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Sunday 28 June 2020 09:48
The government is reportedly considering imposing a local lockdown in the East Midlands after a surge in cases, as the global total of infections passed 10 million.
Leicester city mayor Peter Soulsby said “there may be a case” for the return of restrictions in some neighbourhoods depending on new data on the level of coronavirus.
Meanwhile Boris Johnson vowed there would be no return to austerity in the wake of the pandemic, which has so far claimed nearly 500,000 lives across the world.
In the US, cases continued to surge to record levels in five states, forcing vice president Mike Pence to cancel a campaign bus tour.
Follow the latest developments in our live coverage below
Home Secretary Priti Patel said the prime minister’s post-Covid investment plan, due to be revealed on Tuesday, would see money for broadband connections and new roads.
She told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge On Sunday programme: “As we move out of this awful period of coronavirus, this dreadful disease, we want to get Britain moving again.
“We’re building now very much a road to recovery, a road map focusing on infrastructure right now, levelling up across the country, focusing on roads, broadband – the type of things that effectively help to create jobs but also provide services and economic growth and opportunity across the country.”
Sir Mark Walport, the former government chief scientific adviser, said the UK needs to maintain “constant vigilance” as it eases out of lockdown.
Speaking to Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday, he said the Government faced a “fine balancing act” between managing the virus outbreak and the health harms caused by a damaged economy.
He said people needed to be “sensible and responsible”, and to try and reduce social contact as much as possible.
“The virus is out there, it is very widely distributed and we have to have constant vigilance.”
Sir Mark also said that “history will probably show” that the UK locked down “a bit later than it should”.
The first minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford, said he was concerned about the messaging deployed by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government on coronavirus, warning that the crisis was not over yet.
He told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday: “We will continue to do things in the way we’ve done things in Wales – carefully, cautiously, one step at a time.
“We put our efforts into planning first and making the announcements second, not making an announcement and then thinking about how you can make those things happen.”
Asked if that is what Prime Minister Mr Johnson has been doing, Mr Drakeford replied: “My concerns with the UK Government are sometimes less with the substance, where I think we’re all broadly trying to do the same things, I’m more concerned with the messaging, the way things are described.
“Here in Wales I am very keen to continue to say to Welsh citizens, coronavirus has not gone away, it remains something that kills people in Wales every day, if you don’t stay on top of it you will see things going backwards and everything we’ve done together thrown away.
“That’s a very different message to the message across the border where the message seems much more ‘it’s all over and you can go back to doing everything as you did before’.”
Five states hit record daily highs for coronavirus cases on Saturday, forcing vice president Mike Pence to cancel planned campaign events in hard-hit areas.
The number of confirmed U.S. cases of the virus rose to more than 2.5 million on Saturday with over 125,000 deaths.
Florida on Saturday morning reported 9,585 new infections in the last 24 hours, a record for a second day, while Arizona recorded 3,591 new cases of COVID-19, matching its prior record on Tuesday.
Mr Pence canceled planned events to campaign for President Donald Trump’s re-election next week in Florida and Arizona out of “an abundance of caution,” campaign officials told Reuters.
Meanwhile, Nevada on Saturday disclosed 1,099 new cases, double its previous record, while South Carolina and Georgia reported 1,604 and 1,990 new infections, respectively, also marking new daily highs.
The surge in cases has been most pronounced in a handful of Southern and Western states that reopened earlier and more aggressively, serving as a warning to the potentially illusory nature of any perceived progress in controlling the virus.
For the third consecutive day, new U.S. cases rose by more than 40,000 on Saturday.
UK ‘traffic light’ quarantine plan sees return of summer holiday
On 6 July, 111 days after the Foreign Office warned against foreign travel, British holidaymakers will once again be able to go abroad.
For millions of travellers, the brakes will be off – and many countries are eager to welcome UK holidaymakers, despite the relatively high prevalence of Covid-19.
The move coincides with the start of the main holiday season in Europe, and the easing of international travel restrictions across the continent.
Boris Johnson will promise this week not to return to austerity policies in order to balance the UK’s finances in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic.
The prime minister’s vow will come in a high-profile speech on Tuesday designed to move his premiership on from the Covid crisis and reboot his election pledge to “level up” disadvantaged parts of the country.
Today is the UK’s 98th day of lockdown since restrictions were first announced on 23 March.
In that period we have seen at least 43,000 deaths, Boris Johnson go in and out of intensive care, the Dominic Cummings lockdown trip to Barnard Castle to test his eyes, the failure of the NHS coronavirus app, the slow launch of Test and Trace and the gradual easing of restrictions.
Australia’s Victoria state will implement mandatory coronavirus tests for returning travellers after a sharp spike in infections over the past two weeks, the state’s premier said on Sunday.
The country’s second-most populous state, containing the city of Melbourne, had 49 new cases on Sunday, its highest in more than two months and the 12th consecutive day of double-digit rises. The rest of Australia has seen almost no infections.
“Much like a bushfire, putting this out is challenging,” Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews told a press conference, alluding to wildfires at the end of last year that burnt through vast swaths of the country.
“Containing it, though, is something that we can do, and test and trace is the most effective thing to do.”
Czech Republic cases rise to highest level since early April
The daily number of new coronavirus cases in the Czech Republic jumped to 260, the highest since April 8, Health Ministry data showed on Sunday.
That is nearly triple that of the 93 recorded on Thursday. In total, the country of 10.7 million has confirmed 11,298 cases of the COVID-19 illness, with 347 deaths as of the end of Saturday.
Chief public health officer, Jarmila Razova, told public Czech Radio on Saturday that the rise could be linked to intensive testing in local hotbeds of the infection.
The coronavirus pandemic is far from over, German chancellor Angela Merkel has warned, amid growing concerns that fresh outbreaks could lead to a second global wave of the virus.
The German response to the virus has been praised across the globe after an intensive testing regime revealed high numbers of infections but relatively few fatalities compared to other European nations.
Global coronavirus cases exceeded 10 million on Sunday, according to Reuters statistics – yet another milestone in the spread of the disease that has so far killed almost half a million people in seven months.
Infections are still surging in parts of the US, where five states posted record daily highs for new cases.
Other parts of the world such as the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Iran and India are also reporting new increases in infections.
City mayor Peter Soulsby told the BBC yesterday “there may be a case” for new restrictions – but added that it depended on analysis of recent data.
He said current data on a surge in cases in North Evington was “too vague” but said: “We are beginning to crunch that information and hopefully within the next few days we will know what is going on there and be able to intervene in the right neighbourhood with the right communities.”
Asked what he meant by “intervene”, the mayor said: “It depends on the level of the infection. Clearly there may be a case to work with the government to provide local advice which really involves the return of lockdown in some neighbourhoods.”
It’s been reported today that the government is considering reimposing coronavirus restrictions in the city of Leicester after a surge in cases.
The Sunday Times said health secretary Matt Hancock was examining the legal grounds for a local lockdown “within days” after it was revealed 658 new cases were recorded in the two weeks to 16 June.
The Department of Health and Social Care on Sunday stopped short of saying a local lockdown was likely for Leicester, but acknowledged the city was an area of concern as it urged residents in the city to be vigilant against the virus.
“We are supporting the council and local partners in Leicester to help prevent further transmission of the virus,” a spokesman said in a statement.
“We have deployed four mobile testing sites and made thousands of home testing kits available, to ensure anyone in the area who needs a test can get one.
“NHS Test and Trace will contact anyone testing positive to help them identify their recent contacts and advise who may have been near to someone with the virus to stay at home to prevent the spread.
“We urge the people of Leicester to continue to practice social distancing, wash their hands regularly, get tested immediately if they have symptoms and follow the advice they receive if contacted by NHS Test and Trace. This advice is there to protect communities and save lives.”
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic in the UK and worldwide.
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