Britain today announced 85 more coronavirus deaths — as Northern Ireland has now gone a week without any Covid-19 fatalities.
The figure, announced by Department of Health chiefs and which take into account lab-confirmed fatalities in all settings, takes the official Government total to 44,602.
Today’s fatalities are marginally lower than last Thursday’s, when Government statistics revealed just 89 coronavirus deaths across the UK. Yesterday 126 were reported.
Figures show the average number of fatalities has plummeted by a quarter in a week, in more hopeful signs the worst days of the Covid-19 crisis are over.
And Government antibody surveillance suggests the outbreak is still shrinking, with just 0.03 per cent of the population currently infected – or one in every 3,900 people – down from 0.04 per cent last week and 0.09 per cent a week before.
In other coronavirus developments Britain today:
- British holidaymakers jetting to Ibiza or Majorca will have to wear face masks whenever they leave their hotel rooms from Saturday or face a £90 fine;
- Thousands of taxi drivers, cleaners and shop workers will be tested for Covid-19 from tomorrow as part of a new trial — even if they have no symptoms, the Department of Health revealed;
- Nearly 60,000 workers face redundancy as Boots, John Lewis, Rolls Royce and Burger King announce layoffs just hours after Rishi Sunak’s £30bn bailout that was supposed to save the High Street post-Covid.
Department of Health figures released today showed almost 152,362 tests were processed on July 8. The number includes antibody tests for frontline NHS and care workers.
But health chiefs have refused to say how many people have actually been tested since May 22, only how many swabs were carried out.
It means the exact number of Brits who have been swabbed for the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been a mystery for seven weeks.
A further 621 more cases of Covid-19 were announced today. Government statistics show the official size of the UK’s outbreak now stands at least 287,621 cases.
But the actual size of the outbreak, which began to spiral out of control in March, is estimated to be in the millions, based on antibody testing data.
The daily death data does not represent how many Covid-19 patients died within the last 24 hours — it is only how many fatalities have been reported and registered with the authorities.
The data does not always match updates provided by the home nations. Department of Health officials work off a different time cut-off, meaning daily updates from Scotland as well as Northern Ireland are always out of sync.
And the count announced by NHS England every afternoon — which only takes into account deaths in hospitals — does not match up with the DH figures because they work off a different recording system.
For instance, some deaths announced by NHS England bosses will have already been counted by the Department of Health, which records fatalities ‘as soon as they are available’.
More than 1,000 infected Brits died each day during the darkest days of the crisis in mid-April but the number of victims had been dropping by around 20 to 30 per cent week-on-week since the start of May.
Department of Health chiefs announced today thousands of taxi drivers, cleaners and shop workers will be tested for Covid-19 as part of a new trial — even if they have no symptoms.
People who will be enrolled in the asymptomatic testing scheme are those who have been deemed by the Department of Health to be at a high risk of catching the coronavirus.
They are in ‘high-contact professions’ which mean they come close to a lot of different people every day. This both makes them more likely to catch the coronavirus, and also more likely to spread it.
The asymptomatic swabbing scheme today, launching tomorrow, will include taxi firm Addison Lee, BT, services firm Mitie and pharmacy giant Boots.
The Department of Health said each of the four businesses will receive thousands of tests for staff dotted across the country. These will either be home-swabbing kits sent in the post, or mobile testing sites will be set-up in offices.
Officials have set up the trial with the intention of trying to catch the virus early among people who are most likely to get infected, and to stop them passing it on.
Those who test positive will need to self-isolate and results will be shared with the NHS Test and Trace programme so contacts can be traced.
Local authorities in Bradford, Newham, Brent and Oldham – areas with high transmission rates – will also select groups of people deemed to be high-risk for asymptomatic testing.
Tests are only currently available in the UK for adults and children with a cough, fever or no sense of taste or smell — the three tell-tale symptoms.
It comes as a government insider claimed that ministers ‘broke the rules’ in the early chaotic days of the crisis to make it look like testing numbers were constantly rising.
In a shocking behind-the-scenes insight into the shambolic handling of the Covid-19 testing numbers, the Whitehall source told Sky News they ‘forgot the conventions’ because they were so short of time.
In races to prepare for the daily briefings in Downing Street officials would have to phone round to tally up the testing data and scribble the numbers down by hand, the broadcaster’s investigation found.
An internal audit has since found that the figures presented to the public were not always correct and could not be accounted for.
Numbers were still being counted on paper even in May when Health Secretary Matt Hancock was scrambling to hit the 100,000-tests-a-day target, Sky said.
In other coronavirus news today, British holidaymakers jetting to Ibiza or Majorca have been told this will have to wear face masks whenever they leave their hotel rooms.
People who flout the order to cover up their mouths and noses will be hit with a fine of €100 (£90).
Governors responsible for the Balearic Islands confirmed they were tightening the rules hours after Catalonia became the first Spanish region since the end of the country’s state of emergency to make them obligatory at virtually all times in public.
It has not yet been confirmed if they will be mandatory on the islands’ beaches. And there has been no news yet on whether other Spanish regions including the Costa del Sol will follow suit in the next few days.
Catalonia, which includes Barcelona and the Costa Brava, was expected to make sunseekers wear them even when they were topping up their tans, although on Wednesday it emerged the exceptions on their use extended to sunbathing.
Up until now face masks in Spain have only been obligatory in closed public spaces like shops as well as public spaces outdoors where social distancing of around five feet could not be guaranteed.