UK coronavirus live: only 1% of deaths in England and Wales are now linked to Covid; testing ability ‘behind the curve’ | Politics

Good Morning. Boris Johnson won his first vote on the domestic market bill very easily last night, but the morning papers won’t give him much comfort because several are targeting the coronavirus testing crisis, with large numbers of people. they continue to report that they cannot get proof.

On the Today show Sir John Bell, a regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford and a government adviser on life sciences, said the government was “behind the curve” in providing testing capacity.

When asked what was going on, he replied:

I think what is going wrong is the second wave. A month ago they had spare capacity in testing, significant spare capacity, but I think what has been underestimated was the speed at which the second wave would come, but also the pressure put on the system by children going back to school. and the demands of the evidence. associated with that, and more and more people away from home.

So I think they are definitely behind the curve in terms of getting the necessary evidence for what we need today.

Bell said there would be a “significant increase” in testing capacity over the next two weeks. But demand was also increasing, he said.

This will get worse because, of course, we have not yet reached winter; not all of us have started to sob, to have a fever, to have colds, and that will add more confusion to the problem. The demand will increase. The real question is whether they can get the supply in a position where it can exceed the demand, and that’s the challenge right now.

In the same program Chris hopsonorth, the executive director of NHS Providers, which represents hospitals and other NHS trusts, said the government was not being open enough with health leaders about the scale of the problem. He said:

Part of the problem here is that the government is not being as open as trusts would like about how big this problem is, how widespread it is, and how long it is going to last. Therefore, it is difficult to obtain complete information.

He also suggested that the government was focusing too much on the turn.

Governments, when they have operational problems like this, are faced with a choice, which is whether they try to communicate politically to get out of them, let’s say, for example, ‘look how many millions of tests we have done’ or ‘we are next year we are going to do a very ambitious project ‘- or calmly and seriously explain the appropriate details of what is happening, and in doing so help and support those organizations … that are trying to deal with these problems. And I suppose our trusted leaders have a pretty clear view that they really want less of the former and quite a bit more of the latter.

When told that he was saying that there were too many laps and that there was not enough real information coming from the government, he replied, “That’s definitely one way of putting it, yes.”

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30 am: Boris Johnson chair cabinet.

9.30 am: The ONS publishes its weekly death statistics for England and Wales.

11am: Sir Keir Starmer gives a speech at the Trade Union Congress online conference.

12:00 h: The Department of Education publishes school attendance figures.

12:00 h: Downing Street plans to hold its daily briefing in the lobby.

12:15 pm: Nicola Sturgeon, the Prime Minister of Scotland, is holding her regular briefing on the coronavirus.

12.30 pm: Matt Hancock, the health secretary, will answer an urgent question about coronavirus in the Commons.

Around 2:00 p.m.: The deputies begin the first phase of the committee’s debate on the internal market bill. They will discuss amendments relating to the functioning of the UK internal market.

2.30 pm: David Nabarro, WHO special envoy on coronavirus, testifies to the Commons foreign affairs committee.

Politics Live has doubled as the UK’s coronavirus live blog for some time and given the way the Covid crisis overshadows everything, this will continue for the foreseeable future. But we will also cover political stories that do not belong to Covid, and where they seem most important and interesting, they will take precedence.

Here’s our global coronavirus live blog.

I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, put “Andrew” somewhere and you’re more likely to find it. I try to answer questions and if they are of general interest I will post the question and answer above the line (ATL), although I cannot promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to get my attention quickly, it’s probably best to use Twitter. I’m in @ AndrewGorrión.