Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
A “significant” number of people will require long-term aftercare such as the physiotherapy and speech therapy being received by Derek Draper after a year in intensive care following Covid, a leading doctor has said.
On Friday, it was revealed that Draper, the former political adviser and the husband of ITV presenter Kate Garraway, has been taken off support machines and returned home after a year in intensive care – but will receive 24-hour care at the couple’s newly adapted north London home.
Move over man caves! Now women are discovering what a life-saver their own private sheds can be
At the entrance to Angela Benjamin’s shed is a copper sign that reads: “She Cave”, and a deep purple clematis weaves its way through the letters. The shed is a simple wooden structure at the end of her garden in Ealing, west London that backs on to a cemetery – “so I don’t disturb anyone when I’m working!”
A trio of countries stand out for the effectiveness of their Covid-19 vaccination programmes: Israel, Chile and the UK. All have managed to inoculate an impressively high percentage of their people but each has fared very differently in controlling the disease.
Israel has done so well it is resuming university lectures, concerts and other mass gatherings and has opened up its restaurants and bars. By contrast, Chile is experiencing soaring levels of Covid cases and faces new lockdown restrictions.
The Australian government is funnelling millions of dollars to private contractors for its beleaguered Covid vaccine rollout using opaque deals – some of which are hidden from the public and ignore transparency standards.
The government is relying heavily on contractors to aid its vaccine rollout, including multinational consultants PwC and Accenture, logistics companies DHL and Linfox, and healthcare contractors Healthcare Australia, International SOS, Sonic Clinical Services and Aspen.
Leading scientists warned last night that the government was risking a third wave of Covid-19 by easing the lockdown at a time when official data still shows virus hotspots across many parts of the country.
With the UK poised to lift many Covid restrictions on Monday, the scientists accuse ministers of abandoning their promises to “follow the data, not dates” in a rush to reopen society and the economy.
Vaccine rollouts in France and Germany have finally begun to pick up speed, after a slow start and problems with supplies and bureaucracy.
France continues to struggle to contain a third Covid-19 wave, but announced it had hit its 10 million inoculations target a week earlier than expected, while Germany doubled the number of vaccinations, administering a record 720,000 doses on Thursday after the rollout was extended to family doctors.
The British Retail Consortium estimated that lockdowns in 2020 cost non-essential retail £22bn in lost sales. So with non-essential shops allowed to open again on Monday after nearly four months, retailers have concocted plans to make real-life shopping trips a pastime once again.
Lauren Cochrane looks at how different shops are adapting:
According to a tally compiled by AFP, at least 2,917,316 people have died from Covid-19 worldwide since the virus first emerged in December 2019.
The US is the worst-affected country with 561,074 deaths, followed by Brazil at 348,718, Mexico with 207,020, India with 168,436 and Britain with 127,040.
Former president tells Guardian Brazil faces perhaps gravest moment in its history and is ‘adrift on an ocean of hunger and disease’
Jair Bolsonaro’s perverse and “genocidal” response to one of the world’s deadliest Covid outbreaks has left Brazil “adrift on an ocean of hunger and disease”, the country’s former president Dilma Rousseff has claimed.
Speaking to the Guardian this week – as Brazil’s coronavirus death toll hit devastating new heights, with more than 12,000 deaths in the last three days – Rousseff said her country faced perhaps the gravest moment in its history.
Historic queer institutions across southern California that have been safe spaces for LGBTQ+ crowds for decades are in danger of closing permanently
Four iconicLos Angeles gay bars, touting a combined history of 130 years, have permanently closed during the pandemic and many more have warned that they are on the brink of shutdown.
The EU’s drug regulator is reviewing reports of rare blood clots in four people who received Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine and has expanded its inquiry into AstraZeneca’s shot to include reports of a bleeding condition.
Of the four serious cases of clotting and low platelets, three occurred in the US during the rollout of J&J’s vaccine from its Janssen pharmaceuticals unit, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said on Friday, adding that one person had died and one case was reported in a clinical trial. It was the first news of EMA’s inquiry into the J&J vaccine.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, plans to take control over the Covid-19 response from federal states to impose restrictions on regions with high numbers of new infections, as the head of the country’s disease control agency said Germany needed a two- to four-week lockdown to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed.
“Germany is in the middle of a third wave, so the federal government and the states have agreed to add to the national legislation,” a spokesperson for the German chancellor told reporters on Friday.
Norway’s prime minister, Erna Solberg, has been fined 20,000 kroner (£1,713) after breaking coronavirus social-distancing rules when organising a family gathering to celebrate her birthday.
The matter came to light in a report by the public broadcaster NRK, which triggered a police investigation.
That’s it from the UK blog team. Thanks for following our coverage..
People who have had the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine are seeking help at A&E in England despite having only mild side-effects such as headaches, in the wake of the controversy over whether the jab causes blood clots.
Vaccine rollout faces delays as authorities scramble to secure alternatives to AstraZeneca such as Pfizer for under-50s over blood clot fears. Follow updates live
Labor MP Josh Burns has criticised the government for failing to deliver vaccines to aged care staff and residents, noting the issue is unrelated to fresh concerns about the AstraZeneca vaccine causing blood clotting in those under 50.
We’ve not had any federal aged care providers in Macnamara receive their vaccinations or have any indication on what day they are going to be having them, not to mention the staff that are still vulnerable and haven’t been vaccinated.
The frustration that Australians rightly have is that the promises that have been made have not been made by the Labor Party, they’ve been made by Greg Hunt, they’ve been made by Scott Morrison, they’ve been telling Australians that they’ve got it under control, that all is well, they are going to be vaccinating Australians and they haven’t been.
Women need more information about contraceptive options, experts said, after concerns over rare blood clots linked to the AstraZeneca Covid jab prompted a debate over side-effects caused by certain forms of the pill.
On Wednesday the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said that evidence that the jab could be causing a rare blood clotting syndrome was growing stronger. As a result the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) recommended that healthy people under the age of 30 who were at low risk of Covid should be offered a different vaccine if possible.
States and territories have been left scrambling to respond to government advice recommending against vaccinating anyone under 50 with the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, leaving tens of thousands of people in the lurch.
On Friday, New South Wales halted its AstraZeneca rollout entirely for several hours while patient consent forms with the latest information about the rare risk of severe clotting associated with the vaccine were added. The state’s rollout for people aged 50 and over has since resumed.
The number of people suffering with long Covid should be published routinely, as happens with those infected with or hospitalised with coronavirus, MPs and peers are urging Boris Johnson.
The cross-party group of parliamentarians want the prime minister to ensure that the “untold human suffering” that the condition involves helps shape future government policy towards the pandemic.
The parents and children of doctors and nurses who died from Covid tell of how grief has affected them
Dr Reza Chowdhury was a beloved internist with a private practice in the Bronx and a trusted voice in New York’s Bengali community. His daughter, Nikita Rahman, said despite underlying health issues that put him at higher risk of developing Covid complications, he saw patients through mid-March when he developed symptoms. He died on 9 April.
Nikita Rahman My therapist says grief is the final act of love. Every time I miss him, I think about how that is my love for him, showing up again. I like that framing of it. I think I only recently realized just how much I loved him.
The UK will be reliant on the EU to complete its vaccine rollout and a little recognition of that would not go amiss, the European commissioner leading Brussels’ vaccine taskforce has said – adding that Europe could have fully vaccinated 70% of adults before the UK reaches its own target of one dose for all over-18s by the end of July.
Thierry Breton also said AstraZeneca had agreed that almost all the Covid vaccine doses made in the Netherlands over which the UK has made a claim will stay in the EU.
Hello, this is Rhi Storer taking over from my colleague Yohannes Lowe. Please feel free to send any contributions over to rhi.storer@guardian.co.uk or alternatively you can message me on Twitter. Thanks in advance.
Reuters reports:
The fund behind Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine said on Thursday that Slovakia should return doses received from Russia due to contract violations, after Slovakia’s drug agency raised issues with the shot.
The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), responsible for marketing the vaccine abroad, said on the jab’s official Twitter page that it had sent a letter requesting the doses be returned.
Germany’s health minister has said he wants to hold talks with Moscow about obtaining supplies of the Russian vaccine Sputnik V, in an effort to boost the country’s inoculation campaign.
Jens Spahn said Germany would have no hesitation in acting independently of the European Union, indicating his frustration over the bloc’s refusal to engage with the Russian jab’s manufacturers, but he stressed that the vaccine would only be used if it was approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).