Covid-19 Daily Bulletin

29 Apr

29 April 2021

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

Key Announcements:

  • On 28th April, there were 2,166 new cases of coronavirus in the UK and 29 people died having tested positive for the virus within 28 days.
  • On average, over 50 per cent of UK adults are likely to have Covid antibodies, the Office for National Statistics has stated. The study is based on a sample of blood test results for the week ending 11 April.
  • In a press conference yesterday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock stressed that a new variant posed the greatest threat to the vaccine programme. He said scientists had been working on a programme of booster vaccines for over a year and said the UK had backed clinical trials looking specifically at booster shots.
  • Matt Hancock is set to get his vaccination this morning, after the programme was extended to 42-year-olds yesterday.
  • The UK has ordered an extra 60m doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to help support the booster vaccination programme beginning from the Autumn.

Devolved

  • Joint head of the Government of Northern Ireland, Arlene Foster, has said she will step down as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party on 28 May and as first minister at the end of June.

International

  • India has reported another all-time high in daily cases and deaths as it struggles with a deadly second wave of the pandemic. The total number of coronavirus cases in India is thought to be 15m. There are reports of hospitals at maximum capacity and oxygen emergencies.
  • Turkey is to go into its first full national lockdown after the country was hit by a surge of coronavirus cases.

Stakeholders

  • The NSPCC has advised that calls to its helpline have risen to record levels. In the year to March 2021 the helpline was contacted almost 85,000 times, up 23 percent on the previous year.
  • Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye has said the pandemic has “devastated” the aviation sector but that “restarting international travel from May 17th will help to kickstart the economic recovery, allowing exporters to get their goods to market, as well as reuniting families who have been separated for over a year. Heathrow is gearing up for the recovery.” The airport has suffered losses of £2.4bn since the start of the pandemic.