Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The number of Covid-19 patients in French intensive care units fell below 5,000 for the first time since late March on Sunday, Reuters is reporting that health ministry data showed.
The number was down for a sixth day in a row at 4,971, against 5,005 the previous day, the ministry said.
The United States is closer to getting the coronavirus pandemic under control and health officials are focused on the next challenge: getting more Americans vaccinated, the White House Covid-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said on Sunday, Reuters reports.
“I would say we are turning the corner,” Zients said in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Emmanuel Macron has said national divisions during the Covid-19 pandemic have highlighted the need to “beef up” EU powers, as he opened a consultation on Europe’s future at an event that was almost cancelled due to internal squabbling.
Speaking from a TV studio set up in the middle of the hemicycle of the European parliament in Strasbourg, the French president said he hoped the Future of Europe conference, a rolling series of events and online public opinion surveys, would strengthen EU level decision-making.
Italy plans to lift quarantine restrictions for travellers arriving from European countries, including Britain and Israel, as early as mid-May to revive the tourism industry, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said on Saturday.
After meeting Health Minister Roberto Speranza to discuss the easing of restrictions for countries where vaccination levels are high, Di Maio said, quarantine requirements may also be scrapped for those arriving from the United States from June.
Tourism is an important key to Italy’s restart, and we need to plan the summer well so that health, economy and work are not put in danger.
With Minister Roberto Speranza we had a first confrontation on reopening measures to foreign tourists who want to visit our country this summer.
The German chancellor Angela Merkel said Europeans could forward to travelling this summer if coronavirus cases continue declining on the continent.
While the European Union is developing a vaccine certificate, valid throughout the 27-nation bloc, summer holidays should be possible again for people who haven’t had their shots against the virus, the chancellor said.
Merkel said that Germany also appears to have broken its most recent outbreak.
“Step by step, more will be possible in Germany, too, wherever the incidence drops, and that will hopefully be the case for all of Europe,” she said.
EU leaders have given short shrift to a proposal by Joe Biden and backed by the pope to waive Covid-19 vaccine patents as a way to increase supply, insisting that the White House should instead allow the export of doses and the key ingredients.
At a summit in Porto, a series of European leaders, including those who had previously appeared open to suspending intellectual property rights, said Biden’s idea was not a priority and expressed frustration at the US president’s attempt to claim the moral high ground.
Three Covid medicines with the potential to “change the course” of the pandemic will be authorised for mass production and use in the EU by October under a European Commission plan.
Stella Kyriakides, the commissioner for health, said such a move would reduce hospitalisation and tackle the long-term impact of Covid, with one in 10 people reporting symptoms 12 weeks after infection.
Mask-wearing mandatory for all indoor public venues, including public transport, as health authorities brace for more coronavirus cases due to the level of activity of a man in his 50s while infectious. Follow latest updates
Fairly wild photo of former Australian cricketer Brett Lee and broadcaster Neroli Meadows on a flight out of India (not sure where they’re going, surely we won’t lock up Bing, it’s been a big enough week for former Australian test cricketers as it is).
☣️ As COVID-safe as it gets …
Brett Lee and Neroli Meadows are prepared for the task to start their journey from India.
This is quite a wonky but important national security story: there’s concern that the independent monitor of intelligence and security agencies could become too close to them.
A government member of parliament’s security committee has questioned whether the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security is too close to the agencies it is supposed to be monitoring, AAP reports. The committee is scrutinising proposed laws intended to keep Australia’s close-knit network of intelligence agencies in check. Liberal committee member Celia Hammond gathered evidence at Thursday’s hearing about the practice of intelligence agencies getting pre-operational advice from IGIS. “Overall I think the danger, even with the best will in the world, is huge,” said Bret Walker SC, chair of the Law Council of Australia’s constitutional law committee and member of its criminal law committee. “I think it is depriving oversight agencies of a critical degree of detachment.” Just like judges don’t have lunch with litigants, consulting the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission about a transaction that might be insider trading was a very bad idea, Mr Walker said. “There is a real risk, a constant one, of all oversight supervisory bodies engaged in this sector of government activity, of those of us doing that work, being duchessed by the people we are meaning to be supervised.” The new bill will expand the remit of the inspector-general to include ACIC and AUSTRAC, which gathers financial intelligence on money laundering, organised crime, welfare fraud, tax evasion and terrorism financing. The committee also heard that the oversight bill is not dependent on the passage of the identify and disrupt bill that will add to surveillance powers and warrants for the Australian Federal Police and ACIC. Inspector-General Christopher Jessup QC said it was critical in a democracy that intelligence agencies were subject to strong oversight and accountability mechanisms. “Indeed, independent and credible oversight of intelligence activities is a core element of the public’s trust in intelligence agencies and their operations,” Dr Jessup said. But the bill doesn’t include any intelligence functions of the federal police and Home Affairs. Commonwealth Ombudsman Michael Manthorpe said there were already overlaps engineered into the system and the bill would add to them, but they could refer complaints or matters to IGIS. “I have very specific oversight powers with respect to the various covert and intrusive regimes that exist for law enforcement,” Mr Manthorpe said “But I also have a broad jurisdiction as the ombudsman under the Ombudsman Act to look at and inquire into complaints of a very wide array about administration in the Australian public sector.” For the Morrison government, the bill introduced last December is in line with last year’s review of intelligence laws by former ASIO boss Dennis Richardson who also served as Defence secretary and foreign affairs chief. Critics say the latest Richardson review is a watered down version of the Independent Intelligence Review of 2017, which found a “compelling case” to also include the federal police and Home Affairs. George Williams, head of the Gilbert and Tobin Centre of Public Law, said the bill would leave significant gaps and wanted it extended to include all intelligence functions across government. “It requires a specialised kind of oversight - the gold standard that IGIS provides,” Professor Williams said. He also called for a broader body of work on Australia lacking the parliamentary oversight enjoyed by other members of Five Eyes, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom where parliamentary committees exercise more influence on powerful agencies.
Staff at an Indonesian pharmaceutical company have been accused of washing and repackaging used Covid nasal swabs, which were then sold to thousands of unsuspecting travellers.
Five employees from the state-owned Kimia Farma have been arrested, while the company may also face a civil lawsuit over the claims.
Norway will introduce verifiable vaccine certificates from early June, allowing holders to use them for admittance to events held in Norway, prime minister Erna Solberg has said.
About a quarter of Norway’s population, as Reuters reports, has received a first dose of a Covid vaccine, while 6.8% has received two doses.
Staff at an Indonesian pharmaceutical company have been accused of washing and repackaging used Covid nasal swabs, which were then sold to thousands of unsuspecting travellers.
Five employees from the state-owned Kimia Farma have been arrested, while the company may also face a civil lawsuit over the claims.
Daily life will vary depending on where you live, and how local officials decide to implement – or ignore – public health measures
For many months, members of the public have equated a return to “normal life” with the phrase “herd immunity”: that threshold reached when the Covid-19 pandemic would be boxed in by immunization campaigns, find no new hosts and society would return to a 2019-style normal.
North Macedonia’s Covid-19 vaccination program picked up speed Tuesday, with authorities starting to use 200,000 Sinopharm jabs bought from China. The European Union’s top official for enlargement, Oliver Varhelyi, also delivered about 5,000 Pfizer-BioNTech doses to North Macedonia, Associated Press reports.
That is part of a batch of 120,000 the 27-nation bloc will donate to the country by the end of August.
The handling of the coronavirus crisis in the UK has provided few moments to celebrate, but the day we reach zero deaths from the disease will clearly be one to toast. That day may not be far off. On Tuesday, the UK reported four Covid deaths within 28 days of a positive test. On Monday it was only one. Months of painful lockdown, in the face of more transmissible variants, and the rapid rollout of effective vaccines, have proven their worth. We have good reason to feel optimistic for the months ahead.
No one will have forgotten the brutal winter. In January alone, the UK reported nearly 32,000 Covid deaths, an appalling tally directly linked to locking down too late. In April, the death toll fell to 753. This month, scientists advising the government expect deaths to fall further. It is worth remembering that it’s been more than nine months since the UK last reported zero Covid deaths. We may see more in May, though people will continue to die of Covid, and the numbers might well rise again when restrictions are lifted on indoor mixing.
Severe Covid-19 vaccine shortages have hampered India’s plan to administer jabs to all adults, with fewer then half of India’s states able to begin vaccinating over-18s amid warnings the shortfall could last months.
Over the weekend, more than 600 million Indians became eligible for the coronavirus vaccine in a policy that was introduced in the wake of a deadly second wave hitting the country last month.
Our South Asia correspondent reflects on a catastrophe that is now affecting the lives of almost everyone in the country
You recently lost a close colleague, Kakoli Bhattacharya, to Covid-19. Can you tell us about her and the important work that she did?
Kakoli was the Guardian’s news assistant over here and had worked for us since 2009. She could find any number or contact I needed and smoothed over any and all of the bureaucratic challenges that working in India can present. She made reporting here a huge joy, when it could be a huge challenge, and she was hugely well thought of by journalists for other organisations too. More than that, though, she was the person who welcomed me to Delhi. She knew the region inside out. She was incredibly warm and was someone I could always call on. The Guardian’s India coverage won’t be the same without her.
Stable Covid-19 infection numbers in Germany are fueling hopes that intensive care units will not be overwhelmed, the head of the German hospital federation (DKG) told the tabloid newspaper Bild.
DKG President Gerald Gass was quoted as saying:
“The majority of hospitals in Germany are feeling a first, slight easing.
We are looking at about two weeks of relatively constant numbers in terms of new infections, which gives us confidence that we don’t have to be concerned about an exponential rise in patients in need of intensive care.”
The UK records 14 deaths and 1,671 new cases of Covid-19. The case numbers are down by -10.2% and deaths down by -31.2% since the previous 7 days, Public Health England reports.
So far, 34.51m people have received the first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.
It’s hard to convey the full depth and range of the trauma, the chaos and the indignity that people are being subjected to. Meanwhile, Modi and his allies are telling us not to complain
During a particularly polarising election campaign in the state of Uttar Pradesh in 2017, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, waded into the fray to stir things up even further. From a public podium, he accused the state government – which was led by an opposition party – of pandering to the Muslim community by spending more on Muslim graveyards (kabristans) than on Hindu cremation grounds (shamshans). With his customary braying sneer, in which every taunt and barb rises to a high note mid-sentence before it falls away in a menacing echo, he stirred up the crowd. “If a kabristan is built in a village, a shamshan should also be constructed there,” he said.
“Shamshan! Shamshan!” the mesmerised, adoring crowd echoed back.
Chile has designated pregnant women a Covid-19 vaccination priority and this week began issuing Pfizer doses to those with underlying health issues in their second or third trimesters.
Reuters reports:
Chile’s top public health official Paula Daza said women were being inoculated with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine since more information existed about its safety for pregnant women.
An estimated 230,000 will be offered vaccines, with those with health conditions followed by those working in high-risk jobs such as the health and education sectors.
The coronavirus situation is improving in France, prime minister Jean Castex said on Wednesday.
As we reported earlier, president Emmanuel Macron will outline on Friday how restrictions will be progressively relaxed.
Warning: Some viewers may find this video distressing
Crematoriums in Delhi have been forced to build makeshift funeral pyres on spare patches of land after being inundated by bodies from the surging Covid-19 crisis sweeping India.
Crematoriums across the city have been building new platforms after ambulances carrying bodies and grieving families were forced to wait for hours for a funeral pyre.
The country recorded 300,000 new Covid cases on Tuesday and 2,771 new deaths. However, health experts believe the official toll to be far higher
Dr Anthony Fauci, the White House’s chief medical adviser, has said countries have failed to unite to provide an adequate global response to prevent the “tragic” coronavirus outbreak from overwhelming India.
He singled out wealthier nations for failing to provide equitable access to healthcare around the world.
"We’re all in this together. It’s an interconnected world. And there are responsibilities that countries have to each other, particularly if you’re a wealthy country and you’re dealing with countries that don’t have the resources or capabilities that you have,” he said
A single dose of a Covid-19 vaccine can slash transmission of the virus by up to half, according to a Public Health England study.
The PHE finding offers further hope that the pandemic can be brought under control as it indicates that vaccinated people are far less likely to pass the virus on to others.