Category Archives: Society

‘The support has fizzled out a bit’: frontline workers on lockdown easing

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We check in again with workers including a bus driver and a care home manager about their experiences of the pandemic

In early April, frontline workers including a bus driver, a care home manager and a cemetery worker spoke to the Guardian about their experiences during the coronavirus paramedic. Two weeks later we checked in to hear how they had been coping with the peak of the virus.

Now, another month on, with lockdown restrictions easing, we catch up with the workers to see how things have changed.

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‘A lot of benign neglect’: how Ghana’s social changes are isolating older people

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The modernising economy is changing family structures – but can ‘western’ residential homes be accepted culturally?

After breakfast on a Friday morning, a small group of elderly people are engaging in gentle exercises – walking to one end of a walled compound and back. Some of them need the assistance of nurses or walkers, or both, to complete the journey.

“Usually, we do this a couple of times but it is a little bit cold today so we are going just once,” says Henry Ofori Mensah, administrator at Comfort For The Aged, a residential care home in Kasoa, a dormitory town west of Accra, Ghana’s capital.

At the turn of the century, a facility like this would have been hard to imagine in Ghana.

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WHO halts hydroxychloroquine trial for coronavirus amid safety fears

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Malaria drug taken by Trump could raise risk of death and heart problems, study shows

The World Health Organization has said it will temporarily drop hydroxychloroquine — the malaria drug Donald Trump said he is taking as a precaution — from its global study into experimental coronavirus treatments after safety concerns.

The WHO’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in light of a paper published last week in the Lancet that showed people taking hydroxychloroquine were at higher risk of death and heart problems than those who were not, it would pause the hydroxychloroquine arm of its solidarity global clinical trial.

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Hydroxychloroquine: Trump’s Covid-19 ‘cure’ increases deaths, global study finds

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Malaria drug should not be used to treat coronavirus, scientists say, after study shows high death rate

Hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug Donald Trump is taking to prevent Covid-19, has increased deaths in patients treated with it in hospitals around the world, a study has shown.

A major study of the way hydroxychloroquine and its older version, chloroquine, have been used on six continents – without clinical trials – reveals a sobering picture. Scientists said the results meant the drug should no longer be given to Covid-19 patients except in proper research settings.

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‘The issue now is surviving’: countries react with shock to Oxfam withdrawal

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Locals, NGOs and politicians express fears for world’s most vulnerable as charity announces withdrawal from 18 countries due to financial impact of Covid-19

Oxfam International’s announcement that it will close operations in countries including Afghanistan and Haiti has prompted fears that regions are being abandoned just as the coronavirus pandemic makes them more vulnerable.

Oxfam said the impact of Covid-19 on its finances had forced it to fast-track a global restructuring programme, which entails the closure of 18 country offices.

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Covid-19: did the UK government prepare for the wrong kind of pandemic?

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Britain’s highly rated disease preparation failed on coronavirus – possibly because ministers followed a plan for flu

When the coronavirus struck, the British government repeatedly said it was among the best-prepared countries in the world – with some justification. As recently as October, an international review of pandemic planning ranked the UK the second best prepared country in the world (behind the US).

Two months on, any breezy confidence has evaporated. The government is facing growing complaints over a series of policy missteps that critics say are responsible for the worst death toll in Europe.

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‘If I don’t have sex I’ll die of hunger’: Covid-19 crisis for Rio’s trans sex workers

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Brazil is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for transgender people. For trans sex workers, the pandemic has intensified the risk

  • All photographs by Ian Cheibub

Social distancing is keeping people off the streets of central Rio de Janeiro. And that has created serious challenges for its trans sex workers, who have seen their clientele, and their income, melt away.

“You can see what it’s like: empty streets, shops closed, the fallen economy ” says Elba Tavares, 44, from Paraíba state in north-east Brazil. “I am no longer in that rush of prostitution but yes, I sell my body.” But, she says: “There are very few customers.”

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Rwanda to release 50 women jailed for having abortions

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Activists welcome pardons, but call for relaxation of abortion laws and an end to punitive measures such as life sentences

Rwanda is to release 50 women who were jailed for having abortions after a personal pardon was issued by the country’s president, Paul Kagame.

Human rights activists welcomed the pending release of the women, six of whom had been given life sentences – the highest penalty available to the courts – two serving 25 years and the others terms ranging from 12 months to 20 years.

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No-deal Brexit ‘would overwhelm local emergency teams’

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Leaked report warns local disaster planning already exhausted by coronavirus crisis

Preparing for the impact of a no-deal Brexit later this year would overwhelm local emergency response teams exhausted by the Covid-19 pandemic, a leaked Whitehall report has warned.

A review by a committee set up to review the response to coronavirus said failing to seek an extension to Brexit negotiations threatened to “compound Covid-19 with a second UK societal-wide, economic and social, chronic threat”.

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US demands removal of sexual health reference in UN’s Covid-19 response

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Campaigners condemn letter from USAid’s John Barsa, calling it ‘a disgraceful and dangerous attack on essential health services’

Civil society groups have condemned calls by the Trump administration to remove references to sexual and reproductive health from the UN Covid-19 humanitarian response plan (HRP).

In a letter to the UN secretary-general António Guterres on Monday, John Barsa, the acting administrator for the US agency for international development (USAid), called on the UN to “stay focused on life-saving interventions” and not include abortion as an essential service.

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Pitfalls the UK needs to avoid when contact tracing for coronavirus

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Health expert John Ashton recalls his experience of the early stages of the crisis

Fresh uncertainty over the UK’s contact-tracing plans has thrown light on the difficulties of a successful track-and-trace system to tackle Covid-19. Prof John Ashton, a former regional director of public health and regional medical officer for the north-west of England, describes his experience of contact tracing at the early stages of the coronavirus crisis and highlights pitfalls the UK should avoid.

“In early February I was invited to Bahrain to examine the country’s preparedness for Covid-19. The first case, that of a religious pilgrim returning from a visit to holy sites in Iran, was diagnosed while I was in Bahrain on 24 February.

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UK gambling addiction much worse than thought, says YouGov

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New research also warns that half of those with a problem are not getting the help they need

Gambling addiction rates may be much higher than previously thought, according to research that also warns nearly half of those with a problem are not getting any help.

Related: Isolation will fuel gambling addiction. We must protect those at risk | Carolyn Harris

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Girls at risk of child marriage as half of local authorities fail to keep records

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Women’s rights group says too many social workers are not equipped to respond to increased risk posed by lockdown

Girls at risk of child marriage are falling under the radar of authorities in England and Wales because of a lack of record-keeping by more than half of the departments responsible for children’s social care, a charity has warned.

IKWRO women’s rights organisation says it is preparing for a spike in cases following the easing of lockdown and is urging social workers to be ready to respond.

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US and UK ‘lead push against global patent pool for Covid-19 drugs’

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Efforts to dilute world health assembly resolution on open licensing decried as ‘appalling’

Ministers and officials from every nation will meet via video link on Monday for the annual world health assembly, which is expected to be dominated by efforts to stop rich countries monopolising drugs and future vaccines against Covid-19.

As some countries buy up drugs thought to be useful against the coronavirus, causing global shortages, and the Trump administration does deals with vaccine companies to supply America first, there is dismay among public health experts and campaigners who believe it is vital to pull together to end the pandemic.

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Homophobic crimes rise by more than a third in France

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Figures released on eve of International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia show 36% leap in offences

Homophobic attacks and insults in France rose by 36% last year, according to figures released by the interior ministry, prompting the government to talk of an “anchoring” of homophobia in the country.

The figures released on Saturday show a steady increase in offences and come on the eve of the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia, and 30 years after the withdrawal of homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses by the World Health Organization.

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Kenya’s pastoralists face hunger and conflict as locust plague continues

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As herds are devastated and crops destroyed across east Africa, there are fears of violence as competition for grazing increases

Tiampati Leletit had heard tales of massive desert locust swarms darkening Kenya’s horizon. But when they hit his farm the devastation was all too real. They ate everything.

“I have never seen anything like this. When the swarms of locust invaded, they consumed everything and all the vegetation was gone. The livestock had nothing to eat,” says the 32-year-old. In January, he had 80 goats. Today he has four.

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‘The way we get through this is together’: the rise of mutual aid under coronavirus

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Amid this unfolding disaster, we have seen countless acts of kindness and solidarity. It’s this spirit of generosity that will help guide us out of this crisis and into a better future. By Rebecca Solnit

People behaving badly is a staple of the news, and the pandemic has given us plenty of lurid snapshots. In the US alone, we have seen protesters with guns in Michigan’s capital demanding an end to lockdown, anti-vaxxer women in a frenzy at California’s capitol, opportunists stockpiling hand sanitiser to resell for profit.

One of the biggest cliches about disasters is that they reveal civilisation as a thin veneer, beneath which lies brutal human nature. From this perspective, the best we can hope for from most people under crisis is selfish indifference; at worst, they will swiftly turn to violence. Our worst instincts must be repressed. This becomes a justification for authoritarianism and heavy-handed policing.

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Covid-19 crisis raises hopes of end to UK transmission of HIV

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Sexual health experts see in lockdown restrictions a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ chance

“In the war against any infectious virus,” says Dr Alan McOwan, “You’re trying to win various battles. You have to keep clobbering it from every direction you can.”

That’s true for coronavirus, he says, as well as for other viral conditions. An HIV specialist at London’s 56 Dean Street sexual health clinic, McOwan sees similarities between Covid-19 and HIV. Both are viruses without a working vaccine, you can be infectious without knowing it, and both rely mostly on close human contact to spread.

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PMQs: Keir Starmer presses Boris Johnson over care home deaths

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PM accused of not knowing government’s coronavirus advice after clash in Commons

Boris Johnson has been accused by Labour of not knowing the government’s advice on coronavirus after he told Keir Starmer at prime minister’s questions that it “wasn’t true” that the care home sector had been advised it was unlikely to face an outbreak.

In a tricky series of exchanges in the Commons, Starmer put Johnson under intense pressure to explain the extent of care home deaths.

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