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One of the government’s scientific advisers has said repeated “mini lockdowns” could be effective as a tool to bring Covid-19 cases under control.
The suggestion from Professor John Edmunds, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), comes amid growing evidence the virus’s prevalence is growing among older, more vulnerable people.
Britain has reached a Covid crossroads – and its leaders are being pressed to pick one of two stark options. Are they going to return to the lockdown days that brought life to a standstill six months ago, but succeeded in halting the rapid spread of the disease? Or are they going to turn their backs on “an authoritarian nightmare” that is preventing the nation from getting on with “the business of living”?
This is the basic division that has emerged over the summer in an increasingly heated debate between two unlikely groupings of scientists, columnists, campaigners and politicians.
Almost half of British companies have warned that their Brexit preparations have been hit by the pandemic, as business leaders demanded a last-minute compromise to reach a trade deal and avert chaos at the border.
A Key West team is expected to enforce a new mandate allowing people to go maskless outdoors if they are 6ft apart – an impossible task among partygoers
Key West code enforcement officer Paul Navarro was halfway through his shift and beginning to see signs of trouble. The crowds on lower Duval Street swelled just after 9pm, and social distancing quickly became impossible on the sidewalks.
Navarro is the last line of defense against the high-risk behaviors which spread Covid-19 and is one of the principal enforcers of the Florida city’s mask mandate – an effort to protect public health and the local economy. Until 16 September part of that balancing act had included a strict mask mandate, now that rule has been loosened.
For many, one of the silver linings of lockdown was the shift to remote working: a chance to avoid the crushing commute, supermarket meal deals and an overbearing boss breathing down your neck.
But as the Covid crisis continues, and more and more employers postpone or cancel plans for a return to the office, some managers are deploying increasing levels of surveillance in an attempt to recreate the oversight of the office at home.
Coronavirus cases in Colombia, which is nearly a month into a national reopening after a long quarantine, have passed 800,000, while in Argentina infections passed 700,000, as the pandemic continues to grip the Americas.
Colombia has 806,038 confirmed cases of the virus, the health ministry said on Saturday, with 25,296 reported deaths. Active cases numbered 78,956.
Hundreds of frontline and community heroes who played a key role in the coronavirus pandemic response will be recognised in the Queen’s birthday honours next month, Boris Johnson has said.
The prime minister praised the “dedication, courage and compassion” shown by the recipients, whose contributions to national life will be honoured, alongside people recognised for a broad range of achievements, on 10 October.
We have a sense of what it means to live in disturbing times, to live under threat. We should not forget the many people who have known this all their lives
This is part of a series of essays by Australian writers responding to the challenges of 2020
One fine untroubled morning in 2019 I was out walking in Potts Point, on my way to see my eldest brother. He lived in a room here when I was 21 and he was 26. In those days, Potts Point was unconventional and impoverished, home to people who minded their own business, which was largely conducted at night.
His room was narrow, with a bed and a wardrobe housing a few shirts on wire hangers. A window opened on to a wall. There was a bathroom on the same floor. I could stay there when he was away; I could borrow a shirt. When he wasn’t away I stayed in a friend’s apartment on New South Head Road and walked to Potts Point to visit him. At the time, I was writing a thesis on the fiction of Samuel Beckett. As I wrote I grew more and more uneasy about the loss of this thesis, and I began to carry my work with me in a small suitcase for safekeeping. With my suitcase and my plain man’s shirt I wasn’t of much interest to the people on the street. I kept writing. The suitcase became heavier and heavier, for it now contained books and all my drafts. I carried it to my brother’s concerts. We began to share this burden, as we walked about the city. Once he stopped and put it down, flexing his fingers. “You do realise I make my living with my hands,” he said, before he picked it up again.
Disadvantaged areas already ravaged by the virus will be devastated when government subsidies are cut
If the slogan of 2020 is “We’re all in this together”, perhaps it should come with an asterisk: *except for those with less, who are hurting more.
Covid-19 hasn’t torn through Australia as it has the United States, Brazil, India and much of Europe, but the economic impact has exposed gaping inequities in almost every facet of our lives.
Boris Johnson is facing a massive parliamentary revolt over the way he is imposing Covid-19 restrictions on the British people without first consulting MPs – amid new signs that confidence in his leadership is collapsing in the Conservative party and across the country.
An extraordinary cross-party backlash against Johnson’s “rule by diktat” from Downing Street was taking shape on Saturday – ahead of a key vote on Wednesday – as a new poll by Opinium for the Observer showed Labour has overtaken the Tories for the first time since Keir Starmer became leader in April.
Keir Starmer ahead by four points on who would be better prime minister, as underlying figures suggest government failings in pandemic to blame for reversal
Labour has recorded its first poll lead since Boris Johnson became prime minister, marking an extraordinary changes in fortunes for the two main parties.
Keir Starmer’s party now has a three-point lead over the Conservatives, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer. In a result that will stir more unrest among Tory MPs over the performance of the prime minister, the poll put Labour on 42% support, with the Conservatives on 39%.
The right fails to recognise that the Swedes’ real virtue in this pandemic is their social cohesion
Sweden is to the 21st-century right what the Soviet Union was to the 20th-century left. Conservatives have transformed it into a Tory Disneyland where every dream comes true. On the shores of the Baltic lies a country that has no need to curtail civil liberties and wreck the economy to curb Covid-19. “I have a dream, a fantasy,” sang Abba. “To help me through reality.” For much of the right, that fantasy is called Sweden.
Let the leader of the Conservative backbenchers stand for the Tory press and innumerable ideologues inside and outside Westminster. Sir Graham Brady ruined a perfectly good argument that parliament must have the power to scrutinise Johnson’s emergency decrees by announcing that there was no emergency. We could look to a country that merely had a ban on gatherings of more than 50, restrictions on visiting care homes, a shift to table-only service in bars and see that “Sweden today is in a better place than the United Kingdom”. Or as the Sun explained on Thursday as Boris Johnson met Anders Tegnell, the Swedish public health “mastermind”, a do-little strategy has spared Sweden a second wave of Covid-19 infections.
Demonstrators gathered in Trafalgar Square in central London to protest against the government's recently toughened Covid-19 restrictions. Protesters waved placards and flouted government guidelines on social distancing, opting not to wear masks. The police moved in and attempted to disperse them
The UK’s daily coronavirus death toll will rise from 34 to 100 a day in three to four weeks’ time, an expert on the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) has warned.
Infectious disease modelling expert Prof Graham Medley said there is little that can be done now to prevent daily deaths climbing to 100 – but “we need to make sure transmission comes down now” to prevent the figure increasing further.
Coronavirus cases in Colombia, which is nearly a month into a national reopening after a long quarantine, surpassed 800,000 on Saturday, a day after deaths from Covid-19 climbed above 25,000.
The country has 806,038 confirmed cases of the virus according to the health ministry, with 25,296 reported deaths. Active cases number 78,956.
Queen Elizabeth II will recognise the work of hundreds of doctors, nurses, fundraisers and volunteers during the pandemic when the her annual birthday honours list is published next month.
The list, which was due to be published in June, was postponed in order to add nominations for people playing key roles in the early months of the outbreak. It will be released on 10 October.
We all have to play our part, but the dedication, courage and compassion seen from these recipients, be it responding on the frontline or out in their communities providing support to the most vulnerable, is an inspiration to us all.
We owe them a debt of gratitude and the 2020 Queen’s Birthday honours will be the first of many occasions where we can thank them as a nation.
The prime ministers of France and the Netherlands have issued stark warnings about their coronavirus figures, while in Spain, the western European country hardest hit by the virus, Madrid authorities have rejected the central government’s call for a lockdown across the capital.
Santé Publique France, the French public health authority, tallied 15,797 new confirmed cases on Friday, just shy of a daily record of 16,096 set on Thursday.
From overcrowded lecture halls in France to a ban on sleepovers in Ireland, special coronavirus apps in the UK, snitching on dorm parties in the US and shuttered campus gates in India, students face a range of experiences when – or if – universities reopen.
Authorities around the world have introduced different measures to try to balance the needs of third-level education with those of public health amid an autumnal surge in Covid-19 infections. Students will encounter new rules, tensions and scrutiny in response to fears that universities and colleges will open the pandemic’s floodgates.
It is the question scientists around the world are trying to answer: how long can the coronavirus survive in the tiny aerosol particles we exhale? In a high-security lab near Bristol, entered through a series of airlock doors, scientists may be weeks from finding out.
On Monday, they will start launching tiny droplets of live Sars-CoV-2 and levitating them between two electric rings to test how long the airborne virus remains infectious under different environmental conditions.
The UK government has been continuing to source medical gloves used as PPE by frontline healthcare workers from a manufacturer in Malaysia repeatedly accused of forcing its workers to endure “slave-like conditions” in its factories, the Guardian can reveal.
Top Glove, the world’s biggest producer of rubber medical gloves, has faced multiple allegations of exploitation from migrant workers mostly from Bangladesh and Nepal.