Boris Johnson has ordered the removal of the NHS migrant surcharge from health and care workers, in a humiliating U-turn just a day after he told MPs that imposing the £624 fee on foreign-born NHS workers was “the right way forward”.
Antibody tests for coronavirus will soon be provided on the NHS under a new deal signed by the government, Downing Street has said, as health bosses warned “time is running out” to launch a test and trace system before the UK faces a possible second wave of coronavirus infections.
But Downing Street has confirmed the NHS smartphone app for tracking people who have been in contact with coronavirus patients will not be ready for 1 June, when the lockdown is due to be relaxed further in England. It comes as the UK death toll rises above 36,000.
Nicola Sturgeon has announced that people in Scotland will be allowed to meet friends and family from one other household, sunbathe in parks, and reopen some outdoor businesses in the first phase of a “careful relaxation” of the country’s lockdown.
Britain's biggest holiday firm has been widely criticised for telling customers whose holidays have been cancelled that they must accept a “refund credit note” and then phone the company to ask for a refund.
The single phone number is regularly engaged or, after an automated answer, drops off the caller.
Tui’s managing director, Andrew Flintham, has sent an email to hundreds of thousands of frustrated holidaymakers, headed: “We’re sorry”.
Mr Flintham writes: “It’s hard to believe that in a matter of just months, we've gone from taking our customers on holiday all around the world, to being forced to cancel holidays for nearly a million customers.
“It’s certainly been a learning curve for us, and I’ll be the first to admit we didn’t always get it right. I’d like to apologise for the frustration you may have felt. I’d like to assure you that we’re dedicated to doing everything we can to make things better.”
Donald Trump left the White House for Michigan on Thursday afternoon feeling "positively," telling reporters in one of his most convoluted statements yet that he had "tested positively toward negative" for coronavirus, John T Bennett reports.
Here is the president, in his own words: "I tested very positively in another sense. I tested positively toward negative. I tested perfectly this morning, meaning I tested negative."
Mr Trump made the confusing remark as he departed the White House for a Ford facility in Michigan that has been converted to build ventilators and personal protective equipment to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
Up to 4,000 people will take part in a pilot in Hampshire, after the rapid test proved effective in clinical settings, the Department of Health said.
The swab test will be carried out in a number of A&E departments, GP testing hubs and care homes in the county in a trial lasting up to six weeks.
The loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) swab can be processed on-site rather than needing to be sent to a lab, and could mean healthcare workers can, depending on the result, return to a shift or isolate on the same day they take the test.
Matt Hancock said: "This new test could provide accurate results almost on the spot. This will enable health and care workers to carry on with their shift or immediately isolate on the same day, and could eventually offer the same benefit to the whole country.
"This could change the way that we control Covid-19 across the country, getting those with negative results back into society as quickly as possible."
The lockdown is horribly unpleasant. Everyone’s fraying. Social distancing is proving harder to maintain now it’s been partially lifted, writes James Moore.
Trouble is, if too many of us try and find reasons for why we’re uniquely justified in busting it, we’ll end up right back where we started.
"We can't clap our carers on a Thursday and charge them to use the NHS on a Friday, so he's been challenged - I asked the prime minister to reconsider, he's done that, he's U-turned," the Labour leader said.
"This is a good thing, a victory for common sense."
Asked if the move should extend to all foreign-born key workers, Sir Keir said it was clear there would have to be a "rebalancing" at the end of the crisis in how we value key workers.
Coronavirus has shown the ways in which a crisis can swiftly ramp up security risks, the US-based Centre for Climate and Security has warned.
"These threats can have massive implications beyond what we've ever planned for," said senior research fellow Kate Guy.
As leaders scramble to learn lessons from the Covid-19 crisis, they also need to think ahead to climate risks, which are "the next big thing - the longer-term, more intense form of this crisis", she told an online event.
While countries have spent years analysing how security threats, from terrorism to nuclear weapons use, could play out globally, relatively little work has yet been done on climate change in this context, she said.
A hotter planet could bring shocks to global food systems, dry up vital water supplies and give populist leaders an excuse to give themselves broad emergency powers, as seen in the Philippines and eastern Europe with Covid-19, Ms Guy said.
Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, which has a factory in Pencoed, Bridgend, is believed to be the only firm producing the new blood tests in the UK, which will soon be rolled out on the NHS.
Welsh health minister Vaughan Gething welcomed the availability of the test, which will be available from Ortho and other suppliers across the UK, saying it was an "important step forward" in stopping the spread of Covid-19.
Mr Gething said work was also ongoing in Wales to develop another type of antibody test involving taking a pinprick of blood and testing with a device to give a result in just minutes, which would help to make antibody testing more widely available.
The renowned conservationist, 86, delivered a commencement speech on Zoom to students across the world from her family home in Bournemouth, England where she has been isolating during the pandemic lockdown.
Dr Goodall drew a parallel with her childhood during the Second World War and the battle with the "real, physical enemy" of the Nazis. Now, she said, we are faced with an invisible enemy, “a sneaky little virus”.
“The sad thing is we brought it on ourselves. We’ve been very disrespectful of the environment, very disrespectful of animals. We’ve been gradually invading the world of the animals.
“We’ve been forcing them to spend more time together which enables a virus or a bacteria to cross the species barrier from an animal into a human.
“We’re hunting, killing, eating and trafficking them.”
Interim chief medical officer Dr Gregor Smith said Holyrood will still be urging people to remain in their homes as much as possible to try to prevent a "resurgence" of Covid-19.
Nicola Sturgeon previously described Westminster's new "stay alert" message as "very vague" and urged Scots to "try to not get distracted" by messages from other parts of the UK.
Giving evidence to Westminster's Scottish Affairs Committee, Dr Smith said: "Although we're starting to change the way that these restrictions impact on people's lives, the message is still to stay at home when you can.
"There will be a kind of easing of the circumstances whereby it is legitimate to leave your home. But actually, we still want to be conscious that the more we physically distance while starting to take that journey back to normality, the less likelihood there is of this disease resurging to any great extent in Scotland."
Man drinking beer on Brighton beach says UK ‘needs to be stricter like Spain’ to avoid second spike in deaths
‘If we carry on the way we’re going I think we’re going to have a major lockdown in two weeks’Mr Hancock sought to play down the importance of the delayed app in the contact tracing process.
He told press conference: "The technology is an important part, but it is not the only part."
He said trials of the app in the Isle of Wight had shown the human contact tracing elements were also important so people can understand the consequences of what is required if they have been near someone with coronavirus.
"The app is, as you know, working in the Isle of Wight, we want to make sure that this whole system lands well and supports the ability, safely, to make changes to social distancing rules," Mr Hancock said.
Mr Hancock noted Boris Johnson had received the care of NHS workers from abroad when discussing the surcharge U-turn.
He said: "The prime minister has asked the home secretary and I to work on how we can remove NHS and care workers from the NHS surcharge as soon as possible.
"I'm very pleased to be able to do that, I've already spoken to the Home Secretary and we'll be saying more on how we do this in the next few days.
"The prime minister has clearly himself been a beneficiary of careers from abroad.
"So, the purpose of the immigration health surcharge within the NHS is a fair one and the purpose is to ensure that everybody contributes to the NHS, but also those who work within the NHS and within the social care are themselves making that contribution directly."
Mr Hancock said he hoped everybody would take a vaccine if one is developed.
But he said the question of whether it should be mandatory had not yet been addressed.
"We are doing everything we can to get a vaccine and we will only recommend a vaccine if it is safe," he said.
"That means that if we get a vaccine - and I very much hope that we will and we are working incredibly hard for that - and people are asked to take that vaccine, then they absolutely should because we will only do it on the basis of clinical advice that it is safe.
"The question of whether it is mandatory is not one we have addressed yet, we are still some time off a vaccine being available.
"But I would hope, given the scale of this crisis and given the overwhelming need for us to get through this and to get the country back on its feet, and the very positive impact that a vaccine would have, that everybody would have the vaccine."
Government signs contracts to supply 10 million antibody tests
Prof Whitty said care home deaths have peaked and have now come down.
"The care home deaths have peaked and have come down a long way.
"But that peak was slightly later - one to two weeks - after the peak in hospitals."
Total deaths from all causes down to average winter rate
England's chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, said the total number of deaths from all causes was now down to the rate in an average winter.
He told the press conference: "All cause mortality has come down at the same time as the Covid deaths have come down and it is now at roughly the rate it is at in an average winter.
"So, we are essentially having a winter in health terms, in terms of mortality, but in late spring and early summer."
Mr Hancock said certification systems will be developed for people who test positive for coronavirus antibodies.
"It's not just about the clinical advances that these tests can bring," he said.
"It's that knowing that you have these antibodies will help us to understand more in the future if you are at lower risk of catching coronavirus, of dying from coronavirus and of transmitting coronavirus.
"We're developing this critical science to know the impact of a positive antibody test and to develop the systems of certification to ensure people who have positive antibodies can be given assurances of what they can safely do."
Government signs contracts to supply 10 million antibody tests
Matt Hancock said the government has signed contracts to supply 10 million antibody tests, with the roll-out starting with health and care staff, patients and residents from next week.
He told the briefing: "We've signed contracts to supply in the coming months over 10 million tests from Roche and Abbott.
"From next week we will begin rolling these out in a phased way, at first to health and care staff, patients and residents.
"The UK Government has arranged supplies of these tests on behalf of the devolved administrations and each devolved nation is deciding how to use its test allocation and how testing will be prioritised and managed locally.
"This is an important milestone and it represents further progress in our national testing programme."
Around 17 per cent of people in London and around 5 per cent of people or higher have tested positive for coronavirus antibodies, Matt Hancock, the health secretary, has said at the government's daily coronavirus briefing.
Man drinking beer on Brighton beach says UK ‘needs to be stricter like Spain’ to avoid second spike in deaths
A man has been filmed while drinking beer on Brighton beach saying the UK “should be more strict like Spain” and enforce tougher lockdown rules.
The middle-aged man said the UK could see “a massive rise in deaths again” with “the way the restrictions are”.
He warned the UK could see “a major lockdown in two weeks” if people “carry on the way we’re going”.
In the video, uploaded to Twitter by a correspondent for ITV’s Good Morning Britain, the man says: “Me personally, I think the way we’re going – I know we’re drinking beer so it looks like we’re saying what’s good for us is not good for everyone else – but if we carry on the way we’re going I think we’re going to have a major lockdown in two weeks, the way the restrictions are, and in two weeks I think we’re going to see a massive rise in deaths again.
“So I think we should be more strict like Spain and none of us be allowed out.”
