Category Archives: Coronavirus outbreak

This pandemic exposes the source of true fear – our utter powerlessness | Melanie Cheng

Posted on by

We’ve all experienced tragedy but usually there is comfort in the wider world carrying on. With Covid, the jig is up

  • This is part of a series of essays by Australian writers responding to the challenges of 2020

As a teenager, I loved feeling scared. Horror films were my go-to. The Exorcist, Poltergeist, The Omen, even the slightly sillier ones like Friday the 13th. In my youth I mistook that manufactured titillation for real fear, but now I know better. Now I know true fear is not exhilarating. True fear cannot be easily soothed by a quick cuddle from Mum. True fear is intense, exhausting, merciless. True fear is an invisible pathogen that threatens to strip you of everything you love.

“Would you prefer to get your results on a less ominous day?” I joked as I booked patients in for their appointments on Friday the 13th of March, Some laughed and others hesitated but most seemed to eventually suppress any niggling superstition.

Continue reading...

Trump’s stream of subconsciousness becomes a torrent in car-crash interview | John Crace

Posted on by

The president’s incoherence and unchecked narcissism were given full rein for 40 long minutes in a TV evisceration

I take it all back. I regularly mock British politicians for their lies and hypocrisy, not least Boris Johnson, the UK’s Donald Trump-lite, who only last Friday had hit a new low for cronyism, corruption and nepotism with his appointments to the House of Lords.

But all this was amateur hour compared with Donald Trump’s interview with Axios’s political correspondent, Jonathan Swan, that was broadcast on HBO on Monday evening.

Continue reading...

Rafael Nadal withdraws from US Open citing Covid concerns as Madrid Open cancelled

Posted on by
  • Reigning champion pulls out of tournament due to pandemic
  • Madrid Open had already been moved from May

Defending champion Rafael Nadal has pulled out of the US Open citing concerns over coronavirus. The four-time winner at Flushing Meadows does not want to travel to the United States while Covid-19 cases are on the rise.

He joins women’s world number one Ashleigh Barty in pulling out of the tournament due to the treat of coronavirus.

Continue reading...

Man attacked in Paris launderette for asking customer to wear mask

Posted on by

Alleged victim says he was beaten with baseball bats after asking man to put on mask

A man using a launderette in a Paris suburb says he was beaten by two men with baseball bats in front of his young children after asking a customer to put on a face mask.

Masks are obligatory inside all public places in France to combat a recent surge in coronavirus cases.

Continue reading...

Donald Trump flounders in interview over US Covid-19 death toll

Posted on by

President again says he is doing ‘incredible job’ fighting pandemic and casts doubt on Jeffrey Epstein’s cause of death

Donald Trump visibly floundered in an interview when pressed on a range of issues, including the number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the US, his claims that mail-in voting is fraudulent, and his inaction over the “Russian bounty” scandal.

The US president also repeatedly cast doubt on the cause of death of Jeffrey Epstein, and said of Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite who has pleaded not guilty to participating in the sex-trafficking of girls by Epstein, that he wished her well.

Continue reading...

‘We’re fighting a ghost’: six months on, coronavirus victories remain fragile

Posted on by

Governments are at a nebulous stage: past the initial shocks but still without a clear end in sight

Nobody is clapping any more. Six months since Covid-19 registered as an urgent threat, and one country after another spiralled into lockdown, the nightly outpourings of solidarity with essential workers have petered out.

Governments behind which people rallied earlier in the outbreak are again facing criticism and scorn. Panic at the scenarios that filled imaginations in those first weeks – of millions of imminent deaths, medical systems buckling and food supplies running scarce – has largely abated.

Continue reading...

‘You can’t do that’: Trump argues with reporter over Covid-19 death figures – video

Posted on by

In an extraordinary clip from Axios’ Jonathan Swan's interview with Donald Trump, the president rifled through a sheaf of graphs to claim that the US has lower numbers of coronavirus than other nations.

The pair debated Trump's point that America has a lower number of deaths as a percentage of coronavirus cases, but when Swan pointed instead to the number of US Covid-19 deaths as a population percentage, Trump said: 'You can't do that' 

The full interview will be shown on HBO on 4 August 

Continue reading...

Victorian builders could lose $450m daily under Melbourne stage 4 Covid-19 lockdown

Posted on by

Work levels from big construction sites to trade businesses set to be pummelled amid predictions new curbs will ‘knock wind out of’ state

Victorian builders say they will take a hit to revenue totalling up to $456m a day from sweeping new restrictions on construction in the state, forcing some companies to close their doors entirely.

Under tough restrictions announced on Monday that are designed to slow the spread of the state’s coronavirus outbreak, the number of workers on large building sites such as apartment complexes and office towers is to be reduced to a quarter of the normal number.

Continue reading...

UK coronavirus live: calls for more test and trace; virologists question Covid-19 response

Posted on by

Researchers warn more testing is needed ahead of schools reopening to prevent second wave while other experts criticise handling of crisis

Related: Coronavirus near me: are UK Covid cases rising in your local area?

Former prime minister Tony Blair said a mass testing regime, which includes people who are not displaying coronavirus symptoms, is essential to avoid the need for another lockdown.

He told Times Radio:

On some estimates 70% of people with the disease are asymptomatic, so if you are only testing people with symptoms you are losing the majority of people from your testing strategy

From the very beginning, mass testing has been the only thing that gets you through this, avoids the severity of the very blunt instrument of lockdown and gets you to a place where you can more or less get your economy moving whilst containing the disease.

Continue reading...

Coronavirus near me: are UK Covid cases rising in your local area?

Posted on by

Latest updates: how has Covid-19 progressed where you live? Check the week-on-week changes across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

The map shows local authorities where the number of cases has increased week-on-week and where it has fallen. Some of this is due to natural fluctuations, especially in areas where there are very few cases, and so a rise from 1 to 2 is a doubling. Increased testing also means that more cases may be being detected than previously, although the impact of this between one week and the next is likely to be slight.

Continue reading...

Covid-19 treatment: Gilead Sciences urged to study drug that showed promise with cats

Posted on by

Activists are calling on the pharmaceutical firm Gilead Sciences to study a drug for the treatment of Covid-19 that showed promise in curing cats of a coronavirus.

The drug, called GS-441524, is chemically related to remdesivir, an antiviral also made by Gilead, and one of the only treatments to successfully shorten the duration of Covid-19 recovery.

Continue reading...

Donald Trump defends Dr Deborah Birx after calling her Covid-19 assessment ‘pathetic’ – video

Posted on by

The US president has defended his public health expert Deborah Birx after she drew criticism from House speaker Nancy Pelosi and from his own earlier tweet, labelling her assessment of Covid-19's spread as 'pathetic'. Pelosi targeted Birx, saying Trump spread coronavirus misinformation and Birx was his appointee. The president pointed to coronavirus flareups overseas as a measure of the US success, saying the country was doing very well and adding he had a lot of respect for Birx


Continue reading...

World Health Organisation warns there may no be a Covid-19 ‘silver bullet’ – video

Posted on by

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warns there may never be an effective vaccine for Covid-19. Speaking in Geneva, Tedros explains the need for caution despite progress developing some vaccines. 'A number of vaccines are now in phase three clinical trials and we all hope to have a number of effective vaccines that can help prevent people from infection' he says. 'However, there’s no silver bullet at the moment and there might never be'

Continue reading...

Land Rovers eyed by thieves in countryside crime spike during UK lockdown

Posted on by

Livestock, GPS equipment and quad bikes targeted as gangs took advantage of empty roads

Farmers are counting the cost of a sharp increase in countryside crime ranging from livestock rustling to the theft of tractors, quad bikes, GPS equipment and Land Rovers.

There was a spike in the theft of sheep during the lockdown as gangs took advantage of deserted communities, empty roads and concerns about food shortages during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.

Continue reading...

Victoria’s contact-tracing effort buckles under the weight of Covid-19 cases

Posted on by

ANU’s Peter Collignon says what’s important now is making sure people who test positive stay at home

Victoria’s rise in Covid-19 case numbers is occurring so rapidly that contact tracing can no longer be relied upon to unearth all potential clusters in the state, according to epidemiologists who argue health detective work “won’t make much difference when you’ve got thousands of active cases potentially out there”.

On Monday the state’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton, said there were “literally thousands on the phone who are chasing up close contacts and who are talking to them about what quarantine requires of them”, after reports that some close contacts of confirmed cases were waiting up to a week for contact from the state instructing them to self-isolate.

Continue reading...

Trump calls Birx’s dire warning on widespread coronavirus in the US ‘pathetic’

Posted on by

President and Nancy Pelosi criticize Deborah Birx as US deaths climb past 154,000 and cases reach one-quarter of global total

Donald Trump publicly rebuked a second member of the White House coronavirus taskforce on Monday morning, calling Deborah Birx’s assessment of Covid-19’s spread “pathetic” in a tweet.

Birx warned on Sunday that the coronavirus was entering a new phase in the US and infections were now “extraordinarily widespread” across the country, instead of clustering mainly in a clutch of states and big cities.

Continue reading...

Manchester Covid outbreak ‘a warning to complacent white middle class’

Posted on by

Exclusive: health chief says declaration of major incident shows spread not just in BAME groups

The declaration of a major incident in Greater Manchester should jolt a “complacent white middle class” into realising that Covid-19 is not just spreading in ethnic minority households, one of the region’s health chiefs has said.

Eleanor Roaf, the director of public health in Trafford, said 80% of its infections in the last week were in the white community, and she urged the region’s 2.8 million residents to concentrate “much harder on what we can do to stop the wider spread”.

Continue reading...

Iran’s Covid death toll three times higher than admitted, says report

Posted on by

BBC says government papers reveal total is more than 42,000 – far above official toll of 17,000

One person is dying from Covid-19 every seven minutes in Iran, state television in the country has said, as a report claimed the overall toll from the virus was three times higher than authorities have admitted.

A health ministry spokeswoman said on Monday that 215 people had died in the past 24 hours, on top of more than 200 the previous day – the country’s highest figures in nearly a month.

Continue reading...

Israel protests: thousands join weekend protests against Netanyahu’s government – video

Posted on by

Thousands of Israelis took to the streets over the weekend to protest against Benjamin Netanyahu's alleged corruption and against his government's handling of the coronavirus crisis.

Israeli media estimated that about 15,000 protesters arrived at the prime minister's state residence in Jerusalem, where they carried banners calling on him to resign.

The weekend's protests were reported to be the biggest in a series of weekly demonstrations near Netanyahu's residence in Jerusalem. Protesters also arrived outside his private house in the Israeli city of Caesarea and hundreds gathered in Tel Aviv

Continue reading...

Berlin protests against coronavirus rules divide German leaders

Posted on by

Up to 20,000 demonstrated against restrictions, raising fears of a rise in infections

German leaders are divided over whether to restrict the rights of demonstrators, after tens of thousands of people who took to the streets of Berlin at the weekend failed to abide by hygiene and distancing rules.

According to officials, up to 20,000 people took part in demonstrations against the government’s coronavirus restrictions at different locations across Berlin on Saturday, amalgamating for a joint rally later in the day. Organisers said up to 1.3 million people took part, a figure that police denied.

Continue reading...