Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Hong Kong is locking down entire residential blocks without warning as part of a controversial new strategy to contain outbreaks of Covid-19.
Over the past 10 days, squads of Hong Kong police officers have launched “ambush-style” lockdowns of residences,forcing everyone to be tested for Covid-19 or be fined HK$5,000 ($645). Viral footage of one operation showed dozens of officers sprinting up a street, unfurling a roll of tape to cordon off a building and its occupants, as bystanders jump out of the way.
Yes, Craig Kelly has spoken to the prime minister this morning.
Scott Morrison made clear he doesn’t support the Liberal MP’s views and actions and asked him to refrain from pushing views contrary to medical advice, because they are negatively impacting the government’s vaccine strategy.
NSW has also recorded no new locally acquired cases in the past 24 hours, which makes 17 days with no local cases.
Two people in hotel quarantine have tested positive.
NSW Health continues to urge people across the state, particularly in the Liverpool area, to come forward for testing with even the mildest of symptoms that could signal Covid-19, such as a runny nose or scratchy throat. After testing, you must remain in isolation until a negative result is received.
The state’s ongoing sewage surveillance program has detected the virus that causes Covid-19 at the Ireland Park sewage network site, which serves about 88,000 people in the Liverpool catchment in south western Sydney.
Regulators in Belgium are the the latest in Europe to advise against the administration of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine to older people due a lack of data about its efficacy.
Frank Vandenbroucke, Belgium’s health minister, said the country’s superior health council, an advisory body, had suggested the jab should be administered to people younger than 55 for the time being.
Switzerland has withheld approval for the Oxford/AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine, its drugs regulator said today (via Reuters).
The vaccine won European Union approval last week but German and Austrian medical experts last week recommended it should not be used on people aged 65 or over andPoland said yesterday it would only use the vaccine for people aged 18 to 60 following a recommendation from the country’s medical council.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has been denounced as a “rogue agency” after new allegations of assaults on asylum seekers emerged, and deportations of African and Caribbean migrants continued in defiance of the Biden administration’s orders.
Joe Biden unveiled his immigration agenda on Tuesday, and his homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was confirmed by the Senate, but the continued deportations suggested the Biden White House still does not have full control of Ice, which faces multiple allegations of human rights abuses and allegations that it has disproportionately targeted black migrants.
A hastily executed transfer of nearly 200 people in California’s prison system set off a public health disaster that endangered the lives of thousands of prisoners and staff and led to dozens of deaths, according to a new report from the state’s office of the inspector general (OIG).
The report published on Monday, the third in a series examining the Covid-19 catastrophe in California state prisons, details the circumstances of a May 2020 transfer of 189 people from the California Institute for Men (CIM) in Chino, California, to San Quentin state prison in the Bay Area and Corcoran state prison in the Central Valley.
The second world war veteran, who raised almost £39m for NHS charities, has died after testing positive for Covid-19. Moore walked 100 laps around his garden to raise money, earning him his first of two Guinness World Records. He broke his second one when he became the oldest person to reach number one in the UK charts with the single You'll Never Walk Alone, which he recorded with Michael Ball and The NHS Voices of Care Choir. In July, he was knighted by the Queen
One dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine provides sustained protection against Covid for at least three months and cuts transmission of the virus by two-thirds, according to research that appears to support the UK’s decision to delay booster shots.
Analysis of fresh data from three trials found that the first shot conferred on average 76% protection against symptomatic infections from three weeks until 90 days, and reduced transmission of the disease by 67%.
The Sputnik V vaccine, which has been the subject of scepticism since Russia began using it last year before trials had ended, is 91.6% effective against symptomatic Covid according to data published in one of the world’s leading medical journals.
Results in the Lancet from 20,000 trial participants suggest Sputnik’s efficacy is on a par with that of some of the leading vaccines now in use. There was good efficacy in older adults, who are at highest risk for death, but little diversity, since most participants were white males.
Matt Hancock said the government would take firm action to stamp out the South African Covid variant in the UK. The health secretary said 105 cases of the variant have been identified, including 11 without a direct connection to international travel. 'Our mission must be to stop its spread altogether and break its chains of transmission,' he said, as he summarised door-to-door testing efforts taking place in areas affected
Vaccines may have been described as the great escape route from the Covid pandemic – but treatments, which are bringing down death rates, will be needed as much as ever in the era of jabs because the virus is not expected to go away in the foreseeable future, experts say.
“It’s going to take a long time to vaccinate the world,” said Peter Horby of Oxford University, chief investigator of the Recovery trial into Covid treatments and chair of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag). “I don’t know what the estimates are, but we’ve already seen issues with manufacturing scale-up and difficulties in delivering at scale.
Last year, Covid-19 spread around the world, sending millions of people into lockdown as health services struggled to cope. The surge in new variants of the virus has prompted fresh questions and concerns. The Guardian's health editor, Sarah Boseley, explains what we now know about the Covid-19 variants and what they could mean for the future of the pandemic
When the coronavirus pandemic was in its infancy, one of the common silver linings scientists mentioned was the virus’s slow rate of mutation. It raised the hope that the virus lacked the agility to rapidly evolve around human immunity – whether from previous infection or vaccine. The virus is certainly slow to mutate by some standards. Sars-CoV-2 typically acquires two single letter changes in its genetic code a month, about half the rate seen in influenza.
So why are so many new variants emerging? At the heart of the problem is the fact the global pandemic is raging. Every new case is a chance for mutations to arise, spread and build up. In the simple arithmetic of evolution, when a virus mutates and gains an advantage it can rise above the others.
Death rates among people who end up in intensive care with Covid-19 have improved dramatically since the start of the pandemic thanks to advances in treatment, new research has found.
The proportion of those worst affected by the disease who die from it has fallen from 60% when it first appeared early last year to 36% by October, the study of global trends shows.
Doctors’ group lashes out at Liberal MP, saying ‘all public figures’ should ‘act responsibly’; Morrison government to face pressure on jobkeeper and jobseeker. Follow all the latest news and updates, live
Ed Husic is also asked about the CFMEU ad that depicts Scott Morrison driving a literal bus (called the omnibus) towards workers, which is meant to illustrate workers being hit by IR changes, and whether it goes too far:
Husic:
Some of the unions, or some people will try and characterise it in that way, and whether or not that works in their favour, to be putting it bluntly, I think there is a genuine concern about what the government’s industrial relations reforms will do, what impact they will have on working people.
When you go through the detail of what they are proposing, they will be seeing the greatest burden placed on working Australians and it’s just wrong. They shouldn’t have cuts to their take-home pay.
Ed Husic is on the ABC this afternoon, where he is asked about the topic of the day – government backbencher Craig Kelly and the government’s leadership refusal to censure him.
Husic:
The prime minister occupies an important place in the country, the words of the prime minister matter, the actions mean even more, and in this case allowing Craig Kelly to just keep rolling on the way he is, to undermine the investment of taxpayer dollars, in information campaigns to embrace the inoculation process, to help us deal with a Covid-19 pandemic that has crippled the economy for the best part of 2020, resulted in 2 million Australians being unemployed or underemployed and the vaccine bringing one way to bring us closer to normal, as it were, this is just wrong, that you could have a government MP being allowed by virtue of inaction by the prime minister for that to continue.
It shouldn’t, and if he did take this matter seriously it would be reined in and it wouldn’t be an issue and you and me wouldn’t be talking about it.
China reported the fewest new coronavirus cases in a month as imported cases overtook local infections, official data showed on Tuesday, suggesting the country’s worst wave since March 2020 is being stamped out ahead of a key holiday.
Reuters: Thirty cases were reported in the mainland on Feb. 1, the National Health Commission said in a statement, down from 42 cases a day earlier and marking lowest total since 24 cases were reported on 2 January.
The commission said 18 of the new cases originated overseas, overtaking locally transmitted cases for the first time in about a month. Out of the 12 local cases, northeastern Heilongjiang province accounted for eight while the neighbouring Jilin province reported the remaining four.
The rainforest city of Manaus in the north-west of Brazil was the first in the country to be struck by the pandemic. The virus rapidly spread, and by October last year it was estimated that 76% of the population had been infected – a number higher than the theoretical threshold for herd immunity. Yet, in January 2021, cases surged and the health system was once again overwhelmed, with hospitals running out of oxygen and doctors and nurses required to carry out manual ventilation.
Billed as a celebration of humankind’s victory over coronavirus, Games could fall foul of pandemic for a second time
The Olympic rings have been spruced up and are once again overlooking Tokyo Bay. Countdown clocks have been reset, telling passersby there are just 171 days to go until the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games begin.
They are supposed to build excitement in the host city and among sports fans around the world. But Japan’s Olympic dream is quickly turning sour in the face of the worst global health crisis for a century.
Single malt sales to US have fallen more than third since retaliatory regime was imposed, says industry body
Losses to Scotch whisky exports after tariffs were imposed by the US have reached £500m, according to an industry body.
New figures suggest exports of single malt Scotch whisky have fallen by more than a third – amounting to more than £500m – since a 25% tariff was imposed in October 2019.
Figure is lower than proportion of black people who live in long-term care homes or work in healthcare, but CDC warns data is incomplete
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found only 5.4% of coronavirus vaccine recipients were black, in its first analysis of how vaccines were given out among different demographic groups in the first month of US distribution.
Tens of thousands of people will be tested in a door-to-door “two-week sprint” to halt the spread of the South African coronavirus variant as cases were found across England.
Squads of health officials, firefighters and volunteers have been established to deliver and collect PCR test kits door-to-door and mobile testing units will be sent to each area. Wastewater could also be tested to determined the prevalence of the strain.
The South African variant, like the new UK variant, contains a mutation known as N501Y which is believed to make the virus more contagious than older variants. The South African variant also contains other mutations of concern, including E484K and K417N. These two mutations are thought to explain why the South African variant appears to be better able to evade neutralising antibody responses by the body.