Category Archives: Health

Australia news live: premier announces three-day lockdown for Brisbane as Queensland records more Covid cases

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State reports four new local cases; Nationals MP Anne Webster lodges complaint over alleged sexual harassment in parliament. Follow the latest updates
• Queensland Covid hotspots
• Queensland authorities contradict earlier advice about Covid case hosting ‘party’
• Coalition women call for MP drug and alcohol testing in response to sexual misconduct crisis

The Victorian state government won’t release a three-page email chain in which a decision to put Melbourne under a coronavirus curfew was made, reports Karen Sweeney from AAP.

Victorian opposition MP David Davis requested all documents relating to the curfew to be released under Freedom of Information.

These are the documents that relate directly to the decision to put Melbourne under a curfew and the reality, in our view, is there is little reason the documents should not be in the public domain.

We have one document - it is three pages of an email chain containing legal advice.

It is a single document - it may just be a single decision has to be made by the tribunal...

It’s just hard to see why this has been strung out for so long.

It’s worth considering how soon this lockdown is coming after the end of jobkeeper and how close it is cutting it to the start of the federal government’s half-priced plane ticket program.

Jobkeeper ended on Sunday, and the tourism sector support program is slated to start on 1 April.

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Johnson urges caution as England takes first big step out of lockdown

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Outdoor group socialising allowed from Monday but ad campaign stresses Covid risks of indoor meeting

Boris Johnson will stress the need for people to be cautious on Monday as England takes its first significant step towards easing lockdown restrictions for adults.

People will now be able to meet up legally outdoors in groups of six, or in two households, including in private gardens, and organised outdoor sport can resume.

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Race to contain Brisbane Covid outbreak as cluster grows to three

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Queensland police contradict earlier reports from health authorities that man hosted a party for 25 guests after being told to self-isolate

Health authorities in Queensland are scrambling to track down contacts of two Brisbane friends who tested positive for coronavirus, amid fresh concerns about the outbreak growing.

Queensland Health said on Saturday night one of the men, aged 26, held a house party in Strathpine while he was waiting on his test result, despite instructions to self-isolate. But on Sunday morning, Queensland police contradicted that advice and said only five people had been directed to quarantine.

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Coercion or altruism: is China using its Covid vaccines to wield global power?

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Beijing has donated millions of vaccines to developing countries but its largesse often comes with conditions attached

In May 2020, China’s president, Xi Jinping, told the World Health Assembly its Covid-19 vaccines were “a global public good”, and their distribution would be part of Xi’s vision of a “shared future for the people of the world to work as one”.

But in the months since, China’s alleged “vaccine diplomacy” has been consistently criticised internationally for being rolled out with conditions attached, with allegations of expatriate Chinese nationals being prioritised, and the distribution of vaccines seen as a coercive tool with which to wield geopolitical influence.

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UK Covid deaths pass 150,000 milestone, analysis shows

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Figures collated by the Guardian reveal that one in 445 people have died from the virus during pandemic

More than 150,000 people have died from coronavirus in the UK, according to Guardian analysis.

The latest figures revealed at least one in three recorded Covid-19 deaths have taken place in the past three months, with 54,445 fatalities officially counted on death certificates in the UK since the beginning of 2021. It means one in 445 people have died from the virus since the beginning of the pandemic.

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Coronavirus live news: UK over-70s could start getting booster jabs in September, Czech government extends state of emergency

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Vaccines minister says first booster doses will go to the top four priority groups, which includes care home staff, NHS workers and clinically extremely vulnerable

Northern Ireland’s first minister, Arlene Foster, has received her first dose of Covid-19 vaccine.

The 50-year-old politician was given a shot of AstraZeneca’s vaccine by a GP at Castle Park leisure centre in Lisnaskea in her Co Fermanagh constituency on Saturday morning, according to PA.

There is a really positive community spirit here and across all of our centres in a collective effort to combat Covid-19. I am grateful to all of the wonderful team of medics and volunteers who are making this happen in GP practices and centres across Northern Ireland every day of the week.

Families in Israel are celebrating Passover following a successful vaccine rollout in the country in which more than half of its overall population have received both doses.

Giordana Grego, who immigrated to Israel from Italy, told AP:

For us in Israel, really celebrating the festivity of freedom definitely has a whole different meaning this year after what we experienced. It’s amazing that this year we’re able to celebrate together, also considering that in Italy, everybody is still under lockdown.

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‘Vaccine prince’: the Indian billionaire set to make Covid jabs for the UK

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Serum Institute boss Adar Poonawalla has rented a Mayfair mansion for £50,000 a week

The AstraZeneca vaccine has made Prof Sarah Gilbert – who led the Oxford team that created it – one of the UK’s most famous modern scientists and turned the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company into a household name.

But almost half of all the AstraZeneca shots, destined for the arms of hundreds of millions of people around the world, are being produced by a 40-year-old Indian billionaire with a penchant for private jets and Picassos.

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Queensland Covid hotspots: list of Brisbane and regional Qld coronavirus case locations

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Here are the current coronavirus hotspots and case locations in Queensland and what to do if you’ve visited them

Queensland authorities have released a list of hotspots where Covid-positive people have visited while infectious.

Any individuals who have been in the below locations during the relevant times are considered close contacts and asked to immediately home quarantine (for 14 days), even if you receive a negative result, and complete the contact-tracing self-assessment or call 13HEALTH (13 43 25 84):

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France claims UK will struggle to source second Covid jabs

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EU will not be blackmailed over Oxford/AstraZeneca doses, says foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian

The war of words with the EU over vaccines has escalated as France’s foreign minister claimed Britain will struggle to source second Covid jabs but that Brussels would not be “blackmailed” into exporting doses to solve the problem.

Jean-Yves Le Drian, a close political ally of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, claimed that the UK’s success had been built on driving forward with first jabs without having secured the second doses necessary for full vaccination.

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My friend is an anti-vaxxer, and she’s converting my husband. What can I do?

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You’re scared of the virus; they’re scared of the vaccine. Could you try talking about your fears without confrontation, asks Annalisa Barbieri

I recently had my Covid-19 vaccine. One longstanding friend queried my decision and forwarded anti-vax conspiracy theories. Initially I responded by saying that we should respect each other’s choices and I would rather not argue with her about it. But after thinking it over, I felt angry and upset about her stance.

As my husband has recently recovered from Covid-19, I am assuming he will have some natural immunity to the disease, but he is undecided about getting the vaccine and hasn’t yet responded to invitations to do so. I think he is quite influenced by my friend’s husband and the couple’s negative attitudes towards science in general, which are linked to their religious beliefs (which I do not share).

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Covid third wave may overrun Africa’s healthcare, warns WHO

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Leap of 50% in cases in three months and just 7m jabs across continent ‘infecting 11 health workers an hour’

Rising cases of coronavirus in Africa threaten to overrun fragile healthcare systems and test the continent’s much-touted resilience to the disease, according to the World Health Organization’s regional office for the continent.

The global health body stated that infections were on the rise in at least 12 countries in Africa including Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya and Guinea.

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EU leaders back ‘global value chains’ instead of vaccine export bans

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Refusal to support measure despite Ursula von der Leyen highlighting 21m doses sent to UK

EU leaders backed “global value chains” rather than support Brussels in using new powers to block Covid jab exports to highly vaccinated countries, despite being told that 21m doses had been sent to the UK.

At a virtual summit, attended briefly by Joe Biden, the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, highlighted the large shipments sent over the Channel, amounting to two-thirds of the jabs given in the UK.

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Inside the Covid unit: crisis threatens to overwhelm PNG’s biggest hospital

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Exhausted doctors warn sceptical patients that Covid is real as Port Moresby general reaches capacity

The emergency department of the largest hospital in the capital of Papua New Guinea is hot, stuffy and full. People sit lined up outside the front counter, waiting to be seen.

It has been divided into two sections: the front continues to operate as a traditional emergency room, while the back is now a Covid-19 isolation ward, treating the most serious cases of the virus.

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If you’re ecstatic after a trip to the shops, it’s your brain thanking you for the novelty | Richard A Friedman

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The monotony of lockdown life has starved us of spontaneity and serendipity, which enhance learning and memory

  • Richard A Friedman is a professor of clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College

I hit a wall in late February and felt that life had taken on a quality of stultifying sameness. Was it Wednesday or Sunday? I couldn’t really tell: every day of the week felt identical because there was nothing to distinguish them. Work, read, exercise, eat, repeat. Like nearly everyone I know, I have settled into a state of dreary uniformity.

The pandemic has been a vast uncontrolled experiment – not just in social isolation, which is bad enough, but in the deprivation of novelty. Overnight we were stripped of our ability to roam around our world the way we usually do. Gone were the chance encounters with other people and the experience of new things and places: no travel, no adventures, no restaurants, no theatres, no crowds. We weren’t just quarantined from Covid: we were cut off from the ubiquitous stimulation of the unfamiliar and new.

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EU leaders push back against bloc’s plans to halt Covid vaccine export

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More sceptical member states hope ‘stick will never be used’ amid concerns over supply chain

EU leaders are likely to shy away from supporting the use of new powers to block Covid vaccine shipments to countries such as the UK with better jab coverage than the bloc, according to a draft statement ahead of a meeting of EU leaders today.

The European commission has increased its scope for blocking vaccine exports but disquiet among capitals is set to be reflected in a muted statement at the end of the virtual summit on Thursday evening.

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‘So much pressure to look a certain way’: why eating disorders are rife in pop music

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A documentary series about Demi Lovato shows how brutally controlled the singer’s diet once was, and, as other pop performers attest, it’s control that underpins damaging behaviour

For eight years of her life, Demi Lovato was served a watermelon cake for her birthday. This wasn’t a watermelon-flavoured version of a proper cake with all the good stuff like butter, sugar and flour, but rather an actual watermelon with some icing on top.

The reason for this was that her team at the time were “trying to keep her weight down”, according to Lovato’s best friend Matthew Scott Montgomery, who is interviewed as part of Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil, the YouTube documentary series premiering this week. Her team would police what she ate, he says, and those she was with were also required to eat only when Lovato ate, with no snacking outside of meals, in an attempt to “keep her well” and avoid triggering a relapse into the restrictive eating disorders she struggled with as a teenager.

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Vladimir Putin receives first dose of Russian-made Covid vaccine in private

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Russian president declines to have first dose in public after delaying jab for months

Vladimir Putin has received his first dose of a Russian-made coronavirus vaccine in private, his spokesman has confirmed, in an apparent effort to boost Russia’s fledgling vaccination drive after months of delaying his jab.

The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told news agencies late on Tuesday that the 68-year-old president had been vaccinated but did not specify which one of the three Russian-made vaccines was administered.

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Boris Johnson admits regrets over handling of first Covid wave

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PM says he wishes ‘many things’ were done differently as country marks one year since first lockdown

Boris Johnson has admitted there are many things he wishes he had done differently to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic as the UK marks a year since the first lockdown and remembers the 126,000 people who have died so far.

At a Downing Street press conference, England’s chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, also conceded the country had endured “a bad outcome”, but the prime minister once again refused to commit to a public inquiry to look at the decisions taken by the government over the last year.

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EU to widen criteria for possible Covid vaccine export bans

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Bloc expected to assess countries’ Covid vaccination coverage and record in facilitating exports to EU

The EU is expected to take into account the level of vaccination coverage in a country and its record in facilitating exports to the bloc when deciding on whether to prohibit individual vaccine shipments to the UK and elsewhere.

The revision of the export authorisation scheme, widening the criteria that will guide Brussels’ decisions on export requests, is due to be announced on Wednesday. EU leaders will then on Thursday discuss going further in controlling vaccine distribution when they meet by videoconference.

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Prince Harry joins $1bn Silicon Valley startup as senior executive

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Duke of Sussex’s first formal role since ending royal duties involves ‘meaty role’ as chief impact officer at BetterUp

Prince Harry has been given a job by a $1bn (£730m) Silicon Valley startup which provides professional coaching, mental health advice and “immersive learning” as its chief impact officer.

The Duke of Sussex said he hoped to be able to use his own experiences using the “the power of transforming pain into purpose” to help BetterUp’s clients with “proactive coaching” for personal development, as well as achieve “an all-round better life”.

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