‘BAME people could undergo more testing due to higher risk’
ber. If the centre remains shut for a year, it is anticipated that the organisation will lose around £20m in revenue.”
The venue, which attracts 1.6m visitors a year and contributes £70m to the Welsh economy, has also announced the cancellation of its annual international Festival of Voice, which was due to take place between October 29 and November 1 this year.
The WMC currently has around 140
PEOPLE from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds could undergo greater levels of coronavirus testing due to their increased risk of getting seriously ill and dying from Covid-19, said Transport Secretary Grant Shapps.
It is understood that recommendations will be made for people from BAME backgrounds who work in areas such as health and social care to undergo more regular testing.
Mr Shapps told the Downing Street briefing: “My colleague, who’s the equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch, is in the process of working with that report [from Public Health England] to make a series of recommendations.
“But I can give you an early sneak preview when I say that we consider it doubly important to make sure some permanent staff, meaning around two-thirds of the workforce are now at risk of being made redundant. As well as the 85 permanent staff at risk, another 165 casual positions – such as bar and restaurant staff and stewards – are also affected.
Productions that have been cancelled or postponed include The Lion King, the Welsh National Opera’s autumn season, The Book of Mormon, and The Phantom of the Opera, which were all due to take place in the 1,850seat Donald Gordon Theatre.
“The closure will also affect the of those higher-risk environments, which coincidentally are environments that black, Asian, minority and ethnic people might be working in, get additional support in terms of testing and tracking and tracing.”
Earlier yesterday, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) said the reproduction number, referred to as R, of coronavirus across the UK remains between 0.7 and 0.9, while across England it is 0.8-1.0.
Sage also published regional values for R in England for the first time, with the South-West having the highest range at 0.8-1.1.
The East of England is at 0.7-0.9, London, the Midlands, the NorthWest and the South-East at 0.8-1.0, centre’s 300 volunteers’ roles and will impact on freelance and local artists whose work is performed in the centre’s performing spaces, including the 250-seat Weston Studio and 160-capacity Ffresh Cabaret venue,” the WMC spokesman added.
The WMC closed on March 17 in the wake of social-distancing advice about mass gatherings being announced by the UK Government.
Centre managing director Mathew Milsom said: “It is with deep regret that we have made the difficult decision to close Wales Millennium Centre and the North-East and Yorkshire at 0.7-1.0.
But experts said that as the numbers of infections fall across the country, R – which refers to how many people an infected person passes the virus on to – becomes less reliable.
As the number of infections drop, it is not uncommon for the R value to increase, they say.
For example, if one person passes it on to one other, the R rate jumps to 1.0, and if that infected person infects two others, it jumps further to 2.0, despite a small number of people in the population actually having the virus.
The policy implications when R equals 1.0 when there are 1,000 new infections per day are very different from when R equals 1.0 when there are 100,000 per day.
Alongside Sage, the ONS released
until January 2021.
“The coronavirus pandemic has had a devastating effect on theatres across the UK and, like many others, we have concluded that we won’t be able to put performances on our stages again while social-distancing measures are in place. Under these circumstances we can’t open the theatre in a way that provides a good audience experience and that is economically viable for the centre and the producers who present their work here.
“The safety of our audience, staff, new figures showing that the number of people with Covid-19 in England continues to fall.
The number of average infections per day since the end of April has fallen from 5,600 new infections per day to 4,500, according to the latest figures. This is a snapshot of the average number of infections recorded by ONS taken at weekly intervals.
And it suggests only about one in 1,700 people were infected between May 25 and June 7.
Meanwhile:
■ Mr Shapps played down reports that the chief nursing officer for England, Ruth May, was banned from No 10 press briefings because she would not defend the Prime Minister’s adviser, Dominic Cummings;
■ Matt Fowler, founder of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK group, has called for an and performers is of paramount importance and, therefore, we may have to consider extending the period of closure as Government advice on mass gatherings becomes clearer over the coming weeks and months. We are also expecting significant disruption to the availability of touring shows for years to come as productions are being cancelled and no new shows are being created.”
Ticketholders for affected shows are currently being contacted to arrange refunds and/or to rearrange for future dates. immediate public inquiry into the handling of the coronavirus outbreak, saying his 56-year-old father’s death could have been prevented in the pandemic; and
■ Uber has said that it will make face coverings mandatory for drivers and passengers across the UK from Monday.
A raft of papers informing Sage’s work were also released yesterday, showing experts said as recently as June 4 that people should continue to follow the two-metre social-distancing rule.
The Environmental and Modelling Group (EMG) said that while the risk of outdoor transmission was low, people should maintain the distance to avoid contracting coronavirus from face-to-face contact.