Coronavirus news: Priti Patel says 'entire UK is grieving' as global death toll passes 200,000
Doctors have criticised the government’s coronavirus testing strategy after the online booking system for essential workers was exhausted within hours for the third day in a row.
The British Medical Association said there was “no point” having a first-come-first-served policy if there was insufficient capacity to cope with demand.
Meanwhile furloughed workers are likely to be encouraged to take second jobs picking fruit and vegetables to stop June’s harvest going to waste, environment secretary George Eustice has said.
Coronavirus restrictions in varying forms will become the “new normal” even once the UK’s lockdown rules are relaxed, Dominic Raab has warned, amid mounting pressure from Labour to discuss possible exit strategies.
Boris Johnson is to return to work at Downing Street on Monday, amid a scramble to hit Matt Hancock‘s looming target of 100,000 daily coronavirus tests, of which less than a third was reached on both Friday and Saturday, despite tens of thousands of newly eligible key workers’ attempts to apply.
The virus has now claimed more than 200,000 lives worldwide, with Department of Health figures suggesting one in 10 of these fatalities occurred in UK hospitals. The official UK hospital toll is 20,732, after 413 more deaths were recorded in the 24 hours to 5pm on Saturday.
'Fantastic', says government after online tests booked out for third day in row
The Department of Health and Social Care has said it is "working hard" to increase availability of tests, following criticism of its online booking system.
"There has been significant demand for booking tests," a spokeswoman said.
"It is great that so many essential workers want to get tested and get back to work to help the national effort against coronavirus.
"We are working hard to increase the availability of online booking slots, which is determined by a number of factors including overall capacity of the testing system and how many test kits we send to those most in need, for example in care homes.
"It is also fantastic that we have received requests for 5,000 home kits on day one of the online portal being available."
After seven weeks of lockdown, Prime minister Giuseppe Conte has announced a staged easing of the coronavirus restrictions in Italy.
From 4 May, public parks and gardens will re-open and people will be able to visit relatives who live in the same region - as long as they wear masks and don't hold parties. Funerals will be allowed but no more than 15 people can take part.
Professional sports teams can resume training on 18 May - meaning the Serie A football league could resume playing games in June.
Retal shops, libraries, museums and art exhibitions can re-open on the same date.
Factories, construction sites and wholesale supply businesses can resume activity as soon as they put safety measures into place aimed at containing COVID-19.
If all goes well, restaurants, cafes, barber shops and hair salons will be allowed to reopen on 1 June.
However social distancing measures will remain in force for the foreseeable future.
"If you love Italy.... keep the social distance," Mr Conte added.
Covid-19 has been confirmed in mink at two fur farms in the Netherlands, the agriculture ministry has said.
The animals were tested after showing symptoms including breathing difficulties and because there was a higher-than-normal death rate, according to officials.
Fur farm chiefs tested the animals after several workers also developed symptoms.
Quarantine on airport arrivals could have severe impact
At present there are no health checks on passengers arriving at British ports and airports, but asking people landing in the UK to self-isolate for two weeks would be a big change. Simon Calder answers all the obvious questions the plan raises here:
Spare a thought for the children of Spain, who were allowed out of their homes for the first time in six weeks after the lockdown was slightly relaxed today.
"It was as if we had rediscovered the street," said Gustavo Tapia, the father-of-three-year-old twins. "They were really excited to see things that they had grown accustomed to seeing before. For example, when they saw a streetlight they started shouting 'Green! Green!' They also loved seeing ants and other insects." Photo via Getty
Online test booking system 'no practical help' to healthcare workers, says BMA
The government's approach to testing has come under fire again after booking slots in England and Wales ran out for the third day in the row.
More than 10 million essential workers and their households are now eligible for Covid-19 checks as officials try to reach their 100,000-a-day testing target.
However home testing kits ran out by 10am on Sunday and appointments at drive-through centres are regularly filled up within a few hours each day.
There is no point putting forward a proposal unless its matched with adequate capacity," said Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chairman of the British Medical Association (BMA) council.
"What we found in the first two days was that within an hour the bookings had all been taken up, and therefore offered no practical help for large numbers of healthcare staff, who found the website had effectively closed to bookings.
"If the Government wants healthcare workers to have access to the test, it has to be in the context or providing adequate capacity, not a 'first come first served' and closing within an hour."
Dr Nagpaul said around 90,000 health and care staff are off work self-isolating.
"With that in mind, if they all wanted to have a test, clearly capacity has to match that number on that assumption," he said.
Police stop 10 people driving five hours to go walking in Wales
Ten people from London who travelled 245 miles to go walking in north Wales were sent home and reported by police for breaking lockdown rules.
The group, travelling in two separate vehicles, had travelled for five hours before they were stopped by officers near their destination on the A5 in Bethesda.
They told police they were intending to go walking in Snowdonia, the mountainous national park.
Instead, officers reported them for breaching lockdown laws.
NHS England chief appears to undermine minister's defence of Sage secrecy
One reporter asked whether the government was concerned that the public could lose faith in objectivity of the scientific advisory group, after the revelation that the PM's chief adviser Dominic Cummings had sat in on crunch meetings.
The environment minister echoed previous insistence that the attendance was not made public to leave those involved "free of external influence".
"The important thing to note is Sage is unusual in the way it operates as an expert advisory group in that it is convened in response to specific emergencies," George Eustice said. "And the scientists that go on to that group will change depending on the type of the emergency.
"And it is important that those scientists are able to have discussion themselves free of external influence and also that we protect their own security as well.
"So for those reasons we don't publish the names of those on the group. However, their minutes and their deliberations are published."
NHS England medical director Stephen Powis, who was also at the briefing, replied that he is a member of Sage, adding: "Personally, I have no problem, providing people give permission and the chief medical officer has said the same, with the names of participants of Sage being published."
‘Pick fruit and veg to stop crops rotting’, minister tells idle furloughed workers
While the international food chain is still "working well", the environment secretary said he expects staff will be needed to harvest UK crops at the start of summer.
"We're also acutely aware that we're about to start the British season in fresh produce, in soft fruits and salads," George Eustice said.
"We estimate that probably only about a third of the migrant labour that would normally come to the UK is here, and was probably here before lockdown.
‘We are working with industry to identify an approach which would encourage millions of furloughed workers, in some cases, to consider taking a second job helping to get the harvest in in June,"
"It’s not an issue at the moment – since the harvest has barely begun – but we do anticipate that there will be a need to help recruit staff for those sectors in the month of June."
He added that supermarkets and the food supply chain have seen a "significant reduction in staff absence over recent weeks, as staff who had been self-isolating through suspected coronavirus have returned to work".
Absence levels are down from a peak of typically 20 per cent in food businesses three weeks ago, to less than 10 per cent at the end of last week, he said.
Less than 30,000 tests carried out on Saturday - despite insistence capacity was above 50,000
Environment secretary George Eustice announced at the Downing Street briefing that 29,058 tests were carried out on Saturday - merely hundreds more than the previous day, when 46,000 people applied for tests.
Despite this, Mr Eustice echoed an insistence from both Dominic Raab and NHS England's Stephen Powis that capacity was above 50,000, saying: "It currently stands at over 50,000 a day.
"We have started to invite large numbers of people working in the care sector and care homes to undertake those tests and significant numbers have."
Matt Hancock has set a daily target of 100,000 daily tests by Thursday.
Mr Eustice said some 152,840 people have tested positive - a daily increase of 4,463 cases.
Portugal to move some asylum seekers into vacated tourist properties after dire outbreak at immigration hostel
Reuters has the following report:
Portugal will test 500 asylum seekers for coronavirus and move some into apartments left empty by tourists, after an outbreak at an immigrant hostel last week prompted scrutiny of overcrowded conditions that could lead to contagion.
Portugal is housing 800 asylum seekers in hostels across the country while they wait for their applications to be processed. A single case at one hostel in Lisbon last week prompted all 175 residents to be tested, revealing that 138 had contracted the virus.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs said on Sunday it was planning to "take advantage of the reduced pressure on the housing market in the capital" to move some asylum seekers to hostels and apartments left empty because of the lack of tourists this summer.
Applications for asylum increased in Portugal nearly threefold in the past five years to 1,716 in 2019.
The Council for Refugees, responsible for housing people while their applications are being processed, has capacity for just 150, and puts up the remaining applicants in hostels or social housing.
"Viruses that jump from animals to humans, known as zoonoses, have existed for centuries, but experts say outbreaks of dangerous new diseases with the potential to become pandemics are on the rise," writes Jane Dalton.
"Indeed, they have become four times as frequent in the past half-century."
Thousands flock to California beaches as temperatures soar despite stay-at-home orders
Local lifeguards estimated that as many as 40,000 people visited Newport Beach in California over the weekend, as some counties eased restrictions on public access to open spaces, Maighna Nanu reports.
“It’s crowded out,” said Brian O’Rourke, a lifeguard battalion chief in Newport Beach told NBC. “We haven’t had too many issues with [social distancing] as lifeguards.
“Our primary mission is watching the water. We’ve had dozens of ocean rescues and hundreds of preventative actions.”
Social distancing guidelines vary across the state, and Orange Country was among the areas in California that opted to reopen beaches ahead of the hot weekend.
