UK unemployment jumped by 50,000 to 1.35 million in the three months to March as the labour market was hit by the coronavirus lockdown, new Office for National Statistics figures have revealed.
Early estimates for April 2020 indicate the number of paid employees fell by 1.6 per cent compared to March, as firms began to feel a greater impact from the lockdown.
Donald Trump has revealed he is taking malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to protect against Covid-19, despite warnings from his own government that it should only be administered for the new coronavirus in a hospital or research setting due to potentially fatal side effects.
The US president has also threatened to permanently stop funding for the World Health Organisation (WHO) if it does not commit to improvements within 30 days, after accusing it of promoting China’s “disinformation” about the outbreak.
It comes as WHO has bowed to calls from most of its member states to launch an independent investigation into its management of the international response to the coronavirus.
A new study has suggested delirium and confusion could be common among seriously ill hospital patients with Covid-19, Matt Mathers reports.
Researchers in the UK and Italy found evidence of confusion and agitation in more than 60 per cent of intensive care patients with the virus in a small number of cases, mostly from China, the epicentre of the outbreak.
The findings, published in The Lancet science journal, suggest that patients who have long stays in intensive care and receive ventilation treatment are at greater risk.
The Treasury said companies will now be able to receive up to £200m from the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS), which previously had a maximum payout of £50 million.
It said that loans under the expanded scheme will be made available to firms from 26 May.
The CLBILS scheme was introduced last month by chancellor Rishi Sunak to support companies with sales of between £45m and £250m.
The government said it has handed out £359m through the CLBILS scheme, while it has provided 36,000 loans worth more than £6bn through a similar scheme for smaller firms.
PA
The government's coronavirus testing capacity has been "inadequate" throughout the pandemic and there has been a lack of transparency over some of its crucial decision-making, MPs have told Boris Johnson.
The Commons Science and Technology Committee has identified several lessons to learn from the UK's handling of the outbreak, which has seen its testing strategy pilloried for being too slow and not aggressive enough.
It also called on the government to "urgently" build up capacity for contact tracing, a key tactic in helping ease existing lockdown measures.
Ryan Hooper reports:
Former government chief scientific adviser Sir David King, asked about Donald Trump's admission that he was taking anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine, told Good Morning Britain: "I think he speaks from the top of his head and every word he says should be ignored in terms of advice.
"I'm sorry but this is not the pronouncements of a person who is listening to the scientists. He is making it up as he goes along."
In our latest coronavirus podcast, we’ll be answering readers’ questions, speaking to guests and making the most of our team of journalists around the UK, the US and the world.
Russia has reported 9,263 new Covid-19 cases over the last 24 hours, pushing its nationwide tally to 299,941.
The daily rise in cases was below 10,00 - a threshold it has been above for much of May - for the fourth day in a row.
Russia's coronavirus taskforce said 115 people had died overnight, bringing the death toll to 2,837.
Reuters
Government plans to further ease the lockdown before the ‘test-and-trace’ scheme to catch infections finally starts risks a fresh pandemic, a health chief is warning.
Greg Fell, the director for Public Health Sheffield, hit out after No 10 suggested more restrictions could be lifted on 1 June – including schools reopening – even if the programme is hit by further delays.
Deputy political editor Rob Merrick reports:
Conrad Duncan explains:
Borzou Daragahi traces the history of plagues and disease, and wonders what our post-pandemic future will look like:
Work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey has also defended the government's coronavirus testing record as having improved from a "standing start".
Responding to the Commons Science and Technology Committee's criticism, she told BBC Breakfast: "We had a small amount of capacity at the very start, it was solely based on Public Health England's capability of being able to have about 2,000 tests a day.
PA
Therese Coffey, the work and pensions secretary, has said having the NHS coronavirus tracing app running was not a condition of reopening schools as she defended a delay to its rollout.
She told BBC Breakfast: "I'm not aware that's been set as a condition that's necessary for the phased reopening of primary schools.
"I think it is better to get the app as good as we can make it rather than rush out an app and have to change it.
"So it's important that that trial, that pilot in the Isle of Wight, is allowed to run to its full length that's needed, rather than perhaps the target deadline that the Health Secretary has set."
PA
NZ records no new cases for second day running
New Zealand has recorded no new coronavirus cases for the second consecutive day today, but authorities said it was premature to discuss moving the country to "level one" in its scale of alert.
The Pacific nation, home to more than 5 million, moved to "level 2" last week, allowing cafes, shops and restaurants to reopen under strict social distancing rules.
But Ashley Bloomfield, director-general of health, said there is “still a long way to go”, adding: "We are only just into alert level two; we still need to settle into the full alert level two parameters.”
New Zealand plans to launch a contact-tracing app on Wednesday to help people track their movements, but the government said the data would not be shared with anyone besides the user.
The daily number of infections has been falling steadily over the last few weeks since peaking in early April, with the country registering only 19 new coronavirus cases in May. No cases were reported on eight separate days in May.
Donald Trump has said he will permanently withdraw the United States and its funding from the World Health Organisation (WHO) without "major substantive improvements in the next 30 days", Gino Spocchia reports.
In a letter to WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Mr Trump said: "It is clear the repeated missteps by you and your organisation in responding to the pandemic have been extremely costly for the world.”
Donald Trump has revealed he is taking a malaria drug to protect against the coronavirus, despite warnings from his own government that it should only be administered for Covid-19 in a hospital or research setting due to potentially fatal side effects.
The US president told reporters he has been taking the drug, hydroxychloroquine, and a zinc supplement daily "for about a week and a half now”.
Mr Trump has spent weeks pushing hydroxychloroquine as a potential cure or prophylaxis for Covid-19 against the cautionary advice of many of his administration's top medical professionals.
More from our Washington bureau chief John Bennett here:
UK unemployment jumped by 50,000 to 1.35 million in the three months to March as the labour market was struck by the coronavirus lockdown, new Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures have revealed.
It also announced that early estimates for April 2020 indicate that the number of paid employees fell by 1.6 per cent compared to March, as firms began to feel a greater impact from the lockdown.
Jonathan Athow, deputy national statistician for economic statistics at the ONS, said: "While only covering the first weeks of restrictions, our figures show Covid-19 is having a major impact on the labour market.
"In March employment held up well, as furloughed workers still count as employed, but hours worked fell sharply in late March, especially in sectors such as hospitality and construction.
"Through April, though, there were signs of falling employment as real-time tax data show the number of employees on companies' payrolls fell noticeably, and vacancies were sharply down too, with hospitality again falling steepest."
The new coronavirus has so far infected more than 4.7 million people across the world and killed over 315,000, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.
