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Covid live: Chinese city of Baise ‘sealed off’ after Omicron outbreak; Papua New Guinea PM tests positive
City in Guangxi, with population of 3.7 million, reportedly under lockdown; James Marape tests positive on arrival at Winter Olympics
It’s no coincidence vastly unequal US has world’s highest Covid death tollI didn’t take Covid seriously, admits leading statisticianUK travellers warned about Covid rule trapsFascinating dispatch from Costa Rica by CNN’s Latin American affairs editor, Rafael Romo, who reports of the fallout of the country’s decision last November to became the first country in the world to mandate Covid-19 vaccines for minors, with all children five and older required to get vaccinated, barring medical exemptions.
It started as a heated discussion between a father and his son’s doctor. But it quickly escalated to a multi-person fist-fight that shocked the nation.
Inside the St Vincent de Paul hospital in Costa Rica’s Heredia province, not far from the capital San Jose, the argument – over the country’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate – came to blows last week, leading to the arrests of seven people.But this fight proved more consequential than for just the people involved: The incident forced authorities to temporarily close the hospital’s doors, marking a dark moment in the country’s fight against the pandemic and highlighting the debate around its mandatory vaccination policy.
In 2019, 16.1 per cent of private school pupils had their A-levels graded A*. In 2021 — when teachers decided what marks to award their pupils — the proportion jumped to 39.5 per cent.
Research by The Sunday Times shows for the first time the extent of the grade inflation in individual schools. At North London Collegiate School, a girls’ school in Edgware whose senior fees are more than £21,000 a year, the proportion of A* grades soared from 33.8 per cent in 2019 to 90.2 per cent last summer. The 56.4 percentage point increase is the highest recorded in the investigation.
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