#we just got our new covid restrictions and all schools are closing until the 25 and going online

[theotherjourney7]

“The Week In Tory returns for the second time in 4 days.

The weeks grow shorter, but the days last forever...

1. The consultant who advised the government to look for "alternative arrangements" on the Irish Border is in line for a £200m contract if alternative arrangements go ahead.

But to facilitate this, the government has to break international law with the Internal Market Bill (IMB)

Nobody can tell us what the "alternative arrangements" are, but the IMB passed through parliament anyway.

2. The UK’s highest-ranking law officer in Scotland resigned over the IMB

& The UK’s special envoy on media freedom, Amal Clooney (yes, that one) quit over IMB

3. The former (Tory appointed) ambassador to USA said the IMB was "hugely damaging to our international reputation"

4. Those snowflake liberal Remoaners Toby Young, Peter Hitchens and Tim Montgomerie turned on the govt over IMB. As did every living former-Prime Minister.

5. Joe Biden said there would be no UK/US Trade Deal if the IMB went ahead

But, Iain Duncan Smith said "we don’t need lectures" from Joe Biden

Trump’s special envoy to Northern Ireland also said there would be no Trade Deal

Apparently, Iain Duncan Smith does need lectures. Who knew?

6. Oh, and IMB also includes a provision allowing the government to break absolutely any law, absolutely any time!!!!!

7. Unrelated, I’m sure, but the number of "problem drinkers" in England doubled this year

So the government cut funding to alcohol addiction services

8. Dominic Raab, whose job it is to understand the Good Friday Agreement, admitted he hasn’t read the Good Friday Agreement

His excuse is: "it’s not a novel". True. Novels tend to be longer than 35 pages, aren't vital to solving conflicts that killed 3600 people

9. The Prime Minister, who literally voted to break a deal he signed with the EU, said the EU was "not negotiating in good faith"

The next morning, Northern Ireland minister and arch memo-misser Brandon Lewis went on TV and said "I believe the EU is negotiating in good faith"

10. It was revealed the Smart Freight System to handle post-Brexit trade won’t be ready until at least April 2021.

That’s at least 4 months without a freight handling system, during the time of year we rely on food imports the most

11. The Road Haulage Association said a meeting with Michael Gove to discuss border checks provided "no clarity" and was "a washout"

12. An official report says 2-day queues at Dover in January are "a certainty"

So the government closed a Covid test site in Kent, to convert it into a lorry park, in what experts (well, me) are calling "the world’s shittest game of whack-a-mole"

13. The government said people would be fined £1000 if they don’t self-isolate after getting a positive test

And then all tests ran out in the 10 worst-hit Covid hotspots

And then all home testing kits ran out, nationally

And then the website for booking tests broke, and just showed a series of error messages.

And then the government said the system was under strain because people were asking for tests when they didn’t know they were infected

So [deep breath] you must self-isolate after getting a test that doesn’t exist, and you can only get a test if you already know the result

14. Naturally, honesty no-fly-zone Home Office Secretary Priti Patel went on Radio 4 and announced tests were available everywhere and there were "no problems getting tests"

Same day - same hour, in fact - Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the testing system "has huge problems"

Jacob Rees-Mogg, who simply cannot shut up about fish, said we should stop the "endless carping" about not being tested for a fatal infection

15.Prime Minister Boris Johnson went on national TV and announced a "£100bn moonshot" approach to Covid, which would test "10m people per day"

Three days later, in front of a Parliamentary Committee, said he "didn’t recognise" the figure of 10m a day

And it was reported his half-brother is on the board of the business that would get most of the £100bn budget, which I’m sure is just a massive coincidence

Officials branded the moonshot as "Moonfuck"

16. And then Health Secretary Matt Hancock had to ask other cabinet ministers to stop referring to him as "Matt WankCock"

Despite appearances, these are not 7 year old boys

17. Food news, and Tory MP Douglas Ross said "I have seen the difference free school meals can make, and I want to make sure nobody falls through the cracks"

Douglas Ross voted against free school meals

18. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said we cannot put punitive restrictions on food imports from the EU (to force them to give up on Ireland), or we will starve

And then, minutes later, he agreed with a Brexiter MP who said we SHOULD put punitive restrictions on food imports from the EU

19. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said "I venerate our civil service" after sacking the innocent heads of multiple departments to protect friends including Gavin Williamson and Dominic Cummings. And as a result, people leaving the civil service rose 14% in a year

20. Planning-ahead news: an international conglomerate pulled out of a £16bn power project because the government hasn’t performed its part of the deal for the last 20 months

21. Funding cuts since 2010 meant the government had to inject £700m to prevent further education going bankrupt

22. This week it was found the government– which last week voted not to implement the recommendations of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry – has also failed to deliver its promise to remove the same dangerous cladding from at least 2000 tower blocks. Sleep well.

And then the government said files on Grenfell were "lost forever", after a laptop was wiped. Because everything is always stored on a single laptop. We all know this.

The government runs G-Cloud, its own dedicated cloud backup service, which has been active since 2012. So... yeah.

23. At a committee in parliament, an MP read out the Covid test figures. Dido Harding, in charge of testing, said “I’m sorry, that’s just not true, I don’t know where that number is from”

It was from her own report. Page 8. In bold type.

Dido Harding said "nobody could predict" a rise in demand for testing

Government scientists predicted it, and in a July report sent to Dido Harding – maybe it was a different one? - said "July and Aug must be a period of intense preparation for a September resurgence in Covid"

Oh, and standard advice says the NHS must always prepare for cold and respiratory infections to spike immediately after the return to school in September

Dido Harding wasted £13m on a "world-beating" testing app that cost £12.3m more than the German app, and didn’t work

She is now in charge of the test-and-trace service which has collapsed completely

So naturally, it was reported the government wants to sack the head of NHS England and install Dido Harding instead. Let's make the most of that successful record, eh?

24. In June the government tweeted "grab a drink and raise a glass, pubs are reopening"

The Prime Minister said "it is your patriotic duty to go out and enjoy yourselves"

This week they said the public is responsible, and "people going to the pub fuelled the rise in Covid"

So the government closed pubs at 10pm, because it’s well-known viruses only pop out for last orders.

25. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the government "threw a protective ring around care homes"

A leaked document said care homes are now being asked to accept patients who are known to have Covid

26. Hospitals were banned from launching their own testing regime for staff and patience because… nope, nobody knows why. Just because.

27. There hasn’t been a meeting of COBRA (the government’s committee for national emergencies, headed by the Prime Minister) since 10th May

28. As Covid infections surged, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said restrictions are increasing, and pointed to a chart showing the government has "moved to alert level 3". Level 3 is "a gradual relaxing of restrictions". Not only can't he remember his own alert system, he can't even read it.

29. Despite travel restrictions, it was reported the Prime Minister flew off for a long weekend in Perugia, where his friend the Russian billionaire Evgeny Lebedev lives. He denies it, but the airport has his landing documents. So either he’s lying or... no, that’s the end of that sentence

30. In June the government spent £500m on a GPS satellite system to replace the one we lose due to Brexit

In July it was reported "we bought the wrong satellites"

This week the government cancelled the programme and began asking the EU if we can keep on using their GPS system

31. A cross-party committee of MPs found nurse-Ratched cosplayer Home Office Secretary Priti Patel "bases immigration policies on anecdotes and prejudice"

It found her dept has "no idea" what its annual spending achieves, and referred to "the wreckage that [Patel’s department’s] ignorance caused"

She is one of the favourites to replace Prime Minister Johnson

32. This is because it was reported the Prime Minister is thinking of quitting because he’s worried about his personal finances: the poor man has to "pay tax", "buy his own food" and "support 4 of his 6 children". Oh, the humanity!

33. And Jonathan Aitken – look him up – continues to get privileged access to parliament despite a ban on MPs who have served more than a year in prison. Which he did. And it was hilarious.

34. And finally, because he always needs a guest appearance, Chris Grayling, the man who awarded a ferry contract to a company with no ships, has got a £100k appointment to advise ports”-Russ

#life #real life #uk #uk politics #politics #uk government #coronavirus #boris johnson #conservative #health #prime minister #house of commons #member of parliament #foreign affairs #for future reference #in summary #care homes #uk coronavirus #uk coronaviurs deaths #brexit #international law #international trade #trade tensions #europe #euro crisis #northern ireland #england #scotland #wales #borderlands

[sciencespies]

Covid-19 news: Infection rate in England rises to one in 500 people

https://sciencespies.com/biology/covid-19-news-infection-rate-in-england-rises-to-one-in-500-people/

Covid-19 news: Infection rate in England rises to one in 500 people

By Michael Le Page , Clare Wilson , Jessica Hamzelou , Adam Vaughan , Conrad Quilty-Harper and Layal Liverpool

Public information messages in central Manchester, England

Jon Super/AP/Shutterstock

Latest coronavirus news as of 5 pm on 25 September

Infection rate within communities in England and Wales continues to rise 

One in 500 people in England had the coronavirus in the week ending 19 September, up from one in 900 people the previous week, according to the latest results from a random swab testing survey by the Office for National Statistics. “It’s a worrying increase and is occurring across all age groups, particularly in the North of England and London,” said Simon Clarke at the University of Reading in a statement. “While it’s true that there are many more tests conducted nowadays, this is clear evidence of an accelerating spread of the virus,” said Clarke. “We can expect to see an increasing burden placed on our hospitals and a consequent increase in deaths.” 

Northern Ireland, which was included in the survey for the first time, and Wales have also seen increases in infections. One in 300 people are estimated to have had the virus in Wales and Northern Ireland during the same time period. In Wales, this figure is up from one in 500 the week before. This weekend, new restrictions will be put in place in the Welsh city of Cardiff as well as in Swansea county areas and in the town of Llanelli. 

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The UK’s R number – the number of people each coronavirus case infects – has increased for the third week in a row, up to an estimate of between 1.2 and 1.5, an increase from between 1.1 and 1.4 the previous week, according to official figures. This is most likely to represent the situation two to three weeks ago due to a time lag in the data used to model the R. Infections across the country are estimated to be growing at a rate of between 4 and 8 per cent every day.

Other coronavirus news

Only 11 per cent of people told to self-isolate actually do so for the full 14-day period, which the UK government has been aware of since June. The finding comes from a survey that began in February. Results were published online yesterday to the pre-print server medRxiv and have not yet been peer-reviewed. The government’s scientific advisors recommend that 80 per cent or more of the contacts of people diagnosed with the coronavirus self-isolate for the full time period in order to help limit onward spread. 

Independent SAGE – an independent group of scientists publishing advice for the UK government – says Sweden’s success in tackling the coronavirus pandemic has been overstated. In a report published today, the group dismissed the idea of “herd immunity” as a strategy for dealing with the UK’s epidemic in the absence of a vaccine and said it is “irresponsible and unethical to try”.

Spain’s government has recommended imposing a new partial lockdown on the entire city of Madrid due to rising cases. The capital accounts for more than a third of the country’s hospital admissions, according to local authorities. Under the new restrictions, people would be banned from travelling outside of the city but would still be allowed to leave their homes to go to work and school.

The Netherlands recorded its highest daily increase in cases since the start of the pandemic, with 2777 new cases confirmed today. The country’s previous record for daily new cases was set just yesterday, when 2544 cases were recorded.

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 984,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 32.3 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

When did the coronavirus first reach Europe and the US?: No cases were reported outside China until January 2020, but a study published on 10 September claims that cases in the US began to rise by 22 December. Many people there and in Europe suspect they had coronavirus around this time. Yet overall, the evidence suggests there were few cases outside China this early on. 

Birdsong during lockdown: If you thought birdsong sounded different during lockdown, it turns out you were probably right. The uniquely quiet circumstances of the covid-19 restrictions in San Francisco saw birds respond by lowering their pitch, singing sexier songs and making their songs clearer.

Essential information about coronavirus

Everything you need to know about the pandemic

What is covid-19?

What are the worst symptoms and how deadly is covid-19?

You could be spreading the coronavirus without realising you’ve got it

Which covid-19 treatments work and how close are we to getting more?

What are the main coronavirus vaccine candidates?

What to read, watch and listen to about coronavirus

Health Check is New Scientist’s weekly health newsletter by reporter Clare Wilson. This week she examines a new study from the only city in the world to have achieved herd immunity to the coronavirus and explores what the impact might be if the UK were to try a similar strategy.

Race Against the Virus: Hunt for a Vaccine is a Channel 4 documentary which tells the story of the coronavirus pandemic through the eyes of the scientists on the frontline.

The New York Times is assessing the progress of different vaccine candidates and potential drug treatments for covid-19, and ranking them for effectiveness and safety.

Humans of COVID-19 is a project highlighting the experiences of key workers on the frontline in the fight against coronavirus in the UK, through social media.

Coronavirus, Explained on Netflix is a short documentary series examining the on-going coronavirus pandemic, the efforts to fight it and ways to manage its mental health toll.

New Scientist Weekly features updates and analysis on the latest developments in the covid-19 pandemic. Our podcast sees expert journalists from the magazine discuss the biggest science stories to hit the headlines each week – from technology and space, to health and the environment.

The Rules of Contagion is about the new science of contagion and the surprising ways it shapes our lives and behaviour. The author, Adam Kucharski, is an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK, and in the book he examines how diseases spread and why they stop.

Previous updates

The new NHS Covid-19 app for England and Wales

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

24 September

NHS Covid-19 app goes live in England and Wales but testing and tracing still limited

The official test and trace app for England and Wales went live today, with more than one million downloads so far. The app uses Bluetooth technology built into smartphones to detect people nearby and alert users if any of those people later test positive for the virus. The government is urging everyone over the age of 16 to download and use the app. 

Some users have already reported issues with the app, and it does not work on some iPhone and Android smartphones, including iPhone 6 and older models. UK health minister Matt Hancock told BBC Breakfast this morning that the app would run on the “vast majority” of smartphones in the country. But there are concerns that limitations in testing and contact tracing could negate any potential benefit of the app. 

The latest NHS Test and Trace figures reveal that it is taking longer to return results for coronavirus tests in England. Only 28.2 per cent of coronavirus tests performed in community testing centres returned results within 24 hours in the week leading up to 16 September, down from 33.3 per cent in the previous week. During the same period, NHS Test and Trace reached 60.2 per cent of the contacts of people who were diagnosed with the virus, below the level of 80 per cent or more recommended by the government’s scientific advisors. 

Just 18 per cent of people in the UK report self-isolating after developing symptoms of the coronavirus and only 11 per cent say they self-isolate after being told by contact tracers that they have been in contact with a confirmed coronavirus case, according to a preliminary study by researchers at King’s College London. The study, which has not been peer-reviewed, surveyed more than 31,000 people in the UK between 2 March and 5 August.

The number of new coronavirus cases in England also went up, but less sharply than the previous week, with 19,278 people testing positive for the virus between 10 and 16 September, compared to 18,371 the week before. This small weekly increase may reflect “oddities in the reporting testing system, rather than a sudden plateau in viral cases,” said James Naismith at the University of Oxford in a statement. 

Other coronavirus news

The number of people in the UK diagnosed with common conditions – including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and mental health conditions – was about 50 per cent lower than would normally have been expected between March and May this year, a study has found. The study, published in The Lancet Public Health analysed electronic health records from 47 general practices in Salford, UK, between January 2010 and May this year. The UK went into lockdown on 23 March.

United Airlines in the US is expected to become the first airline to offer rapid coronavirus testing to some of its passengers. The firm plans to conduct a trial of the programme on flights from San Francisco to Hawaii starting on 15 October, using 15-minute rapid tests supplied by US biotechnology company Abbott.

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 978,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 31.9 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Testing troubles: How the UK can get its catastrophic coronavirus testing under control. 

Doctor administers a vaccine

Udom Pinyo/Getty Images

23 September

Volunteers will be deliberately infected with the coronavirus in first challenge trials

Healthy volunteers will be deliberately infected with the coronavirus to test the effectiveness of experimental coronavirus vaccines in London next year, in the world’s first human challenge trials for coronavirus. About 2000 people in the UK have volunteered to be given one of a number of experimental vaccines and then receive a dose of the coronavirus under controlled conditions. The volunteers have joined the trial, which is due to begin in January, through advocacy group 1Day Sooner. Earlier this year the group organised an open letter signed by prominent researchers including Nobel laureates, urging the US government to immediately prepare for human challenge trials. The researchers behind the trials, which are being funded by the UK government, told the Financial Times that the trials would play an important role in helping to identify the most promising vaccine candidates likely to move into clinical testing in early 2021.

Other coronavirus news

There were 6178 new coronavirus cases recorded across the UK today, the highest daily total since 1 May. Scotland recorded 486 new coronavirus cases yesterday, the highest daily figure since its epidemic began, first minister Nicola Sturgeon told a briefing today. In the Scottish city of Dundee, 500 university students have been told to self-isolate due to a suspected outbreak in a halls of residence. Meanwhile, in England, more than a million pupils were absent from school last Thursday for reasons related to covid-19, according to the nation’s Department for Education. Yesterday, the Isle of Scilly off the coast of Cornwall in England recorded its first coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic.

The UK’s prime minister Boris Johnson has urged people in England to follow new rules announced yesterday aimed at limiting the spread of the coronavirus, warning that the government could introduce further restrictions if people fail to adhere. “If people don’t follow the rules we have set out, then we must reserve the right to go further,” Johnson said during a televised address. However, some have questioned the logic behind the new rules. “Closing down restaurants and pubs earlier will do little to stave the spread for as long as multiple different households can interchangeably meet up,” David Strain at the University of Exeter said in a statement.

The official test and trace app for England and Wales will be launched tomorrow after being trialled in Newham in London and the Isle of Wight. It will be the second iteration of the app, after the first was abandoned because it struggled to detect iPhones. There are concerns about the lack of transparency around the new app, and the government has not yet demonstrated that it is effective and ready for mass rollout, the Health Foundation charity said in a statement today.  

Germany’s contact tracing app, the Corona-Warn-App, has been used to transmit 1.2 million coronavirus test results from laboratories to users during its first 100 days, according to officials. The app has been downloaded more than 18 million times since it was first launched in June and more than 90 per cent of laboratories in the country are now connected to it.

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 972,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 31.6 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Asymptomatic infection: People who have the coronavirus without symptoms appear to have similar levels of the virus in their noses and throats to people with mild symptoms, a study has found. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean they are as likely to spread covid-19 as those who are sick.

Doctor’s diary: How can we deal with the long covid-19 symptoms?

A staff member wears a face mask as she serves customers at the The Shy Horse pub and restaurant in Chessington, Greater London

BEN STANSALL/AFP via Getty Images

22 September

New restrictions for England could last six months, UK prime minister says

People in England will be asked to work from home where possible and pubs, bars and restaurants will be required to close at 10 pm each night, under a series of new restrictions announced by UK prime minister Boris Johnson today, which come into force on Thursday. Under the new rules, which Johnson today told MPs could stay in place for six months, pubs, bars and restaurants will be restricted to table service only and face masks will be compulsory for hospitality staff and non-seated customers, as well as for retail workers and taxi drivers. In Scotland, a ban on meeting people in houses will be extended from Glasgow and its surroundings to the entire country, and bars, pubs and restaurants will have to close at 10 pm. 

Linda Bauld at the University of Edinburgh said in a statement that the new measures for England are not as stringent as might have been expected, with some of them already in place in parts of the nation under local lockdowns. “What is worrying, however, is that they will be accompanied by sticks but no carrots,” said Bauld, which she says “risks rising levels of non-compliance” among the public. Shops and hospitality businesses that fail to comply to the rules on use of face coverings, contact tracing and limits on maximum group sizes, risk closure or fines of up to £10,000. Fines for individuals not wearing face coverings or following rules will be increased from £100 to £200 for the first offence. 

Cabinet office minister Michael Gove told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that people should work from home “if you can,” a reversal of advice from the prime minister in July, when he encouraged people to go back to workplaces. 

“The urging of people to work from home if at all possible is sensible. There should never have been encouragement of people to return to their workplace,” Michael Head at the University of Southampton said in a statement. “We have already seen outbreaks linked to the office environment, and there is no reason to promote an increase in numbers of commuters travelling on public transport.”

Other coronavirus news

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has backtracked on advice it posted last week regarding airborne transmission of the coronavirus. The advice suggested the virus spreads through tiny droplets that can linger in the air. The World Health Organization acknowledges that there is some evidence that airborne transmission can occur in crowded spaces with inadequate ventilation but says the main route of coronavirus transmission is through larger droplets from coughs and sneezes, which can land on surfaces and get onto people’s hands. The CDC retracted its guidance yesterday, with a spokesperson telling CNN that a “draft version of proposed changes to these recommendations was posted in error.”

More than 200,000 people in the US have now died from covid-19, according to Johns Hopkins University, the highest number for any nation. The country has recorded more than 6.8 million cases of the coronavirus.

Covid-19 was a factor in 1 per cent of all deaths registered across England and Wales in the week ending 11 September, according to the Office for National Statistics. The figure is among the lowest since March but there are concerns deaths may rise due to recent increases in cases and hospitalisations.

No new locally acquired coronavirus infections were recorded in New South Wales in Australia today for the first time in 76 days. Two infections confirmed yesterday were both returned travellers in hotel quarantine, according to local health authorities.

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 965,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 31.3 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Staff at a NHS appointment only testing facility take testing kits from members of the public in Redcar, England

Ian Forsyth/Getty Images

21 September

New localised lockdown restrictions to come into force in parts of the UK tomorrow

Amid warnings from scientists that the UK’s epidemic is doubling every seven days, which could lead to 50,000 cases a day by mid-October, the UK has imposed new restrictions to try and limit the spread of coronavirus. The country’s chief medical officers also advised that the coronavirus alert level be raised from 3 to 4. According to the government’s 5-tier alert system, an alert level of 4 indicates that transmission is high or rising exponentially and warrants increased social distancing measures. The UK is currently recording around 3000 cases per day, compared to around 5000 a day at the peak of the epidemic in spring. 

Wales has now followed England in introducing additional localised coronavirus restrictions, set to come into force tomorrow. In total, at least 13.9 million people in the UK now face some form of additional local restrictions. From 6 pm tomorrow, people in Merthyr Tydfil, Bridgend, Blaenau Gwent and Newport in Wales will not be allowed to leave those areas or to meet with people from other households. Restaurants, bars and pubs will be required to close from 11 pm each night. Similar restrictions will affect Rhondda Cynon Taf in Wales as well as 10.9 million people in parts of north-west England, West Yorkshire and the Midlands starting tomorrow. Today, Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon told journalists that additional lockdown restrictions will “almost certainly” be put in place in Scotland over the next few days as well. 

Other coronavirus news

Coronavirus restrictions will be lifted across New Zealand today, with the exception of Auckland, where some restrictions will remain in place. “Our actions collectively have managed to get the virus under control,” the country’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern told a press conference today. There are currently 62 active cases of the virus in New Zealand, 33 of which are connected to a cluster in Auckland. Rules in Auckland will be eased further on Wednesday, with a limit on gatherings to be increased from 10 to 100 people.

Strict new lockdown measures came into force in Spain’s capital Madrid today. At the weekend, thousands of people in the city’s southern district of Vallecas took to the streets to protest against the new restrictions. Under the new rules people won’t be allowed to leave the areas where they live except to go to work or for emergency medical treatment.

India’s Taj Mahal reopened today for the first time since it was closed due to the pandemic in March. Visitors will be required to adhere to strict physical distancing rules and the number of visitors will be limited to 5000 per day – a quarter of the usual rate.

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 961,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 31.1 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Death toll: Most people still don’t have any level of immunity to the virus behind covid-19. But there is a growing risk that some of us are becoming immune to the enormous numbers that this pandemic is throwing out on a weekly basis. The global death toll from covid-19 is nearing 1 million. That is a number that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to become blasé about.

UK epidemic: The UK faces a “very difficult problem” of rising covid-19 deaths and cases if it does not change course, chief medical officer for England Chris Whitty has warned.

Shoppers walk past an electronic billboard displaying a UK Government advert in Newcastle, UK

OLI SCARFF/AFP via Getty Images

18 September

UK government considering short-term national lockdown in October

The UK could face a second nation-wide lockdown in October, according UK health minister Matt Hancock. In an interview today, Hancock told Sky News that the government isn’t ruling out a short-term national lockdown in October. “We do have to recognise that the number of cases is rising and we do have to act,” he said. This comes after warnings from senior scientific advisors to the government that the UK is about six weeks behind France and Spain in terms of coronavirus cases, and can expect to see a significant increase in cases by mid-October without further intervention. France set a record for daily new coronavirus cases in the country on Thursday, recording 10,593 new cases within 24 hours, according to its health ministry.

The latest estimate of the UK’s R number – the number of people each coronavirus case infects – is between 1.1 and 1.4, up from between 1 and 1.2 the previous week and between 0.9 and 1.1 the week before, according to the latest government figures. The current number is representative of the situation two to three weeks ago due to a time-lag in the data used to model the R number. In documents released today, the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies warn that new infections in the UK may be doubling as quickly as every seven days and, according to the latest results from a random swab testing survey by the Office for National Statistics, about one in 900 people in communities in England had the virus in the week ending 10 September, up from about one in 1400 the previous week. 

Parts of north-west England, West Yorkshire and the Midlands have become the latest areas in the UK to see tightening coronavirus restrictions. Starting on Tuesday, people in these areas won’t be allowed to mix with people from other households, and pubs and restaurants will be required to shut at 10 pm each day. “It does seem ironic that after encouraging mass attendance at pubs, cafes and restaurants through ‘eat out to help out’, that we are now contemplating restricting or closing those activities down,” said Jonathan Ball at the University of Nottingham in a statement. At least 13.5 million people in the country are now facing local restrictions of some kind, including 10.9 million people in England. 

Other coronavirus news

Details on a participant in the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine trial who experienced neurological symptoms, which halted the trial in early September, have been revealed in an internal safety report by the firm. The 37 year-old woman experienced symptoms of a rare neurological condition called transverse myelitis, including pain, weakness and difficulty walking, according to the report.

Israel today became the first country to introduce a second nation-wide lockdown, with people required to stay within 500 metres of their homes, except if they are travelling to work. 

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 947,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 30.2 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

People entering Oxford Circus Station in London, England.

17 September

Steep rise in new coronavirus cases in England despite testing shortage

The weekly number of people testing positive for the coronavirus in England has risen sharply, as the country is experiencing testing shortages. Between 3 and 9 September, 18,371 people were diagnosed with covid-19, which is “a substantial increase of 167 per cent compared to the end of August,” according to NHS Test and Trace. These may be “the last reliable figures” on the state of the nation’s epidemic for some time because of the reduced availability of tests, said Daniel Lawson at the University of Bristol in a statement. 

The time for tests to be returned is also taking longer. The proportion of test results received within 24 hours fell to 14.3 per cent during the same period in September, down from 32 per cent the week before. “Tests which take many days to report and action, are of no value in suppressing the pandemic,” said James Naismith at the University of Oxford in a statement. In June, UK prime minister Boris Johnson told parliament that all coronavirus tests would be returned within 24 hours by the end of the month.  

The website for booking coronavirus tests online in the UK is struggling to cope with the growing demand for tests. An increasing number of users are reporting receiving error messages when attempting to book tests on the site.

Other coronavirus news

Today the UK government announced new restrictions affecting almost two million people in the north-east of England, where case rates are particularly high. Under the new rules, which come into force at midnight tonight, people will be banned from meeting people from other households. Restaurants, bars and pubs will also be required to close at 10 pm. Affected areas include Sunderland, where the infection rate is currently 103 per 100,000 people, as well as Newcastle, South Tyneside and Gateshead, all of which have infection rates above 70, UK health minister Matt Hancock told MPs today. “The data says that we must act now,” said Hancock. 

Europe has “alarming rates of transmission”, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned today, as it encouraged countries to stick to the recommended 14-day self-isolation period for people who may have been exposed to the coronavirus. In the UK, the recommendation is currently 10 days. Other European countries, including Portugal and Croatia, are considering reducing the length of recommended self-isolation, according to the Guardian. “Knowing the immense individual and societal impact even a slight reduction in the length of quarantine can have […] I encourage countries of the region to make scientific due process with their experts and explore safe reduction options,” Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, said at a press conference.

It will take at least a year before a coronavirus vaccine becomes generally available to the US public, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield told a US Senate panel yesterday. In an interview with Fox & Friends earlier this week, US president Donald Trump said a vaccine could be ready “in a matter of weeks.”

Coronavirus deaths

The worldwide death toll has passed 942,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 29.9 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Tracking blood oxygen: Apple’s recently released Series 6 smart watch incorporates a new feature: it can measure your blood oxygen levels. The tech must have been years in the making, but the timing of its release worked well given we are in the middle of a global respiratory pandemic.

Stopping the next pandemic: Covid-19 isn’t the first pandemic humanity has faced and it won’t be the last. What has happened offers lessons about how to judge and respond to virus warnings in future.

What now?: Five scientists tell us what happens next with the covid-19 pandemic.

People queue at a coronavirus testing facility in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham

Jacob King/PA Wire/PA Images

15 September

Widespread reports of people struggling to get coronavirus tests in England

England’s coronavirus testing system is significantly overwhelmed, with many people in the nation’s 10 worst-hit coronavirus hotspots unable to get tests. People trying to book swab tests on Monday in Bolton, Salford, Bradford, Blackburn, Oldham, Preston, Pendle, Rochdale, Tameside and Manchester were told that it was not possible, according to LBC. Bolton currently has 171 coronavirus cases per 100,000 people, the highest rate in England. “It seems that there are several bottlenecks in the testing procedures. These are not being made publicly available so we can only speculate that these may be limited materials for the testing process, capacity and procedural issues,” said Brendan Wren at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in a statement. “This needs to be addressed urgently, and if it is [a lab] capacity [problem] then university labs should be more widely deployed,” said Wren.

A spokesperson for the Department for Health and Social Care told the Guardian: “It is wrong to say testing is not available in these areas, and our capacity continues to be targeted where it is needed most.” However, there have also been reports of testing shortages elsewhere. NHS Providers, a body that represents hospital trusts in England, told the BBC that NHS staff are having to self-isolate, because they are unable to get tests for themselves or their family members. 

Laboratories analysing community swab tests in England were stretched to capacity as far back as August, emails seen by the Guardian revealed today. NHS England sent an email to all NHS laboratories on 24 August calling for them to support the UK Lighthouse Labs Network, a private group of labs that has been analysing community swabs, due to a “surge in capacity.”

Other coronavirus news

A report by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation warns that the coronavirus pandemic has pushed back progress on improving health around the world by “about 25 years.” The pandemic has increased poverty by 7 per cent and led to a drop in routine vaccination coverage from 84 per cent last year down to 70 per cent, according to the report. “It’s a huge setback,” Bill Gates said at a media briefing on the report’s findings today. The report also highlighted the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women, racial and ethnic minority communities and people living in extreme poverty. 

Schools in England have seen a higher absence rate among pupils this term compared to last year, according to the nation’s Department for Education. Official figures suggest 88 per cent of pupils attended school last Thursday, below the figure for the same term last year of about 95 per cent. Since schools reopened earlier this month, school leaders have warned that delays in testing are leading to year groups being sent home, the BBC reported.

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 930,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 29.3 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Anti-government protesters rallying in Madrid, Spain amid the covid-19 outbreak, on September 12, 2020

Oscar Gonzalez/NurPhoto via Getty Images

14 September

New global record for daily new coronavirus cases as WHO warns of rise in deaths in Europe

A record single day increase in global coronavirus cases was recorded on Sunday with 307,930 new confirmed cases . The largest increases were in India, the US and Brazil, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO also warned that Europe can expect to see more deaths from covid-19 as soon as next month. “It’s going to get tougher. In October, November, we are going to see more mortality,” said Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, in an interview with the AFP news agency today. Cases in Europe have increased sharply over the last few weeks, with case rates highest in Spain and France. There are 270.7 cases per 100,000 people in Spain and 153.9 per 100,000 people in France, according to the latest 14-day cumulative figures from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. In the UK there are 51.1 cases per 100,000 people.

Other coronavirus news

Laboratory-made antibodies will be given to about 2000 covid-19 patients in UK hospitals as part of the UK’s RECOVERY trial, a large-scale clinical trial to test existing drugs as therapies for covid-19. In June, data from the RECOVERY trial provided the first evidence that a steroid drug called dexamethasone could save lives for those with severe covid-19. In the new trial of antibodies made specifically to combat the coronavirus, the first patients will be given the experimental treatment in the coming weeks. “There are lots of good reasons for thinking it might well be effective – stopping the virus from reproducing, stopping the virus from causing damage, improving survival for patients,” Martin Landray at the University of Oxford, who is co-leading the RECOVERY trial, told the BBC. “Monoclonal, or targeted, antibodies are already used to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases,” said Fiona Watt, executive chair of the Medical Research Council in the UK, in a statement. “The new trial will tell us whether antibodies that attack the virus can be an effective treatment for covid-19.”

An email seen by the BBC reveals that UK government chief scientific advisor Patrick Vallance argued that the UK’s coronavirus lockdown restrictions be imposed earlier than they actually were, and in response he was given a “telling off” from other senior officials. Vallance referred to advice given by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies on 16 March, suggesting “additional social-distancing measures” be implemented “as soon as possible.” The UK went into lockdown on 23 March, about two months after the country’s first confirmed case, which some researchers blame for the UK’s high number of coronavirus deaths.

Israel has become the first country to announce a second nationwide lockdown to begin Friday and last three weeks. It is an effort to contain a second-wave surge of new cases, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday. People will be required to stay within 500 metres of their homes, with the exception of travelling to workplaces. Schools will also be closed.

US president Donald Trump held the first indoor presidential campaign rally in months in Nevada on Sunday, despite local officials saying it violated the state’s rule limiting gatherings to 50 people. In a statement before the rally, Nevada’s governor Steve Sisolak criticised Trump’s decision saying “Now he’s decided he doesn’t have to respect our state’s laws. As usual, he doesn’t believe the rules apply to him.”

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 925,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 29 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Coronavirus family tree: Like any other biological entity, SARS-CoV-2 has a family tree. It isn’t a very old one – the virus has only been recognised since December – but it still has tales to tell.

Racism in healthcare: Covid-19 is affecting ethnic minorities more severely, but we will never understand why if we don’t collect the right data, says Alisha Dua.

Members of the public attend an NHS covid testing facility in Bolton town centre as restrictions are tightened in the area on 9 September

Anthony Devlin/Getty Images

11 September

New data suggests England’s R number could be as high as 1.7

The UK’s coronavirus epidemic is growing, according to the latest government figures. Simon Clarke at the University of Reading described this as a “massive blow to the government’s strategy to contain the spread of covid-19.” The UK’s R number – the estimated number of people each infected person goes on to infect – is between 1 and 1.2, up from between 0.9 and 1.1 last week. This data is representative of the situation two to three weeks ago, due to a time-lag in the data used to model the R, but is in line with more recent data for England from a separate study by researchers at Imperial College London, which suggests England’s R number could be as high as 1.7. 

The study, commissioned by the Department of Health and Social Care, tested over 150,000 people in communities in England between 22 August and 7 September and used this to model the R number. It found that 0.13 per cent of people tested positive – equivalent to 130 per 100,000 people in the population. The latest results from a random swab testing survey by the Office for National Statistics also indicate an increase in infections in communities in England and Wales in recent weeks.

The rise in cases “suggests that the recent uptick in cases is not just because of greater testing,” said Clarke in a statement. “It’s likely that the coronavirus is circulating more freely out in the community again, meaning we are likely to need greater restrictions on our lives to push the transmission rate back down again.”

Other coronavirus news

A new coronavirus contact tracing app will go live across England and Wales on 24 September, the government announced today. The new app will allow people to scan QR codes to register visits to bars and restaurants and will use Apple and Google’s method for detecting other smartphones nearby. The UK government was previously forced to abandon development of an earlier app, built on different technology, due to its inability to recognise a significant proportion of Apple and Android devices. Scotland’s app, Protect Scotland, went live yesterday.

Birmingham in England is being put under a local lockdown due to a spike in cases. The city now has the second highest rate of coronavirus infection in England, after Bolton. There were 85.4 cases per 100,000 people in Birmingham during the week ending 7 September, up from 32 in the previous week. People in Birmingham will no longer be allowed to meet with other households.

India has recorded the highest number of daily new coronavirus cases in a single country since the pandemic began, with 96,551 cases recorded in the country on Thursday.

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 910,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 28.2 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Reports of reinfection: In recent weeks, the first confirmed reports of people who have been re-infected with the coronavirus have begun to trickle in. Such cases suggest that, in some people at least, the immune system doesn’t develop lasting protection against the virus. How worried should we be?

An adult singer from the York Minster Choir walks to rehearse ahead of a performance in York, England.

Ian Forsyth/Getty Images

10 September

Latest figures show significant jump in weekly coronavirus cases in England

The number of people who tested positive for the coronavirus in England was 9864 in the week ending 2 September, up 47 per cent from 6732 in the previous week, according to the latest figures from NHS Test and Trace. It’s the highest number of weekly positive cases recorded since the system was launched in May. During the same week, NHS Test and Trace only managed to reach 69.2 per cent of the contacts of people diagnosed with the virus in England – below the target of 80 per cent or more recommended by government scientific advisors to limit infections from spreading. 

Public health specialists have raised concerns about the feasibility of government plans announced yesterday to spend £100 billion on expanding testing to 10 million tests per day by early 2021. Chaand Nagpaul, council chairman of the British Medical Association told the BBC it is unclear how these tests will work, given the “huge problems” with lab capacity. Sarah-Jane Marsh, director for testing at NHS Test and Trace apologised for the problems with the testing scheme earlier this week. Even if testing can be expanded, concerns remain about accuracy and contact tracing capacity. Transport secretary Grant Shapps told BBC Breakfast this morning that the technology to carry out the plan doesn’t currently exist.

Other coronavirus news

US president Donald Trump admitted to playing down the threat posed by the coronavirus in March, during an interview with journalist Bob Woodward revealed in his forthcoming book. “I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told Woodward on 19 March. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.” Trump also acknowledged the virus was “more deadly than even your strenuous flu” as early as February – a time when he was publicly saying the virus was less of a concern than the flu.

AstraZeneca chief executive Pascal Soriot today told an online briefing he is hopeful that the company’s coronavirus vaccine candidate could be ready for global distribution in the first half of 2021. Trials of the vaccine, which is being developed in partnership with the University of Oxford, were put on hold yesterday after a participant developed neurological symptoms. An independent safety committee is currently reviewing data on the affected participant, said Soriot. 

Scotland’s Test and Protect system, the nation’s equivalent to NHS Test and Trace in England, today released its Protect Scotland app, which alerts people if they have been in close contact with someone who later tests positive for the coronavirus. Like Northern Ireland’s app, Scotland’s new app was built using the toolkit provided by Apple and Google. England doesn’t yet have a widely available equivalent app but has been testing a similar one on the Isle of Wight and in the London borough of Newham over the past month, after abandoning development of an NHS Covid-19 app built on different technology, due to its inability to recognise 96 per cent of Apple phones and 25 per cent of Google Android devices.

University students in England may be required to stay in their student accommodation and avoid visiting their family homes in the event of local coronavirus outbreaks, according to new guidance published by the UK Department for Education today. Students with covid-19 symptoms should “self-isolate in their current accommodation”, the guidance says. It also suggests that universities group students living in halls of residence into “households” that include all of those living on the same floor or sharing communal facilities, potentially including as many as 30 students. The guidelines add that private gatherings, including those within student households, must still be limited to a maximum of six people.

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 905,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 27.9 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Coronavirus and flu: Doctors are fretting about concurrent outbreaks of flu and covid-19 but some virologists are worrying about another scenario: a Frankenvirus. Could the coronavirus merge with another virus to create a new threat?

A general view of analytical chemists at AstraZeneca headquarters in Sydney

DAN HIMBRECHTS/AAP/PA Images

9 September

UK government plans to expand coronavirus testing to 10 million tests a day

The UK government plans to carry out 10 million coronavirus tests per day by early 2021, according to documents obtained by the BMJ. Currently, the UK’s testing capacity is 350,000 per day. As part of the new plan, £100 billion will go towards the expansion of the country’s testing programme, the documents revealed, and GSK and AstraZeneca are among firms named for supplying tests and laboratory capacity respectively. 

Martin McKee at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told the BMJ the plan is too optimistic and disregards “enormous problems with the existing testing and tracing programmes.” NHS Test and Trace in particular has been criticised for its repeated failure to reach a sufficient proportion of the contacts of people who test positive for the virus in England. Between 28 May and 26 August, the scheme reached 78.5 per cent of the contacts of people diagnosed in England – below the target of 80 per cent or more recommended by government scientific advisors. 

Jon Meeks, a biostatistician at the University of Birmingham who reviewed the documents for the BMJ, tweeted that the documents “show a severe lack of science or reality. No consideration of harms that screening us all would create.” In the BMJ he raised the problem of false positives: “If you test 60 million people [with a 99% accurate test] we will be classifying a group the size of the population of Sheffield as wrongly having covid.”

Other coronavirus news

Advanced trials of one of the most promising coronavirus vaccine candidates have been put on hold after a participant became ill in the UK. Drug firm AstraZeneca, which is developing the vaccine in partnership with the University of Oxford, has voluntarily paused the trials. This is standard procedure in vaccine development, and allows time for the researchers to determine the cause of the illness and ensure the safety of participants. AstraZeneca described the action as “routine” in a statement to STAT. The vaccine candidate has already passed preliminary trials, and is now undergoing phase II and III trials involving approximately 30,000 participants in the US as well as in the UK, Brazil and South Africa. These larger trials are designed to test whether it can prevent people from becoming infected with the coronavirus or getting ill with covid-19, as well as assessing long term safety.

Social gatherings in England will be limited to a maximum of six people from Monday 14 September, in an effort to tackle a recent spike in coronavirus cases. People will not be allowed to gather in groups larger than six either indoors or outdoors, with the exception of gatherings in schools, workplaces and some events such as weddings and funerals. UK health minister Matt Hancock told the BBC today that the new rule is “super simple” and will be “enforced by the police.” People could be fined between £100 and £3200 for violating the rule, he said. “We’ve seen in other countries around the world where they don’t take action then you end up with this second peak, resulting in more hospitalisations and more deaths, and we don’t want to see that here,” said Hancock.

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 898,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 27.6 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Severe symptoms: An out-of-control human peptide called bradykinin could be responsible for some of the varied and sometimes deadly symptoms seen in people who have contracted the coronavirus. We already have drugs to control bradykinin, which are being tested as treatments for people with covid-19.

People walk on the street in central Bolton, Greater Manchester

Jon Super/Xinhua/PA Images

8 September

New restrictions could be introduced across England due to surge in cases 

The government could tighten restrictions on people meeting in England following the recent spike in coronavirus cases. According to several reports, the government could reduce the number of people allowed to meet outdoors to six, down from the current limit of 30. Restrictions on how many people can meet indoors may also become tighter, according to Sky News. Under current guidelines, only two households can congregate indoors. 

England’s deputy chief medical officer, Jonathan Van-Tam, said the new wave of cases was because “people have relaxed too much.” Today, 2420 people tested positive for the coronavirus in the UK, down from 2948 on Monday but still high compared to daily figures in recent months. John Edmunds, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies told ITV that the UK as a whole is in a “risky period” because the country’s R number – the number of people each infected person goes on to infect – has risen above 1. An R number higher than 1 means that an epidemic is growing. 

Some measures are already tightening in some parts of the UK, including Bolton, in Greater Manchester. The town currently has the highest case rate in the country, with 120 cases of the virus per 100,000 people. Pubs and restaurants there will now have to be take-away only and stay closed between 10 pm and 5 am, UK health minister Matt Hancock announced today. The current guidance, which says people should not socialise with those from a different household, will be made legally binding, he told MPs. The number of people allowed to visit hospitals and care homes will also be reduced under the new measures. “The rise in cases in Bolton is partly due to socialising by people in their 20s and 30s. We know this from contact tracing,” said Hancock, adding “we’ve identified a number of pubs at which the virus has spread significantly.” 

Other coronavirus news

Amid increasing reports of people being told to attend drive-through testing centres hundreds of kilometres away from their homes, the director of testing for NHS Test and Trace, Sarah-Jane Marsh, tweeted an apology today to people in England who haven’t been able to get tested for the coronavirus. Marsh described laboratory processing as “the critical pinch-point” and said “we are doing all we can to expand quickly.” Last month researchers warned that the UK would probably face a second wave of coronavirus infections in winter if the country’s testing and contact tracing system didn’t improve by September.

There were 101 deaths from covid-19 in England and Wales during the week ending 28 August, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics. This is down from 138 deaths in the previous week and is also the lowest number of deaths from the disease recorded since the week ending 13 March.

A school in Nottinghamshire in England has been forced to close after its head teacher was admitted to hospital with covid-19. Pupils and staff at Trowell Primary School have been told to stay home and self-isolate until 21 September. In the week since pupils returned to classrooms, coronavirus outbreaks have been reported at dozens of schools in England and Wales. Across Liverpool, an estimated 200 pupils are self-isolating after positive covid-19 cases at five schools, while five teachers at a school in Suffolk have tested positive.Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 897,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 27.3 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

What is a vaccine and how do they work?: The latest video in our new YouTube series, Science with Sam, explains how vaccines work by training your immune system to recognise viruses and bacteria. We also take a look at the unprecedented worldwide effort to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus, and consider the challenges involved in making, testing and distributing covid-19 vaccines.

People undertake a coronavirus test at a walk-in test facility in Bolton, UK, September 7, 2020

Phil Noble/REUTERS

7 September

The UK recorded its highest number of daily new cases since May on Sunday

There were 2948 new coronavirus cases confirmed in the UK today, down slightly from the 2988 new cases confirmed on Sunday, which marked the highest daily increase in cases recorded in the country since 23 May. “This is especially concerning for a Sunday when report numbers are generally lower than most other days of the week,” said Paul Hunter at the University of East Anglia in a statement. “Sadly it is beginning to look like we are moving into a period of exponential growth in the UK epidemic and if so we can expect further increases over coming weeks,” said Hunter.

UK health minister Matt Hancock yesterday expressed concern about the rise in cases, which he said were largely among people under 25, especially those between 17 and 21. “Of course younger people can pass on the disease to their grandparents and we do not want to see that,” Hancock said yesterday. In France and Spain, rises in infections among younger adults in August were followed by higher numbers of hospital admissions for older and more vulnerable people in subsequent weeks. “It’s concerning because we’ve seen a rise in cases in France, in Spain, in some other countries across Europe, and nobody wants to see a second wave here,” Hancock said today.

Hancock’s concerns about younger people transmitting the virus to more vulnerable groups are shared by the government’s scientific advisors. A report endorsed by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies published last week warns there is a significant risk that reopening universities could amplify local and national transmission, adding that “it is highly likely that there will be significant outbreaks.” Because of the higher proportion of asymptomatic cases among younger age groups, cases and outbreaks are also likely to be harder to detect among student populations, says the report.

Other coronavirus news

India confirmed 90,632 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours, the country’s health ministry reported on Sunday, setting a new global record for the number of infections recorded in a single country in one day. India has confirmed more than 4.2 million cases since the pandemic began, the second-highest number for any country after the US.

The Tokyo Olympic Games will take place next year “with or without covid”, according to John Coates, vice-president of the International Olympic Committee. Previously, the committee said they would cancel the Games scheduled for July 2021 if necessary. 

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 889,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 27.1 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Keeping schools safe: There is wide agreement that schools must reopen, and stay open. Achieving this is fraught with unknowns, however. Although it seems that children are less likely to transmit and get sick from the coronavirus, we don’t know why that is the case. Should an outbreak occur, pupils’ families and school staff could still be at risk. In order to keep schools safe, governments must be prepared to shut down other areas of society to keep overall levels of virus transmission low.

Sputnik V, Gamaleya National Center

THE RUSSIAN DIRECT INVESTMENT FUND

4 September

Russia’s vaccine candidate produced antibody and T-cell responses in early-stage trial

A preliminary trial of Russia’s coronavirus vaccine candidate Sputnik V suggests it is safe and induces an immune response. The vaccine was approved by Russian authorities last month, before any data had been made public or a large-scale trial had begun. In the preliminary trial, it was tested in a small group of 76 healthy volunteers. All the volunteers developed coronavirus-specific antibodies and T-cells, and none experienced serious adverse reactions, according to results published in The Lancet today. However, it still isn’t clear whether the vaccine protects people from becoming infected with the coronavirus or from getting ill. This will be investigated through phase III testing, which is already underway, and which is expected to include 40,000 people across Russia. 

Some researchers are concerned that vaccine developers may come under political pressure to release doses of the vaccine for administration to the general public, before phase III testing is complete. “A vaccine should not be used to short-cut the implementation of public health interventions that are already known to be safe and effective, until the vaccine itself has been shown to be safe and effective,” said Eleanor Riley at the University of Edinburgh, in a statement. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) today said it does not expect widespread coronavirus vaccination until mid-2021. “We are not expecting to see widespread vaccination until the middle of next year,” said WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris at a briefing in Geneva. Harris said phase III trials will need to go on long enough to determine how “truly protective” and safe a given vaccine candidate is.

Other coronavirus news

Preliminary findings from a study by Public Health England found low rates of coronavirus infection among children and teachers in pre-school and primary school. Researchers took swabs from more than 12,000 children and teachers across 131 primary schools in England in June and early July, and detected only three cases of the virus. Ravindra Gupta at the University of Cambridge said the findings are not surprising, since limited numbers of children were attending schools in England during this time period. “We must not be complacent and falsely reassured,” said Gupta in a statement. “From September there will be more children, more mixing, more crowding and over winter less time will be spent outdoors,” he said, adding that there will be less chance to socially distance in schools in the coming months than it was possible to do in June.

New Zealand has recorded its first death from covid-19 since 28 May. A man in Auckland died after being admitted to hospital. His death is the first connected to a recent outbreak in the city, including 152 cases.

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 870,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 26.3 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Social distancing: Computer scientists have used a database of public cameras to keep track of how well people are adhering to social distancing guidelines.

A medical worker takes a swab to test for the coronavirus at a drive-in testing facility

ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP via Getty Images

3 September

New funding announced for trials of rapid new coronavirus tests in the UK

The UK government today announced £500 million worth of funding for trials of rapid coronavirus tests, including recently developed swab and saliva tests that can be performed in 90 minutes or less. The trials will also include community pilots investigating the effectiveness of repeat testing in schools and among the general population. “We are backing innovative new tests that are fast, accurate and easier to use and will maximise the impact and scale of testing, helping us to get back to a more normal way of life,” UK health minister Matt Hancock said in a statement today. 

Having quicker tests could help speed up the identification of infected people and the tracing of their close contacts. But having a rapid test is “useless” if contacts can’t be identified because the tracing system is overwhelmed, Joshua Moon at the University of Sussex said in a statement. NHS Test and Trace has been criticised for its repeated failure to reach a sufficient proportion of the contacts of people who test positive for the coronavirus in England. According to the latest figures, 78.5 per cent of the contacts of people diagnosed with the virus in England were reached by NHS Test and Trace between 28 May and 26 August – below the target of 80 per cent or more recommended by government scientific advisors.

Other coronavirus news

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has notified states to prepare for the roll-out of a coronavirus vaccine within two months. “Limited covid-19 vaccine doses may be available by early November 2020,” according to CDC documents first published by the New York Times.  And in a letter to governors on 27 August, first obtained by McClatchy, CDC director Robert Redfield wrote: “CDC urgently requests your assistance in expediting applications for [vaccine] distribution facilities and, if necessary, asks that you consider waiving requirements that would prevent these facilities from becoming fully operational by November 1, 2020.” But public health researchers are concerned that the move is being driven less by evidence and instead by a political effort to rush a vaccine before the November election. Michael Osterholm at the University of Minnesota told the Associated Press that “the public health community wants a safe and effective vaccine as much as anybody […] but the data have to be clear and compelling.”

Pharmaceutical giants GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi will start testing their protein-based coronavirus vaccine candidate in humans for the first time, to assess its safety and ability to induce an immune response. If this and subsequent trials are successful, the companies have said they could be requesting regulatory approval in the first half of next year. 

A surge in demand for coronavirus tests has left the UK struggling to keep up. Some people with symptoms who tried to book coronavirus swab tests online told the BBC they were directed to testing centres more than 100 miles away from their homes. This could act as a “big disincentive to being tested”, Paul Hunter at the University of East Anglia told the BBC, potentially limiting efforts to contain localised spikes in cases.

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 864,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 26 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Pharmacist holding packs of dexamethasone anti-inflammatory steroid tablets.

LEWIS HOUGHTON / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

2 September

Steroid drugs that reduce inflammation found to save lives from severe covid-19

A group of drugs that reduce inflammation have been confirmed to increase survival in people with severe covid-19. In a landmark study bringing together all the trials done so far looking at the effect of steroids on coronavirus, researchers in the World Health Organization (WHO) REACT working group analysed results from seven randomised clinical trials, which included 1703 critically ill patients with covid-19. They compared the outcomes of those who had received one of three corticosteroid drugs – dexamethasone, hydrocortisone or methylprednisolone – with those who received standard care or a placebo. The researchers found that 32 per cent of those who received a corticosteroid treatment had died from the disease after 28 days, compared to 40 per cent of those who did not. 

“The evidence for benefit is strongest for dexamethasone,” Stephen Evans at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said in a statement. These new results, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, add weight to earlier findings from the RECOVERY trial, which found that dexamethasone reduced deaths in critically ill covid-19 patients by a third for patients on ventilators and by a fifth for those receiving oxygen – the first drug shown to do so. “This analysis increases confidence that [dexamethasone] has a really worthwhile role in critically ill patients with covid-19,” Evans said. As a result of the study, the WHO is expected to update its guidance on treatment. In the UK, the drug has been in use for treating severely ill covid-19 patients since June.

Other coronavirus news

The US will not take part in a global initiative to develop and distribute a future coronavirus vaccine, because of its association with the WHO. More than 170 countries are participating in the initiative, called COVAX, which is working to ensure the equitable and fair global allocation of a potential vaccine. “We will not be constrained by multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China,” White House spokesperson Judd Deere said in a statement. The US is due to withdraw from the WHO entirely next July – a move Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has vowed to reverse if he is elected in November.

Coronavirus restrictions have been eased in parts of Greater Manchester, Lancashire and West Yorkshire in England, with the exceptions of Bolton and Trafford in Greater Manchester. The government today announced that restrictions on meetings between different households indoors in these areas, which were also due to be lifted today, would now remain in place due to increasing infection rates. Bolton currently has one of the highest rates of new virus cases in England, with 59 cases per 100,000 people in the week ending 29 August. Similar restrictions have also been introduced in the Glasgow area in Scotland, which has seen a rise in cases over the last two days.

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 858,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 25.8 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Schools reopening: Schools across England and the US are about to reopen their doors to students who have been at home for months thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. What is the best way to keep children, and school staff and parents, safe?

Face coverings in schools: Should children returning to school wear face coverings? Official advice on this has evolved during the pandemic.

Oxford vaccine: A large trial of a coronavirus vaccine developed by the University of Oxford has begun in the US. With similar trials already under way in the UK and Brazil, hopes are rising that we could find out if the vaccine works before the end of the year.

Pupils wash their hands as they arrive on the first day back to school at Charles Dickens Primary School in London

Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire/PA Images

1 September

Pupils around the world return to schools with new coronavirus measures in place

Millions of pupils returned to school today for the first time since coronavirus lockdowns were introduced, including pupils in France, Poland, Russia, England and Wales as well as in Wuhan in China, where the coronavirus was first detected. Schools in England and Wales have introduced hygiene and social distancing measures in line with recently updated government guidance, including wearing of face coverings by pupils in communal areas and staggering of break times for different year groups. But a survey of 653 parents in these regions by YouGov revealed that 17 per cent were considering keeping their children out of school due to concerns about coronavirus. 

UK schools minister Nick Gibb today urged parents to send their children back to school. Doing so would “help them catch up on the lost education they’ll inevitably have suffered in the lockdown period,” he told the BBC Breakfast show. A survey of thousands of teachers by the National Foundation for Educational Research suggests that children in England are three months behind in their studies following lockdown, and that the estimated learning gap between advantaged and disadvantaged pupils has risen by 46 per cent. 98 per cent of the teachers in the survey, which was conducted at the end of the last school year in July, said their pupils were further behind in the curriculum than they should have been at the time.

Other coronavirus news

The UK’s prime minister Boris Johnson today told MPs that people in the UK were returning to the office in “huge numbers”, although no evidence has emerged to support the claim. A spokesperson for Johnson told the Huffington Post “people will be returning to the office after the summer break and also children going back to school gives parents some added flexibility.” The UK government’s campaign to encourage people to return to offices launched today. But in a recent survey of more than 6000 workers who have been working from home due to the pandemic, nine out of 10 said they would like to continue to do so.

Pharmaceutical giant Astrazeneca has expanded its agreement with UK company Oxford Biomedica to scale up production of its coronavirus vaccine candidate. Oxford Biomedica has agreed to produce tens of millions of doses of the vaccine candidate, which is being developed by AstraZeneca in partnership with the University of Oxford. The candidate recently entered late-stage trials in the US, with 30,000 people enrolled. In a statement, AstraZeneca said its global manufacturing capacity was close to 3 billion doses.

Although there has been an increase in the use of face coverings in the UK, only 13 per cent of people who wear reusable face masks are maintaining them in a way that is helpful to stopping the spread of coronavirus, according to a poll of 1944 people by YouGov. The survey found that the use of face coverings in the UK increased from 38 per cent to 69 per cent from mid to late July. However, only 13 per cent of people who said they wear washable face masks also said they wash them after every use and at 60 degrees C or higher.

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 851,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 25.5 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Immune response: Throughout the coronavirus pandemic there have been fierce debates over the science – when to lock down, whether face coverings help and whether children are less susceptible, for example. The latest row is over whether we have been ignoring a crucial part of our immune response to the virus: T-cells.

Children wait outside the school gate in Johannesburg, South Africa.

KIM LUDBROOK/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

28 August

Children are at “strikingly low” risk of getting severely ill from coronavirus

Children are much less likely to get severe covid-19 than adults, and it is very rare for them to die from it, according to a UK study that was published in the BMJ today. The study tracked 651 under-18s admitted to hospital with coronavirus between January and July in England, Scotland and Wales. Six children died, 1 per cent of the total, and they had all had other severe illnesses before the virus struck, some of which were themselves life-limiting. The authors say this is a “strikingly low” death rate compared with 27 per cent for all ages in the population as a whole over the same time period. The findings are in line with previous similar research. Young people make up 1 to 2 per cent of cases of covid-19 worldwide, although it’s not clear why they seem to be less affected.

“There have been no deaths in otherwise healthy school-age children,” Calum Semple at the University of Liverpool told the BBC. “There is no direct harm from children going back to school,” he said. The findings come as some UK schools have been reopening for all their pupils for the first time since lockdown in March, with most schools in England due to be back by next week.

Other coronavirus news

The UK has announced plans for quickly immunising large numbers of people if a coronavirus vaccine is developed before winter. They involve allowing a wider range of healthcare staff to give shots, such as midwives, physiotherapists and dentists, as well as pharmacists, who already administer flu vaccines. It also grants powers to approve any vaccine that is proven safe and effective before the end of the year to the Medicines Healthcare Regulatory Agency. This body will become responsible for approving all drugs and vaccines from the start of 2021 once the UK’s Brexit transition period is over.

Schools reopening in the US have found Legionnaires’ disease bacteria in their water supply, which can cause deadly pneumonia. The Legionella microbe was found in the water supply of five schools in Ohio and four in Pennsylvania last week, and experts say it could be in more.

The World Health Organization is trying to get more countries to join Covax, its coronavirus vaccine allocation scheme, according to documents seen by Reuters. The WHO plan would see countries pooling funds so that if one vaccine succeeds, all participants will get a fair allocation. But the UN agency has struggled to get enough richer nations on board. Countries including the UK, the US and Japan have made their own deals with manufacturers developing vaccines, securing millions of doses for their own citizens. 

Several large US states have said they will not follow official federal policy to stop testing people who think they have been exposed to the coronavirus but who do not have symptoms. In a rebuke to the new testing policy announced by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), California, Texas, Florida, New York and four other states have said they will continue with the old regime. The CDC’s move provoked claims that it was a politically motivated move to lower the number of people testing positive ahead of the 2020 election.

Coronavirus deaths

The worldwide death toll has passed 832,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 24.5 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Internet outage slows covid-19 contact tracing: Health officials were unable to trace and isolate the contacts of thousands of people who tested positive for the coronavirus in England until up to a week later.

A woman walks past chairs painted with the colours of the Tour de France leaders’ jerseys on the seafront in Nice, France

ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT/AFP via Getty Images

27 August

WHO warns Europe is entering “tricky moment” as coronavirus cases climb

As some European countries have continued to report growth in covid-19 cases, governments are responding by tightening up restrictions and safety measures. France reported 5429 daily cases today, up from 3776 a week ago, and Italy counted 1366 cases, its biggest daily increase in more than three months and up against 642 a week ago. Daily numbers in other major European countries are relatively stable, with Spain at 7296, Germany at 1507 and the UK at 1048.

The French prime minister Jean Castex warned the country had seen an “undeniable surge” of cases and the epidemic “could become exponential”, with cases rising as quickly as they did in the early days of the pandemic. The virus is now circulating in 20 of the country’s 101 “departments”, up from two previously. With France’s reproduction number – the average number of people one infected person will likely infect – now at 1.4, Castex said masks will become mandatory in Paris. The 21-day Tour de France will still go ahead this Saturday.

The German government today rejected calls to relax restrictions, with a leaked plan saying private parties will be limited to 25 people and the anticipated end of a ban on large public gatherings in October will instead be extended to the end of the year.

Hans Kluge at the World Health Organization said today that Europe is entering a “tricky moment” as schools reopen across the continent, though he stressed that schools had not been a “main contributor” to the epidemic. Asked by New Scientist at a press conference today if European countries’ responses to growing cases this week are commensurate with keeping the virus in check, Maria van Kerkhove at the WHO said: “What we are seeing is countries applying different measures. What we are seeing are targeted, tailored approaches. Hopefully these are time-bound.” On measures such as mandating face coverings and limiting the size of gatherings, she said: “All of these are different tools that may need to be applied. I think what we’re seeing is this calibration, of putting in efforts to suppress transmission to keep it at a low level while allowing societies to open up. This is one of the critical things we are all trying to figure out now.”

Other coronavirus news

The number of patients getting heart disease services at hospitals in the US and UK dropped by more than half during the countries’ lockdown, researchers have found. Writing in the journal Open Heart, they warned cardiology departments need to be prepared for a “significant increase in workload” in the coming months as a result.

In the UK, government statistics today show that three months after the launch of England’s contact tracing scheme, it is still falling short of reaching 80 per cent of close contacts of people who have tested positive for covid-19, the level the government’s scientific advisers say is needed. Three quarters of close contacts were reached between 13-19 August. Nearly 300,000 people have been reached since the system’s launch.

Separately, anyone in the UK on a low income who needs to self-isolate for 10 days and cannot work from home will be eligible to get £13 a day from the government in areas affected by local outbreaks, health secretary Matt Hancock said today.

A drug used to help cats with another coronavirus has been found to show promise in tackling the current coronavirus outbreak. The drug, GC376, and its parent, GC373, are “strong drug candidates for the treatment of human coronavirus infections because they have already been successful in animals,” the team write in Nature Communications. Here’s the New Scientist guide to all the latest on covid-19 treatments.

Coronavirus deaths

The worldwide death toll has passed 826,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 24 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Is the rush to roll out a coronavirus vaccine undermining safety? Some shortcuts are being taken in the race to get a coronavirus vaccine approved, but there are also more resources, openness and scrutiny than ever before.

Pupils in Glasgow, Scotland return to school after lockdown on 12 August

Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

26 August

Face coverings will now be mandatory for secondary school pupils in areas of England under lockdown 

Secondary school pupils in areas of England under local lockdowns will now be required to wear face coverings in all communal areas except classrooms, after the government reversed its guidance last night. The government has been under mounting pressure from headteachers to adopt a stricter policy on the use of face coverings ahead of schools reopening next month. Within coronavirus hotspots, “it probably does make sense in confined areas outside the classroom to use a face covering in the corridor and elsewhere,” UK prime minister Boris Johnson told journalists today, citing recently updated World Health Organization guidelines. The new rule won’t apply to schools in areas that aren’t under lockdown, although head teachers in any secondary school will have the flexibility to introduce their own rules. In Wales, the decision on the use of face coverings in schools will be left to individual schools and councils.

Other coronavirus news

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been criticised for changing its guidelines on coronavirus testing to say that some people without symptoms may not require a test, even if they have been in contact with someone who tested positive for the virus. The change has not been explained by CDC leaders. Leana Wen, a doctor and public health professor at George Washington University, told CNN, “These are exactly the people who should be tested,” as they are key to contact tracing.

Fewer than 40,000 cases were confirmed in the US yesterday and daily new coronavirus cases there have been falling, after peaking on 22 July at about 70,000, though this may be due to insufficient testing. The total number of tests administered has fallen from an average of more than 820,000 per day in mid-August to about 690,000 per day in the last week or so.

Coronavirus deaths

The worldwide death toll has passed 820,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 23.9 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Vaccine race: Some shortcuts are being taken in the race to get a coronavirus vaccine approved, but there are also more resources, openness and scrutiny than ever before.

Face coverings: Do you get angry when you see someone without a face covering? They might have a good reason to avoid one, even if it isn’t obvious.

Father and two children walking to school wearing face masks

Sally Anscombe/Getty Images

25 August

UK government under pressure to review policy on face coverings in schools in England

There is growing pressure on the UK government to review its policy on the wearing of face coverings in schools in England, after the Scottish government today announced that secondary school pupils will have to wear them in communal areas from Monday. Public Health England’s current guidance, issued in July, doesn’t recommend the use of face coverings in schools. The Association of School and College Leaders – a headteachers’ union in the UK – has criticised the lack of clarity around the rules on whether teachers and pupils can wear face coverings in schools in England. “The guidance is silent on what schools should do if staff or pupils want to wear face coverings,” the union’s general secretary, Geoff Barton told the BBC. During a visit to the south-west of England today, UK prime minister Boris Johnson said the government is continuing to look at the changing medical evidence, adding “if we need to change the advice then of course we will.” The Welsh government has said it will review its position on face coverings in schools. 

Earlier this month, the World Health Organization issued new guidance saying that children above age 12 should wear face masks in line with recommended practice for adults in the place where they live. Recent outbreaks in Scotland “reinforce the idea that covid-19 transmission in schools is potentially substantial”, said Rowland Kao at the University of Edinburgh in a statement. “Should masks be adopted, their use must be accompanied by awareness of the need for good mask hygiene and regular handwashing.”

Other coronavirus news

Two more patients have been reported to have been reinfected with the coronavirus, one in the Netherlands and another in Belgium. Yesterday, researchers at the University of Hong Kong announced that they had documented the first case of coronavirus reinfection. “That someone would emerge with a reinfection, that doesn’t make me nervous,” Marion Koopmans at Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands told Dutch broadcaster NOS. “We have to see whether this happens more often.” 

Coronavirus cases in Spain are continuing to surge, with 175.7 cases per 100,000 people, according to the latest 14-day cumulative figures from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. This is compared to 62.8 cases per 100,000 people in France and 22.5 cases per 100,000 people in the UK. Unions in Madrid last week warned that the primary care system was “on the edge of collapse” due to lack of staff and capacity for testing.

People living in the Gaza Strip have been put under a lockdown after local authorities confirmed the first locally acquired cases of the coronavirus. A 48-hour lockdown went into effect on Monday evening across the territory.

Bali in Indonesia will not reopen to foreign tourists this year due to concerns about rising coronavirus cases.

Coronavirus deaths

The worldwide death toll has passed 814,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 23.6 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Less deadly in Europe: It is becoming increasingly clear that people are less likely to die if they get covid-19 now compared with earlier in the pandemic, at least in Europe, but the reasons why are still shrouded in uncertainty.

Plasma treatment: Blood plasma donated by people who have recovered from covid-19 will be used as a treatment for the infection in the US. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted an emergency use authorisation for the treatment on 23 August, but the evidence that it works is lacking.

First case of reinfection: A healthy 33-year-old man is the first person confirmed to have caught the coronavirus twice, according to unpublished research from the University of Hong Kong. As details of the case emerge, researchers say there is still much we don’t know.

Hong Kong residents receive free covid-19 test kits

MIGUEL CANDELA/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

24 August

Researchers say they have detected the first case of coronavirus reinfection

Researchers at the University of Hong Kong say they have documented the first case of a person being reinfected with the coronavirus. The team analysed virus samples taken from a man when he first tested positive for the coronavirus in late March, and again when he tested positive for a second time in mid-August. They discovered several differences in the sequences of the virus from the first and second infections, suggesting the man had been infected with two separate strains of the virus, rather than one long-lasting infection. Their findings have been accepted for publication in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal.

What will the discovery mean for the dozens of vaccine candidates being developed to protect people against the coronavirus? It may indicate that being infected with the virus doesn’t necessarily protect people against future infections, said David Strain at the University of Exeter in a statement. “Vaccinations work by simulating infection to the body, thereby allowing the body to develop antibodies. If antibodies don’t provide lasting protection, we will need to revert to a strategy of viral near-elimination in order to return to a more normal life,” says Strain. But Brendan Wren at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said it is important to take these results into context: “This is a very rare example of reinfection and it should not negate the global drive to develop covid-19 vaccines.”

Other coronavirus news

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Sunday issued emergency use authorisation for convalescent plasma as a treatment for severe covid-19. This is drawn from people who have recovered from infection with the coronavirus and contains antibodies to fight the virus. In a statement the FDA said that “the known and potential benefits of the [treatment] outweigh the known and potential risks.” More than 70,000 people in the US have received convalescent plasma as a treatment for covid-19 since March, through a programme run by the Mayo Clinic. FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn said studies have found a 35 per cent improvement in survival for covid-19 patients given the plasma.

At least 17 staff and pupils at a school in Dundee have tested positive for the coronavirus less than two weeks after pupils returned to schools in Scotland. Kingspark school closed last Wednesday and pupils have been told to self-isolate until 3 September. Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon today announced that secondary school pupils in Scotland may be advised to wear face coverings, in light of new guidance from the World Health Organization. Schools in England are due to reopen in September, but a spokesperson for the prime minister today said there are no plans to review the current guidance in England for the wearing of face coverings in schools.

Coronavirus deaths

The worldwide death toll has passed 809,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 23.4 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Australia’s second wave: Australia’s second wave of the coronavirus appears to be finally subsiding, but the country isn’t out of the woods yet.

Vaccine technology: Prevention is better than cure, so we should start using genetic techniques to stop dangerous animal diseases jumping to humans, say Scott Nuismer and James Bull.

Commuters arrive for work at Victoria Station in London

Alex Lentati/LNP/Shutterstock

21 August

Coronavirus R number in UK rises slightly but infections appear to be levelling off

In the UK, the latest estimate for the R number, the number of people each coronavirus case infects, has risen to between 0.9 and 1.1, up slightly from 0.8 to 1.0 the previous week. However, due to a time lag in the data used to model the R number, this is more representative of the situation two to three weeks ago. Estimates for the infection growth rates range between -3 and 1 per cent. This suggests infections in the UK are levelling off on average, in a continuation of the trend observed over the last few weeks. This is consistent with the latest results from the random swab testing survey by the Office for National Statistics, which suggests about 24,600 people in England – 1 in 2200 – had the virus in the week ending 13 August, compared to 28,300 people – 1 in 1900 – in the week ending 9 August

Local coronavirus restrictions in place in parts of northern England will be lifted on Saturday. People from two different households in Wigan in Greater Manchester and Rossendale and Darwen in Lancashire will now be allowed to meet in homes and gardens. But restrictions will remain in place in some other parts of Greater Manchester and Lancashire, as well as in parts of West Yorkshire and in Leicester. Oldham, which had the highest rate of infections in the UK last week at 103.1 cases per 100,000 people, has avoided the introduction of restrictions but will be subjected to “a more targeted intervention”, according to the Department of Health and Social Care. 

Other coronavirus news

Travellers arriving in the UK from Croatia, Austria and Trinidad and Tobago will be required to quarantine for two weeks upon arrival, starting at 4.00 am on Saturday, UK transport minister Grant Shapps announced yesterday. There are currently 47.2 cases per 100,000 people in Croatia compared to 21.2 per 100,000 people in the UK, according to cumulative figures for the last 14 days from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Those arriving in the UK from Portugal, which currently has a case rate of 28.5 per 100,000 people, will no longer need to self-isolate. Shapps said it would be “too difficult” for the UK to adopt a more targeted approach to the quarantine rules like Germany’s, affecting travellers from specific regions rather than entire countries, due to the difficulty in assessing infection patterns overseas in sufficient detail.

Coronavirus cases have been reported among pupils or teachers at 41 schools in Germany’s capital Berlin, less than two weeks after schools reopened. Berlin was one of the first places in Germany to reopen schools after the summer break. Schools in Scotland reopened earlier this month and schools in England will reopen in September. 

South Korea recorded its highest number of daily new coronavirus cases since 8 March, with 324 new cases confirmed on Thursday. There have been 732 cases linked to the new outbreak so far, 56 of which have been linked to a single church in Seoul.

Lebanon has reintroduced a partial lockdown and an overnight curfew in an attempt to suppress a recent spike in coronavirus infections in the aftermath of the Beirut port explosion. The country recorded 605 new cases on Thursday, its highest daily case number so far.

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 794,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 22.7 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Coronavirus and flying: Is it safe to fly with the coronavirus still circulating? That depends partly on where you are. But while hard evidence is scarce, it appears the risk of being infected with covid-19 during a flight is relatively low.

Commuters at Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof central train station in Frankfurt, Germany.

Alex Kraus/Bloomberg via Getty Images

20 August

WHO warns of “risk of resurgence” in Europe as Germany and Spain see cases surge

The risk of a resurgence of the coronavirus “has never been far away,” the World Health Organization (WHO) regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge said during a briefing today. Europe recorded 40,000 more coronavirus cases in the first week of August, compared to the first week of June, when cases were at their lowest, and cases have steadily been rising in the region, in part due to the relaxation of public health and social measures, he said. Germany recorded its highest daily number of new cases since April, with 1707 new cases confirmed on Wednesday. Spain recorded 3715 cases on the same day, the highest daily number there since the country’s lockdown was lifted in late June. “Authorities have been easing some of the restrictions and people have been dropping their guard,” said Kluge. 

Kluge thanked young people for the sacrifices they have made to protect themselves and others from covid-19 but expressed concern about people aged between 15 and 24, who account for a growing number of cases. “Low risk does not mean no risk. No one is invincible,” he said.

Other coronavirus news

England saw a 27 per cent increase in the number of people testing positive for coronavirus in the week ending 12 August compared to the previous week, according to the Department of Health and Social Care. Its latest figures state that 6616 people tested positive for the virus, whilst the number of people tested for the virus went down by 2 per cent over the same time period.

UK health minister Matt Hancock yesterday told the BBC that people in the UK should be able to return to workplaces without the need for wearing face masks, citing evidence from NHS Test and Trace that people have been largely catching the virus in meetings between households rather than in offices. But researchers, including microbiologist Simon Clarke at the University of Reading, say there isn’t sufficient data to rule out the risk of transmission within workplaces and from workplaces to households. “The virus needs to be taken into homes by someone and they will have had to pick it up from somewhere else […] even a single workplace transmission could lead to multiple onward infections in a family, household or other setting.”

India reported a record daily increase in coronavirus cases for the country today, with more than 69,652 cases confirmed, according to its health ministry.

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 788,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 22.4 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Rewilding the sky: Let’s take inspiration from the way we intervene to help degraded ecosystems recover and attempt to restore the atmosphere back to full health, taking advantage of the lull in human activity under covid-19, writes Graham Lawton.

A medical worker takes a swab sample in a drive-thru testing centre

REUTERS/Carl Recine – RC2Z2I9ILO1A

19 August

Random swab testing survey to be expanded in England and to other UK nations

Coronavirus tests will be carried out on more people in the UK to help monitor the spread of the virus, the government says. The random swab testing survey for coronavirus by the Office for National Statistics, which started in May, will be expanded to test more people in England as well as people in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the UK’s health minister Matt Hancock announced today. In England, the survey will expand from testing 28,000 people every two weeks in the community, outside of hospitals and care homes, to testing 150,000 people. Hancock said this is part of a wider effort to expand coronavirus testing in the UK.

Testing larger numbers of people will allow smaller changes in infection growth trends to be interpreted with more reliability, says biologist and medical innovation researcher Michael Hopkins at the University of Sussex. It will provide a “higher definition picture of the outbreak”, helping to pinpoint at-risk groups within the population, says Hopkins. More widespread testing could also help capture people who have the virus but are asymptomatic. An analysis by the ONS published yesterday found that only 28 per cent of people testing positive for the coronavirus in England reported having symptoms around the time they were tested.

Other coronavirus news

Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison backtracked today after saying that coronavirus vaccination would be mandatory in Australia. Currently there isn’t a coronavirus vaccine available but there are 160 vaccine candidates being developed and 31 are in human trials. The Australian government recently secured access to the vaccine candidate being developed by the University of Oxford in partnership with pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, and has now said that if the vaccine is approved it will offer it to Australian citizens for free. Clarifying his earlier comments about making the vaccine mandatory, Morrison said “we can’t hold someone down and make them take it”, adding that vaccination would be “encouraged.”

Almost 1200 fewer people died this year in New Zealand up to 20 July compared to during the same period last year, a rare trend in light of the global pandemic. Some researchers speculate this may be due to a reduction in deaths from other respiratory illnesses, thanks to the introduction of measures to limit the spread of the coronavirus. In May, neighbouring Australia reported lower flu rates than usual, which was also attributed to coronavirus lockdown measures. New Zealand has recorded only 22 covid-19 related deaths. 

South Korea recorded its biggest daily increase in coronavirus cases since March yesterday, with 297 cases of the virus confirmed. Officials in Seoul have begun introducing restrictions on gatherings in the city and its surrounding area, prohibiting indoor gatherings of more than 50 people and outdoor gatherings of more than 100 people.

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 782,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 22.1 million, according to the map and dashboard from Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Achieving herd immunity: Today, some headlines celebrate the fact that many places might have achieved herd immunity including Britain and pockets of London, New York and Mumbai. But others warn that millions will die before we get there. The true picture is far messier, partly because scientists don’t even agree on what herd immunity is, let alone how it might be achieved. So how will we know when populations are protected against the coronavirus?

A worker holding a tray containing ampoules of “Sputnik V”, a covid-19 vaccine candidate developed by the Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology in Zelenograd, Russia

Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg via Getty Images

18 August

“We need to prevent vaccine nationalism,” says WHO director-general

The World Health Organization (WHO) today called for an end to “vaccine nationalism”, the hoarding of vaccine doses by some nations. “The fastest way to end this pandemic and to reopen economies is to start by protecting the highest risk populations everywhere,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press briefing today. “We need to prevent vaccine nationalism,” he said. The priority should be protecting essential workers and other at-risk groups, Ghebreyesus said: “If we can work together, we can ensure that all essential workers are protected and proven treatments like dexamethasone are available to those who need them.” Although there currently isn’t a vaccine available for covid-19 there are more than 160 candidates in development, with 31 in human trials. Several countries have already secured deals for doses of some of these vaccine candidates. The UK has purchased at least 190 million doses, including 100 million of the vaccine candidate being developed by the University of Oxford and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. 

Separately, Takeshi Kasai, WHO Western Pacific regional director, told the briefing that “the epidemic is changing.” He said that “people in their 20s, 30s and 40s are increasingly driving the spread. Many are unaware they are infected.” This increases the risk of the virus spreading to the more vulnerable,” he added.

Other coronavirus news

Public Health England will be replaced by a new public health agency, UK health minister Matt Hancock confirmed today. The new agency, called the National Institute for Health Protection, will combine “the expertise of Public Health England with the enormous response capabilities of NHS Test and Trace and the Joint Biosecurity Centre,” Hancock said at the Policy Exchange think tank. Dido Harding, the current head of NHS Test and Trace, will lead the new organisation initially, Hancock said. NHS Test and Trace has been criticised for repeatedly failing to reach the proportion of contacts of people diagnosed with coronavirus that is recommended by government scientific advisors – 80 per cent or more. Between 30 July and 5 August for instance, the system only managed to reach 74.2 per cent of the contacts of people who tested positive for the virus in England. 

The proportion of people in the UK who reported experiencing symptoms of depression was 20 per cent in June, up from 10 per cent in July last year, according to a survey by the Office for National Statistics.

Voters from six US states filed a lawsuit against the country’s president Donald Trump and the postmaster general Louis DeJoy yesterday over cuts to the US postal service ahead of the upcoming general election. Many states are expecting a surge in postal ballots this year due to the pandemic.

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 775,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 21.9 million, according to the map and dashboard from Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Travelling abroad safely: Many countries have seen an increase in coronavirus cases, making going abroad more of a gamble. So what are the different options for managing the current risks from international travel, and which countries have got it right?

Return of covid-19 to New Zealand: New Zealand has acted swiftly to contain a new coronavirus outbreak after going 102 days virus-free, but it’s still unclear whether it can stamp it out again.

A-level students hold a sit in protest at the Department for Education over the results fiasco

17 August

A-level and GCSE grades in England to be based on teachers’ predictions instead of controversial algorithm

Pupils in England will be given A-level and GCSE grades estimated by their teachers rather than by an algorithm that sparked protests after it was used to moderate the grades of A-level pupils last week. The algorithm, which was introduced because the pandemic disrupted the usual exam process, resulted in about 280,000 A-level pupils in England seeing their scores drop by at least one grade or more compared to their predicted results.Those from disadvantaged backgrounds were worst-affected. UK education minister Gavin Williamson today announced that England’s exams regulator, Ofqual is scrapping the algorithm, bringing policy in line with the UK’s other nations. Williamson and Ofqual chair, Roger Taylor apologised for the “distress” caused. 

Other coronavirus news

England’s health agency, Public Health England, could be replaced by a new body specifically focused on dealing with pandemics. The new agency would be modelled on Germany’s Robert Koch Institute and is expected to be announced this week by the UK’s health minister, Matt Hancock, according to a report in the Sunday Telegraph. The article also indicates that Hancock plans to merge the NHS Test and Trace scheme with the pandemic response work of Public Health England. “The reports in the media of a proposed ‘axing’ of Public Health England is of huge concern,” said Amitava Banerjee, clinical data scientist and cardiologist at University College London. A major restructuring of public health function, as the global covid-19 emergency continues, will divert limited resources away from public health measures such as testing and tracing, said Banerjee. 

Voters in the US are concerned about whether it is still safe to post their ballots, after the country’s president Donald Trump last week said he would block additional funding required for the postal service to handle the expected surge in postal ballots this year. Many US states have been trying to make postal voting easier so that people are able to vote safely during the pandemic.

South Korea tightened social distancing rules on Sunday after 197 new coronavirus cases linked to a new outbreak were confirmed on Saturday. “We’re facing a crisis where if the current spread isn’t controlled, it would bring an exponential rise in cases, which could in turn lead to the collapse of our medical system and enormous economic damage,” director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Jeong Eun-kyeong said during a briefing.

New Zealand’s general election will be postponed by a month due to an on-going coronavirus outbreak in Auckland, the country’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern announced today. Nine new cases in the new cluster were confirmed today, bringing the total to 58 cases so far.

A new test for coronavirus-specific T-cells – immune cells that help the body fight infections – could help researchers developing vaccine candidates. The test is being developed by UK company Indoor Biotechnologies, which says early trials found that some people who had the coronavirus but tested negative for antibodies went on to test positive for T-cells. It still isn’t clear whether antibodies or T-cells provide long-lasting immunity against the virus and how long such immunity might last.

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 776,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 21.7 million, according to the map and dashboard from Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Coronavirus and pets: Reports of pets being infected with the coronavirus have been growing, but how worried should owners be? And could pets be spreading the virus between people?

Passengers wait next to the Eurostar Terminal at the Gare du Nord train station in Paris.

Michel Euler/AP/Shutterstock

14 August

UK visitors to France could face restrictions after UK imposed quarantine on arrivals 

Travellers arriving in France from the UK could be required to quarantine for two weeks after arrival into the country, Clément Beaune, France’s junior minister for European Affairs, told journalists on Thursday. His statement came after the UK added France and the Netherlands to its list of countries from which arriving travellers will be required to quarantine for 14 days. France currently has a coronavirus case rate of 34.0 people per 100,000, according to cumulative figures for the last 14 days from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, with 41.6 cases per 100,000 people in the Netherlands. The case rate in the UK is currently 17.3 per 100,000 people. The UK’s new rules are effective from 4:00 BST on Saturday 15 August and will also apply for people arriving in the UK from Monaco, Malta, Turks and Caicos and Aruba. Transport minister Grant Shapps said that there are currently about 160,000 people from the UK on holidays in France. 

Other coronavirus news

Restrictions affecting parts of northern England and Leicester will stay in place due to on-going local outbreaks, the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care announced today. People living in the affected areas in Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, East Lancashire and Leicester aren’t allowed to meet with people from other households indoors or in private gardens. Oldham in Greater Manchester has experienced the largest week-on-week rise in cases in England, recording a rate of 107.5 cases per 100,000 people between 2 and 8 August, up from 57.8 during the previous week. The government says the restrictions will be reviewed again next week. 

Elsewhere in England, easing of restrictions allowing small wedding receptions, live indoor performances and beauty treatments will go ahead from Saturday after being delayed from the original date of 1 August, UK prime minister Boris Johnson confirmed today. Bowling alleys, casinos and play centres will also be allowed to reopen.

Despite some local outbreaks, coronavirus cases across England as a whole appear to be levelling off, according to the latest results from a random swab testing survey by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The ONS estimates that 28,300 people in England – one in 1900 people – had the virus in the week ending 9 August, the same as the previous week.

New Zealand has extended a lockdown in Auckland by at least 12 days, the country’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern announced today. New Zealand had been free of locally transmitted coronavirus infections for 102 days until four people from the same household in Auckland tested positive for the virus earlier this week. The number of cases in the new outbreak there has since risen to 29. 

North Korea has lifted a three-week lockdown in the border city of Kaesong after a suspected coronavirus case there, state media reported today. The World Health Organization last week said that tests on the suspected case – a man who returned to North Korea after defecting – had been inconclusive. North Korea has not reported any other cases.

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 760,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 20.9 million, according to the map and dashboard from Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Staff of Guardian Funerals transport the casket of Covid-19 victim

Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

13 August

UK government has changed the way deaths from covid-19 are recorded in England

England’s covid-19 death toll has been revised down by more than 5000, after the UK government announced a new UK-wide standard for recording deaths caused by the coronavirus. The changes mean the removal of 5377 deaths from Public Health England’s official record, decreasing the UK’s total numbers of deaths from the virus from 46,706 to 41,329 as of 12 August. 

People who recovered from covid-19 before dying from other causes more than a month later may have been included in the previous death toll due to the way Public Health England was collecting its data. “It had become essentially useless for epidemiological monitoring,” said epidemiologist Keith Neal at the University of Nottingham, UK. From now on England’s official death toll will only include people who died within 28 days of testing positive for the virus, bringing it in line with the other nations in the UK. 

Other coronavirus news

The number of patients admitted to hospitals in England for routine treatment was down by 67 per cent in June compared to the same time last year, according to data from NHS England. The number of people visiting accident and emergency units was also down, by 30 per cent compared to last year, as was the number going to their family doctor with symptoms of cancer and being urgently referred to a specialist , at 20 per cent lower than last year. The NHS England data also suggests more people waited longer than usual for planned procedures, such as knee and hip operations. The Health Foundation charity told the BBC that this indicates the NHS is still “nowhere close to business as usual following the first outbreak of covid-19,” and warned that long waiting times could lead to deterioration in people’s health.

The coronavirus may have been circulating in New Zealand for weeks prior to the country’s new outbreak, according to New Zealand’s director-general of health, Ashley Bloomfield. The first person in the new cluster of cases started showing symptoms as early as 31 July, Bloomfield said during a media briefing in Wellington, adding that genome sequencing was underway on the original four cases to try and trace the train of transmission. Officials are also investigating the theory that the cases were imported via refrigerated freight. New Zealand had been free of locally transmitted coronavirus infections for 102 days before four people from the same household tested positive earlier this week. 

Authorities in two cities in China said they found traces of the coronavirus on imported frozen food and on food packaging. Samples of chicken wings imported to the city of Shenzhen from Brazil and packaging of frozen shrimp imported from Ecuador to a city in China’s Anhui province tested positive for the virus. It isn’t yet clear when the products became contaminated but China is increasing screening at its ports. The coronavirus can survive for up to two years frozen at -20°C but is destroyed by heating to 70°C. The World Health Organization says that there isn’t currently any evidence that people can catch the virus from food or food packaging. 

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 750,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 20.6 million, according to the map and dashboard from Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Sweden’s coronavirus strategy: Sweden was one of the few European countries not to impose a compulsory lockdown. Its unusual strategy for tackling the coronavirus outbreak has both been hailed as a success, and condemned as a failure. So which is it?

Two woman in Ripollet, Catalonia wearing face masks outside a coronavirus testing area.

PAU BARRENA/AFP via Getty Images

12 August

Germany and Spain among a growing list of western European countries where coronavirus cases are surging

Coronavirus cases are rising in Germany, Spain and other countries in western Europe, with Spain recording 1418 new infections on Tuesday, and Germany detecting 1200 cases in the last 24 hours, the country’s biggest daily increase for three months. In the Netherlands, daily new infections are back to about half the level they were at during the initial peak. Spain now has the highest rate of coronavirus infections in the region, with 94 cases per 100,000 people, compared to 38 in the Netherlands, 30 in France, 18 in the UK and 14 in Germany, according to cumulative figures for the last 14 days from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. 

Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, says people returning from holiday may be the reason for the increasing number of cases in Germany, as the UK and Germany continue to warn people against non-essential travel to parts of Spain. Any holidaymakers returning to the UK from Spain are required to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival. The list of countries from which all arrivals to the UK must quarantine may be updated this week to include 14 more countries, including France.

Other coronavirus news

The World Health Organization (WHO) is in talks with Russian authorities about reviewing the coronavirus vaccine candidate whose approval for use in Russia yesterday sparked criticism from researchers. Russia’s vaccine, Sputnik-V, is not on the WHO’s list of six vaccines that have reached phase III trials involving clinical testing on large groups of people. Russia’s health minister Mikhail Murashko today dismissed safety concerns expressed by foreign researchers about the rapid approval of the vaccine as “groundless.”

Lebanon announced its highest number of daily new coronavirus cases yesterday since the start of the pandemic, with more than 300 new cases and seven deaths from covid-19. Hospitals in the country are overwhelmed following the aftermath of the explosion in Beirut last week. WHO spokesperson Tarik Jarasevic told a UN briefing yesterday that the displacement of people due to the explosion risks accelerating the spread of the coronavirus there.

At least 800 people are estimated to have died around the world as a result of misinformation about the coronavirus during the first three months of this year, a study has found. A further 5800 people are estimated to have been admitted to hospital for the same reason during this period. The majority of the deaths and hospitalisations were due to people consuming methanol and alcohol-based cleaning products, incorrectly believing that they were cures for covid-19, according to the study, which was published in The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

Coronavirus deaths

The worldwide death toll has passed 744,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 20.4 million, according to the map and dashboard from Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Children at risk: A staggering 115 million children in India are at risk of malnutrition, as the world’s largest school lunch programme has been disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Who should get vaccinated first?: It is August 2021, and the moment the world has been waiting for has finally arrived – a vaccine against covid-19 has passed all the tests and is ready to be rolled out. But this isn’t the end. There are more than 7.5 billion people in need of vaccination but perhaps only a billion doses available in the first six months of production. Who gets one?

Staying connected: Greeting neighbours or gossiping with a colleague can boost your health and well-being, but coronavirus lockdowns are putting that in jeopardy. Here’s how to stay connected.

New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern announced new lockdown measures in Auckland after four new coronavirus cases were detected in the community

New Zealand government

11 August

New Zealand reimposes Auckland lockdown after first locally transmitted cases for 102 days

New Zealand has reported its first new coronavirus cases thought to be acquired through local transmission, after going 102 days without a single reported case outside of managed isolation or quarantine. Four people within one family in south Auckland tested positive for the virus, New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern said today at a press briefing. New Zealand has been widely praised for its aggressive response to the coronavirus, closing its borders to non-nationals and implementing one of the strictest lockdowns in the world, all at a time when the country had only 205 cases and no deaths from covid-19. Testing is now being ramped up in Auckland and lockdown restrictions will be reimposed there from tomorrow. Everyone except essential workers will be asked to work from home and schools will be closed for most children. Other public facilities, including bars and restaurants, will be required to close and gatherings will be limited to 10 people. 

Other coronavirus news

Researchers have expressed concerns about the approval of a coronavirus vaccine candidate in Russia today. The virus has been approved for widespread use, despite only being tested in dozens of people. “There is no data on the Russian-led vaccine for the global health community to scrutinise,” said Michael Head, public health research fellow at the University of Southampton, UK. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin said one of his daughters has already been inoculated, and claimed it was safe. 

The number of contact tracers working for NHS Test and Trace will be reduced by 6000 in England by the end of this month, the UK government has announced. The remaining 12,000 contact tracers will work more closely with local public health authorities to help with contact tracing within communities. Between 16 and 22 July, NHS Test and Trace only managed to reach 75 per cent of the contacts of people who tested positive for the coronavirus in England. Dido Harding, head of NHS Test and Trace said that having a more localised approach will ensure more contacts of coronavirus cases within communities can be reached.

Australia’s remote Northern Territory will keep its borders shut to coronavirus-affected states until at least 2022, according to local officials. People arriving from affected states will be required to quarantine at a hotel for 14 days at their own expense.

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 737,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 20.1 million, according to the map and dashboard from Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist

Question about the UK’s new rapid tests: Two 90-minute tests for the coronavirus will be rolled out by the UK government in the coming weeks – and while both are promising, neither has publicly available data to support its use.

Common cold virus vaccine: A vaccine that protects against one of the main common cold viruses – respiratory syncytial virus – has been shown to be safe and effective in a clinical trial and could be available by 2024.

A man seen in a street during a snowfall in the early stages of the pandemic.

Sergei Fadeichev/TASS via Getty Images

10 August

No indication there is seasonality with the coronavirus, says WHO 

There is no indication that the coronavirus is seasonal and it could bounce back any time, World Health Organization (WHO) leaders said at a press briefing today. Evidence suggests the coronavirus is unlike flu, which tends to spike in autumn and winter. “If you take pressure off the virus, the virus will bounce back. That’s what we will say to countries in Europe – keep the pressure on,” said Mike Ryan, WHO executive director of the emergencies program. Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead of WHO’s covid-19 response, said that the majority of the world’s population remains susceptible to the virus, and WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus emphasised the importance of countries taking targeted action to tackle local outbreaks through methods like localised lockdowns employed in Leicester, UK. 

Other coronavirus news

The WHO says it has only received a fraction of the funding it needs for an initiative aimed at developing and distributing drugs, vaccines and other tools to help tackle the pandemic. “While we’re grateful for those that have made contributions, we’re only 10 per cent of the way to funding the billions required to realise the promise of the ACT [Access to Covid-19 Tools] accelerator,” Tedros said during a press briefing today.

“Greece has formally entered a second wave of the epidemic,” Gkikas Magiorkinis, an epidemiologist at Athens University and one of the scientists advising the Greek government, told journalists today. This comes after Greece recorded its highest number of daily new coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, with 203 confirmed on Sunday.

In France, it is now compulsory to wear a face mask outdoors in certain crowded areas within Paris. Health officials said the rate of positive coronavirus tests was 2.4 per cent in the Paris area compared to the average of 1.6 per cent for people tested in the country as a whole. Other cities, including Nice and Lille, have also introduced new rules making face masks mandatory in specific outdoor areas.

It has been more than 100 days since New Zealand last detected a locally acquired coronavirus case. As of today, the country has only 21 active infections, all of which are being managed in isolation facilities. Authorities are still testing thousands of people each day. “We need to be prepared to quickly stamp out any future cases,” said New Zealand’s director-general of health Ashley Bloomfield on Sunday. 

Coronavirus deaths

Matthew Rowett

The worldwide death toll has passed 731,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 19.9 million, according to the map and dashboard from Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

NHS advice board promoting Test and Trace in Birmingham city centre in the UK

Mike Kemp/In PIctures via Getty Images

7 August

The number of people estimated to have the virus in England may be levelling off

The number of people estimated to have covid-19 in England appears to be levelling off, after rising slightly in July, according to a random swab testing survey of almost 120,000 people by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The ONS estimates that 28,300 people outside of hospitals and care homes in England had the virus in the week ending 2 August – about one in every 1900 people. This is down slightly from the previous week’s estimate of 35,700. But it isn’t clear how infection rates may differ across different regions. In Wales, which was included in the survey for the first time, an estimated 1400 people had covid-19 in the week ending 2 August, equivalent to one in every 2200 people.

The proportion of people in the UK who say they have been wearing face coverings has gone up for the second week in a row, according to a separate ONS survey. In the week ending 2 August, 96 per cent of people said they had worn a face covering outside their home, up from 84 per cent in the previous week and 71 per cent the week before. The survey also found that 72 per cent of people said they had socialised with others in person, just over half of whom said they had always maintained social distancing. 

Other coronavirus news

Coronavirus vaccine trials could be undermined by the lack of diversity among participants, according to researchers. In the recent trial of a coronavirus vaccine candidate being developed by the University of Oxford in partnership with AstraZeneca, fewer than 1 per cent of the approximately 1000 participants were black and only about 5 per cent were Asian, compared to 91 per cent of participants who were white. In a smaller trial of a vaccine candidate being developed by US company Moderna, 40 out of 45 participants were white. “Diversity is important to ensure pockets of people don’t have adverse side-effects,” Oluwadamilola Fayanju, a surgeon and researcher at Duke University told the Guardian.

The city of Preston in England is being placed under stricter local lockdown measures following a rise in coronavirus cases. From midnight on 7 August residents from different households aren’t allowed to meet indoors or in private gardens. These new measures are in line with those currently in place in east Lancashire, Greater Manchester and parts of West Yorkshire.

More than one million people in countries across Africa have been diagnosed with the coronavirus, although health officials say this is certainly an underestimate. “We haven’t seen the peak in Africa yet,” Mary Stephen, technical officer at the World Health Organization’s regional office for Africa told Al Jazeera. Although the majority of cases confirmed so far are in South Africa, it is also performing significantly more tests than other African countries.

India has recorded its highest number of daily new coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic, with 62,538 cases confirmed on Friday. There have been more than 2 million cases recorded in the country since the pandemic began.

Coronavirus deaths

The worldwide death toll has passed 715,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 19.1 million, according to the map and dashboard from Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.

Click here to see previous daily updates

Matthew Rowett

Matthew Rowett

Matthew Rowett

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[so-hereiam]

Change in the Time of Corona

Alternate Title: “The Corona-Coaster” (started writing March 25, finished writing March 27, 2020)

I’m sitting here on my bed—room torn apart, two packed suitcases—contemplating the immense shell shock of the last several days. Never in my life have I experienced such drastic and constant changes in such a short period of time. The last few days have seen a constant cycle of uncertainty, peace, anxiety, peace, change, peace, tears, peace, over and over again. It really is a struggle to even know how to begin writing all of this out. I guess I’ll start at the beginning; let’s head back to about to weeks ago (time has really all meshed into a big blob, so I’m not exactly sure of the exact date).

With the rising pandemic of COVID-19, Canada soon announced that all Canadian citizens and permanent residents abroad should return home as soon as possible as borders would soon be closing and travel would soon be very challenging. My mom and my aunt, of course wishing for me safety and wellbeing, texted me and asked me to pray about coming home. I said I would, but I had the conviction immediately that I had to stay. Soon, the warnings got even more prevalent, and several of my friends also urged me to come home, but again, for some reason, I knew I had to stay. I thought that was an emotional situation to process, but it was nothing compared to what would happen next. 

During our recent spring break, we heard that other islands in Micronesia were closing their schools due to the virus, and almost all of them were sending their SMs home early. Palau to date has not had a positive case (and for that we are very thankful), but some of the teachers were talking about what might happen in the future under these circumstances. On the Friday of our week of spring break, while hanging out with my family on another island in Palau, I received messages from some of the other missionaries about an emergency board meeting with all SMs and AVS-2 teachers. I couldn’t go because I was a full-hour boat ride away from Koror, but I asked what it was about. They shared with me that the GMM (Guam-Micronesia Mission—basically our conference) sent an email recommending all non-local missionaries to immediately return home, one of the reasons being that the United States increased their warnings (I don’t know the exact announcement that was made for them, but I think it was close to the one that Canada had made prior). My heart dropped as I read this, and I immediately thought of my kids and my family that I might soon be forced to leave. I thought of all the things I still had planned, all the things my students and I still wanted to do, and all the time I would miss with my family. I knew then that I did not want to go home yet and even contemplated the idea of fighting it if they tried to evacuate me. 

However, the meeting revealed that the Board wanted to continue with school. (Oops, I forgot to mention that somewhere in this timeline, the government decided to close down all schools in Palau for a span of two weeks starting right after our spring break.) Our school board wanted to provide distance/online learning during this two-week period, so they allowed the missionaries to decide if they were going to stay or if they needed to go home. Again, for some reason I knew I had to stay. (Throughout the events I’ve been mentioning, I maintained the conviction that I had to stay, but the alternatives and possible consequences and fears were cycling through my mind—I prayed that God would reveal to me if I was making the wrong choice.) 

After the emergency meeting, the SMs and missionaries really wrestled and struggled with this decision. Some of the universities gave their students no choice and bought their return tickets for the next flight. Some decided with their parents that they needed to go home. Some had responsibilities and duties at home, and were even starting new jobs in the next few months, and could not be potentially stuck in Palau until possibly after the summer because of travel restrictions and border closures. Over half of the SMs/AVS-2 teachers made the painful and difficult choice to return home early. This also broke my heart as one of my closest friends here told me that she was going home. Then a few more, then a few more. This group really became a family over the last 8 months and it was very hard for everyone to say goodbye to our family earlier than anyone had expected. 

During this time, I was still with my family at the distant island, wrestling with anxieties and processing what all was happening. I wasn’t able to fall asleep for the next two nights and stayed up talking with God and opening up to him about everything that was going on inside—and it was a lot. This led me to have some very intimate moments with him of vulnerability and transparency and honesty. My body felt the pain of anxiety coursing through it, but my heart and my mind found peace with God about the chaotic situation we had found ourselves in. I really enjoyed spending time with my family regardless of the increasing uncertainty, and on Sunday we headed back to the main island. That night (actually early Monday morning at 2am), the SMs were supposed to catch their flight. It was a very sad time for everyone as they came to terms with the year ending this way, and I was very sad to think of spending the rest of the school year here without the people I’d gotten so close to. Unexpectedly, though, their flight was cancelled a few hours before they were supposed to check in. That gave everyone yet another dose of uncertainty before it was discovered that the government cancelled the flight to Guam because there had been a death from COVID-19 in Guam. Eventually, everyone was able to get a new ticket for the same flight the next morning at 2am. 

The next evening, a few hours before their flight, we were going to have a short vespers with everyone in the chapel so that we could all practice social distancing measures. I arrived and sat in the back, already emotional that I would be saying goodbye to some of my close friends, some of whom I had been here with for almost 2 years. I had no idea that I would soon be in tears for other reasons as well. The principal greeted everyone, but instead of starting the vespers program, he had an announcement. He had just returned from a school board meeting, and revealed to us that they had decided to cancel school for the rest of the year and send all remaining missionaries home on the next flight (this decision was due to many factors, such as communication from the division and GMM, growing uncertainty, caution, and more that I’m sure I’m not aware of). It took a few seconds for the news to sink in, but then my head was once again filled with swarms of thoughts and sadness and I couldn’t help but cry right where I was sitting (I hate crying in front of people, and over the last 2-3 years, it’s been very hard for me to cry at all, even when I want to and try to, but this pushed it all to the brink). I again thought of my students and all the things I had planned over the last two months before leaving. I thought about possibly not being able to say goodbye. I thought about telling my niece and nephew that I would have to leave early and that we wouldn’t be able to hang out or play Minecraft or go swimming like we talked about doing. After processing it all, talking with the other SMs, sharing our last “warm fuzzies,” and talking to the principal, I found peace once again. Right there in that seat that I was sitting on was the first time that I had felt peace about going home. I thought back to when I asked God to show me if I had to change my decision, and I thought that the peace He had given me about going home was the answer. 

After tearful goodbyes to everyone who was leaving, I went home wide awake. It was already early in the morning, but I ended up staying up until around 5am checking the latest information about the Canadian border closures, looking at the flight availability, and packing. I barely fell asleep before waking up for a meeting at school and then cleaning my classroom as best I could. The flight that I was supposed to be going on was leaving on Thursday night/Friday early morning, and I had so much to do before then. That whole next day I worked non-stop in my classroom, packing my room, and making lists of all the goodbye letters I wanted to write and gifts I wanted to leave. Exhausted after only a few hours of sleep over the previous several nights, I tried to take a nap, but my brain was fully on and I started packing again. I had two suitcases packed and just needed to do laundry to pack the rest. With all this going on, I also told virtually no one that I was going home because the school had not yet purchased my ticket and I wanted to wait until it was official. I was waiting to hear back from the principal for the whole day until around 4pm when I got a call from him. He told me he had asked the chairman of the board to hold off on booking my flight. I was confused at first, but he explained that he wanted to fight for us to at least try to offer school for our kids during the last quarter. He asked me if I would stay if the board changed their mind. This was another punch to my stomach as once again I had to process a completely different reality. I had already made peace with going home and I was looking forward to the comfort of being close to my family and friends there. However, I immediately knew that I had to stay, so I said yes. 

After thinking for 18 hours that I was going home, I was now flung the exact opposite direction and started working with another teacher on a proposal for the board to allow us to do remote learning so that we could make sure that our kids understood the necessary concepts vital to their success in the next grade level. We worked on it all afternoon and evening, again I couldn’t fall asleep until early morning, and then I woke up after a couple hours for another meeting. All morning we worked on the proposal, brainstorming, and logistics again, and then the principal took it to the board. During the chaos and then the wait, I contemplated all of the possibilities. In the last few hours I had gotten extremely invested in our proposal and was really excited to be able to have school in at least some form instead of completely shutting it down. I also longed to be home, but I also longed to stay. I prayed constantly that whatever decision was made would be the right decision for everyone, even if we didn’t like it. As the board meeting was in session, I talked with one of the other missionaries here about the craziness of it all, how God has been helping our hearts, and so much more. As we talked, I was able to come to another place of peace. After an hour or two, we heard the decision that school was back on and that the board had accepted the proposal. Again, flurries of emotions and thoughts, and then the reality of how much work was now to come. 

I don’t even fully remember what day that was, but ever since, we’ve been working non-stop to get all of our classes prepared for remote learning. All of the teachers are learning new programs, figuring out what will work best for their students and their parents, surveying parents to see who doesn’t have access to what they need for remote learning, reviewing the standards and planning out what they still need to cover and how they’ll cover it, facilitating textbook pick-up for parents, and much more. We’ve figured out how to cover the classes from the teachers who had to go home, and I’ll be teaching 5 additional math classes now, including my other ones. It’s going to be difficult, but it’s going to be okay. It’s now Friday, March 27, and I’m completely emotionally and physically exhausted. I’m sitting on my bed again, still with my two packed suitcases and my torn apart room. I’ve gone through almost every emotion possible within the last week, and even more so the last few days. All I know is that through all of this, God has been holding my hand. Like most all of us, I don’t do well with change or uncertainty, but I’ve seen in the last little while how He has been present in every moment. I don’t know how to fully explain all of the thoughts and all of the realizations that have shown themselves, and I don’t think I can. For all of us, it’s difficult to fully share the emotions and the comforts amidst the chaos. I don’t know what will happen next, I don’t know how things will shift or change in the next two months, even the next two days, but God has shown me that through it all, it’s going to be okay. 

(This isn’t a very well-written blog, I think I probably missed some pretty important details, but it’s something to remember all of this for now since my memory is trash.) 

[itvplus]

Six Nations 2021: Ireland hoping for final day title showdown against England

Five key England forwards are absent and many players are lacking game-time, with scrum-half Ben Youngs admitting there could be "teething problems".

Nevertheless, the defending champions are favourites to win again this year.

"The pressure is on England," Monye said on the Rugby Union Weekly podcast.

"Anyone that thinks otherwise is deluded."

https://ryanwhiteconference.hrsa.gov/six-nations-italy-vs-france-live-six-nations-rugby/

https://ryanwhiteconference.hrsa.gov/calcutta-cup-england-vs-scotland-six-nations-live-2021-rugby/

https://ryanwhiteconference.hrsa.gov/six-nations-italy-vs-france-live-six-nations-rugby/

https://ryanwhiteconference.hrsa.gov/calcutta-cup-england-vs-scotland-six-nations-live-2021-rugby/

Genge won his first cap nearly five years ago but has started only one Six Nations match, against Italy in 2019. With Mako Vunipola injured and Joe Marler withdrawing for personal reasons, the 25-year-old Leicester loosehead is the likely beneficiary. On his day, Genge has few peers, mixing destructive scrummaging with carrying and tackling, aggressively mobile. Consistency has been an issue as well as temperament, but if England are to make greater use of their attacking options, they need more forwards to make metres and deliver quick possession. Which is where Genge comes in and what Eddie Jones will be looking for is the player whose multilayered performance helped Leicester overcome a 14-point deficit against Bath this month.

Every game Saturday will have a livestream option, giving fans unable to attend a game an opportunity to watch. Michigan COVID-19 restrictions allow just 125 fans per team in attendance.FSD and MHSAA.tv will feature the livestreams of the games. Fans watching on MHSAA.tv will need to subscribe for $10.99 a month or $69.99 for the year and can sign up for the MHSAA.tv livestreams here.

Here are the matchups for the 2020-21 Michigan high school football state playoff semifinals and eight-man finals, all scheduled for Jan. 16:JACKSON, Miss. (WDAM) - The 2020 MHSAA State Football Championships are set and WDAM will have coverage of all the games this weekend.

Coverage of this year’s championship games will be shown on Bounce TV as games are scheduled to happen Friday and Saturday at 11 a.m., 3 p.m. and 7 p.m.Below is a listing of channel numbers on cable and satellite providers that include Bounce TV:

Cable/Antenna - Channel 7.3 Comcast - Channel 216

Six high schools from the Pine Belt will be represented by their football teams at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium in Jackson this weekend in championship play as Magee, Lumberton and Oak Grove high schools will play Friday, and Poplarville, Taylorsville and West Jones are set to play on Saturday.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced Sunday that all sports in Michigan, other than professional and college, must stop competition for three weeks in an effort to bat down an exponential spike in COVID-19 cases in Michigan.

But that does not mean the end of the high school state playoffs in football, volleyball or swimming.

Mark Uyl, executive director of the Michigan High School Athletic Association, told the Free Press on Sunday that those playoffs are being put on hold and the MHSAA has every intention to finish them at a later date.

“We will suspend our three remaining fall tournaments,” he said, “and figure out how to get those completed.”

If that sounds familiar, it should.

In March, when COVID-19 began spreading throughout the state, the MHSAA suspended play in its remaining winter and spring tournaments. Uyl said then he had every intention of completing those championships, including boys and girls basketball and boys swimming, but it never happened because schools were closed in April and did not reopen until this fall.

MHSAA FOOTBALL SCHEDULE: Regional finals matchups for when playresumes

The MHSAA volleyball championships were scheduled to conclude this weekend in Battle Creek, and girls swimming and diving was scheduled to hold its championship meets this weekend as well.

The football playoffs were headed to regional championship games this weekend in 11-player and the semifinals in 8-player.

That is why the MHSAA is putting all playoffs on hold.

“Given the fact that we’re only down to three weeks in football,” Uyl said. “Again, it’s different than last March. We’ve got some time in front of us.”

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Forty-five days before the announcement of the first suspected case of what would become known as COVID-19, the Global Health Security Index was published. The project–led by the Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security–assessed 195 countries on their perceived ability to handle a major disease outbreak. The U.S. ranked first.

It’s clear the report was wildly overconfident in the U.S., failing to account for social ills that had accumulated in the country over the past few years, rendering it unprepared for what was about to hit. At some point in mid-September–perhaps by the time you are reading this–the number of confirmed coronavirus-related deaths in the U.S. will have passed 200,000, more than in any other country by far.

If, early in the spring, the U.S. had mobilized its ample resources and expertise in a coherent national effort to prepare for the virus, things might have turned out differently. If, in midsummer, the country had doubled down on the measures (masks, social-distancing rules, restricted indoor activities and public gatherings) that seemed to be working, instead of prematurely declaring victory, things might have turned out differently. The tragedy is that if science and common sense solutions were united in a national, coordinated response, the U.S. could have avoided many thousands of more deaths this summer.

Indeed, many other countries in similar situations were able to face this challenge where the U.S. apparently could not. Italy, for example, had a similar per capita case rate as the U.S. in April. By emerging slowly from lockdowns, limiting domestic and foreign travel, and allowing its government response to be largely guided by scientists, Italy has kept COVID-19 almost entirely at bay. In that same time period, U.S. daily cases doubled, before they started to fall in late summer.

Among the world’s wealthy nations, only the U.S. has an outbreak that continues to spin out of control. Of the 10 worst-hit countries, the U.S. has the seventh-highest number of deaths per 100,000 population; the other nine countries in the top 10 have an average per capita GDP of $10,195, compared to $65,281 for the U.S. Some countries, like New Zealand, have even come close to eradicating COVID-19 entirely. Vietnam, where officials implemented particularly intense lockdown measures, didn’t record a single virus-related death until July 31.

There is nothing auspicious about watching the summer turn to autumn; all the new season brings are more hard choices. At every level–from elected officials responsible for the lives of millions to parents responsible for the lives of one or two children–Americans will continue to have to make nearly impossible decisions, despite the fact that after months of watching their country fail, many are now profoundly distrustful, uneasy and confused.

John Moore—Getty ImagesFriends and family mourn the death of Conrad Coleman Jr. on July 3 in New Rochelle, N.Y. Coleman, 39, died of COVID-19 on June 20, just over two months after his father also died of the disease

At this point, we can start to see why the U.S. foundered: a failure of leadership at many levels and across parties; a distrust of scientists, the media and expertise in general; and deeply ingrained cultural attitudes about individuality and how we value human lives have all combined to result in a horrifically inadequate pandemic response. COVID-19 has weakened the U.S. and exposed the systemic fractures in the country, and the gulf between what this nation promises its citizens and what it actually delivers.

Although America’s problems were widespread, they start at the top. A complete catalog of President Donald Trump’s failures to address the pandemic will be fodder for history books. There were weeks wasted early on stubbornly clinging to a fantastical belief that the virus would simply “disappear”; testing and contact tracing programs were inadequate; states were encouraged to reopen ahead of his own Administration’s guidelines; and statistics were repeatedly cherry-picked to make the U.S. situation look far better than it was, while undermining scientists who said otherwise. “I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told the journalist Bob Woodward on March 19 in a newly revealed conversation. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

Common-sense solutions like face masks were undercut or ignored. Research shows that wearing a facial covering significantly reduces the spread of COVID-19, and a pre-existing culture of mask wearing in East Asia is often cited as one reason countries in that region were able to control their outbreaks. In the U.S., Trump did not wear a mask in public until July 11, more than three months after the CDC recommended facial coverings, transforming what ought to have been a scientific issue into a partisan one. A Pew Research Center survey published on June 25 found that 63% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said masks should always be worn in public, compared with 29% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.

By far the government’s most glaring failure was a lack of adequate testing infrastructure from the beginning. Testing is key to a pandemic response–the more data officials have about an outbreak, the better equipped they are to respond. Rather than call for more testing, Trump has instead suggested that maybe the U.S. should be testing less. He has repeatedly, and incorrectly, blamed increases in new cases on more testing. “If we didn’t do testing, we’d have no cases,” the President said in June, later suggesting he was being sarcastic. But less testing only means fewer cases are detected, not that they don’t exist. In the U.S. the percentage of tests coming back positive increased from about 4.5% in mid-June to about 5.7% as of early September, evidence the virus was spreading regardless of whether we tested for it. (By comparison, Germany’s overall daily positivity rate is under 3% and in Italy it’s about 2%.)

Testing in the U.S. peaked in July, at about 820,000 new tests administered per day, according to the COVID Tracking Project, but as of this writing has fallen to about 740,000. Some Americans now say they are waiting more than two weeks for their test results, a delay that makes the outcome all but worthless, as people can be infected in the window between when they get tested and when they receive their results.

Most experts believe that early on, we did not understand the full scale of the spread of the virus because we were testing only those who got sick. But now we know 30% to 45% of infected people who contract the virus show no symptoms whatsoever and can pass it on. When there’s a robust and accessible testing system, even asymptomatic cases can be discovered and isolated. But as soon as testing becomes inaccessible again, we’re back to where we were before: probably missing many cases.

Tod Seelie—The GuardianPeople sleeping in a parking lot in Las Vegas after a homeless shelter shut down because of COVID-19

Seven months after the coronavirus was found on American soil, we’re still suffering hundreds, sometimes more than a thousand, deaths every day. An American Nurses Association survey from late July and early August found that of 21,000 U.S. nurses polled, 42% reported either widespread or intermittent shortages in personal protective equipment (PPE) like masks, gloves and medical gowns. Schools and colleges are attempting to open for in-person learning only to suffer major outbreaks and send students home; some of them will likely spread the virus in their communities. More than 13 million Americans remain unemployed as of August, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data published Sept. 4.

U.S. leaders have largely eschewed short- and medium-term unflashy solutions in favor of perceived silver bullets, like a vaccine–hence the Administration’s “Operation Warp Speed,” an effort to accelerate vaccine development. The logic of focusing so heavily on magic-wand solutions fails to account for the many people who will suffer and die in the meantime even while effective strategies to fight COVID-19 already exist.

We’re also struggling because of the U.S. health care system. The country spends nearly 17% of annual GDP on health care–far more than any other nation in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Yet it has one of the lowest life expectancies, at 78.6 years, comparable to those in countries like Estonia and Turkey, which spend only 6.4% and 4.2% of their GDP on health care, respectively. Even the government’s decision to cover coronavirus-related treatment costs has ended up in confusion and fear among lower income patients thanks to our dysfunctional medical billing system.

The coronavirus has laid bare the inequalities of American public health. Black Americans are nearly three times as likely as white Americans to get COVID-19, nearly five times as likely to be hospitalized and twice as likely to die. As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notes, being Black in the U.S. is a marker of risk for underlying conditions that make COVID-19 more dangerous, “including socioeconomic status, access to health care and increased exposure to the virus due to occupation (e.g., frontline, essential and critical infrastructure workers).” In other words, COVID-19 is more dangerous for Black Americans because of generations of systemic racism and discrimination. The same is true to a lesser extent for Native American and Latino communities, according to CDC data.

COVID-19, like any virus, is mindless; it doesn’t discriminate based on the color of a person’s skin or the figure in their checking account. But precisely because it attacks blindly, the virus has given further evidence for the truth that was made clear this summer in response to another of the country’s epidemics, racially motivated police violence: the U.S. has not adequately addressed its legacy of racism.

Neil Blake—The Grand Rapids Press/APThe line for a drive-through food pantry in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Americans today tend to value the individual over the collective. A 2011 Pew survey found that 58% of Americans said “freedom to pursue life’s goals without interference from the state” is more important than the state guaranteeing “nobody is in need.” It’s easy to view that trait as a root cause of the country’s struggles with COVID-19; a pandemic requires people to make temporary sacrifices for the benefit of the group, whether it’s wearing a mask or skipping a visit to their local bar.

Americans have banded together in times of crisis before, but we need to be led there. “We take our cues from leaders,” says Dr. David Rosner, a professor at Columbia University. Trump and other leaders on the right, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Tate Reeves of Mississippi, respectively, have disparaged public-health officials, criticizing their calls for shutting down businesses and other drastic but necessary measures. Many public-health experts, meanwhile, are concerned that the White House is pressuring agencies like the Food and Drug Administration to approve treatments such as convalescent plasma despite a lack of supportive data. Governors, left largely on their own, have been a mixed bag, and even those who’ve been praised, like New York’s Andrew Cuomo, could likely have taken more aggressive action to protect public health.

Absent adequate leadership, it’s been up to everyday Americans to band together in the fight against COVID-19. To some extent, that’s been happening–doctors, nurses, bus drivers and other essential workers have been rightfully celebrated as heroes, and many have paid a price for their bravery. But at least some Americans still refuse to take such a simple step as wearing a mask.

Why? Because we’re also in the midst of an epistemic crisis. Republicans and Democrats today don’t just disagree on issues; they disagree on the basic truths that structure their respective realities. Half the country gets its news from places that parrot whatever the Administration says, true or not; half does not. This politicization manifests in myriad ways, but the most vital is this: in early June (at which point more than 100,000 Americans had already died of COVID-19), fewer than half of Republican voters polled said the outbreak was a major threat to the health of the U.S. population as a whole. Throughout July and August, the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force was sending private messages to states about the severity of the outbreak, while President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence publicly stated that everything was under control.

Some incredulity about the virus and public-health recommendations is understandable given the reality that scientific understanding of the newly emergent virus is evolving in real time. The ever shifting advice from health officials doesn’t instill public confidence, especially in those already primed to be skeptical of experts. “Because this is a new infectious disease, a new virus, we don’t have all the answers scientifically,” says Colleen Barry, chair of the department of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “I think that creates an environment that could potentially erode trust even further over time.” But the trust fractures on partisan lines. While 43% of Democrats told Pew in 2019 that they had a “great deal” of trust in scientists, only 27% of Republicans said the same.

Truly worrying are the numbers of Americans who already say they are hesitant to receive an eventual COVID-19 vaccination. Mass vaccination will work only with enough buy-in from the public; the damage the President and others are doing to Americans’ trust in science could have significant consequences for the country’s ability to get past this pandemic.

There’s another disturbing undercurrent to Americans’ attitude toward the pandemic thus far: a seeming willingness to accept mass death. As a nation we may have become dull to horrors that come our way as news, from gun violence to the seemingly never-ending incidents of police brutality to the water crises in Flint, Mich., and elsewhere. Americans seem to have already been inured to the idea that other Americans will die regularly, when they do not need to.

It is difficult to quantify apathy. But what else could explain that nearly half a year in, we still haven’t figured out how to equip the frontline workers who, in trying to save the lives of others, are putting their own lives at risk? What else could explain why 66% of Americans–roughly 217.5 million people–still aren’t always wearing masks in public?

Despite all that, it seems the U.S. is finally beginning to make some progress again: daily cases have fallen from a high of 20.5 per capita in July to around 12 in early September. But we’re still well above the springtime numbers–the curve may be flattening, but it’s leveling out at a point that’s pretty frightening. Furthermore, experts worry that yet another wave could come this winter, exacerbated by the annual flu season.

Jae C. Hong—APCardboard cutout “fans” at an L.A. Angels baseball game

There are reasons for optimism. Efforts to create a vaccine continue at breakneck speed; it’s possible at least one will be available by the end of the year. Doctors are getting better at treating severe cases, in part because of new research on treatments like steroids (although some patients are suffering far longer than expected, a phenomenon known as “long-haul COVID”). As the virus rages, perhaps more Americans will follow public-health measures.

But there is plenty of room for improvement. At the very least, every American should have access to adequate PPE–especially those in health care, education, food service and other high-risk fields. We need a major investment in testing and tracing, as other countries have done. Our leaders need to listen to experts and let policy be driven by science. And for the time being, all of us need to accept that there are certain things we cannot, or should not, do, like go to the movies or host an indoor wedding.

“Americans [may] start to say, ‘If everyone’s not wearing masks, if everyone’s not social distancing, if people are having family parties inside with lots of people together, if we’re flouting the public-health recommendations, we’re going to keep seeing transmission,'” says Ann Keller, an associate professor at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.

The U.S. is no longer the epicenter of the global pandemic; that unfortunate torch has been passed to countries like India, Argentina and Brazil. And in the coming months there might yet be a vaccine, or more likely a cadre of vaccines, that finally halts the march of COVID-19 through the country. But even so, some 200,000 Americans have already died, and many more may do so before a vaccine emerges unless America starts to implement and invest in the science-based solutions already available to us. Each one of those lives lost represents an entire world, not only of those individuals but also of their family, friends, colleagues and loved ones. This is humbling–and it should be. The only path forward is one of humility, of recognition that if America is exceptional with regard to COVID-19, it’s in a way most people would not celebrate.

–With reporting by Emily Barone and Julia Zorthian/New York

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White House tensions with CDC spill into public view as top Trump adviser criticizes agency response

“Early on in this crisis, the CDC — which really had the most trusted brand around the world in this space — really let the country down with the testing,” Navarro said. “Because not only did they keep the testing within the bureaucracy, they had a bad test. And that did set us back.”

The CDC did not respond to a request for comment. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, whose agency oversees the CDC, pushed back against Navarro’s criticism in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“I don’t believe the CDC let this country down,” Azar said when pressed repeatedly on Navarro’s comments. “I believe the CDC serves an important public health role. And what was always critical was to get the private sector to the table [on testing].”

With the coronavirus pandemic in the United States now in its third month, some in the White House are increasingly taking aim at the CDC and the leadership of its director, Robert Redfield, as The Washington Post has previously reported.

In addition to the issue of testing, White House officials say they are also frustrated by what they consider the agency’s balky flow of data and information and the leak of an early version of its reopening recommendations, according to three administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal disagreements.

Appearing remotely at a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday, Redfield detailed the CDC’s efforts to combat the pandemic, including expert assistance to state health authorities, disease surveillance and testing and contact tracing strategy. But he also sounded an alarm that the nation’s public health resources have been insufficient to meet the challenge that covid-19 has posed.

“We need to rebuild our nation’s public health infrastructure: data and data analytics, public health laboratory resilience and our nation’s public health workforce,” he said.

Navarro on Sunday lashed out not only at the CDC, but also at China, escalating the Trump administration’s attacks on that country for its handling of the virus. In an interview on ABC News’s “This Week,” Navarro said he holds the country’s leaders responsible for the global outbreak.

“The virus was spawned in Wuhan province,” Navarro said. “Patient zero was in November. The Chinese, behind the shield of the World Health Organization, for two months hid the virus from the world, and then sent hundreds of thousands of Chinese on aircraft to Milan, New York and around the world to seed that. They could have kept it in Wuhan. Instead, it became a pandemic.”

Beijing has responded to such attacks by accusing the Trump administration of “shifting blame” in an effort to distract from its own failures amid the pandemic.

While they were at odds over the CDC, Navarro and Azar were in agreement Sunday as they defended the Trump administration’s push for states to reopen their economies.

Navarro argued that “some of the people in the medical community want to just run and hide until the virus is extinguished,” an approach that he argued, without evidence, would “kill many more people” than the coronavirus would.

He also said loosening restrictions on businesses is not a “question of lives vs. jobs.”

“What President Trump realized early on is that, if you lock people down, you may save lives directly from the China virus, but you indirectly are going to kill a lot more people” through suicide or substance abuse, Navarro said.

Azar declared that it’s safe to reopen the country because half of the counties reporting “haven’t had a single death,” and more than 60 percent of all covid-19 cases are in just 2 percent of the reporting counties.

“That’s why the local leaders need to lead this,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Azar also said he was not overly concerned by images of people congregating at bars and other places without staying six feet apart or wearing masks.

“I think in any individual instance you are going to see people doing things that are irresponsible,” he said, emphasizing, “we’ve got to get this economy open and our people out and about, working and going to school again.”

Trump made only brief remarks Sunday as he returned to the White House from Camp David. In an exchange with reporters, he maintained that “tremendous progress is being made on many fronts, including coming up with a cure for this horrible plague that has beset our country.”

But statistics from some states paint a less-than-rosy picture.

Texas reported its largest single-day jump in coronavirus cases Saturday, with 1,801 newly confirmed cases. According to the Texas Department of State Health Services, 734 of the new cases were reported in the Amarillo area, where there has been an outbreak tied to the region’s meatpacking facilities.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has already allowed some businesses — including hair salons, restaurants and retail stores — to reopen at reduced capacity, and beginning on Monday, gyms, offices and nonessential manufacturing facilities will be allowed to do so as well, according to the Dallas Morning News.

New York, the state hardest hit by the pandemic, has seen a decline in new cases since April, but officials remain wary of a potential increase as parts of the state begin to reopen. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) on Sunday received a covid-19 swab test on live TV in an effort to convince residents to get tested if they are experiencing symptoms.

“It is so fast and so easy that even a governor can take this test,” Cuomo said shortly before a doctor swabbed his nose during his daily briefing in Albany.

After photos and videos emerged over the weekend of people in New York City crowding the sidewalks outside restaurants and bars, many carrying open containers and not wearing masks, Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) scolded those disregarding quarantine measures.

“We’re feeling the pull of the outdoors, we’re feeling the seasons changing, we all want to be out there,” de Blasio said, noting that the sunny weather has only exacerbated pent-up New Yorkers’ “quarantine fatigue” after two months in isolation. “But we all understand we’re in the middle of a pandemic, and we have to do things differently.”

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom said he is moving forward based on the best guidance to control the spread of the virus: social distancing. He also said reopening schools will be predicated on data and science, not just observations on the ground.

“I think some schools will not be [open this fall] and many schools will be,” Newsom (D) told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Seventy-five percent of California’s economy is now open, including manufacturing, warehouses and restaurants, Newsom said. Business owners and individuals are encouraged to wear face coverings and maintain physical distance from others. Opening sports arenas, he said, is not an option at this time.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) said that reopening his state’s economy was necessary but also noted that the state was still wrestling with the outbreak and the danger remains. “I’ve said to Ohioans that so much is in every individual’s control. I encourage people to wear masks when they go out in public,” he said on CNN.

DeWine said he was concerned when he saw images of a reopened Ohio bar crowded with people. But he added that the people running the bar got the situation under control.

“Ultimately, it’s going to come to Ohioans doing what Ohioans have done the last two months — keep their distance and wear masks,” he said.

DeWine said that 90 percent of the state’s economy is open but that he wasn’t sure about reopening schools. He said they were closed “not because you [are] specifically worried about the kids,” but to keep students from going home and infecting their parents.

“You have 30 kids go into a classroom, one kid is in there, and he’s got no symptoms, but he’s carrying it — now you got maybe 25 kids . . . going back to their families,” DeWine said. “And it just spreads and multiplies. So, that’s the concern.”

In an interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) warned that “time is of the essence” for Congress and the White House to approve an additional round of coronavirus relief, including funds for additional testing and job protections.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has sought to expand liability protections for employers that reopen during the pandemic, but Pelosi on Sunday declined to say whether Democrats are open to such a move.

“Time is very important. We have lost time,” Pelosi said, adding: “People are hungry across America. Hunger doesn’t take a pause. People are jobless across America. That doesn’t take a pause.”

Meryl Kornfield, Joseph Marks, Steven Goff, Lenny Bernstein and Mike DeBonis contributed to this report.

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#Blogger #White House tensions with CDC spill into public view as top Trump adviser criticizes agency

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The U.S. Concerns over Coronavirus Outbreak

An ongoing widespread pandemic of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) was first confirmed to have spread to the U.S. in January 2020. The cases have been confirmed in all 50 U.S. states encompassing all inhabited U.S. territories – except American Samoa – and the District of Columbia. The United States has the most confirmed active cases in the world as of March 30, 2020 and ranks sixth in number of death from the virus. On January 20, 2020, the first known case – a 35-year old man who had just returned from the region of China ‘Wuhan’ five day earlier – of Coronavirus in the U.S. was confirmed. On January 29, the White House Coronavirus Task Force was devised. Two days later, the flights between the U.S. and China were suspended by most major airlines. In addition, a public health emergency was declared by the Trump administration and publicized limitations on the travelers arriving from China. On 26 of February, in northern California, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the first case in the United States in a person with ‘no known exposure to the virus through close contact or travel with a known infected one’. The U.S. got off to a slow start in Coronavirus testing. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) processes, until the end of February, prohibited laboratories other than the CDC from releasing test results to patients, even though they followed globally acknowledged test protocols. The CDC, to cope with the critical situation, devised and distributed test kits of its own, but a number of them were found to have a manufacturing error which turned the kit illegal to use until the protocol was altered. Until the end of February, the use of any test kits other than the CDC’s were not permitted by the FDA. On 29 of February, public health hospitals, agencies and private companies were granted the permission to develop tests and perform testing; the private companies were shipping thousands of tests by mid-March. Initially, there were very restrictive guidelines pronounced by FDA on who was permitted to be tested, but on 5th March, it allowed anybody holding a doctor’s order could be tested. As of March 25, eventually, at least 418,000 test had been conducted, and this number had reached 945,000 by March 30. The CDC warned that worldwide spread of the ongoing disease might force a considerable number of people to seek hospitalization and other services of healthcare nature which may cause an overload on healthcare systems. Since 19 of March, the Department of State has prescribed its inhabitants to evade international travel. On March 16, any gatherings comprising more than 10 people were strictly restricted by the White House. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), in mid-March 2020, voiced the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to devise a plan to construct new facilities encompassing leased hotels and other buildings, and further asked them to convert them for use as intensive care units and hospitals. State and local responses to the outburst have entailed prohibitions and cancellations of trade shows, conventions, music festivals, large-scale gatherings and suspension of leagues and sporting events, and closure of schools and educational institutions. The Reaction of White House

By March 31, 2020, more than any other country, the United States has more confirmed cases of coronavirus with more than 163,655 positive cases whereas 3,005 individuals have been expired. Telling reporters: “you don’t know what the numbers are in China.” Mr. Trump also cast doubt on the figures coming out of Beijing. But later on, he uncovered in his tweet that he had had a ‘very good conversation’ with the president of China – Xi Jinping. “China has been through much & has developed a strong understanding of the Virus. We are working closely together. Much respect!” Mr. Trump said. He, at Thursday’s briefing, said: “They (the American people) have to go back to work, our country has to go back, our country is based on that and I think it's going to happen pretty quickly”. “A lot of people misinterpret when I say go back - they're going to be practising as much as you can social distancing, and washing your hands and not shaking hands and all of the things we talked about.” President Trump added later on. Donald Trump has said that by the time the coronavirus outbreak peaks, the U.S. will be in “a very good shape” in terms of the number of ventilators accessible. According to him, 10 U.S. companies were now constructing the medical devices and some might be exported. On March 30, speaking at Monday’s Coronavirus Task Force briefing at the White House, President Donald Trump said, “We have now 10 companies at least making the ventilators, and we say go ahead because, honestly, other countries - they'll never be able to do it.”

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COVID travel issues didn't dissuade Americans from visiting hot spots

See on Scoop.it - COMPARE RISK COMMUNICATION

'Pragmatic and cautious': As some Americans avoid travel, others visit COVID-19 hot spots anyway USA TODAY Published 9:33 AM EDT Aug 10, 2020 Jacqui Slay, a 38-year-old stay-at-home mom of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, planned her family trip to Disney World in Florida a year ago. One month away from her scheduled tour in early September, she said she wasn't sure if she would go, citing recent record-high COVID-19 cases in Florida. “We’re kind of up in the air about it,” she said.  Slay is one of many Americans who faces a travel dilemma during the COVID-19 pandemic: Is it worth the risk to travel and escape the monotony of quarantine life, or is it better to wait until the country has the coronavirus, which causes COVID-19, more under control?  A USA TODAY analysis of data from Trivago, a platform for searching and booking hotels, shows Americans have chosen a little of both. Although people aren’t quite ready to travel in full force again, they are still searching for domestic vacation destinations that have long been major draws — including in places where COVID-19 case counts are rising. Trivago measures hotel search volume, which reflects travel requests and booking queries based on users’ link clicks. Last month’s volume was off 73% from the same time in 2019.  It’s been up and down for months. After dropping 92% below 2019 levels in April, Trivago hotel searches started coming back in May and June as states reopened. Florida was among the states to progress the furthest back to normal booking levels, going from 95% below 2019 levels at the start of April to just 18% below normal in mid-June. In July, when the number of new coronavirus cases was rising sharply in dozens of states, would-be travelers pulled back. The number of searches for hotels slipped further below 2019 numbers compared to the number of searches in June. Yet Florida remained the country’s most-searched domestic travel destination, followed by California and Nevada. All three were major COVID-19 hot spots. Big heads up: State Department lifts March advisory on avoiding international travel amid COVID-19 pandemic Travel to hot spots Florida, California and Nevada are “very traditional summer places for domestic travelers,” said  Robertico Croes, a professor at the Rosen College of Hospitality Management at University of Central Florida. He added theme parks in Florida and California are “very attractive, especially in the summer,” to tourists, and Las Vegas “is known for entertainment and casino gaming.”  “In general, especially when there is a crisis like this pandemic, people tend to be very conservative in terms of their travel behavior,” said Croes. “It means that they go to the places where they're familiar with.” In late May, Croes and his team surveyed nearly 2,000 American travelers across the country and found nearly two-thirds responded they would not travel within the next 12 months.  For people who expected to travel, 40% said they were likely to stay close to home and consider destinations with small numbers of coronavirus cases, but 27% of them were “daredevils,” who were less concerned about the coronavirus situation when picking destinations and willing to travel further.  Craig Haseman, a 49-year-old family medicine doctor of Evansville, Indiana, is one of the “daredevils.” In mid-July, he and 11 friends and family members drove about nine hours from Indiana to a vacation house in WaterColor, a resort community on Florida’s Gulf Coast, and spent a week there. When Haseman booked the rental about a month prior to the trip, after most states, including Florida, had begun reopening, he had no idea the virus cases would spike there during the very weeks for which his trip was planned. “When the numbers were going down everywhere, we went ahead and planned it,” Haseman said. “As we got close to time, we realized that the numbers were going up.” The group of Indiana travelers decided to stick with their plan, but “we just stayed with the people that we went with” to social distance, said Haseman. Susan Glasser, 50, and her husband of Nashville, visited Florida in a way that potentially exposed them to more people — by air.  They had originally planned a trip in January to Costa Rica for their 25th wedding anniversary in July but by June chose to cancel. “We are not overly frightened of coronavirus, but we are pragmatic and cautious enough,” Glasser said.  The pair took a quick flight to Jacksonville, Florida, instead and went to Amelia Island.  “We felt as safe as can be when traveling during COVID,” she said, complimenting The Ritz and Southwest Airlines for their safety protocol enforcement. So much so that Glasser is hoping to go on a family trip with their five children in September or October if they can get their schedules — and COVID-19 — to cooperate.  But for others, canceling altogether became the safest choice. Tracey Marshall-Underwood, a 44-year-old optometrist from Dover, Delaware, chose to “forgo our summer” in the name of safety for her family. They typically spend a week in Virginia Beach, Virginia, as well as attend the state fair and go to amusement parks. She bought a trampoline to keep her 13- and 10-year-old kids occupied outside the house instead. Tracey Marshall-Underwood bought a trampoline to keep her 13- and 10-year-old kids occupied outside the house. Courtesy of Tracey Marshall-Underwood In case you're doing domestic traveling: These states require travelers to self-quarantine or present negative COVID-19 test Some travelers avoiding hot spots Amy Fesmire, of Firestone, Colorado, opted to cancel her family’s summer vacation plans to South Carolina. They’ve been going to the same beach in Isle of Palms for about 22 years with another family. Fesmire said they didn’t feel comfortable flying right now and cited South Carolina’s coronavirus numbers for the concerns. New cases in the state were rising throughout the summer, though have since begun to fall; they opted to change plans around Father’s Day. “When I called to talk with someone there, she said that it was crazy and no one was wearing masks,” the 54-year-old second-grade teacher said. “My daughter-in-law is pregnant, so we didn’t want to take any chances.”  Amy Fesmire, of Firestone, Colorado, had to cancel her family’s summer vacation plans to South Carolina. They went to Yellowstone instead. Courtesy of Amy Fesmire Fesmire and her husband, three sons and daughter-in-law decided to visit Yellowstone National Park instead of South Carolina because they all could drive there; they arrived July 25 and left Aug. 1. They rented a lakehouse in Island Park, Idaho, made day trips into the park for sightseeing and wore masks wherever they went, including on hikes.  Travelers may also be contending with quarantine restrictions around the country or from their employers when deciding whether or where to travel.  Diana Snyder, a 34-year-old teacher of Jonas, Pennsylvania, received a list from her school of 18 states, including Florida, California and Nevada, that, if visited, would require her to quarantine for two weeks. “The coronavirus isn't really holding me back from going anywhere. … But I wouldn't go to any of those states because of the fact that I won't be able to go to work for two weeks … when the school starts back at the end of August,” said Snyder, who eventually drove with her family to upstate New York and camped near Lake Ontario for a week. Diana Snyder, of Jonas, Pennsylvania, and her family visited Niagara Falls while they camped near Lake Ontario in upstate New York. Courtesy of Diana Snyder US coronavirus map: Tracking the outbreak Some trips canceled by restrictions, others by choice Matthew Loraditch, a 35-year-old network engineer of Maryland, was supposed to be in South Africa with his parents for a 11-day trip in mid-July. Three months prior to his family trip, his international flight got canceled. South Africa began its lockdown in late March, when all its borders were closed and international flights prohibited. Months later, he canceled two more trips: a convention trip to Las Vegas scheduled in June, and a Disney World tour that was originally planned in March and rescheduled in September.   “I'm not doing anything now,” said Loraditch. Nevada saw a stronger recovery in travel interest in May and June – Las Vegas reopened casinos in early June – but the interest declined as the state’s outbreak worsened. Trivago data shows the hotel search level bounced back to just 26% below 2019 levels in mid-June after dropping to 94% below 2019 in the beginning of April. Then Nevada hotel searches dropped down back to 58% of 2019 levels at the end of July. Among the countless trips that have been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a 37-year-old trip planner from Northern Virginia who specializes in booking and planning Disney tours, experienced 14 of them. Justin Rose said 10 families canceled their trips during Disney World’s shutdown between March and July, and when Disney World reopened its Florida parks starting July 11, four more families requested cancellations due to “concerns for COVID itself or concerns that the experience at Disney would not be what it was prior to the shutdown.”  “A lot of people plan their trips a year or two years in advance. They do all the pre-planning and go through all the excitement to build up to it, and then to have it be canceled last minute, out of their control, is really unfortunate,” said Rose, who has visited Disney parks about 30 times so far. For the rest of the calendar year, he has 10 other trips booked to Disney World in Florida. Before the shutdown, visitors may have faced long lines. Now, Rose said, “because the park is going to be so empty, you can see and do all things you want to do.” After lower-than-expected attendance amid the coronavirus pandemic, Disney is scaling back operating hours at the Magic Kingdom and several other Florida theme parks. José Miguel Polanco, a 27-year-old sales supervisor, lives in Peru but is currently in Brazil with his parents. Every year he goes back to the U.S. to visit family. This year, that couldn’t happen. José Miguel Polanco, a 27-year-old sales supervisor, lives in Peru but is currently in Brazil with his parents. Courtesy of José Miguel Polanco He was supposed to fly from Lima to Dallas, Texas, this past week, for a work event and then vacation. “First our company canceled the event and then Peru canceled all international flights,” he said. He was able to fly to Brazil on a humanitarian flight to be with his parents. His family had other trips planned this year, including one to the French Riviera in May and to Ecuador this August.  “There was no question on whether to cancel the trips, it just doesn’t feel right to be out and enjoying travel when there are so many people in the Americas suffering either from health or economic problems,” he said, noting he's had relatives sick with COVID-19 in Peru. Important to know: Is international travel allowed? See reopening dates for Canada, Mexico, Bahamas and other spots Wow: Disney lost nearly $5 billion while theme parks were closed due to coronavirus Published 9:33 AM EDT Aug 10, 2020

[bike42]

Adventures in Quarantine March-May 2020

Corona Virus Upends Life as We Knew It              

Chapter One: Denial

Just after the New Year, we started hearing about Corona Virus, and the resulting disease of COVID-19 as something happening in China.  Without giving much thought to the global nature of life these days, we continued life as normal.  

On January 21st the first US case of COVID was confirmed in the US (Seattle area).

February 5-14: We flew to Florida for the IFA conference in Orlando, then spent a few days on the Gulf Coast in Sarasota.  We had uncharacteristically warm weather and thoroughly enjoyed our get away.  

Feb 25-27:  Jeff travelled to Atlanta for his BrightStar Performance Group meeting.  Compared to the flights just two weeks before, he said his flights were pretty empty, already people were cancelling their travel plans.

March 6 – I went to the UW Hospital for an ADRC Ambition Study Visit.  Seemed like business as usual.

March 6-8  We met Sandra and Matt in Minneapolis for the week-end.  With beautiful weather, we walked a lot and went to the Farmer’s Market at the Mill Museum, The Walker Art Museum, and on Sunday Jeff and I attended the Minnesota Auto Show at the Convention Center.  We didn’t know it at the time, but it was the last time we were in large crowds and were able eat in restaurants until who knows when we’ll be back to that?!

March 10  Jeff and I drove to Chicago to attend the BrightStar Midwest Owner’s Meeting.  Just before the meeting, BrightStar set up an option to attend the session virtually via something called “Zoom” meeting (had never heard of it before, but now we are Zooming nearly every day!).  About 40 people attended the session, and Shelly, the originally hugger, mandated that no one touch, shake hands or hug. Honestly, I thought that was a bit extreme, but now in the era of “social distancing,” it’s our new normal.  This was the last face-to-face business meeting we’ll attend in who knows how long.  The BrightStar Leadership Team also decided to cancel the BrightStar Leadership Conference scheduled in Dallas in mid-April.

Madison had the first Wisconsin confirmed COVD-19 case on March 11, at the UW hospital.

March 12 – Governor Evers declared a “public health emergency” for the State of WI.  We weren’t exactly sure what that meant at the time.  Also, that day, Jeff had scheduled a visit with his primary MD Trent Thompson to discuss heartburn / exercise induced chest pain that he’d had over the last several months (note title of this chapter = denial).  Dr Thompson scheduled an Upper GI exam and due the fact that Jeff used the words “chest pain” and he also had a slightly abnormal EKG, he also ordered a Stress Test.  After the MD visit, we headed to Costco where there was quite a buzz with people stocking up on cleaning supplies – we thought it was hysterical, but this was the beginning of the great “Toilet Paper Shortage” of 2020.  Crazy

March 13:  CMS mandated that all Nursing Home facilities across the country stop in-person visits and limit entrance to employees only. Although not required of Assisted Livings, we thought this was a good idea and implemented it for our BrightStar Senior Living communities.  We also instituted temperature and symptom monitoring for all staff as they entered the building, and daily temperature and wellness checks for our residents.

We also started having Home Care and Staffing employees that had traveled “out of state” start performing daily temperature checks.  Since we’d recently been to MN and IL, we also started our daily checks.

Around this time, many schools were on spring break, some extended the break a bit, throwing parents into a panic.

The government started talking about plans to help the country – promised of $600 a week in federal unemployment benefits (on top of state benefits), payment breaks on SBA loans, and several other loan and grant programs for businesses.  It really added to the confusion going on as schools were talking about closing, the threat of businesses closing, and then the uncertainty around if our business could be defined as “healthcare” and therefore an “essential business.”  We were just in the process of switching over to Waunakee Community Bank, for personal and business, so it was a great time to see how much of a partner they’d be for us.

Chapter Two:  This Just Got Real

Sunday March 15:  We attended church as usual, not knowing that this would be the last church service we’d attend in person in some time.  As it was, there was a bit of uncomfortableness during the time when we get up and move about and greet one another.  No hugs or handshakes – some people bumped elbows, some practiced “distance” high fives.  For the first time ever, I was uncomfortable with the thought of someone ripping off a hunk of bread for me as we participated in communion.

That evening we were notified that 2 BSL-M residents were sent to the ER with respiratory symptoms. We were relieved a few hours later to hear both had testing positive for influenza, and they were returned to the community where they were quarantined to their rooms and recovered without issue. We felt like we dodged a bullet.

Monday March 16: Jeff had his Upper GI procedure at St Mary’s outpatient surgery unit this AM.  All the nurses were decked out in full PPE with facemasks, and only a small percentage of the normally scheduled cases were performed.  With Jeff, they found a tiny hiatal hernia (too small to worry about), and Schottky’s ring (which they stretched).  We were sent on our way, feeling somewhat like we didn’t get the answers we are searching for.  

Sad afternoon, we got home from St Mary’s and decided we should take Tiger cat into the Vet’s Urgent Care as he’d been pretty listless for about a week.  The vet was on “lockdown” and you called them from the parking lot and they came out and took your pet in – you had to stay in the car.  I was not happy about that, but stopped myself from pitching a fit.  Soon they called and told us they found that he was in early stages of heart failure, so we made the decision to put him down.  We called Bailey to come out, and we were able to spend some final precious moments with a sedated Tiger, telling him how much we loved him and what a great cat he’d been.  So hard, but a good end to a wonderful 16 years.

Tuesday March 17: normal day at work.  We recorded several videos to be sent out to our staff with a “we got this” theme.  So odd to look back at that now, didn’t even realize what was in store.

Wednesday March 18: Up as usual, and I headed downstairs to our home gym.  Several minutes later, Jeff sent me a text saying “come up.”  I found him lying on the floor in our bathroom – with horrible chest pain.  I called 911 but it wasn’t until the EMTs were here with him hooked up to the EKG that I actually understood that he was having a heart attack.  Now we know there were warning signs, but something like this was never on our radar!

Amazing work from the Waunakee EMTs and we found ourselves back at St Mary’s in the Cardiac Cath lab. Ryan joined me there, and after about 90 minutes we met up with Jeff in Cardiac Care Unit.  Jeff had blockage of his cardiac arteries – repaired with 5 stents and now a life changing array of medications (blood pressure, cholesterol lowering and blood thinning).  He was always fit, ate well, exercised, had low BP and cholesterol … but heart disease runs in his family and you can’t beat genetics.

He was in the hospital until Friday March 20th, and our world completely changed during those days.  The cardiac event alone rocked our world, but during this time the governor signed a “Safer at Home” order which closed all businesses except those deemed essential. We emerged from the hospital on Friday to a different world.

Saturday March 21st was my dad’s 80th birthday.  My parents were driving back to WI from Florida (also in denial), and it felt so wrong to not have them stop in to visit, or be able to visit them, but we knew we had to stay isolated at home at this point in our lives.

It took some time to get used to our new normal and get settled into our home.  New routine for Sox our remaining cat as well.  Much of that first week was a blur.

Tuesday March 24th - BSL-W resident Bob, had respiratory symptoms as was sent to the hospital early this morning tested positive for COVID-19.  The news was devastating to me.  My heart was breaking for all the families that trusted us to care for their loved ones.  Even with restricting visitors and screening staff, the darned virus got in.  While we already knew we weren’t alone – I can’t describe what a devastating feeling this was.  Our management staff were amazing, however the majority of our caregiving staff (and our brother and sister cooks) all freaked out and left. Later that week, Doris, another resident that was already on hospice also died – presumably of COVID-19 since she had respiratory symptoms.   On Saturday April 4th, another resident (Ray) suddenly developed symptoms and was admitted to the hospital, not expected to live.  I took that news especially hard – I’d had a conversation with Ray during my last visit into the community (March 4th).  He’d been watching the news about how hard the nursing home in Seattle was hit with the virus and felt like they were “sitting ducks.”  What we learned was all attempts to screen or use available PPE wasn’t enough, when apparently, some carry the virus asymptomatically.  Also, on Saturday, Ray’s wife Lynne went to the hospital and also tested positive for the virus, but didn’t have severe symptoms.  On the morning of Thursday, April 9th, I was out for a run in the morning and as I was on my way home, I saw an ambulance outside BSL-W and I lost it. I’m sure I was quite a sight – yelling at God, screaming and crying on the sidewalk.  Probably the most helpless feeling I’ve ever had.  We finally got the health department to cooperate and provide tests for our staff and residents.  8 residents were presumed positive (3 deaths, 3 hospitalized and recovered, two showed no symptoms).  4 staff members tested positive and were quite ill, some out 4 weeks before they felt well enough to return.  True heroes – everyone involved:  residents and their families, managers, and staff.

Chapter Three:  Our New Normal

Government – I’m not even going to get into what terrible leadership our president demonstrated during this crisis.  Both the house and senate went to work in unprecedented fashion and in short time they introduced an array of bills – some good for us, some not, some that we’re still trying to figure out 6+ weeks later.  Payroll Protection Act – gave us loans that could turn into grants if we keep people working – Families First Corona Leave Act was an FMLA that gave non-essential workers unlimited time off to care for their families – Federal UI Act promising $600 a week in UI on top of what someone can get from the state (more than most of our workers are paid to work!!).  Crazy times, and a roller-coaster of uncertainty as we tried to figure out what applies to us, what works for us, what could hurt us, etc.

Zoom Meetings and “work” from home / gardening class.  Zoom church. Zoom Yoga.  Zoom meetings with friends.  Zoom meetings with WI DHS twice a week regarding COVID matters.  Zoom meetings with Littler twice a week, scaring the crap out of us with all the ways people can be suing us over COVID and myriad of other employment related issues!

School – though this didn’t affect us, school was cancelled for the rest of the year. Can’t imagine what that was like – the stress it put on working families, especially lower income who were less likely to have internet access and even access to food the way some kids did through school.  

Workouts – we loved getting up every day without the alarm clock, having our home gym.  On nice days I’d bring my yoga mat up to the porch.  We gradually got out walking, measuring heart rates and before long we were up to walking 7 miles with weighted packs.

Cooking – Jeff always loved to cook and it was great to have the extra time to make soups and clean out the pantry and see what kind of mixes were in there.  He also baked a Key Lime Pie, which was awesome.  

Wine – initially we were home with Ryan bringing us supplies and groceries.  My stash of “everyday” wine dwindled and I started tapping into the good stuff – I mean, what was I saving it for anyway?  By May, we were venturing back to Costco with masks on, so I was able to restock the “everyday” wine.  I also started making margaritas again – I mean, we had 5 bottles of tequila in our bar for some reason!!  As the weather warmed up, our condo ladies (Judy, Joan and me) started having wine parties on our patio - practicing social distancing of course.  Sure, was good to socialize with actual people again!

Puzzles – early into quarantine one night after Jeff had gone to bed, I got out a jigsaw puzzle that I’d had for awhile but had never put together (a series of VW beetles). We worked on it over the next few days and found it was calming, and something we could work on together. After we completed that, I found a few more in the basement, and then ordered a few more online.  Like a lot of things, they were becoming hard to find – took 3 weeks for Amazon delivery!!  The last one we are still working on – 1000-piece Macho Pichu with tiny little pieces!!

House Cleaning – after the heart attack, we realized we needed to quarantine alone, so we put our cleaning service on hold.  At first, we’d forget that the toilets needed to be cleaned and we’d realize the floor was disgusting.  It didn’t take long for us to get back into the routine of cleaning, and we think part of our new normal will be doing the cleaning ourselves again.  We’re not working the excessive hours that we were 10 years ago when we first broke down and hired cleaners.   Except wow – does the dust ever pile up!

Newspaper: “The Wide World of No Sports” The sports section is hysterical.  They’re working so hard to find things to publish.  Same with sports on TV.  Really – who wants to watch old games and old golf tournaments. One cool thing though was they published the AP Writers Top 25 Sports Movies, so were working on watching all of those (some old favorites, some good, at least one so far has been terrible). Here’s the list:

1.       Hoosiers

2.       Bull Durham

3.       Rocky

4.       Caddyshack

5.       Slap Shot

6.       Field of Dreams

7.       Raging Bull

8.       Major League

9.       The Natural

10.   A League of Their Own

11.   Moneyball

12.   The Bad News Bears

13.   Miracle

14.   Hoop Dreams

15.   Eight Men Out

16.   Chariots of Fire

17.   White Men Can’t Jump

18.   Remember the Titans

19.   Rudy

20.   Seabiscuit

21.   Breaking Away

22.   The Pride of the Yankees

23.   When We Were Kings

24.   Brian’s Song

25.   Friday Night Lights

26.   The Sandlot

Chapter Four:  Getting Old

Easter came and went. While I’m getting used to participating in church via video, Easter without family just felt like another day.

The week after Easter, we should have been at a conference in Vegas.  Its been rescheduled to September, on top of everything else.  If we can do things in September, we’re going to have to prioritize!!

Everything has been cancelled for the summer – IFA Summer Board meeting, Waunafest, Shake the Lakes Festival, State Fair, Farmer’s Market, everthing!!  No idea how or when Baseball and Football will start, and if they’ll play games in empty stadiums or what.  

The Wisconsin Supreme Court decided that the “Safer at Home” order was illegal, which threw the state into a state of confusion.  There is a real divide between people that want everything back open, and people that are still freaked out.  No one knows. As of May 26, 2020 – places are allowed to slowly open.  Salons by appointment; restaurants at 25% capacity.  We are still wearing masks in public, and since we’re working in healthcare, we’re enforcing even wearing masks in our office – not a popular decision, but they’ll be thankful if this spikes up again!

I’m feeling more used to it, and spending more time working on some of the work projects that I thought I’d be knocking out during this time.  It was just so hard to focus for the first 8 weeks – everything was about the darn virus!!

Jeff is knocking off house projects like crazy.  We’ve bought a new dinning room rug and moved some others around; he’s washing and waxing the cars that don’t go anywhere.  I’ve got him on a chipmunk reduction program now.  

I’m still working on my Master Gardner certification via Zoom and I’ve been able to spend a lot of time outside in the garden here and at our Waunakee BSL (and at church).  

We’ve also taken a few social distance hikes with our hiking group, and just this week decided to postpone September’s trip to Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro/Safari until September 2021. Its just too hard to believe that international travel will resume within the next few months.  I was terribly frustrated with that – I’m such a planner and it was making me crazy with nothing on our horizon.  Our hiking friend Gary came up with the idea to start knocking off segments of the Ice Age Trail – a 1000-mile trail that winds around Wisconsin.  Brilliant!! That’s exactly what I need – get away from the media, away from the crowds, and into nature.  By the time we’re done, things will be back to normal – whatever that is!  Stay tuned!!

We broke the news to our Leadership team that we’re about to hit the road again.  Most of them are used to it, and honestly, they brought us through this crisis with little support needed from us.  I’m so glad to have a plan.

[ruadhdubh]

Capitalist Realism vs Virus Realism

Logic is often linked with reason. Where reason is the motivation behind an action, the reason why one does something, logic is a series of reasons that limit one another to form a suite of actions, or a general behaviour. It is a set of principles that underlies the general thinking behind that general behaviour. Logic, as with reason, is not universal. This tends to be generally understood of reason. For example, I might have a reason to want to leave work early while my manager has a competing reason for me to stay. This, however, is less understood of logic, which can also be said for rationality, also often linked with reason. But a rationale is just the consistent application of reason, and logic, as I already mentioned, is the sequence of reasons alongside and limiting one another. If a man accuses a woman of being irrational, it is more likely that that man simply fails to understand the logic underlying the reason for that woman’s behaviour. Logics compete, just as reasons do.

Returning to the situation between myself and my manager, it is not necessarily the case that our competing reasons belie competing logics. We might both wholeheartedly agree with the logic that to work hard at our company will benefit us both, and it’s just a deadly sunny day and I need to get out of the office in that given moment. It is more likely, however, that a manager, who will be on a higher pay scale than me-who needs to be managed, is operating from a different logic. The reason they want me to stay to work is informed by the logic of management in a capitalist enterprise. That is; ‘if I sit here and make sure he doesn’t move, he will eventually produce the service required by my manager, so that I might pass it along and continue receiving my sweet salary.’ Whereas my reason for wanting to leave early is more likely informed by an altogether different logic, such as: ‘this is such a menial shitty load of bollox of a job. There is literally no point in me staying here to produce this service because, as bad as it is, it would be even worse to eventually get that eejit’s job, despite the better pay.’

So if I get up and leave for the door and the manager jumps up, startled, and demands to know where I’m off to, and I tell him I don’t care about the job, that I’ve just got to go, he might try to explain the situation to me, according to his logic: ‘you must stay! I implore you! Who will produce this service if you’re not here for me to supervise you? You’re acting entirely irrational!’ This is of course wholly antithetical to the logic informing my reasoning. The conversation doesn’t get very far, as we bump heads until eventually my manager, failing to grasp my logic and in need of a higher rate of compliance for his logic to be seen through, fires me and I get to leave early. There is no universal logic. Logics can compete.

On March the 4th of this year, Italy had just closed its schools and universities due to having become the European epicentre of the coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic. With 87 known cases in the UK, the Prime Minister Boris Johnson had just told the nation that, as long as they were washing their hands for 20 seconds, people could greet others however they liked. During the weeks that followed confusion ensued with some baffled that the government hadn’t adopted Italy’s policies before the spread of the virus got much worse, and others keen to focus on the ‘it’ll be grand’ aspect of Johnson’s message. Johnson assured the nation that more stringent measures were not necessary as the science was sound, that the virus would spread through the population and only kill off the weak, while everyone else built up a natural immunity. On March 16th, the science reported in an online article on the Hoover Institute’s website that the standard model of spread was a gross overestimation, and that we should also be concerning ourselves with the impending economic shock.

But then, on March 18th, the science again reported, this time through a research paper published by the Imperial College London, that things were going to get very bad. In response, Johnson finally closes the schools. Two days later, pubs, restaurants and gyms are also ordered to close. A furlough scheme, allowing companies to temporarily lay off staff so they could stay home and the government would pay 80% of their wages, was announced. Then, on March 23rd, Johnson tells the nation to stay home, to only leave for food, medical reasons, essential work if it cannot be done from home, and for one hour’s daily exercise. In this five day period the world, for those living in the UK, changed dramatically. 43 people were reported to have died, but the figure stood at 11 000 in the wider world. The reality of the virus for the vast majority of people living in the UK was a vague and ambiguous puzzle playing out on their screens. It was largely happening elsewhere. There was, for at least some I guess, a sense that an enemy was imminent, and this feeling was, for me anyway, made even more surreal by Johnson’s u-turn with respect to policy.

It was as if the Prime Minister began employing a different logic to the one that informed his previous ‘herd immunity’ policy. In contrast to the stark Virus Realism of a policy of lockdown, many in the financial press were clamouring for us to consider the economy. On March 19th, the Wall Street Journal published a report highlighting the human cost of job losses, claiming that this cost would grow by the hour. It warned that 10 million jobs would be lost but, in case the reader wasn’t sufficiently tugged by their heart strings, the article counted this cost in lost dreams. This sentiment was ramified when, on March 23rd, the same day that Johnson delivered Virus Realism to the UK, the leader of the free world, Donal Trump announced to the business class that the cure cannot be worse than the problem, and that the US would be out of lockdown sooner rather than later.

On March 24th the Washington Post reported that Trump was coming under increasing pressure from business leaders, Republican lawmakers and conservative economists to reopen the economy. It also reported that Dr. Fauci, a lead member of the administration’s coronavirus taskforce, disagreed with this direction. Competing logics. Capitalist logic determines that today’s investments must be valorised tomorrow. That is, if I make an investment on March 22nd I require economic activity so that the economy grows and I can eventually cash out, having made a gain on my investment, otherwise known as profit. If, however, Boris Johnson effectively shuts down a large economic hub, otherwise know as the UK, on March 23rd, then the chances of valorisation become limited. Yes, I can read in the news that some people are ill and a few of them are dying, but if my capital doesn’t valorise, my competitors might outflank and then sink me. This is the logic of capitalism, the logic underlying the reasoning behind Trump’s plans to reopen the economy.

The logic of Covid-19, however, goes something along the lines of: ‘this host is literally killing itself to get rid of me. Perhaps I should try that eejit over there? Nope, just as hostile. Oh, they’re now dead. Ah, here’s their neighbour to check on them…’, and so on. This logic, or, the one derived from it that goes something like: ‘we must stop this virus from spreading and killing its hosts’, appears to be in direct competition with the logic of capitalism. On March 25th an article published by the Financial Times declared that shutting industry could inflict lasting damage on economies. On March 31st another Financial Times article reminded everyone that the UK’s gross domestic product would shrink £6 billion during each month of lockdown. And on the same day the BBC relayed the message from the World Bank that the 24 million people they projected to escape poverty now would not. From this two week snapshot of various policies and reactions in the media we get a sense of the competition between these two logics.

Another two weeks on and, on April 14th, the same day the IMF released their Global Financial Stability Report, (the same day, incidentally, that Johnson was released from hospital after having succumbed to the virus two and a half weeks earlier), the UK’s office for budgetary responsibility asked the British chancellor of the exchequer, Rishi Sunak, to begin reminding everyone of the primacy, after all, of the capitalist logic. Sunak, in his statement to the nation, declared that it was important to be honest with people about what was happening to the economy, stating that he would outline such before turning to the health figures. So, before turning to those health figures, Sunak took the time to assure the UK nation that the government had the economy in hand, and that it would be getting everyone back to work as quickly as possible, as soon as restrictions changed, to get business moving again and recover the economy. Then, on pivoting toward the health figures, Sunak gave us a direct glimpse down to the bone of the logic by saying the single most important thing we can do for the health of the economy is to protect the health of our people.

Remember, a logic is a sequence of inter-limiting reasons. In Sunak’s sequence of reasons why the government should act, the economy here comes first, as if people serve the economy, rather than that the economy serves people. Four weeks have since passed and, on May 10th, Johnson eased the lockdown to allow more people to travel to work, suggesting also that schools would soon re-open. This policy of easing lockdown comes at a time when Virus Realism appears to be subsiding. The rate of death linked with Covid-19 is reportedly lowering. The curve seems to have been flattened and the National Health Service managed not to collapse under the weight of its peak. It would appear then, that the government is now aware of what sort of numbers the health system is capable of, and must be confident it can maximise economic activity within the parameter of cases the country featured over the past two months.

I cannot say for sure that this is a conscious policy, of course, but given the virus logic, it at least does not appear to seek to minimise the death rate. And, given the logic of capitalism, the government is technically now aware of how to manage the case load for the NHS. When numbers rise once the economy restarts, the government will know when to cap this second wave and introduce lockdown measures again. The inevitable re-increase of the death rate will be a collateral factor to the continuation of the logic of capitalism and the need to valorise investments. It just so happens that, for those business leaders and conservative economists lobbying on behalf of the logic of capitalism, the virus logic affects them least of all. On May 1st a report was published on the Poverty and Social Exclusion website by the Office of National Statistics that displayed that the distribution of deaths linked with Covid-19 lay increasingly with those from the most deprived areas of England and Wales.

Irrespective of the logic of the virus, this is always the logic of capitalism. This distribution pattern is not too dissimilar for deaths not linked to the virus also. And this is an important point, but bear with me for a moment. A few days after the lockdown measures were announced, the NHS put out a call for volunteers. In the first 24 hours they received over half a million applicants. Mutual aid groups were quickly established across the country, and a poll, published on April 9th, stated that the British public valued the health and lives of its older population over even long-term economic considerations. Despite a government bent over the lap of the business lobby (as if they weren’t thoroughly involved in business themselves!) and thus operating under the logic of capitalism, these moments of selflessness illustrate an alternative reasoning among that government’s constituents. From this glimpse of reason, we cannot say what logic underlies it but what we can say, however, is that it doesn’t appear to be concerned too much with the logic of capitalism.

Why, though, was this not as blatantly apparent before the Covid-19 crisis? As above, the country’s death rate is dramatically asymmetrical in its distribution along degrees of deprivation, virus or no virus. Why in this moment do people suddenly seem motivated by human vulnerability? I would guess that this is perhaps because for a moment human vulnerability was honestly depicted in the mainstream media during the early phase of the crisis. Society’s comparable endemic vulnerabilities that existed before, and will exist long after unless things change, will not be sufficiently newsworthy as to inspire such levels of social solidarity once this is over. The mediated experience of the world people generally consume cannot help but affect profoundly the underlying logic to the reasons anyone does anything. This alongside, of course, the imposition of the logic of capitalism on most people to perform waged labour for most their lives just to survive.

It is not the case that people were indifferent and now they have suddenly found their calling. Its that the logic of capitalism determines what makes the headlines as investors in media require that the company they invested in experiences share price growth continuously. This pressure requires the company to opt for the sort of news that incites passion in the consumer, allows them to feel things, to sense life. It must be sensational. Constantly. If a media company was to report continuously on the sort of human vulnerability that might inspire social solidarity, its readership will flag, leading investors to cash-in and invest elsewhere. This competitive drive is the essence of the logic of capitalism, and in this way, one of many, it determines so much of our society.

Returning now to the articles mentioned above, published between March 19th and March 31st. In particular, the Wall Street Journal’s projection that 10 million will lose their jobs and their ability to realise dreams; Trump’s tweet that the cure cannot be worse than the problem; the Financial Times claim that shutting industry could inflict lasting damage on the economy; and the World Bank’s warning that the 24 million people they predicted would escape poverty this year, will no longer do so. The elements involved here are people and wealth, the relationship between them is determined by processes. Under capitalist logic the processes is: the people will slowly attain a share of the wealth by engaging in the economy (the economy that is served by people, not the one that serves people, as highlighted by Chancellor Sunak. This is the capitalist economy – the free market). Under competition with virus logic this logic comes to reason that: the people will not attain a share of the wealth as lockdown will disturb the free market. The elements remain unchanged: under lockdown or otherwise, the people exist; the wealth exists. Its just the interplay of logics that determine the relationship between them.

Under the competition imposed by virus logic, the transfer of wealth to the poor can no longer be achieved under capitalist logic because the prime value or reason determining the process that manages that relationship is the free market. In a capitalist economy the industry mentioned in the Financial Times article has developed an organic network of production, directed by free market price signals. In shutting industry down, the lasting damage the Financial Times alludes to is in the relationships between nodal points in that network, who, after some time, will have failed to perform that relationship and may no longer do so once the possibility arises once more. The quality of these relationships is based on the conditions of competition, the ones I mentioned previously that deliver such quality media companies. The extended logic, then, is that we cannot simply place element wealth alongside element people as this will disturb the free market as I just outlined it. To do so is illogical. But now, Virus Realism is disturbing this process and the poor people will have to suffer under the totality of that logic, as if this manner of distributing wealth is the best humanity could possible come up with.

In sum then, the quality of industrial relations, as we have seen, are not that brilliant. The process is so feeble that it is unable to withstand lockdown. Its ability to distribute wealth is negligent – why is everyone so poor to begin with? So why do we uphold its logic and the prime value of the free market economy? Because the class with power in society has invested in the process and they demand a return on it in both the near future and further down the line. Competing logics. What if instead of valuing the free market, instead of valuing the expansion of the economy that valorises invested capital, we swapped it for a new prime value? That of, not expansion, but distribution. We could outline an economy that serves people, rather than the other way round. We could build a production chain robust enough to adapt to crises such as this pandemic, so long as it relied on social rather than capital relations. It would no longer be an illogical act to simply place the existing wealth beside the people who need it.

Under this logic, if under it we had an actually free press, headlines would instead read ‘the 24 million people capitalists decided would gradually escape poverty this year will no longer do so as those capitalists have instead decided to withdraw their wealth from circulation because the government has suggested that people’s welfare is slightly more pressing than this economic nonsense’; or ‘people’s dreams shattered as capital is withdrawn from the economy due to fear and greed by the capitalist class’. There is no scarcity of wealth. There is no reason that we cannot distribute wealth evenly in society, where it is needed. There is no reason for this, other than the logic of capitalism.

[day0one]

White House tensions with CDC spill into public view as top Trump adviser criticizes agency response

Tensions between the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spilled out into public view on Sunday as a top adviser to President Trump criticized the public health agency’s response to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The comments by White House trade adviser Peter Navarro are the latest signal of how the Trump administration has sought to sideline the CDC. The agency typically plays the lead role in public health crises, but in recent weeks it’s had its draft guidance for reopening held up by the White House, leaving states and localities to largely fend for themselves.

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Speaking on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” Navarro sharply criticized the CDC over its production of a flawed coronavirus test kit that contributed to a nationwide delay in testing.

“Early on in this crisis, the CDC — which really had the most trusted brand around the world in this space — really let the country down with the testing,” Navarro said. “Because not only did they keep the testing within the bureaucracy, they had a bad test. And that did set us back.”

The CDC did not respond to a request for comment. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, whose agency oversees the CDC, pushed back against Navarro’s criticism in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“I don’t believe the CDC let this country down,” Azar said when pressed repeatedly on Navarro’s comments. “I believe the CDC serves an important public health role. And what was always critical was to get the private sector to the table [on testing].”

With the coronavirus pandemic in the United States now in its third month, some in the White House are increasingly taking aim at the CDC and the leadership of its director, Robert Redfield, as The Washington Post has previously reported.

In addition to the issue of testing, White House officials say they are also frustrated by what they consider the agency’s balky flow of data and information and the leak of an early version of its reopening recommendations, according to three administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal disagreements.

Appearing remotely at a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday, Redfield detailed the CDC’s efforts to combat the pandemic, including expert assistance to state health authorities, disease surveillance and testing and contact tracing strategy. But he also sounded an alarm that the nation’s public health resources have been insufficient to meet the challenge that covid-19 has posed.

“We need to rebuild our nation’s public health infrastructure: data and data analytics, public health laboratory resilience and our nation’s public health workforce,” he said.

Navarro on Sunday lashed out not only at the CDC, but also at China, escalating the Trump administration’s attacks on that country for its handling of the virus. In an interview on ABC News’s “This Week,” Navarro said he holds the country’s leaders responsible for the global outbreak.

“The virus was spawned in Wuhan province,” Navarro said. “Patient zero was in November. The Chinese, behind the shield of the World Health Organization, for two months hid the virus from the world, and then sent hundreds of thousands of Chinese on aircraft to Milan, New York and around the world to seed that. They could have kept it in Wuhan. Instead, it became a pandemic.”

Beijing has responded to such attacks by accusing the Trump administration of “shifting blame” in an effort to distract from its own failures amid the pandemic.

While they were at odds over the CDC, Navarro and Azar were in agreement Sunday as they defended the Trump administration’s push for states to reopen their economies.

Navarro argued that “some of the people in the medical community want to just run and hide until the virus is extinguished,” an approach that he argued, without evidence, would “kill many more people” than the coronavirus would.

He also said loosening restrictions on businesses is not a “question of lives vs. jobs.”

“What President Trump realized early on is that, if you lock people down, you may save lives directly from the China virus, but you indirectly are going to kill a lot more people” through suicide or substance abuse, Navarro said.

Azar declared that it’s safe to reopen the country because half of the counties reporting “haven’t had a single death,” and more than 60 percent of all covid-19 cases are in just 2 percent of the reporting counties.

“That’s why the local leaders need to lead this,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Azar also said he was not overly concerned by images of people congregating at bars and other places without staying six feet apart or wearing masks.

“I think in any individual instance you are going to see people doing things that are irresponsible,” he said, emphasizing, “we’ve got to get this economy open and our people out and about, working and going to school again.”

Trump made only brief remarks Sunday as he returned to the White House from Camp David. In an exchange with reporters, he maintained that “tremendous progress is being made on many fronts, including coming up with a cure for this horrible plague that has beset our country.”

But statistics from some states paint a less-than-rosy picture.

Texas reported its largest single-day jump in coronavirus cases Saturday, with 1,801 newly confirmed cases. According to the Texas Department of State Health Services, 734 of the new cases were reported in the Amarillo area, where there has been an outbreak tied to the region’s meatpacking facilities.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has already allowed some businesses — including hair salons, restaurants and retail stores — to reopen at reduced capacity, and beginning on Monday, gyms, offices and nonessential manufacturing facilities will be allowed to do so as well, according to the Dallas Morning News.

New York, the state hardest hit by the pandemic, has seen a decline in new cases since April, but officials remain wary of a potential increase as parts of the state begin to reopen. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) on Sunday received a covid-19 swab test on live TV in an effort to convince residents to get tested if they are experiencing symptoms.

“It is so fast and so easy that even a governor can take this test,” Cuomo said shortly before a doctor swabbed his nose during his daily briefing in Albany.

After photos and videos emerged over the weekend of people in New York City crowding the sidewalks outside restaurants and bars, many carrying open containers and not wearing masks, Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) scolded those disregarding quarantine measures.

“We’re feeling the pull of the outdoors, we’re feeling the seasons changing, we all want to be out there,” de Blasio said, noting that the sunny weather has only exacerbated pent-up New Yorkers’ “quarantine fatigue” after two months in isolation. “But we all understand we’re in the middle of a pandemic, and we have to do things differently.”

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom said he is moving forward based on the best guidance to control the spread of the virus: social distancing. He also said reopening schools will be predicated on data and science, not just observations on the ground.

“I think some schools will not be [open this fall] and many schools will be,” Newsom (D) told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Seventy-five percent of California’s economy is now open, including manufacturing, warehouses and restaurants, Newsom said. Business owners and individuals are encouraged to wear face coverings and maintain physical distance from others. Opening sports arenas, he said, is not an option at this time.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) said that reopening his state’s economy was necessary but also noted that the state was still wrestling with the outbreak and the danger remains. “I’ve said to Ohioans that so much is in every individual’s control. I encourage people to wear masks when they go out in public,” he said on CNN.

DeWine said he was concerned when he saw images of a reopened Ohio bar crowded with people. But he added that the people running the bar got the situation under control.

“Ultimately, it’s going to come to Ohioans doing what Ohioans have done the last two months — keep their distance and wear masks,” he said.

DeWine said that 90 percent of the state’s economy is open but that he wasn’t sure about reopening schools. He said they were closed “not because you [are] specifically worried about the kids,” but to keep students from going home and infecting their parents.

“You have 30 kids go into a classroom, one kid is in there, and he’s got no symptoms, but he’s carrying it — now you got maybe 25 kids . . . going back to their families,” DeWine said. “And it just spreads and multiplies. So, that’s the concern.”

In an interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) warned that “time is of the essence” for Congress and the White House to approve an additional round of coronavirus relief, including funds for additional testing and job protections.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has sought to expand liability protections for employers that reopen during the pandemic, but Pelosi on Sunday declined to say whether Democrats are open to such a move.

“Time is very important. We have lost time,” Pelosi said, adding: “People are hungry across America. Hunger doesn’t take a pause. People are jobless across America. That doesn’t take a pause.”

[myoddlifestories]

Coronavirus - 2020

So normally I only write once a year at New Years to reflect on the year and write about my new year plans and goals. But today, I wanted to write a post on life at the moment, so at the end of the year I can look back and remember how crazy this is 

As I write this.. sat on the sofa in my running gear (i have started running now) with This Morning on the telly - Holly and Phil standing 2 meters apart, all guests by video calling them. Cooking shows from the chefs own home kitchen. It’s very surreal, but beginning to feel the new “normal”. 

It all started around December 2019, there were reports of a thing called Coronavirus in Wuhan China.  At the time, you think it’s another thing like Swine flu which affected us 10 years ago or so,  where it’s a bad flu, nothing to worry about. Or thinking, it’s not spread much - we will be ok in our UK bubble. 

We had a holiday end of April booked in to Japan, but we thought it will be all sorted by then surely? How wrong we were!

Sometime in January UK recorded a case, then from then on it escalated. It was okay until March time when everything became much more serious.

February 13th I had my wrist operation... plate taken out of my wrist in Orpington hospital, first time I ever had general anaesthetic, and my god it was good, I was quite nervous by thought of it, but on the day, I was pretty chilled and relaxed. I fully trusted the surgeon - Ramon Tahmassebi - private hand consultant at Fortius clinic.  He did a great job! Then,I went away to South Africa where me and kenny had the holiday of a lifetime. I then returned to work 1 month after my op - 14th March. More and more cases were announced, it was reported as a pandemic, but no real changes had been made, so couldn’nt be that serious issue ? We were just told to wash our hands regularly and cover our mouths if we cough or sneeze. At clinic, I was disinfecting EVERYTHING after each patient. And gettign patients to antibac before they come in. We were told not to shake hands. 

Other countries - particularly Italy, were a few weeks ahead of us and were suffering badly. Churches had been used to hold dead bodies, make-shift hospitals as not enough capacity. They were in a total lock down, only to leave house if they had a valid reason - walking dog or buying groceries. No exercise allowed outdoors. 

This is when the stock piling started. It started with anti-bac gel - my local pharmacy started to sell tiny little bottles which are normally£1-2 for £16 ! It was shocking. Toilet roll was impossible to get hold of. I went to every shop near me and all fully sold out. Only way to get some was arrived when delivery, Then it was pasta, bread and canned goods!  It was sad to see people being selfish, and out just for themselves. Photos of elderly people in empty aisles - unable to get essentials. Eventually a rule was set so that you could only get 3 of each essential item. Even as I write this, its a big struggle to find eggs and impossible to find strong bread flour... otherwise, the panic has calmed down now..

Then 23rd March Boris Johnson made an announcement - pre-recorded message which gave me chills. It now felt serious. We were going into lock down. We had to stay at home and only leave to exercise x1 daily, or go to shops for essentials. 

This meant we could not see family or friends. Not go to work. Not go to the park to sunbathe and enjoy the sunshine in spring. 

This is when shit got real. 

As me and kenny are both employed - this was a big financial hit for us. Still having to pay £1600 a month for rent as well as bills and profession subscriptions etc... Kenny was due to leave for Love Island US in mid may, which has been pushed back by months and no gaurantee of happening. So kenny had no work for months. 

I was only able to do video consultations, which meant my income dropped to about 25% . Later a scheme was announced they would help self employed buy paying 80% of their monthly income (upto £2500).  This wouldnt go live until June tho.. and Kenny was eligible for it as he hadnt been full time self employed in year 2018-2019.  Luckily we had savings for house, but ideally didnt want to dig into this. On top of this, Kenny found out he had a MASSIVE tax bill to pay in January.. a rather stressful time.

We both wanted to try do our bit during this time.

Kenny applied at supermarkets to help stack shelves to help with demand and worked at Tesco for a day - but it was so quiet, he wasnt doing much.  He was then offered a job for 8 weeks doing social media managing. CBS then said they will pay him a retainer fee - which gave us a massive relief with finances.

I spoke to Age UK to see how I could help , applied for NHS volunteering and applied for jobs as a HCA/ physio - to see what I could do. I decided against NHS work as Kenny has asthma and has been coughing a lot since Dec, so I worry how he would deal with Covid-19 and I would never forgive myself if he ended up in iTU. 

i accepted a role as volunteer at Age UK - delivering food parcels to the elderly and the telephone befriending. As the elderly and vulnerable had to self isolate for 3 months (until Mid June).  I was happy to do something and help in some way. I am doing volunteering alongside the odd video call. I have also been offered a job as a PIP assessor - which I can do training from home hwilst this lasts, offering 41k. I am due to start 11th May.

I also had an interview (all interviews are done via Zoom video call) with Spire Wellesly in Southend - band 5/6 outpatient physio job. It went amazing - they said they would have me in a heart beat and that I was a strong candidate. The interviewer said I would be better as a band 7 (senior physio) - but needed to speak to director about creating a role. which is promising! I am in no rush, but when we move, - whenever that will now be , it would be ideal.

So currently.. the situation is as follows.

- Restrictions to be reviewed on 7th May - possible lift ? - Everyone wearing masks (although government currently say no need), queues to get into supermarkets as limited number allowed, 2m distance markings on floors, plastic covers in front of cashier, contactless card,  - All restaurants, cafes, shops blocked up and closed. - Reduced trains and buses - Oxford street is empty and its so eery - Regents park is busy as everyone wants some green! - Everyone 2m apart - Everyone working from home / no school (unless parents are keyworkers)

I may write another update in 2 weeks time!

I will do another post with photos / and daily life/achievements during lock down`!