Joe Biden’s administration demands ‘robust and clear’ investigation as WHO team visits Wuhan
The US wants a “robust and clear” international probe into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic in China, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, has said.
Speaking to reporters, she said it was “imperative we get to the bottom” of how the virus appeared and spread. She highlighted “great concern” over “misinformation” from “some sources in China”.
Continue reading...With a vaccine-hesitant public and jabs yet to begin, there are fears immunisations are off the pace
Japan was among the first countries to report cases of Covid-19 after the world was alerted to the virus in December 2019. But just over a year later, it is the last major economy to deploy a vaccine – a measure widely acknowledged as the best hope for a return to something resembling normal life.
The first round of jabs is not expected to begin in Japan until the end of February, months after the US and UK – which have recorded far higher death tolls and caseloads – began their vaccination programmes.
Continue reading...Analysis: Arrivals from high-risk countries will have to pay to isolate in a hotel under Boris Johnson’s proposals
With new hotel quarantine measures for international arrivals from high-risk countries due to be introduced to curb the spread of Covid-19, focus falls on how they will work.
Here, we look at what the rules are now and what’s being done by the UK government to toughen border controls.
Continue reading...Boris Johnson has said that 8 March is the earliest schools could reopen, but warned the date depended on ‘lots of things going right’. A firm decision will be taken in the week of 22 February after reviewing infection and vaccination data, the prime minister said
Continue reading...Canadian casino executive Rodney Baker and his wife were initially fined C$2,300 for breaking public health rules
A millionaire Canadian couple who traveled to a remote community to receive a coronavirus vaccine intended for vulnerable and elderly Indigenous people are facing growing calls for a tougher punishment after they were initially fined C$2,300 (US$1,800) for breaking public health rules.
Casino executive Rodney Baker and his wife Ekaterina Baker, an actor, travelled by chartered plane to Beaver Creek, a community of 100 in Canada’s Yukon territory, where a mobile team was administering the Moderna vaccine to locals, including elderly members of the White River First Nation.
Continue reading...EU health commissioner dismisses AstraZeneca argument it is contractually obliged to supply UK first
Britain is on a collision course with the European Union over vaccine shortages after Brussels refused to accept that people in the UK have first claim on Oxford/AstraZeneca doses produced in local plants.
The EU’s health commissioner outright dismissed on Wednesday an argument made by Pascal Soriot, the Anglo-Swedish company’s chief executive, that he was contractually obliged to supply the UK first.
Continue reading...Madrid health authorities announce two-week pause after supply issues; Cyprus welcomes fall in number of new infections
The British home secretary Priti Patel has outlined new rules for tighter border controls amid unprecendented pressure on the UK health service and over 100,000 Covid-19 deaths.
Patel said too many people are coming in and out of the country every day, but told MPs on Wednesday more details will be set out by the health department next week.
Firstly, the police have stepped up checks and are carrying out more physical checks at addresses to ensure that people are complying with the self-isolation rules.
Second, we will continue to refuse entry to non-UK residents from red-list countries which are already subject to the UK travel ban.
The European Union health commissioner has said that AstraZeneca has committed to providing the bloc with doses from four plants, including two in Britain, Reuters reports.
Stella Kyriakides told a news conference that the company had legal obligations to comply with the contract.
Continue reading...Explainer: AstraZeneca’s Pascal Soriot gives insight into ‘glitches’ that constrained production
The chief executive of AstraZeneca has dismissed suggestions that the UK is being unfairly prioritised for Covid-19 vaccine doses, in a wide-ranging interview revealing “glitches” that have constrained production.
Pascal Soriot offered the deepest insight yet into a scientific process that has been dragged into the political sphere, as leaders in Brussels and several EU capitals voiced anger that Europe will not get the vaccine as quickly as hoped.
Continue reading...President, who has already cancelled Keystone XL pipeline, will address nation on the environment
While we’re waiting for a Covid-19 briefing, it’s worth remembering just how many people have gone through a year of pandemic without health insurance: likely at least 28.9 million.
The number of people who lacked health insurance rose through the Trump presidency, and grew by experts millions were added to the ranks of uninsured as the pandemic drove unprecedented job losses. A plurality of Americans rely on private health insurance through an employer.
WASHINGTON (AP) Fulfilling a campaign promise, President Joe Biden plans to reopen the HealthCare.gov insurance markets for a special sign-up opportunity geared to people needing coverage in the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden is expected to sign an executive order Thursday, said two people familiar with the plan, whose details were still being finalized. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the pending order ahead of a formal announcement.
Hello – this is Jessica Glenza taking over from Martin Belam. Among the most high profile events happening in Washington DC today is the first Covid-19 briefing, which the Biden administration promised will be a regular feature of his administration.
At 11am ET, we’re expecting Biden’s first Covid-19 briefing. Here’s a closer look at what is expected:
(AP) - For nearly a year it was the Trump show. Now President Joe Biden is calling up the nation’s top scientists and public health experts to regularly brief the American public about the pandemic that has claimed more than 425,000 US lives.
Beginning Wednesday, administration experts will host briefings three times a week on the state of the outbreak, efforts to control it and the race to deliver vaccines and therapeutics to end it.
Continue reading...First minister also says UK government’s hotel quarantine plans ‘do not go far enough’
Nicola Sturgeon has questioned whether Boris Johnson’s planned trip from London to Scotland on Thursday is “genuinely essential”, suggesting his visit makes it harder to convince the public to stick to travel restrictions.
At her daily briefing, when she also warned that the UK government’s hotel quarantine plan for travellers “does not go far enough”, Scotland’s first minister said that while she was sure the prime minister and his advisers would take care to make sure no laws were broken, “we all have to make judgments on what we genuinely think is essential”.
Continue reading...International Monetary Fund says there are concerns about share price bubble
Governments and central banks must maintain their pandemic rescue programmes or risk triggering a stock market crash, the International Monetary Fund has said.
Warning that there were legitimate concerns about a share price bubble, the Washington-based organisation said that without continued low interest rates and government subsidies it was possible a “correction” in stock markets would occur.
Continue reading...Police brutality and unemployment worsened by the pandemic continues to drive young protesters onto streets to demand reform
The latest victim of Tunisia’s current unrest has been named as Haykel Rachdi, from Sbeitla in Kasserine, near the Algerian border. He died of his injuries on Monday night after reportedly being struck on the head by a police teargas canister.
Protests were continuing on Wednesday, with police pushing back hundreds of mainly young demonstrators outside the country’s parliament in the capital, Tunis. One group had marched there from the working-class district of Hay Ettadhamen, in the north of the city. The protesters chanted refrains from the revolution of the winter of 2010–11 and anti-police slogans, while inside, politicians continued to debate whether to accept or reject a proposed new government, the fifth since 2019’s inconclusive elections.
Continue reading...Zhang Hai among those to tell of crackdown before WHO team begins investigation into pandemic’s origins
Relatives of Wuhan’s coronavirus dead have said Chinese authorities deleted their social media group and told them to keep quiet while a World Health Organization team was in the city preparing to begin an investigation into the pandemic’s origins.
Scores of people had banded together online in a shared quest for accountability from the Wuhan officials they blame for mishandling the Covid-19 outbreak that tore through the city a year ago, and caused more than 4,000 officially recorded deaths there.
Continue reading...Interior minister says danger posed by recent mutations ‘requires drastic measures’
The German government is expected to announce tighter border controls after warnings from leading virologists that the move is vital to control the spread in the country of more contagious variants of Covid-19.
Angela Merkel, the chancellor, is widely reported to have told a meeting of her CDU party colleagues that air travel in particular needed to be restricted “to the extent that you simply can’t get anywhere any more”.
Continue reading...The UK needs to learn from the lessons of the past year and come up with a concrete plan to avert a disastrous third wave
Yesterday Britain passed a grim milestone. A further 1,631 deaths from Covid-19 were recorded, taking the official tally above 100,000, though data from the Office for National Statistics suggests the total number will now be nearer 120,000. In a briefing, Boris Johnson has said his government did everything it could to minimise the loss of life, but these deaths were far from inevitable. While the number of UK deaths has entered the hundreds of thousands, New Zealand has recorded only 25 deaths from Covid-19 so far. Taiwan has recorded seven, Australia 909, Finland 655, Norway 550 and Singapore 29. These countries have largely returned to normal daily life.
In the first year of the pandemic, the UK faced three big challenges. Our national government had no long-term strategy for suppressing the virus beyond a continual cycle of lockdowns. Even now we still don’t know what the government’s plans for the next six months are. In the early days of the pandemic, the UK treated Covid-19 like a bad flu. The government halted testing, and the initial plan seemed to be allow the virus to run unchecked through the population (the “herd immunity” approach). Finally, ministers have pitted the economy against public health, instead of realising that the health of the economy depends upon a healthy population.
Continue reading...Analysis: Frustration around restrictions in Netherlands could be voiced in other countries
In recent nights, rioters have poured on to the streets of 10 Dutch cities in what has been the closest Europe has come to open revolt against the coronavirus restrictions imposed across the continent.
The violence, the worst in four decades, might be put down to the liberty-loving culture of the country or an outbreak of straightforward criminality but, perhaps not coincidentally, the Netherlands is also the very last EU member state to start vaccinating the public and offer some hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Continue reading...Two people had completed isolation at the same Auckland hotel as Sunday’s case, which was New Zealand’s first in months
Two more returnees who stayed at the same New Zealand hotel at the same time as Sunday’s coronavirus case have tested positive after finishing their quarantine.
The two people are asymptomatic and had already completed their managed isolation at Auckland’s Pullman hotel and returned two negative tests, the Department of Health said.
Continue reading...Those in professions that rely heavily on taste and smell fear the loss of their careers
Around three weeks after Covid-19 completely took away her sense of smell and taste, Maggie Cubbler had a beer. It was a pale ale she’d had before and, to her excitement, it tasted wonderful – just as she remembered. She was ecstatic to feel she was on the road to normality, but she soon found that recovery from Covid is by no means linear.
“After that I started noticing that many things started smelling terrible – like absolutely revolting – and one of them was beer.” For a beer sommelier and writer of ten years, this was a devastating and isolating development. When the pandemic halted her beer travel business and decimated the industry generally, Cubbler had pivoted into doing a beer podcast. Now, with her sense of taste still muted and the source of her livelihood unbearable to smell, her career has been thrown into uncertainty.
Continue reading...Shaun Ryder keeps chickens, while Mel Giedroyc organises chutney tastings. These small, affordable suggestions won’t end lockdown misery – but they might help
If you live with someone else, draw each other. My boyfriend, a professional artist, has a gross advantage – so I hold the most atrocious pose possible to challenge him. Then I challenge the foundations of our relationship by trying to depict him in a fashion that won’t result in him dumping me. Our relationship survived the last time, although we almost died laughing. Laura Snapes, Guardian deputy music editor
Continue reading...The Biden administration is increasing vaccination efforts with a goal of protecting 300 million Americans by early fall, as the administration surges deliveries to states for the next three weeks following complaints of shortages and inconsistent supplies. 'This is enough vaccine to vaccinate 300 million Americans by end of summer, early fall,' Biden said. 'This is a wartime effort,' he added, saying more Americans had already died from the coronavirus than during all of the second world war