Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Six EU states have now fully inoculated a larger share of their total populations with a coronavirus vaccine than the UK, after the bloc’s dire initial rollout took off while Britain’s impressive early jab rate has slumped.
According to government and health service figures collated by the online science publication Our World In Data, Malta, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Denmark and Ireland have all overtaken the UK in terms of the percentages of their populations who are fully vaccinated.
A new series on Covid’s global political impact starts by looking at how the pandemic has fuelled turbulence in Latin America and the Caribbean
For Filipe da Silva, hitting the streets was about staying alive.
“Unfortunately, Brazil elected a murderer,” the 28-year-old declared as he and thousands of fellow protesters streamed through the seaside city of Fortaleza last month to decry the president’s bungling of a Covid epidemic that has killed more than half a million people.
The ritual of coffee and breakfast at the bar in Italy has become slightly more complicated as restrictions on unvaccinated citizens kicked in.
People can still drink coffee and eat a cornetto, a type of croissant, while standing at the bar or sitting at an outside table without needing to present a so-called green pass. But not if they are seated inside.
Since the Covid pandemic took off in early 2020, researchers have been studying myriad aspects of the virus, and made some surprising discoveries. Here are four areas where our understanding has changed:
Hazzard is the asked if the health system is being overwhelmed:
The health system is under stress as you would expect because there are a number of cases that are coming into our hospitals and our patients are being cared for, but they want to thank our nurses, our doctors, our cleaners, administrative staff who are there every day putting themselves at the front line to keep us all safe and I would just say again to people who might want to walk into our hospitals, if you do have COVID symptoms, cough, cold, temperature, anything that you think might be COVID, bring ahead and let them know that you are coming in so that they can keep themselves safe.
We have to keep our health staff safe so you can be safe. But certainly, anybody who thinks the health system in any country where we have a Delta variant is not under stress is getting themselves. Of course it is under stress but our health professionals are doing a great job.
As per usual, health minister Brad Hazzard has given his colourful daily take, today urging HSC students to “go for gold” in getting the Pfizer vaccine, and then listed off all the “stars” who have performed at the Qudos Arena, where the pop-up hub will be set up:
We’ve seen our Olympic stars go for gold, we’ve seen the most amazing stars in the Qudos Bank Arena, I think there has been Lana Del Rey, Keith Urban, Pink, Madonna, you have a chance to go to that stadium next week and get some gold by getting your first vaccination, your first Pfizer vaccination.
This is your big chance to really go for gold. You are getting an opportunity that so many others haven’t yet managed to achieve and is there to light up your future by having your safety and security looked after.
Government expands border ban in a move experts say could be constitutionally invalid and unfairly affect Australians from multicultural backgrounds
The Australian government has quietly expanded its ban on Australian citizens leaving the country to include people who are ordinarily residents in another country, meaning that even people who live overseas may not be allowed to leave Australia.
Prof Kim Rubenstein, an expert in citizenship law from the University of Canberra, said the change would unfairly affect Australians from multicultural backgrounds and could be constitutionally invalid.
Package holiday operators have given a lukewarm response to the government’s latest easing of Covid-19 restrictions on arrivals in England, but travel firms that focus on short breaks have reported an uptick in 11th-hour bookings.
Plans by Germany’s health minister to place restrictions on Germans who have not been vaccinated against coronavirus are facing stiff resistance from his coalition partners and the opposition.
Several Social Democratic party (SPD) politicians have called Jens Spahn’s proposals to exclude people from restaurants, gyms and other facilities who had failed to take up a vaccine offer “unworkable” and say they risk undermining the public health campaign to dampen the spread of the virus.
British holidaymakers in Mexico have told of their dismay after the country was abruptly put on the government’s red list of travel destinations.
The changes, which were announced on Wednesday night and will come into force at 4am on Sunday, mean that holidaymakers coming from Mexico and other red list countries – including Georgia, La Réunion and Mayotte - will either have to cut their holidays short to beat the restrictions or pay thousands of pounds to stay in a quarantine hotel when they return.
With 16 million Australians again plunged into lockdown as authorities struggle to contain Delta variant outbreaks, the national cabinet is set to examine how allowing vaccinated residents to be freed from restrictions could provide a “powerful incentive” to be immunised.
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, will meet with state and territory leaders on Friday amid fresh tensions between New South Wales and the commonwealth over the state’s prolonged and expanding lockdown and as Victoria enters its sixth lockdown following fresh Covid cases.
I have been vocal publicly about our need and want for more vaccines.
We know the vaccines stop the spread. They protect life and keep people out of hospital. That’s why it is so critical and every jurisdiction around the world is finding Delta challenging.
Greece imposed a night-time curfew and banned music on two popular tourist islands on Thursday to contain the spread of Covid-19, its civil protection deputy minister said.
The Mediterranean country, which is trying to rebuild a tourist sector hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic, is also battling a wave of wildfires during a protracted heatwave, Reuters reports.
We call on the residents and visitors in these areas to fully comply with the measures to limit the spread of the virus.
Fully vaccinated Britons will not have to quarantine on return from France and Spain for the next three weeks, bringing much needed business to the struggling tourism sector, according to the transport secretary.
But Britons will need to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 'for evermore' in order to travel between countries, Grant Shapps has predicted, suggesting that quarantine restrictions for some arrivals in England will remain in place into the autumn.
Shapps said it was vital to 'protect the domestic unlocking' after the latest changes were announced to the traffic light system that grades destinations according to their case, vaccine and variant numbers
The World Health Organization has asked the world's richest countries to delay rolling out booster shots to their populations before at least 10% of the world is vaccinated.
'We cannot accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it, while the world’s most vulnerable people remain unprotected,' said the WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The WHO said the moratorium would help towards the goal of vaccinating at least 10% of every country’s population by the end of September, and would help fight a pandemic that has killed more than 4.25 million people worldwide
Indonesia’s health ministry has recorded 1,747 new deaths of Covid-19 in the last 24 hours, pushing the nation’s total deaths to 100,636.
The south-east Asian country has been struggling to cope with the highly contagious Delta variant since it was first discovered in Indonesia in late June. According to Our World in Data, Indonesia’s total number of infections has now reached 3.53 million.
Ron DeSantis’s desire to keep state open amid Delta surge draws criticism from local leaders to the White House
Florida governor Ron DeSantis earned a new moniker this week as the resurgent coronavirus continued to wreak havoc on his state: the “Pied Piper of Covid-19, leading everybody off a cliff.”
The stark assessment of the Republican politician from Dan Gelber, the mayor of Miami Beach, came as Florida continued to set records for new cases and hospitalizations, saw worrying surges in both deaths and rates of positivity, and led the nation in pediatric Covid admissions.
Experts say so-called breakthrough cases remain rare, and deaths among vaccinated people are ‘effectively zero’
The Delta variant caused an inflection point in the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States. So-called “breakthrough” cases, or Covid-19 infections in people who have already been vaccinated, upended the understanding of whether people in America needed to continue wearing masks to prevent spreading the coronavirus.
But breakthrough cases remain rare, and hospitalization and death for vaccinated people is “effectively zero” in many US states reporting this data.
Mutant strain may emerge amid vaccine hesitancy, experts say, as even medics reject jabs in DR Congo
Dr Christian Mayala and Dr Rodin Nzembuni Nduku sit together on a bench outside the Covid ward at Kinshasa’s Mama Yemo hospital.
They are discussing the health of their father, Noel Kalouda, who contracted coronavirus weeks before, and is now lying in a hospital bed, breathing through an oxygen mask.
Analysis: Proof of vaccination is nothing new and any requirement that people use a ‘health pass’ will involve balancing various rights
With greater numbers of people being vaccinated and countries looking to reopen borders safely, the introduction of some form of vaccine passport seems increasingly likely.
For New Zealand, where the elimination strategy has been largely successful but which remains vulnerable to border breaches, proof of vaccination may well be a condition of entry.
The Mexican government has launched legal action against US gunmakers in an unprecedented attempt to halt the flow of guns across the border, where US-made weapons are routinely used in cartel gun-battles, terror attacks on civilians – and increasingly to challenge the state itself.
The Mexican government is suing six gunmakers in a Massachusetts court, alleging negligence in their failure to control their distributors and that the illegal market in Mexico “has been their economic lifeblood”.
The state department has said that it is looking into the apparent disappearance of a nearly $6,000 bottle of whisky given more than two years ago to then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo by the government of Japan.
In a notice filed in the federal register, the department said it could find no trace of the bottle’s whereabouts and that there is an “ongoing inquiry” into what happened to the booze. The department reported the investigation in its annual accounting of gifts given to senior US officials by foreign governments and leaders.
Millions of Britons have been given the green light to travel to Europe’s holiday hotspots, avoiding quarantine on return from France and Spain where concerns have been raised about Covid variants.
Ministers announced on Wednesday that fully vaccinated holidaymakers returning from France would no longer need to quarantine and ditched plans for a “watchlist” of amber countries such as Spain.