Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
As Covid cases rise, vaccination lags and costs soar, most Japanese people are extremely cynical about the Games
The Olympic Games begins in Tokyo on Friday, just as Covid-19 blights the city for the fourth time – and a year after the Games were originally scheduled to begin.
Despite the latest alarming spike in coronavirus infections and hospitalisations across the city’s metropolitan area, Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, has reiterated his resolve to go ahead with the Games, declaring at a session of the International Olympic Committee held on 20 July that “the Games can be held successfully, with the efforts and wisdom of the people”.
Alabama’s Kay Ivey says surge in new infections is due to a reluctance among many in state to get inoculated
The Republican governor of Alabama has said it is “time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks” for rising cases of Covid-19, amid concern that months of misinformation over the need and efficacy of vaccines is fueling a resurgence of coronavirus infections in several states.
The perfume and toiletries shop overlooking Brodick Bay on Arran is normally packed in the summer, as day-trippers and holidaymakers stream off the mainland ferries at the busy terminal just across the bay.
But this summer has been grim, said Andrew Russell, the sales director for Arran Sense of Scotland, formerly known as Arran Aromatics. For thousands of people and businesses up and down the west coast of Scotland, this summer has been marred by repeated crises affecting ferry services run by the state-funded CalMac.
New South Wales announces 136 new local Delta cases with Sydney under the strictest lockdown measures it has experienced
Australia’s most populous state has declared a “national emergency” as it struggles to contain a record-breaking surge of the Delta variant of Covid-19 amid a lockdown affecting half the country.
The state of New South Wales announced 136 new locally-acquired cases of Covid-19 on Friday, with continued community transmission among essential workers, including in supermarkets and pharmacies.
Often, the political week heading into the Commons summer recess can feel almost soporific, with the thoughts of ministers and MPs geared more towards holiday sunbeds than rows. But the last seven days has been different, and not only because of the ongoing political flux of coronavirus, with the government seeming to flail from one controversy, U-turn or misstep to the next, day after day.
Scenes that have for months haunted hospitals across Indonesia’s Java island are appearing across the country, as the Delta variant spreads to new provinces, causing shortages of beds and oxygen.
Images have circulated on social media of overstretched hospitals in both Papua and Kalimantan. One video shows a patient lying inside an ambulance, with two of his relatives sitting next to him. “The people need help. [I] have brought them to hospitals but all of them rejected us. [The hospitals] said there is no oxygen. How come the government can’t provide oxygen?” the ambulance driver, who recorded the video, can be heard saying. The Twitter account reported that the patient finally died.
New Zealand will suspend its quarantine-free travel bubble with Australia for two months, as the country grapples with a number of serious outbreaks of Covid-19. Travel with the states of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia had already been paused but will now expand to the entire country. At a press briefing on Friday, the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said because of the Delta variant there was 'greater risk now … than when we opened the travel bubble'. While Ardern said she remained committed to the travel bubble, Ardern added 'Covid has changed and so must we'
The US is at another 'pivotal moment' in the pandemic as the Delta variant drives a big rise in new cases, said CDC director, Rochelle Walensky, who warned 'we are not out of the woods yet'. She added: 'The Delta variant is more aggressive and much more transmissible than previously circulating strains,' she said. 'It is one of the most infectious respiratory viruses that we know of and that I have seen in my 20-year career.'
Premier Gladys Berejiklian says 53 of the new cases were infectious in the community; northern NSW on alert after Covid fragments found in Byron Bay sewage; national cabinet to meet to discuss vaccine rollout. Follow live
NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant is back after a few days, and she is speaking to the tighter restrictions she has recommended.
Chant said:
I have advised the government today that this is a national emergency and requires additional measures to reduce the case numbers. What we are seeing is that the actions we have taken to date have averted many cases.
But what we are not seeing is the turnaround that we would have liked to see at this stage. And I’m concerned that we need to put in place urgent additional measures, what I’m recommending strongly is that our vaccination efforts are refocused on those affected LGAs. Every day, people from those LGAs have to go out to work to keep our city going.
We also know that, as I indicated that the group of workers that keep the society going is this group of workers in the 20 to 49 year old age group in south-western Sydney. Under 40s would not have been routinely eligible for vaccination, in terms of Pfizer. And what I’ve recommended to government is we urgently do mass vaccination of those workers to stem the transmission risk. We know the vaccines do that because they reduce the risk. If you’re vaccinated, even one dose, it reduces your risk of onward transmission.
Gladys Berejiklian has announced a new Covid death in her state, a 89-year-old male.
Details of the death are brief as the death is recent (it happened after 8pm last night) and authorities want to make sure family members have been notified.
I also want to say that tragically, as we see more cases, develop, we will also see more hospitalisations and more people in intensive care and regrettably, we did have an additional death overnight, which I’ve only just learned about.
I just want to foreshadow that unfortunately, we’re going to see more of this as the case numbers increase.
Senators say FBI gathered over 4,500 tips but failed to follow them up
Nancy Pelosi rejects Jim Jordan and Jim Banks for inquiry role
White House in talks with CDC about updating masking guidance
The recent heatwave that broiled the US Pacific north-west not only obliterated temperature records in cities such as Seattle and Portland – it also put a torch to a comforting bromide that the region would be a mild, safe haven from the ravages of the climate crisis.
Unprecedented temperatures baked the region three weeks ago, part of a procession of heatwaves that have hit the parched US west, from Montana to southern California, over the past month. A “heat dome” that settled over the area saw Seattle reach 108F (42.2C), smashing the previous record by 3F (1.7C), while Portland, Oregon, soared to its own record of 116F (46.7C). Some inland areas managed to get up to 118F (47.8C).
Hospitals are filling up, especially in areas with low vaccinations
CDC offers no change in guidance on mask wearing
The US is “at another pivotal moment in this pandemic” as rising Covid-19 cases show no signs of abating, driven by the Delta variant, and some hospitals are filling up, especially in areas with low vaccination rates, government officials warned on Thursday.
The US government did not change its guidance on mask wearing, despite debates going on in the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about whether those who have been vaccinated should once again be officially advised to wear masks indoors to prevent the spread.
Moscow owes 18.5m doses, leaving Argentina in a ‘very critical situation’ with only 12% fully vaccinated, leaked letter reveals
Argentina’s gamble on Sputnik V vaccine has left it in a “very critical situation” because of Russia’s failure to fulfill delivery commitments, according to an official letter to Moscow leaked on Thursday.
Russia owes Argentina 18.5m doses of its Sputnik V jab, over two-thirds of them vital second-component doses.
Only 12% of Argentinians are fully vaccinated so far, partly due to failed Sputnik deliveries of its second component. Another 37% have received only a single dose.
This compares disastrously with double-dose vaccination rates of over 60% in neighbouring Chile and Uruguay, countries that did not bet so heavily on the Russian vaccine.
Its low two-dose vaccination rate leaves Argentina particularly exposed to the arrival of the Delta variant. Neighbouring Uruguay, meanwhile, has already approved moving to a three-dose regimen.
The Italian prime minister, Mario Draghi, has urged all Italians to get Covid-19 jabs after his government approved restrictions on unvaccinated citizens as it scrambles to contain a resurgence of infections.
Draghi told a press conference on Thursday that the country needed to act quickly to avoid the kind of infection levels that are being seen in the UK and elsewhere in Europe, as well as to protect the economy.
Always the diplomatic politician, forever the objective scientist, Germany’s chancellor gives her last annual summer press do
As she faced a lecture-hall sized auditorium packed with national and international press for the last time in her 16-year chancellorship, there was a sense that the room was simultaneously hearing from two very different people in Angela Merkel.
One was Merkel the politician, unafraid to talk up her achievements, who patted herself on the back for diplomatic victories and expertly fudged answers to difficult questions. The other was Merkel the scientist, who found it hard to skirt around uncomfortable truths and instinctively wanted to scrutinise her doppelgänger’s track record.
The next wave of Covid will be different. When cases soared in spring and winter last year lockdowns rapidly brought them back under control. This time it will be vaccines that do the hard work.
But Covid jabs are not a perfect shield. They slow the spread of the virus, help prevent disease, and reduce the risk of dying. They do not bring all this to an end.
The vaccines minister has confirmed the government intends to go ahead with making Covid vaccination a condition for entry to nightclubs from September in England.
Nadhim Zahawi said that after a successful trial the government has rolled out the NHS Covid pass, which allows people to show their Covid status, whether proof of vaccination, test results or natural immunity.
He added the government reserved the right to make its use compulsory in future but confirmed MPs will get a vote on plans to use Covid passports
In the UK, a record 618,903 alerts were sent to users of the NHS Covid-19 app in England and Wales in the week to July 14 telling then they had been in close contact with a person who had tested positive for coronavirus, according to NHS figures.
Angela Merkel has urged Germans to get vaccinated amid a worrying rise in cases, telling the nation: “The more we are vaccinated, the freer we will be.”
“We all want our normality back,” the German chancellor, who is preparing to step down later this year, said. “The more we are vaccinated, the freer we will be.”
China’s government has refused to cooperate with the second stage of an international investigation into the origins of Covid-19, labelling a proposal to audit Chinese labs as “arrogance towards science”.
Chinese health officials held a press conference on Thursday to respond to last week’s proposal by the World Health Organization that the second phase of its investigation into the origins of the pandemic include “audits of relevant laboratories and research institutions operating in the area of the initial human cases identified in December 2019”, meaning the city of Wuhan.