Some scientists believe there is growing evidence of airborne transmission of Covid-19
Some scientists are warning there is growing evidence of airborne transmission of coronavirus. But how does it affect the actions we should take to stay safe?
Continue reading...Premier Gladys Berejiklian details stricter regime for pubs as cluster linked to the Crossroads Hotel grows to 30 cases
New South Wales is on “extra high alert” for a widespread Covid-19 resurgence and will require so-called hygiene marshals to enforce social distancing at every pub in the state.
The crackdown comes after patrons who visited a Sydney hotel at the centre of the state’s largest outbreak expressed concern over relaxed safety practices and the pub’s manager conceded more could have been done to record visitors’ contact details.
Continue reading...French study is believed to be first such confirmed case but doctors say infant has made good recovery
Doctors in France have reported what they believe to be the first proven case of Covid-19 being passed on from a pregnant woman to her baby in the womb.
The newborn boy developed inflammation in the brain within days of being born, a condition brought on after the virus crossed the placenta and established an infection prior to birth. He has since made a good recovery.
Continue reading...The president says the scientist leading the US fight against the virus has ‘made a lot of mistakes’
He is the US scientist who became the figurehead of attempts to combat the country’s coronavirus epidemic, described in some quarters as “America’s doctor”.
Now Anthony Fauci appears sidelined by Donald Trump’s White House after repeatedly contradicting the president’s view about the effectiveness of the government response.
Continue reading...Exclusive: best analysis to date indicates significant increases in infections, hospital admissions and deaths
There is “compelling” evidence that air pollution significantly increases coronavirus infections, hospital admissions and deaths, according to the most detailed and comprehensive analysis to date.
The research indicates that a small, single-unit increase in people’s long-term exposure to pollution particles raises infections and admissions by about 10% and deaths by 15%. The study took into account more than 20 other factors, including average population density, age, household size, occupation and obesity.
Continue reading...Guardian Australia analysis and map shows how the pattern of Covid-19 has changed throughout Melbourne. Live data updates will track it as the lockdown continues
A Guardian Australia analysis of Victorian coronavirus cases shows that infections have been increasing in areas outside the locked-down postcodes, and that all significant growth areas are now contained within the wider Melbourne lockdown.
Using data aggregated daily from the dashboard of the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) here, we calculated the number of new cases a day for every local government area in Victoria.
Continue reading...Cases rise by over 230,000 worldwide in 24 hours; Florida cases increase by record total for a US state; Brazil cases near 2m. Follow the latest updates
Mainland China reported eight new Covid-19 cases as of the end of 12 July, up from seven reported a day earlier, the Chinese national health authority said on Monday.
The National Health Commission said in a statement that all of the new cases were imported infection involving travellers from overseas, the same as the seven cases a day earlier. The capital city of Beijing reported no new confirmed cases for the seventh consecutive day.
The Commission also reported six new asymptomatic patients, those who are infected with the coronavirus but have no symptoms, compared with five a day earlier. China does not consider such patients as confirmed cases.
Total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases for mainland China now stands at 83,602, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
Hong Kong health authorities are continuing to battle its worst virus outbreak yet. It saw a rise in cases in March as people began returning from overseas, prompting increased social distancing measures and restrictions which had started to ease in recent weeks.
On Sunday another 38 new cases were confirmed, including 30 local transmissions. Of the 30, 13 have an unknown source.
Continue reading...Cases rise by over 230,000 worldwide in 24 hours; EU summit ‘may not agree Covid-19 recovery fund’; 130m ‘may go hungry in 2020 because of virus’
An entire hospital in Mexico’s southern Oaxaca state has been put in quarantine after 68% of its remaining staff tested positive, writes Analy Nuño in Guadalajara.
Doctors and nurses at the Macedonio Benítez Fuentes hospital in the town of Juchitán de Zaragoza held protests last week, calling for a lockdown after 120 of their colleagues were put under isolation after positive tests.
The hospital won’t close – we will still deal with urgent cases, and have already analysed our staffing requirements to attend to the community as our colleagues start to return to work.
China has stepped up a travel warning to Australia, telling its citizens of a risk of being searched “arbitrarily” by law enforcement authorities, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
Tensions between the two countries have been escalating on various fronts after Beijing reacted with fury to calls for an independent investigation into the origins and spread of the pandemic, which first surfaced in central China last year.
We urge Australia to change its course and stop interfering in Hong Kong’s affairs and China’s internal affairs in any way, or risk further damage to China-Australia relations.
Continue reading...Patient said: ‘I think I made a mistake, I thought this was a hoax, but it’s not’, according to health official
A 30-year-old patient died after attending a ‘“Covid party”, believing the virus to be a hoax, a Texas medical official has said.
“Just before the patient died, they looked at their nurse and said ‘I think I made a mistake, I thought this was a hoax, but it’s not,’” said Dr Jane Appleby, the chief medical officer at Methodist hospital in San Antonio.
Continue reading...Infections are accelerating in largely untouched countries and those which hoped they had come through the worst. But there is hope
“Most of the world sort of sat by and watched with almost a sense of detachment and bemusement,” said Helen Clark, appointed to investigate the World Health Organization’s handling of the pandemic. The former New Zealand prime minister was describing the early weeks of the outbreak, and the sense that coronavirus was a problem “over there”. The failure to recognise our interconnection created complacency even as the death toll rose.
It took three months for the first million people to fall sick – but only a week to record the last million of the nearly 13 million cases now reported worldwide. As England emerges from lockdown at an unwary pace, Covid-19 is accelerating globally. The WHO has reported a record surge of a quarter of a million cases in a single day. The death toll is over half a million people and rising fast.
Continue reading...Indian cases pass 800,000; Johannesburg struggles to find vital equipment; Texas warns ‘worst is yet to come’
India reported a record spike in coronavirus cases on Saturday, taking the national total to more than 800,000 and pushing several states to bring back lockdowns, despite the punitive economic cost.
Now the world’s third-worst affected country by case load, it reported a spike of 27,114 cases on Saturday, although mortality rates have been lower than in other badly affected countries with confirmed death toll now 22,123.
Continue reading...Job losses, homelessness, school closures and acute hunger set to rise dramatically without urgent support, Christian Aid warns
The pandemic has exposed and reinforced deep inequalities across the world, with the true extent yet to be seen, according to a major new report.
The crisis in the poorest countries threatens to escalate into a catastrophe as job losses and food insecurity mount. “The economic, social and political impacts are only starting to unfold,” says Building Back with Justice: Dismantling Inequalities after Covid-19, to be published by Christian Aid later this month.
Continue reading...This blog has closed – please keep following our live coverage here
This blog has closed – thanks for following. Coverage continues at our latest coronavirus live blog.
Good morning, good evening, hello, wherever you might be. This is Helen Davidson taking the reins of the blog for the next few hours. Thanks to my colleagues for their coverage.
We’ll be starting a new blog shortly, but in the meantime here is some more news on the vaccine front.
Continue reading...Daniel Andrews says effects of lockdown won’t be reflected for weeks as NSW cases linked to Casula pub
Victoria has recorded another 216 cases of coronavirus and one additional death, a man in his 90s, as the state tries to contain the second wave of the virus that returned Melbourne residents to lockdown.
Thirty of the new cases are linked to known outbreaks and 186 are under investigation, with the state’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton, saying it was becoming more difficult to quickly trace the source of new infections.
Continue reading...Metropolitan Melbourne returned to lockdown on 8 July after Victoria recorded 191 new cases of coronavirus since the start of the week, which was at the time the highest daily increase since the pandemic began.
Guardian Australia’s Melissa Davey explains why the stage 3 stay-at-home orders were announced, how the latest lockdown has been met with a mixture of fury and acceptance, and whether this apparent second wave could have been avoided
Collaboration with Kid Cudi takes aim at people spreading Covid-19 by not wearing masks
Eminem has entered the debate about face masks in a collaboration with Kid Cudi, tackling an issue that is the subject of fierce disagreement in the US and UK.
The single, The Adventures of Moon Man and Slim Shady, is the first time the two rappers have joined forces. They reflect on rehab and recovery as well as current events including police brutality and the coronavirus pandemic.
Continue reading...Japan reels from resurgence of virus while Australia restricts admissions to 4,000 a week
Tokyo hit another record daily high number of new cases, Australia is to halve the number of citizens it allows to return each week and Hong Kong’s schools have closed early for the summer as countries around the world struggled to contain fresh coronavirus outbreaks.
Amid growing signs of a resurgence of the virus in Japan, the capital reported 243 new infections on Friday, more than the previous day’s 224 and the first time that more than 200 cases have been confirmed for two consecutive days.
Continue reading...Its findings should illuminate global responses amid conspiracy theories and Trump’s mudslinging
In the world of epidemiology it’s sometimes said that pandemics are lived forwards and understood backwards.
We encounter them head-on, chaotically, trying to fathom the disease in real time even while trying to mitigate its impact. Lessons generally come later as the evidence accumulates.
Continue reading...Venezuelan Socialist party boss also tests positive; Brazil president Bolsonaro ‘in good health’; record new cases in Australian state of Victoria
Reuters is reporting that a clinical trial in Japan of Fujifilm Holdings Corp’s Avigan drug yielded inconclusive results as a treatment of Covid-19.
The drug, which has been shown to cause birth defects in animal studies, has already been approved as a Covid-19 treatment in Russia and India.
So, welcome to our coronavirus live coverage. For those of you wanting your news straight, here’s a summary of the top lines of the day, with link to key pieces for you to investigate further at your leisure:
The UK has rejected the chance to join the European Union’s coronavirus vaccine programme due to ministers’ concerns over “costly delays”, according to sources.
Continue reading...WHO reports worrying rise; second Venezuelan minister tests positive; Brazil records 1,200 more deaths
This blog is closed – keep following coronavirus news at our new live blog.
US prison officials have announced California will release up to 8,000 people from state prisons to curb the spread of Covid-19 throughout the institutions.
Officials on Friday announced three separate efforts, approved by the governor, Gavin Newsom, that they say will decrease the prison population by 8,ooo by the end of August. The measures mark the largest release efforts the state administration has taken since Covid-19 began to circulate among prison staff and incarcerated people.
Related: California to release up to 8,000 prisoners to curb spread of coronavirus
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