Category Archives: Infectious Diseases

‘A very dangerous epoch’: historians try to make sense of Covid

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Experts say it is not just the pandemic that makes these feel like unusually significant times

It was in the first few weeks of 2020, when early reports began filtering through of a mystery virus threatening to spread across the world, that Rob Perks decided to begin collecting.

As lead curator for oral history at the British Library, Perks’s team routinely gather testimony to be archived for future research. But a comment by a historian who advises the institution stopped him in his tracks.

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Victoria’s coronavirus lockdown sabotages terminally ill Australian man’s flight home

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John Jobber’s flight home, after being stuck in Ireland, will not be accepted due to lockdown restrictions

Terminally ill Australian man John Jobber is running out of time to make it back from Ireland and fulfil his wish of dying back home in Tasmania.

After nearly a year of fighting to get Jobber home, his daughter Samantha John finally secured plane tickets to Melbourne for next week, but now she fears Melbourne’s snap lockdown means he will never see home again.

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Wales is first UK nation to offer Covid jab to top four priority groups

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Everyone in top four categories has been offered first vaccine dose, says first minister

Wales has become the first UK nation to have offered a Covid jab to everyone in the top four priority groups, the first minister, Mark Drakeford has announced.

Last month, Drakeford was forced to defend Wales’s vaccination programme after criticism of delays from opposition parties and doctors. But at a press conference on Friday, he said that 66 days after people in Wales first began getting the jab, the key target had been achieved.

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Coronavirus live: France advises single vaccine dose for those who had Covid; Germany shut parts of land border

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French health authority will give one jab to previously infected people; Germany to ban travel from Czech border regions and Austria’s Tyrol

Reuters reports:

The French government has no plans for now to order local lockdown measures in the eastern area of Moselle to rein in the spread of highly contagious Covid-19 variants, health minister Olivier Veran said on Friday.

Veran told reporters that a high number of cases of the South African Covid-19 variant had been found in the region.

The World Health Organizations’ director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has discussed US support for COVAX vaccines:

I so appreciated today’s call with @CDCDirector Dr. Rochelle Walensky on our organizations' enduring partnership. It was good to discuss ‘s support for @ACTAccelerator and COVAX, #VaccinEquity, prioritizing robust public health systems, and our partnership to #EndPolio. pic.twitter.com/LVba0R3aFq

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Coronavirus live news: US could have prevented 40% of deaths; new China cases at five-month low

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Lancet commission review condemns Trump’s virus response; Two masks ‘substantially reduce expose US CDC says; cheap asthma drug appears to reduce risk of severe illness. Follow latest updates

The Czech Republic on Thursday announced a stricter lockdown in three districts from east to west where coronavirus infections have soared and hospitals are struggling to cope.

The order means a ban on movement from and into the eastern district of Trutnov on the border with Poland and the western districts of Cheb and Sokolov on the border with Germany, the health minister Jan Blatny said.

CNA is reporting three community cases among 12 new Covid-19 infections in Singapore.

The Ministry of Health (MOH) said the remaining nine infections were imported and had been placed on stay-home notice upon arrival in Singapore. No new infections were reported in foreign worker dormitories.

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UK Covid live: No 10 says MPs won’t vote on 10-year sentences for travel ban cheats because law already in place

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Latest updates: PM says people will have to ‘get used to the idea of vaccinating, and then re-vaccinating in the autumn’

The latest edition of the Guardian’s Politics Weekly podcast is out. Jessica Elgot and John Crace look at why the latest coronavirus travel restrictions might not work the way the government expects, as well as Robert Jenrick’s latest announcement on cladding funds. Plus, Helen Davidson and Jon Henley on how the world sees the UK’s Covid response.

Related: Hotel quarantine – too little too late? Politics Weekly podcast

As HuffPost’s Paul Waugh reports, at the lobby briefing the prime minister’s spokesman had difficulty justifying some of the work done by the three taxpayer-funded photographers now working from Downing Street.

Asked why the taxpayer should fund ‘vanity’ photographers who took these pix of the PM’s dog playing in the snow, No.10 spokesperson suggests Dilyn works for govt: “These photographers document the work of the government, as well as the work inside Number 10.” pic.twitter.com/UgdDF2Tdrp

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Ursula von der Leyen admits failings in EU Covid vaccine rollout

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European commission leader says bloc late to authorise jabs and ‘not where it wants to be’

The EU is “not where it wants to be” with its coronavirus immunisation programme, Ursula von der Leyen has conceded, as she faced MEPs in the European parliament amid mounting criticism of the bloc’s slow deployment of vaccines.

“We were late to authorise,” the European commission president said. “We were too optimistic when it came to massive production, and perhaps too confident that what we ordered would actually be delivered on time. We need to ask ourselves why that is the case.”

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Europe’s oldest person survives Covid and set to celebrate 117th birthday

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French nun Sister Andrée tested positive in her retirement home in Toulon but had no symptoms

A French nun who is Europe’s oldest person has recovered from Covid-19 after it swept through a nursing home in the south of France, and will celebrate her 117th birthday this week.

Sister Andrée, born Lucile Randon in 1904, tested positive for the coronavirus last month at the Sainte-Catherine Labouré home near Toulon where 81 of the 88 residents contracted the virus – 10 of whom died.

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WHO investigation into Covid-19 origins offers no quick answers

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Analysis: start of long process by Wuhan team junks Trump allies’ claim that coronavirus escaped from a laboratory

The press conference given by the World Health Organization’s investigative team in Wuhan is unlikely to silence the most conspiratorial of the conspiracy theorists who took their lead from the fever dreams of the former Trump administration.

Indeed, the first and very partial findings in what was always going to be a long and drawn-out process have not told us much we did not already know about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

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Calls for sweeping border curbs to protect UK against new Covid variants

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Boris Johnson to announce new restrictions on UK arrivals to protect vaccine rollout

Scientists and senior MPs have renewed calls for sweeping border curbs to protect the UK’s vaccination programme against new variants as Boris Johnson prepared to introduce tougher measures and Britain saw internal infections fall.

The government is to announce new restrictions on arrivals into the UK this week, including mass testing of all arrivals. All passengers arriving in the UK will be tested for coronavirus on day two and day eight of their isolation – regardless of the country they have come from and whether they are at home or in hotel quarantine. The UK already requires all arrivals to have a negative Covid test from within the past 72 hours, taken while still abroad.

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Capital cities on alert over positive cases as tennis begins – as it happened

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Melbourne quarantine hotel worker tests positive to virus; NSW issues alert over returned traveller case. This blog is now closed.

That’s where we will leave the live blog for Monday. Here’s what you might have missed today:

AAP has the latest on Covid restrictions in Western Australia:

Face masks are mandatory for teachers and secondary students, a precaution that’s part of transition arrangements for Perth and Peel, after the five-day lockdown sparked by a hotel quarantine security guard’s infection.

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‘Fighting for life’: Bangladesh shrimp farmers destitute in wake of cyclone

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Natural disaster compounded by the collapse of a lucrative export during the pandemic has thrust people into poverty

This time last year the west coast of Bangladesh was a thriving place for shrimp farmers. It was a decent enough living and there was a healthy export market.

Majnu Sardar, who lives in Koyra upazila (administrative region) in Khulna district, used to earn enough to feed, clothe and educate his family of six. Now they are living in a small mud hut, with a canopy of leaves as a roof, on the banks of the Kapotaksha River after Cyclone Amphan buried his house and land in May.

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Ebola virus kills woman in Democratic Republic of Congo, health ministry says

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Case near city of Butembo comes nearly three months after the end of an outbreak in the western province of Équateur, which killed 55

Health authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo are racing to contain a possible Ebola outbreak, after a woman died from the virus near the eastern city of Butembo.

The woman showed symptoms on 1 February in the town of Biena, North Kivu. She died in hospital in Butembo two days later. She was married to a man who had contracted the virus in a previous outbreak.

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Study shows Oxford Covid vaccine has less protection against South African variant

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Researchers say vaccines’ focus must shift to protecting people from hospitalisation and death

The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine will not stop people becoming ill if they contract the South African variant of Covid-19, researchers have confirmed, warning that vaccines’ focus needs to shift from population immunity to protecting individuals from hospitalisation and death.

The small study in 2,000 people aged 31, who are less likely to become severely ill, adds to evidence from big trials of other vaccines carried out after the variant appeared in South Africa. Trial data from the Janssen and Novavax vaccines showed efficacy in South Africa was up to 60% against the variant, substantially lower than against the original virus.

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When will Britain’s Covid lockdown be lifted? Three scenarios

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At best, vaccines and lockdown could make life more normal by May. But at worst, a new mutation could undo any progress

Hopes are rising that Britain may soon put the worst of Covid-19 behind it. After a year in which the disease has paralysed the nation, killed more than 100,000 people, closed schools and universities, and brought the NHS to its knees, there are now signs of hope emerging.

Most optimism stems from Britain’s vaccination programme, which has resulted in the inoculation of more than 10 million people in the past two months alone, and which aims to have vaccinated the entire adult population later this year.

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Coronavirus live: ‘We had clear focus on being quick but no blank cheque,’ says UK ex-vaccine chief of rollout success

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Kate Bingham says ‘the UK had a very strategic approach … to secure vaccines quickly. The European approach … was more about making sure you got the best value for money’

Venetians have celebrated a very different carnival this year, without the usual crowds of tourists, Reuters reported.

“It’s totally surreal,” said 47-year-old carnival-goer Chiara Ragazzon, an office worker. “What hits me most is the silence. You’ve always been able to hear music during the carnival, people having fun. But Venice in the fog - it’s still a magical place.”

Ragazzon and her husband had ventured into Venice from their home around 50 kilometres (30 miles) away.

More than 12 million people in the UK have now received a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, according to government data up to and including 6 February.

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Oxford Covid jab less effective against South African variant, study finds

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University of the Witwatersrand and Oxford University research shows vaccine has reduced efficacy against mutation

British drugmaker AstraZeneca said on Saturday that its vaccine developed with the University of Oxford appeared to offer only limited protection against mild disease caused by the South African variant of Covid-19, based on early data from a trial.

The study from South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand and Oxford University showed the vaccine had significantly reduced efficacy against the South African variant, according to a Financial Times report published earlier in the day.

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Coronavirus live news: surge testing starts in Worcestershire after South African variant detected; German minister angry over vaccine rollout

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A further seven people with Covid-19 have died in Northern Ireland, the PA news agency has reported. Another 390 positive cases of the virus were also notified by the Department of Health on Saturday. There are 602 Covid-positive inpatients in hospital, 67 of whom are in intensive care.

A total of 10,302,620 vaccinations have taken place in England between 8 December and 5 February, according to provisional NHS England data, including first and second doses, which is a rise of 403,577 on the previous day’s figures.

Of this number, 9,831,897 were the first dose of the vaccine, a rise of 401,636 on the previous day’s figures, while 470,723 were the second dose, an increase of 1,941.

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Oxford Covid vaccine almost as effective against Kent variant, trials suggest

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Scientists say it offers only slightly lower protection compared with original Covid

The Covid vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca is nearly as effective against the Kent variant as it is against older forms of the virus, according to preliminary research results.

Researchers analysed swabs from trial volunteers who developed asymptomatic or symptomatic infections to determine which variant of the virus they had caught after receiving the vaccine or a control jab.

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What are Covid variants – and should we be worried?

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In the UK, all eyes are on South African, Brazilian and Kent variants - with mutations transmitting among the population

With the discovery of new coronavirus variants in parts of the UK, prompting intensive testing, we take a look at what the variants are and how concerned we should be.

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