Covid-19 Daily Bulletin

7 October 2020

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

Key Announcements:

• Care homes in England are facing delays of a week or more in receiving the results of coronavirus tests, hampering their ability to safeguard vulnerable residents almost five months after the UK health secretary talked of throwing “a protective ring” around the under-resourced sector.
• UK chancellor Rishi Sunak is drawing up plans for new support for businesses worst affected by new local lockdown restrictions, as the spread of coronavirus continues to accelerate in the north of England.
• A decision on plans to introduce Covid-19 testing for international arrivals to cut quarantine times will not come until next month at the earliest, with Downing Street instead setting up a global travel taskforce to look at proposals.
• Efforts to reopen universities in the midst of the pandemic appeared to be unravelling tonight, as three of the country’s largest universities called a halt to face-to-face teaching.
• Coronavirus swabs and other key NHS tests for conditions including cancer are under threat, after a supply chain failure at a major diagnostics company.

Regional/ Devolved

• New restrictions aimed at slowing a surge in coronavirus cases are to be announced by Scotland’s first minister. Nicola Sturgeon has already stressed the new rules will not signal a return to full lockdown, even for a short period of time.
• Health officials are expecting Nottingham to be the next city to be placed into local lockdown after a surge in Covid-19 cases .

International

• More than 1 million people have died, and 35.8 million people have caught Covid-19 around the world. According to Johns Hopkins University, Covid-19 is spreading further among those around US President Donald Trump, with White House adviser Stephen Miller and a top military official infected.
• Democrat Joe Biden says the next presidential debate on 15 October should not take place if the president still has Covid-19.
• Malaysia’s prime minister said on Wednesday he had tested negative for coronavirus, after a member of the south-east Asian country’s cabinet tested positive.
• The UN’s migration agency said on Tuesday it feared an outbreak of Covid-19 among the 90,000 people displaced by the civil war in north-east Yemen.
• The US reported its biggest increases in coronavirus cases and deaths in three days on Tuesday. A further 38,696 people tested positive over the past 24 hours, according to Covid Tracking Project data, up from about 38,100 on Monday.

Stakeholders

• Tesco chief executive Ken Murphy has signalled that he is likely to continue his predecessor’s dividend policy after declaring a 20 per cent increase in the half-year pay-out. Shareholders will receive 3.2 pence per share, up from 2.65p last year, the UK’s largest supermarket group said on Wednesday. The increase, which means that the interim pay-out is just over a third of the last full-year dividend, was in line with policy, the retailer added.
• The UK banking industry on Tuesday warned against irresponsible lending after the government pledged to “turn generation rent into generation buy” through a big increase in low-deposit mortgages for first-time buyers.

Unconfirmed reports

• Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to announce this month plans for a simplified three-tier system of local and regional lockdowns; curbs in the worst-hit areas could include the closure of hospitality and leisure businesses