Exclusive: Prof John Drury says cooperation more prevalent than selfish behaviour
From empty supermarket shelves to crowded parks, public behaviour has come in for criticism during the Covid-19 outbreak.
But blaming the spread of Covid-19 on selfishness or thoughtless behaviour is misguided and distracts from the real causes of fatalities, according to one of Britain’s leading behavioural psychologists.
Continue reading...Restrictions on travel to and from China capital brought in as neighbourhoods sealed off and venues close
Authorities in Beijing have described the city’s coronavirus outbreak as “extremely severe” as dozens more cases emerged, travel from the city was curtailed and its schools and universities shut down.
Beijing residents were told to avoid “non-essential” travel out of the capital, and anyone entering or leaving will be tested for Covid-19.
Continue reading...Food and Drug Administration says drug is unlikely to work against coronavirus and notes heart risks
US regulators revoked the emergency authorization for malaria drugs championed by Donald Trump for treating Covid-19, amid growing evidence they don’t work and could cause serious side effects.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on Monday the drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine were unlikely to be effective in treating the coronavirus. Citing reports of heart complications, the agency said the drugs’ unproven benefits “do not outweigh the known and potential risks”.
Continue reading...Organs of some who die after over a month in hospital sustain ‘complete disruption’, peers told
Covid-19 can leave the lungs of people who died from the disease completely unrecognisable, a professor of cardiovascular science has told parliament.
It created such massive damage in those who spent more than a month in hospital that it resulted in “complete disruption of the lung architecture”, said Prof Mauro Giacca of King’s College London.
Continue reading...WHO warns UK not to lift lockdown; Iran deaths top 100 for first time in two months; cases worldwide near 7.9m. Follow the latest updates
The number of confirmed Covid-19 infections has passed 25,000 in Afghanistan while a key testing laboratory paused work due to lack of kits.
The health ministry has detected 761 new cases from 1,551 tests in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of confirmed infections to 25,527.
Norway will halt its Covid-19 track and trace app, and delete all data collected so far, after criticism from the Norwegian Data Protection Authority.
The app was introduced by some Norwegian authorities to limit the transmission of the coronavirus.
We don’t agree with the DPA’s evaulation, but feel it is necessary to delete all data and put work on hold as a result of this.
We will as a result weaken an important part of our preparedness against a spread in infection, as we now lose time for development and testing of the app.
Continue reading...Survey reveals deep global dissatisfaction with US leadership under Donald Trump
China has beaten the US in the battle for world opinion over the handling of coronavirus, according to new polling, with only three countries out of 53 believing the US has dealt with the pandemic better than its superpower rival.
The survey comes ahead of a major conference on the future of democracy this week, due to be addressed by the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state John Kerry and the Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong. The conference is likely to be a rallying point for pro-democracy activists as China and the US enter an ever more explicit ideological contest.
Continue reading...Exclusive: senior official says contact tracing should be more effective before measures eased
England’s coronavirus lockdown should not be further lifted until the government’s contact-tracing system has proven to be “robust and effective”, the World Health Organization has said after widespread criticism of the first results of the new tracking operation.
Continue reading...
Mistakes mean findings should not be used as evidence for relaxing rule, say professors
Senior scientists have reported flaws in an influential World Health Organization-commissioned study into the risks of coronavirus infection and say it should not be used as evidence for relaxing the UK’s 2-metre physical distancing rule.
Critics of the distancing advice, which states that people should keep at least 2 metres apart, believe it is too cautious. They seized on the research commissioned by the WHO, which suggested a reduction from 2 metres to 1 would raise infection risk only marginally, from 1.3% to 2.6%.
Continue reading...Deaths worldwide pass 430,000; New York State sees lowest deaths since pandemic started; evacuation flight for British nationals leaves Colombia. Follow the latest updates
The way Russia counts fatalities during the coronavirus pandemic could be one reason why its official death toll of 6,829 is far below many other countries, reports the Associated Press. Despite the comparatively low number of fatalities, Russia has reported 520,000 infections, behind only the United States and Brazil.
The paradox also has led to allegations by critics and Western media that Russian authorities might have falsified the numbers for political purposes to play down the scale of the outbreak. Even a top World Health Organization official said the low number of deaths in Russia certainly is unusual.
The Guardian’s Paris correspondent, Kim Wilsher, has this report from Paris, where streets have been pedestrianised and the mayor has turned parking spaces into cycle lanes.
Related: Cafe society spills on to Paris cobbles as drivers bid to reclaim post-lockdown streets
It is evening rush hour and the Rue de Rivoli, a major east-west road through central Paris, is heaving. Pre-coronavirus, it would have been one long traffic jam, paralysed by increasingly frustrated and angry motorists. Now, though, with private cars banned, it is busy with pedestrians, cyclists and a smattering of taxis and buses.
North of Rue de Rivoli, in the Marais, a maze of narrow cobbled streets, cafes, restaurants and bars have spread out across pavements and parking places.
Continue reading...All of mainland France now in ‘green zone’; Spain’s border to open to EU countries except Portugal on 21 June; deaths worldwide pass 430,000
UK care homes are receiving far more coronavirus testing kits than they order, raising concern that the extra supplies help the government inflate the number of people it claims have been tested.
The apparently widespread nature of the practice in England has prompted fresh suspicion that ministers are counting swab kits sent out as tests done to exaggerate official figures.
Related: Oversupply of kits to care homes raises concern over Covid-19 test figures
France has reported nine new coronavirus deaths taking the total to 29,407 and marking the fifth day with under 30 fatalities, Reuters reports.
The government also reported the number of people in hospital fell by 28 to 10,881 and those in intensive care units fell by two to 869, with both tallies continuing weeks-long down-trends.
Continue reading...Richard Horton does not hold back in his criticism of the UK’s response to the pandemic and the medical establishment’s part in backing fatal government decisions
There is a school of thought that says now is not the time to criticise the government and its scientific advisers about the way they have handled the Covid-19 pandemic. Wait until all the facts are known and the crisis has subsided, goes this thinking, and then we can analyse the performance of those involved. It’s safe to say that Richard Horton, the editor of the influential medical journal the Lancet, is not part of this school.
An outspoken critic of what he sees as the medical science establishment’s acquiescence to government, he has written a book that he calls a “reckoning” for the “missed opportunities and appalling misjudgments” here and abroad that have led to “the avoidable deaths of tens of thousands of citizens”.
Continue reading...Anthony Fauci calls Trump rallies a danger to health; Australia’s chief medical officers warns against BLM rallies
Three activists of Algeria’s Hirak protest movement were ordered to be held in pre-trial detention for offences including “endangering the lives of others during the [coronavirus] confinement period”, a prisoners’ defence group said on Saturday.
The Hirak movement led peaceful protests in 2019 after Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced his candidacy for a fifth presidential term, calling for Bouteflika’s immediate resignation.
Airlines are slowly trying to return to business after the pandemic grounded entire fleets of planes around the globe for months and put their very existence in doubt.
My colleague Gwyn Topham reports.
Related: Lots of distancing, no long-distance: airlines cautiously return to the sky
Continue reading...US public health expert said another wave of infections ‘not inevitable ... if you approach it the proper way’
Leading US public health expert and White House coronavirus taskforce member Dr Anthony Fauci has said the US may not see a “second wave” of cases of Covid-19.
According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, the US has recorded more than 2m cases of Covid-19 and nearly 115,000 deaths.
Continue reading...Dozens of domestically transmitted cases at city’s largest wholesale food market prompt move
Parts of Beijing have reimposed lockdown measures after a cluster of locally transmitted coronavirus cases emerged nearly two months after the Chinese capital appeared to have stamped out the virus.
The outbreak, linked to a major wholesale food market, raised serious questions about the challenges of keeping the disease at bay, even in countries such as China where authoritarian rule allows harsh containment regulations and invasive tracing systems.
Continue reading...Over 70% of the indigenous Peruvian community of Cantagallo Island have tested positive for coronavirus. This is how they are surviving lockdown
• All photographs by Florence Goupil, who received a grant from the Covid-19 National Geographic emergency fund for journalists
Continue reading...Study prompts further criticism that chances to suppress infection early in outbreak were missed
There was no “patient zero” in the UK’s Covid-19 epidemic, according to research showing that the infection was introduced on at least 1,300 occasions.
The findings, from the Covid-19 Genomics UK consortium, have prompted further criticism that opportunities to suppress the spread of infection in February and March were missed.
Continue reading...Shortage of test kits ‘leading to virus spread in Africa’; Mexico confirms record daily infections; Brazil deaths near 40,000
Another 1.5 million people in the US filed for unemployment benefits last week even as states continued to relax their coronavirus quarantine measures, writes Dominic Rushe and Amanda Holpuch in New York.
In just 12 weeks more than 44 million claims have been made for benefits as people lost their jobs. Rehiring appears to have started. Last week the labor department said the unemployment rate had dipped in May to 13.3% from 14.7% in April – although officials said difficulty collecting data meant the figure was probably 3% higher.
Related: 1.5 million Americans file for unemployment as states relax restrictions
Nearly three-quarters of new cases of coronavirus are coming from 10 countries, mostly concentrated in the Americas and south Asia, the director general of the World Health Organization has said.
Speaking at the UN health agency’s member state briefing on Thursday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the global situation was deteriorating, even as Europe appeared to be over the worst of the outbreak.
More than 7 million cases of Covid-19 have now been reported, and more than 408,000 deaths.
Although the situation in Europe is improving, at the global level, it is getting worse. More than 100,000 new cases have been reported each day for the most part of the past two weeks.
Continue reading...A second wave of coronavirus cases would be disastrous – but there are ways to prevent this happening
Over the weekend, there were no new deaths from coronavirus in London, Scotland or Northern Ireland. Slowly, the number of hospitalisations and deaths is falling across the UK. Rather than celebrating these early signs that the worst of the pandemic could be behind us, however, some scientists are warning of a second wave of infections – an increase in coronavirus cases in the coming weeks or months, which could occur even after a sustained fall in the number of cases.
These warnings often refer back to the 1918 flu pandemic. That outbreak killed tens of millions of people when it returned the following winter in a deadlier form after the first outbreak had been controlled. But there’s a confusing lack of consensus from scientists about whether we’ll see a second wave of coronavirus cases. Although the future is uncertain, we can imagine four scenarios for what might come next.
Continue reading...Australia’s GDP could fall by 6.3% this year if hit by a second wave of infections, the OECD says in a new report. Follow live updates
Scott Morrison is now calling on all the closed states to nominate the date they will re-open in July.
Because he is getting “frustrated” at the interstate border closures.
“People who rallied this [past] weekend, showed great disrespect for their neighbours,” Scott Morrison says.
Continue reading...Many Pacific nations are Covid-free but have been devastated by the economic impacts of the virus
Pacific Island nations are urging Australia and New Zealand to include them in a planned travel “bubble”, as flights across the region resume.
Pacific governments face a delicate balancing act, weighing the devastating economic impact of border closures and travel restrictions on their tourism-dependent economies, with the risk of widespread and uncontrollable Covid-19 infections if the virus is introduced.
Continue reading...