Covid-19 Daily Bulletin

6 October 2020

A series of daily updates for CHO members regarding relevant updates pertaining to Coronavirus from home and abroad.

Key Announcements:

• Yesterday, there were 12,594 new cases of Covid and 19 deaths.
• The BBC has confirmed the missing 16 ,000 Covid-19 cases left off the test and trace was caused by the ill-thought-out use of an old version of Microsoft’s Excel software. Public Health England (PHE) was to blame, rather than a third-party contractor, the BBC reports.
• In response to the missing data as part of test and trace, Matt Hancock said: “This incident should never have happened. But the team have acted swiftly to minimise its impact “. The Government has now ordered an investigation.
• Chancellor Rishi Sunak said yesterday the Government would “always balance the books”. He warned that debt and spending needed controlling “over the medium term”, but he did not hint how he would go about it. Treasury sources suggest it’s unlikely to happen by the time of the next election, which is expected to be in 2024.
• Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds will lead an Urgent Question debate in the Commons on support for those under local lockdown at 12.30 p.m.
• Epidemiologist Professor Neil Ferguson said that cases were doubling every two weeks and a ban on household mixing would be the most effective measure.
• Boris Johnson will today pledge that offshore wind will produce enough electricity to power every home in the U.K. by 2030 , as he unveils a renewable energy policy at 11.30 pm; the announcement would mean 2,000 construction jobs created immediately , with the offshore wind sector supporting 60,000 jobs by 2030 in ports, factories and supply chains.
• The BBC reports that UK employers planned 58,000 redundancies in August, as they made preparations for the end of the furlough scheme at the end of October ; this would take the total redundancies to 498,000 for the first months of the Covid crisis.
• MPs are due to vote today on a statutory instrument on the ‘rule of six’ and another one on the 10 pm curfew, with the latter potentially being voted down.

Regional/ Devolved

• People travelling to Wales from Covid hotspots elsewhere in the UK could face quarantine under measures being considered by the Welsh Government.
• In Northern Ireland, 13 senior medics specialising in infectious diseases have written an open letter raising concern about the rapid increase in Covid cases.
• The Scottish Government is due to meet today to discuss further restrictions, with some advisers know to back the ‘circuit breaker’ idea.
• The list of people waiting for routine surgery in Wales is seven times longer than a year ago with almost 70,000 waiting for an operation, BBC reports .
• Derry City and Strabane council has introduced new restrictions on 5 October.

International

• All bars in the French capital Paris will shut from Tuesday as the city’s coronavirus alert was raised to maximum.
• There have now been more than 35.1m Covid-19 cases causing more than 1m deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University
• Donald Trump left hospital yesterday evening, four days since diagnosed with Covid, and did a photo op on his balcony. In a recorded message he said: “Now I’m better, maybe I’m immune, I don’t know”.
• Ireland will not be moving into a comprehensive lockdown, at odds with the government’s own medical advisers.

Stakeholders

• A survey of 1,000 surgeons in England has found that only 14 percent of them thought that the health service could meet its targets to get surgery to pre-pandemic levels. Many warned there would be a “tsunami of cancellations” unless hospital beds were “ring-fenced for operations” . NHS England said it had already doubled the number of non-urgent operations and at the end of August 70 percent of activity pre Covid had resumed.
• UUK published revised guidelines on how to ensure about wellbeing of students during campus lockdowns; undergraduates had complained about a lack of information and support .
• Teaching unions have accused the Government of refusing to outline plans on secondary school results this year to avoid repeating the exam results fiasco.

Unconfirmed reports

• The Times’ Tom Newton Dunn reports that further restrictions in Liverpool and Newcastle “look imminent”.
• The Times reports that contact tracers’ phone line crashed yesterday, leading to a backlog of 40,000 contacts of coronavirus cases