Society

We still await good data on the transmissibility of the Indian variants of Sars-CoV-2, something the government insists is vital as to whether the full reopening of the economy and society can go ahead as planned on 21 June. But we do now have some data on efficacy of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines against the Indian variant B.1.617.2 – whose triple mutation las led to worries that it might be able to sidestep the vaccines. A study lead by Public Health England finds that while the efficacy of both vaccines is slightly lower for the Indian variant compared with the Kent variant, the difference is not great. While the

There are few public health interventions as successful as parkrun. It wasn’t set up as a public health intervention, which may be one of the reasons it has worked so beautifully. The first one was just a group of friends doing a 5k time trial in London’s Bushy Park. But in the years since that first event in 2004, parkrun has spread across the world. It went from being a largely middle-class event for people who already considered themselves runners to being a part of many communities, deliberately expanding into deprived areas and trying to get a slower average time for participants completing the course, because that meant it wasn’t

The tone of his delivery was subdued, which belied the severity with which the future king, Prince William, battered an institution that has historically striven to please and not provoke his family. There was not one bit of comfort for the BBC in the 315 words uttered by William. This was the most damning criticism a senior royal has ever unleashed on the national broadcaster. Once lauded for its Diana scoop, the BBC will now forever be haunted by the accusation that its failures contributed significantly to the ‘fear, paranoia and isolation’ that Diana experienced in the final years of her life. This was the most damning criticism a senior