Category Archives: Coronavirus

Political support for surveillance of Covid waning in Australia despite ‘waves of mutations’, scientists say

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Active community testing required on an intermittent basis to see ‘the whole iceberg, not just the tip’, Prof Catherine Bennett says

Political momentum for the monitoring and surveillance of Covid-19 is “fading”, the Australian virologist who developed a world-first method for rapidly isolating and characterising variants said.

Prof Stuart Turville, with the University of New South Wales Kirby Institute, said while the impact of Covid-19 in Australia is waning, the Sars CoV-2 virus that causes disease is constantly changing and “there is still a lot we don’t know”.

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Americans at high risk advised to wear masks as new Covid variant detected

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CDC said that scientists discovered a new coronavirus variant, BA 2.86, and that higher-risk individuals should be cautious

As authorities revealed that a new Covid-19 variant has been detected in the US, medical experts are emphasizing that high-risk persons resume masking to prevent potentially deadly infection. Warnings from these physicians come amid an ongoing increase in Covid-19 hospitalizations.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said that scientists have discovered a new coronavirus variant, BA 2.86, during routine monitoring of wastewater. Officials said that this variant’s “large number of mutations” has prompted concerns that it could evade immunity derived from vaccination and prior infections more than other variants.

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North Korea abruptly cancels first post-Covid international commercial flight

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Air Koryo flight from Pyongyang cancelled two hours after its scheduled arrival in Beijing

North Korea’s national airline’s first commercial flight since it largely closed itself off from the world in early 2020 in response to the Covid pandemic has been abruptly cancelled.

Journalists gathered on Monday at Beijing’s Capital international airport to await Air Koryo flight JS151 from Pyongyang, due to arrive at 9.50am.

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Victoria paid EY more than $30m for Covid pandemic health projects

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Public health expert says value of contracts cannot be assessed as they are described using ‘waffle words generated by the obfuscation machine’

The Victorian government paid the consultancy firm EY more than $30m to help manage and deliver key public health projects during the pandemic, including contact tracing and the rollout of tests and vaccines.

Government contracts show the health department paid EY $17.4m for its work on the test-and-trace program, known as Operation Drasi, with EY staff seconded into the department.

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Barbenheimer-style gatherings blamed for Covid rise in Germany

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Events such as filmgoing craze partly blamed as epidemiologists warn country could have a summer wave

German epidemiologists are warning of a summer wave of coronavirus infections, blaming in part mass gatherings such as the Barbenheimer double feature craze.

The government’s disease control agency, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), says that while infections remain low compared with at the height of the pandemic, they have been on the rise for the past month.

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Mary-Louise McLaws, epidemiologist who guided Australia through Covid, dies aged 70 from brain cancer

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Health minister says professor and WHO advisor was ‘an incredibly calm, articulate voice at a time that was very frightening’

Professor Mary-Louise McLaws, the epidemiologist who guided Australians through the Covid-19 pandemic, has died at the age of 70 from brain cancer.

McLaws died in her sleep on Saturday night, her husband Richard Flook said in a statement to the Sydney Morning Herald.

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Cyprus to begin treating island’s sick cats with anti-Covid pills

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Vets receive medication originally meant for people amid virulent feline coronavirus that has killed thousands of cats

Veterinary services in Cyprus have received a first batch of anti-Covid pills, from a stockpile originally meant for humans, as efforts intensify to stop the spread of a virulent strain of feline coronavirus that has killed thousands of cats.

The island’s health ministry began discharging the treatment on 8 August – long celebrated as International Cat Day – in what is hoped will be the beginning of the end of the disease that has struck the Mediterranean country’s feline population.

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Seals practise social distancing, aerial survey of North Sea shows

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Research suggests behaviour may reflect evolutionary response to previous outbreaks of disease

Aerial surveys of the North Sea have revealed that seals practise social distancing – and the discovery may have profound implications for the spread of disease among the marine mammals.

In a paper published today by the Royal Society, researchers conducting censuses of grey and harbour seals detail new evidence that the two species not only maintain distances between their own kind (unlike walruses, for instance, who cluster close together) but also that this behaviour may “reflect an evolutionary response to viral susceptibility”.

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French research centre behind controversial Covid paper found to have used questionable ethics processes

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Institution used concerning approval procedures for hundreds of studies, review says

A major French research centre that produced one of the most widely cited and controversial research papers of the Covid-19 pandemic has been found by an international research team to have used questionable and concerning ethics approval processes across hundreds of studies.

The Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire Méditerranée Infection, or IHU, is a large clinical research centre in the south of France. It was founded by Prof Didier Raoult, who was also director of the centre until August 2022, when he stood down ahead of the release of findings from a government audit that found the institute conducted trials “likely to constitute offences or serious breaches of health or research regulations”.

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New vaccine research centre to help scientists prepare for ‘disease X’

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Facility in Porton Down, Wiltshire will allow vaccines to be developed for future pandemic pathogens

Ministers have opened a new vaccine research centre in the UK where scientists will work on preparing for “disease X”, the next potential pandemic pathogen.

The state-of-the-art Vaccine Development and Evaluation Centre is based at the UK Health and Security Agency’s (UKHSA) Porton Down campus in Wiltshire.

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Anti-vaxxer guilty of harassing Matt Hancock on London tube

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Geza Tarjanyi barged into former health secretary on train while shouting conspiracy theories

An anti-vaccine protester who accused Matt Hancock of murdering people during the coronavirus pandemic has been found guilty of harassment.

The former health secretary feared being pushed down an escalator by Geza Tarjanyi, 62, of Leyland, Lancashire, who shoulder-barged him and “shouted ridiculous conspiracy theories” on two separate occasions on 19 and 24 January.

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Nose-picking healthcare workers more likely to catch Covid, data suggests

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Rhinotillexis may be underestimated cause of transmission between staff, say researchers

Nose-picking should be given greater consideration as a potential health hazard, researchers have said, after finding healthcare workers who engaged in rhinotillexis were more likely to catch Covid than those who refrained.

Scientists in the Netherlands say research has previously found healthcare workers who had direct contact with Covid patients were more likely to catch Covid than those who did not.

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Public health experts excoriate Canada Covid response and call for inquiry

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Country failed to collect and share data, masking issues and inequalities, according to editorial in British Medical Journal

Prominent public health experts have called on Canada to launch an inquiry into its Covid response, arguing that the country’s failure to collect and share data masked issues and inequalities that – if properly addressed early on – could have saved lives.

The call to action came alongside a scathing editorial in the British Medical Journal, titled “The world expected more of Canada”, which argues that Canada’s “overall impression of adequacy” conceals important inequalities.

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US-China cultural exchange at low point after tensions and Covid, data shows

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Tourism, academia and literature all exhibit signs that trend of closer ties has gone into reverse

Cultural ties between the US and China are at a low point after several years of decline, according to Guardian analysis of official figures.

The Covid-19 pandemic and travel restrictions, coupled with the continuing trade war between the two countries, is diluting cultural exchanges, with visitor numbers, students and even the world of literature all affected.

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Minister orders briefing on $33m grant – as it happened

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New Zealand PM to address media shortly

New Zealand’s prime minister Chris Hipkins is set to address media at 10:15am New Zealand time about the shooting in Aukland this morning.

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Judge rejects Trump bid to move hush money case to federal court as legal challenges gather pace – as it happened

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This blog is now closed. You can read the latest news on this story here.

Former Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, who Donald Trump pressured to overturn the 2020 election, has been cooperating with special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the January 6 insurrection, NBC reported.

A spokesperson for Ducey yesterday confirmed that Smith’s team had contacted the former governor. “Yes, he’s been contacted. He’s been responsive, and just as he’s done since the election, he will do the right thing,” they told CNN.

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Salvadoran government accused of doctoring true extent of Covid deaths

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A Salvadoran newspaper reported 15,956 people died from the disease, three times more than President Bukele’s official numbers

Nayib Bukele’s administration in El Salvador has come under fire from rights groups for apparently falsifying Covid-19 figures in an attempt to cover up the true cost of the pandemic.

Two-thirds of the country’s Covid-19 fatalities were left out of official figures in order to give the illusion that the authoritarian government had the pandemic under control, the Salvadoran newspaper La Prensa Gráfica reported on Monday.

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Rural bus services hit new low after losing out on post-Covid funding

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More than a quarter of routes in English county and rural areas have been lost over 10 years

Endangered rural bus services have dwindled to a new low after losing out on funding after the pandemic, analysis for councils has shown.

More than a quarter of routes in county and rural areas of England have been lost in the past decade, with passenger numbers falling sharply.

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Michael Gove claims work for no-deal Brexit made UK ‘match fit’ for pandemic

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Levelling up minister strongly denied work to leave EU hindered readiness for crisis at Covid inquiry

Michael Gove strongly denied planning for a no-deal Brexit weakened pandemic readiness and claimed it actually helped in evidence to the UK Covid-19 public inquiry.

Senior officials in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have previously told the investigation that as scores of civil servants were switched to planning for the UK to crash out of the EU, work to update and develop pandemic plans was sidelined.

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Australia’s drug regulator received two hoax reports of children dying from Covid vaccines

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Exclusive: Therapeutic Goods Administration documents reveal separate reports made in 2022 about two boys, aged six and seven, were false

Australia’s drug regulator received two reports of child deaths after vaccination against Covid-19 that turned out to be hoaxes.

Therapeutic Goods Administration documents on fatal adverse events in children and adolescents after a Covid-19 vaccination published under freedom of information show that a report was made to the body in January 2022 that a seven-year-old boy had died from “an adverse event following immunisation” with an unspecified brand of Covid vaccine.

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