Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Officials work to pinpoint doses in pipeline between federal distribution and administration by states
The Biden administration has spent its first week in office attempting to manually track down 20m vaccine doses in the pipeline between federal distribution and administration at clinic sites, when a dose finally reaches a patient’s arm.
The Trump administration’s strategy pushed the response to the coronavirus pandemic to individual states and omitted pipeline tracking information between distribution and when the shot is actually administered, Biden administration officials told Politico.
The llama has provided nanobodies that effectively prevent infection, but the use of other species in Covid research raises troubling ethical questions
Cormac the llama lives a quiet life on a farm in Washington State, totally unaware that his unique immune system may be key to protecting the developing world from Covid-19.
“He is an extremely charismatic llama … he’s a pretty cool guy,” says TJ Esparza, a neuroscientist at the Uniformed Services University. He is part of the team attempting to transform Cormac’s nanobody cells into a drug that will coat the inside of human lungs, providing temporary but effective protection from coronavirus particles.
Michael Gove says European commission recognised they made an error by seeking to trigger a Brexit deal clause to prevent coronavirus vaccine shipments entering the UK. He added that it was important to cooperate with the EU to make sure the vaccination rollout was effective
A couple have been married in a hospital’s coronavirus ward after an urgent appeal for a registrar, more than 46 years after they first met on the set of a pantomime.
Philip, 78, and Patricia, 88, were married at Coventry university hospital, where Patricia is being treated for Covid-19, on Friday.
Children in the US will ‘hopefully’ start to be vaccinated against Covid-19 by late spring or early summer, said Dr Anthony Fauci.
Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, the head of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases, was speaking at a White House coronavirus briefing, an event re-instituted by the new president after falling away during the last months of the Trump administration
While many have endured almost a year of stress and hardship during the Covid crisis in the UK, others have remained relatively unscathed.
Caroline Ball, a 37-year-old academic librarian from just outside Derby, has even felt guilty at times, having the good fortune of a stable job which she can do from home and not worrying about homeschooling children.
The European commission has announced that it will tighten the export rules of vaccines produced in the 27 EU countries. ‘We paid these companies to increase production and now we expect them to deliver,’ said the commission vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis.
The ‘vaccine export transparency mechanism’ would be used until the end of March and would control shipments to non-EU countries and ensure any exporting company based in the EU first submits its plans to national authorities
Dozens of sex workers took to the streets of Malawi’s capital Lilongwe on Thursday to protest against what they described as “targeted police brutality” following new Covid-19 restrictions.
The protests were led by the Female Sex Workers Association (FSWA), which has about 120,000 members across the country, according to its national coordinator, Zinenani Majawa.
Hello everyone, I’m Molly Blackall, taking over the blog in London. I’ll be bringing you all the key updates in the coronavirus pandemic around the world over the next few hours.
If you spot something you think we should be reporting on in this blog, please feel free to drop me a message on Twitter. Tips and pointers always much appreciated!
The former Northern Ireland secretary Julian Smith has weighed into the row over the EU’s threat to override part of Northern Ireland Protocol under its coronavirus vaccine controls, calling it “almost Trumpian.”
The Tory MP told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Years have been spent trying to ensure goods will flow freely and there will be no hard border and last night the EU pulled the emergency cord without following any of the process that are in the protocol if one side wants to suspend it.
And they did that, in my view, without anywhere near the understanding of the Good Friday Agreement, of the sensitivity of the situation in Northern Ireland, and it was an almost Trumpian act.
It is not just a backdoor for goods going to Britain, it is a very sensitive place and we have a duty of care between the EU and the UK to preserve no hard border and stability in Northern Ireland.
A year ago, on 30 January, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of the new coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern – the highest level of alarm at our disposal under international law.
At the time there were 98 confirmed cases and no deaths reported outside China. The WHO repeatedly urged all countries to capitalise on the “window of opportunity” to prevent widespread transmission of this new virus.
Countries have adopted different rules on business activity, education, socialising and travel
Curfews and lockdowns Restrictions have largely been relaxed in most of Brazil’s 26 states, although several continue to limit opening hours for bars, restaurants and shops. A round-the-clock curfew was imposed this week in Brazil’s biggest state, Amazonas, after hospitals were overwhelmed.
‘History and geography don’t change – I don’t think British destiny is different to ours,’ says French president
Emmanuel Macron has warned that Boris Johnson’s government has to decide who its allies are, insisting that “half-friends is not a concept”.
“What politics does Great Britain wish to choose? It cannot be the best ally of the US, the best ally of the EU and the new Singapore … It has to choose a model,” the French president said, in an interview with the Guardian and a small group of other media.
Under Brexit’s Northern Ireland protocol, all products are normally permitted to be exported from the EU to Northern Ireland without checks, as NI remains in the single market for goods and continues to operate under EU custom rules.
The protocol was a resolution to the sticky Irish border question and was designed to avoid a return of checkpoints along the politically sensitive frontier and minimise potential disruption of cross-border trade.
Book extract: A lot of things will change as a result of this pandemic and it’s clear the recovery won’t be marked by a discrete event
In 1844, Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote: “Whoever has learnt to be anxious in the right way, has learnt the ultimate.”
I’m no Kierkegaard, but I think he may have been on to something. The anxiety we may be experiencing in these coronavirus times might be something that feels different, deeper, and beyond perhaps your usual fear or anxiety about day-to-day troubles. This feels more existential.
Stormont's first minister branded the EU’s triggering of article 16 of Brexit’s Northern Ireland protocol to stop the unfettered flow of inoculations from the EU into the region an 'incredible act of hostility'
When it became clear the China coronavirus outbreak might lead to a global pandemic, Oxford University’s life scientists convened a crisis meeting. It took place on Thursday 30 January last year, and if the rest of the world hadn’t yet realised the potential consequences of what was unfolding in Wuhan, they had.
Around the table in the Nuffield Department of Medicine were experts from in and around the university, gathered for a moment they had feared would one day come.
Covid-19 infections in the UK are reducing but remain stubbornly high, despite a month of lockdown measures. So could we be doing more as individuals to curb transmission of the virus? A virologist, a psychologist and a public health expert share their views on some of the Covid-19 mistakes that we are all still making.
MC Fioti’s ‘vaccine anthem’ remix celebrates coronavirus inoculation with music video shot at biomedical research centre
Leandro Aparecido Ferreira laid bricks and flipped burgers for a living until becoming one of Brazil’s most famous funk musicians.
This year, the 26-year-old – whose stage name is MC Fioti – has added a new and unexpected string to his bow: as an unlikely champion of science and vaccinology in a country being pounded by coronavirus.
The prospect that former president Donald Trump was ready to strike up on his own and split off from the Republican party appears to be receding, at least according to this report from Newsweek’s Jacob Jarvis. He writes:
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Trump met in Florida yesterday, and it was discussed that Trump would back Republican candidates for 2022.
“President Trump committed to helping elect Republicans in the House and Senate in 2022,” McCarthy said in a statement.
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley has told CNN he does not having any regrets over voting not to certify all of November’s election results, but also claimed that he was not attempting to overturn the election result – a statement that appears to contradict his earlier position. Manu Raju, CNN’s Chief Congressional correspondent, writes:
In the aftermath of pro-Trump rioters storming the Capitol seeking to stop the January 6 certification of Biden’s win, the first-term Missouri Republican senator has faced a barrage of criticism over his decision to contest the results of Pennsylvania. But Hawley has said he has “no” regrets, telling CNN: “I was very clear from the beginning that I was never attempting to overturn the election.”
Yet before 6 January 6, Hawley didn’t rule out the possibility that Congress could throw out the electoral results and keep Trump in office.
Commission president says company legally obliged to use UK plants to help deliver on order
Ursula von der Leyen has said it is “crystal clear” that AstraZeneca is bound by its contract to deliver coronavirus vaccine doses produced in the UK to the EU to make up for a shortfall in production in Belgium.
The European commission president dismissed the arguments of AstraZeneca’s chief executive, Pascal Soirot, that the British government had a first claim on doses produced in Oxford and Staffordshire.