That’s it from me, Nadeem Badshah. To continue following our coronavirus coverage, you can check out our global blog -https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/apr/19/coronavirus-live-news-europe-deaths-approach-100000-as-us-looks-to-lift-restrictions
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Key developments in the coronavirus outbreak today:
- The UK death toll from Covid-19 has risen to 16,060. As of 9am today, 372,967 people have been tested of which 120,067 tested positive.
- As of 5pm yesterday, of those hospitalised in the UK who tested positive for coronavirus, 16,060 have died. The Department of Health and Social Care added that 482,063 tests have concluded, with 21,626 tests undertaken on 18 April. NHS England said 482 people with Covid-19 have died, which is the lowest daily number since 6 April.
- Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, said there are “currently no plans to have schools open over the summer period”. He added that he cannot give a date for schools to reopen following reports suggesting they could reopen in three weeks.
- A delivery of 84 tonnes of personal protective equipment destined for frontline NHS staff has been delayed. The shipment – including 400,000 gowns – was due to arrive in the UK from Turkey on Sunday afternoon. Williamson said the shipment should be arriving tomorrow and manufacturers willing to produce PPE would be contacted in the next 24 hours.
- Williamson listed a number of measures the government was introducing for disadvantaged children trying to learn at home, including buying laptops for those preparing for exams and giving 4G routers for those without internet.
- Michael Gove conceded that Boris Johnson missed five consecutive emergency meetings in the buildup to the coronavirus crisis and that the UK shipped protective equipment to China in February.
- The family of Ruben Muñoz, a nursing assistant at Surrey and Sussex NHS trust who died after contracting coronavirus, have described him as a “beloved husband and amazing father”.
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The family of a nursing assistant who died after contracting coronavirus have described him as a “beloved husband and amazing father”.
Ruben Muñoz, a father of two and healthcare worker at Surrey and Sussex NHS trust, died on Friday, the trust said today.
His family said in a statement: “Ruben is a good son, a beloved husband and an amazing father to his two children.
“He was so proud of his NHS and Woodland Ward family.”
Muñoz’s friends have set up a fundraiser for his family - https://www.gofundme.com/f/in-loving-memory-of-ruben-munoz-a-nhs-hero
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The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, said PPE equipment should be arriving in the UK from Turkey tomorrow.
On the PPE shortages, Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, said:
No one in the NHS wanted to be where we now are on gowns, with a significant number of trusts reporting critically low stocks.
“We have, over the last 24 hours, seen an unhelpful focus on one individual consignment coming from Turkey. We are told that this consignment is still stuck in Turkey with no certainty, at the time this comment was issued, on how many gowns, if any, will leave for the UK, when.
“Bitter experience over the last few weeks has shown that until a consignment of gowns has landed, the boxes have been checked and the equipment tested, the NHS can’t count on the gowns being available for use at the frontline.
“We understand, for example, that a consignment of 200,000 gowns that arrived from China last week actually contained only 20,000 gowns. This follows previous instances of consignments of gowns being mislabelled and failing safety tests.
“Everyone is keen to move to a sustainable supply of gowns as soon as possible but NHS trusts need certainty. Given the current uncertainties over gown manufacture and supply, due to global shortages, we suggest that any future announcements on what gowns might be available for delivery, when, just focus on what we can be certain of.
“On the current position in trusts, it is important to understand what ‘running out of gowns’ means. Usually it doesn’t mean that no member of staff in that trust has access to a fluid repellent gown or higher levels of protection than a basic apron.
“Trusts tell us that they are adopting a number of different approaches to address current shortages. These include concentrating the use of fluid repellent gowns in areas of highest risk such as intensive and critical care and using fluid resistant, as opposed to fluid repellent, coveralls with an additional apron, in line with the advice issued on Friday.
“Trust leaders have asked us to publicly thank the fire and police services, vets, local councils, DIY stores, builders’ merchants and others who have donated their supply of gowns and coveralls, many of them fluid repellent, over the last few days. For example one trust we spoke to this afternoon had secured 2,000 fluid repellent gowns from a local vet supply firm and another had secured 3,000 washable gowns from a local business that they were looking to adapt for NHS use.
“In the words of one chief executive on Twitter: ‘I cannot even begin to describe how hard NHS CEOs are working to organise, share and best use each piece of PPE we have. We are only sorry we can’t do more to protect our amazing people.’”
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The government’s daily press briefing has now concluded.
The main points to note are the PPE equipment should be arriving in the UK tomorrow, there is no date for schools to reopen and schools will not be open over the summer holidays.
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Dr Harries declined to say whether the UK had “passed the peak” of the virus.
Sir Jeremy Farrar, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said earlier today he thought the UK was past the peak of the “first wave” of the virus.
Harries said: “I would be very tempted to offer a comment on that today but I’m not going to be, for a number of reasons.”
She identified that the low number of deaths recorded today was “positive” but cautioned against reading too much into the figures, which are often retrospectively revised.
Harries said: “We could jump to all sorts of positive conclusions about that, but we shouldn’t.
“I do think it is fair to say that we do know from the hospital data that we are starting to plateau across.”
But she added: “If we don’t keep doing the social distancing, we will create a second peak and we definitely won’t be past it, so this is no reason to consider that we have managed this.
“But I do think things look to be heading in the right direction.”
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On measures taken in schools in other countries such as Denmark to get them to open sooner, such as reducing class sizes, Williamson said: “Are we looking at other countries and learning from them? Absolutely.
“And we’re seeing a few examples of countries opening up their schooling system and we’ll look closely as to how that works, how that goes, and what lessons can be learnt from it so we can benefit from that.”
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Williamson’s response in full on schools being open over the summer and whether he thinks social distancing is feasible in classrooms:
I think we recognise the challenges that anyone who’s a parent of trying to instil social distancing in small children, and we have to understand really that sort of broad context.
“We are in a stage in terms of dealing with this pandemic where there are an awful lot of questions that sadly, people would love to have answers to, but in terms of how the virus develops we have to see that.
“There are currently no plans to have schools open over the summer period and we haven’t been working on plans to have them open over the summer period.”
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Dr Harries cautioned against comparing UK figures with Germany, adding: “We are at different phases of the pandemic.”
She also defended the country’s approach to managing the spread of the virus:
We had and we still have a very clear plan - we had a containment phase and it was very successful. We had very strict quarantine regimes from high-risk areas, we followed up individual cases and families wherever that was possible.
But once you end up with seeding and cases across the community, our focus has to be on managing the clinical conditions of those individuals.”
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Dr Harries added it was “very easy to make a throwaway comment about single-use PPE” but the situation was “actually quite complex”.
“It is the fact we are in a global shortage … we all need to use this PPE carefully.
“Some sessional use is entirely appropriate. For example wearing a gown for sessional use with a disposable plastic apron on top of it is an entirely appropriate use of PPE.
“In that example you can see there is one element of what some people may call re-use and one element of what some may call single use.”
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Asked if she would be comfortable treating Covid-19 patients by reusing single-use PPE, Dr Harries said: “If I happened to be working on the frontline today I have a responsibility to look after patients to the best of my ability, to protect my colleagues and my staff and to manage my practice safely.
“All of those in the current climate will mean that I need to understand the agreed guidance on PPE ... and to implement that whenever I can.”
Updated
Williamson: No plans to have schools open over summer holidays
Gavin Williamson said there are “currently no plans to have schools open over the summer period”.
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Williamson has defended Boris Johnson after reports today said he missed five Cobra meetings on coronavirus.
Williamson said: “The prime minister from the moment that it became clear that there were challenges in terms of coronavirus developing in China has absolutely been leading our nation’s effort to combat the coronavirus, making sure that resources or money is not a concern for any department, especially the health service.”
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When asked why the government has not responded to manufacturers who are willing to produce PPE, Williamson said they would be contacted in the next 24 hours.
He said a billion extra PPE have been brought into the country while the government was doing “immense work” in trying to find British suppliers.
He encouraged those suppliers who have been in contact with the government and have “slipped through the net” to get in touch again.
Williamson said the government will ensure they are contacted “in the next 24 hours”.
He added: “We recognise this is a national endeavour and we are so incredibly grateful for so many people who are willing to step forward to make a real difference, and we certainly don’t want to miss out on those opportunities.”
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On situations where 30%-40% of students have no computer at home and a difficult environment to learn at home, Williamson said he is “worried about it immensely”:
Many families are learning about the challenges of home education for their child. That’s why we have announced these package of measures to help children from a disadvantaged background.
It it worrying for me, those children are going to fall behind and struggle to catch up. I don’t want to see children falling behind and will do everything I can do.”
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Williamson’s answer in full on the depleted stocks of PPE and why more was not done to get hold of more PPE in March and February.
What we’ve seen over the last few months is an enormous effort, it’s a national effort, but it’s also an international effort to secure PPE from right around the globe, but we’ve seen so many brilliant British businesses repurpose themselves in order to be able to provide it.
“And we’ve seen many educational settings also being able to do it.
“But you know, the government, from the first moment that we were in a situation where the scientific advice was highlighting to us that we were facing a real challenge in terms of coronavirus, and this could potentially evolve into a pandemic, every resource of government has been deployed to not just expanding what we need in terms of PPE, but also ventilators, and we’ve seen a massive growth in the number of ventilators that we have available in our hospitals.
“And keep adding and building to the stock of what we’ve got.”
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Reaction to Williamson’s responses to the questions about PPE.
My colleague Hugh Pym asks why it took so long for UK domestic suppliers to be asked, and if stockpiles were allowed to be run down...
— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) April 19, 2020
Harries asks for “more adult” conversation re PPE, & we shouldn’t “lump it altogether”..tho about 10 secs later Williamson uses 1 billion number
The daily briefing continues to be dominated by the shortages of protective equipment.
Williamson said the government “recognises the enormous strain being placed on the system”.
He added the RAF is on standby to deliver PPE from Turkey that has been delayed.
Williamson said he hopes this will take place tomorrow.
On reports that stocks of PPE such as gowns and masks were run down ahead of the coronavirus outbreak, Williamson responded that the government has been working hard “from the first moment”.
Dr Harries said there needed to be “an adult conversation” about PPE.
“The UK has been an international exemplar in preparedness,” she said.
Harries says there has been a “huge demand on our supply”.
“Rather than lumping all of the PPE together, we just need to think carefully through what has been achieved and the challenges.”
Updated
Gavin Williamson doesn't answer question on whether Govt allowed PPE stocks to run down.
— Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) April 19, 2020
He says "from the first moment" of epidemic "every resource" has been deployed.
Dr Jenny Harries says UK was "international exemplar" & there should be "more adult" conversation about PPE.
On reports today that Boris Johnson missed five Cobra meetings about Covid-19, Williamson said: “Many Cobra meetings take place where it is actually led by a departmental minister.
“This is a whole governmental effort, making sure we do everything required and protect the NHS and save lives.”
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Williamson earlier spoke about the list of online educational resources.
He said: “Some of our leading state schools have collaborated to open the Oak National Academy, which will be launched online tomorrow.
“This is a totally new initiative led by 40 brilliant teachers who have assembled video lessons and resources for any teacher in the country to make use of if they wish to do so.
“180 video lessons will be provided each week across a broad range of subjects for every year group from reception through to year 10.”
Asked about concerns surrounding the shortage of personal protective equipment after the delay in the shipment arriving in the UK, Williamson appears to evade the question and says the government has been engaged in an “enormous effort” to secure supplies from “right around the globe”.
Deputy chief medical officer, Dr Jenny Harries, said the public should congratulate themselves on maintaining social distancing measures by not using public transport.
Tube travel is down by 95%.
She said there was a “little blip” over Easter but added we now back to “normal pandemic level”.
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Williamson also heaped praise on parents for dealing with home-schooling children during the lockdown.
He said: “I recognise all the challenges that families will be facing at the moment.
“We are determined to support parents who are helping their children learn from home.
“I think we all know how difficult that can be.”
Williamson insisted the government’s “first priority has always been protecting the children and young people, but particularly vulnerable people”.
He confirms no one will have to leave care “during this difficult time” and ministers are working with Childline and NSPCC for help.
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The education secretary said he “knows how hard it must be” for children who have had their education disrupted.
He added: “You’re such an important part of this fight too and I cannot thank you enough for what you’re doing.”
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Williamson added for schools without internet connection, the government would provide free 4G routers while schools were closed and exempt “certain education resources from data charges so this does not add to household expenses”.
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Williamson said the government was ordering laptops for disadvantaged young people, and laptops and tablets for children with social workers and care leavers.
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The education secretary added: “On any normal Sunday afternoon, many of you would have been out with family and friends enjoying the sunshine.
“And tomorrow, many children would be going to school after a two-week break.
“But these are not normal times and we are asking you to stay at home.”
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Williamson also thanked Britons for the “sacrifices you have made and are continuing to make”.
Williamson: 'I can't give you a date' for schools reopening
Williamson says the government is “enormously grateful” to the teachers and staff in nurseries who have continued working to care for vulnerable children and look after the children of key workers.
He adds that “I can’t give you a date” when schools will reopen fully.
It comes after press reports today suggested that schools could reopen in three weeks.
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The five tests are:
- the NHS’s ability to cope
- daily death rates decreasing
- reliability of data on rate of infection falling
- testing capacity and PPE being managed, with supply meeting demand
- any changes the government makes will not risk a second peak of infections
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Daily Downing Street briefing starts
The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, says the government needs to meet five tests before setting deadline for reopening of schools.
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Patrick Vallance, the UK government’s chief scientific adviser, has written for the Guardian about the promise of a coronavirus vaccine:
Ideally, we would have one ready to take off the shelf and roll out yesterday. One that could be delivered at scale. But this is a new disease that didn’t exist before December and we have a lot to learn about the virus and how the body responds to it.
All new vaccines that come into development are long shots; only some end up being successful, and the whole process requires experimentation. Coronavirus will be no different and presents new challenges for vaccine development. This will take time, and we should be clear it is not a certainty.
You can read the full piece here:
The UK government will give its daily briefing at 4pm BST led by the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, while Boris Johnson continues to recover from coronavirus.
Williamson will be joined by deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries.
Updated
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe faces another “deeply unsettling” couple of days as the wait continues to find out whether her temporary release from a prison in Iran has been extended, according to her husband.
The British-Iranian woman was temporarily freed from Evin prison in Tehran in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s furlough was extended by two weeks in late March, and she was scheduled to return to prison on Saturday.
When her family had not received a decision by Saturday on whether or not her furlough is to be extended, they were told to return to the Prosecutors Office in Iran on Sunday - but have now been told to come back on Tuesday.
Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said: “Nazanin’s father and lawyer were separately told to come back on Tuesday. No news on clemency, no news on furlough extension.
“The president announced today that non-dangerous prisoners on furlough have it extended for another month.
“According to her lawyer, this means furlough has been automatically extended for non-political prisoners.
“For political prisoners like Nazanin, the extension needs to be confirmed by the Prosecutors Office in co-ordination with the prison - and will be allowed for those only with a record of good behaviour, not speaking out in the media etc.
“For the cases of most of the political prisoners that we are aware of, people have been told to come back on Tuesday for another update.”
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Scotland’s health secretary, Jeane Freeman, has addressed reports in the media that schools could reopen in three weeks.
Speaking at a briefing at the Scottish government’s headquarters in Edinburgh, she said: “These are not plans that the Scottish government has seen, and not ones we endorse.”
Freeman added: “We have committed to publishing later this week our initial thinking on how Scotland plots our way forward.
“This will focus on the issues that have to be weighed up and the changes that will be required for society to adapt as safely as possible to the presence of the virus.
“We confirmed only three days ago that the current lockdown remains in place for another three weeks. We will use that time to assess the evidence and the options before we make any further decisions.”
Freeman also announced an emergency hospital based at Glasgow’s Scottish Events Campus (SEC) would be ready to receive patients from Monday.
She said the number of cases of Covid-19 would be monitored in Scotland before the hospital would be brought into use.
Freeman added: “The decision on whether patients need to be admitted to the Louisa Jordan will be reviewed on a regular basis as the data on case numbers continues to come forward.
“As I’ve said before, I hope that this facility will not be needed, but it is valuable to have this extra capacity and I’m grateful to everyone who has delivered this hospital at such speed.”
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A group representing care home providers has estimated that more than 4,000 residents have died during the coronavirus pandemic.
One person in Northern Ireland has died in a hospital setting with coronavirus in the past day, the Public Health Agency has said.
This brings the total number of confirmed deaths in hospital settings in the region to 194.
A further 159 people were diagnosed with Covid-19 in Northern Ireland, the PHA added.
It brings the total number of people who have tested positive in the region thus far to 2,645.
A total of 903 people who tested positive for coronavirus in Scotland have died, a rise of 10 on Saturday’s figure, according to the Scottish government.
Across the country, 39,612 people have been tested for Covid-19 with 8,187 testing positive.
As of Saturday night, 1,797 patients were in hospital with either confirmed or suspected coronavirus, an increase of four.
Of those, 174 were being treated in intensive care units, down eight from the previous tally.
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Of the 482 new deaths announced in England today:
- 118 occurred on 18 April
- 243 occurred on 17 April
- 62 occurred on 16 April
The figures also show 56 of the deaths took place between 1 April and 15 April, and the remaining three deaths occurred in March, with the earliest new death taking place on 20 March, NHS England said.
The figures published today show 8 April currently has the highest total for the most hospital deaths occurring on a single day – 801 – although this could change in future updates.
Updated
Death toll in UK rises to 16,060
As of 9am today,372,967 people have been tested of which 120,067 tested positive.
As of 5pm on yesterday, of those hospitalised in the UK who tested positive for coronavirus, 16,060 have died.
The Department of Health and Social Care added that 482,063 tests have concluded, with 21,626 tests undertaken on 18 April.
As of 9am 19 April, 482,063 tests have concluded, with 21,626 tests on 18 April.
— Department of Health and Social Care (@DHSCgovuk) April 19, 2020
372,967 people have been tested of which 120,067 tested positive.
As of 5pm on 18 April, of those hospitalised in the UK who tested positive for coronavirus, 16,060 have sadly died. pic.twitter.com/sO9IRInBsu
Updated
Further 482 people have died from coronavirus, NHS England says
NHS England says a further 482 people with Covid-19 have died, which is the lowest daily number since 6 April.
Public Health Wales has announced another 41 deaths of people who tested positive for coronavirus, bringing the total number of confirmed fatalities in Wales to 575.
There have been a total of 7,270 confirmed cases in Wales, a rise of 334, while 25,170 tests have been carried out on 21,717 individuals, officials said.
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Conservative former party leader Iain Duncan Smith has backed the government’s record on preparing for coronavirus.
He told Sky News: “The reality about this is that the world did not realise the extent of the pandemic in China because it is quite clear now that China suppressed and hid information, for whatever reasons we may yet discover.
“And that the World Health Organization, which has serious questions to answer, did not tell the rest of the world that this was a pandemic that was more than likely to spread.”
He added: “There are questions, yes, that will be asked, but later on, not now.
“We have no idea who is leaking this information, whether they are disgruntled or not, we don’t know.
“But the reality is, questions will be asked, but it is right to ask them once we have completed this process, got on top of this and then managed to get the country back up and running.”
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The Welsh government has announced plans to rapidly increase testing for coronavirus.
The health minister, Vaughan Gething, set out plans to “remove the bureaucracy” from the coronavirus testing system in the country.
The plans would result in more critical workers being tested so they can return to work more quickly and include the military looking at operational processes to make the system quicker and more efficient, as well as an online booking system.
The cap on referrals of social workers per local authority will also be removed, and the referral process will be reviewed.
“We are increasing our capacity for testing in Wales through our community testing units, the introduction of regional drive-in testing centres and, within weeks, an online home testing service,” Gething said.
The Welsh government had set a target of 5,000 tests per day by the second or third week of April but this has not been reached.
Daily capacity is currently at 1,300 per day, with documents setting out the new plan admitting the 5,000 figure would not be achieved by the third week of April.
It said it had “experienced a range of delays in securing some of the equipment and reagents for processing and running swab tests”.
Data published by Public Health Wales shows the number of daily tests are often well below the 1,300 capacity, with 783 carried out on Friday.
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The prime minister spent nearly two weeks at a country mansion with his partner, Carrie Symonds, as ministers held emergency meetings on the coronavirus crisis.
It has emerged that during this time Johnson did not attend five Cobra meetings at the start of the coronavirus crisis. Johnson instead reportedly remained at Chevening, a 115-room lakeside mansion set in 3,500 acres in the Kent countryside.
The Grade I-listed, 17th-century mansion is traditionally the country residence of the foreign secretary but Johnson stayed there as his official country retreat, Chequers, was being renovated.
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A union boss has criticised “irresponsible” claims from “private briefings” claiming schools could be set to reopen within weeks.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, said: “Private briefings about senior ministers’ responses to coronavirus simply must stop. It is irresponsible and is causing confusion and fear.
“I am pleased that the secretary of state for education has moved to set the record straight immediately.”
Whiteman said any reopening of schools must be led “by the best scientific and medical advice available” amid reports children could return to schools in three weeks’ time.
“Any return to school must be planned in dialogue with the profession and be accompanied by robust safety measures for pupils, parents, school staff and the wider community,” he said.
“Schools stepped up immediately alongside other public services in response to this crisis. Not through compulsion but through a determination to play their part.
“Instructing school leaders and their teams to return without including them in the planning stages or sharing proper safety arrangements would be extremely reckless.”
The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, said on Sunday morning that no decision had been made on when the government would reopen schools.
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A homeless former British paratrooper who set off on a mission to walk around the coast of the UK is isolating on an uninhabited Shetland island after lockdown measures were introduced part way through his challenge.
Chris Lewis, 39, has walked 12,000 miles since setting off from Llangennith beach on the Gower peninsula, near his home city of Swansea, south Wales, in August 2017.
He was sleeping in a tent on mainland Shetland when the UK government announced lockdown restrictions on 23 March to limit the spread of coronavirus.
Lewis and his dog Jet were taken to Hildasay, a 108-hectare island off the west coast of the Shetland mainland, by boat and have remained there ever since.
They have been given permission to live in the one house on Hildasay, a former shepherd’s hut without running water, heating or electricity.
After lockdown restrictions are lifted, Lewis and Jet will continue their journey around the UK coastline to raise money for SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity, with donations already reaching almost £98,000.
He said: “I thought it would be better if I wasn’t on the mainland - I didn’t want to be in the way.
“There is one house on the island and the family of the man that used to live there heard I was camping and offered me the keys.
“Everybody is in isolation at the moment - it’s the one thing I can do. This will be over for me when it’s over for everyone else.”
Lewis collects driftwood, forages and fishes for his food, and always makes sure he has a three-week supply of dog food for Jet.
Hildasay has been uninhabited since the late nineteenth century, with Lewis and Jet joined only by 15 sheep and thousands of birds.
Fundraising page: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/chriswalks
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Labour has warned against the repeat of “mistakes” made in the financial crisis of a decade ago in the response to the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
The shadow chancellor, Anneliese Dodds, said her party and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development had been calling for the most vulnerable people and businesses to be protected.
She told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show: “I would say the critical thing there is that we learn from the lessons particularly of the very slow recovery that we had in the UK after the global financial crisis, make sure that we don’t repeat the same mistakes again and that we have a much more sustainable economic recovery this time.”
Dodds warned of a “ripple effect right across our economy if large numbers of people and businesses become severely indebted and, of course, if many businesses go bust”, adding: “Of course we are seeing now record numbers of people struggling, trying to access universal credit.
“We had the longest squeeze on living standards in our country since Napoleonic times from 2010 until the current day. That can’t happen again.
“So that means not having a strategy where services are cut back so radically that you pull demand out of the economy, that’s what happened in the UK in the 2010s, not having an approach which cuts taxes for the very best-off people but actually ensures that the burden is falling on the shoulders of everybody else.”
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An indie musician has almost completed an album about the coronavirus pandemic, written while he was recovering from the disease.
Singer-songwriter Momus told the BBC the outbreak “puts us all in the same state of existential anguish”.
Nick Currie, who has made music under the alias Momus for more than 30 years, had just finished the first track from his forthcoming album when he started experiencing symptoms of coronavirus.
“Having heard accounts of people who have been through very mild cases, they have had the same symptoms as me - the chills, the fever, the lack of appetite, the raging thirst,” he said.
“At that moment, I was very scared. I really thought – this is it – and started anticipating all the RIP Momus messages people would be posting.”
But, when he started feeling better, Momus began work on a whole album charting his own and the world’s progress since the day his illness struck on 17 March.
“This is an amazingly intense moment for the whole of mankind and, for a marginal artist like me, it is an extraordinary opportunity to be on the same page as everyone else, to experience what everyone else is experiencing,” he added.
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The health secretary, Matt Hancock, has appointed a “personal protective equipment (PPE) tsar” to take on the shortage of supplies across NHS trusts in the UK.
Paul Deighton, 64, the chief executive of the London 2012 Olympics, has been appointed to get a grip on the situation, as thousands of doctors and nurses across the country are being forced to work without the correct PPE.
Hancock said: “Just as Lord Beaverbrook spearheaded the wartime efforts on aircraft production, the appointment of Lord Deighton will bring renewed drive and focus to coordinate this unprecedented peacetime challenge.
“Lord Deighton led the delivery of the Olympics. Now he will lead a singular and relentless focus on PPE as the country’s top manufacturing priority, with the full weight of the government behind him.”
The government has been under fire for weeks over the distribution of PPE, with some frontline staff warning that they have had to work in situations where they feel unsafe. At least 50 NHS workers have now died after contracting coronavirus.
Updated
The UK’s death toll from coronavirus is thought to be far higher than official figures, a new study has suggested.
The data from the National Care Forum estimated that more than 4,000 elderly and disabled people have died across all residential and nursing homes.
This is significantly higher than the official weekly figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which recorded 217 care home deaths connected to the virus up until April 3.
The NCF collected data from 47 care homes which support more than 30,000 people across the UK, accounting for 7.4% of the care sector population.
It found 299 confirmed or suspected coronavirus deaths across those specific homes in one week between April 7 to April 13, which is almost three times the number of deaths in the preceding month, when they found 102 deaths between March 6 and April 7.
When scaled up to reflect the UK’s care home population, the NCF estimated that 4,040 people may have died of a coronavirus-related illness before April 13.
Just a reminder that we’ll be bringing you all the latest UK coronavirus developments as the day unfolds. As ever, if you’d like to get in touch with a story, comments, tips or suggestions, please feel free to email me at nazia.parveen@theguardian.com or follow me to send me a message on Twitter, I am on @NParveenG
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Support for businesses during the coronavirus pandemic must come faster if people’s livelihoods are to be saved, the Government has been warned.
The government’s furlough scheme, which allows employees to get 80% of their salaries up to a maximum of 2,500 a month, was extended on Friday for at least another month, as many employees are forced to stay at home to help slow the spread of coronavirus.
Adam Marshall, director general at the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), said the situation for so many firms is “extremely difficult”.
I've extended the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme by one month to reflect the continuing #coronavirus lockdown measures.
— Rishi Sunak #StayHomeSaveLives (@RishiSunak) April 17, 2020
This will allow firms across the UK to continue protecting millions of jobs. https://t.co/AjCBcTFMV0 pic.twitter.com/UuhQchA0Tr
He was asked about the consequences of support not coming through fast enough, and told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday: “Well, the cost here is in terms of people’s livelihoods.
“We’re seeing for example about 66%, two-thirds of businesses, telling us that they’re going to use the furlough scheme in order to try to get some support for their employees so that they don’t have to make them redundant or lay them off.
“That’s a really big number, and unless some of that cash flows through from the furlough scheme quickly when applications open tomorrow, a lot of businesses are going to face difficulty paying wages and paying suppliers.
“So the human cost as well as the economic cost could be big if we don’t see support moving more quickly to the frontline.”
Bit more from Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at Oxford University, who has said that nobody can be “completely certain” that it is possible to find a coronavirus vaccine but the prospects are “very good”.
Gilbert said they hope to begin clinical trials towards the end of next week. In the meantime, permission has been given to recruit volunteers, take blood tests, explain the process and check their health status, she said.
Gilbert said: “By the time we have all the approvals for the vaccine ready, we should have a good pool of volunteers to draw from and we should be able to get going quite quickly.”
It is difficult to know when a vaccine might be ready, Gilbert said, as there are many complex stages in vaccine development.
These start with immunising healthy 18 to 55-year-olds, before moving into older age groups, looking at the safety and immune response to the vaccine.
“That’s important because it’s the older population that we really need to protect with the vaccine,” she said.
She added that her team has gone through stages of vaccine development that usually take five years in just four months.
Updated
A delivery of 84 tonnes of personal protective equipment destined for front line NHS staff has been delayed, according to reports.
The shipment - including 400,000 gowns - was due to arrive in the UK from Turkey on Sunday afternoon. It is not currently known when the supplies described as “critical” will arrive instead.
This morning during an interview on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show Michael Gove was asked if it was correct that the UK had sent 273,000 pieces of personnel protection equipment (PPE) to China in February.
Gove, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said: “We did send protective equipment to China.
“But, I think it’s important to stress two things there as well. The first thing is that the personal protection equipment that we sent to China was to help with the most extreme outbreak in Wuhan.
“That personal protection equipment was not from our pandemic stock.
“And, also we have received far more from China in personal protective equipment than we have given.”
Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon has responded to overnight reports of UK ministers planning to reopen schools before the end of may by cautioning that “decisions must be based on evidence and careful judgment, not on the demands of the Sunday newspaper briefing cycle”.
She tweeted that: “Decisions need to be solidly based & not premature. We don’t yet know what will be possible & when. The Scottish government will set out asap the factors that will guide decisions, but as/when we lift restrictions, we must be able to suppress virus in different ways eg test, trace, isolate”.
Decisions need to be solidly based & not premature. We don’t yet know what will be possible & when. @scotgov will set out asap the factors that will guide decisions, but as/when we lift restrictions, we must be able to suppress virus in different ways eg test, trace, isolate. https://t.co/LnyeF5Y3JR
— Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) April 18, 2020
This comes after Sturgeon suggested on Friday that it would be “logical and sensible” for Scotland to diverge from the rest of the UK in terms of an exit strategy from lockdown where the scientific evidence directed it.
In what appeared to be an indirect criticism of the UK government’s warning that discussing an exit strategy at this stage would confuse critical health guidance, she promised to treat the Scottish public “as the grown-ups that you are”, and share “as much detail” as she could on her plans for an eventual emergence from lockdown.
Updated
In a video shared online shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth has demanded “clear answers” from the government about why Boris Johnson missed five emergency meetings about the coronavirus crisis.
He said “The public deserve clear answers as to why the Prime Minister skipped five vital Cobra meetings.
“We knew in February how serious this virus was. Yet today our NHS and care staff (are) still lacking adequate PPE, testing is not at levels needed and hospitals (were) delivered wrong ventilators.”
This comes after The Sunday Times published an investigation claiming the Government was slow to order PPE and ignored scientists’ warnings.
The public deserve clear answers as to why the Prime Minister skipped 5 vital vital cobra meetings. We knew in February how serious this virus was.
— Jonathan Ashworth (@JonAshworth) April 19, 2020
Yet today our NHS & care staff still lacking adequate PPE, testing is not at levels needed & hospitals delivered wrong ventilators. pic.twitter.com/ytFVOxvBzu
Updated
On a slightly more cheery note these photographs show the seaside resort of Whitley Bay, Northumberland, where people on their daily walk have been adding pebbles to make large tower sculptures
This is incredible people on their daily walk have been making pebble tower sculptures on the beach @ourwhitleybay which started as 1 or 2 has turned into 100,s #weather @ChronicleLive @PA pic.twitter.com/OoELUjkuzu
— Owen Humphreys (@owenhumphreys1) April 19, 2020
Defending the government’s initial response to the coronavirus outbreak amid claims it missed chances to lessen impact during February and March, Michael Gove has admitted that “profound lessons” would be learnt.
During an interview on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show Gove confirmed the prime minister did not attend five Cobra meetings at start of coronavirus crisis. However, he added that PMs don’t attend most of these meetings.
“He didn’t. But then he wouldn’t.....because most Cobra meetings don’t have the Prime Minister attending them,” he said.
He added: “All governments make mistakes, including our own. We seek to learn and to improve every day.
“It is the case, I’m sure, at some point in the future, that there will be an opportunity for us to look back, to reflect and to learn some profound lessons.”
In an earlier interview today Gove had declined to deny that Johnson missed five consecutive emergency meetings in the build-up to the coronavirus crisis. Pressed on a series of allegations about delays and failings as the virus started to spread from China, detailed in the Sunday Times, Gove said that some elements of the story were “slightly off-beam”, but repeatedly declined to say which.
Updated
Farrar said he was “optimistic” about finding a vaccine for coronavirus with advances in science, but acknowledged “the truth is we don’t have another vaccine for any other human coronavirus”.
He said: “It’s not a given that we will make a vaccine. If we did have a vaccine, let’s say late in 2020 or into 2021, we would then need to manufacture it in billions of doses and make those billions of doses available to the world.
“So just having a vaccine that is safe and effective, proven, is not enough. If there is any country vulnerable, if there is any country where there is still transmission of this virus, then in fact every country is vulnerable.
“I hope we would have a vaccine towards the end of this year – but that’s a vaccine in a vial, it’s a vaccine that we believe to be safe, a vaccine we think might be effective. That’s not having a vaccine for the world.”
Updated
Sir Jeremy Farrar, who is a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), added that he thought that the UK was past the peak of the “first wave” of the virus.
“We should not see this as a discrete episode. I think the probability of what we must be planning for is that there would be further waves of this in the future.
“But for this first wave I think the number of new infections stabilised maybe a week or two ago, the number of hospitalisations maybe a week or so ago … we’re probably just past the peak in many parts of this country, as is true in many parts of the world.”
But he cautioned: “If we were to release those lockdowns too soon whilst the infection rates are still high … then the epidemic would come back again, it would come back very quickly.
“It would rebound within a few weeks or a couple of months.”
Updated
Expert warns that if lockdown is lifted too soon, the epidemic could return “very quickly”
'If we were to release those lockdowns too soon, the epidemic would come back again very quickly.'@jeremyfarrar tells #Ridge it is critical the public continue to follow social distancing guidelines.
— Sophy Ridge on Sunday (@RidgeOnSunday) April 19, 2020
Live #coronavirus updates: https://t.co/MQdpnNCrxI pic.twitter.com/U4fSsBPfgG
Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at Oxford University, who is leading a team to develop a coronavirus vaccine, said nobody can be sure that it is possible to find a workable vaccine.
She told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: “That’s why we have to do trials to find out. The prospects are very good, but it is clearly not completely certain.”
Gilbert said her team has not immunised anyone yet, but they hope to start clinical trials towards the end of next week.
“We are waiting for the final safety tests to be done on the vaccine and the final approvals to be given.”
In the meantime, permission has been given to recruit volunteers, take blood tests, explain the process and check their health status, she said.
“By the time we have all the approvals for the vaccine ready, we should have a good pool of volunteers to draw from and we should be able to get going quite quickly.”
Updated
The Nato general leading the group’s response to the coronavirus outbreak in Europe has conceded all key figures were caught “off-guard” by the coronavirus outbreak.
Defending Nato’s work in reaction to the virus, including co-ordinating the distribution of personal protective equipment (PPE) through various European countries, Lieutenant-General Olivier Rittiman said “no one” fully understood the depth of the crisis that lay ahead in the early days of the outbreak.
“I think that everybody was taken a little bit off-guard by this crisis,” Lt Gen Rittiman, the commander of Nato’s Europe Covid-19 taskforce, told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge.
Rittiman gave a guarded response to reports the United States had hijacked PPE in China that was meant to be shipped to Europe, saying nations had had to take “all appropriate measures to make the best choices” in the early days of the outbreak.
He added that when choices were made, “you are always able to be criticised afterwards”.
Earlier this month German media reported on allegations from the interior minister for Berlin state, Andreas Geisel, that 200,000 N95 masks destined for Europe were instead diverted to the US as they were being transferred between planes in Thailand.
Updated
The government was warned of “critically low” shortages of protective equipment, according to a health chief.
Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chairman of the British Medical Association council, said doctors are “extremely worried” that they are not adequately protected.
Speaking to Sky News, he said: “But even more stressful now is that doctors and other healthcare workers are treating their own colleagues in intensive care on ventilators and tragically see some of them not survive.
“This is extremely emotionally taxing and it’s showing its toll on the healthcare workforce.”
He said the government was warned last weekend that there were “critically low shortages of full length gowns”.
He added: “At the beginning of the pandemic we were assured that we had sufficient stockpiles... and we believed that we were well catered for.”
“We then heard that the issues were about operational deliveries,” he added, stating that deliveries had been the cause of lack of supplies to the front line.
“We’re not being given clear information,” he said.
Dr Chaand Nagpaul says a survey revealed 51% of doctors don't feel looked after by the government or confident of being supported on the #COVID frontline.
— Sophy Ridge on Sunday (@RidgeOnSunday) April 19, 2020
He adds the government were warned last weekend of critical PPE shortages.
Follow #Ridge live: https://t.co/MQdpnNCrxI pic.twitter.com/fjHZ5v19r2
Updated
The shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, argued that Gove’s defence that one or two aspects of the Sunday Times story were off beam is “possibly the weakest rebuttal of a detailed expose in British political history”.
Ashworth said the government would need to address “serious questions” about the claims that the prime minister skipped five Cobra meetings.
He added: “And we know that serious mistakes have been made, we know that our frontline NHS staff don’t have the PPE, that they’ve been told this weekend that they won’t necessarily have the gowns which are vital to keep them safe. We know that our testing capacity is not at the level that is needed.
“We know that the ventilators that many hospitals have received are the wrong types of ventilators and there are big questions as to whether we went into this lockdown too slowly, and now we hear the prime minister missed five meetings at the start of this outbreak. It suggests that early on he was missing in action.”
Updated
In his defence of the prime minister, Michael Gove said Johnson had been part of all the major decision-making.
Describing the claims made in the Sunday Times as “grotesque” he added: “Nobody can say that the prime minister wasn’t throwing heart and soul into fighting this virus. His leadership has been clear.
“He’s been inspirational at times.”
'The idea that the Prime Minister skipped meetings that were vital to our response to the #coronavirus is grotesque'
— Sophy Ridge on Sunday (@RidgeOnSunday) April 19, 2020
Michael Gove insists Boris Johnson was "energetic, determined, focussed and strong" in his leadership against #COVID.
Latest: https://t.co/GM5u37D7JW #Ridge pic.twitter.com/HNrcU9tGrx
Updated
There were mixed messages from government over PM’s attendance at key meetings.
.@michaelgove tells @SophyRidgeSky it’s ‘grotesque’ to suggest PM missed key meetings.
— Joe Pike (@joepike) April 19, 2020
Yet @BorisJohnson’s *official spokesman* confirmed to me nearly 7 weeks ago that the PM missed first 5 COBRAs on #Coronavirus: https://t.co/SyiHnXmTPU
Updated
The government missed a series of opportunities to lessen the impact of the coronavirus in February and March, it has been claimed.
The claims came as the prime minister, who is recovering from coronavirus, was said to have been giving directions to ministers from the country retreat of Chequers, where he is recuperating.
Reports in the Sunday Times that Johnson did not attend a raft of Cobra meetings, and that the government missed a series of opportunities to try and lessen the impact of the outbreak in February and March, drew a pointed response from Downing Street.
A No 10 spokesman said: “The prime minister has been at the helm of the response to this, providing leadership during this hugely challenging period for the whole nation.”
The comments came as controversy continued to grow over the insufficient levels of personal protection equipment (PPE) for frontline NHS staff, and criticism that not enough people were being tested for the killer virus.
The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, accused the government of dragging its feet in dealing with the pandemic. Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Starmer said:
The government was too slow to enter the lockdown. It has been too slow to increase the number of people being tested.
It has been too slow in getting NHS staff the critical equipment they need to keep them safe. We need to make sure these mistakes are not repeated.
Other countries have begun to set out a road map to lift restrictions in certain sectors of the economy and for certain services, especially social care, when the time is right.
This of course must be done in a careful, considered way with public health, scientific evidence and the safety of workers and families at its heart. But the UK government should be doing likewise.”
Updated
Michael Gove has denied reports that the government has drawn up a three-stage plan on ending the coronavirus lockdown.
During an interview with Sophy Ridge on Sky News, Gove said: “We should not be thinking of lifting these restrictions yet.”
"We should not be thinking of lifting these restrictions yet."
— Sophy Ridge on Sunday (@RidgeOnSunday) April 19, 2020
Michael Gove tells #Ridge that reports the government has drawn up a three-stage plan on ending the #coronavirus lockdown is not true.#COVID latest: https://t.co/GM5u37D7JW pic.twitter.com/2sf7meaO0k
Downing Street has previously rejected claims by Sir Keir Starmer that plans on how to scale back the coronavirus lockdown are in limbo amid the continued absence of Boris Johnson, insisting that proposals were being worked on.
The new Labour leader raised the idea in an interview with the BBC, saying that with the prime minister still recovering from his serious bout of the virus at Chequers, his official country retreat, Dominic Raab, who is standing in, was wary of making decisions.
Updated
Morning, we’ll be bringing you all the latest UK coronavirus developments as the day unfolds. As ever, if you’d like to get in touch with a story, comments, tips or suggestions, please feel free to email me at nazia.parveen@theguardian.com or message me on Twitter, I’m on @NParveenG
