Category Archives: Coronavirus

BBC apologises for failure to scrutinise Nadine Dorries’ claims about Sue Gray

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Former culture secretary called into question neutrality of civil servant after her appointment as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff

The BBC has apologised for the failure to properly scrutinise claims made by Nadine Dorries on a radio show, capping a day of controversies for the corporation.

The broadcaster said in a statement on Friday that “there should have been more challenge” when the former culture secretary and Boris Johnson loyalist made allegations about Sue Gray on Radio 4’s World at One.

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Cabinet Office ‘told Matt Hancock to tone down lab leak claims’

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Former health secretary was asked to make clear in Pandemic Diaries that he was not reflecting government’s view

Matt Hancock was instructed by the Cabinet Office to tone down claims in his memoir that the Covid-19 pandemic originated from a laboratory leak in China, according to leaked correspondence.

Officials warned it would “cause problems” if Hancock repeated the claim in his Pandemic Diaries and insisted he must make clear he was not reflecting the government’s view, the Daily Telegraph reported.

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US expected to ease Covid testing for arrivals from China

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Improving situation in China prompts decision, say news reports quoting Biden administration officials

The US is preparing to relax Covid-19 testing restrictions for travellers from China as soon as Friday, according to two people familiar with the decision.

The people, who were not authorised to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Biden administration had decided to roll back the testing requirements as cases, hospitalisations and deaths were declining in China and the US had gathered better information about the surge. The Washington Post was first to report on Tuesday about the easing of requirements.

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Schools in England seeing more pupil absences on Fridays

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Change in parents’ work patterns since Covid may have led to pupils staying home

Schools in England are seeing “a huge amount” of pupil absence on Fridays with children staying at home with their parents following a shift in attitudes post-Covid, MPs have been told.

Dame Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner for England, told the education committee that persistent absence from schools is “one of the issues of our age” and called for a “razor sharp focus” on the problem.

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‘He’s gone full Trump’: Tories turn on Boris Johnson over Partygate

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Senior MPs blast ex-PM’s ‘wicked’ claims after his backers level new accusations against Keir Starmer’s appointment of Sue Gray

Tory support for Boris Johnson is draining away tonight as party grandees likened his response to a cross-party parliamentary inquiry into whether he misled MPs over “Partygate” to the lies of former US president Donald Trump.

Several Conservative MPs in senior positions reacted with disbelief after Johnson and his dwindling band of allies questioned the work of the independent Commons privileges committee and accused it of an “outrageous level of bias”, after it said on Friday there was a significant volume of evidence suggesting that the former PM may have misled parliament.

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WHO calls on US to share information on Covid-19 origins after China lab claims

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World Health Organization’s director general says the politicisation of research into Covid’s origins was making the scientific work harder

The World Health Organization has urged all countries to reveal what they know about the origins of Covid-19, after claims from several US government agencies that a Chinese lab leak was behind the disease were furiously denied by Beijing.

“If any country has information about the origins of the pandemic, it’s essential for that information to be shared with WHO and the international scientific community,” the WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Friday.

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Matt Hancock ridiculed Sunak’s ‘eat out to help out’ scheme, messages show

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Then health secretary tried to get support of then cabinet secretary, according to leaked WhatsApp texts

Matt Hancock expressed disdain for Rishi Sunak’s flagship Treasury initiative, “eat out to help out”, during the Covid pandemic, according to the latest cache of leaked WhatsApp messages.

The messages show the then health secretary also attempting to get the support of the then cabinet secretary, Simon Case, in challenging the stance of Sunak, who was the chancellor, and others over some pandemic-era rules.

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Police and travel industry react angrily to Matt Hancock lockdown texts

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Messages show Hancock urging ministers to ‘get heavy’ with police and making light of hotel quarantine situation

Ministers have come under fire from police officers and the travel industry after private messages from Matt Hancock highlighted the rapid and occasionally haphazard way in which they wrote Covid lockdown policies.

Senior representatives of the police service attacked the government’s handling of the pandemic after the Telegraph published messages showing the former health secretary urging ministers to “get heavy with the police” over lockdown enforcement.

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Boris Johnson in battle for political future amid fresh evidence he misled MPs

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Privileges committee document intended to help ex-PM prepare for questioning contains wealth of new information

Boris Johnson faces a battle for his future in parliament after a cross-party committee found there was significant evidence he misled MPs over lockdown parties, and that he and aides almost certainly knew at the time they were breaking rules.

The damning report includes one witness saying the then prime minister told a packed No 10 gathering in November 2020, when strict Covid restrictions were in force, that “this is probably the most unsocially distanced gathering in the UK right now”.

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Covid was top line-of-duty death for US police for third year running in 2022

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Report shows pace has slowed, however, with 70 law enforcement deaths recorded in the line of duty

Covid was the top cause of death in the line of duty for American law enforcement for the third year in a row in 2022, according to a recent report, though the pace has slowed.

When the pandemic first hit, many law enforcement officers did what they could to lower the risks of catching Covid-19 – taking some reports over the phone rather than in person, trying to limit contact within departments and with the public.

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Misplaced tube may have contributed to London boy’s Covid death, inquest hears

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Doctor who treated Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab in March 2020 says breathing tube was in wrong position

An incorrectly placed breathing tube could have contributed to the death of a 13-year-old boy who became the UK’s first known child victim of Covid-19, a doctor has told the inquest into his death.

Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab, of Brixton, south London, died of acute respiratory distress syndrome caused by coronavirus pneumonia in the early hours of 30 March 2020, three days after testing positive for the virus.

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Kemi Badenoch dismisses idea of trialling menopause leave because it was proposed ‘from a leftwing perspective’ – as it happened

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Minister for women and equalities dismisses suggestion government should pilot menopause leave for women

PMQs is about to start.

Sammy Wilson, the DUP’s chief whip, has said that he thinks the Stormont brake – the mechanism at the heart of Rishi Sunak’s deal to revise the Northern Ireland protocol – will turn out to be “fairly ineffective”.

Let’s not underestimate the fact that when the EU introduces new laws in the future, it will have an impact on Northern Ireland. And the point of the brake was meant to be to give a means for unionists to oppose that. I think it will have to be used on lots of occasions, though I suspect to be fairly ineffective.

As long as it takes us to get, first of all, the analysis, and secondly, the answers from the government, before we make that decision, that’s the time we’ll take.

But the one thing I’ll say to you is that we will not have a knee-jerk reaction to this deal. It means too much to us. And we have got to give it real consideration.

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‘Time is not on our side’: Congress panel says tackling China defines next century

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‘We do not want a war within the PRC, a clash of civilizations,’ says ranking Democrat as new committee holds first hearing

Congress must act urgently to counter economic and national security threats posed by China, lawmakers on a newly created special House committee warned in its first primetime hearing.

China and the US are locked in an “existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century”, the Republican chairman, Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, said.

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FBI director endorses theory Covid-19 virus may have leaked from Chinese lab

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Comments fuel divide within US intelligence community on origins, as Chinese state media warns Elon Musk on pushing Wuhan lab theory

Christopher Wray, the FBI director, has weighed in on the debate over the origins of the Covid-19 virus, using an appearance on Fox News to endorse the theory that the virus potentially originated from a leak in a Chinese laboratory.

“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” Wray told Fox News’ Brett Baier, adding that the assessment was based on research the agency’s analysts, including scientists, had conducted and that “our work related to this continues”.

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Covid-19 likely emerged from laboratory leak, US energy department says

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Updated finding a departure from previous studies on how the virus emerged and comes with ‘low confidence’

The virus which drove the Covid-19 pandemic most likely emerged from a laboratory leak but not as part of a weapons program, according to an updated and classified 2021 US energy department study provided to the White House and senior American lawmakers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

The department’s finding – a departure from previous studies on how the virus emerged – came in an update to a document from the office of National Intelligence director Avril Haines. It follows an FBI finding, issued with “moderate confidence”, that the virus spread after leaking out of a Chinese laboratory.

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Labor MP calls on government to widen Covid anti-viral eligibility in Australia

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Exclusive: Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah says strategy is letting Australians down but medical groups back regulatory approach

A Labor MP and doctor says the nation’s strategy on responding to Covid infections is “letting Australians down” and is calling for an overhaul oof eligibility for powerful anti-viral drugs to allow far greater access for more people.

Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah said she had paid more than $1,100 from her own pocket this week on a private script for Covid anti-virals for a sick family member who was not eligible for subsidised access to the drugs. She called on her government to open the treatments to all people aged over 12, labelling the rules “daft”.

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Detained activist fears for missing zero-Covid protesters in China

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Ding Jiaxi tells his lawyer he is also worried about his own health after being held for more than three years

The detained human rights activist Ding Jiaxi has expressed concern for the young protesters who have disappeared since participating in the “blank paper” protests against zero-Covid that stunned China last year.

At least 16 of them are still in police detention, according to names gathered by activists, while Ding himself has been detained for more than three years.

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China claims ‘decisive victory’ over Covid amid doubt over figures

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More than 200m people treated for virus and death rate now ‘lowest in the world’, says government

The Chinese government has declared a “decisive victory” in the battle against Covid-19, claiming it had created “a miracle in the history of human civilisation” in successfully steering China through the global pandemic.

The comments were made at a meeting presided over by President Xi Jinping on Thursday. The government said more than 200 million people had been treated for Covid and that China’s death rate from coronavirus was “the lowest level in the world”.

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Long Covid causing job losses and homelessness in Australia, inquiry hears

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Chief medical officer Paul Kelly says a long Covid strategy is ‘well under way’ but will not be finalised until advice is received from the inquiry

The federal government is developing a national long Covid strategy, with a parliamentary inquiry hearing the condition has resulted in job losses and homelessness among some sufferers.

The chief medical officer, Professor Paul Kelly, said the federal health department had been tasked with developing a national long Covid strategy that would cover prevention, immunisation, treatment and research into the condition.

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PR firm behind Tory pandemic response linked to Covid inquiry

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Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group call this a ‘conflict of interest’ in preliminary hearing

The team behind the Covid inquiry has insisted there is no conflict of interest in having a PR firm which worked on Whitehall’s response to the pandemic running a listening exercise with bereaved families.

The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group reacted with dismay after their concerns were dismissed, saying they were “unbelievably let down”.

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