Covid-19: Hugh Jackman tests positive to Covid
Aussie actor Hugh Jackman has taken to social media to reveal he has tested positive to Covid amid an ominous warning from WHO.
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Australian star Hugh Jackman has revealed he has Covid-19.
Performances of the two-time Tony Award winner’s Broadway musical The Music Man have been cancelled after the actor announced his diagnosis via a video on his Twitter and Instagram accounts.
“I just wanted to make sure you heard this from me. I tested positive for Covid,” the caption to the video read.
“Mild symptoms and looking forward to getting back on stage ASAP!”
Jackman wore a black face mask in the short video, which he shared with his more than 30 million followers.
“My symptoms are like a cold,” Jackman, 53, said during the video.
“I have a scratchy throat and a bit of a runny nose, but I’m fine.”
The show had previously cancelled matinees on December 25 and 26 after Jackman’s co-star Sutton Foster contracted the virus. An understudy recently had to step into Foster’s role of Marian Paroo for one of the preview performances at the Winter Garden Theatre with mere hours’ notice.
Jackman gave a touching speech in front of the audience after the performance in praise of the actress, Kathy Voytko.
The production has cancelled all performances until Jackman returns a negative diagnosis.
FEARS OF HEALTHCARE CRISIS
It comes as the Omicron coronavirus variant could lead to overwhelmed healthcare systems, even though early studies suggest it sparks milder disease, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned on Tuesday.
It comes as China put hundreds of thousands more people under lockdown, while infections hit new highs across Europe and in several US states.
Covid-19 surges have wreaked havoc around the world, forcing many nations to make tough choices between economically punishing restrictions and controlling the spread of the virus.
The US has halved the isolation period for asymptomatic cases to try to blunt the disruption, while France has ordered companies to have employees work from home at least three days a week.
Contact restrictions were in place in Germany for the second year in a row heading into the New Year, as Europe’s biggest economy shuttered nightclubs and forced sports competitions behind closed doors.
Despite facing a much smaller outbreak compared with global virus hotspots, China has not relaxed its “zero Covid” strategy, imposing stay-at-home orders in many parts of the city of Yan’an.
The hundreds of thousands of affected residents there joined the 13 million people in the city of Xi’an, who entered a sixth day of home confinement as China battled its highest daily case numbers in 21 months.
“I’m about to be starved to death,” wrote one Xi’an resident on the Twitter-like Weibo platform.
“There’s no food, my housing compound won’t let me out, and I’m about to run out of instant noodles … please help!” Many Xi’an residents have similarly complained on social media about the restrictions, which include a ban on driving and only one member of a household permitted to go outside for groceries every three days.
This lockdown is the most sweeping in China since the similar-sized city Wuhan was cut off from the world in the early days of the pandemic.
WHY ENGLAND WON’T INCREASE RESTRICTIONS
Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson has decided not to impose new Covid-19 restrictions in England before 2022 amid optimism that hospitals will not be overwhelmed by the Omicron variant.
After a meeting with pandemic advisers, Mr Johnson concluded that there was no new data which required fresh curbs on indoor gatherings.
The announcement means that people in England are not subject to the legally binding restrictions that have been implemented in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
All three nations have introduced curbs on the hospitality and leisure industry, put limits on the size of gatherings and resumed social distancing rules.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid urged the public to be cautious and get their booster jabs to protect their communities.
He told Sky News: “While there is still a lot of uncertainty around this new variant, we do know that our very best form of defence is vaccination”.
Confirming England would be going it alone in its decision in its move to hold fire on restrictions, Mr Javid said: “There will be no further measures before the New Year.”
He told Sky News: “It’s for each country that makes up the UK to decide how it wants to go forward.”
Mr Javid told people to “take a lateral flow test if that makes sense, celebrate outside if you can, have some ventilation indoors if you can” and urged them to “please remain cautious”.
He held open the possibility of further restrictions soon, saying that “when we get into the new year, of course we will see then whether we do need to take any further measures”.
The decision came after Mr Johnson held an online meeting from Chequers with Professor Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, and Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser.
They reviewed the first sets of data on infections, hospital admissions and deaths since before Christmas.
The Times reported that new data showed a record 112,628 positive cases were confirmed on Christmas Day in England.
A further 103,558 were recorded on Boxing Day, while the number dropped to 98,515 on Monday.
The lack of legally binding rules follows a string of hugely positive studies which show that Omicron is milder than other strains of Covid-19, with the first official UK report revealing the risk of hospitalisation is 50 to 70 per cent lower than with infections caused by the Delta variant.
Covid booster jabs protect against Omicron and offer the best chance to get through the pandemic, health officials have repeatedly said.
Meanwhile, South African scientists are confident the Omicron outbreak there is receding and may last just a couple of months.
Infections have spiralled in the past week and admissions failed to reach expected levels, as hospitals “never reached capacity”.
Francois Venter, a medical professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, predicted that Omicron would “be pretty much gone” from all of South Africa by the end of January, The Times reports.
Professor Salim Abdool Karim, who leads the country’s pandemic response, said he believed almost every other country would follow the same trajectory.
Covid booster jabs protect against Omicron and offer the best chance to get through the pandemic, health officials have repeatedly said.
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