From immunity to blocking transmission of the virus, labs across the UK are hunting for second-generation jabs
Scientists are developing a range of second-generation Covid vaccines aimed at expanding protection against the disease.
Continue reading...PM Scott Morrison one of the first to be vaccinated; Ireland’s pubs to stay closed until summer; all UK adults to be offered vaccine by ‘end July’. Follow latest updates
Reuters: Israel reopened swathes of its economy on Sunday in what it called the start of a return to routine enabled by a Covid-19 vaccination drive that has reached almost half the population.
While shops were open to all, access to leisure sites like gyms and theatres was limited to vaccines or those who have recovered from the disease with presumed immunity, a so-called “Green Pass” status displayed on a special health ministry app.
In Australia the state of Victoria has recorded no new locally-acquired cases as the government commits $143m of support for businesses unable to operate on Valentine’s Day due to the state’s five-day lockdown.
Vaccinations will start for eligible high-risk recipients on Monday in Victoria, where there were no local or overseas-acquired coronavirus diagnoses in the latest 24-hour period, with more than 10,300 tests conducted.
Initial group, which includes aged care residents and staff as well as chief medical officer, receive Pfizer vaccine on Sunday
The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has received the Pfizer vaccine, as he joined a small first group to be vaccinated against Covid-19 on Sunday – a step the government says is intended to build public confidence in the safety of the vaccines.
Morrison – the 12th member of the group to receive the vaccine at a televised event in Sydney – described it as a “curtain raiser” for the formal start of the vaccine rollout on Monday.
Continue reading...Call comes as prime minister aims for all adults to be vaccinated by July
Data on the number of Covid-19 cases is now so encouraging that outdoor sports for children and small numbers of adults should be allowed immediately as part of an accelerated easing of the lockdown, a leading scientist and adviser to government has told the Observer.
With the prime minister expected to take a cautious approach to lifting restrictions in a statement to the House of Commons on Monday, Prof Mark Woolhouse of Edinburgh University, whose work feeds into the Sage committee’s sub-group Spi-M, said the data showed there was no need for the government to be “ultra-cautious”.
Continue reading...Seven poultry workers found to be infected, but no evidence of transmission between humans
A H5N8 strain of bird flu has been detected in humans for the first time, among seven workers who were infected at a Russian poultry plant in December.
There is no evidence of the strain being transmitted between humans, but Russia has reported the transmission to the World Health Organization.
Continue reading...As smoking falls out of fashion, BAT is pinning its hopes on younger users of e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches
Flashing an ice-white smile for her 50,000 followers on TikTok, a fresh-faced young woman pops a flavoured nicotine pouch into her mouth, as one of Pakistan’s most popular love songs plays in the background.
More than 3,000 miles away, in Sweden, another social media starlet lip-syncs for the camera, to a different pop tune. The same little pouches, made by British American Tobacco, appear in shot.
Continue reading...Russia mediated deal in which Israeli woman was exchanged for two Syrian shepherds
Israel secured coronavirus vaccines for the Syrian regime as part of a Russian-mediated prisoner swap agreed this week, according to an Israeli source and local media reports.
The source, who requested anonymity, did not state the number of vaccines, or whether they were from Israel’s own supply. Barak Ravid, an Israeli reporter, wrote on Twitter that the country had paid Russia $1.2m (£850,000) for its Sputnik V vaccine as part of the deal, citing “foreign sources”.
The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced on Friday that a young Israeli woman who crossed the border into Syria was heading back to the country. In return, the Israeli government had returned two Syrian shepherds it had been holding, he said. It is not clear why the Israeli woman entered Syria.
The press in Israel had initially referred to another unspecified but apparently significant clause in the deal, adding that the country’s military censor had blocked publication. Under Israeli law, the agency can prevent reporting on topics it deems related to security issues.
The Times of Israel website said a “central aspect of the agreement” had been barred by the censor “despite the fact that the matter would be seen as deeply controversial to the Israeli public”.
Continue reading...For better and for worse, drinking has been a constant thread running through writer Megan Nolan’s relationships. She reflects on the dual thrills of alcohol and romance
From the very beginning, whenever there was a crush, there was also a drink in my hand. In his novel High Fidelity, Nick Hornby’s narrator Rob, an unhappy vinyl obsessive, asks himself: “Which came first, the music or the misery?” Did he learn to be unhappy from the sad songs he loved, or did the songs comfort him after the unhappiness was already a fact? In my case, the question is something like this: which came first, the booze or the boys? Did I just happen to begin my romantic life at the same time as my drinking life? Or were my infatuations and love stories authored – or at least fuelled – by the alcohol that accompanied them?
This is not the story of a tragic, ruined woman who destroys all her relationships through drinking. In some, I drank very moderately; in most others, only to good-spirited excess, which caused no harm. There is no redemption arc here, no coming to the light. I still drink now. It is one of my personal bugbears that we seem as a culture flatly incapable of discussing many of life’s most complex issues without urgently needing to name and solve them, preferably with formal medical interventions. And so I can’t speak about a plodding, hopeless soul sickness that afflicts me at times without being cornered into describing it as depression or an anxiety disorder. This is not to say that these things don’t exist; of course they do, and over the years I’ve taken medication for both. But the terms and the drugs are too blunt as tools to address the infinite realm of human suffering and struggle that they sit within.
Continue reading...Long-term social isolation is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. What has the last year meant for those who don’t share their homes?
When the first headlines about coronavirus began to appear in January 2020, they had little impact on south Londoner TJ, 25. “It seems outrageous now, but I thought: ‘I’m young, I’m healthy, I’ll be fine.’” By the time the first lockdown was announced, his mindset had begun to shift. He’d been single “for ever” and his housemate was spending lockdown with her parents, but he felt that same batten-down-the-hatches optimism many did in the era of weekly clapping and Zoom quizzes. “But that first weekend, the silence of the house and all the hours to fill – I got this inkling… mentally, I don’t know where I’ll be at the end of this. Four weeks in, I was genuinely scared for my mental health, I wasn’t coping at all.”
TJ is one of an estimated 7.7 million people in the UK who lived alone for most or all of the last year. “It’s not a game of Top Trumps, it’s not like my anxiety is more profound,” he says. “But it is different when you’re experiencing it all on your own.” In November 2020 the Office for National Statistics released findings that showed acute loneliness had climbed to record levels, with 8% of adults (around 4.2 million people) feeling “always or often lonely”, and 16-29-year-olds twice as likely as the over-70s to experience loneliness in the pandemic. “You’d never think fear of missing out would exist when we’re all stuck at home,” TJ says. “But I’d be scrolling through Instagram, seeing friends with their boyfriends or housemates, and thinking: ‘I wish I had someone. I feel so alone.’”
Continue reading...Quarantine-free travel for New Zealanders entering Australia will restart from Sunday
Australia’s coronavirus travel bubble with New Zealand will recommence on Sunday, the Department of Health has announced.
In a statement issued on Saturday afternoon, the department said “green zone” flights from New Zealand could resume at 12.01am on Sunday, subject to some conditions.
Continue reading...England waits to see if PM will stay restrained or bow to backbench pressure with Covid plan
It was an uncharacteristically subdued Boris Johnson who announced from Downing Street that Britain had surpassed the first, phenomenally ambitious target of giving 15 million people a coronavirus vaccine: this was a success, yes, but it was “no moment to relax”, the prime minister said on Monday.
The boosterish rhetoric has been restrained for several weeks – gone is the talk that led to claims there would be normality by November last year, or that it would be “inhuman” to cancel Christmas. Now, escape from the third lockdown must be “cautious but irreversible”.
Continue reading...We can rise to the challenge of a green, resilient and inclusive recovery from Covid, but only if critical changes are made
The numbers are well-publicised but bear repeating. Around 120 million more people were pushed into extreme poverty in 2020, a number that could rise to 150 million in 2021. An estimated 250 million jobs have been lost around the world, and the number of people affected by acute food insecurity was estimated to have doubled to 272 million by the end of last year. A decade of progress in the most fragile countries wiped out.
Let’s put a human dimension on these numbers. More than a billion children have been out of school during the Covid-19 pandemic, and girls are much less likely to return to the classroom.
Continue reading...Pressure mounts for patent waivers to allow poorer countries to develop their own manufacturing capacity to boost availability
The domination of global medicine by major pharmaceutical companies needs to be confronted to provide fairer access to vaccines, a leading South African official has said.
The scramble over Covid vaccines should alert rich countries to the power of profit-driven companies that control production of crucial medicines, said Mustaqeem De Gama, South Africa’s delegate at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on intellectual property rights.
Continue reading...Liam Thorp, whose real height is 6ft 2in, was recorded as having a BMI of 28,000
A 32-year-old man with no underlying health conditions was offered a Covid vaccine early because of a blunder at his GP surgery which recorded him as being 6.2cm tall, giving him an astonishing body mass index (BMI) of 28,000.
The Liverpool Echo’s political editor, Liam Thorp, said he was left “really confused” after he was offered the jab this week seemingly ahead of the government’s rollout plan, and shared the “frankly surreal” experience in a Twitter thread which quickly went viral.
Continue reading...Exclusive: government analysis reveals unmet financial needs of many people needing to self-isolate
A “perfect storm” of low wages, cramped housing and failures of the £22bn test-and-trace scheme has led to “stubbornly high” coronavirus rates in England’s most deprived communities, an unpublished government report has found.
A classified analysis by the Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC), produced last month, concluded that “unmet financial needs” meant people in poorer areas were less likely to be able to self-isolate because they could not afford to lose income.
Continue reading...Healthy adult volunteers aged 18 to 30 will be exposed to virus in controlled environment
Human challenge trials for coronavirus are to begin in the UK, a world first in the global fight against Covid-19.
Healthy adult volunteers aged between 18 and 30 will be exposed to coronavirus in a controlled environment, to learn more about how their body reacts to the virus, how it is transmitted and how much of the virus is needed to cause infection.
Continue reading...Analysis: Operation Moonshot rhetoric has been toned down but tests will help spot variants
When the government’s Operation Moonshot plans for mass testing of the population for Covid-19 were first revealed, the intention was to use that as the route out of perpetual cycles of lockdown.
It was described as a £100bn-plus endeavour, with resources likened to the Manhattan Project, the top-secret wartime endeavour led by the US to develop a nuclear bomb.
Continue reading...The former government staffer says in a statement ‘the government has questions to answer about its own conduct’. Follow live
Former sex discrimination commissioner Pru Goward is asked about Brittany Higgins’s statement on Afternoon Briefing:
I think we have two start by accepting her position on everything.
It happened to her, she is the aggrieved party and she is entitled absolutely to that view, and I think we have seen a lot of victim blaming in history, and people need to be very careful the way that they choose their words.
Malcolm Turnbull spoke in support of Brittany Higgins this morning.
Kevin Rudd has now issued a statement.
Continue reading...The strict 14-day hotel quarantine system has been key to keeping the nation’s coronavirus cases low, but major leaks and controversies have forced constant rethinks
Australia’s strict 14-day hotel quarantine system, and simultaneous stifling of its citizens’ ability to travel freely overseas, are widely acknowledged as a major factor in the nation’s successful containment of Covid-19, low death rate and ability to resume a semblance of pre-pandemic life.
However the nation’s quarantine regime has been progressively tightened in response to instances of the virus leaking out of hotels since the mandatory order was introduced for international arrivals from all countries in March last year.
Continue reading...New modelling identifies more higher-risk adults, of which 800,000 will be offered priority vaccination
Nearly 2 million more people in England will be asked to shield and 800,000 of those offered priority vaccination as a result of new modelling that has identified adults at higher risk from Covid-19 because of a combination of health factors and their circumstances, including ethnicity and low income.
Until now the NHS identified those most at risk on the basis usually of a single underlying health condition, such as specific cancers, together with age. But a more sophisticated modelling tool developed by the University of Oxford has shown that the shielding list should nearly double, adding 1.7 million people on the basis of multiple risk factors.
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