A medical expert has warned against treating age groups differently when easing lockdown measures.

Sir Jeremy Farrar, a member of the government’s scientific advisory group Sage, said he did not support giving different rules to over-70s, currently considered a clinically vulnerable group.

Last week NHS England’s national medical director Professor Stephen Powis said officials would look at whether stricter measures will still be required for the elderly once lockdown is eased.

Sir Jeremy told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think isolating certain groups and saying you are different from the rest of society is a very difficult message to give.”

At the end of a weekend in which it appeared that all hope of a July holiday in France had vanished for British travellers, UK visitors have now been told they will escape 14 days of quarantine on arrival, writes Simon Calder.

On Saturday the government in Paris published proposals that appeared to require everyone arriving in France up until 24 July 2020 to be kept in quarantine for two weeks.

Effectively, arriving travellers will be assumed to be coronavirus-positive. The national assembly is due to vote on the measures imminently.
 

Malaysia has reported 55 new coronavirus cases, bringing the country’s total to 6,353. No new deaths were reported on Monday.

Protesters have blocked access to building sites for the HS2 high-speed railway in London and Warwickshire.

The group, who call themselves HS2 Rebellion, claimed the work was non-essential was putting the lives of workers and their families at risk.

The demonstrators said health workers still lacked PPE and that money used for construction projects should be used to buy medical supplies instead.

They claimed they were respecting social distancing guidelines by wearing gloves and masks – and that their actions constituted their state-sanctioned daily exercise.

What would qualify as failure? The question was hanging in the air as Boris Johnson returned to work last week, chirruping about Britain’s “apparent success” in handling the coronavirus crisis, writes Rachel Shabi.

It lingered while commentators cooed over the prime minister taking charge after his own illness with the virus. It waited patiently while broadcasters signal-boosted deputy Dominic Raab saying that his boss back at the helm was a “boost for the country”.

And the air turned thunderous as it became clear we were supposed to be placated by the prime minister’s ebullience.
 

The view on the criminal justice backlog from a solicitors’ association, here. The UK’s court system was a mess even before coronavirus struck, it says.

Japan’s national state of emergency will be extended to 31 May, prime minister Shinzo Abe said on Monday.

Mr Abe said he would consider lifting the conditions before the expiration date if experts decided that was possible, based on detailed analysis of regional infection trends, he said at the start of a meeting of the government’s coronavirus task force.

Universities in England can still charge full tuition fees if their courses are taught online because of the coronavirus outbreak, the government has confirmed, writes Peter Stubley.

Students will not be entitled to refunds or compensation “if the quality is there”, said Michele Donelan, the minister of state responsible for the higher education sector.
 

South Korea has said it will reopen schools in stages beginning on 13 May, as new domestic coronavirus cases approach zero.

But health authorities urged vigilance once some 5.5 million elementary, middle and high school students gather in classrooms. Officials are conducting mock drills and preparing guidelines in case a new surge in infections takes place.

Widespread testing, intensive contact tracing and tracking apps have enabled South Korea to limit the spread of Covid-19 without the extensive lockdowns seen in other countries.

But the beginning of the spring semester has been postponed four times since March, during an intensive social distancing campaign which has forced teachers to hold lessons online.

“We’re now preparing for the opening of schools while managing the daily risks of the disease,” education minister Yoo Eun-hae told a televised briefing.

Companies are being urged to “hold firm” and avoid short-term action which unions say could damage the UK’s resurgence after Covid-19.

Following a series of lay-offs in recent weeks, Unite said companies should avoid a “knee-jerk ” reaction.

The union called on companies like Rolls-Royce to work with unions and the government to come up with an industrial strategy to safeguard jobs.

Thousands of jobs are under threat at the engineering giant as manufacturers continue to suffer from the economic lockdown.

A dog welfare charity is urging members of the public to think carefully about bringing a dog into their home in the present climate as their lifestyles will change when lockdown lifts.

In the month after nationwide lockdown was introduced on Monday 23 March, Google searches for “buy a puppy” increased by 120 per cent, Dogs Trust said.
 

Doctors are struggling to give non-coronavirus patients the care they need because the pandemic, a survey has found.

Thousands of medics also said the long-term impact of Covid-19 on NHS demand was their greatest concern for the future, according to research by the British Medical Association (BMA).

More than half of the 16,000 members questioned said the pandemic was damaging the care of those without Covid-19. Almost 30 per cent said they were short of supplies like medicines or oxygen.

The chair of the BMA council said patients were being “neglected” that he feared a “sudden spike in demand” when coronavirus cases begin to drop.

“Before any lockdown measures are eased, the government has rightly insisted that the NHS must be able to cope,” ​Dr Chaand Nagpaul said.

“These results clearly show that this is not just about Covid, but also a potential surge in other patients who may have put off accessing healthcare or indeed had their treatment deferred.”

More than 3.5 million people have been infected with coronavirus worldwide and almost 247,000 deaths have been reported, writes Chiara Giordano.

In the UK, 28,446 people have died from Covid-19.

Here is your morning briefing of the coronavirus news you might have missed over the weekend.
 

The Philippines’ health ministry reported 16 new coronavirus deaths and 262 additional confirmed cases on Monday.

Total confirmed cases have now risen to 9,485 while 623 people have died. But 101 more patients have recovered, bringing total recoveries to 1,315.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany has increased by 679 to 163,175, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed on Monday. The reported death toll rose by 43 to 6,692, the tally showed.

The health secretary was met with confusion at the weekend when he tweeted that “the clinically vulnerable, who are advised to stay in lockdown for 12 weeks, emphatically DO NOT include all over-70s”, writes Jon Stone.

Matt Hancock said there was no “blanket” rule applying to older people, which some people thought had contradicted previous government advice. The government’s website appeared to show something different. But what actually are the rules and why were people confused?
 

Sir Jeremy Farrar, a Sage member and director of research charity Wellcome Trust, has  said there is “nothing magical” about the two-metre social distancing rule, saying time in close contact is also key.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It’s based on old data about how far when we cough and we sneeze that the droplets and the aerosols that may come from that spread.

“There’s nothing magical about two metres. Perhaps more importantly is the time you spend in contact with somebody else. Not just the distance but also the time.”

Last Week Tonight host John Oliver has lashed out at the US government’s low rate of testing for coronavirus, writes Roisin O’Connor.

In the latest episode of his show, which returned after a week’s break, Oliver pointed out that there is “almost nothing more important than widespread effective testing”.
 

Singapore’s health ministry said on Monday it had confirmed 573 new coronavirus cases, taking the city-state’s tally of infections to 18,778.