Health chief urges pregnant women to get COVID jabs and admits ‘major concern’ about unvaccinated
England’s chief medical officer has urged all women who are pregnant, or wishing to become pregnant, to get a COVID vaccine as he admitted there was a “major concern” about those not getting jabbed.
Speaking at a Downing Street news conference, Professor Chris Whitty presented “stark” data on the number of pregnant women ending up in hospital with coronavirus.
He described these as “preventable admissions” and highlighted how there had been deaths of unvaccinated pregnant women from coronavirus.
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Vaccine appeal after mum dies of COVID
Prof Whitty said the “universal view” among experts was that the benefits of COVID jabs “outweigh the risks in every area”.
“I would just like to give you some fairly stark facts about this because this is a major concern,” Prof Whitty said of pregnant women or those wishing to get pregnant.
“Based on academic data from 1 February through to 30 September… 1,714 pregnant women were admitted to hospital with COVID.
“Of those, 1,681, which is to say 98%, had not been vaccinated. And if you go to those who are very severely ill in intensive care, of 235 women admitted to ICU (intensive care units), 232 of them – over 98% – had not been vaccinated.
“These are preventable admissions to ICU and there have been deaths. All the medical opinion is really clear that the benefits of vaccination far outweigh the risks in every area.
“This is a universal view among doctors and among the midwife advisory groups and among the scientific advisory groups.
“So can I please encourage all women who are pregnant or wishing to become pregnant to get their vaccination.”
Prof Whitty also urged a greater uptake of flu vaccines this winter, with flu “also very dangerous for women who are pregnant”.
Prof Whitty said the ‘universal view’ was that the benefits of COVID jabs outweigh the risks
Earlier this month, the husband of a woman who died of COVID-19 without having the chance to meet her newborn baby pleaded with people to get a COVID vaccine.
Majid Ghafur told Sky News: “I’m going to pass this message to the whole world, I just beg all people to get the vaccine.”
He added his wife, Saiqa Parveen, 37, had “planned so many things” and that “this disease didn’t give her a chance”.
Saiqa died after spending five weeks in intensive care. She contracted COVID-19 when she was eight months pregnant with her fifth child.
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PM makes COVID vaccine plea
Her husband said she had been offered a vaccine but had decided to wait to have it until after her baby was born.
In a letter to midwives, obstetricians and GP practices in July, the chief midwife for England, Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent, said all healthcare professionals had “a responsibility to proactively encourage pregnant women” to get vaccinated.
A US court is once again being asked to weigh in on maximal extractable value practices after a judge allowed new evidence to be added to a class-action lawsuit tied to a memecoin platform.
The judge granted a motion to amend and refile to include new evidence a class-action lawsuit against memecoin launch platform Pump.fun, the maximal extractable value (MEV) infrastructure company Jito Labs, the Solana Foundation, which is the nonprofit organization behind the Solana ecosystem, and others.
The motion said over 5,000 pieces of evidence in the form of internal chat logs were submitted by a “confidential informant” in September that were previously unavailable. The filing said:
“Plaintiffs assert that the logs contain contemporaneous discussions among Pump.fun, Solana Labs, Jito Labs, and others concerning the alleged scheme, and that they materially clarify the enterprise’s management, coordination, and communications.”
The lawsuit, originally filed in July, alleges that the Pump.fun platform deliberately misled retail investors by marketing memecoin launches as “fair,” but engaged in a scheme with Solana validators to front-run retail participants through maximal extractable value (MEV).
Maximal extractable value is a technique that involves reordering transactions within a block to maximize profit for MEV arbitrageurs and validators.
The plaintiffs allege that Pump.fun used MEV techniques to give insiders preferential access to new tokens at a low value, which were then pumped and dumped onto retail participants, who were used as exit liquidity by insiders.
Cointelegraph reached out to Burwick Law, the legal firm representing the plaintiffs, as well as Pump.fun, Jito Labs and the Solana Foundation, but did not receive any responses by the time of publication.
The lawsuit could set a precedent for MEV cases in the United States, as the ethics of the practice continue to be debated within the crypto industry and legal bodies struggle to define proper regulations about the highly technical subject.
Related: Pump.fun co-founder denies $436M cash out, claims it was ‘treasury management’
The MEV bot trial leaves questions unanswered
Anton and James Peraire-Bueno, the brothers accused of using a MEV trading bot to make millions of dollars in profit, went to trial in November in the US.
Prosecutors argued that the brothers tricked victims out of their funds, but defense attorneys said that they were executing a legitimate trading strategy and did not do anything illegal.
The jury struggled to reach a verdict in the case, and several jurors requested additional information to clarify the complexities surrounding the technical specifics of blockchain technology.
The case ended in a mistrial after the jury was deadlocked and failed to reach a verdict, highlighting the complexity of adjudicating legal disputes surrounding the application of nascent financial technology.
Magazine: Meet the onchain crypto detectives fighting crime better than the cops
Reports a female MSP had a secret recording device planted in her office by a member of her own staff are “completely and utterly unacceptable”, SNP leader John Swinney has said.
Scottish parliament officials are investigating the alleged bugging incident by a man, which is said to have taken place in 2023 at Holyrood.
The Scotsman newspaper reported the staffer is still involved with the SNP and moved on to work with a male MP after the issue came to light.
Sky News has yet to independently verify the details, but one senior party source with knowledge of events has said it is “100% true”.
The source alleges “the SNP did nothing; indeed he simply got moved and continued to be promoted by very senior members of executive”.
It is suggested the female MSP, who has not been publicly named, is liked, rated and respected by her colleagues.
The Scottish parliament building in Edinburgh. Pic: PA
First Minister Mr Swinney was stopped by reporters in Edinburgh on Thursday where he said he was “not familiar with all of the details… but that type of conduct is completely and utterly unacceptable”.
“Individuals are entitled to operate in an open and transparent environment that shouldn’t be subjected to that kind of behaviour,” he concluded.
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MPs and MSPs employ staff directly, rather than the political party.
Sky sources confirmed the victims of the incident had to get counselling in the aftermath before suggesting the SNP “definitely has a woman problem”.
The source claims it is “not a one-off incident”, adding: “Women are habitually treated differently.”
An SNP spokesperson said: “The SNP has no involvement in the employment processes of parliamentarians. That is a confidential matter between elected members, employees, and Scottish parliament authorities.
“The reports outline a very traumatic situation for those involved and nobody should ever have to experience fear or harassment for doing their job.”
Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie said: “These jaw-dropping revelations pose serious questions for the SNP top brass.
“It appears a grave breach of privacy and potentially criminal behaviour has been swept under the carpet by the SNP.
“Once again it looks like the SNP chose to close ranks and protect their own, rather than dealing with serious misconduct head-on.”
A spokesperson for the Scottish parliament said: “Each MSP is an employer in their own right and is responsible for managing staff welfare issues and employment disputes.
“Complaints about staff conduct are investigated by an independent adviser, and it is for the member to act on their findings accordingly.
“As a matter of standard practice, we do not comment upon or confirm any individual cases.”
Major US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is expanding payment options in Poland by integrating with one of the country’s most widely used mobile payment systems.
Coinbase has partnered with European payment processor PPro to enable payments via Blik, a popular Polish mobile payment network with nearly 20 million users.
The announcement was made by Coinbase executive and NFT Paris co-founder Côme Prost, who joined the exchange in February 2024 to lead its French operations.
“Improving local payment rails is a key focus for us,” Prost said in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday, highlighting the importance of simple, fast and familiar payment options in driving crypto adoption.
Coinbase holds MiCA licence as Poland struggles to pass crypto bill
Coinbase’s local expansion comes as Poland struggles to pass cryptocurrency legislation amid political divisions. Last week, the Polish government reintroduced an identical version of a strict crypto bill that had been vetoed by President Karol Nawrocki just weeks earlier.
Coinbase holds a license under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), which it secured in June.
“It has been a pleasure working with the team at Coinbase to launch Blik on their platform to enable Polish customers to access Crypto,” PPro executive Tom Benson wrote in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday.
He added that he was confident the partnership with Coinbase would deepen in 2026 as the company adds more local payment methods and expands collaboration across additional areas.
Poland’s crypto adoption booming despite lagging local regulation
Crypto adoption in Poland has surged despite slow-moving local legislation, with the country emerging as one of the leaders in Chainalysis’ 2025 European Crypto Adoption report.
Poland is the only EU member state without a functioning national legal framework to enforce the MiCA regulation, even though the framework applies even without formal implementation.
Following the president’s veto of the government’s bill, Poland is indeed the only EU member state without any step toward implementation,” Juan Ignacio Ibañez, a member of the Technical Committee of the MiCA Crypto Alliance, told Cointelegraph recently.
Related: Coinbase adds stock trading, prediction markets in ‘everything app’ push
“Not every country has a single implementation law,” he added, pointing to Germany and France, which have specific laws, while other member states, such as Spain and Luxembourg, rely on amendments to existing financial legislation.
Ibañez noted, however, that a lag in implementation does not mean all countries are equally advanced, nor does it imply that Poland is more hostile to crypto. Hungary, for example, has implemented MiCA with additional regulations that are “more unfriendly to crypto asset service providers than Poland,” he added.
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