Prince William and Kate release photo of daughter Charlotte to mark ninth birthday
Prince William and his wife Kate released a picture of their daughter Charlotte to mark the princess's ninth birthday on Thursday.
Tourists and the travel industry vented frustration and anger on Saturday after Britain reversed a plan to ease travel restrictions on France just two days after they were due to start, citing concerns about a variant of the coronavirus.
The move comes despite the fact that France currently has lower rates of the virus than the U.K., where the highly contagious Delta variant is driving a surge in infections. On Saturday, Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who is in charge of Britain's coronavirus response, said he has tested positive for COVID-19 and is self-isolating while he awaits the results of a second test.
Javid said in a video message that he has had both shots of a vaccine and "so far my symptoms are very mild."
Javid took over last month from Matt Hancock, who resigned after breaching social distancing rules. Hancock fell ill with COVID-19 early in the pandemic last year, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson spent several days in intensive care with the virus in April 2020.
Coronavirus cases have been rising for weeks in Britain, where more than 54,000 new infections were confirmed on Saturday, the highest daily total since January. Hospitalizations and deaths are also rising, but remain far lower than at previous infection peaks thanks to vaccinations.
Despite the soaring cases, remaining restrictions are set to be lifted in England on Monday, though the government is advising people to remain cautious. Face masks will still be required on London's buses and subways and some other transit networks.
The U.K. government announced late Friday that people arriving from France must self-isolate for 10 days on entering Britain, even if they are fully vaccinated. The announcement came just days after the government said vaccinated U.K. residents will no longer face quarantine starting Monday when arriving from dozens of countries classed as "amber," or medium, on Britain's traffic-light system of coronavirus risk. The amber list includes the United States, Canada and much of Europe.
British health authorities say France is being singled out because of the beta variant, first identified in South Africa, which is believed to be more resistant to vaccines than other strains. The beta variant accounts for about 10 per cent of cases in France, but much less than 1 per cent of cases in Britain. In both countries, the Delta variant first identified in India is dominant.
Epidemiologist John Edmunds, a member of the U.K. government's scientific advisory group, said there is good evidence that beta "can evade the immune response generated by the AstraZeneca vaccine more efficiently."
The AstraZeneca shot has been used for a majority of British vaccinations.
Before the pandemic, more than 17 million U.K. residents visited France every year. Gemma Antrobus from the Association of Independent Tour Operators said Friday's announcement had taken the travel industry by surprise.
"Really the travel industry are in as much shock as the consumers are right now, and really we would just have to pick up the pieces and deal with it and help our clients through this pretty terrible situation," she told the BBC.
Georgina Thomas, a British nurse visiting her parents in western France, said she was "frustrated with the inconsistent approach the government are taking. It doesn't all appear logical."
"If a quarantine is necessary then so be it, but I'm confident that my risk will be higher when I return to the U.K.," she said.
France is also tightening its border rules. Starting Sunday, unvaccinated people arriving from Britain, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Greece or Cyprus will have to show a negative results from a test less than 24 hours old to enter.
The U.K. government says easing social restrictions is possible because almost 90 per cent of British adults have received one dose of a vaccine, and more than two-thirds have had both doses. Health authorities say the vaccines used in Britain -- made by AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna -- all offer strong protection against serious illness and death after two doses, though they don't prevent all infections.
The vaccination drive has slowed in recent weeks as eligibility expanded in descending order to new age groups, a sign some younger people feel less urgency about getting inoculated. Pop-up vaccination clinics were organized for over the weekend at sites such as London's Tate Modern art gallery, city parks and the clothing chain Primark to encourage young people to get shots.
Conservative lawmaker Jeremy Hunt, a former British health minister, said the number of hospitalizations was growing and the warning light for pressure on the health service "is flashing red."
"I think coming into September we are almost certainly going to see infections reach a new daily peak going above the 68,000 daily level, which was the previous daily record in January," he told the BBC. "If they are still going up as the schools are coming back, I think we are going to have to reconsider some very difficult decisions."
Prince William and his wife Kate released a picture of their daughter Charlotte to mark the princess's ninth birthday on Thursday.
The makers of Ozempic say their weight-loss drug Wegovy will be available to patients in Canada starting Monday.
Archeologists have unearthed the skeletons of five people, missing their hands and feet, at a former Nazi military base in Poland.
Just days before the seventh anniversary of the day Jack Letts was thrown in prison with thousands of suspected ISIS fighters, his mother, Sally Lane, delivered a small stack of envelopes to the headquarters of Global Affairs Canada in Ottawa.
In an effort to balance the profitability of Mother's Day with the pain it causes some people, some brands are offering customers the choice to opt out of Mother's Day email advertising.
Police removed barricades and began dismantling a pro-Palestinian demonstrators’ fortified encampment early Thursday at the UCLA campus after hundreds of protesters defied police orders to leave, about 24 hours after counter-protesters attacked a tent encampment on the campus.
Citizens' Services Minister Terry Beech says 1,200 seniors have already visited a dentist and had their claims processed by the federal government's new dental care plan.
Inspections are underway at more than one Loblaws location in Ottawa after complaints were filed about tall Plexiglass barriers.
Scientists studying a Neanderthal woman's remains have painstakingly pieced together her skull from 200 bone fragments to understand what she may have looked like.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.