UK coronavirus live: Britain comes together to clap for carers on Covid frontline - as it happened

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The prime minister, who is expected to announce the next phase of easing some lockdown measures on Sunday, stood outside Number Ten to take part in the applause.

Shadow chancellor Annaliese Dodds tweets her thanks.

RAF Cosford in Shropshire has tweeted its thanks to NHS and key workers.

https://twitter.com/RAF_Cosford/status/1258472016010756097

Officers from Leicester City Police show their appreciation.

Astronaut Tim Peake has tweeted this tribute.

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon took part in the weekly applause outside her front door.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer on the seventh week of Clap for Our Carers.

Warwickshire Police with some striking artwork to pay homage to NHS and key workers.

The AA building in Newcastle is turned blue.

Police forces across the country have paid tribute to NHS and key workers.

Staff and commuters at Euston station in London stop in their tracks to take part in the applause.

Birmingham Children’s Hospital with a shout out to those who participated in the nationwide applause.

The National Trust tweets a floral tribute.

A tweet from Pentonville Prison in north London.

The Premier League says thank you to NHS workers, social care workers and health workers across the world.

The ritual applause, banging of kitchen utensils and the occasional firework is now in its seventh week as part of the Clap for Carers initiative.

Thousands of people across the UK are preparing to unite again at 8pm to applaud NHS and key workers in the fight against coronavirus.

Downing Street said the prime minister emphasised his commitment to collaborative working with the devolved governments in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Stormont and also insisted he had no intention of risking a fresh upsurge in Covid-19 infections by relaxing the lockdown too far or too soon.

However, No 10 confirmed Boris Johnson was happy for the lockdown to be relaxed at different paces in different parts of the UK, after Nicola Sturgeon and the Welsh government said separately they would ease the lockdown at the best pace for their nations. A spokeswoman said:

He reiterated his commitment to continuing our UK-wide approach to tackling coronavirus, even if different parts of the UK begin to move at slightly different speeds. Those decisions will be made based on the science for each nation.

They all agreed that continued engagement between our administrations is vital and to remain in close contact in the days and weeks ahead.

Q: Are you considering testing relatives who want to visit someone in a care home?

Raab says there is no silver bullet here.

The government is confident it now has enough information, he says.

And that’s it. The press conference is over, more quickly than usual.

Diamond says all the data he has seen shows the importance of social distancing. He says he thinks it will be essential to maintain that in coming weeks.

Q: What is the latest thinking on the impact of summer weather on coronavirus?

Harries says we are seeing epidemics in warm and cold climates. So there probably is not much effect, she says.

Q: People who download the contract-tracing app could be told they have to go into quarantine over and over again. Will they get sick pay?

(ITV’s Robert Peston wrote about this in a blog here.)

Raab says the app should be liberating for people.

Raab says the biggest challenge with care homes is the ebb and flow of people out of them. But at least that is something that can be controlled, he says.

Q: Are you going to introduce temperature testing?

Harries says temperature testing in places like a restaurant may serve a reassurance value. But she says if the incubation period could be up to 14 days, and if the thermometer is not reliable, this may be of limited value.

She says about a third of people with coronavirus do not have a temperature when the illness first takes effect.

Q: Prof Edmunds told the science committee earlier there could be 20,000 new cases a day. What is your estimate?

Diamond says the UK has some very good experts like Edmunds. He says better data is going to become available. But he says he is “very happy” with the numbers given by Edmunds.

Q: Are you worried about R going up? (See 3.15pm.)

Diamond says Edmunds was probably right to say R has gone up. That is because of the epidemic in care homes.

But R is only relevant if you consider prevalence too.

He repeats the point he made to the science committee earlier. (See 3.23pm.)

Q: Will you take steps to protect BAME workers in frontline jobs?

Raab says the government is looking very carefully at why BAME people are more at risk. When it gets those findings, it will consider what action to take.

The government dashboard with the daily death figures has now just been updated with today’s figures.

Raab says the CQC figures show the number of deaths in care homes going down.

But there is still a lot of work to do on this, he says.

Q: Can you confirm you are renewing the lockdown restrictions. They have to be reviewed today. And Nicola Sturgeon says it could be catastrophic moving from the ‘stay home’ message. Is that safe?

Raab says there is no change today in the rules.

But the PM will set out a roadmap on Sunday.

He says the PM spoke to Sturgeon today, and the PM set out his determination to maintain a four-nations approach, even if some countries move forward at slightly different speeds.

Q: How does R vary regionally?

Diamond says it varies a bit, and would be lowest in London.

Raab confirms that the PM will set out a “roadmap” on Sunday for moving forward, with conditions for reaching each milestone.

Jeremy Hunt, who was the health secretary at the time that Exercise Cygnus was carried out and the report completed, has previously said he believed the report should be published.

He told the Guardian that he had agreed with its recommendations and had fought within the government for an expansion of both the NHS and social care budgets but was not successful in securing extra money for the care sector. He said:

All the recommendations made by officials to ministers were approved, largely around the need to prepare emergency legislation which we have now put into law.

I very much agreed (then and now) with the need to expand the capacity of both the NHS and social care system, which is why I fought for big increases in both their budgets although in office was only able to secure the first part of that, which was the additional £20bn annual increase for the NHS.

The royal family have praised “all of the journalists and broadcasters working to keep us informed” during the coronavirus crisis.

The message closely follows an appeal from the communities secretary, Robert Jenrick, on Wednesday calling on the public to buy a newspaper to support the media.

At the daily press briefing, Jenrick said much of the frontline effort in the fight against coronavirus “is being coordinated in our own communities”, adding:

A free country needs a free press and the national, the regional and the local newspapers of our country are under significant financial pressure.

It sounds as if opposition party leaders at Westminster got exactly the same line from the PM as the cabinet (see 1.36pm) when he spoke to them at lunchtime. Commenting on the talks, a No 10 spokesman said:

The prime minister … told them the government would approach the next phase with ‘maximum caution’ and his priority above all else would be to save lives.

He committed to speaking to them again soon and to make a statement to the House of Commons on Monday.

Boris Johnson has posted this on Twitter. It’s a direct quote from the speech he gave outside No 10 on Monday last week (the El Alamein one).

It will be seen as yet more evidence that Downing Street is trying to contain expectations for next week. (See 1.36pm.)

Peter MacMahon, from ITV Border, thinks the PM may also be seeking to reduce tensions with the Scottish government.

The number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 in jails in England and Wales continues to rise slowly, the latest update from the Ministry of Justice shows, as the first official report on post-lockdown prison life was published.

As of 5pm on Wednesday there were 390 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in prisoners across 74 prisons, a 1% rise in 24 hours, while the number of infected prison staff rose 3% to 447 workers in the same period.

At least 19 prisoners and six prison staff have contracted Covid-19 and died. There are 80,800 prisoners in England and Wales across 117 prisons, and around 33,000 prison staff in public-sector prisons.

Prisons are currently operating on a restricted regime. HM Inspectorate of Prisons published its first scrutiny report on Thursday on the function of prisons during the crisis, looking at three young offender institutions (YOI).

The report was broadly positive but found inconsistencies in the restrictive regime across the jails, with one of the YOIs – Cookham Wood in Kent – releasing teenage inmates from cells for just 40 minutes a day.

A charity for people with learning and cognitive disabilities such as autism has released a “statement of rights” for people to show police on their mobile phones if they are questioned for potentially breaching the lockdown.

Enable Scotland said the statement, which has been designed in consultation with Police Scotland to be downloaded on to phones, followed complaints that many people with autism and learning disabilities found the rules very stressful.

Guidance in Scotland states people should leave home only for exercise, once a day and for an hour, and should stay close to home. For some people those restrictions have caused distress and ill-health, Enable Scotland said, because leaving home several times a day is part of their normal routines and coping strategies.

It said these people feared being stopped and challenged by the police. The latest Police Scotland data showed that by 24 April the force had stopped nearly 8,000 people for breaching the lockdown.

Nicole Forsyth, Enable Scotland’s delivery manager, said:

It became clear from our regular phone calls and Zoom catchups with members that a major source of anxiety for many of them is the fear of being challenged by police officers when out exercising.

So our members suggested this handy smartphone image, and it means our members will feel more secure and comfortable about going outside to exercise – which not only helps them stay healthy physically, but is also really important for their mental health at what is an especially challenging time for everyone.

Essential personal protective equipment worth £166,000 has been stolen from a warehouse in Greater Manchester, police have said.

Officers were called to the Trafalgar business park in Salford following reports that a large amount of PPE had been taken.

Last month Greater Manchester police launched an investigation after a masked thief ransacked an NHS office and stole PPE as well as number of laptops and petty cash.

The raid took place at the offices of the Care Homes Medical Practice in Windsor Street, Salford, which cares for patients living in nursing and residential homes.

The British public has already started to venture out and about more, despite lockdown measures not yet being relaxed, researchers have found.

The analysis, by researchers at University College London, is based on data from the company Huq Industries, which collected anonymised data via an app on where people are using their phones, giving a sense of how many people are passing through an area across a given hour. This was summed together to gauge activity levels across a day and then a week.

Overall, looking across Greater London, Liverpool, Greater Manchester, Greater Glasgow, south Hampshire and the West Midlands, the team found activity levels were 50% lower on average between 13-19 April compared with levels during 9-15 March, shortly before strong physical distancing began. However, by early May levels had risen, and they are now back at 60% of the level before 16 March.

When the team looked at areas with different characteristics, for example zones known to be financial hubs or shopping areas, they further found that activity levels were higher in areas linked to jobs such as construction and domestic work than those associated with activities including tourism or finance. The team said this could shed light on which jobs can be done from home and which cannot.

Prof James Cheshire, a co-author of the study and deputy director of the ESRC Consumer Data Research Centre, said:

Our analysis suggests that people have been adhering to the lockdown rules and taking them very seriously over the first month or so. But by early May we’ve started to see a shift, with more activity in recent days. It may be that people have started to increase their movements in anticipation of the government announcement expected this weekend for easing lockdown.

Labour has called on Jeremy Hunt, the former health secretary, and other ministers and former ministers to explain “what they knew and why they didn’t fix the problems that were so clearly identified” in a secret government report from 2017 that warned about problems with the UK’s flu pandemic preparedness.

Liz Kendall, the shadow care minister, highlighted the warning in the Exercise Cygnus report, revealed today by the Guardian, about care homes’ lack of readiness to accept large numbers of patients discharged from hospital. She said the plan to protect the NHS relied on removing thousands of people from hospitals into care homes and without mandatory testing, and “care homes have struggled to cope mainly because they can’t effectively isolate them”.

Kendall said:

[The report] specifically highlighted problems with social care, the lack of planning and the inability of social care to cope with huge numbers of people being discharged from hospital. There was a lack of a plan and a lack of ability to cope. Ministers have to say what they knew and why they didn’t fix these problems that were so clearly identified and why the front line care providers weren’t involved [in planning].

Covid-19 has spread rapidly in care homes, killing 6,686 people up to 1 May in England and Wales, and deaths in care homes now account for a third of all virus fatalities.

Newsnight’s James Clayton has a useful Twitter thread on why the government is finding it so hard to meet the daily testing figure it claimed to meet at the end of last week. It starts here:

Sir Ian Diamond, the UK’s national statistician, is also giving evidence to the Commons science committee. Referring to what Prof John Edmunds said about the R number (see 3.15pm), Diamond said it was important to understand that the R number on its own was not all that matters. Prevalence mattered too, he said. He explained:

An R of 1 effectively means you are flat-lining. So you can imagine a situation where the prevalence was, shall we say, 0.401 of the population - ie, a very, very tiny prevalence - but if it were staying there over time, then R would be 1. That’s actually not a bad place to be in ...

R is incredibly important. But you also need to see it in context.

Prof John Edmunds, who is head of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, has just started giving evidence to the Commons science committee. He is a member of Sage, the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, and his team has provided some of the modelling considered by Sage as it advises the government.

Asked for his current estimate of R, the reproduction number (the rate at which people are getting infected), he told the committee he thought it was between 0.75 and 1. He said two weeks ago he would have given a different figure, between 0.6 and 0.8.

He said this was because the nature of the spread had changed. He said that there was much less community transmission now. Coronavirus was not spreading widely in the community now, he said. But he said it was still spreading in closed settings such as hospitals, which explained why the latest number was higher.

UPDATE: See 3.23pm for some helpful context to this.

The Foreign Office has announced five more rescue flights for British nationals still stranded in India, seven weeks after lockdown.

Dominic Raab was heavily criticised for not laying on the flights earlier. The charter planes from Amritsar and Ahmedabad next week bring the total flights from the country to 64, transporting 16,500 people home, said the minister for south Asia, Tariq Ahmad.

The government has pushed to delay the legal challenge to its lockdown legislation by a millionaire businessman, asking for an extension to the deadline for a response.

It wrote to the Jota Aviation owner Simon Dolan to ask for another week to respond to the “letter before legal action”, but his lawyer has given the government until Tuesday on the grounds of the urgent public interest.

Dolan’s lawyers have argued the lockdown was imposed ultra vires - outside the legal authority - because it implemented regulations under the Public Health Act 1984 instead of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 or the emergency Coronavirus Act 2020.

They have also argued that the legal test that must be passed at every stage of lockdown review is faulty because it is based on one set of metrics, Covid-19 data, and not wider health outcomes from cancelled cancer and other life-saving treatments or economic data.

His lawyers say they have hired the human rights lawyer Philip Havers QC, a barrister and deputy high court judge, to press the case.

Britain’s medicines regulator has issued a warning about medicines and other products being sold online that are claimed to treat or prevent Covid-19, saying they may pose a threat to life.

The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency said it had been receiving reports of “miracle cures”, “antiviral misting sprays” and antiviral medicines being sold through websites by British users of Facebook and Amazon as a treatment for the virus.

Colloidal silver, which can lead to skin turning a light bluish-grey and has been touted in the past by the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Debbie McGee, has been the target of action by the US authorities. However, it continues to be sold below the radar in the UK on Amazon and Facebook Marketplace.

One Facebook seller in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, claimed the “Crystal Silver” being sold would act against flu and coronavirus.

Lynda Scammell, a senior enforcement advisor at the MHRA, said:

We cannot guarantee the safety or quality of these products and this poses a risk to your health.

The UK sales of colloidal silver were flagged up by a new grouping, Youth Against Misinformation, which is supported by youth organisation Restless Development and the anti-hate organisation Center for Countering Digital Hate. One of the members of the new group, Sara, said:

My dad is still working as a bus driver at TfL and I have elderly grandparents who have underlying health issues, so my family and I understand first-hand the distress and anxiety that misinformation can cause. I want to be part of this project as it will bring more peace and truth to worrying families and friends during this stressful and intense time.

As reported earlier, No 10 seems concerned that what Boris Johnson says on Sunday night about the lifting of the lockdown will not match the expectations generated by some of today’s front-page headlines. (See 1.36pm.) Here are some examples:

The Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has emphasised the importance of a cross-UK consensus on leaving lockdown and called on Boris Johnson to involve the devolved nations and opposition parties in “meaningful” discussion.

Having different approaches and rival strategies isn’t going to help. I’m not talking about [more cautious nations having] a veto but my strong preference is that the whole of the UK move as as one on this.

Speaking to Scottish lobby reporters as he took part in a series of Zoom events with “not just the party faithful”, he said:

It is really important in Scotland and across the UK that we are cautious about this, that nothing is done that might push the infection rate above one. There is a strong preference on my part that this is done across the UK as a whole. That’s the approach we took going into lockdown, that’s the approach we should be taking coming out.

Asked about Nicola Sturgeon’s warning at her own media briefing this lunchtime that it would be a “potentially catastrophic mistake” to move too quickly (see 12.50pm.), Starmer said:

The danger if we don’t act together is that there are then different rules for different places, that makes it much more difficult to police,” adding that it was “very hard to see how you could have separate regimes in different countries or regions.

It is very important that we build a national consensus about what happens next ... It does mean that the prime minister has got to involve the devolved nations, trade unions civic society and opposition parties in a very meaningful way.

Six weeks into the UK’s Covid-19 crisis, the latest instalment of Anywhere but Westminster asks how a city keeps going when everything has ground to a halt.

The team virtually visits Plymouth, population 250,000, to see how the services that are vital to a city and its inhabitants are scrabbling to stay afloat. The fishing industry is in meltdown, temporary housing is oversubscribed and nurses facilitate goodbyes over Zoom. Most of all, people are asking: what on earth happens after this?

You can catch up on previous episodes in the series here.

Speculation about how the lockdown in England might be lifted risks sending “mixed messages” across the UK, the Welsh government has said.

The Welsh cabinet met this morning to discuss the lockdown restrictions and will meet again this evening. It has not given details of its next steps but said the message for this weekend remained the same – people should stay at home.

In a statement it said:

It is crucially important that the people of Wales are informed clearly and accurately about what, if any, changes are made to the current stay-at-home restrictions.

Some of the reporting in today’s newspapers is confusing and risks sending mixed messages to people across the UK.

The first minister of Wales [Mark Drakeford] will announce the outcome of the cabinet’s decision in due course.

Our message for this bank holiday remains, stay home, protect the NHS, save lives.

This is from Heidi Alexander, the deputy mayor of London for transport and deputy chair of TfL.

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, announced the London Streetspace plan yesterday. The initiative will create new cycle lanes and wider pavements to accommodate increased demand for walking and cycling, and to enable members of the public to maintain physical distancing.

Similar measures are to be implemented in Greater Manchester in the next few weeks.

The former Labour leader Gordon Brown and Prof Hugh Pennington, one of Scotland’s leading microbiologists who has advised both the UK and Scottish governments, are calling for mass testing “to become the new normal”.

Launching a new paper from Our Scottish Futures thinktank, they said it was now clear that mass testing across the community was the only way to give people the confidence to return to work, but the Scottish government’s testing target for 15,500 tests a day by the end of May is “wholly inadequate”.

Brown said:

A maximum of 8,000 tests now and 15,500 by the end of the month is simply not good enough when we have 162,500 NHS staff, more than 130,000 adult social care workers, 170,000 construction workers, 100,000 frontline public servants from police and fire to teachers and 137,000 retail workers. Even on the Scottish government’s most optimistic plan - 15,500 tested by the end of the month - we would be covering only 0.3% of the people.

He added that it was “a scandal and a tragedy” that care home residents and workers were not being tested as a matter of routine.

Reactive testing - when the disease breaks out - is not good enough when people can carry the disease for days and infect others without showing symptoms.

Hundreds of items of PPE have been donated to a hospital in memory of a woman who died after contracting coronavirus.

Patricia Hughes, 73, was a stalwart of the Morriston Hospital League of Friends and helped raise £2.5m to support care for patients and their families there. She died last month following serious ongoing health problems, and with Covid-19.

Colleagues of her husband John, 77, at Tata Steel in Port Talbot have now donated hundreds of items of certified PPE in tribute. His line manager, Mike King, personally delivered 200 face visors and 100 face masks for staff on the frontline at the Swansea hospital. King said:

We thought about sending flowers. But then we thought it’d mean more if we gave something which will be useful to the staff who Trish valued so highly and worked so hard to help over the years.

When deciding who to ease lockdown measures, the government needs to know what the likely impact of relaxing each measure is going to have on the rate of infection. Scientists from the University of East Anglia have been looking at this issue and they have concluded that the two safest policies would be lifting stay-at-home orders and letting shops open that are selling non-essential goods.

The UEA press release goes on:

[Researchers] found that closing schools, prohibiting mass gatherings and the closure of some non-essential business, particularly in the hospitality sector, were the most effective at stopping the spread of the disease.

Enforcing the wearing of face masks in public was not found to make additional impact.

The press notice is here, and the full academic paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, is here (pdf).

The research is based on the impact of various social distancing measures in 30 different countries.

Anas Sarwar, a Scottish Labour MSP, has urged the Scottish government to carry out urgent research into the ONS findings that in England and Wales the risk of dying with Covid-19 is significantly higher amongst BAME communities.

Sarwar, whose father, Mohammad Sarwar, was the UK’s first Muslim MP, said:

These stark findings will cause considerable alarm in ethnic minority communities across the UK. Given the data from England and Wales, it’s now imperative for the Scottish government to record, study and publish the coronavirus impact on Scotland’s BAME community.

While Scotland’s BAME population may be smaller than in England, ethnic minorities make up a large proportion of those on the frontline in Scotland – in our NHS, care homes and shops. We know that a huge number of deaths in the medical profession involve ethnic minority workers.

Scotland’s ethnic minority communities deserve to know whether they are at a greater risk from Covid-19 and, if so, what steps can be taken to prevent further loss of life.

There are many reasons for thinking that the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis has been, as policy types might put it, “sub-optimal”. But there is no evidence that this is having any impact (yet?) on the government’s standing with the electorate. YouGov has published its latest poll this morning and it shows the Conservatives on 50%, ahead of Labour on 30%.

Ethnic minorities’ war and postwar efforts and sacrifices were erased from the national narrative. Today, as our doctors and nurses give their lives, we cannot have a repeat – their stories must be central to how we reshape Britain’s shared future and identity, writes Guardian columnist Afua Hirsch.

It’s beyond ironic that black and Asian people in Britain underpinned the creation of the institutions that so often define Britishness, not least the NHS. Yet that same postwar era also laid the foundations for the inadequate access to healthcare, housing and secure labour that must be part of the reason why minorities are so disproportionately affected by today’s coronavirus crisis.

And we now witness the remarkable full circle of Britain recruiting foreigners to carry out essential work, whether in agriculture or the NHS. It’s just like the last time – when Enoch Powell was among the first to ask Caribbean nurses to come and work in the NHS before turning to race hate. But this time it’s taking place quietly, so we can continue the national pastime of deluding ourselves that Britain can survive without immigrants, while our very survival depends on their labour.

The difference between this moment and the social contract of 75 years ago, is that this time the service and sacrifice of ethnic minority people in Britain is impossible to ignore. It’s clear that racial injustice deserves a central place in our new settlement.

Bob Seely, the MP for the Isle of Wight, has just told Sky News that around 30% of people living on the island have already downloaded the government’s contact-tracing app, which is being piloted there. He said that was a remarkable take-up given that ordinary residents are only being invited to download it from today. Earlier in the week key workers were asked to sign up. But Seely said people started downloading it anyway.

Alongside its main report on coronavirus deaths and ethnicity (see 9.41am and 10.33am), the ONS has also published what it calls a technical appendix, explaining in detail how social factors help to explain why BAME people are more at risk of coronavirus deaths.

It gets quite technical, but it is worth reading if you want to understand this in more detail. Here is an extract.

Another indicator of social disadvantage is living in an overcrowded household (defined as having fewer bedrooms than needed to avoid undesirable sharing). Analysis of the English Housing Survey showed that between 2014 and 2017, around 679,000 (3%) of the estimated 23 million households in England were overcrowded; however, there were marked contrasts between ethnic groups. While only 2% of White British households experienced overcrowding, it was 30% of Bangladeshi households (the highest percentage), 16% of Pakistani households and 12% of black households.

There is also a contrast in the propensity to live in a multi-family household. An unpublished analyses of Labour Force Survey data showed that in 2018, those with a Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnicity were much more likely than any other ethnic group to live in a multi-family household ...

Occupations involving close contact with the public are deemed to be a risk factor for Covid-19 infection. Figure 1 shows how ethnicities are distributed when working in occupations classified to the transport and drivers and operatives standard occupational classification sub-major group, which encompasses bus, coach and taxi drivers and those driving other types of industrial and agricultural vehicles.

And this is figure 1, showing that more than 10% of Bangladeshi and Pakistani people work as bus or taxi drivers, or in similar transport jobs - a far higher proportion than for other ethnic groups.

Sir Harry Burns, Scotland’s former chief medical officer, has warned against relaxing the lockdown until the community rate of transmission for the coronavirus, known as R, has fallen below 0.5.

Burns, who advised Scottish ministers during the swine flu pandemic in 2009, told MSPs on the Scottish parliament’s new Covid-19 committee he had been told the R rate in Scotland was about 0.7 and said he feared it would rise once the lockdown was eased.

Boris Johnson is expected to announce modest relaxations from next Monday in a statement on Sunday night, including allowing family picnics, more outdoor exercise and potentially authorising outdoor cafes to reopen.

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, is resisting a relaxation too early, and has said Scotland’s R rate may be slightly higher than in England.

Burns told the committee:

I would expect [the R number] to go up when we ease lockdown because people will be getting together, unless we have a very effective trace and isolation and approach.

I would probably like it to be a bit less than .7 because it’s going to oscillate a bit and it will go up. It would be nice for it to be below .5 but that might be asking a bit much.

He said some people were at increased risk of being infected, particularly people who lived in crowded high rises and used shared lifts. Wealthier people in the suburbs with private gardens will be less exposed. That meant the R rate would be higher in crowded urban areas.

Burns added that he was also “leery” about lifting the lockdown too early because there were clear risks transmission rates would surge. As the sole carer for his 96-year-old mother, who was shielding at home, he already avoided shops and public spaces to lower the chance he catches the virus. He said:

So I understand why people are concerned [about lifting lockdown] and I share their concerns, so we need to tread very carefully.

This is from David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, on the ONS report into coronavirus deaths and ethnicity.

This is from Nick Stripe, head of health analysis at the Office for National Statistics, explaining to the BBC what its report on coronavirus deaths and ethnicity (see 9.41am and 10.33am) shows.

Your probability of dying with Covid is made up of two things, firstly your probability of actually being infected in the first place and then secondly, your probability of dying once you have been infected.

Now those two things are influenced by your personal circumstances to a large degree, so the first thing we did is, we looked at adjusting for age, what the difference was of dying to these ethnic groups and that brought out some quite stark differences.

So just adjusting for age, we saw that the black ethnic grouping was just over four times more likely to die of Covid-related issues than the white group, the Bangladeshi and Pakistani grouping was about 3.5 times more likely and the Indian grouping about 2.5 times more likely.

Those figures are just when we adjust for age, but we know other circumstances matter, so we want to try and introduce those other circumstances, which we can do, because we have geographical location from the death certificate and the death registration.

So we know for example, big cities like London, Birmingham and Manchester have been more affected, we know from figures that we released last Friday that whether you’re in an urban or rural area matters, your area’s relative level of deprivation matters, so there’s really a strong social gradient to mortality rates generally, and even more for Covid.

So we needed to adjust for those other factors as well, so geography is a key one and then other socio-economic factors, we could get data from the census records that we’ve linked the deaths to, so things like people’s qualifications, people’s housing circumstances, what type of jobs or occupations they had and their self-reported health.

When we adjust for all those other things, then actually those rates come down significantly, a lot of the difference can be explained by these geographical and socio-economic factors.

Once we’ve adjusted for that, the black ethnic group is now about 90% or 1.9 times more likely to die from Covid-related issues, Bangladeshi and Pakistani males are about 80% more likely, females about 60% more likely and Indian females are about 40% more likely and males about 30% more likely.

This is from Helen Barnard, acting director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a social justice thinktank, on today’s ONS report about coronavirus deaths and ethnicity.

Today’s figures are a stark reminder that although we are all weathering the same storm, we are not all in the same boat.

People from black and minority ethnic backgrounds are more likely to live in deprived areas, employed in low-paid jobs where they cannot work from home. We know that both these factors increase the risk of catching coronavirus.

Workers from BAME communities are also more likely to live in overcrowded homes, increasing the risk for their families too. We entered the crisis with millions of people locked in poverty, struggling against a rising tide of low pay, insecure jobs and spiralling living costs.

With the Bank of England now forecasting the deepest recession on record, we must ask ourselves what kind of society we want to live in after the virus passes. It doesn’t have to be like this – as a society that prides itself on justice and compassion we can and must do better.

A majority of British voters want the UK government to force social media sites to remove false information from their platforms, with misinformation proliferating on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

A poll by Survation for the open data campaign Open Knowledge Foundation found 55% of people believed the government needed to “impose compulsory action on social media sites to prevent the spread of disinformation on their sites”.

A third (33%) said those sites should take voluntary action against misinformation. All the sites involved, including YouTube, insist they do remove fake news and misinformation both proactively and if content is flagged, but they also argue people are entitled to freely share their opinions, even if they are wrong.

The poll found 51% had seen misinformation about the coronavirus, often posts wrongly linking the pandemic to 5G mobile phone masts.

That echoes similar results in polls by Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, which has already taken enforcement against broadcasters for airing such claims by David Ike, the conspiracy theorist. YouTube deleted Ike’s channel on the platform for repeatedly breaching its ban on disputing the existence of Covid-19.

Schools have been asking teachers to come into work during lockdown to decorate classrooms, attend face-to-face meetings and make fresh preparations for a reopening, a union has claimed.

NASUWT, the teachers’ union, says it has received reports of teachers being brought back into work amid speculation that schools will be asked to reopen to more pupils before the summer.

Patrick Roach, general secretary of the NASUWT, has said the requests - which he called “wholly inappropriate” - have “intensified” in the past week following reports of an early return.

In recent days, teachers have been told to come into school to get them “used to” the workplace and to get classrooms ready for social distancing measures, according to the union leader.

Roach has urged schools not to act prematurely as staff are being put “at risk unnecessarily”.

Schools, colleges and nurseries closed more than six weeks ago due to the coronavirus outbreak, remaining open only for vulnerable youngsters and the children of key workers.

The shadow chancellor, Anneliese Dodds, has warned the government to “be quite careful” about saying employees who have been furloughed have become “addicted” to the scheme. Dodds told Sky News:

I think we need to be quite careful about suggesting there is some kind of psychological desire of people to stay in that status.

Ultimately, a lot of people are seeing quite a major hit to their income as a result of going onto the furlough scheme, they want to be back at work, but we need to have the systems there to make sure they can do so safely.

On the unusable gowns from Turkey, she added: “Well to be completely honest, clearly a mistake was made around this but for me the critical thing is how are we going to deal with this in the future?

“Because I don’t see that need in care homes, in particular, ebbing away actually, it is even more pressing now, so let’s not dwell too much on what might have gone wrong, let’s focus on how we can actually try and get this fixed and sorted.”

I will be updating you on the latest news and developments. Please do get in touch to share any thoughts, news tips or insights with me. It’s always really helpful, thanks in advance

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Nadia Whittome, a Labour MP who said she was fired from her temporary role as a carer for speaking out about PPE shortages, has responded to her former employer after it said it had sufficient equipment.

Speaking on Good Morning Britain, Whittome said:

I’ve never in any of my media appearances blamed my employer for the lack of PPE, I’ve always been clear that this is a national crisis and the responsibility for that lies with government.

Of course I’m delighted that there is now sufficient PPE, of course that wasn’t the case when I spoke out, I’ve always told the truth and that’s corroborated by the fact that ExtraCare had themselves put out a plea for PPE donations.

When asked if speaking to the media about PPE shortages may have been unsettling for the residents in her care, Whittome said:

That’s not the experience that I have on the front line with residents and it’s not the experience of my colleagues.

Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien has praised Liam Gallagher for announcing a free concert for NHS workers, but said his own band had no such plans.

Former Oasis singer Gallagher plans to perform at The O2 arena in London, which has a capacity of 20,000, on October 29.

O’Brien, 52, said Radiohead were “dormant”, although they occasionally came together for band meetings.

But he suggested NHS and care home workers might not even want to see them perform live.

He told the PA news agency: “Radiohead is kind of dormant at the moment. We have meetings but it’s not an active thing.

“We don’t have any plans but I think it’s brilliant, the way that the initial wave of people like Liam Gallagher ... I think that all of that stuff is brilliant.

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has called for ethnicity to be recorded on all death certificates to expose the disproportionate effect that Covid-19 and other illnesses are having on the capital’s black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies estimates that hospital death rates are highest among those with black Caribbean, Pakistani and black African heritage. However, it’s not possible to understand the full extent of this inequality as, unlike in Scotland, ethnicity is not recorded on death certificates in England.

Khan has successfully lobbied ministers to routinely collect and publish demographics of those dying in hospital and welcomed the government’s review into the disproportionate effect of the virus, but only by adding ethnicity on to death certificates would we be able to get a complete picture, he said.

Khan said:

We need to fully expose the effect it is having on our communities, have honest conversations about what is behind it why it is happening, and work hard to tackle these problems. That’s why I’m calling for greater transparency and bringing city leaders together to see what we can do.

I’m working hard to do all I can to support and fight for London’s diverse communities, but the government cannot ignore the structural problems in our society that mean minority ethnic Londoners are more likely to work in lower paid jobs, live in overcrowded accommodation and suffer from underlying health conditions which put them at greater risk.

The SNP’s Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, has urged Boris Johnson to build a consensus with all the devolved nations on easing lockdown restrictions.

Yesterday we reported on significant tensions between the UK government, Scotland and Wales on exit strategy.

Blackford told BBC Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme: “It’s important we do all seek to work together... this shouldn’t be about politics, this should be about the scientific and medical advice.”

Criticising the UK government for “briefing to newspapers ahead of discussions with devolved leaders”, he said: “We know that the R rate in Scotland is slightly above that of rest of the UK and the public would expect the first minister to take action to look after the people of Scotland ... If we do allow an earlier lifting of restrictions all we do is run the risk of a second spike.”

Morning all and welcome to the Guardian’s live feed. I will be updating you on the latest news and developments. Please do get in touch to share any thoughts, news tips or insights with me.

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The Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer told BBC Good Morning Scotland he thinks lockdown should continue.

He told the programme:

Of course we want the number of infected cases to go down, we want the death toll to go down but we’ve got to also plan for the future and I’m convinced that testing, tracing and isolating is going to have to be part of any strategy for the future. But if that’s going to happen the planning needs to go in now because we need many many more tests than we’ve got already.

Asked whether we should continue with lockdown measures he said:

I think we should. I’m sure that that is going to be the UK government’s decision and we will support it. Lockdown needs to stay in place until we are sure the infection rate has gone down.

I will be very surprised if the government doesn’t reimpose the lockdown when it comes up for review later on and we will support them in that. This is not about lifting the lockdown now, it’s about planning for the future.

On testing, Lewis told Sky News that “there has been a bit of a drop-off in the tests in the last couple of days because of some technical issues”.

On the Bank of England figures, he added:

This is going to be a very difficult time for our country, it is a difficult time for countries around the world.

And that is why it is important that, as we start to look at what the other side of the virus might be, one of the key things for us will be looking at how we can safely ensure that people can start to get back to work so that our economy will have a chance to blossom and grow again in the future and as quickly as possible once we’re the other side of this virus.

The Bank of England’s monetary policy committee (MPC) voted unanimously in favour of holding rates.

In a statement, the central bank added: “The spread of Covid-19 and the measures to contain it are having a significant impact on the United Kingdom and many countries around the world.

“Activity has fallen sharply since the beginning of the year and unemployment has risen markedly.”

The acting leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Ed Davey, has said it is possible for the Bank of England to lend money to the government to help the economic situation.

Davey told BBC Breakfast:

It is quite possible for the Bank of England to lend money to the government.

We saw that after the 2008 financial crisis but now even more so, this is an unprecedented crisis and I think the Bank of England needs to be clear that it is prepared to lend the government that money and in a country like ours that is quite possible and with interest rates at record lows, that could be sustained for some time to come and we could focus on growth and not cuts.

On loosening lockdown, he said:

I think if we’re going to ask people to do some more exercise, if we’re going to open things like garden centres, that message certainly has to be relaxed.

But the real question is we don’t want to give a false impression that things have changed dramatically and that life can go back to normal. It’s essential the government gets the balance right.

He added:

I want to see a plan that does really ensure that the health of the nation really is sorted out with a proper testing, tracing and isolating strategy and the economy really can be sustained, ensuring that employers have confidence and they don’t have to start consulting on redundancy.

Welcome to the Guardian’s live feed this morning. I will be updating you on the latest news and developments. Please do get in touch to share any thoughts, news tips or insights with me.

Twitter: @sloumarsh
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Email: sarah.marsh@theguardian.com