Peak

Times
Britain is reaching the peak of the coronavirus pandemic and will be able to finalise its strategy for easing the lockdown within ten days, the chief medical officer has said. Chris Whitty said health officials believed that the trend in new infections was beginning to “flatten out” as the death toll stayed below 800 for the fourth day in a row. Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, who is deputising for the prime minister while he recovers, is expected to announce today that lockdown restrictions will remain in place for a further three weeks.

Mail
Britain’s coronavirus crisis may have already peaked, England’s chief medical officer yesterday claimed as the daily death toll stayed below 800 for the fourth day in a row. Officials announced just 761 more COVID-19 victims in hospitals across the home nations, including a 20-year-old with no known underlying condition, taking the overall number of fatalities close to the 13,000-mark.  It is slightly down from the 778 fatalities recorded on Tuesday – but much lower than the 980 declared on April 10, considered Britain’s darkest day yet since the virus began spreading on British soil in February.

Reuters
Britain is probably reaching the peak of its coronavirus epidemic but it is too soon to be confident of that and begin thinking about next steps, England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty said on Wednesday. “Our view is that it is probably reaching the peak overall,” he told a news conference. However he said statistical lags meant the number of deaths may go up in the coming days.

Telegraph
Coronavirus may be reaching its peak in the UK, the Chief Medical Officer has said, as ministers came under fresh pressure to reveal their plan for ending the lockdown. Dominic Raab, the acting prime minister, is expected to announce on Thursday that social restrictions will stay in place for another three weeks, but will face fresh accusations that the Government does not trust the British public enough to tell them when and how the measures will start to be lifted.

Independent
Britain appears to be reaching the peak of the coronavirus outbreak, with signs that the numbers of new cases are flattening off, experts have said. But chief medical officer Chris Whitty left no doubt that it is too soon to lift lockdown  restrictions on social activities without risking a renewed flare-up of the deadly virus. Ministers are expected to extend the restrictions until 7 May at a virtual meeting of the Cobra emergencies committee on Thursday, when they will be briefed by Prof Whitty and chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance.

Lockdown

Sun
MINISTERS are expected to extend the coronavirus lockdown by three weeks today. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab will lead emergency Cobra and cabinet meetings about continuing social distancing. Labour has confirmed it will support an extension, but also demanded details on how and when the lockdown would end. The Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty has suggested ministers could soon be given permission to start planning the UK’s exit from lockdown as officials gather information on how the virus is spread.

BBC News
Ministers are later expected to announce a three-week extension to the coronavirus lockdown. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab will lead emergency Cobra committee and cabinet meetings about the continuation of social distancing measures. Labour has said it will support an extension, but also called for details on how and when the lockdown would end. Meanwhile, social care directors have said distribution of protective kit for carers has been “shambolic”. Speaking at Wednesday’s daily press briefing, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said restrictions on movement were beginning to help reduce the spread of the virus. But he warned “we will not lift these measures until it is safe to do so”.

Sky News
The government is expected to announce an extension of the UK’s coronavirus restrictions later today, as health minister Nadine Dorries suggested “full lockdown” would be required until a vaccine for COVID-19 is found. The current measures have been in place for more than three weeks, and this morning the cabinet will receive a briefing on the latest scientific and medical advice via video conference, before a COBRA meeting chaired by First Secretary of State Dominic Raab. Mr Raab, who is deputising for the Prime Minister as he continues his recovery from COVID-19, is expected to set out the reasoning behind the government’s decision at the daily briefing from Downing Street.

Mail
Ministers could be given the green light to start planning an exit from the lockdown within ten days, the Chief Medical Officer suggested last night. Chris Whitty said Government experts hoped to have enough evidence about the transmission of the coronavirus by that point to ‘judge how we can go into the next phase’.  The lockdown is set to be extended today for at least three weeks, despite fresh warnings about the long-term impact on the economy.  The Cabinet is expected to rubberstamp the extension in a conference call this morning ahead of a formal decision this afternoon by the Government’s emergency committee Cobra, which will be attended by Nicola Sturgeon and political leaders in Wales and Northern Ireland.

Sun
BRITAIN could stay in lockdown until June, but Chancellor Rishi Sunak is pushing to have measures eased by next month to save the economy. Up to two million people could lose their jobs and the UK is looking at the worst economic slump in 300 years, experts warned yesterday.  Whitehall sources told the Daily Mail that Mr Sunak fears Brits have “over interpreted” the lockdown advice, and believe only designated key workers should be working. They said he wants to “strengthen the message” that people should be trying to work unless their entire sector has been shut down, or they cannot practise safe social distancing on the job.

Deaths

Guardian
The coronavirus crisis has led to a sharp rise in the number of seriously ill people dying at home because they are reluctant to call for an ambulance, doctors and paramedics have warned. Minutes of a remote meeting held by London A&E chiefs last week obtained by the Guardian reveal that dozens more people than usual are dying at home of a cardiac arrest – potentially related to coronavirus – each day before ambulance crews can reach them. And as the chair of the Royal College of GPs said that doctors were noticing a spike in the number of people dying at home, paramedics across the country said in interviews that they were attending more calls where patients were dead when they arrived.

Sun
THE true coronavirus death toll in the UK could be 50 per cent higher than official figures show – with at least 18,000 people losing their lives to the killer bug. Pressure is mounting on the government to release the number of care home deaths after hidden victims outside of hospitals were yesterday revealed. The Office for National Statistics found Covid-19 was responsible for 6,235 deaths in England and Wales by April 3 – including backdated hospital deaths and those who died elsewhere. This figure is almost 2,000 higher than the official number reported by the Department of Health, which only records hospital deaths, on April 4.

Care homes

Telegraph
Care homes cannot safely accept hospital patients suffering from coronavirus without risking the lives of residents, ministers were told on Wednesday. Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, said hospital patients who tested positive for Covid-19 would continue to be discharged into care homes despite growing evidence that the policy is fuelling outbreaks and deaths. Charities and local authority leaders said the approach, designed to free up hospital beds, was “madness” because many homes do not have the resources to keep vulnerable and elderly residents safe.

Sky News
The government has announced a package of measures to try and combat the spread of the coronavirus in care homes, amid fears of a “growing crisis” in social care. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said this includes increased testing of residents and staff and improved access to personal protective equipment through a supply network of “unprecedented scale”. Fears are growing that hundreds of people are dying with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, in care homes but not being included in daily government updates.

iNews
Helen Whately, Minister in the Department of Health and Social Care, conceded that she did not know how many care workers had died due to Covid-19 in a fiery interview with Good Morning Britain presenter Piers Morgan today. Ms Whately admitted that she did not have the figures for care workers who have died because of issues of gathering data across “the nearly 30,000 providers of care across the country.” Government ministers have faced criticism over their statistics throughout the crisis, with Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick giving two contradictory figures for ventilators within an hour earlier in the month.

Mail
Care home staff are to be recognised for their heroic work in the pandemic. Following a campaign by the Daily Mail, Matt Hancock has promised to put them on the same footing as NHS doctors and nurses. This newspaper has revealed in a series of harrowing stories that care home residents are the forgotten victims of coronavirus, left to die in huge numbers. Health Secretary Mr Hancock vowed a set of measures to alleviate the dire situation in the nation’s 11,000 care homes.

Sun
AS many as 4,000 care home residents may have already lost their lives to coronavirus without deaths being officially recorded, experts have warned. New figures show 217 residents in nursing homes in England and Wales have died from coronavirus in the 14 days leading up to April 3. However, Care England and the Alzheimer’s Society believe the death toll within care facilities is being under-reporterd because of a lack of testing. Mike Padgham, from the Independent Care Group, said he believes 4,000 residents could have already died from coronavirus.

Ventilators

Times
The first hospital ventilator specifically designed for coronavirus patients will go into production this week after it was approved by regulators. The Times understands that the VentilatorChallengeUK consortium will make an initial 5,000 machines for the NHS at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre in north Wales. Staff from Airbus and Siemens have built assembly lines at the facility and companies across the country have supplied design skills and components. The device, based on a ventilator made by the Oxfordshire firm Penlon, is the first to be given the green light since Boris Johnson called on industry a month ago to join the national effort against the Covid-19 pandemic.

Business

Telegraph
The Treasury is expected to unveil a sweeping rescue package for start-up businesses within days as criticism mounts over the emergency support on offer for companies battling through the lockdown. Ministers are rushing ahead with a bailout plan for loss-making companies whose funding pools have dried up since normal life was put on hold, according to two senior sources in the tech industry. It came as the Government’s furlough scheme was extended to support up to 200,000 more workers at risk of losing their jobs. Details of the start-up rescue package are yet to be finalised, although it is thought to centre around a co-investment strategy – where investors continue to back fast-growing firms but their funding is matched by the taxpayer.

Times
Banks have handed out more than £1.1 billion to small businesses, doubling the number of emergency loans as part of a bailout package for the economy. Under the state-backed funding programme lenders have granted 6,000 loans as hundreds of thousands of companies seek urgent support to carry them through the Covid-19 pandemic. Hundreds of applications were approved last weekend and lending under the scheme increased by £700 million over the past seven days, according to UK Finance, which represents banks and financial institutions.

Chinese propaganda

Breitbart
A leading British newspaper has decided to stop running paid propaganda articles from a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) amidst a global effort by the regime in Beijing to influence Western opinion on the Wuhan virus pandemic. The Daily Telegraph has removed its longstanding ‘China Watch’ section, which the paper has run for over ten years. The segment featured propaganda articles from the Chinese state-sponsored media outlet China Daily. Another part which ran articles from the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, has been removed as well.

Fox News
China has recast itself as a global leader in defeating coronavirus — and nowhere is that more apparent than in their military. In fact, China has claimed that not a single member of its 2 million strong People’s Liberation Army has contracted COVID-19, a virus that was started in China and has infected 2 million people worldwide. The fantastical claim is being labeled an implausible narrative that scientists and scholars find bogus and warn is a classic and transparent tactic meant to intimidate regional rivals.

Brexit

Mirror
British negotiators again ruled out extending the Brexit transition with the EU. UK ministers and officials have come under mounting pressure to delay the deadline for striking a deal with Brussels as the world battles coronavirus. They have been unable to hold face-to-face meetings with counterparts since the outbreak began. While Britain formally left the EU on January 31, we immediately entered an 11-month period where the relationship with the EU remains largely unchanged.

City AM
The UK’s chief Brexit negotiator David Frost and his Brussels counterpart will meet for their next round of official trade talks next week. Frost and chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier will hold week-long negotiating rounds via video conference on the weeks commencing 20 April, 11 May and 1 June. The pair met today to outline the process for trade talks going forward as the two sides try to negotiate a UK-EU trade deal before the 31 December deadline. The government has consistently denied any notion the deadline should be extended due to disruption caused by the coronavirus crisis.

Express
RISHI SUNAK has sparked panic throughout the European Union with a promise to complete a Brexit deal by December 31, issuing a further warning the transition period will not be extended beyond that date. Last month, the UK and European Union opened talks on a post-Brexit free trade agreement, with the first round of negotiations taking place in Brussels. A team led by Boris Johnson‘s chief negotiator David Frost traveled to the Belgian capital to begin crunch talks with representatives led by EU counterpart Michel Barnier.

Guardian
The European Union and UK government have agreed to resume post-Brexit talks next week, where they will confront entrenched divisions on trade and fishing rights over video link. The two sides released a timetable for the next three rounds of negotiations in an attempt to get coronavirus-disrupted talks back on track, following a video conference on Wednesday between the prime minister’s chief negotiator, David Frost, and his EU counterpart, Michel Barnier. Following Brexit day on 31 January, the EU and UK managed only one round of talks before coronavirus crashed them.

Immigration

Mail
Priti Patel’s pledge to crack down on migrants crossing the Channel in small boats is in tatters after a record number reached Britain this month.  The Home Secretary vowed in the autumn that the illegal journeys would be virtually eliminated by now.  But Home Office figures show that so far this month at least 336 men, women and children have made the treacherous trip from northern France – the highest monthly total logged.   This includes 72 caught on Easter Sunday after a number of small-boat crossings. More are expected as the weather improves.

Labour Party

Independent
Anti-Corbyn Labour officials who worked to prevent the party from winning in order oust its leader regard the organisation as “their personal property”, Len McCluskey has said. In an angry broadside published on Wednesday, the Unite general secretary said the “politically-crooked” officials on right wing of the party were only interested in fighting the left and had taken part in a “rancid, and very cruel, political culture”. The intervention comes after the leaking of a report and cache of WhatsApp chats and emails that appear to show senior executives at the party’s HQ worked to undermine Labour’s chances at the 2017 election and were distraught when it overturned the Tory majority.

HS2

Times
Full construction of the HS2 railway line will start in weeks after the government gave formal approval even though it admits that it could deliver “poor” value for taxpayers. Yesterday ministers said that the “notice to proceed” had been signed which gives HS2 Ltd, the government-owned company, permission to build the line. It is estimated to cost up to £106 billion. The move will provide a “vote of confidence” in the construction industry at a time of economic uncertainty posed by the pandemic, the government said.

Independent
The government has formally approved the construction of the new HS2 railway line, with the main works on the project set to start immediately. The “notice to proceed” was confirmed by the Department for Transport early on Wednesday morning, allowing the project’s main civil works contractors to put spades in the ground. HS2 minister Andrew Stephenson said: “We cannot delay work on our long-term plan to level up the country.” With the UK expected to enter a deep recession because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and measures taken to combat it, the project will provide work for the construction industry – which has been hit badly.

BBC News
The government has given formal approval for construction work on the HS2 rail project to begin despite lockdown measures. Construction firms involved in phase one of the high-speed rail project will need to follow social distancing rules. HS2 minister Andrew Stephenson said: “We cannot delay work on our long-term plan to level up the country.” Prime Minister Boris Johnson approved the decision to build the rail link in February after a review into its cost.

Express
NIGEL Farage has launched a scathing attack on the Government after it gave to go-ahead to firms to begin the first phase of the HS2 rail link, connecting London and Birmingham – even though the economy is paralysed by the coronavirus pandemic. HS2 Ltd, the Government-owned company which is overseeing the project, was granted approval to issue a notice to proceed to firms contracted to design and construct bridges, tunnels, embankments and viaducts.

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