tonight at ten, the fears among doctors that, as the lockdown eases in england, there ll be a second peak of coronavirus cases. we talk to staff in one of the worst affected hospitals in the uk, in one of the most densely populated parts of london. are you expecting a second wave? yes. i have to say yes because i think once the lockdown is relaxed, people of course are going to have more contact with each other, so that s the way this is going to spread. we ll have the first of clive myrie‘s special reports from the royal london hospital. also tonight. mr cummings, were you telling the truth yesterday? the prime minister s top advisor facing yet more calls to resign after being accused of breaking the rules during lockdown. a glimpse of the new coronavirus test that produces a result injust 20 minutes. as the lockdown is eased, shops are concerned about getting all the safety measures ready in time. and calls for access to england s beaches to be restricted, until there are lifeguards back on patrol. and in sport, world number one rory mcilroy says he believes the ryder cup, scheduled to take place in september, will be postponed until next year due to the coronavirus pandemic. good evening. we start tonight with the growing fears among doctors of a second peak of coronavirus infections, as the lockdown restrictions are eased in england. we ve been speaking to staff at one of the hospitals worst affected by the pandemic in the uk, the royal london, in east london, which serves the densely populated area of tower hamlets. hundreds of people have died there, with people from ethnic minority backgrounds particularly affected. medical staff say a rise in cases is now inevitable, as people have more and more contact with each other. and they ve also spoken of the mental and physical burden of the past few months. the latest figures for the uk are that 134 deaths were recorded in the last 24 hour period, but there were none reported in northern ireland. that brings the total number of deaths across the uk to 37,048. my colleague clive myrie has spent a week at the royal london hospital. this is the first of his special reports. it s in times of crisis we find out who we really are. i ve felt broken on many occasion. and i think a lot of my colleagues have. when souls are laid bare. in this time of coronavirus, one hospital, and one community, reflect on these troubled times. coming upforair, to reveal their souls to us. we saw the fragility of life. this guy s not going to survive the night. better to call the family, i think. we re going to take out your tube now. we saw its strength. perfect. well done. how s that feel? yeah? and all the while, one fear looms another peak of infections to rival the first. we were 20 beds away from being overrun. don t be fooled by the gentle pace. time is twisted here, on the royal london hospital s coronavirus wards. ..while many patients inhabit ventilated worlds of slow motion dreams and hallucinations. the doctors and nurses charged with bringing them back to life inhabit the real world, where time moves too quickly, as this cruel disease eats away at human lungs with frightening speed. can we just do a couple more suctions? but the medical staff, including consultant pj zolfaghari have their own nightmares. are you expecting a second wave? yes. i have to say yes, because i think once the lockdown is relaxed, people, of course, are going to have more contact with each other. so that s the way this is going to spread. but if the lockdown completely disappears, then i suspect that the cases willjust rapidly rise again. you know, we ve learned a lot during this last few weeks, the last couple of months. not perfect but, you know, i think we re be better placed for it now. then, as our interview ends, he s called away. i ll be two minutes. these two minutes turn into several agonising hours. can see you re working hard to ventilate him. we had permission from all the patients or their families to film. do we have any more atracurium? and krishnapillai yogan‘s vital signs have worsened. he s just 55. this is going to cause a bit of a problem here. yeah, and again. go, go, go. the professionalism of the team is stunning. years of experience are gathered around this bed. as the duality of time, the drifting, oblivious patient, and the rush to save his life merge into a tableau for our times. ok, this doesn t look good. how concerned are you? i m extremely concerned about this chap. especially at this late stage, as well, that he s developed further complications. so, there s a final roll of the dice. so, you guys lift him up, i ll push the pillows down. this is a last resort. maybe by turning him onto his front they can force air into his lungs, oxygen into his body. it s all they can do. 0k. ready, steady, go. his lungs are just getting worse, and more inflamed again. and you ve been preparing to talk to his family? yes, that s right. just to let you know. have you called the family yet? sister becky smith, a presence on the covert award for absent relatives. their eyes and ears. 0k, take care, then. essentially, we ll make a decision about whether it s appropriate to continue with what were doing at the moment or whether we should. give him a bit of dignity. imagine this stress for the team, multiplied every day for weeks. now you understand what the peak of the pandemic was like. are you all right? my face is all marked. well, you ve just come off shift. sister carleen kelly bore witness to those dark days. i ve felt broken on many occasion. and i think a lot of my colleagues have. it consumes you. it s what you think about when you go to bed. it s what you wake up. you re preparing for your next shift. you re relieved that the previous shift is over. you re sad. it s a huge emotional burden. it s a time of our lives that we ll never, ever forget. the peak almost broke minds. and according to consultant nick bunker, almost broke the royal london. in normal times, we manage about 44 patients. at the peak, we were managing just shy of 90 patients. almost double? almost double. we were 20 beds away from being overrun. we were keeping people alive. that s what our goal of care was. keep as many people alive for as long as we can, until we can get back to being able to deliver the quality of care that we always aspire to deliver. sometimes, it s hard to find light in the darkness. but you re about to witness what medicine can do. i m going to take out your tube now. this is one of the defining moments in an intensive care unit. give me a big puff. big puff, that s it. when a patient‘s ventilator tube is removed. it s a procedure full of expectation. and dread. i m going to pull the tube, as you do that, 0k? will it work? he s grimacing as the tube inches up his throat. he gasps. and finally leaves his chest. everything s 0k. you re at the royal london hospital. gasping. the heavy breathing of a man given a second chance. it s a victory for everyone, and a morale boost for everyone. as i said, he s still not out of the woods. but at least he s doing good. and we re very, very pleased with where he s got to. but there are other defeats. sadly, that evening, krishnapillai yogan died. another soul lost. 0n tomorrow night s programme. a prayerfor the dying. and the morgue, struggling to cope. at the height, we were dealing with about 25 bodies daily coming the morgue because the cemeteries and other funeral services weren t able to cope. clive myrie, bbc news. the physical and emotional burden carried by the staff of the royal london hospital. clive myrie reporting, with producer sam piranty and cameraman davy mcilveen. dominic cummings, the prime minister s top adviser, is facing more calls for his resignation following his decision to drive his family hundreds of miles from london to durham during the lockdown. dozens of conservative mps have now called for him to step down, while others have expressed their concern about the impact of his behaviour. earlier today a government minister, douglas ross, resigned his post in protest at mr cummings‘s controversial interpretation of the lockdown rules. 0ur political editor laura kuenssberg has the latest. were you telling the truth yesterday? police, to keep order this morning. could you move out of the way, guys? the prime minister s top advisor, no longer protecting his boss instead, a very big problem. social distancing. only a faint plea this morning. dominic cummings swagger, long gone. but now a minister s jumped because mr cummings hasn t been pushed. douglas ross, happy to be on the campaign in scotland in the autumn election. but if the number 10 adviser won t quit after breaking at the very least the spirit of the lockdown, well, mr ross won t stay. i have constituents who followed the guidance. and whether there were loopholes or areas that you could get around the guidance, they didn t. when the vast majority of people followed the guidance to the letter of the law, because the uk and scottish governments were very clear at that time to stay at home, to help ourfront line nhs workers beat this virus. now there are nearly a0 mps, including former tory ministers, even the boss of the party in scotland, calling on him to quit. i think many people will have understood the dilemma that has been faced. but i think we are distracting attention now from the key issue, which is tackling the coronavirus. and that unease goes right to the top. a member of the cabinet told me, if dominic cummings had any self awareness, he would resign. another said, for as long as he stays, the government will remain stuck in this groove, unable to concentrate on what really matters. and, by defending his adviser so strongly, this has become a question of the prime minister s judgment, too. one very worried, very senior figure in the party even suggested borisjohnson‘s authority itself is slipping out from under the door. yet downing street is adamant that mr cummings trip to the north east was covered by the exceptions to the lockdown rules. he travelled more than 200 miles to county durham, after his wife fell ill. and they ve tried to justify even his 60 mile round trip to barnard castle, where he was spotted by eyewitness robin lees. but ijust feel it was right for the true message, for what i saw to be in the public domain. i d seen that, and i didn t think that i should keep it to myself. ministers know the public is concerned. even challenged by a vicar from brighton on what the implications were. will be government review all penalty fines imposed on families travelling for childcare purposes during lockdown? that s a very good question. i think, especially coming from a man of the cloth, i think that it is perfectly reasonable to take away that question. i ll have to talk to my treasury colleagues before i can answer it in full. nearly a0 of your colleagues believe that the prime minister s top adviser let the country down and want him gone. given that you stood there at that lectern and told people the guidelines were not advice, they were instructions, do you? my view is that what he did was within the guidelines. i can understand why reasonable people can take a different view. do you admit that it s doing damage to the government s credibility, after a question from the member of the public that you might review some of the fines that have been given to people if they were travelling for reasons to do with their children? i think it s incredibly important that, as a nation, we keep our resolve. everybody has a part to play in this. of course, the future of one man, onejob, is less important than dealing with the virus. it s a huge destraction, though, despite the determination in number 10 to keep ignoring the wild ride outside. laura kuenssberg, bbc news, westminster. navigating a way out of lockdown and keeping the public on side was always going to be a challenge, according to the public health experts. some now worry that the row over dominic cummings will make that task even more difficult. our home editor mark easton has been gathering opinion from across the uk. there are concerns confidence in the prime minister may have been damaged in the past few days, but how serious is it? with the help of research company britainthinks, we have assembled a cross section of voters to calculate how the dominic cummings row has affected to the public mood. it s one rule for all of us, and government can do whatever they like, and we ve got accept it. it s completely out of order. ijust didn t believe a word of it. i found he was very arrogant. and i think borisjohnson s lost credibility. you can t break a regulation, and his 30 mile drive to the castle, to check his eyesight? it s irrelevant! how can you drive 30 miles to check your eyesight? when you consider circumstances, his son who needs care all the time, and a wife who was ill, or was briefly ill, i think there has to be a little bit of slack given. listen to the job this man s got. he s crucial. he s needed. he could have stayed in that cottage for weeks. he chose to come back and help us in this crisis. who here thinks that he should resign? you didn t, of course, apologise. he didn t, of course, apologise. should he have resigned? hands up. trust in the government appears to have been declining even before the dominic cummings row. in early april, over two thirds of people surveyed said they trusted the government to control the spread of the virus. by last friday, that had fallen to a half. do you think that the way the government is planning to ease the lockdown in england is right, or should they go faster, or should they go slower? unfortunately, i feel there s going to be a second wave because more and more people are getting together. and people aren t taking this as serious as they should be. if the government guidelines are that you are meant to meet one person, it s not really happening. and does that worry you? it seems like you can do whatever you want, really. i think they definitely do have to be more certain with the messages that they are putting forward. i don t think that the prime minister has any idea on what he s saying and what message he s trying put forward. give it another week or two weeks, see what happens. don t jump into anything. this is a deadly thing. we would quite like to go shopping, but i don t want to catch corona doing so. today s survey suggests more than half of people worry the controls are being lifted too quickly, with just 13% wanting lockdown lifted faster. the prime minister s lack of assertiveness has been the defining point of the crisis. it hasn t been as much of a success as the country would have hoped for. just kind of lost faith generally. ijust feel like, as usual, we re kind of the laughing stock nation. i understand why they are trying to keep things open. unfortunately, as a result, i m sure it s resulted in a lot more deaths than there needed to be. trust in government matters. and even more so in a crisis. it may, quite literally, be a matter of life and death. mark easton, bbc news. laura joins us from westminster now. in your report, you raised the issue of the prime minister s own authority. what is your reading of that tonight? i think this is a very choppy situation. four different members of the cabinet have suggested to me today it would be better if dom cummings had already disappeared. there are about a0 conservative mps actually on the record, going public, even in a difficult environment for them, to suggest that he should quit and many more of them have private deep unease and i think the frustration is now not so much about what he did oi’ is now not so much about what he did or didn t is now not so much about what he did ordidn‘t do, is now not so much about what he did or didn t do, but in part about the handling of all of this and the way that it has developed over the last couple of days, with this surreal experience of his press conference yesterday, and also many mps just simply relating what they are hearing from their constituents, then talking about getting hundreds, even more than a thousand e mails expressing fury. but it says a lot about this administration that inside the very tight knit group around boris johnson in inside the very tight knit group around borisjohnson in number ten, they sense this might actually be them starting to move to the other side of the storm. they hope and believe that perhaps some of the public anger might be starting to fade away. i have to say, some polls that are reported into my‘s newspapers suggest that is necessarily the case but inside downing street, there is still absolutely a conviction that the cost of hanging on to dom cummings is less than the cost politically and personally to them would be to see him walk or if he decided that it was time to resign. but we will see. tomorrow, boris johnson it was time to resign. but we will see. tomorrow, borisjohnson is up for a grilling in front of a group of senior mps and i think it is likely there may well be some tricky exchanges there. but as far as downing street is concerned, there is no badging in this moment. but there is also no denying that in this moment of a national crisis, they have been distracted, trying to keep up with a fast moving political crisis that for many people inside their own party as a source of huge frustration, not least because it was very much an own goal by one of their own. laura, thanks again, laura kuenssberg with the latest analysis at westminster. the latest weekly figures for coronavirus deaths registered across the uk are the lowest since early april. the data shows the situtation is improving, but experts say widespread testing is the key to keeping in control. 0ur health editor hugh pym has been to basingstoke hospital to see the pilot of a new coronavirus test that gives a result injust 20 minutes. sonia has come into a&e with breathing difficulties and she s being tested for coronavirus. nose and throat swabs are taken and then picked up and carried to the lab here at basingstoke and north hampshire hospital. the swabs usually take at least seven hours to analyse, sometimes a day or more. but with a new piece of equipment, it s nearer 20 minutes. a team here worked with a local technology company to come up with a more rapid process. it s a very exciting project to be part of, and it s been part of a real big team effort, so having the ability to bring the test nearer to the patients, whether it is in hospital or in the community, can have a real impact on how that patient is managed far more rapidly. there s a six week trial of the rapid testing system, both here and in another emergency department run by the trust, at a gp practice and local care homes. depending on how well it goes, decisions will be made on whether it can be rolled out more extensively. ijust need to check. it could make a big difference to health staff. at this london gp surgery, some have had to wait more than a week to get test results back. this has been a very frustrating situation for us at the surgery. we ve had staff off when we needed results to enable them to return back to work. i ve been speaking to my colleagues in secondary care, and they re facing the same problems. the scottish government today unveiled a strategy called test and protect. from thursday, anyone with coronavirus symptoms will be tested and they ll be asked to name people they ve been in close contact with. these individuals will then be traced by up to 2,000 health officials. technology used by contact tracers will be in place from the start, but we will also add a digital platform to allow people who test positive to enter details of their contacts online. many care homes around the uk have called for more support to get staff and residents tested after local outbreaks and fatalities. in the week ending 2ath 25th april, there were nearly 3,200 deaths with covid i9 in uk care homes. by the first full week of this month, that had fallen to belowjust below 1,950, and figures out today showed it was down slightly at nearly 1,900 a week later. the hope now is that this rapid testing equipment does prove suitable to be taken out to care homes. so the test has come back negative. good news for sonia, meanwhile. she hasn t got coronavirus. it was only a brief wait before a further assessment. but there s still frustration in many other parts of the nhs that the testing process just takes too long. hugh is here now. encouraging news in your report about that new test, but we can also talk tonight about a new form of treatment. what can you tell us? yes, a drug called remdesevir, originally designed as an antiviral for ebola patients but now being tried out for cobh at 19 in various different health care systems. in england, it is going to be available now under something called the early access medicines scheme, whereby a drug is allowed by regulators to be used by doctors for unmet need even though the trials had not been completed. early work on this suggests it cuts the recovery time for coronavirus by four days from an average of 15 days down to ii. for coronavirus by four days from an average of 15 days down to 11. if administered early, it is thought it will prevent patients needing to go into intensive care, in other words, stopping them deteriorate. so it looks as if it may save lives but there is no hard evidence of that at this stage. matt hancock, the health secretary, says it is the biggest step forward in treatments since the crisis began. experts are saying it is not a magic bullet, though. we don t know how much is going to be made available by the drug company, gilead sciences, to the nhs. doctors will probably administer it based on their assessment of a patient‘s need. but certainly, there is a view that it at least blocks the virus and it could well open the door longer term for a treatment. thank you forjoining us. hugh pym, our health editor, there. the supercar maker mclaren has announced 12,000 jobs will be lost across its operations, including its formula i team. the firm based in surrey said its finances had been hit badly by the cancellation of motorsport around the world, and reduced demand for its products, during the pandemic. car showrooms and outdoor markets in england will be able to welcome customers from next monday, and other shops will follow on the 15th ofjune, but some retailers say they will struggle to have government safety measures ready in time. among the measures will be limits on the number of shoppers allowed into a shop at the same time, as well as one way systems on the floor. our business correspondent emma simpson has more details. more people are out and high streets are also preparing to come out of hibernation. but shopping will be different. the first thing is, be prepared to queue. it s not just groceries, all shops will be limiting the number of customers in store to comply with social distancing. queueing, it seems, is about to become part of our everyday life. when you re inside, expect to see lots of signs on how to move around the store. now, we all love a good browse, but customers are being encouraged not to handle items while they re doing it, where possible, and, preferably, shop alone. and you can forget about trying stuff on because fitting rooms will be closed wherever possible. here at m&s, if you want a bra fitting, you ll have to follow their diy guide online. it s back to basics for stores now. next door, andy s got far less space to play without his fashion store but he reckons he can also follow the government s new retail rules. the guidance is very detailed and i think it is quite good. so, i m not nervous about the situation because i think as long as i communicate the right things to the people who work here and set the rules correctly, i think we don t need to be nervous. how keen are you to reopen again? we ve got to get on with life. we ve got to get this show up and running again. so, yeah, i m excited. i just want to get back to work, really. but all retailers are wondering, when the doors finally reopen, will shoppers come? very keen. yes, very keen as well. can t really wait. i ve been shopping online a lot and it s just not the same. i think you like to go in and have the experience. i still think it s ok, if you socially distance and you re sensible about it. but we have to get the economy going. are you prepared to queue? probably not. if i m really honest. down the road in kingston, john sells records. 0nline sales have kept him going, but he s in no rush to open up. i just don t feel comfortable bringing people into the shop. the shop, which has to be about browsing and losing yourself in the shop. i don t think we can do social distancing in here effectively. it s been a long wait, but it s also likely to be a slow and gradual reopening for many of our high street shops. emma simpson, bbc news, kingston. the royal national lifeboat institution is calling for access to england s beaches to be restricted, until lifeguards are back on patrol. they were taken off duty when lockdown came into force. two people died in separate incidents on the cornish cost yesterday, and the charity says safety advice and warnings only go so far when people are keen to enjoy some freedom after weeks of being at home. 0ur correspondentjon kay reports. half term, perfect weather. but with two deaths, it s been a bleak bank holiday weekend on the cornish coast. just off this middle section of the beach where the rocks run out. ben is a vicar, but yesterday, he raced into the sea to rescue a surfer at widemouth bay, because there were no lifeguards on duty. at least three people got pulled in off the beach here that day, and further up the coast, we know of at least another six. and that s because we aren t going to leave people to drown. the rnli stood down all its lifeguards in the uk when lockdown started. and they still haven t returned, even though beaches in england are now filling up again. many people living in coastal communities say they feel exposed. it is just so dangerous. we are seeing rescues happening on a daily basis. perhaps the lifeguards aren t seen as an emergency service elsewhere in the country, but in cornwall, it is essential. get your act together. it s not rocket science. the rnli says it wants to have lifeguards back on duty right around the uk as soon as possible, but they say it is not that simple, because first, they have to train up their staff to save lives safely in a time of coronavirus. we were not able to start moving until may the 13th. we heard about it at the same time as everybody else did. and we have moved incredibly quickly to get the service up and running as fast as we possibly can. to avoid more deaths, the rnli wants the government to restrict access to the seaside for now. 16 beaches in england will get some cover this weekend, with more to follow across the uk as lockdown rules change. but until lifeguards can return to work officially, some say they will patrol the beaches as volunteers. jon kay, bbc news, cornwall. a teenagerfrom india who cycled hundreds of miles, carrying her injured father, from the capital delhi back to their home village during the country s lockdown, has been speaking to the bbc about her story. 15 year old jyoti paswan took seven days to complete the journey, which has also highlighted the plight of indians who regularly travel hundreds of miles to find work. 0ur correspondent yogita limaye has the story.
latest figures from the us show that 90,000 people have now died with coronavirus, almost a third of the world total. there have been more than 1.5 million recorded cases of covid 19. president trump has said he s taking an unproven antimalarial drug as a precaution. the trump administration has once again criticised the world health organisation s response to the coronavirus pandemic, accusing it of costing many lives by failing to provide the information the world needed. in response, the agency s director general said they had sounded the alarm early and often. india and bangladesh are preparing to evacuate more than 2 million people as cyclone amphan heads towards their coasts. it s expected to make landfall on wednesday. this would be the first supercyclone in the bay of bengal in 20 years. now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i m stephen sackur. much of the world responded to the covid 19 pandemic with a lockdown strategy. now the focus is on finding a way out of lockdown without prompting a second wave of infection. could sweden provide a model? well, my guest today is sweden s chief epidemiologist, anders tegnall. now, he was the architect of a controversial no lockdown strategy, which continues to stir interest right across the world. has it worked? anders tegnall in stockholm, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. let s begin with the latest picture in sweden. your death figures every day from covid 19, they go up, they go down, sometimes by significant margins. it s hard to get a real sense of whether you are really in control of the spread of covid 19 in sweden or not. what do you say? yeah, we know that the death toll is a bit complicated because the registration of death is sometimes a few days late. so we now collect data on actual date of death and we do it in a way that we do not worry too much about the last ten days because we know they are unsure, a lot of things happening and they fill out every day. instead, we look at two days before that and then we follow the trend much better and we have a clear declining trend. i think we topped atjust under 100 cases a day and now we are down to slightly more than 80 a day on the average. the trend seems to keep going that way. that trend is clearly very good news. but is not the brutal truth that you have had many more deaths in sweden than you would have had if, like your scandinavian neighbours, you had imposed an early and very strict lockdown policy? i think that s very difficult to know. the death toll in sweden is mainly in the long term facilities for long term ill, elderly people and we had very much an unfortunate spread in those facilities in the way that some other countries had, but not all our nordic neighbours. why we had a spread in sweden and not our neighbouring countries, that is something we are trying to investigate now. with respect, isn t that part of my point? that you probably would not have had that catastrophic spread of covid i9 through your care homes, particularly around stockholm, if you had run a more strict, a less open policy for the general population? yeah, i mean, these people meet a lot of people, even if you have a lockdown, so you cannot isolate them. in that way, lockdown would not have stopped the spread into them and we can see now, when we are starting to look at these places, we see a decline in the incidences in those places, once we really get them to focus on basic hygiene procedures. let me ask you this. as the country s chief epidemiologist, the man, let us be honest, the man who in many ways is the architect of the swedish government s strategy for coping with covid i9 can you regard a situation in which your country has, getting on for 30,000 infections of covid i9 in the population, has a death toll which is significantly higher than your neighbours, standing at around 3500, can you regard that as success or do you have to acknowledge that in some ways your strategy failed ? yeah, that s true. when it comes to the death toll, this didn t work out the way we hoped it. 0n the other hand, the connection between our basic strategy in slowing down the spread, if that s really in the long run will affect the total death toll in the society or not, that is not clear yet. we know that our neighbouring countries by now have around i% of the population who had some kind of immunity, has had the disease. the investigations we have had in sweden so far we have a major one going on that will give us a better answer it points that we have at least ten, maybe 20 times higher level of immunity in the population, which means that we are much further into the spread than other countries, and if that means that other countries will reach similar death tolls to us or not, i think that s very difficult tojudge. that is a very interesting answer because you are inviting me there to consider the long term significance of this notion, this concept of herd immunity. now, your own government says that the strategy that you implemented, the more moderate, the less strict emergency response to covid i9 was not about establishing herd immunity, but you seem to be suggesting that actually it is about getting to that point where so many people in the general population have had covid i9 and, therefore, we can assume have some resistance to getting it again, that you have this concept of herd immunity in your population. was that the working strategy or not? no, it was not. i m just pointing out one way that shows that you cannot make this kind of easy comparison at this stage because the epidemic has hit different countries in many different ways. the point is really about comparisons with your nordic, scandinavian neighbours. because they took a different approach, they were much stricter in their lockdown, as you ve acknowledged, and the death tolls, denmarkjust over 500, finland just over 200, norwayjust over 200. they are strikingly different from sweden s, and the point really is that they now feel they are in a position to ease their strict lockdowns, to bring some sense of normality back to their populations and to quote one of the senior ministers in denmark, they feel that there s very little chance of a second spike in infections because of what they have achieved. so they are as far along the curve as you are, but they ve prevented hundreds and hundreds of deaths that you failed to prevent. i don t understand what you mean that they are as far along the curve as we are. 0bviously they are not. if only i% or 2% of their population has been infected, they are not very far along any kind of curve. but they are confident that because of measures that they took and the social distancing and the public consciousness that they now have, that the disease will not spread and will not kill the numbers that have been killed in sweden. yep, and only the future can tell. if you look at similar kind of diseases, we have never really been able to stop anything. we can sometimes delay things. they ve been successful in doing that, our nordic neighbours, but to stop them forever i don t think that s going to be possible with covid i9, just as it has never been possible with flus or any other viral diseases in this way. we ll come back to your vision of future in a moment, but i am very interested in the philosophical point that your approach has tested, and that is the notion of not conducting your emergency response through the heavy hand of government, through strict mandatory lockdown, but talking to your people, placing trust in your own population and saying to them, we are relying on you voluntarily to adopt behaviours that we think will best control the spread of this disease. do you think your policy of trust has worked? yes, i really do. because we can really see that we have big impacts and that comes back a bit to the comparison to other countries and so on. if we look at some statistics that we have, we can look at the travel patterns travel during easter was only 10% of what it normally is, showing that people really tried to minimise their social contact. we can also see that some of our other viral diseases like flu, which has the same kind of pattern every year, suddenly stopped in the middle of the pattern and disappeared. also, once again showing that social distancing really worked and you can see trains in sweden running at 10% of capacity, domestic flights are almost not running anymore and so people really took this on in a way that is more or less equal to people and countries who did it by illegal measures. yours was a mandatory crackdown. in that sense, do you think some governments, particularly in europe, where the lockdowns have been severe, have infa ntilised their populations and therefore when they release the brakes, people may not act in the responsible way that you say swedes continue to act. i don t know if i canjudge that, but i can say one very important thing for us is what you are alluding to and that is sustainability. these kind of measures, voluntary measures, with a big understanding in a population of why we re doing this, have a much higher level of sustainability. we all know that this is something that we are going to have to handle for a long time and, as you said, our nordic neighbours now believe that they can handle it in the long term, going over to something which is fairly similar to what sweden is doing today. but we really need to then have sustainable solutions. and, sure, i mean, there are signs of a reaction in some countries that when you turn things free, then you really use your freedom to the maximum extent. here in sweden, even if people are getting slightly more mobile as we head into summer, we still have a great level of social distancing in place. let me, if i may, get a little personal with you. earlier, i said you became seen as the architect of a maverick policy which went against the grain of the scientific consensus in many other parts of the world, where scientists were backing very strict mandatory lockdown. it did put you in the spotlight, notjust in sweden, but right around the world, and as the death toll has mounted in sweden, and you ve been open about that, how has that affected you personally? do you feel any sense of personal responsibility for those lives lost? i mean, this is not my decision or anything like that. we are a big agency, i have my director who backs this whole thing. you re a modest man, but i think you would accept that much of the groundwork and strategy and the thinking behind sweden s policy came from you, and it seems to me that that is quite a burden for you to bear when we see what has happened. i mean, of course, this death toll is highly regrettable. it s a terrible thing that we re seeing. i think we have a number of explanations why this happened, not directly connected to our strategy. now, when we re investigating these long term facilities, there are a lot of things that can be done to improve the quality of hygiene, other things there, and most likely would diminish the death toll over time in these facilities. it s highly regrettable that that was not seen by the people responsible before this happened, but it did happen and, of course, it s terrible. 0n the other hand, we re not too sure a strict lockdown would have changed so much. it didn t change very much in the netherlands, in the uk and many other places. and what about the debate in the scientific community? it s very notable, i think it was pretty much 2000 doctors, scientists, professors, learned people signed a petition calling on the government to reverse your policy and impose stricter measures that was back in late march, and even in april, on april 22, some very respected scientists in sweden wrote a piece condemning officials without talent, which undoubtedly included you, saying that the decisions were wrong and to quote one leading immunologist, cecilia soderberg naucler, she said, we are not testing, we re not tracking and the people behind this strategy are leading us to catastrophe. how did you cope with all that? yeah, i can cope with that because i know that of the other 40,000 scientists in sweden, the majority is realy behind us. we have an expert group that we talk to every week who are very much behind us, completely in line with what we re trying to do and we are really trying to the best we can under the circumstances we re in, that we are trying to sacrifice some of it to have an easier burden on the economy, that is definitely false. the 2000 was a big mixture of different kinds of scientists and the smaller group of 22 is not our leading scientists in the field. the leading scientist in the field is behind us. what about the public? so that part doesn t worry me too much. the death toll definitely worries me, but that small group of scientists does not worry me. interesting, and what about the public? because you ve had a lot of support. you ve even had people putting tattoos of your face on their bodies and wearing t shirts proclaiming their support for you. but you ve had others, and i dare say some of those were the family members of people who have died, who have been very critical. that s tough. yeah, but i think that also shows that the agency and the policy has strong support in the population. we have done several investigations, and not only us, many others have done investigations, and the level of people who are behind what we re doing is like 70 80%, which is an incredibly high number for any kind of measure from a public health agency in sweden. and only like 5 10% think that we should think more about the health of the population. another 10 20% are worried about the economy. and i think that s it s a great support for what we re doing, that the population is definitely behind us. and then we have some extremes, with tattoos and stuff like that, which i try not to think about too much. it must be a strange feeling when you see yourself on somebody else‘s body, ican imagine. but you say that you didn t do any of this in terms of the strategy and the policy that you scientists came up with and that the government adopted, you didn t do it for economic reasons. but surely the truth is that when it came to the crunch and making these big decisions, people at the top of government in sweden did want to keep the economy functioning as well as it possibly could. they wanted to avoid long term damage, and surely that was a very important element in this strategy. not the way we delivered it. i mean, we didn t do those calculations. 0n the other hand, we did calculations on the broader public health impact. i mean, when it comes to closing schools, there s a lot of science behind that closing schools does a lot of damage to children, especially children who are vulnerable already, from the beginning. being out of work is also very dangerous from a public health perspective. so i think you re onto something here. i mean, our strategy includes broader public health perspectives. than maybe many others in other countries. when it comes to the economic consequences, that s on the government level, and of course they will make adjustments to the things we suggest, taking the economy into account. but it s definitely not our part of the development of this strategy. right, so when you look across europe and the world at other countries and the way they re doing things, and i m thinking now of where i am, the united kingdom, where the lockdown is still pretty much in place, with a very few minor easings of it, and schools are still closed, and there is a very great debate about whether any schools beyond primary age will open before september it seems they won t are you saying that is just plain wrong, it s a mistake? it s getting the balance between tackling covid and wider public health and social issues it s getting the balance wrong? yeah, i mean, only the future can tell, and i think what is the science behind this and what is not the science behind dealings with covid i9 is definitely not clear. i mean, not anybody can claim that they have the science that lockdowns are good and the more open strategy in sweden is wrong, because there is no science, really, supporting anything. what s supporting what we re doing in sweden is we re following a long tradition of how we work in public health. we are also taking into account the public health effect of closing schools and other things which would give you a lot of long term problems in the area of public health, and that needs to be taken into account when you close schools. and so not doing that, i think, would not be ethical and not be a correct public health way of working. i ll tell you what s striking in this interview, and i would say honest on your part, is that you keep telling me that on many aspects of this covid i9 response, the science isn t clear. i want to, in that context, bring you back to the notion of herd immunity. cos you have said, you said it just a few weeks ago, that you believe by the end of may that there will be a form of herd immunity in play in stockholm. i think you suggested that by then you could imagine that maybe 30% or 40% of the population will have had covid i9, and will have, therefore, a form of immunity. but it seems to me you have no scientific evidence for that. you re not doing enough testing to know whether that 40% figure is real, and you also, frankly, don t know the science of covid i9. you don t know that having had covid i9 gives you any long term immunity at all. so, where s your science? we are just now doing a major investigation in sweden, like they ve done in other countries, taking a sample of the total population and looking at the level of immunity they re having right now, so we get better data. what we re basing it on so far is a few minor investigations showing levels between 10% and 15% of different smaller groups have immunity, which supports the modelling that s been done by two or three different scientists in sweden. and when it comes to immunity, just recently i had a discussion with the top scientist on coronavirus and immunity in sweden, and everybody says of course there s immunity. we can measure antibodies, we can measure other aspects of immunity, and why should covid i9 be different than all other infectious diseases? but what about these cases, dr tegnell, what about these cases i read about from china to california of people who had covid i9, recovered, tested negative after they recovered, and then two months later test positive again? apparently they ve caught it again. that is not a reinfection. i ve just discussed this with the top people in sweden. some of them are what they call a recurrence. i mean, you can have part of this virus and carry it obviously for a very long time, which explains some of the cases. other of the cases were obviously contaminations when they were tested the first time. there is no, as far as they knew, and i really trust these people, there is no confirmed cases of somebody who really had the infection twice. we have a very good system of register in sweden. among all the cases we have had in sweden, not one of them have had it more than once. well, to be really sure, then, about how much immunity there is in the general population, you do need the antibody test. roche, the pharmaceutical giant in switzerland, has now developed an antibody test that the us, the eu and now the uk governments are all saying they approve of. is sweden intending to test pretty much everybody over the next few months? we are doing as i said, we are doing a test of a sample of the population to look at the level of immunity in the whole population right now. the samples have been tested, a few of them have been random, but in the next week we ll be able to tell what s the level of immunity. and we re using a number of different methods to look at that, because there is a number of methods out there, and we have developed some ourselves with the help of the top immunologist in sweden doing this. so, towards the end of next week, we can say better what level of immunity we have in the population. i want to end, if i may we re short of time, dr tegnell. i m sorry to interrupt, we re short of time. i just want to end with some thoughts about the future, because throughout this interview, you ve indicated you don t think that, if we can call it the fight, the fight against covid i9 will come to any sort of end until there is an effective vaccine that is deliverable to the world s population. so, we re talking, let s say, a year or 18 months at the best, in most people s view. in the meantime, how much normality can there be? if we take sweden as one of the more advanced countries, that s thought about this a lot, do you think that we, for example, can return before a vaccine to a world in which there is widespread travel, even between countries, where crowds can gather at music concerts or football stadiums, where hugs and handshakes can become routine again, where people do not have to wear facemasks on public transport, or has our life fundamentally changed for the long term ? nobody knows the answer to that question. i think certain things we can be quite sure about. i think for a long time we re going to need to protect our elderly in different ways. because they are always going to be susceptible to this disease, and they are always going to have a very high death toll to it, unless we find a vaccine that will work in that part of the population, which is not going to be easy, or a treatment, and that s not going to be easy either. when it comes to other things, this is not only one nation that can decide, about travel and so on. i think that we in sweden would feel rather confident to ease down on some of the things. maybe travelling around could be ok, maybe a few other things could be ok. if we sometime get an immunity test that works a bit better on the individual level, which they unfortunately don t do yet, we don t have enough experience on that, we can probably ease a few other things too. oui’ main concern now is really the elderly, who have been very isolated, and we need to find different ways of easing that isolation, because that will also affect our health, both in the short term and the both in the short term and the long term, and i think that s one of our main concerns right now. and i m just very interested in one point. do you go out every time you go out now, do you wear a facemask? nope, in sweden we don t wearfacemasks. in sweden, we stay home when we re sick. i think that makes a big difference. anders tegnell, it has been fascinating getting your insights from sweden. thank you very much for being on hardtalk. thank you. hello there. on monday, the temperature reached 25 celsius in suffolk, and over the next couple of days, the heat will continue to build. the peak of the temperatures is likely to be on wednesday. things start to break down a bit after that. chance of thunderstorms on thursday before we all turn cooler and windier by the end of the week. pretty mild out there at the moment away from northernmost parts of scotland. these are the temperatures by the end of the night, and as you can see, still a lot of cloud around. some outbreaks of rain, too. that rain continuing to affect the northern half of the uk mainly during tuesday morning. slowly petering out, many places becoming dry during the afternoon. the cloud thinning and skies brightening. the best of the sunshine likely to be across wales, the midlands and southern england, where temperatures will peak at 25 or 26 degrees. but on the whole, it should be a slightly warmer day across the uk than it was on monday. and those temperatures continue to climb for wednesday. that area of high pressure is sitting over the uk. it s pushing the cloud and rain away, and we re going to be drawing up a gentle southerly breeze that will bring the heat northwards all the way from spain and france and move its way across the uk. northern areas start quite cloudy on wednesday. some rain to clear away from the northern isles, the cloud thins and breaks, and sunshine develops more widely. and in the afternoon, we re likely to find temperatures of 23 degrees through central scotland, 20 or so for northern ireland, the highest temperatures across the midlands to the south east of england, 27 or 28 degrees. things start to break down a bit on thursday. there s a bit of rain trying to come in from the west. that may not make it too far. these showers are likely to break out from the south east of england, heading towards the midlands, lincolnshire and east anglia, and they could be heavy and thundery. and that will knock the temperatures down. for many of us, it s still quite a warm day on thursday, just not quite as warm as wednesday. and then things start to change more widely, i think, for the end of the week, because we ve got this area of low pressure. it s winding itself up, the winds will be strengthening and this weather front will be bringing some rain. that s going to move its way eastwards across the uk during friday, but there won t be much rain, i think, for england and wales, and the more persistent rain soon sweeps away from mainland scotland. the winds, though, will be stronger. gales likely in the north west, and this is where we ll see most of the showers. 0therwise, there ll be some sunshine, a cooler and fresherfeel, but still 21 in eastern england.
this is bbc news, with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. i m mike embley. america s coronavirus death toll tops 90,000, as president trump says he s been taking an unproven drug to prevent coronavirus. i happen to be taking it. hydroxychloroquine? the world health organization pledges an independent inquiry into the pandemic, but the us renews its criticism. the british government adds loss of smell or taste to its official list of symptoms. doctors say it should have been done weeks ago. cyclone amphan powers towards india and bangladesh
and then things get even worse for my ego. this week s grazia, page nine, chart of lust, next to michaeljordan, chris mason! hello. in the chart of lust. what page were you on, vicki? 34? 0h, stop it! chris, you re in the chart of lust alongside michaeljordan, alexis from schitt‘s creek and cardi b. big cardi b fan? it s nothing to do with my winter outfits. i think cardi was marginally above me in the chart, but there s always next week. she is, but she wasn t on gogglebox. how was that? to make matters even worse! it all came about. the brief story is it came about because we re now having, in the absence of make up people, to use technological gadgetry when we appear on the telly, like this. good morning. welcome to breakfast with chris mason and rachel burden. i like chris mason. i like the confidence he has to part his hair in the middle. i love it! did you catch eurovision last night? yes, we did. we watched it! did i bleep, chris! the coronavirus newscast from the bbc. hello, it s adam in the studio. and vicki young in the studio. and chris in my socially distant cupboard of news. just down the corridor. now, a long running theme of this podcast, vicki, has been face masks or, as we call them now, face coverings, and the advice that has changed through time in different parts of the uk about when and when not to wear them and how to wear them safely if you do. cast your mind back to the 3rd of april and whenjonathan van tam, the deputy chief medical officer for england, said this. there is no evidence that general wearing of face masks by the public who are well affects the spread of the disease in our society. what matters right now is social distancing. and what is the government saying about masks right now? well, the announcement came today from the 15th ofjune in england it will be compulsory to wear a face covering of some kind on public transport something that, for example, the mayor of london, sadiq khan, has been talking about for almost two months and, if you don t do that, you will not be allowed to travel and you could end up being fined. the government has, i think, reluctantly eventually ended up in this place and inevitably lots of people are saying, this is far too slow, why didn t you do it ages ago? and the government are saying, now is the time to do it because we re starting to open things up. here s how grant shapps, the transport secretary, broke it to the plane, train, bus and tram using public today. as of monday the 15th ofjune, face coverings will become mandatory on public transport. that doesn t mean surgical masks, which we must keep for clinical settings. it means the kind of face covering you can easily make at home. there will be exemptions to these rules for very young children, disabled people and those with breathing difficulties but, broadly, as we come through this phase, we re doing what many other countries have asked transport users to do. it is interesting because the kind of nudge, nudge of a few weeks ago when the prime minister hinted at it has become a kind of prod, prod , but the government are still quite vague about the kind of fine you might get if you don t have one, and it s more about turning up to wear one when you get to the station or the bus stop in the hope that the peer pressure of the queue means we all put them on. that was interesting the whole thrust of this was, we expect people to want to do this, they re going to want to do their duty, and the example they gave was when drinking alcohol in london and other places was banned, and actually it doesn t happen very often. think about smoking not very often that people are smoking on the train or a bus so they think that most people will want to do the right thing. the peer pressure of not doing it is another aspect of all of this, so they re really relying on that, although ultimately, yes, you won t be allowed to travel if you haven t got it, which is up to staff and british transport police. it is interesting it s taken them quite some time to get to this point. it s seven weeks to the day since sadiq khan, the london mayor, called for this. and it s two weeks till it comes in. and the other aspect, and the prime minister has spoken about this, and he talked openly about the fact it doesn t make that much difference. they admit today there s a limited impact in terms of your health but it s partly about giving people confidence that it is safe to go back to particularly crowded public transport, because i think there have been concerns that people are incredibly anxious. they ve watched everything for the last three months and some people are scared to go out, certainly to go on public transport, and they think this might help. and there is a bit of a regional well, not regional, national element to this at the moment at least. yeah, and we were hearing from grant shapps that he was saying this is england only, but he hopes that the devolved administrations will follow suit, and we ve heard conversations going on elsewhere in the uk scotland, wales and northern ireland about what they might do, not least because you get the inevitable questions that have tumbled in the direction of mr shapps today around, what happens if you re on a train from edinburgh to london? do you have to suddenly pull on the mask at berwick upon tweed? it will be interesting to see explicitly what we get out of edinburgh, belfast and cardiff in the next couple of days. grant shapps said, in his recent experience, everybody ends up in the same place on stuff like this, and there will be lots of help for the travelling public. you will not be able to miss the signs and the posters telling you to do this, and it sounds like there will be spare masks on hand. for if you forget. imagine you re trying to get to work and you forget to do it, but it s an interesting thing about short bus journeys, shortjourneys in london maybe, but then you think about getting on a train, maybe chris to yorkshire, me to cornwall or you to scotland, and you re talking four or five hours with a mask on. that s going to be quite off putting. if you re wearing specs they get clouded up. design flaw! exactly. in either the mask or the specs or the wearer. another thing i noticed at train stations now, so many more bits are cordoned off for the staff to stand in. there are hand sanitiser stations in the station all over the place for you to wash your hands, and a lot of staff pointing you in the right direction. this is the thing. we re not back to normal and, even when we do start travelling again in that way, it s not as it was, and i think people looking around think, everything is back to normal, but it isn t, and travelling in this way is completely different to what we were doing three months ago. and it s going to be like this for ages. mm, yeah. and remind us what else is happening on the 15th ofjune in england. nonessential retail is opening. but you still can t get a haircut? no. that s the 4th ofjuly at the earliest, despite speculation it might be even earlier. lots still not happening, but people will be able to go, and that s the point if shops are opening up, workers have to get to those places of work and people will want to go to them, and that s why the government says they re doing it now. we ve spoken to a few conservatives who you might not think would be in favour of this, telling people what to wear, and actually the ones we have spoken to are on board if this is what needs to be done, it needs to be done. and the trade unions seem to be happier about the idea of their staff wearing masks and the people they interact with wearing masks and not so worried about the idea they ll have to be telling people off. they seem to like the health benefits and are less worried about the enforcement. you would have thought they would be worried about the enforcement side, but i suppose you have natural barriers, in the sense that most things you are getting onto something. but imagine if there is a stand off that will always be an issue. but they re relying on people doing their duty. and, from the outset, people over interpreted plenty of the lockdown guidelines and were more compliant than perhaps the government expected at the start, so i suppose that hope that we are self policing in all of this is grounded in that sense that a lot of people are very nervous about going out and this might help tempt them out. vicki, up hasjust popped on my phone an exclusive on the guardian website. they ve got some leaks saying that the test and trace app might not be ready and working for everyone until september or october. we haven t got any word from the government confirming or denying that story, and they never talk about lea ks anyway, but what is your app thinking? it chimes with the sense we re getting, because all that talk about the app. it s currently on the isle of wight and it feels like it s going to stay there, because they ve got lots of people to take it up there, but it s all gone a bit quiet really. there was a rumour about maybe a big announcement at the end of this week, beginning of next, but i think it s interesting that lots of government insiders talk about it as nice to have, the cherry on the cake, but it s a bit of an extra, we can quite easily do test and trace without it. and they point out, which i think is the case, that lots of other countries have opened up from lockdown without it. i think the problem they have got is that borisjohnson has gone out talking a world beating system, and he didn t need to say that. it s evidently not a world beating system. it s not going to be better than some of the systems in asia. but they think they can carry on without it, and this would fit in with that. we don t know if it s september, october, but it maybe wouldn t be a huge surprise. not appening. have you held that in for the last 12 weeks? i have. i ve been working on it. just polishing it. and then, when you heard reports it might be delayed until september, you thought, got to use it now! out it comes. alok sharma, the business secretary, was spotted at the dispatch box in the commons yesterday looking quite pea ky. sweaty. dabbing his face with his handkerchief. how is he? it turns out he s all right, actually. breaking news! he was sweating, didn t look well at all. the spokesperson said he d gone home and was isolating and everybody thought, this is the moment where the coronavirus rears up again in the house of commons, where they re complaining about being back there, but he says he has had a test and it s negative and he s fine. all this week on the coronavirus newscast, we ve been sort of broadening our agenda, as they call it in newsrooms across the country, looking at some of the other big stuff that s happening in the world at the moment, obviously with coronavirus as the backdrop to everything. so, monday, tuesday, wednesday, we looked at the protests in the us after the death of george floyd and the political reaction to that and, last night, there was a jaw dropping moment when we got the statement from the british police, the portuguese police and the german police appealing for information from the public about the disappearance of madeleine mccann, the three year old british girl who went missing on herfamily holiday in portugal 13 years ago, because the german police have a new suspect, and it s a guy in his 40s who s behind bars at the moment for a different crime. i got this update from our berlin correspondent, jenny hill, who is in braunschweig, where the police gave a press conference today. the starkest thing to come out of it is the fact that investigators in germany are convinced that madeleine mccann is dead, that she was killed by this man that they are now saying is a suspect, this chap who s been in prison for some time, serving quite a lengthy sentence. and his back story is quite something, isn t it? it is. i mean, today, prosecutors have said that he has got convictions for child sexual assault. while he was in portugal. he comes from this city, braunschweig, they think, or he lived here for some time, but he spent a considerable amount of time in portugal and they say he drove around the algarve in a camper van and during that time they say he was funding his lifestyle by burgling hotels and holiday accommodation and drug dealing. he s in prison at the moment. police say officially he s serving a sentence for a sex crime. reportedly, that crime was the rape of a 72 year old american woman who was in praia da luz and was attacked two years before madeleine mccann disappeared from the same resort. so this chap, according to prosecutors here, is somebody who has been involved with serious criminality in the past. and the police have pointed to specific things. you mentioned vehicles but also phones, places where he lived. yeah, last night, german police went on a national tv show here. it s a bit like crimewatch in britain, aimed at getting the public to help them solve old cases, and they were keen to highlight a few different things. first of all, a couple of properties the man is said to have spent time in on the algarve, one in particular not too far from praia da luz. they have also released some pictures of a vw camper van he is said to have used a lot, and also a dark red jaguar. they are keen to have the public look at these, and what s really interesting is they re saying to people, if you were in praia da luz, on the algarve, in april or may 2007, which is when madeleine mccann disappeared, have a look back through your holiday snaps. it might be one of these vehicles is in the background, parked on a street. you wouldn t have thought anything about it at the time but now it could be crucial information. i was a bit confused first thing this morning when they said their assumption was that the little girl was dead, i wondered, is this a murder investigation or is it still a sort of missing persons investigation, which is how it s sort of presented by the met police in the uk. yes, it was quite a shocking moment. when i watched this programme on tv last night and the detective said, we think she is dead, and again today the prosecutor said, this is a murder enquiry as far as the german police are concerned. they believe that madeleine mccann has been killed. that is very different to what we are hearing from scotland yard who are saying at the moment they do not have conclusive evidence as to whether she is alive or dead. you can only imagine how distressing this all must be to her family. but there is a very stark difference in the way that the two forces are presenting it, but certainly here in germany as far as investigators are concerned, madeleine mccann was killed. now let s talk tojim gamble, who was head of the child exploitation and online protection centre and was involved in one of the british investigations into madeleine mccann‘s disappearance. hello,jim. hello. for all of us on wednesday night this was like a whoa moment hearing this news. what was it like for you? it was a whoa moment for me as well. this has been a long time coming, there have been a lot of false dawns, we don t know what will happen with this, but there seems to be more substance to this than any of the other announcements that i have seen or been involved with over the last 13 years. what do you think is making the german police so confident? surely if they were lacking confidence they would not have done this big thing? well, i think the german police, the portuguese and new scotland yard have more information than they are sharing with us. but critically what you see is a strong circumstantial case. what that means is you look first of all have you got a suspect who has a motive? this man, who is now 43, has been convicted of offences, sexual offences, against girls before. that puts him into that motive category. he has also been involved in burglaries. then you say would he have had an opportunity to commit the crime? we know from his telephone data that his phone was in close proximity to the place where the crime took place and a short time before that. then you consider the subsequent conduct of the suspect in this case. the day after madeleine went missing he changed the registration number on one of his cars. each of those things in isolation might not be a big deal, but taken together they certainly provide you with a strong circumstantial case and i think what the german police, who i have worked with in the past, and new scotland yard, what they are trying to do is give us a little bit of information in the hope that the public will be able to help them corroborate some of the other information they have to get it to an evidential standard. there has been controversy about this partly because a lot of resources have gone into this investigation, a lot of funding, a lot of attention, some people say it was completely disproportionate. what do you say to people who think that is the case? i understand why people will look at this and think, and i have seen it said, this is one missing child when there are literally hundreds of thousands every year. the truth is the madeleine mccann case is pretty unique with the exception perhaps of ben needham many years before, so a uk child going missing in a foreign country whilst on holiday. the vast majority of children who go missing in the uk will go missing by running away or being lured away by friends and most return within the first 48 to 72 hours. that is not to say missing and being absent from home is not a risk around exploitation, but the madeleine mccann case is very different. i think it has engendered a aplit in public opinion unlike any other i think it has engendered a a split in public opinion unlike any other case i have ever seen, and some of the social media content directed at the parents is amongst some of the worst harassment and bullying that i have seen in any case. i am intrigued by the tactic you hinted at on behalf of the police, that they would hold back some information from the public domain that they might be aware of to try and flush out the corroborating information. talk us through the rationale for that. would it be that sense that it would be more independent, a second source, if somebody comes along with information that they have already got a sense of from other people? exactly. if i put words in your mouth, the evidential value of that is wholly diminished. but what i say to you is here is what we know. here is a picture of this camper van, a picture of thisjaguar car, here is other information about a telephone number, but i do not give you all of that. if you are able to come back and say, now that you mention it, when i look back through that lens, i remember seeing that car parked up every day in this car park and there was a guy living rough in the back and he looked like this. that is corroboration. what i would say to anyone listening to the show is, if you were in portugal in that year, not even around the week of the crime, if you were in portugal in 2007, revisit your holiday snaps, you don t know what you have got. flick through the photographs you took and in the background you might see a volkswagen kombi van with a yellow skirt and you might see a very distinctive jaguar car and a blonde man near it. what they are trying to do is to get people to look through this lens which is more tightly focused and to try and prompt them to come forward and also to prompt people that they suspect or know have information who have not as yet come forward. what do you make of this kind of difference of description from the different countries? the germans make it sound very much like this is a murder enquiry, the brits make it sound like a missing person s enquiry. what does that mean? the difference in emphasis is important. the germans are working on the assumption she is dead and from a very pragmatic place they are thinking statistically this is the most likely outcome, or they know more than they are telling. i think the approach from new scotland yard, who i think are amongst the finest detectives in the world, is the right one. who are we to remove hope unless we are in a position to say here is evidence that says this child is dead? madeleine s mum and dad have to get up every day and they are probably fuelled by the desperate hope that something good will come out of this, that madeleine will come home. you do not want to extinguish that. the german police have done the wrong thing by saying that today? i do not want to criticise the german police, i wouldn t have done it, i refuse to give up hope until there is evidence. you have got the translation saying they are working on the assumption, so it is a difference in emphasis. but my goodness, gerry and kate mccann are already carrying a burden for a variety of reasons and to layer this on it before you are certain i think adds to the pain that they currently suffer. jim, thank you very much. you re welcome. lots of coronavirus newscast consumers get in touch with me to tell me when they listen to this and some people say it is before bed, sometimes it isjust after they ve woken up, and those seem to be the two main times that people listen to us. read into that what you will. actually there is news about sleep and the coronavirus today. king s college london have done a big survey and they found that 50% of people have had disturbed sleep during this period. does that apply to either of you two? no, i love sleep, nothing stops me sleeping. i love sleep as well, but, definitely. early on when we were in that kind of acute phase of things when it felt emergency like, i was not sleeping as well. the weird thing was it was not that i was big time worried about stuff, but because of all the disruption in our day to day lives that is what i put it down to. chris, you are in the 50% of people who had disturbed sleep or the 40% who said they were sleeping less and me and vicky are in the 25% who said they were getting better sleep, which is good news for us. less for you, chris. university college london, because sleep research is so hot right now, are calling out for people to send in their dreams because there is anecdotal evidence that people have been having much more vivid dreams. does that apply to you? yes, there were a couple of anxiety type dreams which involved the zoom meetings with downing street. as journalists we have to ask questions of the ministers and the prime minister and you have to zoom in and there is a mute button thing going on and it is high stress. that sense of responsibility. so i did have a dream and i was zooming in and i could not get it to work and it was notjust a normal one, it was not just the prime minister, my boss katie was there and donald trump. i could not make myself heard and that is what it all comes down to. reverse ventriloquist, mouth moving but nothing coming out. chris, any vivid dreams for you? oh, yes, absolute nightmares. my fear is ending up on page 34 of grazia and next week. imagine the shame of that. my nightmare is not being in any magazines this week. oh, it is true. enough of us sleep amateurs, let s speak to a sleep professional, let s speak to doctor michael farquhar, a consultant in sleep medicine at the evelina children s hospital in london, which we can see from our office. hello, dr michael. hello. where are you? i am in one of our bedrooms at the children s sleep centre where we do overnight sleep studies on children and we have a detailed look at their sleep. is that when you get wired up to one of those headset things? absolutely. in the walls and hidden away there is all sorts of technical gadgetry that is as simple as possible so the kids do not get too freaked out and it is boring and they get to sleep. whenever you talk about sleep research, or us as individuals talk about sleep problems we might have, the minute you start talking about it you start worrying about it more and the danger is it gets worse. absolutely, you can get very trapped in that loop very quickly. you are ten minutes late falling asleep and you start to worry about not falling asleep and the more you worry, the more difficult it is to get to sleep and before you know it, it is three in the morning. learning how to break that is a good skill to learn. did you see that survey about 50% of people having disturbed sleep? idid. did you think it was obvious, that is what happens at a time like this? pretty much. we have been doing work since the beginning of the pandemic and we wanted to support our staff because we knew disrupted sleep would come. we have been doing work very early on to try and improve and maintain as good quality sleep as possible. the most important thing is we are living through completely abnormal times and disrupted sleep is a completely normal response. i have a question and i am asking for a friend and for adam. is it possible to have too much sleep? it is difficult to overdo it to be honest. most people will catch up sleep if they have not been getting the right amount on a weekday night. the classic pattern, and we see it in an exaggerated manner in the teenagers, but also in adults, you get x amount of sleep on a weekday night and at the weekend you sleep a little bit more. what that is, you are catching up on sleep you should have had on the weekdays. but most people would find it difficult to sleep well beyond unless they were massively sleep deprived. i could sleep, i could go to sleep now. are we boring you, adam? i knew you would say that as soon as i said that. vickyjust told us about having anxiety dreams about doing the downing street press conference and donald trump was there and her boss was there. what is happening when you have an anxiety dream? people forget how important sleep is, from both a physical and mental perspective sleep is essential to keep you functioning at your best, and from a physical point of view you are recharging. from a mental point a lot of processing goes on at night in terms of what your brain is doing. all the things you have done in the daytime, your memories and emotions are being processed and dealt with in sleep to a degree. if you have lots of things that you have not dealt with in the daytime, that has an impact on your sleep. when people are stressed they are more likely to have vivid dreams. sometimes it is obvious and people are honest and they say, i was worried and the dream was vivid. if we are not being honest with ourselves, those unusual and vivid dreams can be a sign that things are not being dealt with in the daytime that should be. there is anecdotal evidence that a lot of our listeners listen to this podcast to help them get to sleep. is that a good thing? having a consistent routine for getting to sleep is really important. if you fall asleep in the same way each night by listening to the same music and the same podcast, that helps train your brain. from your point of view the audience might be drifting off halfway through, but that is ok. podcasts are brilliant, we love them. but screens are not brilliant for sleep, so as long as you are not staring at a screen we are happy. doctor michael, thank you very much. that is good news, that we can help people gently go off to sleep, although they will not know i have said that because they will be asleep by now. as long as they don t go to sleep until the end. or wake up if you are listening to us in the morning. it must be very confusing for you. thank you, guys, and thank you to everyone who was on the programme tonight and i have always wanted to end a broadcast saying this. don t have nightmares. goodbye. hello. friday s blustery weather with showers is going to continue into saturday. that low pressure is firmly in charge of our weather. looks as though it will drift away on sunday, but as far as saturday s concerned, it s more the same. so, strong winds through the early hours and also a band of more persistent rain moving from north to south. but i think very early in the morning, southern parts of the country will actually wake up to some sunshine. could be very decent indeed. but quickly through the morning, it looks as though the clouds are going to increase and many of us are in for a least a spell of rain at some point during the day. there ll be some sunny spells, too, particularly the further north you are. and the gusts of wind particularly strong in the afternoon. 40, maybe even 50 mph in some places. now, tempereatures will be typically around 15 16 degrees, perhaps a little bit higher there in the lowlands of scotland, where we ll have a little more sunshine. as i say, by sunday, just that little bit better. this is bbc news, i m lewis vaughan jones. our top stories: two years after it tried to bann american football players from taking a knee, the nfl admits it was wrong. the sick man of europe the official coronavirus death toll in britain passes 40,000. a surprise 2.5 million jobs return to the us economy, and president trump invokes george floyd s name to welcome the figures. hopefully george is looking down right now and saying there s a great thing that s happening for our country. there s a great day for him, it s a great day for everybody. the eu s brexit negotiator accuses the uk of
the world health organisation has reported the biggest global rise in new coronavirus infections in a single day 106,000. there are at least 5 million confirmed cases worldwide. the head of the un agency says he is particularly concerned about the rising number of cases in lower and middle income countries. at least 15 people have died as cyclone amphan, one of the most powerful south asian storms for decades, ripped across parts of bangladesh and eastern india. dramatic pictures showed high winds and heavy rain lashing coastal areas. nearly three million people have been evacuated and there s been widespread damage. floodwaters have continued to rise in the us state of michigan where two dams were breached on tuesday after record rainfall. officials say water levels in the city of midland could reach an historic high. one of the dams was rated unsatisfactory by the state two years ago. now it s time for a look back at the day in parliament. hello there and welcome to wednesday in parliament. on this programme, labour says there s been no tracking and tracing of coronavirus in the uk for months. for ten weeks, there s been no tracing, unlike germany and south korea. and tracing is critical. but the prime minister promises the uk will have a world class track and trace system. and, yes, it will be in place, it will be in place byjune 1. the government confirms there will be new checks on some goods entering northern ireland from the rest of the uk as part of the brexit deal. and there s an angry reaction to the end of the hybrid parliament, which has seen mps taking part by videolink. it is widely reported that the motivation for this over hasty return is to get a support pack behind the prime minister on wednesday afternoons. the labour leader has challenged the prime minister over the number of routine coronavirus tests in care homes. official figures suggest more than 11,600 people have died from the infection in care homes across the uk since the start of the pandemic. on tuesday, the head of care england which represents independent providers told mps that while ministers had announced routine testing, he didn t know when it would start. at prime minister s question time, sir keir starmer wanted a straight answer. what s causing the continued delay in routine testing in ourcare homes? mr speaker, i m afraid he s simply in ignorance of the facts, because the reality is that already, 125,000 care home staff have been tested, 118,000. perhaps he didn t know that, mr speaker! 118,000 care home workers have been tested. and we are absolutely confident that we will be able to increase our testing notjust in care homes but across the whole of the community. and he wanted that to get up to 200,000 tests by the end of the month, more than virtually any other country in europe. again, the question was when routine testing would start, and the chief executive. the chief executive of care england, who knows what he s talking about, gave evidence yesterday that it hasn t. if the prime minister is disputing the evidence of the select committee, that s his own business. order, order! secretary of state for health, please, i don t mind you advising the prime minister but you don t need to advise the opposition during this. sorry, do you want to leave the chamber? we re on maximum numbers. if you want to give way to somebody else, i m more than happy. keir starmer. mr speaker, to assure the prime minister, i m not expressing my own view. i m putting to him the evidence of experts to committees yesterday. keir starmer said what was needed was to test, trace and isolate. borisjohnson said he was confident progress on testing and tracing could be made. already, we ve recruited 2a,000 trackers. and by the 1st ofjune, we will have 25,000. they will be capable of tracking the contacts of 10,000 new cases a day. and to understand the importance of that statistic, i should just remind him that, today, the new cases stand at 2,a00. and i hope therefore that he will abandon his slightly negative tone and support it. keir starmer. 34,000 deaths is negative. of course i m going to ask about that. and quite right, too. the prime minister knows. he says feigned ignorance. for ten weeks, there s been no tracing, unlike germany and south korea. and tracing is critical. there s no getting away from that. we have growing confidence that we will have a test, track and trace operation that will be world beating. and, yes, it will be in place, it will be in place byjune 1. keir starmer moved on to ask the prime minister to exempt more key workers from abroad from having to pay a surcharge to use the health service. the charge has already been suspended for some nhs workers. many of them are risking their lives for the sakes of all of us. does the prime minister think that it is right that care workers coming from abroad and working on our front line should have to pay a surcharge of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of pounds to use the nhs themselves? like him, i ve been the personal beneficiary of people, carers who ve come from abroad and, frankly, saved my life, so i know exactly the importance of what he s talking about. on the other hand, we must look at the realities. this is a great national service, it s a national institution. it needs funding, and those contributions actually help us to raise about £900 million. and it s very difficult in the current circumstances to find alternative sources, so, with great respect to the point that he makes, i do think that that is the right way forward. but there was more pressure from the snp s westminster leader. people migrating to these nations and choosing to work in our nhs and our care sector must have this government s cruel nhs surcharge removed and removed immediately. will the prime minister make that pledge today or will he clap on thursday, hoping that no one really notices that he s giving with one hand and raking it in with the other? well, borisjohnson didn t answer that directly but reminded ian blackford his party had introduced the living wage and was investing £34 billion in the nhs. now, scotland s first minister, nicola sturgeon, has been challenged over whether details of future clusters of covid 19 will be made public after she was accused of keeping an early outbreak secret . the scottish conservative leader said people should have been told about the spread of the disease linked to a nike conference in edinburgh. a delegate from abroad is understood to have passed on the coronavirus to 25 people at the event, held on the 26th and 27th of february days before scotland s first case of the virus was confirmed. but the incident was not made public until it was revealed in a bbc documentary. the confirmation of the number of those who have lost their lives to covid reminds us again of the enormity of this tragedy and i wonder, in the light of that, whether the first minister now accepts that keeping the nike conference outbreak a public secret was not the right course to take. first minister. i really do challenge that terminology, and i think. and i say this with deep regret because i don t believe any aspect of our handling of this crisis should be political but i do believe terminology like that is seeking to make it political. she said at the time there were few cases, so those infected risked being identified. apart from asking why anybody would have wanted to cover this up, i would say, if that is the accusation, it doesn tjust impugn my integrity opposition politicians are entitled to do that but it actually starts to impugn the integrity of the experts who managed this outbreak, including, i have to say, public health england, who were part of the incident management team. so let s talk about these things seriously, let s look at where there are legitimate issues and questions, but let s not engage in ridiculous language of secrecy or cover up. labour s leader called for financial help for care workers. we still have no details yet of how, for example, death in service payments that nhs workers are rightly entitled to will be extended to those working in social care services. and we know that many care workers are on insecure contracts, that many are low paid, and we know that many care workers who are ill or need to self isolate will only receive statutory sick pay. that s £95.85 a week. we are not the employers of social care staff, and therefore. without pointing the finger at anybody or trying to pass the buck, i do think it s really important we work with employers to make sure employers are doing the right thing. as to death in service benefits. scottish care have confirmed that they are putting a proposal together, and i think the health secretary is discussing that proposal we haven t seen it yet with them on friday of this week. and if there is a role that the scottish government can play to facilitate that, we will play that. nicola sturgeon. now, the government has confirmed there will be new checks on some goods entering northern ireland from the rest of the uk as part of the brexit deal. the cabinet office minister, michael gove, told mps northern ireland s ports would be developed to carry out checks on animals and food products. the province will continue to follow some eu rules after the brexit transition period ends on december 31, but michael gove said there would be no new customs infrastructure. we acknowledge, however, as we ve always done, that on agri food and live animal movements, it makes sense to protect supply chains and the disease free status of the island of ireland, as has been the case since the 19th century. that will mean some expansion of existing infrastructure to provide for some additional new processes for the agriculture and food sector, but these processes will build on what already happens at ports like larne and belfast. we welcome the statement today, but it does expose the broken promises made by the prime minister. today, there has been an admission, for the first time, that there will be additional checks, that there will be tariffs on goods at risk of entering the single market. even now, many fear that the government are not willing to admit the full extent of those. we have seven months to get this right and we must. those checks already exist for live animals. it is the case already in the port of larne and the port of belfast that checks are carried out. so we will, of course, exercise any new checks on agri food products in a proportionate way, but by doing so, we imagine that the proportion of goods that will need to be checked will be very minimal. will my right honourable friend confirm that, as from the 1st ofjanuary 2021, northern ireland, ie a part of the united kingdom, will be required to abide by eu regulations on certain goods until at least 2024 and potentially indefinitely? it is the case that there will be eu regulations, aspects of the acquis, that will apply in northern ireland to 2024. but, of course, she draws attention to a very important point, which is that if the workings of the protocol are viewed by the people and the parties of northern ireland as onerous, too much, intrusive and unacceptable, then they have the opportunity to vote them down in 2024. uk ministers have repeatedly said there would be no border or any checks down the irish sea. we now know that s not exactly the case, as we heard in the last response there. from the very beginning, the possibility of this was crystal clear given what s in the withdrawal agreement and the need for a level playing field between the eu and northern ireland. we all know that there will be customs checks between the rest of the uk and northern ireland. why doesn t the uk government just acknowledge that fact? michael gove said there was a misunderstanding of the position. the plan got a mixed response from northern ireland s politicians. the secretary of state will be aware that we voted against the withdrawal agreement because of the northern ireland protocol, but we welcome the clarity that this statement brings today. the member has finally confirmed that there will be a large increase in the amount of red tape, and therefore the cost, to consumers and businesses in northern ireland. michael gove said he didn t accept that and the government was proposing a light touch approach. coronavirus has created an unprecedented crisis in britain s labour market and an emergency response is needed to prevent damaging long term consequences, mps have been told. the work and pensions committee was questioning employment experts about the impact on jobs now and in the future and what needed to be done about it. everything is unprecedented in this crisis, but the data that was released yesterday showed that we ve seen the largest increase in claimant unemployment, the fastest increase in claimant unemployment since 1947, since the winter of 1947. and the increase month on month was five times greater then we saw in the 2008 9 recession. it s now 2 million people now claiming unemployed. i say now . it was 2 million claiming unemployed on the 9th of april. there s been a million universal credit claims since then. jobcentre, as was and is, is set up for record levels of employment, not record levels of unemployment. this isn tjust a dwp/ jobcentre plus problem, and it shouldn t be seen as such. so, in amongst this sort of thinking around what happens with jobcentre, what s happening with the other departments and the other levers that can be pulled for, for example, supporting those young people who are unemployed? this is a much wider government issue than just jobcentre. it s quite a list, isn t it? it s people living with disabilities, people who are shielding, older people, younger people, women and people with caring responsibilities more broadly so that s children but also people who are carers people who are currently in the furlough scheme and people who are employed in sectors which may be slow to pick up again as a result of this the obvious one being retail. we ve called for a cobra forjobs, unlike the sort of cobra forjobs of government ministers coming together and talking, trying to make decisions, trying to open that out and involve and engage much more with wider partners. spending is about £200 million a year. going into the last recession, it was over £1 billion a year. and in 2010, at the height of the recession, the government was spending £2.4 billion in today s money on contracted employment support. so we re at one sixth of the level going into the recession than we were last time and we probably need to scale up to a similar amount of money you know, literally a couple of billion pounds a year if we want to make sure that those who are coming onto unemployment are getting access to the right support. we have seen much greater adoption of flexible working, of working from home, and they re some of the things that actually have previously been barriers to some disadvantaged groups being able to access work. so, if there are opportunities to try and learn the lessons of what we found possible to do in a moment of crisis that hasn t happened as readily previously, then that might give us an opportunity to try and have a better chance of building back better than if we just go back to operating business as usual. the government had actually promised a £600 million investment in skills. that is not replacing what we ve lost over the last decade, but that was due to come in in 2021, and obviously now should be brought forward. and just because i haven t mentioned it yet, one of our key proposals in this kind of scenario is for a jobs guarantee and government to fund paid jobs for people who are at risk of long term unemployment. all the witnesses argued that, with the right policies, the uk could emerge from the crisis with a more skilled workforce than before. you re watching wednesday in parliament with me, alicia mccarthy. in the welsh parliament, the plaid cymru leader renewed calls for an inquiry into the handling of the covid crisis. adam price said setting up an inquiry should begin now, because it could take up to six months. and he wanted it to start work before the end of the year. could you make some general commitments today to the principle of setting up an independent public inquiry in due course to ensure that in the meantime all relevant documentation, minutes, e mails, even zoom recordings first minister are being safely kept? no doubt that an independent inquiry will be required at the right point in the process. and the documents that are kept by the welsh government are kept meticulously, and i m sure that they will be available for that inquiry when the time for it comes. the first minister has offered a so called road map out of lockdown but with no dates attached. and crucially, it offered no real leadership to the people of wales. first minister, is this road map the best hope that the welsh government can actually offer the people of wales and when can we expect to see some timescales alongside your exit strategy? i completely reject the member s suggestion there is no leadership on the matter. the road map was very widely welcomed in wales and beyond wales indeed as a clear statement of a direction of travel that the welsh government has set out. on timescales, let me say as i have said before when i have been asked, there is a genuine debate to be had as to whether timescales are a helpful way of setting out the future. in the end, we thought that it was more of a distraction than a concentration on the matters that really deserve our attention. why should people in wales be subject to the most extraordinary, intrusive, and prescriptive restrictions on their freedom if they are not necessary? many who had not before understood the scope of devolved powers don t now like the answer. it s because of devolution. mark dra keford accepted extraordinary powers were being used. i agree with what mr reckless has said about devolution being brought home to people in this crisis in a way that it hasn t been over the last 20 years. i doubt that it is true that in wales people aren t aware of devolution, it is certainly true people outside of wales and in london appear to have woken up from a 20 year sleep. mark drakeford. measures to create a trade policy independent from the eu came a step closer when the trade bill passed its second reading in the commons. the legislation replaces trade agreements the uk had as an eu member state and paves the way for embedding new trade deals into uk law. as we recover from the economic shock of the coronavirus crisis providing certainty and predictability in our trading arrangements will be vital to securing the interests of businesses and consumers. we will unleash the potential and level up every region and nation of our united kingdom. now is the time for this house to speak out against protectionism. it is time for us to embrace the opportunities that free trade and an export led recovery will bring. but labour said the bill was a missed opportunity. for the last five decades, our trade policies have been set at european level. indeed there isn t a single member of this house who was in parliament the last time the uk set its own trade policies. so, like it or not, this bill has historic significance. and that s what i want to address today. is this bill in its current form fit to rise to its historic challenge? because after five decades, years in which we have seen tremendous upheaval in our global economy, does this bill provide the legislative framework and the bold far reaching vision we need to underpin britain s trade policies for several years to come? the answer, she said, was no. nevertheless, the bill was approved by mps without amendment and it now goes on for more detailed scrutiny. will primary schools in england be reopening for some pupils from june 1? schools are looking at ways to enforce social distancing and make sure it s safe for youngsters and teachers. but at least 11 councils have expressed concerns about the plan, and the teaching union, the nasuwt, said it remained unconvinced reopening schools was appropriate or practicable . peers were told that certain year groups would be expected to go back in england, providing the government s five tests on easing lockdown restrictions were met. labour focused on the spread or r value of the virus. minister, you have said today that various local authorities across england are now advising schools not to open in their areas. with public health england having said r values vary across different regions, it s difficult to understand the government s decision the school should reopen nationwide onjune1. so will the noble baroness the minister reveal to noble lords what the government s scientific evidence says about reopening schools in communities which have an r value which is closer to one than the average? the r rate is not actually broken down regionally. it is not published in that form, it s a uk wide estimate range that s published each week. the individual modelling groups include epidemiological information on the intensive care unit rate of admissions, the death rates and the rate of hospital admissions. so, it is an average value that can vary across communities, but it is not published on a regional basis. germany closed their schools within three weeks of their first case being identified. this and their very early test and trace and isolate strategy appears to account for their remarkable success in controlling deaths from covid. does the minister agree that schools should only reopen in those areas where they have a capacity to test, trace, and isolate absolutely fully across the community so that then of course if a child is identified as having covid within a school, school can close for 14 days, then reopen and press on with their wonderful work? the minister said the government was looking to learn from other countries, but any measures had to be specific to the uk. i was in a meeting yesterday and i met the un secretary general‘s special envoy on covid 19. he emphasised that the seriousness of this virus cannot be underestimated and nor can its uncertainty. he said that we should have and i quote a comprehensive defence everywhere. can the government guarantee that every school which opens will have a full operational defence plan which protects both staff and children? lady berridge said the government had published detailed guidance for schools to be able to reopen. finally, the commons is about to take a break for whitsun. when it returns onjune 2, the current arrangements whereby some mps speak in the chamber and others speak via video link is expected to stop. the leader of the commons believes this so called hybrid system can t scrutinise ministers properly. and he s worried that the 36 bills promised by the government after the election are virtually stalled. we have to recognise that if we persist with the present arrangement, it will become harder to make progress in a timely fashion. that is why in line with government advice for those who cannot do theirjobs from home, i m asking members to return to their place of work after whitsun. we will not be returning to the crowded bustling chamber of old. we will be observing social distancing. it is widely reported that the motivation for this over hasty return is to get support back behind the prime minister on wednesday afternoons. it s even reported today that the leader yesterday suggested to a commons commission that to get more mps in, perspex screens should be installed between the benches, between members. someone has obviously told him how things have been done at tesco these days. mr speaker, we have demonstrated in recent weeks that the business of this house can be done from behind the screen as we do right now from behind a computer screen. this is not, mr speaker, a battle of government good and everyone else bad, of shirkers versus workers as some ministers have said. this is about parliament being a good model employer. we need a phased return, not to overpower the nhs or overpower house staff where everyone can be safe. whilst we have had to improvise due to the unprecedented situation we find ourselves in, we cannot effectively do ourjobs from home. we should lead by example when asking the country to return to work. this will not affect everyone equally. those who are older and suffer ill health will be disproportionately affected as will those who live furthest away. so, can i ask has he undertaken under qualities assessment of this proposal and does he think that removing the existing arrangements is compatible with the laws on equality of treatment of persons in the united kingdom? i would like to reassure those members with underlying health conditions who have been told to shield or are receiving specific government advice about their health that we are working with the house authorities to see how they can continue to contribute to proceedings within the house, and we recognise the importance of that, but we also recognise the need for business to continue. i understand that the parliament in holyrood is still meeting, though with a third of members turning up, moving all over scotland to get there. so i slightly think what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. jacob rees mogg. and that s it from me for now, but do join me next time for our round up of the week here at westminster. but for now from me, alicia mccarthy, goodbye. hello there. some overnight rain for parts of northern ireland in western britain will continue eastwards through the day. in fact we could see a few sharp showers developing more than persistent rain as it comes into the south east, potentially thundery downpours here, torrential downpours before it clears away. righteous quys before it clears away. righteous guys follow where we could get damp and foggy weather for much of the day. because we have changed the air across the uk, it won t be as warm. still warm enough strong may sunshine. there is more change of foot as we go through thursday night into friday, you can see this deep area of low pressure and seasonably area of low pressure and seasonably area of low pressure and seasonably area of low pressure will wind itself up the windy weather is due on friday and some rain, to the north west highlands will see most of the rain but we will notice a much cooler feel, of the rain but we will notice a much coolerfeel, particularly of the rain but we will notice a much cooler feel, particularly with those gale force winds in the north west.
welcome to bbc news, i m mike embley. our top stories: the biggest one day increase in worldwide covid 19 cases, says the who. protests in peru, health workers tackling covid 19 demonstrate over a lack of personal protective equipment. cyclone amphan, one of the most powerful south asian storms for decades, kills at least 15 people in bangladesh. a state of emergency in parts of michigan, where heavy rain has caused two dams to collapse. european countries puzzle over re opening tourism, we meet the hoteliers hoping to salvage the season. the balance between welcoming visitors back here and the risk ofa visitors back here and the risk of a second wave is what italy and every other country is now trying to
this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. the uk government insists that it continues to be led by science over the next stages of the easing of lockdown measures after concerns were raised by some leading scientists. we need to proceed in a very cautious way. so we have set out a road map, but at each stage we are saying we are not going to proceed with that unless we are confident that we can do so in a safe way. the return of competitive sport is announced for the uk from monday, starting with horse racing. other sports given the go ahead to resume behind closed doors include football, rugby and cricket. appeals for calm after a fourth night of violence in the us city of minneapolis following the death of george floyd, an african american in police custody. a former police officer is charged with murder and the pentagon puts the us military on high alert. you are disgracing our city! you are disgracing the life of george floyd! and every other person who has been killed in this country! india s daily total of new coronavirus cases hit another record high today with nearly 8,000 new infections. nasa astronauts prepare to launch into space from the us within the next half an hour for the first time in nearly a decade. president trump has arrived at the kennedy space center for the historic launch. we will bring you that live this hour. hello and welcome if you re watching in the uk or around the world, and stay with us for the latest news and analysis from here and across the globe. the uk is at a dangerous moment and the easing of lockdown has to go slowly, england s deputy chief medical officer has said. professor jonathan van tam said the consensus among scientists was that new easing measures being introduced were not expected to push the rate of infection above 1.0. the uk government insists that it continues to be led by science over the next stages of the easing of lockdown measures after concerns were raised by some leading scientists. several members of the sage advisory group have spoken out against the pace of change. from monday in england, up to six people from different households can meet outside, including in private gardens. 215 deaths have been recorded in the uk in the last 2a hours. it brings the total number of deaths to 38,376. 0ur political correspondent, chris mason, has this report. york in the sunshine has always proved popular. a socially distant queue. a spot of refreshments. in scotland and northern ireland, groups are already allowed to gather outside. england and wales will follow on monday but the number of coronavirus cases falling, ministers say the time is right. but some of those advising the government have concerns. if we make multiple releases of the lockdown at the same time, we won t know what is causing the inevitablejump in cases. and we don t have an established test, track and isolate process to follow these people up. so we re at a very risky point where we could take the lid off a pot that is still bubbling in places and it risks overflowing in places. he s one of several members of the scientific advisory group for emergencies to speak out. the labour mayors of london and greater manchester are also worried this loosening of the rules has come to soon. so, at this afternoon s government news conference, i asked. what you say to those scientists and others who say that you re easing the lockdown in england too quickly? we haven t got that much headroom. that s why the prime minister has been clear we need to proceed in a very cautious way. so we set out a road map that at each stage we are saying we will not proceed with that unless we are confident that we can do so in a safe way. i believe and you will recall i was at the podium when the disease activity was very high in the uk, and i said it s a very dangerous moment. i believe this is also a very dangerous moment. we have to get this right. the public in general to actually follow the guidance. don t tear the pants out of it and don t go further than the guidance actually says. professor van tam knows how to turn a phrase and make a point. he was also asked directly about dominic cummings. the prime minister s most senior adviser who among other things drove 50 miles to test his eyesight during the lockdown. the rules are clear and they have always been clear. in my opinion, they are for the benefit of all. and in my opinion, they apply to all. questions about mr cummings keep coming. questions about easing the lockdown will too. the government has published new guidelines to allow the return of competitive sport from monday. athletes will still have to maintain social distancing where possible. the announcement was made by the minister for culture, media and sport, 0liver dowden. i m delighted to announce today that the government has published guidance which allows competitive sport to resume behind closed doors from monday at the earliest and, crucially, only when it s safe to do so. it s up to each individual sport to decide exactly when to resume competition. they know their sports best. but football, tennis, horse racing, formula i, cricket, golf, rugby, snooker and others are all set to return to our screens shortly with horse racing first out of the gate in the north east next week. violent protests over the death of an unarmed african american man at the hands of police officers in minnesota are no longer in any way about his killing, the state s governor has said. tim walz spoke after a night of unrest in several us cities over the death of george floyd in minneapolis. he said that as a result he was taking the unprecedented step of mobilising the state s entire national guard. the pentagon has also moved to put military units on a four hour recall status if needed. 0ur correspondent, barbara plett usher, is in minneapolis, and her report contains some distressing images. america is rising up in anger over the killing of another black man in police custody. in minneapolis, protesters defied a curfew taking over the streets for the fourth night in a row, turning them into a smoky battle ground. security forces were overwhelmed. the governor has now announced the largest mobilisation of the national guard in the state s history. he blames outsiders for spearheading the violence. the situation in minneapolis is no longer in any way about the murder of george floyd. it is about attacking civil society, instilling fear and disrupting our great cities. here in minneapolis, this is the damage after another night of chaos. authorities thought they had calmed things down after they moved swiftly to charge a police officer for the death of george floyd. and they were shocked when the virus escalated instead. i cannot breathe! a widely publicised video shows the officer kneeling on mr floyd s neck as he begged for air. in footage that emerged today, you can see two other policemen were also holding him down. ignoring his cries to let him stand. the graphic images have ignited protests across a country already grappling with a deadly pandemic. and suffering its worst economic crisis since the great depression. in seattle, washington, demonstrators hurled a rock at an amazon store. they chanted i can t breathe and black lives matter . in charlotte, north carolina, police fired tear gas. a city council member was among several people arrested. and in atlanta, georgia, protesters threw rocks and smoke grenades at police. trashed cars and smashed windows at cnn headquarters. the governor issued a state of emergency and the mayor pleaded for the riots to stop. you are disgracing our city. you are disgracing the life of george floyd and every other person who has been killed in this country. we are better than this. we are better than this as a city, we are better than this as a country. i am duty bound to be here to simply say that it is your duty not to burn your own house down for anger with an enemy. accountability is what the protesters are demanding. the lack of it so many times before has stoked the smouldering anger that is exploding now with such force. donald trump has again condemned the violence that erupted in minnesota on friday night. boarding an aircraft to travel to cape canaveral, mr trump urged the authorities there to be tough on those he said were bent on violence and added that federal reinforcements could be despatched if necessary. they ve got to be tough, they ve got to be smart. we have our military ready, willing and able today if they ever want to call our military. but we can have troops on the ground very quickly if they ever want our military. they re using their national guard right now, as you know, they have their national guard out. we can have our military there very quickly. they ve got to be tough, they ve got to be strong, they ve got to be respected. because these people, it s antifa, it s a lot of radical left, bad people. and they ve got to be taught that you can t do this. so i m going now to watch a great launch and we ll see how we do. thank you very much. professor kaye whitehead is an educator, author and media host who is known as the #blackmommyactivist. she teaches african and african american studies at loyola university in baltimore, maryland, from where she told me that the violence had a clear context. i think it s important to recognise that the murder of george floyd comes on top of so much injustice and so many unarmed black men, women and children who have been killed ever since we have been protesting black lives matter. we can go back and look at the modern civil rights movement, the history of how we got here, but if we just focus on black lives matter, i can easily go through a litany of names of black men, women and black men women and children and most recently we had a black woman shot and keld in her own home in kentucky. a man shot and killed in georgia, and now george floyd, watch it in real time and you can hear him struggling, yelling out that he cannot breathe, calling for his mother, it is the injustice that we are dealing with as black and brown people in this country when we see this happening to people that could be part of our families and then we don t see people being held accountable so there is a lot of pent up frustration that got us to this moment. you can change policy, but that does not necessarily change attitudes, not least within the police. so how do you bring about meaningful change? it s interesting that we have been wrestling with this question around change for quite a while. what would it look like if we were to do something different? we talk about police officers, that s kind of a point blank. to do an intensive training with police officers so that we can build a bridge between the police force and the community. there is predatory policing that is happening in economically challenged black communities where they are overpoliced, herded and controlled, rather than protected and served so that needs to happen. we need to have more accountability for police officers so when they do what these police officers participated in it s not just that they are arrested, not just that they are fired, not just that they are charged, but they are found guilty and they serve time so that people understand there is a price to pay. there is accountability. a second thing is to think about reparations. right now we re looking at how we are economically challenged in this community, we see how the income of black people is steadily dropping by the year 2053, the estimate of income will be zero in comparison to our white counterparts. so a way of redistributing funds we hope will turn around decades upon decades of economic injustice in our community and third which i think is the hardest piece is how do we change the hearts and minds of people? there is a large community of people not of colour in this country of white people who really believe that black folks are inferior. they are groups of white nationalism and supremacy and they are pushing that age old agenda that race is a determining factor. we are fighting against the hearts and minds of those individuals as well. the chair of the senate health committee in the united states has warned that president trump s withdrawal from the world health organisation could interfere with clinical trials to develop a vaccine against covid i9. lamar alexander, who s a republican, also said it could make it harder to work with other countries to stop viruses reaching the us. on friday, president trump announced he was terminating america s relationship with the who. he s accused it of failing to hold beijing to account over the pandemic. india has recorded its biggest single dayjump in coronavirus cases with nearly 8,000 new infections and 265 deaths. these latest figures bring the total numbers to over 170,000 cases of infection and close to 5000 deaths. more than a third of all cases are in maharashtra, one of india s richest states. but despite the rising number of covid nineteen cases, the government has been easing restrictions. the return of competitive sport is announced for the uk from monday starting with horse racing other sports given the go ahead to resume behind closed doors include football, rugby and cricket. the uk government insists that it continues to be led by science over the next stages of the easing of lockdown measures after concerns were raised by some leading scientists. appeals for calm after a fourth night of violence in the us city of minneapolis following the death of george floyd an african american in police custody. a former police officer is charged with murder and the pentagon puts the us military on high alert. spacex says it is pressing ahead with the launch of a rocket taking two nasa astronauts to the international space station. the first attempt was called off on wednesday. nasa says there is a 50% chance of cancellation because of the weather in florida. it s the first manned us mission to space in nearly a decade. president trump is due to attend. nasa has relied on russian rockets to send astronauts into space since scrapping its shuttle programme in 2011. let s bring you some live pictures now from the kennedy space center in florida, where the rocket is due to take off in around an hour s time. i m joined now by our correspondent in washington, jane 0 brien, libbyjackson, who manages the uk space agency s human exploration programme, and laura forczyk, who founded the space analysis and consulting group astralytica and joins us from atlanta, georgia. let s start with jane. 60% chance that the weather would be against them again and it would have been potentially cancelled like it would have on wednesday. i m keeping everything crossed that at the moment it looks really good. they have been cleared in terms of whether. it is marginal but exceptional but blue skies, no clouds or thunderstorms or any signs of tornadoes we were experiencing in terms of a tornado warning on wednesday. and we are alreadyjust five minutes to go before liftoff. we are well ahead of where we were this time on wednesday so things are looking really good. the astronauts are strapped in, the hatch is closed, they are finishing off feeling right now, and we will know inafew feeling right now, and we will know in a few minutes whether or not we are about to make history here at the kennedy space center. let s speak to laura and libby. laura, remind us why this is so significant a launch. this is the first time that nasa has been able to launch their astronauts from america since their astronauts from america since the space shuttle retired in 2011. since then they have been purchasing from russia. it is also the first time that spacex has attempted to launch people and the first time for any commercial company has ever attempted to launch a nasa astronaut to the space station to orbit so it s a very exciting time not only for nasa but the commercial space industry. how much will it change people s perception of who gets involved in space? this has always been backed by the american government. and notjust the american government but governments around the world, russia and china have all launched astronauts but this time it could be commercial companies that take that roll over or at least supplement it with government that can help launch people and more inexpensively than has been in the past. libby, with how much envy will the uk and our european partners be watching what is happening in florida? we are not watching with mv but with excitement and support because this mission is the first of many and later ones will fly european space station astronauts. we are part of that global cooperation. the european space agency as a partner in the international space agency and its programme so international space agency and its programme so we are international space agency and its programme so we are really excited. libby, how much pressure as everyone under? not that you can do anything about the weather but you do not wa nt about the weather but you do not want too many failed attempts! they will go when it is safe, that is the weather and many other things they are looking at. no one is under pressure to go today, we will go today if we can. everybody is really trained. doug hurley has flown in space on the last space shuttle mission. they know what to expect. right now, they will work through their check list. it is three minutes until we launch. this looks like it will go. let s go back to jane who we managed to get. to this fantastic deployment. these things are difficult enough at the best of times, launching people into space, but this has been done in an era where they are having to content with covid 19 as well. where they are having to content with covid-19 as well. i have to tell you though that covid 19 is not on anybody‘s mind right now. we are looking at history about to be made here at the kennedy space center. i don t know if you can see but we have people moving out of the buildings, moving down towards that countdown clock which is now saying one minute 30 seconds. this is absolutely nail biting and everybody just wants to get a glimpse of this. i ve never experienced a rocket launch before, i don t know what to expect, but already we are getting some semblance of cheering, and i can tell you that driving into the centre this morning, there were people lined up either side of the road, binoculars trained on this spot, waiting to see what will happen, whether or not they can actually take off after that nail biting disappointment on wednesday where it was just 17 minutes until launch and they had to call it off because of an excess of electricity in the air ie thunderstorms which have been incredibly dangerous. we have no weather problems right now but don t forget this is an incredibly small window of opportunity. we are talking barely a minute for this rocket to take off so everything just depends on the next 36 seconds and counting, and what those two astronauts must be thinking, i don t know. they have trained for this, they are calm, they will come when they are calm, they will come when they had to leave the spaceship just on wednesday. they were very philosophical about it. but we are now down to 19 seconds, and i think we should just watch and wait to see what happens because the countdown is now well under way. ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero. liftoff! go, nasser, go spacex! america has launched! a new era of american space flight, a new generation continuing the dream, 20 seconds into flight stage when propulsion is nominal. t plus 30 seconds of this historic mission, flying through on board. flying crew. we are throttling down to get ready for the period of maximum dynamic pressure. reports say all systems a re dynamic pressure. reports say all systems are go. we have exceeded lock one on the falcon nine. we are throttling back up to full power. we heard that bravo pull out. call out. at this .2 .3 gs, 2.3 times the earth s gravity, 1500 mph. we have called the call for engine chill getting the engine ready to light. right now everything continuing to look good. next major event coming up look good. next major event coming up is going to be the triple, we will have main engine cut off, stage separation, and then ignition of the second stage engine to continue to carry astronauts into orbit. coming up carry astronauts into orbit. coming up and about 20 seconds. we are throttling down the engines on the first stage. falcon stage separation confirmed. we have a stage separation confirmed, the stage beginning, the second stage being powered by that single engine has ignited and is now carrying bob into orbit. they will continue under the power of the second stage. propulsion is nominal. which will cut off in about eight minutes and 44 seconds into today s flight minutes and 44 seconds into today s flight so another five minutes to go on the second stage. you heard the call out to alpha so the longer stubble zone that carries them all the way from north carolina of the eastern seaboard almost to canada. things looking good though, get a good call outs, nominal propulsion on the second stage, continuing to make their way into orbit. dragon spacex, nominaltrajectory. nominal trajectory. hearing nominal trajectory. hearing nominal trajectory so dragon pointed in the right direction, continuing to make theirflight right direction, continuing to make their flight uphill. stage two propulsion are still nominal. there were grins all round when we watched that launch. let s speak to jane who had the view from the ground. describe what it was like, jane. ground. describe what it was like, jane. that was incredible! i have never seen jane. that was incredible! i have never seen anything like it. that suspension build up and then to actually see, hear and feel at take off, my whole body was vibrating with the sound, absolutely incredible, you could actually feel it through your entire skeleton, it was extraordinary, and then to see that bright light just suddenly exploding and moving upwards, i have never seen exploding and moving upwards, i have never seen anything like it, what an incredible privilege, and for those two men on board, what a privilege for them and for spacex and nasser to pull this thing off in spite of all the way the problem they have had. it s tremendous. a day in history for america and the world. laura and libby, they are still with us. laura and libby, they are still with us. laura, as much as it is exciting, there is a moment of anxiety too for everyone watching this. absolutely. i have seen several shuttle launches in person and even from a distance you are cheering them on and praying and hoping for them that nothing goes wrong and at this point itjust looks amazing but you never know what could happen in the future, something could still go wrong, but from the centre looks beautiful.m does, and libby you never tire of seeing the earth from that perspective, do you? never indeed. i have been looking at the pictures and it s amazing what technology allows us to see with his launchers. we will see in a little while the landing of the first stage in florida, and you can see the pictures of the earth coming back towards it, it s all beautiful, but there are still about four or five minutes until they reach all britain until they get them safely in orbit and on theirway until they get them safely in orbit and on their way to the international space station, i am still watching everything closely, so we still watching everything closely, so we keep seeing if it all goes 0k. i think that president trump is speaking, we might be able to listen then, we knew he was heading down to florida. real talent, real genius nobody doesn t like us. it s great to have this programme back and it sjust the beginning, it sjust the beginning. we have many more things to come. that s a lot ofjobs, it s a lot of technology. we has space for us now. and thank you very much for us now. and thank you very much for being here. we appreciate it very much. number one. one of the things we ve done is created the space for us, first programme, if you look 70 for years now over 72 now at 74th. time flies. since the air force now we have eight major branch of the military, joint chiefs of staff. full honors. it s called the space for us. we did