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 documents have long been a fascination of the prime minister, who touted their use for pubs and theatres back at the start of 2021, but acknowledged the moral dilemma they posed in a country that has always prided itself on opposition to a European-style “papers, please” regime.
Children in the UK will get a Covid vaccine only if they are over 12 and extremely vulnerable, or live with someone at risk, as scientists raised concerns about inflammation around the heart linked to the Pfizer jab.
Sajid Javid, the health secretary, said he accepted the advice of scientific advisers that only children over 12 with severe neuro-disabilities, Down’s syndrome, immunosuppression and multiple or severe learning disabilities should be allowed to get the Pfizer vaccine. Children over 12 who live in the same house as people who are immunosuppressed will also be eligible for jabs.
The Italian government is expected to impose restrictions on unvaccinated people as it scrambles to stem a resurgence in Covid-19 infections.
In a similar move to that seen in France, those not fully vaccinated could be barred from being served indoors at restaurants and bars and from entering stadiums, museums, theatres, cinemas, swimming pools and gyms.
It is hard not to feel undermined by rising cases and the decision to relax restrictions, says this consultant
It is hard to summarise exactly why I feel so angry. While the third wave is clearly under way, things are definitely different this time around. For the equivalent case numbers, hospitalisations are far lower, and people overall are less unwell. Vaccines have made the difference.
Many of our admissions have not been vaccinated, however. Some want to achieve “natural immunity”; it is unclear whether they realise that the only way to do this is to get the disease instead. Another wants “to see some real data”, as if all the information assessed by the regulatory authorities before approval, and the clear real-world data about the reduction in cases, is somehow fabricated. Someone’s friend got some side-effects from the vaccine so she didn’t have it; guess which one of them ended up in hospital. Most of these people have the decency to look sheepish, or to describe themselves as “one of those idiots”.
The loss of frontline health workers dying of Covid around the globe, is being compounded in the hospitals of developing nations by trained medical staff leaving to help in the pandemic effort abroad, according to experts.
With new Covid waves in Africa, and with Latin America and Asia facing unrelenting health emergencies, the number of health worker deaths from Covid-19 in May was at least 115,000, according to the World Health Organization. Its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, acknowledged data is “scant” and the true figure is likely to be far higher.
A quick snap from Reuters here that Taiwan’s government has approved the production of Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corp’s vaccine candidate.
The health ministry said in clinical trials in Taiwan the antibodies created by Medigen’s vaccine candidate have been proven to be “no worse than” those created by AstraZeneca vaccines, and that there were no major safety concerns.
In the UK, while vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi was on Sky News, over on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme they were also talking about the NHS app and the instructions it is giving to workers to self-isolate.
Again it seems like there are two broad schools of thought – either the app is a nuisance that is causing over a million people, many of whom are vaccinated, to be told to stay at home when they are not at risk of developing a serious bout of Covid. Or it is a valuable diagnostic tool that is simply reflecting the fact that there are a lot of Covid cases out there in England, and it is spreading.
This is a problem and I think it could get worse. It is disruptive to the business. We had to close, in the last seven days, 33 pubs due to lack of staff because of self-isolation. Across the industry we think it is about one in five of our team members who have been affected by this and therefore it is causing a real issue for us setting up business on a daily basis – we’re having to have shortened hours in some circumstances.
We’ve been talking for a while internally about living in the ‘United Pingdom’ and it has become a huge challenge for individuals and businesses. Up to 25%, in some areas, of our staff have been asked to self-isolate. We’ve been able, through flexibility and sharing of labour, to keep sites open so far but it has been a very close call in certain circumstances, and I would echo that I think there is a different way of reacting to the pings for vaccinated people and using lateral flow tests that would help industries of all sorts a great deal and keep the economy functioning.”
We are waiting on an update from South Australia now, but in the meantime, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has released an ad campaign to encourage people to get vaccinated. It features artists such as Tim Minchin, Rhonda Burchmore and performers from the Australian Ballet.
NSW Health has confirmed that the woman found dead in Green Valley was a confirmed Covid-19 case.
It said in a statement:
NSW Health today sadly reports the death of a woman in her 50s who was a confirmed Covid-19 case. She was a resident of south-western Sydney and a close contact of a Covid case.
This is the 61st death in NSW related to Covid-19 and the fifth of the current outbreak.
At a public library in London, staff members are filled with nerves about “freedom day” on 19 July. Billed as the big unlocking and an end to social distancing rules and mandatory face coverings in England, they fear for their safety as Covid cases grow daily.
“I will still be wearing a mask and so will lots of colleagues. We will still be washing and sanitising our hands and trying to keep a distance, but it is hard as a lot of people just walk straight up to you,” said Alan Wylie, a 55-year-old librarian.
Minister Karen Andrews says British far-right commentator entered country with support of NSW government to appear on Seven Network’s Big Brother VIP
The Australian government has cancelled Katie Hopkins’ visa after the far-right commentator boasted about breaching hotel quarantine conditions.
The cancellation was announced by the home affairs minister, Karen Andrews, on Monday – and follows a decision by Endemol Shine Australia to cancel her contract to appear on Seven Network’s Big Brother VIP. Hopkins will now be required to leave the country.
The £37bn test-and-trace system is described by the government as Britain’s “second line of defence” against Covid, behind the public health mantra of “Hands. Face. Space”. As England limps uncertainly into so-called freedom day on Monday, when rules around mask-wearing and social distancing will be relaxed, the programme becomes arguably even more crucial.
New alliance urges governments to work together to deliver a just transition to a green economy
People around the world need a “global green deal” that would tackle the climate crisis and restore the natural world as we recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, a group of politicians from the UK, Europe and developing countries has said.
The Global Alliance for a Green New Deal is inviting politicians from legislatures in all countries to work together on policies that would deliver a just transition to a green economy ahead of Cop26 UN climate talks in Glasgow this November.
Analysis: making fully vaccinated travellers returning from places with lower infection rates quarantine, while the virus runs wild here, is difficult to comprehend
Boris Johnson’s pendulum swing from “freedom day” to unlocking with “extreme caution” relayed a shift in the government’s thinking – that the relaxation of almost all restrictions at this stage comes with significant risk. The move to make fully vaccinated people returning from France continue to quarantine – because of the risk of the Beta variant – appears to be another sign of panic setting in.
Delta, the dominant variant in the UK, is far more transmissible than the Beta variant, which was first identified in South Africa. But the danger of Beta has long been its ability to thwart any vaccine shield, particularly the AstraZeneca jab. Beta actually preceded Delta – it was first recorded in the UK in December but never quite took off. In South Africa, it has dominated. It also accounts for about one in 10 new infections in France, but that data includes the French territories of Réunion and Mayotte, where the variant is almost dominant.
Cases are soaring in many countries, and the social and political effects are becoming clearer
“At the root of every pandemic is an encounter between a disease-causing microorganism and a human being … It is a social phenomenon as much as it is a biological one,” writes Laura Spinney in her book Pale Rider, arguing that Spanish flu “pushed India closer to independence, South Africa closer to apartheid, and Switzerland to the brink of civil war”.
It will be a long time before we, or our descendants, can fully assess Covid’s impact. But its social and political effects are emerging more clearly. It has played a role in extraordinary turmoil in places from Colombia to Cuba to South Africa, exacerbating poverty and frustration. The unrest is rooted in longstanding social and economic problems. In South Africa, where 10,000 troops have now been deployed, it is the furious response to the jailing of the divisive former president Jacob Zuma, who faces a slew of corruption charges; authorities suspect his followers of orchestrating the violence. But Covid’s erosion of social and economic wellbeing and trust in leaders has surely contributed.
Vivek Murthy: rise seen ‘among the unvaccinated in particular’
Biden administration renews attack on Facebook
Joe Biden’s administration renewed its assault on social media companies spreading Covid-19 misinformation on Sunday, as new infections continued to surge across the entire US.
Vivek Murthy, the US surgeon general who has accused companies including Facebook of “poisoning information” about coronavirus vaccines, said they were not doing enough to check the online proliferation of false claims.
The prime minister has said he briefly considered not isolating after coming into contact with the health secretary, who has contracted Covid-19 but thinks it is ‘far more important that everybody sticks to the same rules’. Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak had initially tried to avoid isolation by saying they were part of a daily-test pilot scheme, prompting an outcry from members of the public and backbench Conservative MPs
Indonesia has reported more daily Covid-19 infections than India and Brazil as the Delta strain sweeps across south-east Asia, placing intense pressure on health systems.
Most countries in the region are experiencing their worst outbreaks since the pandemic began, fuelled by the emergence of more aggressive variants and a lack of vaccines.
Following the announcement of stricter social distancing measures being introduced in Vietnam’s capital city, the country’s health ministry has confirmed that daily Covid cases have reached a record high.
The country reported 5,926 cases on Sunday, according to Reuters, as the country battles its worst outbreak so far. Vietnam has reported 53,830 cases overall, with 254 deaths.
Tony Blair has called on ministers to drop the requirement for people who are fully vaccinated to self-isolate if they come into contact with someone who has tested positive for Covid-19, PA Media reports.
The former prime minister said the current system was “not rational” and he understood why people were deleting the NHS Covid app from their mobile phones.
We’re at risk of moving in two contradictory directions.
On the one hand we’re going to open everything up, free restriction altogether, and on the other hand we’ve still got this pinging track and trace system where people have got to go into complete isolation if they’re pinged in circumstances where probably the vast majority of those people do not need to do so.
I don’t want the prime minister of the country to be in isolation at the moment, I need him at his desk doing his job.
He’s double-vaccinated, he’s actually had Covid, he’s testing and presumably the tests are coming back negative. The point is to do this for everyone.
As I dance, it doesn’t feel like a night out – it feels like a homecoming
In 2018, upon her return from a trip to China, my roommate gifted me a pack of black surgical masks. Affixed to the plastic packaging was an explanatory note: RAVE MASKS :)
I knew the look – the masks were purely aesthetic for certain ravers; dressed and masked in serious black, drifting past me at warehouse parties in New York, where I live.But it was a hard look to live up to, and my rave outfits leaned more toward sweaty efficiency, anyway.
When should you open the windows, wear a mask and take a lateral flow test? As we enter the ‘personal responsibility’ era, here’s an expert guide
Freedom day is here, at least for those of us who live in England, and we’re back in the place nobody wants to be. On one hand: yay, freedom. On the other: an uneasy sense that the relaxation of restrictions has very little to do with the data, and very much more to do with a government that is bored of imposing Covid-related restrictions.
So we arrive on the unwanted (by me) territory of personal responsibility. Which freedoms should you grab with both hands, which should you foreswear for the time being, which should you exercise caution around? How should informed, polite, civic-minded and reasonable sorts conduct themselves? Expertise provided here is from Greg Fell, the director of public health in Sheffield; Prof Christina Pagel, the director of the clinical operational research unit at University College London, which applies advanced analytical methods to problems in healthcare; and Debora Robertson, the co-author of Manners: A Modern Field Guide.
South Africa men’s squad in quarantine after three positives
Games president claims a ‘plan in place’ for village outbreak
Two South African footballers have become the first athletes in the Olympic Village to test positive for Covid-19, raising fears that the virus may force a growing number of competitors out of the Tokyo Games when they begin on Friday.