Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
China’s leader Xi Jinping has visited Wuhan for the first time since the coronavirus outbreak began, a signal that the nation’s leadership believes its fight against the epidemic has been largely won.
According to the official state news agency Xinhua, Xi landed in Wuhan on Tuesday where he planned to “visit and express his regards” for frontline medical workers, military, community staff, local party officials, as well as patients and residents.
Italy has extended its emergency coronavirus measures to the entire country. All movement across the country will be restricted to ‘reasons of work, reasons of necessity or health reasons’, says Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. Italy is the worst-hit country after China with more than 460 deaths. Additionally, six people died during riots across Italy’s prison system which were sparked as probation and visitation rights were restricted.
The director general of the World Health Organization has said the threat of a Covid-19 pandemic has become ‘very real’, but added that the world ‘is not at the mercy of the virus’. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said of the four countries with the most cases, China is bringing its outbreak under control, and that there had also been a decline in new cases in South Korea. ‘The rule of the game is, never give up,’ he added
Here are the main points from the press conference held by Boris Johnson. He was joined by Prof Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, and Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser.
We are now very close to the time, probably within the next 10 to 14 days, when the modelling would imply we should move to a situation where everybody with even minor respiratory tract infections or a fever should be self-isolating for a period of seven days.
It is absolutely critical in managing the spread of this virus that we take the right decisions at the right time based on the latest and the best evidence, so we mustn’t do things which have no or limited medical benefit, nor things which could turn out actually to be counter-productive.
We were all given an instruction not to shake hands and there’s a good reason for not shaking hands, which is that the behavioural psychologists say that if you don’t shake somebody’s hand then that sends an important message to them about the importance of washing your hands.
So there’s a subliminal cue there to everybody to wash your hands, which is, I think I’m right in saying ... far more important.
What you can’t do is suppress this thing completely, and what you shouldn’t do is suppress it completely because all that happens then is it pops up again later in the year when the NHS is at a more vulnerable stage in the winter and you end up with another problem.
This is what Boris Johnson said at the start of his press conference.
I want to stress the following things. First, we are doing everything we can to combat this outbreak based on the latest scientific and medical advice.
Second, we have a truly brilliant NHS where staff have responded with all the determination, compassion and skill that makes their service so revered across the world and they will continue to have this government’s full support, my support, in tackling this virus on the front line.
This week we will hear from people working on the frontline of the health system as it manages the outbreak of Covid-19 around Australia. Today, we hear from a GP working in a private practice in Sydney’s southern suburbs
Bleary eyed as usual on an 8am Saturday morning start, I stumble into work, sit down at my desk and sip on the coffee my wonderful colleague has left for me. I glance at the screen and notice the familiar list of 30 patients booked in six hours. Sigh.
Wearing a face mask is certainly not an iron-clad guarantee that you won’t get sick – viruses can also transmit through the eyes and tiny viral particles, known as aerosols, can penetrate masks. However, masks are effective at capturing droplets, which is a main transmission route of coronavirus, and some studies have estimated a roughly fivefold protection versus no barrier alone (although others have found lower levels of effectiveness).
Dealing in shares on the main US indices was frozen within minutes of the opening bell, as circuit breakers were triggered by a 7% fall on the S&P 500. Once trading resumed 15 minutes later, the Dow Jones Industrial Average completed a fall of more than 2,000 points for the first time ever – a fall of more than 7%.
The disappearance of this friendly gesture reflects the fragmented European response to the coronavirus
Europeans have stopped shaking hands. That is, I and almost everyone I have come across has stopped.
At an event last week hosted by the German foreign ministry in Berlin, we shunned the handshake. We huddled awkwardly, nodding heads, or half-jokingly stretched out a leg to touch an interlocutor’s foot as a new form of greeting. In Paris, a fashion and perfume store manager told me sales were badly down because “the usual 30 bus loads of Chinese tourists a day” had completely stopped. A taxi driver said he was keeping his car windows open, despite the cold, to avoid contamination from passengers. As of Monday, French authorities have announced that any event with more than 1,000 people has to be cancelled: book fairs and music festivals are over. Of course the situation in Italy is more alarming, with more than 16 million people in quasi-lockdown, and numbers of infections and deaths still rising quickly. That the Pope decided to speak by video on Sunday for the Angelus ceremony, to protect himself and the congregation in St Peter’s Square from infection, seemed a fitting symbol of what is under way.
As coronavirus infections around the world rise, the number of new cases in China has plummeted dramatically, prompting some observers to look to Beijing for lessons.
In recent days, the number of daily new cases in China has gone from almost 2,000 less than three weeks ago to under 100. On Monday, China’s national health commission reported 40 new cases, its lowest daily since authorities began tracking the outbreak in January. According to the official figures, new infections in the rest of China, outside of Hubei province which has been hardest hit, have almost completely stopped.
Royal Dutch Shell and BP lose more than £32bn from their combined market value
Saudi Arabia’s oil price war has wiped billions of pounds from the market value of the industry’s biggest companies after oil markets recorded one of the biggest price slumps in history.
The decision of the world’s largest oil-producing nation to increase its production even as the coronavirus outbreak stalls global oil demand triggered a 30% drop in oil prices on Monday morning.
US authorities are planning a flight tomorrow to repatriate Britons on the coronavirus-hit Grand Princess cruise ship.
The UK Foreign Office issued the following statement:
We continue to work closely with the US authorities to repatriate British nationals on board the Grand Princess. The US are currently planning for a flight to leave tomorrow evening, returning to the UK on Wednesday afternoon. We remain in contact with all British nationals on board and will continue to offer support.
Chinese authorities reportedly scrambled to move people out of quarantine hotels which need full safety inspections after the deaths of at least 10 people in a collapsed hotel.
Joanna Davison, an English teacher, and her partner were suddenly placed in enforced isolation in Shenzhen after a ferry trip about 10 days ago. On Thursday, she told the Guardian she endured a “terrifying” experience as five people in hazmat suits came to test them at her home before they were whisked to quarantine.
Only essential services will be allowed to operate in area home to 500,000 people
Saudi Arabia has cordoned off an oil-rich Shia region, suspended air and sea travel to nine countries and closed schools and universities, in a series of measures to contain the fast-spreading coronavirus.
Italian health authorities were checking passengers getting off buses and trains from northern Italy and arriving in Salerno and Naples on Saturday. Other countries could soon follow Italy’s drastic containment measures as coronavirus threatens to continue its spread across Europe. Italy remains the epicentre of the viral outbreak in Europe, as more than a quarter of the country’s population is under quarantine
Women and children part of thousands who took to streets around world, but some protests turned violent
Female asylum seekers have staged a demonstration at the Turkish border demanding to be let into the EU as part of protests around the world on International Women’s Day.
All over the globe, thousands of women took to the streets, including South Americans campaigning for access to abortions and topless demonstrations in London and Paris.
Italy announced a sweeping quarantine on Sunday for its northern regions, igniting travel chaos as it restricted the movement of a quarter of the countries population in an effort to halt the relentless march of the coronavirus
Containing the epidemic requires both reliable news coverage and truth from the president
It has taken until the last year of Donald Trump’s presidency for the existential risk this narcissistic authoritarian poses to be fully exposed. There have been other tests: the unconstitutional squeezing of immigration; the brief week or so when war with Iran felt inevitable; the imprisoning of children in cages along the United States’ southern border; not to mention the engagement with foreign governments in seeking personal gain. But it is the arrival of Covid-19, the infectious respiratory virus, that threatens a presidency reliant on a strategy of all narrative and no truth.
Trump has a core support base of people who are most vulnerable to Covid-19. Older people – particularly those who might resist taking the kind of interventionist measures being suggested – are very much at risk. Trump may have to halt his famous rallies in the middle of election season. More alien to him even than that, if containment of the virus is ever going to work he will have to build a good-faith alliance with the press to push out a unified and coherent message.
Giuseppe Conte announced a range of tough new measures in the early hours of Sunday to try to contain Italy's coronavirus outbreak, including the virtual lockdown of the country's wealthiest and most populous region. The new rules include telling people not to enter or leave Lombardy, which is home to about 10 million people, and dozen provinces in four of Italy's 19 other regions. The draconian steps come after the number of coronavirus cases in Europe's worst-hit country reached 5,883 on Saturday.
It is caused by a member of the coronavirus family that has never been encountered before. Like other coronaviruses, it has come from animals. Many of those initially infected either worked or frequently shopped in the Huanan seafood wholesale market in the centre of the Chinese city.
Wearing a face mask is certainly not an iron-clad guarantee that you won’t get sick – viruses can also transmit through the eyes and tiny viral particles, known as aerosols, can penetrate masks. However, masks are effective at capturing droplets, which is a main transmission route of coronavirus, and some studies have estimated a roughly fivefold protection versus no barrier alone (although others have found lower levels of effectiveness).
Surveillance in ‘sanctuary cities’ and increased Ice presence could deter immigrants from accessing healthcare
Since 2017, Donald Trump has pushed a hardline immigration agenda that has sown confusion, fear and distrust among immigrant communities. Now, as the world deals with a public health emergency in the shape of the coronavirus outbreak, experts worry his immigration policies may put everyone at risk.
There is a widespread fear that the president’s policies have sown such fear of deportation and wariness of any contact with US authorities among immigrants – who also have greater difficulty getting healthcare – that many of them will not seek help if they fall sick with the virus.