A selection of comments from across the political divide on PM’s handling of pandemic
The brewing rebellion among Tory backbenchers over the lack of scrutiny afforded to parliament on Covid-19 restrictions – as well as concerns about their impact – has left Boris Johnson facing criticism from within and outside his party. Here are some of the more pointed comments levelled against the prime minister and his policies from across the political divide.
Continue reading...Global initiative will supply 120m rapid antigen tests to low- and middle-income countries
Tests for Covid-19 that show on-the-spot results in 15 to 30 minutes are about to be rolled out across the world, potentially saving many thousands of lives and slowing the pandemic in both poor and rich countries.
In a triumph for a global initiative to get vital drugs and vaccines to fight the virus, 120m rapid antigen tests from two companies will be supplied to low- and middle-income countries for $5 (£3.90) each or even less.
Continue reading...Substance has had promising results in ferrets, with hopes it may reduce transmission
A nasal spray is under development that could nip a coronavirus infection in the bud, with promising results already seen in ferrets, researchers have revealed.
With coronavirus infections surging around the world, the race is on to develop a vaccine. But researchers are also looking for other ways to tackle Covid-19.
Continue reading...Melbourne’s stage four restrictions ease as Victoria records three deaths and five new Covid cases and NSW reports zero. Follow live
A man who had been deported to New Zealand, and who was in isolation at a government-run quarantine hotel, is under investigation by the police after he tied bed sheets together to escape the facility from a fourth floor window.
All travellers returning to the country – only New Zealanders and their families, plus others with special exemptions are allowed to pass through its borders – must spend two weeks in mandatory isolation, during which they are tested twice for Covid-19.
I am going to leave you in the very capable hands of Naaman Zhou for the rest of the afternoon shift.
There have been quite a few messages today – I am slowly working my way through them – but if you have anything else to say, or I missed you, you can contact me here and here.
Continue reading...WHO says global toll is likely to be over one million already; travel in and out of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague may be banned
The percentage of Covid-19 tests taken in New York state that have come back positive has inched up to 1.5%, governor Andrew Cuomo said, a worrisome trend for the former centre of the US coronavirus epidemic.
The rise in positivity in New York above the 1% target comes as 27 other states recorded increases in the number of cases for two straight weeks.
MEPs won’t yet be returning to Strasbourg due to rising coronavirus infections in France, the European parliament speaker said, despite a plea by the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
The European parliament has its headquarters in Strasbourg in eastern France, where MEPs usually based in Brussels travel every month for 12 plenary sessions a year.
Continue reading...People refusing to self-isolate will face penalties starting at £1,000, and police will act on tip-offs from neighbours
A new, more robust chapter in English coronavirus regulations begins on Monday, with fines of up to £10,000 for people who refuse to self-isolate when asked, and enforcement including tip-offs from people who believe that others are breaching the rules.
The changes come with the duty to self-isolate moving into law. It becomes a legal obligation if someone is told to do so by test-and-trace staff, but not for those simply using the Covid-19 phone app, which is anonymous.
Continue reading...Le Monde reports 32% of outbreaks in France found in schools or universities; Victoria ends curfew
Families are counting down the days to moving into new homes in a Hong Kong estate that had been used as a Covid-19 quarantine centre in what had become a lightning rod for discontent, the South China Morning Post reports.
They included L.N. Siu, her husband and daughter, who were overjoyed when they were finally allocated a public housing flat at the Chun Yeung Estate in Hong Kong last December. They had been waiting eight years.
Romanians go to the polls on Sunday to choose mayors and local councillors, but a Covid-19 surge is threatening to hit the first electoral test after years of political turbulence with a high abstention rate.
Nationwide, the east European country of almost 19 million people has 43,000 seats to fill in the single-round election seen as a test ahead of national polls in December.
Continue reading...Oliver Dowden says everyone must follow rules after Labour urges promise on ‘unfair’ restrictions
University students should be able to return home to their families at Christmas if the country “pulls together” and observes the new coronavirus rules, a cabinet minister has said.
The government is under pressure to guarantee young people are not confined to their halls of residence over the festive period because of Covid-19 outbreaks on campuses.
Continue reading...Strategy of repeated ‘circuit breakers’ would reduce total number of cases, according to leading scientific adviser
One of the government’s scientific advisers has said repeated “mini lockdowns” could be effective as a tool to bring Covid-19 cases under control.
The suggestion from Professor John Edmunds, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), comes amid growing evidence the virus’s prevalence is growing among older, more vulnerable people.
Continue reading...As Covid cases rise, an increasingly heated debate has emerged over whether to readopt stringent measures or return to ‘the business of living’
Britain has reached a Covid crossroads – and its leaders are being pressed to pick one of two stark options. Are they going to return to the lockdown days that brought life to a standstill six months ago, but succeeded in halting the rapid spread of the disease? Or are they going to turn their backs on “an authoritarian nightmare” that is preventing the nation from getting on with “the business of living”?
This is the basic division that has emerged over the summer in an increasingly heated debate between two unlikely groupings of scientists, columnists, campaigners and politicians.
Continue reading...We have a sense of what it means to live in disturbing times, to live under threat. We should not forget the many people who have known this all their lives
One fine untroubled morning in 2019 I was out walking in Potts Point, on my way to see my eldest brother. He lived in a room here when I was 21 and he was 26. In those days, Potts Point was unconventional and impoverished, home to people who minded their own business, which was largely conducted at night.
His room was narrow, with a bed and a wardrobe housing a few shirts on wire hangers. A window opened on to a wall. There was a bathroom on the same floor. I could stay there when he was away; I could borrow a shirt. When he wasn’t away I stayed in a friend’s apartment on New South Head Road and walked to Potts Point to visit him. At the time, I was writing a thesis on the fiction of Samuel Beckett. As I wrote I grew more and more uneasy about the loss of this thesis, and I began to carry my work with me in a small suitcase for safekeeping. With my suitcase and my plain man’s shirt I wasn’t of much interest to the people on the street. I kept writing. The suitcase became heavier and heavier, for it now contained books and all my drafts. I carried it to my brother’s concerts. We began to share this burden, as we walked about the city. Once he stopped and put it down, flexing his fingers. “You do realise I make my living with my hands,” he said, before he picked it up again.
Continue reading...The right fails to recognise that the Swedes’ real virtue in this pandemic is their social cohesion
Sweden is to the 21st-century right what the Soviet Union was to the 20th-century left. Conservatives have transformed it into a Tory Disneyland where every dream comes true. On the shores of the Baltic lies a country that has no need to curtail civil liberties and wreck the economy to curb Covid-19. “I have a dream, a fantasy,” sang Abba. “To help me through reality.” For much of the right, that fantasy is called Sweden.
Let the leader of the Conservative backbenchers stand for the Tory press and innumerable ideologues inside and outside Westminster. Sir Graham Brady ruined a perfectly good argument that parliament must have the power to scrutinise Johnson’s emergency decrees by announcing that there was no emergency. We could look to a country that merely had a ban on gatherings of more than 50, restrictions on visiting care homes, a shift to table-only service in bars and see that “Sweden today is in a better place than the United Kingdom”. Or as the Sun explained on Thursday as Boris Johnson met Anders Tegnell, the Swedish public health “mastermind”, a do-little strategy has spared Sweden a second wave of Covid-19 infections.
Continue reading...France’s total cases now 527,446; London mayor condemns ‘unacceptable’ demonstration. Follow all the developments live
Coronavirus cases in Colombia, which is nearly a month into a national reopening after a long quarantine, surpassed 800,000 on Saturday, a day after deaths from Covid-19 climbed above 25,000.
The country has 806,038 confirmed cases of the virus according to the health ministry, with 25,296 reported deaths. Active cases number 78,956.
Queen Elizabeth II will recognise the work of hundreds of doctors, nurses, fundraisers and volunteers during the pandemic when the her annual birthday honours list is published next month.
The list, which was due to be published in June, was postponed in order to add nominations for people playing key roles in the early months of the outbreak. It will be released on 10 October.
We all have to play our part, but the dedication, courage and compassion seen from these recipients, be it responding on the frontline or out in their communities providing support to the most vulnerable, is an inspiration to us all.
We owe them a debt of gratitude and the 2020 Queen’s Birthday honours will be the first of many occasions where we can thank them as a nation.
Continue reading...Coronavirus cases in France jump to record high as Spanish government calls for Madrid lockdown
The prime ministers of France and the Netherlands have issued stark warnings about their coronavirus figures, while in Spain, the western European country hardest hit by the virus, Madrid authorities have rejected the central government’s call for a lockdown across the capital.
Santé Publique France, the French public health authority, tallied 15,797 new confirmed cases on Friday, just shy of a daily record of 16,096 set on Thursday.
Continue reading...Researchers will test length of time virus stays infectious in different climatic conditions
It is the question scientists around the world are trying to answer: how long can the coronavirus survive in the tiny aerosol particles we exhale? In a high-security lab near Bristol, entered through a series of airlock doors, scientists may be weeks from finding out.
On Monday, they will start launching tiny droplets of live Sars-CoV-2 and levitating them between two electric rings to test how long the airborne virus remains infectious under different environmental conditions.
Continue reading...Spanish government calls for Madrid lockdown; Netherlands records worst day for new cases; cases in Reykjavík linked to two French visitors
The UK government has been continuing to source medical gloves used as PPE by frontline healthcare workers from a manufacturer in Malaysia repeatedly accused of forcing its workers to endure “slave-like conditions” in its factories, the Guardian can reveal.
Top Glove, the world’s biggest producer of rubber medical gloves, has faced multiple allegations of exploitation from migrant workers mostly from Bangladesh and Nepal.
Related: NHS sourcing PPE from company repeatedly accused of forced labour
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
Continue reading...New infections in UK growing by 4% to 8% every day; measures to come into force in three areas in Wales this weekend; London placed on watchlist
A further 33 people who tested positive for coronavirus have died in hospital in England, bringing the total number of confirmed deaths reported in hospitals to 29,871, NHS England said on Friday.
The patients were aged between 56 and 93 and all except two, aged 84 and 88, had known underlying health conditions.
The mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, has called for financial support from the government for areas under extra restrictions.
At his weekly press conference, he told reporters:
These restrictions in our case have been in place for a number of weeks, getting on for seven to eight now, and they are having an impact on people’s lives but also on people’s jobs and people’s businesses.
There was not any compensatory support for many of those people announced yesterday and I think this is an unacceptable situation.
Exclusive: Gloves from Malaysian company Top Glove found in NHS supply chain despite multiple allegations of worker exploitation
The UK government has been continuing to source medical gloves used as PPE by frontline healthcare workers from a manufacturer in Malaysia repeatedly accused of forcing its workers to endure “slave-like conditions” in its factories, the Guardian can reveal.
Top Glove, the world’s biggest producer of rubber medical gloves, has faced multiple allegations of exploitation from migrant workers mostly from Bangladesh and Nepal.
Continue reading...The prime minister warns nations will be severely judged if they try to profit from hoarding a vaccine
Scott Morrison will use a speech to the United Nations general assembly in New York to urge countries to share a Covid-19 vaccine as soon as a successful candidate emerges, characterising such collaboration as a “global and moral responsibility”.
Morrison will use his contribution to the general assembly 75th anniversary general debate, scheduled for Saturday morning Australian time, to revive concerns that some countries might see “short-term advantage or even profit” in hoarding the vaccine rather than sharing it with the world.
Continue reading...Experts say that while contested ‘light touch’ response warrants study each country must find right approach for them
EU governments that locked down are increasingly emulating the one that did not, but experts warn that Sweden’s Covid approach, relying more on voluntary compliance than coercion, will not suit all – and big questions remain over whether it has worked for Sweden.
As infections surge in several European countries, France, which is currently averaging nearly 12,000 cases a day, has ruled out another national lockdown, instead pursuing a strategy the prime minister, Jean Castex, calls “living with the virus” and imposing local measures.
Continue reading...