At least five hospitality venues close as two police officers and Extinction Rebellion camp report cases of virus
Concerns are growing that St Ives may face a spike in Covid cases as the G7 summit winds up with hospitality venues, police officers and a protest camp all reporting cases of the virus.
At least five venues in St Ives, the town closest to the main venue summit, Carbis Bay, have closed or are limiting their operations because of cases.
Continue reading...The Brazilian president led thousands of supporters through the streets of São Paulo on Saturday, and was fined for failing to wear a face mask in violation of local Covid-19 measures. The state government press office said a fine equivalent to about $110 (£78) had been imposed. Bolsonaro’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment
Continue reading...In early 2020, there were bans on most social contact, international travel stopped, workplaces and schools shut. Lockdown had arrived. These policies may have limited the spread of the virus, but what collateral harms and benefits on physical health were there?
Despite recommendations to continue to seek help, normal healthcare endured severe disruption. In England, waiting lists for hospital treatment now exceed 5m, up more than 500,000 from before the pandemic. During the first wave, nearly 90,000 joint replacement surgeries were cancelled, leaving many struggling with pain. Cancer investigations and diagnoses fell and although there is no sign yet of any excess cancer deaths, this may only become apparent in subsequent years.
Continue reading...With famous users leading a rebrand, pleasure accessories lose their stigma in a £90bn health and wellness boom
Lily Allen has one. Cara Delevingne has one. Dakota Johnson has developed her own range. Is the celebrity sex toy 2021’s answer to the celebrity perfume?
For some, getting busy has been the last thing on the menu during the pandemic. Study after study, from India to Italy, has revealed that lockdown libido loss is real and that stress has killed the buzz in the bedroom. Sexual wellness, on the other hand, has reached a dizzying peak. Not only has the conversation around sexual pleasure changed for generation Z, but the industry attached to it – from apps to toys, herbal supplements to specialist oils – is also booming.
Continue reading...While men over 50 tend to suffer the most acute symptoms of coronavirus, women who get long Covid outnumber men by as much as four to one
In June 2020, as the first reports of long Covid began to filter through the medical community, doctors attempting to grapple with this mysterious malaise began to notice an unusual trend. While acute cases of Covid-19 – particularly those hospitalised with the disease – tended to be mostly male and over 50, long Covid sufferers were, by contrast, both relatively young and overwhelmingly female.
Early reports of long Covid at a Paris hospital between May and July 2020 suggested that the average age was around 40, and women afflicted by the longer-term effects of Covid-19 outnumbered men by four to one.
Continue reading...While ban on evictions protected some people, domestic abuse and loss of temporary accommodation were common triggers for homelessness
At least 130,000 households in England were made homeless during the first year of the pandemic, despite the government’s ban on evictions, according to data sourced by the Observer. With the ban now over, fears are rising that a surge of evictions may be imminent. But the Observer’s figures show that even while the ban was in place, households were being forced from their homes.
“The ban didn’t stop tens of thousands from facing homelessness,” said Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter. “During the pandemic, the most common triggers for homelessness were no longer being able to stay with friends or family, losing a private tenancy, and domestic abuse.”
Continue reading...Migrant labourers tell of being forced to isolate in brutal conditions as Covid wave grips region
It was around mid-May when workers at the Cal-Comp factory in Phetchaburi, central Thailand, heard a small group of their colleagues had tested positive for Covid-19. It soon became clear the virus had ripped through the production lines. A cluster associated with the electronics factory has since been linked to thousands of infections.
Hwan Htet Paing*, a worker from the factory, said he was not told the results of his Covid test, carried out on 19 May. Despite this, he was instructed to quarantine inside a vast hall at his workplace. The floor was covered with tarpaulin sheets and lined with rows of mosquito nets for each worker. Everyone was given a bucket and a cup, and bedsheets to lay across the floor. Fans were handed out to help ease the heat – until the vast numbers of people testing positive meant there were none left.
Continue reading...Observer poll reveals most people believe prime minister should wait past proposed 21 June date
The majority of the public back delaying the end of legal restrictions on social contact in the wake of rising cases of a more transmissible Covid variant, according to a new poll.
With Boris Johnson poised to announce a delay to his plan to remove the remaining restrictions on 21 June, an Opinium poll for the Observer found that 54% think the move should be postponed, up from 43% from a fortnight ago.
Continue reading...Country confounds post-Covid predictions as transatlantic holidaymakers flood in ready to spend
A fresh wind blows down Adrianou. Seated in front of his rug store on the street that cuts through the heart of ancient Athens, Theo Iliadis takes in the scene. At 47, he’s seen “a lot of bad stuff” in recent years. The global pandemic couldn’t have come at a worse time for Greece, already gutted by prolonged economic crisis.
But barely a month after the tourist-dependent country opened its doors, the entrepreneur is in ebullient mood. There’s a glint in his eye and a lightness in the air of the carpet-stacked cavern behind him. “Americans are in town,” he smiles. “Business is good, the loom is good and I’ve got drinks on ice.”
Continue reading...G7 summit hears move would slash the cost of jabs and accelerate rollout of programmes across the developing world
Britain and Germany were under intense pressure on Saturday to drop their resistance to proposals that would slash the cost of Covid-19 vaccines, following accusations that an agreement at the G7 summit to fund a billon doses will give the world’s poorest countries “crumbs from the table”.
Aid agencies said rules that protect drug patents from being illegally copied must be waived during the pandemic to accelerate the rollout of vaccines and save lives across the developing world.
Continue reading...The prime minister has a host of problems to weigh up before deciding to remove all legal restrictions on social contact
The key issue is the extent to which infections of the Delta variant first detected in India will lead to hospitalisations and deaths. The problem is that it’s too early to say. Because of the lag between cases and admissions to hospital, many experts say a short delay could be a major benefit to understanding that relationship. “With the current knowledge about Delta, we can’t really predict the size of that wave,” said Anne Cori of Imperial College London’s modelling group. “Delaying the easing allows time to accumulate more evidence about the characteristics of Delta. And I hope in a few weeks, we would be in a better position to predict what the epidemic may look like in the next few weeks or months.”
Continue reading...Annual pilgrimage will be restricted to 60,000 vaccinated adults from within the kingdom
Saudi Arabia has announced that this year’s hajj pilgrimage will be limited to 60,000 vaccinated people from within the kingdom because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The kingdom ran a reduced pilgrimage last year, but still allowed a small number of people to take part in the annual event.
Continue reading...Honours for key UK figures in vaccine drive; MPs say Covid passports are discriminatory and should be scrapped
G7 leaders discussed the origins of Covid-19, including the theory it originated in a Chinese lab, WHO head Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
“We believe that all hypotheses should be open, and we need to proceed to the second phase to really know the origins,” he told reporters.
Above all, at the root of the #COVID19 pandemic is a deficit of solidarity and sharing – of the data, information, resources, technology and tools that every nation needs to keep its people safe. @WHO believes the best way to close that deficit is with a #PandemicTreaty. #G7UK
A poll for the Observer shows more than half the British public support delaying the lifting of restrictions on social contact because of the rising number of Covid-19 cases, report Michael Savage and Ben Tapper.
With Boris Johnson poised to announce a delay to his plan to remove the remaining restrictions on 21 June, an Opinium poll for the Observer found that 54% think the move should be postponed, up from 43% from a fortnight ago.
It suggests that the public is taking a cautious view following the emergence of the Delta variant, first detected in India and thought to be 60% more transmissible than the variant previously dominant in the UK. The proportion of people who thought Johnson should push ahead with the unlocking has fallen from 44% a fortnight ago to 37% this week.
Related: Delay ending lockdown: majority of public back Boris Johnson
Continue reading...Leaders of the G7 industrialised countries are meeting in Cornwall this weekend to discuss vaccines, the pandemic recovery and the climate crisis
The Duchess of Cambridge and US first lady Jill Biden have written a joint article on the importance of early childhood, following their visit to a primary school in Cornwall, where the G7 is taking place.
The two women met for the first time on Friday at Connor Downs Academy in Hayle, where they took part in a round-table discussion with experts on the importance of the early years of childhood for future outcomes.
In the article, published by CNN, they say there must be a fundamental shift in how the UK and US approach the earliest years of life. “If we care about how children perform at school, how they succeed in their careers when they are older, and about their lifelong mental and physical health, then we have to care about how we are nurturing their brains, their experiences and relationships in the early years before school,” they write.
The European Union has been urged to back down in a dispute with the UK over Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trading arrangements.
Boris Johnson was holding talks with the EU’s key players on Saturday as the dispute threatened to overshadow his hosting of the G7 summit.
The prime minister was meeting European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, European Council head Charles Michel, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the margins of the gathering in Cornwall.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab urged the EU to take a more “pragmatic” approach to the Northern Ireland issue.
The main summit agenda will see the leaders of the UK, the US, Canada, Japan, France, Germany and Italy commit to a new plan aimed at preventing a repeat of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Johnson also faces a potentially tricky series of meetings with the EU’s senior representatives. Downing Street has indicated the UK would be prepared to unilaterally delay the full implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol to prevent a ban on chilled meats crossing the Irish Sea from Great Britain.
Although a few states have seen large increases in vaccination rates among Black and Latino Americans, most are still trailing behind
When vaccines became increasingly available throughout America, US health officials moved quickly to try to convince large numbers of Americans to get vaccinated. But amid the mass vaccination rollout, Black and Latino communities, who are disproportionately affected by the pandemic, have been left behind in vaccination efforts, creating racial disparities about who was more likely to get a Covid-19 shot.
Amid federal and local efforts to address vaccine disparity, vaccination rates for Black Americans and Latinos lag behind the general population, leaving many communities of color still unprotected against the Covid-19 pandemic.
Continue reading...Peers and mayors also among voices calling for wall of hearts to become national landmark
It started as an almost guerrilla act of memorialisation. In March, grieving relatives began inscribing red hearts beside a Thameside walkway – one for every person in the UK who died from coronavirus. Now stretching 500 metres, the Covid memorial wall should be made a permanent national landmark, say more than 200 MPs, peers and mayors.
Boris Johnson is facing calls to “make this wall of hearts a, if not the, permanent memorial to the victims of the pandemic” from a cross-party alliance including the mayors of London and Greater Manchester, Sadiq Khan and Andy Burnham.
Continue reading...Officials and NGOs say orphans now face the double threat of neglect and being vulnerable to exploitation
Nitish Kumar will never forget the day he and his sisters buried their dead mother in the back garden.
Just 32, Priyanka Devi had died from Covid on 3 May. Neighbours and relatives refused to help with her burial, and all the family’s money had gone on hospital fees.
Continue reading...As doubt grows that government will end Covid controls on planned date, we look at the other options
Downing Street is due to announce its decision on the next stage of Covid reopening in England by Monday, a week ahead of 21 June, which was set as the earliest date to bring in what is officially stage four of the Covid unlocking process. The original aim was to remove “all legal limits on social contact”, allowing the reopening of remaining businesses such as nightclubs. Public health is a devolved matter, meaning Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland do not have the same deadline. Here are some possible options for England. They are not exclusive, meaning several could be used at the same time.
Continue reading...UK also reports 17 deaths as infection rate rises; British Medical Association calls for delay to easing of remaining lockdown restrictions
The EU does not expect Johnson & Johnson will be able to deliver 55 million Covid-19 vaccine doses it had committed to shipping to the bloc by the end of June, an EU official has said.
Reuters reports that the bloc had previously said that it was confident the US pharmaceutical giant could meet its commitments. The position has changed after the European Medicines Agency, the European drugs regulator, said earlier today that J&J doses sent to Europe from a factory in the US would not be used out of precaution after a case of contamination.
The British Medical Association is calling for a delay to the easing of all remaining lockdown restrictions in England due to case numbers ‘rising rapidly’.
The BMA says the fourth stage of lockdown should not go ahead until there is “better understanding of the implications” of the reported rise in cases in recent days.
Continue reading...New data shows officials approved fewer applications during the pandemic than the year before, despite risks from virus
The last time Sean McQuiddy called home from federal prison, it was just before Christmas in 2020, and he had just tested positive for Covid-19.
“If I don’t make it out of here,” his brother recalled him saying, “just know that I love you.”
Continue reading...