Consumers buying chlorine dioxide solution on Amazon platform say they have been drinking fluid despite FDA warnings
Industrial bleach is being sold on Amazon through its product pages which consumers are buying under the mistaken belief that it is a “miracle cure” for Covid-19, despite health warnings from the US Food and Drug Administration that drinking the fluid can kill.
Related: 'Archbishop' of Florida church selling bleach 'miracle cure' arrested with son
Continue reading...Covid has forced many people out of workplaces. Some have saved money by moving overseas
When the coronavirus lockdown forced Mason Palmer, 26, to start working from home, the digital content creator had a rethink about where that home was and in July he moved from Bristol to Milan. “I’ve always loved travelling to Italy,” he says. “I was always going over there; it was like an expensive hobby.”
He did not expect his boss to necessarily be on board with his plans and suggested that he move to working for the company, Working Word, on a freelance basis. But the firm was open to the idea and his boss kept him on staff. “Now I’m like the unofficial Milan branch,” he laughs.
Continue reading...Doctors in England urge tighter restrictions; number of cases worldwide passes 30 million; scaled-down Oktoberfest in Munich begins. Follow all the developments
Kenya’s chief public prosecutor, Noordin Haji, has ordered a probe into $71m in “irregular procurement” linked to the coronavirus by the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (Kemsa).
Hard-pressed Kenyan hospital staff have staged strikes to highlight what they say are scandalous practices by the authority, which purchases medication and equipment for the nation’s public hospitals, AFP reports.
France has joined a string of other countries in reporting yet another record increase in infections today.
French health authorities reported 13,498 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Saturday, setting another record in daily additional infections since the disease started to spread in the country.
State’s chief health officer says it was ‘inappropriate’ to single out migrant community in Casey
Victoria’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton, has apologised for comments he made singling out Melbourne’s Afghan community in relation to a Covid-19 outbreak in Casey.
Sutton made the apology as the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, announced 21 new coronavirus cases and seven more deaths in the state on Saturday. It was the lowest number of new Covid-19 cases in the state since 24 June.
Continue reading...The World Health Organization warned the coronavirus is ‘not going away,’ as the current global weekly death toll temporarily plateaued at around 50,000.
Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s emergencies programme said countries entering the winter season had ‘a lot of work to do’ to avoid Covid-19 cases rising and developing countries would also struggle after nine months of pressure on their health systems
Mayor says that action is needed before a second Covid-19 wave hits London
It is “increasingly likely” that lockdown restrictions will soon be needed to slow the spread of coronavirus in London, the capital’s mayor has warned.
London mayor Sadiq Khan said he was of the “firm view” that action should be taken before the virus spirals out of control, and leaders were considering measures already imposed in other parts of the UK.
Continue reading...Olivia Troye attacks Trump and says he called his own supporters ‘disgusting people’ he no longer had to shake hands with
The coronavirus pandemic moved to the centre of the US election again on Friday, as a former senior official on the White House taskforce turned on Donald Trump.
Related: 'He’s paying attention to people like us': Trump’s messages resonate in Wisconsin
Continue reading...Test, which is only offered to children in British Columbia, involves gargling saline solution and spitting it into a tube
Authorities in Canada have unveiled a new non-invasive coronavirus test that avoids the need for intrusive nasal swabs, in a development which they hope will making testing easier and more accessible for students as they return to schools.
The new testing method, unveiled Thursday, is a significant departure from the standard – and often painful – nasopharyngeal swab, which remains the most common method of detecting Covid-19.
Continue reading...New infections grow by up to 7% daily; UK cases surge; Welsh leader slams ‘vacancy at heart of UK’; Scotland given ‘advance notice of hard decisions’
Coronavirus cases in England almost doubled in the space of a week, with infections becoming more widespread across all ages, leading one expert to say a second wave had begun.
Almost 60,000 people are thought to have had the virus from 4 to 10 September 2020 – one in every 900 people – with about 6,000 new cases per day, according to the ONS survey of randomly selected people in the community.
Related: England Covid cases almost doubled within a week, according to ONS
A further 4,322 people have tested positive for coronavirus in the UK, an increase of nearly 1,000 cases from the following day.
Overall, 385,936 people have tested positive for coronavirus since the pandemic began.
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Kamala Harris, the Democratic party’s vice-presidential candidate, has paid tribute to Ginsburg, calling on the nation to fight for the late justice’s legacy.
Tonight we mourn, we honor, and we pray for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her family. But we also recommit to fight for her legacy.
Doug and I send our heartfelt prayers to Jane and James, and the entire Ginsburg family, particularly on this holy day of Rosh Hashanah. pic.twitter.com/SNyqZCznfv
With the stage set for an epic political battle over who will succeed Ginsburg, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell indicated that the vote will go ahead quickly.
Although McConnell did not give any specific timing, he implied that Trump’s nominee for the vacant position would be put to the vote before the election in November.
Related: Mitch McConnell vows US Senate will push on with Trump's pick to replace Ginsburg
Continue reading...New cases above 3,000 a day – as high as at any point since virus first hit country
Iran appears to be in the grip of a “third wave” of the coronavirus outbreak, with the number of new infections above 3,000 a day – as high as at any point since the virus first hit in February.
Iran was one of the first countries to be struck by the virus outside China. Its officials brought the disease under a form of control by early May, but then experienced an increase at the start of June that drifted down to fewer than 1,600 new cases a day in late August.
Continue reading...The most prominent US agency for delivering public health advice on Friday reversed key guidelines about who should get tested for coronavirus that were published just a month ago.
Related: Trump under fire for 'shocking' Covid failures as ex-adviser turns against him
Continue reading...Good Law Project says plans ignore scientific evidence and break value-for-money rules
The UK government is facing legal action over Boris Johnson’s “moonshot” project, which could involve up to £100bn being spent on an attempt to increase Covid-19 testing capacity to 10m per day.
The health secretary, Matt Hancock, and the minister for the Cabinet Office, Michael Gove, are named in a case that alleges the project, as described in leaked papers, is unlawful because it ignores scientific evidence, involves potentially huge private contracts that may not have been tendered and breaks the government’s own value-for-money rules.
Continue reading...Scientists tracking the virus have uncovered a major mutation, but it may not be as scary as it sounds
Scientists have had eyes on Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, since the beginning of this pandemic.
They can see it is evolving, but it is happening at a glacial pace compared with two other viruses with pandemic potential: those that cause flu and Aids. That is good news for efforts to develop vaccines and treatments, but scientists remain wary that anything could still happen.
Continue reading...As cases rise sharply, the regional government has floundered. From Monday, the worst-affected areas face new restrictions
People in the queue to be tested for Covid-19 at the Buenos Aires health centre in south Madrid on Friday morning were met with a bleak but polite homemade sign.
It still bore the previous day’s information, spelled out in marker pen: consultations – by phone and in person – 483; Covid consultations, 19; PCR tests, 78; and number of staff absent, 13.
Continue reading...The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, has confirmed that the annual firework display on New Year's Eve will not go ahead because of concerns about large numbers of people gathering in the capital's centre. 'We simply can't afford to have [those] numbers of people congregating,' Khan told LBC's James O'Brien. About 100,000 people usually attend the display
Continue reading...UK billionaire praises Emirates for flight as thousands remain stranded by policy to ease pressure on hotel quarantine
A tweet by Lord Sugar about his recent flight into Sydney has angered scores of Australians stranded around the world who themselves are unable to enter the country.
Australia’s federal opposition seized on the tweet on Friday amid accusations a controversial policy to ease pressure on Australia’s mandatory hotel quarantine system was unfairly penalising economy travellers stuck overseas.
Continue reading...Successful schemes in South Korea and Germany show speed and targeting are key
As chaos continues to engulf Britain’s test and trace system, attention has focused on how successful other countries have been in using testing and contact-tracing to suppress coronavirus transmission.
While many have embraced test/trace regimes, comparing the relative successes – and failures – is complicated by the fact that different countries count things even as basic as the number of daily tests using different methods.
Continue reading...President warns against ‘finger-pointing’ as country asks why virus containment efforts failed
Israelis are preparing to enter a second national coronavirus lockdown on Friday, facing at least three weeks of tough restrictions that will upend a normally festive period filled with Jewish holidays.
The cabinet released a full list of rules on Thursday, setting out a return to stringent measures Israelis had hoped were behind them when they endured a similar lockdown in spring.
Continue reading...New infections in Iran pass more than 3,000 a day again; deaths in France related to Covid-19 trend upwards for first time since lockdown
The US biotech company Moderna has announced that it expects to produce 20million doses of its experimental coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year, Reuters reports.
The announcement, made in a filing with US securities regulators, comes after Moderna’s chief executive, Stephane Bancel, told Reuters on Thursday that the company plans to seek emergency authorisation for the vaccine’s use in high-risk groups if it proves even just 70% effective.
Mark Rutte, the prime minister of the Netherlands, has said his government is preparing “regional” measures to combat the coronavirus outbreak, after the country registered 1,972 cases in the past 24 hours, Reuters reports.
Rutte said the Dutch situation was “worrying” after the country registered a record number of cases for the fourth consecutive day, with particular rises in major cities in the west of the country, including Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague.
At this rate, the number of infections would double every week and we absolutely cannot have that.
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