Cases across the globe has climbed above the thirty million mark. According to figures from Johns Hopkins university in the United States more than nine hundred and forty thousand people worldwide have died with the disease since it first emerged in Central China late last year. Figures from the World Health Organisation show that new weekly coronavirus cases in europe now exceed those reported when the pandemic first peaked in march. The un body has also warned of alarming rates of transmission across the region. Officials have described it as a wake up call for europe. The British Government is considering the imposition of new measures across the country in response to a sharp rise in coronavirus infections. The suggestions include a so called circuit break a short period during which restrictions would be re introduced in some public spaces while schools and workplaces remained open. Now on bbc news, its
time for newscast. Of cult ofjeremy hunt to help me out on this episode. Hi. Ive called out. Foreign secretary. So, ithought ive called out. Foreign secretary. So, i thought it would combine that with some of the news today, which is that guadalupe has been taken off the travel corridor list comes of people from guadalupe avenue to quarantine that they arrived in the uk. So, im going to give you little guadalupe quiz. Try me. It isjust for fun. Guadalupes nearest neighbour isa guadalupes nearest neighbour is a british territory called. Montserrat. Leaving london tomorrow by a paris ta kes london tomorrow by a paris takes how long . Nine hours, 13 hours or 25 hours . I would guess 13 hours. Correct. The
price is not a ticket to that flight, price is not a ticket to that flight, just a warning. Last question and this is my favourite because it touches on many of my favourite interests. Guadalupe uses the euro is in the customs territory of the eu. True or false . True. Correct. Because it is a part of france. You used your time and the Foreign Office wisely to read up on sorts of interesting places. I wish i had sorted brexit as well, but that you are. We do not to schedule and a former foreign secretary because you are now the chair in the house of commons, which means theres a lot we can talk to about on this addition of newscast. Hello. It is adam in the studio. James gallagher halfway across london in a completely different studio on his own. The Health Correspondent and we are joined
the Health Correspondent and we arejoined by a the Health Correspondent and we are joined by a special guest for the whole show, it is jeremy hunt. Hello, jeremy. Thank you for make me feel like a pariah politician in the studio all my own. That is chris mason plus plus to you in very good company. You said that you have never seen this before. I am a newscast version. Well, more of that to come. Always remember your first. Subcommittee and the foreign, former Health Secretary and you can talk us through everything that is happening in the big things is to be happening now is the test entry to be happening now is the test e ntry syste m to be happening now is the test entry system seems to be under a lot of strain and i think eve ryo ne a lot of strain and i think everyone knows somebody or know somebody who knows somebody has a problem in getting a test. Absolutely. Let us not remember, there was not a testing system at the very start and now there is a very big testing system and there we re lots of
big testing system and there were lots of teething problems getting that sorted, but it is really clear in the last week or so really clear in the last week or so that the level of stress and strain and frustration that is been on the testing system has been absolutely intense. In peace have been completely swamped with complaints about it, we have seen the public cueing, public frustration and people are really perplexed by what is going on. To the frustration from a nurse and like many people, she is waiting for a test from a member of her family which means she cannot go and work in the health service. Pin i am a respiratory specialist nurse. I work ina respiratory specialist nurse. I work in a team of ten and we assist patients of coming to hospital via a e or the acute medical areas who have breathing difficulties. We do sometimes see covid 19 patients through that. At the moment, five people in the team are off to to the children being poorly 01 to to the children being poorly or sent home from school with a fever or a cough and we cannot
help our colleagues at hospital because we are of isolating. We cannot get swabs for kids, we are trying to the government websites, where trying to get work and it has been difficult. Our colleagues are overstretched, tired, busy, and we wa nt overstretched, tired, busy, and we want to help them. Ijust think this is a catastrophic failure and a need to be at work at the moment and i am not there. And the problems is it is not always shown that much empathy for people who are stuck in the system in the leader of the house of commons of the people complaining about testing were carping on. Jeremy hunt, what you think of your collea g u es hunt, what you think of your colleagues saying that . hunt, what you think of your colleagues saying that . I would not have use those words. And rosais not have use those words. And rosa is a very good example of two issues, the first is obviously, she wants to get back to work and we needed to get back to work but secondly, anthony who is president trump
a equivalent of chris with the, although they seem to have fallen out. Run 50 of them are from those who have no symptoms. 50 . So you want to be testing people like resident as well, people working in hospitals are to be tested every week. If you have these precious in the system, that is never going to happen, so i think laura is right say that the government deserves credit for doubling the Testing Capacity over the summer in doubling it again, but we really have to sort these issues. What you think is going on . At the start of this, youre one of the people out there though saying very loudly from your kitchen rather than in the studio in westminster, you are saying repeatedly that the government had to get on building the system, this was going to be completely crucial. They have built the system, but what do you think the problems with are . Because theres been so with are . Because theres been so much chatter this week of what is going wrong, not much clarity. I think the government
did expand the capacity. But the surprises been that, when people are going back to work and kids are going back to school and basically the beginning of this month, we all really started to get back to normal as he possibly could, that has caused a much bigger than expected spike in demand for tests. I think the reason is basically, like one waiter and restaurant, gets the virus, the naturally the instinct is for the manager of that restau ra nt for the manager of that restaurant to get other waiter tested. If one kid at his school gets the virus, you want all the teachers tested and preps of the class tested. It isa preps of the class tested. It is a natural instinct and theres been a lot of that necking the worry of the moment is that, even if you get a 500,000 tests a day by the end of october, which is another massive increase in capacity, demand may still search further ahead of that. So we do end up with these bottlenecks and the only real long Term Solution is
to have a structured population so if everyone knew there when you get a test once a fortnight, once a month, then you could avoid these huge surges in demand. Arched she does drink a nicer version of what he said about carping on. Youre kind of blaming people for wanting to get a test for the wrong reasons and being too emotional and too scared to not thinking rationally and following the rules on who gets a test. No, im actually a different place because i think we need to be testing people who do not have symptoms and at the moment, we cannot. That is your dream of the moment, we cannot. That is yourdream ofa the moment, we cannot. That is your dream of a different system but this is the system that weve got. But its not my dream of the system, logically, that seems to be the only way that seems to be the only way that we are going to do with the complete legitimate concern. Lets have it tomorrow, laura gets symptoms and ends up being tested and positive. Even if you do not have any symptoms because youve been in that studio with her, youre going to want to
tested as a perfectly natural desire and the only way that we really going to be able to give you the test is if we have expanded the capacity enough to be able to give everyone regular tests, which i think is the key to this. I think it is essential that we find a way asymptomatic people, but even you ahead of the queue, there is no more important than you when interviewing me, even ahead of you, theyre going to be people like rosa were working in hospital. We really need her to get back to work and if children have got the virus of the symptoms to get back to work, knowing that she wont be able to affect other patients. Getting into the swing of this kind of programme. Remind us of what has been going on because aside from the stresses and strains oii from the stresses and strains on testing, is becoming more more important because people are desperate to know where the disease spreading and how much they should be worrying about it. The time it takes the
number of cases to double as around about seven to ten days. Now, that is a potentially worrying sign because the beginning of september, we are entering the phase were cases are already increasing and doubling because we anticipate that winter can be a bad time because look at any of the respiratory bug, winter is the kind of time where it tends to spread quite easily and expect something to spread with coronavirus we have already seen those early signals of it happening. It is potentially worrying. One question i want to askjeremy is how concerned are you about the second wave . A bad wintergiven are you about the second wave . A bad winter given that we are already in this position of the beginning of september . Well, it isa beginning of september . Well, it is a very important question. We have a triple whammy at this point of spikes in the northeast in the northwest, the doubling of every week or so, winter
approach and the surge in demand. But we are in a much better position than we were backin better position than we were back in february. I mean, we have a pretty substantial test and trace operation in place. It just has and trace operation in place. Itjust has this massive bottleneck at the moment and i have to say, listening to matt hancock in the comments today, my heart did go out to him because Health Secretary had a succession of winter prices for the nhs, the winter crisis normally finishes and easter, only we get through easter to you kind of know that the winter is behind you and every yearin winter is behind you and every year in april, i would sit down with my team and i would say, never again, tell me, what you need, what is the money, what is the plan and they would tell me what they wanted and i would say do you think we can do it ina void say do you think we can do it in a void when this year and they would say yes and then we would have another winter crisis in this 11 years in a row. I want to put our record, this is not because the people,
they work so hard and it is because the nhs is the for the world and weve got 1. 4 million people, it is genuinely hard and when i heard that lighthouse in Milton Keynes have 30,000 samples arriving every day, each of which have to be unpacked, treated with massive care because they could have covid 19 in them. It is a huge challenge getting these things right. Benoit into the government was not warned about this, academics, unions, tests from schools going back and this what happened in scotland, a huge search when people came back from holiday bit earlier, iio back from holiday bit earlier, 110 one can say back from holiday bit earlier, no one can say that the government was not aware that the search would come not come. Knowing precisely what happened, i dont think anyone, with nevada pandemic like this before could quite know what happened to demand
and injune, the idea of doubling capacity will seem reasonable and doubling against october, would seem like a reasonable thing to do but it was not a tatty make enough. And try to get more capacity with speeding up the process of opening up the labs, listening toa opening up the labs, listening to a select committee where the boss of test trace was being quizzed in quite some depth in one of the things that came out of it was that they are getting robots, they are introducing robots, they are introducing robots though unpacked samples and speed up the process, another very irritating thing was, did they see this coming. Listen to what she said here, im something shes blaming scientists in the infamous models against. I do not think anyone was expecting to see the sizeable increase in demand to seen over the course of the la st seen over the course of the last few weeks. None of the modelling was that expected. And that is why i think we all have to think really hard about how we prioritise the use of these tests. That we are clear that should only get tested if you have the coronavirus symptoms since top blue that the sans crackers doesnt it . Anecdotally, anybody with kids is talking about, but back to school because theyll get sniffles in a way, everyone is going to be worried about coronavirus, teaching units and all sorts of organisations, talking by testing, is it really true that none of the modelling foresaw this . They foresaw that which will be worth the summer that is a fa ct. Worth the summer that is a fact. And one thing that is been consistent in advising everything is that test traits as elation programme had to be fully functional by the end of summer. And what i would say is, if the test trace Isolation Programme fully functional at the moment, even if you want to argue over the numbers . The moment, even if you want to argue overthe numbers . Known estimates of that yet but i think that will be the thing that will be a throwback. Functioning as a programme, states ca m e functioning as a programme, states came out on thursday lunch as they always do and if you go to a local, regional test site, you can get your test site, you can get your test in an ideal world back in 24 hours. 66 of people original test sites got there test site in 24 hours, thats 137. 9 , dramatic drop. Jeremy, what is your opinion on what the model did or did not do. Perhaps, but we look back at this, we have the inquiry, what are the decisions that will be looked at is the decision to looked at is the decision to look at the centralised model where we have half a dozen big the portrays, rather than asking each local authority to be responsible for the road testing trace and that wouldve meant tapping into a much larger group of laboratories in
universities. And having a few big laboratories is if something goes wrong get one of them, it causes a huge backlog everywhere. And then theres the idea of whether there should have been Big Bang National labs or whether they should have used local Authority Networks and local networks that already existed and has been one of the themes of this, hasnt it. Real tension. Being very vocal that they should have used local authority know how and expertise much more. And again, today we saw another one of these local tightening things with another huge part of the country much northeast of england having its restrictions tightened after local Council Leaders were appealing to Central Government to say please, please, help us tighten the rules and matt hancock highlighted it to date. In northumberland, north tyneside, south tyneside, newcastle upon tyne, Gateshead Sunderland in
cou nty tyne, Gateshead Sunderland in county durham, resident should not socialise with other people outside of their own households or support bubble. Hospitality for food and drink will be restricted to Table Service only. In the late night restrictions of operating hours will be introduced so leisure and Entertainment Venues must close between 10pm inquiry on. Is there an expectation that we are heading back to some kind of nationwide action again . |j of nationwide action again . think the hope is to avoid that is much as possible. But this one the dangers that is happening with testing trace because testing trace serves a couple of problems, on one hand, it is about identifying those positive cases, telling them to isolate entries tracing their contacts and telling those to isolate, but did does
have a very valuable service to. It tells us where the infection is up and down the country, where cases are spiking and where things are improving and that is the tool that allows us to have local measures, devon credibly local lockdowns and the danger is the testing trace cannot keep up and we lose sight of where the virus is, that is the kind of thing that increases the likelihood that we might need new national parks. And talking by the testing of the stop of the episode, i am not sure if you told us of the government can the fixes next few weeks. We know there is the target of half a million test by the end of october, but people are having a hard time now. What levers can matt hancock and borisjohnson pull levers can matt hancock and Boris Johnson pull now levers can matt hancock and borisjohnson pull now to levers can matt hancock and Boris Johnson pull now to fix this . They may be doing this but what i would be doing is talking to all of the other laboratories they can help out, places like the institute in cambridge, london, and make sure that youve got other labs
in reserve. It is notjust his lighthouse labs. But i would like to know is that we do have plans in place to go beyond the 500,000 tests a day for the plan for the end of october and are we going to get to a million, 2 million. Just to be a little bit more optimistic, if we get to 2 million tests a day, which is four times planning for the end of october, then we could test the whole population once a month. So these are starting to be within our grasp, and that is where i hope we are heading. And what makes people believe that theyre