Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Software hailed as a ‘game-changer’ in providing early warning for humanitarian relief efforts as virus fuels conflict
Coronavirus is predicted to push more than 1 million people from their homes across the Sahel, creating havoc in an already highly fragile region, according to new forecasting software.
Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Nigeria in west Africa are predicted to see displacement as a result of the increasing conflict, unemployment and human rights abuses brought on by fallout from the coronavirus, the analytical tool developed by the humanitarian group Danish Refugee Council (DRC) has found.
I am one of those people who were told that from 1 August we no longer needed to shield to protect ourselves from the coronavirus.
While you might assume that, having been trapped inside our homes for the past 18 weeks, we would embrace our newfound freedom with enthusiasm, the reality remains far from it.
Secret Service shot armed suspect outside White House fence
President was giving coronavirus briefing
Donald Trump was abruptly escorted out of a press briefing by a Secret Service agent on Monday after an armed suspect was shot outside the White House.
The president was just minutes into his coronavirus briefing when a Secret Service agent asked Trump to leave the podium and quickly exit the room along with other administration officials.
Nearly five months to the day since the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic, Covid-19 infections have passed 20 million cases. In acknowledging the milestone, the health body’s chief warned against despair, saying if the virus could be suppressed effectively, “we can safely open up societies”.
Global cases reached one million at the start of April. By 22 May, there were 5 million cases. That figure had doubled to 10 million cases by the end of June, and, seven weeks later, it had doubled again to 20 million infections.
Wearing face coverings, avoiding kissing and choosing positions where you are not face to face are among the recommendations from a leading sexual health charity to reduce the risk of catching coronavirus during sex.
Publishing advice on managing the risk, the Terrence Higgins Trust said asking people to abstain indefinitely was not realistic and that people needed to find a way “to balance our need for sex and intimacy with the risks of the spread of Covid-19”.
While the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic has so far spared the Pacific, its economies are in free-fall, the region’s chief diplomat warns
Beyond the health and economic crises of Covid-19, the global pandemic has the potential to cause political instability and undermine state security across the Pacific, the region’s chief diplomat has warned.
Dame Meg Taylor, secretary general of the Pacific Islands Forum, said the region’s economies were struggling with the virus-induced shocks, and a prolonged crisis could worsen existing problems of hunger, poor healthcare, and state fragility.
Face masks have become compulsory in more than 100 Paris streets and tourist areas, Greece is “formally” in a second wave and new outbreaks are causing alarm in Italy and Spain as coronavirus infections continue to pick up again across Europe.
The Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control called on member states that are seeing an increase in cases to reinstate control measures, warning of a “true resurgence” in several countries and a “risk of further escalation” across the continent.
Donald Trump is responding to a statement released Sunday by former Republican senator, Ben Sasse, who excoriated the president for his attempt to use executive orders to combat the worsening coronavirus outbreak.
RINO Ben Sasse, who needed my support and endorsement in order to get the Republican nomination for Senate from the GREAT State of Nebraska, has, now that he’s got it (Thank you President T), gone rogue, again. This foolishness plays right into the hands of the Radical Left Dems!
President Obama did not have the power to unilaterally rewrite immigration law with DACA, and President Trump does not have the power to unilaterally rewrite the payroll tax law. Under the Constitution, that power belongs to the American people acting through their members of Congress.
In a press conference Monday, following a night of unrest and looting, Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot appeared to criticize Cook County’s state’s attorney Kim Foxx, whom she previously endorsed.
People believe there is no accountability in our criminal justice system. We need the prosecutors and courts to step up”.
One senior local health official, who did not want to speak on the record, said he interpreted the move as “the government saying we can’t do this only from London”.
Whether or not you interpret it as shifting the blame and responsibility [to local teams], I wouldn’t go that far but it’s a reflection that it can’t be either/or - it has to be both [local and national].
If you look on a map, it’s really clear: there’s probably one case a week in Surrey. It’s not quite like that in Blackburn with Darwen, for instance.
We’ve shifted from a single, universal pandemic across the whole country to a series of localised flare-ups. That’s why the nimbleness and ability to get on top of things at a local level really does matter.
People who have been in contact with confirmed coronavirus cases may get a knock on their door if tracers are unable to reach them over the phone under plans to strengthen regional test and trace powers in England announced by health officials.
In pilot schemes, this has meant that local authorities have been able to visit people at homes where national contact tracers have been unable to reach them. It comes after criticism that the national system was not tapping into local knowledge.
NHS Test and Trace is one of the largest contact tracing and testing systems anywhere in the world, and was built rapidly, drawing on the UK’s existing health protection networks, to stop the spread of coronavirus.
At the height of the pandemic, we ensured the system had extra capacity in place to cope with potential peaks in the virus.
The actor has said he is celebrating in quarantine and otherwise relatively unaffected, other than being ‘a little bit more tired than usual’
The actor Antonio Banderas has confirmed on Twitter that he is suffering from coronavirus. In a message posted on 10 August, his 60th birthday, the actor said he was forced to celebrate in quarantine but reassured followers that his health was largely unaffected.
What are the restrictions within Victoria and the border closures with NSW and Queensland? How far can I travel, and how many people can I have over at my house? Untangle Australia’s Covid-19 laws and guidelines with our guide
Australians had been slowly emerging from Covid-19 lockdowns since the federal government announced a three-stage plan in May to ease restrictions across the country, but from 8 July the Melbourne metropolitan area and Mitchell shire immediately to the north returned to a stage three lockdown for six weeks.
After consistently high case numbers despite the lockdown, the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, announced further restrictions for the state. From 2 August, metropolitan Melbourne entered a six-week stage four lockdown, while a stage three lockdown took effect across regional Victoria and Mitchell shire from 6 August.
Five months since the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus crisis a global pandemic, the number of Covid cases globally is nearing 20m, with almost 730,000 known deaths.
The current number of confirmed infections stands at 19,792,519, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, with total new cases daily averaging more than 250,000.
India has registered a record 1,007 fatalities in the past 24 hours as new coronavirus infections surged by 62,064 cases, the Associated Press reports.
The health ministry said the total fatalities reached 44,386 on Monday. The number of confirmed cases reported so far are 2,215,074. At least 634,935 patients were still undergoing treatment.
Concern is growing that a resurgence of coronavirus in Europe will lead to a “second wave” of uncoordinated border restrictions that will undermine the open borders on which the European Union is founded.
In a letter to national governments, seen by the Associated Press, the European commission warns that “while we must ensure that the EU is ready for possible resurgences of Covid-19 cases ... we should at the same time avoid a second wave of uncoordinated actions at the internal borders of the EU.”
US has the highest number of cases and the highest number of deaths in the world as former vice president attacks Donald Trump over coronavirus ‘failures’
The US on Sunday passed the grim milestone of 5m coronavirus cases, as Donald Trump’s executive orders seeking to break a political impasse over further economic relief were denounced by a Republican as “unconstitutional slop” and Joe Biden accused the president of issuing little more than “excuses and lies”.
Recriminations have been flying in Washington since talks on further aid for the unemployed and for states struggling with a public health crisis collapsed on Friday.
Official measure to be declared this week as coronavirus lockdown shrinks GDP by 21% in second quarter
Britain’s economy will be officially declared in recession this week for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis, as the coronavirus outbreak plunges the country into the deepest slump on record.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics on Wednesday are expected to show that gross domestic product (GDP), the broadest measure of economic prosperity, fell in the three months to June by 21%.
On a Saturday evening in mid-July, Michael made a video call to his grandmother and checked she had everything she needed. Then, along with about 3,000 others, he set out for an illegal rave.
Despite coronavirus lockdown measures, Michael, a 20-year-old student from Bristol who asked to use a pseudonym, went to the event at a former RAF airfield near Bath three weeks ago with a group of friends. Before they met up, he said, their group chat was “mostly excitement, but a little bit of trepidation”. Michael added: “But we just thought, none of us live with old people, and the rules are all confusion.”
Demonstrators allied to Evo Morales say authorities are using Covid-19 to delay vote
Demonstrators in Bolivia have dynamited Andean passes, scattered boulders across highways and dug trenches along rural roads to protest against repeated delays to a rerun of last October’s deeply contentious election, which led to the downfall of the long-serving leftwing president Evo Morales.
As the country’s death toll from the coronavirus pandemic mounts, more than 100 roadblocks and marches nationwide – convened on Monday by Bolivia’s main workers’ union and indigenous and campesino movements allied to Morales’s Movement Towards Socialism (Mas) – have brought the country to a standstill for six days.
Experts predict an increase in deaths across the region, made significantly worse by lawmakers who question the value of face coverings
Three months ago, the Republican governor of Missouri chose not to wear a mask in a shop, because he said he wasn’t going to let the government tell him what to do. Mike Parson visited a hardware store to celebrate its reopening after he lifted Missouri’s coronavirus lockdown over the objections of health professionals and mayors of major cities.
Parson said the worst of the pandemic was past and the economic impact of the shutdown was worse than the virus. As for masks, the governor dismissively claimed “there was a lot of information on both sides” over whether to wear one so he wasn’t going to require people to do so.
Back in April, the French epidemiologist Arnaud Fontanet found himself leading an investigation in the town of Crépy-en-Valois, a small community of 15,000 inhabitants just to the north-east of Paris. In February, the town’s middle and high schools had become the centre of a new outbreak of Covid-19.
Fontanet and colleagues from the Pasteur Institute in Paris were tasked with conducting antibody testing across Crépy-en-Valois to understand the extent to which the virus had been circulating. As they surveyed the town, they noted an interesting pattern. While the virus had spread rampantly through the high school, with 38% of students being infected, along with 43% of teachers and 59% of non-teaching staff, the same was not true for the town’s six primary schools. While three primary-age pupils had caught Covid-19 in early February, none of these infections had led to a secondary case. Overall, just 9% of primary age pupils, 7% of teachers and 4% of non-teaching staff had been infected with the virus.
Coatsworth is asked about the fatality rate in Australia. He says he hasn’t seen the data in the last week or two but Australia has generally been better than much of the rest of the world.
The reasons include the already high standard of Australian health care and in particular intensive care units and staff.
“But we’re also learning more and more. We’re applying new treatments and [a medication] that’s demonstrating in a recovery trial to decrease mortality. We have at our disposal... and our specialists that are backed up by the Australia New Zealand Intensive Care Society and are discussing the clinical treatment of patient whose are gravely ill with Covid-19 and how you ventilate them is a challenge and the contact of proning which is where you ventilate someone on their tummy, rather than on their back, has proven to be critical. The timing you do that.
Dr Nick Coatsworth, deputy chief medical officer in Australia is giving a national briefing.
Nationally in Australia there are 295 dead from Covid-19, and 658 currently hospitalised with 51 in intensive care.
It is not going to be acceptable for any single country to have the vaccine and Australia is joining with a number of different countries around the world through the initiative to ensure that any vaccine that is developed is available.