Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
There will be a strict travel ban between Scotland and the rest of the UK throughout the festive period, and the five-day Christmas window for indoor mixing will be reduced to just Christmas Day, Nicola Sturgeon has said.
In Wales, first minister Mark Drakeford likewise scrapped festive relaxation plans for all but Christmas Day and brought forward the country’s lockdown which will now start from midnight on Saturday.
Ten of the richest people in the world have boosted their already vast wealth by more than $400bn (£296bn) since the coronavirus pandemic began as their businesses were boosted by lockdowns and financial crises across the globe.
The extra wealth accumulated by the 10 men – approximately $450bn, using Forbes figures – over the past nine months is more than the £284bn the British government is estimated to have spent on tackling the pandemic and the economic damage it has wrought on its 66 million people.
The New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, has warned residents of greater Sydney to prepare for an increase in restrictions if the outbreak of Covid-19 expands beyond the northern beaches.
Meanwhile travellers coming from NSW to Queensland will require a border pass declaration from 1am on Sunday and Western Australia announced it was reinstating its hard border with NSW.
“They used to stand at the bar three deep,” says John Moran, surveying the long, empty counter at Killarney Rose, a Wall Street bar that would, in another era, have been stuffed with early-shift construction workers and, at lunch and late into the evening, suited bankers.
The world’s pre-eminent financial thoroughfare – at least throughout the 20th century – is a ghost of what it once was. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are still located here, but dozens of financial institutions have emptied out from New York’s financial district in an exodus that started in the wake of 9/11 and has been hastened by Covid.
The Food and Drug Administration approved Moderna’s vaccine for emergency use. This is the second coronavirus vaccine to gain approval in the US.
The government can now begin to distribute 5.9m doses of the Moderna vaccine across the US.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle said they were optimistic they could reach a deal on a coronavirus stimulus bill this weekend.
The $900bn proposal currently on the table has been held up over an attempt by Republicans to curtail the Federal Reserve’s lending power - limiting its emergency lending efforts amid a deep economic crisis. Democrats said the provision would tie president-elect Joe Biden’s hands as he tries to rein in the economic fallout caused by the coronavirus crisis.
Distribution of the Moderna vaccine will begin to more than 3,800 sites across the United States this weekend, after it was approved on Friday by the medicines regulator, the Food and Drug Administration.
Workers in Bloomington, Indiana, will fill and package vials with the mRNA vaccine before handing them on to be shipped from sites including Louisville, Kentucky and Memphis, Tennessee. Those locations are close to air hubs for United Parcel Service Inc and FedEx Corp.
A further 339 people who tested positive for coronavirus have died in hospital in England, NHS England said on Saturday.
Patients were aged between 44 and 100. All except 13, aged between 64 and 95, had known underlying health conditions. The deaths were between 5 November and 18 December.
Emmanuel Macron has blamed his coronavirus infection on a combination of negligence and bad luck and urged his compatriots to stay safe in a self-shot video. The French president was isolating with symptoms that included headaches, fatigue and a dry cough. 'Despite everything I caught this virus,' Macron said. 'Perhaps, doubtless, a moment of negligence, a moment of bad luck too.'
Plans to relax Covid restrictions over Christmas are an error, says the Labour leader, as swathes of England have either entered or will enter tier 3 this week, and with mounting cases and hospitalisations. But Boris Johnson has resisted calls to reverse the five-day relaxation, instead urging the public to take individual responsibility. 'The prime minister should take the hard decisions, not hand them over to individuals,' says Starmer.
Austria is to enter a third lockdown from Boxing Day but will stage mass coronavirus tests in mid-January to determine who will be exempt from certain restrictions, the government announced on Friday.
Italy is preparing to outline new measures that could lead to a complete lockdown over the Christmas and new year period, while the Spanish government has warned of a possible “third wave” of infections.
A Belgian minister has blown the lid off a sensitive and commercial secret – the price that the EU has agreed to pay for the leading Covid vaccines.
Belgium’s budget state secretary, Eva De Bleeker, posted the price list on Twitter, with the amounts of each vaccine that her country intends to buy from the EU. The tweet was quickly deleted, but not soon enough to prevent interested parties taking screenshots, which have now made it public knowledge.
The US vice-president, Mike Pence, received his Covid-19 vaccine on Friday morning. Dr Anthony Fauci, who was present for the 'symbolic' inoculation, said it should serve as an example for all Americans called to do so to get vaccinated.
US deaths from coronavirus topped 3,000 for a third straight day and the country reported a record number of new infections
This is not the first time that a pandemic has gripped the holiday season. In December 1918, preparations for the first Christmas without war in four years took place in the midst of the worst pandemic since the Black Death.
The 1918-19 influenza, like Covid-19, came in waves. The deadliest began in autumn, peaked in late November and continued through the first weeks of December. It struck hundreds of millions and killed tens of millions worldwide.
The massive public, private and foundation investments in a coronavirus vaccine are producing results at a record pace. And countries are reacting accordingly. A recent global assessment of purchasing agreements for Covid-19 vaccines reveals that high-income countries, as well as a few middle-income countries with high manufacturing capacity, have already bought enough doses for their populations.
But delivery of the vaccine needs a new level of focus. This is especially the case for populations in poor and war-torn countries, where the health system is weak or nonexistent. Even before the pandemic, approximately 20 million infants a year, often some of the most vulnerable in the world, were missing out on basic vaccines. For example, there are estimated to be more than 10.6 million children in the world’s poorest countries who in 2019 did not receive even a first dose of a diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccine (DPT).
Governments around the world have breached the rights of seafarers during the Covid-19 pandemic, creating a “humanitarian crisis” in which hundreds of thousands of workers are stranded onboard ships, said a UN panel on labour rights in a landmark ruling.
Seafarers had reported physical and mental exhaustion, anxiety and sickness after spending months on board ship during the pandemic. There were also cases of people taking their own lives. Hundreds of people were denied medical care ashore, resulting in a number of deaths, said the UN’s International Labour Organization’s committee of experts.
Christmas travel plans up in the air after Sydney cluster grows to 28 and Qld, WA, Victoria and Tasmania announce new border restrictions and quarantine measures
When asked why he isn’t implementing a hard border with NSW, Mcgown says it’s because the outbreak is not as “spread out” as the Adelaide outbreak, when the state did implement a hard border.
“It’s based upon the number of cases and the spread of the cases. So if the cases are out from their existing location to other parts of Sydney or New South Wales, if the numbers grow as they have, or even more, then there may well be a requirement to go to a harder border arrangement.”
WA health minister Roger Cook has announced one additional case in the state overnight, which takes total cases to 844.
In relation to the clinics, he says all travellers who have arrived in WA from NSW between 11 and 17 December are required to immediately self-quarantine and be tested at a Covid clinic. They will have to remain in quarantine until they receive a negative result.
There are no restrictions on movement in the northern beaches in Sydney, but here is an indication people are complying with requests to stay home, from the MP for Mackellar.
The United States on Thursday surpassed a total of 17m coronavirus cases, with infections rising by more than a million a week during the early winter surge – while at the start of the year it took three months for the US to accumulate its first million cases.
Nearly a quarter of a million new coronavirus infections and more than 3,600 deaths had been reported just on Wednesday, shattering previous records as the national vaccination campaign against Covid-19 began rolling out across the country this week.
To Australia (where your correspondent currently sits):
The state of Victoria has imposed a ‘traffic light’ restriction system on travellers from New South Wales from tonight.
We are very strongly advising all Victorians not to travel to Sydney. As conditions are expected to deteriorate, and you may not be able to re-enter Victoria without undertaking quarantining for 14 days.
Don’t come from Sydney if you’re planning to come to Melbourne... it won’t be a holiday. It won’t be a Christmas. It won’t be the Christmas or the holiday you were planning. The situation in NSW and Sydney is rapidly evolving.