Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
In India’s remote peaks, the pandemic’s toll is worsened by lack of medical facilities, roads and information
Phalguni Devi has spent a fortnight living in a cattle shed. Looking out on a rainy afternoon in early June, she worries that if the rain does not let up, her fever will worsen.
Devi, 51, shares the shed with a cow and two cats, and this has taken its toll. Herbal concoctions have not worked and the visit to a pharmacist in the nearest town, in the Nijmola valley in the Himalayas, which took an entire day, did not help.
Does parliament even happen if the motion to remove Andrew Laming from his committee role isn’t defeated?
Heading into the Chamber for the daily Laming.
Scott Morrison told Australians Andrew Laming would stand down from all his roles, then allowed him to keep a ~$20k Committee role.
Every day we move a motion calling on the PM to keep his word & every day Lib MPs vote against it
In 10 minutes of my life I will never get back, I just watched Michael McCormack on Sky News (fun fact, you can skip ahead to any point of a McCormack interview and it still makes as much sense if you listened to it straight through.
And of course, even during a trade deal interview, he can’t help but take a swipe at the Greens.
We don’t things just to annoy the Greens, although I think the Greens annoy the hell out of everybody.
I mean I’ve yet have yet to ever see them, condemn the Extinction Rebellion protests, I’m yet to ever see them exalt what our farmers do.
Developed by Australian and European researchers, the film works by converting infrared light into light visible to the human eye
A transparent metallic film allowing a viewer to see in the dark could one day turn regular spectacles into night vision googles.
The ultra-thin film, made of a semiconductor called gallium arsenide, could also be used to develop compact and flexible infrared sensors, scientists say.
As lockdown easing in England is delayed from 21 June to a possible date of 19 July amid concerns of a substantial wave of hospitalisations due to the Delta variant of coronavirus, we take a look at the latest data on the protection offered by vaccines.
Israel and the UK were viewed as world leaders in their coronavirus vaccine campaigns but whereas the former is lifting almost all pandemic limitations, the latter is now glumly extending its restrictions in England amid a sharp rise in infections.
Despite starting its mass inoculation programme after the UK in December, Israel has sped ahead and it reached a key milestone on Tuesday, scrapping a requirement to wear face masks indoors, one of the final Covid limitations.
China is on track to administer 1bn vaccine doses by the end of this week, after bolstering production and distribution networks in an ambitious drive to vaccinate 40% of the population by this month.
Chinese authorities have been encouraging people to take the free and voluntary doses with cash incentives, gifts and colour-coded signage to laud or shame businesses depending on vaccination rates, as well as the promise of protection against Covid-19.
Instead of cutting the aid budget – including 95% from the plan to stamp out the disease – Britain should take a global lead
Despite the Covid pandemic, there have been just two recorded cases of wild polio in 2021 – in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the two remaining hiding places for the disease. But eradication is not guaranteed. Polio is virulent and spreads quickly. Even one case poses a threat to unvaccinated children everywhere, which is why a new strategy launched last week by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) outlines a plan to utilise this small window of opportunity for the world to end polio for good.
A 99.9% fall in polio cases globally in recent decades is thanks in large part to the GPEI and its supporters. The British government’s recent announcement that it will slash its contributions to the GPEI by more than 95% has been a body blow. The funding cut amounts to almost a quarter of the annual World Health Organization polio eradication budget.
The ‘blood man’ of conflict-racked Kashmir has donated 174 pints of blood since 1980 but feels ‘crushed’ by his poverty
Shabir Hussain Khan was taking an afternoon nap when he heard a commotion outside his house. A friend had been injured in a football match and had lost a lot of blood. Khan, who did not have any transport, rushed to the hospital by foot to donate some. It was 4 July 1980. Yesterday the man known locally as the “blood man of Kashmir” donated his 174th pint of his blood to strangers at the public hospital close to his Srinagar home.
“Blood is not something you can buy in the market,” says Khan, who has an O-negative blood group. “In those days blood donation was not common, nor were blood banks. The way blood is available readily now, it was not like that before. Also there was no connectivity at that time. We only had radios and two or three landline phones in the entire locality.”
Vaccine thefts reported and hospitals unable to admit patients as cases leap 2,800% in a month
Uganda has all but run out of Covid-19 vaccines and oxygen as the country grapples with another wave of the pandemic.
Both private and public medical facilities in the capital, Kampala and in towns across the country – including regional hubs in Entebbe, Jinja, Soroti, Gulu and Masaka – have reported running out or having acute shortages of AstraZeneca vaccines and oxygen. Hospitals report they are no longer able to admit patients to intensive care.
The roadmap out of lockdown – England’s strategy to return to a life more normal – was heavy on dates from the start. The first three steps, in March, April and May, passed so smoothly that a crucial point was easily forgotten: reopening rested on data, not dates, at least that was what scientific advisers hoped. Well, now the data has spoken.
England is not in lockdown today. Children are back at school. Cafes, restaurants and pubs are open. People can mix indoors, albeit in small numbers. Thousands can watch football matches. As the country moved from one step to another, more contact between people was expected to fuel cases, hospitalisations and even deaths. To keep them to a minimum, we have the vaccination programme.
The Delta variant of Covid-19, first identified in India, has been detected in 74 countries and continues to spread rapidly amid fears that it is poised to become the dominant strain worldwide.
With outbreaks of the main Delta strain and several of its sub-lineages confirmed in China, the US, Africa, Scandinavia and the Pacific, concern increasingly is focusing on how it appears to be more transmissible as well as causing more serious illness.
A Covid vaccine that is a critical part of the effort to vaccinate the developing world, as well as the UK, has an efficacy of 90% overall, its manufacturers have said after trials in the US and Mexico.
The UK has ordered 60m doses of Novavax, which has manufacturing agreements in Britain. Novavax has signed an agreement to provide 1.1bn doses to Covax, the UN-led initiative to get vaccines to poorer countries. The Serum Institute of India is contracted to make 100m doses, but has been making vaccines only for India in recent months in response to the Covid crisis there.
Ministers have been told that a four-week delay to easing all Covid restrictions would probably prevent thousands of hospitalisations, as Boris Johnson prepares to tell the English public they will have to wait up to another month for “freedom day”.
The government roadmap out of lockdown earmarks 21 June for the last remaining coronavirus restrictions to be lifted in England, but the prime minister is expected to announce on Monday that the timetable will be pushed back by two to four weeks amid a rapid rise in cases of the Delta variant first detected in India.
In early 2020, there were bans on most social contact, international travel stopped, workplaces and schools shut. Lockdown had arrived. These policies may have limited the spread of the virus, but what collateral harms and benefits on physical health were there?
Despite recommendations to continue to seek help, normal healthcare endured severe disruption. In England, waiting lists for hospital treatment now exceed 5m, up more than 500,000 from before the pandemic. During the first wave, nearly 90,000 joint replacement surgeries were cancelled, leaving many struggling with pain. Cancer investigations and diagnoses fell and although there is no sign yet of any excess cancer deaths, this may only become apparent in subsequent years.
With famous users leading a rebrand, pleasure accessories lose their stigma in a £90bn health and wellness boom
Lily Allen has one. Cara Delevingne has one. Dakota Johnson has developed her own range. Is the celebrity sex toy 2021’s answer to the celebrity perfume?
For some, getting busy has been the last thing on the menu during the pandemic. Study after study, from India to Italy, has revealed that lockdown libido loss is real and that stress has killed the buzz in the bedroom. Sexual wellness, on the other hand, has reached a dizzying peak. Not only has the conversation around sexual pleasure changed for generation Z, but the industry attached to it – from apps to toys, herbal supplements to specialist oils – is also booming.
It was around mid-May when workers at the Cal-Comp factory in Phetchaburi, central Thailand, heard a small group of their colleagues had tested positive for Covid-19. It soon became clear the virus had ripped through the production lines. A cluster associated with the electronics factory has since been linked to thousands of infections.
Hwan Htet Paing*, a worker from the factory, said he was not told the results of his Covid test, carried out on 19 May. Despite this, he was instructed to quarantine inside a vast hall at his workplace. The floor was covered with tarpaulin sheets and lined with rows of mosquito nets for each worker. Everyone was given a bucket and a cup, and bedsheets to lay across the floor. Fans were handed out to help ease the heat – until the vast numbers of people testing positive meant there were none left.
G7 summit hears move would slash the cost of jabs and accelerate rollout of programmes across the developing world
Britain and Germany were under intense pressure on Saturday to drop their resistance to proposals that would slash the cost of Covid-19 vaccines, following accusations that an agreement at the G7 summit to fund a billon doses will give the world’s poorest countries “crumbs from the table”.
Aid agencies said rules that protect drug patents from being illegally copied must be waived during the pandemic to accelerate the rollout of vaccines and save lives across the developing world.
G7 leaders discussed the origins of Covid-19, including the theory it originated in a Chinese lab, WHO head Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
“We believe that all hypotheses should be open, and we need to proceed to the second phase to really know the origins,” he told reporters.
Above all, at the root of the #COVID19 pandemic is a deficit of solidarity and sharing – of the data, information, resources, technology and tools that every nation needs to keep its people safe. @WHO believes the best way to close that deficit is with a #PandemicTreaty. #G7UK
A poll for the Observer shows more than half the British public support delaying the lifting of restrictions on social contact because of the rising number of Covid-19 cases, report Michael Savage and Ben Tapper.
With Boris Johnson poised to announce a delay to his plan to remove the remaining restrictions on 21 June, an Opinium poll for the Observer found that 54% think the move should be postponed, up from 43% from a fortnight ago.
It suggests that the public is taking a cautious view following the emergence of the Delta variant, first detected in India and thought to be 60% more transmissible than the variant previously dominant in the UK. The proportion of people who thought Johnson should push ahead with the unlocking has fallen from 44% a fortnight ago to 37% this week.
Downing Street is due to announce its decision on the next stage of Covid reopening in England by Monday, a week ahead of 21 June, which was set as the earliest date to bring in what is officially stage four of the Covid unlocking process. The original aim was to remove “all legal limits on social contact”, allowing the reopening of remaining businesses such as nightclubs. Public health is a devolved matter, meaning Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland do not have the same deadline. Here are some possible options for England. They are not exclusive, meaning several could be used at the same time.
The US Food and Drug Agency (FDA) has raised significant concerns about the rapid Covid test on which the UK government has based its multibillion-pound mass testing programme.
In a scathing review, the US health agency suggested the performance of the test had not been established, presenting a risk to health, and that the tests should be thrown in the bin or returned to the California-based manufacturer Innova.