Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
A coronavirus vaccine developed in the UK can prevent 70.4% of people from getting Covid-19 and up to 90% if a lower dose is used, according to data.
Oxford University and AstraZeneca have announced their jab is effective in preventing many people getting ill and it has been shown to work in different age groups, including the elderly. There are early indications it might also help stop the spread of the disease.
Christmas could be turned into a communal outdoor celebration – with hot drinks and mince pies consumed in the street – scientists have suggested, in alternative plans drawn up for safer festivities.
In a set of proposals compiled by Independent Sage – a group formed in response to concerns about a lack of transparency in scientific advice given to government – they say the rules over the festive period will depend upon the rate and level of infections at the time.
A programme of mass, instant coronavirus testing is to be rolled out to areas of England with the highest infection rates after lockdown is lifted next month, the prime minister has announced, as the government faces an unprecedented internal rebellion over Covid measures.
Among the plans, which will rely on the ability to massively expand rapid testing systems across the country, is a scheme to stop people who have come into close contact with someone who has coronavirus from having to isolate for 14 days, if tests show they have not contracted it.
South Australian premier Steven Marshall has reiterated his state is “not out of the woods yet”, a day after one new case of coronavirus was recorded in the community.
The comments follow a decision to lift the state’s Covid-19 lockdown early after authorities learned a key case linked to its emerging cluster out of a quarantine hotel had lied to investigators about working a second job at a pizza restaurant.
You don’t get a second chance to stop a second wave. The advice that we received from health was unequivocal. We had to go hard and go early. We didn’t want a second wave.
We didn’t want to have this seeded in South Australia so that we were managing multiple clusters on an ongoing basis until this particular infection actually, if you like, died out.
We think the people of South Australia deserve some answers on this and we will look at every opportunity for there to be some consequences for this person because it is really important that when a public health official asks you questions you provide them with accurate information otherwise lives can be at stake.
Labor’s Joel Fitzgibbon has backed the sentiment behind a speech to be delivered today by party colleague, Queensland senator Murray Watt, which indicates plans to “reset the party’s approach to coal and gas”.
No doubt he wants to put labour back into the Labor party. And today he speaks to our traditional base, all those people in the hi-vis and blue collar outfits, working hard every day in Queensland.
All they want for us is to give credit to them for what they do, the contribution they make to our economy and community. And we want to encourage them to be proud of what they do as they should be.
We need to be ... very loud and clear in our expressions of support for those industries, and those who work within them.
The Labor party always supported the coal mining industry, it always supported the gas sector, the oil sector, etc our manufacturers, but for some reason we haven’t been that keen to say that loudly and proudly. And if that’s what we’re about to start doing well, I’ll be very very pleased.
German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, on Sunday lashed out at anti-mask protesters comparing themselves to Nazi victims, accusing them of trivialising the Holocaust and “making a mockery” of the courage shown by resistance fighters.
The harsh words came after a young woman took to the stage at a protest against coronavirus restrictions in Hanover on Saturday saying she felt “just like Sophie Scholl”, the German student executed by the Nazis in 1943 for her role in the resistance.
Operation Warp Speed chief says if immunization plan goes well enough Americans should be vaccinated by May
As the number of Covid-19 cases in the United States passed 12 million, the Trump administration’s vaccine program adviser predicted that life in America could be back to normal around May of 2021 as immunization is set to begin.
The note of optimism came even as millions of Americans were expected to travel for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday this week and many appeared to be ignoring warnings from health officials about furthering the spread of the infectious disease.
France is preparing to ease its Covid-19 lockdown rules in the weeks leading up to Christmas with new daily caseloads falling and pressure building from retailers to allow the annual shopping season to go ahead.
But parts of east Asia that were thought to be controlling the disease have raised the possibility of new restrictions.
The past few months have brought a number of scientific terms to public attention. We’ve had to digest R (a virus’s reproduction number) and PCR (the polymerase chain reaction method of testing). And now there’s mRNA. This last one has featured heavily in recent news reports because of the spectacular results of twonew mRNA vaccines against coronavirus. It stands for “messenger ribonucleic acid”, a label familiar enough if you studied biology at O-level or GCSE, but otherwise hardly a household name. Even in the field of vaccine research, if you had said as recently as 10 years ago that you could protect people from infections by injecting them with mRNA, you would have provoked some puzzled looks.
Essentially, mRNA is a molecule used by living cells to turn the gene sequences in DNA into the proteins that are the building blocks of all their fundamental structures. A segment of DNA gets copied (“transcribed”) into a piece of mRNA, which in turn gets “read” by the cell’s tools for synthesising proteins. In the case of an mRNA vaccine, the virus’s mRNA is injected into the muscle, and our own cells then read it and synthesise the viral protein. The immune system reacts to these proteins – which can’t by themselves cause disease – just as if they’d been carried in on the whole virus. This generates a protective response that, we hope, lasts for some time. It’s so beautifully simple it almost seems like science fiction. But last week we learned that it was true.
State-sponsored hackers from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are engaged in concerted attempts to steal coronavirus vaccine secrets in what security experts describe as “an intellectual property war”.
They accuse hostile-state hackers of trying to obtain trial results early and seize sensitive information about mass production of drugs, at a time when a range of vaccines are close to being approved for the public.
Russia’s best-known hacker groups – Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear – are considered to be linked to the country’s intelligence organisations, according to western security agencies.
The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, declined to apologise for PPE contracts given to companies with links to MPs and ministers during the first wave of coronavirus.
Appearing on BBC One's The Andrew Marr Show, Sunak was questioned on the government's purchase of 50 million face masks from Ayanda Capital that were later deemed unusable for NHS workers.
'It was right to try to do everything we can, and I'm not going to apologise for us reacting in that way,' Sunak said.
Polls suggest Americans are exhausted after months of restrictions, so we asked experts for advice on how to convince loved ones to stay safe ahead of the holidays
Fatigue with pandemic restrictions has hit many Americans at a time when it’s more important than ever that people take the virus seriously and stay home.
While everyone celebrated this month’s news that not one but two experimental vaccines against Covid-19 have proved at least 90% effective at preventing disease in late-stage clinical trials, research into understanding how the Sars-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, interacts with the human immune system never paused.
There are plenty of questions still to answer about the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines: how well will they protect the elderly, for example, and how long for? Which aspects of the immune response that they elicit are protective and which aren’t? Can even better results be achieved, with vaccines that target different parts of the immune system?
The team behind the feted restaurant found Danes queued around the block for their pandemic pop-up
It is one of the best restaurants in the world, known for its 18-course tasting menus costing north of £300 per person and for spawning a culinary movement based on foraging for ingredients.
Now the two Michelin-starred Copenhagen restaurant Noma, run by feted chef René Redzepi, is preparing to open the doors of a new venture: a burger-and-chips joint.
Experts have urged Americans against travelling for family gatherings at Thanksgiving this week even though millions were set to defy the advice, as the US crossed the threshold of more than 12m cases of coronavirus.
Ominous warnings came as Donald Trump appeared to admit that coronavirus is “running wild” across the US, in contrast with his statements throughout the election campaign that the virus would simply “go away” or “disappear” and, more recently, that the country was “rounding the turn” on the pandemic.
The Palestinian health ministry has recommended strict limits on Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem this year due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Celebrations in the biblical town revered by Christians as Jesus’ birthplace are usually attended by thousands of people from around the world, but this year the ministry has recommended the upcoming tree lighting ceremony in Manger Square be limited to 50 people, throughout the festive season.
President’s tweet came as FDA approved emergency use authorisation for Regeneron antibody therapy
Donald Trump appears to have admitted that coronavirus is “running wild” across the US, in contrast with his statements throughout the election campaign that the country was “rounding the turn” on the pandemic.
As new Covid infections in the US approached 200,000 a day, Trump took to Twitter on Saturday night to insist things were bad outside the United States as well: “The Fake News is not talking about the fact that ‘Covid’ is running wild all over the World, not just in the U.S.”
Boris Johnson will meet his cabinet remotely on Sunday to decide how people will be able to gather with loved ones at Christmas, before the announcement of a new Covid winter plan.
The prime minister, who is self-isolating, will then confirm by video to parliament on Monday that national restrictions will end on 2 December and be replaced by the three-tier regional system, with even tighter controls in some areas.
Boris Johnson and his health secretary, Matt Hancock, acted “unlawfully” when appointing three key figures – including the head of NHS Test and Trace, Dido Harding – to posts in the fight against Covid-19, according to a legal challenge submitted by campaigners to the high court.
The Observer has seen details of documents from those pursuing the case – and initial responses from government lawyers – relating to the call for a judicial review into the appointment of Baroness Harding, who is a Tory peer, and into those of Kate Bingham to the post of head of the UK’s vaccine taskforce and Mike Coupe to the role of director of testing at NHS Test and Trace.
Most of the public would rather have a locked-down Christmas than have a new lockdown imposed in January, a new poll suggests.
With the government considering the extent to which restrictions should be lifted to limit the impact on Christmas family gatherings, the latest Opinium poll for the Observer found that the public opted for a locked-down Christmas over new January restrictions by a margin of 54% to 33%.
Donald Trump has taken his campaign to deny the results of the US presidential election global, telling world leaders at the G20 summit that he looks forward to “working with you again for a long time”.
The gathering of leaders of major world economies is being held online this year, because of the pandemic, but could have been an occasion for Trump to bid his peers goodbye and pledge American support to the battle against Covid-19.