Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
With more than 22 million Americans currently Covid-19 positive, infrastructure needed to disseminate vaccine is far from complete
Joe Biden has been promising Americans that “help is on the way” since his election, with a goal of inoculating 100 million people with the Covid-19 vaccine within the first 100 days of his presidency.
But just days away from his inauguration, Biden is reportedly frustrated with his own coronavirus taskforce, and concerned they might not reach their goal in time, according to Politico.
How do scientists know the new UK variant is 70% more transmissible, and how certain are they of this figure?
Our gift to the world: the UK variant of Sars-CoV-2. There are sufficient data to quote 70% greater infectivity, but how was this figure ascertained?” D Moon, Brighton
The UK's Covid vaccine deployment minister, Nadhim Zahawi, confirmed England's restrictions were being reviewed but said the lockdown was already 'pretty tough'.
Zahawi told Sky News: 'The lockdown is actually pretty severe. We're asking people to stay at home, don't go out, if you have to go out it's only for exercise'
In the UK, ministers appear to have downgraded their promise to vaccinate the most vulnerable by mid-February, committing only to offering them an inoculation by that point.
The prime minister Boris Johnson said last week that they would have received their first jab by that date – and that daily figures for vaccinations carried out would be published from this week.
The top four categories, actually, for the UK is 15 million people, in England it’s about 12 million people, so we will have offered a vaccination to all of those people.
When you offer a vaccination it doesn’t mean a Royal Mail letter, it means the vaccine and the needle and the jab are ready for you. What you will see us publishing is the total numbers of people being vaccinated, not being offered a vaccine, and that’s the number to hold us to account to.
Passenger numbers at London’s Heathrow airport were down 72.7% in 2020, with 22.1 million people travelling through it.
In December, demand fell by 82.9% to 1.1 million as the new variant of the virus spread in the UK. Heathrow’s chief executive John Holland-Kaye said:
The past year has been incredibly challenging for aviation. While we support tightening border controls temporarily by introducing pre-departure testing for international arrivals, as well as quarantine, this is not sustainable.
The aviation industry is the cornerstone of the UK economy but is fighting for survival. We need a road map out of this lockdown and a full waiver of business rates.
A World Health Organization team of international experts tasked with investigating the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic will arrive in China on 14 January, China’s national health authority has said.
The team was initially aiming to enter China in early January but China blocked their arrival, saying visas had not yet been approved, even as some members of the group were on their way.
In France, every child is now obliged to have 11 vaccinations. If parents want their children to attend school, or take part in many extracurricular activities, they must accept. There is no opt-out or concessions made to vaccine doubters.
On Monday France’s government and health authorities are speeding up the country’s Covid-19 vaccine drive – a process complicated by widespread scepticism about the inoculation that has encompassed the usual global conspiracy theories.
One in five people in England may have had coronavirus, new modelling suggests, equivalent to 12.4 million people, rising to almost one in two in some areas.
It means that across the country as a whole the true number of people infected to date may be five times higher than the total number of known cases according to the government’s dashboard.
The face of South Africa’s Covid science on why Africa has been hit less hard than Europe, the new variant in the region, and the danger of vaccine nationalism
The epidemiologist Salim Abdool Karim could be considered South Africa’s Anthony Fauci. As co-chair of the South African Ministerial Advisory Committee on Covid-19, he is the government’s top adviser on the pandemic and has become the country’s face of Covid-19 science. He also sits on the Africa Task Force for Novel Coronavirus, overseeing the continent’s response to the global crisis.
Karim, who directs the Durban-based Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in South Africa and is a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, has long advocated for science and speaking truth to power. For three decades, along with his wife and scientific collaborator, Quarraisha Abdool Karim, he has been at the forefront of the fight against South Africa’s substantial HIV and tuberculosis epidemics and in the early 2000s was one of the scientists who spoke out against the government’s Aids denialism.
Healthcare workers in Madrid have gone to extreme lengths – some walking for hours – to relieve their exhausted colleagues as Spaingrapples with the double whammy of a deadly storm and the coronavirus pandemic.
Storm Filomena hit Spain on Friday, blanketing large parts of the country in snow and bringing Madrid to a standstill as the city saw its heaviest snowfall in 50 years. Across the country the storm claimed at least four lives, affected around 20,000km of roads and left thousands trapped in their cars for as many as 12 hours without food and water.
An intensive care doctor has pointed out that in the UK hospital admissions are still rising beyond what the country saw in the first wave of infections, adding that “staying power” is the superhero skill the NHS needs more. He writes:
NHS hospital admissions came and went in 4-6 weeks, briefly peaking at 3000 patients/day. The second wave has lasted for 12 weeks so far, has passed 4000 patients/day, and is STILL rising. Staying power is the superhero skill we need most.
My biggest pandemic anxiety is uncertainty. We're franticly planning for an uncertain situation. The NHS is not used to doing this, not at this speed. What I most want to know is how high this second wave will get. Feels even a bad answer would be better than uncertainty. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/5sAFWqSoCM
Also worth noting the first wave of NHS hospital admissions came and went in 4-6 weeks, briefly peaking at 3000 patients/day. The second wave has lasted for 12 weeks so far, has passed 4000 patients/day, and is STILL rising. Staying power is the superhero skill we need most. 2/2 pic.twitter.com/drVgfWnRWp
With roads blocked and trains cancelled healthcare staff decide to make the trip to work on foot
Healthcare workers in Madrid have gone to extreme lengths – some walking for hours – to relieve their exhausted colleagues as Spain grapples with the double whammy of a deadly storm and the coronavirus pandemic.
Storm Filomena hit Spain on Friday, blanketing large parts of the country in snow and bringing Madrid to a standstill as the city saw its heaviest snowfall in 50 years. Across the country the storm claimed at least four lives, affected around 20,000km of roads and left thousands trapped in their cars for as many as 12 hours without food and water.
The health secretary promised vaccines would be offered to every adult in the UK ‘by the autumn’. Speaking on the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show, Hancock said it was ‘very, very important’ that as many people as possible get a vaccine. More than 200,000 people are now being vaccinated each day, he added
It’s cheap, widely available and might help us fend off the virus. So should we all be dosing up on the sunshine nutrient?
In March, as coronavirus deaths in the UK began to mount, two hospitals in northeast England began taking vitamin D readings from patients and prescribing them with extremely high doses of the nutrient. Studies had suggested that having sufficient levels of vitamin D, which is created in the skin’s lower layers through the absorption of sunlight, plays a central role in immune and metabolic function and reduces the risk of certain community-acquired respiratory illnesses. But the conclusions were disputed, and no official guidance existed. When the endocrinology and respiratory units at Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS foundation trust made an informal recommendation to its clinicians to prescribe vitamin D, the decision was considered unusual. “Our view was that this treatment is so safe and the crisis is so enormous that we don’t have time to debate,” said Dr Richard Quinton, a consultant endocrinologist at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle.
Soon clinicians and endocrinologists around the world began arguing about whether sufficient levels of vitamin D might positively impact coronavirus-related mortality rates. Some considered the nutrient an effective treatment hiding in plain sight; others thought of it as a waste of time. In March, the government’s scientific advisers examined existing evidence and decided there wasn’t enough to act upon. But in April, dozens of doctors wrote to the British Medical Journal describing the correction of vitamin D deficiencies as “a safe, simple step” that “convincingly holds out a potential, significant, feasible Covid-19 mitigation remedy”.
The movement best known for its schools is firmly entrenched within the German health sector
In a pandemic where global leaders have peddled quack treatments and miracle cures, Germany has often stood out as a shining beacon for science.
It is the country that developed the first diagnostic test to detect the coronavirus, and the first vaccine approved in the west to shield people against the disease. It is a country whose physicist chancellor told parliament she passionately believes “there are scientific findings that are real and should be followed.”
Anonymous activist says he’s no ‘moral watchdog’ but vows to continue effort in hope of persuading revellers to stay home
Fuelled by black coffee, yellow-tipped cigarettes and white, incandescent rage, the faceless sleuth lurks on social media poised to unmask his next target.
“It’s outrageous, bizarre, it’s horrifying – a collective genocide,” fumed the twentysomething activist who burns the midnight oil scouring the internet for footage of parties being thrown despite a rapidly deteriorating Covid crisis that has killed more than 200,000 Brazilians.
South Africa is struggling to contain a second wave of Covid-19 infections, fuelled by a virulent new local variant of the virus, “Covid fatigue” and a series of “super-spreader” events.
On Thursday health officials announced 844 deaths and 21,832 new cases in a 24-hour period, the worst toll yet. Experts believe the second wave has yet to reach its peak in the country of 60 million, and fear healthcare services in the country’s main economic and cultural hub may struggle to cope with the influx of patients.
First we thought Covid would come in July, when restrictions were lifted and tourists and second home owners escaped the confines of their cities and headed down the M5 for fresh air at the coast. Then we thought it would come in September, when tourists and second home owners headed back up the motorway, leaving the virus behind them.
But coronavirus rates have remained persistently low in Cornwall since the beginning of the pandemic and for many of us, including myself and my family, the crisis has seemed far removed from our corner of the world.
As Covid-19 cases rise across the world, hopes that life could get back to some semblance of normality by summer are fading. What chance do we have of going to a festival, flying off for a holiday or attending a major sporting event?
What are the restrictions in Brisbane since a worker tested positive to the UK strain of Covid-19? Do I have to wear a mask and how do Victoria’s border closures with NSW and Queensland work? Untangle Australia’s Covid-19 laws and guidelines with our guide
When will the Covid-19 vaccine begin to have an effect on the nation?
The government has pledged to offer vaccines to 15 million people – the over-70s, healthcare workers and those required to shield by mid-February, and millions more by spring. This should slowly bring the virus under control although it will take many weeks before we can be sure the vaccine is having an effect. Numbers of daily cases of Covid-19 may drop but that decline could simply be due to impact of current lockdown measures. Only when hospital admissions start to reduce significantly will we be sure the vaccine is having an impact. Then there could be be a slackening of lockdown measures. Few scientists believe that will happen before Easter, however.
Jordan is set to start its Covid vaccination programme within days, the health minister has said, with priority being given to the elderly, health sector workers and those with underlying conditions.
The state news agency cited Nathir Obeidat as saying the rollout would begin on Wednesday following the expected arrival of the first batches of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine on Monday.
Twelve people have been arrested for breaching Covid-19 restrictions during an anti-lockdown protest in south-westLondon, the Metropolitan Police said.
A crowd of about 30 people marched down Clapham High Street on Saturday afternoon, chanting “take your freedom back” while being heckled by members of the public.
So the anti-Vaxxers are out demonstrating in Clapham Common today... They’re shouting ‘what’s happening in China is going to happen here ‘ ...
... which from an epidemiological perspective one can only respond ‘I hope so’... pic.twitter.com/RNAzGj5lEb