There are grounds for optimism but also several unknowns around this coronavirus vaccine
Hopes that the end of the coronavirus pandemic has become nearer have soared after the news that a coronavirus vaccine was found to be 90% effective in global trials.
Although there is definite reason to be optimistic, experts have cautioned that the data from the trials conducted by Pfizer and BioNTech are not final, and there remain plenty of unknowns.
Continue reading...Italy imposes tougher restrictions as cases continue to rise; authorities across Europe fear infections and deaths will continue to rise
Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen unit has received the green light to carry out late stage trials for its vaccine in Mexico, the country’s foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard has said.
He said the US vaccine developer Novavax Inc earlier this month also presented health authorities with a request to conduct phase 3 testing in Mexico.
Four judicial investigations have been opened in France into the authorities’ response to the Covid epidemic, the Paris prosecutor’s department has said. The prosecutor opened a preliminary inquiry in June to determine whether any criminal offences might have been committed.
Continue reading...Covid-19 has spread around the planet, sending billions of people into lockdown as health services struggle to cope. Find out where the virus has spread, and where it has been most deadly
Continue reading...President-elect warned the US is ‘facing a very dark winter’ as 200,000 more could die before a vaccine becomes available
Joe Biden vowed on Monday to spare no effort in tackling the coronavirus pandemic as soon as he enters the White House and warned the US is “facing a very dark winter”.
Continue reading...Global stocks surge and experts optimistic as Covid vaccine exceeds expectations
Hopes are soaring that a Covid vaccine is within reach, following news that an interim analysis has shown Pfizer/BioNTech’s candidate was 90% effective in protecting people from transmission of the virus in global trials.
The vaccine performed much better than most experts had hoped for, according to the companies’ analysis, and brings into view a potential end to a pandemic that has killed more than a million people, battered economies and upended daily life worldwide.
Continue reading...Portugal imposes state of emergency; global cases pass 50m; infections in Germany ‘levelling off’
Hungary and Portugal have become the latest countries in Europe to impose tough new restrictions to stem the second wave of the coronavirus, as the first signs of light at the end of the tunnel emerged in France, Germany and Belgium.
As the US pharmaceuticals company Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, said their experimental Covid-19 vaccine appeared safe and more than 90% effective, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, announced a partial lockdown.
Continue reading...US currently has 9.62m confirmed Covid cases; pandemic expert says half positive cases not being identified; economic fallout makes prospect of third world war ‘a risk’. Follow the latest updates
New Zealand and the Cook Islands are set to open a ‘travel bubble’ between the two countries, with NZ prime minister Jacinda Ardern confirming officials from her government would visit the South Pacific archipelago later this week.
“While I don’t wish to put any time-frames on a potential travel bubble, it is my aim and hope that this can resume as soon as is safely possible, and this on-the-ground visit by officials to the Cook Islands is the next step in that process.
US President-elect Joe Biden’s healthcare advisers have held talks with drugmaker executives on the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed program to accelerate development of a possible Covid-19 treatment, a Biden spokesman said on Sunday.
Reuters reports that under the Trump administration, Operation Warp Speed has struck deals with several drugmakers in an effort to help speed up the search for effective treatments for the disease amid the global coronavirus pandemic.
The US Covid-19 death toll stands at over 237,000, with more than 9.9 million cases now reported in the country since the outbreak began, according to a Reuters tally.
“As we previously said in September, because President-Elect Joe Biden is absolutely committed to helping develop a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine as soon as possible, campaign medical advisers have received briefings from companies working to produce vaccines in order to be informed about the process,” Biden’s spokesman Andrew Bates said in an emailed statement.
Biden’s advisers met with companies that have Covid-19 vaccines or therapies in late-stage clinical trials in September and October, Bloomberg News had reported earlier.
The report added that the meeting was aimed at gathering information about the development, manufacturing and distribution of shots to ward off the novel coronavirus and therapies to treat the sick.
Biden has vowed to “listen to the science”, with his coronavirus plan calling for scaling up testing and contact tracing and promising to appoint a “supply commander” to oversee supply lines of critical equipment.
Tests will investigate whether virus evades antibodies from recovered patients and those in vaccine trials
Scientists in the UK are working to secure samples of a mutant form of coronavirus that arose in Danish mink farms and spread into humans, prompting ministers to ban non-UK citizens arriving from Denmark.
Danish health authorities raised the alarm over the mutant virus last week and announced a cull of the nation’s 17 million mink as the Statens Serum Institut (SSI) in Copenhagen warned of potentially “serious consequences” for vaccines if it was allowed to spread internationally.
Continue reading...Economic fallout of pandemic makes prospect of third world war ‘a risk’; Covid-related deaths in France exceeds 40,000 for the first time; number of cases in Germany increases by 16,017
Lovely reporting from my colleague Lorenzo Tondo in Roccafiorita in Sicily:
When the mayor of Roccafiorita received a phone call in October informing him that an employee in his office had tested positive for Covid-19, his heart sank.
When the phone rang, it was like lightning on a sunny day. With this second wave on its way, for a second I thought that we might actually be wiped off the map.
Related: 'Wiped off the map': tiny Italian villages cower from Covid threat
As Joe Biden announced he would name his own coronavirus taskforce on Monday, the US recorded its fourth consecutive record daily total of new Covid cases, close to 130,000.
“That plan will be built on a bedrock of science,” Biden said, promising to “spare no effort or commitment to turn this pandemic around.”
We’re in for a whole lot of hurt. It’s not a good situation. All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors. You could not possibly be positioned more poorly.
Related: US posts fourth consecutive daily Covid record as Joe Biden prepares taskforce
Continue reading...With test and trace a shambles, many are pinning their hopes on a jab. But experts warn more measures will be needed to vanquish the coronavirus
England is back in lockdown. It happened not a moment too soon. As of 2 November almost three-quarters of a million new cases have been officially counted since 21 September, when the government’s scientific advisory committee Sage advised lockdown. On that day, Britain had only had about 360,000 cases since Covid arrived. Now the figure is three times that. So many more cases mean it will take longer, and possibly require tougher social restrictions, to get numbers down by imposing lockdown than it would have in September, says James Naismith, head of the Rosalind Franklin Institute in Oxford.
Naismith calculates that we will have 500 deaths per day in two to three weeks because of the cases that occurred over the past week, compared with an average of 144 in the week ending 2 November. But it could be far worse. If we had done nothing for another two weeks, he says, we’d be looking at 1,000 deaths a day by Christmas – and more, if hospitals fill up and not everyone can get optimal treatment.
Continue reading...US sees record 120,000 cases in a day as Texas edges towards 1m infections; New South Wales has one locally acquired case. Follow the updates
The UK’s first mass Covid testing trial in Liverpool risks being “an expensive mess that does more harm than good”, health experts said as it got under way on Friday.
My colleagues in the UK, Josh Halliday and Sarah Boseley, report that six new testing centres opened their doors to Liverpudlians at midday on Friday as part of the government’s Operation Moonshot drive to eventually test up to 10 million people a day.
The potential for harmful diversion of resources and public money is vast. Also of concern are the potential vested interests of commercial companies supplying new and as yet inadequately evaluated tests.
Related: Covid: Liverpool mass testing trial 'could do more harm than good'
Continue reading...Latest UK figures show 24,957 new cases in 24 hours; Trump aide Mark Meadows has Covid-19; Poland registers record 27,875 new cases
Care home residents in England face a postcode lottery over visiting because ministers have abdicated responsibility to local officials, my colleague James Tapper reports.
Read the full story here:
Related: Care home residents face postcode lottery over face-to-face visits
The Queen has worn a face mask in public for the first time as she made a poignant pilgrimage to the grave of the Unknown Warrior to mark the centenary of his burial on Wednesday, PA media reports.
Following government regulations, the head of state adopted the covering when she visited the place of worship for a brief ceremony - her first public engagement in London since March.
Continue reading...Chris Whitty, chief medical officer for England, understood to be concerned by new strain
All travel to the UK from Denmark is being banned amid mounting concern over an outbreak in the country of a mutation of coronavirus linked to mink, the Guardian understands.
Downing Street had already taken action to remove Denmark from the travel corridor, forcing arrivals to quarantine for two weeks from Friday at 4am.
Continue reading...Country surpassed record set on 30 October and hospitalizations and deaths have also begun to increase
The United States has broken its record for the highest number of new Covid-19 infections in a single day yet again, with more than 121,000 new cases recorded on Thursday.
As the country’s attention has been trained on the presidential election, the US has continued to break daily records for new Covid-19 cases. On Wednesday, the day after the election, the country saw more than 107,000 cases, the first time the US surpassed 100,000 new cases in a single day. Before that, the record was set on 30 October with just over 99,000 new cases.
Continue reading...Latest updates: ONS figures represent around 1.13% of population; Operation Moonshot trial launches in Liverpool on Friday
A coronavirus passport app promoted by the Olympian Zara Tindall has been reported to a health regulator over concerns it is mis-selling antibody tests.
The V-Health Passport was touted as a “game changer” to get sports fans back into stadiums and major events. It involves spectators getting a rapid antibody test prior to attending an event, with results uploaded on a health passport on an app.
In the advert, Zara and Mike Tindall were being told they don’t have the virus – you can’t say that. This could do harm, with people getting into sporting events with negative results while they are infectious.
I have no problem with the app, it’s the use of the app. A lot of health professionals have seen it with their head in their hands.
Some schools may be sending children home “too readily” amid the pandemic, the chief inspector of Ofsted has said.
Parents of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) have been told that schools cannot accommodate their children due to Covid-19 risk assessments, according to Amanda Spielman.
And here, many parents haven’t made an active decision to keep their child at home – they’ve been told that schools can’t accommodate them. Because it’s too difficult, because Covid risk assessments won’t allow it. It’s deeply concerning and, understandably, many parents feel cut adrift.
For the children with SEND that have been able to get back into education, it hasn’t been plain sailing either. We’re hearing that many have suffered setbacks in their communication skills – probably down to having reduced social interaction for such a long time.
Continue reading...No 10 has admitted an ‘error’ in the way data was presented to make case for second lockdown
The UK Statistics Authority has rebuked the government over its lack of transparency around projected Covid-19 deaths and hospital admissions, saying it could cast doubt over official figures.
A range of estimates were used to make the case for a second English lockdown in a press conference on 31 October. However, the UKSA said “the data and assumptions for this model had not been shared transparently”, potentially undermining confidence in official figures.
Continue reading...One of Danish mink strains prompts country to cull all its mink; Sweden registers 4,697 new infections, highest since pandemic began
The Kremlin has said it is early to judge how effective Russia’s coronavirus restrictions are without lockdowns, as the country reported a record daily number of new Covid-19 infections.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the increase in coronavirus cases to a daily high of 20,582 was alarming and that authorities would take action depending on how the situation developed.
New coronavirus restrictions came into force in Italy on Friday but from pavements dotted with coffee drinkers to lines of striking taxi drivers, the picture on the streets was different from the ghostly scenes of the first lockdown, Reuters reports.
The restrictions, which divide the country into three zones according to the severity of the latest outbreak, are less severe than the blanket measures imposed when the pandemic first took hold in March.
Continue reading...France’s new infections more than 2,000 higher than previous record; Italy registers 37,809 new cases; Russia says Covid was main cause in 5,199 cases. This blog is now closed
NSW has reported one new case of locally transmitted Covid-19 in the 24 hours to 8pm last night.
Four cases were also reported in overseas travellers in hotel quarantine, bringing the total number of cases in NSW to 4,270.
Dr Michael Douglas provides a #COVID19 update for Saturday 7 November 2020. pic.twitter.com/T2q5LFhLy1
Continue reading...Asymptomatic people encouraged to get tested as scheme launches amid some confusion
The UK’s first mass-testing trial is under way in Liverpool as part of the government’s Operation Moonshot drive to test up to 10 million people a day.
Six new testing centres opened their doors to Liverpudlians at noon on Friday as the city’s health chief urged the city’s 500,000-strong population to volunteer for a coronavirus test over the next fortnight.
Continue reading...Mutation that led to government order fuels debate about future of fur and safety of farms
John Papsø is devastated. You can hear it in his voice over the phone from Jutland. Like every other fur farmer in Denmark, he has 10 days to kill his mink.
“It’s horrible. I’m not even sure it’s dawned on me how grave the consequences will be for us. We are shellshocked. I was up at 4am because I couldn’t sleep. I’ve been pacing up and down the floor, and I’ve cried. It’s a state of shock,” said Papsø, who has more 30,000 mink on his farm.
Continue reading...