Analysis: Operation Moonshot rhetoric has been toned down but tests will help spot variants
When the government’s Operation Moonshot plans for mass testing of the population for Covid-19 were first revealed, the intention was to use that as the route out of perpetual cycles of lockdown.
It was described as a £100bn-plus endeavour, with resources likened to the Manhattan Project, the top-secret wartime endeavour led by the US to develop a nuclear bomb.
Continue reading...Captain Sir Tom Moore’s daughter has said he would never have been able to understand the online 'hate' the family received.
In an interview with BBC Breakfast, Hannah Ingram-Moore said she could not tell her 100-year-old father about the abuse after his fundraising efforts for the NHS. Moore died at Bedford hospital on 2 February after testing positive for Covid-19
Continue reading...The former government staffer says in a statement ‘the government has questions to answer about its own conduct’. Follow live
Former sex discrimination commissioner Pru Goward is asked about Brittany Higgins’s statement on Afternoon Briefing:
I think we have two start by accepting her position on everything.
It happened to her, she is the aggrieved party and she is entitled absolutely to that view, and I think we have seen a lot of victim blaming in history, and people need to be very careful the way that they choose their words.
Malcolm Turnbull spoke in support of Brittany Higgins this morning.
Kevin Rudd has now issued a statement.
Continue reading...The Games are due to begin in July but Shimane prefecture says it might pull out of the prestigious pre-Games event
The head of a prefecture in Japan has said the area is considering pulling out of the Olympic torch relay, as the nation became the latest major economy to begin its vaccine rollout.
Tatsuya Maruyama, the governor of Shimane prefecture, said on Wednesday that it could withdraw from the key Olympic event and has called for the Tokyo 2020 Games to be cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Continue reading...German health minister says he would be happy to have ‘safe and effective’ AstraZeneca jab amid fears people are turning down the vaccine
Cyprus plans to reopen its airports with the help of a colour-coded health risk assessment from 1 March, applicable to travellers from its main tourism markets and the EU, authorities said on Wednesday.
Reuters reports:
The Mediterranean island has adopted a traffic light system for EU member states and third countries such as Britain, Russia and Israel, among its main feeder markets.
The transport ministry said it was extending until 31 March the mandatory seven-day quarantine of arrivals from the United Kingdom at a facility under the supervision of health authorities. That practice has been in place for British arrivals since December.
The state of New York is suing Amazon, claiming the company failed to provide workers with a safe environment at two warehouses in the state as Covid-19 infections surged nationwide.
The Associated Press reports:
The suit from Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, landed just days after Amazon pre-emptively sued to block the suit over its coronavirus safety protocols and the firing of one of its employees who objected to working conditions.
In the suit filed late on Tuesday, New York claims Amazon showed a “flagrant disregard for health and safety requirements” and retaliated illegally against employees who raised alarms.
Related: New York sues Amazon over claims it failed to protect workers from pandemic
Continue reading...The strict 14-day hotel quarantine system has been key to keeping the nation’s coronavirus cases low, but major leaks and controversies have forced constant rethinks
Australia’s strict 14-day hotel quarantine system, and simultaneous stifling of its citizens’ ability to travel freely overseas, are widely acknowledged as a major factor in the nation’s successful containment of Covid-19, low death rate and ability to resume a semblance of pre-pandemic life.
However the nation’s quarantine regime has been progressively tightened in response to instances of the virus leaking out of hotels since the mandatory order was introduced for international arrivals from all countries in March last year.
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The White House briefing has now concluded. Here’s where the day stands so far:
White House press secretary Jen Psaki would not say when specifically Joe Biden will address a joint session of Congress for the first time as president.
Biden said last month that he would lay out his Build Back Better plan in a February address to Congress.
Continue reading...Earlier ruling that emergency powers were wrongly used is overturned, with full hearing due on Friday
A Dutch appeals court has ruled that the government’s controversial coronavirus curfew must stay in place until a hearing later this week to decide whether the measure is legal.
The government had been stunned when a lower court judge ruled earlier that it must immediately lift the Netherlands’ first curfew since the second world war because it had wrongly used emergency powers to invoke it.
Continue reading...Police have fined 70 people £200 each after discovering 150 revellers packed into makeshift nightclub in Birmingham. The lockdown-defying event featured a bar, VIP area and DJ. On the same night, officers shut down a bar named the Covid Arms inside a mechanic's garage
Continue reading...New modelling identifies more higher-risk adults, of which 800,000 will be offered priority vaccination
Nearly 2 million more people in England will be asked to shield and 800,000 of those offered priority vaccination as a result of new modelling that has identified adults at higher risk from Covid-19 because of a combination of health factors and their circumstances, including ethnicity and low income.
Until now the NHS identified those most at risk on the basis usually of a single underlying health condition, such as specific cancers, together with age. But a more sophisticated modelling tool developed by the University of Oxford has shown that the shielding list should nearly double, adding 1.7 million people on the basis of multiple risk factors.
Continue reading...Home affairs has made more than 500 requests for information to be removed from social media
The Department of Home Affairs has made more requests for misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic to be removed from Facebook than any other government department in Australia since March last year, Guardian Australia has learned.
Despite not having direct responsibility over social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, or being responsible for the government’s response to the pandemic, Peter Dutton’s mega agency has sent more than 500 takedown requests for misinformation and scams related to -19, a department spokesperson told Guardian Australia.
Continue reading...Exclusive: officials say the employees tested negatively but were sent notifications telling them to self-isolate
Thousands of Amazon workers received the wrong Coronavirus test results after a mistake meant they were given inaccurate information by test and trace.
The Guardian understands that 3,853 staff members at the online retailer received an erroneous result. Officials said they had tested negatively but received notifications to say they had tested positive and asking them to self-isolate.
Continue reading...President Lazarus Chakwera fires several officials and warns ‘no penny meant for saving lives will be stolen, abused or wasted’
Malawi’s president Lazarus Chakwera has fired the heads of his government’s Covid-19 taskforce, in what is being seen as his first decisive move during the pandemic.
The president fired the head of the disaster management department and the taskforce’s co-chair, and suspended further officials, some “for failing to maintain proper records of how such critical funds were used and others for defying my directive to submit reports weekly to my office”. He said the pandemic called for “strong leadership”.
Continue reading...Dutch ministers ask court to suspend its verdict until an appeal is heard; local authorities in Norway now to decide whether to have local restrictions
France has registered 586 new coronavirus deaths in the past 24 hours, a sharp fall from 724 last Tuesday while the seven-day moving average of deaths fell to 381, the first time the average was below 400 since late January.
The 586 deaths included 351 deaths in hospitals, from 412 on Monday, and 351 deaths in retirement homes over the past four days, Reuters reports.
As arctic temperature freeze rivers and lakes in northern Germany, workers at houseboat charter companies are already gearing up for what they expect to be a busy summer season, Reuters reports.
Cross-border travel restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic last summer prompted a run on domestic tourism, including on floating accommodation. Many expect that 2021 will be no different.
“I think that big trips abroad and flying will still not be the dominant type of vacation for people this summer,” said Dagmar Kuhnle, spokeswoman at a houseboat charter company in the northeastern Mecklenburg lake district.
Continue reading...Australian National Audit Office launches inquiry into pandemic border policies, including biosecurity and the adequacy of assistance to those stranded overseas
Australia’s international border policies including the outbound travel ban and inbound arrival caps will be examined by the Australian National Audit Office.
After first proposing the audit in September, the ANAO quietly activated the inquiry in mid-January and has called for submissions on the management of the Australian border to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
Continue reading...Governor, who has faced calls to resign, acknowledged that officials should have moved faster to release some information
Under fire over his management of the coronavirus’ lethal path through New York’s nursing homes, Andrew Cuomo insisted Monday the state didn’t cover up deaths – but the governor acknowledged that officials should have moved faster to release some information sought by lawmakers, the public and the press.
Continue reading...Five twitchers travelled to Devon to photograph a northern mockingbird, last seen in the UK in the 1980s
Five birdwatchers have been fined for breaking Covid-19 restrictions after they travelled to Devon to try to see a rare specimen after a Twitter tipoff.
They were looking to catch sight of a northern mockingbird, normally found in North America, which had been spotted by Exmouth resident Chris Biddle.
Continue reading...Infectious disease expert tells Axios he had been nervous going there when many were coming down with the virus
Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert and chief medical and coronavirus adviser to Joe Biden, revealed on Monday that he had been nervous entering the White House when many there were coming down with Covid-19 late in Donald Trump’s presidency.
Fauci is 80 years old and said that as such he was acutely aware that he was at high risk of suffering a “serious outcome” if he became infected by coronavirus, he told Axios in an interview clip posted online.
Continue reading...FTSE 100 posts biggest daily gain for over a month as investors buoyed up by vaccine and US economy hopes
The pound has hit its highest level against the dollar for almost three years as global markets were buoyed up by hopes for a faster economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
Sterling rose by 0.5% to hit a 33-month high against the dollar on Monday, trading above $1.39 on the global currency markets for the first time since 2018, while also rising to a nine-month high against the euro of almost €1.15.
Continue reading...At least four people have died in the epidemic, causing heightened alarm across west Africa
Health officials in Guinea are racing to contain a new outbreak of Ebola that has killed at least four people and raised concerns across west Africa, which previously suffered the worst from the virus.
On Monday morning, a fourth victim died in Guinea and four others are being treated in an isolation centre, suffering vomiting, diarrhoea and bleeding. At least seven of the people who contracted the virus attended the funeral of a nurse in Goueke, a town near the Liberian border, on 1 February the government said on Sunday.
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