Nightingale Hospitals

Telegraph
The new 4,000-bed temporary NHS Nightingale hospital in East London treated just 19 patients over the Easter weekend, it has emerged. Leaked data shows the tiny handful of patients were treated at the massive overflow facility as intensive care capacity at existing London hospitals never went above 80 per cent. It comes as an NHS chief in the North East of England predicted the Nightingale hospital under construction there is unlikely to be needed. Occupying London’s Excel conference and events centre, NHS Nightingale London was built in just nine days  after a massive operation involving military planners. Including 2,900 intensive care beds, it is principally intended to be a critical care facility for seriously ill but stable Covid-19 patients who have transferred from permanent London hospitals. It was ordered in March after the scenes from Northern Italy caused officials to fear that the capital’s existing intensive care units, comprising around 770 beds, would be overwhelmed by coronavirus patients.

Times
London’s newly constructed Nightingale Hospital has remained largely empty with just 19 patients being treated at the facility over the weekend, according to senior figures. According to draft plans, the temporary hospital in the Docklands is designed to have 2,900 intensive care beds and 750 additional beds. In early March, there were fears that London’s existing intensive care units, which had a total of around 770 beds, would be overwhelmed by the coronavirus patients. This led to national leaders to target a four-fold increase in ICU capacity and to build the Nightingale Hospital at the Excel conference centre.

Care homes

Telegraph
Every care home resident showing symptoms of coronavirus will be tested for the disease, ministers have promised after facing accusations that the public has been misled over the scale of the crisis in care homes. All care home residents and social care staff displaying symptoms will be tested as capacity is built up in laboratories across the country, Matt Hancock, the Heath Secretary, has said. It comes as GPs revealed that many patients dying from the virus are not being recorded as such, suggesting official totals may be “significantly skewed”.  Ministers were forced to deny that care home residents had been “forgotten” and were also challenged over accusations that they were not included in daily figures in an attempt to make the UK’s statistics look better than those of other nations.

Mail
A ‘hidden epidemic’ of coronavirus in care homes may have cost 4,000 lives, experts warned last night.  They believe deaths are being hugely under-reported because of a lack of testing. GPs are also sometimes reluctant to write Covid-19 on death certificates and figures from care homes are not included in the official daily toll.  The latest report from the Office for National Statistics says the virus killed 217 care home residents in England and Wales in the two weeks up to April 3.  But industry figures say the true count is much higher – potentially 4,000 since the outbreak started.

Independent
Matt Hancock will today pledge a coronavirus test for everyone in a care home who needs one, amid growing fears over the number of residents’ deaths. The health secretary said all 30,000 care providers would be contacted by the end of the week and offered tests for their staff. Tests for care home residents showing symptoms of the disease would be prioritised as capacity increases, he added. All patients discharged from hospital will be tested before they go to a care home.

Sky News
Ministers have promised to ramp up coronavirus testing for care home residents and staff, as fears grow that the virus is “running wild” in adult social care. Opposition parties have warned of a “growing crisis” in care homes, with elderly residents particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. And there are growing demands for care home deaths to be included in the daily updates for deaths in hospitals to stop “potentially thousands” of fatalities going “under the radar”. In response to these concerns, the government has pledged that all social care staff who need a test for COVID-19 will be able to access one, as testing capacity continues to increase.

Star
The Government has been accused of “misleading” the public as experts suggest 4,000 people may have been killed by coronavirus in care homes. The number of deaths announced to the public may be under-reported due to a lack of testing, reports Mail Online. Care home deaths are not included in the official daily toll  announced by the Government – and it has been suggested that GPs can be reluctant to write Covid-19 as the cause of death on certificates. In the two weeks up to April 13, although the official figure from the Office for National Statistics for coronavirus deaths in care homes is 217, industry experts claim the toll may be 4,000 since the start of the outbreak.

ITV News
All care home residents and social care staff with Covid-19 symptoms will be tested for the virus as capacity increases, the Government has pledged. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he was “determined” to ensure that everyone needing a test should have access to one, with testing remaining a “key” part of the Government’s coronavirus battle plan. Currently, only the first five symptomatic residents in a care home setting are tested to provide confirmation of whether there is an outbreak.

Times
All care home residents and social care staff with Covid-19 symptoms will be tested as capacity increases, the government will announce today. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, said he was “determined to ensure that everyone who needs a coronavirus test should be able to have access to one”. Under the present system, the first five symptomatic residents are tested to confirm an outbreak. Mr Hancock said this would be expanded to all residents with symptoms and all new residents discharged from hospital into care. Every social care worker who needed a test would also have one, he added.

Deaths

Sun
CORONAVIRUS is linked to more than one in five deaths in England and Wales, new figures show. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said there were 3,475 cases where Covid-19 was cited on the death certificate in the week ending April 3. The figures show 21 per cent of all deaths in England and Wales up to that date – 6,235 – were caused by the killer bug. In the week up to April 3, the total number of people who passed away – including non-Covid-19 fatalities – was more than 16,387, a new record high. That grim figure is 6,000 more than normal at this time of the year when deaths tend to fall because there is less flu than in the winter.

ITV News
A total of 12,107 patients have died in hospital after testing positive for coronavirus in the UK, up by 778 from 11,329 the day before. The Department of Health said as of 9am on Tuesday 14 April, a total of 382,650 coronavirus tests had been carried out, with 93,873 testing positive. NHS England has announced 744 new deaths of people who tested positive for Covid-19, bringing the total number of confirmed reported deaths in hospitals in England to 11,005. Public Health Wales also confirmed the number of deaths in the country had reached 403, a rise of 19.

Lockdown

Mail
Chancellor Rishi Sunak is pushing to ease the lockdown next month by encouraging more people to return to work where they can do so safely. Whitehall sources told the Daily Mail that the Chancellor fears some members of the public have ‘over-interpreted’ the lockdown advice and believe only designated key workers should be working. He is said to be pushing for ministers to ‘strengthen the message’ that people should be trying to work unless their sector has been directly shut down or they can not practise social distancing. And he warned colleagues the Government risks causing permanent damage to the economy if the lockdown goes on too long.

Sun
MINISTERS are looking at how to lift Britain’s lockdown gradually over the summer – but some restrictions are likely to remain in place for months to come. As Britain enters its fourth week of lockdown, Dominic Raab has said they don’t expect any changes to be made this week, setting the scene for the lockdown to carry on into May. But last night he claimed that the nation-wide shut down was working, and experts predicted that the number of cases and deaths would start to plateau in the coming weeks. There were “positive signs” that the UK was beginning to “win this struggle”.

Mirror
The government is poised to extend the UK’s coronavirus lockdown until at least May 7 in an announcement to be made on Thursday. Dominic Raab, who is standing in for Prime Minister Boris Johnson while he recovers from Covid-19, will tell Brits that they will have to remain at home for at least another three weeks as ministers grapple with an exit strategy, according to The Times. The lockdown has to be reviewed by law every three weeks, and the first review must be carried out by Thursday this week. The government’s scientific advice group SAGE meets today and its announcement will be made on Thursday.

Education

Mail
Teachers today demanded clarity from the government over ‘disturbing’ suggestions about reopening schools.  The National Education Union (NEU) has written to ministers asking to see the government’s evidence on the impact of allowing pupils back. It warned acting too early in the coronavirus crisis will result in an ‘increased risk’ to staff and children, and could ‘undermine people’s resolve to stick to social isolation’. The alarm comes after headteachers suggested that schools should reopen for a period before the summer holidays – rather than in September – if scientific evidence says it is safe to do so.

Telegraph
The government is coming under mounting pressure to re-open primary schools before the May half term, as catastrophic Office for Budget Responsibility figures forecast the economy will shrink by 35 per cent due to the coronavirus lockdown. A number of ministers are understood to be agitating for younger pupils to return to the classroom as soon as May 11 amid fears the restrictions cannot feasibly be relaxed until workers’ children are back in full-time education. It had previously been suggested that at the earliest, pupils would not be back until after the Whitsun half term, which begins on May 25, the late Spring bank holiday.

Brexit

Telegraph
The EU would negotiate an extension to the Brexit trade talks because of the coronavirus pandemic, the European Commission said on Tuesday before a meeting of both sides’ chief negotiators on Wednesday. David Frost and Michel Barnier, the UK and EU top Brexit officials, will hold a video conference call to finalise arrangements for large-scale trade negotiations to take place over the internet next week.  That would involve up to 11 separate groups of negotiators holding simultaneous talks over video conferencing software on areas from trade in goods and the “level playing field” demanded by the EU, to fishing and law enforcement.

Breitbart
Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage told Britons that they must not accept that leaving the European Union’s institutions at the end of 2020 should be delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Marking the first anniversary of the Brexit Party’s Coventry launch, Mr Farage thanked the hundreds of thousands who donated money and the five million who voted for a party that was just weeks old at the time of the May European Parliament elections, putting the Brexit Party in first place. “If it hadn’t been for the Brexit Party, not only would we be going through this horrible crisis, we would still be in the EU,” Mr Farage told viewers of his Facebook live session on Tuesday.

WHO

Times
President Trump has halted US funding of the World Health Organisation, accusing the agency of “severely mismanaging and covering up” the initial outbreak of coronavirus in China. The president said that the UN agency “willingly took China’s assurances at face value” about the transmission of the virus and “pushed China’s misinformation.” He added: “So much death has been caused by their mistakes… The outbreak could have been contained at its source with very little death and certainly very little death by comparison. This would have saved thousands of lives and avoided worldwide economic damage.”

ITV News
US president Donald Trump has said he will halt payments to the World Health Organisation. Mr Trump said the coronavirus outbreak could have been better contained had the health agency done a better job investigating reports coming out of China. Here, the PA news agency answers some questions about the organisation: – What is the World Health Organisation? The WHO is a body responsible for international health which is part of the United Nations. It aims to “promote health, keep the world safe and serve the vulnerable”. – When did it start? The origins of an international body for health matters date back to International Sanitary Conferences, with the first one held in 1851 in France to discuss quarantine regulations around cholera.

Recession

Telegraph
Britain will suffer its deepest recession for 300 years if the coronavirus lockdown continues into the summer, according to the budget watchdog, as the Chancellor warned of “tough times” to come. The Office for Budget Responsibility said the economy could shrink by 35 per cent this spring, with unemployment soaring by two million to its highest level since the nineties. It came as the International Monetary Fund said the global economy was heading for its biggest slump since the Great Depression of the thirties. The OBR also said government borrowing could hit its highest level since the Second World War.

Sun
BRITAIN was warned today of pay cuts and up to two million job losses caused by the corona­virus lockdown. Treasury forecasters fear the economy faces its worst slump on record. Chancellor Rishi Sunak has said it is “not surprising” that the UK is facing it’s biggest economic slump in 300 years – as this has never been seen before. As the UK death toll hit 12,107, the full scale of the Covid-19 meltdown emerged in government figures which predicted the country’s economy may be slashed by a record 35 per cent by June.

Sky News
The chancellor has repeated his warning that the government will not be able to protect every business and household during the coronavirus outbreak, admitting: “These are tough times and there will be more to come.” Rishi Sunak told the government’s daily coronavirus news conference that the UK economy was “fundamentally sound” and he was confident there would be a “bounceback in growth” once the crisis has passed. It comes after the Office for Budget Responsibility, the independent fiscal watchdog, said Britain’s economy could shrink by 35% in the second quarter and see unemployment jump by two million because of COVID-19. Mr Sunak said some of the figures were “not surprising” as the country is getting to grips with a crisis “unlike anything we’ve seen before”.

BBC News
A forecast by the UK’s tax and spending watchdog suggests the coronavirus crisis will have “serious implications” for the UK economy, Chancellor Rishi Sunak has said. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) warned the pandemic could see the economy shrink by a record 35% by June. Mr Sunak stressed that the forecast was only one possible scenario. But he said it was important that the government was “honest with people about what may be happening”. He said the OBR figures suggest that the scale of what the UK is facing “will have serious implications for our economy”, in common with other countries.

Express
THE economy will “bounce back” from the devastating coronavirus crisis thanks to the help of hardworking Britons, Rishi Sunak vowed last night. Calling on a huge national effort in the war against the deadly disease the Chancellor promised any hit to the economy would be “temporary” and that the recovery is one that “we are all in together”. But he warned of “more tough times to come” amid warnings the economy faces shrinking by 35 percent if the lockdown continues for three months, with two million people made jobless. Mr Sunak’s remarks came after staggering analysis from the Office for Budget Responsibility predicted the UK’s economy will fall dramatically if we remain in a prolonged lockdown. He said: “When I see these numbers, I am deeply troubled.

Mirror
Britain is heading for a summer of economic ­misery, with ­Chancellor Rishi Sunak  warning many businesses could collapse due to the coronavirus crisis. Unemployment may hit 3.4 million – the highest since the dark days of Margaret Thatcher – and government borrowing faces a £218billion hike, the Office for Budget Responsibility said. And with the UK’s Covid-19 death toll rising by 778 to 12,107, ministers are tomorrow expected to extend the lockdown by three weeks. That will leave many struggling ­businesses fearing for their survival, with the economy possibly shrinking by a third. And only 2% of firms affected have accessed the government loans scheme.

Times
Britain should prepare for tough times ahead, the chancellor warned yesterday as the financial watchdog predicted that the lockdown could leave more than two million people unemployed and shrink the economy by 35 per cent. In a bleak forecast, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), said that net public-sector borrowing would reach £273 billion, the largest single-year deficit since the Second World War. However, economists suggested that the damage could be even worse.

Sport

Telegraph
The British Grand Prix, the last pillar of the nation’s sporting summer still standing, could host two races on the same weekend in late July as Formula One scrambles to stage the minimum eight rounds needed for a world championship. With the French race on June 28 almost certain to be the 10th of 22 postponed or cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Silverstone is seen as the most realistic option to ensure a summer start, given the circuit’s proximity to seven of the 10 teams’ bases.  “If Formula One want to use the circuit for more than one round, I’m sure that something’s we can accommodate,” Stuart Pringle, Silverstone’s managing director, told The Telegraph. “We remain receptive to any solution that anybody wants to propose. We’re open-minded and we want to try to help navigate a way through this. But it’s desperately difficult.”

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