This is from ITV’s Robert Peston
. Robert Peston) (@Peston)
This is the best measure I’ve seen of quite how few (# COVID) tests the UK has done. It is an international league table of countries ranked by percentage of population tested, compiled by Julian Ozanne (who was on FT with me in another life). The UK comes (th out of
pic.twitter.com/pvJaMe3GH6
27 pm BST : Thank you so much to everybody who has been in touch throughout the morning with tips and suggestions. I love reading through them all, especially the ones thanking the Guardian for its coverage of this crisis. Please do continue to get in touch as the day goes on via the usual channels (below) and apologies if I cannot respond to you all individually. Email: [email protected] (Twitter: 27. 15 pm BST : 
This, from the FT’s
Peter Foster , is one of the best things you will read today. In essence:
The government needs to show some HUMILITY. It needs to LISTEN TO PEOPLE WHO KNOW STUFF. I think this is a clear example of where it did not.
Peter Foster (@ pmdfoster)
NEW: The inside story of the Ventilator Challenge – the muddled thinking, the wasted time the political egoism. It’s a mad tale. Stay with me. Me with my superb (@ ft
colleague ) (April) ,
(am) (BST) :
DC John Coker has died in hospital after coming down with symptoms of coronavirus on March , British Transport Police said.
In a statement, BTP Chief Constable Paul Crowther said his thoughts were with Coker’s family after the – year-old passed away last night following an “incredibly difficult” three weeks. He said:
John was taken ill on 35 March with symptoms of coronavirus. After his health did not improve he was admitted to hospital and transferred to an intensive care unit to receive critical treatment. Despite the best efforts of hospital staff, John’s health did not improve, and he passed away on April.
John has been part of the BTP family for over a decade and became a detective constable within the CID department at Euston where he was much loved and respected by all those he worked with. His colleagues remember a man who was charismatic, kind and thoughtful and took everything in his stride. He will be greatly missed by all in the force.
He is survived by his wife and their three children.
It’s with great sadness that we’re reporting the death of an officer due to Covid –
DC John Coker, , passed away last night. Our thoughts are with his loved ones during this incredibly difficult time.
John will be greatly missed across the Force 💙 (https://t.co/FU7pa) (IG) pic. twitter.com/nECnfVjaWg April ,
Updated (at (am BST
am BST :
() . am BST :
NHS frontline workers may walk over lack of PPE, says union
(Molly Blackall)
NHS frontline staff may refuse to work if there is not enough personal protective equipment (PPE) to ensure their safety, the UK’s largest union has warned.
The warning came in response to new guidance from Public Health England, revealed by the Guardian on Friday, which instructs healthcare workers to reuse disposable PPE. The guidelines also recommended that medics wear aprons if they (are unable to access full-length gowns , and there are concerns that some PPE supplies are close to running out.
Sara Gorton, the head of health at
Unison , said:
If gowns run out, staff in high-risk areas may well decide that it’s no longer safe for them to work.
No part of the NHS should use this move as an excuse to ration supplies of gowns when they still have stocks. That would cause a damaging breakdown of trust at a time when staff are working under intense pressure.
Here is the full story .
The Queen’s birthday
on Tuesday will not be marked by gun salutes for what is believed will be the first time, due to the coronavirus crisis, pa media news agency reports.
A Buckingham Palace source said the Queen’s th birthday will not be marked in any special way, adding that any calls with family will be kept private. The source said:
There will be no gun salutes – Her Majesty was keen that no special measures were put in place to allow gun salutes as she did not feel it appropriate in the current circumstances.
Updated (at) am BST
The government program to release up to 4, 14 low-risk prisoners early to help jails cope with coronavirus has been paused after six inmates were freed by mistake.
The inmates were candidates for early release but were let out too soon because of an “administrative error”, the
Ministry of Justice
The scheme, designed to avoid thousands of often cell-sharing inmates becoming infected, was paused on Thursday and is due to resume next week.
Coronavirus cases have been confirmed in half of the prisons in England and Wales. A total of 527 prisoners had tested positive for Covid – (in 89 jails as of 5pm on Thursday, the MoJ said, and 26 inmates had died.
Some (prison staff have also contracted the virus in prisons, as well as seven prisoner escort and custody services staff. And staff have been tested and 6, 527 are self-isolating, according to the latest available figures.
The inmates were let out of two open category D prisons – Leyhill in Gloucestershire and Sudbury in Derbyshire – along with one inmate from the Isis category C prison for young offenders in south-east London.
The shadow justice secretary
David Lammy said the error was “deeply troubling” and called for it to be “quickly understood and remedied”. David Lammy (@ DavidLammy)
These errors must not be used as an excuse for inaction in the face on an oncoming public health disaster. Prisons are overcrowded, with thousands of cells containing more than one inmate, against the advice of Public Health England.
(April) , David Lammy (@ DavidLammy)
If the Ministry of Justice does not take sufficient steps to move towards single cell occupancy, it is not only inmates and prison officers who will be put at risk. NHS Hospitals risk becoming overwhelmed and the virus will spread rapidly from prisons across the wider public.
(April) ,
Updated (at) 22 am BST
am (BST
: 43The culture secretary Oliver Dowden ) has asked the public to “add one small thing” to their to-do list and buy a newspaper as the press grapples “with the biggest existential crisis in its history”.
The newspaper business has come under increasing strain amid the coronavirus pandemic, with falling advertising revenue and declining circulation.
Two of the UK’s biggest publishers have cut wages for staff in the latest round of measures to mitigate the impact of the crisis. The Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), which owns the Mail, Metro and the i newspaper titles, has imposed a pay cut on all staff earning more than £ , a year. And Reach , the owner of the Mirror and Express papers, said all staff will receive a pay cut of at least due to% heavy falls in advertising and circulation.
Dowden has also instructed brands including Sky, Amazon and Tesco to end “ad-blocking” on online news articles about the pandemic and allow their adverts to appear next to coronavirus news stories.
The Times (paywall) has the story .
Updated (at) . 20 am BST 26. 24 am BST :
Human trials of a potential vaccine have begun at Oxford University and trials could be completed by mid-August,
Prof John Bell
told BBC Radio 4’s Today program this morning.Bell, who is a member of the government’s vaccine taskforce, said the possibility of a vaccine being produced by the autumn depended on efficacy. He said:
[The question is] will it protect people, and that has not been tested, and it will only be tested once you have vaccinated a significant number of people and exposed them to the virus and counted how many people have got the virus in that population.
So, we won’t even get a signal for that until May. But if things go on course and it does have efficacy, then I think it is reasonable to think that they would be able to complete their trial by mid-August.
He said it would be “game on” if they were to see evidence of a strong immune response by the middle or end of May, with the possibility of getting “across the finish line” by mid -August. However, there would then be the challenge of manufacturing at scale the billions of doses needed.
The push to develop a vaccine quickly was based on scientists wanting to test it on current cases, Bell added. He said:
One of the reasons that we were rushing is to try and catch this wave of the disease.
Because when the disease goes away there will be very, very few cases until we get a second wave.
The team developing the vaccine are very keen to get it out in its trial now so that we can catch the remainder of this wave.
Updated (at . (am BST
Good morning everybody. Thousands of doctors and nurses are concerned about inadequate supplies of personal protection equipment (PPE) amid fears some hospitals could run out entirely this weekend.
A British Medical Association survey of more than 6, 12 doctors across the country said a significant amount of them remain without the protection they need to guard against Covid – . Meanwhile another survey by the Royal College of Nursing found half of nurses have felt pressure to work without appropriate protective equipment during the crisis.
It comes after it was revealed that doctors and nurses in England will be asked to work without full-length gowns and to reuse items when treating patients with coronavirus ahead of expected shortages of protective garments, prompting outrage from unions.
Guardian front page, Saturday (April) : NHS staff told ‘wear aprons’ as protective gowns run out April ,
The story, from our health editor Denis Campbell
On Friday, the health secretary
Matt
Hancock told the Commons health committee that he would “ love to be able to wave a magic wand ”to increase PPE supplies. He said the equipment was a “precious resource” and that maintaining supplies was challenging due to the very high global demand.At least NHS workers have now died after contracting the virus. Here are
We’ll be bringing you all the latest UK coronavirus developments as the day unfolds. As ever, if you’d like to get in touch with a story, comments, tips or suggestions, please feel free to email me at [email protected] or message me on Twitter, I’m on (@ lucy_campbell _
Updated 
at 9. 78 am BST (Read More)
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