Greece extends ban on flights from UK June 29, 2020 The Greek government has extended a ban on direct flights from Britain until 15 July, amid fears the rate of infection in the UK could spring up as lockdown measures are lifted. Brits had strong hopes that summer holidays to Greece would be given the green light this week, as so-called air bridges with European [...]
Sadiq Khan calls for government clarity on local lockdown powers June 29, 2020 Sadiq Khan has urged the government to provide more clarity on what powers local authorities have to deal with regional coronavirus outbreaks. The mayor of London wrote to health secretary Matt Hancock today to ask if councils had the power to implement local lockdowns and for additional resources in the case of localised flare ups. [...]
“Vaccine will come, but not without huge challenges” – leading world epidemiologist June 29, 2020 | City Talk Professor Peter Piot, a legend in the field of virology and the fights against HIV and Ebola, is optimistic about a Covid vaccine. But he sees recurrent outbreaks as unavoidable. Professor Peter Piot was not surprised by the outbreak of a global pandemic earlier this year. “We always assumed there would be a big one”, [...]
Barnard Castle lab offers Dominic Cummings coronavirus antibody test June 29, 2020 A Barnard Castle-based laboratory has offered Dominic Cummings a coronavirus antibody test – and the Downing Street adviser doesn’t even need to make a return trip. Honeyman Group today said it was willing to send Cummings a coronavirus antibody test, which it says takes 24 hours to check a blood sample for signs of Covid-19 [...]
Lords urge government to take immediate action against online misinformation June 29, 2020 Ministers have been urged to beef up regulation of digital and social media to stub out a “pandemic of misinformation and disinformation” that is destroying public trust and leveraging power to big tech companies. A new report by the Lords Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee, chaired by Labour peer and film director David Puttnam, proposes [...]
Covid consolidation bears low-hanging fruit for traders June 29, 2020 | Sponsored No understatement is truer than the one about how “nothing will ever be the same again” following the coronavirus pandemic. Businesses in the hundreds of thousands will not reopen. Millions of jobs have been lost. Billions of dollars have been wiped off the valuations of household brands and City darlings. Past worries about Brexit seem [...]
Leicester lockdown: Pubs and restaurants may stay closed for two more weeks June 29, 2020 Leicester may be forced to extend restrictions on restaurants and pubs for a further two weeks due to a local coronavirus flare up, according to the city’s mayor. Sir Peter Soulsby said today that the government recommended that England’s current social distancing restrictions, due to be lifted on Saturday, are not lifted for the Midlands city. [...]
Boris Johnson doubles down on spending plans after coronavirus ‘disaster’ June 29, 2020 Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he will ramp up unprecedented government spending, as it seeks to mitigate the impact of coronavirus, which has been a “disaster” for the country. Johnson told Times Radio he wants to double down on his plans to increase public investment, and that a return to austerity would be a [...]
Lessons from the data: How can countries avoid a second Covid wave? June 29, 2020 The Economist Intelligence Unit recently launched an index to rank the quality of the policy response to coronavirus across 21 OECD countries. Countries are assessed against three “quality of response” criteria: number of above-average excess deaths, number of tests, and provision of non-Covid-19 healthcare. Three mitigating criteria adjust scores to take pre-existing risk factors into [...]
Let’s build back green, not grey June 29, 2020 Despite the tragedies of the last few months, we have not been short of the rays of hope and human courage that often come to define crises of these kinds. As cliched as it may now be to say, the weekly showering of applause for our keyworkers shows that even when facing the greatest adversities, [...]