Category Archives: Coronavirus outbreak

‘Compelling’ evidence air pollution worsens coronavirus – study

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Exclusive: best analysis to date indicates significant increases in infections, hospital admissions and deaths

There is “compelling” evidence that air pollution significantly increases coronavirus infections, hospital admissions and deaths, according to the most detailed and comprehensive analysis to date.

The research indicates that a small, single-unit increase in people’s long-term exposure to pollution particles raises infections and admissions by about 10% and deaths by 15%. The study took into account more than 20 other factors, including average population density, age, household size, occupation and obesity.

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The world needs grown-up leadership. Time for Germany to step up | Shada Islam

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With Germany at the EU helm, there’s a unique chance for Europe to fill the vacuum left by the retreating US

With Trump’s US missing in action from the global stage, the European Union should be stepping into the vacuum. Germany, which has just taken over the bloc’s rotating presidency, could use the next six months to provide the leadership to boost Europe’s global impact. But is it ready to shake off its traditional reticence?

Immediate economic challenges will dominate EU leaders’ first in-person encounter since the lockdown, on 17 and 18 July. And Berlin is right to prioritise agreement on the EU’s new seven-year budget and a pandemic recovery plan, a task complicated by internal rifts and new forecasts warning of an even deeper recession than expected across the 27-nation bloc. As Angela Merkel said in a recent Guardian interview: “For Europe to survive, its economy needs to survive.”

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Victoria and Melbourne coronavirus cases by region: where are Covid-19 case numbers getting better and worse?

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Guardian Australia analysis and map shows how the pattern of Covid-19 has changed throughout Melbourne. Live data updates will track it as the lockdown continues

A Guardian Australia analysis of Victorian coronavirus cases shows that infections have been increasing in areas outside the locked-down postcodes, and that all significant growth areas are now contained within the wider Melbourne lockdown.

Using data aggregated daily from the dashboard of the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) here, we calculated the number of new cases a day for every local government area in Victoria.

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Coronavirus live news: WHO reports record global cases as South Africa reinstates alcohol ban

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Cases rise by over 230,000 worldwide in 24 hours; Florida cases increase by record total for a US state; Brazil cases near 2m. Follow the latest updates

Mainland China reported eight new Covid-19 cases as of the end of 12 July, up from seven reported a day earlier, the Chinese national health authority said on Monday.

The National Health Commission said in a statement that all of the new cases were imported infection involving travellers from overseas, the same as the seven cases a day earlier. The capital city of Beijing reported no new confirmed cases for the seventh consecutive day.

The Commission also reported six new asymptomatic patients, those who are infected with the coronavirus but have no symptoms, compared with five a day earlier. China does not consider such patients as confirmed cases.

Total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases for mainland China now stands at 83,602, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.

Hong Kong health authorities are continuing to battle its worst virus outbreak yet. It saw a rise in cases in March as people began returning from overseas, prompting increased social distancing measures and restrictions which had started to ease in recent weeks.

On Sunday another 38 new cases were confirmed, including 30 local transmissions. Of the 30, 13 have an unknown source.

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Coronavirus live: Colombia faces calls to put capital into total lockdown

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Cases rise by over 230,000 worldwide in 24 hours; EU summit ‘may not agree Covid-19 recovery fund’; 130m ‘may go hungry in 2020 because of virus’

An entire hospital in Mexico’s southern Oaxaca state has been put in quarantine after 68% of its remaining staff tested positive, writes Analy Nuño in Guadalajara.

Doctors and nurses at the Macedonio Benítez Fuentes hospital in the town of Juchitán de Zaragoza held protests last week, calling for a lockdown after 120 of their colleagues were put under isolation after positive tests.

The hospital won’t close – we will still deal with urgent cases, and have already analysed our staffing requirements to attend to the community as our colleagues start to return to work.

China has stepped up a travel warning to Australia, telling its citizens of a risk of being searched “arbitrarily” by law enforcement authorities, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

Tensions between the two countries have been escalating on various fronts after Beijing reacted with fury to calls for an independent investigation into the origins and spread of the pandemic, which first surfaced in central China last year.

We urge Australia to change its course and stop interfering in Hong Kong’s affairs and China’s internal affairs in any way, or risk further damage to China-Australia relations.

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Super-rich call for higher taxes on wealthy to pay for Covid-19 recovery

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Exclusive: Group of 83 wealthy individuals demands ‘immediate, substantial and permanent’ higher taxes ‘on people like us’

A group of 83 of the world’s richest people have called on governments to permanently increase taxes on them and other members of the wealthy elite to help pay for the economic recovery from the Covid-19 crisis.

The super-rich members, including Ben and Jerry’s ice cream co-founder Jerry Greenfield and Disney heir Abigail Disney, called on “our governments to raise taxes on people like us. Immediately. Substantially. Permanently”.

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30-year-old dies after attending ‘Covid party’ in Texas

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Patient said: ‘I think I made a mistake, I thought this was a hoax, but it’s not’, according to health official

A 30-year-old patient died after attending a ‘“Covid party”, believing the virus to be a hoax, a Texas medical official has said.

“Just before the patient died, they looked at their nurse and said ‘I think I made a mistake, I thought this was a hoax, but it’s not,’” said Dr Jane Appleby, the chief medical officer at Methodist hospital in San Antonio.

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As Covid-19 persists around the world, death is not the only outcome to fear | Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz

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There are worrying trends about long-term damage, even in those with milder symptoms

There are a lot of unknowns about Covid-19. This makes sense, because despite six months of the most amazing scientific effort of our lifetimes, the coronavirus is a novel disease which means that we are constantly finding out new things about it. Even now, the debate about the most likely method of spread of the disease rages on, in part because the idea of masks has in many places become somehow a political decision rather than a scientific one.

Sometimes 2020 feels like living in the Bad Place (but with less frozen yoghurt).

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The Guardian view on Covid-19 worldwide: on the march

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Infections are accelerating in largely untouched countries and those which hoped they had come through the worst. But there is hope

“Most of the world sort of sat by and watched with almost a sense of detachment and bemusement,” said Helen Clark, appointed to investigate the World Health Organization’s handling of the pandemic. The former New Zealand prime minister was describing the early weeks of the outbreak, and the sense that coronavirus was a problem “over there”. The failure to recognise our interconnection created complacency even as the death toll rose.

It took three months for the first million people to fall sick – but only a week to record the last million of the nearly 13 million cases now reported worldwide. As England emerges from lockdown at an unwary pace, Covid-19 is accelerating globally. The WHO has reported a record surge of a quarter of a million cases in a single day. The death toll is over half a million people and rising fast.

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British pilot leaves Vietnam hospital after four-month battle with Covid-19 – video

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A British pilot who spent more than two months on life support in Vietnam after contracting the coronavirus has been discharged from hospital and has returned to the UK. Stephen Cameron, 42, was the sickest patient medics had treated during the coronavirus outbreak in the country and had been given 10% chance to live. The Vietnam Airlines pilot from Motherwell, Scotland, spent four months in hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City, including 10 weeks on a ventilator. Vietnam has recorded no official deaths related to the pandemic after a fast and proactive response

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Florida reports 15,000 new coronavirus cases, a record single-day total in the US

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Rise is the biggest in any state since start of the pandemic as its daily average death toll continues to also rise

Florida broke the national record Sunday for the largest single-day increase in positive coronavirus cases in any state since the beginning of the pandemic, adding more than 15,000 cases as its daily average death toll continued to also rise.

According to state Department of Health statistics, 15,299 people tested positive, for a total of 269,811 cases, and 45 deaths were recorded. California had the previous record of daily positive cases 11,694, set on Wednesday. New York had 11,571 on 15 April.

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Mueller castigates Trump’s decision to commute Roger Stone’s sentence – live

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The grim news from Florida continues: The state reported 15,000 new cases on Sunday. That breaks not only the record for a state in the US in a single day but is also more new cases than any European country has reported in a single day during the pandemic. Only the US, Brazil and India have reported more new cases in a day than Florida did on Sunday.

Related: Florida wrestles with impossible question: when can schools reopen safely?

The row over Goya Foods is spreading to some unlikely places. Last week, Goya Foods CEO Bob Unanue heaped praised on Donald Trump, saying: “We’re all truly blessed at the same time to have a leader like President Trump, who is a builder”.

There was backlash due to the fact that the head of an organization that describes itself as the largest Hispanic-owned food company in America praised a president who has introduced policies that have hurt Latinx people.

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Coronavirus live news: Florida sees fresh record rise in infections; 73 test positive in English farm outbreak

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Cases have risen by another 15,300; more than 70 workers have Covid-19 in Herefordshire cluster; Michael Gove says people should return to work

The US state of Florida has registered another grim record, and reports that new infections have risen by 15,300 in the 24 hours to Sunday to a total of 269,811.

This is the biggest daily increase in recorded coronavirus cases in the Sunshine State since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the state health department.

Hello, I’m taking over for the next few hours. As ever, any relevant updates you might want to share with me are greatly appreciated, you can get me on Twitter @JedySays or via email.

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Coronavirus: 200 farm workers quarantined in Herefordshire outbreak

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At least 73 employees at AS Green & Co near Malvern have tested positive for Covid-19

About 200 workers at a vegetable farm and packing business have been ordered to isolate in mobile homes on the property after an outbreak of coronavirus.

At least 73 of the workers at AS Green & Co, near Malvern in Herefordshire, have tested positive for Covid-19, and more are awaiting results.

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Fifth of vulnerable people considered self-harm in UK lockdown

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Exclusive: UCL findings shared with the Guardian underline mental health toll of pandemic

A fifth of vulnerable people in Britain thought about self-harming or killing themselves during lockdown, according to research shared with the Guardian, as a series of inquests underline the mental health toll of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Findings from University College London reveal that 8,000 out of 44,000 people surveyed (18%) reported thoughts of self-harm or suicide, and 42% had accessed support services. A further 5% said they had harmed themselves at least once since the start of the UK’s lockdown.

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Israelis protest over Netanyahu’s handling of economy during Covid-19 outbreak – video

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Huge crowds of people have demonstrated in Tel Aviv against the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Unemployment has increased to 21% since the country went into partial lockdown in March and aid packages promised by the government have been slow to come through, frustrating Israelis who fear they are on the verge of financial collapse.

In keeping with restrictions on public gatherings, police limited the number of people allowed into Tel Aviv's Rabin Square for the rally on Sunday as nearby streets filled with demonstrators wearing face masks

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Indonesia is failing to control coronavirus outbreak, say experts

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Fears that lack of testing, mixed messages and promotion of bogus cures hampering efforts

Attempts to control a growing coronavirus outbreak in Indonesia, the worst-hit country in south-east Asia, are being hampered by a lack of testing, poor communication from the government and the promotion of bogus cures, health experts have warned.

The country has so far recorded more than 74,000 cases and 3,535 deaths from the virus, though it is feared that this could be a vast underestimate. While testing rates have improved, they remain among the lowest in the world.

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Coronavirus brings tension and prejudice to Italy’s beaches

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Tempers fray over social distancing and visitors from Lombardy tell of discrimination

Tensions are breaking out on beaches and tourists from Lombardy have reported instances of discrimination as Italy’s first holiday season since the coronavirus outbreak gets under way.

Residents of Codogno, in Lodi province, the first town in the country’s badly affected Lombardy region to be quarantined, have claimed attempts to book holidays elsewhere in Italy were rebuffed after they revealed they would be travelling from a former “red zone”.

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Donald Trump publicly wears face mask for first time during hospital visit – video

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Donald Trump wore a face mask in public for the first time during a visit to a military hospital on Saturday evening. 

'When you’re in a hospital, especially … I think it’s expected to wear a mask,' the US president said as he left the White House in a helicopter to visit the Walter Reed national military medical centre in suburban Washington DC to meet wounded service members and healthcare providers caring for Covid-19 patients.

Coronavirus cases have surged to record levels in the US, with guidelines recommending the wearing of face masks in certain circumstances to stop the spread of the virus

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Crossroads Hotel: thousands told to isolate for two weeks as Sydney coronavirus cluster grows

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Nine cases have been added to the cluster in Casula and the contact dates have been widened to 3 to 10 July

Thousands of pub-goers have been asked to self-isolate for two weeks after a hotel staff member and three other people became the latest cases in an emerging coronavirus cluster.

The 18-year-old staffer and a close contact in her 50s, plus a woman in her 40s and a Victorian man in his 20s, who both dined at the venue, were on Sunday confirmed as new cases linked to Sydney’s Crossroads Hotel cluster.

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