Name: Virus spread in France showing signs of slowing – as it happened
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Virus spread in France showing signs of slowing – as it happened

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This article is more than 1 year oldThis article is more than 1 year old; ;We’re closing this blog now but you can carry on monitoring all the latest developments at our new blog here. Thanks for reading.That’s all from me, Jessica Murray, today - thanks for following along.I’ll leave you with this story of the Austrian village which has renamed itself Fugging after years of ridicule for its previous - more explicit in English - name. Britain has asked its medicines regulator to assess Oxford University and AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate for temporary supply, a step towards beginning a rollout before the end of the year.AstraZeneca expects 4m doses to be available in Britain by the end of next month, and the health minister, Matt Hancock, is targeting the rollout to begin before Christmas.“We have formally asked the regulator to assess the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, to understand the data and determine whether it meets rigorous safety standards,” Hancock said in a statement.“This letter is an important step towards deploying a vaccine as quickly as safely possible.”Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is already assessing the vaccine in a “rolling review” as data comes in on safety and efficacy.Hancock has also asked the MHRA to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech candidate after it was shown to be 95% effective.Oxford and AstraZeneca published interim efficacy results on Monday which showed that the vaccine could be 90% effective when given as a half dose followed by a full dose.Questions have been raised about the Oxford/AstraZeneca data and the robustness of that result, though the MHRA approved the use of the half dose/full dose regime a subgroup received in the trial.Britain’s top science adviser said on Thursday the interim results showed the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine worked.“The headline result is the vaccine works and that’s very exciting,” Patrick Vallance said. Chief medical officer Chris Whitty said it was up to the regulator to make an assessment.Covid grief is worse than other types of grief, according to the first findings of UK-wide research into how people have coped with the deaths of loved ones during the pandemic.Family and friends bereaved by coronavirus experienced “greatly increased negative experiences” and showed higher grief and support needs compared to people suffering the loss of loved ones from other illnesses, including cancer, researchers at Cardiff and Bristol universities found.Examining more than 500 deaths since mid-March, around half from Covid, they discovered that Covid-bereaved people were less likely to have been able to say goodbye to loved ones, less likely to have visited them prior to death and less likely to have had contact with friends and family after their bereavement.There have been more than 70,000 excess deaths in the UK during the pandemic, adding to an estimated 450,000 which would have normally occurred over the nine months, the report’s authors said. On the basis that a typical person dying leaves five people bereaved, they estimate 2.6 million people have been bereaved in the UK “at a time of profound disruption to our social support networks as well as intense pressure on health and social care”.The study, which will continue gathering evidence until the end of December, found 70% of bereaved people whose loved one died of a confirmed Covid-19 infection had limited contact with them in the last days of their life, 85% were unable to say goodbye as they would have liked, and 75% experienced social isolation and loneliness. By contrast 43% of people whose loved ones died of cancer over the same period had limited contact, 39% were unable to say proper goodbyes and 63% experienced loneliness.Australia’s second-largest state, once the country’s Covid-19 hotspot, has gone 28 days without detecting any new infections, a benchmark widely cited as eliminating the virus from the community.The state also has zero active cases after the last Covid-19 patient was discharged from hospital this week, a far cry from August when Victoria recorded more than 700 cases in one day and active infections totalled nearly 8,000.The spread of the virus was only contained after a lockdown lasting more than 100 days, leaving some 5 million people in Melbourne, Australia’s second largest city, largely confined to their homes.While the lockdown has seen infections wane, it slowed Australia’s economic recovery from its first recession in three decades after large swathes of the country’s economy were shut down in March.Australia’s economy shrank 7% in the three months to the end of June, the biggest quarterly decline since records began in 1959. The unemployment rate hit a 22-year high of 7.5% in July as businesses and borders closed to deal with the coronavirus.Still, Australia’s nearly 28,000 Covid-19 infections recorded to date, according to health ministry data, are far fewer than in many other developed countries. Victoria accounts for more than 90% of the country’s 905 deaths.The US airline Delta has announced the first “quarantine-free” transatlantic flights, with pre-departure Covid testing enabling passengers to escape 14 days’ isolation on arrival in Italy.The trial flights will start next month between Atlanta and Rome, the first of the type of transatlantic corridor that to open up travel on their most lucrative routes.Passengers must test negative three times: first, a PCR test will be taken in the 72 hours prior to departure, then a rapid test before boarding in Atlanta, and a further rapid test on arrival at Fiumicino airport in Rome.The trial, starting on relaunched services from 19 December, will open up Italy to US citizens permitted to travel for essential reasons, such as work, health and education. Returning citizens must take a rapid test at Rome-Fiumicino before departure to the US, which has barred foreign nationals from flying in from the EU.Delta’s president, Steve Sear, said such tests were the “best path for resuming international travel safely and without quarantine until vaccinations are widely in place”.Donald Trump has said he will leave the White House if the electoral college votes for president-elect Joe Biden, the closest he has come to conceding the 3 November election, even as he repeated his unfounded claims of massive voter fraud.Speaking to reporters on the Thanksgiving holiday, Republican Trump said if Democrat Biden - who is due to be sworn in on 20 January - is certified the election winner by the electoral college, he will depart the White House.But Trump said it would be hard for him to concede under the current circumstances and declined to say whether he would attend Biden’s inauguration.“This election was a fraud,” Trump insisted in a sometimes rambling discourse at the White House, while continuing to offer no concrete evidence of widespread voting irregularities. Biden won the election with 306 electoral college votes - many more than the 270 required - to Trump’s 232, and the electors are scheduled to meet on 14 December to formalise the outcome. Biden also leads Trump by more than 6 million in the popular vote tally.Trump has so far refused to fully acknowledge his defeat, though last week - with mounting pressure from his own Republican ranks - he agreed to let Biden’s transition process officially proceed.Asked if he would leave the White House if the electoral college votes for Biden, Trump said: “Certainly I will. Certainly I will. And you know that.”“But I think that there will be a lot of things happening between now and the 20 January. A lot of things,” he said. “Massive fraud has been found. We’re like a third world country.”Desperate efforts by Trump and his aides to overturn results in key states, either by lawsuits or by pressuring state legislators, have failed, and he is running out of options.In the US, a candidate becomes president by securing the most ‘electoral’ votes rather than by winning a majority of the national popular vote. Electors, allotted to the 50 states and the District of Columbia largely based on their population, are party loyalists who pledge to support the candidate who won the popular vote in their state.US president Donald Trump said deliveries of a coronavirus vaccine would begin next week and the week after.Speaking to US troops overseas via video link to mark the Thanksgiving holiday, Trump said the vaccine would initially be sent to frontline workers, medical personnel and senior citizens. Brazil registered 37,614 additional cases of Covid-19 over the last 24 hours and 691 related deaths, the health ministry said.The South American country has now registered 6,204,220 total confirmed coronavirus cases and 171,460 deaths.AstraZeneca is working with regulators to investigate a lower dosage of its vaccine that performed better than a full dosage, a spokesman for the company said, after its chief executive was quoted as saying an additional global trial was likely.Asked about the Bloomberg report on the additional trial, a spokesman for AstraZeneca said: “As we communicated earlier this week, there is strong merit in continuing to further investigate the half-dose/full dose regimen.“We are further evaluating the data and will work with regulators on the best approach for further evaluation. This would add to data from existing trials which are currently being prepared for regulatory submission.”A gay nightclub in London said it is going to serve McDonald’s in order to stay open as a bar under restrictions being imposed on the capital when a national lockdown ends next week.In an event titled The Show Must Go On, G-A-Y said McDonald’s meals would be served at its Heaven nightclub allowing the venue to serve alcohol to attendees.London is being placed under Tier 2 coronavirus restrictions when lockdown ends on 2 December, meaning hospitality venues can only serve alcohol with substantial meals, and pubs and bars must close unless operating as restaurants. The event, running from 6pm - 11pm in accordance with a hospitality curfew, will also feature performances from West End singers Lucie Jones and Shanay Holmes. Other Tier 2 restrictions mean people will only be able to attend with members of their own household in groups of up to six. The head of British drug manufacturer AstraZeneca said further research was needed on its Covid-19 vaccine after questions emerged over the protection it offers, but the additional testing is unlikely to affect regulatory approval in .AstraZeneca and its partner, the University of Oxford, announced on Monday that it was seeking regulatory approval for the vaccine after it showed an average 70% effectiveness.That rate jumped to 90% when an initial half-dose then a full dose was given, similar to that of rival vaccines in development by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna.But it emerged the higher rate of effectiveness came during tests in people aged 55 and under, and was .The head of the Oxford Vaccine Group, Andrew Pollard, said this week that further evidence will be available next month, but the result was still “highly significant”.“Now that we’ve found what looks like a better efficacy, we have to validate this, so we need to do an additional study,” AstraZeneca chief executive Pascal Soriot told Bloomberg.He said he expected there would be another “international study but this one could be faster because we know the efficacy is high, so we need a smaller number of patients”.The additional trial was not likely to delay regulatory approval in Britain and the EU, Soriot said.There are high hopes for the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine, which Pollard has hailed as a “vaccine for the world” given that it could be cheaper to make, and easier to store and distribute.It can be stored, transported and handled at normal refrigerated conditions of between two and eight degrees Celsius (36-46 Fahrenheit) for at least six months.Pfizer/BioNTech’s offering requires temperatures of -70C, driving up costs and potentially making it out of reach for lower and middle-income countries.AstraZeneca/Oxford has also promised to provide its vaccine to the developing world on a non-profit basis.

This article is more than 1 year oldThis article is more than 1 year old; ;We’re closing this blog now but you can carry on monitoring all the latest developments at our new blog here. Thanks for reading.That’s all from me, Jessica Murray, today - thanks for following along.I’ll leave you with this story of the Austrian village which has renamed itself Fugging after years of ridicule for its previous - more explicit in English - name. Britain has asked its medicines regulator to assess Oxford University and AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate for temporary supply, a step towards...

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Matthew Weaver

Jessica Murray

TheGuardian.com, formerly known as Guardian.co.uk and Guardian Unlimited, is a British news and media website owned by the Guardian Media Group. It contains nearly all of the content of the newspapers The Guardian and The Observer, as well as a substantial body of web-only work produced by its own staff, including a rolling news service.

Virus spread in France showing signs of slowing – as it happened

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