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      Andrew Bridgen must pay Matt Hancock legal fees of £40,000 in libel claim

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 20:18


    High court strikes out part but not all of Bridgen’s case and orders him to pay Tory MP’s costs

    The MP Andrew Bridgen has been ordered to pay Matt Hancock more than £40,000 in legal fees after an early stage of their libel battle.

    The MP for North West Leicestershire is bringing a libel claim against the former health secretary regarding a January 2023 message on X that followed Bridgen posting a comment about Covid-19 vaccines.

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      Over 4,000 Covid victims at Madrid care homes ‘could have been saved’

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 14:30

    Citizen-led commission suggests deaths may have been avoided if transfers to hospital were allowed

    The lives of more than 4,000 care home residents in Madrid could have been saved if the regional government had allowed them to be treated in hospitals, the findings of a citizen-led Covid commission have suggested.

    Launched in April last year, the commission spent months researching and compiling the testimonies of family members, care home staff and experts in an attempt to piece together how the region’s residential homes came to rank among Europe’s deadliest in the early months of the pandemic.

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      Lockdown gave Finley Boden’s parents cover – but safeguarding failures ran deep

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Yesterday - 18:54

    A report on the case of the murdered Derbyshire baby finds a number of opportunities were missed to protect him

    When Finley Boden was returned to the care of his parents, only to be murdered by them weeks later, England was days into its second national lockdown.

    A safeguarding report into Finley’s care makes clear the backdrop of restrictions brought in during the Covid pandemic hindered the ability of authorities to protect him.

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      The Guardian view on unpaid care: time to heed Kate and Derek’s story | Editorial

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Yesterday - 18:42 · 1 minute

    Let us hope Kate Garraway’s films spark a national conversation and serious change. Society is nothing without care

    It is an extraordinary story, it is an ordinary tragedy. Kate Garraway’s documentaries about caring for her late husband, Derek Draper , have drawn huge publicity and millions of viewers. That is partly testimony to the celebrity of the couple – a TV presenter and a New Labour politico – but it is mostly due to the power of their story. Covid ravaged every organ in Mr Draper’s body so that, in the programme aired this week , viewers saw this vibrant, sharp-witted man confined to a bed, struggling to walk or to form sentences. “His brain was his best friend,” Ms Garraway remarked at one point. “Now it is like his brain is his enemy.” Meanwhile, the work of caring for him pushed  her to the edge financially, psychologically, even physically. The stress was so severe that she developed heart pains that forced her to attend hospital.

    Even amid this intimate suffering, Ms Garraway knows there are millions of other households in similar situations – except without her profile, access to expertise or high salary. Among the programme’s most moving sections are the testimonies from other carers about negotiating bureaucracy and trying to manage. They borrow money from friends and family, they go to food banks, they are “just existing”. The last census from 2021 found that 5 million people provide unpaid care to a loved one .

    That is a sizable jump from a decade ago, and carers’ organisations believe the current total is higher still – perhaps 10 million – after Covid. Yet they are practically invisible in our political conversation. Ministers and economists note that nearly 3 million people are now long-term sick and worry about the impact on our labour force – but no one asks about the people looking after them.

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      From the archive: ‘Is anybody in there?’ Life on the inside as a locked-in patient – podcast

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Yesterday - 05:00


    We are raiding the Guardian Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.

    This week, from 2020: Jake Haendel spent months trapped in his body, silent and unmoving but fully conscious. Most people never emerge from ‘locked-in syndrome’, but as a doctor told him, everything about his case is bizarre. By Josh Wilbur

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      Boots to offer Covid vaccines in England for nearly £100 a jab

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 2 days ago - 15:41


    Pharmacy to offer Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to those not eligible for NHS booster shot from next week

    Boots is to offer Covid vaccinations for almost £100 a shot, making it the latest provider to sell the jabs to those not eligible for a booster through the NHS.

    The company has confirmed it will offer the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to healthy customers in England aged 12 and over from next week, at a cost of £98.95 a jab.

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      I helped advise the US government on the next likely pandemic. What I learned is alarming | Devi Sridhar

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 3 days ago - 08:00 · 1 minute

    The 100-day challenge, to be able to contain a virus while a vaccine is approved, manufactured and delivered, looks ever more remote

    Four years on from the first Covid lockdown, life feels to be largely back to normal, although legacies of the pandemic remain. Collective amnesia seems to have set in. Politicians seem eager to move forward and not relive the decisions, delays and deaths that characterised public policy and press briefings. Yet we can’t forget such a brutal event, when Covid is estimated to have killed nearly 16 million people worldwide in 2020 and 2021, and caused life expectancy to decline in 84% of countries, including Britain. Pandemics aren’t a one-off event. There’s still a risk of another happening within our lifetimes.

    Fortunately, what to do about the next pandemic is still very much at the top of the global health agenda. In 2021, I was asked to co-chair the US National Academy of Sciences’ committee on advancing pandemic and seasonal influenza vaccine preparedness and response . This group was sponsored by the US government to provide recommendations on how to improve preparedness for influenza, which is seen as one of the most likely candidates for the next pandemic. I was also involved with the Lancet Covid-19 taskforce , which brought together global experts to look at how to improve on the Covid response, and what challenges there were going forward. These groups represent some of the world’s best thinkers on global health and pandemic preparedness. Here’s what I learned.

    Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

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      How Covid lockdowns hit mental health of teenage boys hardest

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 5 days ago - 16:00

    New research findings are contrary to what had previously been thought about pandemic’s effect on children’s wellbeing

    Teenage boys were hit hardest by the Covid lockdowns, with their mental health failing to recover despite the return to normality, according to the most comprehensive academic study of its kind.

    Early research into how lockdown affected children indicated that girls had suffered more significant mental health problems than boys.

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      Covid quiz: listen-alongs and lockdown parties – how well do you recall the pandemic?

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 5 days ago - 10:58

    How much can you remember about something so recent that dominated everybody’s lives, and yet can feel like a distant past?

    It is four years since the first UK national Covid lockdown. For the many people who lost loved ones or those whose lives were indelibly changed by contracting Covid it was a life-defining event. And everybody in the UK lived through pandemic times that will always mark a distinct chapter in their lives.

    But events from four years ago can sometimes seem both incredibly close and at the same time like a whole other world. Take our quiz to see how much you remember from something so recent that dominated everybody’s lives, and yet can already feel like a distant past.

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      www.theguardian.com /world/2024/mar/23/covid-quiz-listen-alongs-and-lockdown-parties-how-well-do-you-recall-the-pandemic

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