meet its target of vaccinating all over-50s by May.
No 10 confirmed on Friday that the vaccine programme was intended to reach all those over 50 and those aged 16 to 65 in at-risk groups by May, having previously said it aimed to do so “by the spring”.
Continue reading...Life before was a little different, but not a lot. Now I feel a new resilience and hope
Read more: Laura Barton on how a daily call to California got her through lockdown and Elle Hunt on moving to the other side of the world and the pandemic
I’ve been inside my cramped terrace house for nearly a year now. There haven’t been walks outside, or trips to the shops. Every morning, I wake into a day the same as yesterday. I reach out a hand to the cat who I know will be curled by my right side, listen for the creak of my son climbing down from his bunk bed. He will come and bundle himself under my covers, and we will begin again, another day juggling his schoolwork and my writing work, all conducted mostly from my bed.
I remember, dream-like, two weeks in the summer last year when it felt safe enough for my partner to fly over from Denmark, after six months apart. We drove to quiet places and he pushed me in my wheelchair. I wept, happy to see him and the green trees, and to eat picnics on the warm ground, a family again. It has been six months since then, and so we sit each day in front of iPads, touching fingers to the screen, baffled and smiling to still be in this strange, unforeseen predicament – falling in love, still, because distance does nothing to halt that. My life is one of pain, fatigue, activity, laughter.
Continue reading...After nearly a year of disrupted learning, primary school children in the UK have missed key milestones - as well as their friends. What will be the long term cost?
• In pictures: pets, plants and cuddly toys: a child’s eye view of home schooling
It is fair to say that Wells, eight, does not enjoy remote learning. “It’s horrible,” he tells a group of fellow year 4 children over a video call. “I can see my friends, but I can’t talk to them.” Emily, nine, finds home schooling tough, too: “It’s really, really boring. I’m sad. But I like being able to play with my guinea pigs.” Flora, also nine, agrees lockdown learning isn’t all bad: “It’s fun solving maths problems with my granny on Skype, and I get to have yummy snacks, like chocolate biscuits, all day.”
But they would all prefer to be at school. “There’s less distraction,” says Betty, who has two younger siblings and is expected to work independently in the afternoons. “When you’re in class, you can talk to your teacher and ask for help,” Ainhoa says. “Privately,” Wells adds. “You get their individual attention.” The children talk about feeling frustrated, stressed and even exhausted at the end of the school day. “Sometimes I just want to scrunch up the paper into pieces,” Ainhoa admits. “I really miss playing with my friends in the playground,” Flora says.
Continue reading...Longing for a cuddle? Newlyweds, siblings and housemates hug the people they can – and look forward to being close with those they miss
Continue reading...I moved from London to New Zealand, where the sense of normality is surreal
Read more: Laura Barton on how a daily call to California got her through lockdown
New Zealand doesn’t exist. So goes the meme, an internet in-joke arising from the frequency with which the island nation is left off world maps, and amplified by the whimsical news stories that often emerge there. For instance: a city road was recently closed for an entire month to allow safe crossing for a family of sea lions. How is New Zealand even real? As a citizen, with a black-and-silver passport to prove it, I have caught myself asking that question since I arrived back here from London a month ago. How can this place – where you can hug your parents, go to bars with your friends, and live life more or less like it’s 2019 – be only a flight away from the one I left behind?
I left London, where I’d been living since 2017, a few days before Christmas, just as coronavirus cases started rising again rapidly, and the government braced, too late, for another lengthy lockdown. “Getting out, are you,” a man had said, eyeing my bags on the bus to the Piccadilly line. At each stop on my journey to Auckland, totalling three planes over nearly 24 hours, my phone had lit up with news of the rapidly deteriorating situation I’d just fled. Two weeks later, I was released from my government-managed quarantine hotel into New Zealand, where there had been no local transmission of coronavirus since November. It felt as if I had slipped into another world through the back of my hotel wardrobe.
Continue reading...Scientists say it offers only slightly lower protection compared with original Covid
The Covid vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca is nearly as effective against the Kent variant as it is against older forms of the virus, according to preliminary research results.
Researchers analysed swabs from trial volunteers who developed asymptomatic or symptomatic infections to determine which variant of the virus they had caught after receiving the vaccine or a control jab.
Continue reading...Increasing number of people report feeling worn out and unable to cope due to period of sustained stress
Psychologists are reporting a rise in “pandemic burnout” as many people find the current phase of lockdowns harder, with an increasing number feeling worn out and unable to cope.
They warn that many are finding the latest lockdown more difficult because of a realisation that coronavirus will be around longer than expected, dashed hopes about an easing of restrictions, and a period of sustained stress similar to overwork, which has prompted symptoms such as fatigue.
Continue reading...The only photos were taken on my phone by an oncology nurse, but they reflect the joy we were feeling
I met Emma at a horrendous “mingling event” one wet spring evening in 2015. We connected immediately, and after a couple of dates I think we both knew we had a future together. By Christmas, Emma had moved out of her flat in Hove and into the house I lived in for my job, as site manager for a Brighton primary school. We’d talked about wanting kids on our very first date; we were both in our mid-30s and it seemed important to be upfront.
Our son, Archie, was born in 2018 and by the time he was toddling he was like my shadow, following me as I fixed things and helping put away tools. It never occurred to me I might not get to see him grow up. I’ve always been fit and healthy, and when I suddenly started losing weight last summer my first thought was, “Great – now I won’t need to spend so much time at the gym.” But I was losing my appetite, too, and soon people were saying, “James, what’s up? You don’t look great.”
Continue reading...Analysis: as need outstrips funding, experts are making the case for overhauling ‘old-fashioned’ donor-recipient narratives
This year one in every 33 people across the world will need humanitarian assistance. That is a rise of 40% from last year, according to the UN. More than half of the countries requiring aid to help deal with the coronavirus pandemic are already in protracted crises, coping with conflict or natural disasters.
Even before Covid-19 threw decades of progress on extreme poverty, healthcare and education into reverse, aid budgets were heading in the wrong direction. In 2020, the UN had just 48% of its $38.5bn (£28bn) in funding appeals met, compared with 63% of $29bn sought in 2019.
Continue reading...Campaigners call for vaccines to be prioritised to frontline health workers and people at highest risk
Communities across Africa are reeling as a second wave of Covid infections recedes, leaving thousands dead amid fears of further surges before mass vaccination campaigns can begin to make a difference.
Few countries in Africa will start immunising even frontline health workers until much later this year, prompting accusations that large orders by wealthy nations are costing the lives of medical staff in poorer parts of the world.
Continue reading...