Category Archives: Coronavirus

PM apologises for erroneously stating Kevin Rudd had left and re-entered Australia during Covid

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Scott Morrison has written to the clerk of the lower house correcting the record and apologising to the former Labor leader

Scott Morrison has written to the clerk of the House of Representatives correcting the record and apologising to Kevin Rudd after declaring erroneously in question time that the former Labor prime minister had been allowed to leave and re-enter Australia during the pandemic.

The controversy began when Labor on Monday asked Morrison why Tony Abbott and Alexander Downer had been able to leave and re-enter the country multiple times this year “when there are thousands of vulnerable stranded Australians who haven’t been able to get home once?”

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‘Hug bubble’ safely connects care home residents to their families in France – video

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Since the Covid-19 outbreak, French care home resident Colette Dupas's contact with her daughters has been limited to talking via video call or through a window. Now, thanks to an inflatable tunnel and two plastic sleeves, the 97-year-old has been able to feel their touch. Made from hermetically sealed plastic film, the 'hug bubble' allows care home residents – isolated from the outside world to avoid catching the virus – to hold hands and embrace their visiting relatives through a sleeve. Once visitors leave, care home employees disinfect the plastic sheet, ready for the next encounter

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Coronavirus live news: Giuliani tests positive for Covid; South Korea deploys military to expand testing

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California confirmed record new cases on Sunday; South Korea expands testing amid case surge; Biden picks California Attorney General Becerra to lead pandemic response

The number of new Covid-19 infections per day in France is unlikely to fall to a 5,000 target by 15 December as the population is not sufficiently respecting social distancing measures, one of France*s top coronavirus experts said today.

Eric Caumes, head of infectious diseases at Paris hospital La Pitié-Salpêtrière, told LCI television that if the French are not cautious enough over Christmas and year-end holidays, it will lead to a third wave of the virus in mid-January.

It’s back to school today for some New York City schoolchildren, weeks after the schools were closed to in-person learning because of rising Covid-19 infections.

The city’s public school system, which shut down in-person learning earlier this month, will bring back preschool students and children in kindergarten through fifth grade, whose parents chose a mix of in-school and remote learning. Special education students in all grades who have particularly complex needs will be welcomed back starting Thursday.

We have facts now for two straight months of extraordinarily low levels of transmission in our schools, our schools are clearly safer. This is what our health care leaders say. Our schools are safer than pretty much any place else in New York City. So, I really think everyone in the school community can feel secure because so many measures are in place to protect everyone.

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WHO looks at giving Covid-19 to healthy people to speed up vaccine trials

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Advisory meeting will discuss feasibility of human challenge trials despite first jabs becoming available

The World Health Organization is holding discussions on Monday about the feasibility of trials in which healthy young volunteers are deliberately infected with coronavirus to hasten vaccine development – amid questions over whether they should go ahead given the promising data from the frontrunner vaccine candidates.

Some scientists have reservations about exposing volunteers to a virus for which there is no cure, although there are treatments that can help patients. However, proponents argue that the risks of Covid-19 to the young and healthy are minimal, and the benefits to society are high.

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Covid deepens south and north of England inequalities, study finds

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IPPR North report reveals few signs of government’s levelling up agenda becoming reality

Covid-19 has deepened inequalities between the north and south of England, with little sign of the government’s “levelling up” agenda becoming a reality, a thinktank has warned, in an urgent “wake-up call” to Boris Johnson.

The north is experiencing levels of unemployment not seen since 1994, with areas put under the strictest tier 3 restrictions among the worst affected, IPPR North said in its annual health-check of the economy of the north of England.

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Australian politics live: NSW and Victoria to ease Covid restrictions; final sitting week of parliament

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NSW to lift tranche of restrictions while in Victoria it will no longer be compulsory to wear face masks in offices or cafes; federal parliament returns for the final sitting week of 2020 – latest updates

Victoria will begin accepting international flights again from today – a flight from Sri Lanka is about to touch down in Melbourne. All up, there will be about 125 travellers arriving as part of the hotel quarantine program in Victoria today.

There is no longer any private security guards as part of the Victoria program – and any worker has to work exclusively for the Victorian government.

The latest foreign interference laws are also due to pass parliament this week – these ones are the ones looking at agreements with foreign governments that private organisations and state governments have made.

States, Territories and local governments will have three months to handover agreements with foreign governments which @dfat "will carefully and methodically consider against Australia's foreign policy settings" #auspol @Birmo @SBSNews pic.twitter.com/pwT5PtCEta

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Rudy Giuliani has coronavirus, Donald Trump says

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Multiple US media reports say the lawyer is in hospital, as Arizona closes state legislature for a week in wake of his recent visit

Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has tested positive for Covid-19, the president tweeted on Sunday, prompting Arizona to close its legislature after the lawyer visited the state last week.

Related: Trump's attacks on election integrity 'disgust me', says senior Georgia Republican

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Covid vaccine arrives in UK hospitals ready for first jabs

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Medical director warns of great hurdles in largest vaccination campaign in UK history

Batches of the Covid vaccine have begun to arrive in hospitals around the UK, ready for the first jabs on Tuesday in what NHS England’s medical director warned would be the largest and most complex vaccination campaign in the country’s history.

The UK’s record-breaking approval of the vaccine and the rapid start of immunisation against Covid-19 did not mean the end of the pandemic was in sight, said Prof Stephen Powis. It would be a marathon and not a sprint, he said.

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Millions of Californians put under strict Covid lockdown

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Stay-at-home order will stay in place through Christmas after hospital intensive care beds filled almost to capacity

More than 23 million people in Southern California have been placed under the harshest lockdowns in the United States, as Covid-19 cases hit record levels in the country’s most populous state.

The restrictions require people to stay at home and minimise contact with other households. They came into effect at 11.59pm on Sunday (02:59 ET/06:59 GMT) and will remain in place for at least three weeks, covering the Christmas holiday.

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‘It’s all about the cracking noise’: the unlikely cult of the online chiropractor

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Back pain has become rife in lockdown. But that’s not the only reason chiropractors are being hailed as YouTube influencers – there’s a horror movie thrill, too

The man in a waistcoat and jeans stands over a woman who lies face-down on a vinyl bed. He is all hairy arms, and she a mop of dip-dyed hair. He presses one palm on her back; with the other he cups the side of her head and sharply thrusts. Click, crack: her neck twists in a way that necks don’t usually like to be twisted. The woman curses in apparent relief; the man laughs. He is Joseph Cipriano, a chiropractor who is also known as Dr Joe Back Crack or the Y Strap Doc (after his trademark treatment tool) and this video of him adjusting a client with “*EXTREMELY LOUD* chiropractic cracking” has been viewed 19m times.

Cipriano, who has 1.6 million subscribers on YouTube and his own range of “Team Y Strap” and “Make Your Spine Great Again” sweatshirts, is one of what his fellow chiropractors, Doc Manasseh, calls “a new wave of chiropractors globally to have gone viral”. In an age of back pain, chiropractors are the new social media influencers. But why do so many people want to watch them? And is the rise about more than a interest in good spine health?

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The vaccine miracle: how scientists waged the battle against Covid-19

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We trace the extraordinary research effort, from the discovery of the virus’s structure to the start of inoculations this week

In the early afternoon of 3 January this year, a small metal box was delivered to the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre addressed to virus expert Prof Zhang Yongzhen. Inside, packed in dry ice, were swabs from a patient who was suffering from a novel, occasionally fatal respiratory illness that was sweeping the city of Wuhan. Exactly what was causing terrifying rises in case numbers, medical authorities wanted to know? And how was the disease being spread?

Related: ‘I worked so hard in the lab. I cried when the news came’

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Coronavirus live news: Italy’s death toll passes 60,000; UK records another 231 Covid deaths

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Italy has sixth highest death toll across the world; Russia reports 29,039 new cases, taking cumulative total to 2,460,770

Sick people in northern France occasionally leave garments in healing trees or “arbres à loques” in the hope of a cure, following a tradition that persists since pre-Roman times.

But recently, this tradition has been updated for the coronavirus age.

Donald Trump says his lawyer Rudy Giuliani has tested positive for coronavirus.

.@RudyGiuliani, by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, and who has been working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!) in the history of the USA, has tested positive for the China Virus. Get better soon Rudy, we will carry on!!!

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Rita Ora apologises for second breach of Covid lockdown restrictions

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Singer should have been self-isolating after trip to Egypt when she celebrated birthday at London venue

British singer Rita Ora has apologised after reports emerged that she should have been self-isolating when she celebrated her birthday at a London restaurant last month.

The 30-year-old flew to Egypt in a private jet on 21 November to perform at the five-star W Hotel in Cairo, an appearance for which she was paid a six-figure sum, the Mail on Sunday reported.

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Military planes to fly vaccines in to Britain to avoid ports hit by Brexit

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Officials fear delays even after EU deal as Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen order talks to resume

Tens of millions of doses of the Covid-19 vaccine manufactured in Belgium will be flown to Britain by military aircraft to avoid delays at ports caused by Brexit, under contingency plans being developed by the government.

Both the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and senior sources at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) confirmed to the Observer on Saturday that large consignments would be brought in from 1 January by air if road, rail and sea routes were subject to widely expected delays after that date.

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Anosmia: how Covid brought loss of smell centre stage

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A condition once overlooked by researchers is now in the spotlight as a key symptom of Covid-19

Seven years ago, rhinology surgeon Peter Andrews found himself performing an operation that would go on to change the course of his career.

Andrews was operating on a patient who had broken his nose many decades earlier after being struck by a cricket ball. The procedure was delicate: straightening the septum – the thin wall of cartilage that separates the nostrils – and in the process improving his breathing, which had become more laboured in later life.

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US sees record coronavirus infections as states face deadline for vaccine orders

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  • More than 14m cases recorded with 2,607 deaths on Friday
  • More lockdowns in California as Arizona and Idaho reel

As US states faced a deadline to place orders for a coronavirus vaccine, California went back into lockdown and federal authorities advised the wearing of masks indoors, new infections reached a record 227,885 on Friday.

Related: 'Ridiculous double standard': LA residents condemn maze of Covid restrictions

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Moscow delivers Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine to clinics

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Health workers and teachers have priority in first mass immunisation programme

Moscow’s coronavirus taskforce said on Saturday that it was distributing the Sputnik V vaccine to 70 clinics, marking Russia’s first mass Covid-19 immunisation.

The taskforce said the Russian-made vaccine would be made available first to doctors and other medical workers, teachers and social workers because they ran the highest risk of exposure to the disease.

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Cities can lead a green revolution after Covid. In Barcelona, we’re showing how | Ada Colau

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From non-polluting transport to sustainable industries, urban areas are perfect for testing radical solutions to global problems

• Ada Colau is the mayor of Barcelona

The pandemic will leave behind a very different world from that of a year ago. Thousands of people have died; entire industries have been brought to the brink; welfare states have been shaken. In the coming years, the major challenge facing all public leaders will be charting a path of recovery through the devastating human, social and economic marks that Covid-19 has left on our societies.

But rather than redoubling on the fragile world of the pre-pandemic age, we should be taking advantage of this moment to build one that is more just, balanced and sustainable.

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Coronavirus live news: UK records 397 new deaths and a further 15,539 cases; Keir Starmer forced to self-isolate

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WHO says virus spreading fast despite vaccine progress; French infections rise to 2.29m; Brazil reports 627 new deaths. Follow latest updates

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Saturday reported 14,255,535 cases of the new coronavirus, an increase of 214,099 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 2,439 to 277,825.

The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as Covid-19, caused by coronavirus, as of 4 pm ET on 4 December versus its previous report a day earlier.

2000 football fans in London have started watching the first Premier League game to allow fans into a ground since March.

At 5:30pm local time, the game between West Ham and Manchester United kicked off at the London Stadium, after the ban on fans entering stadiums was lifted on 2 December.

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‘Women feel they have no option but to give birth alone’: the rise of freebirthing

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As Covid infections rose, hospital felt like an increasingly dangerous place to have a baby. But is labouring without midwives or doctors the answer?

On the morning of 3 May, Victoria Johnson prepared to give birth at her home in the Highlands. One by one, her three children came downstairs to where she was labouring in a birthing pool surrounded by fairy lights, the curtains tightly shut against the outside world.

Suddenly, she felt an urge to get out of the pool. “I stood up and it felt as if the weight of the universe crashed from my head to my toes.” Her waters broke – “all over the carpet, which wasn’t ideal” – and the baby started to crown. “Everyone was there, including both grandmothers on video call,” she says. “Once the baby was out, my eight-year-old son came over and said, ‘I’m so proud of you.’ And that was everything.”

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