Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Social distancing will be needed until at least the end of the year to prevent fresh outbreaks of coronavirus even though the UK has reached the peak of the current epidemic, the government’s chief medical officer has said.
Prof Chris Whitty, the UK’s most senior medic, said it was important to be realistic that “highly disruptive” social distancing would need to be in place for “really quite a long period of time”.
Vaughan Gething heard decrying Labour colleague after leaving his audio live on video call
Wales’s health minister, Vaughan Gething, has learned the hard way about one of the risks of videoconferencing after he accidentally broadcast a sweary rant about one of his colleagues during a virtual session of Welsh assembly.
Having apparently left his microphone live after addressing the assembly, the minister could be heard loudly decrying his fellow Labour assembly member Jenny Rathbone.
It’s clear that the coronavirus pandemic is not the first thing on the prime minister’s mind
On one level, the argument about what Sir Simon McDonald said to the foreign affairs select committee this week can be dismissed as a storm in a Whitehall teacup. Hours after the head of the foreign office had called Britain’s refusal to join the European Union’s procurement efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic a “political decision”, McDonald retracted his words. Whitehall-watchers are fascinated. The wider world has bigger things to worry about.
But on another level, this week’s row is political dynamite – and for two main reasons.
Hundreds of asylum seekers in Glasgow have been given less than an hour’s notice to pack up their flats before being moved into city centre hotels, where they claim social distancing is “impossible”.
They have also had all financial support withdrawn, apparently because the hotels provide three meals a day, basic toiletries and a laundry service, in a move condemned by campaigners.
The health secretary, Matt Hancock, has told MPs: ‘We are at the peak’ of the pandemic. ‘But before we relax any social distancing rules or make changes to them we have set out the five tests that have to be met.’
In his first prime minister's questions in parliament as Labour leader, Keir Starmer criticised the government's response to the coronavirus outbreak: 'There's a pattern emerging here. We were slow into lockdown, slow on testing, slow on protective equipment, and now slow to take up [PPE] offers from British firms.' Answering on behalf of Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab said he didn't accept the accusation: 'We have been guided by the scientific advice, the chief scientific adviser, the chief medical officer, at every step along this way'
The health secretary, Matt Hancock, is facing fresh pressure over the protection offered to NHS staff after the European commission said the UK had been given “ample opportunity” to join an EU scheme bulk-buying masks, gowns, gloves and goggles.
After a day of confusion in Westminster over the UK’s lack of involvement in the EU’s joint procurement of equipment, a spokesman for the commission appeared to bolster the claim that ministers had taken a “political decision” to opt out.
The British government is coming under fire for failing to join the EU’s procurement scheme for medical equipment, including masks, gloves, goggles, gowns, testing kits and ventilators, at a time when NHS health workers across the country are crying out for more supplies. In the latest twist, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, was forced to deny claims, later retracted, by the government’s senior diplomat that it had been a “political decision” to opt out of the scheme.
A Chinese citizen journalist who was missing for almost two months after posting videos from Wuhan during the coronavirus outbreak has re-appeared, claiming that he was detained by police and forcibly quarantined, Lily Kuo reports from Beijing.
Li Zehua was one of three Chinese journalists who had been reporting in Wuhan during some of the worst weeks of the epidemic. He was last seen on 26 February after posting a video in which he was chased by a white SUV and an hours-long livestream that ended when several agents entered his apartment.
Airlines in Europe have applied for €12.8bn (£11.3bn) in government support since the start of the coronavirus pandemic with no binding environmental conditions attached, according to an analysis of the sector’s bailout pleas, Sandra Laville reports.
By Tuesday this week, airlines including easyJet, Scandinavian Airlines and Tui had secured loans and other financial support amounting to €3.36bn. A further €9.47bn is being sought by other airlines, data tracking by Transport & Environment, Greenpeace and Carbon Watch reveals.
Remote video trials could disadvantage people with learning disabilities, the equalities watchdog has warned, as courts switch to online hearings during the coronavirus crisis.
An interim report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has highlighed concerns about the impact of conducting cases without defendants being present in court.
The UK’s Covid-19 crisis has reached the blame phase, with Boris Johnson, ministers, civil servants and scientists coming under criticism that they underestimated the threat, were slow to act and are bungling the country’s response amid a wave of deaths.
Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, from Maida Vale, was one of most wanted militants in Europe
Spanish police have arrested a former British rapper turned Islamic State extremist, Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, one of the most wanted militants in Europe, in a counter-terrorism swoop on Tuesday.
British and other sources confirmed his identity a few hours after the national police agency in Madrid said it had arrested an Egyptian national and two other men in a flat in the southern Spanish city of Almeria.
Dozens of patients with Covid-19 have been turned away from the NHS Nightingale hospital in London because it has too few nurses to treat them, the Guardian can reveal.
Epidemics of infectious diseases behave in different ways but the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed more than 50 million people is regarded as a key example of a pandemic that occurred in multiple waves, with the latter more severe than the first. It has been replicated – albeit more mildly – in subsequent flu pandemics.
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, has announced that he is making £20m available to an Oxford team to accelerate trials for a coronavirus vaccine that will be trialled on people from Thursday.
Like many people around the country, I stand on my front doorstep at 8pm every Thursday to clap for carers during the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet when I did so for the first time last month, not knowing for sure if my neighbours would join me, I realised I knew little of the people for whom I was clapping.
Who are the nurses, doctors, cleaners, clerks, porters, researchers and consultants on whom so many lives depend?
The royal family’s Twitter account has posted private behind-the-scenes footage of the Queen as a childin tribute for her 94th birthday.
It showed her as a toddler in a push-chair, and playing with sister Princess Margaret as a child. She is seen learning to ride, gardening with her mother, and dancing onboard a yacht.
The impact of the coronavirus crisis could ripple through every layer of our social fabric.
We want to hear what you are concerned about, hopeful for, or even looking forward to in a changed future, for a Guardian video series in which we will discuss how life may be different. What are the best things about our society that should be protected for future generations, and where can we see a need for change?
Company says it made a loss last year due to investment and the competitive market
Amazon received €294m (£258m) in tax credits last year that it can deduct from future bills for its European business, as revenues at the online retailer rose significantly to €32bn.
The company said it received the tax credits because it made a loss last year due to its investment programme and the highly competitive retail environment across Europe and the UK.
Ronan O’Rahilly, the Irish founder of the notorious Radio Caroline that popularised pop music on British radio, has died aged 79.
His death was announced by the radio station that is still broadcasting, who said: “In a pastime populated by unusual people, Ronan was more unusual than all of them combined.” He had been diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2013.
Morning all. I am running the live blog this morning, so please do get in touch if you would like to share any news tips of information with me this morning. Your thoughts, comments and insight are always very welcome. Thanks in advance.
UK job vacancies dived in the three months to March as the labour market contracted in the face of the coronavirus, official statisticians have revealed.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the number of job vacancies plunged by 52,000 to 795,000 for the quarter.
It said the manufacturing and retail sectors reported the largest decline in hiring over the period.
The ONS also revealed that growth in the number of people on British companies’ payrolls slowed to 0.8% in March from 1.1% in February, according to preliminary tax data.
Economists also revealed on Tuesday that unemployment increased by 22,000 to 1.36 million in the three months to February, before Covid-19 gripped the UK.
Meanwhile, employment for the quarter to February jumped by 352,000 against the same period last year, rising to a record high of 33.07 million. It said this was heavily driven by a jump in the number of women in work, which rose by 318,000 to a record high of 15.73 million.