Coronavirus news – live: Vaccine before Christmas ‘unlikely’ says Whitty, as Hancock makes preparing for winter ‘a priority’
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Your support makes all the difference.Professor Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, has warned that the chances of a “highly effective” vaccine being ready for distribution by Christmas are “very low”.
Giving evidence to the Commons Health and Social Care Select Committee on Tuesday, Prof Whitty said although he was “cautiously optimistic” there would be a vaccine this side of Christmas, the chances of it being “actually highly effective is in my view very low.”
It comes as a Nobel Prize winning geneticist has warned the UK government risks sleepwalking into a “winter of discontent” unless clear governance structures are implemented for the remainder of the pandemic. Professor Sir Paul Nurse, a distinguished scientist and director of the Francis Crick Institute, criticised what he described as the government’s “pass the parcel” approach. Matt Hancock has since told MPs preparing for winter was a 'priority' for his department.
The growth in UK grocery sales has begun to slow down from record highs following the easing of lockdown restrictions, figures show.
Supermarket sales over the four weeks to 12 July grew by 14.6 per cent compared to the same period last year, slowing from 18.9 per cent growth in June, data from Kantar revealed.
Kantar’s monthly grocery market share figures show sales growth slowed as the reopening of pubs and restaurants affected the momentum for supermarket chains.
People more likely to contract Covid-19 at home, study finds
South Korean epidemiologists have found that people are more likely to contract Covid-19 from members of their own households than from contacts outside the home.
A study published in the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) looked in detail at 5,706 "index patients" who had tested positive for the novel coronavirus and more than 59,000 people who came into contact with them.
The findings showed just two out of 100 infected people had caught the virus from non-household contacts, while one in 10 had contracted the disease from their own families.
By age group, the infection rate within the household was higher when the first confirmed cases were teenagers or people in their 60s and 70s.
"This is probably because these age groups are more likely to be in close contact with family members as the group is in more need of protection or support," Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of the Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) and one of the authors of the study, told a briefing.
Children aged nine and under were least likely to be the index patient, said Dr Choe Young-june, a Hallym University College of Medicine assistant professor who co-led the work, although he noted that the sample size of 29 was small compared to the 1,695 20-to-29-year-olds studied.
Children with Covid-19 were also more likely to be asymptomatic than adults, which made it harder to identify index cases within that group.
Data for the study was collected between 20 January and 27 March, when the new coronavirus was spreading exponentially and as daily infections in South Korea reached their peak.
The UK’s economy has recovered around half of its massive fall in output during the coronavirus lockdown, the chief economist of the Bank of England has said.
Andy Haldane said Britain has seen a V-shaped recovery, telling parliament’s Treasury Committee: “Roughly half of the roughly 25 per cent fall in activity during March and April has been clawed back over the period since.
Calls for probe into high infection rate of Ireland's healthcare workers
Representatives of healthcare workers have demanded that the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) be allowed to examine the high coronavirus infection rate among staff.
Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) general secretary Phil Ni Sheaghdha called for the Government to change regulations that would include Covid-19 as an occupationally acquired illness.
She also told the the Oireachtas Covid-19 Committee that healthcare workers are exhausted, adding that their biggest concern is the prospect of a second wave of coronavirus cases.
As at last Friday, there were 8,347 Covid-19 infections among healthcare workers - 32% of all cases.
The committee was told this is more than European and world averages.
Of the 8,347 cases there were 319 hospital admissions, 49 admissions to intensive care and seven deaths.
Professor Chris Whitty has suggested care homes are not to blame for the severe problems they faced with coronavirus in an apparent swipe at Boris Johnson remarks on the issue.
The chief medical officer for England said major risks in social care settings were not considered early on in the pandemic, including staff working in multiple residences and those not paid sick leave.
He added it was clear the UK and other countries across the world had “not handled this well” in relation to issues in social care settings.
A temporary hospital built at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Centre in Queens, New York, to relieve the city’s overwhelmed hospitals, had hundreds of beds and scores of medical professionals trained to treat coronavirus patients.
But in the entire month the site remained open, it treated just three patients from the Queens Hospital Centre emergency department, records show. Overall, the field hospital cost more than $52m (£40.9m) and served only 79 patients.
Austria reintroduces mandatory face masks
Austria is reintroducing a requirement that face masks be worn in supermarkets, banks and post offices because of an increase in coronavirus infections in recent weeks.
Chancellor Sebastian Kurz told a news conference: "There are areas of daily life where one cannot choose whether one goes or not - the supermarket, the bank, the post office.
"We have therefore decided that we will make face masks compulsory again in supermarkets, in banks, in post offices."
The amount of money being written into wills that will eventually go to charities when people die has surged during the coronavirus pandemic, according to an online service.
Will-writing service Farewill said that in April, over £35m worth of charity donations were written into wills, up from £3.5m in February and an average of £4m per month in 2019.
It said this will be welcome news for charities which have struggled as fundraising streams have dwindled due to events having to be cancelled.
Asymptomatic testing in 'sheltered accommodation' set to begin
Health secretary Matt Hancock has said asymptomatic coronavirus testing in settings similar to care homes but not registered by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) will begin this week.
He told the Commons Science and Technology Committee: "The systematic roll out of asymptomatic testing to environments that are essentially sheltered accommodation, that aren't care homes, will start this week."
During the evidence session, chair Greg Clark said the health secretary had told him in the chamber three weeks ago that it was about to begin and would be completed "within three to four weeks".
Mr Hancock replied: "No, I said that it would be rolled out, and we couldn't test all these settings in that period.
"It's a challenge because there is a spectrum of what these settings are, because they're not registered, if they were registered by the CQC, then they'd be care homes.
"And so we're starting the roll-out of that this week."
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