Covid-19 daily Bulletin

10 Sep

10 September 2020

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

Key Announcements:

  • Boris Johnson believes a mass testing programme is “our only hope for avoiding a second national lockdown before a vaccine”, according to leaked official documents setting out plans for “Operation Moonshot”. A leaked Whitehall document puts the cost of the plan at £100bn – almost the cost of the entire NHS England budget.
  • A private company has agreed to provide Exeter University with thousands of coronavirus tests that give results in 24 hours. The deal is thought to be the first of its kind in the UK.
  • Christmas is still a few months away – but there are concerns that social distancing restrictions could still be in place then, making it difficult for families to gather to celebrate.
  • UK medical experts have raised doubts over the PM’s plan to have “millions” of coronavirus tests processed each day.
  • The number of people going back to work in offices has flatlined in the past two months despite the government push to get more workers into cities to protect Britain’s biggest urban economies from collapse.
  • The halt in development of the University of Oxford’s Covid-19 vaccine due to an adverse reaction in a trial participant has triggered fears of a delay in finding a solution to coronavirus restrictions.

Regional/Devolved

  • Caerphilly residents are facing extra restrictions after coronavirus infections there rose rapidly.
  • People living in Manchester, Salford, Rochdale, Bury, Bolton, Trafford and Tameside and Leicester City cannot meet anyone outside their own household, or support bubble, in a home or garden.
  • People living in Glasgow City, East Renfrewshire and West Dunbartonshire are banned from meeting people from another household inside their home.
  • Scotland’s new contact tracing app to help combat the spread of coronavirus has gone live. The Scottish government has said the software will support the Test and Protect system and is “another tool in the fight against Covid-19”.

International

  • US President Donald Trump said he “played down” the risk of the virus to avoid panic, according to a new book.
  • India detected an all-time high of 95,500 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, with 1,168 new deaths, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi continued to push for normalisation to revive the struggling economy.
  • New Zealand reported four new cases of Covid-19 on Thursday, taking the total number of cases in the country to 1,792 since the pandemic began, with 1,441 of those confirmed and 351 listed as probable.

Stakeholders

  • British Airways’ parent group IAG expects to carry fewer passengers than forecast this year as travel restrictions and quarantine measures hamper its recovery from the pandemic. The airline conglomerate is the latest major carrier to trim its flying schedules this week as expected passenger numbers fail to materialise, following easyJet, Ryanair and United Airlines in the US.
  • The UK’s coronavirus test-and-trace system will not function unless ministers boost statutory sick pay (SSP) to ensure that workers can afford to stay at home, the head of the TUC has said.
  • The NUS have said, following their Coronavirus and Students Survey, that one in three students had reportedly been unable to access online during lockdown.

Unconfirmed reports

  • It has been reported that Ministers are considering imposing a national curfew, similar to that set out for Bolton.