Category Archives: Coronavirus outbreak

UK coronavirus live: R number rises to between 1.2 and 1.5; new restrictions for Cardiff, Swansea and Llanelli

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New infections in UK growing by 4% to 8% every day; measures to come into force in three areas in Wales this weekend; London placed on watchlist

A further 33 people who tested positive for coronavirus have died in hospital in England, bringing the total number of confirmed deaths reported in hospitals to 29,871, NHS England said on Friday.

The patients were aged between 56 and 93 and all except two, aged 84 and 88, had known underlying health conditions.

The mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, has called for financial support from the government for areas under extra restrictions.

At his weekly press conference, he told reporters:

These restrictions in our case have been in place for a number of weeks, getting on for seven to eight now, and they are having an impact on people’s lives but also on people’s jobs and people’s businesses.

There was not any compensatory support for many of those people announced yesterday and I think this is an unacceptable situation.

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NHS sourcing PPE from company repeatedly accused of forced labour

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Exclusive: Gloves from Malaysian company Top Glove found in NHS supply chain despite multiple allegations of worker exploitation

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.

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Cardiff, Swansea and Llanelli face lockdown after coronavirus cases rise in Wales – video

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Swansea and Llanelli are expected to go into lockdown on Saturday, and Cardiff on Sunday, after a spike in coronavirus cases, the Welsh health minister, Vaughan Gething, has announced.

Meetings between extended households, known as ‘bubbles’, will be suspended. Travel will be monitored and can only be for essential reasons

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Young people resume global climate strikes calling for urgent action

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Greta Thunberg leads protests as Covid rules restrict numbers compared with last year

School pupils, youth activists and communities around the world have turned out for a day of climate strikes, intended to underscore the urgency of the climate crisis even in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Social distancing and other Covid-19 control measures dampened the protests, but thousands of activists posted on social media and took to the streets to protest against the lack of climate action from world leaders. Strikes were scheduled in at least 3,500 locations around the globe.

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Scott Morrison to tell United Nations that if Australia finds Covid vaccine ‘we will share it’

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The prime minister warns nations will be severely judged if they try to profit from hoarding a vaccine

Scott Morrison will use a speech to the United Nations general assembly in New York to urge countries to share a Covid-19 vaccine as soon as a successful candidate emerges, characterising such collaboration as a “global and moral responsibility”.

Morrison will use his contribution to the general assembly 75th anniversary general debate, scheduled for Saturday morning Australian time, to revive concerns that some countries might see “short-term advantage or even profit” in hoarding the vaccine rather than sharing it with the world.

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Inside a Welsh ICU during the coronavirus pandemic – photo essay

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Consultant and photographer Nick Mason shares his experience and that of colleagues at the Royal Gwent hospital in Newport, offering a unique perspective documenting the impact of Covid-19 on the NHS frontline

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” TS Eliot, Burnt Norton

Human memory is fickle. Only a few brief months ago, many intensive care units (ICUs) across Britain came close to being overwhelmed by patients with a novel coronavirus, unknown to medicine before January of this year, and causing potentially life-threatening lung disease in up to 20% of those it infects. With the relaxation of the lockdown, however – only possible because it had been so effective – and the good summer weather in which we have been encouraged by Westminster to eat, drink and be merry, we have begun to forget. We have rapidly forgotten the fear and anxiety that rightly held Britain in their grip throughout the spring of 2020, the 40,000 people who died from a single infectious disease within a few brief months and the incalculable suffering caused to their families. We have forgotten that more than 600 health and social care workers died as a result of their work caring for others.

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Outcry as Spanish councillor uses face mask to ‘fake speaking English’

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Valencia councillor criticised after it emerges speech made in perfect English was dubbed

Some have railed against the mandatory use of face masks, attacking them as a muzzle on their civil liberties. Others have civically adopted them without so much as a whimper. And then there are those who have seen the opportunities they present amid the crisis.

Valencia may have lost its bid to become the European Capital of Innovation 2020 – the Belgian city of Leuven claimed the honour – but a councillor from the city in eastern Spain did his hometown proud with a minute-long speech in stunningly fluent English and without the slightest trace of a Spanish accent.

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What lessons can Europe learn from Sweden’s Covid-19 experience?

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Experts say that while contested ‘light touch’ response warrants study each country must find right approach for them

EU governments that locked down are increasingly emulating the one that did not, but experts warn that Sweden’s Covid approach, relying more on voluntary compliance than coercion, will not suit all – and big questions remain over whether it has worked for Sweden.

As infections surge in several European countries, France, which is currently averaging nearly 12,000 cases a day, has ruled out another national lockdown, instead pursuing a strategy the prime minister, Jean Castex, calls “living with the virus” and imposing local measures.

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From garden streets to bike highways: four ideas for post-Covid cities – visualised

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As the pandemic wreaks havoc on existing structures, we look at some visions for post-Covid cities – and how they hold up

There is a huge, looming, unanswerable question that overshadows our cities, like an elephant squatting in the central square. Will a Covid-19 vaccine or herd immunity return us to “normal”, or will we need to redesign our cities to accommodate a world in which close proximity to other people can kill you?

After an anxious summer in the northern hemisphere, during which those of us who were able to safely do so mimicked a kind of normality with limited socialising on patios and in gardens, winter is coming – and it will test the limits of our urban design. Regardless of whether we “solve” this latest coronavirus, humanity now knows how vulnerable we are to pandemics.

Can we mitigate the effects of the next great disease before it happens? And has the colossal disruption to the way we work and travel created a renewed impetus to organise cities in a more sustainable, more pleasant way?

We asked four architecture firms to share their visions of what cities should do, now, to better design everything from offices to streets to transport – and we have analysed each one – to help inoculate our cities against a disease that is proving so difficult to inoculate against in our bodies.

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Global Covid report: Rio cancels Carnival for first time in a century as global deaths near 1m

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Landmark event scrapped as Brazil suffers; EU warns pandemic worse now than in March peak for some; Israel further toughens restrictions

As the number of coronavirus deaths worldwide looked set to pass a million within days, Rio de Janeiro delayed its annual Carnival parade for the first time in a century because of Brazil’s continued vulnerability in the pandemic.

The global death toll passed 980,000 on Friday, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker. With the number of deaths confirmed daily averaging more than 5,000, it looks likely the toll will pass 1 million within days. There are 32m cases worldwide.

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New Zealand is in a ‘shecession’ – so where is the much-needed ‘she-covery’? | Claire Robinson

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Both major parties are pinning their hopes on jobs for the boys to lead the post-coronavirus economic recovery

Some may have heard the terms “shecession” or “pink recession”; words associated with the worldwide trend for pandemic-related job and income losses to affect women more than men. In New Zealand, we saw it in the June quarter unemployment figures. Ninety percent of the 11,000 New Zealanders who had at lost their jobs due to Covid-19 were women.

These statistics were shocking but perhaps not surprising. New Zealand’s early pandemic response was gendered when it came to which industries were, and weren’t, considered “essential”. In the highest alert levels (3 and 4) work in the personal care industries (hairdressers, manicurists, beauticians, domestic cleaners, personal trainers, gymnasiums) – largely done by women – was not allowed. Business owners and workers in these industries were told they could not offer services which involved face-to-face or sustained close personal contact; the risk of Covid transmission was too great.

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Coronavirus live updates Australia: Daniel Andrews to face Victoria hotel quarantine inquiry – latest news

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Victorian premier is the last witness who can shed light on the decision to use private security guards, as border restrictions ease around Australia. Follow live

Peter Dutton then followed up that comment, with this one:

Honestly when we had people who couldn’t go to their dad’s funeral and the same time the Premier was approving people from Hollywood to come in and lay by the pool for two weeks, why wouldn’t we call it out?

It was just unfair and it was unjust. It has now changed.

Peter Dutton was on the Nine Network this morning, talking the Queensland border closures:

I just think we want to work very closely together and we’ve been able to do that, and as the Deputy Commissioner pointed out, the ADF and Queensland Police have had a very longstanding relationship and a necessary one and the ADF personnel are going to provide support at the additional hotels that will be stood up to bring more Australians back from overseas. So that will be a very worthy task for them to be involved in. And already they’ve been involved in providing support to the Queensland Police at hotels where people are quarantining. So I think it was obvious yesterday that Dr Steven Miles, who really just picks a fight every day on this issue, I think back-tracked pretty quickly when he realised what he said was actually factually incorrect. And I think the Premier’s pulled him back into line.

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‘Mr Brexit to Mr U-turn’: German commentators befuddled by Johnson’s zig-zagging

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Media criticise PM’s Covid strategy, as UK adopts job support scheme similar to Germany’s own

The UK followed in the footsteps of the German government by adopting a jobs support scheme on Thursday. The announcement came as German commentators spoke of their confusion at the zig-zag approach to tackling the coronavirus, describing a nation caught up in feelings of panic, disbelief and disillusionment.

“Military intervention to control coronavirus rules a possibility,” ran one banner headline in the business daily Handelsblatt this week, while an editorial in the Süddeutsche Zeitung was titled: “Johnson’s skittishness endangers his country.”

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What’s missing from the chancellor’s new scheme to save jobs?

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Five measures absent from the chancellor’s winter economy plan

Rishi Sunak’s winter economy plan prioritises additional support for “viable” jobs. However, critics have warned that other measures are still needed to help people who have already lost their jobs or will lose them despite the new government scheme.

Here are five measures that could help keep workers in jobs, but were missing from the chancellor’s winter economy plan:

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Coronavirus continuing to mutate, study finds, as US cases rise

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Experts believe virus is probably becoming more contagious but US study did not find mutations made it more lethal

The Covid-19 virus is continuing to mutate throughout the course of the pandemic, with experts believing it is probably becoming more contagious, as coronavirus cases in the US have started to rise once again, according to new research.

The new US study analyzed 5,000 genetic sequences of the virus, which has continued to mutate as it has spread through the population. The study did not find that mutations of the virus have made it more lethal or changed its effects, even as it may be becoming easier to catch, according to a report in the Washington Post, which noted that public health experts acknowledge all viruses have mutations, most of which are insignificant.

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Sniffer dogs used to detect coronavirus in Helsinki airport as part of trial – video

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Sniffer dogs have started to be deployed at Helsinki airport to detect Covid-19 among travellers, in a state-funded trial that it is hoped will provide a cheap, fast and effective alternative method of testing people for the virus.

A dog is capable of detecting the presence of the coronavirus within 10 seconds and the entire process takes less than a minute to complete, according to Anna Hielm-Björkman, of the University of Helsinki, who is overseeing the trial

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Italian president rebuts Johnson’s ‘freedom’ remarks over restrictions

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Pushback comes after PM’s suggestion UK’s Covid-19 infection rate was worse than Italy because Britons loved their freedom more

Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, said its citizens “also love freedom, but we also care about seriousness”, responding to Boris Johnson’s suggestion that the UK’s rate of coronavirus infection was worse than both Italy and Germany’s because Britons loved their freedom more.

Mattarella’s comments came at the end of a ceremony in Sardinia, in memory of the former Italian president Francesco Cossiga.

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‘Close to 100% accuracy’: Helsinki airport uses sniffer dogs to detect Covid

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Researchers running Helsinki pilot scheme say dogs can identify virus in seconds

Four Covid-19 sniffer dogs have begun work at Helsinki airport in a state-funded pilot scheme that Finnish researchers hope will provide a cheap, fast and effective alternative method of testing people for the virus.

A dog is capable of detecting the presence of the coronavirus within 10 seconds and the entire process takes less than a minute to complete, according to Anna Hielm-Björkman of the University of Helsinki, who is overseeing the trial.

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Jerusalema: dance craze brings hope from Africa to the world amid Covid

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South African music track and dance steps created in Angola have caught the imagination of politicians, priests and millions more

A song from South Africa that has gone around the world and been endorsed by presidents and priests has become the sound of the pandemic for millions across southern Africa.

Last week the Jerusalema dance challenge was endorsed by President Cyril Ramaphosa ahead of the country’s plan to open up to tourism on 1 October.

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Female voices ‘drowned out’ in reporting on Covid-19, report finds

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Analysis of stories across six countries including UK found fewer than a fifth of experts quoted on the pandemic were women

Women’s voices have been “worryingly marginalised” in reporting of the coronavirus, partly due to the war-like framing of the pandemic, according to a report analysing stories across six countries.

Each woman’s voice in news coverage of the crisis is “drowned out” by at least three men, it said.

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