Covid-19 Daily Bulletin

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

Key Announcements

• The nation will mark a minute’s silence to frontline workers who have died during the coronavirus pandemic. More than 100 NHS and care workers who have now died from COVID-19
• Families of NHS and care workers who die after contracting coronavirus at work will receive a £60,000 payment, Health Secretary Matt Hancock confirmed yesterday.
• Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced small businesses be able to apply for micro-loans of up to £50,000, or 25 percent of turnover, from next Monday. The loans will be 100 percent government guaranteed.
• The SAGE group will meet today to discuss ways of easing the lockdown as the Prime Minister preparers to reveal the government action plan later this week.
• The Office for National Statistics will issue the latest number of COVID-19 deaths in care homes and the wider community at 9.30am today.
• At yesterday’s press conference, Matt Hancock warned that too many people are not going to hospital for conditions other than coronavirus. A&E attendance has dropped more than 50 percent compared to the same week last year.
• Just 33 prisoners have been released early from prison under a plan to safeguard jails from coronavirus, the Government has confirmed. Justice Secretary Robert Buckland admitted progress has been “careful and slow.
• Michael Gove yesterday told the House of Commons that the “COVID crisis […] should concentrate the minds of EU negotiators” and said that it was “entirely possible” negotiations on the UK’s future relationship with the EU could conclude by 31December.
• A BBC panorama documentary last night criticised government failure to buy protective equipment to cope with a pandemic in the years running up to the crisis. The show revealed that there were no gowns, visors, swabs or body bags in the government’s pandemic stockpile when COVID-19 reached the U.K. earlier this year.
• Britain’s largest gambling firms have said they will remove all TV and radio advertising for games and products during the coronavirus lockdown. The Betting and Gaming Council said firms have voluntarily agreed to remove all their gaming advertising for at least six weeks.

International   

• Prime Minister Edouard Philippe will present his lockdown exit plan to the French parliament later today, offering extra detail on how parts of the country will begin to move again on 11th May.
• Japan’s medical association has warned that holding the postponed Tokyo Olympics next summer will still be “difficult” unless a vaccine has been rolled out across the world.
• Most of New Zealand return to work today after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that the country had “won that battle,” with just one new coronavirus case reported.
• The US House of Representatives and Senate will both be in full session next week for the first time in nearly two months, as lawmakers seek to strike a deal on another sweeping coronavirus relief package.
• Italy will allow businesses such as factories and construction firms to reopen from next week as it prepares to gradually lift Europe’s longest coronavirus lockdown.
• French pharmacies have been given the green light to sell face masks during the coronavirus crisis. The government added non-surgical masks to a list of products pharmacies are allowed to offer to the public in a decree over the weekend.

Stakeholders    

• The Health Service Journal have issued stark warnings about an apparent increase in children needing intensive care for an inflammatory condition that may be related to the covid-19. NHS England’s Stephen Powis has confirmed the national director for children has been tasked with investigating “as a matter of urgency”.
• Polling from YouGov reveals that the public would support measures on universal basic income, job guarantees and rent controls in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
• A report from the Resolution Foundation has warned that young and low-paid workers are bearing the biggest health and economic risks from the coronavirus crisis.
• Research from the International Rescue Committee has suggested that up to 3 million people could die in conflict hit nations as a result of coronavirus. The report calls for swift action to mitigate the spread of the virus in nations such as Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen.

Unconfirmed reports

• Both the Times and the Telegraph speculate on forthcoming government measures to ease the lockdown. Measures identified for the first steps include; enforcing social distancing at work and in shops selling ‘non-essential’ items and permitting people to mix with a wider group of friends and family under an expanded definition of a household. Premier League football are likely to be allowed to resume behind closed doors, but schools are reported as unlikely to be in the first wave of adjustments.
• The Telegraph also report that the Department for Transport has begun consulting on getting transport up and running again. One of its key recommendations is that commuters wear cloth face coverings, rather than medical masks, when traveling on buses, trains and the London Underground, and that masks should be worn in shops.
• The Guardian report that the TUC and CBI are both helping to “prepare the ground” for the gradual easing of the lockdown.
• However, the Sun report that, without a credible track and trace scheme, the Government will have to extend the full lockdown beyond the review point of 7 May next week.