Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Last-minute holidays to the Canaries will be back on sale in time for a half-term getaway after the islands were added to the UK travel corridor list.
Holidaymakers will be able to visit any of the eight main islands in the archipelago without the need to quarantine for 14 days on their return. The move comes into effect from 4am on Sunday (25 October), the transport Grant Shapps confirmed on Twitter on Thursday.
Sir Patrick Vallance said there was ‘room for improvement’ with test and trace in the UK as only about two-thirds of the close contacts reached are done so within 48 hours of the case entering the system, according to performance figures released on Thursday.
Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak presented a new package of government support grants during a televised briefing and also discussed vaccines and local restrictions
Parties in which young people try to catch Covid-19 to gain immunity could become the norm if the virus is not eradicated, a Cambridge professor has suggested, prompting others to caution that the long-term effects of infection are not yet known.
Paul Lehner, professor of immunology and medicine at the University of Cambridge, told a briefing held by the Science Media Centre that the virus could be here to stay and that there might be “Covid parties” for the young to expose them to coronavirus while their risk was low.
New definition includes people who come into close contact with infected individuals in multiple short bursts over 24-hour period
The leading US federal public health agency has rewritten its definition of who is at risk of contracting coronavirus to include people who come into close contact with infected individuals in multiple short bursts over a 24-hour period.
The new definition of “close contact” issued on Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will sharply expand the pool of those deemed in danger of being infected by the virus.
Every autumn the streets of Kolkata come alive with the sounds of Durga Puja. The Hindu festival, which celebrates the triumph of good over evil, is marked in West Bengal and neighbouring states as a time for dancing, drumming, eating and worship.
Yet the festival’s most defining feature is the pandal – towering displays of religious sculptures depicting the story of Durga Puja: the moment that the Hindu goddess Durga triumphed over the demon Mahishasura.
The Indian state of West Bengal has reported its biggest daily tally of new Covid-19 infections as thousands of people thronged the streets for a major Hindu festival that began last week, Reuters reports.
India has seen a sharp drop in infections since a September peak, but experts have warned it could see a resurgence during Durga Puja this week, and Diwali, the festival of light, in mid-November.
Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia have all reported their highest one-day rise in cases, Reuters reports.
Croatia reported its biggest rise in daily new Covid-19 infections on Thursday with 1,563 new cases, nearly half of which were in Zagreb, where they more than doubled. The capital recorded a high of 705 new infections compared with the previous day’s 337 infections. So far, Croatia, a country of some 4 million people, has recorded 29,850 cases with 406 deaths. There are currently 7,380 active cases.
Authorities say programme will continue after finding no direct links between the deaths and the vaccines
South Korean officials refused on Thursday to suspend a seasonal influenza inoculation effort, despite growing calls for a halt, including an appeal from a key group of doctors, after the deaths of at least 25 of those vaccinated. Health authorities said they found no direct links between the deaths and the vaccines.
At least 22 of the dead, including a 17-year-old boy, were part of a campaign to inoculate 19 million teenagers and senior citizens for free, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said.
The assistant chief constable Owen Weatherill said during a home affairs committee meeting that England’s three-tier system of coronavirus regulations was confusing and, as a result, difficult for police to implement.
In response, the minister for crime and policing, Kit Malthouse, has said it is important that people inform themselves about restrictions in their areas
The world’s limited progress in tackling child poverty over recent years could be destroyed by the coronavirus pandemic, the UN and World Bank have warned.
“Slow-paced, unequally distributed” progress meant one in six children were living in poverty even before the pandemic, according to a joint study.
The idea of a normal Christmas this year with large family gatherings is “fiction” and people should be “digital-Christmas ready”, Nicola Sturgeon’s public health adviser has said.
Jason Leitch, the Scottish government’s national clinical director, who regularly flanks Sturgeon in her daily coronavirus briefings, told BBC Radio Scotland it was too early to say what the situation would be in late December. But Christmas would “absolutely” not be normal.
When Hla, 19, tried to go back to work seven months ago after having a baby, there were no jobs. Hundreds of garment factories in Myanmar had closed after western fashion brands cancelled orders due to the pandemic, leaving thousands of women jobless.
As lockdown gripped Yangon, her marriage broke down, her husband left, and her father had to sell his trishaw – no longer able to take passengers in the city. Her parents and baby were hungry. Five months ago, she became a sex worker.
Veteran epidemiologist calls for review, and openness to adopting measures suggested by political rivals, now that voters have given PM a mandate
Jacinda Ardern won New Zealand’s election with a commanding majority, in part attributed to her handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in her country. But a veteran epidemiologist is exhorting the prime minister to use the political capital gained in her decisive victory to scrutinise the coronavirus response by her government and officials, and adopt strategies proposed by her opponents before Saturday’s vote.
“New Zealand has shown it can be quite smart and flexible, but we can see we’ve got these blind spots and we need to have no blind spots,” said Nick Wilson, a University of Otago epidemiologist. “This is such an unforgiving disease and very few countries are doing it right so we need to smarten up our act quite substantially.”
A school student in Melbourne’s north tested positive to coronavirus, putting the suburbs of Dallas, Roxburgh Park, Broadmeadows, Preston and West Heidelberg on high alert. Follow live
Australia Post is up in the communications estimates committee hearing - that starts at 9
NSW has reported just one locally acquired case - another six are in hotel quarantine.
Women aged 50-60 are at greatest risk of developing “long Covid”, analysis suggests. Older age and experiencing five or more symptoms within the first week of illness were also associated with a heightened risk of lasting health problems.
The study, led by Dr Claire Steves and Prof Tim Spector at King’s College London, analysed data from 4,182 COVID Symptom Study app users who had been consistently logging their health and had tested positive for the virus.
Tens of thousands of deaths are now inevitable in a second wave of coronavirus infections sweeping across England because of the failure to contain the virus, a government scientific adviser has warned.
John Edmunds, a professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, told MPs on Wednesday that without further measures England’s tiered Covid-19 strategy would lead to high numbers of new infections every day, putting the NHS under strain and driving up the death toll.
State is currently faring better than the US as a whole, but experts and public health officials expect a fall surge
After a brutal summer of increased infection and overburdened hospitals, California is having a moment of respite in coronavirus transmission as much of the nation and the world experiences yet another rise in cases.
But experts and public health officials warned Californians to practice caution.
Four US states reported a record one-day increase in Covid-19 deaths on Wednesday including Wisconsin, a hotly contested state in the 3 November election, as infections keep rising across the Midwest and beyond.
Coronavirus deaths hit daily records in Iowa, Minnesota, Montana and Wisconsin, according to a Reuters analysis. Wisconsin also reported a record daily increase in new cases together with Illinois and Ohio, the analysis showed.
The US is likely to have enough safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines available to inoculate the most vulnerable Americans by the end of 2020, health and human services secretary Alex Azar said.
The US government is “cautiously optimistic” that one or two vaccines, likely from Pfizer or Moderna, will be available by the end of the year and can begin to be distributed to Americans, officials said during a news conference.
Meanwhile, it seems Trump supporters in North Carolina were asked to avoid QAnon clothing.
The president refused to disavow QAnon during an NBC town hall last week. “I don’t know about QAnon,” he insisted.
A Trump campaign worker ahead of the President’s rally in Gastonia, NC, is informing attendees as they arrive at the main entrance that they cannot wear any QAnon attire.
This is from Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, this morning.
Our aim in this negotiation was simple: to agree a deal based on what people will actually need to get through this rather than the arbitrary sum being forced on us all one by one.
We hoped to set a template for others to use. Presumably that’s why the Government walked away. https://t.co/DirwF8dvua
Here are some more lines from Robert Jenrick’s interview with the Today programme this morning.
The mayor of Greater Manchester was never willing to draw this to a conclusion. The public health situation was deteriorating. It would have frankly been irresponsible of the government to allow this to continue for many more days without bringing it to a conclusion.
In a meeting with the prime minister, the prime minister offered £55m, Andy Burnham asked for £65m. The prime minister said: ‘Look, let’s just compromise, and get this done for the sake of people in Greater Manchester.’
The money is still there. It’s got Greater Manchester’s name on it.
Andy Burnham has lambasted Conservative MPs trying to encourage the government to pick off Greater Manchester councils one by one after the region failed to collectively reach a coronavirus deal with ministers.
The government said the £60m business support offer unanimously rejected by Burnham and Greater Manchester’s 10 leaders was “still on the table”, as it was announced the Sheffield city region would be the latest in England to be put into the tightest tier 3 restrictions.