Category Archives: Health

Tracey Emin on her cancer: ‘I will find love. I will have exhibitions. I will enjoy life’

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As she recovers from a brutal summer of cancer treatment, Tracey Emin takes us round her new show – and imagines spending the next 30 years painting in her pyjamas to the sound of birdsong

‘I am so lucky,” says Tracey Emin as we stand in the grand galleries of the Royal Academy. I can tell, from her brown eyes, that she’s smiling beneath her face mask. As we roam rooms painted moody blue for her new exhibition, in which her paintings, bronzes and neons are juxtaposed with the oils and watercolours of Edvard Munch, Emin adjusts her stoma bag occasionally and laughs a lot. “I’m in love with Munch,” she says. “Not with the art, but with the man. I have been since I was 18.”

This is not what I expected. Minutes earlier, walking through this London gallery’s courtyard, I felt darkness descending everywhere. England was re-entering lockdown, Biden hadn’t yet won Michigan and the last visitors to the Royal Academy for a month were heading out into the night. I expected the 57-year-old artist to be at death’s door, defeated by disease and circumstance. She is, after all, putting on an exhibition hardly anyone will see: “They sold 16,000 advance tickets but when Boris announced the second lockdown, we knew we couldn’t open.” All she can hope is that the gallery will open in December, but that is uncertain.

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Foreign spies could target Australian politicians using ‘unwitting relatives or friends’, Asio warns – politics live

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Federal parliament returns; Asio chief warns of ‘real threat’ from foreign spies; incoming Biden administration vows to sign back up to Paris agreement. Follow all the updates

The Senate has just voted up a motion rebuking the government over the weakness of its preferred model of National Integrity Commission.

The motion was voted up 28 to 25 with Labor, Centre Alliance, Rex Patrick, Jacqui Lambie and One Nation combining to warn the Coalition over the draft bill’s inadequacies.

Greens senator Larissa Waters motion stated:

Senate just passed a motion 28:25 for a strong corruption watchdog, listing all of the features the Gov’s weak model leaves out. A defacto vote on the Gov’s bill - the Senate can see through the fig leaf of the Gov’s belated and pathetic model that wouldn’t stop a thing! #auspol

Richard Marles says Labor is not pursing a royal commission into the Murdoch media empire and will “let Kevin speak for himself”.

Andrew Leigh officially tabled the Kevin Rudd-led petition, which had more than 500,000 signatures, in the parliament today.

We have talked about our position in relation to the media over a long period of time. Now, this is not something we have been considering. This is something Kevin Rudd has been pursuing in his capacity as a private citizen. I mean, I obviously note it is a significant petition in terms of those who have signed up to it and it has been presented to the parliament appropriately. That is where the matter is that in terms of the opposition.

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UK scientists seek mutant Covid samples from Danish mink farms

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Tests will investigate whether virus evades antibodies from recovered patients and those in vaccine trials

Scientists in the UK are working to secure samples of a mutant form of coronavirus that arose in Danish mink farms and spread into humans, prompting ministers to ban non-UK citizens arriving from Denmark.

Danish health authorities raised the alarm over the mutant virus last week and announced a cull of the nation’s 17 million mink as the Statens Serum Institut (SSI) in Copenhagen warned of potentially “serious consequences” for vaccines if it was allowed to spread internationally.

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Test and trace needs radical reform in England, health experts say

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Sir John Oldham suggests coronavirus lockdown will be futile unless system is overhauled

The government faces renewed calls for the central NHS test and trace system to be scrapped in favour of handing responsibility for contact tracing to local public health teams.

Weekly test and trace figures for England show it reached just under 60% of close contacts of people testing positive, the lowest since the service began. It comes as the Office for National Statistics indicated the steep rise in new infections was levelling off in England and stabilising at about 50,000 a day.

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How UK government misrepresented Covid projections – explained

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No 10 has admitted an ‘error’ in the way data was presented to make case for second lockdown

The UK Statistics Authority has rebuked the government over its lack of transparency around projected Covid-19 deaths and hospital admissions, saying it could cast doubt over official figures.

A range of estimates were used to make the case for a second English lockdown in a press conference on 31 October. However, the UKSA said “the data and assumptions for this model had not been shared transparently”, potentially undermining confidence in official figures.

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Raw sewage dumped into English and Welsh beaches ‘2,900 times this year’

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Exclusive: public health and environment at risk as water companies overuse emergency overflows, says pressure group

Water companies discharged raw sewage into bathing water beaches almost 3,000 times in the past year, polluting the environment and risking public health, new analysis shows.

Related: Face masks and gloves found on 30% of UK beaches in clean-up

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Operation Moonshot: Covid mass-testing trial begins in Liverpool

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Asymptomatic people encouraged to get tested as scheme launches amid some confusion

The UK’s first mass-testing trial is under way in Liverpool as part of the government’s Operation Moonshot drive to test up to 10 million people a day.

Six new testing centres opened their doors to Liverpudlians at noon on Friday as the city’s health chief urged the city’s 500,000-strong population to volunteer for a coronavirus test over the next fortnight.

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How should you deal with stress in 2020? First, ditch the meditation

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I thought I didn’t have a lot on, but working up disaster scenarios in my head – from the US election to the pandemic – is the closest I have come to a full-time job

The first Wednesday in November is national stress awareness day. This year, that was the day after the US elections – a sick joke that the organisers probably didn’t appreciate, being too busy taking a bath and exercising. It fell in the middle of a week dedicated internationally to stress awareness, which ends today, so you should feel free to go back to the way you were before: highly stressed, but oblivious to it. If you want to remain aware, the best way to measure cortisol, the primary stress hormone, is by analysing your earwax, according to a study from University College London’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. Alternatively, you could count the unbelievably stupid things you have done over the week.

Stress is usually considered an internal state – something amiss in your mind that the outside world can perceive only by a slight squeak to your voice. (You might also get a stress headache, but only in an advert.) Really, though, it is where the internal meets the external that the problems start. Distraction, absent-mindedness: none of this would matter if you hadn’t also put your phone in the fridge and your wallet in the bin and set loose a cascade of errors to which catastrophic lateness for everything is the background music.

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Victoria’s hotel quarantine program revealed to cost $195m – as it happened

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Four new coronavirus cases recorded in NSW southern highlands as Victoria quarantine inquiry delivers interim report. This blog is now closed

That’s it for tonight, thanks for reading. To recap today’s developments:

The chief of the defence force, Angus Campbell, has released a statement about the inquiry into alleged war crimes by Australian special forces in Afghanistan.

Campbell said he received the Afghanistan inquiry report today, which examined the conduct of elite Australian forces in more than 55 incidents of alleged unlawful killings between 2005 and 2016.

Today I have received the Afghanistan Inquiry report from the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force (IGADF).

The independent inquiry was commissioned by Defence in 2016 after rumours and allegations emerged relating to possible breaches of the Law of Armed Conflict by members of the Special Operations Task Group in Afghanistan over the period 2005 to 2016.

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Covid immune response faster and stronger post-infection, scientists say

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Strongest evidence yet found of sustained defence in people who recover from coronavirus

Scientists have found the strongest evidence yet that people who recover from Covid may mount a much faster and more effective defence against the infection if they encounter the virus again.

Researchers at Rockefeller University in New York found that the immune system not only remembered the virus but improved the quality of protective antibodies after an infection had passed, equipping the body to unleash a swift and potent attack if the virus invaded a second time.

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Future market for Covid vaccines ‘could be worth more than $10bn a year’

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Analysts estimate revenue generated, assuming an annual jab at an average price of $20

The future market for Covid-19 vaccines could be worth more than $10bn (£7.6bn) in annual revenues for pharmaceutical companies, according to industry experts, even though some drugmakers have pledged to provide their vaccines on a not-for-profit basis during this pandemic.

The calculations by analysts at Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse assume people will need to be vaccinated every year, similar to the traditional flu jab, with an average price of $20 for a Covid-19 vaccine dose. Prices range from $3 a dose to $37.

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Australia news live: Victoria and NSW report no new Covid cases as Queensland pushed to open border

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Border restrictions continue to be eased as Australian politicians respond to US election result. Follow latest updates

The best doughnut, is a jam doughnut, followed closely by cinnamon.

Both fresh, of course.

Related: How doughnuts became Australia's symbol of Covid hope

News Hub reports New Zealand’s US ambassador has commented on the election. As government employees, ambassadors are prevented from indicating political views (despite being political appointments) but it looks like Scott Brown, for one, is feeling confident enough in the result to be a little honest.

From News Hub’s report:

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‘Don’t stop the music’: songs bring hope to a Nigerian psychiatric unit

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There is a huge mental health treatment gap across Africa, but in one Nigerian hospital, music therapy is having a positive impact

The music comes on – a soft blend of guitar, saxophone, piano – and people sit still at first, then heads start to sway to the sound. Some hum along; mostly they sing, or laugh and dance. At the end, when quiet returns, their mood is assessed – as it was when the session started.

Once or twice a month, Bola Otegbayo brings a team of singers and instrumentalists into this psychiatric unit at University College hospital (UCH) in Ibadan, Nigeria. Otegbayo realised a few years ago that some of her patients were lonely even though their loved ones visited and caregivers provided succour. So she began to share music. Now she is a musicologist alongside her main job as a renal technologist.

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NSW-Victoria border to open on 23 November; Australia awaits American election outcome – politics live

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‘We need to keep moving forward as we live with Covid-19,’ Gladys Berejiklian says. We’ll also be bringing you Australian reaction to that election, as it happens

The Queensland election may be over, but that doesn’t mean the border wars have ended.

As AAP reports:

It’s like the whole of Australia – in terms of politics – has stopped right now.

It’s all about the US.

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Scientists hail earwax test for checking stress hormone levels

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Researchers say cortisol sampling technique could transform diagnostics for people with depression


A test that uses earwax to measure levels of the stress hormone cortisol could “transform diagnostics and care for millions of people with depression or stress-related conditions”, scientists have said.

The researchers believe the test, which can be done at home without clinical supervision, may also have the potential to measure glucose or Covid-19 antibodies that accumulate in earwax.

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UK can expect at least three Covid waves with lockdowns, Mordaunt says

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Tory MP defends strategy as rebels warn they will not vote to extend latest restrictions

The UK should be braced for at least a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic and further lockdowns, a minister has said as Tory sceptics warned they would not vote to extend England’s four-week shutdown.

Penny Mordaunt, the paymaster general, told MPs on Tuesday that there could yet be a rolling series of lockdowns – but argued this was not evidence that the measure was ineffective.

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The women who risk their lives to deliver Pakistan’s polio vaccines

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As activists target female vaccinators, Pakistan remains one of only two countries worldwide not to have eradicated polio

Nasreen Bibi never saw the face of her killer. The 44-year-old had just finished work for the day, vaccinating children against polio in Chaman, Pakistan. As she and her co-worker, Rashida Bibi (no relation), stood waiting for a rickshaw home, a motorcycle skidded up in front of them carrying two masked men.

The men did not utter a word, but through the churned up dust that filled the air, Rashida remembers seeing the raised pistol, hearing the shots and feeling the pain as the bullets hit her hands, her thighs, her back and her stomach. Rashida fell to the ground and felt Nasreen crumple beside her, blood pouring from a dark hole in her forehead.

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‘Lives have been lost’: Pregnant women in Zimbabwe forced to pay bribes when giving birth

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Two women took Harare authorities to court to force them to reopen 42 maternity clinics

In agonising labour pain and turned away from a Harare health centre, Aurage Katume feared that, like many other Zimbabwean women, she could lose her unborn baby.

She struggled to another clinic in the country’s capital. The midwives there were not ready to help her either.

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What is the science behind England’s second national lockdown?

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PM was presented with some alarming data – with one model forecasting up to 4,000 Covid deaths a day next month

England is preparing to enter a second national lockdown after scientific advisers warned that coronavirus infections and the numbers of people in hospital are rising steeply in many areas of the country. But what is the science behind the decision?

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T-cell Covid immunity ‘present in adults six months after first infection’

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Study suggests white blood cell levels higher in people who had symptoms

Cellular (T-cell) immunity against the virus that causes Covid-19 is likely to be present within most adults six months after primary infection, with levels considerably higher in patients with symptoms, a study suggests.

The data offers another piece of the puzzle that could be key to understanding whether previous Sars-CoV-2 infections – the virus behind Covid-19 – can prevent reinfection, and if so, for how long.

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