UK coronavirus live: chief scientific adviser says testing capacity should have been expanded sooner

In the Commons Rosena Allin-Khan, a shadow health minister and practising doctor, asks Matt Hancock if he is committed to maintaining testing at the level of 100,000 tests per day.

Hancock says he has been transparent about how he has achieved this. He says he wants to see the numbers continue to rise. He says capacity for testing is now at 108,000 per day.

In the Commons Matt Hancock, the health secretary, is currently taking questions.

The Conservative MP Bob Neill asked him why care home managers are told if residents test positive for coronavirus, but not if staff members test positive. Neill said this information was withheld from managers on privacy grounds.

Hancock said he would look into this.

A housekeeper who went “above and beyond” in his work is the latest of at least four frontline workers at a single hospital to have died after contracting coronavirus.

Momudou “Mo” Dibba, who worked on Watford general hospital’s Letchmore and Lengley wards, died on 29 April after testing positive for Covid-19.

Nurses Ate Wilma Banaag and John Alagos and healthcare assistant Khalid Jamil also died while working on the hospital’s front line, and Stephanie Willocks, a former matron and ward sister at the hospital, also died after contracting the virus. She retired in 2005 but had been supporting the trust as a nursing mentor.

West Hertfordshire hospitals NHS trust said Dibba would often work extra shifts on reception after finishing his main job in the ward, and at weekends. The trust said in a statement:

Anyone who knew Mo would know how kind, caring and considerate he was to patients and staff.

He would go above and beyond for everyone, organising staff leaving parties and supporting everyone in their roles. He will be sorely missed.

Reopening schools prematurely could risk creating a rise in the transmission of Covid-19, teaching union leaders have warned.

The general secretaries of 10 trade unions across the UK and Ireland have written to the education ministers in all five jurisdictions urging “significant caution in any consideration of reopening schools”.

The letter, sent by the British and Irish Group of Teachers’ Unions on behalf of teachers, warns of the “very real risk of creating a spike in the transmission of the virus by a premature opening of schools”. It says:

We are convinced by the experience of other systems that a critical tool in preventing a surge of infection is an established capacity to ‘test, trace and isolate’ and we would argue that reopening schools before such a regime is in place would be catastrophic to the rate of infection.

The coalition of union leaders argues that schools can only reopen and operate safely if there are “significant operational changes” in place to ensure effective physical distancing, as well as strong hygiene routines and appropriate PPE where required.

It follows speculation that schools could be asked to reopen their doors to more pupils before the summer holidays.

Boris Johnson promised to deliver a “comprehensive plan” this week on how the UK lockdown may be eased and suggested that he would set out efforts to get children back to school.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, the Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford, said schools in Wales could be allowed to reopen their doors from the start of June in a phased approach. And the Westminster education secretary, Gavin Williamson, has said schools in England will reopen in a “phased manner” after the lockdown “when it’s the right time” based on scientific and medical advice, but he has yet to set a date.

At the start of the Commons health committee hearing this morning Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, sought to clarify the remarks he made in mid-March about about how not totally suppressing coronavirus could allow the build-up of “herd immunity”. (See 9.29am.) Vallance said:

I should be clear about what I was trying to say, and if I didn’t say this clearly enough then I apologise. What I was trying to say was that, in the absence of a therapeutic, the way in which you can stop a community becoming susceptible to this is through immunity and immunity can be obtained by vaccination, or it can be obtained by people who have the infection.

Petrol prices have sunk to a four-year low with the average cost of a litre of the fuel at UK forecourts at 1.08, according to government data. It has not been this low since April 2016.

Diesel has also fallen in price, sinking to an average of 1.15 per litre, which is the lowest level since October 2016.

The drop in fuel prices has been driven by a bruising few months for oil. The price of a barrel of Brent crude fell from $64 at the start of the year to less than $19 in April, due largely to plummeting demand from a global economy hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

However, on Tuesday the price pushed back up towards $30, as lockdown measures start to ease around the world.

The number of UK motorists taking advantage of cheaper fuel is limited because of lockdown restrictions and fewer people leaving the home. Indeed, Department for Transport figures show that road traffic is around 58% lower than in early February.

Nick Stripe, head of health analysis at the ONS, told the BBC it was “reassuring” to see the overall number of deaths had slightly dropped, but cautioned that the number of excess deaths in the week ending 24 April was still the second highest since records began in 1993.

Over the last five weeks where data has been recorded, he calculated there have been around 42,000 deaths above average in the UK.

He said the timing of these death registrations meant these were largely deaths that took place up to around 20-21 April, adding:

That’s about four to five weeks after the lockdown was first advised, and then instructed, so if you think about the timeline of the disease it’s often about three to four weeks from becoming infected to, sadly, death.

We would kind of expect to see that impact of the lockdown now, so it’s reassuring to see that the number of deaths have slightly dropped from that very high peak.

These are from Henry Lau, a data visualisation expert at the ONS, with more on today’s ONS report on the weekly death figures.

McDonald’s has unveiled the location of the 15 restaurants it plans to reopen for deliveries next Wednesday, after the fast-food giant closed all its sites in March at the start of the lockdown.

The stores, which are clustered around London and the south-east, will offer a limited menu, including some vegetarian options, delivered within their local areas between 11am and 10pm.

Staff will be asked to be extra careful about physical distancing measures and the restaurants will undergo deep-cleaning with floor markings and Perspex screens installed, the business said.

The following restaurants will reopen on 13 May
– Chelmsford Riverside
– Chelmsford Westway
– Ipswich Cardinal Park
– Boreham Interchange
– Luton Leagrave
– Watford Hertfordshire Arms
– Chaul End Lane, Luton
– Beechings Way, Gillingham
– Sittingbourne Retail Park
– Gillingham Bowaters
– Tooting
– Dalston
– Welling
– Harrow
– Luton George Street

Drivers whose MOTs are due during the pandemic shutdown will enjoy a one-year exemption, a minister in Northern Ireland has said.

It would not be possible to accommodate the backlog as well as conduct normal business at testing centres, infrastructure minister Nichola Mallon said.

Drivers will instead apply for MOTs as normal next year. Mallon said:

I have decided the Driver and Vehicle Agency (DVA) will continue to issue temporary exemption certificates (TECs) to those vehicles, private cars, goods vehicles, trailers or motorcycles until their normal MOT date.

This means a vehicle will get an exemption for one year which will bring it back into the system when there is capacity to test it.

On 24 March, in the interest of public safety and to tackle the spread of coronavirus, the DVA suspended all vehicle testing for three months, until 22 June.

In the health committee Jeremy Hunt, the chair, is wrapping up. But he has one final question.

Q: What are the chances of a second wave? 70/80%, ie fairly inevitable?

Vallance says, if we do test, track and trace well, and maintain social distancing, we should be able to avoid a second peak.

But he adds one caveat; when winter comes, you will have flu circulating, he says.

And that’s it. The health committee hearing is over.

In lighter news, the comedian Jason Manford has said he was turned down for a job at Tesco that he applied for earlier on in the pandemic “when it looked like supermarkets etc were going to need thousands of extra hands”.

Q: How far are we from having a widespread antibody test?

Vallance says reliable laboratory-based tests are already available.