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Matt Hancock criticises lockdown sceptics amid angry scenes in the Commons

It is impossible to have confidence in the government’s decision to overrule scientific adviceIn the weeks after Boris Johnson made his lockdown television address on 23 March, and as the UK’s infection and death rates rose shockingly higher, it was widely recognised that ministers had acted too slowly, and that the pandemic’s severity might have been lessened had they grasped the nettle sooner. Many ordinary people – perhaps especially those predisposed, like their prime minister, to look on the bright side – felt they had learned a hard lesson in the spring. Sometimes it pays to expect the worst.Yet here we are, after an appalling few months in which the UK topped European league tables of excess deaths. And with new infections running at 14,000 a day and hospital admissions and deaths once again climbing, there is no reason to believe that the government will avoid the same errors. Papers released on Monday night showed that on 21 September, ministers rejected a call by its Sage committee of scientific experts for a two-week “circuit breaker” lockdown to slow the virus’s transmission. That this was not disclosed until after Mr Johnson announced the new three-tier system suggests that he did not want to explain why. Continue reading...

Labour leader says government is no longer following advice of scientists; MPs debate Covid restrictions

UK wants to be deeply involved in next frontier of space exploration – the mission to MarsWhen the first female astronaut walks on the moon, more than half a century after Neil Armstrong took that historic first step, it will probably be heralded as a small step for a woman but a giant leap for womankind.But in the corridors of the UK Space Agency it will also be marked as the moment when Britain staked its claim to become a key player in the next frontier of space exploration – the mission to Mars. Continue reading...

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsUFO sightings are often of saucer- or disc-shaped objects. Is there any evidence that this is an efficient or indeed feasible shape for intergalactic travel?Graham Hines Continue reading...

Scientists’ verdict on £12bn system has refocused attention on what is working elsewhere in cutting Covid-19 transmission rates

Timing of the release, just after the PM’s three-tier Covid plan, highlights experts’ disquiet

A radio host used mathematical theory to take Matt Hancock to task. It’s a welcome sign we’re all thinking in a more critical way

Most Sage proposals not acted upon by government despite strong warnings over second wave

Nevada man with no underlying conditions suffers more serious illness the second time with different strain

Months of delayed nuptials have been crowded together with one man having to attend 23 celebrationsCouples have rushed to get married over China’s national day holiday in the first wedding season since the coronavirus pandemic began.Months of delayed nuptial celebrations were crowded into the “golden week” holiday, traditionally a popular time for weddings, that ended on Wednesday as hotels, banquet halls and other wedding venues were booked out. Continue reading...

What does a disease smell like? Humans might not have the answer, but if they could talk, dogs might be able to tell us. Able to sniff out a range of cancers and even malaria, canines’ extraordinary noses are now being put to the test on Covid-19. Nicola Davis hears from Prof Dominique Grandjean about exactly how you train dogs to smell a virus, and how this detection technique could be used in managing the spread of Covid-19 Continue reading...

More over-65s also wanted to ensure potential coronavirus vaccines can work for everyone

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Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus cites lack of understanding of virus and lasting health effects

Paul R Milgrom and Robert B Wilson awarded prize 26 years after game theory scholar John NashThe Nobel prize for economics was awarded on Monday to two US game theory specialists, 26 years after John Nash – the Princeton academic depicted by Russell Crowe in the 2001 film A Beautiful Mind – won for his groundbreaking work on the same subject.Americans Paul R Milgrom and Robert B Wilson won for the designs of mathematical models that promote “improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats”, said Göran K Hansson, secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Continue reading...

To make experimental antibodies affordable will cost billions. If they are shown to work, it will be money well spentCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageWe all want a cure for Covid-19, but it won’t come in a single drug. Neither can we expect to escape this global crisis if treatments, tests or vaccines are not made available to those most vulnerable worldwide. There’s a long way yet to go.Robust research has shown that hydroxychloroquine, the drug once heavily promoted by Donald Trump, doesn’t work as a treatment. We wait in hope for the first vaccines but must be realistic: they may only provide partial protection, important as that will be. Now, as the US president pins his hopes on Regeneron’s antibody cocktail, it must be made clear: life can only return to normal with a range of clinically proven, effective treatments, tests and vaccines; the resilient health systems to deliver them; and the trust of the public. Continue reading...

Referrals currently at 60% of pre-pandemic levels, figures from Cancer Research UK show

Concerns raised amid fears some elderly people may still be affected by the practice

Study instead suggests people are initially attracted to those with similar features to themselvesThe question has intrigued psychologists for years: do the faces of people in long-term relationships start to look the same?Hints that they do emerged in the 1980s and have since made it into psychology courses. Yet in the ensuing decades, the observation has never been scientifically confirmed or refuted. Continue reading...

Infection rates at universities up to seven times higher than those in surrounding areas

Boris Johnson’s plan will see areas of England graded in three tiers of restrictions

Researchers find Sars-CoV-2 survives longer at lower temperatures and lasts 10 days longer than influenza on some surfacesAustralian scientists have found that the virus that causes Covid-19 can survive for up to 28 days on surfaces such as the glass on mobile phones, stainless steel, vinyl and paper banknotes.The national science agency, the CSIRO, said the research undertaken at the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness (ACDP) in Geelong also found that Sars-CoV-2 survived longer at lower temperatures. Continue reading...

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Guardian supporters around the world tell us about the sustainable lifestyle changes that they have committed to during lockdown – and beyond

Former Conservative leader says government should assess China’s influence in areas from 5G to Covid-19 researchChinese ownership of British businesses should be subject to a national security review by the UK government to assess the impact of Beijing’s growing economic power, according to the former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith.The senior backbencher – a leading figure in the rebellion that forced Downing Street to introduce tougher controls on Huawei – believes ministers have failed to deal with the scale of China’s influence on strategic industries in the UK. Continue reading...

Humour makes us more resilient, creative and resourceful – so is more important than ever during a pandemicFive years ago my brother awoke to dreadful news. His close friend was on a business trip in Mali, staying in the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako. It had been stormed by Islamist militants and, ultimately, 170 hostages were taken, 20 killed. My brother’s friend, a Canadian, was on the seventh floor. Gun battles exploded directly below him. Escape wasn’t possible. He locked himself in the bathroom, texted his wife, his family – and my brother.“Things are a little tense inside the Radisson at the moment, Simon. Any English humour available?” He was looking for jokes. Continue reading...

Boris Johnson to outline three-tier system of restrictions, with pubs closed and mixing banned

Ancient artefacts from Samarkand will go on display in London before being returnedThe British Museum is to help repatriate six glazed tiles from a medieval memorial complex on the edge of Samarkand, which were brought into Heathrow in a suitcase.The man who smuggled them in after a flight from Dubai in January even forged paperwork declaring them as replicas that were “made to look old”. He produced a receipt that claimed they had been bought in Sharjah the previous day for 315 dirham, about £70. Continue reading...

The ‘Great Barrington declaration’ makes claims about herd immunity that its signatories have failed to back up

BBC documentary shows fragile sunken vessel in which enslaved Africans died is being destroyed by trawlersA 17th-century English shipwreck, the world’s earliest vessel linked to the transatlantic slave trade, is facing complete destruction by 21st-century fishing trawlers.The 1680s Royal African Company trader – seen as a burial ground of slaves who perished on its final voyage – lies on the seabed about 40 miles south of Land’s End. It is being “pounded into oblivion” by “bulldozers of the deep”, claimed a leading British marine archaeologist. Continue reading...

The west has been wary of China’s rise as a scientific superpower, but the pandemic has made it impossible to ignore

In an extract from his new book, a colleague recalls a meal with the mathematician who shared the 2020 Nobel prize in physicsI had the pleasure of meeting Roger Penrose, the great mathematician from Oxford, when he was passing through Italy for the Festival of Science in Genoa. Penrose is a polyhedral intellectual. Readers know him for several books, among them the dense and wonderful The Road to Reality, a great panorama of contemporary physics and mathematics, a popular work that is not easy and that shines with intelligence and profundity on every page.Among his main contributions to our knowledge of the universe are theorems showing that Einstein’s theory implies that the universe we see originated from a big bang and black holes form generically. In the field of pure mathematics, he is better known for his study of “quasi-periodic” structures, tessellations composed of a few elements that can be repeated to infinity but that, however, are not periodic: they never repeat identically. They are also known as “quasi-crystals” and exist in nature, but they have also been used in fields that range from design of floor tiles to a children’s game devised by Penrose himself. Continue reading...

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Local health teams are outperforming the NHS Covid contact system, but as cases rise they want a rethink

The Guardian is given a unique insight into the operations of CSL, which is making vaccines that could help end the crisis

Ambitious series of joint missions aims to construct a crewed space station that will orbit the moonEuropean space officials will this week unveil detailed plans for a series of ambitious missions aimed at returning humans to the moon in the next few years.Projects will include construction of crew quarters for an orbiting lunar space station, making the power and propulsion units for America’s Orion spacecraft, and designing and building a sophisticated communication and refuelling unit, known as Esprit, to serve astronauts on the lunar surface. These missions will be carried out jointly with Nasa and the Japanese and Canadian space agencies. Continue reading...

More than 170 teams of researchers are racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine. Here is their progressResearchers around the world are racing to develop a vaccine against Covid-19, with more than 170 candidate vaccines now tracked by the World Health Organization (WHO). Continue reading...

British Medical Association seeks to build trust amid ‘inconsistent’ Covid messaging

Fungi have long supported and enriched life on our planet. They must be protected as fiercely as animals and plantsAs you read these words, fungi are changing the way that life happens, as they have done for more than a billion years. They are eating rock, making soil, digesting pollutants, nourishing and killing plants, surviving in space, inducing visions, producing food, making medicines, manipulating animal behaviour, and influencing the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere.Fungi make up one of life’s kingdoms – as broad and busy a category as “animals” or “plants” – and provide a key to understanding our planet. Yet fungi have received only a small fraction of the attention they deserve. The best estimate suggests that there are between 2.2m and 3.8m species of fungi on the Earth – as many as 10 times the estimated number of plant species – meaning that, at most, a mere 8% of all fungal species have been described. Of these, only 358 have had their conservation priority assessed on the IUCN red list of threatened species, compared with 76,000 species of animal and 44,000 species of plant. Fungi, in other words, represent a meagre 0.2% of our global conservation priorities. Continue reading...

Victoria records 14 new Covid-19 infections, with three in NSW and one in QueenslandThe Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, has confirmed authorities will ease restrictions in Melbourne in a week’s time, though the changes will be less expansive than previously hoped.Victoria recorded 14 new infections on Saturday, making it increasingly unlikely that Melbourne would hit a fortnightly average of five cases, the target for a wider reopening under the state government’s Covid-19 roadmap. Continue reading...

WHO emergencies chief warns ‘there are no new answers’ as cases surge globally. This blog has now closed. Follow our latest blog below

Names from across the arts, sport, politics and science are among those recognisedThe prolific author Susan Hill and the renowned choreographer Siobhan Davies have both been made dames. Continue reading...

GPs have reported a substantial drop in the numbers they are seeing across the country

Open letter calling for new Covid-19 strategy also signed by ‘Prof Cominic Dummings’

Mayor says new measures to curb infections will be capital-wide rather than by borough

Fever, runny nose, headache? Lost your sense of taste or smell? Your guide to differentiating between the three illnesses

As cases surge, figures show the demographics of those most seriously affected by coronavirus remain the same

Report says recovery efforts are undermined by ministers’ tendency to over-promise and under-deliverHyperbolic and confused government messaging on Covid-19 has eroded trust among the public and helped created a sense of disconnection between Westminster and those managing the pandemic at a local level, according to a report by Whitehall advisers.The C-19 National Foresight Group highlighted ministers’ tendency to over-promise and under-deliver, and the erratic, often late-night timing of key pandemic announcements – often without prior consultation or warning – as examples of poor communications that were undermining Covid recovery efforts. Continue reading...

Doctors grapple for answers as more patients report post-coronavirus cognitive impairment