This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/may/14/uk-coronavirus-live-antibody-test-approved-for-use-latest-updates

The article has changed 22 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 15 Version 16
UK coronavirus live: UK coronavirus economic rescue package 'moderate' by G7 standards, says IFS UK coronavirus live: Grant Shapps holds daily press briefing; quarter of UK hospital victims were diabetic
(about 1 hour later)
Official UK death toll rises by 428 to 33,614 in last 24 hours; cost of furlough scheme estimated to reach £83bn by October; health minister Edward Argar admits more testing capacity needed for care homes Official UK death toll rises by 428 to 33,614; cost of furlough scheme estimated to reach £83bn by October; transport secretary announces £1.7bn fund to improve transport infrastructure
Armed police were scrambled to Cardiff park after a member of the public reported spotting a man with a sword. Q: Will holidays outside, like camping and caravanning, carry less risk than staying in a hotel? Will they reopen sooner?
Shapps says outdoors is a lesser risk than indoors.
Van-Tam says outdoor environments are less risky.
But a tent is a small, enclosed space with little ventilation. The same applies to a caravan. So this will take careful thought, he says.
Shapps says more than half of people on the Isle of Wight have downloaded the contact tracing app. He says people coming into the UK will also be asked to download it.
Q: I understand you are close to a rescue deal for Transport for London. But they need long-term help, if social distancing stays for years. Are you willing to help them long term?
Shapps says the government has bailed out rail companies. He says he is “optimistic” of having a solution with TfL.
As for what would happen if this went on longer, he says they do not know.
He says he is “confident” that the buses and trains in London will continue to run. He hopes the mayor will be able to put on more services.
Q: Would you expect TfL to have to put up fares?
Shapps says it would be unfair if people outside the system were expected to lose out. He says you need to find the right balance.
Q: Does it make sense to exclude France from quarantine measures?
Van-Tam says discussions are still ongoing about a possible exemption for France.
He says quarantine makes most sense when there is a low rate of inflation in the receiving country, and a high rate in the sending country.
Q: Does the government know how many urgent operations were cancelled in March? Data was meant to be released today, but it was held back.
Shapps says he does not know. He says he thinks the data was not released today because of a prioritisation issue, but he says he will try to ensure that this information is released.
Q: Is the government doing an exclusive deal with Roche to get its tests?
Shapps says they want to get as many tests as possible.
Van-Tam says, as a doctor, he is not privy to those commercial negotiations.
Q: The PM described antibody tests as game changing. Do you still see them like that? If so, when will people see the difference?
Shapps says the antibody test being approved is a very exciting development.
Van-Tam says he thinks the test will be rolled out as soon as is practical.
He says they needed a test that was highly specific; ie, extremely unlikely to give a false positive. Telling people they had antibodies when they didn’t would have been very undesirable, he says.
He says people have only been studying this virus for five months. In most cases there is an antibody response after infection.
But it is going to take time to find out whether the antibodies protect against infection, he says. Hopefully they will.
And if people are protected, they need to find out how long that protection lasts. He says you can only find this out over time.
Q: There is growing anger in the care sector about the way they feel their needs are being ignored. When will this change?
Shapps says care homes are specialists in infection control. In the majority of care homes coronavirus has not been reported.
In other European countries more than half of deaths have been in care homes. That has not been the case in this country, he says.
Q: In Scotland care home patients who have tested positive will need two negative tests before being allowed back. Will that apply in England?
Shapps says that is one for the medical experts.
Van-Tam says there is an enormous effort to increase the number of tests in care homes. Patients are tested before being discharged to care homes.
Q: Will the Premier League be able to return to competitive playing by 12 June?
Van-Tam says the overall approach has been tentative, measured, slow and step-wise. That applies to the approach in football, and other elite sports.
The first step is to return to safe training, while observing social distancing. Plans for that are underway. They will have to see how that goes before they can return to competitive matches.
Shapps reads out a question from another member of the public. When will elective surgery recommence?
Shapps says the health secretary will say something about this soon.
Van-Tam says the NHS wants to resume normal services as soon as is humanly possible. But this must be done in a safe way.
Shapps is now taking questions.
The first comes from a woman whose son is due to start his final year at university in the autumn. What is the government’s plan for students?
Shapps says he also has a child at university. He says Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, is looking at this and will make further announcements. Shapps says he would like to hear the answer too.
Van-Tam is now presenting the data slides.
He starts with new data about the extent of social distancing taking place. (The figures come from this ONS report.)
Here is the chart for testing and new cases. Van-Tam says it shows new cases falling.
Here are the figures for hospital admissions, and critical care bed use by coronavirus patients. There has been a long, steady decline, he says.
Shapps says “bureaucratic bindweed” makes British infrastructure some of the most expensive in the world.
But the government wants to revive infrastructure, he says.
Shapps says that while the country has been in lockdown, transport repairs and upgrades have been carried out.
There were 419 Network Rail projects over Easter, he says, and 1,000 upgrades through the bank holiday weekend.
In the north, rail improvements worth £96m were carried out in England.
Highways England has delivered upgrades worth £200m, and Network Rail upgrades with £550m, he says.
He says he can announced a £2bn transport package, including £1.7bn for local roads.
Shapps says the UK has been in lockdown for two months.
Transport has a critical role to play as the country moves to recovery, he says.
He says that in order to reduce crowding he has set out a £2bn programme to put cycling and walking at the heart of transport.
Three pieces of guidance have been produced: advice for councils on encouraging cycling; advice for operators; and advice for passengers.
He says if people cannot walk or cycle, and have access to a car, they should use it. This is to stop the public transport system getting crowded.
Shapps says he is going to talk about how the government has been using the lockdown to carry out infrastructure repairs.
But first he shows the usual slides setting out the government’s strategy.
Shapps starts by reading out the daily testing and death figures.
He says 126,064 tests were carried out yesterday. That is a record, he says.
Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, is taking the UK government’s daily press conference. He is with Prof Jonathan Van-Tam, the deputy chief medical officer for England.
Reacting to new data that shows a quarter of people who died in English hospitals from coronavirus had diabetes, Bridget Turner, director of policy at Diabetes UK, said:
Armed police were scrambled to a Cardiff park after a member of the public reported spotting a man with a sword.
It turned out that he was a local man out on his permitted lockdown exercise who had simply chosen to wear a fancy dress knight’s outfit – complete with a toy sword.It turned out that he was a local man out on his permitted lockdown exercise who had simply chosen to wear a fancy dress knight’s outfit – complete with a toy sword.
A spokeswoman for South Wales police later said:A spokeswoman for South Wales police later said:
Here is a question from below the line where I’ve got an answer to hand.Here is a question from below the line where I’ve got an answer to hand.
This chart is probably quite a useful way of answering the question. It shows coronavirus hospital deaths in England, by day of death. It is from this analysis by the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford.This chart is probably quite a useful way of answering the question. It shows coronavirus hospital deaths in England, by day of death. It is from this analysis by the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford.
A quarter of Covid-19 patients who have died in hospitals in England had diabetes, according to figures released by NHS England.
Data published for the first time breaks down deaths from coronavirus by pre-existing conditions.
Of the 22,332 patients who died since 31 March, when pre-existing conditions began to be reported, 5,873 (26%) had diabetes, while 4,048 (18%) had dementia. Some 3,254 (15%) were reported to have chronic pulmonary disease, while 1,549 patients had asthma.
NHS England said the accuracy of the data was reliant on the availability and transfer of information by healthcare providers, and patients may have had more than one pre-existing condition.
Nadine Dorries, a health minister, and two other Conservative MPs, Lucy Allan and Maria Caulfield, have been reprimanded by the party whips for sharing a tweet that contained a false smear about Sir Keir Starmer. (See 11.49am.) A Downing Street spokesman said:
On Tuesday, in an interview with the BBC to mark the extension of the furlough scheme until the end of October, Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, said:
This afternoon the Institute of Fiscal Studies has published an analysis suggesting that this is not true. It says most other G7 countries are spending more on their coronavirus rescue packages for the economy. Here is the chart, showing spending on coronavirus measures as a proportion of national income.
There are two figures for the UK, based on two different estimates of what the overall cost will be. The IFS says the higher, OBR figure for the UK does not take account of the extension of the furlough scheme beyond July that was announced on Tuesday. This spending could take the UK higher up the league table, although it is hard to see it catching the US or Japan.
The IFS says:
Police in Greater Manchester have recorded more than 170 assaults on emergency service workers since the lockdown was introduced on 23 March, new figures show.
The force said emergency service workers had been physically assaulted, spat at and coughed on while carrying out their duties over the past seven weeks.Footage released by Greater Manchester police shows a man deliberately coughing in an officer’s face while he was being handcuffed. He was subsequently jailed for 20 weeks after pleading guilty to two counts of assault and one count of assaulting an emergency worker.
GMP’s assistant chief constable Chris Sykes said:
It’s always worth reminding oneself that all across the country local people are coming together to do amazing things in their communities.
Today the volunteers at Branchton Community Centre, Greenock, are getting ready to deliver their 10,000th hot meal to Inverclyde residents in need. The project is powered by 25 food preppers, cooks, packers and delivery drivers, including the local MP Ronnie Cowan.
Organiser Willie Wilson says that he started out aiming for 200 meals a day, but this has now risen to 360, with referrals from agencies or word of mouth, and deliveries from Wemyss Bay to Port Glasgow.
Today’s meal is chicken soup and curry, with a cake for any children in the household. The 10,000th recipient is getting a presentation of flower and chocolates when the delivery vans go out later this afternoon.
NHS England has reported that there have been another 207 coronavirus hospital deaths in England, taking the total to 24,159. It says the people who died were aged between 33 and 100 years old. All but six of the patients had underlying health conditions, it says.
The full details are here.
Newnight’s Lewis Goodall has more on Sir Mark Sedwill’s coronavirus illness that we were never told about. (See 2.07pm.)
New figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimate that an average of 0.27% of the population (148,000 people) had Covid-19 at any given time between 27 April and 10 May 2020.