Pfizer reportedly asked to supply 35m more doses, with final go-ahead for this year’s programme still awaited
Ministers have started ordering vaccines for a booster campaign in autumn 2022, with Pfizer reportedly being asked to supply the UK with a further 35m doses.
The government has still not give the final go-ahead for the vaccine booster programme expected this autumn, but it is understood to have placed the order with Pfizer despite the company raising its prices.
Continue reading...When 18-year-old Edward Mallen killed himself, his father blamed the NHS, society – and himself. He founded the Zero Suicide Alliance to try to make such deaths a thing of the past
Not long before Christmas in 2014, Steve Mallen began to worry about the eldest of his three children. Edward, who had just turned 18, was good at everything. A gifted pianist, a talented sportsman and a nurturing big brother, he had secured a place at the University of Cambridge.
Then Edward stopped playing the piano. He became withdrawn and began to eat less and lose sleep. On 22 January 2015, he went to see the family’s GP, near their home in a village outside Cambridge. He revealed that he had suicidal feelings and had begun to self-harm, something he felt too ashamed to share at home. He had no known history of mental health problems.
Continue reading...Melbourne faces the possibility of a lockdown extension as shopping centre workers ordered into quarantine; new cases emerge across regional NSW. Follow all the day’s news
Queensland LNP MP George Christensen has spoken to Sydney radio 2GB about being censured through a parliamentary motion yesterday.
The whole House, including the government, voted to support Labor’s motion disassociating the parliament with Christensen’s anti-lockdown and anti-public health measure comments yesterday (although Scott Morrison couldn’t bring himself to name or reference Christensen in his speech and just a hour or so later, cabinet minister Paul Fletcher declined five times on national TV to say he disagreed with Christensen’s views)
Happy Wednesday!
It’s not just hump day; we’re also halfway through the parliamentary sitting. At this stage, there’s a week break and then it’s back into it, but you have to wonder whether any of the east coast MPs will risk going home, given how quickly Covid is changing the landscape. Although, it doesn’t seem like anyone is missing the deputy prime minister, who has been in lockdown in Armidale, and apparently, unable to zoom in for the sitting (he has answered no questions in QT and offered no contributions to debate).
Continue reading...Analysis: fate of condemned camelid shines light on one of the UK’s greatest animal health threats
Long-necked, mop-headed and allegedly “a bit grumpy”, Geronimo the alpaca may seem an unlikely cause célèbre.
Yet the future of the eight-year-old camelid has divided experts, stirred some tabloids into indignant fury, and provoked campaigners – known as “alpaca angels” – to march through London.
Continue reading...About 1.35m Americans a year fall ill from the bacteria. Why are there still so many infections?
In my kitchen, I treat raw chicken as if it’s crawling with bacteria that could make me and my family sick. I use separate cutting boards for meats and produce; I wash my hands and disinfect everything that comes close to the bird, then cook it to 74C (165F). A little paranoid, but with good reason.
Chickens, turkeys and other fowl commonly harbour salmonella bacteria that are harmless to the birds but not to humans.
Continue reading...NSW records 356 new Covid cases as virus spreads across the state; Queensland records three new cases; Victoria records 20 new cases. This blog is now closed
That’s where we will leave the live blog for Tuesday.
If you haven’t been one of the millions to fill out your census already, tonight is the night.
The former prime ministers Malcom Turnbull and Kevin Rudd are addressing a La Trobe Asia webinar focused on Australia’s relationship with China.
The discussion has turned to climate action, a day after the IPCC report on the threat the climate emergency poses.
The proposition that we should all down tools until China does more is very naive.
We’re not. So that’s a huge, huge problem.
Continue reading...Mental ill-health and ‘warped’ notions of masculinity among reasons mooted for rise of nearly 50% in a year
There is growing alarm in Kenya over a shocking rise in the number of suicides in the country.
Almost 500 people are reported to have killed themselves in the three months to June this year, more than the whole of 2020, according to the Kenyan police.
Continue reading...Research suggests those with higher loss are more likely to die early, even when exercise is taken into account
Women who experience greater height loss during middle age may be at higher risk of death, research suggests.
Scientists have previously found that shorter people may have an increased risk of heart disease, with researchers saying the two appear to be linked not just by lifestyle but by genes.
Continue reading...Pass sanitaire allows people to visit restaurants, hospitals and take long train trips but backlash continues
An extension to France’s “health pass” covering activities including going to restaurants and cafes, taking long-distance train journeys and visiting hospitals has come into effect after a fourth weekend of protests.
The pass sanitaire, which the government hopes will boost vaccination rates, is shown in the form of a QR code either digitally or on paper and given to those who are fully vaccinated, have a negative Covid-19 test or have had coronavirus and recovered.
Continue reading...One of the few neurosurgeons in the country, Mukasa declined lucrative opportunities to work overseas, dedicating himself to training a new generation and going the ‘extra mile’ for patients
Kennedy Owuor first fell over in his hotel room in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, before headaches followed. He initially brushed the symptoms off as a minor problem, but soon he started having difficulties speaking and moving.
A trip in August 2020 to northern Uganda, as part of his duties working for the UN’s food agency, had to be interrupted. He was instead driven for 12 hours to UMC Victoria hospital in Kampala.
Continue reading...Victoria reports 11 new Covid cases as state expands access to AstraZeneca; Business Council of Australia says vaccinations should be highly targeted. Follow all the day’s news
All things going as normal, we should hear from the NSW authorities around 11am
A women’s and children’s hospital in St Albans has been listed as a tier one exposure site in Melbourne.
The maternity assessment centre at Joan Kirner women’s and children’s hospital on Furlong Road was listed on the Victorian exposure site list late last night. Anyone who attended the centre between 8.15am and 2.45pm on Friday 6 August has been ordered to isolate immediately for 14 days, get tested, and notify the Department of Health. The pathology lab – Dorevitch Pathology – on the ground floor of the same hospital has also been listed as a tier one site.
Continue reading...Books, clean air and socialising thought to have helped the latest five mark their 100th birthdays in Perdasdefogu this year
If there’s one thing the remote mountain village of Perdasdefogu needs to ensure it always has a steady supply of, it’s birthday candles. Already this year, 500 have been needed to decorate the birthday cakes of five residents who turned 100.
Each milestone usually means a celebration involving the entire town. The mayor, Mariano Carta, presents a medal to the centenarian, who more often than not can recall details of their life over the past century with remarkable lucidity.
Continue reading...The author of an acclaimed new book tells how Hitler used works by psychiatric patients in his culture war
On a winter’s day in 1898, a stocky young man with a handlebar moustache was hurrying along the banks of a canal in Hamburg, north Germany. Franz Karl Bühler was in a panic, fleeing a gang of mysterious agents who had been tormenting him for months. There was only one way to escape, he thought. He must swim for it. So he plunged into the dark water, close to freezing at this time of year, and struck out for the far side. When he was hauled on to the bank, soaked and shivering, it became clear to passersby that there was something odd about the man. There was no sign of his pursuers. He was confused, perhaps insane. So he was taken to the nearby Friedrichsberg “madhouse”, as it was known then, and taken inside. He would remain in the dubious care of the German psychiatric system for the next 42 years, one of hundreds of thousands of patients who lived near-invisible lives behind the asylum walls.
Bühler’s incarceration disturbed him, but it also marked the beginning of a remarkable story, one in which he played a leading role. It reveals the debt art owes to mental illness, and the way that connection was used to wage history’s most destructive culture war.
Continue reading...Those who attack Neil Ferguson and Sage’s pandemic predictions only expose their ignorance about science
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It feels like open season on Professor Neil Ferguson right now. Sections of the media and several columnists delight in castigating the epidemiologist, or “Professor Lockdown”, for being “doomster in chief”, constantly predicting catastrophe and then back-pedalling when the worst numbers don’t materialise.
Opponents of Covid restrictions blame Ferguson and his team at Imperial College London for persuading Boris Johnson to shake off his libertarian instincts and take us into lockdown. One presenter on new channel GB News described Ferguson as a “numpty” on air, and the very mention of his name attracts groans in some circles.
Continue reading...Victorian clinics to offer AstraZeneca to under 40s as state records 11 cases; Gladys Berejiklian says vaccine rollout ‘is a race’ as NSW records 262 cases and one death; Queensland records nine new cases, with lockdown to end for 11 LGAs today. Follow live
The new drive-through vaccination clinic will have capacity to administer 10,000 vaccines per week. That’s a conservative number, Bromley says, and may be limited by Pfizer supply.
She urges people to book ahead before turning up at the drive-through clinic.
To start it will be 10 cars at a time. Obviously this week all the processes will be reviewed and they’ll make it as big and as fast as efficient as possible. But we’ll start with 10 cars coming through.
Bromley says the rest of the state-run clinics will soon be allowed to deliver the AstraZeneca vaccine to under 40s. Only nine will be used initially, to test demand and the informed consent process.
So we’ll just do that initially, open up the nine hubs and the reason for that is, A, we want to see what the demand is. We want to know that we’re going to be able to manage that and we want to make sure that the process, because there is an additional process, as Brett sort of talked through, for these individuals coming through, they will go through a slightly more rigorous consent process. We want to make sure we got the systems and the workforce all set up perfectly so it’s running smoothly and so it doesn’t impact on the overall efficiency of the system.
Continue reading...Competitive suffering shows itself as another face of the trauma we’re going through. But eventually there will be unpredictable moments of delight
It’s coming up on a year since the skies over San Francisco turned red because of smoke from wildfires in surrounding areas, an uncanny reminder of Sydney’s Black Summer of late 2019 and early 2020. Now there is different kind of grim echo, as Sydney goes further into lockdown in the grip of a new surge of coronavirus. Here in California we are cautiously taking off our masks and trying to remember how to talk to friends face to face.
Meanwhile, in a horrible reversal, I see my Sydney friends and family experiencing something like we did in March 2020, when the schools closed, the shelter-in-place order went into effect and there was no certainty about how long it would go on, and how bad it would get.
Continue reading...Four people who were so ill that they barely remember their time in the ICU meet the doctors and nurses who held their hands
In a light-filled studio in east London, a petite woman in scrubs receives a bouquet of flowers from a tall man, dressed smartly, only faintly out of breath.
The room is thick with emotion. They are strangers, but stare at each other with wonder in their eyes. And then Dr Susan Jain, an intensive care consultant at Homerton university hospital, breaks the silence with a laugh.
Continue reading...Green pass rule has prompted some protests but not on same scale as similar scheme in France
The ritual of coffee and breakfast at the bar in Italy has become slightly more complicated as restrictions on unvaccinated citizens kicked in.
People can still drink coffee and eat a cornetto, a type of croissant, while standing at the bar or sitting at an outside table without needing to present a so-called green pass. But not if they are seated inside.
Continue reading...Stagnant water caused by dry weather gives mosquitoes – the insect that spreads the virus – free rein, leading to an increased risk for humans
For five days in the late summer of 2019, doctors battled to bring down John Hayden’s high fever.
Hayden’s sudden onset of symptoms, including high fever, had everyone stumped, said his daughter Anne Hayden, and his body seemed to fail to respond to any treatment. He succumbed to the inexplicable illness just after Labor Day, his family at his side.
Continue reading...National cabinet meets today with 16 million Australians in lockdown; violent protests erupt in Melbourne’s CBD. Follow all the day’s news
Hazzard is the asked if the health system is being overwhelmed:
The health system is under stress as you would expect because there are a number of cases that are coming into our hospitals and our patients are being cared for, but they want to thank our nurses, our doctors, our cleaners, administrative staff who are there every day putting themselves at the front line to keep us all safe and I would just say again to people who might want to walk into our hospitals, if you do have COVID symptoms, cough, cold, temperature, anything that you think might be COVID, bring ahead and let them know that you are coming in so that they can keep themselves safe.
We have to keep our health staff safe so you can be safe. But certainly, anybody who thinks the health system in any country where we have a Delta variant is not under stress is getting themselves. Of course it is under stress but our health professionals are doing a great job.
As per usual, health minister Brad Hazzard has given his colourful daily take, today urging HSC students to “go for gold” in getting the Pfizer vaccine, and then listed off all the “stars” who have performed at the Qudos Arena, where the pop-up hub will be set up:
We’ve seen our Olympic stars go for gold, we’ve seen the most amazing stars in the Qudos Bank Arena, I think there has been Lana Del Rey, Keith Urban, Pink, Madonna, you have a chance to go to that stadium next week and get some gold by getting your first vaccination, your first Pfizer vaccination.
This is your big chance to really go for gold. You are getting an opportunity that so many others haven’t yet managed to achieve and is there to light up your future by having your safety and security looked after.
Continue reading...