Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The UK’s Covid-19 statistics remain encouraging despite continuing rows over vaccine deliveries in Europe. Admissions to hospital and daily deaths from the disease continue to decline with numbers in the latter category now down to double digits while the former have dropped to around a 10th of their total two months ago.
However, one other category – numbers of new diagnoses a day – has reached a plateau with cases, having plunged from 60,000, stabilising at around 5,000 to 6,000. So why has this figure apparently stalled while deaths and hospitalisations continue to decline?
The Philippines has recorded 7,757 new cases, its second-highest single-day increase, Reuters reports.
The daily tally follows Saturday’s record infections and marks the third straight day confirmed new cases topped 7,000.
BREAKING: DOH reports 7,757 new cases, bringing the national total to 663,794, as of March 21, 2021.
Total recoveries have reached 577,754 (+ 15,288 new) while death toll is now at 12,968 (+ 39 new). pic.twitter.com/kbAemDp0lp
The number of coronavirus patients in hospital in Bulgaria has risen to 8,545, the highest level since the start of the pandemic last March, Reuters reports citing official data.
A surge in infections in the third Covid wave has prompted the Bulgarian government to close schools, nurseries, restaurants, big shops and gyms from Monday for 10 days ahead of the 4 April parliamentary election.
The handshake will be back, says Ella Al-Shamahi – we’ve been doing it for 7m years and it’s part of our DNA
The handshake has a serious PR problem. For a long time the go-to, multipurpose, international greeting, it was abruptly banished in March 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic swept the world. But has it gone for ever? Is it consigned to history? Have we been shocked into seeing what we should have realised all along: that it is sheer recklessness to indiscriminately touch other people’s dirty paws? The White House Covid-19 taskforce member and immunologist-turned-American hero Dr Anthony Fauci certainly thought so last year when he proclaimed, “I don’t think we should ever shake hands ever again, to be honest with you.”
If the handshake is indeed undergoing an extinction event, then who better than a palaeoanthropologist, someone who studies human evolution, to speak at the wake? Except that, as a palaeoanthropologist, I’m refusing to write its obituary. Drawing on multiple lines of evidence, I have come to the conclusion that the handshake is, in fact, the owner of a rich, fascinating story, hiding in plain sight. I think the handshake isn’t just cultural: it’s biological, it’s programmed into our DNA.
Winters in Berlin are notoriously tough but this year has been like no other. “I’m really tired of it,” Ina Eggers, a teacher in the city, says. “Winter is always hard but now [with lockdown] we don’t have anything to do, so it’s been awful. ”
Germany is in the midst of a third wave of the pandemic, with case numbers increasing rapidly. On Saturday, the Robert Koch Institute reported 16,033 new Covid-19 infections within one day – 3,359 more than a week ago. In light of this, doctors are calling for an urgent tightening of lockdown rules to prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed for the third time.
Japan will emerge from 10 weeks of coronavirus restrictions on Sunday, just in time for the peak of the annual cherry blossom viewing season.
In normal years, the appearance of the delicate pink flowers is the cue for friends to spread out picnic blankets and lose their inhibitions in a ritual that often involves copious quantities of food and drink, and a nodding recognition of the floral spectacular. But the lifting of the state of emergency, announced earlier this month by the prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, will not be celebrated beneath the sakura.
Local authorities reveal devastating toll of coronavirus on households who have struggled to keep a roof over their heads
A rise in the use of food banks and an increase in family disputes requiring mediation has been seen across most of England, according to new research that uncovers the pressures on families during the Covid crisis.
Most local councils in England have also reported increased numbers of people needing help for homelessness, with warnings that many poorer households will face “disaster” unless emergency support is extended well beyond the pandemic.
Boris Johnson faces mounting pressure from senior Tories to resist attempts to extend the blanket ban on overseas travel or delay the loosening of UK restrictions, amid new warnings over rising Covid cases in Europe.
With scientific advisers warning of the risks of overseas holidays in the late spring and summer, figures from across the Conservative party demanded that the prime minister reject an “excess of caution” in reacting to an apparent third Covid wave across the continent.
Next month, Greece will begin distributing free COVID-19 tests that will allow residents to do it themselves and reduce pressure on the healthcare system, which has faced a rise in new positive cases.
The Greek government has announced that people with a social security number will be eligible for four test kits per month, which will be distributed at pharmacies.
It is a new tool in the country’s battle against the pandemic. The tests will allow better epidemiological monitoring, and of course prevention,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement.
The government said the do-it-yourself test kits have an accuracy rate of about 95%-99%. They are easier to do than rapid tests, needing nasal and saliva samples instead of the nasopharyngeal sample used in rapid tests.
Chile has set a new daily record for Covid-19 cases, health officials have reported. While the South American nation continues its vaccination efforts, hospitals are on the verge of collapse.
Reuters reports:
Cases have been ticking up for weeks following the end of the southern hemisphere summer holiday but soared to 7,084, above the previous high of 6,938 last June, the data shows.
The fast-rising caseload has filled critical care wards north to south, leaving Chile with just 198 beds available for new patients. All of the capital Santiago, the economic engine, is in strict lockdown this weekend.
As we hit the first anniversary of lockdown, I realise it’s people and places that I’m really hungry for
There were two branches of Thorntons in Sheffield when I was growing up, but because only one of them was by a stop for our bus, family shopping trips always involved, until I was in possession of hard cash myself, a certain amount of faux-casual, ruthlessly opportunistic manipulation. Basically, if you could persuade your mum to take this route (as opposed to that route) around town, you’d wind up at the aforementioned bus stop rather than the very bleak one opposite Barry Noble’s Roxy Nite Spot, at which point there was every chance that she would buy you a quarter of special toffee as you waited for the number 51. The best strategy was to look meekly un-needy; to breathe in the buttery smells wafting from its door while never actually asking for the goods themselves. Pleased by your forbearance, the offer would then be made – unless the bus appeared first, in which case you’d have to make do with a corned beef sandwich back at home.
I thought about those long ago shopping trips as I read the obituaries of Tony Thornton, the chocolate maker’s former chairman, who died in January (his grandfather founded the company, which recently announced plans to close all its shops, in Sheffield in 1911). Ah, for the days when my idea of an unimprovably posh chocolate was a Viennese truffle. But in these times, thinking is not enough, is it? As we arrive, pale-faced and blinking, at the first anniversary of the first lockdown, I’m beset by sudden cravings – urgent longings on which I must act immediately. Putting down the newspaper, I ran to my desk. Minutes later, I’d added a bag of special toffee to my weekly supermarket haul, where it joined various other items I haven’t eaten in years, the most embarrassing of which was … actually, I can’t bear to tell you that.
Thousands marched under a heavy police presence through central London in protest against lockdown on Saturday, with at least 13 arrested.
Demonstrators gathered at Speakers’ Corner by Hyde Park at about midday, where anti-lockdown figurehead Piers Corbyn gave a speech saying he would “never take a vaccine” and falsely claiming that the scale of deaths from Covid was not dissimilar to those from flu each year.
Charles Oti should be in his NHS job fighting the virus. Instead, the Home Office wants to send him to Nigeria
An infection control specialist who has been offered a job as a senior NHS biomedical scientist to help tackle the pandemic is facing deportation by the Home Office, prompting fresh calls for a more “humane” approach to skilled migrants.
The government has refused Charles Oti, 46, from Nigeria the right to remain in the UK even though the job he was offered is among the government’s most sought-after skilled positions.
Overseas spectators will not be permitted to attend this summer’s rearranged Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo. An announcement was made after a meeting of the International Olympic Committee, International Paralympic Committee, Tokyo metropolitan government, the Tokyo 2020 organising committee and the government of Japan on Saturday.
The decision, which was not unexpected, is due to continuing uncertainty amid the Covid-19 pandemic, with international travel restricted and variant coronavirus strains emerging. Japan is unlikely to be open to foreign tourists by the summer and it was felt some clarification over this matter should be given now.
The Duke of Sussex has reflected on the pain of his mother’s death in a foreword to a book for children of health workers who have died in the coronavirus pandemic.
Prince Harry wrote that the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997 when he was 12 had left “a huge hole inside of me” but that it was eventually filled with “love and support”, according to the Times.
China’s first local coronavirus case since February was a staff worker at a hospital who had received two shots of a vaccine between end-January and early February, state media has reported.
The patient, identified by her surname Liu, had been working in the quarantine area of a hospital in Xian city since 4 March, and was mainly responsible for collecting samples from quarantined people for coronavirus testing, the Health Times reported on Saturday.
Michael Rosen, the poet and children’s writer who survived Covid after six weeks on a ventilator, has backed calls for a public inquiry into the UK’s handling of the pandemic amid rising pressure on Boris Johnson to announce a timetable.
The author spoke out as several other prominent figures urged the government to launch a statutory investigation into the UK’s Covid-19 experience, including the broadcaster Joan Bakewell, the film director Stephen Frears and the music producer and composer Talvin Singh.
Plans to reopen to vaccinated tourists include short quarantine in popular holiday spots like Phuket and Koh Samui
Thailand’s Phuket island used to vibrate with life. Before the pandemic, March was part of peak season and the resort’s long white beaches were packed with tourists from Europe, Australia, North America and China. At night, backpackers would flock to beach-front bars and on the hills stretching inland wealthy tourists would eat at five-star restaurants.
Today, Phuket is a ghost town. The shockwaves of Covid-19 have reduced daily visitor numbers from up to 50,000 down to just hundreds. But there is hope that plans to bring tourists back could change the fortunes of the beach town, and the country.
Papua New Guinea has seen coronavirus cases skyrocket, with fears it could push the health system to breaking point
When Papua New Guinea recorded its first Covid case in March 2020, the country held its breath.
There were acute fears about its on the country’s already overwhelmed and under-resourced health system, which has roughly 500 doctors to serve a population of around nine million, and was already struggling to deal with outbreaks of measles, drug-resistant tuberculosis and polio.
Boris Johnson has received his first dose of a coronavirus vaccine at London’s St Thomas’ hospital, where last year he was treated in intensive care for Covid, and urged others to have the jab.
Germans pleased at lifting of suspension, as rise in infections threatens to overwhelm hospitals
Susanne Klaehr, a nursery worker in Berlin, arrived more than two hours early to receive an AstraZeneca jab at Tempelhofer Feld, on Friday as she didn’t want to miss her chance. “It’s a good day for me,” the 53-year-old said. “I even played loud music on the way here.”
Germany has resumed using the AstraZeneca vaccine after pausing its deployment along with many European countries on Monday over fears of a possible link to blood clots.
Analysis: Foreign secretary’s robust response to the EU contrasted with the PM’s emollience towards India
Boris Johnson went out of his way this week not to blame Delhi for the later-than-expected arrival of 5m doses of the Oxford vaccine from India, which is contributing to a significant dip in supplies in April.
“No, no, no,” he said, when asked by a reporter whether Delhi had blocked the export of the vaccines, as the country battles a resurgence in Covid cases.