Former Australia prime minister Kevin Rudd claims that the New South Wales premier has “put the state and nation at risk” because of pressure from Rupert Murdoch, current PM Scott Morrison and “the far right”, after she dismissed calls to tighten lockdown rules.
Kevin Rudd (@MrKRudd)
Berejiklian, having ignored advice to lock down Sydney early because of pressure from Murdoch, Morrison & the far right, still refuses to impose an effective lockdown despite 633 cases today. As a result, she puts the rest of the state and nation at risk. https://t.co/C3j6NnQtpy
People refusing to get Covid vaccines in France are paying hundreds for fake health passes in an online black market that has flourished since the government imposed mandates for them to enter cafes, inter-city trains and other public places.
AFP reports that people in the historically vaccine-sceptic country have had to show proof they have either been vaccinated, tested negative for Covid or have recovered from the disease in order to enter a museum, cinema or sports venue since July.
It was expanded to restaurants, bars, hospitals and trains earlier this month as president Emmanuel Macron seeks to compel people to get vaccinated.
A black market for fraudulent health passes has sprung up on Snapchat – despite the risk of jail sentences – amid large protests.
Some ads say: “Your health pass by email in eight to 10 hours maximum”, “Vaccination is optional thanks to our service” or “Say no to the vaccine and get a health pass without getting vaccinated”.
A 28-year-old event planner told AFP he obtained his fake health pass for €350. He said he is not anti-vaccine, but that he does not feel that young people should be forced to get vaccinated when they are not particularly vulnerable.
“If Covid-19 still exists when I’m 50 or 60, then yes, I’ll get vaccinated,” he said, adding getting regular tests to show that he is not infected was not an option as he risks a positive result which means he could not work. “Security guards told me that even if I am the person organising the party, if I’m positive, I can’t get into my own event,” he said.
He said he was not worried about getting scammed as he has friends who had already bought fake health passes.
“I send all the information to my doctor contact who registers it in” the French national health system database and the phone app for the health pass, said one counterfeiter.
One woman has received a one-year prison term – which was converted to home detention due to Covid – for creating some 200 QR codes for sale. She worked at a vaccine centre.
The New York Times reports that while the vaccines are effective at preventing serious illness and death, the risk of developing post-Covid health problems after a breakthrough infection is not known.
While some breakthrough cases among those who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 are inevitable, they are unlikely to result in hospitalisation or death. But one important question about breakthrough infection that remains unanswered is: can the vaccinated develop so-called long Covid?
While preliminary research suggests that it is, in fact, possible for a breakthrough case to lead to symptoms that can persist for weeks to months, there are still more questions than answers. What percent of breakthrough cases result in lingering symptoms? How many of those people recover? Are the persistent symptoms after breakthrough infection as severe as those that occur in the unvaccinated?
“People have said to me, ‘You’re fully vaccinated. Why are you being so careful?’” said Dr Robert M Wachter, professor and chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “I’m still in the camp of I don’t want to get Covid. I don’t want to get a breakthrough infection.
“I’m going to take it at face value that one in five people, six weeks after a breakthrough case, continued to feel crummy. That’s enough to make me want to wear two masks when I go into the grocery store, which is not that burdensome anyway.”
Complicating the study of breakthrough infections is the fact that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention only tracks post-vaccination infections that result in hospitalisation or death. While the CDC does continue to study breakthrough infections in several large cohorts, the lack of data on all breakthrough cases remains a source of frustration among scientists and patient advocacy groups.
“It’s very frustrating not to have data at this point in the pandemic to know what happens to breakthrough cases,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale School of Medicine who is conducting studies of long Covid. “If mild breakthrough infection is turning into long Covid, we don’t have a grasp of that number.”
A lack of exercise is linked to an increased risk of severe Covid-19 and associated complications, according to a study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
Researchers compared hospitalisation rates, intensive care (ICU) admissions and mortality among almost 50,000 patients with Covid-19 who were consistently inactive, doing some activity or consistently reporting doing sufficient exercise.
It found that, “consistently meeting physical activity guidelines was strongly associated with a reduced risk for severe Covid-19 outcomes among infected adults.”
The researchers recommend public health agencies to prioritise the promotion of physical activity and to incorporate it into routine medical care.
Obesity increases the risk of dying of Covid-19 by nearly 50% and may make vaccines against the disease less effective, according to a comprehensive study using global data. About 2.2m of the 2.5m deaths related to Covid as of March were in countries with high levels of overweight people, says a report from the World Obesity Federation.
Writing in the Conversation, clinician scientist Jane Thornton, from Western University in Canada, said:
Statistics Canada’s data on Canadian Covid-19 deaths in 2020 reported at least one comorbidity present in 90% of all Covid-19-related deaths (including younger age groups). A comorbidity is a disease or condition that a patient has at the same time as another illness. Many of the most common comorbid conditions on the list — including high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes — are linked to physical inactivity.
As a part of prevention and treatment of these comorbid conditions that put people at greater risk, access to physical activity for all must play a central part in this change. Physicians and other health care providers can play a part by prescribing physical activity, facilitating access and measuring outcomes.
The medical journal Nature has echoed calls for a temporary suspension of Covid boosters, saying the scientific case for their efficacy has not yet been proved.
In a period of vaccine scarcity, the choice to dole out boosters must be guided by evidence of benefit, and consideration given to the cost of delaying the delivery of vaccines to vulnerable people and health-care workers in other countries. So far, there is little evidence that boosters are needed to protect the fully vaccinated.
It said about 58% of people in high-income countries have received at least one vaccine dose, in low-income countries that number stood at just 1.3%.
Sadly, many countries are moving ahead with boosters regardless. Israel has begun giving third doses of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine to people over 50 and other vulnerable groups. France, Germany, the UK and the US are all planning to provide boosters to certain groups. In the US, more than 1m people have managed to get an unauthorised third dose.
Allowing Covid-19 to spread in low and lower-middle-income countries, where, overall, fewer than 15% of people are vaccinated, could result in millions of people dying or facing long-term complications from severe Covid-19. Economies will erode as businesses and schools remain closed.
If vaccines were not scarce, boosters would be less controversial. But to focus on boosters when more than half the world lacks vaccine doses is short-sighted and will only keep the pandemic burning longer. For wealthy countries, this strategy means they will be indefinitely chasing their tails in terms of new variants. And for the rest of the world, it means prolonging unnecessary suffering.
It added: “In some cases, boosters might be warranted — if the evidence suggests that the usual doses aren’t effective, for example. One study of people who have had an organ transplant, meaning they need to take drugs that suppress the immune system, found that almost half had no antibody response after two doses of mRNA vaccines.”
Counterfeit versions of India’s primary Covid vaccine have been seized by authorities in the country, and in African nations, over the past two months, the World Health Organization has said.
The BBC reports that the WHO warned that fake vaccines “pose a serious risk to global public health” and called for their removal from circulation.
“Although we have a strong system to prevent such cases, with this development the only thing we want to ensure is that no Indian received a fake vaccine,” an unidentified Indian health official told the Mint news website.
Covishield, the Indian-made version of AstraZeneca’s jab, is the most widely used vaccine in India, with more than 486m doses administered so far.
Millions of Covishield vaccines were being sent to countries in Asia, Africa and South America as part of deals with various governments and the global Covax scheme. But the Indian government banned exports in May to focus on its domestic rollout amid surging cases, heightening the need elsewhere.
A Singapore court has sentenced a British man to six weeks in prison, local media reported, after he repeatedly breached coronavirus protocols by refusing to wear a face mask in public.
Benjamin Glynn, 40, was found guilty on four charges over his failure to wear a mask on a train in May and at a subsequent court appearance in July, as well as causing a public nuisance and using threatening words towards public servants, Reuters reports.
Glynn was earlier subjected to a psychiatric assessment ordered by the judge as a result of his conduct and remarks in court. Earlier today, he asked the court to drop what he called “unlawful charges” and asked for his passport to be returned so that he could go back to Britain to be with his family, according to media outlet CNA.
It quoted the judge as telling Glynn that he was “completely misguided” in is belief that he was exempt from Singapore’s laws on wearing masks. Glynn represented himself in court.
The Asian business hub is well known for its enforcement of strict rules and has jailed and fined others for breaking Covid-19 regulations, according to Reuters. Some foreigners have had their work permits revoked for rule breaches.
In February, a Singapore court sentenced a British man to two weeks in jail after he sneaked out of his hotel room to meet his then fiancee while in quarantine.
The Scottish government has announced a return to exams for secondary pupils from spring 2022 “if public health advice allows” – but said two contingency plans would remain in place in case of further disruption due to the pandemic.
Some education experts had suggested this could be an opportunity for the government to reassess whether traditional exams remained the best way of assessing achievement, but there have been numerous concerns raised about the type of intensive continuous assessment imposed on pupils over the last school year, when exams were cancelled.
The head of Scotland’s largest teaching union, the EIS, Larry Flanagan, said he would have preferred to see exams bypassed for younger secondary students “in the interests of supporting education recovery and wellbeing among this cohort”.
It remains to be seen whether the reductions in course content for this year as recognition that young people have been adversely affected by the pandemic through no fault of their own, will suffice.”
The Scottish government announced before the summer that it was replacing the Scottish qualifications authority, which has been the subject of ongoing criticism, and Flanagan called for “alternative models of timetabling and the timing of qualifications to better serve the needs of Scotland’s learners” to be considered as part of the overhaul.
A card shop whose owners repeatedly refused requests to close it during lockdowns, because they sold sweets and soft drinks, has been fined more than £35,000.
The BBC reports that the owners of Grace Cards and Books in Droitwich, Worcestershire, argued their shop qualified for an exemption because they sold confectionary.
But a judge did not agree that these constituted essential goods nor qualified it as a newsagent, calling their reasoning a “fig leaf” despite the sale of Christian publications and, later, some national newspapers.
Alasdair and Lydia Walker-Cox were ordered to pay fines totalling £35,000 after being found guilty at Kidderminster magistrates court. They will also have to pay legal costs of just under £9,000 and a victim surcharge of £190.
They told the BBC last year they were defying the rules “on principle” and risked going out of business if they closed: “We have a God-given right to earn an honest living … If we shut we won’t be able to pay suppliers, the rent, let alone support the family. If we open we can.”
Alasdair Walker-Cox also said he believed lockdowns did not “work” against the virus.
BBC Midlands Today (@bbcmtd)
Covid-19: Droitwich card and gift shop flouts lockdown ‘on principle’ https://t.co/8Z9xx3kpHK
The practice of some politicians not wearing face coverings in parliament when they are not speaking may conflict with the spirit of government guidance.
PA reports that on Wednesday the House of Commons was at its busiest since March 2020, as MPs were recalled to debate the situation in Afghanistan, with members sitting shoulder to shoulder.
Some were wearing face coverings as they sat for the hours-long session, but many, including Boris Johnson, were not.
Since 19 July face coverings have not been mandatory in England, but government guidance says they are recommended in crowded and enclosed spaces.
It says: “We expect and recommend that members of the public continue to wear face coverings in crowded and enclosed spaces where you come into contact with people you don’t normally meet.” It adds that people should “use your judgment in deciding where you should wear one”.
Edinburgh University professor of public health Linda Bauld said:
The virus is airborne, we currently have slightly rising numbers of cases, so it is a protective measure that they can take and I’m sure everyone in public health would agree when indoors we should do that where possible.
It is important that people who are in positions of authority lead by example, and that’s been a bit of an issue throughout the pandemic in a whole variety of respects but continues to be the case.
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