Health News at Your Fingertips

All passengers who were on a flight from Zante in Greece to Cardiff in Wales have been asked to self-isolate after some on board tested positive for Covid-19.

Public Health Wales (PHW) said seven people on Tui flight 6215 on Tuesday have now tested positive for the virus.

On Monday, it was reported that 11 young people in Plymouth had tested positive after returning from a holiday to the Greek island.

Dr Giri Shankar at PHW said in a statement:

Cardiff and Vale Test Trace Protect and Public Health Wales have identified at least seven confirmed cases of COVID-19 from three different parties who were infectious on TUI Flight 6215 from Zante to Cardiff on 25 August. As a result, we are advising that all passengers on this flight are considered close contacts and must self-isolate.

“These passengers will be contacted shortly, but meanwhile, they must self-isolate at home as they may become infectious, even without developing symptoms. Anyone with symptoms should book a test without delay.

Coronavirus infections in the US are approaching 6 million as many Midwest states reported increasing cases on Sunday, according to a Reuters tally.

Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota have recently reported record one-day increases in new cases while Montana and Idaho are seeing record numbers of currently hospitalised Covid-19 patients.

Nationally, metrics on new cases, deaths, hospitalisations and the positivity rates of tests are all declining but there are emerging hotspots in the Midwest.

Many of the new cases in Iowa are in the counties that are home to the University of Iowa and Iowa State University, which are holding some in-person classes.

Colleges and universities around the country have seen outbreaks after students returned to campus, forcing some to switch to online-only learning.

Infections have also risen after an annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota drew more than 365,000 people from across the country from 7 to 16 August.

The South Dakota health department said 88 cases have been traced to the rally.

A further three people who tested positive for Covid-19 have died at hospitals in England. The total number of confirmed hospital deaths in England now stands at 29,550.

No new coronavirus-related deaths have been reported in Scotland or Wales.

In Scotland, a total of 123 people have tested positive for Covid-19 in the past 24 hours – the highest figure in more than a week.

The number of people in hospital after contracting the virus fell by seven to 251.

In Wales, 56 new cases were recorded in the past 24 hours, according to Public Health Wales.

Police have said up to 3,000 people are thought to have travelled from across the UK to attend an illegal rave in Banwen, in Neath Port Talbot.

South Wales Chief Supt Simon Belcher said: “This type of illegal gathering is totally unacceptable and we are aware of the concerns it is causing for the local community.

“I would like to again remind people of their obligations under the current coronavirus legislation and the overarching goal for everyone to take personal responsibility by following Welsh Government regulations to keep Wales safe.”

He added that police helicopter and traffic policing officers were helping with their efforts after around 3,000 people arrived at the gathering.

“We are looking at all pieces of legislation as to what action can be undertaken safely,” said Belcher.

“Unlawfully parked cars will be dealt with and people who continue, despite our advice, to try and attend this illegal event are being turned away.”

Olaf Scholz, a candidate to succeed Angela Merkel as German chancellor, has condemned protesters who stormed the steps of the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, some of them holding far-right flags.

The protesters gathered on Saturday to demonstrate against coronavirus curbs. Scholz said:

It is unacceptable that some now appear in front of the Bundestag building, the Reichstag building, the most important symbol of our democracy, the parliament, with symbols from a bad dark past, flags that have nothing to do with our modern democracy.”

Schools will reopen in Nigeria’s coronavirus centre Lagos next month as part of plans to revive the economy as Covid-19 cases decline, the state governor said on Saturday.

Lagos plans to reopen colleges on 14 September, and primary and secondary school schools on 21 September, Babajide Sanwo-Olu said.

“The gradual easing doesn’t mean the pandemic is over,” he said in a tweet. “It is not an invitation to carelessness or nonchalance.”

The Lagos governor said restaurants, social clubs and recreational centers would also be allowed to reopen as long as they followed safety rules.

Nigeria has reported 53,727 infections in total – including 18,104 in Lagos – and 1,011 deaths.

Secondary schools reopened across Nigeria this month for pupils due to take graduation exams.

Mexico is pressing ahead with an effort to forge Covid-19 vaccine alliances across a wide ideological spectrum of countries from France to Cuba as a World Health Organization (WHO) vaccine initiative will fall short of its needs.

Mexico joined the WHO’s global Covax plan in early June. It aims to deliver at least 2bn doses of approved vaccines by the end of next year and ensure “equitable access”.

But Martha Delgado, a Mexican deputy foreign minister whom president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador put in charge of Mexico’s international response, told Reuters its share of that programme was unlikely to be enough to provide the roughly 200m vaccine doses Mexicans will need.

“We can’t depend on it,” said Delgado. “Covax promises to help with 20% of the population – we need a bigger quantity of vaccines and so do other countries as well.”

Delgado’s boss, foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard, has been reporting in regularly to Lopez Obrador about the latest developments in the effort to secure a vaccine that will curtail Mexico’s coronavirus outbreak, she said, an effort embracing all major superpowers and their allies.

Leftwing populist Lopez Obrador has raised eyebrows in some quarters by forging a close alliance with US president Donald Trump.

But Ebrard has also assiduously courted China, which has provided Mexico with such equipment as ventilators and masks. And Lopez Obrador has offered to personally test the Russian vaccine despite misgivings among some scientists.

On that note, while authorities and organisers were concerned about street parties taking place in lieu of Notting Hill carnival’s cancellation due to Covid-19, dozens of protesters have gathered outside the local tube station for an anti-racism protest.

Demonstrators taking part in the Million People March against systemic racism lay down in the road outside Notting Hill tube station in London, blocking oncoming traffic, before heading down the road to Hyde Park.

For the first time in its 54-year history, Notting Hill carnival is being streamed online. The decision to cancel the west London street party was announced in May due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The annual event, which celebrates Caribbean culture in the UK and takes place over the August bank holiday Sunday and Monday, would usually draw more than a million visitors.

Organisers have put together a digital festival, complete with videos filmed all over the world, as well as at venues across London, including the Royal Albert Hall, Abbey Road Studios, Theatre Royal and the Tabernacle.

Matthew Phillip, the executive director of Notting Hill carnival, said people should enjoy the event “at home safely” in order to help protect the future of the carnival. He said cancelling the carnival had not been an easy decision: “We did it in the interest of safety, so we would urge people to stay at home, stay away from the streets of Notting Hill.”

Asked how worried he was about people coming to the area, Phillip said: “Well, obviously we are worried, because people do want to get out and celebrate, but ultimately we hope that people will be responsible and sensible.”

The events are being live streamed on the official YouTube channel. You can read more on the plans for the online event from journalist Rhi Storer here:

Thousands of tearful Shia pilgrims wearing gloves and masks flooded Iraq’s holy city of Karbala on Sunday to mark Ashura, in one of the largest Muslim gatherings since the Covid-19 pandemic began.

Ashura, on the 10th day of the mourning month of Muharram, commemorates the killing of the Prophet Mohammed’s grandson Hussein at the Battle of Karbala in 680 AD – the defining moment of Islam’s confessional schism.

Typically, millions of Shias from around the world flock to the golden-domed shrine where Hussein’s remains are buried, to pray and cry, shoulder-to-shoulder.

But with coronavirus numbers spiking across the globe, this year’s commemoration is subdued.

“Honestly, this year is nothing like the millions-strong commemorations of other years,” said Fadel Hakim, who was out early on Sunday in the streets around the shrine, a blue medical mask cupping his chin. “It stands out because there are so few people.”

Small clusters of pilgrims gathered in the vast courtyards outside the main mosque, wearing the customary black mourning clothes along with less traditional masks and gloves.

Wading through the crowds were teams of shrine employees spraying disinfectant mist through long, thin hoses or distributing masks to any bare-faced visitor.

To be allowed into the shrine, people had their temperatures taken at grey gates resembling metal detectors, while inside, signs on the carpet floor indicated the required distance between worshippers as they prayed.

The head of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is willing to fast-track a Covid-19 vaccine as quickly as possible, the Financial Times reported him as saying in an interview published on Sunday.

Stephen Hahn, who serves as the commissioner of FDA, said his agency was prepared to authorise a vaccine before phase 3 clinical trials were complete, the paper reported.

Earlier this week, AstraZeneca, the company manufacturing the Oxford University coronavirus vaccine, insisted it was not in talks with the Trump administration about fast-tracking its vaccine for emergency use ahead of November’s presidential elections.

A more infectious mutation of Covid-19 has been found in Indonesia, the Jakarta-based Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology said on Sunday, as the country’s caseload surges.

Indonesia reported 2,858 new infections on Sunday, data from the health ministry showed, below the previous day’s record 3,308 cases but above the past month’s daily average.

Its total caseload now stands at 172,053, with 7,343 coronavirus-related deaths.

The “infectious but milder” D614G mutation of the virus has been found in genome sequencing data from samples collected by the institute, deputy director Herawati Sudoyo told Reuters, adding that more study is required to determine whether that was behind the recent rise in cases.

The strain, which the World Health Organization said was identified in February and has been circulating in Europe and the Americas, has also been found in neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia.

It’s an extremely difficult time to be entering the job market around the world, following the economic fallout from nationwide Covid-19 lockdowns.

Our writer Sirin Kale has spoken to young graduates in the UK trying to get their foot in the door at a time when internships – that might have led the way to paying work – are incredibly scarce.

A report from the Sutton Trust in July found that 61% of UK employers surveyed have cancelled all or some of the internships they’d usually offer, while 48% think there will be fewer such opportunities over the next year.

For the class of 2020, Covid-19 has put paid to the internship, at least for now – and possibly, for good.

You can read Sirin’s piece here:

The Philippines has recorded 4,284 new coronavirus cases and 102 new deaths.

In a bulletin, the department of health said the country’s confirmed cases had risen to 217,396, still the highest in south-east Asia, while the nationwide death toll had climbed to 3,520.

One of Brazil’s most celebrated tourist destinations, the paradisiacal archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, has announced it is reopening to outsiders – as long as they have had Covid-19.

Tourists have been banned from the Unesco world heritage site, which Charles Darwin visited in 1832, since late March when the pandemic forced many parts of Brazil into partial shutdown.

Since then more than 120,000 Brazilians have died, the world’s second highest death toll, and president Jair Bolsonaro faces accusations of catastrophically mismanaging the crisis by undermining containment measures.

But from Tuesday visitors will be allowed into Fernando de Noronha, 211 miles off Brazil’s north-eastern coast, if they can prove they have been infected and recovered.

You can read more on this from our Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips, here:

On the subject of live music, which many will be yearning for after events across the globe were cancelled due to the pandemic, a huge two-hour long drive-in concert was held in Indonesia on Saturday night.

According to Reuters, around 900 listeners in 300 cars honked and flashed their lights along as pop ensemble Kahitna at Jakarta International Expo.

It was a reminder of the good times before the coronavirus pandemic brought the music industry to a juddering halt, said Chaeruddin Syah, one of the concert organisers. He told Reuters:

Our economy has declined for four to five months, we have not worked at all and have not made any money.

We hope this concert can provide solutions and inspiration to the entertainment industry.”

Indonesia, which is grappling with a surge in virus infections, racked up its biggest daily increase in cases for a third straight day on Saturday. The south-east Asian nation has tallied about 170,000 infections and 7,261 deaths.

The organisers of Saturday’s event said they had prioritised safety, asking listeners to provide negative test results and wear masks.