Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Dominic Cummings’ litany of claims against the government should be formally investigated, say families
Boris Johnson is facing a growing clamour to bring forward the start of the coronavirus public inquiry after Dominic Cummings’ allegations triggered a “political pantomime” that disrespects the victims of the pandemic, their relatives said.
The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group, which represents thousands of grieving people, called for an urgent start to the inquiry, which is due to begin in spring 2022.
Victoria has started its seven-day circuit-breaker lockdown – its fourth lockdown since the coronavirus pandemic began.
Other states have also imposed snap lockdowns or restrictions as a result of Covid cases in the community, most recently New South Wales, after a mystery case. But, with the exception of Sydney’s northern beaches cluster, most leaks from hotel quarantine have not resulted in sizeable outbreaks.
One of the most shocking allegations made by Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings during Wednesday’s joint parliamentary committee hearing was his claim that “tens of thousands of people died who didn’t need to die”, because of the way the government handled the Covid pandemic.
His claims have some support from scientists, who have estimated that the toll from government delays could be as high as 33,000 lives.
At first minister’s questions in Edinburgh Nicola Sturgeon suggested that Boris Johnson’s failure to act swiftly at certain times in the pandemic had led to “loss of life”. As the Herald reports, Sturgeon said:
Sometimes I’m afraid, in the interests of health and human life, it is necessary for people in leadership positions like me to take very quick decisions because, as we know from bitter experience over this pandemic, it’s often the failure to take quick and firm decisions that leads to loss of life.
And anybody who’s in any doubt about that only had to listen to a fraction of what Dominic Cummings outlined about what he described as the chaotic response of the UK government at key moments of this pandemic.
New absence figures published by the Department for Education reveal that 60% of pupils in England were kept out of school for Covid-related reasons at some time last autumn.
The national data for the term that began when schools reopened in September shows that pupils missed 33 million days in the classroom because of Covid, through having to self-isolate or for shielding reasons. That sent the overall absence rate to nearly 12% for the term, compared with less than 5% in a normal term.
The government’s refusal to give schools any flexibility to finish in-school teaching early before Christmas, which was accompanied by threats of legal action, made matters even worse.
The prime minister’s former senior adviser spoke yesterday of the government’s shortcomings in the handling of this crisis and it is certainly the case that schools and colleges were badly let down by government leadership during the autumn term.
Here’s some news about lockdown relaxations in Sweden via Reuters.
The nordic country will go ahead and ease some of its COVID-19 restrictions from June 1, as the number of new infections has fallen sharply in recent weeks, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said on Thursday.
“We are beginning to glimpse the beginning of the end,” Lofven told a news conference.
The previously announced easing includes longer opening hours for restaurants and cafes, as well as raising the number of spectators at sports events and visitors at museums and amusement parks.
Reuters reportsthat Russia has signed an agreement to supply UNICEF, the United Nations’ children’s fund, with enough doses of its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine to vaccinate 110 million people, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which markets the shot internationally, said on Thursday.
Procurement and delivery of the vaccine is subject to Sputnik V receiving an emergency use listing from the World Health Organisation, a decision which the RDIF said is expected soon.
President Joe Biden has ordered US intelligence agencies to conduct a 90-day review of what is known about the origins of Covid-19 and whether it could have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan. So what does this mean for the lab leak theory?
Boris Johnson has rejected claims by his former chief aide Dominic Cummings that tens of thousands of people died of Covid-19 unnecessarily because of government mistakes. 'Some of the commentary I've heard doesn't bear any relation to reality,' the prime minister said on a visit to a Colchester hospital. 'We followed to the best we could the data and the guidance we had'
Victoria is entering a seven-day lockdown as authorities work to contain a rapidly spreading Covid outbreak that the acting premier has warned is “running faster than we have ever recorded”.
The government hopes the restrictions – which start at midnight and include compulsory masks, school closures and a 5km travel limit for shopping and exercise – will act as a circuit-breaker after the state reported 11 new cases of the B1617.1 variant on Thursday taking the cluster to 26.
A blaze ripped through the overcrowded settlement of Susan’s Bay in Freetown in March, injuring hundreds. British photographer Henry Kamara, of Sierra Leone descent, documents the aftermath in this coastal community as people try to rebuild their lives
Joe Biden has ordered the US intelligence community to 'redouble' its efforts studying the origins of coronavirus, adding that it will continue to press for China to participate in a full investigation. The deputy White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, confirmed the investigation would include any possibility the trail might lead to a Chinese lab. 'China wasn't transparent enough,' she said. 'We have been saying that for a very long time, that China needed to provide more access to the lab, cooperate more fully with the scientific investigators'
A team of German scientists believe that they have worked out why some people given the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines against Covid-19 develop blood clots – and claim they can tell the manufacturers how to improve the vaccine to avoid it.
The key is in the adenovirus – the common cold virus that is used to deliver the spike protein of the coronavirus into the body, say Rolf Marschalek, a professor at Goethe university in Frankfurt, and colleagues. The mRNA vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna do not use this delivery system and there have been no blood clotting cases linked to them.
France’s average daily number of new Covid-19 cases fell to its lowest level since mid-September while the number of people being treated for the virus in hospital continued to decline, official data showed on Wednesday.
The daily figure, averaged out over seven days, fell below 10,000, down from a 2021 high of over 42,000 in mid-April.
Good evening from London. I’m Lucy Campbell, I’ll be bringing you all the latest global developments on the coronavirus pandemic for the next few hours. Please feel free to get in touch with me as I work if you have a story or tips to share! Your thoughts are always welcome.
President received analysis of origins and asked for follow-up in 90 days
Senate Republicans want to lower cost of $1.7tn infrastructure proposal
Deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about the White House’s response to the shooting this morning at a railyard in San Jose, California.
“Our hearts go out to the victims and their families,” Jean-Pierre said. “There is an ongoing investigation, as we all know. We will continue to stay in close contact with them and offer any assistance as needed.”
BREAKING: At least eight people are confirmed dead after the mass shooting at a San Jose rail yard, in addition to the suspected shooter, police say https://t.co/BuWF2htFwfpic.twitter.com/ksGRW3gXSx
One reporter asked Karine Jean-Pierre to reflect on her history-making appearance at the White House briefing room podium today.
“It’s a real honor to just be standing here today. I appreciate the historic nature” of this moment, the deputy White House press secretary said.
Karine Jean-Pierre — the second Black woman to ever lead a White House press briefing — speaks about making history in her role: "It is a real honor to be standing here today. I appreciate the historic nature...Clearly, the president believes representation matters." pic.twitter.com/ErdayRW4VR
Dominic Cummings has laid bare the “surreal” chaos in Downing Street in March last year as the government grappled with the Covid pandemic, portraying the prime minister as obsessed with the media and making constant U-turns, “like a shopping trolley smashing from one side of the aisle to the other”.
During an extraordinary evidence session to MPs at Westminster on Wednesday, Boris Johnson’s former chief aide targeted the prime minister for personal criticism, accusing him of being “unfit for the job”.
US pushing UK hard over minimum corporate tax and swift action on global Covid vaccinations
Boris Johnson is facing mounting pressure from Joe Biden and grass roots activists to be bolder at next month’s G7 summit amid signs that rows over vaccines and tax will dominate what the prime minister hoped would be a low-key event.
The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, kicks off two weeks of intense international diplomacy ahead of the June gathering of the leaders of major western economies in Cornwall when he hosts a virtual meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors on Friday.
The European Commission has demanded an urgent court order requiring AstraZeneca to deliver millions more vaccines to the bloc or face a hefty fine, in a case that may reflect its anger more than its need for doses.
“AstraZeneca did not even try to respect the contract,” the EU’s lawyer, Rafaël Jafferali, told a court in Brussels on Wednesday, saying the EU wanted €10 per dose for each day of delay as compensation for the company’s alleged non-compliance.
France will impose a compulsory quarantine on travellers arriving from the UK amid mounting concern over the rapid spread of the coronavirus variant first found in India, the government’s spokesperson has said.
Gabriel Attal told reporters after a weekly ministerial meeting on Wednesday that the government would announce “in the coming hours” exactly when the decision, which was widely expected, would come into effect.
Boris Johnson has refused to deny that he initially dismissed coronavirus as 'another scare story' in a prime minister’s questions dominated by claims made by his former chief adviser Dominic Cummings.
The PMQs session took place immediately after the first two-and-a-half-hour session of testimony by Cummings to MPs, with Keir Starmer quizzing the prime minister repeatedly about the allegations
European Commission proposes more factchecking and algorithm changes to tackle disinformation
A “massive anti-vaccination campaign” has been cited by the European Commission as a reason for social media platforms to intensify their factchecking and revise the internal algorithms that can amplify disinformation.
Under a revised code of practice proposed by Brussels, companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter would need to show why particular material is disseminated and prove that false information is being blocked.
Ministers are facing fresh opposition from local authorities over updated travel advice urging people to minimise travel to areas with higher coronavirus cases.
The government revised its official guidance on Tuesday following criticism that it had introduced a lockdown “by stealth” by urging people to avoid all but essential travel to eight Covid hotspots in England.