Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Director of National Institutes of Health pleads with Americans to get their shots as Delta variant ravages the country
The US could soon see Covid-19 cases return to 200,000 a day, a level not seen since among the pandemic’s worst days in January and February, the director of the National Institutes of Health warned on Sunday.
While the US currently is seeing an average of about 129,000 new infections a day – a 700% increase from the beginning of July – that number could jump in the next couple weeks, Dr Francis Collins said on Fox News Sunday.
We’re wrapping up the Covid live blog for today, here’s a quick summary of the latest developments:
France’spass sanitaire health permit system will be extended to more than 120 major department stores and shopping centres on Monday in areas where levels of Covid infection are causing concern, including Paris and the Mediterranean coast.
The decision to extend the measure restricting entry to customers who can prove they have been vaccinated, have had a negative Covid test or have recovered from coronavirus was made by local officials.
The pass will now be required for shoppers entering Paris department stores such as Galeries Lafayette, Printemps, BHV, Le Mon Marché and La Samaritaine, and others mainly in the south of the country.
One million additional doses of the Pfizer vaccine are on the way to Australia, after the Polish government answered the Morrison government’s international pleas for help and as New South Wales authorities struggle to contain the state’s Covid outbreak.
A total of 530,000 of the new doses, due to arrive in Australia late on Sunday, have been quarantined for use in NSW for 20-to-39-year-olds living in the 12 hotspot Sydney local government areas.
Ministers are being pressed to reveal what contingency plans are in place to deal with a future Covid variant that evades current vaccines, amid warnings from scientific advisers that such an outcome could set the battle against the pandemic back a year or more.
Recent papers produced by the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) have suggested that the arrival of a variant that evades vaccines is a “realistic possibility”. Sage backed continued work on new vaccines that reduce infection and transmission more than current jabs, the creation of more vaccine-production facilities in the UK and lab-based studies to predict evolution of variants.
Until relatively recently, lethal infectious diseases stalked the lives of Australian children – including my father, Tom Keneally. Vaccines have saved millions
It’s 1940, and a five-year-old boy lies in an oxygen tent. He struggles for breath and hallucinates that his leaden toy soldiers are alive and marching around the room, monstering him with their bayonets.
He has diphtheria, a disease also known as The Strangling Angel. There is a vaccine, but not every child has been inoculated. The bacterial infection creates a membrane across the back of the throat, cutting off air supply.
That’s where I’ll leave you for tonight. It’s been a big day. Let’s recap what we learned.
No public holidays for Parkes...
While the new PHO isn’t available, interesting to note that the Govt took no time at all to cancel the public holidays impacted by the lockdown… ♂️ pic.twitter.com/5uEtFIpKiE
New South Wales has been forced into a snap statewide lockdown after enduring its worst day of the Covid-19 pandemic so far, with 466 new cases and four deaths.
Australia’s most populous state has tightened restrictions and imposed new $5,000 fines for lockdown breaches, ahead of an expected worsening of numbers in coming days.
After backlash over the 100,000-plus crowd of mostly unmasked faces at Chicago’s Lollapalooza, festival organisers reckon with a safe way forward
It could have been an image from 2019 – a sea of mostly unmasked faces, shoulder to shoulder, singing to live music in Chicago’s Grant Park. The mass gathering of about 100,000 people daily for Lollapalooza 2021, one of the country’s most prominent music festivals, featuring Foo Fighters and Post Malone, on the last weekend of July was a welcome sight to music lovers – and a worrisome event for public health officials as cases of the Delta variant of Covid-19 surge in the US.
The photos now appear like the last naive gasp of pandemic-free fantasy; in the two weeks since Lollapalooza, which required either proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test to attend, the rapid spread of the Delta variant has forced a slate of upcoming music festivals to reassess health and safety plans at a pivotal moment for handling of the pandemic in the US.
A noisy minority in NSW’s northern rivers are pushing back against Covid-19 restrictions
Benny Zable has lived in Nimbin on and off since 1973, when he arrived in town for the Aquarius festival – the event that seeded counterculture and escapist lifestyles into the northern rivers of New South Wales.
The 75-year-old artist and activist is a storied figure in this part of Australia, now a heartland for alternative health and wellness advocates, and notorious for low immunisation rates. He was also the first person from Nimbin to show up for a Covid-19 vaccine.
Many more people around the world will die of Covid if western political leaders “reject their responsibility to the rest of humanity” by prioritising booster shots for their own populations instead of sharing doses, the head of the Oxford vaccine group has warned.
Writing for the Guardian, Prof Sir Andrew Pollard, and Seth Berkley, the chief executive of Gavi, the vaccine alliance, say that the scientific and public health case for large-scale boosting has not been made and could have far-reaching consequences in other countries.
Lesotho’s prime minister, Moeketsi Majoro, has said he is isolating after testing positive for Covid-19, as doctors warned that the true tally of cases in the country was going unrecorded.
Majoro tweeted that he had taken a travel-related test that came back positive.
A fake check-in app is being used by Covid-19 conspiracy theorists and anti-lockdown groups to dupe business owners and keep location data out of the hands of contact tracers in at least three states.
Guardian Australia can reveal that conspiratorial websites and Telegram groups with at least 15,000 followers are sharing links that allow users to generate fake check-in confirmations on their phones.
Updated guidance comes after a CDC analysis of new safety data, as vaccination rates remain low among pregnant women in the US
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention urged all pregnant women Wednesday to get the Covid-19 vaccine as hospitals in hot spots around the US see disturbing numbers of unvaccinated mothers-to-be seriously ill with the virus.
Expectant women run a higher higher risk of severe illness and pregnancy complications from the coronavirus, including perhaps miscarriages and stillbirths. But their vaccination rates are low, with only about 23% having received at least one dose, according to CDC data.
Ministers have started ordering vaccines for a booster campaign in autumn 2022, with Pfizer reportedly being asked to supply the UK with a further 35m doses.
The government has still not give the final go-ahead for the vaccine booster programme expected this autumn, but it is understood to have placed the order with Pfizer despite the company raising its prices.
Melbourne faces the possibility of a lockdown extension as shopping centre workers ordered into quarantine; new cases emerge across regional NSW. Follow all the day’s news
Queensland LNP MP George Christensen has spoken to Sydney radio 2GB about being censured through a parliamentary motion yesterday.
The whole House, including the government, voted to support Labor’s motion disassociating the parliament with Christensen’s anti-lockdown and anti-public health measure comments yesterday (although Scott Morrison couldn’t bring himself to name or reference Christensen in his speech and just a hour or so later, cabinet minister Paul Fletcher declined five times on national TV to say he disagreed with Christensen’s views)
Happy Wednesday!
It’s not just hump day; we’re also halfway through the parliamentary sitting. At this stage, there’s a week break and then it’s back into it, but you have to wonder whether any of the east coast MPs will risk going home, given how quickly Covid is changing the landscape. Although, it doesn’t seem like anyone is missing the deputy prime minister, who has been in lockdown in Armidale, and apparently, unable to zoom in for the sitting (he has answered no questions in QT and offered no contributions to debate).
Public support for Yoshihide Suga’s cabinet dipped below 30%, despite widespread support for going ahead with the Games
Public support for the government of Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, has slumped to an all-time low, despite evidence that most people support the decision to go ahead with the Tokyo Olympics during the coronavirus pandemic.
Ebola-like disease kills man in Guinea as WHO says it is working with local health authorities on swift response to stop spread
Health authorities in Guinea have confirmed one death from Marburg virus, a highly infectious haemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola, the World Health Organization says.
It marks the first time that the deadly disease has been identified in west Africa.
They are questions lurking in many people’s minds: just how upbeat or pessimistic should we be about the pandemic now? How does the UK compare with other countries? And is the worst of the crisis really over?
Two weeks after “freedom day” in England and with case numbers across the UK remaining lower than some modellers had feared, the worst seems to have eased. Future lockdowns, according to experts, seem unlikely unless new variants emerge.