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Tuesday 7 July 2020 11:52
The number of deaths involving Covid-19 in the UK remains a little over 55,000, according to the latest available data.
Figures published on Tuesday by the Office for National Statistics show that 50,219 deaths involving Covid-19 had occurred in England and Wales up to 26 June (and had been registered by 4 July). Equivalent data released by authorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland last week takes the total for Britain up to 55,398.
Meanwhile, the president of the Royal Society has said that refusing to wear a mask in public should be considered as socially unacceptable as drink-driving or not wearing a seatbelt. Venki Ramakrishnan said that Britons should be required to wear a mask in all indoor public settings, rather than only on public transport.
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‘Immense frustration’ over information on resuming care home visits
Care providers are “at a loss” to know why they have not received guidance from the Government on how loved ones can safely resume visiting care home residents and other care recipients.
Care England, the country’s largest representative body for independent providers of adult social care, noted with “immense frustration” a delay in updated visitor guidance for the country.
It says this should have been a priority for the Government, as lockdown measures are eased.
Chief executive Professor Martin Green said: “We are at a loss to know why the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is incapable of making swift decisions at a time of crisis.
“As the country unlocks, care providers are in the dark as to what is permissible in terms of visitors to their residents, or indeed residents leaving their homes on visits.
“This should have been a priority for the DHSC given that care homes are central to fighting this dreadful pandemic”.
Opinion: The moment the prime minister uttered the words ‘too many care homes didn’t really follow the procedures’, writes chief political commentator John Rentoul, his fate was sealed.
Iran has recorded its highest number of deaths from COVID-19 within a 24-hour period, Health Ministry figures showed on Tuesday.
The 200 deaths reported on Tuesday exceed the previous record from Sunday, when the ministry reported 163 deaths in a day.
The Islamic Republic has recorded a total of 11,931 deaths and 245,688 infections from the coronavirus, ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said in a statement on state TV.
The number of new daily infections and deaths has increased sharply in the past week following the gradual lifting of restrictions that began in mid-April.
Iran was one of the hardest hit countries early in the pandemic. The highest number of deaths recorded in a day in that first phase was 158 on 4 April.
reports Matt Mathers.
Mr Johnson sparked widespread anger on Monday during a visit to Goole, Yorkshire, when he said “too many” in the care home sector “didn’t really follow the procedures”.
The prime minister was responding to NHS chief executive Simon Stevens who told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that the crisis had shone a “very harsh spotlight” on the care system, adding that the sector needed urgent reform within a year.
And now Mr Morgan, 55, has waded into the row, accusing Johnson and other ministers of attempting to “shift the narrative” around the UK’s high coronavirus death toll.
Read more below:
The government has said that over one million bounce back loans, worth over £30 billion, have been approved for small businesses.
New figures from the Treasury also revealed that more than 53,500 coronavirus business interruption loans have now been approved, providing £11.5bn worth of funding since midnight of 5 July.
Business secretary Alok Sharma has meanwhile said that new funding for home insulation, such as loft insulation and triple glazing installation, will protect jobs and help reduce energy bills.
A total of £2bn out of a £3bn fund due to be announced as part of chancellor Rishi Sunak’s economic recovery plan on Wednesday has been earmarked to improve energy efficiency in homes in England.
Hong Kong was facing another community outbreak of the coronavirus after reporting mostly imported infections in recent months, a health official said on Tuesday.
“The next few days are very crucial,” said Wong Ka-hing, controller of the Centre for Health Protection of the Department of Health.
The Chinese-ruled city reported 14 new cases on Tuesday, five of them imported and nine local. Five of the local cases were of unknown origin, officials said. In total, Hong Kong has reported roughly 1,300 cases since late January and seven deaths.
Coronavirus is likely to have brought forward some deaths of older and vulnerable people which could prompt a period of below-average deaths, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has said.
More than 55,000 deaths involving Covid-19 have been recorded in the UK during the outbreak, with the virus the main reason for deaths increasing above what would normally be expected for this period.
The elderly and those with pre-existing health conditions have been hardest hit by the pandemic.
The ONS said: “The disease has had a larger impact on those most vulnerable (for example, those who already suffer from a medical condition) and those at older ages.
“Some of these deaths would have likely occurred over the duration of the year but have occurred earlier because of the coronavirus.
“These deaths occurring earlier than expected could mean we start to see a period of deaths below the five-year average.”
travel correspondent Simon Calder reports.
But with no agreement over quarantine rules among the administrations in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and local lockdowns springing up around the world, confusion reigns over travel restrictions.
On Friday, 10 July, travellers returning from 74 countries and territories to England will no longer need to self-isolate for 14 days.
But the devolved administrations in Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast have yet to decide on their lists of exemptions.
Bosses at Edinburgh airport, the busiest outside England, have accused Scotland’s first minister of “dithering” over returning holidaymakers.
Read more below:
Foreign students in the United States, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, will have to leave the country if their classes are all taught online this fall or if they transfer to another school with in-person instruction, a government agency said.
It was not immediately clear how many student visa holders would be affected by the move, but foreign students are a key source of revenue for many US universities as they often pay full tuition.
China ranked first among countries of origin for international students in the United States with nearly 370,000 during the 2018-2019 academic year, according to data published by the Institute of International Education.
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency said it would not allow holders of student visas to remain in the country if their school was fully online for the fall. Those students must transfer or leave the country, or they potentially face deportation proceedings, according to the announcement.
The ICE guidance applies to holders of F-1 and M-1 visas, which are for academic and vocational students. The State Department issued 388,839 F visas and 9,518 M visas in fiscal 2019, according to the agency’s data.
reports Rory Sullivan.
The findings marked the conclusion of a three-month study into the prevalence of the virus, which involved testing almost 70,000 people across Spain three times in as many months.
The results confirmed initial reports in May that a low percentage of people in Spain had developed antibodies after being infected with Covid-19.
In an article published in the health journal the Lancet on Monday, the scientists behind the study said: “Despite the high impact of COVID-19 in Spain, prevalence estimates remain low and are clearly insufficient to provide herd immunity.”
Read more below:
The coronavirus death toll in England and Wales has reached 50,000, according to newly published figures.
Data published by the Office for National Statistics on Tuesday show there were 50,000 cases where Covid-19 was mentioned on death certificates between 28 December and 26 June.
In England, including deaths that occurred up to 26 June but were registered up to 4 July, the number involving Covid-19 was 47,705. The comparative number of death notifications reported by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) was 38,982.
In Wales, including deaths that occurred up to 26 June but were registered up to 4 July, of those we have processed so far, the number involving COVID-19 was 2,438.
Figures published last week by the National Records for Scotland showed that 4,155 deaths involving Covid-19 had been registered in Scotland up to 28 June, while 826 deaths had occurred in Northern Ireland up to 26 June (and had been registered up to 1 July ) according to the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency.
Together these figures mean that so far 55,200 deaths have been registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate, including suspected cases.
reports health correspondent Shaun Lintern.
Medical royal colleges, NHS trade unions and bodies representing senior hospital managers and other health organisations have joined together to warn bosses at NHS England and the government that they must act to ensure the health service workforce is supported in the wake of coronavirus.
The organisations said they were united in the belief that meaningful action on long-standing workforce issues would be the best way to repay the efforts of NHS staff during the virus outbreak – calling for a public commitment to boost numbers, increase flexible working, and improve leadership and support for staff.
Signatories included all the medical royal colleges, the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Nursing, Unison, NHS Providers, NHS Employers, and the NHS Confederation.
Read more below:
Business Secretary Alok Sharma said the Prime Minister was “certainly not blaming care homes” for social care coronavirus deaths in comments made on Monday.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Sharma said: “Specifically on the point the prime minister was making yesterday, I think what he was actually pointing out is that nobody knew what the correct procedures were at the time because, quite frankly, we didn’t know what the extent of asymptomatic transmission was.
“We then put in place very detailed action plans for care homes, we made sure there was a rigorous testing regime put in place, and we also ensured there was extra money – there was £600 million that went in as part of an infection control fund.”
Put to him that Boris Johnson had criticised care homes for not following the set procedures, Mr Sharma said: “The prime minister is certainly not blaming care homes.”
He praised the “really brilliant job” done by carers during the pandemic and recognised that they had carried out their work in “difficult circumstances”.
This is the second week in a row that deaths have been below the five-year average.
The number of deaths in care homes and hospitals in the week to 26 June was also below the five-year average (103 and 815 deaths lower respectively), while the number of deaths in private homes was 745 higher than the five-year average.
Of those deaths registered in the week to 26 June, 606 mentioned ‘novel coronavirus (Covid-19)’ on the death certificate – the lowest number of deaths involving Covid-19 since the week ending 27 March.
Business Secretary Alok Sharma said the funding for home insulation, such as loft insulation and triple glazing installation, will protect jobs and help reduce energy bills.
A total of £2bn out of a £3bn fund due to be announced as part of chancellor Rishi Sunak’s economic recovery plan on Wednesday has been earmarked to improve energy efficiency in homes in England, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“Ultimately this is about providing and supporting jobs,” he said. “We believe that, as result of this £3 billion going in, we will be supporting around 130,000 jobs in England.
“This is tradespeople, this is builders, plumbers, and ultimately this is a policy which is about putting money into people’s pockets – people will save hundreds of pounds a year in terms of lower energy costs.
“It is good for jobs and, of course, ultimately it is also very good for the environment.”
Former chancellor Philip Hammond has said his successor must be prepared to let some businesses fail.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak is due to announce fiscal measures designed to aid the UK’s economic recovery after Covid-19 on Wednesday.
Mr Hammond, speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, said: “I think it is important to recognise that the Chancellor faces an extraordinarily complex challenge.
“He’ll want to continue to support businesses and people who are affected by regulatory shutdown in what are otherwise viable businesses.
“But he will also sadly need to facilitate a transition for those businesses and people who are, what they are doing is no longer viable.
“Some businesses will close, some viable businesses will close units – we have already heard the announcement of retailers closing stores – and that’s where a focus on re-training and re-skilling, getting people turned around and ready to go back into the workforce as quickly as possible, will come into it.”
Halfords has said underlying cycling sales surged 57.1 per cent in its latest quarter as people took to bicycles to avoid public transport during the coronavirus lockdown.
As a provider of products deemed essential, Halfords was able to trade through the lockdown period.
Group like-for-like sales over the 13 weeks to 3 July, its fiscal first quarter, fell 6.5 per cent, with the rampant performance in bicycles more than offset by a 45.4 per cent decline in the higher-margin motoring division due a major reduction in car journeys.
Halfords, which had 359 stores trading as of 3 July, said on Tuesday it had withdrawn guidance for the 2020-21 year because of the uncertainty of Covid-19 and remained cautious on the months ahead.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak is being urged to unveil a cash injection worth £200 billion in order to help the economy recover after the coronavirus storm.
The Resolution Foundation has called on the Cabinet minister to further loosen the purse strings, having already announced a string of bailouts and wage subsidy and emergency loan schemes since the outbreak started, and announce a fiscal package worth 10 per cent of GDP.
It said such large scale support is required to turnaround what it claims could be the biggest shrinking of Britain’s economy in a century, with the foundation claiming a fall of 9.3 per cent is likely.
James Smith, research director at the Resolution Foundation, said: “The Covid-induced economic crisis is like no other crisis we’ve seen.
“A £200 billion fiscal stimulus should therefore focus on protecting jobs and supporting spending in hard-hit sectors of the economy, and reflect the fact that low-income households have found it far hardest to cope.”
After a record 112 days on a specialised life-support system, a South Korean Covid-19 patient is recovering from double lung transplant surgery, doctors say, in only the ninth such procedure worldwide since the coronavirus outbreak began.
The 50-year-old woman was diagnosed with the disease and hospitalised in late February and then spent 16 weeks on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) support, which involves circulating a patient’s blood through a machine that adds oxygen to red blood cells. That’s the longest that any COVID-19 patient in the world has spent on ECMO support, her doctors said.
Lee Sun-hee, a head nurse of the ECMO programme who has cared for the patient since February, said the woman seemed to have a stronger-than-usual will to live, in part driven by being a mother of two. Lee said the woman already knows the first thing she wants to do when released from the hospital: “To get a nice bath.”
The Israeli parliament has passed an emergency bill allowing the government to bypass it in making immediate decisions on combating a renewed outbreak of the coronavirus.
However, some opposition lawmakers decried the sidelining of the legislature, saying it marked another step in undermining the foundations of Israeli democracy.
It comes a day after the government reimposed new restrictions on the public to quell spread of the virus. Gatherings have been limited and reception halls, restaurants, bars, theatres, fitness centres and pools were ordered to shut down again.
But after reporting just a handful of new cases a day in early May, it has experienced a steady uptick in cases following an easing of restrictions. Currently, Israel is reporting upward of 1,000 new cases a day, higher than its peak during the previous wave.
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