Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Far-right president: ‘How long are you going to keep on crying?’
Critics condemn Bolsonaro as ‘incurable sociopath’
The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has triggered a wave of revulsion by telling citizens to stop “whining” about a coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 260,000 people.
The far-right populist made the inflammatory declaration on Thursday, as Brazil’s already dire Covid situation deteriorated and its average daily death toll rose above that of the United States.
The normal rules of business that protect the profits of vaccine manufacturers will have to be set aside if that is what it takes to ensure everybody is immunised against the coronavirus, according to the director general of the World Health Organization.
Writing in the Guardian, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says the world needs to be “on a war footing”. Before a key meeting of the World Trade Organization next week on the anniversary of the declaration of the pandemic, he supports a patent waiver that would allow countries to make and sell cheap copies of vaccines that were invented elsewhere.
Sex discrimination commissioner to lead review of parliament culture; Italy blocks 250,000 doses of Covid vaccine under the EU’s export authorisation scheme. Follow latest updates
Minister Reynolds has offered an apology, as she should. And as I said yesterday. And I didn’t find that acceptable, the comments that were made within her office at that time. They weren’t public statements, of course. These were comments made not in a public space... That doesn’t excuse them. And it was relating... she was not talking about the allegations of sexual assault.
Linda Reynolds is returning. She’s currently on leave and will return to her duties when her leave is finished. She maintains my confidence.
Morrison is also asked about the education sector, and whether that was a consideration when discussing international arrival caps and quarantine facilities. In short, no change, but if universities want to reach agreements with government, they’re willing to chat.
No, there’s no change on that front. It would be good if we could get to that point, but at this stage we’re not at that point. The opening of the international borders, we don’t think is wise at this time, and for the period that we’ve suggested, and that’s totally consistent with the medical advice. And we’ve always been happy to work with the international education sector if they want to put in place supplementary self-funded quarantine arrangements and flight arrangements. That has always been there for the international education industry, the large universities and others to go down that path. They haven’t chosen to go down that path. Our focus has remained on the responsibilities we have as a commonwealth.
Italywill further tighten Covid restrictions in three of its 20 regions, the government said on Friday, after health officials warned of the growing spread of new, highly contagious variants.
Earlier, the health ministry announced 24,036 new daily cases of coronavirus, up from 22,865 the day before (See earlier post).
Cyprus will allow British tourists who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 into the country without restrictions from 1 May, a tourism minister has said.
British visitors are the largest market for the country’s tourism industry, which has suffered during the coronavirus pandemic. Arrivals and earnings from the sector, which represents about 13% of the Cypriot economy, plunged on average 85% in 2020.
Texas governor Greg Abbott, who lifted face covering requirement, said it was ‘not the type of word a president should be using’
The White House has defended Joe Biden’s criticism of the Republican governors of Texas and Mississippi, after the president called their decisions to end mask mandates “Neanderthal thinking”.
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, emphasized that the president was comparing the governors’ actions to “the behavior of a Neanderthal, just to be very clear, the behavior”. She also said Biden’s comments were “a reflection of his frustration” about Americans not following public health guidance to limit their risk of contracting coronavirus.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended Joe Biden’s comments comparing Republican governors to Nearnderthals for lifting mask mandates in Mississippi and Texas. Biden’s remarks were ‘a reflection of his frustration’ about Americans not following public health guidance during the pandemic, Psaki said.
The mayor of Rio de Janeiro has ordered a coronavirus “curfew” in the hope of sparing the seaside city a repeat of last year’s Covid-19 “genocide” when it was pummeled by the disease.
The nighttime prohibition, which Mayor Eduardo Paes said would last from 11pm to 5am, was announced as hospitals across Brazil buckled under the strain of a crippling upsurge in infections and the South American country suffered its worst day of losses since the pandemic began.
Brown, a noted Covid sceptic, has withdrawn from the Neighbourhood Weekender festival in Warrington in September
Ian Brown has pulled out of headlining the Neighbourhood Weekender festival in Warrington this September after claiming that all attendees require proof of vaccination.
Brown is a noted Covid sceptic, frequently using his Twitter account to spread disinformation about the virus and protections against it. “I refuse to accept vaccination proof as condition of entry,” he tweeted yesterday.
In 2019 Thierry Baudet looked like a plausible contender for power. Now, as the Netherlands heads for the polls, he’s reduced to mimicking Trump
On 20 March 2019, Thierry Baudet provided Dutch television viewers with two surprises. The first was news of his landslide victory in that day’s senate elections. Baudet’s far-right Forum for Democracy (FvD) was a newcomer in parliament, holding just two seats out of 150 in the lower house. But that day, from scratch, Forum gained 12 of the senate’s 75 seats, putting it on a par with the governing liberal party (the VVD) led by prime minister Mark Rutte.
The second surprise was Baudet’s victory speech. “The owl of Athena spreads her wings as evening falls,” he started, and across the country, jaws dropped and drinks were spilled. The Netherlands is not a country noted for oratory. Our politicians would rather downplay their intellectual prowess than borrow from Greek mythology.
Authorised vaccines that are modified to protect against new variants will not need to start a new approval process or undergo in-depth clinical studies, regulators in the UK, Australia, Canada, Singapore and Switzerland have said.
Manufacturers will need to provide “robust evidence that the modified vaccine produces an immune response, but time-consuming clinical studies that do not add to the regulatory understanding of a vaccine’s safety, quality or effectiveness would not be needed”, bringing the process into line with that already used for updated flu jabs.
Alongside data on the immune response, the vaccine manufacturer would also be expected to provide evidence showing the modified vaccine is safe and is of the expected quality. In addition, data from the original robust clinical trials and the ongoing studies on real-world use in millions of people could be used to support any decision by the regulators.
This approach is based on the tried and tested regulatory process used for seasonal flu vaccines, for which annual modifications are needed to match the strains circulating each year.
Our priority is to get effective vaccines to the public in as short a time as possible, without compromising on safety. Should any modifications to authorised Covid-19 vaccines be necessary, this regulatory approach should help to do just that.
The announcement today also demonstrates the strength of our international partnerships with other regulators and how our global work can help ensure faster access to life-saving vaccines in the UK and around the world.
While worrisome coronavirus variants identified in Brazil, South Africa, and California have mutations that might help them resist antibody treatments and vaccines, the immune system’s T cell responses to the variants are unaffected in recovered patients and in people who have received the Moderna Inc or Pfizer Inc/BioNTech vaccines, new data show.
Reuters: The T cells induced by vaccines can recognise pieces of the virus spike protein, while T cells induced by previous infection recognise multiple parts of the virus, including the spike and other proteins, said Alessandro Sette of the La Jolla Institute for Immunology.
“These pieces are largely not changed/mutated in the variants,” he explained. “This means that the T cell responses recognise the ‘ancestral’ sequence and the variants equally well.”
Coronavirus vaccines tweaked to deal with variants will be fast-tracked without compromising on safety or effectiveness, the UK’s regulator has said.
The approach will be similar to the regulatory process for the modified flu vaccine, to deal with new strains each year, with a brand new approval not required.
Police in China and South Africa have seized thousands of fake doses of Covid-19 vaccine
Police in China and South Africa have seized thousands of fake doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, the global police organisation Interpol said on Wednesday, warning this represented only the “tip of the iceberg” in vaccine-related crime.
The Lyon-based agency Interpol said 400 vials – equivalent to around 2,400 doses – containing the fake vaccine were found at a warehouse in Germiston outside Johannesburg in South Africa, where officers also recovered fake masks and arrested three Chinese and a Zambian national.
Joe Biden sharply criticized the Republican governors of Texas and Mississippi, who announced yesterday that they were rescinding their mask mandates, despite public health experts’ concerns about another surge in coronavirus cases. 'We are on the cusp of being able to fundamentally change the nature of this disease because of the way in which we are able to get vaccines in people’s arms,' Biden said. 'The last thing we need is neanderthal thinking that in the meantime, everything’s fine,' Biden said. 'It still matters.'
Countries with high levels of overweight people, such as the UK and the US, have the highest death rates from Covid-19, a landmark report reveals, prompting calls for governments to urgently tackle obesity, as well as prioritising overweight people for vaccinations.
About 2.2 million of the 2.5 million deaths from Covid were in countries with high levels of overweight people, says the report from the World Obesity Federation. Countries such as the UK, US and Italy, where more than 50% of adults are overweight, have the biggest proportions of deaths linked to coronavirus.
President said US ‘on the cusp’ of being able to change nature of Covid crisis but ‘the last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking’
Joe Biden criticized Republican governors of Texas and Mississippi on Wednesday, calling their decisions to end state-wide mask mandates “a big mistake”.
The US president said the country was on the “cusp of being able to fundamentally change the nature of this disease” with the distribution of vaccines and added: “The last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking that in the meantime, everything’s fine.”
German doctors are reportedly concerned about the large proportion of people from minority ethnic backgrounds among coronavirus patients in intensive care, citing a lack of proper communication with Muslim communities in particular about the dangers of the disease.
Lothar Wieler, the head of the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s disease control agency, confirmed that the issue was discussed with senior medical consultants last month, though he stressed the meeting was informal.
The startling truth is that signing up for even basic utilities in this country has turned into a gamble for many people, particularly undocumented immigrants. Last week, the Washington Post revealed that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has paid tens of millions of dollars since 2017 for access to a private database that contains more than “400m names, addresses and service records from more than 80 utility companies covering all the staples of modern life, including water, gas and electricity, and phone, internet and cable TV”. The information has been mined by Ice, the Post reported, for immigration surveillance and enforcement operations.
Overnight, Giovanni Russonello’s On Politics newsletter for the New York Times had a focus on voting rights restrictions that Republicans are attempting to impose across the US in the wake of their November election defeat.
There are over 250 bills pending in 43 states that would restrict access to voting. He spoke to Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU’s law school, and she had this to say about the efforts:
[There are] seven times the number of restrictive voting bills we saw at the same time last year. So it is a dramatic spike in the push to restrict access to voting. It’s not brand-new this year, it wasn’t invented by Donald Trump, but it was certainly supercharged by his regressive attack on our voting systems.
Many of these bills are fueled by the same rhetoric and grievances that were driving the challenges to the 2020 election. In addition to expressly referencing the big lie about widespread voter fraud and that Trump actually won the election, they’re targeting the methods of voting that the Trump campaign was complaining about. So, for example, the single biggest subject of regressive voter legislation in this session — roughly half the bills — is mail voting.
It would create a baseline level of voter access rules that every American could rely on for federal elections. So, for example, in many states we’re seeing attempts to eliminate no-excuse absentee voting. This would require all states to offer no-excuse absentee voting. Every state would then offer that best practice of voting access, and it would no longer be manipulated, election by election, by state legislators to target voters they don’t like.
A large British study researching potential early-stage Covid-19 treatments will begin testing colchicine, a cheap drug normally used to treat gout, and has expanded enrolment criteria for the trial, University of Oxford researchers said on Wednesday.
The anti-inflammatory drug is already being tested in a separate study conducted by the Recovery programme, which is the world’s largest randomised Covid-19 drugs trial.
Wales has reported a further 208 coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 204,196.
Public Health Wales also reported an additional 12 deaths, taking the total in the country since the beginning of the pandemic to 5,356.