PM says government will review data before 15 February but highlights risk of ‘premature relaxation’

The joy of micro puzzlesUPDATE: Read the solutions here.Today’s puzzles are bijoux. Petite. Bite-sized. They are the canapés of the conundrum world, and so deliciously moreish you will devour them all. They come in two types, and I have included six of one, and half a dozen of the other.First up: ‘equatum’ puzzles, devised by Justin Roughley. These are beautifully elegant number puzzles in which a single word must be transcribed into an equation. Clever stuff, literally. Continue reading...

The Anti-Virus website takes on figures like Toby Young and Allison Pearson - and its creators think it has them on the run

A fun asterism containing stars from six constellations will have you ranging across the skyThe moon will guide you to a fun asterism this week called the Winter Hexagon. Asterisms are patterns made by connecting stars, whereas constellations are the areas of the sky that contain the asterisms. Continue reading...

López Obrador to speak to Putin about obtaining Russian vaccine; Biden to include South Africa in restrictions for non-US travellers

British Society for Immunology calls for a robust programme monitoring the body’s immune response

Humans are designed to touch and be touched – which is why so many who live on their own have suffered during the pandemic. Will we ever fully recover?There’s only so much a dog can do, even if that is a lot. I live alone with my staffy, and by week eight of the first lockdown she was rolling her eyes at my ever-tightening clutch. I had been sofa-bound with Covid and its after-effects before lockdown was announced, then spring and summer passed without any meaningful touch from another person. I missed the smell of my friends’ clothes and my nephew’s hair, but, more than anything, I missed the groundedness only another human body can bring. The ache in my solar plexus that married these thoughts often caught me off guard.The need for touch exists below the horizon of consciousness. Before birth, when the amniotic fluid in the womb swirls around us and the foetal nervous system can distinguish our own body from our mother’s, our entire concept of self is rooted in touch. “The human body has built all its models based on touch received from caregivers,” says Dr Katerina Fotopoulou, a professor of psychodynamic neuroscience at University College London. “We’re utterly reliant on the caregiver to satisfy the body’s core needs. Little can be done without touch.” Continue reading...

The palliative care doctor and author on a year of Covid in UK hospitals and her hopes for the vaccine

Confusion surrounds the vaccines’ effectiveness. The leading Cambridge professor clarifies the data behind the trialsImagine 100 people are ill with Covid-19. “90% efficacy” means if only they’d had the vaccine, on average only 10 would have got ill. Vaccine efficacy is the relative reduction in the risk: whatever your risk was before, it is reduced by 90% if you get vaccinated. There is a lot of confusion about this number: it does not mean there is a 10% chance of getting Covid-19 if vaccinated – that chance will be massively lower than 10%.Researchers estimate efficacy by comparing numbers of new cases in vaccinated and unvaccinated people, best done through a “randomised control trial”. All volunteers receive an injection but, at random, either the actual vaccine or a placebo.They don’t know which they are getting. Continue reading...

Exactly a year after his first story about coronavirus, our science editor received the Pfizer injection last week. Here he reflects on a remarkable scientific achievement

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Medics told they risk undermining public confidence by querying policy of three-month gap between doses

Researchers at a high-security Sydney lab are learning more about concerning Covid variants from the swabs of international travellersIn December, the UK reported a Covid-19 variant of concern, commonly referred to as the B117 variant, which appeared to be more transmissible. Since then, scientists have established that B117 is somewhere between 50% to 70% more transmissible than other variants. If more people are getting sick, there is more pressure on health systems, and in the UK health services are so overloaded a country-wide lockdown has been enforced.While many scientists say B117 does not appear more deadly, researchers on the UK government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group found it may increase the death rate by 30% to 40%, though their sample size was small and they said more research is needed. With B117 now detected in more than 50 countries, understanding the variant is urgent. Continue reading...

One man’s tragic tale reveals much about the reach and harm of anti-science propagandaGary Matthews fell headlong into a subterranean world haunted by vicious fantasies. But he wasn’t vicious himself. “I knew him since he was 19,” his friend Peter Roscoe told me. “He was a gentle guy. He wanted a better world. I am so sorry in recent times he became convinced that Covid was some kind of hoax.”The “hoax” killed him, his relatives said. He had a positive Covid-19 test and went home to isolate. He died, aged 46, alone in his flat in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, on 13 January. Continue reading...

The way we think about pain could change how much we actually sufferWe’ve all got a story about pain. Maybe it’s that time you broke your arm skating, or the time you finished the game on a twisted ankle, or the 10 hours of labour without an epidural. Maybe your story of pain is a story of violence, the injury and trauma of an assault. Maybe it’s a story of terror. Or it’s heartbreak, the seemingly endless depths of grief and despair after a loss. Whatever it is, (almost) all of us have experienced what we call pain and we’re not in a hurry to experience it again.But have you ever tried to define that pain? When you’re telling the story, how do you explain the pain? Do you try to quantify the injury – how many broken bones, the size of the bruise, the amount of blood? Or do you describe the cause – the type of cancerous cells, the crowning baby, the sharp knife? But what if there was no obvious cause? And how do you communicate the intensity? Is it a searing or scalding burn, a throbbing or dull pressure, a pounding or stabbing headache? Is it worse than a bee sting, but not as bad as a dog bite? Continue reading...

Leading doctors have divided opinion among an exhausted workforce by pointing to socioeconomic factors behind coronavirus death toll

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

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