The group, Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, say lessons need to be learned quickly to prevent further deaths, amid fears of a second peak later this year.
 

The Local Government Association, which represents councils across England and Wales has called for a suspension of the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) rule, thought to bar more than 100,000 migrant families in the UK from accessing vital support.

Vast numbers of people subject to NRPF have been approaching local governments for help during the pandemic, LGA says. While central government has given councils funding to support people throughout the pandemic, including housing rough sleepers, it is currently illegal to use this money to ensure rough sleepers with NRPF can be properly housed once the “Everyone In” initiative comes to an end.

“Councils have been doing everything they can to support all groups facing homelessness and help protect them from coronavirus. Councils are now planning their next steps in supporting people to move on from emergency accommodation. This needs to include clarity and funding for those who are destitute and homeless because of their migration status,” said Cllr David Renard, the LGA’s housing spokesperson. 

“As the economy recovers, local outbreaks may mean there still may be a need to be able to access safe and suitable accommodation and financial support to allow for self-isolation, particularly for single adults without care needs who are not usually eligible for social services’ support.

“This could be enabled by a temporary removal of the NRPF condition which would reduce public health risks and pressures on homelessness services by enabling vulnerable people to access welfare benefits.”
 

The Independent last week revealed that NHS England figures showed more than 25,060 patients were discharged to care homes by NHS hospitals in the pivotal 30 days before ministers introduced routine coronavirus testing.

Now an independent Whitehall report has drawn the same conclusions, establishing that, for an entire month, “medically fit” patients who did not display any Covid-19 symptoms were discharged without being tested.

This policy, which sought to free up hospital beds for coronavirus patients, ran from 17 March and 15 April before it was changed, Samuel Lovett reports.

Meg Hillier, chairwoman of the Commons public accounts committee, said care homes had been left at the “back of the queue” for both PPE and testing.

“Residents and staff were an afterthought yet again: out of sight and out of mind, with devastating consequences,” the Labour MP said.
 

National charities have successfully challenged more than a dozen unlawful do not resuscitate orders (DNRs) that were put in place because of the patient’s disability rather than due to any serious underlying health risk, our health correspondent Shaun Lintern reports.

Turning Point said it had learned of 19 inappropriate DNRs from families while Learning Disability England (LDE) said almost one-fifth of its members had reported DNRs placed in people’s medical records without consultation during March and April.

In one example, a man in his fifties with sight loss was admitted to hospital after a choking episode and was incorrectly diagnosed with coronavirus. He was discharged the next day with a DNR form giving the reason as his “blindness and severe learning disabilities”.

Julie Bass, chief executive at Turning Point, said: “It is not only illegal but outrageous that a doctor would decide not to save someone just because they have a learning disability. They have the same right to life as anyone else.”

“Meanwhile, people living in more deprived areas have continued to experience Covid-19 mortality rates more than double those living in less deprived areas. General mortality rates are normally higher in more deprived areas, but Covid-19 appears to be increasing this effect.”

More than two dozen international aid organisations have told the US government they are “increasingly alarmed” that “little to no US humanitarian assistance has reached those on the front lines” of the pandemic, as the number of new cases picks up speed in some of the world’s most fragile regions.

The letter obtained by The Associated Press and signed by groups including Save the Children, Mercy Corps, World Vision and others says that “in spite of months of promising conversations with USAID field staff, few organisations have received an executed award for Covid-19 humanitarian assistance.”

It calls the delays “devastating” and says the window is closing for the US to help mitigate the worst impacts of the pandemic around the world.

The letter to US Agency for International Development acting administrator John Barsa is dated June 4 — the same day that other USAID officials were touting the US government’s “global leadership” in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“To date, we have committed more than $1bn to benefit the global Covid response,” Kenneth Staley, the leader of the USAID Covid-19 task force, told reporters covering Africa.

But much of that aid has been tied up in “uncharacteristic delays” nearly three months after the passage of the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act, the letter from aid groups says.
 

A report has found that young people with learning disabilities are being driven to self-harm after being prevented from seeing their families during the coronavirus lockdown in breach of their human rights, our social affairs correspondent May Bulman reports.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights warned that the situation for children and young people in mental health hospitals had reached the point of “severe crisis” during the pandemic due to unlawful blanket bans on visits, the suspension of routine inspections and the increased use of restraint and solitary confinement.

The report concluded that while young inpatients’ human rights were already being breached before the pandemic, the coronavirus lockdown has put them at greater risk – and called on the NHS to instruct mental health hospitals to resume visits.
 

As growing numbers of largely Tory MPs call for a reduction in the two-metre rule, amid fears that millions of jobs in the hospitality sector could be lost and schools may not be able to fully return unless the social distancing rule is changed, Scotland’s first minister has said that further suppression of the virus must come first.

Runnymede Trust director and Independent Sage member Dr Zubaida Haque has raised further questions about the government’s failure to publish recommendations of how to reduce disproportionate ethnic minority deaths from coronavirus.

Asking whether equalities minister Kemi Badenoch misled parliament with her statement that PHE were “not able to” make recommendations within the published report, she added: “This is exactly what the Black Lives Matter protests are about: it is about the lives of BME people being perceived as expendable and it is about not being heard.”

With scientific experts having estimated the level of transmission of Covid-19 is manageable to allow for an easing of lockdown, first minister Arlene Foster insisted the move had not been fast-tracked in response to the opening of retailers in the Irish Republic.

“I don’t think that that’s the case at all,” she told Good Morning Britain. “We have had our plan, we launched it back on the 12th of May, and in that plan we said we would take a step-by-step process out of the lockdown and we would do it in a way that didn’t have a cumulative impact upon the transmission of the virus.

“We’ve been taking steps to come out, we do that in a gradual way, and we think that now is the right time to open all retail.”

Outlets like independently-run book shops have spent days getting ready and installing protective screens, while those based in shopping centres also received the green light.

From Monday, a much broader range of retailers in England will also open their doors.

After the BBC and Sky reported that a 60-plus page document full of recommendations was left out of the government’s report into BAME Covid-19 deaths – which the government claimed was a second document created “in parallel” to the first, published document – stakeholders have reacted with concern.

The British Medical Association said: “To see such important recommendations missed off this crucial document is deeply worrying. The BMA, as a body that contributed to the review, will be formally asking the Government, ‘Why?'”

Chai Patel, a human rights lawyer at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, tweeted: “Similarly, we at JCWI gave up valuable time to contribute in good faith to this review.

“It is deeply worrying, that at this time when everyone is so overstretched, charities and frontline professionals were asked to take part in something that was then suppressed.”

The government has been accused of “suppressing” a report into the disproportionate threat posed by Covid-19 to BAME communities, which PHE has now said it will publish next week.

The BBC and Sky revealed the existence of the second report last night, which contained hours-worth of consultations from stakeholders, and recommendations for how to limit the impact of the virus on ethnic minorities.

Prof Raj Bhopal from Edinburgh University, who had been asked to review the 64-page document told the BBC that “parliament had not been told the full truth” and called for the report’s immediate release.

While equalities minister Kemi Badenoch had told the Commons that Public Health England “did not make recommendations because they were not able to do so”, citing a lack of data, the government has now told the BBC that she was not referring to this second report, only the first – which also faced allegations of being deliberately delayed. 

The government has now told the BBC and Sky News that the recommendations will be published next week, saying the report had been conducted “in parallel” with the first but was not part of the same document.

Labour said: “The government’s decision to block this report is scandalous and a tragedy. The recommendations it makes could have saved lives. The minister should now explain what she knew about it and when.”

The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK group, which consists of 450 relatives of people who have died during the pandemic, has told the BBC an urgent review was necessary to limit the ongoing effects of the coronavirus crisis and prevent more deaths.

The group’s lawyer Elkan Abrahamson said an early inquiry should be held prior to any complete formal proceeding, which is expected to take place once the pandemic is over.

“What we need to look at straightaway are the issues which are life-and-death decisions,” he said. “We expect there will be a second spike. We want to know what the government is going to do when that happens.”

The group’s request comes after Scotland’s former chief scientific adviser Professor Dame Anne Glover said an inquiry must be held before a second wave of the virus hits the UK.

A government spokesperson said: “At some point in the future there will be an opportunity for us to look back, to reflect and to learn some profound lessons. But at the moment, the most important thing to do is to focus on responding to the current situation.”

While the jury’s still out on how effective antibody-rich blood plasma is improving outcomes for Covid-19 patients, with encouraging signs in the severely ill, scientists are now testing if the donations might also prevent infection in the first place.

Thousands of coronavirus patients in hospitals around the world have been treated with so-called convalescent plasma — including more than 20,000 in the US — with little solid evidence so far that it makes a difference. One recent study from China was unclear while another from New York offered a hint of benefit.

“We have glimmers of hope,” said Dr Shmuel Shoham of Johns Hopkins University. Dr Shoham is launching a nationwide US study asking whether giving survivors’ plasma right after a high-risk exposure to the virus stave off illness?

Researchers at Hopkins and 15 other sites will recruit health workers, spouses of the sick and residents of nursing homes where someone just fell ill and “they’re trying to nip it in the bud,” Shoham said.

It if works, plasma could have important ramifications until a vaccine arrives — raising the prospect of possibly protecting high-risk people with temporary immune-boosting infusions every so often.