Health workers first in line for antibody tests in Britain
Workers in Britain’s National Health Service, or NHS, and the care sector will be given priority when novel coronavirus antibody tests become available, it has been announced, after the government reached an agreement with pharmaceutical company Roche.
The tests, which show if someone has had COVID-19, will be made “free for people who need them” with health and care workers being first in line. However, NHS England’s National Medical Director Stephen Powis said the test does not necessarily show if someone who has antibodies has developed immunity.
At a media conference on Thursday, British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said 10 million tests will be made available, for free on the NHS, over the coming months.
“Real progress” is being made, he added, with more than 3 million novel coronavirus tests having also been carried out, and he said the country is “in a position” to start moving to Level 3 of its five-level warning system.
It has also been announced that the fee required for foreign health and social care workers to use NHS services will be scrapped.
A further 338 COVID-19 patients died in Britain over the latest 24-hour period, bringing the total coronavirus-related death toll in the country to 36,042, the Department of Health and Social Care said on Thursday.
Across Europe, the novel coronavirus had infected 1,755,620 people and claimed 165,578 lives as of Thursday, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
In Russia, a C-17 military transport aircraft from the United States, with an initial shipment of 50 US-made ventilators, landed in Moscow on Thursday. A second shipment with a further 150 ventilators will be delivered to Russia next week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswomen Maria Zakharova said.
Russia’s coronavirus crisis response center on Friday reported 8,894 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of infections to 326,448. Its death toll stood at 3,249.
Russian state media agency Tass reported on Thursday that the head of Russia’s Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, has been sent to Moscow suspected of having contracted the coronavirus.
Russian experts fear a second wave of COVID-19 infections could begin in late summer, or later, in Russia.
“If we begin a blanket immunization somewhere around September or October — that is, before the next incidence wave begins, then we will be able to break this wave,” said Alexander Ginzburg, director of the Health Ministry’s Gamalei National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology.
In Italy, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte outlined the government’s strategy for Phase Two, indicating a post-lockdown stage of its coronavirus response, in a report to the lower house of parliament. “We realize the challenge that lies ahead is even more difficult than and just as dangerous as the one we faced at the beginning of the emergency,” he said.
A further 156 COVID-19 patients had died in the past 24 hours, bringing Italy’s death toll to 32,486, according to fresh figures on Thursday.
US President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered US flags to be lowered to half-staff for three days in honor of those who have died from the coronavirus in the United States.
The announcement came as the country’s COVID-19 death toll approaches the 100,000 mark, and followed calls by Democrats to lower the flag when it reaches that grim milestone.
“I will be lowering the flags on all Federal Buildings and National Monuments to half-staff over the next three days in memory of the Americans we have lost to the Coronavirus,” Trump tweeted.
The Republican president added that flags would remain at halfstaff on Monday for the country’s Memorial Day, honoring those who died while serving in the US military.
The US recorded 1,255 coronavirus deaths in the 24 hours to 8 pm local time on Thursday, bringing the total to 94,661, according to the latest real-time tally reported by Johns Hopkins University.
The country hit hardest hit by the pandemic has now confirmed 1,576,542 cases, the Baltimorebased university reported.
Globally, as of Friday afternoon, there have been 4,962,707 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 326,459 deaths, according to the World Health Organization.
During a tour of a Ford manufacturing plant in the state of Michigan on Thursday, Trump said the US would not close in the event of a second wave of the virus.
“People say that’s a very distinct possibility. It’s standard. And we’re going to put out the fires. We’re not going to close the country. We’re going to put out the fires,” Trump told reporters when asked if he was concerned about a second wave.
The number of US citizens applying for unemployment benefits in the two months since the coronavirus took hold in the US has swelled to nearly 39 million, the government reported on Thursday, even as states from coast to coast gradually reopen their economies and let people go back to work.
Nearly 2.4 million people filed for unemployment benefits last week in the latest wave of layoffs from the business shutdowns that have brought the economy to its knees, the Labor Department said.
Also on Thursday, the US Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, revised airport screening procedures to limit the risk of spreading the novel coro