Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Plans to significantly open up international travel are expected to be announced on Wednesday, with UK ministers poised to let people who have been fully vaccinated in the US and EU avoid quarantine if arriving from amber list countries.
The move would benefit millions of people by finally letting them be reunited with family and friends based in the UK, as well as businesses in the aviation and tourism sectors that have been hit hard by the pandemic.
Francisco Javier de Balmis used children to keep smallpox vaccine fresh on journey to Spain’s colonies
When Francisco Javier de Balmis set off from Spain in 1803 to vaccinate the people in Spain’s colonies against smallpox he had no means of keeping the vaccine fresh, so he used children as his refrigerators.
An exhibition of documents relating to Balmis’s voyage has opened at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville and will be on display until 15 September.
Inevitable Berejiklian is now being grill over Victoria’s sucsess which many are viewing as proof that NSW’s lockdown was too little, too late.
Victoria is now coming out of lockdown. Have they now shown us up? Should we have gone down harder and faster? They’ve done two weeks, we’re here in week five, and with no sign of things slowing down.
Oh look, I think it’s important to note that every state has had its own course during the pandemic.
Victoria is emerging out of its fifth lockdown, and I appreciate appreciate people want to make comparisons, but it’s also important to note that every state has had its own course. Every state has its own history of how they’re built with the pandemic.
Melbourne: schools, restaurants and bars open. Sydney: 172 cases. Highest case number since the borders were shut and edging towards the 200 record.
Thailand’s worsening Covid outbreak is placing intense pressure on hospitals, forcing doctors to treat patients in parking lots and turn away people who are severely ill.
For some people, the moment the ambulance arrives is the time they start expressing regrets about not receiving a coronavirus vaccine. For others, it’s the death of a loved one.
Healthcare workers and Covid patients have spoken out about growing numbers who, once faced with the serious reality of catching the virus, realise that they made a huge mistake.
An increasing number of European governments are planning to prevent unvaccinated people from being able to attend hospitality venues such as bars and restaurants this summer, as Emmanuel Macron celebrates the fruits of the recent announcement of the policy in France.
France on Monday passed the threshold of 40 million people having received at least one vaccine dose – close to 60% of the population. Macron tweeted: “Together we will defeat the virus. We continue!”
I am so pleased to hear that all 10 recommendations of the Foster Review will be implemented.
These reforms, most notably the independent complaints mechanism, will ensure Parliament House is a safer workplace for all future employees. https://t.co/wNNkVy4y9D
‘We have had people under 30 in intensive care,’ says Prof Adam Finn of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation
Young people are getting “seriously ill” from Covid-19, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has warned, as he urged them to get vaccinated.
Prof Adam Finn, from the University of Bristol, said there have been close to 200 admissions, with a mean age of 40, in the city during the Delta variant wave. England’s remaining Covid restrictions were eased on Monday and pictures of crowded nightclubs, filled with revellers not wearing masks or social distancing, have raised fears among some experts that infections could surge among unvaccinated young people.
Health experts have warned the government that it needs to increase efforts to ensure more young adults are vaccinated against Covid-19 – as a matter of urgency.
They fear the current low take-up of jabs among 18- to 25-year-olds could lead to a pile-up of vaccine campaigns in September, when other groups are scheduled to get booster injections and also to be inoculated against influenza. In addition, they argue that vaccines also have a crucial role to play in protecting young adults against long Covid, which is now recognised as a serious problem associated with the disease.
With the school term finally over, Britons are flying to Europe in their tens of thousands, record levels for this Covid year. They are arriving in countries where the Delta variant paralysing Britain is just becoming dominant – and Europe is responding by clamping down.
Some countries have tightened border controls, with Malta barring entry to unvaccinated travellers and Germany bringing in stricter quarantine rules for people arriving from Spain and the Netherlands. More broadly, authorities from Greece to Italy and France to Portugal are bringing in what are effectively vaccine passports for a wide range of activities, although most are shying away from using that term, which has become incendiary.
A conservative radio host in Tennessee who urged listeners not to get vaccinated against Covid-19 has changed track and called on listeners to get the shot, after contracting the virus and ending up in hospital in “very serious condition”.
Alabama’s Kay Ivey says surge in new infections is due to a reluctance among many in state to get inoculated
The Republican governor of Alabama has said it is “time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks” for rising cases of Covid-19, amid concern that months of misinformation over the need and efficacy of vaccines is fueling a resurgence of coronavirus infections in several states.
New South Wales announces 136 new local Delta cases with Sydney under the strictest lockdown measures it has experienced
Australia’s most populous state has declared a “national emergency” as it struggles to contain a record-breaking surge of the Delta variant of Covid-19 amid a lockdown affecting half the country.
The state of New South Wales announced 136 new locally-acquired cases of Covid-19 on Friday, with continued community transmission among essential workers, including in supermarkets and pharmacies.
The US is at another 'pivotal moment' in the pandemic as the Delta variant drives a big rise in new cases, said CDC director, Rochelle Walensky, who warned 'we are not out of the woods yet'. She added: 'The Delta variant is more aggressive and much more transmissible than previously circulating strains,' she said. 'It is one of the most infectious respiratory viruses that we know of and that I have seen in my 20-year career.'
Premier Gladys Berejiklian says 53 of the new cases were infectious in the community; northern NSW on alert after Covid fragments found in Byron Bay sewage; national cabinet to meet to discuss vaccine rollout. Follow live
NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant is back after a few days, and she is speaking to the tighter restrictions she has recommended.
Chant said:
I have advised the government today that this is a national emergency and requires additional measures to reduce the case numbers. What we are seeing is that the actions we have taken to date have averted many cases.
But what we are not seeing is the turnaround that we would have liked to see at this stage. And I’m concerned that we need to put in place urgent additional measures, what I’m recommending strongly is that our vaccination efforts are refocused on those affected LGAs. Every day, people from those LGAs have to go out to work to keep our city going.
We also know that, as I indicated that the group of workers that keep the society going is this group of workers in the 20 to 49 year old age group in south-western Sydney. Under 40s would not have been routinely eligible for vaccination, in terms of Pfizer. And what I’ve recommended to government is we urgently do mass vaccination of those workers to stem the transmission risk. We know the vaccines do that because they reduce the risk. If you’re vaccinated, even one dose, it reduces your risk of onward transmission.
Gladys Berejiklian has announced a new Covid death in her state, a 89-year-old male.
Details of the death are brief as the death is recent (it happened after 8pm last night) and authorities want to make sure family members have been notified.
I also want to say that tragically, as we see more cases, develop, we will also see more hospitalisations and more people in intensive care and regrettably, we did have an additional death overnight, which I’ve only just learned about.
I just want to foreshadow that unfortunately, we’re going to see more of this as the case numbers increase.
Hospitals are filling up, especially in areas with low vaccinations
CDC offers no change in guidance on mask wearing
The US is “at another pivotal moment in this pandemic” as rising Covid-19 cases show no signs of abating, driven by the Delta variant, and some hospitals are filling up, especially in areas with low vaccination rates, government officials warned on Thursday.
The US government did not change its guidance on mask wearing, despite debates going on in the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about whether those who have been vaccinated should once again be officially advised to wear masks indoors to prevent the spread.
The next wave of Covid will be different. When cases soared in spring and winter last year lockdowns rapidly brought them back under control. This time it will be vaccines that do the hard work.
But Covid jabs are not a perfect shield. They slow the spread of the virus, help prevent disease, and reduce the risk of dying. They do not bring all this to an end.
The vaccines minister has confirmed the government intends to go ahead with making Covid vaccination a condition for entry to nightclubs from September in England.
Nadhim Zahawi said that after a successful trial the government has rolled out the NHS Covid pass, which allows people to show their Covid status, whether proof of vaccination, test results or natural immunity.
He added the government reserved the right to make its use compulsory in future but confirmed MPs will get a vote on plans to use Covid passports