GPs worried thousands may delay routine appointments due to fear of catching coronavirus

Covid-19 meetings appear to be first time political advisers such as Dominic Cummings have been present on advisory group

Scientists on UK government’s coronavirus advisory group say Dominic Cummings was an active participant

I’m mixed race and ‘culturally white’, and seemed to be a disappointment to my father – but we just weren’t closeMy dad said it to me when I was seven years old and it stung like vinegar on a paper cut. Of all the things you throw at kids you never know which ones will stick. This one accidentally stuck. I’m not black enough. The phrase, the unblackness, was planted, and developed like an irksome bruise I only feel when I bend a certain way. It’s a scar tissue formed from acid poured into my wound after I was hit by the paternal truck of not-black-enoughness. An unexploded bomb that’s leaking mustard gas into my blood.I’m fully grown now, but the comment still tinkles lightly on the piano of my mind. Whiteness is in my blood. Well, half of it. My mum’s never done an ancestry DNA test, but as a woman from north London who regularly burns in the British sun, it’s safe to assume she’s majority Caucasian. I’m mixed-raced and grew up in multicultural Brighton. When my parents split up, my dad stayed in Brixton and I was occasionally evacuated to him on school holidays. As a single parent, aware of her son’s racial identity, my mum rallied, and founded Mosaic, a support group for mixed-parentage families. Brighton is inherently liberal, but “How come your mum’s white, but you’re not?” was the power ballad of my childhood. Continue reading...

Germany’s leading coronavirus expert Christian Drosten on Merkel’s leadership, the UK response and the ‘prevention paradox’

Evidence grows that many Covid-19 patients do better with non-invasive help

Foreign secretary rejects accusations there has been ‘lack of transparency’ about Sage committee

Excavations reveal that rubbish left outside the city walls wasn’t just dumped. It was being collected, sorted and resoldThey were expert engineers, way ahead of the curve on underfloor heating, aqueducts and the use of concrete as a building material. Now it turns out that the Romans were also masters at recycling their rubbish.Researchers at Pompeii, the city buried under a thick carpet of volcanic ash when Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, have found that huge mounds of refuse apparently dumped outside the city walls were in fact “staging grounds for cycles of use and reuse”. Continue reading...

Behavioural economics is being abused by politicians as a justification for flawed policies over the coronavirus outbreakI first came across “nudge” – the concept many consider to be the pinnacle of behavioural economics – at a thinktank seminar a little over 10 years ago. We were all handed a mock wine menu and asked what we’d order.This was supposed to illustrate that most price-aware diners order the second-cheapest bottle to avoid looking tight and that restaurateurs use this to nudge us towards the bottle with the highest markup. I remember thinking it an interesting insight, but that these sorts of nudges were nowhere near as likely to transform the world as their enthusiastic proponent claimed. Continue reading...

Armed forces will collect swabs from care homes, police stations and prisons across UK

Experts who assess global peril saw a pandemic coming, but they have worse worries for humanity

Prime minister returns to work on Monday to cabinet at odds over easing social distancing

A massive increase in testing and tracing should be the next phase, but decades of cuts and reorganisations have whittled away the necessary regional expertise

Big drugs companies have long favoured outsourcing clinical trials to poor countries with lax regulations to cut costs and maximise profit

Even western countries are starting to accept that shielding our faces could save lives … whether you live in New York or Berlin

Social interaction is vital for young minds, and social media might be the only way of achieving this during lockdownShould we start to use “physical distancing” instead of “social distancing”? Those keen on the change argue that, despite being physically apart, we can still be socially together. So we can connect and support each other even when avoiding unnecessary face-to-face contact.Related: Lockdown is giving my kids a crash course in screen and tween culture | Emma Brockes Continue reading...

Cross-party demand for transparency after chief adviser is revealed as attending meetings of SageBoris Johnson is facing cross-party calls to stop his chief adviser from attending meetings of the secret scientific group advising him on the coronavirus pandemic, as demands grow for the committee’s deliberations to be made public.The former Brexit secretary, David Davis, is among those calling for Dominic Cummings and Ben Warner, an adviser who ran the Tories’ private election computer model, to be prevented from attending future meetings of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage). Continue reading...

Objections raised to inclusion of man suspended from Labour over Islamophobia allegations

No evidence former Covid-19 patients protected from a second infection, says body

Party raises concerns independence of group advising ministers on coronavirus has been compromised

A summary of the biggest developments in the global coronavirus outbreak

Latest figures from public health authorities on the spread of Covid-19 in the United Kingdom. Find out how many confirmed cases have been reported near you

The Guardian’s Beijing bureau chief reflects on four months of risk and emotion at the heart of the Covid-19 epidemicOn 6 January, I wrote a short memo to our newsdesk: “Something we probably want to keep an eye on are these severe viral pneumonia cases that have been racking up (now 44) in Wuhan – China has said that it is not Sars.”Since then, I have been reporting on coronavirus from Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai and most recently Wuhan. I could not have known then how my life would soon be consumed by this story. I have spent the four months since constantly weighing the risks to my family, my colleagues and the people we interviewed against my responsibility as a journalist. Continue reading...

In a secular age, we cast doctors and nurses in the role of miracle-workers – it’s an impossible expectation to live up to

Trust is essential in the pandemic and scientists here can set the priorities that make the most sense for our people

Leading US biologist Thomas Lovejoy says to stop future outbreaks we need more respect for natural world

Scott expedition notebooks acquired by Natural History Museum hold ‘crucial data’Detailed century-old observations of penguin behaviour, including sexual activity so depraved and shocking it was recorded in Greek alphabet code, have been acquired by the Natural History Museum.Curators at the museum announced the purchase of original manuscript notebooks made by the explorer George Murray Levick, part of Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova expedition to the Antarctic in 1910-13. Continue reading...

Concerns grow as the journal Nature raises alarm on serious heart risks associated with Covid-19 patients taking the drugs

The drug – now a partisan wedge issue – has fueled hype and hope, but evidence of its effectiveness remains limited

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Emergency response body could have moved quicker at beginning of pandemic

Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) is advising cabinet on coronavirus response

Europe is in the pandemic frontline but unity among the nations has been rare. That may be changing – not before timeAlmost seven weeks after the World Health Organization confirmed the pandemic, Europe remains in the frontline of the battle to contain the Covid-19 virus. Five of the six countries reporting most cases are in Europe. Seven of the 10 countries reporting most deaths are in our continent too. Yet Europe has struggled to make common cause against the virus. In particular, it has bickered over how to support the most affected European economies against the consequences of the lockdown. In spite of innumerable acts of cross-border solidarity on the medical front, the rich nations of Europe have proved reluctant backers of the continent’s embattled poorer economies.The good news, relatively speaking, is that this divide has not got worse and may, just possibly, have eased a little. This week, leaders of the 27 EU nations finally signed off on a €540bn rescue package. This gives countries such as Italy and Spain, which stand second and third to the United States in Covid-19 cases and deaths, the right to borrow from the eurozone’s bailout mechanism. The problem is that the EU’s southern member states are reluctant to borrow their way out of the problem, in part because they fear that to take on more debt would deepen the inequality between the EU’s south and north. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Leaked list reveals presence of Johnson adviser and Vote Leave ally on supposedly independent body

Video meeting seen as global endorsement of WHO and sign of Trump’s isolation on world stage

Engineering firm has been told by the government that their services are no longer required

Coronavirus has robbed us of life’s markers and left us like prisoners crossing off the days until we can live freely again

Unintentional injuries are the top cause of death for kids in the US and today’s forced confinement raises the riskAs an emergency department doctor in a busy children’s hospital, I am relieved not many children are becoming seriously ill or dying from the coronavirus. However, as an injury prevention expert, I am worried about a hidden danger for America’s children. I am worried about this hidden danger for my now home-bound child.With millions of American children out of schools and daycares, this pandemic is likely to still harm children in a significant way: through injuries instead of infection. The number one killer of children in the United States is not infections like the flu. Year in and year out, it is quietly unintentional injuries, which are more likely to occur in the home, and more likely to arise when routines are interrupted and environments changed. While public health experts have rightfully recommended the closing of schools and daycares to stop the spread of the coronavirus, we must also bring public awareness to the principal danger in millions of children spending their days in homes – a potential rise in unintentional injuries. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Scientists examine whether this route enables infections at longer distances

The pressing need to find a solution to the pandemic means risks and shortcuts may have to be taken

The government’s objections to this seemingly effective measure appear more political and economic than scientific

Medical researchers have been studying everything we know about Covid-19. What have they learned – and is it enough to halt the pandemic?

Doctors warn US president’s musings on disinfectant as a cure for coronavirus could lead to death

Some people are angry at bats which is ridiculous. There are a lot more things to be angry at

24 April 1984: Researchers could be within two years of developing a cure for the ailmentWashington: The US Government announced yesterday that state-sponsored researchers have discovered the probable cause of the disease, Aids, which has caused panic among homosexuals in recent years.The researchers could be within two years of developing a cure for the ailment, the Health and Human Services Secretary, Margaret Heckler, said here. Continue reading...

Unemployment in US up by 4.4 million to a total of over 26 million; world has ‘a long way to go’, warns WHO chief; Iran reports lowest new daily infections for a month. This live blog is now closed –follow our new live blog below

Wildlife Trusts warn of effects from neglected reserves and species loss, to fly-tipping and illegal shooting

WHO draft put online states remdesivir does not benefit severe coronavirus patientsCoronavirus latest: at a glanceRemdesivir, a drug thought to be one of the best prospects for treating Covid-19, failed to have any effect in the first full trial, it has been revealed.The drug is in short supply globally because of the excitement it has generated. It is one of the drugs Donald Trump claimed was “promising”. Continue reading...

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Ministers accused of abdicating political duty to narrow field of opaque expertise on Covid-19