Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Wearing a face mask is certainly not an iron-clad guarantee that you won’t get sick – viruses can also transmit through the eyes and tiny viral particles, known as aerosols, can penetrate masks. However, masks are effective at capturing droplets, which is a main transmission route of coronavirus, and some studies have estimated a roughly fivefold protection versus no barrier alone (although others have found lower levels of effectiveness).
Until the mid-1800s, doctors didn’t bother washing their hands – they would go from dissecting a cadaver to delivering a child. Then a Hungarian medic made an essential, much-resisted breakthrough
It felt strange when Boris Johnson emerged from the first Covid-19 Cobra meeting on 2 March and told us to wash our hands while singing Happy Birthday. The preppers among us had panic-shopped while awaiting his pronouncements, and others fretted about vulnerable loved ones, travel plans, the nightmare of simultaneous homeworking and home-schooling, and not being able to work at all. And all our leader had was this?
As one of the few things we can do to significantly stop the spread of coronavirus while out in the infectious world, the new rules for this everyday habit have become the meme du jour. The Killers’ frontman, Brandon Flowers, tweeted a video of himself lathering up while crooning his hit Mr Brightside to 4 million followers. Judi Dench and Gyles Brandreth have posted themselves online reciting The Owl and the Pussycat with sudsy hands. A website for generating handwashing infographics to the song lyrics of your choice has gone viral.
Breaking: Nicola Sturgeon announces schools and nurseries in Scotland will close to pupils at the end of the week.
The first minister said there will be further announcements to support low income students on free school meals as well as students who have exams.
A person has died from coronavirus in Burkina Faso, the first known death from the disease in sub-Saharan Africa, writes the Guardian’s international correspondent Michael Safi.
The country, where security has been deteriorating for months due to attacks by armed groups including some linked to Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, has emerged as a hotspot in Africa, with 27 confirmed cases and at least 200 more people suspected of having the disease.
England’s deputy chief medical officer does not rule out further curbs; Ohio primary polls ordered to close; France in lockdown; WHO urges widespread testing. Follow the latest updates
Iran has temporarily freed a total of 85,000 prisoners, including political prisoners, a spokesman for its judiciary said on Tuesday, adding that the prisons were responding to the threat of a coronavirus epidemic in jails.
“Some 50% of those released are security-related prisoners . Also in the jails we have taken precautionary measures to confront the outbreak,” the spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili.
The #Iranian government feels it is appropriate to release 80k+ prisoners due to #Covid_19 ,including murderers&drug dealers,but continuously refuse to release the innocent political prisoners,because they hold too much value as bargaining chips #freeanoosheh
On the island of Jamaica, political and social messages have long been spread through the dancehalls and music, and so it is with coronavirus.
Just days after the island’s first confirmed case, an educational single, New Hail, was released to teach listeners how to avoid spreading the virus.
Mi just ah think, we cyan a guh roun’ and touch touch people like we used to. Then me link wid one of my G dem - and you know da likkle supm deh weh we ah rub off big finga? Mi seh dah hail deh now, it haffi guh cut out. Because dis nuh good fi we health, right now. Right deh so now, di song pop inna mi head, like yow, we need fi hail wid we foot enuh.
It a affect yuh, and it nuh care ‘bout race, riches or gender. A nuh everything make fi gimmick and joke ‘bout. As an artiste, I’m all about the fun, but this is not a fun thing and me coulda never do a dance fi some people siddung and joke and laugh about. Yuh know how much street dance cancel over this thing, how many people livelihood affected? Yuh know how much a my show dem get cancel because no travelling nah gwaan?
Neighbours from Naples to Tuscany make harmonies across empty streets to lift spirits and pass the time during quarantine
Italians have been singing from their balconies across the country, in an effort to boost morale during its nationwide lockdown that began this week, due to Covid-19.
Videos of Italian neighbours singing together have been appearing on social media after Italy’s prime minister Giuseppe Conte announced the restrictions that shut down virtually all daily life, and leftonly grocery stores, banks, and pharmacies open.
The World Health Organization has stepped up its calls for intensified action to fight the coronavirus pandemic, imploring countries “not to let this fire burn”, as Spain said it would declare a 15-day state of emergency from Saturday.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, said Europe – where the virus is present in all 27 EU states and has infected 25,000 people – had become the centre of the epidemic, with more reported cases and deaths than the rest of the world combined apart from China.
Herd immunity is a phrase normally used when large numbers of children have been vaccinated against a disease like measles, reducing the chances that others will get it. As a tactic in fighting a pandemic for which there is no vaccine, it is novel – and some say alarming.
It relies on people getting the disease – in this case Covid-19 – and becoming immune as a result. Generally it is thought that those who recover will be immune, at least for now, so they won’t get it twice.
There’s a strange mood in the intensive care unit (ICU) where I work at the moment. It’s one of controlled planning, paperwork and people pulling together in ways that on a normal day perhaps wouldn’t happen.
ICUs are as prepared as they can be. Locally business as usual has made way for preparations for caring for high numbers of patients. We are finding every ventilator we may have and identifying every suitably qualified member of staff. We will work together to fill gaps as best we can.
Plans to close off Catalonia have been announced by the northeastern Spanish region’s president, Quim Torra, who called on the central government to help by authorising the closure of ports, airports and railways.
The evolution of the contagion calls for most drastic action. We need to restrict entry and exit to protect ourselves.
In Europe, Hungary is closing all schools and will continue education as best as it can via digital channels, its prime minister Viktor Orbán has said.
In a Facebook video, he said he expected the Hungarian economy to stall soon and it will have to be restarted; an effort the government will participate in.
The first case of someone suffering from Covid-19 can be traced back to 17 November, according to media reports on unpublished Chinese government data.
The report, in the South China Morning Post, said Chinese authorities had identified at least 266 people who contracted the virus last year and who came under medical surveillance, and the earliest case was 17 November – weeks before authorities announced the emergence of the new virus.
Boris Johnson delivered the government’s coronavirus action plan under the new “delay” phase, flanked by the UK’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, and chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, on Thursday. Here are the next steps in different areas, and the justifications they gave for them.
What became known as Covid-19, or the coronavirus, started in late 2019 and early 2020 in the Chinese city of Wuhan as a cluster of pneumonia cases with an unknown cause.
The cause of the pneumonia was found to be a new virus – severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or Sars-CoV-2. The illness caused by the virus is Covid-19.
Declaring a pandemic has nothing to do with changes to the characteristics of a disease, but is instead associated with concerns over its geographic spread. According to the World Health Organization, a pandemic is declared when a new disease for which people do not have immunity spreads around the world beyond expectations.
Wearing a face mask is certainly not an iron-clad guarantee that you won’t get sick – viruses can also transmit through the eyes and tiny viral particles, known as aerosols, can penetrate masks. However, masks are effective at capturing droplets, which is a main transmission route of coronavirus, and some studies have estimated a roughly fivefold protection versus no barrier alone (although others have found lower levels of effectiveness).
In Vanuatu, where cyclones regularly interrupt trade, we are watching the west’s collective panic with bemusement
I’ve lived in the south Pacific island nation of Vanuatu for 16 years. Tropical weather regularly interrupts trade. Even when they’re hundreds of kilometres away, cyclones wreak havoc on shipping. Isolation and deprivation define our lives. We know better than most how to cope.
So imagine our bemusement when we see ranks of empty shelves in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the USA, denuded by people who pretty clearly have never dealt with a shortage before.
Declaring a pandemic has nothing to do with changes to the characteristics of a disease, but is instead associated with concerns over its geographic spread. According to the World Health Organization, a pandemic is declared when a new disease for which people do not have immunity spreads around the world beyond expectations.
The Covid-19 virus is a member of the coronavirus family that made the jump from animals to humans late last year. Many of those initially infected either worked or frequently shopped in the Huanan seafood wholesale market in the centre of the Chinese city of Wuhan. Unusually for a virus that has made the jump from one species to another, it appears to transmit effectively in humans – current estimates show that without strong containment measures the average person who catches Covid-19 will pass it on to two others. The virus also appears to have a higher mortality rate than common illnesses such as seasonal flu. The combination of coronavirus’s ability to spread and cause serious illness has prompted many countries, including the UK, to introduce or plan extensive public health measures aimed at containing and limiting the impact of the epidemic.
As the whole of Italy goes into lockdown, there are some reassuring signs that measures are starting to work. Across the 11 towns that went into quarantine over two weeks ago, the number of cases is beginning to fall.
Virgin Atlantic has called on the European Commission and UK flight slots co-ordinator to relax rules amid the coronavirus outbreak, PA reports.
Chief executive Shai Weiss said: “Last month Virgin Atlantic and industry partners committed to achieving net zero carbon by 2050.
Adam Castillejo, known as the London patient, goes public to give hope to others with illness
The second person ever to be cleared of HIV has revealed his identity, saying he wants to be an “ambassador of hope” to others with the condition.
Adam Castillejo, the so-called London patient, was declared free of HIV last year, 18 months after stopping antiretroviral therapy following a stem cell – or bone marrow – transplant to treat blood cancer.