Plans to vaccinate teenagers in Japan have prompted an angry backlash from the public.
The Japan Times reports:
As municipalities prepare to inoculate adolescents against Covid-19, some have been inundated with calls and emails from irate people opposed to the young people getting the shots.
Officials say many of those opposed to the move seem averse to the coronavirus vaccine, and are particularly sensitive about the prospect of teenagers being vaccinated. The high volume of calls and emails as part of the anti-vaccination campaign have almost crippled service lines, and in some cases have included death threats, prompting some municipalities to dial back their commitment to getting youngsters in full-time education vaccinated.
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Milkha Singh, one of India’s first sport superstars, has died of Covid-related complications at the age of 91.
Singh, who was popularly known as the Flying Sikh, died late on Friday in a hospital in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh, his family said. He tested positive for Covid on 20 May. His wife, Nirmal Kaur, a former volleyball captain, had died of the virus days earlier. She was 85.
JCR had been a cook for 15 years, never struggling to find a job in New York city, where his friends would always find a place for him in a restaurant’s kitchen.
But when Covid-19 hit the city in March last year, work that immigrants had relied on vanished seemingly overnight, especially jobs in hospitality, events and cleaning.
Options if you have accumulated some money or want to start putting something aside
With strict limits on going out and about, lockdown has helped many people build their savings. Last year, in total, households put away almost three times as much money as the year before, according to an analysis of Bank of England figures by the investment firm Hargreaves Lansdown. It found that in the year to March 2021, £184bn flowed into savings accounts.
For some of those who have been able to carry on working through the coronavirus lockdowns, this has been their first opportunity to start accumulating some savings.
When Donna Brunton started looking for a backup UK holiday, fearing her family’s £2,500 all-in trip to a four-star beach hotel in Malta would not go ahead, she almost fell off her chair when she saw the prices.
“A holiday park in north Cornwall was quoting £3,699 for the four of us to stay seven nights, self-catering in what looks like an upmarket caravan. The only sites available were all thousands of pounds. I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing – the prices were just ridiculous,” said Donna, a nurse from Consett, County Durham.
The NHS app has gained an additional 2.7 million users since a new version of the app has allowed people to show whether they have received the coronavirus vaccine.
The app, separate from the NHS Covid-19 app, began enabling people to show proof that they had received the vaccine from 17 May, in order to travel internationally or attend sporting events, such as Wimbledon and Euro 2020 matches. The app already had other functions in order to access medical services, such as booking GP appointments.
New South Wales reported three cases of Covid-19 on Saturday, taking the total associated with the Bondi outbreak to six.
Two previously unreported cases were announced, including a woman in her 40s from the eastern suburbs who visited a number of venues in Westfield Bondi Junction. The second case, reported overnight, is a man in his 30s who lives in Sydney and also visited Westfield Bondi Junction.
Face masks will be mandatory on public transport in Sydney for at least five days, as New South Wales scrambles to prevent the eastern suburbs cluster from growing.
The announcement of the mandate came as the state recorded another locally acquired case, a man in his 50s who was on the same floor of the Westfield Bondi Junction Myer as the initial case on Saturday.
The history of the race massacre in Elaine, Arkansas, has always been contested.
It is widely accepted that in 1919, a group of white men, with the backing of federal troops, tortured and killed scores of Black residents – the exact number is disputed but assumed to number at least in the hundreds – who were starting to organize against the exploitation of their labor. The massacre came at the tail end of what would become known as the “red summer”, a season of racial terror fueled by white resentment of the strides Black people were making across the country.
US NFL player Cole Beasley leaned into the sharp backlash from statements he has made critical of the coronavirus vaccine on Friday, disclosing that he is not vaccinated and pledging to “live my one life like I want to regardless”.
“I will be outside doing what I do,” he wrote in a statement posted to social media.
Four months of verbal evidence were bolstered by more that 350 written submissions, with a further 4,871 responses received in a corresponding online survey – the second highest response ever recorded to a standing committee poll, beaten only by a recent inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violence.
Almost two-thirds of workers in England seeking grants to help them self-isolate are being refused help, sparking warnings from trade unions that a key policy to limit Covid-19 is “failing” in the face of rising infections.
Councils are continuing to refuse more than six out of 10 applications despite the government increasing funding for the vital anti-Covid system in March to £20m a month, freedom of information requests by the Trades Union Congress found.
Workers must be given a right to do their jobs from home, Labour has demanded as it piled pressure on the government not to let its consultation on flexible working be kicked into the long grass.
In the first major announcement made by Angela Rayner since gaining the portfolio of shadow cabinet minister for the future of work, she said employers should not be able to “dictate terms” to staff when the guidance urging people to work from home is expected to be lifted next month.
There is a strong desire to understand how the coronavirus pandemic began, but in all the squabbling we must remember to listen to the science
The global Covid-19 pandemic may yet become the worst in modern history. Already there are more than 175 million cases and 3.8 million deaths. As quickly as the pandemic was upon us, so too has been the response – the rapid implementation of new technologies to drive public health, novel approaches to vaccines, and the continuous courage and commitment of our healthcare workers.
But with the universal collaboration of those working to fight the virus comes others who have been unedifying and downright mistaken in their approach – the rejection or lack of scientific advice, prioritisation of economic considerations over public health, social media manipulation, and the movement towards an ideological left versus right battle.
10,000 rock and heavy metal fans look forward to weekend of moshing without masks at Covid pilot event
Moshing is surely the final stage of the journey back to normality in a post-lockdown world. Hundreds of sweaty people slamming into each other with full bodily contact might not appeal to everyone, but it is impossible not to appreciate how monumental a step it is after more than a year of being told to stay 2 metres apart.
“After being distanced for so long, it’s going to be weird. But I’m going to be straight in there. You’ve got to throw yourself in at the deep end,” said Shay Fagan, 22, one of 10,000 rock and heavy metal fans arriving at Download Pilot festival on Friday eager to return to the mosh pit.
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Shortage of HGV drivers and workers exacerbated by Brexit and Covid is creating ‘real crisis of food supplies’
Chilled food will struggle to reach some shops in the UK this summer, logistics organisations have warned, due to a lack of drivers and production workers.
A chronic shortage of HGV drivers, exacerbated by Brexit and Covid, is now running into unusually high summer demand as the end of lockdown and opening of hospitality combines with the UK’s forced staycation.
Public Health England (PHE) says younger people are driving the rise in Delta cases – which have soared by 79% in just one week, while hospital admissions have almost doubled.
Dr Jenny Harries, the chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, said spread across the UK was being driven by younger age groups, reports PA.
Cases are rising rapidly across the country and the Delta variant is now dominant. The increase is primarily in younger age groups, a large proportion of which were unvaccinated but are now being invited to receive the vaccine.
Fans must show proof of US-approved Covid vaccine to see to singer’s return after a year away
Bruce Springsteen is bringing glory days back to New York next week, when his show becomes the first to reopen on Broadway since the lights went out for the coronavirus pandemic. But fans without vaccinations approved by the US government will be left dancing in the dark.
The EU has failed in a legal attempt to secure an urgent 120m vaccine doses from AstraZeneca by the end of this month, while securing a judgment that sites in Oxford and Staffordshire should have been used in the past to make good on deliveries.
The court of first instance in Brussels ordered the Anglo-Swedish company to deliver just 10m more than it has already provided by the end of September, and make “best efforts”, including potentially the use of UK facilities, to provide the further 220m jabs to which it is contractually committed.