UK coronavirus live: doctors had prepared to announce Boris Johnson’s death

The daily Downing Street briefing will be at 4pm today and will be led by Michael Gove and Stephen Powis, National Medical Director of NHS England.

The press conference for David King’s alternative scientific advisory group is tomorrow at 4pm.

A passenger plane has landed in the UK with 10 million pairs of surgical gloves for the NHS.

The Airbus A340 9H-EAL, with “Thank You NHS” written on its fuselage, arrived at Bournemouth Airport after picking up the supplies from Kuala Lumpur.

The aircraft, owned by Bournemouth-based European Aviation Group, touched down at around 8.15am today with the boxes of gloves then passed to NHS supplier Crest Medical, based in Warrington, which commissioned the delivery.

Paul Stoddart, European Aviation’s chairman, told the PA news agency: “Today’s flight was a total success. Twenty million gloves, that’s 10 million pairs of gloves, delivered to Crest Medical and on their way to the NHS.

“Well done everyone.”

The flight is the second to land at the airport with NHS supplies, after 120,000 surgical gowns were brought from Tianjin, northeastern China, on Tuesday.

Several more flights are scheduled to depart from Bournemouth over the next few weeks to bring back PPE.

Baroness Ros Altmann, a former minister, believes a ban on older people leaving their homes as the rest of the country surfaces from lockdown would be “age discrimination”.
She said using age-based criteria to lift restrictions would send a message that older people’s lives “don’t count in the same way as others”.

NHS England’s national medical director Professor Stephen Powis said on Friday that officials are considering whether stricter measures will still apply to the elderly when lockdown is eased.

Speaking to Sky’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday, Baroness Altmann said: “I think using an age-based criteria is fundamentally wrong and would potentially cost the lives of many people, and risk social unrest.”
The life peer said many elderly people have only accepted lockdown conditions “because everyone else has got to do it,” and “lots of them” have said they would “risk going to prison” rather than continue isolating. She added “nobody would dream” of applying restrictions on the basis of skin colour, despite a higher death rate among BAME people.

“It’s not OK to discriminate on grounds of gender, or obesity, or colour of skin, but everybody is saying, let’s think about somehow discriminating on the basis of age.”

Comedian Sir Michael Palin agreed in a BBC interview that age restrictions would be “very difficult and very wrong and very unfair”.

Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organisation’s technical lead on Covid-19, said that many people remain susceptible to the virus, even where transmission has been suppressed.

Asked if a second wave of infection could be likely in countries that have started to ease their lockdowns, she said: “It’s certainly possible. What we’re seeing in a number of countries that have been successful in suppressing transmission is that many more people remain susceptible.”

She added: “All countries must remain on alert for the possibility of additional transmission even if they have been successful in suppressing transmission in the first round.”

Following comments by Prime Minister Boris Johnson that face masks will be “useful” as part of measures to come out of lockdown, Dr Van Kerkhove said that masks are recommended for those who are feeling unwell.

She told the BBC’s Andrew Marr programme: “We do recommend the use of masks for people who are feeling unwell, but masks alone will not solve the problem, they cannot solve the problem, and especially if you’re thinking about lockdowns and you’re thinking of lifting lockdowns.

“There has to be a number of measures that have to be put in place before lockdowns can be released and it must be done in a slow and staggered approach.”

Health secretary Matt Hancock has tweeted a link to advice to different groups who are more susceptible to Covid-19.

It comes after he responded to a Sunday Times article about people aged over 70 in lockdown by saying the “clinically vulnerable, who are advised to stay in lockdown for 12 weeks, emphatically DO NOT include all over 70s.”

There is a “great deal of logic” in targeting the nation’s youngest children to return to school first when the coronavirus lockdown lifts, the head of Ofsted has said.

Amanda Spielman said younger pupils need “routine” and, from parents’ perspectives, are those who need the most “care and oversight”.

She also said it is in all children’s best interests that they return to the classroom “as soon as possible”, but there is no single “no-brainer answer” on how to do so.

“There’s a great deal of logic in targeting younger children,” she told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme.

“We know that making normality for children is really important, the younger the children, the more they need that simple structured routine where they understand what’s happening.

“It’s hard for them to go to school one day and then not for another two weeks. So I entirely recognise and see the logic of this.

“I also think there’s a logic from the point of view of parents. The youngest children are the ones who need the greatest care and oversight.

“It’s hardest for parents to work and do all the other things they need to do if they’re also looking after perhaps several young children at the same time and trying to make sure they work through schoolwork remotely.

“If you look at the interests of children, it’s very clear that their interests are best served, in the vast majority of cases, by being back at school as soon as possible.”

Spielman said it is in the “hands of the health experts” to say what is safe and how education could be organised, and she “wouldn’t want to second guess that for one moment”.

More from First Minister Mark Drakeford who has defended the decision not to extend coronavirus testing to all care homes in Wales regardless of whether there is a confirmed case or not.

He told The Andrew Marr Programme: “The advice we have from our chief medical officer is that if there is no coronavirus at all, in a care home, then testing all residents and staff would not be the best use of the tests that we have available.”
Asked if it had been a mistake for Wales to abandon its 5,000 tests-a-day in April, he added: “No, it wasn’t a mistake.

“The feeling I had and the feeling reported to me from people in the front line is that the number itself was a distraction.

“Carrying out tests, without a purpose or a point is not a good use of the limited resources that we have.”

Grant Shapps said he was “actively looking at” quarantining people travelling to the UK from abroad to keep coronavirus infection rates under control.

“I think it is important that as we are seeing the numbers decrease and the R rate we hope decrease… that we do ensure that the sacrifices in a sense – social distancing – that we are asking the British people to make are matched by anybody who comes to this country.

“I am actively looking at these issues right now so that when we have infection rates within the country under control we are not importing,” he told The Andrew Marr programme.
The number of people who have tested positive for Covid-19 in the UK stood at 182,260 yesterday.

Fewer people would have died from coronavirus in the UK if the country had greater testing capacity sooner, transport secretary Grant Shapps said.

Asked whether fewer people would have died if testing capacity had been greater sooner, he told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show: “Yes. If we had had 100,000 test capacity before this thing started and the knowledge that we now have retrospectively I’m sure many things could be different.

“The fact of the matter is this is not a country that had – although we’re very big in pharmaceuticals as a country – we’re not a country that had very large test capacity.”
Shapps added the UK may have had a high death rate compared to some other countries because of “density of population”. He said Britain has “denser cities” compared to other countries and the number of deaths are high because the figures are a “product of excellent statisticians counting in a way that other countries don’t”. On the issue of infection rates in care homes, he said: “Infections in care homes are now falling, not rising.” He added that patients and residents of care homes can now be tested.

First Minister Mark Drakeford has spoken about plans to reopen schools and workplaces in Wales, with the possibility of schools opening by June.

Asked for an indication about when pupils could return, he told the BBC’s Andew Marr Show: “Our advice from the trade unions and from the local education authorities is that you will need three weeks as a minimum from the point that we decide to do that, to when schools can reopen, so we are talking about the beginning of June.”

Drakeford said some groups could return earlier than others, citing the examples of year-six children who are due to move up to secondary school and Welsh medium pupils who may not have had opportunities to use the language at home during lockdown.

He added: “You certainly can’t have schools reopen as they did before and sustain social distancing, and you need it for public health reasons, but you also need it in order to persuade parents and teachers that you are asking young people to come back into an environment that is safe for them.”

On testing in care homes, he said Wales is testing all care home staff and care home residents in care homes where there is a case of coronavirus.

A former government chief scientific adviser has assembled a group of experts to look at how the UK could work its way out of coronavirus lockdown.

Sir David King, who worked under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, created the board “in response to concerns over the lack of transparency coming from the UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage).

The new 12-strong committee of academics is keen to investigate seven key points, including how can successful test and trace be achieved, and what social distancing measures will be needed in the future.

The new committee’s first press conference will be held on Monday at 4pm, the same usual time as the Downing Street briefings over the weekend.

Sir David said transparency within scientific discussion was essential.

He told the Sunday Times: “I am not at all critical of the scientists who are putting advice before the government … but because there is no transparency the government can say they are following scientific advice but we don’t know that they are.”

The future of Britain’s world-renowned science sector – and its ability to lead global research into Covid-19 – risks being fatally undermined if the UK crashes out of the EU without a trade deal by the end of this year, Toby Helm and Robin McKie report in the Observer.

The warning has been issued by leading scientists – including UK-based Nobel prize winners – as fears grow that British science could lose access to the EU’s €100bn (£85bn) research funding scheme, Horizon Europe, which will run from 2021 to 2027.

The government says it is “considering” applying to be an “associate member” (a relationship available for non-member states at the discretion of the 27 member nations) of Horizon Europe and the European Research Council (ERC), which is a component of the funding scheme.

The ERC says one of its UK-based “grantees”, Prof Cecilia Mascolo, is already working in this country on rolling out a mobile app to quickly diagnose Covid-19.

The government has formally complained to the BBC over a recent Panorama programme reporting on problems with the supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) to frontline NHS staff.

Oliver Dowden, the culture secretary, wrote to the corporation’s director-general, Tony Hall, warning the corporation it risks losing the public’s confidence as a result of accusation of bias.

Key items of personal protective equipment (PPE) were not included in the government’s pandemic stockpile when coronavirus reached the UK, the investigation by BBC Panorama reported

It found that gowns, visors, swabs and body bags were left out of the stockpile when it was set up in 2009. Some of the items are now in short supply.

However, there was controversy around some of the interviewees, who critics of the BBC and some news outlets described as “left-wing activists.”

In a letter, excerpts from which were published in the Mail on Sunday, Dowden says that he was sure Lord Hall “will agree that at a time of heightened risk of misinformation and disinformation, it is more important than ever that the BBC upholds the values and standards we all expect.”

‘The public should be able to turn to the BBC for transparent, unimpeachable, reliable news’.

Among those criticising Dowden’s actions today were Alan Rusbridger, formerly of this parish:

The prime minister has been tweeting details of “five key tests” that must be satisfied before the government can adjust the current lockdown measures.

The last one is: “We must make sure that any adjustments to the current measures do not risk a second spike that would overwhelm the NHS.”

Labour’s shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds meanwhile kept up pressure on testing, telling Sky News: “of course I’m pleased that testing has been ramped up. But that in itself is not a strategy.”

“Firstly, the testing has to be increased further, I mean the original target we were talking about a quarter of a million tests a day some time ago, but it has to be linked to tracing as well and it’s that testing and tracing that is going to be so important now in terms of easing the measures of the lockdown in the weeks and months ahead.”

Many older people would rebel and risk going to prison if they were forced to remain locked down for a considerable period of time as younger people were treated differently, according to Baroness Ros Altmann.

The pensions expert and political campaigner on age-related issues, told Sky News: “If they are fit and healthy and need to get out for their own physical health then the idea that the government will tell them you are under house arrest while everybody else is out, and force them into solitary confinement… then I think they wouldn’t accept it.”

Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, the broadcaster Michael Palin also said it would be “very unfair” to treat large numbers of older people differently from others and policy makers had to be “very careful.”

For more on fears among older people about an extended lockdown, here is a recent Guardian piece by my colleague Mattha Busby.

It’s too early to say how many people in Britain have had Covid-19, according to Ian Diamond, head of the Government Statistical Service, which is receiving initial results from some major surveys over the past number of weeks.

Very large numbers of people, more than 80pc, are concerned still and worried about the future not being able to make plans, he said.

He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show that the survey backed up suggestions that adherence to the lockdown was very good.