Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Hundreds of children between the ages of 12 and 16 who have been given the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccination in Israel experienced no serious side-effects, a senior official has told the Guardian, one of the first signs that Covid-19 inoculations could be safe for minors before clinical trial results.
Israel’s health ministry has recommended vaccinating some teenagers if they suffer from underlying conditions that make them vulnerable to coronavirus.
Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine appears to be gaining acceptance in the European Union, as the head of Germany’s regulatory authority publicly praised the Covid-19 jab and Italy could become the first European country to produce the vaccine from the summer.
Thomas Mertens, the head of Germany’s standing commission on vaccination, described Sputnik V in an interview on Wednesday as “a good vaccine that will presumably also be approved in the EU at some point”.
Cairns hospital called a code yellow on Tuesday due to an influx of patients, including a number of Covid-19 payments from Papua New Guinea.
More from AAP:
More than 260 people presented at the emergency department on Tuesday, with road crash victims adding to increased pressure on services.
“A sustained high number of presentations to the ED, alongside a spike in trauma admissions and several patients needing isolation for Covid-19 had led to the hospital declaring a Code Yellow,” the hospital said in a statement on Wednesday.
News that the Hong Kong legislator Ted Hui is settling in Australia after being granted a travel exemption by the Australian government is unlikely to go down well in Beijing.
When Guardian Australia contacted the Chinese embassy in Canberra for comment on the matter, an official pointed us to remarks made by the foreign ministry spokesperson in Beijing last week. The foreign ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, told reporters Monday last week:
China’s position on Hong Kong-related issues is consistent and clear. Hong Kong is China’s Hong Kong, and every bit of Hong Kong affairs belongs to China’s internal affairs, in which no other country has the right to interfere.
The Chinese side urges the Australian side to stop meddling in Hong Kong’s affairs and China’s internal affairs in any way. Otherwise the China-Australia relations will only sustain further damage.
The idea that vitamin D supplements can reduce susceptibility to, and the severity of, Covid-19 is seductive – it offers a simple, elegant solution to a very complex and lethal problem. But analyses encompassing large European datasets suggest the enthusiasm for the sunshine vitamin may be misplaced.
Two still to be peer-reviewed papers looked at the link between vitamin D levels and Covid-19 and both reached the same conclusion: evidence for a direct link between vitamin D deficiency and Covid outcomes is lacking.
Scotland’s first minister has announced that some of the country’s regulations on outdoor mixing are to be eased, but she said ‘we cannot afford to take our foot off the brake too soon’ if people were to enjoy a ‘much more normal summer’. In her weekly update, Sturgeon said that from Friday, as many as four adults from up to two households will be able to meet outdoors and for 12 to 17-year-olds four friends from four different families
Progressive congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman said she will vote for the coronavirus relief bill, despite serious concerns about the changes made by the Senate.
“While I will continue to pressure my party to live up to its banner as the party of the people, I cannot ignore the immediate need for relief,” Watson Coleman said in a statement.
Okay, now it’s official: the House will hold its final vote on the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package tomorrow, not today.
House majority leader Steny Hoyer said moments ago that the House will take up the bill at 9 am ET tomorrow morning, per C-SPAN.
Hoyer this morning in his weekly pen and pad announced the potential timing of House vote on final $1.9T COVID-19 relief bill: “Our expectation is, maybe late this afternoon we would adopt the rule...We will then tomorrow at 9am consider the American Rescue Plan and pass that.”
Sara Fearrington, a North Carolina waitress, joined the Fight for $15 campaign two years ago. A server at a Durham Waffle House, her take-home pay fluctuates between $350 and $450 a week, leaving her struggling to pay bills every month. She voted for Joe Biden, who had pledged to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. It was the first time Fearrington, who is 44, had ever voted in a presidential election.
Angela Merkel’s party tries to distance itself from pandemic deals scandal as elections loom
Corruption allegations and mounting frustration with Germany’s slow vaccination roll-out are threatening to damage Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in weather-vane state elections this Sunday, as the centre-right party is trying to distance itself from politicians whose companies are alleged to have made profits on the back of mask procurement deals.
In the south-western states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate, voters will go to the polls this weekend while digesting the allegations that one lawmaker from the CDU and one from its Bavarian sister-party, the CSU, earned six-figure commissions for brokering deals to procure face masks during last year’s first wave of the pandemic.
The Czech and Hungarian prime ministers will visit Israel this week to gain know-how on Covid-19 vaccinations and vaccine production, the Czech government has said.
AFP reports:
Czech prime minister Andrej Babis and his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orban are due to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday.
“Israel is a leader in technologies. It is our traditional partner. I think it will be a very useful visit,” Babis said in a statement, adding he would visit a large vaccination centre in Jerusalem.
Spain has again extended its ban on arrivals from Britain, Brazil and South Africa until the end of March to avoid the spread of new coronavirus strains.
Only legal residents or nationals of Spain and the neighbouring micro-state of Andorra are currently allowed in on flights from these countries.
Exclusive: union, health and aid groups plead with the Morrison government to support a WTO proposal to suspend vaccine patents during the pandemic
International aid groups, health organisations and unions are pleading with the Morrison government to support a World Trade Organization proposal designed to allow developing countries to make and sell cheap copies of patented vaccines, to achieve a quicker end to the global pandemic.
The WTO proposal would suspend Covid vaccine patents for successful jab formulas invented by pharmaceutical giants for the duration of the pandemic so poorer countries could acquire more affordable doses faster.
England’s chief medical officer has warned MPs that revising the government’s roadmap to emerge from lockdown sooner than planned would risk a more serious third wave of Covid infections.
Whitty told MPs on the Commons science and technology committee: "All the modelling suggests there is going to be a further surge that will find people either that have not been vaccinated, or where the vaccine has not worked."
From transgender sex workers living in a mass shelter whose health relies on back-street clinics, to community leaders who are making changes from the ground up despite a system that is stacked against them, This Is Gender 2021is the world’s largest photography competition looking specifically at gender and health. The collection offers an insight into our gendered world during the time of pandemic.
England’s chief medical officer has warned MPs that revising the government’s roadmap to emerge from lockdown sooner than planned would risk a more serious third wave of Covid infections.
Prof Chris Whitty said he expected a surge of infections once restrictions were lifted but that exiting lockdown faster, when fewer people are vaccinated, would send more people into hospital and lead to more deaths.
They seemed, this time last year, almost unimaginable: the most severe restrictions imposed on a western nation since the second world war. “The whole of Italy is closed now,” was the shocked headline in Corriere della Sera the next day.
On 9 March 2020, a population of more than 60 million was ordered to stay at home, permitted to venture out only under specific circumstances – solitary exercise close to home, grocery shopping, going to the doctor – on pain of a €400-€3,000 fine.
Australian Conservation Foundation to file test case to access documents on approvals fast-tracked by federal environment minister
The Morrison government’s claim that national cabinet deliberations are exempt from freedom of information laws will be challenged in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, setting up a test over the new body’s immunity from scrutiny.
The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) will file a case with the tribunal as it seeks to access information on at least 15 environmental approvals “fast-tracked” by the federal environment minister, Sussan Ley, a task so far stymied by the government’s insistence the documents fall under traditional cabinet rules.
Calls for recovery plans to address unequal burden of looking after children to advance equality and ‘because it makes fiscal sense’
The childcare crisis is at a “tipping point”, threatening to reverse decades of women’s economic progress, according to a new report published on Monday.
The report warned that the female-dominated childcare sector risked collapse, as coronavirus lockdowns and rising poverty levels had led to a “steep drop” in demand for formal and informal services.
In Cameroon, and across the world, grassroot organisations like mine have been on the Covid frontline. Now we need proper support
When Covid-19 first entered Cameroon, where I live and work, I knew that women would be among the worst affected by the ensuing crisis. Across the world during the pandemic, violence against women and girls has soared, and women are also bearing the brunt of the economic fallout.
These same dynamics are at play in Cameroon, but many women here now find themselves in a doubly difficult situation. As the world has gone online, digital gaps in Cameroon have left the majority of women disconnected, unable to access education or connect with one another. A 2015 report revealed that only 36% of women in Cameroon were internet users – and very little has changed since then.
Healthcare is focus of event to mark International Women’s Day, as organisers say pandemic has led to setbacks in rights
A march during the time of Covid is a difficult thing to plan safely. For Pakistan’s women, determined to have their “Aurat March” today, there are other risks – to their physical safety as well as of online abuse and trolling.
Noor is an organiser for this year’s masked nationwide rallies. She said she could not give her surname for fear of reprisals over her work.
Pregnant Then Screwed’s SOS voicemail service gives mothers the chance to ‘rant, rave, scream or shout’ about their pandemic experiences. Their stories are raw, emotional and sometimes painful to hear