Category Archives: Coronavirus

Covid live news: official cases in Africa pass 10m; UK minister says cutting self-isolation would be ‘helpful’

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South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, Ethiopia and Libya among countries hardest hit; Nadhim Zahawi says he supports reducing isolation to five days

More on the Philippines, after the country set a record for new 28,707 Covid infections for a second consecutive day.

A senior government official confirmed an increase in hospital beds and medical resources in and around the capital Manila have been ordered, Reuters reports.

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Nadhim Zahawi denies there is plan to end free lateral flow Covid tests

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Education secretary ‘puzzled’ by reports government will start charging for tests in England in few weeks

Ministers are “absolutely not” planning to scrap free rapid Covid tests, amid reports the government will start charging for them in England in the next few weeks.

The Sunday Times reported free lateral flow tests (LFTs) could be limited to high-risk settings – such as care homes, hospitals and schools – and to people with symptoms.

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Coronavirus: should the UK make vaccination mandatory?

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With more countries ready to oblige citizens to receive the Covid jab, what are the key questions in the debate?

In Italy, it is now obligatory for people aged 50 or over to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Greece is pondering a similar move. In France, which has seen record numbers of positive cases, President Emmanuel Macron has also announced that he wants to “piss off” the unvaccinated, while Austria is contemplating a law to make the vaccine mandatory for all its citizens. By contrast, in the UK, Boris Johnson has confined himself to accusing anti-vaxxers of talking “mumbo-jumbo”.

But is that enough? Should the UK take a harder line on those who refuse to be vaccinated? After all, this is a virus that threatens to overwhelm the NHS. As doctors continue to point out, hospital beds are now filling up with more and more seriously ill Covid patients, many of whom are unvaccinated. So, should vaccines against Covid be made mandatory, not just in certain workplace settings but for all individuals?

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Omicron drives Covid surge but New York a long way from pandemic’s early days

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America’s biggest city is seeing another winter spike, but with good vaccines and a new message many residents say this wave feels different

In the spring of 2020, Hart Island, a mile from City Island in the Bronx, was a focal point of grief in New York. It was here, at the city’s public cemetery or potter’s field, the final resting place of more than a million people, that officials ordered trenches dug to accommodate those the coronavirus was expected to kill.

The trenches were never filled. Many bodies were returned to funeral parlors or stored in mobile freezers on Randall’s Island, better known for music festivals and the Frieze art fair than cold storage of corpses.

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Chinese city of Tianjin to test 14 million people after Covid outbreak

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The port near Beijing began mass testing after 20 children and adults tested positive, including at least two with Omicron

Tianjin, a major Chinese port city near the capital Beijing, has begun mass-testing its 14 million residents after a cluster of 20 children and adults tested positive for Covid-19, including at least two with the Omicron variant.

Those infected include 15 students aged between eight and 13, a staff member at an after-school centre and four parents. The citywide testing, begun on Sunday, is to be completed over two days.

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More than 99,000 new cases nationwide on NSW’s deadliest day of pandemic

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NSW records 30,062 new Covid cases and 16 deaths; Victoria reports 44,155 cases and four deaths; Queensland records 18,000 cases, South Australia 4,506 cases and one death, Tasmania 1,406 cases, ACT 1,039, NT 481 and WA one. This blog is now closed

The health minister, Greg Hunt, has been asked about Novak Djokovic’s court case.

Hunt declined to comment, citing the fact the matter is before the court but did reveal that two other people connected with the Australian Open tournament have left Australia after their visas were cancelled.

In relation to Novak Djokovic, as this is now a matter before the courts, I will respectfully leave any commentary until after it has been heard by the court and my understanding is that there is a hearing tomorrow.

My other advice from border force is that their assessment of any visas relating to the Australian Open has now been completed and two other individuals have now voluntarily left the country – as is the case with an individual who has their visa cancelled is entitled to leave the country at any time, even while they are going through a court proceeding but that is a matter for them. Beyond that, the advice is that there is an ongoing court case so we respectfully are not making any additional comment.

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Covid live: ‘concerning’ rates of Omicron in northern England; two linked to Australian Open leave country

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Latest developments as Philippines reports record 26,458 cases and scientist says Omicron variant could become endemic in UK

The north-east and north-west of England are seeing “concerning” rates of the Omicron variant, an expert has said.

Figures showed that three of the five UK areas with the biggest week-on-week rises in Covid case rates are Middlesbrough (748.8 to 2,651.4), Copeland (1,731.3 to 3,525.8) and Redcar & Cleveland (846.8 to 2,564.3).

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Novak Djokovic relied on December Covid infection for Australian vaccine exemption, court documents reveal

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Tennis star accuses Australian government officials of unfairly pressuring him to accept visa cancellation, documents show

Novak Djokovic relied on a weeks-old Covid infection to justify his vaccine-free travel to Australia and was given a green light by the federal government just days before arriving in the country, court documents reveal.

Court documents associated with Djokovic’s challenge to his visa cancellation were published by the federal circuit court late Saturday, ahead of an urgent hearing on Monday.

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Requiring PCR tests for isolation funds may fail legal test, UK officials told

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Legal advice says any challenge under equalities law would have reasonable chance of success

Government lawyers have said any legal challenge against making low-paid people take confirmatory PCR tests to get financial support during isolation would stand a high chance of success, the Guardian has learned.

Legal advice circulated within the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) is understood to warn that there is a risk of a challenge under equalities law.

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Australia records more than 100,000 cases nationally – as it happened

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Country records over 116,000 cases as Victoria surpasses NSW with 51,356 cases including rapid test results; Nick Kyrgios says Djokovic treatment ‘not really humane’; Queensland grapples with flood emergency. This blog is now closed

Labor MP Andrew Giles has announced he has tested positive for Covid-19.

We have collected stories from readers on what it is like trying to get tested this week.

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As a scientist commenting on Covid I’ve attracted a lot of haters – I won’t let them silence me | Siouxsie Wiles

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The people who harass me are executives and electricians; ordinary people. They can’t imagine I’m simply motivated by wanting to save lives

On Christmas Eve I received an email to let me know I’d been added to the “accused” list on a website called Nuremberg NZ. “Kind regards”, ended the sender. Those behind Nuremberg NZ want people like me to have “thier (sic) day of reckoning” in a similar way to how Nazi war criminals were tried after the second world war. According to the website, my crimes are “misleading the public” and “supporting a government to perform medical experiment (sic) on it’s (sic) citizens”. Nuremberg NZ gives people the opportunity to leave a comment about each accused and to vote on whether they should be listed. User bennyman88 comments with one word, “Murderer”, and votes “agree”.

Great Barrier Island is about 90 kilometres off the coast of New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland. Completely off-grid, the island is home to about 1,000 people and boasts calm bays and surf beaches as well as a dark sky sanctuary, natural hot springs, and native forests. In 2015, island local Gendie Somerville-Ryan started the ‘No Barriers: Small Island Big Ideas’ event series based on the BBC programme Big Ideas. The first event’s theme was pandemics and brought together a virologist, a young adult fiction writer, a sociologist, and a representative from Civil Defence to discuss how the island’s residents should behave if a pandemic was sweeping the world, killing all in its wake.

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Biden addresses pandemic: ‘We’re going to be able to control this’ – live

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There’s been a lot of back-and-forth about the efficacy of the Covid-19 vaccine – which, reminder, while everybody here is highly educated in law, nobody is an epidemiologist – and Justice Elena Kagan went hard at Ohio solicitor general Ben Flowers.

“You said we understand that 18- to 29-year-olds, even though they’re not going to die or end up with very serious injuries, they can spread. You don’t doubt that, that they can spread to other people who are more vulnerable?” Kagan asked Flowers.

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The rise of lateral flow tests: are these ‘heroes’ of the pandemic here to stay?

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After missteps and controversy, the quick and easy tests are well on way to becoming part of daily life

Once obscure diagnostic devices, lateral flow tests have had a rocky path to mainstream use, but some experts now view their rise to ubiquity as a “heroic” step in the fight against Covid-19 and say they could be here to stay.

As the first wave of Covid crashed down in early 2020 and governments scrambled to secure PPE, ventilators and reagents for laboratory testing, behind the scenes some had already foreseen a role for the pregnancy test-style kits.

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England ‘global outlier’ in terms of Covid policy, says Welsh first minister – video

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Mark Drakeford said the Welsh government was capable and determined to act to protect its population from coronavirus.

He said that in England the government was 'politically paralysed' and that Boris Johnson was unable to secure an agreement among his MPs to take actions that would keep the population safe


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Dozens of Hong Kong officials in Covid quarantine after birthday party

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Chief executive expresses ‘deep disappointment’ that bureaucrats ignored government advice

Dozens of senior officials and legislators in Hong Kong have been sent into a 21-day quarantine after they attended a birthday party despite the government’s own pandemic warning.

The embarrassing incident came as the city’s new “patriots only” legislature is scheduled to hold its first meeting next week. Concerns had been raised in recent weeks after a number of Omicron cases were identified in Hong Kong. Health officials say they cannot rule out hidden clusters in the community.

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Japan attempts to stem surge in Covid cases linked to US military bases

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Limits on restaurant opening times imposed in Okinawa and parts of Hiroshima and Yamaguchi

Japan is to introduce limits on bar and restaurant opening times in three areas in an attempt to stem a surge in coronavirus cases that has been linked to US military bases.

The measures – officially described as a quasi-state of emergency – will go into effect from Sunday until the end of the month in Okinawa, home to more than half of the US service personnel based in Japan, and parts of the western prefectures of Hiroshima and Yamaguchi, which also host American troops.

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New Zealand’s successful Covid policies hid inequality – the government can’t ignore it this year | Morgan Godfery

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In 2022 Jacinda Ardern must act on runaway house prices while the central bank should grab inflation by the neck

March 2020 seems like an age ago. And also like it was yesterday. The month begun more or less like any other March in New Zealand. The weather was typically warm and dry, most people were back in the office or on site, and parliament was sitting after its generous summer recess. In most respects you could mistake March 2020 for March 2019. Except, on 4 March, the country recorded its second coronavirus case after a woman returning from northern Italy, where this strange virus had taken hold, presented with the infection at the border. The number of infections increased again and again as the month unfolded with 647 come 1 April.

In the early days of March, government advisers and prime minister Jacinda Ardern were aiming, like the rest of the world, for either “herd immunity” or “flattening the curve”. But when the government’s chief science adviser presented advice on precisely what this meant for the health system – a quick collapse, essentially – Ardern went for the approach her advisers at the universities of Otago and Auckland were advocating: elimination. On 25 March the prime minister made her way to parliament’s debating chamber and in a historic speech announced a national state of emergency and a move to an alert level 4 lockdown. The speech helped generate unprecedented national solidarity.

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Mass cancellation of children’s vaccinations in NSW blamed on ‘technical glitch’

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State health department apologises while commonwealth also in firing line over delayed delivery of doses to GP clinics

A “technical glitch” has forced the mass cancellation of children’s vaccinations at two vaccine hubs in New South Wales, prompting an apology from the state government, while commonwealth delays of Pfizer doses to general practitioners have caused chaos at a number of clinics.

The rollout of the vaccine to children aged five to 11 is due to start on Monday but is facing early problems including low dose allocations for vaccine providers, a reduced health workforce due to Covid cases, booking problems, and delivery issues.

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Covid live: Germany toughens restrictions for bars and restaurants; Austrian chancellor tests positive

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Germany also cuts isolation period for boosted people after a Covid contact; Karl Nehammer tests positive after contact with member of security team

Argentina reported a record number of Covid-19 cases on Thursday for a third day in a row at nearly 110,000, Reuters reports, as the highly infectious Omicron variant drives a third pandemic wave in the South American nation.

The record tally of 109,608 in the middle of the southern hemisphere summer holiday season with tourist centres full of travellers, has not translated into a similar exponential rise in Covid-related deaths, which totalled 40, the government said.

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Philippines’ Duterte orders arrest of unvaccinated people who violate stay-at-home orders

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President ‘appalled’ at the large numbers of Filipinos not vaccinated ‘galloping in our community’

The Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, has ordered the arrest of unvaccinated people who violate stay-at-home orders aimed at curbing “galloping” coronavirus infections driven by the Omicron variant.

The government tightened restrictions in Manila and several provinces and cities this week. Unvaccinated people among the capital’s 13 million people were ordered to stay home, after infection numbers tripled in the last two days.

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