Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The health secretary, Matt Hancock, has fired a coded warning at MPs seeking a roadmap out of Covid restrictions, saying the pressure on the NHS is too great, with hospital admissions still almost double the April peak.
The deputy chief medical officer, Jenny Harries, said people “need to keep these figures in proportion”, adding that there was a serious risk to health services, especially in winter. “We are not out of this by a very long way,” she said.
The EU has threatened to block exports of coronavirus vaccines to countries outside the bloc, after AstraZeneca was accused of failing to give a satisfactory explanation for a huge shortfall of promised doses to member states.
The pharmaceutical company’s new distribution plans were said to be “unacceptable” after it “surprisingly” informed the European commission on Friday that there would be significant shortfalls on the original schedule.
One in eight people who have had Covid-19 are diagnosed with their first psychiatric or neurological illness within six months of testing positive for the virus, a new analysis suggests, adding heft to an emerging body of evidence that stresses the toll of the virus on mental health and brain disorders cannot be ignored.
The analysis – which is still to be peer-reviewed – also found that those figures rose to one in three when patients with a previous history of psychiatric or neurological illnesses were included.
A group of celebrities have released a video addressing vaccine misinformation in BAME communities.
The group, including actors Adil Ray and Meera Syal, as well as cricketeer Moeen Ali and presenter Konnie Huq, appealed to black, Asian and ethnic minority communities in the UK to help address hesitancy around the Covid-19 vaccine.
Coronavirus has disproportionately impacted minority ethnic communities, but these communities have also been subject to misleading information around the vaccine.
‘Unfortunately we are now fighting another pandemic: misinformation,’ Ray, who helped organise the video, explained. ‘We all must do what we can and come together to fight this deadly virus. We hope this video can help dispel some of the myths and offer some encouragement for everyone to take the vaccine’
So much has happened in such a short time. All of a sudden, it feels as if life is progressing too fast, when only a week ago I was impatiently waiting for my new life in the city to begin.
A place on one of Forbes’s “30 under 30” lists has long been a marker of status and potential for a group the magazine has proclaimed as the US and Canada’s “brashest entrepreneurs”.
In a time of global crisis, they were offered an additional reward this week: a month-long trip to a five star hotel and beach club in Bermuda, “one of the most desirable destinations in the world”, to escape from the “monotony and gloom” of the coronavirus pandemic.
Announcement comes after months of a surge in cases and as the governor is sued for restrictions on outdoor dining
California lifted its stay-at-home order statewide Monday after four-week projections showed intensive care unit capacity to be above 15% in beleaguered regions for the first time in weeks.
The announcement follows months of a relentless case surge that exhausted the healthcare system statewide and made California the first US state to record 3m Covid-19 infections. It also comes as more than 50 wine country-based restaurants and wineries have filed a lawsuit against Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, over the state’s restrictions on outdoor dining.
For Abdulgadir Sanousi the decision to lock down the capital of Chad was “a nightmare”. His work driving from N’Djamena to Moundou in the south four times a week dried up overnight. This month any work has involved bribing police to let him through the checkpoints at N’Djamena’s four main entry points.
“The situation is just a nightmare for us. We are faced with difficulties by the police. In order to deal with them you need to bribe them, if not they would confiscate your vehicle,” says 27-year-old Sanousi.
Late February Pfizer vaccine rollout planned. Meanwhile, South Australian authorities warn residents as bushfires erupt in Adelaide Hills. Follow all the latest updates, live
A truck carrying toilet paper has burst into flames, causing traffic chaos on Melbourne’s Eastern Freeway.
It is still unclear what caused the fire, but firefighters are on the scene, attempting to bring the fire under control.
The truck exploding into flames on the Eastern Freeway, Melbourne near the Elgar Rd exit. I saw this while passing by and hope no one is hurt. The fire is now out but traffic is banked up on the city-bound lane. A terrible incident on a 40c day. #truckOnFireMelbourneFreewaypic.twitter.com/tj5MANXAQh
The Bureau of Meteorology has said the heatwave is over in Melbourne and is easing in South Australia, with rain and thunderstorms expected later this evening.
Dean Narramore, a senior meteorologist at the BoM, warned that the focus will shift to New South Wales tomorrow, with temperatures forecast to get near 40C in Western Sydney, with the city expecting to reach 35C.
But by tomorrow night the cool change will have moved across all of south-eastern Australia and temperatures will return to near seasonal averages for the rest of the week.
The number of people hospitalised in France for Covid-19 rose by more than a 1,000 over the last two days, a trend unseen since November 16, and the number of patients in intensive care units for the disease exceeded 3,000 for the first time since December 9.
The country’s Covid-19 death toll was up by 445, at 73,494, the world’s seventh highest, versus a rise of 172 on Sunday. The seven-day moving average of new fatalities increased to 401, the highest since December 9.
The Serum Institute of India (SII) will supply Saudi Arabia with 3 million AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine doses priced at $5.25 each in about a week on behalf of the British drugmaker, its chief executive told Reuters on Monday.
SII has no immediate plans, however, to divert supplies to Europe, even though AstraZeneca has come under pressure from the EU to deliver more shots after announcing a big cut in shipments due to production problems at a Belgian factory.
Police in Amsterdam used water cannon to disperse protesters demonstrating against Covid-19 restrictions while in the southern city of Eindhoven cars were burnt and shops smashed in riots against the country's lock-down measures. Riot police on horseback attempted to clear the demonstrators in both cities where hundreds of people were arrested. A nighttime curfew went into effect on Saturday in a bid to rein in the coronavirus. Parliament voted narrowly last week to approve the curfew, swayed by assertions that an English variant is about to cause a new surge in cases
Experts have called for greater clarity about the monitoring in place to assess the 12-week dosing interval for Covid vaccines, as the UK’s vaccination programme ramps up.
According to government data released on Sunday, a total of 6,353,321 people in the UK have received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine. A further slew of vaccination centres are due to open on Monday to speed up delivery of the jabs.
Dr Anthony Fauci was the “skunk at the picnic” in Donald Trump’s White House coronavirus taskforce, the top US public health expert told the New York Times in a candid interview on Sunday.
Our fashion editor on a year in which sweatpants soared, masks went designer, Topshop tumbled – and a pause fuelled hopes of a reset
I was on the Eurostar, somewhere between St Pancras and Paris, when a senior member of the Guardian team called and suggested that it might be a good idea for me to turn around at Gare du Nord and return to London.
It was 3 March 2020. This was not the plan. The plan had been to go to the Chanel show and report for the news pages. Instead, it was the beginning of all plans – work and otherwise – disintegrating.
Thousands of Brazilians have taken to the streets in their cars to demand Jair Bolsonaro’s impeachment as polls showed support for the far-right president slipping over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
On Saturday, as Brazil’s official Covid-19 death toll hit 216,000, leftwing and centrist protesters organised motorcade rallies in more than 20 state capitals, including Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte and Belém.
Egypt has launched a Covid vaccination campaign, with the first shots of the Sinopharm’s vaccine given to healthcare workers in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia.
Italy will take legal action against Pfizer and AstraZeneca over delays in deliveries of Covid vaccines, with the aim of securing the doses rather than seeking damages, the foreign minister, Luigi Di Maio, said on Sunday.
Di Maio said on RAI state television:
We are working so our vaccine plan programme does not change. We are activating all channels so the EU commission does all it can to make these gentlemen respect their contracts.
Our centuries old love of dogs has never been stronger. So what does a study of ‘man’s best friend’ say about us?
Why is he here? Why is my dog lying at my feet in the shape of a croissant as I write this? How have I come to cherish his warm but lightly offensive pungency? How has his fish breath become a topic of humour when friends call round for dinner? Why do I shell out more than £1,000 each year to pay for his insurance? And why do I love him so much?
Ludo is not a special dog. He’s just another labrador retriever, one of approximately 500,000 in the UK (he’d be one in a million in the United States, the most popular breed in both countries). Ludo has a lot in common with all these dogs. He loves to play ball; obviously he’s an expert retriever. He could eat all the food in the universe and leave nothing for the other dogs. He is prone to hip dysplasia. He looks particularly attractive on a plush bed in a centrally heated house very far from the Newfoundland home of his ancestors.
A representative of the UK’s vaccine advisory committee has defended its decision to delay giving people a second dose, saying it will “save many lives”, as the health secretary, Matt Hancock, warned lifting restrictions was “a long, long way off”.
Prof Anthony Harnden, of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), said the evidence was still in favour of delaying the dose, after a small Israeli study on people over the age of 60 suggested a first dose gave just 33% protection from coronavirus.
Biden administration’s demand that travelers provide a negative test and self-quarantine could hit Mexico’s tourist industry hard
New US coronavirus travel restrictions are likely to have an outsized impact on Mexico, which is also struggling with an uncontrolled outbreak of the virus and record-breaking deaths.
In this extract from her new book Breathtaking, palliative care doctor Rachel Clarke reveals the pressure and pain of splitting her time between hospice patients and hospital Covid wards
In January 2020, novel coronaviruses are nowhere on my mind. Like everyone working in the NHS, I am steeled for a home-grown catastrophe. For no matter how many patients lie on trolleys in corridors, how many ambulances sit trapped on hospital forecourts, how many photos go viral of toddlers slumped on their parents’ coats, receiving oxygen on the floor of a beleaguered A&E, nothing ever truly changes. These days, the annual NHS “winter crisis” is both dreaded and reliable as clockwork.
The numbers are so large, and repeated so frequently, they have long been leached of their force: 17,000 hospital beds lost since 2010; only 2.5 beds per 1,000 people in the UK, compared with three times that number in Germany; unfilled vacancies for more than 10,000 doctors and 40,000 nurses.