Category Archives: Coronavirus

Coronavirus Australia live update: Victoria records three more Covid cases amid speculation over lockdown extension

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Minister Richard Colbeck comes under fire over aged care failures after outbreak in two Melbourne homes. Follow live updates

This has been an ongoing frustration for Mike Bowers and the visual reporters – some committees are throwing their weight around about where photographers and camera operators can stand to do their jobs – which means a lot of photos of the back of people’s heads.

The helpful people at the estimates Economic committee placed our photographic positions behind the heads of the Treasury Officials and Minister giving evidence, do I really have to explain again to members of the Aust senate why this will not work? #notTodayPlease @AmyRemeikis pic.twitter.com/ysRVbOttpy

Katy Gallagher asks Richard Colbeck who is responsible for vaccinating aged care staff.

Three minutes later, Colbeck says it is a “combined” program.

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Covid-19 variants to be given Greek alphabet names to avoid stigma

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WHO unveils new names for variants of concern to replace ones linked to where they were discovered

Coronavirus variants are to be named after letters of the Greek alphabet instead of their place of first discovery, the World Health Organization has announced, in a move to avoid stigma.

The WHO has named four variants of concern, known to the public as the UK/Kent (B.1.1.7), South Africa (B.1.351), Brazil (P.1) and India (B.1.617.2) variants. They will now be given the letters Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta respectively, to reflect their order of detection, with any new variants following the pattern down the Greek alphabet.

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MPs tell Johnson: you have a duty to help vaccinate the world

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Exclusive: group urges prime minister to tackle ‘desperate shortage’ in developing nations

Boris Johnson has a “moral duty” to immediately start matching each vaccine administered at home with a donated dose to poorer countries across the world, a cross-party group of MPs and peers has said.

Several Tory backbenchers joined the call, which puts further pressure on the prime minister to boost supplies given to developing nations facing a “desperate shortage” of jabs.

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If India variant starts a third wave, England’s Covid rules may have to stay

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Analysis: hopes of restrictions ending on 21 June are dwindling as highly transmissible variant spreads

Heralded as “freedom day”, 21 June has been a date circled in the diary by businesses, families and communities alike – a moment when coronavirus restrictions in England are expected to finally end, hopefully in a blaze of summer sunshine.

But new data has revealed that the variant of concern first detected in India, known as B.1.617.2, has continued to spread across England, with samples containing the variant now found from Cornwall to Canterbury, Bury to Bromley.

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EU plans to lift Covid quarantine rules for vaccinated from 1 July

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Deadline set for all 27 EU countries to accept digital passport in time to enjoy a ‘safe and relaxing summer’

The starting pistol has been fired on a “relaxing” summer holiday season for people living in the EU from 1 July, as Brussels proposed lifting all quarantine obligations on those who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

From Tuesday, a system will be ready to allow member states to issue a digital Covid passport to citizens proving their status and freeing them up to travel.

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Covid: France enforces tighter restrictions on travel from UK

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Rules on non-essential journeys toughened amid concerns over spread of India variant from Britain

France has begun restricting non-essential travel from the UK due to concerns over the spread of the coronavirus variant first identified in India.

The regulations were announced last week but came into force from Monday when entry to France from Britain is permitted only for EU nationals, French residents or people travelling for “compelling reasons”. The rules apply to all air, car, ferry and train passengers, and to people who have been vaccinated.

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In rich countries, vaccines are making Covid-19 a manageable health issue | Devi Sridhar

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For the UK and elsewhere the pandemic’s end is in sight, but less fortunate parts of the world urgently need help

When Covid-19 began to spread rapidly in January 2020, governments across the world had limited strategies to deal with it. Without a vaccine or proven treatments for the disease, or even access to mass testing, the only choice political leaders faced was taking the least bad option available.

There were four approaches that different governments took during the beginning of the pandemic. China, New Zealand, Vietnam and Thailand chose to eliminate the virus at the cost of stopping international travel. Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea suppressed the virus through rigorous testing, tracing and isolating while avoiding harsh lockdowns. Sweden allowed the virus to spread through the population before realising health systems could not cope with an influx of Covid-19 patients. Meanwhile, European countries including England and France controlled the virus through a cycle of lockdown measures while keeping borders largely open. This resembled a holding pattern for a plane running out of fuel: people grew tired of continual restrictions, the economy suffered and Covid-19 was never fully suppressed.

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Coronavirus Australia live: Victoria reports 11 new Covid cases and 4,200 close contacts as nearly 280 exposure sites listed

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Three aged care workers and a nursing home resident confirmed to have coronavirus; tensions between state and federal government continue over financial support as Victoria enters its fourth day of lockdown

The Garma festival, one of the largest indigenous gatherings, has been cancelled for Covid reasons.

AAP has the story:

A school in Melbourne’s north has shut its doors, after confirming in a letter to parents that a student had tested positive.

Mercy College at Coburg sent out the letter, announcing the school was shut earlier this afternoon.

Although the student was absent for most of last week, following advice from the Department of Health and Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (MACS), Mercy College Coburg has enacted a preliminary closure from this afternoon, as requested.

This closure will allow time for the school and the DH to work through any contact tracing that may be required.

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Coronavirus live news: Japan mulls tests for Olympics fans; India posts lowest case numbers since April

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Japan may require Games fans to test negative or show vaccine proof; India reports lowest case numbers since 11 April; signs UK is facing third wave

China today re-imposed anti-coronavirus travel controls on its southern province of Guangdong, announcing anyone leaving the populous region must be tested for the virus following a spike in infections that has alarmed authorities, the Associated Press reports. .

Guangdong, which borders Hong Kong, recorded 20 new confirmed cases, all contracted locally, in the 24 hours through to midnight yesterday.

Guangdong’s numbers are low compared with many places in the world, but the rise has rattled Chinese leaders who thought they had the disease under control.

Hello, this is Haroon Siddique. I’ll be updating the blog for the next few hours.

Burkina Faso, one of several countries in Africa that has yet to launch a Covid-19 vaccination campaign, received its first shipment under the global vaccine-sharing scheme Covax yesterday, Reuters reports, citing the country’s health ministry.

The 115,200 AstraZeneca doses were flown into the airport of the capital Ouagadougou and were welcomed by a local delegation led by health minister Charlemagne Ouedraogo.

“In a few weeks other vaccines will probably arrive to supplement what we have,” Ouedraogo said.

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Tokyo Olympics: local fans may need to show vaccination proof or negative Covid test

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Games authorities are relying on Japan’s spectators to provide atmosphere but are now in a race against time to inoculate population

Sports fans in Japan could be allowed to attend Olympic events in Tokyo this summer if they have proof of vaccination or a negative Covid-19 test, a newspaper reported on Monday.

While many athletes are expected to have been fully vaccinated by late July, poor planning and staff shortages mean most Japanese citizens will still be waiting for a jab when the Olympics begin in less than two months’ time.

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Covid summer: Fauci warns US has ‘a ways to go’ despite lowest rates in a year

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‘We don’t want to declare victory prematurely,’ expert tells the Guardian while 2021 has seen more global cases than all of 2020

Dr Anthony Fauci, the top infectious diseases expert in the US, has warned it is too early to declare victory against Covid-19 as cases fall in the country to the lowest rates since last June.

“We don’t want to declare victory prematurely because we still have a ways to go,” Fauci told the Guardian in an interview. “But the more and more people that can get vaccinated, as a community, the community will be safer and safer.”

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Third wave of Covid may be under way in UK, scientists say

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With new infections at level last seen in March, experts have cautioned against lifting restrictions too soon

Scientists have warned ministers that a third wave of coronavirus may have already begun in Britain, casting doubt on plans in England to lift all lockdown restrictions in three weeks’ time.

Experts cautioned that any rise in coronavirus hospital admissions could leave the NHS struggling to cope as it battles to clear the huge backlog in non-Covid cases.

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Trump allies herald Biden investigation of Covid origins in China

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Allies of Donald Trump took the unusual step of speaking out on Sunday in support of Joe Biden, regarding efforts to pinpoint the source of Covid-19 and find out if China knows more about the origins of the pandemic than it is letting on.

Related: Biden move to investigate Covid origins opens new rift in US-China relations

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Covid live news: UK considering compulsory vaccination for NHS staff; Malaysia to increase immunisation efforts

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Latest updates: UK government considering mandatory jabs for health workers; Malaysia to set up more mega vaccination centres

South Korea will get 1m doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine this week mainly to inoculate military personnel, after the United States almost doubled a pledge made earlier this month, prime minister Kim Boo-kyum said on Sunday.

South Korea has reported a lower death toll than many comparable developed countries from Covid-19, but the government has come under criticism for a comparatively slow rollout of vaccines, Reuters reports. Less than 11% of its 52 million people have so far received a first dose.

On care homes, UK vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi today defended the government approach.

Boris Johnson’s former aide Dominic Cummings claimed the health secretary, Matt Hancock, had lied to the prime minister over tests being carried out on those discharged into care homes – a charge denied by Hancock.

Matt Hancock was very much focused on delivery, I think it’s worth putting this in context … in the sense that in the eye of the storm, we were only able to do 2,000 tests a day. The diagnostics industry was almost non-existent in the UK.

We can sit here and sort of argue the toss about asymptomatic transmission … and when we really knew about that.

The whole point is you use every resource available to you, to the best of your ability, to save and to protect as many people as possible.

When the inquiry is held, and we will look at all these things in detail, we will of course examine where we could do better.

But to say that we didn’t deal with them to the best of our capability, with the resources that were available to us, is a mistake, is wrong.

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Produce evidence Matt Hancock lied on Covid, Dominic Cummings to be told

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Select committee chiefs to demand PM’s former aide backs up explosive claims

Dominic Cummings will be asked by senior MPs this week to produce evidence that Matt Hancock lied repeatedly about policy on Covid-19 before the health secretary’s appearance in front of a parliamentary committee early next month.

Jeremy Hunt and Greg Clark, the chairs of the joint select committee which took seven hours of explosive testimony from Cummings last week, will write to the former adviser to the prime minister in the next few days asking that he produce the evidence within the next fortnight.

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Covid investigators must interview Wuhan stall owners, says virologist

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Efforts to find origin of coronavirus ‘must look at what animals were in the market in late 2019’

A leading scientist has called for stallholders at the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan to be interviewed in any further investigation of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Prof Eddie Holmes has joined a growing chorus of voices calling for increased efforts to identify the source of the outbreak. The US president, Joe Biden, has ordered the US intelligence community to intensify its scrutiny of the origins of coronavirus, as the theory that the virus might have come from a lab in Wuhan gains traction.

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Vaccine inequality exposed by dire situation in world’s poorest nations

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Analysis: the failings of the Covax programme, logistical issues and governments’ own inadequacies are making a bad situation worse

Only 1% of the 1.3 billion vaccines injected around the world have been administered in Africa – and that comparative percentage has been declining in recent weeks. It is a stark figure that underlines just how serious a problem global vaccine inequity has become. But the answer for the developing world is not as simple as delivering more vaccines.

From Africa to Latin America, Asia and the Caribbean, the same issues have been replicated. On top of finding enough doses, there have been logistical difficulties with delivery, problems over healthcare infrastructure and, in some countries, public hesitancy towards vaccines.

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Victoria takes aim at ‘disgraceful’ lack of federal financial support during lockdown

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James Merlino announces $250m support package for hard-hit businesses and says Canberra’s lack of help is beyond disappointing

Every Victorian business owner should be angry that the federal government rejected calls to provide additional financial support during the state’s fourth lockdown, the state’s acting premier says, as the cost to the economy was estimated to hit $700m.

The acting premier, James Merlino, announced a $250m package on Sunday that included grants of up to $3,500 for as many as 900,000 businesses and specific support for event organisers.

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Why is the new Covid variant spreading? | David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters

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The virus is now in a race with the vaccines and the victor is increasingly uncertain

The UK’s fine performance in sequencing Sars-CoV-2 genomes allows Public Health England to publish detailed analyses on the progress of variants and the latest report represents the changing of the guard. The B.1.1.7 lineage, first identified in Kent, had been dominant in the UK, but the B.1.617.2 lineage, first identified in India, comprised 58% of the most recent sequences, up from 44% the week before. There are strong regional differences, with under 10% of cases in Yorkshire and the Humber being the Indian-identified variant, while in north-west England that share is over 60%.

The main concern is about increased risk of transmission and reports also include estimates of what is known as the “secondary attack rate” (SAR), which simply means the proportion of an infected person’s contacts who also get infected. Using NHS test-and-trace data for recent non-travel cases, the estimated SAR for the B.1.1.7 variant was 8.1% (+/- 0.2%), while for the variant identified in India it was substantially higher at 13.5% (+/- 1.0%) – although these are likely to understate the true values due to the limitations of contact tracing.

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Kumbh Mela: how a superspreader festival seeded Covid across India

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From across India, millions of Hindu pilgrims came to take a ritual dip in the Ganges, then returned home carrying Covid-19. Here are their stories

On 12 April, as India registered another 169,000 new Covid-19 cases to overtake Brazil as the second-worst hit country, three million people gathered on the shores of the Ganges.

They were there, in the ancient city of Haridwar in the state of Uttarakhand, to take a ritual dip in the holy river. The bodies, squashed together in a pack of devotion and religious fervour, paid no visible heed to Covid protocols.

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