Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
University of Cambridge researchers identify potentially effective interventions to help people
Robotic dogs, laughter therapy and mindfulness could help people cope with loneliness and social isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers at the University of Cambridge have found.
The team at the university’s School of Medicine, led by Dr Christopher Williams, reviewed 58 existing studies on loneliness and identified interventions that could be adapted for people living in lockdown or under pandemic-related social distancing measures.
A “perfect storm” of low wages, cramped housing and failures of the £22bn test-and-trace scheme has led to “stubbornly high” coronavirus rates in England’s most deprived communities, an unpublished government report has found.
A classified analysis by the Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC), produced last month, concluded that “unmet financial needs” meant people in poorer areas were less likely to be able to self-isolate because they could not afford to lose income.
Human challenge trials for coronavirus are to begin in the UK, a world first in the global fight against Covid-19.
Healthy adult volunteers aged between 18 and 30 will be exposed to coronavirus in a controlled environment, to learn more about how their body reacts to the virus, how it is transmitted and how much of the virus is needed to cause infection.
Italy recorded 336 more coronavirus deaths – the second highest rate in Europe
Italy’s new prime minister, Mario Draghi, has pledged to speed up the country’s coronavirus vaccination programme as he presented his government’s priorities before a confidence vote in the upper house of parliament on Wednesday.
In his much-anticipated maiden speech, Draghi, who was sworn into office on Saturday, said the government’s first duty was to “fight the pandemic by all means and safeguard the lives of citizens”.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 inresponse 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.