Kirkland facility reports symptoms in residents and staffPence defends Trump Jr claim Democrats want ‘millions’ to dieA nursing home in Washington state was placed on lockdown after a resident and a staff member tested positive for the coronavirus and more than 50 others showed respiratory symptoms, according to state health officials. Related: Coronavirus outbreak: US confirms cases in...

Watch out later this week as the moon, approaching full, passes the blue-white quadruple star system in the constellation LeoThis coming weekend, keep an eye out for the moon as it passes Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation of Leo, the Lion. Regulus marks the full stop at the bottom of the backwards question mark of stars, also known as the sickle, that makes up the Lion’s head and...

Health secretary: ‘We will see continued community spreading’Pence defends Trump Jr claim Democrats want ‘millions’ to dieUS health secretary Alex Azar has confirmed a new case of coronavirus in Chicago, as the respiratory illness spreads in the US. Related: Yes, it is worse than the flu: busting the coronavirus myths Continue...

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The challenges of a potential pandemic will test Johnson’s leadership skills like nothing before it – and the early signs aren’t greatGive or take the prime minister’s recent 12-day withdrawal from public life, since his party’s victory at the election the government has largely been trading in performance, rhetoric and intrigue. Running through a great deal of what has happened has been...

Vice-President is leading White House taskforce on outbreakRepublicans are only ‘pushing back’, Pence claimsRobert Reich: Trump’s cuts have made the danger far worseWhen Donald Trump Jr said Democrats hope coronavirus “kills millions of people” in the US because they want to bring his father down, he was merely “pushing back” at politicisation of the viral outbreak by Trump...

Government lawyers look at postponing 7 May polls if outbreak continues to spreadCoronavirus outbreak - live updatesGovernment lawyers are assessing the possibility of delaying the local authority, mayoral and police and crime commissioner elections in May if the coronavirus outbreak continues to escalate, the Guardian can disclose.Matt Hancock, the health secretary, said on Sunday the government...

Brilliant theoretical physicist and mathematician whose far-fetched ideas for the future verged on the bizarreThe physicist Freeman Dyson, who has died aged 96, became famous within science for mathematical solutions so advanced that they could only be applied to complex problems of atomic theory and popular with the public for ideas so far-fetched they seemed beyond lunacy.As a young...

Health secretary says options from closing schools, banning large gatherings and isolating cities being considered Coronavirus outbreak – latest updatesThe UK government is considering all options from closing schools to isolating entire cities if the outbreak of the coronavirus continues to escalate, Matt Hancock has said.The health secretary confirmed on Sunday that ministers would this week...

Facing ageing and a new role was deeply uncomfortable – but robustness and hope helped me adaptI was 47, shaking and with tears streaming down my face as I held a perfect baby girl in my arms. My body was zinging with oxytocin, the bonding hormone, in response to her smell and touch, those little breaths – it felt as if she was my newborn baby. She wasn’t. She was my first grandchild. My...

What are the symptoms caused by the virus from Wuhan in China, how does it spread, and should you call a doctor?How to protect yourself from infectionCoronavirus – latest updatesIt is caused by a member of the coronavirus family that has never been encountered before. Like other coronaviruses, it has come from animals. Many of those initially infected either worked or frequently shopped in the...

People want reliable information and reassurance that their government has got a grip: the prime minister must be seen to leadThe coronavirus crisis has sparked a worldwide race against time to try to understand its nature, contain its spread and develop a vaccine. Only in a few remote corners of the planet do people appear to be nonchalantly confident that it can’t get to them. One of those...

China reports 573 new cases with further travel bans and large gatherings restrictedCoronavirus - live updatesThe US, Australia and Thailand have reported their first deaths from coronavirus as two frontline doctors in China died and more countries put in place bans on large gatherings and travel restrictions.A 35-year-old male retail worker in Thailand died from Covid-19, according to the...

A century on, what can we learn from how US mountain community dealt with viral outbreakIn late 1918 the world’s greatest killer – Spanish flu – roared towards Gunnison, a mountain town in Colorado.The pandemic was infecting hundreds of millions of people in Europe, Africa, Asia and across the United States, overwhelming hospitals and morgues in Boston and Philadelphia before sweeping west,...

What are the statistics on surviving Covid-19? When might a vaccine be ready? Find out hereCoronavirus Covid-19 has now spread to six continents – only Antarctica is currently free of infections – and has triggered more than 85,000 cases of respiratory illness, of which nearly 3,000 have been fatal. The spread of the disease, which first emerged in Hubei province in central China at the...

Case establishes precedent for relatives’ right to know about serious conditions, lawyers sayDoctors treating individuals with serious ailments owe a legal duty of care not just to their patients but to third parties associated with the people they are treating.That is the key implication of a high court ruling last week in the case of a woman who had sued doctors because they failed to tell her...