Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
A shadow minister who became the first female MP to be hospitalised by Covid-19 has described the “unbearable pain” caused by coughing fits and pneumonia as the disease took hold.
Yasmin Qureshi, the Labour MP for Bolton South East and a shadow minister for international development, said she was left “anxious and concerned” after being rushed by ambulance to her local hospital in October.
A hard lockdown across Sydney for the next three days is needed to reduce the risk of Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve becoming super spreader events, some health experts have warned.
The dual celebrations could lead to thousands of new cases in the first weeks of 2021 without drastic action, warned Prof Raina MacIntyre, the head of the biosecurity program at the University of New South Wales’ Kirby Institute.
While the country has obsessed over the Christmas restrictions over the last few weeks the real story lay elsewhere, it transpires. A new strain of the coronavirus emerged a couple of months ago, probably somewhere in the north-east corner of Kent, but went unnoticed for weeks. New viruses emerge all the time, but they usually don’t cause problems. And it usually takes a long time for a new strain – starting from just a single case – to become visible to public health authorities.
In fact, we have one of the most comprehensive and sensitive molecular surveillance systems in the world and that allowed us to pick up this strain relatively quickly. However, the virus has also moved fast – very fast – and spread beyond Kent to Essex, London and elsewhere.
The nation’s Christmas plans were plunged into chaos last night after Boris Johnson dramatically abandoned his attempts to avoid tighter Covid restrictions, and instead placed millions of people under new lockdown measures to try to curb a highly infectious new strain of the virus.
In a major U-turn that prompted an immediate backlash from his party, the prime minister placed a third of England’s population under new tier 4 restrictions to counter a Covid strain believed to be up to 70% more transmissible than previous variants.
The New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, has warned residents of greater Sydney to prepare for an increase in restrictions if the outbreak of Covid-19 expands beyond the northern beaches.
Meanwhile travellers coming from NSW to Queensland will require a border pass declaration from 1am on Sunday and Western Australia announced it was reinstating its hard border with NSW.
Distribution of the Moderna vaccine will begin to more than 3,800 sites across the United States this weekend, after it was approved on Friday by the medicines regulator, the Food and Drug Administration.
Workers in Bloomington, Indiana, will fill and package vials with the mRNA vaccine before handing them on to be shipped from sites including Louisville, Kentucky and Memphis, Tennessee. Those locations are close to air hubs for United Parcel Service Inc and FedEx Corp.
A further 339 people who tested positive for coronavirus have died in hospital in England, NHS England said on Saturday.
Patients were aged between 44 and 100. All except 13, aged between 64 and 95, had known underlying health conditions. The deaths were between 5 November and 18 December.
This is not the first time that a pandemic has gripped the holiday season. In December 1918, preparations for the first Christmas without war in four years took place in the midst of the worst pandemic since the Black Death.
The 1918-19 influenza, like Covid-19, came in waves. The deadliest began in autumn, peaked in late November and continued through the first weeks of December. It struck hundreds of millions and killed tens of millions worldwide.
The massive public, private and foundation investments in a coronavirus vaccine are producing results at a record pace. And countries are reacting accordingly. A recent global assessment of purchasing agreements for Covid-19 vaccines reveals that high-income countries, as well as a few middle-income countries with high manufacturing capacity, have already bought enough doses for their populations.
But delivery of the vaccine needs a new level of focus. This is especially the case for populations in poor and war-torn countries, where the health system is weak or nonexistent. Even before the pandemic, approximately 20 million infants a year, often some of the most vulnerable in the world, were missing out on basic vaccines. For example, there are estimated to be more than 10.6 million children in the world’s poorest countries who in 2019 did not receive even a first dose of a diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccine (DPT).
The United States on Thursday surpassed a total of 17m coronavirus cases, with infections rising by more than a million a week during the early winter surge – while at the start of the year it took three months for the US to accumulate its first million cases.
Nearly a quarter of a million new coronavirus infections and more than 3,600 deaths had been reported just on Wednesday, shattering previous records as the national vaccination campaign against Covid-19 began rolling out across the country this week.
To Australia (where your correspondent currently sits):
The state of Victoria has imposed a ‘traffic light’ restriction system on travellers from New South Wales from tonight.
We are very strongly advising all Victorians not to travel to Sydney. As conditions are expected to deteriorate, and you may not be able to re-enter Victoria without undertaking quarantining for 14 days.
Don’t come from Sydney if you’re planning to come to Melbourne... it won’t be a holiday. It won’t be a Christmas. It won’t be the Christmas or the holiday you were planning. The situation in NSW and Sydney is rapidly evolving.
There are no restrictions on movement in the northern beaches in Sydney, but here is an indication people are complying with requests to stay home, from the MP for Mackellar.
The Department of Health has released a written ministerial statement giving the reasons for the decisions taken today about why areas in England are staying in, or moving from, particular tiers. It’s here - although the version up at the moment only covers the north-west, the north-east and London.
The government is to provide interim cover for EU holiday healthcare costs for people who require routine hospital treatment such as dialysis and chemotherapy in the event there is no Brexit deal to replace the current European Health Care Insurance Scheme (EHIC).
This government will introduce the scheme with the intention that it is used by individuals who are certain to require treatment while abroad, such as regular dialysis, oxygen therapy or certain types of chemotherapy. The government recognises that these ongoing, routine treatment costs can be expensive, and makes travelling abroad extremely challenging for many people.
The company behind cigarette brands including Lucky Strike, Rothmans and Benson & Hedges said the US Food & Drug Administration had given it clearance to begin a clinical study with adult volunteers.
Europeans gathering for Christmas with their friends or families should try to celebrate outside or wear masks indoors in a well-ventilated space, according to an advisory issued by the World Health Organization.
A severe weather warning has been issued for Wagga and much of the Riverina for flash flooding this afternoon.
Severe thunderstorms have been forecast for the entire region, all the way from Hay in the west, right across to the east coast, and from the Queensland border down to Tumbarumba.
⚡SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING⚡ for HEAVY RAINFALL. Warning current for much of central and eastern NSW and the ACT. 2hr Obs: 92mm @ Lismore. 30min Obs: 26mm @ Glen Alice, 25mm at Mt.Werong & 22mm @ Lake Burley Griffin. ⚠️Warnings: https://t.co/30woSZ6O2x#ifitsfloodedforgetitpic.twitter.com/L8OXMiSlAz
Victoria police commissioner Shane Patton has sought to differentiate between the police approach during the Black Lives Matter protest in Melbourne in early June and anti-lockdown protests that were broken up during the second wave, with many more fined.
Patton told a Victorian parliament Covid-19 committee on Wednesday that at the time of the BLM protest, the spread of Covid was not as big as it was later on in the second wave, and there weren’t the severe restrictions at the time that were seen later – in June, groups of up to 20 people could assemble.
We eventually made a decision to reluctantly allow that Black Lives Matter to go ahead, because of the emotion that was in the community, because of the emotion that was being displayed across the world.
The 45-year-old man who tested positive was a van driver transporting international flight crew to and from the airport • Follow Wednesday’s Australia liveblog
New South Wales has recorded a new locally acquired case of Covid after a van driver transporting international airline crew to and from Sydney airport contracted the virus.
The state’s health minister, Brad Hazzard, said the case was discovered Wednesday morning.
Christmas plans for millions of families were in the balance last night as ministers and devolved leaders held talks on curtailing freedoms over the festive period amid warnings that the NHS would be overwhelmed.
Boris Johnson is likely to face down calls to change course, though the government may issue new advice urging extreme caution. A government source said it was possible the four nations may diverge after no agreement was reached at a crisis meeting with devolved administrations on Tuesday chaired by Michael Gove.
The London borough of Greenwich has reluctantly backed down over plans to close schools and switch to online learning to slow the spread of coronavirus, after the government launched legal action ordering schools to remain fully open until the end of term.
In a letter to parents, the leader of Greenwich council, Danny Thorpe, said he could not agree this was the best choice for schools in the borough, but neither could he justify using public funds to fight a court battle with the government.
Plans to relax Covid restrictions at Christmas must be reversed or many lives risk being lost, according to a rare joint editorial from two of the UK’s most eminent medical journals.
The government can no longer claim to be protecting the NHS if it goes ahead with “rash” plans to allow households to mix indoors over Christmas, the British Medical Journal and Health Service Journal have said.