Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Health minister Greg Hunt wants to ensure vaccine doses reach Australia but acknowledges potential impact of ‘supply shocks’
The Australian government will make urgent representations to the European Union after it threatened to block companies from exporting doses of the Covid-19 vaccine amid problems with AstraZeneca’s international supply chain.
The federal health minister, Greg Hunt, confirmed on Friday the government would approach both the World Health Organization and the EU to ensure “certainty” for Australia’s vaccine supplies after the European Commission threatened to impose export bans on companies manufacturing the shots.
The Miami Heat will employ canines to sniff out the virus among fans attending games. But can dogs be trained in time to work at the Super Bowl?
Nearly 100 million people are expected to watch Super Bowl LV in Tampa, the first time the big game has been held during a pandemic (the World Series has survived two). But only 22,000 of those viewers, 7,500 of them vaccinated healthcare workers, will be in actual attendance, representing just one-third the capacity of Raymond James Stadium. Social distancing and face-coverings will be enforced. The first few rows will be kept clear as a buffer between the field and the fans. By this stage of the pandemic, everyone should be aware that, at any one time, a portion of the population is composed of asymptomatic carriers who can infect others they come into contact with. As a result, any large gathering has the potential to become a super-spreader event with wide-reaching consequences. Large-scale testing at gatherings such as sporting events is limited by the availability of trained personnel, equipment, money, and the time it takes for the results of the actual test to work.
But an unconventional solution may be in the works.
In an interim analysis of a phase 3 clinical trial conducted in the UK, the vaccine has shown 89% efficacy, with 27% of participants in the trial – almost 4,000 people – older than 65. That trial suggested 95.6% efficacy against the original coronavirus and 85.6% efficacy against the more recent UK strain. Those results were based on the first 62 cases of Covid-19 identified among volunteers, with 56 cases among those given a placebo against just six in those given the vaccine.
Another Covid vaccine, trialled in the UK and bought by the government, has been shown to be nearly 90% effective and work against the UK and South African variants of the virus.
Stanley Erck, CEO of Novavax, has said numbers show 'dramatic demonstrations' of the new vaccine's ability to develop an immune response against different strains of Covid-19.
The UK vaccines taskforce has bought 60m doses of the Novavax vaccine which will be manufactured on Teesside in the UK
The poorest countries are missing out on adequate doses of vaccines – and the health implications should concern us all
Nine months ago world leaders were queueing up to declare any Covid-19 vaccine a global public good. Today we are witness to a vaccine apartheid that is only serving the interests of powerful and profitable pharmaceutical corporations while costing us the quickest and least harmful route out of this crisis.
I am sickened by news that South Africa, a country whose HIV history should have taught us all the most appalling life-costing consequences of allowing pharmaceutical corporations to protect their medicine monopolies, has had to pay more than double the price paid by the European Union for the AstraZeneca vaccine for far fewer doses than it actually needs. Like so many other low- and middle-income countries, South Africa is today facing a vaccine landscape of depleted supply where it is purchasing power, not suffering, that will secure the few remaining doses.
Limits on gatherings lift and masks no longer required while shopping in Sydney as Victoria set to ease travel restrictions with NSW. Follow updates live
The bill has widespread support from industry groups, the Business Council of Australia, and the Australian Medical Association. It does not, unsurprisingly, have the support of the federal government.
The government – especially the minister – is with respect at the moment playing politics with our future. They are not interested in listening to the business community, industry, science, our medical professionals, on what needs to be done with urgency. They are instead focusing on political gains and delaying what needs to be done.
We have more jobs in renewable and future-proof industries than in the industries that are transitioning. We know a jobs disruption is coming. Proper government means we prepare communities. We don’t put our head in the sand and hope it will go away.
Seventy per cent of our two-way trade with countries is now under net zero by2050 goals. Australia is being left behind. We need the government to step up and do this. As to prices, it’s simply incorrect. The lowest prices are from renewables. It’s not from delaying our transition.
I think the world will eventually sign up to a target of net zero by 2050 and the Morrison government needs to do that and will do that. The question is how long are they going to drag it out, and how much will the delay cost us? On our current trajectory of where we’re going, we’re on target for $100bn per year of climate impact costs. That’s an incredibly steep price to pay for inaction.
There’s so much upside for us to take action, we’re the continent with the most resources that can absolutely be at the front of this boom. We can be a renewable energy superpower, we just need the government to look to where the economic opportunities are.
I had constructive discussions with the previous Labor shadow minister, and Mark Butler, and now I look forward to having discussions with Chris Bowen.
Western Australia is expanding its mandatory contact tracing registers, about two months after first introducing the QR code system for higher risk venues.
From 12 February, retail venues, commercial buses (including tour buses and party buses – side note I can’t believe WA currently has party buses), visitors at public and private hospitals, takeaway food and beverage services, and events of more than 500 people with a Covid-safe plan will have to use the WA government’s official SafeWA QR code system.
While WA remains free of community transmission, we continue to learn from what’s occurring over east and overseas. With variant strains becoming more prevalent, we need to bolster our processes in case contact tracing is required by our WA health and response teams.
In addition to rescinding the ‘global gag rule’ on Thursday, Joe Biden ordered funding restored to the UN population fund, UNFPA, which Trump stopped.
UNFPA said the US decision to restore funding will have an “enormous” impact on the agency’s work, particularly coming as the world continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic.
It was a big day for the country’s first second gentleman, or as he is also known, the SGOTUS (yes).
Today, Kamala Harris’s husband, Douglas Emhoff, tweeted that the title “second gentleman” has been officially recognized by Merriam Webster’s dictionary and wrote: “I might be the first, but I won’t be the last.”
Millions of doses of coronavirus vaccine could be blocked from entering Britain from the EU within days after Brussels said it had to respond to shortages emerging in member states.
Following reports of a lack of doses across the bloc, the European commission announced plans to give national regulators the power to reject export requests. The development raises concerns over the continued flow of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, for which the UK has a 40m-dose order, from its plant in Belgium.
An international team of World Health Organization experts has emerged from quarantine in the Chinese city of Wuhan, to begin much-delayed fieldwork into the origins of the Sars-CoV-2 virus that caused the Covid-19 pandemic.
The fact-finding mission has been beset by controversy after the WHO accused China of dragging its heels over arrangements. The team arrived more than a year after doctors in the city first raised the alarm about a mystery new illness spreading among their patients.
German authorities have advised that the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab should not be given to those aged 65 or above. We take a look at why, and what experts make of it.
Why has Germany advised the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab should only be used in adults under 65?
Germany is planning a near-total ban on travellers from Britain, Portugal, Brazil and South Africa as European governments increasingly move to bar entry from countries where more contagious Covid-19 variants are rampant.
Berlin’s initiative came as EU interior ministers met to discuss a more coordinated approach to international travel restrictions.
Rodney and Ekaterina Baker were served with court notice, said Yukon community services minister
A millionaire Canadian couple who secretly travelled to a remote community to receive a coronavirus vaccine meant for vulnerable and elderly Indigenous residents may now face jail sentences for breaking public health rules.
Casino executive Rodney Baker and his wife, Ekaterina Baker, an actor, were widely condemned after it emerged that they had chartered a plane to a remote community in the Yukon territory, where they posed as local motel employees to receive the vaccine.
Dominic Cummings’ plan to test millions of people a day for coronavirus led the government to spend over £800m on quick turnaround tests that were later found in a pilot to give the wrong results as much as 60% of the time, the Guardian can reveal.
Operation Moonshot, a mass testing scheme championed by the prime minister’s former chief adviser, prompted the government to buy huge numbers of so-called lateral flow tests from a company owned by a little-known US private equity house.
Scientists are studying the similarities between long Covid and ongoing symptoms experienced by survivors of Ebola and Chikungunya virus in the hope of devising new treatments to improve their health.
Like patients with long Covid, survivors of these other, relatively new human viruses, often experience lingering symptoms which can make it difficult to work or function in everyday life.
Nobody in Moldova has received a Covid jab yet – and our neglected healthcare system is unable to cope
“I am happy to work on the frontline and to see the Canadian medical system function so well,” Alecu Mătrăgună wrote in a Facebook post, “but I am sad that I was vaccinated before my mother, who works in the medical system in Moldova.” Mătrăgună is a Moldovan sonographer living in Montreal. His mother is 61 and a paediatrician with more than 30 years’ service under her belt. Yet, he told me, she has no idea when the Covid-19 vaccine might become available for her and for more than 53,300 other healthcare staff in Europe’s poorest country.
I had a similar reaction to Mătrăgună’s about my family in Moldova when I saw a sign at my local London pharmacy as long ago as early December, announcing that the vaccine was on its way. At the time, my grandmother had just recovered and my father was still battling with the effects of the virus.
While CSL told the Committee it was too busy to appear, other major companies, including Pfizer and AstraZeneca, have appeared. Pfizer appeared despite currently trying to meet a tight deadline of delivering its vaccine for roll-out in Australia by the end of the month.
It is totally disrespectful for CSL, the recipient of $1.7 billion in taxpayer funded vaccine related contracts, to refuse to appear before today’s Senate COVID Committee. If they won’t respect the Senate’s request, they should expect a ‘subpoena’. #auspolhttps://t.co/ZS3gMO8VoE
CSL appreciates invitation to attend the Senate Select Committee Hearing on COVID-19. Due to our commitment to urgently deliver 50 million doses of a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine we are unable to resource our participation at this time.
In response to the global pandemic, CSL employees allocated to the COVID-19 vaccine program are fully focussed and working around the clock to ensure vaccines are available for use in Australia as soon as possible. We will be in a better position to consider a similar invitation later in the year.
Virgin Australia has cut another 350 jobs, this time at its head office in Brisbane, the Australian Services Union says.
It comes on top of more than 3000 sackings at the airline since it was bought by US investment group Bain Capital last year after going into administration due to the coronavirus crisis.
Turkey will receive the remaining portion of a second consignment of 10 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech by Friday morning, health minister Fahrettin Koca said, Reuters reports.
Turkey received 6.5 million doses of the second consignment on Monday, following an initial consignment of 3 million doses nearly a month ago. It has so far vaccinated nearly 1.7 million people, mostly health workers and elderly people, according to health ministry data.
The first portion of the 10 million dose second consignment of inactive vaccine had arrived at the weekend. As of this morning (Friday), the second portion will have arrived in our country. Vaccines consignments will continue in accordance with the procurement programme,” Koca said on Twitter.
The UK’s prime minister has given his reaction to the Novavax vaccine trial.
Good news that the @Novavax vaccine has proved effective in UK trials. Thank you to all the volunteers who made these results possible.
Our medicines regulator will now assess the vaccine, which will be made in Teesside. If approved, we have 60m doses on order.
Tom Phillips, the Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, looks at the surge of infections in the Brazilian state of Amazonas that has left many hospitals without the most basic supplies and has prompted yet more protests against Bolsonaro
Rachel Humphreys talks to the Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips, about the Covid crisis in Brazil. A surge in infections linked to a new and seemingly more contagious variant has overwhelmed hospitals in Amazonas state, leaving many without the most basic supplies. Circumstances were so bleak that oxygen tankers were rushed over the border from Venezuela, the economically collapsed nation next door, with its leader, Nicolás Maduro, decrying what he called “Jair Bolsonaro’s public health disaster”.
Tom tells Rachel about the way the public have reacted to Bolsonaro and his government’s handling of this latest wave of infections. Inoculation began last Sunday, weeks after other Latin American countries such as Chile and Mexico. But Brazil, which has 212 million citizens, has so far secured only 6m doses of China’s CoronaVac shot and 2m of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine.
Citizens from US, Britain, Switzerland and Denmark face charges for attending event police say was illegal under emergency laws
Police have raided a party at a bar on a popular resort island in southern Thailand and arrested 89 foreigners for violating coronavirus regulations.
The Tuesday night raid on the Three Sixty Bar on Koh Phangan also netted 22 Thais, including one identified as the bar’s owner and another who sold drinks there, said police Col Suparerk Pankosol, superintendent of the provincial immigration office.
The past year of Covid-19 has taught us that it is the behaviour of governments, more than the behaviour of the virus or individuals, that shapes countries’ experience of the crisis. Talking about pandemic waves has given the virus far too much agency: until quite recently the apparent waves of infection were driven by government action and inaction. It is only now with the emergence of more infectious variants that it might be appropriate to talk about a true second wave.
As governments draw up their battle plans for year two, we might expect them to base their strategies on the wealth of data about what works best. And the evidence to date suggests that countries pursuing elimination of Covid-19 are performing much better than those trying to suppress the virus. Aiming for zero-Covid is producing more positive results than trying to “live with the virus”.