According to a report published in the journal eLife, the variant dubbed D614G is believed to be the most dominant in the world. The powerful strain is eight times more transmissible than the one that raised the alarm over a...
UK retail sales plunged in January as the national lockdown took a far greater toll on the high street than economists had forecast. Official figures showed total sales dropped 8.2 per cent as non-essential shops closed their doors. A consensus of analysts had predicted...
Boris Johnson has said he wants the current nationwide coronavirus lockdown “to be the last”. But he almost immediately added that he could give no guarantee that he would not have to introduce restrictions for a fourth time, as ministers...
Bridget Jones’s Diary introduced us to many things about mid-90s British culture. Smug marrieds. The Hay diet. A “ladette” mindset in which women don’t have sex, they “shag”. Yet 25 years after it was first published – and in a neat,...
The UK currently has no plan to eliminate coronavirus from our shores. Lockdown will minimise contacts and protect the NHS. Rapid distribution of vaccines will protect the vulnerable, until all adults receive the vaccine in the longer term. Then we...
Commercial TV channels, radio stations and web portals have gone off air in Poland in protest at tax proposals that critics say threaten independent media, a day after Hungary’s leading private radio station lost its broadcasting licence. The European commission on Wednesday...
He made a great effort not to crow, but the Conservative minister could not contain his mix of pleasure and slight surprise this week. “If there is one thing that the Labour party absolutely does not want right now,” the minister...
The government is under mounting pressure to plug gaps in its emergency coronavirus wage subsidy schemes at the March budget to support millions of self-employed people and other workers excluded from furlough. MPs and campaign groups said the chancellor, Rishi Sunak,...
Perhaps the fight over who gets vaccines, and when, was always going to get ugly. The stakes could not be higher: even after scientists’ extraordinary feat of already developing five effective vaccines against Covid, we do not yet have enough...
The UK has sought to calm tensions in its row with the European Union over the supply of coronavirus vaccines, even offering to “help” the bloc with its current crisis. Just hours after the EU was forced to back down over incendiary plans...
