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 Duchess of Sussex has used her 40th birthday to launch an initiative to help women back into work after the huge job losses caused by the Covid pandemic.
The project, which was launched with a comedy film featuring a juggling Prince Harry, is called 40x40 and is focused on encouraging people around the world to donate 40 minutes of their time to help women return to the workplace.
Covid vaccines will be offered to all 16- and 17-year-olds without needing the consent of their parents, after government experts reversed their advice from just two weeks ago.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said older teenagers should be offered their first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab and advice on when to offer the second dose would come later.
A “fit and healthy” 42-year-old who loved climbing mountains and lifting weights has died of Covid-19 after refusing to get vaccinated, leaving his twin sister and mother heartbroken.
The two women warned others not to think they are invulnerable to the dangers of the virus.
Thinktank says longer wait for treatment since Covid pandemic is main reason, in study of 11 countries
The NHS has lost its prestigious ranking as the best health system in a study of 11 rich countries by an influential US thinktank.
The UK has fallen from first to fourth in the Commonwealth Fund’s latest analysis of the performance of the healthcare systems in the nations it studied.
As the highly transmissible Delta variant continues to spread across at least 17 provinces, China is facing a new dilemma: is its once-successful “zero tolerance” approach to containing the spread of the virus over, and what comes next?
Unlike Britain and Singapore, where officials have explicitly encouraged people to “learn to live with the virus”, China has yet to officially shift its messaging.
Just weeks ago, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) recommended that children over the age of 12 should only be vaccinated if they were extremely vulnerable or lived with someone at risk, citing concerns about an inflammatory heart condition linked to the Pfizer/BioNTech jab. Now the JCVI has tweaked that decision to allow children aged 16 and 17 to be routinely offered the vaccine.
Dr Peninah Murage says the unjust traffic light system penalises poor countries even though some have relatively low numbers of cases. Plus Dot Mornington-West on being under house arrest after returning from France
Can the Guardian please investigate the rationale behind the Covid travel restrictions relating to “red list” countries? Some of the countries on the red list, such as Kenya, have very low Covid cases and deaths, but are among the world’s poorest and with little influence on government policy.
Essentially, the UK government is using this list to appease the public who need to see the government doing something – but at the same time the government is assured that the backlash will be minimal because these countries have very little voice.
About 2,500 students and staff at a school in Melbourne’s west will need to self-isolate and get tested after a teacher caught Covid-19.
Jeroen Weimar, Victoria’s Covid-19 commander, told ABC Melbourne the Al Taqwa College teacher got tested yesterday and her positive result came back today.
Let’s take a look at the market at the close of play, via AAP.
The ASX200 has closed higher than 7500 points for the first time in its history as traders continue to look beyond coronavirus lockdowns.
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.
Australian authorities warn Covid cases will rise despite lockdowns
Coronavirus cases in Australia, while still low, are rising in some areas despite weeks of lockdown, with authorities warning that infections will rise further because of the more contagious Delta variant.
Covid vaccines are expected to be offered to children in the UK aged 16 and 17, in line with many other countries, after a minister confirmed government experts will update their advice “imminently”.
Michelle Donelan, the universities minister, said the government was expecting an announcement from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) on widening access to the coronavirus vaccine to more teenagers.
China has dramatically tightened travel restrictions as it seeks to control the country’s worst outbreak in months, with hundreds of Delta variant cases linked to airport employees.
The latest outbreak has so far infected more than 400 people in 25 cities, including the capital city Beijing, and in Wuhan for the first time since it contained the first Covid-19 outbreak last year. Cases have been reported in 17 of the 31 provinces.
Hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi garment workers have returned to major cities, besieging train and bus stations after the government said export factories could reopen despite the deadly coronavirus wave.
Prof Sarah Gilbert has had quite a year. The co-creator of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab has been made a dame, been given an emotional standing ovation at Wimbledon – and now a Barbie doll has been made in her honour.
Gilbert, who led the development of the Covid vaccine at Oxford University, said she initially found the gesture “very strange” but hoped it would inspire young girls to work in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem).
Polls this week suggest the glacial speed of the Covid vaccine rollout is starting to affect Labour’s support, even as PM remains personally popular
An unbeatable leader in times of crisis, New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern’s soaring popularity has teetered on the country’s slow road to vaccination.
This week, polling in New Zealand indicated some of the gloss may be fading from the Ardern government’s second term, which has enjoyed soaringly high popularity over the past year. The poll, conducted by Newshub/Reid Research, put Labour at 43%, down 9.7 percentage points. The results followed a similar trend line polling by TVNZ from May.
Japan has carried out a threat to publicly shame people not complying with coronavirus border control measures, releasing the names of three people who broke quarantine rules after returning from overseas.
The health ministry said the three Japanese nationals named had clearly acted to avoid contact with authorities after recently returning from abroad.
More than 200 areas across England and Wales had at least twice as many deaths than average during the first Covid, according to analysis by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The figures come as the number of coronavirus deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending 23 July has reached 327, the highest figure recorded for three months.
Ivermectin may combat Covid infection and reduce infectiousness, a new Israeli study suggests.
The Jerusalem Post reports that the widely used anti-parasite drug was tested in a small randomised control trial, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, and saw 22% more patients who received ivermectin test negative for the virus by day six than the placebo group.
At least 70% of adults in the US have now received at least one Covid-19 vaccination shot, the White House announced on Monday, reaching a target Joe Biden originally said he had hoped to achieve by 4 July.
Coronavirus hospitalizations continue to climb in the US, now reaching the levels of last summer’s surge in cases, as the highly transmissible Delta variant continues to spread across the country.
Update today, >51,000 Why can't the @CDCgov curate the data and partition it by vaccination status, as done in other countries? We know it's >>90% unvaccinated, but this needs close tracking to determine extent of breakthrough illness, demographics, time from vaccination, etc pic.twitter.com/cBNx2hnZJK
National cabinet’s pandemic exit strategy only considered modelling for the “transition” phase over the next six months, with the Doherty Institute yet to consider how relaxed restrictions will affect transmission in the community.
The federal government on Tuesday released the modelling that underpinned the updated four-phase roadmap announced on Friday, with the research highlighting the need for a “strategic shift” to targeting young adults who were most likely to transmit the virus.
No 10 is facing claims that its international travel policy is in chaos after Boris Johnson ditched a plan for an “amber watchlist” that would have created a five-tier warning system for England.
After a revolt in the cabinet and a backlash from the travel industry, government sources said on Monday night that Boris Johnson would not be going ahead with proposals for an amber watchlist tier to warn travellers which countries were at risk of turning red.
The World Bank and IMF should step in to finance a recovery of children’s learning chances devastated by the pandemic
“Education,” wrote Nelson Mandela, “is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” One wonders what he would have made of the response to the education crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. A crisis threatening to derail social and economic progress, trapping millions of children in poverty. The UN secretary general has warned of a “generational catastrophe”, yet the international response has been marked by staggering complacency.