Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Nicola Sturgeon has confirmed Glasgow will remain in Scotland’s second toughest lockdown regime for at least another week, and said the country as a whole may not move down a tier, after Covid cases continued to rise.
The first minister said the latest infection and hospitalisation figures in Greater Glasgow and Clyde showed cases were rising, so it would be unwise to move the city down from tier 3 to 2 this weekend.
Victoria has started its seven-day circuit-breaker lockdown – its fourth lockdown since the coronavirus pandemic began.
Other states have also imposed snap lockdowns or restrictions as a result of Covid cases in the community, most recently New South Wales, after a mystery case. But, with the exception of Sydney’s northern beaches cluster, most leaks from hotel quarantine have not resulted in sizeable outbreaks.
One of the most shocking allegations made by Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings during Wednesday’s joint parliamentary committee hearing was his claim that “tens of thousands of people died who didn’t need to die”, because of the way the government handled the Covid pandemic.
His claims have some support from scientists, who have estimated that the toll from government delays could be as high as 33,000 lives.
At first minister’s questions in Edinburgh Nicola Sturgeon suggested that Boris Johnson’s failure to act swiftly at certain times in the pandemic had led to “loss of life”. As the Herald reports, Sturgeon said:
Sometimes I’m afraid, in the interests of health and human life, it is necessary for people in leadership positions like me to take very quick decisions because, as we know from bitter experience over this pandemic, it’s often the failure to take quick and firm decisions that leads to loss of life.
And anybody who’s in any doubt about that only had to listen to a fraction of what Dominic Cummings outlined about what he described as the chaotic response of the UK government at key moments of this pandemic.
New absence figures published by the Department for Education reveal that 60% of pupils in England were kept out of school for Covid-related reasons at some time last autumn.
The national data for the term that began when schools reopened in September shows that pupils missed 33 million days in the classroom because of Covid, through having to self-isolate or for shielding reasons. That sent the overall absence rate to nearly 12% for the term, compared with less than 5% in a normal term.
The government’s refusal to give schools any flexibility to finish in-school teaching early before Christmas, which was accompanied by threats of legal action, made matters even worse.
The prime minister’s former senior adviser spoke yesterday of the government’s shortcomings in the handling of this crisis and it is certainly the case that schools and colleges were badly let down by government leadership during the autumn term.
President Joe Biden has ordered US intelligence agencies to conduct a 90-day review of what is known about the origins of Covid-19 and whether it could have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan. So what does this mean for the lab leak theory?
Victoria is entering a seven-day lockdown as authorities work to contain a rapidly spreading Covid outbreak that the acting premier has warned is “running faster than we have ever recorded”.
The government hopes the restrictions – which start at midnight and include compulsory masks, school closures and a 5km travel limit for shopping and exercise – will act as a circuit-breaker after the state reported 11 new cases of the B1617.1 variant on Thursday taking the cluster to 26.
Several countries tell the WHO annual meeting that a new inquiry with new terms of reference must be launched
The United States and other countries have called for a more in-depth investigation of the pandemic origins, after an international mission to China earlier this year proved inconclusive.
Addressing the World Health Organization’s main annual meeting of member states in Geneva, representatives from several countries stressed the continued need to solve the mystery of how Covid-19 first began spreading among humans.
Dozens of countries are facing severe oxygen shortages because of surging Covid-19 cases, threatening the “total collapse” of health systems.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism analysed data provided by the Every Breath Counts Coalition, the NGO Path and the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) to find the countries most at risk of running out of oxygen. It also studied data on global vaccination rates.
China has vehemently denied a Wall Street Journal report citing US intelligence materials that said several members of staff at a key virus laboratory in Wuhan had fallen ill shortly before the first patient with Covid-like symptoms was recorded in the city on 8 December 2019.
Foreign ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, said it was “completely untrue” that three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) became sick in autumn 2019. The report, based on “previously undisclosed” US intelligence, said the said the lab workers staff had become sick “with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness”.
Confusion is reigning after airlines swiftly increased the number of planes travelling to “amber list” holiday destinations from the UK, before the prime minister contradicted ministers over whether trips to such places were permitted. They are not, in fact, allowed, Boris Johnson said.
But if we always believed what the PM said, well, we would be rather foolish. The ins and outs of the guidance are quite nuanced.
A coronavirus outbreak on Mount Everest has infected at least 100 climbers and support staff, a mountaineering guide said, giving the first comprehensive estimate amid official Nepalese denials that the disease has spread to the world’s highest peak.
Lukas Furtenbach of Austria, who last week halted his Everest expedition due to virus fears, said one of his foreign guides and six Nepali Sherpa guides had tested positive.
I think with all the confirmed cases we know now confirmed from (rescue) pilots, from insurance, from doctors, from expedition leaders, I have the positive tests so we can prove this … We have at least 100 people minimum positive for Covid in base camp, and then the numbers might be something like 150 or 200.”
A coronavirus outbreak on Mount Everest has infected at least 100 climbers and support staff, a mountaineering guide said, giving the first comprehensive estimate amid official Nepalese denials that the disease has spread to the world’s highest peak.
Lukas Furtenbach of Austria, who last week halted his Everest expedition due to virus fears, said on Saturday one of his foreign guides and six Nepali Sherpa guides had tested positive.
Australia has now administered more than 3.5m doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, with a further 89,000 jabs delivered around the country.
New South Wales delivered 12,485 doses in the past 24 hours, becoming another one-day record for the state. Around 5000 of them were administered at its Olympic Park mass vaccination hub alone, AAP reports.
Malaysia has reported a further 6,320 coronavirus cases amid a recent surge in infections, as well as 50 new deaths. Saturday’s figures compare with 4,140 cases and 44 deaths a week today.
The nation reported a record high of 6,806 new cases on Thursday when it also saw its highest daily toll of 59 deaths. Taking the total number of cases since the onset of the pandemic to 505,115, Reuters reports.
The perceived wisdom has been that children do not suffer severely from the virus. Yet they are now in Brazil, Indonesia and India
Emergency physician and leading epidemiologist in Brazil, Dr Fatima Marinho, is seeing symptoms of Covid-19 in children that starkly contrast with the message that has been relayed globally throughout the pandemic that children do not appear to suffer severely from the virus.
Severe muscle aches, diarrhoea, coughing, abdominal pain and hospitalisation – all of these are happening to children with Covid-19 in Brazil, Marinho says.
Both the Pfizer and AstraZeneca jabs are highly effective at protecting people from the strain of the Covid-19 virus first found in India, a study by Public Health England (PHE) has found.
The analysis, carried out between 5 April and 16 May, found the Pfizer vaccine was 88% effective against symptomatic disease from the India variant two weeks after a second dose, compared with 93% effectiveness against the Kent strain. For its part, the AstraZeneca jab was 60% effective, compared with 66% against the Kent variant over the same period.
Australian and international scientists publish open letter defending Dr Elisabeth Bik and calling for science whistleblowers to be protected
A world-renowned Dutch expert in identifying scientific misconduct and error, Dr Elisabeth Bik, has been threatened with legal action for questioning the integrity of a study promoting the drug hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19.
The case, filed with the French state prosecutor by controversial infectious diseases physician Dr Didier Raoult, has prompted hundreds of scientists from across the world to publish an open letter calling for science whistleblowers to be protected.
States across India have begun declaring a “black fungus” epidemic as cases of the fatal rare infection shoot up in patients recovering from Covid-19.
The fungal disease, called mucormycosis, has a 50% mortality rate. It affects patients initially in the nose but the fungus can then spread into the brain, and can often only be treated by major surgery removing the eye or part of skull and jaw.
The potential arrival of a highly transmissable variant could overwhelm health systems already struggling after military coup
Doctors in Myanmar have warned the country would be unable to cope with a major outbreak of Covid-19 as hospitals and medical facilities struggle to function in the aftermath of February’s military coup.
Fears are growing about the potential impact of a highly transmissible variant as neighbouring countries, chiefly India but also Thailand and Laos, battle record numbers of Covid cases.
Pressure growing for UK and others to follow Biden’s lead at WTO to avoid ‘moral and public health failure’
The UK government is in talks about a plan to waive Covid-19 vaccine patents to boost the production of shots in low and middle-income countries, the Guardian can reveal.
The discussions come amid growing calls for Britain and other European countries to follow the US in supporting the proposal put before the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Tunisia has ended its one-week lockdown, despite having the highest reported deaths per capita of any country in Africa.
Covid-19 cases in Tunisia were initially low last year, with a sweeping six-week lockdown involving the closure of borders and shutting down all but essential commercial activity appearing to halt the spread of the virus. However, since easing that original lockdown cases have increased, with daily reported infections and deaths now the highest in Africa, according to Our World in Data.
Local lockdowns remain a possibility in some parts of England, as “intensive surveillance” continues in areas with high coronavirus rates, a cabinet minister has said.
The environment secretary, George Eustice, told Times Radio there was a “clear roadmap out of lockdown” with a decision due within weeks on whether the last stage of lifting of restrictions can go ahead on 21 June.