Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Just months after ICU capacities were at zero in Los Angeles, the county has made a turnaround. But officials advise caution, and warn that vaccine hesitancy is catching up.
North Macedonia’s Covid-19 vaccination program picked up speed Tuesday, with authorities starting to use 200,000 Sinopharm jabs bought from China. The European Union’s top official for enlargement, Oliver Varhelyi, also delivered about 5,000 Pfizer-BioNTech doses to North Macedonia, Associated Press reports.
That is part of a batch of 120,000 the 27-nation bloc will donate to the country by the end of August.
Luiz Henrique Mandetta tells senate inquiry president was aware his anti-scientific response risked ‘death on an enormous scale’
Jair Bolsonaro ignored repeated warnings that his anti-scientific response to Covid-19 was leading Brazil down an “extremely perilous path” and putting tens of thousands of lives at risk, the country’s former health minister has claimed.
Giving oral evidence to a senate inquiry into Brazil’s coronavirus calamity on Tuesday, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, who led the health ministry at the start of the pandemic, said he believed the Brazilian president’s conduct had helped generate an unnecessarily large tragedy.
The handling of the coronavirus crisis in the UK has provided few moments to celebrate, but the day we reach zero deaths from the disease will clearly be one to toast. That day may not be far off. On Tuesday, the UK reported four Covid deaths within 28 days of a positive test. On Monday it was only one. Months of painful lockdown, in the face of more transmissible variants, and the rapid rollout of effective vaccines, have proven their worth. We have good reason to feel optimistic for the months ahead.
No one will have forgotten the brutal winter. In January alone, the UK reported nearly 32,000 Covid deaths, an appalling tally directly linked to locking down too late. In April, the death toll fell to 753. This month, scientists advising the government expect deaths to fall further. It is worth remembering that it’s been more than nine months since the UK last reported zero Covid deaths. We may see more in May, though people will continue to die of Covid, and the numbers might well rise again when restrictions are lifted on indoor mixing.
The streets of Delhi are known for their noise, crowds, and bustle, but Meenal Vis, a UK doctor, says that when her family there listen out of their windows there is “pin-drop silence”.
“It is almost like living in a horror film. People are not sure what will come next,” she said. “The kind of feeling described is a country in a war.”
Cricketer Michael Slater adds to voices condemning ban after chief medical officer Paul Kelly warns it could cause the deaths of Australians overseas. Follow live
Scientists have told a senate inquiry that new national environmental standards proposed by the Morrison government are “not scientifically credible” and that the lack of action by governments to address the decline of the country’s wildlife is “astonishing”.
The Business Council of Australia has called on the Morrison government to set out how it will respond to all of the recommendations of a review of Australia’s national environmental laws.
“Regrettably the standards that are now proposed as interim standards are not scientifically credible. They will not achieve the goals in the view of the academy.
The ABC is reporting Victoria’s transport department has referred an allegation that Tasmanian Liberal candidate Adam Brooks used a fake driver’s licence to Tasmania police.
This has not yet been independently confirmed by Guardian Australia.
The department confirmed it was investigating the claim on Friday, after the ABC reported a Sydney woman had alleged Mr Brooks showed her what appeared to be a VicRoads licence to convince her he was actually named Terry.
Britons’ summer holiday plans were given a major boost on Monday, as the EU confirmed vaccinated travellers will be able to fly to Europe from June, though it’s understood the UK could give the green light to travel to fewer than 10 countries.
The changing quarantine requirements for popular holiday destinations looks set to make 2021 the year of the last-minute booking.
The restaurant and cafe terraces spilling out into the streets of the pretty Dutch medieval town of Sluis were teeming over the weekend with smiling people clinking glasses under the spring sun.
The Netherlands reopened alfresco hospitality last Wednesday and Belgians, ignoring official advice, had driven a short distance across the border in huge numbers to enjoy their neighbour’s freedom over the long Labour day weekend. “We could have filled 400 tables,” said an apologetic waiter at the Resto de Eetboetiek, as he turned away the latest family arriving without a reservation.
Severe Covid-19 vaccine shortages have hampered India’s plan to administer jabs to all adults, with fewer then half of India’s states able to begin vaccinating over-18s amid warnings the shortfall could last months.
Over the weekend, more than 600 million Indians became eligible for the coronavirus vaccine in a policy that was introduced in the wake of a deadly second wave hitting the country last month.
On Christmas Day, Gail Jackson’s 16-year-old daughter said she was in so much pain she thought she would die. Liliana had been briefly admitted to hospital with Covid in September. Her symptoms never went away and, as time went on, new ones had emerged.
“For months she had a relentless, agonising headache, nausea, tinnitus, fatigue and insomnia, but the worst thing was the agonising nerve pain,” said Jackson. “I couldn’t even touch her without her screaming in pain.”
Following 803 pregnant and postpartum deaths, authorities have warned women to delay pregnancy as alarm rises
This month should have been one of the happiest in Letícia Aparecida Gomes’s life. The pregnant 23-year-old Brazilian had been due to marry before delivering her baby, Elloah, in August.
Instead, as the Covid-19 pandemic swept Gomes’s country claiming thousands of lives each day, she was taken to hospital having been infected herself.
Thousands of UK doctors are planning to quit the NHS after the Covid pandemic because they are exhausted by their workloads and worried about their mental health, a survey has revealed.
Almost one in three may retire early while a quarter are considering taking a career break and a fifth are weighing up quitting the health service to do something else.
Liberal senator Jane Hume is asked about her government’s controversial move to make it a criminal offence to enter Australia for citizens who have been in India in the last 14 days.
Hume told the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas the punishments are “a function of the Biosecurity Act” that was introduced with Labor’s support.
“The most important thing here is we’re keeping Australians safe”
No-one is saying this is an easy decision stop in fact, it is a very, very difficult decision to make but I think Australians realise how fortunate we are to be able to live in a country that is largely Covid free and our economy is back on track.
When we see the heartbreaking images of people in India, 300,000 cases a day, 90 million people infected and 200,000 deaths, I think we all fear that third wave.”
It is not a decision made lightly and we are trying to help India in any way we can.”
We don’t want to see anybody charged, we want to see the borders open and for Australians to be able to come home again and we will do that as soon as we possibly can safely.”
Jane Hume, the minister for superannuation and financial services, has been speaking about the government’s proposed $1.7bn increase to the childcare subsidy, which will see the subsidy for families with two children lifted to a maximum of 95% and remove the cap on subsidies for higher-income earners.
Hume said it’s better than more generous proposals from Labor because the Coalition’s plan “is aimed at lower-middle-income workers and people going back to work, study or doing charity work”.
It’s not an easy sell at the best of times but add in a pandemic and the fact that I’m in Africa and, according to the current rules of financial engagement, art is the verylowest of priorities.
The city state was recently crowned the best place to be in the pandemic, and reported an average of seven daily cases last week. But its latest public health video - an infectious pop song starring comedian Gurmit Singh as his much-loved character Phua Chu Kang, an eccentric contractor - warns the public not to be complacent.
Hong Kong’s government has sparked discrimination concerns over plans to force hundreds of thousands of foreign domestic workers to be vaccinated against Covid-19 or face losing their job.
Authorities have embarked on mass mandatory testing of the city’s 370,000 domestic workers after a more infectious strain was detected in the community, and flagged plans for compulsory vaccinations.
Our South Asia correspondent reflects on a catastrophe that is now affecting the lives of almost everyone in the country
You recently lost a close colleague, Kakoli Bhattacharya, to Covid-19. Can you tell us about her and the important work that she did?
Kakoli was the Guardian’s news assistant over here and had worked for us since 2009. She could find any number or contact I needed and smoothed over any and all of the bureaucratic challenges that working in India can present. She made reporting here a huge joy, when it could be a huge challenge, and she was hugely well thought of by journalists for other organisations too. More than that, though, she was the person who welcomed me to Delhi. She knew the region inside out. She was incredibly warm and was someone I could always call on. The Guardian’s India coverage won’t be the same without her.
PM Jacinda Ardern had previously said workers who declined to be vaccinated would be moved to other roles
New Zealand’s customs agency has fired nine border workers who refused to get the Covid-19 vaccine. The country has required all frontline border workers to be vaccinated by the end of April.
Stable Covid-19 infection numbers in Germany are fueling hopes that intensive care units will not be overwhelmed, the head of the German hospital federation (DKG) told the tabloid newspaper Bild.
DKG President Gerald Gass was quoted as saying:
“The majority of hospitals in Germany are feeling a first, slight easing.
We are looking at about two weeks of relatively constant numbers in terms of new infections, which gives us confidence that we don’t have to be concerned about an exponential rise in patients in need of intensive care.”
The UK records 14 deaths and 1,671 new cases of Covid-19. The case numbers are down by -10.2% and deaths down by -31.2% since the previous 7 days, Public Health England reports.
So far, 34.51m people have received the first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.
Dominic Raab urged people to keep their resolve in tackling coronavirus, saying there is only a little bit more time until all legal restrictions on social interactions are removed. Speaking on Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday, the foreign secretary said a careful approach to easing Covid restrictions was still necessary, despite people desperately wanting to hug family members