Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Denmark’s government is considering exhuming and cremating the remains of millions of culled mink after decaying carcasses started to emerge from a hastily dug grave.
After a mutated version of Covid-19 was found in the animals, the prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, announced a cull in early November of the estimated 15-17 million mink in Denmark, the world’s biggest exporter of mink fur.
Russia will ship some doses of its Sputnik V trial vaccine to Hungary next week, after a visit by a team of Hungarian doctors to see the manufacturing process, Reuters reports, citing a statement by the Russian health minister, Mikhail Murashko.
Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, said talks were also underway on how the Russian vaccine could be potentially produced in Hungary.
Concerns around the efficacy of the Oxford University/AstraZeneca coronavirus jab in older people could lead to different age groups being given different vaccines, writes Nicola Davis, the Guardian’s science correspondent.
The partners announced last week that the vaccine had a 70% efficacy overall. For most trial participants – given two full doses, spaced a month apart – the efficacy was 62%, but for 3,000 participants mistakenly given half a dose for their first jab, the efficacy was 90%. No participants, regardless of dosing, developed severe Covid or were hospitalised with the disease.
Concerns around the efficacy of the Oxford University/AstraZeneca coronavirus jab in older people could lead to different age groups being given different vaccines, experts have said.
The partners announced last week that the vaccine had a 70% efficacy overall. For most trial participants – given two full doses, spaced a month apart – the efficacy was 62%, but for 3,000 participants mistakenly given half a dose for their first jab, the efficacy was 90%. No participants, regardless of dosing, developed severe Covid or were hospitalised with the disease.
The Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine is coming under increasing scrutiny, with critics questioning the claim that trials showed it could protect up to 90% of people against coronavirus.
On Thursday Sir John Bell, Oxford’s regius professor of medicine and the UK government’s life sciences adviser, dismissed suggestions the trial had not been properly set up or reported. “We weren’t cooking this up as we went along,” he said, adding that he hoped the full, peer-reviewed data would be published in the Lancet medical journal at the weekend.
The head of British drug manufacturer AstraZeneca said further research was needed on its Covid-19 vaccine after questions emerged over the protection it offers, but the additional testing is unlikely to affect regulatory approval in Europe.
AstraZeneca and its partner, the University of Oxford, announced on Monday that it was seeking regulatory approval for the vaccine after it showed an average 70% effectiveness.
Spain’s capital Madrid turned on its Christmas lights on Thursday, spending more than last year to illuminate 30 additional streets and squares despite a sharp economic downturn driven by the coronavirus pandemic.
Banners of LED lights in the red and yellow of the Spanish flag appeared in parts of the city, including stretches of over a kilometre alongside the central boulevard that runs past the world-famous Prado museum.
The regional government of Madrid is proposing allowing groups of up to 10 people to gather on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day and the feast of the Epiphany (6 January). The number of different households allowed to mix would be capped at three.
Under the plans, which have been submitted to the central government, the current midnight to 6am curfew would be replaced on those days by one running from 1.30am to 6am.
Authorities in Sicily have asked Cuba’s government to send to the region about 60 health operators, including doctors and nurses, as hospitals are struggling with a shortage of medical personnel during the second wave.
The request was filed this week to the Italian embassy in Cuba and consists of intensive care specialists, nurses, anaesthetists, resuscitators, virologists and pneumologists, the Italian newspaper la Repubblica has reported.
Government scientists have warned the relaxation of coronavirus restrictions over Christmas could lead to a third wave of the pandemic, with increased transmission and unnecessary deaths.
Families across the UK will be able to gather in three-household groups of any size over Christmas, the government has announced, prompting warnings from scientists that the plan will almost inevitably result in a rise in the number of coronavirus cases.
People bereaved by Covid-19 have warned that allowing families in the UK to get together over Christmas is “sheer madness” and urged the public to have a low-key festive period rather than risk the grief they have endured.
Members of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group told the Guardian that large family gatherings were too high-risk, with one grieving husband saying anyone prepared to mix family groups should also “prepare for a funeral”.
Results from clinical trials have shown that the world has three apparently highly effective vaccines for Covid-19. With the race now on for regulatory approval, production and distribution, is the end of the pandemic within reach?
After a gruelling year of successive waves of Covid-19 infections and national lockdowns there has been a burst of good news this month, with three separate vaccine candidates performing extremely well in clinical trials.
First, Pfizer and Moderna announced that their vaccines were testing at an efficacy of around 95%. Then came the news that the AstraZeneca vaccine (the one pre-ordered in bulk by the UK government) was hitting 90%. It marks not just a new phase in the Covid-19 pandemic but potentially a revolution in vaccine technology itself.
Anticov study with international research institutions aims to stop disease progression and protect fragile health systems
A network of 13 African countries has joined forces with global researchers to launch the largest clinical trial of potential Covid-19 treatments on the continent.
The Anticov study, involving Antwerp’s Institute of Tropical Medicine and international research institutions, aims to identify treatments that can be used to treat mild and moderate cases of Covid-19 early and prevent spikes in hospitalisation that could overwhelm fragile and already overburdened health systems in Africa.
Scientists have warned the UK’s Christmas coronavirus plans, which will allow up to three households form a “bubble” to meet over the festive period, will cause the virus to spread and lead to further deaths.
Martin McKee, the professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said:“We know that the virus spreads easiest where people mix together, close to each other, for long periods of time indoors. These are exactly the conditions the government seems to be encouraging.”
Brazil registered a further 31,100 confirmed Covid-19 cases over the last 24 hours and 630 deaths, the health ministry said.
The South American nation has now registered 6,118,708 cases since the pandemic began and the official death toll has risen to 170,115, according to ministry data.
Lunar landing is due in about eight days and entire mission is scheduled to last 23 days
China has launched a robotic spacecraft to bring back rocks from the moon – the first such attempt by any country since the 1970s.
The Long March-5, China’s largest carrier rocket, blasted off at 4.30am Beijing time on Tuesday from Wenchang space launch centre on the island of Hainan carrying the Chang’e-5 spacecraft.
The world is moving a step closer to ending the coronavirus pandemic, the scientist behind Britain’s first vaccine has declared, as Boris Johnson said he hoped the majority of those most at-risk could be immunised by Easter.
Successful trial results for the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine, suggesting it could protect up to 90% of people, are the third set of promising findings in as many weeks. Before this year, there had never been a vaccine for a coronavirus.
The coronavirus vaccine produced by Oxford University and AstraZeneca will be available on a non-profit basis “in perpetuity” to low- and middle-income countries in the developing world.
The details of arrangements to supply poorer countries came as AstraZeneca revealed the interim results of a phase 3 trial of the vaccine, which is being heralded as the first to meet the more challenging requirements of the developing world.
A coronavirus vaccine developed in the UK can prevent 70.4% of people from getting Covid-19 and up to 90% if a lower dose is used, according to data.
Oxford University and AstraZeneca have announced their jab is effective in preventing many people getting ill and it has been shown to work in different age groups, including the elderly. There are early indications it might also help stop the spread of the disease.
Quinn credited with boosting ‘greatest social media campaign in history’, raising more than $220m for ALS research
Patrick Quinn, whose personal battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease helped power the Ice Bucket Challenge fundraising campaign, has died aged 37, seven years after his diagnosis, according to the ALS Association and his supporters on Facebook.
Quinn, who was born and grew up in Yonkers, New York, was co-founder of the campaign that raised more than $220m for medical research into amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was diagnosed with ALS on 8 March 2013.
A programme of mass, instant coronavirus testing is to be rolled out to areas of England with the highest infection rates after lockdown is lifted next month, the prime minister has announced, as the government faces an unprecedented internal rebellion over Covid measures.
Among the plans, which will rely on the ability to massively expand rapid testing systems across the country, is a scheme to stop people who have come into close contact with someone who has coronavirus from having to isolate for 14 days, if tests show they have not contracted it.
France is preparing to ease its Covid-19 lockdown rules in the weeks leading up to Christmas with new daily caseloads falling and pressure building from retailers to allow the annual shopping season to go ahead.
But parts of east Asia that were thought to be controlling the disease have raised the possibility of new restrictions.
The past few months have brought a number of scientific terms to public attention. We’ve had to digest R (a virus’s reproduction number) and PCR (the polymerase chain reaction method of testing). And now there’s mRNA. This last one has featured heavily in recent news reports because of the spectacular results of twonew mRNA vaccines against coronavirus. It stands for “messenger ribonucleic acid”, a label familiar enough if you studied biology at O-level or GCSE, but otherwise hardly a household name. Even in the field of vaccine research, if you had said as recently as 10 years ago that you could protect people from infections by injecting them with mRNA, you would have provoked some puzzled looks.
Essentially, mRNA is a molecule used by living cells to turn the gene sequences in DNA into the proteins that are the building blocks of all their fundamental structures. A segment of DNA gets copied (“transcribed”) into a piece of mRNA, which in turn gets “read” by the cell’s tools for synthesising proteins. In the case of an mRNA vaccine, the virus’s mRNA is injected into the muscle, and our own cells then read it and synthesise the viral protein. The immune system reacts to these proteins – which can’t by themselves cause disease – just as if they’d been carried in on the whole virus. This generates a protective response that, we hope, lasts for some time. It’s so beautifully simple it almost seems like science fiction. But last week we learned that it was true.
State-sponsored hackers from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are engaged in concerted attempts to steal coronavirus vaccine secrets in what security experts describe as “an intellectual property war”.
They accuse hostile-state hackers of trying to obtain trial results early and seize sensitive information about mass production of drugs, at a time when a range of vaccines are close to being approved for the public.