Category Archives: Infectious Diseases

Coronavirus live news: pandemic is ‘not even close to being over’, warns WHO chief

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Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says pandemic is ‘speeding up’; India records 19,459 new cases; Iran records highest daily death toll; China’s military approves vaccine for use on its soldiers

Social distancing simply isn’t possible for the 1 million Rohingya refugees who live in Cox’s Bazar refugee camp, in southeastern Bangladesh.

Families live in close quarters inside flimsy bamboo shacks, using communal toilets and water facilities. Sometimes the most basic items, such as soap, are lacking.

Related: Cox's Bazar refugee camps: where social distancing is impossible

The US is to join with other major powers including China, India and the EU in formulating plans for a global green recovery from the coronavirus crisis, in the only major international summit on the climate emergency this year.

The idea of a green recovery to prevent a dangerous rebound in greenhouse gas emissions to above pre-Covid-19 levels has been gathering steam, but few governments have yet committed to plans.

Related: US to join summit on global green recovery from Covid-19 crisis

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Coronavirus Victoria: everything we know about Melbourne’s Covid-19 clusters

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The city is on a 10-day suburban testing blitz after premier Daniel Andrews revealed hotspots were largely caused by extended families

Melbourne has embarked on a 10-day testing blitz, aiming to test at least 50% of people in 10 suburbs.

This is due to problematic rates of community transmission of coronavirus in these areas, as well as persistent outbreaks and clusters.

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Coronavirus live news: US cases pass 2.5m as Australia considers new lockdown in Melbourne

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Cases approach 10m; new Covid-19 clusters across world spark fear of second wave; UK NHS will take four years to recover. Follow the latest updates

The UK needs to maintain “constant vigilance” as it eases out of lockdown, a former government chief scientific adviser has warned.

When outbreaks occur they typically occur in clusters and we’re seeing certain work environments, for example, food processing factories, as being fairly common places for those clusters to rise.

The common denominator is really being indoors, being crowded, being there for prolonged periods of time, noisy environments where people are coughing and shouting, and so there’s more droplet transmission.

The total number of people to die from Covid-19 in Russia has increased by 104 to 9,073, according to the country’s coronavirus response centre.

Russia on Sunday also reported 6,791 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, taking the nationwide tally to 634,437.

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‘Like leaning into a left hook’: coronavirus calamity unfolds across divided US

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In a week that saw the worst day on record for new cases, Trump shrugs as experts warn Americans not to follow his lead

A disaster is unfolding in Montgomery, Alabama, where Martin Luther King preached and where Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on the bus. Hospitals are running short of drugs to treat Covid-19, intensive care units are close to capacity, and ventilators are running short.

Related: Rashida Tlaib pushes to free US inmates from coronavirus 'death sentence’

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‘Escape the pandemic in paradise’: Fiji opens its borders seeking billionaires

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Prime minister looks to attract ‘VIPs’ to help restore country’s battered economy which is heavily dependent on tourism

After months of strict Covid-19 lockdowns and resolutely closed borders, Fiji is open – for billionaires.

The prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, has announced the country is looking to attract “VIPs” to help restore Fiji’s paralysed tourism-dependent economy.

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Australia Covid-19 active cases and hotspots map: coronavirus stats, numbers and state by state data update

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Guardian Australia brings together all the latest on active and daily new Covid-19 cases, as well as maps, statistics, live data and state by state graphs from NSW, Vic, Queensland, SA, WA, Tasmania, ACT and NT to get a broad picture of the Australian outbreak and track the impact of government response

Due to the difference in reporting times between states, territories and the federal government, it can be difficult to get a current picture of how many confirmed cases of coronavirus there are in Australia.

Here, we’ve brought together all the figures in one place, along with comparisons with other countries.

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MoJ failed to investigate potential Covid-19 cluster among cleaners

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Cleaner was sacked while isolating with coronavirus symptoms as others fell ill

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and cleaning firm OCS have been accused of ignoring pleas to investigate a potential coronavirus outbreak among workers at the department after at four cleaners say they fell sick with suspected symptoms.

The MoJ cleaning team, employed by cleaning firm OCS and sub-contractor PRS, were told at the start of lockdown that they were essential workers and were to continue to commute into central London.

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Emanuel Gomes died just hours after his cleaning shift. Why was he working?

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Like many other migrant workers in the UK, Gomes knew he couldn’t live on statutory sick pay. So despite illness, he kept working

Emanuel Gomes spent the last day of his life cleaning an office in the Ministry of Justice (M0J). It was late April, at the height of the Covid-19 outbreak and most of the civil servants had been sent home. Gomes and his colleagues were told that as essential workers they should keep coming into work in the central London offices.

On 24 April, Gomes became so sick at work that a colleague, Amadou (not his real name), had to help him to get home. Amadou says: “In the last few days he was really ill. He lost his appetite, he had phlegm and he seemed to have a fever. I helped him home … by the time we got to Victoria station he was so sick he didn’t know where he was.”

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Swedes rapidly losing trust in Covid-19 strategy, poll finds

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Political parties demand Sweden’s strategy be reviewed before next election in 2022

Swedes are losing trust in authorities’ handling of the coronavirus, as the man behind the country’s light-touch approach called lockdowns a form of madness and political parties demanded the Swedish strategy be reviewed before the next election in 2022.

An Ipsos survey this week for the Dagens Nyheter newspaper showed confidence in the country’s management of Covid-19 had fallen 11 points to 45% since April, with backing for the national public health agency down 12 points.

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Coronavirus live news: global death toll exceeds 490,000; soldiers sent to Italian town amid tension over new outbreak

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WHO needs $31.3bn over 12 months for vaccines; France plans 1.3m tests to find ‘hidden clusters’; Mike Pence to hold first taskforce briefing in weeks

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has offered to help hospitals in other states struggling to cope with Covid-19 cases.

He also criticised states that reopened their economies before getting the virus under control, saying there was “undeniable, irrefutable evidence” those states made a mistake.

The global death toll has passed 490,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The figure has reached 490,632 with the US accounting for 124,509 fatalities, the highest of any country.

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Coronavirus live news: Bolsonaro says he may have had coronavirus as cases rise in 27 US states

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Mike Pence to hold first coronavirus task force briefing in weeks on Friday; Texas pauses next phase of reopening; Brazil registers 39,483 new cases; Follow the latest updates

Charlotte Graham-McLay reports for the Guardian from Wellington:

It was a case of “plenty of room at the inn” for a hotel in a New Zealand ski resort town during the country’s strictest weeks of Covid-19 lockdown, with eight babies born there due to a lack of local maternity facilities.

The hotel, the Ramada at Remarkables Park in Queenstown, accommodated parents, babies and their midwives free of charge while the births happened, according to the website Stuff.

“Our ‘Ramada babies’ will always be welcome here and we look forward to them visiting in future." - Ramada Suites by Wyndham Remarkables Park Queenstown Manager Suzanne Pentecost.#RamadaSuitesbyWyndhamRemarkablesParkQueenstown

Read more: https://t.co/JC22As58al pic.twitter.com/hUvKmxtXkE

Steven Morris, Helen Pidd and Archie Bland report:

A major incident was declared after tens of thousands of people defied pleas to stay away and descended in their droves on beaches in Bournemouth and other stretches of the Dorset coast.

Related: Major incident declared as people flock to England's south coast

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Coronavirus live news: cases surge in Europe since lockdown easing, says WHO

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Cases worldwide growing by 1m per week; Latin American death toll expected to reach 390,000 by October; Texas hospitals near capacity; volunteers receive first doses of experimental vaccine

Guardian analysis of coronavirus data, in combination with the University of Oxford’s coronavirus government response tracker, has identified that 10 of the 45 most badly-affected countries are also among those rated as having a “relaxed response” to the pandemic, underlining the mitigating impact of effective government public health policies. You can read the Guardian investigation here.

The countries include the US - which is experiencing its largest increase in coronavirus cases since April; Iran, Germany and Switzerland - two European countries where the R rate has risen above one this week [...]

A country has been classed as being “relaxed” if its stringency index score is under 70 out of 100, according to the latest data from the University of Oxford’s tracker. The tracker assesses countries’ public information campaigns, containment measures and closures to give them a score out of 100 on their stringency index.

More on the rise of cases in Israel.

With 532 new infections reported by the health ministry in the past 24 hours, Israel has seen the emergence of a number of hotspots including in the Sea of Galilee resort of Tiberias, as well as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem – the highest daily total in more than two months.

Related: Israel brings back tracking system amid surge in Covid-19 cases

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Revealed: countries facing coronavirus rise as lockdown relaxed

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Of the 45 countries to have recorded more than 25,000 coronavirus cases to date, 21 currently have relaxed responses to the pandemic. Of these, 10 are reporting a rising number of cases

Ten countries currently facing serious increases in coronavirus infections are among those nations with less stringent approaches to managing their outbreaks.

Guardian analysis of coronavirus data, in combination with the University of Oxford’s coronavirus government response tracker, has identified that 10 of the 45 most badly-affected countries are also among those rated as having a “relaxed response” to the pandemic, underlining the mitigating impact of effective government public health policies.

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Texas Covid-19 cases soar weeks after state lifts lockdown restrictions – video

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Texas reported an all-time daily high of 5,489 new Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, weeks after the state became one of the earliest in the US to ease its coronavirus lockdown measures. The significant increase in cases has left hospitals in Houston near capacity, with some adult ICU patients treated at Texas Children’s hospital

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Life almost as we know it: England’s lockdown changes on 4 July

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Scientists describe measures for easing lockdown as nuanced and ‘an art, not a science’

As multiple lockdown measures are eased on 4 July, England will enter uncanny valley territory: life almost as we know it, but with notable exceptions.

Weddings can go ahead at religious venues – but with a cap of 30 participants and no singing. Two households can meet indoors, but must make an effort to stay physically distanced. Hugs will have to wait for now. Playgrounds and pubs can open, but casinos and swimming pools will remain shut.

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‘I am angry’: Germans back in lockdown demand accountability

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Reaction in Gütersloh highlights the problems governments may face if restrictions return

Residents and local businesses in a community in Germany’s most populous state that has been forced back into strict lockdown following a coronavirus outbreak at a local abattoir are demanding that those responsible are held to account.

North Rhine-Westphalia’s Gütersloh district, which has over 360,000 inhabitants, on Wednesday had its first full day under a reimposed coronavirus lockdown after more than 1,700 employees at the Tönnies abattoir and meat processing plant tested positive.

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Coronavirus live news: deaths in Latin America pass 100,000 as Fauci warns of ‘disturbing’ US cases surge

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Brazil records 39,436 new cases; 200 cases at one South African school; new cluster confirmed in Tokyo

As the coronavirus spreads, soaring demand for oxygen is bringing out a stark global truth: even the right to breathe depends on money. In much of the world, oxygen is expensive and hard to get a basic marker of inequality both between and within countries.

In wealthy Europe and North America, hospitals treat oxygen as a fundamental need, much like water or electricity. It is delivered in liquid form by tanker truck and piped directly to the beds of coronavirus patients. Running short is all but unthinkable for a resource that literally can be pulled from the air.

In Spain, as coronavirus deaths climbed, engineers laid 7 km (4 miles) of tubing in less than a week to give 1,500 beds in an impromptu hospital a direct supply of pure oxygen. Oxygen is also plentiful and brings the most profits in industrial use such as mining, aerospace, electronics and construction.

But in poor countries, from Peru to Bangladesh, it is in lethally short supply.

In Guinea, a west-coastal country in West Africa, oxygen is a costly challenge for government-funded medical facilities such as the Donka public hospital in the capital, Conakry.

A haunted house in Japan has developed a drive-through format amid the Coronavirus pandemic.

Inside a car, guests can scream as loudly as they like, with no mask required. And according to producer Kenta Iwana, 25, the new format might even be scarier than a traditional haunted house.

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Uganda reopens border to thousands of people fleeing violence in DRC

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Call for other African countries to reopen for refugees, after crossings were shut to stem the spread of coronavirus

Uganda has temporarily opened its border to thousands of people fleeing deadly ethnic clashes in neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The Ugandan government closed its reception centres at border crossings in March in an attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

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Pakistan Covid-19 doctors witness black market deals in blood plasma

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Patients are looking for cure as healthcare system is on brink of collapse, say doctors

As coronavirus chaos has enveloped Pakistan, with hospitals overflowing, doctors dying and infections escalating at an unmanageable rate, a dangerous black market in blood plasma has emerged.

The blood plasma of recovered coronavirus patients is now being sold for upwards of £3,000 to those who are desperately looking for a cure, at a time when doctors say Pakistan’s healthcare system is on the brink of collapse.

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