By Conrad Quilty-Harper
and Layal Liverpool
Pippa Fowles / No 10 Downing Street
Latest coronavirus news as of 5 pm on 28 May
England’s test and trace system won’t be fully operational until end of June
England’s test and trace system, which is designed to identify people who might have been exposed to people who have tested positive for coronavirus, won’t be fully operational until the end of June, Dido Harding, who is leading the NHS Test and Trace scheme, told MPs today. UK prime minister Boris Johnson said last week that the system would be in place and able to track 10,000 people a day using text, phone and email by 1 June. Harding also described the NHS covid-19 contact tracing app, which was meant to launch on 15 May but was delayed until 1 June, as “the cherry on the cake rather than the cake itself.”
In England, people will be allowed to meet in public places and private gardens in groups of up to six starting on Monday, and in Scotland, groups of up to eight people from two different households will be allowed to meet outdoors from tomorrow. Northern Ireland allowed groups of up to six people to meet outside from 18 May. People from different households will still be required to keep a distance of two metres.
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Other coronavirus developments
There have been more than 100,000 deaths from covid-19 in the US since the outbreak began, according to Johns Hopkins University, the largest number of any country. The number of daily new confirmed cases has been rising over the last week in 18 states, including California, Florida and Louisiana. In New York, the country’s worst-hit state with more than 369,000 cases in total, the number of daily new cases has fallen to around 1,200, down from a peak in early April of over 10,000 a day.
An analysis by the Financial Times suggests the UK had the second highest rate of coronavirus deaths among 19 countries with comparable data. The UK registered 59,537 more deaths than would normally be expected to occur since the week ending 20 March, a death rate of 891 per million people, higher than Italy and the US, and second only to Spain. The FT analysis also found a link between countries that locked down earlier in their outbreaks and lower death tolls.
Boris Johnson’s senior aide Dominic Cummings might have breached the UK’s coronavirus restrictions when he drove to Barnard Castle in April, but the incident does not warrant further action, Durham police said in a statement today.
An estimated 133,000 people in England outside hospitals and care homes had covid-19 between 11 and 24 May, according to results from a random swab testing survey in England by the Office for National Statistics. The figure is down slightly from 148,000 between 27 April and 10 May.
UK health minister Matt Hancock responded today to a letter from the UK Statistics Authority to clarify that the government’s target of 200,000 coronavirus tests per day by Sunday doesn’t refer to the number of tests actually performed. Instead it refers to the testing capacity.
The number of passengers arriving in the UK by plane in April was 99 per cent lower than it was in the same month last year, according to a Home Office report published today. 112,300 passengers arrived in the UK by air in April this year, down from about 3.8 million in March and 7.1 million in January.
Coronavirus numbers
Matthew Rowett
The worldwide death toll has passed 356,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 5.7 million, according to the map and dashboard from Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.
Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist
Coronavirus in the brain: From loss of smell to stroke, people with covid-19 are reporting strange neurological issues that challenge our understanding of the disease – and how to treat it.
How to lower your coronavirus risk: The coronavirus is still circulating yet many countries are taking steps to relax restrictions. If you have been asked to return to work or send your children back to school, how can you minimise the risk of infection to yourself and your family?
Essential information about coronavirus
What is covid-19?
What are the worst symptoms and how deadly is covid-19?
You could be spreading the coronavirus without realising you’ve got it
What does evidence say about schools reopening?
What does the latest research suggest about the coronavirus in pregnancy?
What to read, watch and listen to about coronavirus
Covid-19 Fact Checkers, a podcast from Vice, pairs up young people with experts who can answer their questions relating to the pandemic. A recent episode focused on why people in the UK from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds are being disproportionately affected by covid-19.
Can You Save The World? is a coronavirus social distancing game, where the player travels through a city and gains points for saving lives by practising social distancing correctly and collecting masks.
What coronavirus looks like in every country on Earth is a 28-minute film from Channel 4 News showing what daily life looks like in every country from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
Coronavirus, Explained on Netflix is a short documentary series examining the on-going coronavirus pandemic, the efforts to fight it and ways to manage its mental health toll.
Coronavirus: The science of a pandemic: As the death toll from covid-19 rises, discover how researchers around the world are racing to understand the virus and prevent future outbreaks in our free online panel discussion.
A day in the life of coronavirus Britain is an uplifting Channel 4 documentary shot over 24 hours which shows how the citizens of Britain are coping under lockdown.
New Scientist Weekly features updates and analysis on the latest developments in the covid-19 pandemic. Our podcast sees expert journalists from the magazine discuss the biggest science stories to hit the headlines each week – from technology and space, to health and the environment.
The Rules of Contagion is about the new science of contagion and the surprising ways it shapes our lives and behaviour. The author, Adam Kucharski, is an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK, and in the book he examines how diseases spread and why they stop.
Coronavirus trajectory tracker explained, a video by John Burn-Murdoch for the Financial Times, uses data visualisation to explain the daily graphs that show how coronavirus cases and deaths are growing around the world.
Contagion: The BBC Four Pandemic is a sober documentary about the progression of a hypothetical pandemic which the BBC simulated in 2017. Fronted by science journalist and TV presenter Hannah Fry, and made with the support of some of the country’s best epidemiologists and mathematical modelers, it’s very relevant to today’s covid-19 pandemic.
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