Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
They were billed by the UK health secretary, Matt Hancock, as “lifesaving” and “hugely beneficial”: two new coronavirus tests that claim to deliver results within 90 minutes, promoted enthusiastically to the public with the help of front pages in the Times, the i and the Daily Mail, which declared they would “transform the war on corona”.
The suppliers are little known, evaluation data is not yet available, and it is unclear how effective the tests are outside hospital settings, not least because taking blood or swabs is difficult for non-medics.
One of two 90-minute rapid coronavirus tests bought by the UK government and announced on Monday has yet to be approved by regulators, while no data on the accuracy of either has been published, the Guardian has learned.
The test, from Oxford Nanopore, a young biotech company spun off from Oxford University, has not yet gained a CE mark. Before Covid-19, Oxford Nanopore had been involved only in research, not tests for patients.
Nine Conservative MPs in Greater Manchester have written a letter to the health secretary demanding “a more sophisticated approach” to local lockdowns, criticising the government’s “crude and ineffective strategy”.
The whole region of 2.8 million people was put back into partial lockdown last Thursday after infections started to rise. The decision prompted unhappiness in some areas of Greater Manchester where rates remained low, for example in Wigan and Bury.
The mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, has rejected the idea of releasing some of the 10 boroughs before others. But the Tory MPs reject this “one size fits all” approach, which they say “risks spreading resources too thinly across the whole conurbation, including in areas with few or no cases”.
They say Burnham fails to understand local infection patterns in seeking to “impose a crude and ineffective strategy across the whole area”.
They say:
Measures must be taken on a borough by borough basis and on a town by town basis in boroughs where there are only one or two coronavirus ‘hotspots’, but the rates in other parts of the borough are low ...
Failing to properly target resources, meaning inadequate measures in some places where the problems are greatest, and wasting resources where none are currently needed risks a wider outbreak across Greater Manchester, will only lead to more stringent ‘full lockdown’ measures being imposed as in Leicester. We must strive to avoid this at all costs.
Five clusters have been identified in Northern Ireland over the past seven days with 35 associated cases and 239 close contacts, according to the Public Health Agency (PHA).
Dr Gerry Waldron, head of health protection at the PHA, said:
This should act as a timely reminder that we must not become complacent - coronavirus remains in circulation and we have seen an increase in cases in recent weeks. It is therefore essential that we remember the key advice to help keep ourselves and those around us safe.
Maintain social distancing, wash your hands regularly, and get tested if you display any symptoms of coronavirus.
Scans suggest Tanystropheus, which lived 242m years ago, had nostrils on top of its snout
The mystery of an ancient reptile with a tremendously long neck has been solved, according to researchers who say the creature lived in the water.
Fossils of the creature, known as Tanystropheus, were first unearthed in Germany around 150 years ago and further specimens have turned up over the decades, largely at Monte San Giorgio on the Swiss-Italian border.
The UK government said 46,413 people had died in hospitals, care homes and the wider community after testing positive for coronavirus in the UK as of 5pm on Wednesday, up by 49 from the day before.
Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies show there have now been 56,600 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.
Austria’s foreign ministry on Thursday warned against trips to Spain with the exception of the Balearic and Canary Islands, as concerns grow that holidaymakers could catch the coronavirus and spread it once they return.
The measure will take effect from Monday, and people returning to Austria will be required to present a negative test for Covid-19, the ministry said.
The human destruction of natural ecosystems increases the numbers of rats, bats and other animals that harbour diseases that can lead to pandemics such as Covid-19, a comprehensive analysis has found.
The research assessed nearly 7,000 animal communities on six continents and found that the conversion of wild places into farmland or settlements often wipes out larger species. It found that the damage benefits smaller, more adaptable creatures that also carry the most pathogens that can pass to humans.
Test results for a man suspected of being North Korea’s first coronavirus case were inconclusive, but authorities have quarantined more than 3,635 primary and secondary contacts, according to a World Health Organization official.
On 26 July, the country said it had declared a state of emergency and locked down the border city of Kaesong after a person who defected to South Korea three years ago returned across the fortified border with what state media said were symptoms of Covid-19.
France’s prime minister, Jean Castex, has said vineyards are facing “major difficulties” due to a drop in exports during the pandemic.
He tweeted that state support “must continue and intensify” to save the wine industry from collapse.
Contexte international, crise sanitaire, baisse des exportations : notre filière viticole est confrontée à d’importantes difficultés. La mobilisation de l’État doit se poursuivre et s’intensifier. Avec @J_Denormandie, j’échange dans le Cher avec les professionnels du secteur. pic.twitter.com/G6qIEojyMw
Fertility and Sterility took seven years to take down Italian study, which was criticised by doctors for ethical concerns and dubious justifications
A widely criticised peer-reviewed study that measured the attractiveness of women with endometriosis has been retracted from the medical journal Fertility and Sterility.
The study, Attractiveness of women with rectovaginal endometriosis: a case-control study, was first published in 2013 and has been defended by the authors and the journal in the intervening years despite heavy criticism from doctors, other researchers and people with endometriosis for its ethical concerns and dubious justifications, with one advocate calling the study “heartbreaking” and “disgusting”.
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.
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.
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.
Here are the main headlines from our global coronavirus coverage so far on Monday:
About 1.5 million Italians - 2.5% of the population of Italy- may have already contracted coronavirus, nationwide antibody tests indicate, according to the Associated Press.
The figure, announced by health officials on Monday, is six times the number of confirmed cases in Italy’s official virus tally. The results — viewed with the country’s overall death toll of close to 35,000 —align with a 2.3% estimated mortality rate of the virus.
Coronavirus infections in the Philippines surged past 100,000 Sunday in a troubling milestone after medical groups declared that the country was waging a losing battle against the virus and asked the president to reimpose a lockdown in the capital.
The Department of Health reported a record-high daily tally of 5,032, bringing the total confirmed cases in the country to 103,185, including more than 2,000 deaths, the Associated Press news agency reports.
In the UK, where police have broken up several large dance parties since the lockdown began earlier this year, a warning has been issued to people to stay away from an area in south-west England, where they have been forced to break up a rave attended by a “large volume” of partygoers.
Gloucestershire police sent out this tweet this morning:
Police are currently in the Forest of Dean near to Speculation Car Park dispersing a rave. People are advised not to attend the area due to safety and Covid risks. This will likely take some time to resolve this issue. pic.twitter.com/rtYrXSqWb3
It is not always possible to pinpoint the origin of a local spike in cases, particularly in countries like the UK, where the disease is still circulating at relatively significant levels.
But in countries where overall caseloads are lower, and with rigorous test-and-trace schemes, it has been possible to pinpoint the factors that have sparked or fuelled local outbreaks.
The airline and travel industry’s hopes of a recovery are crushed by new quarantine rules and travel restrictions amid a fresh wave of coronavirus infections in several countries, my colleague Rob Davies reports, as fed-up sun seekers are increasingly choosing to defer holiday decisions indefinitely rather than rebook for a later date.
Hello, I’m taking over from my colleague Aamna for the next few hours. Please feel free to message me with relevant updates or tips, you can get me on Twitter @JedySays or via email.
Emily and Laurence Alison specialise in communication and co-operation with criminal suspects. But their methods work in the home and at work, too
“The more you push someone, the more they close up,” say Emily and Laurence Alison, a husband-and-wife psychology team. “The hungrier you are for information, the harder it will be to get that out of someone. But give the person a choice about what they say; give them some autonomy and you begin to build the rapport that may lead to a better conversation,” says Laurence.
This sounds like parenting advice and yet the Alisons’ specialism is helping counter-terrorism officers and the police to improve communication and co-operation with criminal suspects. When the atmosphere turns adversarial and competitive, as it so often does, they turn to the Alisons to help them navigate and negotiate.
From hearing loss and rashes, to being tall and bald, as the Covid-19 pandemic develops, a host of new symptoms and risk factors are being linked to the virus. We take a look at the evidence.
Addressing 12 factors such as excessive drinking and air pollution exposure may have significant effect, experts say
Excessive drinking, exposure to air pollution and head injuries all increase dementia risk, experts say in a report revealing that up to 40% of dementia cases worldwide could be delayed or prevented by addressing 12 such lifestyle factors.
Around 50 million people around the world live with dementia, including about 850,000 people in the UK. By 2040, it has been estimated there will be more than 1.2 million people living with dementia in England and Wales. There is currently no cure.
Governments have the right to restrict protests on public health grounds, within reason, the UN Human Rights Committee said, as demonstrations clash with coronavirus outbreaks around the world.
The committee stepped in to formulate its legal interpretation having seen a gap in the international norms being tested before the pandemic started, since when the matter has become more pressing.
The protection of ‘public health’ ground may exceptionally permit restrictions to be imposed, for example where there is an outbreak of an infectious disease and gatherings are dangerous.
It’s understandable and acceptable that for health reasons there may be limits on your rights.
The Philippine government’s Covid-19 task force confirmed 3,954 new infections on Thursday, the country’s largest single-day increase in new cases.
The information on the surge in infections, which was a sharp increase from the record 2,539 cases confirmed on 8 July, was mentioned in a regular circular issued by the inter-agency task force.