Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
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.
Coronavirus may be more easily transmitted in school and summer camp settings than previously understood, after the emergence of new details of outbreaks in the US state of Georgia and in Israel that have underscored the risks of school reopenings.
A report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) into an outbreak at a summer camp in Georgia suggests children – even asymptomatic cases – may play an important role in community transmission of Covid-19.
Test results for a man suspected of being North Korea’s first coronavirus case were inconclusive, but authorities have quarantined more than 3,635 primary and secondary contacts, according to a World Health Organization official.
On 26 July, the country said it had declared a state of emergency and locked down the border city of Kaesong after a person who defected to South Korea three years ago returned across the fortified border with what state media said were symptoms of Covid-19.
France’s prime minister, Jean Castex, has said vineyards are facing “major difficulties” due to a drop in exports during the pandemic.
He tweeted that state support “must continue and intensify” to save the wine industry from collapse.
Contexte international, crise sanitaire, baisse des exportations : notre filière viticole est confrontée à d’importantes difficultés. La mobilisation de l’État doit se poursuivre et s’intensifier. Avec @J_Denormandie, j’échange dans le Cher avec les professionnels du secteur. pic.twitter.com/G6qIEojyMw
Authorities are also unable to say if non-Sydney residents will have to quarantine in the state capital
Health authorities in New South Wales are unable to say if residents of border areas returning from beyond the Victoria border zone will have to quarantine at hotels when they cross over, admitting that the details of a health order for mandatory hotel quarantine announced hours earlier by the premier, Gladys Berejiklian, have not yet been finalised.
NSW Health also said it had not yet been decided if non-Sydney residents returning from Victoria would have to quarantine at hotels in the state capital as part of the measures the NSW health minister, Brad Hazzard, said were influenced by Victoria’s rising Covid-19 numbers, which reached a record of 725 new cases on Wednesday.
We’ve all experienced tragedy but usually there is comfort in the wider world carrying on. With Covid, the jig is up
This is part of a series of essays by Australian writers responding to the challenges of 2020
As a teenager, I loved feeling scared. Horror films were my go-to. The Exorcist, Poltergeist, The Omen, even the slightly sillier ones like Friday the 13th. In my youth I mistook that manufactured titillation for real fear, but now I know better. Now I know true fear is not exhilarating. True fear cannot be easily soothed by a quick cuddle from Mum. True fear is intense, exhausting, merciless. True fear is an invisible pathogen that threatens to strip you of everything you love.
“Would you prefer to get your results on a less ominous day?” I joked as I booked patients in for their appointments on Friday the 13th of March, Some laughed and others hesitated but most seemed to eventually suppress any niggling superstition.
Donald Trump visibly floundered in an interview when pressed on a range of issues, including the number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the US, his claims that mail-in voting is fraudulent, and his inaction over the “Russian bounty” scandal.
The US president also repeatedly cast doubt on the cause of death of Jeffrey Epstein, and said of Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite who has pleaded not guilty to participating in the sex-trafficking of girls by Epstein, that he wished her well.
Activists are calling on the pharmaceutical firm Gilead Sciences to study a drug for the treatment of Covid-19 that showed promise in curing cats of a coronavirus.
The drug, called GS-441524, is chemically related to remdesivir, an antiviral also made by Gilead, and one of the only treatments to successfully shorten the duration of Covid-19 recovery.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warns there may never be an effective vaccine for Covid-19. Speaking in Geneva, Tedros explains the need for caution despite progress developing some vaccines. 'A number of vaccines are now in phase three clinical trials and we all hope to have a number of effective vaccines that can help prevent people from infection' he says. 'However, there’s no silver bullet at the moment and there might never be'
Victoria’s rise in Covid-19 case numbers is occurring so rapidly that contact tracing can no longer be relied upon to unearth all potential clusters in the state, according to epidemiologists who argue health detective work “won’t make much difference when you’ve got thousands of active cases potentially out there”.
On Monday the state’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton, said there were “literally thousands on the phone who are chasing up close contacts and who are talking to them about what quarantine requires of them”, after reports that some close contacts of confirmed cases were waiting up to a week for contact from the state instructing them to self-isolate.
NSW police have released information on the fines they have issued for social distance breaches:
Police have issued a total of 16 Penalty Infringement Notices (PINs) for non-compliance with Covid-19 Public Health Orders across the weekend.
The Business Council of Australia and the Australian Council of Trade Unions – not known for being on the same side of a lot of issues – have released a joint letter calling for a paid pandemic leave scheme:
Here are the main headlines from our global coronavirus coverage so far on Monday:
About 1.5 million Italians - 2.5% of the population of Italy- may have already contracted coronavirus, nationwide antibody tests indicate, according to the Associated Press.
The figure, announced by health officials on Monday, is six times the number of confirmed cases in Italy’s official virus tally. The results — viewed with the country’s overall death toll of close to 35,000 —align with a 2.3% estimated mortality rate of the virus.
People who have recovered from Covid-19 are being urged to donate their blood plasma as part of an urgent appeal to help the NHS treat those who fall ill during a potential second wave.
The call follows news that the number of appointments booked each week as part of the ongoing NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) convalescent plasma collection has dropped by almost half in the past month. There are fewer eligible donors due to the fall in new infections during lockdown.