Category Archives: Coronavirus

Lifting England Covid rules while 3bn people unvaccinated reckless – experts

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Scientists warn Boris Johnson that failure means new Covid variants will put thousands of lives at risk across UK

Boris Johnson has been accused of taking a reckless approach to public health by lifting all plan B Covid restrictions in England while failing to take enough action to get jabs to 3 billion unvaccinated people in poorer countries.

The prime minister has robustly defended his record on the pandemic this week while awaiting the findings of the Sue Gray report on the “partygate” scandal, insisting he “got the big calls right” on the biggest global health crisis in a century.

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‘Time for the truth’: MPs call on Boris Johnson to publish ‘partygate’ report

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Cabinet Office officials wrangle over final version of Sue Gray’s findings on alleged Covid rule-breaking parties

Boris Johnson has been told it is “time for the truth to be released” as he faced more calls to publish a long-awaited report into “partygate” in full and not “suppress crucial details”.

Officials in the Cabinet Office are still wrangling over the final version of Sue Gray’s findings on a string of alleged Covid rule-breaking parties in Downing Street and other parts of government.

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WHO chief backs Neil Young over Covid misinformation row with Spotify

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Singer thanked for ‘standing up against inaccuracies' after the streaming service refused to remove Joe Rogan’s podcast

The World Health Organization chief has backed the veteran rock star Neil Young in his dispute with the music streaming behemoth Spotify, thanking the musician for “standing up against misinformation and inaccuracies” around Covid vaccinations.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO’s director general, tweeted that “we all have a role to play to end this pandemic and infodemic” – in particular social media platforms.

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German-speaking Covid denialists seek to build paradise in Paraguay

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A group of German, Austrian and Swiss immigrants has implanted an ideologically driven settlement in one of the country’s poorest regions

A 1,600-hectare (4,000-acre) gated community, dubbed El Paraíso Verde, or the Green Paradise, is being carved out of the fertile red earth of Caazapá, one of Paraguay’s poorest regions.

The community’s population – consisting mainly of German, Austrian and Swiss immigrants – will eventually swell from 150 to 3,000, according to the owners.

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Covid news live: England drops all ‘plan B’ restrictions; Moderna begins trial of Omicron-specific booster shot

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Compulsory use of face masks, vaccine certificates and work from home guidance all ended in England; Moderna follows Pfizer in launching trial to target Omicron

A couple of snippets from Politico’s London Playbook email this morning suggest we might all be here again on Monday waiting for Sue Gray to publish her report into a lockdown party culture at Downing Street and in Whitehall. They write:

The latest information is that Boris Johnson has still not received the document from Gray. It is possible it will arrive this morning and then be published this afternoon — however it is now just as likely that the whole publication process slips to next week, after a remarkable internal row broke out over what exactly can be made public following the police decision to launch a formal probe.

…

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Boris Johnson ‘will not have to resign’ if police interview him under caution – UK politics live news

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Latest news updates: ministers say PM will not follow Tony Blair’s precedent if police read him his rights over partygate investigation

As mentioned earlier, the BBC were calling it Grayja vu this morning. A reader has been in touch to suggest that an alternative would be Groundhog Gray.

Boris Johnson has left No 10 and is doing a visit later this morning, Sky News reports. That means the prospect of his doing a statement in the Commons on the Sue Gray report later today is increasingly unlikely. In his Red Box briefing (paywall) for the Times, Patrick Maguire says the planned trip today will take the PM several hundred miles away from London.

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Anti-vaxxers making ‘at least $2.5m’ a year from publishing on Substack

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Center for Countering Digital Hate research calculates that anti-vaccine figures could be making $12.5m from the online platform

A group of vaccine-sceptic writers are generating revenues of at least $2.5m (£1.85m) a year from publishing newsletters for tens of thousands of followers on the online publishing platform Substack, according to new research.

Prominent figures in the anti-vaccine movement including Dr Joseph Mercola and Alex Berenson have large followings on Substack, which has more than 1 million paying subscribers who sign up for individual newsletters from an array of authors who include novelist Salman Rushdie, the writer musician Patti Smith and former Downing Street adviser Dominic Cummings.

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Care home Covid rules to be relaxed in England allowing more visitors

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Easing of restrictions comes as legal requirements for masks and NHS passes are dropped

Care home residents in England will be able to receive unlimited visitors from Monday as the restrictions to tackle the Omicron variant are eased, the Department of Health has said.

Self-isolation periods will be reduced from 14 days to 10 days for those residents who test positive, with further reductions if they test negative on days five and six.

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No decision on ‘fully vaccinated’ definition as at least 72 Covid deaths recorded – as it happened

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Atagi still considering whether to change vaccination advice; nation records at least 72 Covid deaths with 13 in SA including reconciled data of death notifications from past fortnight; Central Land Council calls for central NT lockdown. This blog is now closed

Back to the EU ambassador, and he has confirmed the European Union would respond if Russian troops crossed the Ukrainian border.

Nurses and midwives at Sydney’s Liverpool hospital are striking today, demanding the government take action to address the staffing crisis impacting health care across the state.

Some of them are in tears here this morning, just come off a night shift. They are caring for, sometimes, one nurse for eight to 10 people and Covid has made their situation so harrowing.

Our hospital system really is at a breaking point and they are asking for ... fair, safe staffing levels here in our hospitals. Here in south-western Sydney, these nurses saw the brunt of the Delta outbreak, a failure of national quarantine, a failure of the vaccine rollout, and now they are seeing with Omicron the failure of the rapid antigen testing.

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NSW Covid-19 update: Hazzard says it’s ‘ridiculous’ not enough people getting their booster – video

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NSW health minister Brad Hazzard said the number of people turning up to get their Covid-19 boosters ‘are not where we need them to be’. Addressing the media outside Sydney’s Royal North Shore hospital, he said, ‘there are seven people in ICU and not one of them has had the booster'. Hazzard said it was 'ridiculous' that health staff were being diverted to work in vaccine hubs when only a handful of people were turning up. NSW Health deputy secretary Susan Pearce said appointments were ‘going begging’ but that doses were not being wasted 

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The new normal: New Zealand braces for shift from Covid zero to Covid acceptance

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The nation accepts a big psychological change, one expert says, as people prepare for more cases than they have ever seen before

See all our coronavirus coverage

In New Zealand’s biggest city, the streets were calm. At an Auckland supermarket, shelves of toilet paper, wine, chocolate and flour – metrics of a population hunkering down for a marathon of self-soothing and banana bread – had been quietly restocked from any panic-buying flurries.

In an uptown cafe, a barista said things had been a little quieter since the announcement. Then again, she shrugged: “It might just be a Tuesday.” At Unity Books, a bookstore at the heart of the city, people were quietly browsing. “There’s always an element of eerie calm before the storm,” said bookseller Briary Lawry.

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Spotify removes Neil Young music in feud over Joe Rogan’s false Covid claims

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Musician condemned spread of misinformation on platform’s top podcast: ‘They can have Rogan or Young’

The music streaming platform Spotify is in the process of removing Neil Young’s music after the company refused to take down Joe Rogan’s podcast amid the musician’s objections that it spread vaccine misinformation.

Rogan has been described by the New York Times as “one of the most consumed media products on the planet”. His podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience, is Spotify’s most popular. In 2020, Rogan signed a $100m deal that gave the streaming giant exclusive rights to his show.

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Starmer slams ‘spectacle of PM under police investigation’ as Boris Johnson awaits Sue Gray report – live

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No 10 has still not yet received report on Downing Street parties that could trigger a Tory leadership election

Here is a question from below the line worth answering up here.

The answer is no.

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Covid live: UK reports 346 daily deaths; Denmark aims to end all restrictions

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UK also records over 102,000 daily cases; Danish plan would mean most far-reaching easing among Nordic countries

The key lines from UK foreign secretary Liz Truss on Sky News are that she has reiterated her 100% support for the prime minister, she has said that she herself attended no parties during lockdown, and she also said – albeit with a slight pause – that she had not been invited to any parties during lockdown. She declined, when asked, to call for Labour leader Keir Starmer to also be investigated by police over having a beer in a constituency office.

Beyond that she said “I’m not going to prejudice the findings of the Sue Gray report, or indeed, the police investigation” or words to that effect quite a lot. She said:

I believe that he’s done a fantastic job as prime minister, whether it’s delivering Brexit, delivering the Covid vaccines, the booster programmes. We’ve now got a much faster growing economy than many of our competitors, thanks to his work, and I believe that’s what we should focus on … I don’t think it’s helpful to speculate on specific claims or specific accusations about what may or may not have happened.

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Coronavirus vaccines may reduce risk of long Covid, ONS study finds

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Observational study finds double-jabbed people 41% less likely to report Covid symptoms 12 weeks after a positive test

Vaccination could reduce the risk of long Covid, research by the Office for National Statistics suggests.

The study, of more than 6,000 adults, found those who were double-vaccinated had a 41% lower likelihood of self-reporting Covid symptoms 12 weeks after first testing positive.

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Netherlands lifts toughest Covid curbs with Denmark and France set to follow

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Many EU countries opt to reopen despite record infections as WHO suggests Omicron may signal more manageable phase of pandemic

The Netherlands has lifted its toughest Covid controls, Denmark is to remove all restrictions within days and France will begin easing curbs next week, as many – but not all – EU countries opt to reopen despite record infection numbers.

The moves come as data shows hospital and intensive care admissions are not surging in line with cases, and after the World Health Organization suggested the Omicron variant – which studies show is more contagious but usually less severe for vaccinated people – may signal a new, more manageable phase in the pandemic.

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Australia news live update: nation records at least 74 Covid deaths; Invasion Day rallies begin; lockdown call for NT remote communities

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Lockdown call for NT remote communities as nation records at least 74 deaths from Covid-19; Scott Morrison speaks at Australia Day ceremony in Canberra; Russian ambassador to Australia says country ‘doesn’t intend to invade’ Ukraine; Invasion Day protests begin. Follow all the day’s news

A leading health expert has warned of the potential spread of the virulent Omicron Covid-19 strain during events today as large crowds gather for protest or celebration, AAP reports.

Jane Halton, chair of the coalition for epidemic preparedness and former health department head, says the closer people pack together the more likely it is the virus will spread.

We know it’s highly infectious and the closer everyone gets together, the more the likelihood you’ll be close to someone whose got Covid and therefore the greater the likelihood you’ll contract it.

People should be careful. What we don’t want to see is a big increase in cases.

I don’t think we should be cancelling things. I just think people should be courteous, thoughtful, and a little bit careful.

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Boris Johnson braced for perilous 48 hours with release of Sue Gray’s report

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Premiership under threat as MPs see official report that has now triggered police investigation

Boris Johnson is braced for the most perilous 48 hours of his premiership, with exasperated Conservative MPs due to see an official report into Downing Street parties that has now triggered a criminal inquiry.

The Metropolitan police commissioner, Cressida Dick, announced on Tuesday that her officers are investigating allegations of law-breaking at the heart of government on the basis of evidence unearthed during an inquiry by the senior civil servant Sue Gray.

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Republicans angry as New York keeps school mask mandate despite ruling

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Governor Kathy Hochul has insisted students and teachers should continue to wear face covering despite a judge’s ruling

Republicans in New York reacted furiously on Tuesday after state officials told school administrators to continue enforcing a mask mandate for students and teachers despite a judge overturning it, causing confusion as some districts rushed to make masks optional.

Lee Zeldin, a US congressman from Long Island, addressed the governor he hopes to replace in November.

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Child Covid infections are rising in England – is low vaccine rate a factor?

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Analysis: school absences are soaring, but experts disagree about the importance of vaccinating young children

Covid cases in the UK have fallen sharply in the past few weeks, and hospital admissions appeared to have turned a corner. But now, it seems, the situation has stalled, with cases bobbing around 90,000 a day.

The reason for the change is that while case rates are falling among adults, they are rising among children – where vaccination rates remain sluggish.

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