Category Archives: Infectious Diseases

Coronavirus live news: Italy brings in new restrictions amid record cases

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Mayors will be able to impose 9pm curfews; Senior PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat in hospital; Switzerland to introduce more measures on Monday – follow live

Here’s a snapshot of the countries with the highest coronavirus cumulative cases on the African continent, via the WHO African Region dashboard.

Over 1.6 million confirmed #COVID19 cases on the African continent - with more than 1.3 million recoveries & 39,000 deaths cumulatively.

View country figures & more with the WHO African Region COVID-19 Dashboard: https://t.co/V0fkK8dYTg pic.twitter.com/MzKYRI4gyY

The Australian state of Victoria has reported four new coronavirus cases and one further death, taking the state’s toll 817 and the national figure to 905.

It comes as the state eases its Covid restrictions, including expanding Melbourne’s 5km travel radius to 25km.

Yesterday there were 4 new cases & sadly the loss of 1 life reported. Condolences to all those affected. Cases with unknown source & average in Regional are stable, Metro average decreased slightly. More info available later today. https://t.co/eTputEZdhs #COVID19VicData pic.twitter.com/hJpnTBpQ76

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Victoria’s Covid restrictions ease as Daniel Andrews reveals 25km travel bubble and scraps exercise time limit

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Melbourne to resume real estate auctions and reopen hairdressers and outdoor sporting facilities as state records two new cases

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Melbourne’s 5km travel radius will expand to 25km from midnight under eased restrictions announced by the state’s premier Daniel Andrews.

From 11.59pm on Sunday, residents of the city who have been under lockdown for more than 100 days will be able to travel up to 25km for either exercise or shopping.

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Are we near to having a vaccine for Covid-19?

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Even a once bullish PM is now not so optimistic but there are promising signs of a vaccine on the horizon

In March, Boris Johnson said we would turn the tide in 12 weeks and “send the coronavirus packing” and by May ministers were boasting of having a vaccine by September. Last week the prime minister sounded far less confident, telling MPs that there was still no vaccine for SARS, 18 years after it emerged. A vaccine may not be far away though.

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Digital ‘health passport’ trials under way to aid reopening of borders

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CommonPass aims to create common standard proving a traveller is Covid-free or vaccinated

A new digital “health passport” is to be piloted by a small number of passengers flying from the UK to the US for the first time next week under plans for a global framework for Covid-safe air travel.

The CommonPass system, backed by the World Economic Forum (WEF), is designed to create a common international standard for passengers to demonstrate they do not have coronavirus.

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Coronavirus live news: Liverpool mayor’s brother dies; Iran deaths exceed 30,000

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UK adviser suggests short ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown; Angela Merkel asks Germans to stay home; Poland and Malaysia report record rise in cases

Austria has joined the likes of the Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine and Malaysia in reporting a record daily number of coronavirus infections. It said today there have been 1,747 coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours.

The daily count has this month repeatedly exceeded the peak of 1,050 reached in March during the first wave of infections.

The mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson, has said his brother has died after being admitted to intensive care with Covid-19.

Despite the efforts of all the staff @LivHospitals ICU my brother sadly died at 10.45 last night We want to thank the dedicated staff risking their lives for us.Thank you all for your messages of love and support Let’s stick together and support each other and win this battle❤️

10 mins ago my sister-in-law a Nursing Sister has told me my eldest brother her husband has got Covid-19 he is in the Royal @LivHospitals in the ICU in a very serious condition. Please watch the video, follow the rules & understand why we all need to fight the enemy #Covid https://t.co/pwlVALVuBF

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Greater Manchester lockdown delay ‘could lead to overwhelmed hospitals’

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Stretford and Urmston MP urges government to strike deal with local leaders over tier 3 financial aid

Downing Street must urgently strike a deal with Greater Manchester leaders to introduce tougher Covid restrictions before hospitals are overwhelmed, the shadow education secretary, Kate Green, has said.

Deputy mayors and other civic leaders in the metropolitan region said in a joint statement on Friday they were “ready to meet at any time” with the prime minister to agree a way forward over the introduction of a tier 3 lockdown. They say the government’s initial proposals did not provide adequate financial support.

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Covid reinfections ‘to be expected’ as virus spreads, say government scientists

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Reports suggest timeframe between recovery and reinfection ‘relatively short’ for those who contracted virus twice

Government science advisers have warned that reinfections with Covid-19 are “to be expected” as the virus spreads, based on what is known about people’s immunity to other coronaviruses that cause the common cold.

Researchers on the Covid-19 Genomics UK Consortium said it was unclear at what point people who had recovered from the virus became vulnerable to reinfection, but cited emerging reports of second infections that suggested the timeframe was “relatively short”.

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Brexit: No 10 says ‘trade talks over’ and tells Barnier to cancel London trip unless he’ll compromise – live

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PM says there will be no deal with EU unless there is ‘fundamental change’ in Brussels

From my colleagues Pamela Duncan and Niamh McIntyre

From tonight over half the population of England will be living in areas classed as “high risk” or “very high risk” under the government’s three-tier system, equivalent to 28.4m people.

All of Lancashire county (Lancashire, Blackburn with Darwen and Blackpool council areas) are to move from tier 2 to the higher tier 3 category from midnight, meaning more than 3m people are now living in the highest-risk areas.

Trade negotiations often involve threats to walk away, and dire forecasts, before both side agree to compromise, and Brexit-watchers have been waiting for the UK-EU trade talks to this moment. It came this morning, when Boris Johnson used a TV statement (see 12.29pm) to say that there would no deal without a “fundamental change” in the EU’s approach.

But threats only work if people take them seriously and Johnson’s comments do not seem to have been taken as a sincere statement of intent to talk away. It was telling that, despite being asked twice if he was saying the talks were over, he would not use those words. (See 12.41pm.) If the foreign exchange markets thought Johnson was abandoning hopes of a deal, the pound would have fallen (as it has repeatedly in key moments in the Brexit drama since 2016). But it didn’t. “Market participants see comments from Boris Johnson as mainly political posturing at this stage,” an analyst told Bloomberg.

The pound fluctuates between gains and losses after Boris Johnson says the nation is preparing for a thin, Australia-style trade deal with the EU https://t.co/lzBTCqlY8F pic.twitter.com/YbntZLyFca

There’s no point in trade talks if the EU doesn’t change its position. The EU effectively ended the trade talks yesterday.

Only if the EU fundamentally changes its position will it be worth talking.

What I would say to that is there is only any point in Michel Barnier coming to London next week if he’s prepared to discuss all of the issues on the basis of legal text in an accelerated way without the UK being required to make all of the moves, or if he’s willing to discuss practicalities of areas such as travel and haulage which the PM mentioned in his statement.

Our position is a clear one. Only if the EU fundamentally changes position will it be worthwhile talking.

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Remdesivir has very little effect on Covid-19 mortality, WHO finds

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Results of major trial described as sobering, with drug found not to improve survival rates

Remdesivir, one of the big treatment hopes for Covid-19, has very little effect on preventing deaths, according to a large and comprehensive trial run by the World Health Organization.

The drug, made by the US biotech firm Gilead, has been talked up as a potential cure and was taken by Donald Trump. A trial in the US had previously showed it reduced the length of stay in hospital. But the gold-standard Solidarity WHO trial, which was based on a far larger sample – 3,000 people on the drug, compared with as many who were not – showed remdesivir had little effect on deaths over 28 days.

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Coronavirus: what has changed about what we know? – video explainer

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Covid-19 has spread around the world, sending millions of people into lockdown as health services struggle to cope. From symptoms and long Covid to vaccines and treatments, the Guardian's health editor, Sarah Boseley, explains what we now know about the virus that we did not at the beginning of the crisis

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Coronavirus live news: Berlin court overturns government curfew on bars and restaurants; record Swiss cases

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Berlin bar curfew suspended after court considers move ‘disproportionate’; Czech Republic records 9,721 new infections, Switzerland sees 3,105 cases

Bosnia’s new Covid-19 infections hit a record high for the third day in a row, with 621 cases on Friday, and authorities warned the healthcare system could collapse if the trend continues.

The country of around 3.3 million people has so far recorded 32,845 cases of the coronavirus with 980 deaths. Currently there are 7,262 active cases, or 1,512 more than a week ago.

“It’s not a word I’ve heard in a long, long time,” an elderly Paris resident said, leaving her apartment in mask and gloves for an early expedition to the shops. “A curfew. That’s for wartime, isn’t it? But in a way I suppose that’s what this is.”

Europe’s second wave took a dramatic turn for the worse this week, forcing governments across the continent to make tough choices as more than a dozen countries reported their highest ever number of new infections.

Related: 'On the brink of disaster': Europe's Covid fight takes a turn for the worse

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13,300 new infections in Spain – as it happened

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This blog is now closed. We’ve launched a new blog at the link below:

Hi, Helen Sullivan here. We’ve launched a new blog at the link below – head there for the latest:

Related: Coronavirus live news: France reports record new cases as WHO warns Europe's case surge is 'of great concern'

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Third of newborns with Covid infected before or during birth – study

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Review of reported neonatal cases finds most babies with virus contract it in hospital

Nearly a third of coronavirus infections in newborn babies are picked up in the womb or from the mother during labour, a review of reported cases has found.

While Covid-19 is rare in newborns, doctors have been keen to understand the potential risks that babies face should tests reveal they have the infection soon after birth.

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Long Covid: what we know so far

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Lasting symptoms may not be down to a single syndrome but several different ones

At the start of the pandemic we were told that Covid-19 was a respiratory illness from which most people would recover within two or three weeks, but it’s increasingly clear that there may be tens of thousands of people, if not hundreds of thousands, who have been left experiencing symptoms months after becoming infected.

Now, the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) has released a report which suggests that “long Covid” may not be a single syndrome, but up to four different ones, which some patients might be experiencing simultaneously. Here’s what we now know:

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Coronavirus live news: France brings in 9pm curfew for Paris region and eight other cities

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Public heath emergency declared in France; Italy sees 7,332 new cases; record new daily infections in Portugal, Switzerland, Iran and Russia

The German chancellor Angela Merkel urged young people to do their part to halt the spread of the coronavirus after private parties were repeatedly blamed for localised outbreaks in German cities.

“We must call especially on young people to do without a few parties now in order to have a good life tomorrow or the day after,” Merkel said at a news conference after agreeing additional measures against coronavirus with the heads of Germany’s 16 states.

Ireland’s government moved three counties on its open border with Northern Ireland - Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan - to Level 4 of its five-step framework of Covid-19 constraints and banned almost all visits to homes across the country.

Northern Ireland announced the strictest curbs seen in the UK since early summer on Wednesday in response to a rapid rise in cases that the Irish prime minister Micheal Martin described as “hugely worrying.”

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UK’s test and trace ‘having marginal impact’: which countries got it right?

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Scientists’ verdict on £12bn system has refocused attention on what is working elsewhere in cutting Covid-19 transmission rates

The newly released assessment by the UK government’s scientific advisers that the £12bn test and trace programme “is having a marginal impact” in reducing Covid-19 transmission has refocused attention on how other countries are faring with their regimes.

Since test-and-trace programmes were first mooted around the world at the outset of the pandemic – including monitoring via apps or hardware – they have been beset by issues of privacy and public support over both downloading and using apps and also with a wider willingness to abide by isolation measures.

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UK coronavirus live: Covid deaths in England and Wales quadrupled in a month, ONS figures show

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Latest updates: minister says Covid restrictions require ‘difficult judgment’ of protecting lives while prioritising education and jobs

The Department for Education’s latest school attendance statistics show an increase in the number of state schools in England partially closed because of Covid-19.

More than one in five state secondaries reported being partially closed, meaning that classes or year groups were sent home or were isolating. Previously 82% were classed as “fully open” but last week the proportion fell to 79%.

Attendance in fully open primary schools is now consistent with what we would have expected before coronavirus. Across all state schools, only a small minority of pupils are self-isolating and schools are providing remote education, in line with what pupils would be receiving in school.

We will continue to work with schools to ensure all appropriate steps are taken to keep pupils and staff safe.

A pilot scheme will be launched “shortly” in England which will involve relatives of care home residents being treated as key workers to enable safe visits, Helen Whately, the care minister, has said.

Giving evidence to the joint science and health committee hearing on coronavirus, she said she wanted to enable visiting “but it must be safe”.

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Sage documents show how scientists felt sidelined by economic considerations

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Timing of the release, just after the PM’s three-tier Covid plan, highlights experts’ disquiet

The government’s Sage committee of scientific experts urged ministers to impose a circuit breaker lockdown on 21 September, documents have shown.

What is unusual about these Sage documents?

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Coronavirus live news: Russia reports record daily cases and deaths; Netherlands set for new restrictions

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Russia sees 13,868 cases and 244 deaths in 24 hours; Netherlands to announce new measures Johnson & Johnson confirms pause in vaccine trial

More than 2 million people who shielded during the peak of the coronavirus pandemic in the UK have been given new advice on what to do depending on the Covid alert level in their area.

The government has said:

Related: UK government issues new guidance for coronavirus shielders

Germany must agree on nationwide rules to contain the spread of the coronavirus and prevent infections from getting out of control, the premier of Bavaria said on Tuesday.

Reuters reports:

Speaking ahead of a meeting between Chancellor Angela Merkel and the leaders of Germany’s 16 states on Wednesday, Markus Soeder said the next four weeks would be crucial for whether Germans could celebrate a relaxed Christmas.

“We must now set the course jointly, otherwise there is a danger that it could get out of control,” he told a news conference following a meeting of Bavaria’s cabinet.

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Coronavirus live news: Fauci says he did not agree to appear in Trump ad; Italy plans new restrictions

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Top US infectious diseases expert said on Sunday he had not agreed to be featured in Trump ad; Italy moves as daily infections reach highest levels since March

Below are updates of what’s happened in recent hours. I am now handing the blog over to my colleague Archie Bland, who will continue bringing you live updates. Thanks for following.

• Malaysia on Monday announced that it will impose some restrictions on movement in its capital city and in the neighbouring state of Selangor from Wednesday, as the country grapples with a fresh surge of coronavirus cases.

Italy is set to ban private parties and limit the numbers of guests at weddings and funerals among new restrictions aimed at curbing a surge in coronavirus infections, according to a draft decree seen by Reuters.

The decree, which could be issued as early as Monday, prohibits people from hosting more than 10 guests in their homes or in any other private premises.

It also states that no more than 10 guests will be allowed at weddings, and no more than 15 people can be present at funerals.
Italy on Friday topped 5,000 new Covid-19 cases in a single day for the first time since March. Daily infections remained above 5,000 on both Saturday and Sunday.

Deaths linked to Covid-19 are far fewer, normally below 30, compared with peaks above 900 per day around the end of March.

Under the draft decree, amateur contact sports involving more than 6 people, such as soccer, are to be suspended and more severe social distancing is to be imposed in some workplaces.

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