Category Archives: Infectious Diseases

Why doctors say UK is better prepared for a second wave of coronavirus

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Drug research, well-practised NHS staff and greater awareness of dangers give reasons for hope

When a deluge of coronavirus cases threatened to overwhelm the NHS in March, Covid-19 was a brand new and little-understood disease, causing panic as well as deaths. Hospitals under huge pressure did all they could.

Next time round, if, as everyone supposes, there is a next time, it will be different. In a second wave, or even localised spikes across the nation, the health service will know more about what it is dealing with – and will be better able to help people recover and send them home, say doctors.

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Victoria’s coronavirus spike: is this a second wave, and what’s causing the clusters?

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The state took swift action to contain Covid-19 but it is the site of 83% of Australia’s new cases. We examine why

While Victoria took swift action to contain the spread of Covid-19, the state is experiencing a concerning increase in virus cases. This is despite restrictions such as school closures and limits on the numbers of people in venues continuing longer than most other jurisdictions.

In the past week, 116 of Australia’s new cases – 83% of them – were reported in Victoria. It has also placed pressure on testing in some of the most affected council areas including Hume, Brimbank, Moreland, Darebin, Cardinia and Casey. Almost one in five Victorians live across these areas. For almost one week, new cases in double digits have been reported in the state, with the department of health on Monday announcing 16 new cases overnight.

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Delhi to transform 25 luxury hotels into Covid-19 care centres

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Fearful hotel workers asked to take on role of hospital support staff as cases in Delhi rise

Staff at luxury hotels in Delhi are to start welcoming guests not with traditional garlands but with a medical gown.

Amid growing concerns that there are not enough hospital beds to cope with the rising number of cases, the Delhi government has become the first in the country to requisition its hotels. Starting this week, 25 establishments will be repurposed as emergency Covid-19 care centres for patients with mild to moderate symptoms. In a sign of how overwhelmed medical staff are becoming, hotel employees are being trained in case they have to administer some of the care.

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Australia coronavirus news: Victorians warned to avoid Melbourne hotspots amid fears of second wave – live updates

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Authorities ‘strongly discourage’ travel to and from six council areas that are home to most of the country’s new coronavirus cases. Follow live

Victoria has officially announced its new ministry.

Queensland has reported zero coronavirus cases overnight.

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Coronavirus live news: Bolsonaro silent as Brazil passes 50,000 deaths; global cases reach 9 million

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China halts imports from food plant where 481 tested positive; New York shops and bars reopen; Lisbon brings back lockdown restrictions

The Netherlands reported zero new deaths from Covid-19 on Monday, the first day since the beginning of March that the country’s pandemic death toll has not risen.

Deaths reported by Dutch national institute for public health are not necessarily from the past 24 hours, so it cannot be confirmed that no one has died from coronavirus-related illness. But it is the first day since 12 March that no death has been reported. The country’s total death toll is 6,090.

The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus around the world since the outbreak began has passed 9 million, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The US-based research university, which keeps a tally of official statistics, said that so far 9,003,042 cases had been reported. The United States is the world’s worst affected country by case numbers, with nearly 2.3 million cases alone, followed by Brazil with nearly 1.1 million, then Russia, with nearly 600,000.

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Victoria to extend state of emergency for four more weeks after spike in Covid-19 cases

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Queensland declares southern state a ‘hotspot’ while South Australia reconsiders decision to reopen its border

The Victorian government has announced it will extend its state of emergency for at least four more weeks and ramp up its police enforcement of lockdown rules after a spike in Covid-19 cases.

The surge has also prompted neighbouring South Australia to reconsider its decision to reopen its border, while Queensland has declared all of greater Melbourne a Covid-19 hotspot.

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Global report: Trump says he ordered coronavirus testing to ‘slow down’

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Testing a ‘double-edged sword’, says Trump; Chile death toll nearly doubles; Australian state ‘absolutely at risk’ of second peak

Donald Trump told thousands of supporters on Saturday that he had asked US officials to slow down testing for Covid-19 because case numbers in the country were rising so rapidly.

Speaking at a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the US president used racist language, referring to Covid-19 as “kung flu”, and described testing for the virus as a “double-edged sword” because it led to the identification of more cases.

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Discretion saves lives: quick cleans and ‘Hotel Quarantine’ in Niamey

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Understanding fear of stigma is essential in the battle against coronavirus in Niger’s capital. All photographs by Juan Haro for Unicef

It feels strange to cover the coronavirus crisis in Niger. Everyday life is taking its normal course, but you sense a strangeness in the air. It is manifested in the neighbourhoods, in the space between people. In a society where physical contact is part of the fabric of things, social distancing remains a challenge.

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Mumbai discovers life isn’t so sweet without the workers it once ignored

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Lockdown precipitated an exodus of day labourers and “wallahs” but as monsoon season breaks their loss is being felt

As the monsoon lashes Mumbai and black clouds darken the skyline, the city is in the grip of nostalgia for the men who used to keep daily life ticking as rhythmically and comfortingly as a Swiss watch. Men who are missing.

The men who cleared the drains of silt so that the rains don’t cause flooding and water-borne diseases such as leptospirosis. The electricians who came to fix breakdowns caused by wind and rain. The sanitation workers who used to spray neighbourhoods with mosquito repellent before the monsoon to prevent vector-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and chikungunya. All are missing even though the monsoon officially arrived last weekend.

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Coronavirus live news: Brazil surpasses one million cases

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Country hits grisly milestone as WHO says pandemic is entering ‘new and dangerous phase’

In Australia, authorities are watching the rise in coronavirus cases in Victoria closely as the state prepares to further ease restrictions from Monday.

Gyms, cinemas, indoor sports centres and concert venues are scheduled to reopen on Monday while cafes, restaurants and pubs will increase capacity from 20 people to 50.

Brazil has passed a total of more than one million coronavirus cases, and nearly 50,000 deaths, according to its health ministry data, in a new low for the world’s second worst-hit country.

Brazil has recorded 1,032,913 confirmed cases, second only to the United States, with 1,206 new deaths reported on Friday to take the total official fatalities to 48,954, the ministry said.

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UK abandons contact-tracing app for Apple and Google model

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NHS to switch to alternative design by tech giants, says Matt Hancock in latest U-turn

The government has been forced to abandon a centralised coronavirus contact-tracing app after spending three months and millions of pounds on technology that experts had repeatedly warned would not work.

In an embarrassing U-turn, Matt Hancock said the NHS would switch to an alternative designed by the US tech companies Apple and Google, which is months away from being ready.

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Coronavirus Australia update: Northern Territory to reopen borders in July as Victoria records 18 new Covid-19 cases – question time live

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Michael Gunner declared the NT Covid-free and will prepare to allow domestic travel; person who attended Melbourne Black Lives Matter protest among new Vic cases. Follow live

That leads to this exchange:

Tony Smith: The Prime Minister will resume his seat. The Prime Minister will resume his seat. The Manager of Opposition Business will resume his seat. The Prime Minister needs to withdraw that imputation.

Anthony Albanese to Scott Morrison:

My question is to the Prime Minister. Under this Prime Minister, Australia has entered its first recession in three decades. Australia now has an effective unemployment rate of 11.3%. How many unemployed Australians don’t have a job because the Prime Minister deliberately excluded them from JobKeeper?

No-one in this country is unemployed because of the Government’s responses.

People are unemployed in this country, people have been reduced to zero hours which is the same thing, people have been hit by the coronavirus pandemic!

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Coronavirus live news: New Zealand reports another new case as Brazil nears 1m infections

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Deaths worldwide near 500,000; US health expert says country is ‘still in first wave’; Argentinian president enters voluntary isolation amid coronavirus surge. Follow the latest updates

The hospitalisation of Honduras president with Covid-19 and pneumonia Wednesday has drawn attention to another country struggling under the pandemics strain as cases rise sharply in the capital, AP reports.

President Juan Orlando Hernández announced late Tuesday that he and his wife had tested positive for the virus. Just hours later he was hospitalised after doctors determined he had pneumonia.

From March to 7 June, Honduras confirmed 6,327 coronavirus infections. In the 10 days since, it added 3,329 more, a surge that has come after the government began a gradual reactivation of the economy.

The full story on Australia’s unemployment rate now:

Australia lost a further 227,000 jobs between April and May, resulting in a total loss of 835,000 jobs in seasonally adjusted terms since March and a 0.7% jump in unemployment to 7.1%.

Related: Australia loses 227,000 more jobs, taking unemployment to 7.1%

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Coronavirus live news: New Zealand to trace 320 ‘close contacts’ of virus pair who stopped to meet friends

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Beijing raises alert level and grounds hundreds of flights; India’s official death toll leaps by more than 2,000 to reach 11,903; Brazil suffers record case increase

Around 11,000 mink at a farm in Denmark will have to be culled after they were found to be infected with the coronavirus, the country’s authorities have said.

The outbreak is the first in Denmark, the world’s biggest producer of mink skins, but comes shortly after the virus was found at 13 mink farms in the Netherlands, where about 570,000 mink have been ordered culled.

If you’re planning to meet Vladimir Putin in the next few weeks, be warned: you will have to pass through a special disinfectant tunnel to get to the Russian president.

Putin’s official spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has confirmed a report by Russian state television that three airport-style tunnels have been built for the president: one at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, where he has reputedly being doing much of his work during the pandemic, and two at the Kremlin.

В резиденции Путина для защиты от коронавируса установили специальный туннель. Он предназначен для дезинфекцииhttps://t.co/jjwWbuZ2EX pic.twitter.com/h62KWARvsr

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Global report: six US states report most ever new coronavirus cases

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More cases in Beijing outbreak; Brazil suffers worst ever day; New Zealand prime minister voices anger over quarantine fiasco

New coronavirus infections have soared to record highs in six American states, marking a rising tide of cases for a second consecutive week as authorities in Beijing said another 31 people had been infected in a fresh outbreak in China.

Arizona, Florida, Oklahoma, Oregon and Texas all reported their most ever new cases on Tuesday after all-time highs last week and as they continued to reopen their economies. Nevada also reported its highest single-day tally of new cases on Tuesday, up from a previous high on 23 May.

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Coronavirus in the Pacific: weekly briefing

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Covid-19-related developments throughout the Pacific Islands

The total number of Covid-19 cases across the Pacific stands at 314, with new cases reported this week in New Caledonia, Northern Mariana Islands and Guam.

New Zealand is under increasing pressure, both internally and from across the region, to consider Pacific countries as part of its proposed travel ‘bubble’, alongside, or even in place of, Australia. The foreign minister, Winston Peters, initially rejected including Pacific island nations, but later backtracked.

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Covid-19 outbreaks in New Zealand and China highlight stark choices

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To stay coronavirus free, countries face unsustainable social and economic losses

Beijing and New Zealand had both declared themselves Covid-19-free by mid-June, life returning to an enviable normality of schools and shops, work and human contact. It didn’t last long.

Last week, parts of the Chinese capital went back on a “wartime” footing after a cluster of cases emerged linked to the city’s biggest wholesale food market. Movement restrictions are back and residents have already been warned against leaving the city. Schools are closed.

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Don’t blame public for Covid-19 spread, says UK scientist

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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.

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Beijing coronavirus outbreak: travel restricted to tackle ‘extremely severe’ situation

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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.

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Hydroxychloroquine: US revokes emergency approval of malaria drug for Covid-19

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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”.

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