There will continue to be plenty more data gaps because the Covid-19 strain simply behaves like all influenzas and mutates continuously
By the time you read this it will be out of date.
Why? Because every day we receive new data that causes us to rethink and rewrite our response to Covid-19, notably vaccine programs. This is good. I will explain.
Continue reading...Victoria’s Holiday Inn outbreak rises to 16 cases on second day of state lockdown; Boris Johnson urges G7 leader to unite against virus. Follow the latest updates live
The press conference in Wellington, held in response to the discovery of three community cases in Auckland, has now finished. As of 11.59PM tonight Auckland will be placed under tougher restrictions, at level three, while the rest of the country will be moved to level two restrictions. (Details of the alert levels can be found online here).
Ardern said she was asking the public “to be strong and to be kind”:
I know we all feel the same way when this happens, we all get that sense of - not again. But remember we have been here before and that means we know how to get out of this again, and that is together. If you know someone in Auckland reach out, please check on them. If you are in Auckland please check on your neighburs and ensure they are looked after and supported.
Related: New Zealand Covid outbreak: Ardern puts Auckland into three-day lockdown
Dr Ashley Bloomfield, New Zealand’s director-general of health, said officials were working under the assumption that the new Auckland cases were one of the new variants of Covid-19. “Regardless of where people have come from, these are the common variants and we do know they are more transmissible,” he said.
Ardern said that the decision to introduce tougher restrictions was “not taken lightly”. However, the cost to the economy would be far greater, she said, if the country was slow to react.
Continue reading... This blog is now closed. We’ve launched a new blog at the link below:
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Naval hero praises Jenner’s cowpox jab in a newly found love letter to Emma Hamilton, written as he prepared for war
He is best remembered as the one-armed hero who defeated Napoleon, rewrote the rules of naval warfare and died at sea, in battle, onboard HMS Victory.
Now, the “chance discovery” of a 220-year-old love letter from Admiral Horatio Nelson to Lady Emma Hamilton, his mistress, reveals how open-minded and ahead of his time the formidable captain was about a radical new scientific breakthrough: the smallpox vaccine. In the letter, dated July 1801, Nelson appears to advocate the use of the brand new vaccine on his own baby daughter.
Continue reading...During a visit to the Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies plant in Billingham, Teesside, where the new Novavax vaccine will be manufactured, the prime minister hailed the coronavirus vaccine rollout, but said the infection rate was still high.
Johnson said he would announce an outline for the 'roadmap forward' on 22 February, with priority being given to schools
Continue reading...Prime minister says priority is to reopen schools on 8 March once 15m in priority groups vaccinated
Boris Johnson has said he is optimistic about announcing the easing of some lockdown measures soon as the government nears its target of offering vaccines to 15 million people in priority groups.
Speaking on Saturday at a visit to the Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies plant in Billingham, Teesside, where the new Novavax vaccine will be manufactured, the prime minister said his first priority remained opening schools in England from 8 March, to be followed by other sectors.
Continue reading...Trial will use 300 volunteers to assess whether jab produces strong immune response in children aged six to 17
The efficacy of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in children is due to be tested in a new clinical trial beginning this month.
Researchers will use 300 volunteers to assess whether the jab – known as the the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine – produces a strong immune response in children aged between six and 17.
Continue reading...Border staff not briefed about even basics of Covid protection system starting on Monday, says union
Immigration officials expected to enforce a mandatory quarantine intended to protect the UK from new coronavirus variants have not been briefed on even the basics about how the system will work, little more than 48 hours before it begins, the Guardian has been told.
The Immigration Services Union (ISU), which represents many of the Home Office’s immigration officers, said that before the start on Monday of the new policy, staff had not been told if they would be expected to check for arrivals who had not properly declared their status, or when and how those obliged to quarantine would be taken to hotels.
Continue reading...Everyone in top four categories has been offered first vaccine dose, says first minister
Wales has become the first UK nation to have offered a Covid jab to everyone in the top four priority groups, the first minister, Mark Drakeford has announced.
Last month, Drakeford was forced to defend Wales’s vaccination programme after criticism of delays from opposition parties and doctors. But at a press conference on Friday, he said that 66 days after people in Wales first began getting the jab, the key target had been achieved.
Continue reading...Lancet commission review condemns Trump’s virus response; Two masks ‘substantially reduce expose US CDC says; cheap asthma drug appears to reduce risk of severe illness. Follow latest updates
The Czech Republic on Thursday announced a stricter lockdown in three districts from east to west where coronavirus infections have soared and hospitals are struggling to cope.
The order means a ban on movement from and into the eastern district of Trutnov on the border with Poland and the western districts of Cheb and Sokolov on the border with Germany, the health minister Jan Blatny said.
CNA is reporting three community cases among 12 new Covid-19 infections in Singapore.
The Ministry of Health (MOH) said the remaining nine infections were imported and had been placed on stay-home notice upon arrival in Singapore. No new infections were reported in foreign worker dormitories.
Continue reading...For almost a year our small clinic has been struggling with the horrors of the coronavirus pandemic. So being able to give our staff and most vulnerable patients their first doses of the vaccine has been a real turning point
During the week I work in a small, inner-city GP practice in Edinburgh with 14 staff, caring for almost 4,000 patients. Before the pandemic, I used to see 25-30 people in face-to-face appointments every day. A year into the pandemic, the need out there is the same, but my GP colleagues and I manage more like five or six face-to-face (or mask-to-mask) consultations, a home visit or two, and the remainder on the phone or through video calls. It’s not the best way to practise medicine, but for the moment, it’s the best we have.
The first I heard of the vaccine rollout was back in October, when our practice manager received an email from the health board asking if we would have capacity to vaccinate the over-80s among our patients. We said yes, of course: in the past year we’ve had four patients die of Covid-19, three of them over 80.
Continue reading...World Health Organization recommends AstraZeneca jab ‘even if variants present’; Israel to open hotels and gyms to those who have had vaccine or recovered from virus
Update from earlier post about Israel’s planned re-opening of sections of its society:
With some elementary schools due to open on Thursday, health minister Yuli Edelstein, speaking separately with reporters, said he would seek to require teachers who are not documented as being immune to Covid-19 to test negative every 48 hours.
#BREAKING WHO vaccine experts recommend AstraZeneca Covid jab for over-65s pic.twitter.com/Uoiv9wKxaW
Continue reading...Latest updates: PM says people will have to ‘get used to the idea of vaccinating, and then re-vaccinating in the autumn’
The latest edition of the Guardian’s Politics Weekly podcast is out. Jessica Elgot and John Crace look at why the latest coronavirus travel restrictions might not work the way the government expects, as well as Robert Jenrick’s latest announcement on cladding funds. Plus, Helen Davidson and Jon Henley on how the world sees the UK’s Covid response.
Related: Hotel quarantine – too little too late? Politics Weekly podcast
As HuffPost’s Paul Waugh reports, at the lobby briefing the prime minister’s spokesman had difficulty justifying some of the work done by the three taxpayer-funded photographers now working from Downing Street.
Asked why the taxpayer should fund ‘vanity’ photographers who took these pix of the PM’s dog playing in the snow, No.10 spokesperson suggests Dilyn works for govt: “These photographers document the work of the government, as well as the work inside Number 10.” pic.twitter.com/UgdDF2Tdrp
Continue reading...NSW and Victoria report no new local Covid cases as hotel quarantine worker in Melbourne diagnosed with UK variant. Follow all the latest news and updates, live
On the vaccine distribution in Australia, Paul Kelly says it is still on track for the first injections to be happening before the end of February, but will not put an exact timeline on it.
The aim will be to get 20 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine before the end of this year, in weekly deliveries. Kelly said the AstraZeneca and Novovax vaccines will also be used if and when they are approved by the TGA:
We don’t want a lot of vaccines sitting out in warehouses, so we will be looking to roll out particularly for those priority populations that people will know about now, as soon as we can. But then will be going back to the same population, those people, to give them a second dose. That is really important.
We will await the TGA advice in relation to AstraZeneca but some of the information that has been coming up in the last few weeks is that it may actually be a longer interval for that second dose.”
Australia’s chief medical officer, Prof Paul Kelly, is also moving to reassure people about the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine.
He said it was still in the process of being approved by the Therapeutics Goods Administration, and talked down claims it was less effective in treating the South African variant of the virus.
I just want to make a very clear statement about people taking small amounts of information quickly, without looking at it carefully. And making conclusions. At the moment, I can absolutely say, and this may change in future, and we will be nimble in the way we look at that information, and putting that into our planning, but at the moment, there’s no evidence anywhere in the world AstraZeneca effectiveness against severe infection is affected by any of these variants of concern.
And that is the fact. What we have at the moment is a small group of people in a study not yet peer-reviewed or published in South Africa where there was an effect on the mild or moderate disease in relation to that variant of concern in that country. But there were no severe infections in any of the people that received the vaccine in regards to any of those types of the virus.”
Continue reading...Boris Johnson to announce new restrictions on UK arrivals to protect vaccine rollout
Scientists and senior MPs have renewed calls for sweeping border curbs to protect the UK’s vaccination programme against new variants as Boris Johnson prepared to introduce tougher measures and Britain saw internal infections fall.
The government is to announce new restrictions on arrivals into the UK this week, including mass testing of all arrivals. All passengers arriving in the UK will be tested for coronavirus on day two and day eight of their isolation – regardless of the country they have come from and whether they are at home or in hotel quarantine. The UK already requires all arrivals to have a negative Covid test from within the past 72 hours, taken while still abroad.
Continue reading...Prof Jonathan Van-Tam has said that people should not be concerned about reports that early results suggest the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine has only 10% efficacy against the South African variant of coronavirus. Speaking at the Downing Street press conference on Monday, England's deputy chief medical officer said UK case numbers of the variant are 'very small', meaning it is unlikely to become dominant in the UK, and urged people to get vaccinated.
Continue reading...Drugmakers are looking at ways to improve their vaccines so they are ready for mutations of the virus
Emerging variants of the virus that causes Covid-19 have triggered concerns that the vaccines developed to date will not provide the high level of protection seen in clinical trials. Concerning variants have been identified in California, South Africa, Brazil and the UK.
But not every variant needs a new vaccine, since vaccines produce a broad immune response that will probably cover many mutations. Here’s what needs to be done to assess whether a vaccine needs to be tweaked, and how to tweak it.
Continue reading...John Magufuli’s cavalier disregard of Covid’s impact in the great lakes region is fuelling conspiracies and endangering lives
What is wrong with President John Magufuli? Many people in and outside Tanzania are asking this question.
Magufuli claimed last year that God had eliminated Covid in the east African country of 60 million people, and has since made dismissing Covid vaccines his central priority – leaving many people asking: why?
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...We’re not asking for charity, but fairness – instead of the hoarding and protectionism currently in play
The current situation with regard to the access and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines vividly illustrates the decades-old contradictions of the world order.
Rich and powerful nations have rushed to lock up supply of multiple vaccine candidates. Worse, some are hoarding vaccines – purchasing many times more doses than they need. This leaves African and other developing countries either far behind in the vaccine queue, or not in it at all.
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