London to face tighter Covid restrictions from Friday night

Posted on October 15, 2020 by Admin

No 10 also set to extend tier 3 lockdown measures to Greater Manchester as cases rise

London will be placed in high-risk, tier 2 coronavirus restrictions from Friday night as infection rates in the capital continue to increase, MPs and the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, have confirmed.

The decision came as Boris Johnson was expected to sign off on the harshest tier 3 coronavirus measures for millions more people in the north of England later on Thursday, with Downing Street putting last minute pressure on local leaders in Greater Manchester to accept the changes.

National cabinet meeting to discuss Darwin quarantine postponed due to ‘problem’ with PM’s plane

Posted on October 15, 2020 by Admin

Scott Morrison, who is temporarily stuck in Queensland, expects overseas arrival numbers to rise within weeks

A national cabinet meeting due to discuss a plan to bring back thousands of additional Australians stranded overseas has been postponed, after the prime minister himself became stranded in Queensland with “technical problems” grounding his RAAF plane.

Scott Morrison, speaking in Cairns on Thursday, confirmed that more citizens stuck overseas due to Covid flight caps would soon be able to return home with increased repatriation flights and use of the Howard Springs quarantine facility near Darwin.

Third of newborns with Covid infected before or during birth – study

Posted on October 15, 2020 by Admin

Review of reported neonatal cases finds most babies with virus contract it in hospital

Nearly a third of coronavirus infections in newborn babies are picked up in the womb or from the mother during labour, a review of reported cases has found.

While Covid-19 is rare in newborns, doctors have been keen to understand the potential risks that babies face should tests reveal they have the infection soon after birth.

Welsh government insists police can enforce Covid travel ban

Posted on October 15, 2020 by Admin

Police say they lack resources to prevent people travelling from hotspots elsewhere in UK

The Welsh government has said it is confident the police will be able to enforce rules banning people from travelling to Wales from Covid-19 hotspots in other parts of the UK.

Welsh Police Federation officials expressed concern on Thursday that it would be difficult to stop people travelling to Wales because police did not have the resources and would find it difficult to identify where people were coming from.

Long Covid: what we know so far

Posted on October 15, 2020 by Admin

Lasting symptoms may not be down to a single syndrome but several different ones

At the start of the pandemic we were told that Covid-19 was a respiratory illness from which most people would recover within two or three weeks, but it’s increasingly clear that there may be tens of thousands of people, if not hundreds of thousands, who have been left experiencing symptoms months after becoming infected.

Now, the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) has released a report which suggests that “long Covid” may not be a single syndrome, but up to four different ones, which some patients might be experiencing simultaneously. Here’s what we now know:

Amy Coney Barrett refuses to tell Kamala Harris if she thinks climate change is happening – video

Posted on October 14, 2020 by Admin

Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris has continued to grill supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett on a range of issues, including climate change and racial discrimination in the US. Harris pressed Barrett on whether she believed coronavirus was infectious, smoking caused cancer and climate change was happening. Barrett avoided answering directly to a number of issues during the questioning, including one from Democratic senator Cory Booker on whether it was wrong to separate children from their parents to deter immigrants coming to the US

Amy Coney Barrett pledges 'open mind' and plays down conservative record

France: Macron announces 9pm curfew for Paris and eight other cities – video

Posted on October 14, 2020 by Admin

France will impose a nightly curfew on almost one-third of the country's 67 million people to tackle a resurgence in coronavirus cases, but a new national lockdown is not envisaged, Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday. The French president announced the curfew, which will take effect from Saturday and run each night from 9pm to 6am the following morning, shortly after the government declared a new public health state of emergency.