Public Health England expert says figure suggests B1351 has not taken hold in Britain Coronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coveragePublic Health England has uncovered a total of 170 confirmed or probable cases of the South Africa variant of coronavirus that appears less susceptible to vaccines.Routine and surge testing revealed 151 cases in England, six in Scotland and 13 in...
Initial study brings hope vaccine will reduce Covid transmissionCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageData from researchers in Israel, which has inoculated swathes of its population, suggests the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is reducing viral load, a key signal that the intervention could diminish the spread of Covid-19.Evidence that the coronavirus vaccines being deployed...
Health secretary sets out new measures as Scottish government announces even stricter plansCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageTravellers arriving from coronavirus hotspots could face £10,000 fines and jail sentences of up to 10 years under a package of measures designed to stop new variants entering Britain.Matt Hancock, the health secretary, said people who travelled...
A new course – the space engineering technician apprenticeship – offers the chance to join an expanding industryFor young people eager to launch into the world of work, career horizons are expanding to infinity and beyond. The next generation of space engineers began training last month through a new apprenticeship scheme.The space engineering technician apprenticeship is the first to be...
French nun Sister Andre tested positive in her retirement home in Toulon but had no symptomsCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageEurope’s oldest person, French nun Sister Andre, has survived Covid-19 and will celebrate her 117th birthday this week, her caregivers said.Lucile Randon, who took the name of Sister Andre when she joined a Catholic charitable order in 1944,...
Donations surge during Covid crisis for work by Prof Chris Exley, author of study linking vaccines and autism Coronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageA British academic who has promoted anti-vaccine misinformation has raised more than £150,000 through a university donations portal to support his research during the coronavirus crisis, the Guardian can reveal.Prof Chris...
From doubts about safety in older people to questions about variants, scientists have faced a battle to convince the public and regulatorsCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageThe Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid has barely been out of the news from the moment the race to protect the world’s population from the novel coronavirus began. But not always in...
Neuropsychiatrist who brought brain and mind together in studies of mental health Alwyn Lishman liked to tell people that he wrote his classic textbook Organic Psychiatry (1978) only because the £500 advance would enable him to buy the Bechstein grand piano that he coveted. Yet he put his heart and soul into it, setting the subject of neuropsychiatry on a new footing, and trained generations of...
Theories including virus jumping from animal to human or via frozen food being explored by team in ChinaCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageThe World Health Organization team that visited Wuhan to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic has largely ruled out the theory that the virus leaked from a laboratory, while giving some credence to China’s focus on...
Caseworkers made to turn on ‘geo-tracking’ over concerns about personal data leaving UKCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageSome contact tracers working on the UK’s test and trace system are thought to have been working from abroad, the Guardian has learned, with one company resorting to tracking its employees’ locations.Intelling, hired through outsourcing firm...
People from Bangladeshi and Pakistani backgrounds faring worse than black people in second wave of pandemic Evidence that ethnic minorities are at elevated risk of contracting and dying from Covid-19 compared with their white counterparts is well established. But a new sweeping analysis in England shows that between the first and second waves of the pandemic in 2020, death rates in black...
Turtles have been around for more than 200m years, and can be found almost everywhere on the planet. Yet, they are surprisingly uniform and many species around today are facing an uncertain future – at risk from trade, habitat destruction and the climate crisis. Looking at a new study investigating the evolutionary history of turtles, Age of Extinction reporter Phoebe Weston talks to Prof Bob...