Category Archives: Coronavirus

Is Europe’s Covid wave coming here – or is Britain ahead of the curve?

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Analysis: many experts believe that the continent is only now tackling a Delta variant surge that arrived in the UK some time ago

Once again the UK and Europe are heading in opposite directions. While Covid-19 cases in Britain have been declining, those in France, Germany, Austria and several other countries have risen dramatically in recent weeks. A fourth pandemic wave threatens to break over these nations, raising the prospect of renewed lockdowns there.

This raises a critically important question: is the UK likely to follow suit in a few weeks, or will Europe’s rising numbers peak and start to decline, as they have been doing in Britain? Will Europe follow us or will we follow Europe?

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Covid live: Netherlands to return to partial lockdown from Saturday – as it happened

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Dutch restaurants and shops ordered to close early and spectators barred from major sporting events; Boris Johnson urges Britons to get booster

In the Netherlands, the caretaker prime minister Mark Rutte’s cabinet will take a final decision on new Covid restrictions during a meeting today, and he will announce the measures during a televised news conference scheduled for 1800 GMT.

It is expected that bars and restaurants will be ordered to close early, and sporting events will be held without audiences under a three-week partial lockdown.

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Netherlands imposes lockdown measures as Covid cases hit new high

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PM Mark Rutte announces first partial lockdown by a western European country since the summer

The Netherlands will become the first western European country to impose a partial lockdown since the summer, introducing strict new measures from Saturday in the face of record numbers of new Covid-19 infections.

The restrictions, announced by the prime minister, Mark Rutte, on Friday, will last at least three weeks and include the closure of bars, restaurants and essential shops from 8pm, with non-essential retail and services such as hairdressers to close at 6pm.

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Boris Johnson urges people to get Covid boosters as he warns of ‘storm clouds’

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PM expresses concern over worsening situation in continental Europe, saying: ‘We’ve been here before’

Elderly and vulnerable people must get their booster jabs if a rise in Covid cases in the UK is to be prevented, the prime minister has said, as he warned of “storm clouds” forming over parts of Europe.

Germany, Austria, Slovakia and Croatia are among countries that have recently seen a surge in Covid cases, with the former recording its highest coronavirus case numbers since the start of the pandemic.

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Italian ski resorts get ready to open after two seasons lost to Covid

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Operators greet reopening with cautious optimism with bookings coming in mainly from Italy

Enrico Rossi was among the protesters in Bardonecchia when the Italian government decided in February to maintain a Covid shutdown on ski resorts just hours before the slopes were due to reopen.

Rossi described the loss of the ski season as a tragedy for the small town and others in the Susa Valley, Piedmont, especially after the 2020 season had also been cut short.

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Australia news live update: net zero modelling released; Morrison comments on Aukus fallout

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Federal government releases net zero modelling; Scott Morrison says ‘of course the French are upset’; Australia passes 90% first dose Covid vaccination milestone; Victoria records 1,115 cases and nine deaths; NSW records 286 cases and two deaths; state funeral for Bert Newton. Follow all the day’s news

Accused drug smuggler Mostafa Baluch is due to appear before NSW court today after he was recaptured, extradited from the Gold Coast and slapped with an additional outstanding arrest warrant charge.

It’s alleged that Baluch is the financier behind a 900kg shipment of cocaine into Australia, and was on the run for nearly two weeks after allegedly cutting off his ankle monitor.

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Austria province to place millions of unvaccinated people in Covid lockdown

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Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg says: ‘I don’t see why two-thirds should lose their freedom because one-third is dithering’

Austria is set to place millions of people not fully vaccinated against Covid-19 in lockdown in a matter of days as infections soar to record highs and intensive care units face an increasing strain.

The country’s worst-affected province of Upper Austria plans to introduce a lockdown for the unvaccinated from Monday next week following recommendations from medical experts.

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Fearful of overwhelmed morgues and battling lockdown protests, New Zealand faces up to Covid peak

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The country that kept the virus out for so long is now coming to terms with endemic Covid

Fears of overwhelmed morgues, record Covid cases, anti-lockdown protests – the headlines this week in New Zealand might evoke deja-vu for anyone who lived through the pandemic in Europe, Asia or America.

New Zealand has recently generated a series of news stories that could have been a year-old dispatch from the opposite side of the globe. National radio announced that hospitals had been buying portable refrigerators to prepare for the possibility of growing Covid deaths. In the capital, Wellington, a crowd of thousands of “pro-freedom” anti-vaccination protesters gathered in front of parliament – one of the first organised, medium-scale expressions of dissatisfaction from a country that had held on to extraordinarily high levels of social support for its Covid response.

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Scholz pushes new measures to tackle Germany’s rising Covid cases

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Chancellor-in-waiting sticks with plan to lift nationwide state of emergency

Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting Olaf Scholz has pushed ahead with a plan to phase out a state of national emergency by the end of the month, despite the country recording the highest coronavirus case numbers since the start of the pandemic.

“The virus is still here and threatening the health of our citizens,” Scholz said in a parliamentary debate on Thursday, as he called on MPs to support a catalogue of new measures to curb the spread of Covid that would replace the state of emergency. “Therefore it is very, very important that we take all measures to ensure we can protect their health.”

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Covid live: Germany reports record 50,000 new cases; Dutch experts recommend lockdown amid record cases

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Robert Koch Institute records 50,196 new cases of coronavirus in Germany; Netherlands would have western Europe’s first lockdown since the summer

Vic Rayner, chief executive of the National Care Forum, said there was a “human cost” to the UK government’s mandatory jab policy for care home staff, which became effective from today.

PA Media quotes Rayner on BBC Breakfast saying that about 8% of staff are leaving their jobs, on top of those who have already quit the sector since the policy was announced.

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Morgues fill up in Romania and Bulgaria amid low Covid vaccine uptake

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Lack of confidence in government contributing to double-vaccination rates of just 34% and 22%

Romania and Bulgaria are recording the EU’s highest daily death rates from Covid-19, after superstition, misinformation and entrenched mistrust in governments and institutions combined to leave them the least vaccinated countries in the bloc.

“A village is vanishing every day in Romania,” Catalin Cirstoiu, the head of the Bucharest university emergency hospital, where the morgue is filled to overflowing with coronavirus victims, lamented this week. “What about in a week or a month? A larger village? Or a city? Where do we stop?”

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As Covid recedes in US a new worry emerges: wildlife passing on the virus

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New study shows that deer can catch the virus from people and give it to other deer in overwhelming numbers

As America’s pandemic – for now – seems to be moving into a new phase with national rates in decline from the September peak and vaccines rolling out to children, a new worry has appeared on the horizon: wildlife passing on the virus.

A new study shows that deer can catch the coronavirus from people and give it to other deer in overwhelming numbers, the first evidence of animals transmitting the virus in the wild. Similar spillover and transmission could be occurring in certain animal populations around the world, with troubling implications for eradicating the virus and potentially even for the emergence of new variants.

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Chakras, crystals and conspiracy theories: how the wellness industry turned its back on Covid science

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Its gurus increasingly promote vaccine scepticism, conspiracy theories and the myth that ill people have themselves to blame. How did self-care turn so nasty?

Ozlem Demirboga Carr is not really into all that woo‑woo stuff. “I’m definitely a full-science kind of person,” says the 41-year-old telecoms worker from Reading. She doesn’t believe in crystals, affirmations or salt lamps. But she did find herself unusually anxious during the UK’s Covid lockdown in March 2020 and, like many people, decided to practise yoga as a way to de-stress.

“I tried to be open-minded and I was open to advice on trying to improve my wellbeing and mental health,” she says. So she followed a range of social media accounts, including the “somatic therapist and biz coach” Phoebe Greenacre, known for her yoga videos, and the “women’s empowerment and spiritual mentor” Kelly Vittengl. The Instagram algorithm did its work. “I suddenly found myself following so many wellness accounts,” she says.

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Joy, toys and bumper cars as Manila’s children reclaim the city

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Malls, restaurants and arcades in the Philippines capital are packed with children as Covid curbs ease

Ten-year-old Gabriel Estrella beams as he talks about T-shirts he bought on his first day out at a shopping mall after nearly two years of staying away due to coronavirus restrictions in the Philippines.

“Before the pandemic, buying T-shirts used to be boring,” he said, sweaty after playing with his eight-year-old sister. “Now, it’s exciting! I bought four shirts. They’re anime shirts.

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Australia news live update: NSW braces for widespread flooding; Victoria Covid cases still high; Morrison defends EV policy amid backlash

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Victoria records 1,313 new Covid-19 cases and four deaths; NSW records 261 cases and one death; NSW bracing for widespread flooding; man dies in police custody in Melbourne; PM continues to lash out at Labor as he responds to questions about his government’s stance on EVs – follow all the day’s news

A man has died in custody at a police station in Melbourne’s west, AAP reports.

Police say the 43-year-old Sunshine man was arrested on Tuesday and remanded to appear in court on Thursday.

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Ten Republican-led states sue over vaccine mandate for healthcare workers

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Lawsuit follows similar ones challenging new Biden administration rules for federal contractors and large businesses

A coalition of 10 states sued the federal government on Wednesday to try to block a Covid-19 vaccine requirement for healthcare workers, marking a new front in the resistance by Republican-led states to the pandemic policies of President Joe Biden’s administration.

The lawsuit filed in a federal court in Missouri contends that the vaccine requirement threatens the jobs of millions of healthcare workers and could “exacerbate an alarming shortage” in healthcare fields, particularly in rural areas where some health workers have been hesitant to get the shots.

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Israel to hold world’s first drill to test readiness for new Covid variant

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War games exercise will help prepare for the possible emergence of a lethal ‘Omega’ variant

Israel is to conduct the world’s first national Covid drill to test the country’s readiness for an outbreak of a new and lethal variant of the virus.

The drill, scheduled for Thursday, will take the format of a war games exercise and will be led by the prime minister, Naftali Bennett.

Restrictions on gatherings and movement, quarantine policy, lockdowns, curfews and tourism.

Oversight and warnings issued during the development of a new and dangerous variant, testing vaccine protection, epidemiological investigations, hospital capacity and the carrying out of mass-testing and vaccination programmes.

The legality of local or regional lockdowns and curfews, and other restrictions.

Economic support for the population.

Public security in enforcing quarantine, lockdowns and curfews.

Closing schools in outbreak centres, reducing class sizes and remote learning.

Departure and arrival policy at borders including Ben Gurion airport.

Informing the public and responding to “discourse on the internet”.

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People testing negative for Covid-19 despite exposure may have ‘immune memory’

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Study says some individuals clear virus rapidly due to a strong immune response from existing T-cells, meaning tests record negative result

We all know that person who, despite their entire household catching Covid-19, has never tested positive for the disease. Now scientists have found an explanation, showing that a proportion of people experience “abortive infection” in which the virus enters the body but is cleared by the immune system’s T-cells at the earliest stage meaning that PCR and antibody tests record a negative result.

About 15% of healthcare workers who were tracked during the first wave of the pandemic in London, England, appeared to fit this scenario.

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German Christmas markets face second year of closures as Covid rates soar

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Many markets have already announced they will not be going ahead amid record case numbers

Soaring coronavirus rates in Germany are threatening plans for a rollout of the country’s famous Christmas markets, due to open in about a week’s time.

There had been considerable fanfare over municipalities’ plans to stage the markets this year after they were called off a year ago.

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Nine in 10 university students in England have had at least one Covid jab

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More than 90% also say they would test if they had symptoms, but poll finds mental health has deteriorated

Far from being irresponsible Covid spreaders, the vast majority of students at English universities have been vaccinated at least once and would request a test if they had symptoms, according to a survey.

Students’ wellbeing has suffered this autumn, however, with a third of those surveyed reporting that their mental health had deteriorated since the start of term, the report by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) says.

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