PM warns B117 may increase death rate as well as being up to 70% more transmissible

Patient lost both arms in work accident 23 years ago and it took years to find suitable donors for the complex operation

Australia hit by shortages of contraceptive pills and antidepressantsThe Pharmaceutical Society of Australia has called on the federal government to allow pharmacists to be able to substitute medicines for same drugs of a different brand to address shortages of government-subsidised drugs.The move comes amid significant shortages of the most widely prescribed antidepressant. Continue reading...

Whatever the answer, everyone has to try even harder not to catch it in the first place

UK, South Africa and Brazil variants indicate changes may be needed

Almost half the population unclear what ‘antigen’ or ‘epidemiologist’ mean, while two in five would struggle to explain ‘circuit breaker’

Findings chime with latest R number of between 0.8 and 1.0 for England and the UK as a whole

Nachman Ash had said single Pfizer/BioNTech dose was less effective than expected

Experts say rise in sleep and eyesight problems may also be linked to increased use of digital devices

While some parents have relaxed limits on devices, many are concerned about the physical and mental health fallout

My turn for an AstraZeneca dose has come up, so I need to decide whether to drop out of Novavax tests

Retailer upgrades profit guidance after stronger than expected sales over Christmas

Exclusive: ‘pool’ to share Covid-19 information has received no contributions since May 2020

Once Sussex home lost seven of 24 residents to the virus while it waited for vaccinationsA short two-mile drive past the creeks of Chichester Harbour is all that separates the Pinewood nursing home in Chidham from a similar facility in a neighbouring village. But their experiences of the campaign to vaccinate the most vulnerable could not have been more different. The two homes exemplify what has become a postcode lottery in parts of England in which the winners gain immunity from Covid and the losers are left without protection from the deadly disease.Lawrence Marsh, the owner of Pinewood, which sits on the far western edge of West Sussex, had been expecting his residents to receive their jabs before Christmas after the government’s vaccination experts made care home residents and staff the top priority. But the doses did not come and on 6 January the news he had feared arrived: a positive Covid test in the home. The virus spread predictably fast and 14 of the 24 residents have now tested positive and seven have died. Others remain seriously ill and Marsh is worried the worst may not be over. Continue reading...

Space travel company, which plans to take six people on a sub-orbital flight, completes its 14th missionJeff Bezos’s space travel company, Blue Origin, says it is “getting really close” to flying humans after the successful completion of its 14th mission into space on 14 January.The New Shepard rocket blasted off at 1717 GMT (1117 CST) from the company’s private launch site in west Texas, carrying an upgraded crew capsule containing a test dummy dubbed “Mannequin Skywalker”. Following its separation from the booster, the crew capsule reached an altitude of 66 miles (107km) above mean sea level, placing it 4.3 miles (7km) higher than the Kármán line, the official boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. Continue reading...

As older people relish being vaccinated, the UK government’s messaging risks being confusing and contradictory

Suspected outbreaks recorded in 635 facilities, but vaccinations delayed despite NHS deadline to protect vulnerable people

Scientists believe 2-metre-long burrow once housed predator that ambushed passing sea creaturesThe undersea lair of a giant worm that ambushed passing marine creatures 20m years ago has been uncovered by fossil hunters in Taiwan.Researchers believe the 2-metre-long burrow found in ancient marine sediment once housed a prehistoric predator that burst out of the seabed and dragged unsuspecting animals down into its lair. Continue reading...

Vaccination on its own is not a way out of this pandemic. We need to use other tools and involve ordinary people

Ian Sample and producer Madeleine discuss what science, outside of the pandemic, they’ll be looking out for in 2021. Joined by Prof Gillian Wright and the Guardian’s global environment editor Jonathan Watts, they explore exciting space missions and critical climate change conferences Continue reading...

The NHS must learn from its mistakes with other post-viral conditions such as ME/CFS – more research is vital

As new Covid variants emerge, scientists advise use of FFP masks that filter inflow and outflow of air

Prof Allen Cheng explains how coronavirus vaccines are assessed and what Australia has learned from countries already rolling them outA decision on approving the Pfizer vaccine for use against Covid in Australia is imminent with the recommendations of the independent Advisory Committee on Vaccines now in the hands of the drugs regulator.The chair of the committee, Prof Allen Cheng, said it had finished reviewing the vaccine data for the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) after holding a meeting about the vaccine on Friday. Continue reading...

Tests from 142,000 people suggest level of infections stable or rising slightly after recent falls

A further 1,820 die in the UK within 28 days of a Covid test; Downing Street says police must wait for phase two of vaccine rollout. This live blog is now closed - please follow the global coronavirus live blog for updates

Neutralising ability of antibodies typically falls eight-fold with South African variant

Low uptake fuelled by fears over safety of vaccine and spread of misinformation

Suspicions about army lab spread on social media after official’s tit-for-tat response to US claim

New research centre to tackle overlap of livestock and human medicines, but campaigners fear “techno-fix” for factory farmingAn initiative to develop bespoke antibiotics for livestock has raised fears that it could be a “techno-fix” for more intensive farming.Mixed reactions have followed news that Ineos, a global petrochemical manufacturer, has donated £100m to establish the Ineos Oxford University Institute (IOI) for antimicrobial research.

PHE says potential benefits of daily testing unclear in light of emergence of new variant

Lockdown may have given us more respect for the wild plants, and the work they do, in our urban areasWeeds have a public image problem – unloved, trodden on, dug up and sprayed with herbicides. But during lockdown, the weeds in towns and cities have given a contact with nature, no matter how humble their roots. These are, after all, wild plants growing under our feet and they deserve respect.A study of native British weeds showed that many were highly valuable flowers for bees and butterflies, producing nectar and pollen and also providing them early in the year. Plants such as dandelion and daisy were good for bees and the weed pellitory-of-the-wall, growing in cracks in pavements, is food for the red admiral butterfly. The buddleia bush, growing on walls and almost any waste ground, is a magnet for many butterflies. Continue reading...

Director general says virus may become less deadly over time and warned of vigilance needed to keep out new variants

Tiny aerosols of the virus emitted when speaking linger in air for longer than larger droplets from a cough

This live blog is now closed. For coronavirus updates from around the world, head to our global live blog

Public Health England says number of daily new infections fell to 33,355 – down from 37,535 on Monday

Number of deaths at highest level since mid-May and UK toll at more than 25,000, figures show

A convoy of Spaniards and allies was ritually sacrificed in 1520 at Tecoaque – ‘the place where they ate them’ – before Hernán Cortés wreaked revengeNew research suggests Spanish conquistadores butchered at least a dozen women and their children in an Aztec-allied town where the inhabitants sacrificed and ate a detachment of Spaniards they had captured months earlier.The National Institute of Anthropology and History published findings on Monday from years of excavation work at the town of Tecoaque, which means “the place where they ate them” in the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs. Continue reading...

Crowdfunder led by schoolgirl raises £70,000 for sculpture of pioneering palaeontologist in Lyme Regis, DorsetA statue to Mary Anning, a fossil hunter and palaeontologist once “lost to history” but now considered a significant female force in science, is finally to be erected after a crowdfunding campaign by a teenage girl.Evie Swire, 13, was nine years old when she first heard of Anning, who was born into a humble family in 1799 near Evie’s Lyme Regis home in Dorset. The schoolgirl was outraged to discover there was no statue. Continue reading...

Minister will quarantine until Sunday after being contacted by NHS app

Minister who publicly drank syrup touted as coronavirus cure tests positive

When I damaged my vocal cords, I was forced to change the way I spoke – and discovered how much our voices reveal who we areSome years ago, I was invited by my then boss, Jann Wenner, the owner of Rolling Stone, to be the lead singer in a band he was putting together from the magazine’s staff. I had just turned 41, and I jumped at the opportunity to sustain the delusion that I was not getting old. “Sign me up!” I said.My chief attributes as a singer included impressive volume and an ability to stay more or less in tune, but I was strictly a self-taught amateur. I had, for instance, never done a proper voice warmup, and had certainly never been informed that the delicate layers of vibratory tissue, muscle and mucus membrane that make up the vocal cords are as prone to injury as a middle-aged knee joint. So, on practice days, I simply rose from my desk (I was finishing a book on deadline and spent eight hours a day writing, in complete silence), rode the subway to our rehearsal space in downtown Manhattan, took my place behind the microphone and started wailing over my bandmates’ cranked-up guitars and drums. Continue reading...

The emergence of more infectious variants of Sars-CoV-2 has raised questions about just how long our vaccines will remain effective for. Although there is little evidence that the current vaccines won’t work against the new variants, as the virus continues to mutate scientists are preparing themselves for having to make changes to the vaccines in response. Speaking to Dr Katrina Pollock, science correspondent Linda Geddes asks how we can tweak the vaccines against new variants, and how likely it is we’ll end up in a game of cat and mouse with the virus Continue reading...

BAME communities should be better protected as they are more at risk, say public health experts and MPs

Readmission rate for Covid patients 3.5 times greater, and death rate seven times higher, than for other hospital patients

The government’s libertarian bias may mean restrictions go too soon, with the majority forced to try their luck against Covid

A decade after an outbreak of Q fever killed 95 people in the Netherlands, scientists fear the emergence of a new diseaseIn early 2008, Jeannette van de Ven began to see a slightly higher rate of miscarriages among the goats on her dairy farm in the south of the Netherlands.

You don’t need a telescope to see the mighty hunter’s sword and its star-forming cloudThe mighty constellation of Orion the hunter is one of the greatest sights in the night sky. To those of us in the northern hemisphere, it is currently bolt upright in the south during the late evening. Orion’s right shoulder is marked by the red star of Betelgeuse, and his left foot is signified by the white star of Rigel. Continue reading...

India launches bid to vaccinate 300m people amid fears over efficacy of domestically produced vaccine

We’ve all lost so much through the pandemic, but by making sense of it we can look forwardDeath came early into David Kessler’s life. He was just 13 when his mother died, and her loss prompted his decision to forge a career working in palliative care. He went on to collaborate with psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a central figure in the field, who devised the five stages of grief. In lectures he would talk about his mother’s death and remind his audiences that no one is exempt from loss; and yet, he says today, in his heart he believed his personal experience of devastating grief was behind him, rather than ahead.And then, four years ago, another tragedy hit his family. Kessler was totally floored by it. He discovered it was one thing knowing the landscape of mourning, and quite another travelling through it. But his journey, hard and long as it was, had an important by-product: he realised that the seminal Kübler-Ross inventory was not complete. To the five stages of grief she described, he was able, with the permission of the Kübler-Ross family, to add a sixth. And now, in the midst of the pandemic, he believes that the sixth stage will be as important in our universal experience of grieving as it is in individual lives hit by loss. Continue reading...