Category Archives: UK news

Boris Johnson’s hospital admission suggests his infection has progressed

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It is unlikely the prime minister will have been admitted unless doctors have real concerns

Most people recover from Covid-19 within a week and cannot even be certain they had it, as they probably won’t be tested. The advice is to stay home, rest and take paracetamol. In 80% of cases, that is the end of it.

But NHS advice is that if the symptoms – mainly the dry cough, temperature and fatigue – have not gone by the end of a week, or they get worse, people should seek medical help.

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‘I was face-to-face with Tony Blair’: Michael Sheen on Murdoch, class and giving away his money

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He renounced acting for activism, then had to start earning again. As he returns to TV, Sheen talks about life in isolation, politics and his curious encounter with the man he has portrayed more than any other

Michael Sheen is at home in south Wales, looking out on his garden. The sun catches the side of his face, lighting up his scraggly hair and beard. “We’re very lucky to have a garden to go out in. I know not everybody does,” he says. In the current climate of famous people churning out endless videos of their isolation struggles from the side of a pool in a mansion, it’s a telling sentiment.

A few years ago, after a successful stage and screen career, the actor, 51, “refocused” his life away from entertainment towards community work and activism, and moved back to Wales from Los Angeles. He had been living there for much of the past two decades, to be near his eldest daughter, Lily (her mother is the actor Kate Beckinsale, and they remain close). “And then when my daughter was 18 and went off to a life of her own, I realised: ‘Oh, I can go home again now.’”

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‘All I think of is my brother’: UK refugee family reunions disrupted by Covid-19

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Home Office urged to ‘act urgently’ to rescue vulnerable minors and reunite them with family while flights still available

After seven months of waiting, Ahmed* had everything ready for his younger brother. Finally, 18-year-old Wahid was due to arrive from the Greek island of Samos under family reunion laws.

But on 19 March, as Covid-19 took hold across Europe, the Greek authorities called to tell him the transfer had been cancelled because of the growing restrictions on flights. Greece had suspended direct flights to the UK but indirect routes are still available.

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UK missed coronavirus contact tracing opportunity, experts say

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Thousands of council workers could have been deployed by the government but were not asked

The government has been accused of missing an opportunity after it failed to deploy 5,000 contact tracing experts employed by councils to help limit the spread of coronavirus.

Environmental health workers in local government have wide experience in contact tracing, a process used to prevent infections spreading and routinely carried out in outbreaks such as of norovirus, salmonella or legionnaires’ disease. But a spokesperson for Public Health England (PHE), which leads on significant outbreaks, said the organisation did not call upon environmental health workers to carry out contact tracing for coronavirus, instead using its own local health protection teams.

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Who runs the country if Boris Johnson is out of action?

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With the PM in hospital for his coronavirus symptoms, we look at who will fill the void at the head of the UK government

In his role as first secretary of state, the prime minister’s de facto deputy, Dominic Raab will be expected to stand in for Boris Johnson if he is unable to work because of coronavirus.

While other ministers, including the health secretary Matt Hancock and the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, have been more visible during the Covid-19 outbreak, that position means he takes up the prime minister’s responsibilities if Johnson were unable to perform them himself.

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Queen praises the people, if not the government, and pulls off a tough gig

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Monarch’s rare non-festive TV address delivered the clear moral leadership that many politicians have failed to provide

Now we know just how serious things are. The UK has just wheeled out its biggest gun. The Queen has only ever given an unscheduled TV address to the nation on four previous occasions, either when the nation or the royal family itself was under threat. And as sure as hell Her Majesty wasn’t about to update us on Prince Andrew handing himself over to the FBI or Harry and Meghan’s ongoing flat hunting nightmare; this could only mean the country was in a coronavirus crisis.

Keeping one hand firmly clasped around her wrist and her body a safe distance from a lone BBC cameraman dressed in a hazmat suit – there’s no shortage of personal protective equipment in Windsor Castle – the Queen, interspersed with footage of NHS workers and the wider general public, spoke to the country from her study. Wisely, she kept it short and sweet. This wasn’t a Christmas message when half the country would be pissed and the other half wouldn’t be listening. Now every sentence would be picked over and every word would count.

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‘We will meet again’: Queen urges Britons to stay strong

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In a special broadcast, the monarch said we will overcome the coronavirus crisis if we ‘remain united and resolute’

The Queen has praised Britain’s “national spirit” in facing the challenge of coronavirus as she evoked wartime memories to reassure those “feeling a painful sense of separation from their loved ones” to take comfort in the fact: “We will meet again.”

In only the fifth special televised broadcast, other than Christmas messages, of her long reign, she said: “While we have faced challenges before, this one is different. This time we join with all nations across the globe in a common endeavour, using the great advances of science and our instinctive compassion to heal.”

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Scottish chief medical officer apologises for ignoring own advice – video

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Scotland’s chief medical officer, Catherine Calderwood, has apologised after she visited her second home in Fife in breach of her own advice to avoid travel. Calderwood was pictured on Saturday with her family taking a walk with their dog in the East Neuk, a picturesque area on the Firth of Forth about 45 miles from her main home in Edinburgh

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Coronavirus live news: Italy reports lowest increase in deaths in two weeks

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Spain records smallest rate of increase in infections; Trump tells Americans to expect ‘a lot of death’; Global deaths approach 65,000

Here are the key developments of the last few hours:

The country’s health minister has announced that Barbados has recorded its first death from the coronavirus.

The victim is said to be an 81-year-old male who had an underlying medical condition and had travelled to the UK.

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Scotland’s chief medical officer steps back from public briefings

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Catherine Calderwood apologises after visiting second home despite issuing advice to stay in

Scotland’s chief medical officer has been forced to step back from public briefings after a furious reaction to news she broke her own rules to twice visit her second home during the coronavirus outbreak.

But despite mounting calls for Catherine Calderwood to resign from her position, Nicola Sturgeon on Sunday insisted that she would continue to play a key role in guiding the Scottish government’s response to the crisis.

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Keir Starmer gives Lisa Nandy foreign brief on new Labour frontbench

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New leader brings in one former rival for key post but no role yet for Rebecca Long-Bailey

Keir Starmer has made Lisa Nandy, one of the candidates he defeated to become Labour leader, his shadow foreign secretary, and Anneliese Dodds, who became an MP only in 2017, his shadow chancellor.

Speaking before the first tranche of top appointments, the new Labour leader promised he would create a shadow cabinet balanced between the various wings of the party.

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Expectant mothers turn to freebirthing after home births cancelled

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Maternity rights groups report surge of interest in unassisted childbirth

When Victoria Gianopoulos-Johnson got a call from her midwife to say her home birth would be cancelled, panic took hold. She says she “lost it” for two days, crying constantly, gripped by uncertainty and then anger.

The 33-year-old from the Highlands, whose baby boy is due at the end of April, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after the birth of her first child and wants to avoid a hospital delivery at all costs. Now she has reached the decision to have a free birth, also known as unassisted childbirth.

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YouTube to suppress content spreading coronavirus 5G conspiracy theory

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Site will reduce recommendations of videos promoting misinformation

YouTube will reduce the amount of content spreading conspiracy theories about links between 5G technology and the coronavirus that it recommends to users and actively remove videos that breach its policies, the company has said.

Content that is simply conspiratorial about 5G mobile communications networks, without mentioning coronavirus, is still allowed on the site. YouTube said those videos may be considered “borderline content” and subjected to suppression, including loss of advertising revenue and being removed from search results on the platform.

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Matt Hancock tells sunbathers: ‘You are putting lives at risk’ – video

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The health secretary has said people should not go outside to sunbathe, even if they practise social distancing. 

Speaking to Sophy Ridge on Sky News, Matt Hancock said: 'We are absolutely clear that you should not leave your home unless it is for one of four reasons: for medical reasons, to buy food, to go to work if you can't work at home, or for exercise. We're crystal in the guidance on what people should do – that guidance is backed up by law. It is not a request, it is a requirement in law'

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We are fighting a 21st-century disease with 20th-century weapons

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Better and faster joined-up data systems are key to coping with and preventing pandemics such as Covid-19 – as well as more everyday diseases

Covid-19 has exposed the deficiencies of national disease detection and prevention systems in many countries of Europe, and in the United States. In the UK, contact tracing was abandoned early due to lack of capacity. Just three weeks ago the government was prepared to let thousands of Scots travel through England to Wales and back for a rugby match, and it has taken a month to develop a strategy for scaled-up testing. After a decade of austerity and decentralisation, we are trying to recover the lost muscle memory of the public health response.

It will not be 100 years until the next pandemic. Population growth, human invasion of animal habitats and the resumption of fast travel between continents will take care of that. More urgently, we need a system in place after the lockdown to prevent a second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic being worse than the first.

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NHS heroes … and targets of racists

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I cheered the role of BAME medics in the battle against Covid-19 – but I didn’t expect the torrent of abuse that followed

“Little China girl.” “Paki doctor.” “Black bitch.” These are just some of the racist slurs directed at NHS nurses and doctors as they work on the frontline. I remember feeling sick when I first read an ITV report detailing these incidents at the end of last year. And it was at the front of my mind as I whooped in support of our carers on Thursday night.

I returned to that report last week after posting what I thought was an uncontroversial tweet, noting the fact that all four doctors who had tragically lost their lives to coronavirus at that point were people of colour, and that it was a reminder of how much the NHS relies on BAME and migrant doctors and nurses. Just over four in 10 NHS medical staff are BAME, and almost one in three doctors are not from the UK. From the first Caribbean nurses who arrived after the second world war, the NHS has been built on the backs of both migrant and British workers; in the late 1960s, half of all doctors below consultant level were non-British.

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Shakespeare’s secret co-writer finally takes a bow … 430 years late

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Thomas Watson recognised by literary scholars as the Bard’s forgotten 16th-century collaborator

He was one of the most celebrated English playwrights of the 16th century, yet none of his plays survived, and today the name of Thomas Watson is virtually unknown. Now the writer, poet and pioneer of the English madrigal – who also saved the life of the playwright Christopher Marlowe in a street brawl – is being seen in a new light.

Watson has been identified as the most likely primary author of Arden of Faversham, the first domestic tragedy in English, which was published anonymously in 1592. Many scholars believe that five of the play’s scenes were co-authored with William Shakespeare.

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