Owl recalls headlines in 2013 screaming: A new £8.4million Dinan Way extension linking Hulham Road with the Saddlers Arms could be back on the cards 23 years after it was first mooted. (for interest article copied at the end)

So is this the end of the beginning, or the beginning of the end?

If it relies on community infrastructure levy (CIL) could take a long time yet. 

A program of infrastructure improvements – including the £11.2 million completion of the Dinan Way extension – have been backed by county council chiefs.

Daniel Wilkins and Daniel Clark www.exmouthjournal.co.uk 

Devon County Council’s cabinet, when they met virtually on Wednesday (April 8), approved the updated transport infrastructure plan.

One of the projects included was the long-awaited extension of Dinan Way to link up with the A376 to ‘improve vehicular and bus access and connectivity for residential and commercial areas’.

No timeline has been set for the project.

The money will come from the Community Infrastructure Levy – money obtained from developers – the pinch point fund and the Local Transport Plan.

Approving the infrastructure plan means the council can make progress with a range of transport improvement schemes once the coronavirus crisis has ended.

Cllr Andrea Davis, cabinet member for infrastructure, said: “It is important we look to the future and develop programs that can be progressed when we return to normality, to help the economy of Devon recover.”

Once complete, Dinan Way will be extended from the junction with Hulham Road across to a new roundabout on the A376.

The project aims ease the pressure of ‘rat-runs’ in residential areas of Exmouth used by many commercial vehicles.

Also included in the transport infrastructure plan is £1million improvements to the Clyst St Mary roundabout which connects the A376 and the A3052.

The plan also includes improved walking and cycling links between Exmouth bus station and the town centre as well as a revised entrance to the station.

Several platforms along the Avocet train line – which runs from Exmouth to Exeter – will be extended in the transport infrastructure plan.

Cllr Alan Connett, leader of the Liberal Democrat group, said: “With the current national emergency, none of us know how much of the program will be put in place.”

Cllr Rob Hannaford, leader of the Labour group, added: “This is a welcome report, although we don’t know when it will be delivered.

“It does go to every corner of the county which is great, but many of the projects have been around for some time and the big issue is delivery.”

And from the archive:

Possible £8.4m plan to extend Dinan Way

Dave Beasley www.exmouthjournal.co.uk

A new £8.4million Dinan Way extension linking Hulham Road with the Saddlers Arms could be back on the cards 23 years after it was first mooted.

It follows Strand-based developer Eagle Investments revealing their plans for a 350-home housing estate and new 210-pupil primary school at the top of Dinan Way and Hulham Road this week.

They are holding a public exhibition next week to show what it could look like and they want residents to have their say before they file for outline planning permission.

Goodmores Farm, also called Upper Lovering, is in East Devon District Council’s (EDDC) 13-year blueprint for more homes in Exmouth, called the Local Plan.

Exmouth has been earmarked for 700 homes, split between Clinton Devon Estates Plumb Park project and Goodmores Farm.

The plan says that the new homes would need a new school and a new road.

A huge wedge of land between Hulham Road and the A376 has already been earmarked for the extension and labelled the ‘Dinan Way Safeguarding area’.

County chiefs have put the price tag of a new road at £8,352,000 which would be paid for by developers through schemes like the Community Infrastructure Levy.

John Fowler of Eagle Investments said: “We would expect to have to contribute to a CIL towards a Dinan Way extension. We are talking a lot of money.

“We would hope to file for outline planning permission (for Goodmores Farm) in the near future.”

District council bosses says that planning approval for Goodmores Farm was not dependent on a new road being completed.

A spokesman said: “It would be a longer term need as things stand at the moment.

“But that could change after we have received the findings of the Inspector currently examining our Draft Local Plan.”

A spokesperson for Eagle Investments said: “We want to hear from the community before we submit a planning application.

“Our project team will be at the exhibition to answer any questions.

“This will decide the guiding principles of future development on the site. Within our outline application we are proposing 0.5 hectares of land for community or commercial uses.

“What will be located on this land has not yet been decided and will respond to the needs of the local community.”

It’s a while until payday and a big, unexpected bill has arrived. The money will eventually be there but in the meantime, there is a cash flow problem. Most of us have been there – and Rishi Sunak is no different.

Larry Elliott discusses three options: follow George Osborne’s austerity; follow post war governments – a mixture of growth and inflation; go down the monetary finance route (print money).

Larry Elliott, economics editor,  www.theguardian.com

The chancellor has a whopping cash flow problem. Locking down the economy in response to the Covid-19 pandemic means that tax revenues have dried up at a time when the state is promising to spend billions more on health, wage subsidies, small business grants and universal credit.

It’s not unusual for the state’s spending to exceed its revenue and when it does the gap is normally covered by borrowing. The government sells bonds – or gilts – to investors and uses the proceeds to plug the hole.

In the current crisis, the government’s need for ready cash is so great it can’t get the gilts out of the door quickly enough. Fortunately, though, Sunak has an understanding bank manager in the form of Andrew Bailey. The governor of the Bank of England, has agreed to solve the Treasury’s cashflow problem by printing as much money as the chancellor needs provided Sunak agrees to pay off his overdraft by the end of the year.

This may sounds a bit technical, but it matters a lot. For the time being the economy is effectively being kept going by the state. Only bits of the private sector are operating as normal and the longer the lockdown the bigger the bill for the Treasury. All of which raises the question of how it is to be paid for. More specifically, does the use of the government’s overdraft facility mean that the UK is heading down a road that ends with the Bank printing money to pay for government spending?

How the government goes about footing the bill for Covid-19 depends on the scale of the economic damage, but it is already clear that early estimates of a short, sharp shock were too optimistic. The current crisis looks likely to prove more costly than the recession of 2008-09, until now the deepest slump of the post-war era.

Sunak has options. The first is to do what George Osborne did in 2010 and impose a period of belt-tightening as soon as the recession ends. This would involve an austerity budget – or more likely a series of austerity budgets – in which taxes would be raised and spending cut in order to reduce the size of the government’s annual budget deficits.

This option is unlikely to prove all that attractive. The lesson of the Osborne experiment is that trying to get the deficit down too fast leads to sluggish growth, which reduces tax revenues and means it takes longer to reduce borrowing. Moreover, the tightest financial settlements on the NHS in its history left the health service poorly prepared to cope with a pandemic. There will be political uproar if Sunak goes to the austerity route.

A second option is to follow the example of post-war governments and rely on a mixture of growth and inflation to restore the public finances to good health over time. Between 1939 and 1945, the wartime government ran annual budget deficits of 20% of national output or more. National debt – a measure of the budget surpluses and deficits accumulated over centuries – rose to 250% of gross domestic product. Yet over the next half century, the debt to GDP ratio gradually came down to stand at around 30% by the turn of the millennium.

Borrowing is currently dirt cheap for the government, so Sunak could decide to get the economy fully functioning again before worrying too much about the public finances. The lesson from the decades after 1945 is that governments only really have a deficit problem if they have a growth problem.

The third option is monetary finance, under which the Bank of England is instructed to print enough money to cover whatever the government chooses to spend. In the short-term, this is precisely what Bailey is doing with his overdraft facility. There are those who say it should be made permanent in order to help rebuild the economy and prepare it for the challenges of global heating.

The temporary nature of the overdraft means that it is not really monetary finance. Gordon Brown’s government made use of the same arrangement during the financial crisis of 2008-09 but paid its £20bn overdraft off within two months. Sunak has promised to pay off his overdraft by the end of the year, which he could do either by selling more gilts or by raising taxes. Alternatively, he could decide that his overdraft – on which he only has to pay 0.1% interest – is far too useful to dispense with in the current circumstances.

No question, going down the monetary finance route means a line will have been crossed. The Bank of England’s independence would be called into question. Fears that printing money would lead to runaway inflation would be stoked.

But the lines are getting pretty blurred anyway. Back in 2009, the Bank of England launched a money creation programme known as quantitative easing. It involved Threadneedle Street buying gilts and corporate bonds from the private sector in return from cash. It was not strictly monetary financing because the Bank did not buy the gilts directly from the government and it pledged that it would later sell them again. No gilts or other assets have been sold, although the Bank and the Treasury like to maintain the fiction that they will be.

So, yes, Sunak’s overdraft may prove to be temporary. But that was what was said 11 years ago about ultra-low interest rates and QE. In a crisis what was once taboo can quickly become mainstream.

One family who drove overnight from London to Devon in order to go fishing were fined and told to leave the county, after police located them in Torquay at 5am.

Owl has also received reports of the “well connected” coming down to East Devon to self isolate away from their primary residence, a practice that Robert Jenrick seems to endorse.  

Nicola Woolcock, Emma Yeomans  www.thetimes.co.uk 

A scuba diver and a family who drove more than 200 miles for a fishing trip were among Britons caught flouting social distancing rules.

Police in some parts of the UK were accused of adopting a heavy-handed approach to enforcement as temperatures hit 25C yesterday.

One family who drove overnight from London to Devon in order to go fishing were fined and told to leave the county, after police located them in Torquay at 5am. Mike Newton, a control room supervisor for Devon and Cornwall police, said: “Officers located a family from London who have driven overnight for a spot of fishing. Escorted out of Devon, and adults issued with fines. I shall refrain from further comment.”

Police patrolled beauty spots and roads into Devon and Cornwall over the weekend and warned that “legislation will be enforced”.

The RNLI was called out to two incidents on Saturday night in Brighton. It found one person had safely made it back to the beach but then saw lights coming from beneath the water at the end of the pier. A diver emerged, who had been night-fishing, and was reprimanded by police.

“We are urging the public not to take part in any water-based activity on or in the sea, to reduce the risk to the lifesaving charity’s volunteer crews and other emergency services being exposed to Covid-19 and the pressure on their time,” an RNLI spokesman said.

RNLI volunteers have rescued people on three separate occasions in the past two weeks after they had ventured on to Sully Island, in the Vale of Glamorgan, which is 400 yards from the mainland and accessible only at low tide. A spokesman for Barry lifeboat station added: “The volunteer lifeboat crew are putting their lives at risk responding to people who are not listening to the government advice.”

Second home-owners are reportedly posting their luggage through couriers in an attempt to avoid police. North Wales Police said on Twitter: “Unbelievably we are investigating reports that people are sending their suitcases via courier with clothes to their holiday homes in Wales, so if they get stopped they are not found with them. Surely people aren’t that selfish and cunning, are they?”

There have also been claims of heavy-handed policing. A hospital trust was forced to intervene after nurses on their way to and from work were stopped by police and told their NHS ID badges were not sufficient proof that they were out of the house for essential reasons.

Residents of Bracknell, Berkshire, claimed that drones had been spying on back gardens to check if people were holding barbecues or house parties. Marilyn Hedges, 69, said: “All the neighbours are up in arms. A drone flew at low level and hovered over our gardens. We can only assume it was the police or the council — who else would be doing it? It’s a total invasion of people’s privacy.”

Central Bedfordshire police was forced to clarify that it was only giving “well-intentioned” advice after tweeting: “If you think that by going for a picnic in a rural location no one will find you, don’t be surprised if an officer appears from the shadows!”

Greater Manchester police apologised after a video circulated online of a man being arrested and handcuffed who was reportedly moving a tree in his car on behalf of his mother. The force said he was subsequently de-arrested and it had apologised to his family. It added: “We would ask that the public understand the stresses that our officers are working under at present and we hope this apology will be welcome to those involved.”

The same force has used video messages from local celebrities to encourage people to stay at home. They included Peter Hook, from Joy Division — who said people should not have house parties this weekend — the actor Dan Brocklebank from Coronation Street and the footballers Marcus Rashford and Steph Houghton, the England captain. Ms Houghton’s message was: “If your mates are asking for a game of football, please say no.”

Police covering Richmond upon Thames, southwest London, said people had stayed at home rather than visiting the riverside. Officers patrolling Oxford Street, in central London, posted a picture of the deserted road and said: “Thank you to all those staying at home to protect the NHS and save lives this bank holiday weekend.”

Great Western Railway used social media to warn: “We are aware that a small minority of people are still spending time outside to film trains near our railway lines. This is explicitly against government advice and not essential. We all have a part to play in containing the spread of the virus.”

Police in north London broke up a group of men gathering outside a cafe and also closed down three car washes.

Everyday Owl attracts readers from across Europe and the world, especially from the USA. Owl has no idea why so much global interest is shown in the goings on in a small corner of Devon.

Anyway, for Owl’s American cousins – this for you guys! (Owl understands that loo rolls are still scarce in some places).

Henry Zeffman, Washington  www.thetimes.co.uk 

Every US state is in an official state of disaster for the first time in history as the country’s death toll from coronavirus became the world’s highest.

Wyoming, the least populous state, became the last to get a federal disaster declaration from President Trump over the weekend after it reached 200 cases.

The declarations make federal funding available to state and local governments to combat the virus and make it easier for them to draw on resources such as the army corps of engineers.

Washington DC, which has a unique status, the US Virgin Islands; the Northern Mariana Islands; Puerto Rico and Guam have also received disaster declarations, making American Samoa the only US territory that has not.

On Saturday, the US death toll from the virus surpassed that of Italy, becoming the highest number of any country. As of yesterday evening, there had been 21,954 deaths from the virus in the US.

But as the states attempt to slow the virus’ spread and minimise deaths they are competing with each other, and the federal government, in a cut-throat global market for medical supplies.

State governors are cutting unorthodox deals directly with companies in an attempt to beat their competitors — and compatriots — to precious hauls of masks and other protective equipment.

States are paying ballooning prices for scarce resources, and abandoning rules about how to spend taxpayers’ money, for example by offering full funds up front to sweeten the deal.

Officials in one state told The Washington Post that they were preparing to dispatch police to greet two chartered cargo planes bearing millions of masks from China next week, for fear that the federal government will swoop in. The officials asked the newspaper not to identify their state so the government was not alerted.

“We’re doing what everyone else is doing,” Mike DeWine, the Republican governor of Ohio, said “You’ve got 50 states and the federal government all chasing the same companies. It’s crazy.”

Laura Kelly, the Democratic governor of Kansas, said: “We all know how the free market works. It goes to the highest bidder. I can’t put in a bid for masks or ventilators or face shields that will rival what colleagues in New York can do.”

Mr Trump announced social distancing measures in mid-March but reports at the weekend said he was being urged by senior officials to put strong restrictions in place throughout February.

“Obviously if we had, right from the very beginning, shut everything down it may have been a little bit different,” Anthony Fauci, the White House’s top infectious diseases expert, told CNN yesterday. “But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then . . . We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes, it’s not. It is what it is. We are where we are right now.”

According to The New York Times several administration officials including Mike Pence, the vice-president, Alex Azar, the health and human services secretary, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, tried to impress the seriousness of the crisis and the necessity of strong action on Mr Trump. But it was eventually Deborah Birx, a world-leading HIV researcher seconded to the coronavirus taskforce, who won the president round. The president “often told people he thought she was elegant,” the newspaper reported.

Beginning in January, medical experts communicated on an increasingly panicked email chain about how bad they feared the virus would become — while lamenting the government’s inaction. They called the email chain “Red Dawn”, a reference to a 1980s Patrick Swayze film about children trying to save the US from a foreign invasion.

The group was anchored by Duane Caneva, the chief medical officer at the Department of Homeland Security.

On January 28, James Lawler, an infectious diseases doctor who advised George W Bush and Barack Obama, wrote: “Great understatements in history: Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow — ‘just a little stroll gone bad’. Pompeii — ‘a bit of a dust storm’. Hiroshima — ‘a bad summer heat wave’ AND Wuhan — ‘just a bad flu season’.” Two days later Mr Trump declared that the virus was “very well under control” and there would be a “very good ending for it”.

This NHSX app has been trailed a number of times.

The Government central strategy of skipping any mass testing and going for “herd immunity” (despite there being no evidence that long term immunity is acquired by infection) is in disarray. Covid-19 appears to be behaving in a different way to that used in the initial modelling. This has left us running hard to catch up.

So is this tracing app part of a well thought through Plan B or another clutching at straw exercise such as the anti-body test that everyone could buy from Amazon? (Owl is not arguing that risks should not be taken, but that the Government acts as a well-informed purchaser of biotechnology)

Owl’s previous comment on this app was that it might well work in a metropolitan/city environment but questioned its use in the country. For example, Owl notes that to be successful, a 60% take up in the population would be necessary. For comparison, the Covid-19 tracker app, which is proving very useful as a sampling and general infection tracking tool, managed to get a staggering 2m contributors in a couple of days. But this corresponds to only about a 4% take-up in the population.

In the country, do 60% of every community have a smart pone (or even a reliable mobile signal)?

Owl thinks that this app cannot replace an active contact tracing and tracking system in the country.

Greg Wilford, the Times 13 April 2020

An app that will trace users who have come into contact with coronavirus has been hailed as key to ending the lockdown.

The NHS is working on a mobile phone app that will alert people who may have become infected by those around them in the hope that it will allow the government to begin relaxing social distancing measures.

On Friday Google and Apple announced they were working together to create their own that can be downloaded on to billions of phones worldwide.

They said national health services like the NHS could use the data for their own versions while apps in different countries could work together.

This means that if someone using a contact-tracing system by the NHS travels overseas, their phone can still log the details of people they come into contact with even if the other person was using another system.

Whitehall sources told The Sunday Times that the NHS’s technology arm, NHSX, has been working with Google and Apple “at breakneck speed” to develop its app. They said it was a central plank of the government’s strategy to lift the lockdown. “We believe this could be important in helping the country return to normality,” a source said.

They hope it could help them begin lifting the lockdown late next month. The two technology giants said: “There has never been a more important moment to work together to solve one of the world’s most pressing problems.”

Matt Hancock, the health secretary, is said to be considering how to encourage people to install the app. Experts believe the “track and trace” element will only work if 60 per cent of the public uses it. One idea would be that people are told they can resume normal work and home life if they have installed it on their phones.

The system would work by using short-range Bluetooth signals. These would enable phones to record a list of everyone with whom their owners have come into close proximity in the past two weeks, providing that those people also have smartphones. If someone on that list tests positive for Covid-19 and notifies a public health app, everyone else is alerted and told to self-isolate.

Data would not go to police to enforce social distancing as this may put people off using it. Google and Apple say this should allay privacy concerns.

Older coronavirus patients will be given “scores” to determine whether they are suitable for critical care under new guidelines.

In this case “points” does not “mean prizes”. With 30% of East Devon aged 65+ automatically gaining penalty points, perhaps the Exeter Nightingale won’t be needed after all.

Greg Wilford www.thetimes.co.uk 

Doctors and other health professionals have been issued with a “clinical frailty scale” to identify “who may not benefit from critical care interventions”, the NHS has confirmed.

Infected people aged 65 or over will be given a points tally based on their age, frailty and underlying conditions. According to the system, if someone scores above eight points they should probably not be admitted to intensive care, according to the Financial Times.

Instead, they should be given “ward-based care” and a trial of non-invasive ventilation, the newspaper said. However, official guidance states that clinical discretion could be used to override the scoring system if a situation requires “special consideration”.

A frontline NHS consultant said: “The scoring system is just a guide. We make the judgment taking into account a lot of information about the current ‘nick’ of the patient — oxygenation, kidney function, heart rate, blood pressure — which all adds into the decision-making. If this was a bacterial pneumonia or a bad asthma attack, then that is treatable and you might send that older patient to intensive care.”

The NHS says the scale has not yet been validated for use with people under 65 or those with learning disabilities. It can currently be used by “any appropriately trained healthcare professional”, including doctors, nurses, healthcare assistants and therapists.

Any patient aged 71-75 will automatically score four points for their age and a likely three for their frailty, taking their total to seven, it was reported. Those with conditions such as dementia, high blood pressure or recent heart and lung disease will be given more points.

An NHS website outlining guidance on the scoring system states that it “is a reliable predictor of outcomes in the urgent care context”. It continues: “Like any decision support tool, it is not perfect and should not be used in isolation to direct clinical decision-making.

“It will sensitise you to the likely outcomes in groups of patients, but clinical decision-making with individual patients should be undertaken through a more holistic assessment, using the principles of shared decision-making.”

The scoring system is included in guidelines on critical care for adults with Covid-19 issued by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice). It was originally developed at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. The news emerged after NHS England wrote to all GPs asking them to contact vulnerable patients to ensure that plans for end-of-life decisions were in place.

Ruthe Isden, head of health and care at Age UK, said some elderly patients have felt unsettled and pressured to sign “Do not resuscitate” forms. “Clinicians are trying to do the right thing and these are very important conversations to have, but there’s no justification in doing them in a blanket way,” she said. “It is such a personal conversation and it’s being approached in a very impersonal way.”

Some intensive care wards are now approaching capacity, with about 5,000 Covid-19 cases presenting every day. The NHS and Nice declined to comment last night.

Haroon Siddique  www.theguardian.com 

The government has been warned that Britain risks having the highest death toll from coronavirus in Europe as the total number of fatalities from the disease in UK hospitals rose above 10,000.

As Boris Johnson left hospital on Sunday, criticism of the government’s response to the pandemic was mounting from senior medics and politicians, particularly over its failure to get enough personal protective equipment (PPE) and testing to NHS and care home workers.

Prof Sir Jeremy Farrar, an adviser to the government and director of the Wellcome Trust, said the figures of almost 1,000 daily hospital deaths showed the UK was in a similar situation to other European countries that had been badly affected.

“Numbers in the UK have continued to go up. I do hope that we are coming close to the numbers reducing. But yes, the UK is likely to be certainly one of the worst, if not the worst affected country in Europe,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.

In a video message in which he stated optimism and gave thanks for his care, the prime minister attempted to reassure the nation that the UK was “making progress in this incredible national battle against coronavirus”.

He said the NHS had “saved my life, no question” and praised two nurses in particular – “Luis from Portugal and Jenny from New Zealand” – for watching over his bedside in intensive care for 48 hours “when things could have gone either way”.

The total number of hospital deaths stood at 10,612 on Sunday, up by 737 from 9,875 the day before. On Friday and Saturday, the death toll rose by more than 900 each day.

Epidemiologists and public health experts are divided over how effective the government’s response has been but criticism has been increasing in recent weeks as the UK death toll rises.

Sue Hill, vice-president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said she believed UK deaths could rise to 30,000. She acknowledged that the government has a difficult job but said it gave the appearance of placing “political spin” over action.

Describing the daily Downing Street briefing as “a bit of a joke”, she said: “He [Boris Johnson or another cabinet minister] is sitting there speaking about subjects he doesn’t really understand and can’t answer questions about it. It’s political spin, isn’t it? They’re not doing themselves any favours.

“The thing that irritates me is cabinet ministers are standing up every day, addressing us as if we’re on a war footing and giving Churchillian quotes when they could be doing a few simple things like getting more bits of plastic and paper [which personal protective equipment is made out of] on to wards.”

Prof John Ashton, a former regional director of public health for north-west England, who has previously criticised the government over the crisis, said its performance had worsened.

He said: “It was the failure to convene [the emergency committee] Cobra at the beginning of February that meant everything else flowed from it, the failure to order equipment etc. Now we are into the cover-up. Any journalist worth their salt should boycott this propaganda [the daily briefing]. They don’t answer any questions.

“The chief nurse deflected the question about the number of nurses and doctors who died because of confidentiality. She wasn’t being asked about individuals, she was being asked about numbers.”

He also said that people were dying in care homes and at home without being tested while some were being sent home to die before they had been tested.

“There are probably large numbers of people who are not being counted,” said Ashton.

Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, said “the time for excuses has passed” when it came to PPE failures and the deaths of medical and care staff.

“Ministers have been saying for weeks that the PPE situation is in hand. That there’s enough to go around and it’s just a matter of logistics. But it isn’t good enough,” he said.

“NHS, care and other key workers are falling ill in huge numbers. Some have already died – including nurses, doctors, care workers, healthcare assistants and porters.”

Unison said its PPE alert hotline has been told of care workers being told to wash their face masks for reuse, threatened with the sack for using them, having to buy their own stock and having to use watered down handwash.

Labour has tried to strike a constructive tone when criticising the government, but Sir Keir Starmer warned of a “mismatch” between the complaints of medical and care staff that they lack protective equipment and ministers insisting there is enough to go round. The new Labour leader is also expected to press the government this week on gaps in the UK’s financial support schemes for workers and businesses.

Andy Burnham, Labour’s last health secretary, said: “The issue is not whether mistakes will be made, the question is how quickly do you acknowledge them and correct them. I think on certain issues they have done that but on what’s most material – PPE – they haven’t.”

Meanwhile, Labour backbenchers were breaking rank with the leadership, with Barry Sheerman, the Huddersfield MP, saying the government had “failed abysmally” to protect NHS staff.

He had, he said, tried his “hardest to be fair to the government … but mounting evidence of the sheer incompetence of ministers and the grim fact of 10,000 deaths means now the gloves are off”.

Peter Hain, the Labour peer and former cabinet minister, told the Guardian: “It’s becoming crystal clear the government has shamefully abandoned frontline health and care workers to their Covid-19 fate as they battle to save the desperately ill.”

The opposition has called for immediate talks on the return of a virtual parliament. But with the Commons not due to be recalled until 21 April, Sir Bernard Jenkin, the senior Tory MP and chair of the liaison committee scrutinising the government, called for ministers to agree to a hearing this week.

Writing for the Guardian, he said: “Proper, considered, penetrating, constructive scrutiny does really matter. This is not about hauling ministers before MPs to blame them for the problems they cannot instantly resolve.

“Former cabinet secretary Gus O’Donnell should be commended for his searing honesty when he recently admitted, without prompting, that he should have advised previous governments to commit far more resources to flu pandemic planning.

“This crisis calls for the same candour and transparency – that is what speeds up the learning process, leading to better decisions and more effective action.”

Speaking at No 10’s briefing on Sunday, Matt Hancock, the health secretary, insisted that both more testing and PPE were on their way to the care sector but he could not give a timescale for when either problem would be sorted out, saying it was “impossible” to say when the right kit would be in the right place across 58,000 sites.

Admitting the death figures meant it was a “sombre day” for the UK, he also could not give an update on the number of NHS staff who have died, saying the last previous figure was 19. Statements from hospitals and the families of workers show the figure is more than 30.

The usefulness of figures provided by the government in tracking the spread of the virus have also been called into question, with concerns about the lack of tracking of cases – and deaths – outside hospitals.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, the British Medical Association’s council chair, said with testing only going on in hospitals, it was difficult to draw any conclusions from the government statistics.

Analysis: Ultimately, it may be that the reason for our death toll is simple. The countries that have done the best, so far, engaged in massive testing and isolation early on. We tried to do that, but did not have the capacity.

Steven Swinford, Deputy Political Editor  www.thetimes.co.uk 

Britain’s coronavirus death toll has passed 10,000 as a government adviser warned that the UK could become the worst affected nation in Europe.

The number of people who died from Covid-19 rose by 737 to 10,612 yesterday and nearly 20,000 people have been admitted to hospital with the illness.

Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, who sits on the government’s scientific advisory committee, said that the UK could learn lessons from Germany, which introduced mass testing at an early stage.

Matt Hancock, the health secretary, called it a sombre day, and questions mounted over Britain’s strategy and whether enough protective equipment was being supplied to frontline NHS workers.

On a positive note, Yvonne Doyle, the medical director of Public Health England, said there were signs that the number in hospital with coronavirus in London was beginning to stabilise but she added: “On the other hand we start to see other areas increasing, particularly the northwest and Yorkshire. It’s very important that the message about staying home and social distancing is adhered to because we are certainly not past this crisis’s damage yet.”

Sir Jeremy also raised concerns about evidence in South Korea that people were becoming reinfected with the virus, which he said could have “massive ramifications” for the development of a potential vaccine. He added that, although a vaccine may be ready by the summer, it could take months to develop the manufacturing capacity needed to distribute it.

He told The Andrew Marr Show on BBC One: “The numbers in the UK have continued to go up. I do hope we are coming close to the number of new infections reducing. But, yes, the UK is likely to be one of the worst, if not the worst, affected countries in Europe.”

He said that Germany had introduced testing at a remarkable rate, adding that the country’s mass testing regime had given it a “critical six to eight weeks” to prepare its health system for the pandemic.

“It is still early in this epidemic. What is critical for Germany is they continue that testing and isolation,” he said. “Inevitably the UK will learn lessons from how Germany has managed to control the epidemic to date.”

On South Korea, he said that evidence suggested that as many as 100 people had become reinfected. “It is critical to understand whether those are one viral infection that has persisted in one individual and now has reactivated or whether they’ve been infected with a second virus,” he said. “Either way immunity in some people is not complete and that has major ramifications for the ability to make a vaccine and also for the community to be protected against further waves.”

He said that vaccines and treatments for coronavirus “are really our only true exit strategy from this”, but added that “the chances of second and third waves of epidemic are probably inevitable”.

In an interview with The Times published on Saturday, Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at Oxford University, said that the vaccine being developed by her team could be ready by September.

Sir Jeremy said that a vaccine could begin to become available in September but added that manufacturing capacity had to be created to ensure that there was enough to give to billions of people around the world.

He also said that there was evidence that ethnic minority communities were more at risk from coronavirus. He told the BBC: “There is some evidence growing both in the United States and here in Europe that people from [ethnic minority] backgrounds are more at risk. What is critical to work out is whether that is something specific to that background or is it related to other risk factors we know about: age, other illnesses people have . . . diabetes, people who are obese have been more affected, people with high blood pressure, people with heart disease, lung disease.”

Mr Hancock was asked if the “good outcome” of keeping UK deaths below 20,000, as previously stated by Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, remained likely. He said: “The future path of this pandemic in this country is determined by how people act and that’s why it’s so important that people follow the social distancing guidelines. Predictions are not possible because they depend on the behaviour of the people and I’m really glad that at the moment the British people this weekend are doing their bit.”

ANALYSIS Deaths are hard to explain away (Tom Whipple writes). Comparing countries on the basis of diagnoses is fraught with difficulty. Are they lower in one because there is less testing? Are they higher in another because their testing focuses on hospitals?

Comparing hospital admissions is hard, too. One country may have different criteria for entry, for example, or a different definition of intensive care.

So statisticians tend to place more — though not complete — trust in deaths. They are, to use the technical term, a clear data point, not especially open to interpretation.

On that basis, Britain’s death toll is tough to defend. Our curve is yet to flatten and our daily figure, which still does not count many care home fatalities, exceeds that of the worst-hit countries in the EU, Italy and Spain, at their peak. That those countries still have more deaths in total is little comfort.

Each day’s deaths represent infections from almost a month ago. Since a revolutionary treatment is not on the short-term horizon, it seems plausible that we will pass Italy and Spain in absolute numbers and possibly pass Italy in proportion, too.

That would not necessarily be proof that we had done the wrong thing. Each country is different. London is a global hub with a large, dense population: it was always going to risk a big outbreak. On the other hand, we are also an island. Germany, which isn’t, has managed to control the disease better than any large country in Europe.

Ultimately, it may be that the reason for our death toll is simple. The countries that have done the best, so far, engaged in massive testing and isolation early on. We tried to do that, but did not have the capacity.

(Owl can find nothing from Neil Parish since the “Stay at home and wash your hands” message of 9 April )

A message to our readers from the East Devon MP, Simon Jupp

Philippa Davies  www.midweekherald.co.uk

My thoughts are with Boris Johnson following his admission to intensive care on Monday.

This is a stark reminder of the foe we face and a wake-up call to everyone to follow the clear instruction to stay at home to protect the NHS and save lives.

We are truly living in tough times. I returned home to Sidmouth at the earliest opportunity and I’ve been working seven days a week to help constituents access government funding and return from far-flung places.

Whether you are a well-established firm employing hundreds of people or a small family business, this virus has caused a great deal of anguish as profits evaporate and income dwindles. The Government has offered a wide range of schemes and I’ve been working with businesses across East Devon who’ve contacted me because they’ve not been able to access the support they need.

I hope everyone recognises the speed in which support for jobs and our economy were put in place by the Government. The situation we face is no easy task for any government and alongside my colleagues in Parliament, I’ve worked hard to highlight areas where further support for individuals and businesses is needed. As a result of examples from East Devon and beyond, we’ve seen significant improvements made to the Job Retention and Business Interruption Loan Scheme.

My small team and I continue to receive hundreds of emails a day and we’re working through them as quickly as we can, prioritising urgent cases, as you’d expect. For example, I have recently intervened in cases where care homes have been abandoned by their usual food supply company, and put them in touch with local providers.

I’m acutely aware of the concerns about the strain on our precious health service and I’m in regular touch with NHS leaders and frontline staff to understand the situation on the ground in our hospitals. The availability of PPE in our hospitals is something I’m monitoring closely to ensure any concerns are addressed quickly.

have published a list of the volunteer community support groups setup in towns and villages across East Devon on http://www.simonjupp.org.uk. I’ve also signed up to help in my community and want to thank everyone for playing their part to defeat this virus.

I’m proud to represent an area which has rallied around its communities, demonstrating the determination we need to get through this, together.

SIMON JUPP, MP