Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The race to find a vaccine against Covid-19 has not always been particularly edifying, driven at times by so-called “vaccine nationalism”, much cautioned against by the World Health Organization, which has itself been accused of being invested as much in self-interest and prestige as global public health.
Russia’s announcement that it has registered its Sputnik V vaccine as safe and effective for mass production and inoculation even before so-called phase 3 large-scale safety trials, which usually take months, fits the pattern.
Five months since the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus crisis a global pandemic, the number of Covid cases globally is nearing 20m, with almost 730,000 known deaths.
The current number of confirmed infections stands at 19,792,519, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, with total new cases daily averaging more than 250,000.
India has registered a record 1,007 fatalities in the past 24 hours as new coronavirus infections surged by 62,064 cases, the Associated Press reports.
The health ministry said the total fatalities reached 44,386 on Monday. The number of confirmed cases reported so far are 2,215,074. At least 634,935 patients were still undergoing treatment.
Concern is growing that a resurgence of coronavirus in Europe will lead to a “second wave” of uncoordinated border restrictions that will undermine the open borders on which the European Union is founded.
In a letter to national governments, seen by the Associated Press, the European commission warns that “while we must ensure that the EU is ready for possible resurgences of Covid-19 cases ... we should at the same time avoid a second wave of uncoordinated actions at the internal borders of the EU.”
On a Saturday evening in mid-July, Michael made a video call to his grandmother and checked she had everything she needed. Then, along with about 3,000 others, he set out for an illegal rave.
Despite coronavirus lockdown measures, Michael, a 20-year-old student from Bristol who asked to use a pseudonym, went to the event at a former RAF airfield near Bath three weeks ago with a group of friends. Before they met up, he said, their group chat was “mostly excitement, but a little bit of trepidation”. Michael added: “But we just thought, none of us live with old people, and the rules are all confusion.”
Back in April, the French epidemiologist Arnaud Fontanet found himself leading an investigation in the town of Crépy-en-Valois, a small community of 15,000 inhabitants just to the north-east of Paris. In February, the town’s middle and high schools had become the centre of a new outbreak of Covid-19.
Fontanet and colleagues from the Pasteur Institute in Paris were tasked with conducting antibody testing across Crépy-en-Valois to understand the extent to which the virus had been circulating. As they surveyed the town, they noted an interesting pattern. While the virus had spread rampantly through the high school, with 38% of students being infected, along with 43% of teachers and 59% of non-teaching staff, the same was not true for the town’s six primary schools. While three primary-age pupils had caught Covid-19 in early February, none of these infections had led to a secondary case. Overall, just 9% of primary age pupils, 7% of teachers and 4% of non-teaching staff had been infected with the virus.
Coatsworth is asked about the fatality rate in Australia. He says he hasn’t seen the data in the last week or two but Australia has generally been better than much of the rest of the world.
The reasons include the already high standard of Australian health care and in particular intensive care units and staff.
“But we’re also learning more and more. We’re applying new treatments and [a medication] that’s demonstrating in a recovery trial to decrease mortality. We have at our disposal... and our specialists that are backed up by the Australia New Zealand Intensive Care Society and are discussing the clinical treatment of patient whose are gravely ill with Covid-19 and how you ventilate them is a challenge and the contact of proning which is where you ventilate someone on their tummy, rather than on their back, has proven to be critical. The timing you do that.
Dr Nick Coatsworth, deputy chief medical officer in Australia is giving a national briefing.
Nationally in Australia there are 295 dead from Covid-19, and 658 currently hospitalised with 51 in intensive care.
It is not going to be acceptable for any single country to have the vaccine and Australia is joining with a number of different countries around the world through the initiative to ensure that any vaccine that is developed is available.
Nation is facing shortage of shearers for its 68 million sheep as hundreds are barred from taking their usual trip across the Tasman Sea
It’s a tradition that stretches back decades. Every year, hundreds of New Zealanders fly in to Australia for the spring shearing season – a huge mobilisation of workers essential to the success of the nation’s wool industry.
In dusty sheds on outback farms they join up with local shearers and, between them, relieve five million sheep of their fleeces over eight weeks.
In a normal August, the much-loved miniature tourist train in the French port city of Sète would be full of tourists from Britain and elsewhere, enjoying the ride.
Optimistically, the manager, Romiy Priore, took steps to make his attraction safe for Covid times. “With the virus, we decided to order disposable earphones for the start of the season on 23 June – 100 of them,” he says, huddling behind a Perspex screen in a cool cabin on the quayside. “It’s August, and I still have 70 left. That tells you how many foreign tourists we currently have.”
Luiz Henrique Mandetta says the Brazilian president’s ‘misguided’ handling of the crisis has failed to comfort families
Jair Bolsonaro’s former health minister has accused the Brazilian president of failing to offer “a single word of comfort” to the families of the 100,000 Brazilians who have lost their lives to Covid-19.
In an interview marking Brazil’s latest Covid-19 milepost, Luiz Henrique Mandetta – who was sacked in April after challenging the president’s internationally condemned coronavirus response – expressed consternation that Brazil’s leaders had failed to recognise so much pain.
A man in his 30s and six aged care residents are among 12 new Victorian Covid-19 deaths that have taken Australia’s coronavirus death toll to 278.
On Saturday, the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, announced a further 466 cases of coronavirus in the state. Andrews said the number of cases attributed to no known source had risen by 130 to 2,584.
Ida lost two brothers in 10 days, and Ken’s teenage sweetheart died at 44. Now, they’re looking for answers
Sir Oyaseh Ivowi sits in front of a poster of two of his three boys. Olume, the older brother, hovers over Isi; both wear traditional Nigerian dress. Underneath are the words: “Gone too soon, but not forgotten. Olume Godfrey Ivowi, 7 November 1973 to 10 April 2020. Isi Benjamin Emitsemu Ivowi, 17 November 1985 to 19 April 2020.”
Olume, 46, and Isi, 34, died in Luton and Milton Keynes respectively. Their passing made headlines because it was so shocking: two brothers killed by Covid-19 in such a short space of time. A third brother, Osi, also caught the virus, but has recovered.
They were billed by the UK health secretary, Matt Hancock, as “lifesaving” and “hugely beneficial”: two new coronavirus tests that claim to deliver results within 90 minutes, promoted enthusiastically to the public with the help of front pages in the Times, the i and the Daily Mail, which declared they would “transform the war on corona”.
The suppliers are little known, evaluation data is not yet available, and it is unclear how effective the tests are outside hospital settings, not least because taking blood or swabs is difficult for non-medics.
One of two 90-minute rapid coronavirus tests bought by the UK government and announced on Monday has yet to be approved by regulators, while no data on the accuracy of either has been published, the Guardian has learned.
The test, from Oxford Nanopore, a young biotech company spun off from Oxford University, has not yet gained a CE mark. Before Covid-19, Oxford Nanopore had been involved only in research, not tests for patients.
During the initial peak of Spain’s Covid-19 pandemic in the spring, the virus displayed an unexpected mercy. In its spread, ferocity and awful novelty, it left health workers too tired and overwhelmed to look beyond the next few hours.
“There’s no time to get angry or to wonder why things have been organised the way they have been,” Sara Gayoso, an A&E doctor at El Escorial hospital near Madrid, told the Guardian at the end of March.
U.S. president Donald Trump said he would take part in a conference call on Sunday with leaders of Lebanon, France and other countries following the devastating blast in Beirut.
He also said he will be doing a press conference shortly, which would touch on both Beirut and the coronavirus.
I will be doing a news conference on the ChinaVirus, the just announced very good economic numbers, and the improving economy, at 7pm from Bedminster, New Jersey. Also, the subject of the Beirut, Lebanon catastrophe will be discussed.
Australia passed 20,000 coronavirus cases yesterday, with case numbers doubling in less than a month thanks to the outbreak in the Victorian capital of Melbourne.
The World Health Organization has warned against “vaccine nationalism”, cautioning richer countries that if they keep treatments to themselves they cannot expect to remain safe if poor nations remain exposed.
As global cases of Covid-19 passed 19 million on Friday, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it would be in the interest of wealthier nations to help every country protect itself against the disease.
Nine Conservative MPs in Greater Manchester have written a letter to the health secretary demanding “a more sophisticated approach” to local lockdowns, criticising the government’s “crude and ineffective strategy”.
The whole region of 2.8 million people was put back into partial lockdown last Thursday after infections started to rise. The decision prompted unhappiness in some areas of Greater Manchester where rates remained low, for example in Wigan and Bury.
The mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, has rejected the idea of releasing some of the 10 boroughs before others. But the Tory MPs reject this “one size fits all” approach, which they say “risks spreading resources too thinly across the whole conurbation, including in areas with few or no cases”.
They say Burnham fails to understand local infection patterns in seeking to “impose a crude and ineffective strategy across the whole area”.
They say:
Measures must be taken on a borough by borough basis and on a town by town basis in boroughs where there are only one or two coronavirus ‘hotspots’, but the rates in other parts of the borough are low ...
Failing to properly target resources, meaning inadequate measures in some places where the problems are greatest, and wasting resources where none are currently needed risks a wider outbreak across Greater Manchester, will only lead to more stringent ‘full lockdown’ measures being imposed as in Leicester. We must strive to avoid this at all costs.
Five clusters have been identified in Northern Ireland over the past seven days with 35 associated cases and 239 close contacts, according to the Public Health Agency (PHA).
Dr Gerry Waldron, head of health protection at the PHA, said:
This should act as a timely reminder that we must not become complacent - coronavirus remains in circulation and we have seen an increase in cases in recent weeks. It is therefore essential that we remember the key advice to help keep ourselves and those around us safe.
Maintain social distancing, wash your hands regularly, and get tested if you display any symptoms of coronavirus.
More than 200 workers tested positive at garment factory supplying Amazon, Gap and American Eagle
A garment factory supplying Gap, American Eagle and Amazon was at the centre of one of the worst Covid-19 outbreaks in Guatemala, the Guardian can reveal.
More than 200 people tested positive for Covid-19 at the KP Textil factory, exposing the dire working conditions inside the country’s maquila system of free trade zones. At the time of the outbreak, the factory was making masks for export to the US.
The UK government said 46,413 people had died in hospitals, care homes and the wider community after testing positive for coronavirus in the UK as of 5pm on Wednesday, up by 49 from the day before.
Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies show there have now been 56,600 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.
Austria’s foreign ministry on Thursday warned against trips to Spain with the exception of the Balearic and Canary Islands, as concerns grow that holidaymakers could catch the coronavirus and spread it once they return.
The measure will take effect from Monday, and people returning to Austria will be required to present a negative test for Covid-19, the ministry said.