Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The US diseases expert has been spoofed by Brad Pitt and lauded as the ‘sexiest man alive’. Now the pop culture phenomenon is the focus of a documentary
Beer and bobbleheads. Candles, colouring books, cupcakes and cushions. Dolls, doughnuts, hoodies, mugs and socks. T-shirts and yard signs that declare “Dr Fauci is my hero” and “In Fauci we trust”.
Anthony Fauci, an 80-year-old scientist, doctor and public servant, has become an unlikely cult hero for millions of people during the Covid pandemic.
With that, we’ll wrap up the news blog for the day.
Here were the top headlines today:
Prof Sharon Lewin, director of the Doherty Institute that has provided modelling for Australia’s reopening plan agreed to by national cabinet, has responded to NSW’s roadmap to freedom that was unveiled this week.
Of the plan to reopen at 70% double vaccination in NSW, Lewin told ABC’s The Drum: “I think the with situation in NSW, I’d be going slowly, slowly”.
We will see interpretations that will vary around the country and I think that is going to cause confusion.”
When you don’t have optimal TTIQ then you’ve got to bring in public health measures. That’s why this slow exit from the lockdown is probably going to be important.
I think the biggest challenge for NSW at the moment is keeping an eye on the burden on the healthcare system.
Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has slammed a far-right website in the final days of the country’s federal election, accusing it of spreading misinformation about coronavirus vaccines and contributing to the growing number of protests across the country.
After Wednesday night’s French language debate between federal leaders, Trudeau was asked by a member of Rebel News – a website whose contributors have included Katie Hopkins and Tommy Robinson – if he would continue to exclude the group from covering the election.
The reality is, organisations – organisations like yours – that continue to spread misinformation and disinformation on the science around vaccines … is part of why we’re seeing such unfortunate anger and lack of understanding of basic science,.
Frankly your – I won’t call it a media organisation – your group of individuals need to take accountability for some of the polarisation that we’re seeing in this country.
Joe Biden said in a Thursday afternoon statement that he was no longer proposing David Chipman, a 25-year veteran of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) who has worked to tighten gun laws, as the agency’s next director, confirming an earlier Washington Post report.
The gun reform group Brady says Biden’s decision to bow to National Rifle Association (NRA) pressure and withdraw his nominee, a strong gun control advocate, to lead the agency enforcing federal firearms laws is “a shameful day for our country”.
More than 8,000 people in the UK were in hospital with Covid on Wednesday – the highest figure for nearly six months – leading to fears of a resurgence in the virus’ ability to cause serious illness and death among the population.
In countries with high rates of vaccination, such as the UK, fewer people are predicted to become ill enough to require hospital treatment, even if infection rates remain high. But the latest figures show the highest number of patients on wards since 10 March.
Until cases dip to 10,000 a day, we are still in full ‘pandemic mode’, infectious disease expert says
The US has far too many cases of the coronavirus to see an end to the pandemic, Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Axios in an interview published on Thursday.
“The endgame is to suppress the virus,” Fauci said. “Right now, we’re still in pandemic mode, because we have 160,000 new infections a day.”
France has granted citizenship to more than 12,000 frontline workers whose jobs put them at risk during the Covid pandemic under a special fast-track scheme.
As well as speeding up the application process, which normally takes up to two years, the government also cut the residency requirement from five years to two.
At Thursday's daily Covid-19 briefing, the typically unflappable prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, could barely contain her expression when asked to respond to an allegation that a visitor and a patient had sex in a shared room at Auckland hospital. The allegation comes as the Auckland District Health Board faces criticism for allowing hundreds of visitors a day into hospitals, despite the strict lockdown measures in place to help the country stamp out an outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant.
We know that under the current legislative situation, there’s nothing preventing political parties like the United Australia Party from sending out those text messages, and people cannot unsubscribe from them.
The carriage of messages is generally a commercial matter for telecommunications providers, except in circumstances where there may be offences against the laws of the commonwealth or states or territories.
Both the Telecommunications Act 1997 and Spam Act 2003 contain provisions about implied freedom of political communications. These provisions set out that the acts or parts of them do not apply to the extent they would infringe on any constitutional doctrine of implied freedom of political communication.
There’s a press conference with the PM at 1.40pm AEST.
Daily cases in New Zealand’s coronavirus outbreak have continued to fall, with just 13 new infections recorded on Thursday, the sixth day in a row that numbers have been below 21. The downward trend is an encouraging sign the tough lockdown measures are working and that the country is making progress towards stamping out the virus.
It came as the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, announced the government had secured another 250,000 Pfizer vaccines from Spain to enable the vaccine rollout to continue at pace.
Data suggesting 20.3% of people are unwilling or unsure on getting jab prompts call for new strategies to reach nation’s wary
Australians must be prepared to see the Covid vaccination uptake curve start to flatten in coming months, a leading vaccine communication expert has warned, due to the rate of hesitancy.
But she is calling for health policy to reach this group in order to stop their lives becoming too difficult or to drive them away from healthcare.
Judge rules against governor while appeals court decides whether ban on public schools mandating masks is ultimately legal
A Florida judge ruled on Wednesday that the state cannot enforce a ban on public schools mandating the use of masks against the coronavirus while an appeals court sorts out whether the ban is ultimately legal.
Low-grade ventilation system at indoor carnival in Gangelt leading factor in outbreak among partygoers
Airborne viruses recycled through a low-grade ventilation system likely created Germany’s first super-spreader event of the Covid-19 pandemic, a CSI-style analysis of a carnival celebration has found.
The event at the town hall of Gangelt, a municipality on the border with the Netherlands, was labelled “Germany’s Wuhan” after it was found to be the driver of a major outbreak in the western state of North-Rhine Westphalia last year.
It might be repetitive to say, but I’ll take the good news anywhere. With that in mind, Western Australia and the Northern Territory have recorded zero new cases today. South Australia recorded one case in hotel quarantine, and zero locally acquired cases.
Victoria Police in Australia say future organised large gatherings will not be tolerated, and police will act on intelligence to stop them, after dozens of worshippers gathered near a synagogue in Melbourne’s south east earlier this week, in breach of Covid-19 lockdown rules.
Six people so far have been fined $5452 each for the illegal gathering in Ripponlea on Tuesday morning, held to mark the start of the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah.
One of the other topics that has come up during the UK’s morning media round is the issue of vaccinations for 12- to 15-year-olds, and whether they should be able to overrule their parents and get the jab if they want it. Earlier on Sky News UK health secretary Sajid Javid said:
I think we should follow the same rules that we’ve had in this country, under the successive governments, for decades, which is that you first would try to seek the consent of parents. If there’s a difference of opinion between the child and the parent, then we have specialists that work in this area, the school’s vaccination service, they would usually sit down with the parent and the child and try to reach some kind of consensus. If ultimately that doesn’t work, as long as we believe that the child is competent enough to make this decision, then the child will will prevail.
We have a lot of case law about the competence of young people to make decisions on their own. Certainly, in respect of procedure which is of benefit to them. I think we should err on the side of giving young people the opportunity to make decisions.
Vietnam was a Covid success story but the latest lockdown, with people unable to leave the house even for food, is leaving tens of thousands hungry
When the strictest lockdown to date was imposed in Ho Chi Minh City, Tran Thi Hao*, a factory worker, was told that the government would keep her and her family well fed – but for two months they have eaten little more than rice and fish sauce.
She was put on unpaid leave from her job in July, while her husband, a construction worker, has not worked for months. They are behind on their rent, with another payment due soon.
A medical clinic in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs has been offering patients off-label prescriptions for the anti-parasite drug ivermectin to treat Covid-19, despite a lack of evidence for its use in treating the virus.
The clinic set up a dedicated online page to apply for a consultation to be prescribed the drug to treat Covid-19 on its website after receiving an “influx of ivermectin inquiries”.
New Zealand’s plans to reopen its borders to the world early next year will have to undergo a complete reworking, the government has warned, as the country races to stamp out an outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant.
The nation recorded 15 new cases of coronavirus in the community on Wednesday, bringing the total number in the outbreak to 855.
The pandemic has left thousands of migrants stranded in Yemen because of restrictions on movement.
The UN’s migration agency IOM said 32,000 are stuck in Yemen, which is a transit hub for migrants leaving the Horn of Africa and trying to cross through Saudi Arabia.
Another 22,698 people took up first doses of the vaccine in Britain on Monday, taking the latest figures for overall jabs in the UK to 91,827,909, according to government data.
Four in five over-16s have now been fully vaccinated, with the highest percentage (84.1%) in Wales.
A CTV camera captured what appears to be white gravel hitting Trudeau and one of his bodyguards as he walked toward his campaign bus in London, Ontario. The Liberals cancelled an event late last month because of safety concerns linked to anti-vax protesters.