Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The world’s largest pharmaceutical companies rejected an EU proposal three years ago to work on fast-tracking vaccines for pathogens like coronavirus to allow them to be developed before an outbreak, the Guardian can reveal.
The plan to speed up the development and approval of vaccines was put forward by European commission representatives sitting on the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) – a public-private partnership whose function is to back cutting-edge research in Europe – but it was rejected by industry partners on the body.
Bushfires and Covid-19 highlight connection between human health and natural world, states letter by almost 200 doctors and scientists
Leading health professionals, including a Nobel laureate and a former Australian of the Year, say the government must put human health “front and centre” in a new generation of environment laws in the aftermath of the Covid-19 and bushfire crises.
The Nobel prize-winning immunologist Peter Doherty and the epidemiologist and former Australian of the Year Fiona Stanley are among 180 professionals who have warned the government that Australia’s “failing” environmental laws will fuel further public health crises.
In 1981, a virus that had jumped the species barrier some decades earlier to infect humans began to wreak havoc among the gay community in San Francisco and New York. A taskforce was set up to study the cause of this disease, and it took a few years to identify HIV as the definitive cause of Aids and its genome to be sequenced, and nearly 15 years before a cocktail of drugs meant that having an HIV infection was no longer a certain death sentence.
Forty years later, the cause of the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan was identified as a new coronavirus Sars-CoV-2, and its sequence determined in a matter of weeks. That, in turn, paved the way for a sensitive test for infection and, now, antibody tests for people who may have had the disease. That we know so much in such record time is due to sustained international investment in science.
Hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug Donald Trump is taking to prevent Covid-19, has increased deaths in patients treated with it in hospitals around the world, a study has shown.
A major study of the way hydroxychloroquine and its older version, chloroquine, have been used on six continents – without clinical trials – reveals a sobering picture. Scientists said the results meant the drug should no longer be given to Covid-19 patients except in proper research settings.
The Conservative backbenchers Henry Smith has outraged opposition parliamentarians by saying that the objection to MPs returning to the House of Commons after next week’s recess (when the current, largely-virtual proceedings will end) has come from the “lazy left” and from “workshy” Labour and nationalist politicians.
Not that I should be surprised by the lazy left but interesting how work-shy socialist and nationalist MPs tried to keep the remote Parliament going beyond 2 June.
Henry this is an appalling thing to say, would you like to compare cases dealt with in this crisis? Hours helping with food, PPE, testing? Number of questions put down to ministers? Number of bill amendments written? Also calling people working at home workshy is quite something https://t.co/RROVCxbG7O
The government’s own public health advice has said that those who can work from home should and parliament has developed a system using technology to ensure the scrutiny of government whilst allowing people to work remotely.
Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, told the London assembly this morning that he is considering banning passengers from buses and tube trains in the capital if they are not wearing a face covering. He said that he was hoping to persuade the UK government, which is currently just advising people to wear face coverings on public transport, to toughen its stance. He told the assembly:
We don’t want confusion. When there is a crisis, what’s important is to have message clarity.
When the coronavirus struck, the British government repeatedly said it was among the best-prepared countries in the world – with some justification. As recently as October, an international review of pandemic planning ranked the UK the second best prepared country in the world (behind the US).
Two months on, any breezy confidence has evaporated. The government is facing growing complaints over a series of policy missteps that critics say are responsible for the worst death toll in Europe.
Activists welcome pardons, but call for relaxation of abortion laws and an end to punitive measures such as life sentences
Rwanda is to release 50 women who were jailed for having abortions after a personal pardon was issued by the country’s president, Paul Kagame.
Human rights activists welcomed the pending release of the women, six of whom had been given life sentences – the highest penalty available to the courts – two serving 25 years and the others terms ranging from 12 months to 20 years.
Angus Taylor also spoke on the border closure issue while on the ABC:
Well, I think ultimately it’s a decision for Queensland but the advice coming in is very clear from the Chief Medical Officer and it’s clear what the New South Wales Premier has put her view as well.
What I want to see is opening up, getting things going again, jobs, investment and of course we have got to make sure all our policies are aligned with that at the federal level and we’d like to see states do the same and that includes our emissions policy which is all about strengthening the economy.
Speaking to the ABC a little earlier, Gladys Berejiklian says she did not think it was “logical at this stage to maintain those border closures for a prolonged period of time”.
She prefaced the comment with “that’s a matter for the Queensland premier and the Queensland government” before giving her opinion, so that might tell you how relations within national cabinet are starting to go.
New South Wales is in a position now where we’re really focused on jobs and the economy, and we’ll be able to get our industries up and running.
But for Australia to really move forward as a nation during this very difficult economic time as well as difficult health time, we do need our borders down, we do need to allow people to move between states, to live, to work, to see family.
Fresh uncertainty over the UK’s contact-tracing plans has thrown light on the difficulties of a successful track-and-trace system to tackle Covid-19. Prof John Ashton, a former regional director of public health and regional medical officer for the north-west of England, describes his experience of contact tracing at the early stages of the coronavirus crisis and highlights pitfalls the UK should avoid.
“In early February I was invited to Bahrain to examine the country’s preparedness for Covid-19. The first case, that of a religious pilgrim returning from a visit to holy sites in Iran, was diagnosed while I was in Bahrain on 24 February.
New research also warns that half of those with a problem are not getting the help they need
Gambling addiction rates may be much higher than previously thought, according to research that also warns nearly half of those with a problem are not getting any help.
The World Health Assembly is the key decision-making body of the World Health Organization, attended by representatives of the United Nation’s 194 member states.
Ministers and officials from every nation will meet via video link on Monday for the annual world health assembly, which is expected to be dominated by efforts to stop rich countries monopolising drugs and future vaccines against Covid-19.
As some countries buy up drugs thought to be useful against the coronavirus, causing global shortages, and the Trump administration does deals with vaccine companies to supply America first, there is dismay among public health experts and campaigners who believe it is vital to pull together to end the pandemic.
Premier Dan Andrews says the easing of restrictions is due to low numbers of new cases, but patrons will still have to abide by social distancing. Follow live
Hazzard warns people in New South Wales to still stay 1.5 metres apart, and to not see friends if they are sick, even if it is just a runny nose.
I would just like to warn everybody that we are still vulnerable. We have to temper it in a way that when we go out, we’re still exercising the social distancing.
The 1.5 metres is a magic figure – it can keep you safe! I’ve observed today, people at cafes and restaurants, and many of them do not appear to be exercising that 1.5 metres. I’ll just say to them – please be careful.
New South Wales health minister Brad Hazzard is speaking now. He announces that as of 8pm last night, NSW only had one new case.
However, he says the source of that transmission is unknown, which means people should be on high alert.
Moving about Sydney this morning, I think it’s fair to say that there has been, in a sense, the great NSW bust-out.
People are rewarding themselves for many weeks of sacrifice and having themselves locked inside.
One of the eight new cases of Covid-19 detected in New South Wales in the past 24 hours is an overseas traveller who recently flew from Brisbane to Sydney after completing their mandatory 14-day quarantine period, the state’s health department said.
Despite completing the quarantine in Brisbane, the person developed symptoms afterwards and NSW Health believes “it is likely they were infectious on the flight to Sydney”.
Look I know it’s not strictly coronavirus-related but this video, put together by my colleagues Steph Harmon and Becca Leaver, of beloved children’s author Andy Griffiths answering questions sent in by our younger readers is very good and fun and wholesome.
The private firm contracted to run the government’s stockpile of personal protective equipment (PPE) was beset by “chaos” at its warehouse that may have resulted in delays in deploying vital supplies to healthcare workers, according to sources who have spoken to the Guardian and ITV News.
The allegations from delivery drivers and other well–placed sources raise questions about whether Movianto, the subsidiary of a US healthcare giant, was able to adequately manage and distribute the nation’s emergency stockpile of PPE for use in a pandemic.
The federal government has no plans to make millions of doses of an experimental drug being used in clinical trials on Covid-19 patients available to people who rely on the medicine to treat severe autoimmune conditions, despite Australia’s low number of Covid-19 cases.
The UK government has told the public to wear 'cloth face coverings' in crowded places where it's not possible to comply with physical-distancing measures, but what does this mean? Why not face masks? Outside too? Should anyone avoid wearing a face covering? The Guardian's health editor, Sarah Boseley, answers these and other questions
“In the war against any infectious virus,” says Dr Alan McOwan, “You’re trying to win various battles. You have to keep clobbering it from every direction you can.”
That’s true for coronavirus, he says, as well as for other viral conditions. An HIV specialist at London’s 56 Dean Street sexual health clinic, McOwan sees similarities between Covid-19 and HIV. Both are viruses without a working vaccine, you can be infectious without knowing it, and both rely mostly on close human contact to spread.
As many as 6,000 children around the world could die every day from preventable causes over the next six months due to the impact of coronavirus on routine health services, the UN has warned.
Global disruption of essential maternal and child health interventions – such as family planning, birth and postnatal care, and vaccinations – could lead to an additional 1.2 million deaths of under fives in just six months, according to analysis by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, published in the Lancet Global Health Journal.