Children who need free school meals could miss out on food parcels amid stricter coronavirus lockdown measures and delays to the government’s voucher scheme, heads have warned, writes Eleanor Busby.

Ensuring that food is collected or delivered to all families in need is becoming more difficult amid the pandemic, prompting fears that children at home during closures could go hungry.
 

Ocado chairman Stuart Rose has told shoppers to show restraint.

“There is a billion pounds more food in people’s larders than there was a couple of weeks ago – what are they doing with it? How much food do you need to eat? How much do you need to store away? Please show some restraint,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Vietnam is limiting public gatherings to a maximum of 20 people, its prime minister has announced.

The All England Lawn Tennis Club will decide whether to go ahead with this summer’s Wimbledon championships during an emergency board meeting next week, writes Ben Burrows.

Pressure has been growing on organisers to make a decision, with the SW19 tournament one of the biggest sporting events still remaining on the calendar for June and July.
 

The chairman of British online supermarket Ocado said on Thursday there was no shortage of food in the country. “Nobody will starve,” Stuart Rose told BBC radio.

Asked why he could only say new ventilators and tests would be available “in the coming weeks”, Edward Argar said: “I think everyone would appreciate we are moving heaven and earth to get this done as quickly as we can.

“But this is a huge logistical exercise. We moved fast when we knew, and we got the scientific modelling of what was happening with this virus, that it was moving towards the UK and how it’s growing in the UK, and we moved fast to place the orders and get the processes in place to do this.

“But that is a big logistical task.”

The NHS began this crisis with about 5,000 ventilators, Mr Argar says, and now has about 8,000.

“There are, as I speak, and this number is going up all the time because we are purchasing more, there are another 8,000 on top of that that we have ordered,” he said.

“There is then, of course, the second strand which is the prime minister’s ventilators challenge, encouraging innovators, entrepreneurs, they’ve seen the spec, we’ve put it online, a whole range of people who are working flat-out.”

The coronavirus pandemic continues to cause chaos across the UK and around the world, writes Chiara Giordano. Here’s your morning briefing of everything you may have missed overnight about the fight against Covid-19.
 

Ministers will “move heaven and earth” to get PPE to medics who say they need it, Mr Argar has said.

He told Today that the British Army had helped deliver “millions and millions” of gloves, masks and pairs of goggles in recent days, and that replenishment stocks were also on the way because medics were “understandably” using up their deliveries very quickly.

MPs are being flooded with reports of employees being forced to continue working, Labour has said.

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said bosses were “putting all our lives at risk by their greed”.

Edward Argar, the junior health minister, has been unable to give a date for when the UK will reach the 25,000-tests-per-day milestone.

He could only say that it would happen “in the coming weeks”, in an interview with Today. He insisted, however, that the government was increasing the daily figure “at pace”. There was a global demand for testing kits, he added.

A health minister has insisted that personal protective equipment (PPE) deliveries are being increased.

“We entirely understand how important it is that you (frontline staff) get the kit that you need and feel safe and are safe in doing this amazing work that you are doing,” Edward Argar told BBC Breakfast.

Mr Argar said the government was “ramping up” deliveries of PPE, and had in the last few days delivered 24 million pairs of protective gloves, along with 13 million protective face masks.

On ventilators, he said an additional 8,000 were being ordered and manufactured – which should be available in the next week or two.
 

The US death toll from the coronavirus pandemic has topped 1,000, writes Samuel Osborne.

The number of dead in the US rose to 1,041 on Wednesday, with nearly 70,000 people infected with Covid-19.
 

Moscow will close all shops except for pharmacies and grocery stores, its mayor said on Thursday.

The lockdown, which also includes the closure of restaurants, cafes and bars, will last from 28 March until 5 April, said Sergei Sobyanin.

An pensioner has become the first prisoner in the UK to die of coronavirus.

The 84-year-old inmate at HMP Littlehey, a category C male sex offenders’ prison in Cambridgeshire, died in hospital on Sunday. He reportedly had underlying health issues.

A Prison Service spokesperson said the death would be investigated by the prisons and probation ombudsman.

As of Wednesday, 19 inmates had tested positive for Covid-19 across 10 jails and four prison staff had tested positive for the disease across four jails.
 

Labour believes some front-line NHS staff still don’t have enough protective gear.

Jon Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We’re still concerned that, even today, we’ve got doctors and nurses complaining that they don’t have access to the protective equipment.

“Some of them are going to DIY stores to make their own makeshift visors.”

One of the few heartening pieces of news in recent days is that some 560,000 people have answered the call to volunteer to help the National Health Service.

The “National Help Service”, as it’s been nicknamed, is a remarkable display of selfless devotion to duty in a country hitherto seemingly characterised by panic buying, reckless sharing of public spaces, and the likes of Wetherspoon boss Tim Martin denying science.
 

Brazil’s state governors have defied Jair Bolsonaro’s demand to reopen schools and businesses, dismissing his Trumpian argument that the “cure” of widespread shutdowns to contain the coronavirus is worse than the disease.

Mr Bolsonaro contends the clampdown already ordered by many governors will deeply wound Brazil’s already struggling economy and spark social unrest.

Spain’s parliament has agreed to extend the stricken country’s state of lockdown by 15 days, until 12 April.

People are confined to their homes except for essential trips for food, medicine and work.

Some 3,647 people have died in Spain’s outbreak, according to Johns Hopkins University – more than in China’s.

The global anti-vaccination movement could cause a resurgence of the deadly coronavirus outbreak and others like it in the years to come, experts have warned, writes Richard Hall.

Laboratories around the world are rushing to create a vaccine that will stop the spread of the Covid-19 virus. Scientists anticipate it will take more than a year to discover and test such a drug.