Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Australia’s chief medical officer, Prof Paul Kelly, and infectious diseases experts have defended securing 54m doses of a Covid-19 vaccine made by Oxford University and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, amid concerns the vaccine will not be effective enough to achieve herd immunity.
Over the course of the pandemic, scientists have been monitoring emerging genetic changes to Sars-Cov-2. Mutations occur naturally as the virus replicates but if they confer an advantage – like being more transmissible – that variant of the virus may go on to proliferate. This was the case with the ‘UK’ or B117 variant, which is about 50% more contagious and is rapidly spreading around the country. So how does genetic surveillance of the virus work? And what do we know about the new variants? Ian Sample speaks to Dr Jeffrey Barrett, the director of the Covid-19 genomics initiative at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, to find out
When the scientists on the World Health Organization’s mission to research the origins of Covid-19 touch down in China as expected on Thursday at the beginning of their investigation they are clear what they will – and what they will not – be doing.
They intend to visit Wuhan, the site of the first major outbreak of Covid-19, and talk to Chinese scientists who have been studying the same issue. They will want to see if there are unexamined samples from unexplained respiratory illnesses, and they will want to examine ways in which the virus might have jumped the species barrier to humans.
Ireland emerged from a six-week lockdown in early December with the European Union’s lowest coronavirus infection rate.
It eased restrictions in belief it could contain a rise in the virus over Christmas unlike, say, Germany and the UK, countries that had more than four times the level of infection. Then all hell broke loose.
Photographs of crowded beaches, parks and queues at food stalls outside popular walking spots, all at a time when the UK is on highest alert under tough coronavirus restrictions.
Despite Matt Hancock describing these as examples of “flexing the rules”, and Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, warning that stopping to chat in the street is a potential threat, many continue to interpret the government’s strict “stay at home” message as liberally as they can.
How do scientists know the new UK variant is 70% more transmissible, and how certain are they of this figure?
Our gift to the world: the UK variant of Sars-CoV-2. There are sufficient data to quote 70% greater infectivity, but how was this figure ascertained?” D Moon, Brighton
In the UK, ministers appear to have downgraded their promise to vaccinate the most vulnerable by mid-February, committing only to offering them an inoculation by that point.
The prime minister Boris Johnson said last week that they would have received their first jab by that date – and that daily figures for vaccinations carried out would be published from this week.
The top four categories, actually, for the UK is 15 million people, in England it’s about 12 million people, so we will have offered a vaccination to all of those people.
When you offer a vaccination it doesn’t mean a Royal Mail letter, it means the vaccine and the needle and the jab are ready for you. What you will see us publishing is the total numbers of people being vaccinated, not being offered a vaccine, and that’s the number to hold us to account to.
Passenger numbers at London’s Heathrow airport were down 72.7% in 2020, with 22.1 million people travelling through it.
In December, demand fell by 82.9% to 1.1 million as the new variant of the virus spread in the UK. Heathrow’s chief executive John Holland-Kaye said:
The past year has been incredibly challenging for aviation. While we support tightening border controls temporarily by introducing pre-departure testing for international arrivals, as well as quarantine, this is not sustainable.
The aviation industry is the cornerstone of the UK economy but is fighting for survival. We need a road map out of this lockdown and a full waiver of business rates.
A World Health Organization team of international experts tasked with investigating the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic will arrive in China on 14 January, China’s national health authority has said.
The team was initially aiming to enter China in early January but China blocked their arrival, saying visas had not yet been approved, even as some members of the group were on their way.
One in five people in England may have had coronavirus, new modelling suggests, equivalent to 12.4 million people, rising to almost one in two in some areas.
It means that across the country as a whole the true number of people infected to date may be five times higher than the total number of known cases according to the government’s dashboard.
The face of South Africa’s Covid science on why Africa has been hit less hard than Europe, the new variant in the region, and the danger of vaccine nationalism
The epidemiologist Salim Abdool Karim could be considered South Africa’s Anthony Fauci. As co-chair of the South African Ministerial Advisory Committee on Covid-19, he is the government’s top adviser on the pandemic and has become the country’s face of Covid-19 science. He also sits on the Africa Task Force for Novel Coronavirus, overseeing the continent’s response to the global crisis.
Karim, who directs the Durban-based Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in South Africa and is a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, has long advocated for science and speaking truth to power. For three decades, along with his wife and scientific collaborator, Quarraisha Abdool Karim, he has been at the forefront of the fight against South Africa’s substantial HIV and tuberculosis epidemics and in the early 2000s was one of the scientists who spoke out against the government’s Aids denialism.
Healthcare workers in Madrid have gone to extreme lengths – some walking for hours – to relieve their exhausted colleagues as Spaingrapples with the double whammy of a deadly storm and the coronavirus pandemic.
Storm Filomena hit Spain on Friday, blanketing large parts of the country in snow and bringing Madrid to a standstill as the city saw its heaviest snowfall in 50 years. Across the country the storm claimed at least four lives, affected around 20,000km of roads and left thousands trapped in their cars for as many as 12 hours without food and water.
An intensive care doctor has pointed out that in the UK hospital admissions are still rising beyond what the country saw in the first wave of infections, adding that “staying power” is the superhero skill the NHS needs more. He writes:
NHS hospital admissions came and went in 4-6 weeks, briefly peaking at 3000 patients/day. The second wave has lasted for 12 weeks so far, has passed 4000 patients/day, and is STILL rising. Staying power is the superhero skill we need most.
My biggest pandemic anxiety is uncertainty. We're franticly planning for an uncertain situation. The NHS is not used to doing this, not at this speed. What I most want to know is how high this second wave will get. Feels even a bad answer would be better than uncertainty. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/5sAFWqSoCM
Also worth noting the first wave of NHS hospital admissions came and went in 4-6 weeks, briefly peaking at 3000 patients/day. The second wave has lasted for 12 weeks so far, has passed 4000 patients/day, and is STILL rising. Staying power is the superhero skill we need most. 2/2 pic.twitter.com/drVgfWnRWp
With roads blocked and trains cancelled healthcare staff decide to make the trip to work on foot
Healthcare workers in Madrid have gone to extreme lengths – some walking for hours – to relieve their exhausted colleagues as Spain grapples with the double whammy of a deadly storm and the coronavirus pandemic.
Storm Filomena hit Spain on Friday, blanketing large parts of the country in snow and bringing Madrid to a standstill as the city saw its heaviest snowfall in 50 years. Across the country the storm claimed at least four lives, affected around 20,000km of roads and left thousands trapped in their cars for as many as 12 hours without food and water.
South Africa is struggling to contain a second wave of Covid-19 infections, fuelled by a virulent new local variant of the virus, “Covid fatigue” and a series of “super-spreader” events.
On Thursday health officials announced 844 deaths and 21,832 new cases in a 24-hour period, the worst toll yet. Experts believe the second wave has yet to reach its peak in the country of 60 million, and fear healthcare services in the country’s main economic and cultural hub may struggle to cope with the influx of patients.
As Covid-19 cases rise across the world, hopes that life could get back to some semblance of normality by summer are fading. What chance do we have of going to a festival, flying off for a holiday or attending a major sporting event?
When will the Covid-19 vaccine begin to have an effect on the nation?
The government has pledged to offer vaccines to 15 million people – the over-70s, healthcare workers and those required to shield by mid-February, and millions more by spring. This should slowly bring the virus under control although it will take many weeks before we can be sure the vaccine is having an effect. Numbers of daily cases of Covid-19 may drop but that decline could simply be due to impact of current lockdown measures. Only when hospital admissions start to reduce significantly will we be sure the vaccine is having an impact. Then there could be be a slackening of lockdown measures. Few scientists believe that will happen before Easter, however.
In a private room by the locked entrance of the intensive care unit, Dilip Sharan is sitting up in bed, a plate of stew in front of him. He navigates his spoon around the breathing tube keeping him alive, every mouthful soundtracked by a discordant symphony of beeps and bongs from multiple monitors keeping tabs on his vital organs.
It is his fifth day in the last chance saloon of Covid care. He gasps for air, barely able to speak.
Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and Japan are among those that won’t start vaccinating for months, in part to see how other populations react to the jab
They are the nations that have been held up as shining examples of coronavirus management. In Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan, daily Covid infections are in the single digits and outbreaks are quickly suppressed.
But there is one area where these nations lag well behind the pack in vaccination. Countries with some of the most enviable healthcare systems in the world – including Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea – will not begin to inoculate until the end of February or later.
Vaccines produced by the US and UK will be banned from entering Iran, its supreme leader has said, even though his country has suffered the worst virus outbreak in the Middle East.
“Imports of US and British vaccines into the country are forbidden ... They’re completely untrustworthy,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a live televised speech. “It’s not unlikely they would want to contaminate other nations.
The transport secretary said fears that vaccines would not work against the new South African coronavirus strain prompted the introduction of testing for new arrivals into England and Scotland. 'There are concerns ... about how effective the vaccine would be against it, so we simply cannot take chances,' Shapps said