Covid-19 Daily Bulletin

6 July 2020

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

Key Announcements   

• The UK recorded 516 new cases yesterday and 22 daily deaths.
• The government has unveiled a £1.57bn support package to help protect the futures of UK theatres, galleries, museums and other cultural venues.
• The government is pledging to provide 30,000 new traineeships to get young people in England into work, as part of a £111m funding boost.
• On the first day of pubs and bars reopening, footfall on England’s high streets after 5pm surged by more than a third compared with a week ago.
• Britain will later impose sanctions independently for the first time on dozens of individuals accused of human rights abuses around the world.
• The NHS is rolling out ‘Your Covid Recovery’ – a personalised recovery programme for tens of thousands of patients suffering from the long-term effects of coronavirus.
• Passengers arriving at Heathrow will be among the first to be offered medical Covid-19 tests at a UK airport, pending Government approval.
• Ofsted will start visiting schools and colleges after the summer holidays to see how they are getting back up to speed, after being closed to most pupils and learners for so long.
• The Culture Secretary has announced agreements to allow selected sporting events and production on film and television to get underway safely.

Regional/ Devolved   

• People in Scotland will be able to return to beer gardens and pavement cafes today as they open for the first time in 15 weeks.
• The Scottish health secretary, Jeane Freeman has admitted that no quarantine checks have been carried out on visitors arriving in Scotland from overseas, because staff did not have security clearance to access passenger details.
• The emergency hospital built in Glasgow to help the NHS cope with the coronavirus crisis, could be repurpose d to treat people who have had healthcare postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
• People in Northern Ireland will be able to visit loved ones in hospital for the first time in months as part of further easing of lockdown.
• The Welsh Government’s “stay local” guidance, asking people to stay within five miles of home, has ended , with no limits on travel.
• Two households in Wales will also be able to stay together indoors and overnight.
• Social care workers in Wales have still not received a £500 cash bonus that was promised more than two months ago.
• Employees at a food factory in Wrexham linked to a coronavirus outbreak have been working on site while they wait for their test results

International   

• India now has the third-largest number of confirmed cases in the world at 697,413, taking its total above that of Russia.
• The border between Australia’s two most populous states, Victoria and New South Wales (NSW), is to close after a spike in Covid-19 cases in Melbourne.
• Spain has placed more than a quarter of a million people under indefinite lockdown as Pedro Sánchez called for calm amid new coronavirus outbreaks and fears of a second wave.
• South Korea reported 48 new infections on Monday, 24 of them each linked to local transmissions and international arrivals.

Stakeholders    

• The Association of Colleges has welcomed the traineeships funding but called on chancellor Rishi Sunak to go further, with 3,000 of funding per apprenticeship to reduce damage to young people. Chief executive David Hughes told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We know that young people get treated really badly in recessions. We’re really worried about the end of furlough and the hit to the labour market on that, so we need really bold action now on both labour market and on skills.”
• The NHS will need to carry out the biggest flu immunisation programme yet this winter amid concerns about a second wave of coronavirus, the organisation’s chief executive has warned.
• Ofsted’s Chief Inspector Amanda Spielman has said it “makes sense” for children to drop a subject so that they can focus on English and maths. Ms Spielman told BBC Radio 4’s The Today Programme: “It may make sense for a small minority of children to perhaps drop a subject that they might otherwise have been doing, or for schools to decide that they will provide a curriculum with slightly less scope in some subjects in primary school to make sure that the core English and maths do get fully back on track.”
• A study by the PC Agency and Audiencenet has established that just a third of the countries on the list of countries on the Government’s “travel corridor list” do not have some form of quarantine, closed borders or restrictions that might impede English holidaymakers.

Unconfirmed reports   

• Train companies face being propped up by the taxpayer for up to two years amid warnings that passenger numbers may fail to return to pre-Covid levels.
• Rishi Sunak has drawn up proposals to exempt most homebuyers from paying any stamp duty under plans to kick-start Britain’s economic recovery.
• Delays to cancer diagnosis and treatment due to coronavirus could cause up to 35,000excess deaths in the UK within a year in a worst-case scenario, research suggests.
• The coronavirus crisis could “level down” the UK economy with London and the South East expected to bounce back more quickly than Hull and Bradford, a report from the Social Market Foundation (SMF) has warned.
• Thirteen universities face “a very real prospect” of insolvency following the coronavirus crisis unless they receive a government bailout, says the Institute for Fiscal Studies.