It wasn’t all bad

A new antiviral treatment for Covid is set to be rolled out on the NHS, the Government has announced. Pfizer’s Paxlovid drug, which was first approved in December, has been shown in trials to cut the risk of being hospitalised or dying of Covid by 88%. Around 1.3 million vulnerable people will be eligible to receive the pill if they test positive. The Government has bought 2.75 million courses of the drug, which works best when taken within five days of the onset of symptoms.

Wild crows are being enlisted in the war against urban litter in Sweden. As part of a pilot programme in the city of Södertälje, the birds are being rewarded with food whenever they drop a cigarette butt into an automated peanut dispenser. “They are wild birds taking part on a voluntary basis,” said Christian Günther-Hanssen, the founder of Corvid Cleaning, which designed the dispensers. If the pilot goes well, he believes the costs of collecting butts in the city could fall by 75%. Crows are particularly fast learners, he added, and less likely than other birds to mistakenly eat the rubbish.

An A&E doctor from Teesside has been praised for helping to save the life of a football fan who collapsed at a match – for the second time in three months. In October, Dr Tom Prichard was watching a Newcastle United match when he rushed to the aid of an 80-year-old having a cardiac arrest, prompting the crowd to chant “hero, hero”. This week, he was working with the medical team at Middlesbrough FC when he helped resuscitate an elderly Blackburn Rovers fan who’d collapsed behind the Boro dugout at Ewood Park.