Boris Johnson has hinted he may scrap the two-metre social distancing rule for schools, adding: “Watch this space.” His comments came after schools in England were offered £1bn to help children catch up on learning lost due to coronavirus.
Plus, the UK’s Covid-19 alert level has been lowered from 4 to 3 on the recommendation of the four chief medical officers, who nonetheless warned: “It does not mean that the pandemic is over.”
Also on Friday, figures showed that black men suffered the highest coronavirus death rate of any group at the height of the UK’s epidemic.
US states and cities eye mandatory mask rules
California, North Carolina and a number of American cities have either made wearing a face mask mandatory, or have urged authorities to allow them to do so, after six states set one-day records for rises in infections.
California governor Gavin Newsom ordered mask use in most places as the state for the second day in a row registered over 4,000 new cases.
And in Arizona, where another infection record was set, the Democratic mayors of Tucson and Phoenix respectively ordered and prepared to vote on mandatory face coverings after Republican governor Doug Ducey allowed cities to set their own rules.
The mayors of nine Texas cities have asked that state's governor for similar powers.
Florida posted 3,207 new cases on Thursday, its second daily record in a week. Orange County mayor Jerry Demings ordered obligatory mask use, telling residents of Orlando and other cities it would help them avoid a second shutdown.
Wearing a face mask has become a political issue in the US. Donald Trump has refused to use them and many people see them as a marker of one's political sympathies.
Schools get £1bn to help children catch up
State schools in England will be granted an additional £1bn of funding in a bid to help children catch up on teaching time lost during the lockdown, the government has announced, writes Vincent Wood.
The most disadvantaged children will have access to tutors through a £350m national programme for the 2020-21 academic year, as part of an attempt to prevent the attainment gap from widening further.
The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, has also announced that a further £650m will be shared across state primary and secondary schools to help children from all backgrounds who have lost teaching time.
'Clear intention' to have all pupils back at school by September
The government's "clear intention" is that all children should be back in classrooms across England by September, a minister has said.
Nick Gibb, the schools standards minister, told Sky News: "Our clear intention is that all pupils will return in September. We've had a very phased, very cautious approach to reopening schools to all children."
Mr Gibb added: "Of course, we're working on other contingency plans but the clear intention is that we'll have all children back in school in September."
He also said that schools would be able to use the £650m portion of the £1bn new funding announced this morning "at their discretion".
Mexico posts record daily infections
Mexico logged another record one-day increase in confirmed coronavirus infections on Thursdaay, with 5,662, while 667 more deaths were reported.
The daily death toll has been hovering around 700 for much of this week, but the daily case load increase has usually remained below 5,000.
Mexico now has seen 19,747 confirmed coronavirus deaths and 165,455 confirmed cases.
Officials have acknowledged that both figures are undercounts because of a lack of testing and delayed results.
Has government signed contact-tracing contract with Apple and Google?
Nick Gibb couldn't, or wouldn't, say.
Asked if a deal to develop the app had been completed with the tech giants, the school standards minister told Sky News: "Well, that's a matter for [Matt Hancock, the health secretary]. He's working with Google and Apple, I don't know the details of the contracts that they have."
He added: "What I do know is that we are working with Google and Apple to iron out these problems with the system to make it robust and accurate in how it tracks and traces."
Yesterday the government ditched its plans to administer the app data itself, in the latest of a series of high-profile U-turns.
Catch up on our main story from overnight - NHS app U-turn
The government has ditched plans to develop a custom-made contact-tracing app in favour of a new model after the rollout was beset with problems, writes Lizzy Buchan.
In a major U-turn, ministers announced a switch to technology provided by Apple and Google – abandoning an NHS model which aimed to give the health service greater access to patient data.
Officials admitted the app, designed by the health service’s tech arm NHSX, was highly inaccurate, picking up just 4 per cent of contacts on Apple phones and 75 per cent of contacts on Android handsets.
Singapore open for business again
People in Singapore reunited with lovers and friends on Friday as the city-state lifted restrictions on socialising, shopping and dining out after more than two months.
Many residents had been forbidden from mixing with non-family members since early April.
Singapore has had more than 41,000 cases of Covid-19.
In some restaurants customers scan QR codes on their phone as a pre-emptive measure to aid contact-tracing.
Gyms have also reopened.
China releases genome of coronavirus from latest outbreak
China has released genome sequencing data of the coronavirus responsible for a recent outbreak in Beijing.
Officials have submitted the data to the World Health Organisation, they said. They also claimed it showed the virus was a European strain.
Seafood and meat areas of the gigantic Beijing wholesale market called Xinfadi have been found to be highly contaminated with coronavirus. Norwegian and Chinese officials have previously said they do not believe salmon from the Scandinavian nation is to blame for the outbreak.
Details published on China's National Microbiology Data Center website revealed the genome data was based on three samples - two human and one environmental - collected on 11 June.
"According to preliminary genomic and epidemiological study results, the virus is from Europe, but it is different from the virus currently spreading in Europe," Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention official Zhang Yong said in an article published on Friday. "It's older than the virus currently spreading in Europe."
UK's over-50s to get vaccine first
Over-50s are to be given priority for a coronavirus vaccine if and when it becomes available, along with key workers in the health and social care sectors and those with heart and kidney disease, the health secretary has said, writes Andrew Woodcock.
No jab is yet available, but human trials began on a second potential vaccine being developed at Imperial College London this week, while production has already started on another possible inoculation at Oxford with the aim of building up stockpiles to be ready for deployment if it is approved for use in the autumn.
Thailand figures
Thailand authorities reported five new coronavirus cases, all of which were found in quarantine, on Friday.
It made 25 days without a confirmed domestic transmission of the virus.
The new cases were Thais returning from Saudi Arabia, said Taweesin Wisanuyothin, spokesperson for the government's Covid-19 task force.
Thailand has recorded 58 deaths related to coronavirus among some 3,146 confirmed cases
Germany update
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 770 to 188,534 on Friday, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed.
The reported death toll rose by 16 to 8,872.
'Boris Johnson seems determined to ignore any lessons from coronavirus. It's not good enough'
The government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis has been “world beating” only in delivering one of the highest death rates, writes Sarah Wollaston.
When ministers refuse to acknowledge that anything could or should have been handled differently, how on earth will they learn from mistakes?
Britain was in no position to follow World Health Organisation guidance on testing and tracing because inadequate equipment and facilities, combined with fragmented and underfunded public health systems, meant they were rapidly overwhelmed.
Chinese firm begins human vaccine trials
A potential coronavirus vaccine being developed by China's Clover Biopharmaceuticals is now in early-stage human testing, the firm said on Friday.
Initial safety data from the trial, which is enrolling about 150 adults and also investigating the vaccine in combination with Dynavax's adjuvant, is expected in August this year, Clover said.
The potential inoculation uses a vaccine booster developed by GlaxoSmithKline.
Czechs report biggest one-day rise in cases
The Czech Republic reported its biggest one-day jump in new coronavirus cases in two months on Friday.
The number of new cases was 118 on Thursday, the health ministry said, the largest daily increase since 21 April. The central European country has since May been relaxing rules to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.
The country had 10,283 cases as of Friday morning, of which almost three-quarters have recovered. Some 334 people have died.
With cases waning, the government began relaxing lockdown measures in May, to focus on localised internventions rather than nationwide bans.
According to health officials, the country has two hot spots in Prague and the eastern mining region of Karvina.
Meat-packing factory hit by outbreak
A meat-packing plant in West Yorkshire has been placed under emergency lockdown after a severe outbreak of coronavirus, writes Colin Drury.
Mobile testing tents have been set up outside Kober Ltd, near the town of Cleckheaton, after an unspecified number of workers came down with Covid-19.
Both Kirklees Council, the local authority, and the government have refused to say if there have been any deaths or hospitalisations associated with the new explosion of cases.
UK cinemas have 450 to pick from when they reopen
More than 450 films will be available to cinemas when they reopen, the Film Distributors' Association has said.
The collection has been split into 25 categories including comedy, documentary, musical, horror, romance and science-fiction.
The list of titles is part of the first stage of cross-industry body Cinema First's coronavirus recovery strategy.
Many cinemas around the UK are expected to reopen next month after shutting their doors in March.
'Coronavirus has accelerated the breakdown of democracy right across the world'
The UK has long been a dependable ally. But over the last five years, British foreign policy has tended towards autopilot, as the EU referendum and its fallout consumed all bandwidth and stymied original thinking in Whitehall, writes Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
In recent weeks the UK has begun to change that perception, with its support for Hong Kong, insistence on keeping Russia out of the G7, and its innovative proposal to create a group of leading democracies – the D10 – to add the strength of India, Australia and South Korea to the existing G7 group of industrialised democracies.
Government borrowing leaps
Government borrowing surged to a new record high in May, reaching £55.2nn and exceeding the newly revised £48.5nn for April, following heavy spending in the face of coronavirus, according to new figures.
The Office for National Statistics added that public sector borrowing - excluding banks owned by the state - was nearly nine times higher than the in May last year.
It means the UK's debt mountain has also now outstripped gross domestic product for the first time since 1963, officials added, to £1.95 trillion - or 100.9 per cent of GDP.
Black men most likely to die of Covid-19
Black men suffered the highest coronavirus death rate in the UK at the height of the pandemic, new government data shows, writes Adam Forrest.
The mortality rate for deaths involving Covid-19 from March to mid-May was highest among black men, at 255.7 deaths per 100,000 people, according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS). It was lowest among white men, at 87 deaths per 100,000.
