Health News at Your Fingertips

A ban on households mixing in homes or gardens in large parts of the north of England is to stay in place for at least another week, and has been extended into Preston, the health department has announced.

After a review by ministers and councils on Thursday, the decision was reached that with no sign yet of worrying levels of coronavirus infections falling, the restrictions would stay in place across parts of the north-west of England, West Yorkshire and Leicester, writes Peter Walker.

The meeting also, as widely predicted, added Preston to the list of restricted areas. The rules in the Lancashire city come into force at midnight tonight.

The rules will stay in place at least until they are reviewed on 14 August and mean that aside from official support bubbles, people from different households will be unable to meet in homes or gardens, although they can still do this in public places like pubs, in line with rules across the rest of England.

Adrian Phillips, chief executive at Preston council, said case numbers had increased rapidly in recent days, adding: “It is also alarming to see that the under 30s are contracting it at a significant rate.”

Read the full report

The number of daily new coronavirus infections in Italy jumped 38% higher on Friday, with 552 confirmed cases registered compared to the previous day.

Italy has not seen a such a high daily new caseload since late May. Barely two weeks ago, Italy had been registering roughly 200 new cases a day, the Associated Press reports.

The northeastern region of Veneto, which performed nearly 16,500 swab tests in a day, registered roughly a third of those new cases 183.

Veneto governor Luca Zaia said the new infections were found in residents who recently returned home from Spain, Peru, Malta, Croatia and Greece.

Vacations are a risk,” he said in his daily briefing. Everyone must decide where they want to go on vacation, but it’s also true, that by us, for a couple of weeks now, we’re seeing a concentration of patients who were infected on vacation.’’

Here’s a list of the key global coronavirus developments over the last few hours:

• Hong Kong has announced free mass testing for all residents, amid a third wave of Covid-19 infections. More than half the city’s total number of infections were detected in July, with 12 days in a row with cases above 100. The death toll reached 46.
• Norway has advised its citizens to avoid all travel abroad, even to countries with few Covid-19 cases, amid a series of measures aimed at preventing a resurgence of the epidemic.
• Thousands of items of personal protective equipment (PPE) and 500 hospital beds have been destroyed in the Beirut explosion.
  UN agencies are scrambling to support victims, while the its high commissioner has described the ongoing situation as “really dire” according to Reuters.
• The UK chancellor Rishi Sunak has issued a warning that the government will “not hesitate” to impose quarantine restrictions on arrivals from other countries amid concerns that France may be the next destination to be removed from the UK’s travel corridor list.
• Japan confirmed a record 1,580 new coronavirus infections on Friday, as cases continue to mount throughout the country, particularly in urban areas like Tokyo and Osaka.
• More than 3.5 million health workers in India have embarked on a two-day strike over wages and PPE. It comes as the country recorded a record daily jump in coronavirus infections on Friday, taking the total to over two million. Many of those on strike have been conducting door-to-door checks to trace Covid-19 patients.
• Emmanuel Macron has called a meeting of France’s defence council over the country’s continued rise in Covid-19 cases.
  The president said he was calling for “the greatest vigilance” among citizens after the number of infections grew by 33% in a week between 27 July and 2 August.
• Greek public health officials are becoming increasingly concerned at the number of young people testing positive for the novel virus. An abrupt increase in cases nationwide is being attributed increasingly to younger Greeks flouting mask-wearing and social distancing rules.

In the US, at least 100,000 people are expected to attend the 10-day annual Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota’s Black Hills from today, as opportunities for the local economy have overridden concerns it could become a coronavirus superspreading event.

This year is the 80th anniversary of the event that in normal years sees upward of 500,000 motorcycle enthusiasts descend on the small town of Sturgis and the surrounding area. The rally injects $800m (£614m) into South Dakota’s economy, Reuters reports.

Local authorities expect to take an economic hit with fewer in attendance this year and have halved the number of vendors allowed to participate.

But they are still counting on a massive crowd – one of the biggest in the world since the coronavirus pandemic began – to pack concerts with at least 34 acts playing. Most rallies bring a sea of black leather, boots and bandannas into Sturgis, population 6,900 in normal times.

Full report here

Coronavirus has now infected more than 1 million people in Africa, according to a tally by the French news agency AFP.

Countries across the continent have recorded 1,011,495 infections and at least 22,115 deaths, accounting for about 5% of global cases, it reports. Five countries account for 75% of all cases, says the continent’s health watchdog, the Africa Centres for Diseases Control.

Some countries have recently seen declines of about 20% in daily cases but it is too early to confirm this as a trend, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

“African countries are doing their best, despite … limitations,” such as weak health systems, Mary Stephen of the WHO Africa office, said on Friday.

However, she warned against the public complacency that can develop in prolonged outbreaks.

“Because we don’t see many people like we used to see in Italy, like 1,000 people dying (a day), people tend to relax, they think the risk is not so much in Africa. We need to avoid complacency,” she said in a phone interview from Brazzaville.

Countries with high infections relative to the size of their populations include South Africa, Djibouti, Gabon, Cape Verde and Sao Tome and Principe. East African nations Rwanda and Uganda have managed to significantly slow down transmission, while Mauritius has flattened the curve.

One of two 90-minute rapid coronavirus tests bought by the UK government and announced on Monday has yet to be approved by regulators, while no data on the accuracy of either has been published, the Guardian has learned.

Sarah Boseley reports that the test, from Oxford Nanopore, a young biotech company spun off from Oxford University, has not yet been approved by the regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA). Before Covid-19, Oxford Nanopore had been involved only in research – not tests for patients.

About 80 other molecular tests had a CE-mark from the MHRA as early as April. DnaNudge was granted an emergency exemption by MHRA and can be used without the CE mark.

Oxford Nanopore and DnaNudge were first name-checked by the health secretary, Matt Hancock, in a Downing Street press conference on 1 May, the day he announced his target for reaching 100,000 tests per day in England had been met.

You can read Sarah’s full report here:

The death toll from coronavirus in the US passed 160,000 earlier in the day. For all the latest on US developments, you can read our US coronavirus live blog here:

Japan confirmed a record 1,580 new coronavirus infections on Friday, as cases continue to mount throughout the country, particularly in urban areas like Tokyo and Osaka, Japan’s national daily, The Mainichi, reports.

With Japan’s Bon holiday season beginning next week, there is concern that the movement of people will further spread the virus.

The Tokyo metropolitan government on Friday reported 462 new cases of coronavirus infection, just short of the daily record of 472 cases confirmed in the capital late last week.

To mitigate the risk of the virus spreading, Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike has requested residents to refrain from travelling during the holiday.