LiveUpdated
Sunday 17 May 2020 17:10
Business secretary Alok Sharma has announce the government will commit a further £84m to the vaccine trial being conducted by Oxford University and Imperial College London to help a mass roll-out of the treatment with UK patients being treated as a priority.
Meanwhile Dame Carolyn Fairbairn told Sky News’ Ridge on Sunday that restoring aviation links would be a “powerful” boost to the UK economy after lockdown and warned that aerospace and manufacturing businesses are “really worried” about the obstacles quarantine would cause to movements of critical workers.
This comes as Michael Gove admitted that there was no way of being certain teachers and children will not catch coronavirus if they return to the classroom – just moments after claiming he could “guarantee” schools are safe.
Follow the latest updates below:
Mr Sharma has said discussions between the UK and France have taken place over making visitors exempt from quarantine measures after they arrive at airports.
He said: “What we’ve been really keen on as part of the whole process is to keep the R rate down and it’s really important we do that, we keep this below one, that is why we are going to be introducing quarantining measures, it is particularly important now the transmission rate domestically has come down.
“I don’t think there’s a trade-off between the health of the nation and the health of the economy.”
He added: “There have been discussions between the Prime Minister and President Macron, when details become available we will set them out.
“But what I would say is what is important to realise, the reason we are going to be introducing quarantine measures with some limited exceptions, is precisely because we want to protect the UK population now they have made sacrifices and managed to get the R rate below one.”
Mr Sharma has also announced the UK’s first vaccines manufacturing innovation centre is expected to open in summer 2021, a year ahead of schedule.
He said: “To further support our domestic manufacturing capabilities last month, I announced the Government would accelerate building the UK’s first vaccines manufacturing innovation centre, which is based at Harwell in Oxfordshire.
“And today I can announce we will invest up to a further £93 million in the centre ensuring that it opens in summer 2021, a full 12 months ahead of schedule.
“The centre, which is already under construction, will have capacity to produce enough vaccine doses to serve the entire UK population in as little as six months.”
The Business Secretary said the Government has now committed more than a quarter of a billion pounds towards developing a vaccine in the UK.
But he warned that there are no certainties and it is possible trials may not lead to a successful coronavirus vaccine.
“So we also need to look at other drug treatments and therapeutics for those who get the virus,” he said at the briefing.
He said the Government is working with scientists in the collaborative UK programme Accord to find a drug.
“Today I can report six drugs have entered initial live clinical trials,” he said.
“If positive results are seen they will advance to larger scale trials.”
Alok Sharma announces funding for vaccine trial
The government is providing an additional £84 million to accelerate coronavirus vaccine research at Oxford University and Imperial College London, business secretary Alok Sharma has announced.
More below:
Alok Sharma confirms death toll increase of 170
The business secretary has announced an increase to the national death toll of 170.
Confirmed death rates are often lower across the weekend due to a reduction in testing and reporting.
More below:
Business secretary Alok Sharma has announced an additional £84m in new government funding for the oxford vaccine trial to help a nationwide rollout.
Mr Sharma said: “This new money will help mass produce the Oxford vaccine so that if this trial is successful” it can be rolled out to the public “straight away”.
He added that with UK government support the university has developed an agreement for a global rollout with Astra-Zeneca, with the potential to produce 30m vaccines for the UK by the end of December.
He added the UK would be first to get access, and that it would be made available to developing nations at the lowest possible cost.
The business secretary Alok Sharma will be taking on today’s briefing.
He will be joined by NHS England national medical director Professor Stephen Powis.
Lebanon will gradually reopen its economy beginning on Monday, Prime Minister Hassan Diab said, following a four-day shutdown imposed after a rise in coronavirus cases threatened a second wave of the outbreak.
Already in the throes of a deep economic crisis, Lebanon began easing virus-related restrictions on business late last month to try to restore some economic activity. But that plan was paused last week after a rise in new cases.
Lebanon has been relatively successful reining in the outbreak since a mid-March lockdown that set an overnight curfew and shut most business and air travel. The country of about 6 million people has recorded 911 infections and 26 deaths.
reports political editor Andrew Woodcock.
The move came after health secretary Matt Hancock claimed that ministers had “thrown a protective ring” around care homes from the start of the outbreak.
The claim sparked anger due to official figures suggesting that thousands more care home residents have died than recorded in the government’s own figures.
Data released by the Office for National Statistics last week found 45,899 deaths of care home residents in the period from 2 March to 1 May, 12,526 of which (27.3 per cent) were registered as being linked to the virus. And deputy chief medical officer Jenny Harries has said it is “very likely” that some of the 10,000 unexplained additional deaths above the numbers normally expected in April were due to the virus.
Labour’s shadow social care minister Liz Kendall blasted the government’s testing strategy for care homes as “slow, confused and chaotic” and said minister had still not got a grip on the problem.
Read more below:
UPDATE: Today’s No 10 coronavirus briefing has been pushed back to 4.30pm.
India has extended a nearly two-month-old stringent lockdown by another two weeks with Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai and some other key regions still battling to control the rising curve of coronavirus infections.
The government-run National Disaster Management authority said in a statement on Sunday that fresh guidelines will be issued that keep in view the need to open up economic activity.
Indian media reports said that travel by air, rail and metro will remain shut down nationwide until the end of May. Schools, hotels, restaurants, bars, shopping malls, cinemas and places of worship will also be closed nationally.
India had less than 500 positive cases and nine deaths when the lockdown was first imposed on 25 March. The number of daily deaths in India is around 100.
Spain’s two largest cities are still largely shut down while most of the country has begun to reopen following a lockdown to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
Madrid and Barcelona have been told to wait by the government’s health officials since they have been the hardest hit areas and need to improve their capacity to monitor new cases.
That has led to complaints by Madrid’s regional leaders and to daily protests of a few hundred people in one of the capital’s upscale neighbourhoods and other cities like Salamanca and Zaragoza.
Spain’s far-right Vox party and the conservative leader of the region have voiced their support for the protests, saying that the city’s economy must restart soon to save jobs.
Prime minister Pedro Sanchez made a plea on Saturday for his detractors to consider that keeping the health crisis under control was key to protecting the country’s fragile economy.
“By saving lives, we also save businesses and jobs,” Mr Sanchez said.
Blood-thinning drugs could help save lives of Covid-19 patients, say medical researchers, as they discover a link between the virus and blood clots in the lungs.
Specialists at Royal Brompton Hospital’s severe respiratory failure service have established a clear link between Covid-19 and blood clotting, by using hi-tech CT scans to take images of lung function in critically-ill patients.
All of those tested suffered a lack of blood flow, suggesting clotting within the small vessels in the lung.
Royal Brompton said this could partly explain why some patients are dying of lung failure through lack of oxygen in the blood.
Doctors believe that careful use of the drugs, known as anticoagulants, can eventually save lives, but testing will need to be extremely careful as the drugs can also have serious consequences.
They said a blanket use of anticoagulants would not be appropriate and that any treatment would have to start very early to prevent clots forming.
Dr Brijesh Patel, senior intensivist and clinical senior lecturer at Royal Brompton and Imperial College London, said: “These are very unwell patients but I think the majority of patients will end up on significant therapeutic doses of blood-thinning agents as we learn more about this disease.
“If these interventions in the blood are implemented appropriately, they will save lives.”
India’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) asked the government on Sunday to extend a nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus to 31 May, as cases exceeded 90,000 and further clashes erupted between police and stranded migrants.
The NDMA, responsible for setting policy on the lockdown, made its request in a letter to India’s interior ministry, which is expected to issue detailed guidelines later on Sunday.
India has now reported more cases than China, where the virus first emerged late last year, although its number of deaths so far, at 2,872, is much lower than China’s 4,600. The death toll in the United States and some European countries is much higher.
India’s current lockdown, introduced on 25 March and extended several times, is due to expire at midnight on Sunday.
The curbs have sparked a crisis for the hundreds of millions of Indians who rely on daily wages to survive.
With no work – and little public transport – many urban migrants attempting to return to their home villages have set out on gruelling journeys on foot or hitched rides in the back of trucks.
In Rajkot in the western state of Gujarat, more than 1,500 migrant workers blocked roads, damaged more than a dozen vehicles and threw stones at police on Sunday, after two special trains that were supposed to take them home got cancelled.
Today’s Downing Street press conference at 4pm will feature Business Secretary Alok Sharma and NHS England national medical director Professor Stephen Powis.
Authorities are not seeing spikes in coronavirus cases in places that are reopening but are recording increases in some areas that remain closed, US health secretary Alex Azar said on Sunday.
“We are seeing that in places that are opening, we’re not seeing this spike in cases,” Azar said on CNN’s “State of the Union” programme. “We still see spikes in some areas that are in fact close to very localized situations.”
Mr Azar put the onus on reopening struggles on local governments.
“These are very localised determinations. There should not be a one size fits all to reopening but reopen we must because it’s not health versus the economy. It’s health versus healthy,” he said, adding there were serious health consequences to not reopening.
Asked about images being broadcast from some areas of the country showing people gathering near bars and congregating close together, Mr Azar said that was the cost of freedom.
“I think in any individual instance you’re going to see people doing things that are irresponsible. That’s part of the freedom that we have here in America,” he said on CNN.
‘Every newspaper headline today is about the coronavirus pandemic – and understandably so. However, while the government is occupied with Covid-19, the end of the Brexit transition period is drawing nearer.
‘If an agreement is not reached between the United Kingdom and the European Union, we will crash out without a deal. There will be unpredictable consequences to our economy, to our jobs, incomes and social well-being,’ writes Lord Heseltine.
Egypt will bring forward the start of its curfew by four hours to 5pm and halt public transport from 24 May for six days during the Eid holiday, as it seeks to curb the spread of the new coronavirus, the prime minister said on Sunday.
Shops, restaurants, parks and beaches will be closed for the extended holiday at the end of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, and restrictions on citizens’ movements will remain in place for at least two weeks afterwards, prime minister Mostafa Madbouly said.
Egypt has reported 11,719 cases of the novel coronavirus, including 612 deaths. Daily increases in the number of cases have been rising as the government slightly eased a night curfew and other measures. The number of cases rose by 491 on Saturday, the health ministry said.
Mr Madbouly indicated that there could be a gradual reopening of some activities including sports clubs and restaurants from mid-June, and that a reopening of places of worship would also be considered.
After Eid, the curfew will last from 8pm-6am, as it did before Ramadan.
Senior citizens in Turkey have been allowed to leave their homes for a second time as the country continues to ease some coronavirus restrictions.
People above 65 – the age group most at risk of developing serious Covid-19 symptoms – can be outside for six hours on Sunday, but their lockdown on other days continues. When outside, they are urged to wear masks and practice social distancing.
Turkey has instituted partial lockdowns with people above 65 and under 20, who are ordered to stay at home. The measures for senior citizens came into force on 21 March and were relaxed for the first time last week.
Children and teenagers were also allowed out this week on different days for several hours.
The latest statistics from the health ministry put confirmed infections at 148,067 and the death toll at 4,096.
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
