Category Archives: Medical research

Coronavirus live news: cases surge in Europe since lockdown easing, says WHO

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Cases worldwide growing by 1m per week; Latin American death toll expected to reach 390,000 by October; Texas hospitals near capacity; volunteers receive first doses of experimental vaccine

Guardian analysis of coronavirus data, in combination with the University of Oxford’s coronavirus government response tracker, has identified that 10 of the 45 most badly-affected countries are also among those rated as having a “relaxed response” to the pandemic, underlining the mitigating impact of effective government public health policies. You can read the Guardian investigation here.

The countries include the US - which is experiencing its largest increase in coronavirus cases since April; Iran, Germany and Switzerland - two European countries where the R rate has risen above one this week [...]

A country has been classed as being “relaxed” if its stringency index score is under 70 out of 100, according to the latest data from the University of Oxford’s tracker. The tracker assesses countries’ public information campaigns, containment measures and closures to give them a score out of 100 on their stringency index.

More on the rise of cases in Israel.

With 532 new infections reported by the health ministry in the past 24 hours, Israel has seen the emergence of a number of hotspots including in the Sea of Galilee resort of Tiberias, as well as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem – the highest daily total in more than two months.

Related: Israel brings back tracking system amid surge in Covid-19 cases

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Coronavirus live news: German district placed in local lockdown after meat plant outbreak

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Texas ‘wide open for business’; WHO urges dexamethasone steroid boom; Saudi Arabia closes borders to foreign pilgrims

Novak Djokovic, the men’s world No 1 tennis player, has tested positive for Covid-19, the Serbian said in a statement on Tuesday.

Croatia’s Borna Ćorić, Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria and Viktor Troicki have previously tested positive after playing in Djokovic’s Adria Tour exhibition tournament in the Balkan region.

Related: Novak Djokovic tests positive for Covid-19 amid Adria Tour fallout

Italy has seen a surge in bicycle sales since the government ended its coronavirus lockdown as people steer clear of public transport and respond to government incentives to help the environment.

Some 540,000 bikes have been sold nationwide since shops across the country reopened in early May, according to sector lobby Ancma, a 60% increase in the first month compared to the same period in 2019.

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Why doctors say UK is better prepared for a second wave of coronavirus

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Drug research, well-practised NHS staff and greater awareness of dangers give reasons for hope

When a deluge of coronavirus cases threatened to overwhelm the NHS in March, Covid-19 was a brand new and little-understood disease, causing panic as well as deaths. Hospitals under huge pressure did all they could.

Next time round, if, as everyone supposes, there is a next time, it will be different. In a second wave, or even localised spikes across the nation, the health service will know more about what it is dealing with – and will be better able to help people recover and send them home, say doctors.

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Delhi to transform 25 luxury hotels into Covid-19 care centres

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Fearful hotel workers asked to take on role of hospital support staff as cases in Delhi rise

Staff at luxury hotels in Delhi are to start welcoming guests not with traditional garlands but with a medical gown.

Amid growing concerns that there are not enough hospital beds to cope with the rising number of cases, the Delhi government has become the first in the country to requisition its hotels. Starting this week, 25 establishments will be repurposed as emergency Covid-19 care centres for patients with mild to moderate symptoms. In a sign of how overwhelmed medical staff are becoming, hotel employees are being trained in case they have to administer some of the care.

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Coronavirus live news: Bolsonaro silent as Brazil passes 50,000 deaths; global cases reach 9 million

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China halts imports from food plant where 481 tested positive; New York shops and bars reopen; Lisbon brings back lockdown restrictions

The Netherlands reported zero new deaths from Covid-19 on Monday, the first day since the beginning of March that the country’s pandemic death toll has not risen.

Deaths reported by Dutch national institute for public health are not necessarily from the past 24 hours, so it cannot be confirmed that no one has died from coronavirus-related illness. But it is the first day since 12 March that no death has been reported. The country’s total death toll is 6,090.

The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus around the world since the outbreak began has passed 9 million, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The US-based research university, which keeps a tally of official statistics, said that so far 9,003,042 cases had been reported. The United States is the world’s worst affected country by case numbers, with nearly 2.3 million cases alone, followed by Brazil with nearly 1.1 million, then Russia, with nearly 600,000.

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Coronavirus live news: New Zealand reports another new case as Brazil nears 1m infections

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Deaths worldwide near 500,000; US health expert says country is ‘still in first wave’; Argentinian president enters voluntary isolation amid coronavirus surge. Follow the latest updates

The hospitalisation of Honduras president with Covid-19 and pneumonia Wednesday has drawn attention to another country struggling under the pandemics strain as cases rise sharply in the capital, AP reports.

President Juan Orlando Hernández announced late Tuesday that he and his wife had tested positive for the virus. Just hours later he was hospitalised after doctors determined he had pneumonia.

From March to 7 June, Honduras confirmed 6,327 coronavirus infections. In the 10 days since, it added 3,329 more, a surge that has come after the government began a gradual reactivation of the economy.

The full story on Australia’s unemployment rate now:

Australia lost a further 227,000 jobs between April and May, resulting in a total loss of 835,000 jobs in seasonally adjusted terms since March and a 0.7% jump in unemployment to 7.1%.

Related: Australia loses 227,000 more jobs, taking unemployment to 7.1%

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Coronavirus live news: New Zealand to trace 320 ‘close contacts’ of virus pair who stopped to meet friends

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Beijing raises alert level and grounds hundreds of flights; India’s official death toll leaps by more than 2,000 to reach 11,903; Brazil suffers record case increase

Around 11,000 mink at a farm in Denmark will have to be culled after they were found to be infected with the coronavirus, the country’s authorities have said.

The outbreak is the first in Denmark, the world’s biggest producer of mink skins, but comes shortly after the virus was found at 13 mink farms in the Netherlands, where about 570,000 mink have been ordered culled.

If you’re planning to meet Vladimir Putin in the next few weeks, be warned: you will have to pass through a special disinfectant tunnel to get to the Russian president.

Putin’s official spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has confirmed a report by Russian state television that three airport-style tunnels have been built for the president: one at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, where he has reputedly being doing much of his work during the pandemic, and two at the Kremlin.

В резиденции Путина для защиты от коронавируса установили специальный туннель. Он предназначен для дезинфекцииhttps://t.co/jjwWbuZ2EX pic.twitter.com/h62KWARvsr

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Hydroxychloroquine: US revokes emergency approval of malaria drug for Covid-19

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Food and Drug Administration says drug is unlikely to work against coronavirus and notes heart risks

US regulators revoked the emergency authorization for malaria drugs championed by Donald Trump for treating Covid-19, amid growing evidence they don’t work and could cause serious side effects.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on Monday the drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine were unlikely to be effective in treating the coronavirus. Citing reports of heart complications, the agency said the drugs’ unproven benefits “do not outweigh the known and potential risks”.

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Covid-19 can damage lungs of victims beyond recognition, expert says

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Organs of some who die after over a month in hospital sustain ‘complete disruption’, peers told

Covid-19 can leave the lungs of people who died from the disease completely unrecognisable, a professor of cardiovascular science has told parliament.

It created such massive damage in those who spent more than a month in hospital that it resulted in “complete disruption of the lung architecture”, said Prof Mauro Giacca of King’s College London.

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Scientists report flaws in WHO-funded study on 2-metre distancing

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Mistakes mean findings should not be used as evidence for relaxing rule, say professors

Senior scientists have reported flaws in an influential World Health Organization-commissioned study into the risks of coronavirus infection and say it should not be used as evidence for relaxing the UK’s 2-metre physical distancing rule.

Critics of the distancing advice, which states that people should keep at least 2 metres apart, believe it is too cautious. They seized on the research commissioned by the WHO, which suggested a reduction from 2 metres to 1 would raise infection risk only marginally, from 1.3% to 2.6%.

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The Lancet’s editor: ‘The UK’s response to coronavirus is the greatest science policy failure for a generation’

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Richard Horton does not hold back in his criticism of the UK’s response to the pandemic and the medical establishment’s part in backing fatal government decisions

There is a school of thought that says now is not the time to criticise the government and its scientific advisers about the way they have handled the Covid-19 pandemic. Wait until all the facts are known and the crisis has subsided, goes this thinking, and then we can analyse the performance of those involved. It’s safe to say that Richard Horton, the editor of the influential medical journal the Lancet, is not part of this school.

An outspoken critic of what he sees as the medical science establishment’s acquiescence to government, he has written a book that he calls a “reckoning” for the “missed opportunities and appalling misjudgments” here and abroad that have led to “the avoidable deaths of tens of thousands of citizens”. 

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Coronavirus live news: Beijing back into partial lockdown as new cluster emerges

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Anthony Fauci calls Trump rallies a danger to health; Australia’s chief medical officers warns against BLM rallies

Three activists of Algeria’s Hirak protest movement were ordered to be held in pre-trial detention for offences including “endangering the lives of others during the [coronavirus] confinement period”, a prisoners’ defence group said on Saturday.

The Hirak movement led peaceful protests in 2019 after Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced his candidacy for a fifth presidential term, calling for Bouteflika’s immediate resignation.

Airlines are slowly trying to return to business after the pandemic grounded entire fleets of planes around the globe for months and put their very existence in doubt.

My colleague Gwyn Topham reports.

Related: Lots of distancing, no long-distance: airlines cautiously return to the sky

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No ‘patient zero’ as Covid-19 came into UK at least 1,300 times

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Study prompts further criticism that chances to suppress infection early in outbreak were missed

There was no “patient zero” in the UK’s Covid-19 epidemic, according to research showing that the infection was introduced on at least 1,300 occasions.

The findings, from the Covid-19 Genomics UK consortium, have prompted further criticism that opportunities to suppress the spread of infection in February and March were missed.

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Coronavirus live news: pandemic accelerating across Africa; over 2 million cases in US

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Shortage of test kits ‘leading to virus spread in Africa’; Mexico confirms record daily infections; Brazil deaths near 40,000

Another 1.5 million people in the US filed for unemployment benefits last week even as states continued to relax their coronavirus quarantine measures, writes Dominic Rushe and Amanda Holpuch in New York.

In just 12 weeks more than 44 million claims have been made for benefits as people lost their jobs. Rehiring appears to have started. Last week the labor department said the unemployment rate had dipped in May to 13.3% from 14.7% in April – although officials said difficulty collecting data meant the figure was probably 3% higher.

Related: 1.5 million Americans file for unemployment as states relax restrictions

Nearly three-quarters of new cases of coronavirus are coming from 10 countries, mostly concentrated in the Americas and south Asia, the director general of the World Health Organization has said.

Speaking at the UN health agency’s member state briefing on Thursday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the global situation was deteriorating, even as Europe appeared to be over the worst of the outbreak.

More than 7 million cases of Covid-19 have now been reported, and more than 408,000 deaths.

Although the situation in Europe is improving, at the global level, it is getting worse. More than 100,000 new cases have been reported each day for the most part of the past two weeks.

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Is the worst of the pandemic behind us? Here’s what scientists know | Devi Sridhar

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A second wave of coronavirus cases would be disastrous – but there are ways to prevent this happening

Over the weekend, there were no new deaths from coronavirus in London, Scotland or Northern Ireland. Slowly, the number of hospitalisations and deaths is falling across the UK. Rather than celebrating these early signs that the worst of the pandemic could be behind us, however, some scientists are warning of a second wave of infections – an increase in coronavirus cases in the coming weeks or months, which could occur even after a sustained fall in the number of cases. 

These warnings often refer back to the 1918 flu pandemic. That outbreak killed tens of millions of people when it returned the following winter in a deadlier form after the first outbreak had been controlled. But there’s a confusing lack of consensus from scientists about whether we’ll see a second wave of coronavirus cases. Although the future is uncertain, we can imagine four scenarios for what might come next. 

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How would a coronavirus vaccine work and will we even get one? – video explainer

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Science editor Ian Sample explains how vaccines work, runs through some of the main obstacles to creating one for coronavirus and preparing it for public use, and tells us which scenario he thinks is most realistic in the next 18 months 

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Surgisphere: mass audit of papers linked to firm behind hydroxychloroquine Lancet study scandal

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Questions continue for Surgisphere and CEO Sapan Desai as universities deny knowledge of links to firm behind Lancet’s now-disputed blockbuster study

Dozens of scientific papers co-authored by the chief executive of the US tech company behind the Lancet hydroxychloroquine study scandal are now being audited, including one that a scientific integrity expert claims contains images that appear to have been digitally manipulated.

The audit follows a Guardian investigation that found the company, Surgisphere, used suspect data in major scientific studies that were published and then retracted by world-leading medical journals, including the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine.

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Coronavirus live news: New Zealand ‘Covid-19 free’ as UK travel quarantine rules begin

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New Zealand has zero active cases; Global cases pass 7 million, deaths pass 400,000; Chile deaths jump after new fatalities added. Follow the latest updates

The Ryanair boss, Michael O’Leary, has delivered his withering verdict on Britain’s quarantine rules, which came into force today: “British people are ignoring this quarantine. They know it’s rubbish.”

More here:

Related: Ryanair boss: Britons know quarantine rules are rubbish

The Philippines has reported 579 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 today, and eight deaths. Malaysia has reported seven new confirmed cases, and no deaths.

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Brazil stops releasing Covid-19 death toll and wipes data from official site

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Government accused of totalitarianism and censorship after Bolsonaro orders end to publication of numbers

The Brazilian government has been accused of totalitarianism and censorship after it stopped releasing its total numbers of Covid-19 cases and deaths and wiped an official site clean of swaths of data.

Health ministry insiders told local media the move was ordered by far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, himself – and was met with widespread outrage in Brazil, one of the world’s worst-hit Covid-19 hotspots, with more deaths than Italy and more cases than Russia and the UK.

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What is the coronavirus R number and is it rising in the UK?

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Research suggests the average number of people one person infects may be increasing – but opinions differ as to why

With models suggesting that R could have risen above 1 in some parts of the UK, we look at what that means and how concerned we should be:

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