Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
German toddlers called Fritz or Adele could be invited for a Covid-19 vaccination while octogenarian Peters and Brigittes will not, as an overzealous interpretation of data privacy laws in one state has forced officials to guess people’s ages from their first names.
Authorities in the northern German state of Lower Saxony claim legal hurdles blocked them from accessing official records when trying to send a written invitation for a vaccination appointment to all citizens aged over 80.
Thousands flee for safety and higher ground after island’s second quake in 24 hours
At least 37 people have been killed and hundreds injured following a strong earthquake that shook the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia early on Friday morning, prompting landslides and destroying houses.
Thousands of people fled their homes to seek safety when the 6.2-magnitude earthquake hit just after 1am local time on Friday morning. The epicentre was 6km north-east of Majene city in West Sulawesi.
There are triumphant scenes as lorries leave a vaccine plant in Pune, India, loaded with boxes that will prevent thousands of deaths. Adar Poonawalla, the owner and chief executive of the Serum Institute of India, poses on the tailgate of a truck, making the most of his company’s “proud and historic” moment as the potential saviour of the nation – and even a large chunk of the world.
Poonawalla’s factory, the largest vaccine manufacturing complex in the world, is the best hope for immunisation for people in Africa and some low-income countries elsewhere – which could save them from the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic. The Serum Institute has been contracted to supply the UN-backed Covax initiative, which subsidises low-income countries, with 200m doses of Covid-19 vaccines with an option on 900m more.
Joe Biden, the US president-elect, has unveiled a $1.9tn coronavirus stimulus package to tackle the virus and the economic crisis it has triggered.
Vaccination and testing efforts in the US will be sustained with $160bn, a further $350bn will be issued for state and local government health programmes, and $1tn is to go families
At a Shenzhen hospital, 21-year-old airport worker Wang Shuyue lines up to receive her second shot.
“I feel it’s safe because so many people around the country have taken the vaccine so there shouldn’t be any major problems,” she tells the Guardian. “I think it should be effective otherwise there wouldn’t be so many people taking it.”
Pfizer’s reduction of its COVID-19 vaccine shipments will not delay Canada’s goal of getting most people inoculated by the end of September, the country’s procurement minister said as the country battled a second surge in infections.
“This is a temporary delay and we remain on track to have enough approved vaccines for everyone who wishes to get vaccinated by the end of September 2021,” Procurement Minister Anita Anand said.
Though questions remain that still need answering, there are encouraging signs that proof of immunity to Covid-19 could help people return to normality
As the world’s biggest ever vaccination programme gets underway, so-called immunity passports are back in the headlines. A document verifying the holder’s status as Covid-free could allow international borders as well as concerts and other events to reopen.
So are immunity passports just the ticket, or do they remain a flight of fancy?
A timeline of what was promised and what has been delivered so far
In mid-March, the World Health Organization had a simple message to countries on how to tackle the spread of coronavirus: test, test, test. In the chaotic months of mixed messaging and policy U-turns that followed, the UK government developed a chronic habit of over-promising and under-delivering, not least when it came to testing.
We look back at the major events in the buildup of the UK’s testing regime, what was promised and what has happened since.
The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, has put mass testing for coronavirus at the heart of his strategy to reopen schools after the lockdown. It is a controversial strategy that has divided scientists. Some believe mass testing can help reduce outbreaks at schools, while others argue it could make matters worse by giving teachers and pupils false reassurance.
Mass testing relies on lateral flow tests, or LFTs, which contain antibodies that bind to the virus. When a nasal swab is tested in an LFT, any virus present in the sample sticks to the antibodies and produces a dark band, a bit like a pregnancy test’s indicator. LFTs are not as accurate as the standard NHS lab-based PCR tests, but they are cheap and produce results fast – within 30 minutes.
White House coronavirus taskforce reports advocate for ‘aggressive action’ amid 23m confirmed cases in US
As coronavirus continues to tear across the US without any sign of slowing down, officials have warned there is a “full resurgence” in most major population centers – and that the country could see an additional 92,000 deaths in less than a month.
There have been more than 23m confirmed Covid-19 cases in the US and 385,503 deaths, Johns Hopkins University’s most recent data revealed.
Governor of Amazonas says situation critical as alarming details emerge about breakdown of health system in state capital Manaus
Health workers in Brazil’s largest state are begging for help and oxygen supplies after an explosion of Covid deaths and infections that one official compared to a tsunami and said could be linked to a new variant.
Boris Johnson’s plans to test millions of schoolchildren for coronavirus every week appear to be in disarray after the UK regulator refused to formally approve the daily testing of pupils in England, the Guardian has learned.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) told the government on Tuesday it had not authorised the daily use of 30-minute tests due to concerns that they give people false reassurance if they test negative.
Administration on brink of collapse as Matteo Renzi pulls his party from ruling coalition
Italians have responded with a mix of anger, perplexity and calls for the entire government to be sent packing after the country was plunged into political mayhem once again.
The Giuseppe Conte-led administration is teetering on the brink of collapse after the former prime minister, Matteo Renzi, pulled his small Italia Viva party from the ruling coalition. Renzi said his party was not to blame for triggering the crisis, but that it had been going on for months. He argued that his ministers had shown courage in leaving their posts, and blamed their departure on the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and weak strategy in rebuilding the tattered economy.
Children with parents in prison have been forgotten during lockdown, campaigners have told MPs.
The cross-party human rights committeeis looking at the impact on the right to family life, with a focus on people in institutional settings including prisons, care homes and mental health facilities.
Pre-prepared disaster plans for handling pandemics, natural disasters and terrorist attacks show London had 3,500 mortuary spaces. But the capital braced for the virus with an additional 12,000 mortuary spaces.
If cemeteries could not cope, bodies would be frozen to await their final committal. There were plans to transport scores of bodies at a time between storage locations in trucks, the official said, a practice that risks misidentifying or even losing the dead:
England’s high street pharmacies will begin rolling out Covid vaccines, as the virus death toll across the UK climbed above 100,000.
Boots and Superdrug branches will be among the six stores across England which will be able to administer the jabs from Thursday while the Government aims to hit its target of vaccinating all people in the four most vulnerable groups by the middle of next month.
Andrews Pharmacy in Macclesfield, Cullimore Chemist in Edgware, north London, Woodside Pharmacy in Telford and Appleton Village pharmacy in Widnes will be in the first group to hand out the injections, alongside Boots in Halifax, and Superdrug in Guildford.
Boris Johnson also told MPs that distribution “will be going to 24/7 as soon as we can” but said supply of doses remained the main barrier.
The Scottish Government published its vaccine delivery plan on Wednesday evening, including details of how many doses it expects to receive for each week until the end of May, prompting a row with London, which has declined to publish its numbers.
The six pharmacies have been picked because they can deliver large volumes of the vaccine and allow for social distancing, and Health Secretary Matt Hancock said it was “fantastic” that jabs would be available on the high street.
“Pharmacies sit at the heart of local communities and will make a big difference to our rollout programme by providing even more local, convenient places for those that are eligible to get their jab,” he said.
By the end of the month more than 200 community chemists will be able to give vaccines, according to NHS England.
The pharmacies join the 200 hospitals, around 800 GP clinics and seven mass vaccination centres where jabs are already being handed out.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer urged ministers to go further and use England’s 11,500 pharmacies to deliver round-the-clock vaccinations by the end of next month.
The expanded vaccination service in England comes as the daily reported UK death toll reached a new high on Wednesday, with 1,564 fatalities recorded within 28 days of a positive test.
The latest figures meant the grim milestone of more than 100,000 deaths involving coronavirus has now been passed in the UK, according to official data.
When the UK’s first victim of Covid-19 died on 5 March 2020, there were only 116 recorded infections in the country and few people countenanced a death toll of 100,000.
But for government planners it was different. Emergency response experts tasked with “mortality management” braced for a death toll that they feared would dwarf anything seen since the second world war. As fatalities mounted in China and Italy, the worst-case scenario for the UK was so grim that one scheme hatched involved storing thousands of bodies in a warehouse in east London.
Inconsistent vaccine supply is making it difficult for GPs in England to book patient appointments more than a few days in advance, experts have warned, as the prime minister admitted there were significant disparities in local immunisation rates.
Doctors, NHS specialists and MPs told the Guardian that batches of the Pfizer and Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine frequently arrived with only a couple of days’ notice, requiring last-minute planning and creating uncertainty for patients.