Category Archives: Science

Boris Johnson’s senior adviser refuses to apologise for lockdown breach – as it happened

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Dominic Cummings will not resign; WHO drops hydroxychloroquine from global study into experimental coronavirus treatments. This blog is now closed

We’ve fired up a brand new blog at the link below – follow me there for the latest:

Related: Coronavirus live news: WHO drops hydroxychloroquine trial as Mexico death toll questioned

The White House on Monday issued a statement amending the timing of the start of new restrictions on travel from Brazil to the United States to 11.59pm Eastern Time on Tuesday, 26 May.

The White House announced on Sunday that it was restricting travel from Brazil to the United States, two days after the South American nation became the world’s No. 2 hotspot for coronavirus cases.

In its original announcement, it said the restrictions would come into force on 28 May.

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Global report: US suspends travel from Brazil as schools reopen in parts of Australia

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Chile’s president says hospitals are ‘very close to limit’, France records lowest number of daily Covid-19 cases since March, India restarts domestic flights

President Donald Trump has further limited travel to the US from the world’s coronavirus hotspots by denying entry to foreigners coming from Brazil, which is second to the US in the number of confirmed cases.

Trump had already banned certain travellers from China, Europe, the United Kingdom and Ireland and, to a lesser extent, Iran. He has not moved to ban travel from Russia, which has the world’s third-highest caseload, approximately 20,000 fewer than Brazil’s.

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Exclusive: big pharma rejected EU plan to fast-track vaccines in 2017

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World’s top drug firms turned down proposals for work on pathogens like coronavirus

The world’s largest pharmaceutical companies rejected an EU proposal three years ago to work on fast-tracking vaccines for pathogens like coronavirus to allow them to be developed before an outbreak, the Guardian can reveal.

The plan to speed up the development and approval of vaccines was put forward by European commission representatives sitting on the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) – a public-private partnership whose function is to back cutting-edge research in Europe – but it was rejected by industry partners on the body.

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Elon Musk’s SpaceX to launch first astronauts from US soil since 2011

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Falcon 9 rocket to make history as billionaire seeks to commercialise space travel

Elon Musk’s SpaceX company hopes to make history on Wednesday by launching the first astronauts into space from US soil in nine years, as the billionaire takes the next step in his dream to commercialise space travel.

Donald Trump will be among the spectators at Kennedy space centre in Florida to witness the launch, which has been given the green light despite the coronavirus lockdown.

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Sweden ‘wrong’ not to shut down, says former state epidemiologist

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Scientist who oversaw the response to Sars says country has failed the vulnerable

The predecessor of Sweden’s state epidemiologist has broken her silence on the country’s controversial coronavirus strategy, saying she now believes the authorities should have put in place tougher restrictions in the early stages of the pandemic to bring the virus under control.

Annika Linde, who oversaw Sweden’s response to swine flu and Sars as state epidemiologist from 2005 to 2013, had until now expressed support for her country’s approach under her successor, Anders Tegnell.

But she has now become the first member of the public health establishment to break ranks, saying she has changed her mind as a result of Sweden’s relatively high death toll compared with that of its neighbours, Denmark, Norway, and Finland.

“I think that we needed more time for preparedness. If we had shut down very early ... we would have been able, during that time, to make sure that we had what was necessary to protect the vulnerable,” Linde told the Observer.

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Everyone wants to ‘follow the science’. But we can’t waste time on blame

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The Royal Society president says scientists must not be made scapegoats for policy failures

In 1981, a virus that had jumped the species barrier some decades earlier to infect humans began to wreak havoc among the gay community in San Francisco and New York. A taskforce was set up to study the cause of this disease, and it took a few years to identify HIV as the definitive cause of Aids and its genome to be sequenced, and nearly 15 years before a cocktail of drugs meant that having an HIV infection was no longer a certain death sentence.

Forty years later, the cause of the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan was identified as a new coronavirus Sars-CoV-2, and its sequence determined in a matter of weeks. That, in turn, paved the way for a sensitive test for infection and, now, antibody tests for people who may have had the disease. That we know so much in such record time is due to sustained international investment in science.

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Coronavirus live news: Austria’s president apologises for curfew breach

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France asks citizens to avoid foreign trips; US likely to impose travel restrictions on Brazil; Afghanistan cases top 10,000

The Daily Mail - usually one of Boris Johnson’s supporters in the press - has called on the prime minister to sack Dominic Cummings, trailing its headline with the following:

In the clearest way, Dominic Cummings has violated the spirit and letter of the lockdown. Boris Johnson says he ‘totally gets’ how the public feels about this. Clearly he totally doesn’t. Neither man has displayed a scintilla of contrition for this breach of trust. Do they think we are fools? For the good of the government and the nation, Mr Cummings must resign. Or the prime minister must sack him. No ifs. No buts.

The White House has announced it is prohibiting foreigners from traveling to the US if they had been in Brazil in the last two weeks, two days after the South American nation became the world No. 2 hot spot for coronavirus cases.

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the new restrictions would help ensure foreign nationals do not bring additional infections to the US, but would not apply to the flow of commerce between the new countries.

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Sweden’s Covid-19 policy is a model for the right. It’s also a deadly folly | Nick Cohen

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The Swedes were the Brexiters’ poster nation, but now have Europe’s worst death rate

Covid-19 is nature’s way of making bad situations worse. From the moment it turned the world upside down, you could have predicted that the Chinese Communist party would have arrested whistleblowers and covered up the threat to humanity. It’s what it does best, after all.

You would not have needed mystical powers to divine that Viktor Orbán would have used a pandemic as an excuse to turn Hungary into the European Union’s first dictatorship. Nor did it take a modern Nostradamus to foresee that, if you put men who care nothing for competence, complexity, or the difference between truth and falsehood in power, you will live to regret it. Or in the case of tens of thousands who trusted Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, die needless deaths.

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‘There are too many’: bones of 60 mammoths found in Mexico

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Archaeologists face surfeit of mammoths after bones found at airport under construction north of Mexico City

Archaeologists have found the bones of about 60 mammoths at an airport under construction just north of Mexico City, near human-built “traps” where more than a dozen mammoths were found last year.

Both discoveries reveal how appealing the area – once a shallow lake – was for the mammoths, and how erroneous was the classic vision of groups of fur-clad hunters with spears chasing mammoths across a plain.

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Hydroxychloroquine: Trump’s Covid-19 ‘cure’ increases deaths, global study finds

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Malaria drug should not be used to treat coronavirus, scientists say, after study shows high death rate

Hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug Donald Trump is taking to prevent Covid-19, has increased deaths in patients treated with it in hospitals around the world, a study has shown.

A major study of the way hydroxychloroquine and its older version, chloroquine, have been used on six continents – without clinical trials – reveals a sobering picture. Scientists said the results meant the drug should no longer be given to Covid-19 patients except in proper research settings.

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‘Planes spray the city at night’: Covid-19 conspiracy theories in Mexico’s motor town

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In San Luis Potosí, cases of Covid-19 are rising, but not everyone is taking lockdown seriously. Photographer Mauricio Palos looks at how the outbreak has affected his home town

In San Luis Potosí, a city in central Mexico, some people believe the coronavirus is an invention by the government. They are sharing memes, videos and recordings with misinformation, in which people tell you that in the hospitals they drain the fluid from your knees and planes spray the city with the virus at night.

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Manila lockdown diary: ‘I went into labour but had to walk to the clinic to give birth’

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Poverty, hunger and the threat of being shot by police make life under strict lockdown harder for one expectant mother

Millions of people in the Philippine capital, Manila, have spent more than two months under lockdown. The densely populated city, once notorious for its heaving traffic, has been transformed into a ghost town. Residents who do not perform essential work have been asked to stay at home and are barred from leaving their neighbourhoods. Rights groups have warned over the brutal manner in which the restrictions have been enforced. In one instance, curfew violators were put in dog cages, while others have been forced to sit in the midday sun as punishment. President Rodrigo Duterte has told police they can shoot anyone deemed to be causing trouble during the lockdown.

Last week, the government announced an extension of the lockdown until 31 May, making it one of the strictest and longest quarantines in the world.

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Spain reports lowest daily death toll in over two months – as it happened

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Brazil daily death toll jumps by nearly 1,200; East Africa facing ‘triple menace’ of Covid-19, floods and locusts. This blog is now closed

We are closing this live blog now, but you can stay up to date on all our coverage with our new global blog which you can find below.

Related: Coronavirus live news: Trump pushes to open churches as Brazil death toll passes 20,000

Here the latest developments at a glance:

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UK coronavirus live: Scotland to reopen schools in August as Sturgeon lays out lockdown easing

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Scottish first minister explains measures in phase one of loosening of restrictions; former Tory party chair calls NHS migrant surcharge ‘monstrous’

The Conservative backbenchers Henry Smith has outraged opposition parliamentarians by saying that the objection to MPs returning to the House of Commons after next week’s recess (when the current, largely-virtual proceedings will end) has come from the “lazy left” and from “workshy” Labour and nationalist politicians.

Not that I should be surprised by the lazy left but interesting how work-shy socialist and nationalist MPs tried to keep the remote Parliament going beyond 2 June.

Henry this is an appalling thing to say, would you like to compare cases dealt with in this crisis? Hours helping with food, PPE, testing? Number of questions put down to ministers? Number of bill amendments written? Also calling people working at home workshy is quite something https://t.co/RROVCxbG7O

The government’s own public health advice has said that those who can work from home should and parliament has developed a system using technology to ensure the scrutiny of government whilst allowing people to work remotely.

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, told the London assembly this morning that he is considering banning passengers from buses and tube trains in the capital if they are not wearing a face covering. He said that he was hoping to persuade the UK government, which is currently just advising people to wear face coverings on public transport, to toughen its stance. He told the assembly:

We don’t want confusion. When there is a crisis, what’s important is to have message clarity.

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‘If I don’t have sex I’ll die of hunger’: Covid-19 crisis for Rio’s trans sex workers

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Brazil is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for transgender people. For trans sex workers, the pandemic has intensified the risk

  • All photographs by Ian Cheibub

Social distancing is keeping people off the streets of central Rio de Janeiro. And that has created serious challenges for its trans sex workers, who have seen their clientele, and their income, melt away.

“You can see what it’s like: empty streets, shops closed, the fallen economy ” says Elba Tavares, 44, from Paraíba state in north-east Brazil. “I am no longer in that rush of prostitution but yes, I sell my body.” But, she says: “There are very few customers.”

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Europe should brace for second wave, says EU coronavirus chief

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Exclusive: ‘The question is how big,’ says Dr Andrea Ammon, who thinks March skiing breaks were pivotal to spread

The prospect of a second wave of coronavirus infection across Europe is no longer a distant theory, according to the director of the EU agency responsible for advising governments – including the UK – on disease control.

“The question is when and how big, that is the question in my view,” said Dr Andrea Ammon, director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

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Climate change is turning parts of Antarctica green, say scientists

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Researchers map ‘beginning of new ecosystem’ as algae bloom across surface of melting snow

Scientists have created the first large-scale map of microscopic algae on the Antarctic peninsula as they bloom across the surface of the melting snow, tinting the surface green and potentially creating a source of nutrition for other species.

The British team behind the research believe these blooms will expand their range in the future because global heating is creating more of the slushy conditions they need to thrive.

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Coronavirus live news: Greece to restart tourism from 15 June

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Country plans to allow international flights from 1 July; Spain makes face coverings compulsory; global cases hit 4.9m

Here is more on US president Donald Trump calling for an in-person G7 meeting.

Donald Trump has said he may seek to revive a face-to-face meeting of Group of Seven leaders near Washington, after earlier canceling the gathering due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Related: Trump considers an in-person G7 meeting despite coronavirus pandemic

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Coronavirus live news: Barcelona beaches to reopen for sunbathers

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WHO chief promises review of global response; Afghanistan sees biggest one-day rise in new infections; Italy records lowest deaths since March

Twenty one more people have died from Covid-19 in the Netherlands, the lowest number reported on a Tuesday since March, taking the total death toll in the country to 5,715.

According to the latest update from the Dutch national institute for public health and the environment (RIVM), a further 108 people tested positive for the virus, the lowest number of new daily infections recorded since 10 March. So far, 44,249 confirmed cases have been reported.

The number of people who have fallen ill due to the novel coronavirus in the Netherlands has been decreasing since the end of March. This is apparent from the decrease in the number of newly reported patients, hospital admissions, ICU admissions and deaths per day.

The number of people who visit their GP because of symptoms that are consistent with the coronavirus is still decreasing. This is evident from figures provided by the Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research (Nivel).

The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus across Africa has passed 86,000, the regional office of the World Health Organization has said.

Unlike in Europe, a widespread outbreak seems yet to happen in Africa, a continent of 1.3 billion people. There had been fears that its comparatively limited healthcare infrastructure would be overrun by patients with Covid-19.

Over 86,000 confirmed #COVID19 cases on the African continent - with more than 33,000 recoveries & 2,700 deaths. View country figures & more with the WHO African Region COVID-19 Dashboard: https://t.co/V0fkK8dYTg pic.twitter.com/t8kU48MI7R

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