Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
House minority leader Kevin McCarthy wished Mike Pence a speedy recovery, after the former vice-president’s office said he had a pacemaker implanted yesterday.
“Wishing my friend @Mike_Pence a swift recovery. Judy and I are thinking of you as you overcome this challenge—you are in our prayers,” McCarthy said on Twitter.
Wishing my friend @Mike_Pence a swift recovery. Judy and I are thinking of you as you overcome this challenge—you are in our prayers. https://t.co/UPt1Lwa8k0
The CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla, has said people will “likely” need a third coronavirus vaccine dose within a year, with annual revaccinations also a possibility.
“We need to see what would be the sequence, and for how often we need to do that, that remains to be seen,” Bourla told a CNBC reporter during an event with CVS Health. The CEO’s comments were released today, but they were filmed two weeks ago.
A coronavirus variant with potentially worrying mutations that was first detected in India has been found in the UK.
In total, 77 cases of the variant, known as B.1.617, have been recorded in the UK up to 14 April, according to the latest update from Public Health England (PHE), released on Thursday. Of these, 73 were recorded in England and four in Scotland.
Hairdressers and beauty salons will be able to reopen in Northern Ireland from 23 April, the first stage in a phased reopening of the region’s economy and society, it has been announced.
Outdoor visitor attractions and competitive sports with up to 100 participants will also be allowed from next week.
Officials in St Vincent say they are extremely worried about the island’s Covid-19 outbreak given a lack of clean water and more positive cases reported as thousands of evacuees fleeing the La Soufrière volcano eruption crowd into shelters and private homes.
About a dozen cases have been reported in recent days. At least five evacuees staying in two homes and a shelter tested positive, exposing at least 20 people to the virus, St Vincent’s chief medical officer, Dr Simone Keizer-Beache, said.
Exclusive: In leaked emails, Matt Hancock’s adviser says there is ‘urgent need for decisions’ on asymptomatic testing
Senior government officials have raised “urgent” concerns about the mass expansion of rapid coronavirus testing, estimating that as few as 2% to 10% of positive results may be accurate in places with low Covid rates, such as London.
Boris Johnson last week urged everyone in England to take two rapid-turnaround tests a week in the biggest expansion of the multibillion-pound testing programme to date.
The medical NGO says government negligence is costing lives as death toll exceeds 362,000, second only to US
The Brazilian government’s negligent response to Covid-19 has plunged the South American country into a snowballing “humanitarian catastrophe” that is likely to intensify in the coming weeks, the medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières has warned.
“I have to be very clear in this: the Brazilian authorities’ negligence is costing lives,” the group’s international president, Christos Christou, told reporters on Thursday after Brazil’s official death toll rose to more than 362,000, second only to the US.
Doctors have expressed fears for patients after the government ordered that the majority of the beds in 14 of Delhi’s biggest private hospitals be reserved exclusively for Covid patients, as the Indian capital’s healthcare system struggles to cope with a virulent second wave.
The announcement by the government came as the situation in Delhi grew increasingly dire, with over 17,000 new cases reported on Wednesday, breaking all records since the pandemic began, and 104 deaths. The capital has overtaken Mumbai, previously Covid ground zero in India, in terms of the number of new cases reported every day.
NSW MPs call for end to police investigating themselves on 30th anniversary of royal commission; Queensland eases Covid restrictions; fashion designer Carla Zampatti farewelled in Sydney. Follow updates live
Now that unemployment has hit 5.6%, the treasurer Josh Frydenberg has signalled he will revisit the budget strategy - which is that the Morrison government won’t tighten fiscal policy until unemployment is “comfortably within” 6%.
Frydenberg told reporters in Canberra that 5.6% was not “comfortably within” 6% and that now is “not the time for austerity”.
CDC advisers say they need more evidence to decide if cases of unusual blood clots were linked to the Covid vaccine
Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine will remain in limbo a while longer after US health advisers told the government Wednesday that they need more evidence to decide if a handful of unusual blood clots were linked to the shot – and if so, how big the potential risk really is.
The reports are exceedingly rare – six cases out of more than 7m US inoculations with the one-dose vaccine. But the government recommended a pause in Johnson & Johnson vaccinations this week, not long after European regulators declared that such clots are a rare but possible risk with the AstraZeneca vaccine, a shot made in a similar way but not yet approved for use in the US.
Mexico’s unwillingness to spend money, do more testing, change course or react to new scientific evidence contributed to the country being one of the worst-hit by the coronavirus pandemic, a report has concluded.
Mexico would have had a significantly lower death toll if it had reacted as satisfactorily as the average government, according to the Institute for Global Health Sciences, at the University of California, San Francisco, which also released a report sharply critical of the US response to Covid-19.
Covid-status certificates being considered by ministers to help open up society could amount to unlawful indirect discrimination, the government’s independent equalities watchdog has advised.
As ministers decide whether the documents should be introduced as passports to certain events later this year, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has told the Cabinet Office they risk creating a “two-tier society”.
Hi there, this is Rhi Storer taking over from Yohannes Lowe this afternoon. Please feel free to send me any contributions to rhi.storer@guardian.co.uk or alternatively you can contact me on Twitter.
Here is video of Vicky Foxcroft’s (Lab) question about sign language at PMQs (see earlier post):
Labour MP Vicky Foxcroft asks a question in sign language
"If the prime minister doesn't understand, why does he still not have sign language at his press briefings?"
The Danish Health Authority confirmed on Wednesday it would halt entirely the use of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine in its inoculation programme.
“The Danish Health Authority has decided to continue the vaccination against COVID-19 without the vaccine from AstraZeneca,” it said in a statement.
The suspension of Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine could delay efforts to vaccinate most people in the EU by over two months to December, scientific information and analytics company Airfinity forecast on Wednesday.
“If the EU can’t use the J&J vaccine indefinitely it could push the timeline for vaccinating 75% of the population back into December,” London-based Airfinity said in a forecast update provided to Reuters.
Last month, 130 countries had yet to administer a single dose of vaccine. Meanwhile the US has enough for three times its population
Old colonial lines are being reinforced. As western nations edge closer to effectively vaccinating their populations, much of the rest of the planet languishes in fear of new Covid variants and the long-term impacts of the pandemic and its economic consequences. The US has acquired enough vaccines for three times its population. At the same time, according to Unicef, 130 countries had yet to administer a single dose of vaccine as of mid-February. Some countries aren’t poised to see widespread vaccine access until 2023. While there are questions of unequal distribution within western countries like the US and UK, the larger problem is how the greed of governments – and the corporations that bully them – has caused a new and dangerous form of global inequality.
The US is, for lack of a better term, hoarding vaccines. It began with Donald Trump and his refusal to participate in Covax, a global initiative that aims to ensure the distribution of 2bn vaccines to countries in need. Joe Biden joined Covax but has for the most part deprioritized the organization for the sake of ensuring that Americans are vaccinated first and foremost – even if that means scores of vaccines go unused. After some criticism, Biden agreed to distribute some superfluous vaccines to Mexico and Canada. This is less an act of generosity than an act of self-interest, intended to ensure that the US vaccination process isn’t undone by having unvaccinated nations at its borders. In true American fashion, these vaccines are essentially loans.
After sitting alone in my flat for most of last year, I jumped at the chance to deliver Covid vaccines. This is what I’ve learned
Pushing a needle through fake skin is not much like the real thing. So I discovered when I vaccinated my first patient at a mass vaccination centre in north London. You feel for a person’s shoulder blade and give the injection two finger-widths below the tip of the shoulder, in the middle of the deltoid muscle. In training, you’re given a salmon-coloured “arm” of silicone sponge to practise on. In reality, arms – like the people they belong to – are unique; it takes a little while to confidently feel your way with each new person you close the NHS regulation blue curtain behind.
When I saw an advert for people willing to train as vaccinators in early January, I applied at once. The idea of being an active part of a historic vaccination rollout was thrilling. I have clinical experience as an assistant psychologist, can put people at ease and was very ready for a meaningful break from spending 10 hours a day looking at a screen alone in my flat. The training was delivered by a group of witty, absolutely zero-bullshit female clinicians wearing Crocs. The conversation was sharp; I adored them immediately. We covered infection control (including a sobering experiment with UV gel; trust me, you need to clean your thumbs), PPE, life support and, of course, learning to inject. I remember a surreal moment, looking around a room full of lawyers, medical students, psychotherapists, cycling instructors and shop managers in full PPE, all bound by the shared purpose of wanting to do something.
As the US entered the latest phase of the fight against the pandemic, photographer Filip Wolak felt it was important to capture the unprecedented efforts that the healthcare communities put into place to help mitigate the virus’s lasting effects.
This photo project attempts to capture the largest vaccination sites across the country. Some of the sites pictured were documented in their early stages when the vaccination supply was still limited – Wolak hopes to return to them again.
The photographs were taken from a small airplane, overflying the locations at a high altitude. This point of view allowed Wolak to capture the magnitude of these efforts. In some of the cases, multiple images were combined into one, which allowed a wider reach without degradation of details
He had feared it as he saw the reckless crush of hundreds of people taking part in large wedding parties over the past months, feared it as he saw the maskless faces of shoppers at the market, feared it as he witnessed thousands come together for political rallies in the ongoing elections in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where he is the president of the state medical council.
Asked about Joe Biden’s speech tomorrow on the path forward in Afghanistan, Jen Psaki declined to provide specific details on the plan that the president will propose.
But the White House press secretary did say this: “The president has been consistent in his view that there is not a military solution to Afghanistan, that we have been there for far too long.”
White House Covid-19 task force coordinator Jeff Zeints said a “pause” in Johnson & Johnson vaccine administration would not affect national vaccine distribution, despite that some officials expected to rely on the one-shot vaccine in rural and isolated communities.
“We have enough to continue the current pace of about 3 million shots per day, 200 million shots by [Joe Biden’s] 100th day in office,” Zeints said in the White House briefing room.
He later added: “We have enough supply of Moderna and Pfizer… to head toward the Fourth of July we’ve talked about as a country.”
Six cases of blood clots and low platelet counts in women between 18 and 48 caused the CDC and FDA to recommend states pause administration of the vaccine while potential links between the vaccine and very rare syndrome are investigated. More than 6 million Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses have been administered in the US.
Officials have said there are similarities between the syndrome being investigated and those associated with the AstraZeneca vaccine in Europe and Australia. The AstraZeneca vaccine is not available in the US. Both vaccines from Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca share a vaccine technology called an “viral vector”. If a link was established, the syndrome would still be exceedingly rare, affecting less than one in one million people vaccinated.
Health authorities said it was also important to pause the administration and announce it to the public because of the treatment needed for patients who may be suffering from such clots. Standard treatment for blood clots uses heparin, a blood thinner. In this syndrome, officials said heparin could be “dangerous” and make the syndrome worse.
“When individuals, particularly younger women, come into a physician with a thrombotic phenomenon, we want to alert physicians to take a history of a recent vaccination,” said Dr Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical advisor. “That would be important.”
The White House had “no involvement” in the announcement about a “pause” in administration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the US. Zeints said the administration is “ruled by science,” and would wait for health officials’ investigation.
As to whether the very rare potential side effect could increase vaccine hesitancy, particularly in rural areas where the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was expected to be deployed, Zeints and Fauci said the pause represents how seriously the FDA takes patient safety.
“Hesitancy amongst a group of people is a challenge,” said Zeints. “The FDA acting the way they did today shows they are indeed the gold standard, and I think that should reassure the American public they are very diligent.”
Flu-like side effects in the days immediately following vaccine administration are common established side effects, and would typically resolve within a few days. In all six cases, the blood clotting events occurred between six and 13 days after any of the patients received a vaccine.
Symptoms of the clotting syndrome include severe headache, shortness of breath, abdominal and leg pain. People experiencing such symptoms roughly one to three weeks after receiving the vaccine should seek medical attention. People who received the vaccine more than one month ago are at “very low” risk for complications.
South Africa has temporarily suspended the rollout of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine, its health minister said on Tuesday, after US federal health agencies recommended pausing its use because of rare cases of blood clots.
Health minister Zweli Mkhize told reporters:
I had urgent consultations with our scientists, who advised that we cannot take the decision by the FDA lightly. Based on their advice, we have determined to voluntarily suspend our rollout until the causal relationship between the development of clots and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is sufficiently interrogated.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said on Tuesday it was reviewing cases of rare blood clots in women who had taken Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine after US federal health authorities recommended pausing the use of the shot.
In a statement to Reuters, the EMA said it was “currently not clear whether there is a causal association between vaccination” and the conditions.
Local restrictions should be imposed to curb the spread of coronavirus variants when clusters emerge to avoid local or national lockdowns, scientists have said after the UK’s biggest surge testing operation got under way.
In south London, dozens of cases of the South Africa variant of Covid-19 have been detected, chiefly in the boroughs of Wandsworth and Lambeth, leading to what the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has said is the “largest surge testing operation to date”.