Britain today announced 412 more Covid-19 deaths, taking the official number of victims to 37,460 – as NHS data showed more than half of trusts haven’t recorded a fatality in the last 48 hours.
Department of Health figures show the daily number of fatalities is 13.5 per cent higher than the figure announced last Wednesday (363) – and is three times higher than yesterday’s (134).
Officials warned the figure yesterday was much lower than usual because of a recording delay over the weekend and bank holiday, which could be behind the spike in deaths recorded today.
Scientists who analysed the statistics revealed 12 NHS hospital trusts in England (9.2 per cent) have recorded no coronavirus deaths in the past week, as well as 78 (59.5 per cent) who have registered none in the past 48 hours.
In other developments to the coronavirus crisis in Britain today:
- Two households could be allowed to meet up from next week under Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plans for easing lockdown, it was revealed;
- McDonald’s announced nearly 1,000 more restaurants will reopen for drive-thrus or deliveries from next week – with a £25 cap on orders;
- British health officials have told companies offering Covid-19 antibody tests to stop processing finger-prick blood samples from patients in the UK;
- Forty per cent of staff at a hospital in Weston-super-Mare closed to new admissions because of a spike in Covid-19 patients have symptoms of the infection.
Professor Carl Heneghan and Dr Jason Oke, from the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University, said: ‘Today, for the first time over half of acute NHS Trusts reported no deaths in the last 48 hours.’
And they added that 12 trusts had registered no Covid-19 deaths in the past week.
These included Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust, Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust, Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust, Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust, Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, The Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the Weston Area Health NHS Trust.
NHS England today recorded 183 Covid-19 fatalities in hospitals, while Scotland registered 13 deaths, Wales 11 and Northern Ireland two from all locations, including care homes.
Two households could be allowed to meet up from next week, under Boris Johnson’s plans for easing lockdown – but ministers are said to have parked proposals for people to be able to mix freely in social ‘bubbles’.
Current lockdown rules dictate that you can meet up with one other person from outside your household outdoors as long as you remain two metres apart.
The new plan would allow two households to link up although it is unclear whether everyone in each household would be allowed to attend. This would potentially allow people to see their parents at the same time, for example, something which the existing restrictions prohibit.
It could see people given the green light to invite their partnered household to visit them in a private garden.
However, when plan was discussed at a meeting of the Cabinet on Monday this week, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab reportedly expressed concerns that the two households plan could become seen as a ‘barbecue clause’.
Social bubbles of up to ten people was first laid out in the government’s 50-page roadmap out of lockdown, published on 11 May, and gave hope that people could once again see extended family or friends all together.
The ‘bubble’ plan was originally due to be included in the first wave of lockdown easing announced by the PM but it was held back after scientists said the potential impact needed to be better understood.
New expert modelling produced by the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) is believed to have shown that allowing households to merge in a bubble could lead to a fresh outbreak and is not possible at the moment.
Ministers are now pursuing a more targeted approach which they hope will help people who have been left isolated during the crisis.
The scheme, which could be rolled out from June 1 at the start of Mr Johnson‘s second phase of easing, could force households to nominate the friends or family they want to be allowed to see.
A potential requirement for households to nominate the other household they want to be linked to could cause major headaches because it could force parents to choose which of their adult children they meet up with.
It is also unclear how such a scheme could work in house share situations where people may have different groups of friends.
Nicola Sturgeon has already said that in Scotland two households are set to be allowed to mix in ‘small numbers, including in gardens’ with social distancing in force.
There is likely to be new guidance issued setting out how guests should walk through the house if that is the only route to the garden, too.
Coronavirus is believed to spread more easily indoors than outdoors and there are concerns that the garden provision could be abused, with people ending up moving inside during a gathering.
The PM’s spokesman said ‘work is ongoing’ on plans to increase socialising, and that ministers recognised that ‘sacrifices’ were being made.
‘We are of course aware that not everybody has access to a garden,’ they added.
Meanwhile experts have warned that the Government’s contact tracing operation must be in place before any further easing of lockdown measures takes place.
It is now thought the initiative will go live tomorrow, allowing the PM to go ahead with lockdown changes like the phased reopening of primary schools and non-essential shops.
The contact tracing scheme will see people who have come into contact with someone for more than 15 minutes who has subsequently tested positive for the disease being tracked down and told to self-isolate for 14 days.
It is hoped this would then stop a second wave by breaking the chain of transmission early.
Starting tomorrow, everyone who displays coronavirus symptoms will be asked to report themselves to ‘test and trace’ officials either online or through a new helpline.
Their job will be to find, test and isolate these people and contact anyone who they have had close interactions with. Family members, flatmates, partners and close contacts will be told to go into isolation for a fortnight even if they have no symptoms.
Anyone told to self quarantine will be entitled to statutory sick pay, or if they are self-employed they will have access to Government grants.
Ministers have already stressed that the contact tracing programme (TTI – for test, trace and isolate) will only work if people told to isolate actually do it.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the daily Downing Street press conference last night that people have a ‘civic duty’ to remove themselves from society if they are asked to do so by the programme.
‘People are doing this, they are not doing it for me, people are doing this for their loved ones,’ he said.
‘If you are phoned up and asked to self-isolate even if you are perfectly healthy because you have been in close contact with somebody who has tested positive, it is your civic duty to then self-isolate for yourself, for your community, for your family.
‘We all need to come together to do this and that will then in turn allow us to lift some of the measures that currently are blanket measures across the whole of society and have to be blanket measures until we have the NHS test and trace system up and running and in place.’
It comes as a study by The Royal Society warned the Government’s contact tracing programme will only bring down infections by a mere 5 per cent.
Ministers are believed to be considering plans which would allow two households to meet up outdoors. Pictured are people enjoying the sunshine in east London on May 26
Experts have warned that the Government’s contact tracing operation must be in place before any further easing of lockdown measures takes place. Pictured: Customers at Portobello Road Market today
There are fears the South West is already experiencing some kind of second wave after an outbreak of coronavirus cases has forced a hospital in Weston-super-Mare (pictured, the town’s beach) to shut
It is thought the contact tracing initiative will start from tomorrow, with details being announced later today
World-leading experts from the prestigious scientific academy warned the scheme will only have a ‘modest’ effect on the UK’s crisis because testing times were still too slow and there was a good chance many Britons do not adhere to self-isolation rules. The system will only work if the overwhelming majority of Britons comply, the team said.
They modelled what effect contact tracing would have on Britain’ epidemic and found that, even if compliance is 80 per cent and the Government speeds up its testing, the number of new cases will only drop by up to 15 per cent.
The report, by the Data Evaluation and Learning for Viral Epidemics (DELVE) group, made up of 14 leading experts who give input to the Government, has been handed to SAGE scientists ahead of the rollout of the contact tracing programme tomorrow.
In it, Royal Society academics urge ministers to focus their efforts on bringing down the average time it takes to produce a COVID-19 test result. Currently, swabs can take up to five days to be carried out, posted to a laboratory and analysed.
If this can be slashed to three days, then the TTI programme could see infections fall by as much as 15 per cent, DELVE says.
Nobel Prize laureate Venki Ramakrishnan, chair of the DELVE committee, said the UK’s scheme should by no means ‘be considered as a silver bullet’.
The professor of structural biology said TTI has the potential to ‘play an important part in bringing this pandemic under control’ but social distancing and stringent hand-washing protocol would be just as important.
Professor Anne Johnson, an epidemiologist at University College London and a member of the DELVE committee, said: ‘One of the keys to success of any potential TTI programme will be ensuring that it is carried out in an integrated way – joining up Public Health England, NHSX, primary and community care and the various other strands required to deliver a truly national effort.
‘Fast testing also allows those who are not infected, and their families, to carry on with their lives. There are many potential pitfalls for such a system and it is important that all of those are carefully considered in introducing such a complex undertaking.’
The TTI programme will be supported by the new NHSX app, which uses Bluetooth technology to alert people when they’ve been close to a COVID-19 patient.
After some technical problems and concerns about data privacy, officials say the app is now on course for a national rollout within weeks, having passed a trial on the Isle of Wight.
Other critical unanswered questions about TTI – such as how self-isolation will be enforced – will be announced at Downing Street’s press conference tonight.
There are fears the South West is already experiencing some kind of second wave after an outbreak of coronavirus cases has forced a hospital in Weston-super-Mare to shut.
Weston General Hospital has been closed to all new admissions, including A&E patients, since Monday morning because of a spike in Covid-19 patients.
It has been claimed a memo leaked to local newspaper Somerset Live revealed 40 per cent of workers at the hospital, which has around 2,000 staff, have come down with the infection. Some of them did not show symptoms.
The trust that runs the hospital has yet to deny the claims after being contacted by MailOnline, and admitted last night there is an ’emerging picture’ of staff with no symptoms testing positive for Covid-19.
Silent carriers of the virus, who don’t show symptoms, can unknowingly spread the virus to other people, with scientists previously finding up to half of cases are caused by asymptomatic spread.
The contributions of different intervention strategies in preventing Covid-19 infections: S1 to S5 are increasingly stringent measures, with S1 involving no restrictions on social interaction, only requiring households of symptomatic individuals to quarantine. S5 reflects the current situation
The impact of varying delays in testing cases and tracing close contacts (left) on the reproduction ‘R’ value . The impact of varying compliance with steps in the TTI system (right)
Angry residents say ‘it’s not rocket science’ – there has been an outbreak in Weston-super-Mare because crowds are unable to stay socially distanced at the beach. Pictured: The promenade on May 25
The message reportedly sent to NHS staff in the South West region on Sunday, May 24, also said more than 64 patients have tested positive in the hospital, up from 30 patients at the beginning of last week.
The cause of the outbreak has been shrouded in mystery, with locals blaming tourists crowding the beaches over the past two weeks.
Trust medical director Dr William Oldfield said they are in the process of testing all staff in clinical areas at the hospital who may have had some patient contact.
‘There is an emerging picture of asymptomatic staff testing positive for the virus,’ he said.
Dr Oldfield said members of staff who have tested positive have self-isolated in line with national guidance and there are ‘appropriate levels’ of personal protective equipment (PPE) available.
Local MP, John Penrose, said the hospital was having a ‘deep clean’ after speaking to health chiefs.
He told MailOnline: ‘As I hope everyone would expect, I’ve been meeting local health chiefs to get to the bottom of this. They say the hospital isn’t full and there are enough spare beds, but they’re worried about cross-infecting non-covid patients, so they want to stop new arrivals until they’ve deep-cleaned it and checked all the staff too.
‘They’re running tests which they hope will reveal the truth of it, so we should know more once the results come in.’
Mr Penrose said there was ‘no evidence to show if the outbreak is connected to visitors on the seafront’, after day-trippers were blamed for a surge in cases.
But people who live in Weston-super-Mare said it was clear tourists who flocked to beaches after the lockdown was loosened were contributing to spread of the virus.
The beaches in Somerset and elsewhere have been packed with tourists since Prime Minister Boris Johnson allowed people in England to travel as far as they like to enjoy unlimited exercise and sunbathing.
The South West region has so far experienced the fewest cases and deaths from COVID-19 in England.
University Hospitals Bristol and Weston trust (UHBW), which has confirmed 118 coronavirus deaths across its two hospitals. But it is unclear how many of those happened at Weston General and its other hospital, Bristol Royal Infirmary (BRI).