Good morning. It never feels like a quiet time in the news at the moment, and today is no exception: ongoing atrocities in Ukraine, the aftermath of an unprecedented election result in Northern Ireland, and the list.
It is remarkable how quickly Covid-19 has left the agenda. A tickle in your throat two years ago was enough to send most people into a spiral. The combination of a robust vaccination programme and effective testing has meant that things seem to be returning to normal in the UK.
coronaviruses is still in the background, causing hardship, and disrupting our daily lives. I spoke to Hannah Devlin, the Guardian's science correspondent, to find out where we are. Here are the headlines.
60 people are feared dead after an airstrike on a Ukrainian school. Ahead of today's symbolic Victory Day celebrations in Moscow, the attack was part of an intensified Russian onslaught.
More than two million adults in the UK have gone without food for a whole day over the past month due to the cost of living crisis.
The leaders of the Democratic Unionist party will tell Boris Johnson if the Northern Ireland protocol is not changed. Sinn Féin became the largest party at the assembly for the first time.
Labour denied that a leaked internal memo showed that Keir Starmer had broken the law. Lisa Nandy is the shadow levelling up secretary.
Jodie Comer and Matthew Macfadyen were among the winners at Sunday's television Baftas. It's A Sin was ignored in every category.
It would be fair to say that the epidemic is over for most people. These restrictions on our behavior seem to be relics from a different era. The highest daily rise of Covid deaths in over a year occurred on February 2nd after all restrictions were lifted. What do the numbers mean in a time when the general consensus is that we must live with Covid.
For now, the rates are stable.
Infections and hospitalisation rates seem to have returned to where they were before the BA.2 variant of Omicron became more widespread. Hannah says that there is a tension between where we are as a society and where we are as individuals when it comes to Covid rates.
Things become less clear when we look at the bigger picture. Hannah says that we are still experiencing huge waves of infections. Even though it looks like the worst of the Pandemic is over, another surge could put more pressure on an already strained health service.
The road ahead is dictated by death rates.
After all restrictions and guidance ended at the end of February, a rise in infections was expected, but it is death rates that determine how the government responds. More than 175,000 people have died of Covid-19 in the UK since the outbreak, while the WHO says there have been 15 million excess deaths worldwide.
The death toll at the peak of the epidemic was more than 1,000 a day. Covid is now the sixth-leading cause of death in the UK, according to data from the Office for National Statistics. Despite the end of all restrictions and the seeming infeasibility of a zero- Covid strategy, that is clearly a significant change.
There are more than 200 deaths a day from Covid in the UK. While vaccines and education have changed the Covid crisis for the better, it is almost inevitable that the mortality rates will go down. The government and the country have decided that the goal is not eradication, but management.
The future of vaccines.
It would be understandable to assume that research on Covid-19 vaccines is not as urgent as it used to be. The vaccination programme in this country has worked well, with 98% of people over the age of 12 having one dose, 85% having two, and 42% having a booster.
There is more to the picture. As of April, only 15.2% of low-income countries have received one dose of the vaccine.
The threat of a variant that could escape immunity still exists as Covid continues to run rampant in certain parts of the world, with numbers on the rise in countries including South Africa and India. What happened to the variant-specific vaccines? The pharmaceutical industry is still working on it.
Moderna is targeting the release of their Omicron vaccine by autumn. She says it is an evolving picture. The vaccines we have are still good at preventing severe disease and death, which is the reason why there seems to be less urgent than at the start of the Pandemic.
Broader vaccines that target multiple variant and future strains are in development, as is a nasal spray which is supposed to prevent people from catching Covid in the first place. It looks like these boosters will only be available to those who are older or vulnerable, which raises the question, what about everyone else?
It is not clear what the landscape will look like when it comes to an ever-changing and mutating virus.
Everyone from Boris Johnson to Anthony Fauci has declared that the Pandemic is over, but that doesn't feel right for everyone. Everyone seems to have forgotten you, so it must be terrible to see everyone going back to normal.
There are still questions about what living with Covid means for our futures. If we want to continue enjoying our renewed freedom, we can't just pretend that the virus that changed the world two years ago is gone.
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The residents of a nursing home remember the second world war and must now contend with a new conflict.
Liberal anger has been directed at Fox News for a long time. Observer columnist Nick Cohen argues that the channel broadcasts Kremlin-style propaganda, so why not freeze the assets of Murdoch? Nimo.
More than 2 million Britons can't afford to eat every day, and the Mirror is worried about the cost of living. The Sun pays tribute to Dennis Waterman on its front, and the death of the Minder star is the lead in the paper. The Mail calls the actor a rough diamond and charmer on its front page, but its main story is that he snubs the chance to clear air. The Times leads withBonfire of EU laws in bid to boost economy, and the i reports that the UK threatens to tear up the deal. The Express claims that patients are at risk, while the Telegraph says that Putin is similar to Nazis. GP can't cope with workload pressures. The main story for the Financial Times is the US hitting the bosses of Gazprombank.
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