Covid-19 update: Deaths fall to six-week low – but excess deaths still rising

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News and analysis

New ONS data shows the proportion of deaths involving Covid-19 continues to fall in all English regions, but the excess death toll has reached over 60,000. Details below.
Tory MP Douglas Ross has resigned as a government minister over the Dominic Cummings row. Details below.
Non-essential shops can reopen from 15 June. Barbecues and garden parties of up to ten people may also be allowed.
One in four adults in the UK is not receiving their mental healthcare because of lockdown, according to Public Health England.
Busy Bees, the UK’s largest nursery group, will ban activities involving sand, water and play-dough when children return after lockdown.
The 2020 Turner Prize for art has been cancelled. Tate Britain will instead award £10,000 to ten different artists.

‘Why are they called headlines?’

Covid deaths fall to six-week low – but excess deaths still rising

What elements of the Covid crisis remain most severe? New data from the Office for National Statistics shows 4,210 UK deaths linked to Covid-19 in the week to 15 May – the lowest number since the week to 3 April, just after the formal lockdown began. While this downward trajectory bodes well for concerns about a second wave of infection, the toll Covid has taken on the country is becoming starker, as the figure is released alongside the total death figure, which has reached more than 47,000.

The problem remains acute in care homes, where 37.2 per cent of deaths in England and Wales were registered with Covid-19, down just two percentage points in two weeks. The weekly death figures are still reflecting decisions made months ago – mainly to move elderly patients from hospitals to care homes without Covid tests – and the impact they are having on those most vulnerable to the virus.

Meanwhile, the number of excess deaths since lockdown began has reached more than 60,000, leaving the cause of 13,000 not accounted for by the virus. Today, Public Health England joined a host of institutions and charities drawing attention to physical and mental health patients who have stopped receiving care because of lockdown measures and the significant scaleback of NHS services for non-Covid patients. This number is only expected to rise too, especially as long as strict medical guidance remains in place.

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In pictures

ei_(32).jpeg — Park-goers lie in social distancing circles at Dolores Park in San Francisco during Memorial Day weekend (Photo: Getty)

In words

At some point you’ve got to get your economy out of ICU… You’ve got to get it off the medication before it becomes too accustomed to it. We must enable our businesses to earn our way out of this crisis.

– Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison on the need to end lockdown.

Minister quits over Cummings’s lockdown trip

Douglas Ross, the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, resigned from his government position this morning following the controversy over No. 10 adviser Dominic Cummings’s trip to Durham during the lockdown. The Moray MP said he had waited to hear the full details of the situation before commenting publicly – which he got yesterday, when Cummings gave his own press conference in the Rose Garden – but decided there were aspects of Cummings’s explanation which he had trouble with and so was resigning as a minister.

Ross backed Boris Johnson during the second round of the Tory leadership contest in 2019 and is a committed Brexit supporter. The fact that Ross is not one of the ‘usual suspects’ in the parliamentary Conservative party, who have been critical of either Dominic Cummings or Boris Johnson in the past, will certainly worry Downing Street, who will now fear that further resignations may follow.

Read more from John Connolly on Coffee House.

Global news

The Japan Pediatric Association has warned that face masks are too dangerous for children under two.
Stockholm will not achieve herd immunity in May, according to Sweden’s chief epidemiologist.
Joe Biden has left his home for the first time in more than two months. The U.S. presidential candidate laid a wreath at a Memorial Day ceremony in Delaware.
Millions of children will fall into extreme poverty due to the financial stress of the pandemic, according to a Dutch NGO.
The Chinese city of Hangzhou has proposed permanently tracking citizens’ health after lockdown.
America’s travel ban on Brazil begins today.
A man in South Korea has been sentenced to four months in prison for breaking quarantine. The 27-year-old had tested positive for Covid-19.
Arrivals to Spain will no longer have to complete a two-week quarantine from 1 July.
The archaeological site of Pompeii reopens today, as does the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. The trading floor of The New York Stock exchange also reopens with handshakes banned and face masks compulsory.
Mink in Holland have infected two people with Covid-19. The incident may be the first cases of animal to human transmission in the country.

Our latest podcast

Research: Who is immune?

Once you recover from Covid-19, are you immune? The answer to this question could prove game-changing – if it’s confirmed that people who have contracted the virus aren’t able to do so again and are essentially safe after one infection. But new research from the University of Amsterdam casts doubt on long-lasting Covid immunity. Their study follows ‘ten subjects over a time span of 35 years’, as they contract and recover from a series of seasonal coronaviruses, discovering that an ‘alarmingly short duration of protective immunity to coronaviruses was found.’ Reinfection rates were ‘frequent’ after 12 months since contracting the virus, and antibodies to the virus were seriously diminished after just six months.

Datawatch

Coronomics

Ten million people in the UK have volunteered in their communities during the Covid crisis, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research.
The Office for National Statistics has named the South West the most ‘neighbourly area’ of Britain. Some 64 per cent of people checked on their neighbours in April compared with 48% in bottom-placed London.
The government has given £32 billion in loans and guarantees to businesses affected by Covid-19, according to Rishi Sunak.
LATAM, Latin America’s biggest airline, has filed for bankruptcy after the pandemic grounded global air travel. Meanwhile, Lufthansa has agreed a €9 billion rescue package with the German government.
Car thefts jumped 63% in New York and 17% in Los Angeles year-on-year in the period between January and May.
Shoe retailer Kurt Geiger will quarantine any shoes tried on by customers for 24 hours.